chakravyuha

• A. R. Rahman – Delhi-6
• Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy – Lucky By Chance and
• Amit Trivedi – Dev-D

I cannot stop talking about these three new Hindi movie soundtracks that were all released recently. If you have not already done so, please buy the CD’s, like now. They are all excellent and do a great service in restoring the health of popular India music (read related post here). Dev-D has a song called “Emotional Atyachar”, in two versions. One is called a “Brass-band Version” and the other is the “Rock Version”. Both are a work of mad, riotous genius. It’s so much fun that I have it on repeat since the last two days. The “brass-band” version of the song is a off-the-hook sonic mash-up with hilariously over-the-top, loud and cacophonous Indian wedding bass-band sounds. Unfortunately, you will only “get” the song’s lyrical cleverness if you are a native Hindi speaker and you really have to be a native North-Indian at that to derive much fun out of the brass-band craziness. For additional fun, check out the video of this song. It two fake fake Elvis, and the protagonist exaggeratedly drunk and lurching around comically in a wedding.

Delhi-6 has two numbers that stand out. One is “Dil Hua Dafatan” and the other is “Masakali”. “Dil Hua Dafatan” has simple, beautiful and delicate banjo in the backgound and a small section with a plainative instrument that sounds vaguely Chinese in origin (can someone identify it for me?). The lyrics of “Masakali”, by Prasoon Joshi, are brilliant. Delhi-6 should cement Rahman’s status as one of the best composers in India. It’s a beautiful musical journey that will reward the listener after multiple listens, as is usually the case with his music. In “Lucky By Chance“, there are echos of Shankar-Ehsan-Loy’s previous work but it’s still a very good album. Standout tracks are “Yeh Zindagi Bhi” and “Baawre”.

The dreary and monotonous Jagjit Singh had this to say about A. R. Rahman and his compositions. It’s really sad that an accomplished singer such as Jagjit Singh made this comment. That’s a sign of someone who’s essentially cemented himself in his own musical concrete. Any contemporary phenomenon requires you to get out of your comfort zone and try to see beyond your own blinkered world-view. Jagjit’s Singh’s rigid immobility has perhaps rendered this option impossible for him. So he has decided to take the easy way out and declare “They don’t know what ghazals are all about and they lack good taste in music. What does AR Rahman know about ghazals? He will never use a ghazal in his films. All they do is pick up tunes from the West“.

Rahman does not “lack good taste”. Excuse me, but the man that created modern Indian contemporary soundtrack masterpieces such as “Yuva“, “Rang De Basanti” and “Swades” does not lack nor not lack taste, he defines taste. Musicians like Rahman and Vishal Dadlani are at the vanguard of new music. They create taste. They are defining new Indian music and establishing a new era. So what if he does not use ghazals in his films. Since when did ghazals become the only cultural touchstones? To his comment about picking about tunes from the west, what on earth is that supposed to even mean? Rahman is one of the most original artists on the landscape. He surely cannot be accused of lifting tunes. So maybe Jagjit Singh is talking about Rahman incorporating a lot of instruments of non-Indian origin in his compositions. Is that somehow supposed to lessen his creations?

Music is not just poetic lyrics. Music is not just classical form. Music is not ghazals. Music is not table or guitar. Music is Music. It encompasses all of these and much much more. Good music is not just poetic or beautiful lyrics, it’s also creative, original, virtuoso instrumentation. Instrumental arrangement that soar, uplift, touch your heart and transport you to soci heaven. Jagjit Singh has been singing in the same tone with the same inflections since forever. To me all his ghazals sound musically inert. He might as well just sit down and recite them without any instrument because it surely is perfunctory that form. There might be creativity, poetry and beauty in the written word of ghazals, but there’s surely nothing creative in his music. Rahman’s creations are not just pure fun, they are genius. If Jagjit Singh were not too set in his way he would recognize how good it really is. In my books, Rahman is even a better singer than Jagit Singh.

About those lyrics too, for which he says – “Today, there’s no poetry phrasing, it’s all Western and the language is tapori — a mix of English and Hindi. What kind of lyrics are Pappu can’t dance saala?“. To that I say – “So?”. What’s exactly wrong with non-poetic? What’s wrong with mixing a little English in Hindi? For that matter what’s poetic? Do we not use English heavily in our day-to-day lives? Even non-rhyming verses without a defined meter or other classical elements of poetry might serve well in the context of a song that’s designed to evoke some emotion. When Anupama, Benny Dayal, Blaze, Tanvi, Darshana, Satish Subramanium & Aslam sing “Pappu can’t dance saala” it registers in your system in a way that can only perhaps register with someone who was not born when dinosaurs like Lata Mangeshkar, Kumar Sanu, Udit Narayan, Anu Malik, the duo Laxmikant-Pyarelal etc. roamed this earth and throttled any and all talent that might dare to peek out of that collective colossal edifice that was the music scene of that era. It’s an upbeat emotional call-to-arms to go to the dance floor, to lose yourself in the beat and the rhythm, lyrical poetry be damned. Incidentally, there’s other merit in that song, but I’ll get to that in a later post. All of this is not to bash any of these performers. I acknowledge their obvious talent. What frustrates is how these people got embedded into the whole nation and literally sucked the life out of contemporary music. The 60′s to late 90′s might have been the golden age of the lyric but it’s was the absolute pits for music as a whole.

Culture is not static and if it is, it should not be. A culture that’s rigid and does not learn to bend and twist and even sprout new branches, will just snap one day under the winds of change and cease to exists. Jagit Singh’s comment actually point to a larger malasie in the Indian society. We are just to dammned calcified with notion of supposed superiority of our culture and our ways. If you dig a little deeper we are actually stagnating as a society and as a nation. We are stifling creativity and entrepreneurship and most importantly, change. But I’ll address this point in another post.

Listening to A. R. Rahamn’s Delhi-6 (more here and trailer here) and from whatever I have heard so far, it’s awesome. This is Rahman’s first soundtrack after his accolade-gathering effort Slumdog Millionaire. A detailed analysis to follow….

Saw Aziz Ansari at the Punchline Comedy Club in SFO on Saturday. His act was very good and I would readily recommend it to anyone who would like a fun weekend evening. Beware though, his humor is blunt and vulgar at times but that’s de rigueur for most standup acts. He is an American by birth and Indian by ethnicity.  What I found refreshing though, was that his material did not revolve around the ethno-centric wellspring of humor that guys like Russell Peters and others exploit all the time. In fact, there were none of those jokes to be found., barring one about the built of people from India (and how they are supposed to be skinny and all that). Aziz is working on a Judd Apatow file called Funny People and he did a segment, in-character, as a character called Randy that he’s developing for that project. Other hillarious bits included his imitation of that old staple, the redneck southerner. It stood out for me because there was a certain freshness to how he setup and constructed that whole piece. His style is very animated and he moves around the stage a lot using his whole body as a tool to deliver the jokes. Good Stuff.

Side view of car

This image shows the view of the side of a car. It has been taken from the backside passenger window of an other car. I have used the vOICe to take this image. You can clearly hear the doors of the car. I suspect most of the image is of the part of the door that is just below the passenger windows of the car.

Soundscape of an autorickshaw

The image below shows an autorickshaw from the side. You can clearly make out the dividing bar between the back and front halves. For more information on autorickshaw’s, see the following link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_rickshaw

A soundscape of the same image can also be downloaded here. I took this image using my Nokia E51 with the very latest version of the vOICe. Again, I was looking out the left side passenger window of a car.

Soundscape of a complex street scene.

Above is a complex street scene captured at a red light. There are a number of vehicles visible in the image.

Bjork – All is Full of Love
The accompanying video features two lesbian robots.. but this is Bjork who has even turned herself into an art piece. I’ve never really understood her art or her music but this song is ethereal, haunting and quite simply the most beautiful piece of music I have heard in a long time. Considering this is Bjork, the lyrics are fairly accessible.

Eddie Vedder – Hard Sun
Eddie Vedder – End of the Road
Both songs are from the soundtrack to Into the Wild and I must say go a long way towards restoring my interest in contemporary rock music. I was afraid I was turning into an ambient/atmospheric/light-groove music sissy (current interests include Royksopp, Air, Eluvium etc. so that should tell you something).

Kenny Wayne Shepherd – Blue on Black
One of my favorite rock songs (and has been for a long time)… It’s slightly bluesy in tone and the lyrics are killer.

Supergrass – Fin
mmmm.. moody..

Grant Lee Buffalo – Fuzzy
Grant Lee Phillips has one of the most distinctive voice.

Explosions In The Sky – Your Hand In Mine
God Is An Astronaut – Remembrance day
Euphoria – The Road
Nightmares on Wax – Les Nuits
Instrumental goodness. The Nightmares on Wax number is fairly old (and my favorite among these) but the rest are fairly recent.

Conjure One – Center of the Sun
Man.. Poe’s voice is beautiful.

MIA – Paper Planes
MIA is psychedelic.

Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros – Bhindi Bhagee
A brilliant, quirky and fun song on the immigrant neighborhoods of London. This is so removed in style and mood from The Clash that there’s no way to know that you are listening to the guy who was The Clash. As to the title, “Bhindi” in Hindi is “Ladyfinger”.. yes.. as in the vegetable ladyfinger. Lord know what “bhagee” means though… “bhag” means “run” in Hindi but I am not sure that that’s what he intended. Otherwise the song would translate as “The Ladyfinger Ran”.

Gotye – Heart’s a Messs
Gotye is an Australian artist. I checked a couple of places (iTunes included) and I could not find his songs for sale easily. However, here’s the video of this song.

Queensryche – Scarborough Fair
Queensryche is a band out of Seattle that was born the same time as the grunge phase. They were overshadowed by other grunge heavyweigths (Pearl Jam, Nirvana etc.) but have a pretty solid body of work. Although Simon and Garfunkle set the traditional folk song in counterpoint (the Canticle part of Scarborough Fair) which made it unique and beautiful, I like this re-imagining much much better than theirs. Queensryche have taken the old folk song and have adapted in into a rock format very very effectively. There’s no counterpoin here but it’s short, sweet and heavy – all at the same time, so good.

Timbaland – Apologize (feat. One Republic)
Nelly Furtardo – Say it Right
Both under very heavy rotation on commercial (read that largely uninspired, payola-infested, lifeless non-visual broadcast medium) radio last year. That should, however, not prevent you from enjoying Timbaland’s signature snare drums and style. He produced Nelly Furtardo’s song too and features in her video for this song. Good stuff.

The Cure – Burn
Blistering licks from The Cure, from the soundtrack to The Crow. The way Robert Smith presented himself in all his goth glory, he could very well have played the Crow instead of Brandon Lee.

Gustavo Santaolalla – De Usuahia A La Quiaca
A beautiful, delicate instrumental from the guy who surely gained a lot of recognition after his contribution (another gem called Iguazu) to the soundtrack for this year’s Babel. The primary sound in his music is usually from an instrument called Charango which sounds very similar to the Santoor, which is used a lot in Indian (mostly classical) music. From the soundtrack of Motorcycle Diaries, the Che Guevara road movie.

Silversun Pickups – Rusted Wheel
A new(ish) band out of L.A. This is from their recent album Carnavas. Good stuff.

Matt Mays – When The Angels Make Contact
Matt Mays (w. El Torpedo) – On The Hood
Matt Mays is good talent but is not very well known stateside.

Catherine Wheel – Fripp
Remember Catherine Wheel, no? never heard of them? Well try this anyway, it’s one of their very best. If you need a category to place this piece in, well, 1990′s alt-rock would suffice I guess.

Pink Floyd – Pigs (Three Different Ones)
I recently gave Animals a re-hear (is there such a word?) and I really think it’s underrated in the Floyd discography. People talk about Wish You Were Here, Dark Side of The Moon, The Wall but this does not fare very well in conversations. Maybe it should, although my Floyd favorite Meddle probably fares even worse. Let me be a snob and say that these people could’nt plumb depth of a puddle. As an interesting side note; there was fleeting nod to the Animals cover (the floating balloon pig in front of two giant chimneys) in one of the scenes in the recent film Children of Men.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – All You Do Is Talk
Ooooh.. something semi-decent from a band from the Bay Area. That alone makes this worth putting on the list. Seriously, the bay area has a serious deficit of musical talent. I think the Jefferson Airplanes and Grateful Deads of the worlds sucked up the regions musical karma from the next generations quota too .. just kidding!

Porcupine Tree – Fadeaway
Have I praised this band enough? Have I probably listed this song earlier? Well who cares, the song is that good.

My Bloody Valentine – Soon
Shoegazing pioneers My Bloody Valentine’s landmark (and last) album Loveless has this kicker to close the album. I you ever need an introduction on what distortion is, please do hear this album. It will be very very instructional.

Slowdive – Soulvaki Space Station and
Slowdive – Shine
.. because I mentioned shoegazing.

Tears For Fears – Sketches Of Pain
You know Tears for Fears right? Them of the Everybody Want to Rule the World fame? By the way that song’s surely on the most overplayed songs of the century list. Tears for Fears have actually done pretty interesting things here and there that do not get much attention. This song is one example. The standout in this song is how it breaks into a flamenco style three-fourths of the way through. The sound is a bit processed but it’s pretty nevertheless.

Tears For Fears – The Working Hour
Pretty brass sounds tie this one together nicely. Again one of the Tears’ lesser known numbers.

Wilco – Impossible Germany
Wilco is a puzzle I am still trying to solve. I also plan to enroll myself in a learn-Wilco-in-21-days course to better understand what their music is about. Oh, I know I know, there is no such thing, but seriously, a lot of the alt/folk/country-rock bunch praised Being There and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot to the high heavens. That means any self-respecting music-lover should try a little harder to see what’s really going on. No? Well, at least this song is more radio friendly than most of their products. It’s from their recent album Sky Blue Sky. Starbucks proudly displays this among their album wares these days there surely is something to Wilco. Right? No?

My brother has been insisting for a while that I watch Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou. I am not a big fan of their storytelling or movie-making style but I finally ended up watching this
movie. Actually, I had seen it a long time back and at that time the movie did not quite register, because I have no recollection of either liking or disliking it. My brother alerted me to the fact that it’s loosely based on Homer’s Odyssey, something, which again had not registered earlier even though the beginning credits clearly say so. To be fair though you really have to have read Odyssey to draw parallels between the movie and the epic. Some parallels do not appear as characters or incidents but are drawn out as a subtext of some other incident in the movie. It’s not as if the Coen brothers have relocated the Odyssey to a more contemporary setting. Instead they have taken the base fabric of the epic, the travails of Odyssey (making an appearance here as a vain, pomade covered, hair-style obsessed convict on the run called Everett, played with relish by George Clooney) on the road home after exile, and taken characters and incidents in Odyssey and weaved them into a comedy drama of their own story of a man on the run. The conceit works really well here. The Coen brother’s story is funny and quirky. John Goodman turns up as a crooked one-eyed bible salesman, echoing Cyclops, the Sirens also make an appearance, and Everett’s wife Penny has a suitor in his absence much like Penelope in the epic.

Only a day or two after watching the movie I came across the Tim Buckley (Jeff Buckley was his son) song called Song To The Siren. As the name suggests the lyrics are about a guy who’s lured by the song of a Siren. Soon after, I heard a cover of that song by the group This Mortal Coil and I was totally floored. It’s an absolute beauty. Even though the lyrics would suggest that it’s a man singing, This Mortal Coil’s version has Elizabeth Fraser (best known as the lead singer of Cocteau Twins’), a woman, as the lead singer. Her voice has this quality that fits the mood of the lyrics perfectly and expresses capitulation to the Siren’s song beautifully. She just transports the song to a different realm entirely. If you get a chance give it a listen (A version with much below sub-par audio is here). Oh, and maybe brush up your Greek Mythology to get a little context before you listen to it, or read up the parts in Odyssey where Odysseus encounters the Sirens on his journey back home. In O Brother, Where Art Thou, the Sirens do make an appearance. Everett and his two companions-on-the-run, are driving on a tree-lined highway when one of them, spying these girls through the trees, yells at Everett to stop. They all rush out to near where three girls are. They are singing (very ethereally) and washing themselves and their clothes (very delicately) at a river bank. The fellows are enchanted and stare open-mouthed. These ladies walk up to them, not saying a word, still singing and swaying seductively. And boy are they seduced. During the course of their singing, the girls stiff them with some local wine and the next thing you know two of them (Everett and the slightly dense Delmar) find themselves waking from a deep slumber, near the same spot they saw the Sirens, and one of three is missing. It turns out much later that the girls had trussed up one of them (the hot-headed Pete played by John Turturro) and turned him in for a bounty on the heads of these runaway convicts.

Tourfilter is a website that tracks tour dates of bands and singers. I think it’s a fantastic service and a great example of content aggregation by collaboration. This is AJAX powered, script driven WEB 2.0 stuff that really works and is useful.

It’s remarkable how Indian cinema has re-treaded the guy-loves-girl/guy-loses-girl/guy-to-parents-disapproval-followed-by-parents coming around formula for, well, since when they started making films. Bomarillu, from the Telugu film industry, was a colossal hit last year and it too retreads the same formula. You can judge how well a movie did in India (and this is especially true for Telugu films) by how long it takes for them to get released on DVD in the US. For Bomarillu it was a very very long time indeed. After finally watching the movie on DVD (it released recently), it’s easy to understand how it did so well.

One of the reasons is how the relationship between Siddhu (Siddharth, last seen in his wonderful turn as an insolent son in the Amir Khan’s ‘Rang De Basanti’) and his father (Prakash Raj) is portrayed. The father is a domineering man. He is the head of a joint family of eigth, is a successful businessman and has pretty much hijacked the decision making process of the entire family. Siddhu resents this very much and this leads to a spectacular showdown towards the end of the film, where all his resentment comes tumbling out. This scene is why I particularly liked the film. It’s very dramatic but it is treated carefully and neither character loses balance. There is no ear-splitting music. There is crying and everyone in the family is emotional but even then the proceeding are never absurdly dramatic and logic never leaves the room.

The other reason is the character of Haasini (Genelia D’Souza) who plays a “happy-go-lucky” girl. The way Genelia D’Souza plays Haasini as a trusting, twittering, chattering, cutesy girl almost makes you feel that’s she’s off her rocker in the beginning. All that changes in the second half after a series of events leads her to land in Siddhu’s (the guy of the guy-loves-girl story) house to live for seven days. She’s pretty much the same but something has changed and by the time the film reaches the end you see that she’s not exactly off-kilter. She really is happy-go-lucky and there’s nothing really wrong with her. She’s an anomaly in the modern world. A trusting person ready to place faith in any person who talks nicely to her. Whether such people exist or not depends entirely on how jaded your world-view is and how cynically you view the rest. The ‘innocent’ girl is a common staple of Indian cinema, but the way Genelia plays the character, it comes off rather heartwarming in the end and that’s what you will remember.

Sure enough, Bomarillu has all the masala-movie ingredients. A coterie of comic friends for our hero, the heroine’s father (a doting, decent drunkard and a minor player in the proceedings) and song-and-dance routines. However, in the end the movie makes you feel good. It’s well made, is not loud, very funny in parts and Haasini’s character and the father-son relationship are well played out. Boy loves girl and the father disapproves but what’s refreshing is the the way the father comes around with things never going over the top.

Røyksopp – What Else Is There from The Understanding
Karin Dreijer’s vocals and this video make it a stand-out.

Røyksopp – Because It’s There from The Understanding

Røyksopp – Melody A.M (Album)
Yup. I’m endorsing a whole album here. It’s that good. It also has the song Remind Me which was made famous by one of the Geico Cavemen commercials. The cavemen concept, incidentally, got a life of it’s own. More about that here.

The Knife – Marble House from Silent Shout
and as we were talking about Karin Dreijer earlier, this happens to be her own group.

Modest Mouse – Fire It Up from We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank

Modest Mouse – Gravity Rides Everything from The Moon and Antartica

Red Hot Chili Peppers – Snow (Hey Oh) from Stadium Arcadium

Probably the best song from this album.

INXS – Afterglow

Queens of the Stone Age – No One Knows (U.N.K.L.E remix)
This turbo-charged adrenaline rush of a remix (of an already decent song) is perfect background music in the latest Jason Bourne movie trailer.

and now for a segue into some old classics,
Stevie Ray Vaughan – Voodoo Child (Slight Return)

Jefferson Airplane – Embryonic Journey from Surrealistic Pillow

Jefferson Airplane – White Rabbit from Surrealistic Pillow
Probably one of the trippiest song ever made!

His-awesomenesses A. R. Rahman (Yes, he is that good. Both a formidable composer and a very good singer. More on Rahman soon.) recently released a single and accompanying video called Pray for me brother. There was some hype over the release of the video. Normally, everything by Rahman deserves a careful listen. Rahman’s music never sweeps over you. It seeps into you, gradually, after you have heard it a couple of times. I have heard it many times now and I am surprised at how mediocre both the song and video really are. See and judge for yourself.

A recent ruling by the US Copyright Board has been judged to be a death blow to internet radio stations. It proposes new royalty rates for the operator of these stations which remarkably, also apply retroactively. These proposed rates are stratospheric. Most of these stations operate with razor thin margins, so this sounds a death-knell to their existence.

For me personally, this is very very disheartening. I am not a native English speaker and western music (and here I include all genres like pop, rock, jazz, hip-hip, trip-hop, what-have-you) has been an acquired taste over the years. Not only has Internet radio has been the only source of diverse music for me, it has been an education tool. The playlists on these stations Introduce me to new sounds every day. Take a look at the number of channels at SomFM, the playlist at Radio Paradise, or at KCRW. When you discover sounds you discover a culture, you discover people and you discover a country. The blues find their genesis in the US. If I listen to B. B King or Stevie Ray Vaughn I am tempted to find out about them. In turn, I discover what made the men and their music. This chain of action would have led me discover all about the roots of blues and follow the players. If I follow the discussion thread on Beatles’ landmark A Day In Life I am not only part of a community, I also learn peoples ideas and opinions on what makes the song great. DJs like Bill Goldsmith at Radio Paradise or Nic Harcourt at KCRW talk to you. They are running these programs because they care about the music and you can see the care they take in programming the playlists. This kind of interaction, diversity or commitment to presenting music in a way that’s always fresh is wholly absent from commercial radio.

There is a growing movement afoot to get the ruling reversed or at least get the terms changed. I hope that it does get changed. My personal interest aside, it does look like a simple evolutionary step. Since I am not a US citizen I cannot get directly involved but I can give you these pointers on this issue and calls-to-action.

Info

Action

Update [03/20/07]: The issue got slashdotted today.

The list this time is all Hindi.

Bidi – from the movie Omkara

Raunch stuffed to the gills. What great fun! A rare song that manages to not sound cheap while being deliciously risque

Naina – from the movie Omkara

Just plain beautiful. A short treatise on the, well, eyes. Actually even though “eyes” is a literal translation for “naina” it just does not cut it. “Naina” conveys something much softer. I guess that’s one of those things that is utterly lost in translation.

Shafqat Amanat Ali Khan & Salim Merchant – Yeh Honsla from the movie Dor

Daler Mehndi & Chitra – Rang De Basanti from the movie Rang De Basanti

Rabbi Shergill – Bulla Ki Jana

It’s in punjabi and translations are available freely.

Bodhi Tree – Sab Ka Katega

This song was done by my brother Abhishek’s band. It’s not a plug, it’s a genuinely fun song. It can be download for free from here. While you are there check out a song called “GMD”. I believe it was quite an underground sensation last year in India. But be warned. It’s not for those who are easily offended.

When I was a young I had quite a few of these Hasbro Transformer toys, so I am really interested in seeing how the movie based on the comics (accompanying the toys) turns out. The latest trailer for Transformers has come out and it looks fantastic. Check it out here. There’s also a brief glimpse of what looks like the Optimus Prime transformer in it. He is the blue, white and red one in the trailer and is the leader of the good transformers, the Autobots, from the comics. So really, he is not red, white and blue for no reason. The movie promises to be exciting as its directed by the blow-em-up specialist Michael Bay and has Steven Speilberg attached to the project as an executive producer.

One annoying thing about watching a movie in a group, is that burden of expectation on everyone to lay a verdict on the movie right after you walk out of the theater. This is especially true when the movie is not a pure entertainment piece. I am sure you can picture the scene. The end credits roll and the throngs start the silent shuffle out of the theater. The quiet is only punctuated here and there by an expressive few who might outright say that they loved or hated the movie. Most of them from among the younger lot. As soon as you are out, however, there’s a brief moment of uneasy silence. A silence where everyone expects the other to start passing judgment. Most movies – and I am talking about the ones that can easily be determined to be well made and have a story to tell – are easy to like or dislike, or even dismiss.

Babel, however is not one of those movies. Many of the reviewers and others who have watched it seem to have one major complaint with the movie. The problem, it seems, is the lack of a purpose. That seems to bother a lot of people and I have read and heard people ask “What was the point of the movie?”. Which to me brings up the question of why should we expect every movie to have a point, a moral or an implied conclusion? I am sure a gazillion pointless movies are churned out every year. Movies that neither end up neither entertaining, nor educating, nor even telling a compelling story, and people do not complain about them. Movies like Babel, however, can be seen to merit different treatment. A mainstream feature with a high profile director (Alejandro González Iñárritu) and an equally high profile star cast (Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Gael García Bernal are the major leads) naturally attracts more attention and is therefore reviewed more critically. If it’s a drama then it is also expected to have an ending that is a neat conclusion to whatever came before.

To me, a movie like Babel is a rare treat because it does one thing very well that not many movies do. It tells a compelling story. In this case not one, but three different stories. Consider this a three story version of Canterbury Tales, with Alejandro Iñárritu as the narrator of all the tales and with all the tales sharing a common subject, the many roles of the spoken word. The confusion sown by different languages in the world is the theme here. Hence the title Babel, referring to the Biblical Tower of Babel. The absence of language, the understanding, misunderstanding and lack of understanding resulting from the spoke word, all of these aspects underly these stories. The pleasure of the movie is in the stories themselves, not in trying to fish out a moral from it or looking for a satisfying conclusion. It’s beautifully made and acted and there are so many subtle observation and moments that make it a very rich movie-going experience.

I’ve gone postless for a rather long time and I need to get back in the groove. So let me start slow here. Here’s a typical song(s)-of-the-day/week/month post. I intend to make this a regular thing, with songs from both the past and the present. Follow my lists and you’ll surely gain a couple points of cool each week.

Neil Finn – Elastic Heart from One Nil.

I always thought that FLAC encoded digital tracks are only used by raving Phish fans. I have this in FLAC along with MP3 and boy does FLAC sound good. A nice groove with Neil Finn (of the Crowded House fame) stretching the vowels every third word. Some interesting touches include the electronic bird chirp in the background in sections. If you have your headphones on, you’ll feel that it’s the early morning bird. At the start and end of the song there’s garbled vocals which sound like words from an Aarti. There’s a lot happening here so give it a couple of listens, preferably with those cans on.

Zero 7 – In The Waiting Line (Dorfmeister Mix)

A nice mix of the Zero 7′s In the Waiting Line from their album Simple Things.

Mogwai – Hunted By A Freak from Happy Songs For Happy People

Instrumental happiness. The best piece from this album.

Blur – Tender from 13.

Slow, rambling, tuneful. I seriously consider anything Damon Albarn puts out.

Led Zeppelin – No Quarter from Houses of the Holy.

Old gold.

What mad(?) art. First look have a look at the ad., then marvel at what the guy creates and finally read more about the man in this Wired article from last year.

via kotteke.org

Meet Veronica Mars – gutsy crime fighter, loving daughter, purveyour of smart aleck comments and a class warrior. If you have not watched it yet go get the DVD right away. It’s one of the most interesting shows made in the recent times and is in it’s third season. One of the things that I enjoy the most (apart from the well written storylines and characters) are the snappy conversations between Veronica and her father, played by Enrico Colantoni.

via TPM via In These Times.

Creative, engaging and fun flash animation.

Animator vs. Animation by *alanbecker on deviantART