Tuesday, February 27, 2007

one thousand movies later

wow...i'm here after a long time. Waiting for blogger to get out of beta was my favourite excuse, but now its gone and i'm back. Dunno if its one thousand movies since i was last here, but sounded nice, so.

Monday, December 12, 2005

Special mention: A movie i saw this weekend

When gopi, a collegue made a passionate plea asking me not to miss this movie, I was pleasently intrigued by the impression this movie could've made on him. The movie was cheran's thavamai thavamirunthu. Having seen Autograph and the effect it had on almost everybody i met, i had no choice but to expect a lot.
I was impressed. The very opening shot in black and white and ensuing conversation with the driver set the tone for what was to follow. As the events unfolded the premise gets well established and we know what to expect. In fact thats what set me thinking.
Among communication devices, my favourite is the highest common denominator. The most exclusive but commonly shared concepts that people don't even talk about but strikes a chord universally. For example if death is lowest common denominator (targeting the lowest expectations and broadest interests of an audience with a varying range of tastes) and yngwie mamsteen is highest common factor(most exclusive in terms of familiarity) then a child sleeping with grandparents as an expression of happy family unit is what i call highest common denominator. It is liberally used by all good communication experts without dissecting it thus.
Cheran comes across as an expert in handling this and the whole movie is a string of such instances giving the feeling for almost everyone (at least in this part of the country) that one is watching one's own story on screen.
Of course, staying in the same area of expertise (nostalgia/flashback) is a bit boring but its still a treat. Like i said earlier, the movie is so predictable and when the charecters stay true to what is expected the audience actually love it. The man is clearly adept at using the medium and techniques esp low angle shots for childhood. The background score unfortunately is a letdown as compared to the earlier movie. Rak kiran has etched his character in the most natural potrayal doing justice to cheran's attention to details. The charecterisation must've certainly inspired him. What i didn't see and not usually seen in most tamil movies is the director's objective reference, a comment on the proceedings, a flash into his thought process. I don't know if this is charecteristic desi humility or inability to articulate view point but if you've seen cinema paradiso or Tim burton's big fish you'll know what i'm saying.
Great step forward for tamil cinema but cheran shouldn't lose his head when the masses start calling it a "novel in celluloid"...saw a poster for his birthday on the way and the glorification was sickening.

Many movies, many weekends later

Haven't got myself to this corner of my life for over a month, so there's a long list to be covered. Don't remember all but top-of mind are:
I love Huckabees: wierd
Me and you and everybody we know: more wierd
Harry potter and the goblets of fire: quite a letdown i thought
memento: whoa! If somebody said gajini has been inspired by this i'll slap them. Gajini is more like a crude insulting parody. To see an experiment like this and not understand the essence of the attempt and lift a few devices is pathetic. The movie(if i can call that) is more experiential design than narrative. It should be called immersive design. Getting into the mind of a short-term memory loss patient and seeing the movie like how he faces reality is the sort of idea moviemaking was made for. But unfortunately, the human mind has been conditioned to seek meaning and everybodys been unravelling the plot, dissecting the charecters for years now. One decent soul, a film student has even published an essay on how the audience should watch this movie. In my opinion the movie should be watched once in a theatre preferably with no remote at hand and should linger ambiguously in your memory.
CRAZY : wow! This is my kinda crazy! A canadian-french movie that traces the life of an average family through all the ups and downs that history itself witnessedas fashions changed, cultures merged and the family turned out to be the only safe place. And what styling!

Thursday, October 27, 2005

communication- insight?

A communication used to share an idea, concept, feeling is one thing. Communication used to manipulate is another. Actually to me all communication seems to be of the second type but not everbody admits to it.
And therefore not employing the device that truely seems to work for the second type seems to be the biggest reason any type of communication fails. A student of mass communication or comm.sciences would probably better explain it, but my take on the device that works best for the manipulative communication bit- Incomplete messaging works beter than complete messages. Let me explain.
Driving down a main road, you see a Levis Signature hoarding. The latest one thats in your town about the new cheap jeans from levis. The line says "At Rs. 599/- it doesn't hurt that much". What the visual shows however are what really hurts during those years of madness: the rotten-tomatoes-at-your-first-performance or cactus-on-your-backside-as-you-make-your-move situations we've all been through.
What has happened, is a casual line that directly states the marketing promise(cheap jeans) in borrowed lingo of the college youth, with a visual that says what has been left out. So the complete line should say: "At Rs. 599/- it doesn't hurt that much, but what really hurts are the rotten-tomatoes-at-your-first-performance or cactus-on-your-backside-as-you-make-your-move". Which if you've ever sat through a creative brief in an ad agency would be what would've been put in the "desired response" slot, as "research" showed youth saying it hurts because they can't afford a Levi's. Whew.
So, children, thats all you do- take desired response, break it in two, put the first half as line, suitably contextualised, put second half as background leaving your audience guessing how the bloody hell does it connect and when they get it... a 3D experience in a static medium. Kidding.

My real focus was on the last part...leaving your audience guessing with an incomplete message that they solve inside their head, feel suitably rewarded and boom... they like it. Happens all the time. Watch out when the best jokes are cracked or when somebody pulls that deadly comeback.

P.s:If this post feels a little incomplete or vague, you know why ;-)

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Many things

Always wondered why we have such a linear approach to arranging all the information we use- Psychology/cognition/philosophy students would explain it with the psychokinetic phenomena/sequential absorption theory/The premise but i dont care. It is this that is the primary cause of most of our troubles. It is this that makes us think he is placed higher than me or we are lower than them leading to all sorts of conflict. Why cant we all assume we are just floating in free space and yes, i can see him, oops that one disappeared....? Some day.

Marketing, a favourite past time for me, however bends this favourably. Some time back was the Stains are good campaign( indianised terribly) and now there's the it campaign. This it one is quite a whopper. Vis it. One agency has even pulled the ultimate inside story. They've put out an recruitment ad for the man who wrote the original recruitment ad.
But it stands out. The cultural signposts are all there down to the "t". Funnily, each film snippet is inspired from movies or TV shows ensuring a strange sense of familiarity, whether its the japanese show in Lost in translation or the Primer( the cult movie) look for "making of it".
Great ides. super execution.

Monday, October 24, 2005

Movies this weekend

All that consumption didn't spoil my appetite for the weekend movie binge- Did two movies back to back

The clearing- A story that was all about storytelling than anything else. Parallel narratives, sensitive details, the works. A rather abrubt ending though.

Out of Order- Crazy hollywood crazy- the kind nobody else outside Hollywood thinks crazy- Man has chronic depressive wife mostly high on dope which gives him the perfect excuse to throw an X-tacy party and skinnydip with his kids' friends' mom and get frisky with her. And finally asks the audience to pass judgement on the charecter. Please.

Whew! what a weekend!

Played my consumer tag to the hilt. Bought a car, a vaccum cleaner(well...) and a world space radio. And then did the wardrobe update! Hang on there Mr. Money bags...

Monday, October 17, 2005

Movies this weekend

Finally spent time outdoors hanging around with humans (family, actually) so didn't quite do the big list. Didn't want to miss the ritual, so late sunday night went back to my " next whisky bar". This is what resulted:

The myth- Was that jackie? And who's that babe doing a tits-on-rat-glue number? Our own mallika sherawat? Oh please. Don't you go anywhere near this if you liked police story. If its murder you want, well...yes!

Motorcycle diaries - loved it. The vulnerable che before he became che-the-Tshirt. Did i smell swades?

Thats all.

Blogscam?

Call me a cynic, but somehow the entire iipm episode smacks of struggles of a-medium-coming-of-age creating the sort of buzz that has other media taking notice. Easy for me to say this post-facto, but suderman already smelled fish. As the interest fades off, rather quickly and quietly for how it spread, there's another pertinent question begging to be answered: have we "indianised" the blogging experience by making it the "I WANT TO BE HEARD" angst coming from screaming over a billion voices?

Thursday, October 13, 2005

Tune into the time machine

Dunno how many of you listen to the radio these days. Not many, i guess.May be the FM with all those firangi sounding desi RJs. So much for Freddie mercury's radio ga-ga. But shift to our AIR and you can happily move into the waybackmachine. Nothing seems to have changed since the 70's or max 80's. Same songs. Same "presentors". Same bloody sound. Listen to 107.1 fm between 12-1 pm. Again in the night between 9:30pm and 11:00pm in AM 783. Nothings changed.

Movies during the week

To makeup for that sorry set over the weekend, raided the DVD rental with a vengeance. This is what i got:
Black angel (Senso '45) by the crazy italian director Titi(oops) Tinto Brass
Jamon Jamon by the crazy spaniard Bigas Luna
Score with a HUGE cast like de niro, brando AND edward norton and still...sad
Kundun by scorcese
Beauty & the beast I & II

A mixed bag at the end of it.