A self-deprecatory review of the 79th Annual Academy Awards

And so it is that Martin Scorsese has won his first Oscar.

Deservedly, no doubt. I watched The Departed on the day of my last exam, bleary eyed from lack of sleep and roommate internecine, and the movie was remarkable enough to hold my incredibly fatigued mind's attention. (When I left the theater, a haze of images were floating in and out of my vision, mixing themselves liberally with reality; my sphincter had decided to loosen itself a tad; and the bus-stop, a mile and a half from where I stood, seemed an unattainable goal. When I finally got home, an hour and fifty-five minutes later, I simultaneously needed to empty my bowels and drop down dead. How I managed both is a secret I will divulge only upon threat of torture; know, however, that I slept the sleep of the deeply drugged that night, waking only about a day later. )

So definitely a movie to think about, and applaud. So let us pause for a moment to do exactly that.

(Pause pause pause pause)
(Applause Applause Applause Applause Applause)

Okay, now that the applause has stopped, what of his achievement? Should we talk about it? Should we talk about how he has been ignored by the Academy these past five hundred and thirty one years? Should we assert that all his movies deserved to win and five hundred and thirty two years later, only one of them has? Should we posit that now, having won for the first time(which, as grandmothers will no doubt tell you, is the hardest), he will continue to win until his grandchildren are dead?

Nah. And I'll tell you why. Because it would be hackneyed to make those observations. Everyone is talking about Marty and his statuette right now, all across the internet. To add to that would be less than boring.

Instead, I will tell you a little story.



I don't have TV. I can't afford the costs, of course, but more importantly, I can't afford the time. I have taken three serious graduate courses this semester, and none of them have anything even remotely to do with TV. Plus, I don't feel like watching any of the TV shows that are on nowadays; all they do is make me feel drowsy and inattentive.


I did want to watch the Oscars, though. I always do. Not because I care particularly about who's winning or losing, or because I like the innuendo, or even because of the cleavage density per square inch. No, I like to watch the Oscars because of Wikipedia.

Last year, when Paul Haggis won Best Screenplay for Crash, I was the first (only?) person to change his Wikipedia entry from "Academy-Award nominated" to "Academy Award winning". This year, I hoped to pull off a similar coup; eating my day's complement of butter with chips, with my guitar in the background waiting to be picked up, and Metallica playing 'Turn the Page'; this year I wanted to be the first one to compliment Helen Mirren, flatter Forest Whitaker, and most importantly, pay my respects to Martin Scorsese. And all this with the capable but ultimately flawed Mozilla Firefox for the Macintosh, with multiple "tabs" open, each one editing a separate Wikipedia entry.

But I was thwarted at every turn. Every time I went back to the edit history, I found out that my addition to the page was a tad too late, and hence worthless. It began with Alan Arkin (who(m) I've been a fan of ever since The Rocketeer and Glengarry Glen Ross), and as the day (night) progressed I missed Jennifer Hudson, Pan's Labyrinth, Michael Arndt and Happy Feet (though in my defense, the latter I never expected to win; I had the Wikipedia page for Cars open instead). I gave up after these defeats.

The problem, of course, was at least partially because I didn't have TV. With TV the broadcast is instantaneous, or maybe staggered only by a few seconds; when it comes to the internet, however, there is an extra lag that accounts for some poor guy like me hunched over a computer terminal, diet Coke in a coaster by his left hand, anxiously typing out the latest winner at 100 words per minute or less. What chance has he against the speed of light, or the speed of a Wikipedia junkie?

None, as it turned out. And so it was that butter ran out of chips, my guitar stayed where it was throughout the night, unplayed and abandoned,and Metallica had played 'Turn the Page' fifty-one-and-a-half times. A Pyrrhic defeat.



All this only goes to show that if you're serious about paying homage (how many in the audience know that 'homage' is pronounced 'omaaage'? I thought so.) to prospective first time Oscar winners by announcing their victories on Wikipedia, you should definitely have access to a TV with a decent cable connection.

Or maybe you should get on one of those sites that provide (il)legal access to the Oscar broadcast via the internet.

Or maybe you should find a better way to pay homage.


Or maybe, just maybe, you should find a more compelling pastime.

Naseeruddin Shah...

...agrees with me.

A book's pages...

...should have a pre-determined, standard thickness.

This is not an issue that can be shoved away at a moment's notice. Pages are what make up a book (a trite observation, but wait a moment),and if no one pays any attention to them, the people at large will stop reading books in the dystopian future I foresee.

For example, thick pages lend the book a false illusion of girth. Readers who look primarily for girth during purchase (of a book) will be inspired to new heights of cynicism; ah, they will think, what a cheap way of making a book look bigger than it really is. They will become wary and suspicious, and tend not to trust publishers (and hence the authors under their wing) who choose to descend to such murky depths of deception.

On the other hand, thin pages are subject to being torn in a moment of emotion: when our protagonist has just confronted his direst enemy; when he is being castrated by wild Rottweilers; when he is about to meet David Furnish. The torn page is an all too frequent casualty of frenzied reading, as any bookworm will testify.

The answer lies in standardization. Publishers should conduct experiments where they pay people to read. These experiments will teach them the "correct" value of the thickness of a page. In the meantime they can also feed and shelter the experimentees, who can do little else but read, read, and read some more.

People such as myself.

A letter to my uncle...

...written about four months ago. I present it here without comment.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20000818/REVIEWS/8180303/1023

A review of the movie 'The Cell' directed by another budding Indian Hollywood director, Tarsem Singh. He doesn't have as much hype surrounding him as Shyamalan, but he seems pretty good, at least going by what Ebert says (I haven't watched the movie myself).

I sent you this review because I thought it illustrated a point I was trying to make over the phone, about Indian movies degenerating into the sort of vapid nonsense that movies like 'Neal 'N Nikki', 'Kaliyug', 'Main Prem Ki Deewani Hoon' exemplify. In the last lines of the review, Ebert asks ' Is it possible that the next infusion of creativity will come from cultures like India, still rich in imagination, not yet locked into malls?'

Too late, I say. If we weren't 'locked into malls' in 2000 (when the review was written) we certainly are now, and while there's nothing 'wrong' with that, it's still discouraging. Why haven't our filmmakers incorporated into our moviemaking the eclecticism that countries like Japan and Korea and China seem to routinely incorporate into theirs? Why can't they get out movies that handle our culture gracefully, and with pride? Why do we have to be subjected to the same 'boy meets girl' formula over and over again, which works about three times out of a hundred ( I use the word 'works' here in the sense of 'breaks even')?

I'll tell you why. (Yes, I'm going to answer all my rhetorical questions). It's because they're timid. They think that if they make one movie that requires more attention-span than the average movie-goer possesses, they will lose all their money and credibility. And they're right, they probably will. It's why more people have heard of Karan 'KANK' Johar than Nagesh Kukunoor.


If all this seems a bit abstract, take an example--Rang de Basanti. Critically acclaimed movie, great box office hit, all that. My problem with it - and this is something I can't get anyone to see, much less agree with - is that it's too easy. You have all these drunken inebriated assholes who suddenly take a 180 degree turn to face martyrdom because their friend died. 2+2 = 4. Get it? Except that in real life, it's *never* that easy. There's no way ordinary people can get themselves worked up enough to murder someone who may or may not have been responsible. You need more than a friend's death to be able to kill someone else with moral impunity.

And then there's the whole massacre thing in the end, which signifies--what, exactly? That we are a police state? That the media is stifled in our country? No one knows, but no one cares, because, hey, Aamir Khan is dying. Dead, already.

Whatever. Here's my theory on how this thing could have been written. The director, or scriptwriter, or whoever, says, 'Hey, I have this great idea. Aamir Khan dies in the end. Let's think of a good way to extract cheap emotion from the audience.' And a great story is born. The thing that infuriates me most is that people actually identified with the story, and 'got' it. Are we so disconnected with our emotions that we need to be told stories that make logical sense?

To an extent, I realize that all this is the natural course of things. I realize that mainstream media needs to sellout if it needs to sustain itself. I realize that many people go to the movies to be entertained, to be told what to feel. I realize that most people watch movies not expecting to make any significant emotional investment. What I do not realize, however, is why Bollywood (the name itself suggests a sellout of epic proportions. Hollywood was perhaps a wood of hollies before the 'h' was capitalized; but what in God's name is a 'Bolly'?) needs to sellout more than most other film industries in the world. It's more of a travesty because we have such a rich culture and so many untold stories that deserve telling, and so many stories that need a more impartial retelling.

Anyway, this email is dangerously close to becoming one of my self-righteous rants (maybe it already is one, so sue me), so I'll sign off here.

Me.

On Music

Something that I read in a book recently has held my subconscious too long to be ignored, and I knew I had to write about it when I discovered that I had something to say. (Actually, this may not be entirely true; I do feel strongly about the issue, but whether or not I have something to say will emerge in the following paragraphs.)

The author in question tried to compare writing in general and prose in particular, to music in all its forms. He postulated that prose is transparent, showing up the writer's imperfections. The nature of prose (he argued) is such that the creator cannot separate himself from his creation; his flawed stamp is visible on each of his offsprings.

Music, on the other hand, transcends the creator. The nature of music is such that it automatically distances itself from whoever wrote it; it is exalted, pure, an embodiment of the truth, existing in a vacuum and frustrating attempts to trace its genealogy.

This was the author's thesis, anyway. I remember reading this and agreeing with it almost immediately (a reaction that I later concluded signified a personal flaw). It was only later when I examined the components of this argument that I found that I took issue with most of the assumptions it made, that the argument itself was deeply inadequate, glib, even, and failed to hold any water under serious examination.

First of all, writing - we will all agree that writing is flawed, and for exactly the reasons listed above. So much has been said about this by so many people so much better at making arguments than I that it would border on impudence to try and add to them; if one needs a thorough primer on how exactly writing is flawed one can easily refer to the Zadie Smith article that I helpfully provided a link to in one of my previous posts.


But music, now; is it unsullied, incapable of adulteration? Does it not bear even a single trace of its creator's imperfections? Is it, in short, divine?

Music as come down to us, some say, from God, and hence is abstract, incapable of being annotated, analyzed, dissected into its component elements; it is a reflection of a being who is simultaneously all-powerful and compassionate. People who believe this about music will also diligently hold that Glenn Gould (who will show up later in these paragraphs) playing the Goldberg Variations cannot be duplicated by a computer hooked up to a piano. The human being is divinity personified when he plays such beautiful music; this divinity is not reflected, cannot be reflected, in something as banal as a procession of zeros and ones.

I used to subscribe to this point of view, but don't anymore; Music possesses a language, by which everything that is abstract about it can be reduced to an almost cabalistic symbolism. It is an incredibly efficient language, a language that enables the composer to separate himself from the sounds of his music, its very flesh, and concentrate on its creation. A language that does not correspond to the idea of most languages we know, a language that cannot be spoken, only understood, but a language all the same.

And because music can be described by a language, it is also subject to its various shortcomings. There is a dichotomy here; The same language that enables the perpetuation of music through the ages and ensures its immortality also imprisons it; a treble clef here, a C minor chord there, a few crochets everywhere, and look - there is Glenn Gould, in all his majesty. Or rather the computer, playing Glenn Gould. Can you tell the difference? Almost certainly not.

It follows that any music that is written can be flawed, and can carry with it all the quirks of the person that wrote it. Two examples immediately spring to my mind -

Glenn Gould, when once asked why he didn't play Mozart, chuckled a tiny bit and apparently said that his music was simple and derivative.

Joe Satriani, in this
interview, says of the song Hella Good (by No Doubt) - "They're in the wrong key, and that bugs me. They've got all this support from this great pool of talent, they've got all this money, everything is set up for them to do this right, and then you hear a vocal line singing a melody that doesn't mix with the chord progression."


These people are clearly making a point, though I can't really see it. I've listened to Hella Good dozens of times, but don't detect anything wrong . And Mozart? Who can dare call his music "simple", of all things?

People who know more about it than I do. And here is the epiphany, the moment of revelation, almost timid in its simplicity - we cannot perceive flaws in music because we understand it not at all. When a piece of music plays, we love it, but cannot hope to understand what is being said. Somewhere buried in the notes and the chord progressions is a true authorial reflection, but we, in our ignorance, cannot see it.

And perhaps this is just as well. Imagine a life where music is as commonplace and well understood as speech; imagine recognizing each musical cliché as it came your way; imagine hordes of effete critics, using all the literary tools at their disposal to annotate, interpret, and pummel into submission a work of flawed excellence.

We would have lost something indescribably beautiful because we strove, in all our innocence, to describe it.