Wassup: Notes on recent films, music, reading…
Saw Fantastic Four on the weekend, at Fame Adlabs.
I don’t know if this is just my imagination, but the projection at Fun Republic just isn’t up to the mark anymore. Maybe it wasn’t, from the very beginning, but it certainly seems worse now.
I’ve noticed dirt in the projector gate, fibres, out of focus reels, and various other little inconsistencies.
Either they’re short of good projectionists and are forced to shuttle operators from screen to screen, or their people are just not good enough.
It’s a pity, because I actually like Fun Republic a lot.
I still hope they’ll improve, quickly.
Meanwhile, my family prefers to go to Fame Adlabs, or even Fame Malad, if we’re in the suburbs.
Or, of course, Inox rocks in town. And Sterling and Regal, those old warhorses, are still rocking too.
Anyway, back to the movie.
It’s a pretty good adaptation of the comic book.
As comic book movies go, it’s an ‘origin’ story, which means it’s more interesting for those who don’t know much about the comic book characters and their mythology.
For stalwarts like myself, who have been reading comics and graphic novels since around the time our moms were trying to get us weaned off cerelac and onto solid food, well, it’s still pretty good.
The casting is really spot-on, which makes a difference.
The effects are as good as you’d expect.
What it doesn’t deliver is a bangup climax. In fact, there’s almost no climax as such, just a kind of coming to terms, pulling together, and taking a stand.
But, as in the case of X-Men, I’m betting they’ll have a more action-packed plot-oriented picture the next time around, and slightly less emphasis on character banter and interaction.
(On the other hand, Spiderman managed to get it all just right the very first time out of the gate, just as Batman Begins seemed to get it all wrong, so you never can tell.)
Still, FF is a tp film worth catching, whether you’re a comic book fan or not.
Me? I went back and read through my Gotham Comics pile, and was hungry for more already.
I even went back and re-read my special edition of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, quite possibly the single greatest superhero graphic novel ever published.
(Don’t take my word for it: Read it. It really is a great book, and not just a great comic book.)
On the subject of comic books still, I read about the upcoming film version of Alan Moore’s classic graphic novel, V For Vendetta.
What can I tell you? V is another great, great graphic novel.
Again, I’m not exaggerating. Many readers like Moore’s Watchmen more (and that’s also being adapted to film) or his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (already adapted, with apna own Naseerbhai providing the exotic exxxxtra ingredient).
But for me, V is V, V, V, Good!
(Sounds like an ex-President of India, V. V. Giri!)
On DVD, I finally got Mean Creek, a movie I’ve been wanting to see for a while.
It’s what I call an ‘alt-rock’ movie.
As in, it’s offbeat, but not Hollywood offbeat.
It’s a teenage movie, in the sense that all the main characters are teenagers.
But it’s a very serious film, with a very serious subject and script, and while it doesn’t deliver anything fantastic, it’s still a worthwhile film to watch.
Sort of like Garden State or Orange County, or films like that, movies about American teenagers who live such boring lives, they have to go out and complicate things a bit. Or a lot.
The music by tomandandy (that’s how they spell it in the credits) is very nice, a sort of incomplete symphony, half-notes, and half-chords, like listening to an orchestra practise and warm up before the actual performance.
it goes very well with the film, perfectly matching the movie’s tone of ‘we’re just trying to show it like it is, not making any comments or giving you a moral-of-the-story’.
Like the movie, it’s pleasant, soothing, like drifting down a river on a sunny afternoon, your hand trailing in the cool water, birds winging overhead.
But not exceptional.
On the music front, I’ve been listening to all kinds of stuff.
Techno – have you heard the techno versions of Star Wars? Trust me, they’re pretty cool. Imagine a techno version of all the famous set-pieces from all the Star Wars films? That’s right, da-da-du-dah boom-boom-badda-boom!
Darth Vader must be rocking in his grave – the Force is with us!
I’ve also been compelled to listen to some Hindi film music, courtesy of my family, who has some pretty abysmal taste at times – as, I’m sure, they feel the same about me at times! – and has been listening to things like “Dus bahaane” and stuff like that.
Reading? I mentioned Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, and lots of Gotham Comics, right?
I also read The Fixer by Joe Sacco. Which, if you’ve read his earlier graphic (non-fiction) novels, Safe Area Gorazade and Palestine, is another realistic B&W portrayal of people in a war-torn area, Sarajevo, Bosnia, in this case, during the past ten years.
It’s a terrific piece of journalism cartooning, and a great piece of literature.
Like the Persepolis series by Marianne Satrapi which I’ve been reading ever since the first English translation rolled off the presses in France (where the first book was first published, since Satrapi writes in French), and which my 12-year old daughter has been reading with great pleasure too – making it her first foray into the alternate-reality of graphic literature.
For serious reading, I’ve been delving deeply into too many Mahabharata sources to list here. But time and time again, I can’t help marvelling at the greatness of Kisari Mohan Ganguli’s supremely brilliant translation of the great epic.
Truly, no other translation or edition in the world has come close to touching Ganguli’s brilliance.
(I’ll be happy if I come even within a mile’s reach!)
For fun, I’ve been reading a novel titled Utopia by Lincoln Child.
Child is one half of the writing team of Lincon Child and Douglas Preston, who team up together to write some of the best adventure-techno thrillers I’ve ever read.
I’ve been reading their books for years and enjoying them.
If you haven’t discovered them, trust me, try them out today.
Check out these ones in particular, the best of their bunch:
Relic.
Reliquary (sequel).
Riptide.
Mount Dragon.
Thunderhead.
and
The Ice Limit.
Their more recent novels are part of an ongoing series featuring the same protagonist, FBI Agent Pendergast.
Personally, while I enjoyed reading about Agent Pendergast’s eccentric but brilliant investigative techniques in Relic and Reliquary, both excellent adventure-mystery-thrillers, I don’t care very much for his solo outings.
Which was why I thought of trying out one of the team’s solo novels.
And I haven’t been disappointed yet.
I’m halfway through Utopia by Lincold Child.
And it’s terrific entertainment. Especially if you like your thrillers spiced with lots of tech stuff, knowhow about coding, programming, robotics, neural networking and the like.
I can’t claim to be an expert at any of those things.
But I get a big thrill reading about them, and reading about people who work in those fields.
Speaking of which, if you’ve got anything to do with coding, programming, gaming, or hell, anything to do with the IT biz at all, you must read Masters of Doom.
It’s about the guys at ID Software, the company best known for creating Doom and its sequels.
And it’s one of the best non-fiction books I’ve read in the past year or so.
There were a few more books, movies, music…
But that’s all I’ve got time to chat about now, people.
Why don’t you tell me what you’re reading, listening to, or eyeballing?
Just post them as comments after this post. I’m always looking for good recommendations.
And my tastes are as wide as my waistline used to be (but happily isn’t anymore, thanks to my disciplined diet and exercise regime, and my excellent trainer!).
This entry was posted on Monday, July 18th, 2005 at 10:18 pm. It is filed under Ashok.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
