Chess, Comics, Crosswords, Books, Music, Cinema

2012-02-14T06:24:00.000-08:00

Respect Your National Anthem,

Respect Your Nation

On Friday, February 10, I posted a video of India’s Silent National Anthem. Today, I am posting another one called Respect the National Anthem, an award-winning ad. I hope you will click on “Play” and watch both the videos. I have a feeling you will like them. They have touched a lot of non-Indian hearts on YouTube.

For Tuesday’s Forgotten/Overlooked films, don’t forget to visit Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom.

2012-02-10T03:41:00.000-08:00

The Silent National Anthem

All of us feel that the national anthem of our own country is the best in the world. We rise to our feet every time the anthem is played and we beam with pride every time we listen to it. No other song gives more goose bumps than the national anthem. How many of us remember other national anthems of the world? I have heard America’s The Star-Spangled Banner on a few occasions but I wouldn’t be able to hum a line if you asked me to. And why should I? I have my own anthem and it's better than yours!

India’s national anthem – Jana, Gana, Mana – is, arguably, one of the finest. It was composed and set to music by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, the renowned writer, poet, musician, playwright, and spiritual preceptor. Although Tagore originally wrote it in Bengali in 1911 and later translated it into English, the anthem was adopted by the Constituent Assembly as the Indian national anthem on January 24, 1950. Jana, Gana, Mana means “Thou art the ruler of the minds of all people, Dispenser of India's destiny…” You will find a nice piece about the anthem here.

Over the years the Indian national anthem has been scored and sung in a hundred different ways, and it’s hard to pick any one. My own favourite is The Silent National Anthem created by Mudra Group on the occasion of India’s 61st Republic Day, which falls on January 26 every year. August 15 is our independence day. This beautiful version of the anthem is played in all BIG Cinemas, a division of entertainment group Reliance MediaWorks, minutes before a film rolls. Some years ago, the federal government made it mandatory for all movie theatres to play the national anthem before the start of the film. It’s a goose bumpy feeling if there’s ever one inside a cinema hall.

Check it out below and tell me exactly what you felt, though don't I know that feeling already.

2012-02-08T02:46:00.000-08:00

R.I.P. Sharada Dwivedi, 1942-2012

On February 6, Bombay (now known as Mumbai) lost one of its most important denizens — Sharada Dwivedi — who spent a lifetime chronicling and conserving the city's historic building and architectural heritage. The 69-year old genteel urban historian died after a brief illness.

Dwivedi, who completed her schooling from Queen Mary's High School, graduated from Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics, and took a degree in Library Science from the University of Mumbai, wrote several books including Bombay: The Cities Within (1995), her first, with noted historian and architect Rahul Mehrotra.

Some of her other notable books were Banganga, Sacred Tank (1996), Fort Walks (1999), Anchoring a City Line: The History of the Western Suburban Railway and its Headquarters in Bombay (2000), The Jehangir Art Gallery (2002), and The Victoria Memorial School for the Blind (2002). Each traced the rich and vibrant heritage of these historic buildings.

Dwivedi, who often fought politicians to preserve Bombay's heritage, was involved in several conservation projects and served as a member of the Mumbai Heritage Conservation Committee. She was also a member of the Executive Committee of the Urban Design Research Institute and a consultant to the Bombay Collaborative, which works with historic buildings in the city.

If Bombay owes its historic buildings and monuments to the British, it owes their preservation to Sharada Dwivedi.

Seat of Learning: The Rajabai Clock Tower located within the Fort Campus (headquarters) of the University of Mumbai was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, an English architect, who modelled it on London's Big Ben. The 85-metre tall landmark in south Bombay was built in 1878.
Photo: Prashant C. Trikannad

2012-02-07T03:32:00.000-08:00

A Passage to India (1984)

A Passage to India is my contribution this week to Tuesday's Overlooked/Forgotten Films at Todd Mason’s blog. You will find lots of interesting film and television reviews over there.

English novelist E.M. Forster (1879-1970) wrote A Passage to India in 1924 and, sixty years later, British filmmaker David Lean (1908-1991) made it into a successful film. It was his last. The film owes its success to Forster’s personal experience of India during the British Raj as much as it does to Lean’s keen writing and directorial sense.

For instance, Lean has captured, quite appropriately, the nationalistic, and often irrational, fervour and sentiment of the Indian people outraged by the arrest of a young doctor on charges of molesting an English woman. Set in 1920s, during the height of the freedom movement, the accusation is perceived as yet another racist attack by the imperialist British against an “innocent” countryman. A case of rubbing salt into the wound…

A Passage to India is the story of Dr. Aziz H. Ahmed, a widower, played by the seasoned character-actor Victor Banerjee, who unwittingly endears himself to a young woman named Adela (Judy Davis) and her future mother-in-law Mrs. Moore (Peggy Ashcroft). The two women from England wish to see the real India with an unprejudiced eye and ask Aziz to take them on a sightseeing trip to the Marabar Caves, a fictional place. Overcome by claustrophobia during the trip, Mrs. Moore excuses herself and insists the two proceed without her.

When Aziz and Adela, escorted by a lone guide, reach the caves on top of a hill, the doctor excuses himself briefly to have a quiet smoke behind a rock. As Adela awaits his return, she ventures into one of the caves and soon begins to get a distorted feeling within the dark and foreboding interior. Aziz returns to the spot to find Adela missing. He peers into the cave and calls out her name frantically. Though she can see him standing in the sunlit entrance to the cave, she remains silent. He can’t see her in the pitch darkness. As Aziz moves away to look for her elsewhere, Adela emerges from the cave and runs blindly down the hill to the road below where she is “rescued” by another English woman and taken to the hospital. Adela is shivering and is disoriented, and has cuts all over her body.

Judy Davis, Victor Banerjee and Peggy Ashcroft in the film.

The story begins when Adela accuses Aziz of attempted rape and the physician is promptly arrested and placed on trial. The action shifts to the court where a bespectacled and harried Indian judge presides over the case in the presence of a trio of lawyers for the defendant, McBryde (Michael Culver), the police inspector and public prosecutor, and a room filled with English men and women waiting for Aziz to be sentenced. Outside, there is complete pandemonium as a huge crowd of angry Indians push back the khakhi-clad policemen in a violent effort to storm the court.

In the end, Adela takes the stand, looks up hesitantly, and finds Aziz glowering at her. And that’s as far as I’m going with this review. No spoilers.

Of the cast Judy Davis as Adela is not very convincing while the elderly Peggy Ashcroft as Mrs. Moore raises the bar with her grace and quiet elegance. Victor Banerjee does well as the bearded Dr. Aziz Ahmed with a talkative and an emotional disposition. He has a formidable reputation in parallel cinema as opposed to the commercial films dished out by the Indian film industry every year.

Apart from Aziz and the two English women, there are two other notable characters— Richard Fielding (James Fox), superintendent of the local school, the only Englishman who believes his friend Aziz is innocent, and Prof. Godbole (Alec Guinness), an elderly Brahmin scholar who wears a turban and looks at everything with an indifferent eye. “My philosophy is you can do what you like... but the outcome will be the same,” he tells Fielding.

As I said at the beginning, Lean has made this film the way an Indian director would have made it, particularly in terms of the mood and emotion of the people, the summer sun that breathes hot and humid air down your neck, the sudden downpour that takes a suited and booted Richard Fielding by surprise, and the rustic landscape of the countryside, little details that enrich the film.

A Passage to India, which is true to Forster’s novel, does justice to both, the Indians and the British, and therein lies its appeal.

A few interesting facts…

David Lean has made ambitious films based on several famous books like The Greatest Story Ever Told by Fulton Oursler; Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak; Lawrence of Arabia, based on the life of T.E. Lawrence; The Bridge on the River Kwai by French author Pierre Boulle; One Woman's Story by H.G. Wells; and Oliver Twist and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

Peggy Ashcroft, the legendary English actress, was made a Dame of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 1956. She won an Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress, and a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.

A Passage to India was nominated for 11 Academy Awards (won two), 5 Golden Globe (won three), and 9 BAFTA Awards (won one), all including Peggy Ashcroft.

Five of David Lean’s movies appeared in the top 30 (three of them in the top five) in a list of 100 favourite British films of the 20th century compiled by the British Film Institute in 1999.

2012-02-06T04:15:00.002-08:00

How to Fail in Literature by Andrew Lang

One of the joys of going through eBooks out of copyright and available legally is discovering rare fiction and non-fiction that some of us might not have heard about. These are plain vanilla texts of books, manuscripts, journals, periodicals, and magazines, as well as anthologies and collections of literary works recorded in easy-to-read format. In case you don’t like reading thick eBooks, then you have the option of settling for the smaller variety like essays, speeches, lectures, and short stories. There’s something for everyone online.

Going through one of the many eBook sites, I came across a short and interesting piece by one Andrew Lang who I found was a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic and, believe it or not, an ardent contributor in the field of anthropology. According to an article at Wikipedia, Lang, who lived from March 1844 to July 1912, was best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St. Andrews, the oldest university in Scotland, are named after him.

How to Fail in Literature, the article I referred to, was actually a lecture delivered by Lang at the South Kensington Museum, London, in aid of the College for Working Men and Women. The museum is now known as the Victoria and Albert Museum. Lang expanded his discourse on a career in literature and published a small booklet in 1890. The PDF version on my desktop is 22 pages long.

Andrew Lang’s address became a sort of literary benchmark for budding writers. As the title suggests, the Scottish writer, tongue firmly in cheek, provides lots of tips on how you can, literally, spoil your chances of a career in literature. He expects you to heed his advice. On the flipside, it can also be taken as a serious guide to how not to fail in literature, if you know what I mean.

While the lecture touches upon all the elements and characteristics of literary writing that are relevant even today, it is out of place in so far as modern technology-driven writing and publishing is concerned.

I have reproduced below some quotes from How to Fail in Literature which I found stimulating and entertaining.

“IT is impossible to prophesy the success of a man of letters from his early promise, his early tastes; as impossible as it is to predict, from her childish grace, the beauty of a woman.”

“THERE is no more frequent cause of failure than doubt and dread; a beginner can scarcely put his heart and strength into a work when he knows how long are the odds against his victory, how difficult it is for a new man to win a hearing, even though all editors and publishers are ever pining for a new man.”

“IT might be wiser to do as M. Guy de Maupassant is rumoured to have done, to write for seven years, and shew your essays to none but a mentor as friendly severe as M. Flaubert. But all men cannot have such mentors, nor can all afford so long an unremunerative apprenticeship. For some the better plan is NOT to linger on the bank, and take tea and good advice, as Keats said, but to plunge at once in mid-stream, and learn swimming of necessity.”

“EDITORS and publishers, these keepers of the gates of success, are not infallible, but their opinion of a beginner's work is far more correct than his own can ever be. They should not depress him quite, but if they are long unanimous in holding him cheap, he is warned, and had better withdraw from the struggle. He is either incompetent, or he has the makings of a Browning. He is a genius born too soon. He may readily calculate the chances in favour of either alternative.”

“STYLE may be good in itself, but inappropriate to the subject. For example, style which may be excellently adapted to a theological essay, may be but ill-suited for a dialogue in a novel.”

“THE young author generally writes because he wants to write, either for money, from vanity, or in mere weariness of empty hours and anxiety to astonish his relations. This is well, he who would fail cannot begin better than by having nothing to say. The less you observe, the less you reflect, the less you put yourself in the paths of adventure and experience, the less you will have to say, and the more impossible will it be to read your work.”

“IMITATION does a double service, it secures the failure of the imitator and also aids that of the unlucky author who is imitated. As soon as a new thing appears in literature, many people hurry off to attempt something of the same sort. It may be a particular trait and accent in poetry, and the public, weary of the mimicries, begins to dislike the original.”

“THE common novels of Governess life, the daughters and granddaughters of Jane Eyre, still run riot among the rejected manuscripts. The lively large family, all very untidy and humorous, all wearing each other's boots and gloves, and making their dresses out of bedroom curtains and marrying rich men, still rushes down the easy descent to failure.”

“WHEN you have done your book, you may play a number of silly tricks with your manuscript. I have already advised you to make only one copy, a rough one, as that secures negligence in your work, and also disgusts an editor or reader. It has another advantage, you may lose your copy altogether, and, as you have not another, no failure can be more complete.”

“MUCH may be done by asking him for “introductions” to a legal advisor editor or publisher. These gentry don't want introductions, they want good books, and very seldom get them. If you behave thus, the man whom you are boring will write to his publisher:

Dear Brown,
A wretched creature, who knows my great aunt, asks me to recommend his rubbish to you. I send it by today's post, and I wish you joy of it.

This kind of introduction will do you excellent service in smoothing the path to failure.”

“AN author can make almost a certainty of disastrous failure, by carrying to some small obscure publisher a work which has been rejected by the best people in the trade. Their rejections all but demonstrate that your book is worthless.”

“A GOOD way of making yourself a dead failure is to go about accusing successful people of plagiarising from books or articles of yours which did not succeed, and, perhaps, were never published at all.”

Source for How to Fail in Literature: Project Gutenberg

2012-02-05T08:03:00.000-08:00

Gregory Peck reads

With Ava Gardner in The Great Sinner (1949)

With Mary Badham in To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)

2012-02-03T08:23:00.000-08:00

‘I wish I was a spaceman,

the fastest guy alive’

Colonel Steve Zodiac: Okay, Venus?
Venus: Okay, Steve.

Colonel Steve Zodiac: Right, Let's Go!

These were the lines spoken by Steve and Venus at the start of every episode and just prior to boarding Fireball XL5, the spaceship that took the young astronauts on a new interplanetary mission.

Fireball XL5, a popular children's science-fiction television series, was broadcast on NBC in early 1960. As kids we used to watch the black-and-white show in late 1970s on Doordarshan, the state-run television channel in India. Incidentally, Doordarshan means Far Vision. In those days the half-an-hour show was all the TV entertainment we got and so we didn't miss a single episode.

The puppet-animated series was created and produced by the husband-wife team of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and launched through their company APF.

Colonel Steve Zodiac, the commander of Fireball XL5, accompanied by his girlfriend Venus, a space doctor; her semi-telepathic pet Zoonie; Prof. Matthew 'Matt' Matic, navigator and engineer; and co-pilot Robert, a mechanical robot, patrolled Sector 25 of charted interstellar space — like space policemen.

Zodiac and the others belonged to World Space Patrol, a part of Space City, located on a mysterious island in the South Pacific, and headed by Commander Wilbur Zero who had an assistant called Lieutenant Ninety.

As I recall, the most exciting part of each episode was when the credits rolled to the catchy tune of "I wish I was a spaceman, the fastest guy alive. I'd fly you 'round the universe, in Fireball XL5" — a theme song written by Barry Gray and sung by Don Spencer, and intoned by kids glued to the television set. After some thirty-odd years, it's still playing in my ears. You'll find it on YouTube.

Another thrilling moment was when Colonel Zodiac took off in the spaceship from a sharply vertical sky ramp that never seemed to end. You didn't know whether they were about to hurtle into space or taking a roller-coaster ride. According to an article on Wikipedia, Anderson was "inspired by an old Soviet design, a concept also used in the film When Worlds Collide."

Steve Zodiac’s Fireball XL5 and James T. Kirk’s Star Trek were the only television shows based on science fiction that I watched in my early youth. While the episodes were kid stuff and nothing much to talk about, it was Fireball XL5 that introduced me to the sf genre long before anything else did. The regular visits to the theatres to watch science-fiction films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Back to the Future came much later.

2012-02-02T08:17:00.000-08:00

Tarzan and Conan

The Ape-Man and the Barbarian are similar in many ways but the two things they have in common above all is the absence of fear and the ability to fight all kinds of creatures, man and monster, as these two fine covers will tell you. I had both these comic-books in my collection for a long time till, one day, I noticed they were missing. Tarzan and Conan have never failed to entertain since Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard created the two mighty superheroes in 1912 and 1932.

2012-01-31T06:45:00.000-08:00

SCENE STEALERS

The Last Voyage (1960)

“This is one guy I'm gonna help aboard personally!”

This line is uttered by Cliff Henderson (Robert Stack) as he helps Hank Lawson (Woody Strode) clamber aboard the last lifeboat after an ageing luxury liner, SS Claridon, en route to Japan, goes under.

Lawson, a black man, has just spent a better part of the 91-minute Oscar-nominated film helping Henderson rescue his wife, Laurie (Dorothy Malone), from the wreckage of their cabin which is hit by a huge explosion in the boiler room. Lawson, a tall, bare and muscular handyman in the engine room, could have abandoned the sinking liner with the rest of his mates but decides to stay back and help Henderson extricate his wife from the debris. He also ensures the safety of their four-year old daughter by putting her on board one of the fleeing lifeboats.

Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone in an emotional moment.

The Last Voyage, written and directed by Andrew L. Stone, moves at a slow pace and the long wait – till Laurie is rescued just as the ship goes down completely – is agonising for the viewer. Will she or won’t she make it? You’re relieved that she makes it in the end, with plenty of help from Second Engineer Walsh (Edmond O’Brien) towards the end. At one point, as her devoted husband Cliff runs around frantically for help, Laurie contemplates slashing her wrist with a shard of glass lying nearby so that at least her distraught husband can save himself. She decides against killing herself because she knows losing hope is half the battle lost.

The film is realistic for its portrayal of a huge ship in distress, the scramble for survival among its hundreds of passengers, a captain (George Sanders) who refuses to believe his ship is sinking, and the respect that he, as Captain Robert Adams, commands among his junior and senior officers. For me, the defining feature of The Last Voyage is the portrayal of racial equality among men as they come together in a desperate bid for survival.

Woody Strode, Robert Stack and Edmond O'Brien in The Last Voyage.

Hank Lawson, with a smile on his face and a kerchief around his neck, is endearing throughout the movie as he refuses to ditch Cliff Henderson and save his own life, because he knows it could have been his wife trapped down there.

For more Overlooked/Forgotten films this Tuesday, visit Todd Mason’s exciting blog.

2012-01-29T09:56:00.000-08:00

Dr. Death by Jonathan Kellerman (2000)

When I decide to read a new series by a new author, I usually like to start with the first book. You get a feel of the primary character, especially if it’s a spy or a detective, and you get to walk alongside the writer as he or she refines the character with each new book. In the absence of a first book and in my haste to read the author, I pick up any within the series that might come my way. And so it was that I happened to read Dr. Death (2000) by Jonathan Kellerman instead of When the Bough Breaks (1985) and found myself fourteen books ahead.

So what was American psychologist Alex Delaware like in the last fifteen years? Which were some of his most challenging and rewarding cases? Did he ever fail? How many times was he shot at? Was he married before Kellerman brought him to life? How many times has he been arrested?

Dr. Death doesn’t tell me much but I’m guessing Delaware hasn’t changed a lot in all the years that he has been assisting LAPD detective Milo Sturgis solve murder mysteries. What I can infer is that Delaware is a quiet man who likes to listen more and talk less. But then, that’s what psychologists do. I know his friend Sturgis is a gay, with a live-in partner, which has no bearing on the case. Delaware is also a kind-hearted man who refuses to compromise the interests of his patients even if they might be connected to the murder. He has a rare curiosity that enables him to dig, and dig deep. He lives with his girlfriend, Robin Castagna, a sculptor, who seldom questions him about his work. They are a happy couple, perhaps because they give each other time and space, and spend a lot of time together, eating, watching movies and making love. They have a bulldog.

This is what I have discovered so far about Delaware as he teams up with Sturgis to investigate the brutal murder of Eldon Mate, or Dr. Death, a story which Kellerman seems to have loosely fashioned on the late American pathologist and euthanasia activist Jack Kevorkian who died in June 2011. He doesn’t say so anywhere.

Kevorkian, who was called Dr. Death in real life, once said, “Dying is not a crime” which Eldon Mate apparently concurs with as he helps others commit suicide in Dr. Death. Till one day, someone decides to use his own death machine against him, in a rental van and off a remote stretch of the road in the Hollywood Hills area. His gruesome and wound-infested body is discovered by a dog belonging to a young couple on their morning walk; the man more than willing to talk, the woman reticent and withdrawn.

Thereafter, the story moves along at an even pace as Kellerman introduces one suspect after another that the detective and the psychologist can only suspect and do little about.

There’s Richard Doss, a shrewd businessman who buys rundown properties cheap, turns them around, and makes his fortunes. After years of a seemingly perfect marriage, his wife, Joanna, falls sick but the doctors are unable to diagnose the cause though you suspect its chronic depression. She eventually turns to Dr. Death who helps put her out of misery. Doss might have avenged his wife’s assisted killing.

Eric, his brilliant albeit disturbed, son has reason to murder Eldon Mate because he leaves university abruptly to care for his ailing mother.

Another prime suspect is Dr. Death’s own son, a psychological mess, whom he abandoned as a child. His wife, who brings up their son, turns up after Mate’s death to find out if there’s anything for her in his will.

Retired FBI agent Leimart Fusco is a suspect because he has been trying, for several years, to hunt down a serial killer who had killed his daughter and was responsible for numerous other murders. You can’t help wondering who he is after: the serial killer or Mate’s murderer. Might they be one and the same person?

Even Mate’s absconding lawyer Ray Haiselden is a suspect.

Kellerman ties all these suspects into one big knot and leaves it for the reader to untie, which is easier said than done. You don’t suspect the identity of the real killer until nearly the end but, by then, the author has you in knots too. Alex Delaware looks at things, like hidden clues, for instance, with a keen academic eye which finally helps him snare his prey. Dr. Death is a good psychological thriller but it’s not racy like your regular whodunit and the pace picks up much, much later. But it’s worth reading.

2012-01-28T11:49:00.000-08:00

Long live King Kong!

Much before King Kong was made into a film on at least three occasions – the 1976 version starring Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange, in my opinion, being more enchanting and engrossing than the 1933 and 2005 versions – English crime writer Edgar Wallace created the giant gorilla in a short story he co-wrote with Draycott Montagu Dell. Their story first appeared in Cinema Weekly in October 1933.

Interestingly, the first version of King Kong was directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack based on a story idea by Cooper and Wallace.

King Kong has lost none of its cinematic influence after scores of movies about beasts and monsters that followed the first version – originally titled The Beast: The Birth of Kong – over the past eighty years. King Kong still sounds better.

The movies spawned many comic-books with the 1968-published Gold Key cover of the mighty King Kong battling puny airplanes atop the Empire State Building being the most striking of all.

2012-01-27T04:29:00.000-08:00

Stamp of a Writer: Samuel L. Clemens (MARK TWAIN)

"I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55."

"Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very;" your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."

"I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so that it will not only interest boys but strongly interest any man who has ever been a boy. That immensely enlarges the audience."

"We write frankly and fearlessly but then we "modify" before we print."

"You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God's adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by."

"Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."

The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it."

"If you invent two or three people and turn them loose in your manuscript, something is bound to happen to them — you can't help it; and then it will take you the rest of the book to get them out of the natural consequences of that occurrence, and so first thing you know, there's your book all finished up and never cost you an idea."

The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is that you really want to say.

"I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English — it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them — then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice."

"An author values a compliment even when it comes from a source of doubtful competency."

"There is only one brief, solitary law for letter-writing, and yet you either do not know that law, or else you are so stupid that you never think of it. It is very easy and simple: Write only about things and people your correspondent takes a living interest in."

"Nothing in the world affords a newspaper reporter so much satisfaction as gathering up the details of a bloody and mysterious murder, and writing them up with aggravated circumstantiality."

"Classic — a book which people praise and don't read."

2012-01-25T10:41:00.000-08:00

Ten most popular male-female duets

Some of my favourite songs are popular duets sung by male and female vocalists. Here are ten famous duets that I have been listening to for many years. They are in no particular order because I like them all. If I have missed any obvious duos and their duets, such as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals, which I haven't included here, don't hesitate to belt them out.

1. Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now by Grace Slick and Paul Kantner

This hit song was a part of Jefferson Starship’s album No Protection and was also the soundtrack of Mannequin starring Andrew McCarthy and Kim Cattrall. Both song and film were released in 1987. The song has a terrific beat and effective lyrics.

2. Phantom of the Opera by Sarah Brightman and Michael Crawford
Of all the broadway and movie versions, the 2004-film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1986 musical starring Emmy Rossum and Gerard Butler is, unarguably, the best. Listen to it today, if you haven’t yet. It’s powerful and magical and, to use a cliché, it will take your breath away.

3. Almost Paradise by Ann Wilson and Mike Reno
This love theme from Footloose by Wilson, vocalist for the Heart band, and Reno, lead singer of rock band Loverboy, starts off slowly before the tempo rises. It’s a soft number that’ll stay with you long after you listen to it.

4. (I've had) The Time of My Life by Jennifer Warnes and Bill Medley
If you’ve seen Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing, then you’ve heard this song. It won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group, an Academy Award for Best Original Song, and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. What more do you want?

5. Summer Wine by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood
The world discovered Lee Hazlewood’s baritone voice in 1967, the year he and Nancy Sinatra made this song famous. I discovered Hazlewood in 2010. Along with the Wild West Summer Wine, I also recommend Some Velvet Morning, one of many popular duets they sang.

6. Up Where We Belong by Jennifer Warnes and Joe Cocker
When I first heard this lovely number, some years ago, I didn’t know it was from An Officer and a Gentleman, 1982. I found that out this evening! Warnes and Cocker sing this number with a lot of depth and feeling.

7. Somethin' Stupid by Nancy and Frank Sinatra
The best father-daughter duet I’ve ever heard. It sits on the famous crooner’s album The World We Knew.

8. Endless Love by Diana Ross and Lionel Richie
I have been hearing this original soundtrack but haven’t seen the film, namely Franco Zeffirelli's Endless Love starring Brooke Shields. Billboard has labelled it the “greatest song duet of all time” – it’s really nice, but I won't say it's the greatest.

9. Beauty and the Beast by Celine Dion and Peabo Bryson
Beauty and the Beast is the first of four of the greatest Disney films I’ve ever seen – the others are The Jungle Book, The Lion King and Bambi. The movie is a classic, so is this song.

10. You're the One That I Want by Olivia Newton and John Travolta
While this song from the 1978 musical-hit Grease is quite catchy, it faces stiff competition from the many songs in Grease 2, starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Maxwell Caulfield, released in 1982.

2012-01-24T03:37:00.000-08:00

SCENE STEALERS

(Return to) The 36th Chamber of Shaolin

Which is your favourite kung fu movie? No prizes for guessing which mine is. It's always been Enter the Dragon which Bruce Lee never saw in the theatre — he died three weeks before the film was premiered in 1973. His death, at 32, wasn't just premature, it was profoundly tragic. There are quite a few unforgettable moments in the film — Lee's fair play, inimitable catcalls, unblinking eyes, lightning reaction, flying kick, amazing skill with nunchakus, duel in the Hall of Mirrors, and even one liners. In one scene, as Lee prepares to fight O'Harra (Robert Wall) and avenge his sister's death, O'Harra shows off by flinging a board in the air and smashing it with his fist. A grim-faced Lee retorts, "Boards don't hit back."

However, this post, which is offered as a part of Tuesday's Overlooked/Forgotten Films at Todd Mason's blog, is not about Enter the Dragon or the spate of martial arts flicks that followed, most notably, Drunken Master (1978), Snake in the Eagle's Shadow (1978), Mad Monkey Kung Fu (1979), and Snake in the Monkey's Shadow (1979). It's about two other kung fu movies, the first of which is considered the greatest martial arts film ever made — The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978) and Return to the 36th Chamber (1980) — directed by Chia-Liang Liu.

Last week, I watched both these films after a gap of nearly three decades. I remember, the first time I saw it I was awestruck by The 36th Chamber of Shaolin and the gruelling training that San Te (Chia Hui Liu) goes through. He might as well be training to become a Navy SEAL.

A still from The 36th Chamber of Shaolin.

San Te, wounded in an uprising against the brutal Manchu government, approaches the fortress-like Shaolin Temple and begs to be trained so that he can go back and avenge the deaths of his family and friends. The temple of peace-loving Buddhist monks run by a kind abbot is initially reluctant to accept him because he doesn't belong to their fold. Later, however, he is allowed to enter the monastery and trained in its famed martial arts technique. San Te trains long and hard and often fails, only to rise and excel in each department, and quickly make his way past the other disciples to reach the 35th chamber. After completing his training, San Te goes home to help his people bring down the oppressive regime. Mission accomplished, he returns to the Shaolin Temple where he opens the 36th chamber to train ordinary people in martial arts.

If director Chia-Liang Liu romanticises The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, he lends a comic touch to Return to the 36th Chamber which is not a sequel though it might seem like one.

In this film, released in 1980, Chao Jen-Cheh (Chia Hui Liu again) is hired by poor workers to reclaim their wages from the owner of a chemical factory where they are employed but ill treated. Jen-Cheh must pretend he is a Shaolin monk and kung fu expert but his impersonation, with a dose of slapstick, is soon exposed by the boss and his thugs. Filled with remorse, the well-meaning Jen-Cheh promises the workers that he will return only after he learns kung fu at Shaolin.

As in The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, Jen-Cheh tries to trick his way into the temple but with little success. He pleads with the kindly abbot who sees potential in the upstart and assigns him two tasks with a purpose only the monk knows.

A scene from Return to the 36th Chamber.

First, he must wash his soot-stained face at the well. In the absence of large wooden buckets, which are taken by the official pupils, he must tie one end of a rope to his waist and the other end to a rock which he must then lift and throw into the well and quickly try and wash himself when the water splashes over. Jen-Cheh masters the art of ‘drawing water’ with a rock after dozens of failed, albeit comic, attempts. He learns his first martial arts lesson. But he doesn't know it.

The second task is what makes this film worth seeing. The abbot orders Jen-Cheh to build a bamboo scaffolding all around the interior of the temple. As the young man goes to work on the scaffolding, he watches the pupils train under him. He begins to imitate their actions with little other than his bare hands and feet and bamboos and twine. Jen-Cheh takes a year to build the scaffolding — and train himself in martial arts of the Shaolin temple. But he doesn’t know it. When the abbot sees the scaffolding, he quietly tells Jen-Cheh to pull it down. Jen-Cheh can’t believe it, but the abbot knows that the young man is ready.

Jen-Cheh then returns to his hometown and takes on the factory owner and his thugs with a superb display of martial arts tactics (the start-stop-start-stop technique of fighting associated with most kung fu movies) which he learnt from the rooftops of Shaolin Temple. He even calls it rooftop kung fu.

Chia-Liang Liu, who directed the two Shaolin films and also directed himself in Mad Monkey Kung Fu, is average with comedy. The martial arts expert who brought comic timing to, well, martial arts films is Jackie Chan who acted in popular films like Snake in the Eagle's Shadow and Drunken Master. His brand of slapstick is permanently etched on kung fu movies.

2012-01-23T02:01:00.000-08:00

The Rushdie-Winfrey Show

Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie did not attend the Jaipur Literature Festival but his long shadow hovered over the largest literary event in Asia-Pacific on all five days. The annual festival, held at Diggi Palace in Jaipur, the capital of the northwestern state of Rajasthan (the Land of Kings) from January 20 through 24, was in the news for all the wrong reasons.

The controversial author was keen to attend the festival but backed out at the last minute because of a perceived threat to his life from the underworld and possibly Islamic radicals. The writer's decision not to attend the prestigious event came in the wake of an "advisory" from the central (federal) government which its counterpart in the state took up in earnest. It concerned a possible law-and-order situation arising out of protests that might have greeted Rushdie on arrival, possibly leading to more serious consequences for the writer.

The Rajasthan Chief Minister, Ashok Gehlot, whose party heads the coalition government in New Delhi, denied there was a conspiracy to keep the author away. His government's feeble excuse was that it hadn't written to Rushdie, one way or the other.

Yesterday, Rushdie, who has been in the eye of a literary storm since publishing The Satanic Verses—a book banned in India—twenty-four years ago, claimed that he was "lied to" on the plot to kill him, which, on the face of it, appears to have been a political ploy to appease the Muslim community and keep the vote-bank of the ruling Congress Party intact. This is not the first time.

The author of Midnight's Children, which won the Booker in 1981, showed his anger on Twitter: "I've investigated and believe that I was, indeed, lied to... Don't know who gave orders. I guess the same police who want to arrest Hari (Kunzru), Amitava (Ghosh), Jeet (Thayil) and Ruchir (Joshi). Disgusting."

The four writers, who were participating in the literature festival, were asked to leave after reading excerpts from The Satanic Verses, to show their solidarity with Rushdie. Several authors at the fest have now demanded lifting the ban on the book.

The controversy over Rushdie took the spotlight away from another high-profile visitor to the Jaipur Literature Festival—Oprah Winfrey—who was on a week-long trip to India in connection with her new TV channel, Oprah Winfrey Network.

The talk show host, who is very popular in India, spoke about her love of books and how it helped her to become one of the most influential women of our time. "Reading is what I do for pleasure, what I do to relax myself," she told the eager crowd. "My ideal day is to spend a day reading a great book, and knowing I have another one to read... At school, I turned in assignments a week early to get another book. The other kids hated me."

Winfrey has some nine million followers on Twitter but it didn't stop her from expressing concern over the damaging effects of computers and social networking on reading habits. "I feel that, because when I am on it (Twitter), I feel I could be reading a book right now."

The literature festival had its lighthearted moments too. Like, when The New Yorker editor David Remnick was about to answer a question, a cow somewhere behind him mooed, prompting the American journalist to joke, "I deserved that!" Later, he told The Times of India, "A cow behind the tent made loud noises whenever I was asked a question. I don't usually get cows — I get hecklers." He also thinks Barack Obama is the best President in his lifetime of 53 years. Find out why here.

If you want to read more about the Jaipur Literature Festival, click here.

2012-01-21T04:29:00.000-08:00

#6 Ode to (Eternal) Peace

Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949), known as The Nightingale of India, was a well-known poet and writer and freedom fighter and social activist. She was the first Indian woman to become the President of the Indian National Congress.

Men say the world is full of fear and hate,
And all life's ripening harvest-fields await
The restless sickle of relentless fate.

But I, sweet Soul, rejoice that I was born,
When from the climbing terraces of corn
I watch the golden orioles of Thy morn.

What care I for the world's desire and pride,
Who know the silver wings that gleam and glide,
The homing pigeons of Thine eventide?

What care I for the world's loud weariness,
Who dream in twilight granaries Thou dost bless
With delicate sheaves of mellow silences?

Say, shall I heed dull presages of doom,
Or dread the rumoured loneliness and gloom,
The mute and mythic terror of the tomb?

For my glad heart is drunk and drenched with Thee,
O inmost wind of living ecstasy!
O intimate essence of eternity!

Book Cover: © www.penguinbooksindia.com

2012-01-19T08:30:00.000-08:00

Rip Kirby, private detective

These are two vintage covers of Rip Kirby comic-books published under the Indrajal Comics label by Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd, publishers of The Times of India. Indrajal Comics stopped publication of Remington 'Rip' Kirby and other heroes like Phantom, Mandrake, Bahadur (the brave), Flash Gordon, Buz Sawyer and Garth in late 1980. Kirby, the private detective created by Alex Raymond in 1946, wasn't as popular as Phantom, Mandrake and Bahadur but he had a small band of loyal
followers like this blogger.

The bespectacled and immaculately dressed private eye was largely known for investigating high-profile cases usually involving rich women and jewel heists. He carried a pistol but mostly used his fists and there was almost no violence in his comics. Kirby, who was ably supported by his faithful, albeit disconsolate, butler Desmond, was one of the earliest modern-day sleuths.

Now if I were making a movie on Rip Kirby, who would I cast in his role? It'd be Gregory Peck or Michael Caine.

Long out of print, Indrajal Comics today have considerable value, more so Rip Kirby whose titles weren't too many.

2012-01-17T23:40:00.000-08:00

Back in time: Nestlé tells a story

First Nestlé logo

On January 15, I did a small post on how GE turned to comic-books in 1950s to rekindle interest in science and technology among students in America. Over the last hundred years, multinational companies have used comics as a potent tool to showcase and sell a multitude of products and merchandise on one hand and educate the community on the other. In fact, early logos and adverts of companies bore a close resemblance to illustrations in children's storybooks. Others looked like picture postcards and movie posters.

The Nestlé Company was established in 1866 by Henri Nestlé, a trained pharmacist, to "help combat the problem of infant mortality due to malnutrition." Nestlé — which means 'little nest' in German — understood the power of branding. When one of his agents suggested that the nest could be exchanged for the white cross of the Swiss flag, Nestlé's response was firm: "I regret that I cannot allow you to change my nest for a Swiss cross... I cannot have a different trademark in every country; anyone can make use of a cross, but no one else may use my coat of arms."

The 'little nest' hasn't changed in nearly 150 years. You can read more about it at Nestlé.

Source: www.sparehed.com

2012-01-17T01:57:00.000-08:00

SCENE STEALERS

Peter Benchley's Jaws and The Deep

“Smile, you son of a BITCH!”

In case you forgot who said those words, it was Amity Island police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) after he shoots at a scuba tank and blows up Jaws.

I saw Jaws a few years after it was released in 1975 but I didn't know it was directed by Steven Spielberg. In fact, I didn't even know who Spielberg was back then. I saw the movie on a cousin's VCR and it was only much later I realised that you don't watch a film like Jaws on video. You need Jaws to come after you on 70 mm, quietly and stealthily, and drag you under. I had taken the bite right out of the flesh-eating monster's mouth.

So then, I came to know of Spielberg only after E.T. (1982) and by then I'd also seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). This was a period when I used to watch lots of films without bothering to find out who the directors were. I was barely getting acquainted with the actors.

I'm not going to review Jaws the film, which, thirty-seven years later, continues to hold its own, as a cult film and the biggest grosser before Star Wars (1977) came along. For me, Jaws is not about an ugly great white shark attacking unsuspecting beach-goers in the resort town of Amity Island. It's the scary music by John Williams that presages the coming of the killer fish. You know something horrible is going to happen to people who know absolutely nothing about it, and there's no way you can warn them off. Mute the volume and Jaws is like a toy fish in a bathtub. Spielberg and Williams knew how to jangle our nerves.

Apart from the music, the other highlight of the film is the sombre performance by Roy Scheider who wages a lone battle against Jaws, the seafaring shark, and Mayor Lawrence ‘Larry’ Vaughan (Murray Hamilton), the land shark. Vaughan refuses to close down the beach so the town council can reap profits during the holiday season. It's left to the police chief to hunt down Jaws with the help of oceanographer Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw).

The film has its tense moments, like the time when Hooper goes underwater in a cage which is destroyed by the shark or when the half-crazed Quint, a former shark survivor, stops Brody from calling the coast guard for help or when the shark hunter slides down the deck of the half-submerged boat and straight into the open jaws of the great white. In the end, the brave police chief blows the monster out of the water.

Jaws was based on a novel by American writer Peter Benchley who wrote two other thrillers set in and around the high seas and which were made into films—The Deep (1977) and The Island (1980). I read all three books a very long time ago though I've only seen Jaws and The Deep.

The Deep, directed by Peter Yates, is a suspense film that did well at the box office but wasn't quite as successful as Jaws. Unlike the latter, I can recollect almost nothing about this film, except that it has a lot of underwater scenes. I also remember being scared out of my skin when Gail Berke (Jacqueline Bisset) screams when she suddenly spots a hideous face in the window in the dead of night.

To refresh my memory, I read about The Deep on the internet: it's an action-packed adventure film about a young vacationing couple, Gail Berke and David Sanders (Nick Nolte), who discover artifacts, including a mysterious ampule of amber-coloured liquid and a medallion, while scuba diving near shipwrecks off the shark-infested coast of Bermuda. That little discovery sets them on a dangerous course against evil treasure hunters who'll stop at nothing to get the ampule.

A few observations to round up: Jaws and The Deep are shot on high seas or under water; Robert Shaw and man-eating sharks are in both the films; Peter Benchley and Roy Scheider died in 2006 and 2008; Eli Wallach acts as Adam Coffin, the only survivor of a sunken ship, in The Deep; and if I didn't know Steven Spielberg in Jaws, I didn't know Nick Nolte in The Deep either. I met him five years later in 48 Hrs.

This post is offered as part of Tuesday's Overlooked/Forgotten Films over at Todd Mason's blog at http://socialistjazz.blogspot.com

2012-01-16T02:54:00.000-08:00

WISDOM FROM BOOKS & COMICS

Edith Wharton in The Age of Innocence

Ah, good conversation — there's nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.

I shan't be lonely now. I WAS lonely; I WAS afraid. But the emptiness and the darkness are gone; when I turn back into myself now I'm like a child going at night into a room where there's always a light.

An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.

He simply felt that if he could carry away the vision of the spot of earth she walked on, and the way the sky and sea enclosed it, the rest of the world might seem less empty.

...he arrived late at the office, perceived that his doing so made no difference whatever to any one, and was filled with sudden exasperation at the elaborate futility of his life.

What's the use? You gave me my first glimpse of a real life, and at the same moment you asked me to go on with a sham one. It's beyond human enduring — that's all.

It seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it into a copy of another country... Do you suppose Christopher Columbus would have taken all that trouble just to go to the Opera with the Selfridge Merrys?

We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we?

You'll find earlier literary wisdom here:

Jean-Paul Sartre

Daniel Defoe

Thomas Hardy

2012-01-15T06:59:00.000-08:00

When GE turned to comic-books

While, globally, corporate social responsibility came to be implemented by multinational corporations since the 1960s, US giant General Electric used a unique form of CSR long before it officially became a part of corporate culture: GE published comics to get students interested in science in a fun and colourful way. Here's what GE has to say:

It’s become a vexing cliché to bemoan the lack of student interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). “A national crisis has been identified in the area of global technological competitiveness,” warned a recent study by Purdue University. “Will our science and high technology sectors have the talented STEM graduates prepared to compete and be leaders in tomorrow’s world?

In response to this STEM crisis, the White House has launched the Educate to Innovate campaign. There is also the National STEM Video Game Challenge, where kids learn STEM skills by designing games. GE has some experience experimenting with play and fun in an effort to attract young minds to science and engineering.

In the 1950s, comic books were as popular with kids as video games are today, and just as decried by parents. “Teachers, parents and lawmakers were bitter about newsstand comics in 1945,” General Electric Review wrote in September 1953. “But in the public relations field, although were all aware of the adult fear that comic books were producing a crop of juvenile delinquents, we couldn’t escape the conclusion that the medium had attractive possibilities for mass communications.

Intrigued by the possibilities, GE started printing comics “on mammoth presses on newsprint stock in quantities of 500,000 to 3,000,000.” The titles: Adventures In Jet Power, Adventures Inside the Atom, and Land of Plenty, A Story of Freedom and Power.

According to GE Review, the “drawings were shown to several vice presidents and managers” before publication. “And the results of these previews were indeed stimulating because the eight members of management who saw the colourful boards had so much fun looking, reading, and commenting that they not only gave their final approval to the project, but also suggested many themes for future series.”

Photos: www.gereports.com

2012-01-14T04:39:00.000-08:00

SHORT STORIES: Sundance Western Comic-Book

Death of a Ghost Town

Death of a Ghost Town—No.60W of Sundance Western: Illustrated World Library Series published by World Distributors (Manchester) Ltd, UK—is the story of an abandoned town called Richville in California. Set in 1880 at the time of the gold rush, the town, a typical cluster of wooden structures, is deserted except for a lone bandit and gold digger called Welton who is desperately searching for old Orson’s gold stashed in one of the houses.

About half-a-day’s journey from Richville, a stagecoach is making its way to an unknown destination when three masked men on horseback ambush it and kidnap one of the occupants, a young boy. The gun toting men bring the boy to Richville, which they’d heard of before, and lock him up in one of the houses and leave on an errand.

It’s clear at the outset that the gangsters have mistaken the young lad for a rich man’s son and kidnapped him with the intention of claiming ransom from his father. Now the boy’s father, a poor man, works for the rich man whose son they were actually supposed to abduct. But the hoodlums don’t know this.

The gold digger, who is no paragon of virtue, watches quietly from a distance. He knows what the men are up to and, in their brief absence, hatches a plot to whisk the boy away and claim the ransom for himself. “This is another way of making a bit of cash without working hard for it,” he thinks to himself.

The bandit rescues the boy who instantly realises that he is in the clutches of just another rotten scoundrel, but there’s no escape. The bearded man tells the boy, “I’m not one of the same breed as those three rogues. I said right away when I saw you in their hands: ‘I will help him. This poor kid’.” The young lad is far from reassured.

Even as the two set out toward the bandit’s horse, the gangsters return, forcing the two to hide in one of the other houses. Not aware of the gold digger’s presence, the men think that the boy has escaped and is hiding somewhere nearby. The men call out to the boy and when he fails to appear, one of them, who looks to be the gang leader, begins to set the houses on fire — “The one way to make him come out quick. You’ll see!”

His two accomplices are not convinced this ploy will work and as they argue, an interesting story is unfolding inside, where the boy tells his so-called benefactor that if they ever leave the place alive his father would surely reward him. “But my father is poor!” he says, to Welton’s disbelief. “What did you say?”

As the gangsters continue to squabble outside, the boy realises why he has been kidnapped. “Ah! Now I’ve got it. They thought they were kidnapping the boss’s son who should have made the trip. They mistook me to be the boss’s son!”

By now the house in which they are hiding is also torched and as the flames begin to lick at the dilapidated wooden structure, Welton orders the boy out so that he can escape by the back door. But the boy refuses to leave the bandit to whom he says, “They would kill you if they saw that you tried to save me. I’ll stay with you. Let’s try and find a way for both of us to escape.”

Welton is stunned and even as he tries to make sense out of the boy’s words, the ceiling collapses, but he is pulled to safety by the young lad. What happens next is equally bewildering for the bandit who discovers the hidden gold under the debris.

Outside, the gangsters are caught in a gunfight and eventually part ways and leave town.

As the fire spreads rapidly and destroys all the houses in the ghost town, Richville, for the first time, sees “a gesture of generosity and affection” which isn’t lost on Welton who takes the boy home.

Photo: Scanned cover of my copy of the western comic-book.

You can read my review of two short stories by Anton Chekhov at http://chesscomicsandcrosswords.blogspot.com/2012/01/short-stories-anton-chekhov-lottery.html

2012-01-12T09:21:00.000-08:00

Asterix and the potion of magic

Nothing's fair in love and war or, for that matter, in comics. Now I have been reading Asterix, my favourite comic-book, for more than three decades. Yet, during all these years, I have never given much thought to the obvious flaws in the Goscinny-Uderzo creation. And there are quite a few.

For instance, in Asterix in Britain, the brave Gaulish warrior and his pigtailed friend Obelix cross over into Roman-occupied Britain with a barrel of magic potion to help a small village fight against the might of Caesar's Rome. Now this village has been successfully defending itself against the Romans without the aid of the potion. All that the Britons, as indomitable as the Gauls, drink is hot water, with a drop of milk, till Asterix introduces them to tea with some herbs that Druid Getafix gave him before he left home.

Now hot water with a spot of milk is no match for the druid’s powerful concoction and yet that is all the magic the Britons have to stave off the invading Romans. My point is if one little village of Britons can defeat the Romans without any magic potion, why can’t the village of Gauls, as we know it, do likewise?

On the rare occasion when the Gauls are without their magic potion, they turn to Obelix to guard the village because he fell into the cauldron of magic potion when he was a baby and it had a permanent effect on him. No one among the Britons fell into a cauldron of hot water and even if someone did, the poor man would have been scalded for life.

Asterix comics are replete with examples of brave and ordinary people who fight the Romans with little other than the clothes on their back. For example, the Corsicans in Asterix in Corsica stare down their Roman opponents while the Helvetians in Asterix in Switzerland scare the hell out of the tin-hat soldiers by blowing into their alpine horns. No magic potion in both cases. It goes to the credit of the Gauls that they are willing to share the potion with anyone who’s up against the Romans.

See what I mean. If it weren’t for the magic potion, there would be no village of indomitable Gauls and no bashing of Romans and no menhir-delivery man either. Then again, Asterix wouldn’t have been half as funny without the magic potion.

2012-01-11T11:50:00.000-08:00

Memorable musical movies

One of the things I like about blogging is that you can blog about anything you like, and that includes both exciting and mundane stuff. You can post a serious article or a light piece depending on what suits you best. Over the past two years this blog has veered towards the latter mainly because I have the patience but not the time to write thought-provoking and debate-inducing stories. Of course, I could post a well-researched piece every few days rather than write nonsense every single day (Asterix and Obelix agree with me – look at them go!) But then, I like to post something daily, even if it’s hackneyed stuff, because it keeps the momentum going (I don’t know where) and because, hopefully, it will attract more traffic (I don’t see how).

That’s enough baiting and fishing for the day (or night in my case). I’ll leave you with more of the banal (in terms of post treatment) — this time a film reel of some of the most memorable musical films ever. I’ve seen them all, in no particular order. Like I said I don’t have the time to write about each of them separately unless I do one or two a week. Now if only I’d the patience…

2012-01-10T03:48:00.000-08:00

SCENE STEALERS

The Day After and The Day After Tomorrow

Roland Emmerich, the director of doomsday movies, gave us two epic adventures about global catastrophes – The Day After Tomorrow in 2004 and 2012 in 2009. While one is about the devastating impact of global warming where everything freezes to subzero and the earth is threatened by a second ice age, the other is about the cataclysmic solar storms that trigger volcanoes and earthquakes, wreaking terrible havoc on the planet. Big blockbusters, bombastic words. The only way to describe Emmerich’s mega-scale films that also include The Independence Day (1996), Godzilla (1998) and 10,000 BC (2008).

Emmerich has probably envisioned the destruction of earth and humankind by aliens, man, monster and nature more than any other director and at the pace he is churning out apocalyptic films, we will have a few more by 2020. I hope he does, so far they have been exciting and nerve wracking.

However, long before climatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) tried in vain to convince a stubborn US vice president of an unprecedented climate change and the coming of a new ice age in The Day After Tomorrow, university science professor Dr. Russell Oakes (Jason Robards) walked the lone and barren path through the death streets of Kansas City in the aftermath of a devastating Soviet nuclear missile strike in The Day After (1983). The catastrophes pictured in both the films were manmade and, in spite of the twenty-one year timeline between the two, continue to pose a real threat even today.

The Day After, an American television film directed by Nicholas Meyer, was shot on a small budget and more like a reality biopic in the backdrop of the Cold War between the US and the USSR. I’d like to think that, at some point, the film brought the nuclear posturing Americans and the Soviets to the negotiating table.

The film, with its frightening portrayal of a nuclear bomb-hit city and the trail of radioactive destruction in its wake, did well at the global box office, including India. I saw the film alone in a theatre called Eros, one of the finest in south Bombay at the time, and recall being awed by the mushroom cloud on 70 mm.

The final scene in The Day After will forever stay with me: Dr. Oakes making his way through the burning and dying city, to see his home one last time, and Joe Huxley (John Lithgow) talking to a radio without hope, “Hello? This is Lawrence, Lawrence, Kansas. Is anybody there? Anybody? Anybody at all…” This is just about all I can remember about The Day After. How terrifying can that be!

For Tuesday's Forgotten and Overlooked films, go to Todd Mason's blog at www.socialistjazz.blogspot.com

2012-01-08T11:11:00.000-08:00

JUKE BOX

I Dreamed a Dream by Susan Boyle

In April 2009, Susan Boyle, as a 47-year old unmarried and unemployed Scottish woman, took Britain's Got Talent, Simon Cowell, and the music industry by storm when she sang I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miserables to global applause. If you want to know what instant success and glory is, watch this video. You'll give her a standing ovation too.

2012-01-07T11:41:00.000-08:00

A poser for the weekend

Here’s a tricky question to end the day, at least in my part of the world: if you had free access to copyrighted books and ebooks on the internet, what would you do? Would you be tempted to download them on to your e-reader or desktop computer or would you take the moral high ground and desist from doing such a thing? Music I have downloaded, movies never, and books not yet. Millions are downloading music and movies without a shred of guilt. I don’t know the download scene for books still under copyright. So far the only books I’m reading online and occasionally downloading are the classics, other fiction, and short stories no longer under copyright. But what is your view?

2012-01-06T04:39:00.000-08:00

One novel, one film, one comic

All Quiet on the Western Front is one novel, film and comic-book I'd like to read, watch and read. The title suddenly sprang up today while I was looking for some images on the internet. I haven't read the book by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I, which is what the story is all about. Neither have I seen the black-and-white film directed by Lewis Milestone and starring Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, John Wray and Arnold Lucy, all new to me. Classics Illustrated did a fine job of bringing it out in comic-book which I read many years ago, though, unfortunately, it's not a part of my small collection of CI.

According to an interesting Study Guide by The Glencoe Literature Library, "In 1933, All Quiet on the Western Front was one of the first books that the Nazis burned in public, declaring it a 'betrayal of the soldiers of the First World War'. The successful American film of the novel, made in 1930, was also banned by the Nazis. Had Remarque remained in Germany, he would have faced certain persecution. The Nazi government later revoked his German citizenship in 1938."

At this point of time there's very little I can say about All Quiet on the Western Front except that I've been told it is one of the greatest war movies on the Great War. You might have difficulty acquiring the rare comic-book but not the ebook or the film, the former is freely available online.

Don't forget to check out Friday's Forgotten Books at Todd Mason's blog www.socialistjazz.blogspot.com

2012-01-05T04:23:00.000-08:00

Laughing with Laurel

"Well, I couldn't help it, I was dreaming I was awake,
then I woke up and found myself asleep!"

Some lines are meant to be delivered only by some actors. Like this classic line Stan Laurel utters in the 1934 short film Oliver The Eighth directed by Lloyd French and produced by Hal Roach. I can't think of anyone other than Laurel saying it. It's not just funny, it's uproariously funny. Psychologists should prescribe a liberal dose of Laurel and Hardy films instead of antidepressants. It will do wonders for mental health.

Photo: MGM

2012-01-04T04:41:00.000-08:00

SHORT STORIES: Anton Chekhov

The Lottery Ticket and A Nincompoop

“Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress.”

Anton Chekhov, one of the greatest writers of short stories, was very popular during my school days, popping out of our English text books and regaling us with stories of despair and hope. The Russian physician and author often shared the 35-minute English period with other acclaimed writers and poets like Dickens, Shaw, Milton and Byron. He was the odd-man out but he didn’t seem to mind because he had the attention of the class.

Chekhov wrote about ordinary people who lived even less ordinary lives. The human life was central to his stories which revolved around the working class, the wage-earning proletariat, and their seemingly insurmountable problems and their unfulfilled dreams and aspirations. Through his writings, he advocated just and equitable treatment of the less fortunate and strived to raise their lot. He captured the pathos of their situation like few did.

To give you a feel of Chekhov’s humane writing, in A Nincompoop, the master of the house says to himself in the end, “How easy it is to crush the weak in this world!” The “weak” in the story is Julia Vassilyevna, his children’s governess, who quietly walks out of the room with her monthly wage of eighty rubles—shortly after her master has played a cruel joke on her.

A few moments before, the man had summoned the governess to his room in order to settle her account and had proceeded to deduct a considerable amount from her wages on account of various reasons. A teary-eyed Vassilyevna accepts the final sum of eleven rubles with trembling fingers and whispers “Merci” to the visible anger of her master.

“For what, this ‘merci’?” he asks.

“For the money.”

“But you know I have cheated you, for God’s sake, robbed you! I have actually stolen from you! Why this ‘merci’?”

“In my other places, they did not give me anything at all.”

“They did not give you anything? No wonder! I played a little joke on you, a cruel lesson, just to teach you... I am going to give you the entire eighty rubles! Here they are in an envelope all ready for you... Is it really possible to be so spineless? Why don't you protest? Why be silent? Is it possible in this world to be without teeth and claws, to be such a nincompoop?”

A Nincompoop stands on its own and requires no further explanation, as does Chekhov’s other popular story The Lottery Ticket. If you’ve read Chekhov before then you might guess what this one is all about. I’ll tell you a bit about it.

This story is about a middle-class family, Ivan Dmitritch and his wife Masha, who are quite happy with their lot which includes a tidy income of 1,200 rubles a year. Then one day, after supper, Masha asks her husband to check her lottery ticket in the day’s newspaper. He does so and finds that the series number tallies. But does the ticket number tally too? If it does, then Masha stands to win the prize of 75,000 rubles!

The harsh reality of the story lies somewhere between the two numbers, as Ivan and Masha, married for several years and suffering one another, visibly so, dream about what each would do if they win it. I won’t spoil it for you any more. You have to read the story.

2012-01-03T02:38:00.000-08:00

SCENE STEALERS

Whiteout and The Back-up Plan

Tom Skerritt and Kate Beckinsale in Whiteout.

Last Tuesday, as part of Todd Mason's weekly meme about Overlooked/Forgotten Films at his blog Sweet Freedom, I wrote about the James Franco starrer Annapolis which, in my opinion, deserved to be overlooked and forgotten, in a different sense than what this entertaining meme is really about. Over the weekend I saw Whiteout (2009) and The Back-up Plan (2010), two more films I had no hesitation in placing in the watch-and-forget category. And to think I've been cribbing about not having enough time to read books or play chess.

By some coincidence, Whiteout and The Back-up Plan tell the stories of two women who are unsure of the men in their lives (actually, in their midst), though, in vastly different circumstances.

In Whiteout, directed by Dominic Sena, US Marshal Carrie Stetko (Kate Beckinsale) is stranded at a deserted research station in Antarctica, for six months of a fierce winter storm, as she tries to hunt down a serial killer responsible for the murders of his associates, all of them involved in diamond smuggling. Stetko eventually nails the killer and also discovers the role of her close friend and ageing station medic Dr. John Fury (Tom Skerritt) in the diamond smuggling. The marshal gives Stetko, a harmless bloke who meant no harm, a grim choice: either she turns him in or he goes out into the whiteout where nothing is visible and only death waits. Dr. Fury chooses the latter, but not before a final drink and one last look at the aurora.

The man in the film, or in Stetko's life, is Robert Pryce (Gabriel Macht), a UN security agent who mysteriously lands up at the station to assist in the investigation. Stetko suspects his motives but these prove unfounded as the UN agent comes to her rescue during a particularly intense struggle with the killer in the middle of a deadly snowstorm.

Whiteout is supposed to be a thriller but I failed to see the suspense. It has its moments, though. For instance, much of the film is shot outdoors, in the frozen climes of Antarctica, a white-and-grey landscape that looks like the last place god made. Beckinsale does well as Marshal Stetko though she could do with more expression on her face. She could have been a part of the evacuation of the cold continent but decides to stay back for up to six months and investigate the murders—a tense period during which she discovers a trail of blood and dead bodies, a crashed Russian plane, and unexplained cargo, gets trapped in a tunnel, loses a finger, and nearly lose her life more than once.

There's plenty of action in Whiteout, no doubt, but it's all still white and grey and visibility is near zero—a blizzard of a movie that you might see on a cold and wet day. If I were you, I'd go for that unsolved jigsaw puzzle on the table.

The Back-up Plan, directed by Alan Poul, is arguably one of the silliest movies I've seen in recent months. It's meant to be a romantic comedy but, just as I failed to see the suspense in Whiteout, I didn't see the romance in this one. Zoe (Jennifer Lopez) realises she's getting on in life with no sign of settling down with a husband and children. With no man in her life, Zoe decides to have a baby through artificial insemination, prepares for the role of a single mother, and promptly falls for Stan (Alex O'Loughlin).

Alex O'Loughlin and Jennifer Lopez in The Back-up Plan.

The reason Zoe is in no-man-in-my-life situation is because she doesn't let anyone get too close to her. Not even Stan who sticks by her even after she shocks him with news that she's pregnant, with twins she later discovers. A case of two very cold feet.

At one point, Stan, who hides his own misgivings about instant fatherhood and tries hard to make Zoe feel secure and wanted, tells her "I love you" and a pregnant Zoe responds by throwing up in the sink. "Not the answer I was looking for," Stan murmurs.

In the end Zoe overcomes her fear of commitment, with a little help from her "just married" grandmother, her only blood relation, and runs back to Stan in case she loses him too. You can't help wondering to yourself, "Why is he still around? Come on, Stan, go get a life."

Photo courtesy: Warner Bros. Pictures for Whiteout and CBS Films for The Back-up Plan

2012-01-02T03:28:00.001-08:00

Stamp of an Actor: John Wayne

"A man's got to do what a man's got to do."

"I don't want ever to appear in a film that would embarrass a viewer. A man can take his wife, mother, and his daughter to one of my movies and never be ashamed or embarrassed for going."

"Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway."

"I've had three wives, six children and six grandchildren and I still don't understand women."

"Talk low, Talk slow, and don't say too much."

"I don't think John Ford had any kind of respect for me as an actor until I made Red River (1948) for Howard Hawks. I was never quite sure what he did think of me as an actor. I know now, though. Because when I finally won an Oscar for my role as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit (1969), Ford shook my hand and said the award was long overdue me as far as he was concerned. Right then, I knew he'd respected me as an actor since Stagecoach (1939), even though he hadn't let me know it. He later told me his praise earlier, might have gone to my head and made me conceited, and that was why he'd never said anything to me, until the right time."

"Westerns are closer to art than anything else in the motion picture business."

"I have tried to live my life so that my family would love me and my friends respect me. The others can do whatever the hell they please."

That Redford (Robert Redford) fellow is good. Brando (Marlon Brando). Ah, Patton (1970), George C. Scott. But the best of the bunch is Garner, James Garner. He can play anything. Comedy westerns, drama, you name it. Yeah, I have to say Garner is the best around today. He doesn't have to say anything—just make a face and you crack up."

"Well, you like...each picture for...a different reason. But I think my favourite will always be the next one."

"I said there was a tall, lanky kid that led 150 airplanes across Berlin. He was an actor, but that day, I said, he was a colonel. Colonel Jimmy Stewart (James Stewart). So I said, "What is all this crap about Reagan (Ronald Reagan) being an actor?" "Young fella, if you're lookin' for trouble I'll accommodate ya."

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday."

"God-damn, I'm the stuff men are made of!"

2012-01-01T10:52:00.000-08:00

New books on New Year

I am not going to ring in 2012 without wishing you, dear readers and fellow-bloggers, on the dawn of the new year. So here goes: a Happy and Prosperous New Year to you all!

Neither am I going to start this wonderful year without posting something, anything. So again, here goes: this morning we revisited a place called King’s Circle at Matunga in central Bombay (now Mumbai) famous for its decades-old used and secondhand book-sellers and authentic south Indian cuisine. The book vendors sit on the footpath that runs around King’s Circle which is actually a garden in the centre of a bustling traffic junction. An ugly flyover now runs over the garden known in our parlance as Maheshwari Udyan (udyan means garden).

Many of the old sellers are gone, a few others are still around, and quite a few are hawking cheap pirated editions of Stephen R. Covey and John Grisham, and more.

We made our way directly to one particular book-seller who stocks just about everything, fiction and non-fiction, academics included, and all original. Most of the books are piled five-feet high, some are spread out on the floor, and others are lined up in open wooden shelves. The owner knows his books, what he doesn’t know is where. If you ask him for a particular author or title, he will point to a lot and say, “It should be somewhere in there.” So you browse through the lot at the risk of dirtying your hands and not finding what you are looking for, but it’s a risk worth taking.

I could have walked away with many more books and comics than I did but I did not want to exhaust my quota on the first day of 2012 itself. So this is what I finally settled for – Tarzan at the Earth’s Core and Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (see exact covers); Beyond the Black Stump by Nevil Shute; The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey (original); The Mammoth Book of Golden Age of Science Fiction presented by Isaac Asimov; The Secret of Spiggy Holes by Enid Blyton; and eleven pocket-sized war and western comics, which included six Combat Picture Library, two War Stories in Pictures, two Cowboy Adventure Library, and one Sundance Western: Illustrated World Library Series.

The entire lot cost me Rs.350 ($7). The sf book cost just 20 cents. All in all, a very fruitful first day of the year, don’t you think? I am going back next Sunday!

2011-12-31T05:47:00.000-08:00

#1 Amar Chitra Katha: Jesus Christ

Amar Chitra Katha (Immortal Picture Stories), the largest-selling comic-book series in India, has, from time to time, brought out special issues on epics and events that shaped history. This particular issue, published in 1980, tells the beautiful story of Christ from his birth to his crucifixion. A major portion of the comic-book is devoted to the time Jesus spent with the apostles and the miracles he performed. The speech bubbles and the coloured illustrations are clear and simple.

ACK, as it is known, has published more than 400 titles, mainly on the great Indian epics, mythology, history, folklore and fables, often revolving around people who made a difference. Since its launch in 1967, ACK has sold over 90 million copies in 20 Indian languages.

You can read more about this educational series at www.amarchitrakatha.com

2011-12-30T04:36:00.000-08:00

Books I read in 2011

“Predictable” is the word I would use to describe the sort of books I read in 2011, a diverse mix of fiction and non-fiction, including philosophy, but no surprises, really. I did not have a reading plan for this year and I don’t have one for next year either, save for a couple of authors I have mentioned in my posts. I intend to read more short stories, poetry and classics in 2012, though.

I read a few books over the past twelve months. This does not include the dozens of comics I read. To give you a rough idea, this is what my assorted ‘fiction’ list looks like…

Ernest Hemingway — For Whom the Bell Tolls

Tom Clancy — The Hunt for Red October

Agatha Christie — The Murder of Roger Ackroyd & The Mysterious Affair at Styles

A.J. Cronin — The Spanish Gardener

P.G. Wodehouse — Piccadilly Jim & Money for Nothing

Jack Higgins — Keys of Hell, Storm Warning & The Iron Tiger

John Irving — The 158-Pound Marriage, The World According to Garp (re-read) & The Hotel New Hampshire

Ed Gorman — Cavalry Man: The Killing Machine

Thomas Hardy — Jude the Obscure

Jonathan Kellerman — Dr. Death

Elmore Leonard — Pagan Babies

Don Pendleton — Mack Bolan, the Executioner: Death Load

Leon Uris — The Angry Hills

Boris Pasternak — Dr. Zhivago

Harold Robbins — A Stone for Danny Fisher (re-read)

Among non-fiction, I had fun reading The Complete Prose of Woody Allen.

Like I said, no surprises...

2011-12-29T01:01:00.000-08:00

WISDOM FROM BOOKS & COMICS

Jean-Paul Sartre in Nausea

I suppose it is out of laziness that the world is the same day after day. Today it seemed to want to change. And then anything, anything could happen.

I am going to outlive myself. Eat, sleep, sleep, eat. Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water, like the red bench in the streetcar.

It left me breathless. Never, until these last few days, had I understood the meaning of "existence."

There is a universe behind and before him. And the day is approaching when closing the last book on the last shelf on the far left; he will say to himself, "now what"?

He is always becoming, and if it were not for the contingency of death, he would never end.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

When she was in Djibouti and I was in Aden, and I used to go and see her for twenty-four hours, she managed to multiply the misunderstandings between us until there were exactly sixty minutes before I had to leave; sixty minutes, just long enough to make you feel the seconds passing one by one.

Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.

If you want to learn or read more about Jean-Paul Sartre, I recommend www.sartre.org

2011-12-27T08:28:00.000-08:00

2012 TBR Challenge: Friedrich Nietzsche

A lot of book-bloggers are making resolutions for Literary 2012—books they plan to read next year—and the lists I have read so far are impressive...and intimidating. They include titles I have never heard of. Ignorance is not always bliss. Some of these books I have added to my own tentative list which, as it stands, is nothing to write to the book club about. But there is one book that I intend to read: The Philosophy of Nietzsche.

Big name, big book. The literary equivalent of heavy metal, you might say.

I have never read Nietzsche before, not in the way Nietzsche should be read. But I am familiar with all his books and from time to time I have read his assorted quotations and pondered over their deeper meaning.

My hardbound copy of The Philosophy of Nietzsche [The Modern Library, 1954] is a 1,120-page volume which contains the complete and unabridged texts of Nietzsche's five most famous works: Thus Spake Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, Genealogy of Morals, Ecce Homo and The Birth of Tragedy.

The German philosopher, who was plagued by ill-health through most of his adult life, was one of 19th century’s most radical and brilliant thinkers. As Willard Huntington Wright, a US art critic and author, says in his introduction to the volume, “He was constantly ill and for the most part alone, and this perturbed and restless period of his life resolved itself into a continuous struggle against melancholy and physical suffering.” It was during these difficult years that Nietzsche wrote all of the above works and more as well as “an enormous number of notes which were to constitute his final and culminating work, The Will to Power.”

Friedrich Nietzsche will live up to my expectations. The question is will I live up to his? Time to find out.

Meanwhile, here are a few random books with curious titles I found on The Modern Library website. Some are popular among readers.

We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live by Joan Didion

When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Harold S. Kushner

Classics to Read Aloud to Your Children by William F. Russell

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

A Garden of Earthly Delights by Joyce Carol Oates

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne

The Key & Diary of a Mad Old Man by Junichiro Tanizaki (Translated by Howard Hibbett)

The Vintage Book of Classic Crime edited by Michael Dibdin

Photos: Scans of front and back covers of my copy of the book.

2011-12-26T10:01:00.000-08:00

SCENE STEALERS

Annapolis, no please

I had mixed feelings when director Sam Raimi got rid of James Franco in Spider-Man 3. On one hand, I thought his insufferable character, Harry Osborn, had outlived his usefulness even though he eventually helps his friends Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) and Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) overcome the combined might of super-freaks Venom (Topher Grace) and Sandman (Thomas Haden Church). On the other hand, I felt Peter needed his best friend around considering he didn't have any other friends. Maybe, just maybe, his death at the hands of the alien symbiote Venom was premature.

Jordana Brewster and James Franco in a still from the film.

So it was with mixed feelings that I watched James Franco play naval rookie Jake Huard in Annapolis (2006) directed by Justin Lin. My first thought was: didn't they find anyone else? Apparently not.

Annapolis is the story of a young man from a not-too well-to-do family of shipbuilders who dreams of joining, and graduating, from Annapolis, the elite US naval academy, and he does so against odds that run only in one direction–his way. First of all, he arm-twists a Congressman into selecting him; second of all, his grades are below average; and third of all, he is not exactly an asset to his class of cadets.

But Huard is determined to see it through Annapolis for two reasons: one, a promise he made to his dying mother, and two, make his father, Bill Huard (Brian Goodman) believe in him. But life at the academy isn’t a cakewalk, as Huard’s inability to measure up to its high standards earns him the scorn of his superiors, particularly Cole (Tyrese Gibson), and the ridicule of his batch mates whom he lets down frequently.

A frustrated Huard confronts his academic ineptitude by walking out of Annapolis. Not for long, though. His father, whom he meets at the shipyard where he, himself, used to work as a welder, tells him, rather condescendingly, that he is not capable of pursuing his dream. Huard, in an I-gotta-make-my-daddy-proud-of-me moment, does an about turn and returns to the academy, only this time for real. He studies hard and for once remembers naval history; trains hard and helps his fat roommate train harder; endures punishment and punishment posting; and eventually enrolls his name in a boxing tournament, the prestige of Annapolis, which is open to all ranks.

The boxing contest, in fact, forms the backdrop of this movie, as Huard, an amateur boxer, trains under Ali (Jordana Brewster), his superior and love-interest, and goes on to defeat one opponent after another including a senior officer. Predictably, Huard meets reigning champion Cole in the final, a battle that proves to be the one redeeming feature in an otherwise forgettable tenure at the academy. Huard proves his true mettle against Cole and though he loses the crown, he wins hearts. As Huard makes his way back from the ring, he sees his father in the stands, beaming with pride.

Annapolis is probably the story of many real-life Jake Huards who, in spite of their poor social backgrounds and academic deficiencies, make it through some of the toughest US defence academies to, as Huard says with grim determination, “Serve my country, sir.”

In terms of acting skills, James Franco, as the cocky and bungling Jake Huard, is rather mediocre with his trademark smile being the only notable feature throughout the film. Annapolis is a film you should watch if you’ve nothing worthwhile to see. What was that I said about mixed feelings?

For Tuesday's Overlooked/Forgotten films, visit Todd Mason's blog Sweet Freedom.

2011-12-25T09:49:00.000-08:00

A few of my war and western books

2011-12-23T03:30:00.000-08:00

#5 Ode to Christmas (in India)

Dim dawn behind the tamarisks — the sky is saffron-yellow —

As the women in the village grind the corn,
And the parrots seek the riverside, each calling to his fellow
That the Day, the staring Easter Day is born.
Oh the white dust on the highway! Oh the stenches in the byway!
Oh the clammy fog that hovers
And at Home they're making merry 'neath the white and scarlet berry —
What part have India's exiles in their mirth?

Full day begin the tamarisks — the sky is blue and staring —
As the cattle crawl afield beneath the yoke,
And they bear One o'er the field-path, who is past all hope or caring,
To the ghat below the curling wreaths of smoke.
Call on Rama, going slowly, as ye bear a brother lowly —
Call on Rama — he may hear, perhaps, your voice!
With our hymn-books and our psalters we appeal to other altars,
And to-day we bid "good Christian men rejoice!"

High noon behind the tamarisks — the sun is hot above us —
As at Home the Christmas Day is breaking wan.
They will drink our healths at dinner — those who tell us how they love us,
And forget us till another year be gone!
Oh the toil that knows no breaking! Oh the Heimweh, ceaseless, aching!
Oh the black dividing Sea and alien Plain!
Youth was cheap — wherefore we sold it.
Gold was good — we hoped to hold it,
And to-day we know the fulness of our gain.

Grey dusk behind the tamarisks — the parrots fly together —
As the sun is sinking slowly over Home;
And his last ray seems to mock us shackled in a lifelong tether.
That drags us back how'er so far we roam.
Hard her service, poor her payment — she is ancient, tattered raiment —
India, she the grim Stepmother of our kind.
If a year of life be lent her, if her temple's shrine we enter,
The door is hut — we may not look behind.

Black night behind the tamarisks — the owls begin their chorus —
As the conches from the temple scream and bray.
With the fruitless years behind us, and the hopeless years before us,
Let us honor, O my brother, Christmas Day!
Call a truce, then, to our labors — let us feast with friends and neighbors,
And be merry as the custom of our caste;
For if "faint and forced the laughter," and if sadness follow after,
We are richer by one mocking Christmas past.

2011-12-22T04:29:00.000-08:00

Celebrating Christmas with Comics

Drooling over mouthwatering comic-book covers, especially the oldies, is a reckless diversion that occupies one's time and thoughts in a most pleasant way. If you're a comic-book reader or collector, even better. If you're not, you can start right here. Either way it's a visual treat that few meaningful hobbies or pursuits offer with the exception of fine art and philately. This blog, for the first time in three years (which isn't much), is ringing in Christmas with some eye-catching comic-book covers (and a magazine cover too) that are not unfamiliar to this blogger. Sit back and take a few seconds to look at the vertical slideshow I've put together. Merry Christmas to you all!

Copyrights: Harvey Comics, DC Comics, Archie Comics, Walt Disney, Marvel Comics, World Editions and Hank Ketcham/Fantagraphics Books

2011-12-20T10:10:00.000-08:00

SCENE STEALERS

Laugh out loud with Schwarzenegger

I have seen nearly every Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, some more than once, but never ever in a cinema hall. I have watched all his films on cable and none on video or DVD. I have thought it to be a waste of time, money and energy to see his films in a theatre. No doubt, he is a big entertainer and, in my opinion, bigger than Sylvester Stallone and Jean Claude Van Damme, but still not worth the price of a movie ticket, popcorn, samosas, and coke.

Yet, not a week goes by when I don't see his films or at least parts of whichever film cable TV is showing. Last week, I saw two of Schwarzenegger's earliest movies, Commando (1985) and Predator (1987), both among my favourites. Terminator I & II come third. All three films are notorious for Schwarzenegger's one liners.

My favourite line in Commando (and there are quite a few) is in the last scene when Schwarzenegger, as the retired special agent John Matrix, is returning after rescuing his daughter from the clutches of a Latin American dictator. He has also just destroyed the "military" camp and killed hundreds of the dictator's armed henchmen. As he makes his way to a waiting amphibious aircraft, he encounters General Franklin Kirby (James Olson), the head of his elite unit, who asks him: "Leave anything for us?" and Schwarzenegger replies, deadpan, "Just bodies." You need to be a Schwarzenegger to say that.

In Predator, Schwarzenegger, as Major "Dutch" Schaefer, the lone survivor of a team of special forces ops butchered by the invisible alien, is fighting an almost losing battle against the Predator. At one point, the alien reveals himself and Schwarzenegger goes, "What the hell are you?" To which, the Predator retorts, "What the hell are you?"

Without these one liners, including the 'I'll be back" in Terminator, Schwarzenegger's films wouldn't have been as entertaining as they eventually turned out to be. The former Mr. Universe-turned-Conan the Barbarian-turned-California Governor is not a funny actor and, technically, he sucks at humour. But give him four-worded lines and you can trust him to deliver them in a way that'll make you laugh out loud. That's why I like his
films.

For Tuesday's Overlooked/Forgotten films, visit Todd Mason's blog Sweet Freedom.

2011-12-19T01:24:00.001-08:00

Fathers And Sons or Sons And Fathers?

Wars are fought in Commando Comics and their close and distant cousins like Battle Picture Library and Sgt. Rock. The battles continue to rage in Commando which has been published and republished by D.C. Thomson of Dundee, Scotland, since 1961. Recently, I came across two titles which left me baffled—Commando No.4152: Fathers And Sons and Commando No.4427: Sons And Fathers. For a moment I thought it was printer's devil, with misleading cover illustration and all, that had gone unnoticed. On a closer look I found they were separate issues with distinct stories, both celebrating an event.

While Fathers And Sons marks 90 years since the end of World War I (1918-2008), Sons And Fathers commemorates fifty years of Commando Comics (1961-2011).

The Armistice issue (left) was one of an eight-part series brought out by Commando on the events of the Great War. It says, "Two young soldiers—one British, one German—were about to go into battle as the Second World War broke out. Like many of their friends, their fathers had seen action years earlier in the First World War. But for this particular pair of warriors, there was a bizarre link which, one day, would end in bitter tragedy..."

The Golden Jubilee comic (below) declares, "There they stood, back-to-back, Beretta sub-machine guns stuttering as they fought for their lives. It had been the same many years before as their fathers had battled shoulder-to-shoulder in a heroic but doomed last stand. Would history repeat itself? Or was there another twist to the tale?"

Commando Comics go with two popular themes: British and German soldiers fight each other, which is usually the case, or they fight side by side, on rare occasions. One way or other, Commando Comics are eminently readable.

Covers: © DC Thomson & Co. Ltd

2011-12-15T01:05:00.000-08:00

JUKE BOX

Agadoo by Black Lace

I was half-way through college when I first heard this party song by British Euro pop band Black Lace. It was the whackiest number to come out in 1984 with lyrics that made little sense and music you couldn't write home about. It was the kind of song you heard once and forgot, and seldom recommended. Yet, Agadoo ruled for a long time on the UK Singles Chart becoming the eighth bestselling single in the UK that year. It became quite popular in India too.

According to Wikipedia, "In a survey for dotmusic in 2000, respondents voted Agadoo as the fourth most annoying song of all time. In a poll for Q magazine in 2003, a panel of music writers voted Agadoo as the worst song of all time, saying: 'It sounded like the school disco you were forced to attend, your middle-aged relatives forming a conga at a wedding party, a travelling DJ act based in Wolverhampton, every party cliche you ever heard.' The panel also described it as 'magnificently dreadful'."

Here's the video link to this crazy song. I usually post the lyrics too but let's skip this one, shall we?

2011-12-13T01:40:00.000-08:00

War movies worthy of World War II

War is a dirty business, yet, in a perverse fashion, war also entertains. In one of life’s tragic ironies, the senseless deaths of hundreds and thousands on the battlefield—civilian or combatant, ally or enemy—is reenacted on the big screen for the amusement of an audience that can scarcely perceive the true horrors of war. If you are not in it, how can you feel the pain? The audience can be, at best, sympathetic and, at worst, a mute spectator. I would like to think of war movies as awakening us to the terrifying realities of war and its aftermath, and educating and entertaining us at the same time. A reality check, as it were.

A few days ago, I saw The Dirty Dozen, presumably for the twelfth time, and enjoyed the derring-do of US Major Reisman (Lee Marvin) as he leads a dozen dirty and convicted murderers on a secret mission to wipe out, what seems like, half the roster of German officers during World War II. Nearly every German officer and soldier is either gunned down or blown up. There are losses on the dirty-dozen side too with only Major Reisman and Joseph Wladislaw (Charles Bronson) surviving in the end.

This movie, for no apparent reason, set me thinking about the dozens of war films I have seen over the years; many of them true to reality. An anthology is beyond me. For instance, I haven’t seen many pre-1960 war films, mostly black and white but captivating nonetheless. So what I have done is put together a list of twenty-one of the finest (and panned) World War II films made over a 22-year period from 1957 through 1979. With the exception of Kelly's Heroes (1970), I have seen, or at least remember seeing, the remaining twenty films.

Mind you, this odd-numbered list is not the absolute roll-call of war films during this period and it’s likely I have missed some obvious ones.

As you will, no doubt, glean from the titles, the twenty-one World War II films are all blockbusters, pumped up with adrenalin from a terrific star cast that is every director’s dream and every viewer’s delight. These are fictional films but some have played out on the historical battlefields. For example, The Bridge on the River Kwai alludes to the construction of a railway in Burma in early 1940s while The Great Escape is believed to have actually taken place.

A random headcount reveals the following interesting aspects in these films:

* Richard Burton, Donald Sutherland, Robert Ryan, and Telly Savalas star in four of the films; Charles Bronson, Maximilian Schell, Henry Fonda, Michael Caine, Robert Shaw, Edward Fox, and Michael Byrne appear in three; and Richard Harris, Sean Connery, James Coburn, Clint Eastwood, Martim Balsam, and Donald Pleasence act in two movies each.

* Ken Annakin, John Sturges, and Guy Hamilton are the only ones to have directed two films each.

* Three singers, Trini López, Paul Anka, and Art Garfunkel, share a film each.

* Three of these movies are based on thrillers written by Scottish novelist Alistair MacLean (remember him?). Two others are adapted from the novels of Cornelius Ryan.

* Watch out for young stars like William Shatner, Harrison Ford, Dan Ackroyd, and Clint Eastwood.

With bayonets at the ready, let's run through some of the memorable war movies ever made this side of WWII.

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

Director: David Lean
Book: French writer Pierre Boulle
Cast: William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, and Geoffrey Horne

Plot: Spirited British POWs are forced to build a bridge for their Japanese captors even as the Allies plan to destroy it.

Standout: Alec Guinness as Colonel Nicholson.

The Guns of Navarone (1961)

Director: J. Lee Thompson
Book: Alistair MacLean
Cast: David Niven, Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn, Stanley Baker, and Richard Harris

Plot: A three-member British crack force is sent to occupied-Greece to destroy powerful German guns that loom over a strategic sea channel.

Standout: Gregory Peck as Capt. Keith Mallory

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

Director: Stanley Kramer

Cast: Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Maximilian Schell, Montgomery Clift, William Shatner, and Werner Klemperer

Plot: The war is over and most of the Nazi leaders have been prosecuted. The fate of four Nazi judges, however, hangs in the balance.

Standout: Spencer Tracy as Chief Judge Dan Haywood

The Longest Day (1962)

Directors: Ken Annakin & Andrew Marton

Book: Cornelius Ryan
Cast: Paul Anka, John Wayne, Robert Ryan, Richard Burton, Sean Connery, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, George Segal, Rod Steiger, and Robert Wagner

Plot: D-Day, the Allied landing in France, is told on a scale bigger than 70mm. Look out for the cameos.

Standout: John Wayne as Lt. Col. Benjamin Vandervoort

The Great Escape (1963)

Director: John Sturges
Cast: Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasence, James Coburn, James Donald, David McCallum, and John Leyton

Plot: Don’t miss the comic parts in this otherwise true story of an audacious plan by Allied POWs to escape from a German camp…by the hundreds.

Standout: Steve McQueen as Hilts ‘The Cooler King’

Battle of the Bulge (1965)

Director: Ken Annakin
Cast: Henry Fonda, Robert Shaw, Robert Ryan, George Montgomery, Charles Bronson, and Telly Savalas.

Plot: It’s the Battle of Belgium really, as Allied and German forces clash in the Ardennes in the last months of World War II. Round one to Germany.

Standout: Robert Shaw as Col. Hessler

The Dirty Dozen (1967)

Director: Robert Aldrich
Cast: Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland, John Cassavetes, Richard Jaeckel, George Kennedy, Trini López, Ralph Meeker, Robert Ryan, Clint Walker, Robert Webber, Tom Busby, and Ben Carruthers

Plot: The dirty dozen, a band of convicted murderers, give their lives for the Allied cause. Only one among them survives to tell the story of the secret plan to assassinate hundreds of German officers and soldiers.

Standout: The dirty dozen

Where Eagles Dare (1968)

Director: Brian G. Hutton
Book: Alistair MacLean
Cast: Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, and Patrick Wymark

Plot: A US ranger finds himself in a secret British operation to rescue an American General held prisoner at Nazi headquarters, but there’s more than meets the eye.

Standout: Richard Burton as Major John Smith

Battle of Britain (1969)

Director: Guy Hamilton

Cast: Michael Caine, Trevor Howard, Laurence Olivier, Christopher Plummer, Michael Redgrave, Robert Shaw, Michael Bates, and Edward Fox

Plot: It’s the RAF vs. the Luftwaffe as the two countries battle for control of British airspace, and the invasion of Britain that never came.

Standout: Michael Caine as Squadron Leader Canfield

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)

Directors: Richard Fleischer & Kinji Fukasaku
Cast: Martin Balsam, Sô Yamamura, Joseph Cotton, Jason Robards, and James Whitmore

Plot: On December 7, 1941, Japan took America and the rest of the world by surprise with a Sunday morning air raid on Pearl Harbour at Honolulu, the capital of Hawaii. This film dramatises the events leading up to that fateful day, and Japan’s greatest blunder.

Standout: Jason Robards as Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short

Catch-22 (1970)

Director: Mike Nichols
Book: Joseph Heller
Cast: Anthony Perkins, Martin Sheen, Jon Voight, Orson Welles, Alan Arkin, Martin Balsam, and Art Garfunkel.

Plot: If you’ve read Heller’s satirical novel, then you know the film is about a USAF bombardier’s desperate effort to be certified insane to avoid combat flying missions. It’s a catch-22 situation because if the man does not seek an “unfit to fly” evaluation he continues to fly and if he is sane enough to seek one, it means he is not insane and still flies. That’s military logic for you.

Standout: Alan Arkin as Capt. John Yossarian

Kelly's Heroes (1970)

Director: Brian G. Hutton
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, and Donald Sutherland

Plot: A group of US soldiers sneaks across enemy lines to get their hands on a secret stash of Nazi treasure.

Standout: Telly Savalas as Master Sergeant Big Joe

Patton (1970)

Director: Franklin J. Schaffner
Books: Ladislas Farago's Patton: Ordeal and Triumph and Omar N. Bradley's A Soldier's Story
Cast: George C. Scott, Karl Malden, Stephen Young, Frank Latimore, and Michael Strong

Plot: Patton tells the true story of General George S. Patton, the brave and outspoken US commander, nicknamed Old Blood and Guts, during World War II.

Standout: George C. Scott as General George S. Patton Jr

Raid on Rommel (1971)

Director: Henry Hathaway
Cast: Richard Burton, John Colicos, Clinton Greyn, and Wolfgang Preiss

Plot: The ‘Desert Fox’ was to Germany what ‘Old Blood and Guts’ was to America. A British commando unit is on a mission to destroy German guns at Tobruk in North Africa, and along the way comes Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.

Standout: Richard Burton as Capt. Alex Foster

Operation Daybreak (1975)

Director: Lewis Gilbert
Cast: Timothy Bottoms, Martin Shaw, and Joss Ackland

Plot: Operation Daybreak recounts the true story of a plan by a Czech resistance force to assassinate an SS General known as The Butcher of Prague. Don't miss the last heartrending scene.

Standout: Timothy Bottoms as Jan Kubis

The Eagle Has Landed (1976)

Director: John Sturges
Book: Jack Higgins
Cast: Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland, Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasence, and Michael Byrne

Plot: A crack German parachute unit is sent to Britain to kidnap Prime Minister Churchill and bring him to Berlin. Don’t forget to read the book.

Standouts: Michael Caine as Colonel Steiner and Donald Sutherland as IRA ideologue Liam Devlin

A Bridge Too Far (1977)

Director: Richard Attenborough
Book: Cornelius Ryan
Cast: Sean Connery, Ryan O'Neal, Gene Hackman, Dirk Bogarde, Michael Caine, Michael Byrne, Anthony Hopkins, James Caan, Maximilian Schell, Colin Farrell, Laurence Olivier, Robert Redford, and Edward Fox

Plot: With a solid cast like that you don’t have to bother with the story. Still, this historical film captures the Allies’ failed attempt to capture strategic bridges to Germany in Operation Market Garden.

Standout: Standout: Dirk Bogarde as Lieutenant-General Frederick 'Boy' Browning

Cross of Iron (1977)

Director: Sam Peckinpah
Cast: James Coburn, Maximilian Schell, James Mason, and David Warner
Book: The screenplay is based on the 1956 novel The Willing Flesh by Willi Heinrich

Plot: Two German military officers are caught in an ego clash and spar over the decorated Iron Cross, somewhere on the Russian front.

Standout: James Coburn as Unteroffizier Feldwebel (Staff Sergeant) Rolf Steiner

Force 10 From Navarone (1978)

Director: Guy Hamilton
Book: Alistair MacLean
Cast: Robert Shaw, Harrison Ford, Edward Fox, Franco Nero, Carl Weathers, Richard Kiel, and Michael Byrne

Plot: An assorted bunch of military experts team up to raid and destroy a bridge vital to German strategy.

Standout: Harrison Ford as Colonel Barnsby

The Biggest Battle (1978)

Director: Umberto Lenzi
Cast: Orson Welles (narrator), Henry Fonda, Helmut Berger, Giuliano Gemma, John Huston, and Stacy Keach

Plot: Story of how WWII affected the lives of a German and an American family that had sons and fathers fighting in the war.

Standout: Helmut Berger as Lt. Kurt Zimmer

1941 (1979)

Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Ned Beatty, Treat Williams, Christopher Lee, Tim Matheson, Robert Stack, and John Candy

Plot: Hysteria grips California following the bombing of Pearl Harbour as an assorted group of defenders try to defend the coast against an imagined Japanese invasion.

Standout: John Belushi as Capt. Wild Bill Kelso

Note: Material for this post has been sourced from IMDb and Wikipedia for factual correctness.

Don't forget to check out Tuesday's Overlooked/Forgotten movies at Todd Mason's blog at http://socialistjazz.blogspot.com

2011-12-12T02:29:00.000-08:00

R.I.P. Mario de Miranda,
1926-2011

Mario Miranda, the legendary Indian cartoonist and illustrator, died last week in his hometown, in the idyllic coastal state of Goa. You can read more about Mario and his distinctive art at mariomiranda and wikipedia. Mario at work is from www.thehindu.com All sketches reproduced below are by Mario Miranda.

2011-12-09T07:29:00.000-08:00

Stephen Leacock on good humour

"To me it has always seemed that the very essence of good humour is that it must be without harm and without malice. I admit that there is in all of us a certain vein of the old original demoniacal humour or joy in the misfortune of another which sticks to us like our original sin. It ought not to be funny to see a man, especially a fat and pompous man, slip suddenly on a banana skin. But it is. When a skater on a pond who is describing graceful circles, and showing off before the crowd, breaks through the ice and gets a ducking, everybody shouts with joy. To the original savage, the cream of the joke in such cases was found if the man who slipped broke his neck, or the man who went through the ice never came up again. I can imagine a group of prehistoric men standing round the ice-hole where he had disappeared and laughing till their sides split. If there had been such a thing as a prehistoric newspaper, the affair would have headed up: Amusing Incident. Unknown Gentleman Breaks Through Ice and is Drowned."

2011-12-08T00:35:00.000-08:00

Stamp of a Writer: Virginia Woolf

"Language is wine upon the lips."

"Lock up your libraries if you like, but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind."

"Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money."

"Books are the mirrors of the soul."

"I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual."

"Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others."

"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

"Do we write better? Do we read better? We read and wrote 400 years ago when we were un-lectured, un-criticized, un-taught."

"Words do not live in dictionaries, they live in the mind. And how do they live in the mind? Variously and strangely, much as human beings live, ranging hither and dither falling in love, meeting together. It's true they are much less bound by ceremony, convention, than we are. Royal words meet with common words. English words marry French words, German words, Indian words..."

"Fiction must stick to facts, and the truer the facts the better the fiction—so we are told."

2011-12-07T04:09:00.000-08:00

WILY VILLAINS

Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh in
No Country for Old Men

Only three words describe Javier Bardem's character in No Country for Old Men—dead man walking. Look at that face—there's nothing there. It's almost as if the blood has drained out of Anton Chigurh who is on a relentless quest to hunt down opportunist welder and hunter Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) for a $2 million booty. The film, directed by Ethan and Joel Coen in 2007, takes the audience through nail-biting suspense marked by cold-blooded murders. Don't forget to call when the psychopathic killer flips a coin: it might be your only chance of survival. Then again, maybe not...

No surprises but Javier Bardem walks away with the honours from seasoned actors like Brolin as well as Tommy Lee Jones (Sheriff Ed Tom Bell) and Woody Harrelson (Carson Wells). Yes, they were in it too.

In Eat, Pray, Love (2010), Javier Bardem plays Felipe, the quiet romantic out to woo Elizabeth Gilbert (Julia Roberts) who is searching for love and light in her life. She finds it in Felipe who mouths something like "Listen, balance, my darling, is not letting anybody love you less than you love
yourself." Yikes!

Give me Anton Chigurh any day.

Guess who's the previous Wily Villain?

2011-12-06T08:20:00.000-08:00

A way with words

As a rule I delete email forwards without opening and reading them, unless they are from someone I know well enough to send me only the good stuff, nothing dark and depressing and morbid. Like this one about anthropomorphic collective nouns for the various groups of animals. But, like most email forwards, this one’s probably all over the internet too. I enjoyed it because it’s one more example why English is a funny language and because it gets funnier towards the end. So here goes…

We are all familiar with

A Herd of Cows

A Flock of Chicken

A School of Fish

A Gaggle of Geese

However, less widely known is:

A Pride of Lions

A Murder of Crows (as well as their cousins the rooks and ravens)

An Exaltation of Doves (presumably because they look so wise)

A Parliament of Owls

Now consider a group of baboons. They are the loudest, most dangerous, most obnoxious, most viciously aggressive, and least intelligent of all primates.

So what do you think is the proper collective noun for a group of baboons?

Believe it or not… a Congress of Baboons!

I guess that pretty much explains who we elect to most parliaments and congresses of the world.

2011-12-05T09:02:00.000-08:00

#1: Bahadur

2011-12-04T09:56:00.000-08:00

SCENE STEALERS

Lady and the Tramp

I recently watched Lady and the Tramp (1955) again and loved it as much as I did the first time I saw it in a theatre in the late 1970s. It's one of four animated films from the Walt Disney stable I never tire of watching. The other three are The Jungle Book (1967), Beauty and the Beast (1991), and The Lion King (1994). Each of these films tells a delightful story that you wish you were a part of. You learn as you enjoy. These animated films rest in my CD case.

Lady and the Tramp has some memorable dialogues. Here it is, with a little help from IMDB.

Tramp (Larry Roberts): Not to change the subject, but, um...ever chased chickens?
Lady (Barbara Luddy): I should say not!
Tramp: Oh-ho, then you've never lived!
Lady: But we shouldn't.
Tramp: I know. That's what makes it fun. Aw, come on, kid. Start building some memories.

Lady: What's a... baby?
Jock (Bill Thompson): Well, they... they resemble humans.
Trusty (Bill Baucom): But I'd say a mite smaller.
Jock: Aye, and they walk on all fours.
Trusty: And if I remember correctly... they beller a lot.
Jock: Aye, and they're very expensive. You'll no be permitted to play wi' it.
Trusty: But they're mighty sweet.
Jock: And very very soft.
Tramp: Just a cute little bundle... of trouble!

Tramp: Just a cute little bundle... of trouble. Yeah, they scratch, pinch, pull ears... Aw, but shucks, any dog can take that. It's what they do to your happy home. Move it over, will ya, friend? Homewreckers, that's what they are!
Jock: Look here, laddie! Who are you to barge in?
Tramp: The voice of experience, buster. Just wait 'til Junior gets here. You feel the urge for a nice, comfortable scratch, and... "Put that dog out! He'll get fleas all over the baby!" You start barking at some strange mutt...
Tramp: "Stop that racket, you'll wake the baby!" And then... then they hit you on the room and board department. Oh, remember those nice, juicy cuts of beef? Forget 'em. Leftover baby food. And that nice, warm bed by the fire? A leaky dog house.
Lady: Oh, dear!

Lady: ...But when she put that horrible muzzle on me...
Tramp: Say no more, I get the whole picture. Aunts, cats, muzzles... Well, that what comes of tying yourself down to one family.
Lady: Haven't you a family?
Tramp: One for every day of the week. The point is, none of them have me.

Don't forget to check out Tuesday's Overlooked/Forgotten films at Todd Mason's blog.

2011-12-03T11:01:00.000-08:00

Wilbur Smith pokes fun at literary prize juries

Bestselling author Wilbur Smith is currently in India to promote his 33rd novel Those in Peril. I read just one of his fat books, Rage, a long time ago. In an interview to The Crest Edition of The Times of India, the Africa-born novelist had an interesting take on book awards and prize juries. To a question whether he kept up with book lists and book awards, Smith replied, tongue in cheek, "Indeed, I do. For instance, I look upon the Booker Prize shortlist as a red alert warning of books to be avoided at all costs." And, did he think it fair that literary prize juries take a rather condescending view of pulp fiction? "Not at all. Literary prize juries are exclusive little clubs of non-selling writers awarding each other consolation prizes. I think it is rather sweet and funny."

You can read the full interview at The Crest Edition.

2011-12-03T06:08:00.000-08:00

#4 Ode to Travel

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

2011-12-02T01:28:00.000-08:00

Books and brickbats

Over the past fortnight, I bought just three books from the secondhand bookstall I frequent on my way home from work. I usually pick up more. They were The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn, an Inspector Morse mystery by British crime writer Colin Dexter; Dr. Death by American psychologist Jonathan Kellerman; and Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut. These are used books in very good condition and cost me a little over a dollar…for the lot.

While I am familiar with Dexter and Vonnegut, I have never read Kellerman before. However, Dr. Death will have to wait his turn behind a long line of to-be-read books which, on last count, was pushing fifty, maybe more; not counting the unread Agatha Christie, P.G. Wodehouse, the Classics, and God alone knows what else.

Of course, I can get Kellerman to jump the queue because I am curious to read how psychologist-detective Alex Delaware solves the brutal murder of Eldon Mate, alias Dr. Death, somewhere near Hollywood. I will have to bring Kellerman to the book-front ever so discreetly lest it annoys Martin Cruz Smith, Agatha Christie, Lloyd C. Douglas, Frank G. Slaughter, Amitav Ghosh, and Ed McBain who are immediate next.

When the hoarding gets tough, the books (have to) get going. Pretty unlikely, till I decide whether to read them, and read them fast, or give them away. It’s a malady that afflicts and a dilemma that confronts all book lovers.

For the time being, I have decided to take the middle path—no more new (old) books.

So this entire week, as I stepped out of the railway station in the evening peak hour and walked past the bookshop, I turned abruptly on my heels, stepping on cursing shoes and feet, to look at the neat pile of books. I didn’t buy any, though, except for a beautiful hardbound The Secret of the Lost Necklace and Other Stories by Enid Blyton (Award Publications Ltd, 2008), a gift for a child.

Here’s what I have missed so far, all in mint condition and selling at Rs.100 ($2) each—five books by James Patterson, based on his characters Alex Cross and Michael Bennett; three books by the historical-romance author, Julia Quinn, which included the Bridgertons family series; one book by Jasper Fforde, whose title I don’t remember; two books by fantasy writer Jonathan Stroud (Books 2 & 3) of the Bartimaeus Trilogy; Espresso Tales by Alexander McCall Smith; and Samit Basu's The Manticore's Secret (Book 2) of the three-part GameWorld trilogy, a fantasy. There were more, many more…

Then yesterday, December 1, as I was browsing but not buying, the shop owner came up to me and said: “A new lot has just come. We are sorting them. Wait for a couple of days.”

“What category of books?” I asked.

“The Rs.20 lot,” he smiled, knowingly, for half my collection in recent months has come from the 50-cents pile. You don't want to know what it looks like.

2011-12-01T00:46:00.000-08:00

HOT OFF THE PRESS

Fahrenheit 451 lights up as an e-book

"Take Fahrenheit 451. You’re dealing with book burning, a very serious subject. You’ve got to be careful you don’t start lecturing people. So you put your story a few years into the future and you invent a fireman who has been burning books instead of putting out fires—which is a grand idea in itself—and you start him on the adventure of discovering that maybe books shouldn’t be burned. He reads his first book. He falls in love. And then you send him out into the world to change his life. It’s a great suspense story, and locked into it is this great truth you want to tell, without pontificating."
— Ray Bradbury in an interview to Paris Review, in 2010 (check it out at www.theparisreview.org)

Fahrenheit 451, the classic science fiction by Ray Bradbury, is now available as an ebook for the first time, Simon & Schuster announced on November 29. The New York-based publisher has been the hardcover publisher of Fahrenheit 451 since it was first published in 1953.

The publication in digital form comes as part of a new publishing agreement that includes all English language print and digital formats of Fahrenheit 451 in North America, and also includes English language mass market rights in North America to Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man, Simon & Schuster said in a press release.

The agreement was negotiated by Simon & Schuster Publisher Jonathan Karp and Bradbury’s agent, Michael Congdon of Don Congdon Associates.

Following the release of the ebook edition of Fahrenheit 451, Simon & Schuster will also publish a trade paperback edition in January 2012. The mass market editions of The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man will go on sale in March 2012.

"It’s a rare and wonderful opportunity to continue our relationship with this beloved and canonical author and to bring his works to a new generation of readers and in new formats," said Jonathan Karp.

Having sold over 10 million copies since its original publication, Fahrenheit 451 is one of the most famous and widely-read novels in American history, and has never been out of print. It has been translated into 33 languages and published in 38 countries.

(You can read the entire release at Simon & Schuster)

2011-11-30T08:53:00.000-08:00

JUKE BOX

Axel F by Harold Faltermeyer

The Axel F electronic theme from Beverly Hills Cop by German musician Harold Faltermeyer is one of two music or background scores that has lodged itself in my head. The other one is the soundtrack of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly by Ennio Morricone. Faltermeyer is also instrumental, literally, for the Top Gun Anthem. According to an article on Wikipedia, Faltermeyer referred to Axel F as the "banana theme" because it was originally written for a particular scene in the film, the one where Detroit policeman Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) gives two Beverly Hills police officers, Detective William 'Billy' Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and Detective Sergeant John Taggart (John Ashton), the slip by shoving bananas up the exhaust pipe of their car and stalling it. Instead, Axel F plays fairly throughout the movie. There's no escape from the BHC tune.

2011-11-29T09:48:00.000-08:00

SCENE STEALERS

Sidney Poitier in

In the Heat of the Night

The first thing that strikes you about Sidney Poitier, irrespective of which of his films you are watching, is his steady gaze and unblinking eye. It makes you uncomfortable even if you are nowhere in his picture. If you play who-blinks-first with one of America’s most intense-looking actors, you’ll blink first. I bet he can stare down an owl. It’s a look Poitier has patented in reel life and, I suspect, in real life too. It sits easily on his face.

It’s this unwavering eye that greets small-town police chief Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger) who hauls up Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) and pins a high-profile murder on him, which goes well with the tagline—“They got a murder on their hands. They don't know what to do with it.” If you don’t catch the culprit, within twenty-four hours of the murder, you fabricate one, like evidence.

Tibbs, a seasoned homicide detective from Philadelphia, is passing through the town when Gillespie orders patrolman Sam Wood (Warren Oates) to arrest him for the murder of a prominent businessman. The police chief is under pressure, as they usually are, to nail the killer–pronto! And so he nails Tibbs without realising who Tibbs is.

Detective Tibbs is let off the hook early on in the film, as the police chief reluctantly calls up his boss in Philadelphia and confirms that he is, indeed, whom he claims to be–a crack homicide sleuth. Gillespie then, equally reluctantly, enlists his help to solve the murder case.

In arresting the detective, Gillespie jumps the gun on two counts: one, to prove he is worthy of his badge, and two, he is prejudiced against blacks. There is an undercurrent of racial tension throughout the film.

But then, racism is a recurring theme in Poitier’s films, notably To Sir, with Love (1967) in which he disciplines an unruly class of largely white students, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) which touches upon the bold subject of interracial marriage at a time when it was outlawed in several US states. In In the Heat of the Night, for instance, Tibbs gets into a lot of trouble, often at the risk of his own life, when he suspects Eric Endicott (Larry Gates), a powerful man in the county.

Tibbs and Gillespie work together and as they make progress, they develop respect for each other, eventually resulting in friendship between the two policemen. Tibbs, of course, hunts down the real killer in the end.

For me, there are two highlights in this movie. One, when Endicott slaps Tibbs for attempting to interrogate him and Tibbs slaps him right back (that one scene sent a powerful message of racial equality during a tumultuous period in US history–the African-American civil rights movement); and two, Detective Tibbs’ unwavering courage in the face of stiff resistance and, more importantly, the manner in which he extracts respect from the very people who were going to incarcerate him.

The Academy Award winning In the Heat of the Night, directed by Norman Jewison in 1967, is based on the book by John Ball. A must-see.

For more overlooked/forgotten films and a few other reviews, visit Todd Mason's blog at http://socialistjazz.blogspot.com

2011-11-28T09:56:00.000-08:00

Western Gunfighters: All guns blazing

Western Gunfighters is a one-off special issue published by Marvel Comics in 1980. Presented by Stan Lee, who introduced many such unique issues to readers, WG contains ten action-packed adventures that include seven gripping and crisply written comic strips and three photo features based on western movies.

A movie index on Clint Eastwood, from 1957 to 1976; pin-ups of Eastwood and John Wayne, and a still from Cactus Jack starring Kirk Douglas, Ann-Margaret and Arnold Schwarzenegger are added bonus.

I liked everything about this comic-book magazine starting with the front cover, a previously unpublished work of western action by the legendary British comics artist Frank Bellamy. Apparently, Bellamy presented the illustration, of a cowboy with the raised gun and firing to his right, to Dez Skinn on his 21st birthday and Skinn, who edited this issue, used it without permission. It was his birthday present and I guess he was free to use it.

While reading about this special issue on the internet, I came across Skinn’s story that Bellamy, it seemed, pointed out an error in the way he had drawn the cowboy–one belt buckle drawn correctly and one wrongly! Looking at the picture you wouldn’t buckle under the error.

Many of the stories in Western Gunfighters: A Marvel Special first appeared in the namesake comic book series published by Atlas Comics (1956-1957) and Marvel Comics (1970-1975) written by Stan Lee (who requires no introduction), Jerry Siegel (who needs no introduction either but just in case you forgot, he co-created Superman), and Gary Friedrich (known for Sgt. Fury and Ghost Rider). The stories featured some of the biggest artists in the comic-book industry including Gene Colan, Reed Crandall, Joe Maneely, John Severin, Alex Toth, Al Williamson, Syd Shores, and Wally Wood.

The seven unforgettable comic-book stories reproduced in the special issue of WG include offbeat western tales about cowboys who are as tough as they come. You have The Rawhide Kid (or The Misunderstood Kid if you like) in a story that gives him the famous nickname; Frontier Marshal Wyatt Earp who takes on a bunch of masked rustlers only to discover they are some of the town’s big ranchers plotting to drive out the small ranchers; the Outcast, a half-breed, who struggles to find his origins; the Black Mask, the town’s doctor by day and masked vigilante by night; and the brave Major Brett Sabre who walks into Fort Rango and sets out to tame and train his lawless troopers against Indian renegades.

The three photo-features based on western movies are Cactus Jack starring Kirk Douglas and Ann-Margaret; Tom Horn, one of the last great heroes of the American West, portrayed by David Carradine on TV and Steve McQueen in film; and Film Trends where Benny Aldrich traces the changing face of the western movie star, from the singing cowboy and the noble hero through to the scruffy anti-hero and the comedy cowboy. “A whole new generation turned away from John Wayne’s noble cowboy to a bearded, scruffy mumbler Clint Eastwood,” Aldrich notes in his essay.

Western Gunfighters, which I bought for Rs.10 (about 20 cents) from a secondhand bookstore, is a collector’s issue in more than one way–it has action, adventure and anthology as well as spectacular illustrations. The black-and-white pencil sketches, particularly the detailing, are absolutely fantastic and leave you asking for more.

2011-11-25T11:38:00.000-08:00

Friday Night Comic Strips

Jataka Tales Monkey Stories

Do you know why the monkey is laughing at the crocodile? The monkey is telling the hungry croc that he has left his heart behind, on the tree he lives in, and that if the croc wants to give it to his wife, for her midday meal, then he will have to take him back to fetch it. The dumb croc falls for the ploy, turns around, and heads for the mainland. No sooner the croc touches land, the monkey leaps out, climbs the nearest tree, and swinging around, mocks the croc: "You fool, if I had left my heart behind would I be alive and sitting on your back?" The croc, feeling like an idiot, goes back to Mrs Croc, empty handed but wiser.

This comic strip is part of a popular story in Jataka Tales Monkey Stories published by Amar Chitra Katha (Immortal Picture Stories) from Bombay, India. ACK is one of the oldest comic-books on the subcontinent.

2011-11-25T00:46:00.000-08:00

The Fisher of Men and The Rock

Christmas is still a month away and I have made up my mind what books I am going to read leading up to my favourite season of the year. Obviously, the two novels I have selected reflect the spirit of Christmas—The Big Fisherman by Lloyd C. Douglas (of The Robe fame) and Upon This Rock by Frank G. Slaughter (who wrote The Thorn of Arimathea).

As the titles suggest, the books tell the story of Christ’s life and teachings through Simon Peter, his foremost disciple and leader of the Apostles. He was the man to whom Christ spoke the twelve famous words that changed history—“Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.”

The Big Fisherman, which is set before The Robe, and Upon This Rock together recreate the life and time of Simon Peter in an age that saw faith and forgiveness on one hand and tyranny and brutality on the other.

I have read a few books by Douglas and Slaughter and each time I have been impressed by the depth, research, and scholarship that has gone into their biblical novels. I have marvelled at the imaginative and lucid prose as well as the superb plot and characterisation. The stories, as far as I can remember since I read the books a long time ago, are truly inspiring. There are few parallels in religious fiction.

Postscript: While I haven’t seen The Big Fisherman (1959) starring Howard Keel as Simon Peter, I have seen The Robe (1953) with Richard Burton as the unforgettable Marcellus Gallio and Michael Rennie (The Day The Earth Stood Still) as the Apostle.

2011-11-23T11:14:00.000-08:00

Ray Bradbury to the rescue

With day turning into night and time running out, for the post of the day, my eyes fell on the three Ray Bradbury novels in my modest collection–Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles and The Halloween Tree–which I purchased from a used bookstore a few months ago. They cost me Rs.20 each, just under 50 cents. The three covers that I have posted here are exactly the ones sitting on my bookshelf.

Out of the three books, The Halloween Tree has some fantastic black-and-white illustrations by the late Italian artist and illustrator, Joseph Mugnaini, who was associated with Bradbury since 1952. If the cover catches your eye, so does Bradbury’s dedication inside which says, “With love for Madame Man’ha Garreau-Dombasle met twenty-seven years ago in the graveyard at midnight on the Island of Janitzio at Lake Patzcuaro, Mexico, and remembered on each anniversary of The Day of the Dead.’ I had to read more on this.

Apparently, the well-known author met Madame Garreau-Dombasle in Mexico in 1945, during the Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) holiday celebrations in October. The war had just ended. Bradbury, who was only 25 years old at the time, established a lifelong friendship with the wife of the French Ambassador to Mexico. In 1972, he dedicated his novel to Madame Garreau-Dombasle, in memory of The Day of the Dead.

I didn’t know the story, or the history, behind this particular dedication until I read it again and looked it up on the internet.

I am also scouting cyberspace to find out who illustrated the cover of Fahrenheit 451 displayed on the right. In case you know then write to me.

It is possible to get a sense of satisfaction by merely looking at the various covers of a book even before you read it. The covers of Ray Bradbury and Agatha Christie novels evoke such a sense. (For vintage Christie covers, check out http://yvettecandraw.blogspot.com/2011/11/more-vintage-agatha-christie-covers.html where you will get your eyeballs worth of some great book jackets.)

Also, don’t forget to check out Todd Mason’s blog for the weekly dose of Tuesday's Overlooked Films written by him and other bloggers. You won't be disappointed.

2011-11-22T00:26:00.000-08:00

Stamp of an Actor: James Dean

"When an actor plays a scene exactly the way a director orders, it isn't acting. It's following instructions. Anyone with the physical qualifications can do that.""Being a good actor isn't easy. Being a man is even harder. I want to be both before I'm done."

"An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so must be willing to accept all the experiences life has to offer. In fact, he must seek out more of life than life puts at his feet."

"I think there is only one form of greatness for man. If a man can bridge the gap between life and death. I mean, if he can live on after he has died, then maybe he was a great man. To me the only success, the only greatness, is immortality."

"Trust and belief are two prime considerations. You must not allow yourself to be opinionated. You must say, "Wait. Let me see". And above all, you must be honest with yourself."

"Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. You are all alone with your concentration and imagination, and that's all
you have."

"Dream as if you have forever. Live as if you only have today."

"Live fast; die young; leave a good-looking corpse behind."

Take a look at some of the previous celebrity stamps:

Groucho Marx
Bette Davis
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Arthur Conan Doyle
Fyodor Dostoevsky

2011-11-21T04:11:00.000-08:00

'Keep your jacket on, your dad’s here'

This morning I read the news of actor Gerard Butler's revelation that he cried for hours when he was reunited with his father after 14 years. Apparently, Butler's dad left his mother when he was only two years old and turned up, unannounced, when he was in his mid-teens.

"My parents split up when I was young, so my mother was left with the task of being both my mum and my dad. My mother was everything to me. I used to have these horrible nightmares about something happening to her. I didn’t even know my father for many years. He lived in Canada and I didn’t know he was alive. One day when I was 16, I came home from school and my stepfather, who at the time was just my mother’s boyfriend, said, 'Keep your jacket on, your dad’s here,'" Butler, now 42, has been quoted as saying.

Butler said he went on "great adventures" to his dad’s house in Toronto, Canada, and spent quality time with him before he passed away.

Gerard Butler's reunion with his father is perfect fodder for a movie script, a theme the Indian film industry, particularly Bollywood, has pounded into dust. Hollywood, too, has its fair share of father-son duets (which, if I'm not mistaken, surpass mother-daughter combinations). Which ones would those be? I have selected five out of a dozen father-son movies, all tearjerkers, which is not to say they are bad films; in fact, they are all standouts for me. By a sheer coincidence, three of these movies portray the wife-mother in a negative role — running out on the family.

1. Kramer vs. Kramer (1979): Work-is-worship Ted Kramer (Dustin Hoffman) learns to love and cherish his son Billy (Justin Henry) the hard way — when his wife Joanna (Meryl Streep) leaves him. Ted brings up his son and discovers his familial responsibility till, one day, Joanna returns to claim their son, a custody battle that knocks on the court's door. Ted loves his son too much to give him up. Robert Benton, who directed this movie, ensures that you blow into your hankie.

2. The Champ (1979): Billy Flynn (modern-day villain Jon Voight), a former boxing champion and now horse trainer, is bringing up his son T.J. (Rick Schroder) with bare hands and just enough money. His wife Annie (Faye Dunaway), who had left Billy seven years earlier, returns to take their son away. The final scene between father and son is heartbreaking: as Billy lies dying after a boxing match, T.J. cries out in anguish, "Champ, wake up, Champ! Hey, don't sleep now. We got to go home. Got to go home, Champ! I want Champ!" Director Franco Zeffirelli hits you below the belt with his film.

3. Dad (1989): Working man John Tremont (Ted Danson) teaches you how to be the ideal son and friend to your aged and ailing dad. As John takes care of his father Jake Tremont (Jack Lemmon), he realises what he has been missing between him and his dad — and between him and his own son Billy (Ethan Hawke). A fine movie by Gary David Goldberg.

4. Life is Beautiful (1997): What more can anyone say about the WWII film that had the ecstatic director-actor, Roberto Benigni, walking over seats and shoulders to claim his richly deserved Oscar? The film has the most endearing relationship between a father and his son.

5. The Pursuit of Happyness (2006): Director Gabriele Muccino casts Will Smith in the role of a lifetime, possibly. This true story revolves around salesman Chris Gardner (Smith) and his desperate battle to give his son Christopher (Jaden Smith) and himself a better life, one off the streets literally, after he loses his job and his wife leaves him. Gardner comes back and how.

Which father-son movies make your list?

2011-11-20T11:27:00.000-08:00

SCENE STEALERS

Frank Sinatra in Suddenly

"Don't...please," are the last desperate words of John Baron (Frank Sinatra) as widow Ellen Benson (Nancy Gates) and love-interest Sheriff Tod Shaw (Sterling Hayden) shoot Baron to stop him from assassinating the US President who is passing by train through the small town of Suddenly in California.

Baron is a hired assassin without a political agenda of his own – he kills for pleasure and for a smart fee. As Baron tells his hostages who, apart from Ellen and the Sheriff, include her son Pidge (Kim Charney), her father-in-law Pete 'Pop' Benson (James Gleason), and TV repairman Jud (James O'Hara): "The thing about killing you or her or him is that I wouldn't be getting paid for it and I don't like giving anything away for free." Baron kills, all right.

The psychopath in assassin's disguise and his two henchmen pose as FBI agents and enter Ellen's home facing the train station, a perfect site for the ambush.

When the Sheriff warns Baron of the potential risks and consequences of assassinating the President, Baron shrugs it off saying who and why he kills are the least of his worries.

"Tonight at five o'clock I kill the President. One second after five there's a new President. What changes? Nothing!" Baron lays it out for the Sheriff.

Sheriff Tod Shaw says, "Don't play God just because you have a gun." To which, Baron replies, "You know when you have a gun you are in a way sort of a god. If you had the gun then you would be the god."

At one point when Ellen asks Baron if he didn't have any feelings, he retorts, "No, they were taken outta me by experts."

John Baron (Sinatra) and Ellen Benson (Nancy Gates) in Suddenly

Baron proves that he is a psychopath when he kills Jud in cold blood and knocks out Pop Benson before Ellen and Jud shoot him as he takes aim through the sniper rifle mounted beside the window facing the train station. The President’s train passes by but does not halt, the local police having alerted the FBI and the Secret Service of the imminent ambush. Baron goes down pleading "Don't... please." He dies a coward in the end.

Directed by Lewis Allen in 1954, Suddenly is perhaps one of the earliest films with a plot to assassinate the US President. As I watched it on TCM, Sunday, November 20, I couldn’t help admire Sinatra’s ability to portray the bad guy as convincingly as he plays the good guy. However, the tagline “Sinatra…as a savage, sensation-hungry killer!” just doesn’t fit in with the singer-actor’s image as we know it. You expect him to come good even as he pulls the trigger on Jud and wallops Pop Benson on the head.

He’s trying to tell the audience, “Look, I don’t want to do this but I can’t help it.” Frank Sinatra will live to see another day.

2011-11-19T04:16:00.000-08:00

The death of the dictionary and the directory

Two mighty books you are no longer likely to find in your home, particularly if you are not a writer or educator, are the English dictionary and the telephone directory. These thousand-page reference books, when they were lying around the place, served two useful purposes: you referred to them to look up a genuine word or meaning and phone number or name or if you did not refer to them, then you used them as dumbbells to develop muscles. Really, I am serious.

While the dictionary has been replaced by the more sophisticated online version, sitting on your desktop or cellphone (I recommend the free version of WordWeb from Princeton University) and thesaurus in MS-Word, the directory has been replaced by the virtual phone book — number-names that you find everywhere — on corporate websites, personal blogs, social networking sites, contact lists in mobile phones, bottom of emails, and chat.

I remember, when I was in school, the father of a friend of mine used to throw the dictionary at his son every time he asked the meaning of a word. "Look up the word first. If you still don't get it, then ask me," his father said. The repetitive lexical act helped build my friend's vocabulary and spelling. How many fathers throw the dictionary at their children? Inversely, how many kids ask their fathers the meaning of new words?

Today, Google a word or sentence and it will throw about 8,300,000 results in 0.20 seconds at you — something no dictionary on earth can match. While I admit to Googling words and phrases in office, I rarely do so at home where I prefer to refer to the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary and A Dictionary of Modern English Usage by H.W. Fowler (Second Edition revised by Sir Ernest Gowers, 1975). I also refer to a fifty-year old pocket-sized Collins English Gem Dictionary (for sentimental reason) and a recent edition of The Economist Style Guide: The best-selling guide to English usage (for my newspaper), both very handy and useful.

So, has Google killed the dictionary? No, it hasn't, we have. Google has only made the task easier and faster and enriching. The choice of referring to the physical or virtual lexicon is still ours. It's like saying I don't meet my friends anymore because we meet on Facebook. You can still meet your friends — who’s stopping you?

Replacing the physical directory with a virtual phonebook makes more sense. Unlike the dictionary, you have nothing to lose if you refer to one or the other. You need a number and you need it fast — only Google or Gadget can give it to you in 0.80 seconds.

In the 1970s and 1980s, people in India used to wait in long queues to pick up their legitimate two-part telephone directory from state-owned telecom companies. Then, a year later, you went in for the revised edition provided you surrendered the previous year's lot. That's how it worked. The government phonebooks were replaced by the yellow pages which gave you an elaborate list of products and services as well as classified advertisements. These were handy, too, particularly if you were looking for a plumber or painter.

All this was a long time before the telecom revolution swept India and put multiple phones in the hands of every Indian.

The phonebook had other uses, though. For instance, in John Irving's The World According to Garp, the writer T.S. Garp got the names of his characters out of the phonebook. Did writers in real life do that? I am sure they did. I know parents of newborns leafed through the telephone directory looking for unusual names for their babies. No one bothered to check the numbers.

2011-11-18T09:01:00.000-08:00

Friday Night Comic Strips

Batman and Captain America: Friends or Foes?

2011-11-17T10:34:00.000-08:00

Forgotten char-actors: Bolo the baddie

Bolo, the Girth, in Enter the Dragon

There is a class of actors, within the category of character actors, who I find particularly fascinating because no one notices them or writes about them. They are heard and seen throughout the movie and yet they remain unheard and unseen, behind a visage of anonymity. In spite of acting in scores of films, they are neither famous nor popular and, I suspect, not very wealthy either. They rarely talk on screen. When they do communicate, it’s usually through an unspecified mix of grunts and snorts, pointing of the finger, heaving of a muscle or facial contortions. They play the hero’s butler, the major’s private, and the villain’s sidekick with equal ease. They make you laugh without being funny. When they are serious, they are dead-serious. In short, they are entertaining. They are my kind of character actors – what I call “char-actors”.

One such "char-actor" caught my eye on television last weekend when I was watching a part of Enter the Dragon (1973). Now this is a film I must have seen at least fifty times yet I barely noticed the evil Hans’ man-for-all-whippings Bolo – the bare-chested martial arts hoodlum with a muscular girth that would make a bear jealous. He’s the guy who Roper (John Saxon) kills towards the end of the movie.

Bolo doesn’t just fight; he fights to kill – brutally. He kills even when the man is down. In one scene, Bolo, mad look on his face, holds a minion between his powerful biceps and folds him up like a book, breaking his spine into two, and throws him on the ground.

Frank Dux (Van Damme) and Chong Li (Bolo) in Bloodsport

Enter the Dragon is one of three films that gave Bolo (Bolo Yeung) a reputation for brutality and little else. The other two movies are Bloodsport (1988) where he is defeated in the ring by Frank Dux (Jean-Claude Van Damme) and Double Impact (1991) opposite Van Damme in a double role. The half-crazed look and the bear-like girth greet you in both the films.

In Bloodsport, Frank Dux (Van Damme) and Chong Li (Bolo Yeung) are bitter rivals who meet in the ring for the fight of the tournament. Bolo mouths exactly two dialogues, both addressed to Dux: “You break my record, now I break you, like I break your friend” and this singular gem “You are next.” You don’t need brains to say those lines, brawn is enough.

If I were Bolo’s opponent in a film, I would have melted like butter on a hot platter; watching him from the other side of the screen, I can’t help laughing at his antics. I said char-actors like him were entertaining, didn't I?

If Van Damme is known as “The Muscles from Brussels’, Bolo Yeung is nicknamed ‘The Beast from the East’. You guessed it. The 5' 6" Bolo was born in China. He took interest in bodybuilding and became Mr. Hong Kong bodybuilding champion at the age of 21, a title he held for ten years and earned him another nickname, ‘The Chinese Hercules’. Bolo and Bruce Lee were foes in Enter the Dragon but they were close friends in real life. In fact, Bolo trained under the legendary martial arts icon. Bolo Yeung is 65 and lives with his family in Los Angeles, California.

Char-actors like Bolo are the unsung heroes of popular cinema, a fact Bolo knew only too well. He once said, “There are plenty of times people will come up to me for an autograph and tell me they enjoyed my work on Enter the Dragon. But people just know me from the movie; they don't really know who I am.”

2011-11-15T09:23:00.000-08:00

Spielberg matches Georges 'Hergé' Remi
in The Adventures of Tintin

A little over twenty-four hours after The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn was released in India, Friday, November 11, I stood in the queue to buy tickets for the 9 pm show. It was a weekend and the queue at the local cinema hall was long and threatened to spill from the lounge on to the street outside—there were four people between me and the ticket counter that was tantalisingly within reach. They seemed like forty! My patience on the boil, it was nearly a half-hour before I made it to the counter and walked away with four tickets from the final lot, fourth row from the screen. If you're a Tintin fan, you'll know what that's like.

"It's all right...it's in 3D so the closer you're to the screen the better," my daughter assured me. I wasn't convinced.

It didn't matter really because Steven Spielberg had me (and I suspect nearly everyone in the packed hall) eating out of his directorial hands from the word go. Everything about Spielberg's maiden animation film is a comic-book page turner—the animated graphics, the special effects, the characters, the story, and the sound. He has Tintin by the tuft of his red hair and his audience pretty awestruck behind their 3D glasses.

Spielberg has based The Adventures of Tintin on three of Hergé’s comic books—The Crab with the Golden Claws (1941), where Tintin first meets a drunk and imprisoned Captain Haddock, and The Secret of the Unicorn (1943) and its sequel Red Rackham's Treasure (1944), where Tintin (Jamie Bell) and Haddock (Andy Serkis) solve the mystery of the Unicorn, the ship that his ancestor, Sir Francis Haddock, was forced to blow up 300 years ago to save his treasure from the pirate Sakharine.

In sinking the ship, Sir Haddock is reckless but he is not daft. He leaves behind clues in three separate scrolls which are hidden in three models of the Unicorn, one of which Tintin happens to buy in a flea market. This is where the story begins: the pirate Sakharine's descendant, Ivanovich Sakharine (Daniel Craig), is desperate to get hold of Tintin's model which contains the second of the three scrolls and even kidnaps the Belgian reporter. While Sakharine already has the first scroll, the third is hidden in a bullet-proof glass case belonging to a sheikh in Morocco.

In the end, though, Tintin and Haddock with a lot of help from Snowy foil Sakharine's evil plans and discover the treasure has been lying at Marlinspike Hall, the Haddock estate, all along.

The movie is a precise reflection of the comic books except for the part where the two descendants, Haddock and Sakharine, fight each other with giant cranes unlike their ancestors who fought with swords on a burning ship. The analogy is striking. It also has several original elements from the comic books, such as the antics of the bumbling detectives, the Thom(p)son Twins; the unsuspecting Milanese Nightingale whose soprano voice shatters the sheikh's glass case (Sakharine's idea and a Spielberg invention); the treachery of Captain Haddock's first mate, Allan, on board his dark and foreboding vessel Karaboudjan; Tintin and Haddock's escape from the ship on a lifeboat; their subsequent daredevil flight on the enemy's amphibious aircraft and trek through a scorching desert; and Nestor, Haddock's butler at Marlinspike Hall.

A few other things stand out in the film: Snowy's quick-thinking and his faithfulness towards his master, Tintin; Captain Haddock's fondness for alcohol, particularly whisky, and for cuss words, "Blistering Barnacles!" and "Thundering Typhoons!", their attires—blue-eyed Tintin in his all-too familiar white-collared blue shirt, plus fours and trench coat and craggy-faced Haddock in his equally familiar navy-blue cap, turtle-neck sweater with an anchor etched on it, jersey and slacks; the Thom(p)son Twins in black suit and walking sticks; and the appearance of Tintin creator Georges ‘Hergé’ Remi in an artistic cameo. I suspect Spielberg borrowed the idea from Stan Lee’s cameos in the Marvel films.

The final scene in the movie—where Tintin and Haddock discover Sir Francis Haddock’s hidden booty in a secret basement at Marlinspike Hall—is actually the final scene in the sequel Red Rackham’s Treasure which, as we know, takes the Belgian reporter and his newfound friend on an exciting adventure—the hunt for Sir Francis Haddock’s treasures buried at sea—with Professor Cuthbert Calculus and his pendulum in tow.

Tintin reminds Haddock about the scuttled ship and ever so subtly lets us in on what could well be Spielberg’s next Tintin adventure. Hopefully, he will stick to the comic-book script, as he did in this film. When it comes, though, I’m going to jump the queue. Highly recommended.

The Adventures of Tintin poster: © Paramount Pictures and Columbia Pictures

2011-11-14T00:44:00.000-08:00

WISDOM FROM BOOKS & COMICS

Daniel Defoe in Robinson Crusoe

I now began to consider seriously my condition, and the circumstances I was reduced to; and I drew up the state of my affairs in writing, not so much to leave them to any that were to come after me - for I was likely to have but few heirs—as to deliver my thoughts from daily poring over them, and afflicting my mind; and as my reason began now to master my despondency, I began to comfort myself as well as I could, and to set the good against the evil, that I might have something to distinguish my case from worse; and I stated very impartially, like debtor and creditor, the comforts I enjoyed against the miseries I suffered, thus:

Evil: I am cast upon a horrible, desolate island, void of all hope of recovery.

Good: But I am alive; and not drowned, as all my ship's company were.

Evil: I am singled out and separated, as it were, from all the world, to be miserable.

Good: But I am singled out, too, from all the ship's crew, to be spared from death; and He that miraculously saved me from death can deliver me from this condition.

Evil: I am divided from mankind - a solitaire; one banished from human society.

Good: But I am not starved, and perishing on a barren place, affording no sustenance.

Evil: I have no clothes to cover me.

Good: But I am in a hot climate, where, if I had clothes, I could hardly wear them.

Evil: I am without any defence, or means to resist any violence of man or beast.

Good: But I am cast on an island where I see no wild beasts to hurt me, as I saw on the coast of Africa; and what if I had been shipwrecked there?

Evil: I have no soul to speak to or relieve me.

Good: But God wonderfully sent the ship in near enough to the shore, that I have got out as many necessary things as will either supply my wants or enable me to supply myself, even as long as I live.

Upon the whole, here was an undoubted testimony that there was scarce any condition in the world so miserable but there was something negative or something positive to be thankful for in it; and let this stand as a direction from the experience of the most miserable of all conditions in this world: that we may always find in it something to comfort ourselves from, and to set, in the description of good and evil, on the credit side of the account.

2011-11-13T04:03:00.000-08:00

A lot of comedy and a little fiction

Present Laughter: An Anthology of Modern Comic Fiction, edited by well-known English author Malcolm Bradbury, in 1994, is a collection of 29 of the best comic short stories written by some of the world’s finest humourists and satirists. Most of the outstanding comic fiction, written in the late 20th century, represents “the cream of humour” – so you have “farce by Beryl Bainbridge, parody by Jorge Luis Borges, folk humour by Garrison Keillor, black humour by Margaret Atwood, gentle confusion from John Updike and strange fantasy from Angela Carter.”

I have not read all 29 stories, having acquired this wonderful anthology quite recently, but my own favourite is the sf-fantasy The Kugelmass Episode by Woody Allen who wrote it for The New Yorker in 1977. Since then, The Kugelmass Episode has attained a cult status of sorts.

About the story The New Yorker says: “Kugelmass, a humanities professor at City College, was unhappily married for the second time and up to his neck in alimony to his first wife. He wants to have a discreet affair. Persky, a magician from Brooklyn, introduces Kugelmass to his magical cabinet. All Kugel mass has to do is choose a novel, climb into the cabinet, and he will be projected into the novel. He chooses "Madame Bovary," and in no time is having an affair with Emma. He reverses the procedure and brings Emma to New York, but has trouble when he tries to return her to France. Persky fixes the cabinet and Kugelmass swears he'll never cheat on his wife again. Three weeks later, he appears at Persky's. He wants to be projected into "Portnoy's Complaint," but instead, the cabinet explodes. Persky dies of a heart attack, and Kugelmass is projected into a Spanish grammar where he is pursued by the verb "to have.”

Here’s why Woody Allen is a sparkling writer as well as an exceptional filmmaker: To quote the last paragraph of his hugely funny story, “Kugelmass, unaware of this catastrophe, had his own problems. He had not been thrust into Portnoy’s Complaint, or into any other novel, for that matter. He had been projected into an old textbook, Remedial Spanish, and was running for his life over a barren, rocky terrain as the word tener (‘to have’) – a large and hairy irregular verb – raced after him on its spindly legs.”

The 29 delectable comic short stories in this anthology are:

1. The Tillotson Banquet by Aldous Huxley
2. The Waltz by Dorothy Parker
3. Excursion in Reality by Evelyn Waugh
4. Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote by Jorge Luis Borges
5. The Assistant Producer by Vladimir Nabokov
6. Gimpel the Fool by Isaac Bashevis Singer
7. The Wrong Set by Angus Wilson
8. The Champion of the World by Roald Dahl
9. Interesting Things by Kingsley Amis
10. A Member of the Family by Muriel Spark
11. The Bulgarian Poetess by John Updike
12. My Vocation by Mary Lavin
13. To London and Rome by Donald Barthelme
14. Uncle Vlad by Clive Sinclair
15. Nobody Will Laugh by Milan Kundera
16. The Longstop by Beryl Bainbridge
17. American Dreams by Peter Carey
18. The Kitchen Child by Angela Carter
19. The Kugelmass Episode by Woody Allen
20. Lantern Lecture by Adam Mars-Jones
21. Lives of the Poets by Margaret Atwood
22. The Royal Family by Garrison Keillor
23. Modern Love by T. Coraghessan Boyle
24. The Stolen Child by Clare Boylan
25. The New Baboon by Andrew Davies
26. An Outer London Childhood by Suzannah Dunn
27. Schoom by Jonathan Wilson
28. Career Move by Martin Amis
29. A Short History of the English Novel by Will Self

“The fact remains that, both as a reader and as a writer, I have always taken comedy with a good deal of (ever delighted) seriousness. Indeed, it is hard to think about the art of fiction without thinking about the art of comedy, for the two have always gone together, hand in hand,” Bradbury says in the introduction to the anthology.

Present Laughter: An Anthology of Modern Comic Fiction delivers exactly what it claims to offer readers: “Wit, wildness and hours of escape from the solemn side of life.” Highly recommended.

Cover Jacket: © Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London