The Prestidigitator

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0934706/

There comes a time when even gods must die.

I think I was in the 3rd grade when the front page of Malayala Manorama (yes, that one) carried the news of Superman being killed off in the comics. Years later I read the landmark The Death of Superman, World Without a Superman, and the Return of Superman comic titles and unlike some people I know didn’t get too emotional but still found the story arc very engrossing. Cheesy but engrossing.

Now, the same (more or less) story has been updated for the current generation (considering short attention spans) as an animated film. Superman: Doomsday follows the events leading to the epic battle between the inter galactic destroyer, Doomsday and our boy blue; and the aftermath.

Comic book purists will be distressed to learn that the plot is drastically different from the books; the only similarity being that Superman dies (sort of) and then later, returns. Lex Luthor unwittingly unleashes Doomsday who/what due to the lack of any cognitive function whatsoever runs amok through Metrolopolis leaving scores dead. Superman tries in vain to stop the rampage and gets beaten up like never before. A 15 minute fight sequence leads to the mother of all Coriolis Effects killing both destroyer and savior (again, sort of) in the process. Metropolis mourns. Lois Lane mourns. Martha Kent mourns.

The next act was pretty weak, with Lex Luthor going bizarrely depressed. In a fit of madness, he clones Superman. The new Superman however while retaining all the powers of the original Man of Steel, has a twisted sense of morality. Plot wise, the rest of the film doesn’t live up to the amazing first act but then again I wasn’t totally disappointed.

The animation is outstanding and the fight sequences are breathtaking. However, there is a lot of blood and a number of on screen deaths which elevates the proceedings to a certain extent; it’s not a children’s cartoon anymore. People die; some are crushed to death while others perish in explosions and one particular gentleman’s skull is crushed by Doomsday.

The voice acting is terrific and I was impressed by Adam Baldwin’s portrayal of Superman. My major complaint was/is that the film was too short and that too much was crammed in. But then again, I’m 23 years old and these things shouldn’t matter right? Right?

Wrong.

7.5/10

The new Apple iPOD Nano ad (video link) has an extremely catchy tune. After humming it on trains, at work and in the shower, I decided to find out who the artist was.

The track, 1234 is sung by the beautiful Leslie Feist (the video is quite interesting as well) whose album The Reminder is as good and sometimes even better that the infectious track itself. Very light, breezy music with ample strumming.

On a related note, I finally got around to buying a guitar and christened her/it Cecilia.

If you’ve been following the news lately, you’re probably aware of the uproar over the Sethusamudram Project and the subsequent fallout. For the uninitiated, the project aims to create a shipping canal between India and Srilanka through the island chain called Rama’s Bridge (Adam’s Bridge to the angrezis). Dig canal-connect countries. Fairly simple isn’t it? Afraid not.

According to the Hindu scriptures, the bridge was built by Rama’s allies which enabled him to rescue his abducted wife Sita from Ravana (this guy). The canal apparently serves political interests as well and when myth (er…religion) mixes with politics, the combination rarely proves to be fruitful. First the Supreme Court of India had to retract (when the BJP created a stir) it’s ruling which stated that there was no substantial scientific evidence the said bridge was built by Lord Ram. I wonder whose job it was to actually *search* for the evidence in the first place. Fine, the trident waving ”Ram Sevaks” backed off.

Then, Mr M ”too old to think coherently” Karunanidhi goes on to say that Ram was a myth. He has a career spanning 60 years in politics but sadly, this bloke with the shades hasn’t learned a thing. Chaos ensued. Buses burnt. Homes attacked. People dead. Bonus points for God.

Why are we as a country so dense? Didn’t we start out on the right foot? Aren’t we the same people whose hearts fill with pride every time we hear those oft repeated lines?

…when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance …. We end today a period of ill fortune, and India discovers herself again.

What happened to secularism and tolerance? What happened to reason?

Friedrich Nietzche’s treatise, Thus Spoke Zarathushtra speaks of the Persian sage, Zorastar who descends from his solitude in the hills and declares, ”God is dead” and goes on to argue the meaning of existence and power of the human life force.

If Zorastar descended from the Himalayas today with the same message, he’d be running back.

Radio Host: What’s your latest obsession?

Hank: Just the fact that people seem to be getting dumber and dumber. You know, I mean we have all this amazing technology and yet computers have turned into basically four figure wank machines. The internet was supposed to set us free, democratize us, but all it’s really given us is Howard Dean’s aborted candidacy and 24 hour a day access to kiddie porn. People…they don’t write anymore – they blog. Instead of talking, they text, no punctuation, no grammar: LOL this and LMFAO that. You know, it just seems to me it’s just a bunch of stupid people pseudo-communicating with a bunch of other stupid people in a proto-language that resembles more what cavemen used to speak than the King’s English.

Radio Host: Yet you’re part of the problem, I mean you’re out there blogging with the best of them.

Hank: Hence my self-loathing.

-Californication (Episode 5)

Zodiac (2007): David Fincher

A masterpiece of mood. The film follows the aftermath of the Zodiac Killings of 1960 in North California and is based on the non fiction book, Zodiac Unmasked by Robert Graysmith (played by Jake Gyllenhall).

Technically outstanding, the film has a unique feel to it, thanks mainly to the fact that David Fincher employed the use of the Thompson Viper Filmstream camera. It was shot entirely in uncompressed digital format, and it shows. Every frame in the film looks polished and just about perfect.

The film is extremely well paced and doesn’t really resort to any gore or blood to induce an interest in the proceedings but sadly this film got lost amidst all those tent pole releases this year. David Fincher is a genius as a director (though he did choose some lousy scripts like Panic Room and The Game) and with this, he solidifies his reputation.

9/10

Batman Confidential (Issues #7-9); Lovers and Madmen: Michael Green, Denys Cowan, John Floyd

I had decided to stay off Batman comics for a while ever since the debacle that was/is All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder (Frank Miller/Jim Lee) but this new series seemed too promising considering it was a retelling of the Joker’s origin. The Joker is my favorite Batman villain. The Killing Joke is one of my favorite books. In spite of the over the top antics by the clown prince of crime, I think the Joker is one of the most well thought out characters in the DC universe. Cliches be damned.

Back to the series, so far the issues have been fairly good. The ”re-imagination” goes so far as to give us  an explanation for the Joker’s chelsea grin. The writing is pretty decent and there are even traces of genius in issue number 9. Hopefully, it’ll get better. To me however, art work was the highlight; the penciling is extremely well done giving a gruff look to the characters and their surroundings.

Fingers crossed, hoping that this doesn’t turn out to be another damp squib.

7.5/10 

Yale: I mean we’re just people. We’re just human beings, you know? You think you’re God.
Isaac Davis: I… I gotta model myself after someone.
-Manhattan ( 1979,Woody Allen)

Ever since I can remember, I’ve never been satisfied with who I was. I’ve always pretended to be somebody with quirky tastes and admirable eccentricities. But then, that is how we all start out; we start pretending to be what we want to end up as. Along the years, there have been a number of people I’ve tried to model myself after and these weren’t your garden variety famous folks. These were people I knew (directly or otherwise); people who were older than me; people who possessed a vastly superior intellect when compared to my math hating frontal lobe.

So as I grew up, I read the books they raved about, listened to their favorite bands and watched the films they swore by. These were the people who unbeknown to them, I truly looked up to and to a very great extent, tried to ape. I always knew what I wanted to be; the pseudo intellectual. Like them.

Now, many years later, as I look around, I see them languishing with petty and materialistic pursuits. Somewhere along the line, they sold out. They found bliss in mediocrity and comfort in normalcy. I constantly find myself asking, did I aim too low?

I constantly keep track of my site stats, mostly just to feed my bloated ego but there are times I’m curious to find what people actually read here. Somehow my post on 300 shows up whenever people search for naked men. I will not comment on that but today someone searched for ”malayalee moron” and ended up here! Says a lot about the author eh?

Who exactly at Google do I thank?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0440963/

One day over six years back, I picked up the Bourne series off the dusty book shelf of my school library. What followed were some of the finest hours of my adolescent life. I immediately fell in love with the character; the amnesiac spy in search of his identity, the cold war setting and the bleak political landscape of that era. Robert Ludlum was a fine writer and he crafted some pretty amazing thrillers. So it was natural that I felt disappointed upon hearing Hollywood was getting ready to bastardize the concept.

Thankfully, the first two Bourne films (The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy) delivered what they promised, a smart edge of the seat experience. But the third in the series is hands down the best of the three and perhaps even one of the best action/spy capers of all time. I’m going to risk ridicule by going ahead and putting it right up there with the likes of Heat and Ronin.

The first thing you’ll notice about the film is the breakneck pacing. It gets brutal with the brilliant camera work and some very very clever scenes. The scene where he maneuvers a British journalist through the Waterloo train station is downright ingenious. The film is unrelenting; it hardly gives you time to breathe. An hour into the film, it slows down a bit for about two minutes and sooner than you can say ”*insert term of choice here*”, you’re biting your nails off again.

Oliver Wood’s photography, contrary to a few critics’ opinions actually gives you a sense of being part of the action. The plot is nothing to crow about but marvelous performances (notably Joan Allen and David Strathairn) by an amazingly talented cast turn this into a top notch cinema experience. Jason Bourne’s change from a man on the run to a merciless revenge seeking machine is brought to life by a very restrained Matt Damon.

Paul Greengrass is a master director. Though I found his United 93 a bit too hard to sit through, I have to admit, this man has complete control over everything. A few scenes are so well thought out that I’m guessing editing them must have been harder than shooting them.

Of course, the film is nothing like the book. The only similarities I could make out were the names of the characters and the David Webb persona. But this is an extremely smart update of the same story; it deftly captures human paranoia in the current political atmosphere.

Overall, one of the year’s best films if not one of the most engrossing thrillers of all time. 9/10

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been tempted to post on a range of topics but the lack of time coupled with some serious lethargy prevented the flow of…er…words. So I shall resort to cliche and write in points.

• Californication: In spite of the gratuitous sesk and noodity (PG 13 you see), I love this show. The show follows the travails of a depressed has been writer trying to bring his life back on track. If you’re still not convinced, there are a bevy of beautiful women in every episode.
• ”Tumhara Kya Hoga, RGV?” : Couldn’t resist. Ram Gopal Varma’s attempt at remaking Sholay has pissed off pretty much the entire country. Looks like his illustrious career is headed for the dogs now. Thankfully, our very own Lalettan has come out unscathed.
• I have finally gotten an apartment after weeks of futile hunting. Of course, I had help and a person to get the lease transferred from.
• Work is starting to feel like a long unfunny version of The Office.
• A 3 year old kid (whose parents are software professionals from Cognizant and Satyam Computers) was kidnapped in Hyderabad and subsequently released. Police claim the reason the parents didn’t receive any ransom calls could have been because the family’s land line was out of order. Could have been. Can you come up with a smarter deduction?
• I have this sudden yearning for travel. I’m seriously contemplating visiting Tasmania.
• I have been (re)reading Name of the Rose for over 2 months now…haven’t been able to finish it yet. When did I get so slow?
• Apple has gone ahead and announced the iPOD Touch…that too 2 months after I bought a 30 gig iPOD!

The past week was just terrible enough for me do something crazy!

—(wait for it)—

Ta-Da!