Monday, March 16, 2009

The Sport Movie

Imagine a genre all by itself!

With enough of the sport movie coming out in all languages, it certainly is getting more crowded, don’t know about better though.

Right from Marty to Rocky to Any Given Sunday. We have seen enough of these back in India also. Remember Awwal number 1? Technical advances have certainly been made with slick product like Lagaan, Chak De and Iqbal. Or even a story on gully cricket, very close to the heart of everyone who’s ever played in a soma or mrc: Chennai – 28.

Well am not trying to chronicle the rise of the sport movie nor make a commentary on the same. This is about what I think is my perfect sport movie.

My perfect sport movie is one when there’s no sporting action. Yup you read that right, absolutely no sporting action.

Yes in most sport movies this is the highlight but in my book it’s no big deal. Any sport set piece in a movie however great is never going to match up to the real thing. AND YOU KNOW WHATS GOING TO HAPPEN IN THE END.

The real cool part is if any movie manages to capture anything about what goes on behind the scenes. The Wrestler I thought managed to do this beautifully. (Hey don’t take my word for it Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson says he quickly moved into acting to escape this fate which befalls many professional wrestlers and agrees with the film). As his daughter so eloquently puts it Randy the Ram is a fuck up. And he knows it and accepts it. Even in his extremely small and futile attempt to clean up and live a normal life he’s not really clear as to what he’s doing. And of course like all sport movies he comes back…..but with an ending which I thought was perfect.

The movie manages to capture the motivations that drive the athlete rather than relegating it to a montage. That was the real victory.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Watchmen

This is not a movie review. Am too prejudiced in too many ways to give you a decent review of any movie. Even if I could, it will be more like whooooaaaaaa wtf, woooooow, woooooaaaahhhh if I like the movie or whooooaaaaaa wtf, woooooow, woooooaaaahhhh if I don’t!

So I have been reading a lot of the reviews for Watchmen. Some flattering, some scathing, some walk the line. I did see the movie couple of days back. Am not a graphic novel connoisseur by any stretch of imagination. In fact read Watchmen only a few years back. And I haven’t really read the apparently defining works like Maus or Persepolis. But there have been many critics who have been savaging the movie for looking just like the book and not doing enough with the story. I hear fan boys slobbering that the movie looked exactly like the book and angry that it went too off the book in terms of the story. And am wondering where do I fit in?

I was astonished by what Zack Snyder has done with the film. It was a blessing indeed that the movie wasn’t made before this. With his amazing eye for detail the director has been able to replicate the smallest details from the book onto the screen. And I was even more astonished by the screenplay; a complex book with many layers has been rendered comprehensible to everyone. I strongly felt that this was the real victory of the movie.

There have been critics from publications like The New Yorker who have heaped derision on the movie for being too slavishly devoted to the book and pandering to the fan boys. I would be surprised if the reviewer was anywhere below the age of 80 mentally if not physically. To not like the Watchmen is understandable but to look down upon a phenomenon like Alan Moore is just not cricket.(He finishes the review by saying wheres the comedy in comics these days? Hell if that isnt a 50 year old complaint)

It’s fairly simple actually. Any great book like The Godfather, LOTR etc the screenwriter and the director at least have the freedom to visualize the way the setting would look, the way the actors would be cast etc. Makers of legendary graphic novels don’t have this choice. The fan boys and girls not only want the same story without any liberties but they want it replicated on screen frame by frame. This is something which Zack Snyder has been very successful with, his love for the material comes through in every scene. If the creator takes any liberties at all with the source material the core audience that will create the big opening and the buzz and the word of mouth will be turned away. And if you don’t have a great opening, the normal film fan who might not know the work at all might not be intrigued. There are other factors of course in the marketing of a film but am looking at only the word of mouth creation.

In other comic books there are so many story lines and mythology that the creators can still get away. To be fair most movie adaptations of the stand alone GNs are fairly bad (am looking at you LXG/V for Vendetta). But then we want them up on screen also, and not through only animation but preferably live action. Directors like Robert Rodriguez and Zack Snyder are showing us how it can be done. Ironically Frank Miller one of the greats had royally screwed up the beloved character The Spirit in its film adaptation.

Hell you might just want to see the movie and see what the fuss is all about anyways. But if you really want to know what the fuss is all about pick up the book.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Who’s better?

“So don’t you think Green Day is the best American band out there right now?” Question thrown my way innocently enough!

Big mouth…..”Hell Yeah”.

“Better than Red Hot Chili Peppers?”

Sucker punched, well played sir.

I have an irrational obsession with everything I like. Food and drink, music, movies etc…..this coupled with a pseudo intellectual streak and an almost psychotic immersion in the moment plays havoc with concepts like preferences, best, greatest, coolest and the like.

So I think Green Day is probably the band from my time that best epitomizes or comes closest to the bands of the past that were topical, made music keeping the external environment in mind, great showmen and amazing performers.

At the same time when I listen to a band like Red Hot Chili Peppers. They have come a long way in the last 10 years. From their hard core and punk rock origins to making music that appeals to a broader cross section it’s been a wild ride. And like I said am obsessed with RHCP.

Rationally logically Green Day stands for everything I believe in while RHCP certainly have gotten into a certain mushy, personal territory which I shouldn’t be playing up at all.

But I love RHCP and think they rock and they are the coolest band out there. Getting caught up in the moment is not so bad after all.

Monday, March 2, 2009

School picnics

I studied in the same school for 12 years. From the first grade to the twelfth.

And we used to have this mandatory manic student picnic/trip every year. Mandatory because the enthusiasm levels mustered by the organizers was in reverse proportion to the mayhem we were capable of generating. So the more moronic the trip the more ruckus we could create.

And for the first 4 years the venue was always “Guindy Park”. Ask any kid who was born in the late 70s in Madras about Guindy Park and you would see this very distinctive look which bridges a whole lot of emotions and expletives. This was a place so mind numbing that the mayhem potential was quickly culled out.

Guindy Park had a lot of advantages. It was bang in the middle of the city, meant that we could do a day trip and be back in school second half. It dint really have too many exhibits, meant that we dint have to spend too much time there and be back in school second half. We usually went on a weekday which meant that there wasn’t too much of a crowd and be back in school second half. (My school really dint think too much of activities done outside school premises)

The biggest advantage was of course that most of the kids had already been there with family on some weekends or had already been part of an earlier school trip to the same venue. So we could pretty much be left to our devices as we would know the tour path and the accompanying teachers dint have to do too much policing.

For many years when the zoo would get a new animal, anything from as innocuous as a field rat or as dangerous as a bandicoot, there would be immense coverage in The Hindu. (Note: I said The Hindu and not the newspaper, we dint acknowledge the existence of other newspapers, but that of course is a topic for another day) I would like to think that the attendance swelled with hoards of bored looking kids being dragged towards the GP.

Oh I forgot another big advantage of GP was that there was this Mahatma Gandhi memorial right next to it. A fairly bleak empty place with pics of the grand old man and some sad looking portraits with some of his quotes. Not really telling us about who he really was nor what he said nor what he had done. Definitely must have been part of some centenary celebrations and the dude heading the govt then wanted his name on a plaque next to one of the most important people in the history of the world.

Still cant figure out the point of these half day school outings. Educational? Hmmm not really. The kids have fun? Hmmm not really, we always had someone screaming at us for daring to break away from the line. The place itself wasn’t of any landmark importance that it would make us want to revisit it when we were older.

Just another one of those have to do this once a year, lets get it over with so that the kids can get back to school and continue their quest towards becoming better engineers and accountants.

Funny this post started off a fairly happy one.