But, one band...

Taking cue from a facebook post by film maker Jaideep Varma, I watched his 4th full length documentary “Par Ek Din” today. With a foot note specifying that it was shot in about 4 days under a budget of 1 lakh rupees, and about a band that has not released any music so far – you pretty much know what to expect.  But having watched all his previous films, I couldn’t wait any longer.

15 minutes into the film, I felt the same enthusiasm as watching a “Classic albums” documentary, which had a more generous production backing. I had watched a couple of these, and the documentary on Steely Dan’s Aja is exceptionally filmed. But then, a realisation struck me – the making of music that I had watched on Classic albums series were of albums that I had listened to at least a thousand times before I watched the documentary, which made that watching extremely engrossing. However, Par Ek Din was about a band I had not even heard before, and the music was all new to me. Still, I was hooked till the final cut!

Par Ek Din covers the story and music of the band CityHaze based in Mumbai, members with an average age of 25. From the first song featured, you know that you are in for a different sound, and utterly fresh and beautiful, but rather “gloomy”, lyrics. I wouldn’t say that the sound of the band is completely original or fresh. While I was debating this in my mind, my wife who heard one of the songs asked me whether they were covering Wilco, which pretty much made me conclude that they did not have a very original sound, but then again I was thinking about the definition of originality. You could see a lot of influences, especially that of Lucky Ali which is mentioned in the movie, and through a poster in their bed room – but the way the whole thing came together, there was magic! I felt better when I remembered something that I had read in the liner notes of an Amit Chaudhuri album, written by Prof Anand Lal:

To tell the truth, all music is fusion. No musical form remains untouched by acculturation, though classical pundits still turn up their noses at the perjury committed by colleagues who jam with jazzmen. To pin those purists down on hybridization, just ask them how their ragas Kafi or Miyan ki Malhar got their names, or how violin found such a hallowed place in south India.

Hence, I find it absurd to classify a particular artist into a specific genre, or to judge the originality of the sound – it is just the working of various things that goes into music making that defines what it really is.

One key element that stands out in the film is the band’s honesty. I was very impressed by their view points, and seriously doubt whether I had that much of worldview when I was 25! Speaking of honesty, they were not shy to tell you about their shared interest in watching WWF wrestling! I remembered with a smile what Frederick, a serious painter from Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters, said:"Can you imagine the level of a mind that watches wrestling?" 

It was really heartening to see these five individuals striking a path to their calling, than be forced to comply with the society’s rules – perhaps a message that this film delivers apart from the sheer joy of watching music making.

Watch Par Ek Din here:

The Limits of Control

Thoroughly disappointed by Jim Jarmusch’s highly indulgent “The Limits of Control”. The movie, in fact, tested my limits of tolerance. But the 2 hours spent was worth just for this one scene- 3 minutes of an amazing flamenco performance:
Watch it!

He who thinks that he’s bigger than the rest
Must go to the cemetery
There he will see, what the world really is:
It’s a handful of dirt.

The curious case of critics

The other day, film critic Rajeev Masand tweeted that there is no God if James Franco was not nominated in the Best actor category at the Oscars. In the review that followed, he raves about the movie and there is not a single negative point he has cited. And he gives it 4 out of 5 stars.
He writes:

The extraordinary cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle and Enrique Chediak, and AR Rahman’s haunting score complement Boyle’s rich and imaginative storytelling style. And James Franco who appears in more or less every scene delivers a performance nothing short of spellbinding.

Question: Can someone please enlighten me on why he refrained from giving it 5 out of 5 if, in his opinion, the movie scores full marks in all aspects?

I have watched some reality shows on Indian television where one of the judges marks a performance 21 out of 25, while the other one marks it 23/25, without any explanation on how this score was arrived at!

The wonderful guys at the fabulous Sound Opinions, rates a record as buy it, burn it, or trash it. When I heard it the first time, I didn’t get what “burn it” meant, and on reading up:

Burn it! ...There are a few good tracks here, but not worth the full price....try a downloading service, or (cough), another method.

This is kind of, I would say, innovative and "adapting to the times".

Maybe, someday, all critics would follow a thumb rule, like Siskel and Ebert did – Up or Down? Which is it?

Gene Siskel boiled it down: "What's the first thing people ask you? Should I see this movie? They don't want a speech on the director's career. Thumbs up--yes. Thumbs down--no."

PS: I attended a session by Rajeev Masand in Bangalore in 2010 and found him to be genuine. When my brother asked him what he thinks about The Big Lebowski, he more or less admitted that he didn’t get it the first time and that he is planning to watch it again. That was an honest response!

Achiever.

Ray and Lucy

Two powerful movies - Frozen River and Wendy and Lucy - with very poignant female lead characters and both directed by women. Just a coincidence that I watched both over a weekend.

Film reviews

Reviews by two film critics, Jim Emerson of Chicago Sun-Times and Baradwaj Rangan of The Indian Express, pans Avatar. Interestingly, both these critics panned The Dark Knight too, last year. I had my own rant about The Dark Knight, but loved Avatar!

Jim Emerson:

As much as I take delight in the appearance of the Na'vi characters themselves,
the biggest disappointment of "Avatar" for me is the visual design -- a kitschy
mélange of 1970s Roger Dean album covers by day, and Thomas Kincaid "Painter of
Light" Christmas-twinkle scenes by night.

B. Rangan:

Avatar, on the other hand, has no teeth. It feels like a sci-fi story envisioned
by a tree-hugging schoolgirl from the 1980s, who wrote the first draft in
longhand in a pink diary, probably after watching the Billie Jean video on MTV.

Year-end list '09: Movies

A great year in movies, watched almost 3.5 movies this year!

Richard Jenkins.

Kapish redonkulous?

Havent enjoyed a movie scene like this in a long time since the bread came in slices and changed the way we lead our lives... . The movie is worth for this one scene.
Bolt, the superdog from a TV show meets some pigeons in Hollywood....

Two Men With The Blues

Two super-heroes of our times, one at 78 and the other at 75:



Roger Ebert writes in his review of Gran Torino:

I would like to grow up to be like Clint Eastwood. Eastwood the director, Eastwood the actor, Eastwood the invincible, Eastwood the old man. What other figure in the history of the cinema has been an actor for 53 years, a director for 37, won two Oscars for direction, two more for best picture, plus the Thalberg Award, and at 78 can direct himself in his own film and look meaner than hell? None, that's how many.

AV Club writes in the review of Willie Nelson's collaboration album with Wynton Marsalis, released in 2008.

Willie Nelson records so frequently (2008 releases included Two Men With The Blues, the solo Moment Of Forever, and the career-spanning box One Hell Of A Ride) that it takes some stamina to keep up. Not bad for a guy who recently turned 75.

Note: I haven't watched Eastwood's movie, but listened to Nelson's Two men with blues, which is a fantastic album.

Rock Journalism, Kaufman etc.

Though Web 2.0 is feeding us with more reviews and star ratings of arts and entertainment than ever before, you have to look in the right places to find a good piece of journalism. Well, Journalism- as I heard in a movie last night- is literature in a hurry!

For music reviews, I have now narrowed down to just three sources: AV Club, Pitchfork and All Music Guide.

The AV Club review of Synecdoche, New York, drawing parallels between the protagonist of the movie and the life of Axl making the Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy album, is perhaps one of the best reviews/appreciation I've read in recent times.

Not to mention the comments section which has some gems like these:

Kaufmann can write a script about you writing an article about watching his movie and listening to an analogous hard rock album. Add some crazy time-bending thing with Axl writing the album based on a movie he thinks is going to be made in 2008...

If you think there is great music and great reviews to look forward to, read this sattire-at-its-best piece by The Onion: Pitchfork Gives Music 6.8.

"Music used to be great, but let's be honest, it's a 6.8 now at best," said Los Angeles resident Lowell Radler, 23, who admitted that he just looked at the rating rather than reading the whole review. "I seriously might never listen to music again."

Related: Roger Ebert on giving out too many stars.

"The Dark Knight" Reviews

The Dark Knight is certainly a good movie. No arguments on that.

While I thoroughly enjoyed Batman Begins, I didn’t get the same feeling after watching The Dark Knight- something was lacking somewhere, nothing to relish (Heath Ledger is brilliant, but the pre-release hype killed it!), no goose bumps (except for, maybe, the Bat Pod scene) and overall, yeah, just that it is not a bad movie. I had arguments with my friends on this, but I couldn’t prove my point.

I was browsing through some film reviews today, came across this review by The Indian Express film critic Bharadwaj Rangan and I got the word I was looking for to support my point: laboured.

The storytelling is deliberate and laboured, and there’s so much pulling away for the larger picture, with such a densely plotted maze of procedural details, that the simple emotional beats get lost. When Batman faces the death of a loved one, we don’t feel that loss.

Rangan shares some interesting thoughts on the movie:

You cannot will a great movie into being. It just happens – if you’re lucky, and if about a few thousand variables click satisfyingly (and somewhat improbably) into place. The undoing of The Dark Knight appears to be that its greatness was pre-ordained (and heartily embraced by millions) to such an unprecedented extent that the film had to merely show up, and it would already be a masterpiece.

I didn’t grow up reading Batman comics; the only super hero comic I read was Phantom. It was in my college days that my friend told me about the greatness of Batman in the super hero world -like others, Batman has no super powers, but indeed he is a super hero! Batman Begins turned Batman into a human hero, which we all watched with awe. In The Dark Knight, Nolan takes that one step further. Rangan has an interesting take on this:

[..]in Batman Begins, where he transformed Batman into Bond, an ordinary hero (as opposed to a “super” hero) who needed the help of Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) just as Bond needed Q. This was an unprecedented level of inquiry into the origins of the powers of a superhero, who, in the comic-book universe, is typically self-made. In The Dark Knight, Nolan pushes Batman further into Bond territory, fashioning mirror events such as the loss of a loved one, or the fight sequence involving a shoe with a knife.
It feels funny to say this, because The Dark Knight is certainly not a bad movie. It is consistently interesting, well intentioned and well crafted, with a lot of expertly executed action eye candy – but the numerous story threads aren’t tied together in a fully satisfying way. The Dark Knight shapes up into a solidly good movie – and while that’s hardly an insignificant achievement, that’s all it is.

Update:
A thought was running in my mind while I was driving back home from work yesterday. To put it bluntly: The Dark Knight is like a Steely Dan song.
A Steely Dan song is a perfect piece of art, a flawless and meticulous production. There would be outstanding and extensive sax or guitar solos which can be considered as a song by itself (like Ledger’s performance). At some point these solos are woven back in to the song, at times painstakingly, and gradually we get into perspective. All Steely Dan albums are studio engineering marvels** and they get the best session musicians to play for them. Also, I am sure that The Dark knight wouldn’t be considered dated even after 20 years, just like a Dan song you heard, which was made in the late 70s sounds as fresh as it was recorded last year.
You know what to expect from a Dan album and you get exactly that, it just has to show up to be hailed as a classic – like Two Against Nature. And a solid album that it is.
But here is the point – would you ever hum a Steely Dan song in the bathroom?

**from Wiki: ..with one notable example being that Becker and Fagen used at least 42 different studio musicians and took over a year to record the tracks that resulted in 1980's Gaucho — an album that contains only seven songs - Did I say "laboured"?

Allen Worship

Tim Burton's Ed Wood reminded me of Woody Allen.
Johnny Depp portrays the enthusiastic Edward Wood Jr. (apparently voted the worst director in the history of cinema) who is madly in love with film making and does it with amazing speed - he made a movie in 5 days! However his movies were horrible while Allen's movies are at the other end of the spectrum. But the passion and the speed may be the same.

Here is a quote from AV Club Woody Allen interview:

Vicky Cristina Barcelona has not yet come out, and I'm already finished shooting and editing a film with Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, and Patricia Clarkson, and I'm now working on another film.

Roger Ebert writes in his review of Allen's latest:

A few days before seeing "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," I viewed his "Hannah and Her Sisters" again. More than 20 years apart, both with dialogue at perfect pitch. Allen has directed more than 40 movies in about as many years and written all of them himself. Why isn't he more honored? Do we take him for granted?

Jack flak

Jack Black is not an actor. He lives in his movies. That’s why we are so bored of him. He is just the same in all of them. After doing School of Rock he should have embraced St. Kurt. It’s better to burn out, etc. In Hi Fidelity, it was a guest appearance of the character from School of Rock. I don’t remember much of Shallow Hal. In Jesus’ Son and Orange County, the roles are so similar that even Jack Black wouldn’t be able to tell one from the other. Luckily I didn’t get a chance to watch Nacho Libre.

And with the Pips spoof from the American Idol finale, it is official – Jack Black should quit the entertainment industry. May be he can form a rock group and put his music online for free download. It would be better than whatever he is doing now.



Ladies and Gentlemen, Jack Black has dropped his pants. You may laugh now. Thank you.

Major Lift

One of the most frequently used song in movie and TV serial soundtracks these days, is Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. Last night I came across this song again, the John Cale cover, in an episode of Scrubs. By far the most appropriate usage of this song I have seen, is in the movie Lord of War (the Jeff Buckley cover). Others can take a lesson or two from T Bone Brunett.

Mr. Sanghvi, you are out of your element!

Last month (Feb 08), his column on Woody Allen was titled When did the genius turn into such a bore (yes, b-o-r-e!) in which he says that he dozed off while watching Melinda and Melinda. I agree that Melinda is not a great Allen movie, as I have mentioned elsewhere on this blog, it would have been like a TV soap if it had been made by a lesser film maker.
Vir rambles on:

"Frankly I couldn’t give a monkey’s. All I knew was this: Christ, was the man a bore!"

Take a look at yourself, Sir!

"In 1972, Allen made the crappy Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (a series of unfunny sketches)"

Unfunny sketches!- Mr. Sanghvi, I thought you had taste!

"Now I very much doubt if I’ll waste my time on another Woody Allen film."

Better not, Sir. Instead, please spend that time eating oysters, drinking wine and do some good introspection!

"He’s still offering the same old things. But alas, I’ve moved on."

Thank you, Sir. And please don’t write about his next movie without watching it. Peace out.

PS: I am a huge fan of Vir’s food writings.

4-movie Easter weekend

Try lending a DVD from Blockbuster in the US: You need to produce your US drivers license and a credit card even before you can look at the DVDs on the racks! And the late fees can kill, that you end up buying those DVDs. Netflix was a blessing, for the late fee part.

Now, I am here in Munich (in Germany, not the ones in US) and visited a DVD lending store near my hotel. In 10 minutes, I walked out with 4 DVDs (just 2 EUR rent each) with no deposit at all! It was a refreshing change from the ID and plastic driven contracts of the US.

So, here are the movies I watched over the Easter weekend:

Adapatation
Dir: Spike Jonze
Written by: Charlie Kaufman

The expansion of GNU (of the open-source league) is "GNU's Not Unix". This recursive stuff fascinated me, then. Like the Ouroboros. Snake thats eating its own tail. And Charlie Kaufman is one who makes a living out of this! Remember how John Malkovich enters his own portal in Being John Malkovich.
I picked this movie from the DVD rental store as I wanted to watch something I had not heard much about - about the plot or even knowing whether it was a hit or not or what the critics think about it. The only thing I knew about this movie was the director Spike Jonze and later the opening credits showed that the script was written by Charlie Kaufman (of Being John Malkovich).
The movie starts off from the sets of the movie Being John Malkowich showing real life characters (Malkovich, John Cusack etc.) and Kaufman himself (played by Nicholas Cage), who is the narrator and protagonist. Its a mix of real life characters and fiction and the movie is about making of the movie itslef - a bit complex to write this down:)
Its innovative, engrossing and refreshing. And its about flowers too.

Sideways
Dir: Alexander Payne

Thanks Aj again, for reccomending this! :)
It is interesting that the friends in this movie (Miles-Jack) and in The Big Lebowski (Dude-Walter) are so different in their behaviour and interests (except for one - bowling and golf!), they even hate each other for most of the things the other guy does, still they are buddies and always together.
Maybe I should buy a DVD.

Melinda and Melinda
Written and Directed by Woody Allen

Decided to check out a 00's movie of Woody Allen. This is much on the beaten track on how the plot can be made into a comedy or a tragedy, with both the stories running in parallel. Allen manages to keep us alert and entertained through out. The whole movie is about affairs, breakups and all kind of relationships and this would have looked like a TV soap, if it had been made by a lesser film maker. Allens gets the right characters, dialogue and the right music in!

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
Dir: Michel Gondry
Written by: Charlie Kaufman

Another Charlie Kaufman movie for the weekend. So, you all know what this movie is about. One good thing about this movie is that there are no technical eplanantions or jargons thrown out like other sci-fi movies. And this is no sci-fi movie either. Its a bit complex like Memento (the sequence), and I am not really into these kind of movies, but I enjoyed watching this.

Allen movies: Part 1

I wanted to write about the movies of Woody Allen on my blog soon after I finished watching September. Then I got this urge to write after watching Zelig. Now that I watched Hannah and her sisters last night, I have to write about it!

After watching Annie Hall back in 2003, I never came across any of Woody Allen movies. When Aj told me that he has bought a DVD box set of Woody Allen, I wondered whether he had made so many movies! And when the DVDs arrived, I started watching them one by one and the first couple of movies were the typical Allen ones, with the characters that comes to your mind when you think of him. Sleepers, Shadows and fog and Love and Death.

Shadows and fog had a mega star cast (J. Malkowich, William H. Macy, Madonna!) and the character of John Cusack was memorable. Sleepers was a satire on society and there's very little I remember from Love and Death.

For me September was the real shocker. I never expected such a serious, emotional-high-voltage drama from Woody Allen. The movie was shot in just one location (studio, maybe) inside a big house where the story takes place. Later I read somewhere that Allen actually filmed the movie again, from beginning to end, changing the cast - and it didn't cost much to the production house!

Much has been written about Manhattan. You can find them here, here and here (I cant insert those hyperlinks!:)

Zelig revealed the real genius of Woody Allen to me. A mockumentary, this was an audacious attempt to film the funny story of a person who transformed into the person whom he met. He became a doctor when he spoke to a doctor. The movie had some original footages and in the beginning of the movie I thought it is a real documentary - with those footages of Scot Fitzgerald et al.

Everything you wanted to know about sex.. and Bananas were laugh out loud funny. Another woman was a dissection of emotions, much in the league of serious movies of Allen, with a superb performance by the lead actor (Gena Rowlands as Marion Post).

What struck me about Interiors was that throughout the sensitive drama there was no background score and the scene where a record is played, that was the most dramatic scene of the movie!
Radio days was beautiful and I wonder how he could make a movie out of that! It is just about growing up with radio, events related to the broadcasts and events about radio personalities!

Broadway Danny Rose proved that Allen can do serious roles too. He really made me sympathize with the character.
I remember this funny dialogue from the movie:
Tina is talking about her husband:
Tina: They shot him in the eyes.
Danny: Oh my God, he's blind?
Tina: He's dead...
Danny: Of course, the bullets would go right through...
:)

Alice had one of those catchy background scores. Someday I should dig up those IMDB archives to figure out the musicians and tracks Allen has featured in his movies.

Hannah and her Sisters, I should say, is the perfect and most fulfilling Woody Allen movie I have watched so far. It has Manhattan, Allen in his typical role, laugh out loud jokes, emotions, affairs, great background score, literary references, search for God, meaning of life, ace performances, Thanks giving dinner...
Manhattan is beautifully captured in the movie, that I am sure it wont look that beautiful in real! The river, city streets and even the architecture. Michael Caine gives a splendid performance (Guess he won an Oscar for supporting role - I'd like to see all the nominations and wins of all these movies on IMDB, someday).
Another surprise I got from the closing credits was that John Turturo had a small role in the movie. I scanned through the DVD and found that its a 1 minute role as a script writer for TV. The music is so beautiful in the movie, that if I come across the soundtrack in any music store, I'll just grab it!

I have a bunch of DVDs more to go, before I post part 2 of this and start watching those movies again!

Chords, Coffee and Cigarettes

For reasons I cannot explain
There’s some part of me wants to see Graceland
I’m going to Graceland
-Paul Simon, Graceland

These words sum up the feeling one gets after watching Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train. The movie narrates incidents of three sets of tourists visiting Graceland, the cradle of rock ‘n roll, connected by a common thread of a Radio music show being played in the background.

There is something about the movies made by people who have a passion for music, even though the movie is not centered on Music as its theme. For instance- Tarantino, Cameron Crowe, Coen Brothers. You can expect a monumental Soundtrack for sure, apart from the musical references in the movie. References like - how Jackie plays the record of The Delfonics when Max Cherry visits her to get back his gun in Tarantino’s Jackie Brown or this whacky conversation centered on Elvis in Tony Scott’s True Romance:

In a cocktail bar in Detroit, Clarence Worley is trying to pick up an older lady named Lucy.

CLARENCE to LUCY: In "Jailhouse Rock" Elvis’ everything rockabilly's about. I mean he is rockabilly: mean, surly, nasty, rude........... I'd watch that hillbilly and I'd want to be him so bad. Elvis looked good. I'm no fag, but Elvis was good-lookin'. He was fuckin' prettier than most women. I always said if I ever had to fuck a guy... I mean, had to, 'cause my life depended on it... I'd fuck Elvis.

(Lucy takes a drag from her cigarette.)

LUCY: I'd fuck Elvis.

CLARENCE: Really?

LUCY: When he was alive. I wouldn't fuck him now.

CLARENCE: I don't blame you.
(they laugh)
So we'd both fuck Elvis. It's nice to meet people with common interests,
isn't it?
(Lucy laughs.)
--True Romance (Written by Tarantino)

After watching Mystery Train, I browsed through Jarmusch's filmography and my admiration for him grew when I read that he directed Neil Young’s concert documentary Year of the Horse (though he is a bit overrated as the Godfather of American Independent movies). He also had musicians like Tom Waits and Screamin’ Jay act in his movies! The background score of these movies were entirely different from the Spielbergian Philharmonic scores (Dead Man had a score by Neil Young on Guitars).

Hmm…I wanted to write something on interesting musical references in movies, but digressed to Jarmusch’s movies. But then, I aint no good to write on movies... At least these movies gave me enough pointers to quality music, not to mention the sheer bliss of watching them!