Now I know what Tantalus felt like

Newest haul of goodies in. Sadly I can't actually watch any of them right now on account of my home PC, which is also my blu-ray player, being on the furshlugging blink. I suspect it'll be nearly 2 more weeks before things return to normal. GRRRR!

Still, I will take the opportunity to give you a peek at what I could have been enjoying if not for this tragedy. As always click on the pics for full resolution:

The Criterions:

The non-Criterions (which are also awesome!):

Coen Bros boxset revealed:

Holy shit, I seriously didn't expect the Taxi Driver package to be so awesome:

What's a haul without some Lovecraft love?

More detail from the Horror in Clay (an awesome birthday gift from Prachit Pandey. Seeing this in full resolution might just drive you insane!):

The Adventures of Mark Twain [dir. Will Vinton]

I have to shamefacedly say that although I have liked most of what I have read of Mark Twain, the actual amount of stuff I've read is pitiful – some of his famous adventure stories (the Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn novels, and The Prince and The Pauper) and some of his short satirical pieces. I suspect most of the general public is like that, they've heard of Twain and possibly gather his several quotable sayings to impress at social gatherings, but not read a good deal by him (as goes for George Orwell who in popular perception has written nothing apart from Animal Farm and 1984). Will Vinton, the man who made this wonderful Clay-mated film, is unlikely to fall in this category, having gone to such lengths to pay tribute to the author.

The Adventures of Mark Twain is a sort of meta-fiction based on Twain's “association” with Halley's comet (his birth and death were remarkably coincident with sightings of the comet and in his lifetime he even predicted his demise with the words I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.). Twain in the film actively sets out to meet his celestial brother in a tricked-out dirigible (stripped of the fantastic overtones it implies a fatalistic, perhaps even suicidal frame of mind) and tagging along for his journey as stowaways are Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and Becky Thatcher (who Twain in the film describes as reminding him of his late wife “that same combination of innocence and sand”).

In this framework, Vinton references several of Twain's works (the biggest chunk reserved for a humorous interpretation of the Adam and Eve story) and even constructs many scenes around delivering those aforementioned quotable sayings. I can't say I recognize the source of a lot of these references but they do sound like things that the author would have said or written. Not unsurprisingly, the film doesn't have a single strong dramatic trajectory, but is more a meandering journey with a series of little stops. This is not a slur against the material, it generally works pretty well, and invests the central character with a depth not obvious from his popular image. This is most significantly observed in the film's allusions to Twain's last book The Mysterious Stranger – here an angel named “Satan” holds forth unchallenged on the pointlessness of civilization's belief in a benevolent God. This section stands apart from the other sequences of the film in how obviously sinister and nihilistic it is, and has the potential to give nightmares to children of unwary parents.

Literary leanings aside, the film is a fine watch, and a spectacular example of the Claymation process. In the hands of skilled artists with solid vision, it displays far more personality and palpable emotional impact than the computer generated animation we see so much of these days. You will notice that the screens from the film look pretty but in motion the impact is far greater. Even without knowing anything about its titular character you will find an abundance of charm that in itself makes The Adventures of Mark Twain a worthy journey.

[dir. Mani Kaul]

I suppose by now most people that know me well know of my love-hate (actually I wouldn't say love) relationship with most of the late Mani Kaul's films. The man had some chops – his themes were not conventional, he had an eye for lighting and shot composition, and he could use music in a very evocative way. But he was a twat, too full of his own artistic importance and what an antithesis he was going to be to traditional narrative-oriented Indian cinema – one of the joys of reading Satyajit Ray's essay collection Our Films, Their Films was his contemptuous dismissal of Kaul's film-making style as “anemic”.

Most of the Mani Kaul films I saw were on the Doordarshan channel (yes, yes, in those old days when TV wasn't all Sari and Sins). Luckily enough the first one I caught was Nazar, which I remember being fairly intrigued by (especially Piyush Shah's images set to classical music) even though it wasn't breezy viewing. I will be revisiting it soon to see how my interest holds up. Later on, I slogged through Uski Roti (not even sure now if I saw it in full, because I was plain zombified by the experience) and Duvidha (more on this ahead). I was also “privileged” to see Beyond The Cloud Door, his "masterful" contribution to the shorts compilation Erotic Tales, at Mumbai's New Excelsior cinema. Despite Anu Agarwal's Tittu Ahluwalia act, most of the crowd gathered there was swearing at the dullness and incomprehensibility of the proceedings and I could not blame them. Sadly, I haven't seen any of his documentaries, I suspect the form is a lot more suited to his style.

Anyway, back to Duvidha, which I saw today on the NFDC Mani Kaul 3-movie set. In my first viewing on DD, I thought the film was an interesting ghost story done in a terribly dull manner. Consider the plot: When a young man leaves his wife on business immediately after the wedding ceremony for an interval of several years, a yaksha impersonates him and consorts with the wife (after telling her the truth). What happens when the young man returns? Who is her real husband? Very interesting folk tale with a powerful and timeless moral dilemma, like a Girish Karnad play. But dash it if Kaul doesn't aim to deliberately undermine the dramatic potential with his confirmed anemic approach. In Kaul's version, the characters are reduced to ciphers, their ethical dilemmas mere murmurs. It's not even in the name of realism, I've seen real people immensely more animated and emotional than the actors in this film. It's in my view a fake aesthetic designed to appeal to people that believe in the snob value of such esoteric examples of artistic expression.

That said, my second viewing was a better experience, mainly because of the better conditions of the viewing. Thanks to the clean-up job done by NFDC on this release, the mumble-mumble of the soundtrack is a lot more comprehensible and the sound design can be appreciated. It doesn't change my impressions of the film a huge deal but I am less bitter about it now. I suppose the image is better than what it used to be: It's still very soft and like with the Mirch Masala release, there's a problem with blown whites. You might find that you need to dial the brightness of your screen a few notches below usual to make the display easier on your eye and better appreciate the shadowy compositions.

I'll probably update this post with more impressions as and when I watch the other films in the set.

It's raining movies out here

Click on the images to see in full resolution.

Behold once again how Ravi aka Crudo Cruox's avarice towers over my significantly more modest haul. Also, what appears to be a deliberate attempt to strain poor Rajesh Balakrishnan's limbs with the load of multiple copies of the same album (see top)

The Tower of Babel in close-up:

Modest haul in close-up (sorry for the flash but on my ancient camera I can't seem to get an non-blurry pic in the evening without using it):

Modest haul in more detail below:

1. I love me my Hammer horror and other thingies. Batman's a digibook and Blade Runner's the 5-disc (3BD + 2DVD) Complete Collector's set.

2. The name's Bond, James Bond.

3. The Criterions - including the most monstrous Criterion release of all time

4. Godzilla in full glory

5. And these came in today from Amazon UK. Return... is a Steelbook loaded with extras. Like I said, it's raining movies.

Freefall - 360

His first and foremost urge was to violently throw up; it was all so delirious and confusing it took him some time to deduce what had happened. When it finally struck, he was overcome by another wave of nausea. He'd gotten what he'd just wished for – he now had 360° vision.

His mind whirled in rage and terror at this new development. It wasn't even as if it was something he had repeatedly prayed for or craved with any consuming fervor, just a thought that had occurred to him as he was walking along the deserted beach. Even though he'd been to this place earlier, he had been once again captivated by its beauty: the wind, the sky the currents white and steel gray tirelessly throwing themselves upon the sands. There was such an immenseness to the scene, his eyes widened in greedy appreciation, wanting to taking in more and more and still more...

As he placed a tentative foot fresh spasms of dread drove through. With such an all-encompassing vision he had no perspective. He could not say what lay before and what was behind him. Distance became impossible to judge. But it was infinitely worse when he inclined his head. In one sweeping move he was looking at both earth and sky, and it felt as though he was being hurled between the two. As a child it had been one of his favorite pastimes to go up to the terrace of his house, lie flat on the floor eyes shut tight, then suddenly open them. At that instant it would seem to him that he was falling toward the sky, like it was some immense ocean. It was a sensation both terrifying and exhilarating. Now he worked desperately to keep his head straight so he would only have to deal with the horrors of the horizontal plane.

He could also see himself from both sides, though in his mind he could not tell front and back. How had this happened? Had he sprouted an extra pair of eyes at the back (and why always a pair), or had his own expanded out of their sockets to cover his entire head. The latter option so disgusted him he felt no urge to ascertain the truth.

It was when it began to rain that he realized the other thing. In all this while he had not once blinked. He willed himself to, concentratedly, but almost like it was some inverted blindness, he could not shut out his horrifically panoramic vision. The splashes of rain blurred and filmed over like water drops against a windshield, and he could not bring himself to wipe or shield what had become of his eyes. Each splatter sent ripples and distortions across the whole of his sight. Then he could bear it no longer and broke into a run.

For a spell he didn't perceive where he was headed, as he madly dashed, stumbling and struggling. It was ironically the chill of the water rocking against his legs that told him where he was. It had been wet weather all through, and the sea was suffused with a barely controlled fury. He tried moving back to shore, but his confusion by now was so complete he could do no more than to helplessly watch as the current dragged him further away. Floating on the back of mad foam-flecked waves his new-found eyes took in both wild sea and stormy sky and he felt as if he were suspended between two infinite depths. He was in freefall.

King Solomon's Slaughter

Call me a politically-correct wuss, but some 50 pages into King Solomon's Mines by Rider Haggard, I'm more than a little horrified by what constitutes heroic adventure here. A trio of white men lead a band of African natives to look for the brother of one of the white men who was last heard of making his way towards the mythical mines. In the course of this expedition, they enter wild country and their first reaction is "Oh look, animals. Let's shoot them all. This brother hunting mission can wait." And it's not like they shoot what they can eat. Not even close. After shooting a giraffe, the 3 white men out of a total party of 10 shoot down 8 full grown elephants from a herd. That's nearly one elephant per man. And the rest of the herd gets to escape only because these trigger happy blokes got tired of chasing after them. Apart from these 8, there's a badly wounded bull elephant who goes on a rampage, finally running blind toward the white man who shot him in the first place. Just when you think that some redemption is at hand, it's not he who dies but a poor native who steps forth to hurl a lance at the beast to save his "I'll shoot me down a brace of elephants" master.

I'm wondering if I should go ahead with this.

Anyway, the book in question being out of copyright, I can safely paste the text that offended me:

Presently we caught sight of the herd, which numbered, as Ventvögel had said, between twenty and thirty, standing in a hollow, having finished their morning meal, and flapping their great ears. It was a splendid sight, for they were only about two hundred yards from us. Taking a handful of dry grass, I threw it into the air to see how the wind was; for if once they winded us I knew they would be off before we could get a shot. Finding that, if anything, it blew from the elephants to us, we crept on stealthily, and thanks to the cover managed to get within forty yards or so of the great brutes. Just in front of us, and broadside on, stood three splendid bulls, one of them with enormous tusks. I whispered to the others that I would take the middle one; Sir Henry covering the elephant to the left, and Good the bull with the big tusks.

"Now," I whispered.

Boom! boom! boom! went the three heavy rifles, and down came Sir Henry's elephant dead as a hammer, shot right through the heart. Mine fell on to its knees and I thought that he was going to die, but in another moment he was up and off, tearing along straight past me. As he went I gave him the second barrel in the ribs, and this brought him down in good earnest. Hastily slipping in two fresh cartridges I ran close up to him, and a ball through the brain put an end to the poor brute's struggles. Then I turned to see how Good had fared with the big bull, which I had heard screaming with rage and pain as I gave mine its quietus. On reaching the captain I found him in a great state of excitement. It appeared that on receiving the bullet the bull had turned and come straight for his assailant, who had barely time to get out of his way, and then charged on blindly past him, in the direction of our encampment. Meanwhile the herd had crashed off in wild alarm in the other direction.

For awhile we debated whether to go after the wounded bull or to follow the herd, and finally deciding for the latter alternative, departed, thinking that we had seen the last of those big tusks. I have often wished since that we had. It was easy work to follow the elephants, for they had left a trail like a carriage road behind them, crushing down the thick bush in their furious flight as though it were tambouki grass.

But to come up with them was another matter, and we had struggled on under the broiling sun for over two hours before we found them. With the exception of one bull, they were standing together, and I could see, from their unquiet way and the manner in which they kept lifting their trunks to test the air, that they were on the look-out for mischief. The solitary bull stood fifty yards or so to this side of the herd, over which he was evidently keeping sentry, and about sixty yards from us. Thinking that he would see or wind us, and that it would probably start them off again if we tried to get nearer, especially as the ground was rather open, we all aimed at this bull, and at my whispered word, we fired. The three shots took effect, and down he went dead. Again the herd started, but unfortunately for them about a hundred yards further on was a nullah, or dried-out water track, with steep banks, a place very much resembling the one where the Prince Imperial was killed in Zululand. Into this the elephants plunged, and when we reached the edge we found them struggling in wild confusion to get up the other bank, filling the air with their screams, and trumpeting as they pushed one another aside in their selfish panic, just like so many human beings. Now was our opportunity, and firing away as quickly as we could load, we killed five of the poor beasts, and no doubt should have bagged the whole herd, had they not suddenly given up their attempts to climb the bank and rushed headlong down the nullah. We were too tired to follow them, and perhaps also a little sick of slaughter, eight elephants being a pretty good bag for one day.

The Cabin and The Rowdy

Went town-side today to catch a couple of films with pals:

Cabin in The Woods was up first. Thankfully I had kept away from the internet buzz about the film, not even visiting the IMDB page before seeing it, because the entertainment value of the film primarily depends upon you wondering what's going to happen next. It works decently enough as a meta-fiction spoof on the 80's haunted house / slasher genre, specifically referencing Evil Dead, Hellraiser and their ilk. It's a geekboy idea that will not stand up to any close scrutiny, being as full of absurdity and contrivance as the horror film conventions it aims to cock a snook at, but first viewing goes pretty smoothly and some moments ahead into the film, which I shall refrain from spoiling, have a lot of heh-heh-heh coolness value for splatter-horror fans.

We were all pretty chuffed with the film, and after that proceeded to a decent if not entirely great lunch at the Indigo Deli. The chilled melon soup was not chilled enough and on the sweet side, not to my liking. Pastrami and Cheese sandwich was alright, though not juicy the way I would have preferred (isn't that how a freshly prepared Deli sandwich should be?). Passion fruit sorbet for dessert was quite lovely, though, and at half the day gone we were generally at peace with the world.

And then came Rowdy Rathore. We walked out at the Intermission, what a waste of time. Action-packed my bleeding ass, the first action scene of any note comes just before the interval, more than an hour into the film and, without going into any details for fear of losing my sanity over the remembrance, everything before that is soul-suckingly inane filler. And the action scene was nowhere worth it, no imagination in the choreography. One would have thought that with Akshay Kumar being a skilled action hero who can do many of his own stunts, we would see some fairly spectacular stuff, but no, it's just haphazardly put together yawn material. It's amazing how once you apply terms like mass and masala to a film, it need not aspire to any notions of pace or grip in the screenplay. Dabangg was a recent film that got the masala formula perfectly with a pacy script, punchy dialog and badass fight scenes. This one, like the numerous Dabangg clones already out or in the making, randomly flings shit at the wall hoping something will stick.