Slumdog protests! I am not a dog...but a kutta.

Much has been made of Danny-boy shooting in an Indian slum, and what a departure that is from the Bollywood dream factory. The protests surrounding the film also focus on the same thing. "Why don't foreign filmmakers depict another aspect of India, besides the poverty?", and so on . To show or not to show it seems, is the question.

Then there is the name business...apparently, people living in the shanties seem more than little upset being referred to as a slum-dog. I suppose it could have been a literal translation from "suar ka kutta" or "gali ka kutta". But just as a brother can call a fellow brother "nigger" whereas anyone else calling a black man "nigger" is beyond offensive, there is something jarring about a Brit referring an Indian slumdweller with a translated 'dog' from the local parlance of 'kutta'. It just is. I wonder if The Slum Millionaire, or The Millionaire from the Slums, or maybe even The Curious case of a Slumdweller would have as much effect?

There are two movies within the Slumdog Millionaire (which I should be pleased about - you know, two for the price of one!). The first third with the subtitled Hindi, and the rest, with the very British English. Everything changes as the language changes. the faces, most obviously. The coarse and piercingly beautiful children are replaced by polished and still beautiful adolescents. The direct documentary of the city with sets and crafted locations. The drama with melodrama...what is "bizarrely curious (more on that later)" is the directorial decision of not letting us in on this transformation (why the hell is Danny-boy nominated for Best Director?). It is beyond patronizing to demonstrate a fondness for the subject, and then to abandon it with as much calous laziness as one would abandon an adorable street puppy once it grows into a mongrel. Dealing visually with the adorable labrador Marley is so much easier than doing anything with a gali ka kutta; no matter how tiresome he is, he looks so sweet!

Somewhere else, in the media coverage of Slumdog, I read about the recent depiction of the 'underbelly' of India being scratched - in film (like this movie), and in books like the Booker Prize winner Arvind Adiga's White Tiger. Unfortunate comparison, I thought, because the White Tiger is all about that transformation (and I disagree heartily with Guardian's Mr. Rushby on his take of the novel): How the rag became rich. Slumdog on the other hand wants to enjoy the times after the rag became rich, but gratuitously shows a little bit of the stinky rag because it was aesthetic and visually stunning.

To be fair, it seems Danny-boy is fond of his characters, and the city in which his characters live. What makes Bombay fascinating to him is that in any frame, the belly and the underbelly seem present simultaneously. Very cubist, I suppose. But there are separations, despite the closeness. The transition from Dharavi to Malabar Hill is not seamless, and that is where he remains trapped in his visual frame. Adiga's White Tiger slit a throat to cross that line. Danny-boy's Jamal just changed clothes, sat in a chair, and spoke immaculate English. There is something more fake in calling that real than all the Bollywood fantasies (with all the songs and dances) put together. My sister (link deliberately not provided) articulates this language business more eloquently and bluntly than I can. She said, "the decision to move from Hindi with subtitles in the first part of the film to British English with teenage actors was actually offensive. Indian English is a wonderful and playful genre on its own. For instance, which policeman in a Bombay police station would say 'this is bizzarely curious'!!!! That was just lazy or an oversight---but it demanded too much of a leap of faith and I could not suspend my disbelief and forget that the actors were speaking british english. That's when the film lost me"...

The ability to move from Hindi (or any other vernacular language) to English, and all the kichhdi (yummy mixed stew of rice and lentils) inbetween is probably the closest we come to blurring that class line. And yet, even there, you maybe given up with a slip in the accent, or an expression. To deny the characters, and the audience, the tricky drama that Jamal, and the rest of us play out and seek our thrills and frustrations in is an opportunity missed. Bombay and Jamal, his love and all else captured by Danny-boy become mere entries in his tourist diary - fascinating, beautiful and enjoyable, but also disingenuous.

There are two things I do hope happen in all this - that A R Rehman gets all the awards he can possibly get at the end of the awards season. I like his music. And second, that should there be a sequel, Shah Rukh Khan is allowed to ham it up, instead of Anil Kapoor. One needs the ham when working with the kutta.

goodbye, dr. strangelove.

Dick move? What was Cheney doing packing his own boxes in the midst of [supposedly] 90+ movers. Makes me curious about the contents of the box. But that's Cheney - bizarre and mysterious to the very end.

revival. onto sunday reading.

slavoj zizek's political economy clearly needs wider reading...

float like a bird, not a feather....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cPWCaRWe0w

an alien in america: railway revival

India is full of enterpreneural ideas these days. A consistently loss-making entity such as the Indian Railways is now making hefty profits. The US can learn from IR, says GE CEO, among other admirers.
But could they please preserve our view?

netflix encounters #2: a classical masterpiece

Recently, I rented The Wire. Loved it. Got effusive about it: "The pacing - breathing itself. The dialogue, Shakesperean in its rhythms - the notes enframed in that pace. The characters, complex and complimentary - the orchestra. A Classical Masterpiece".
Critics (just about the entire NPR cew, for one) and the creators of The Wire compare it to a novel. In which case, it would be in the Classics section. Probably next to the Iliad, Odyssey or the Mahabharata.
As far as popular TV shows go, I can't argue that the classical view is superior to the Romantic one; to even introduce the idea that art is meant to nudge us toward moral improvement and social awareness is to concede to Romantic hope. But for some people, in some places, the classical view is more true, and in such cases, the artist's duty is to show us that these lives are no smaller for that. And it is -- as we always, always seem to forget -- not depressing but strangely exhilarating to see this truth about humanity acknowledged for once. It may not be the only truth, but it's a truth all the same.

kitty kitty bang bang

I would've almost missed this one. Gratuitous violence gives me nightmares - I wish they didn't, since I think I can intellectually argue with myself about the different facets of violence. So, when The Lieutenant of Inishmore began laying at the Curious, and all I heard was cats and humans being blown up, flung about or chopped up, I told myself there was no need to go see on stage what I can't see even on fast-forward.
But I did go (clearly). And saw dead cats, and a live one. Live humans being made dead. Spurts of laughter, spurts of blood.
"Lieutenant" is unapologetically a farce...and knowing Ireland has finally found the peace needed to be once again discovered by tourists allowed the laughter to be raucous. But I laughed the loudest at several critics and audience suggestions at the post-show talk-back of the cats - the dismembered and the intact - being the metaphors for Ireland - and all the accompanying sentimntality. Maybe so, but in a view utterly from the present, wouldn't it be more shocking if one didn't retreat into a metaphor and let it be unapologetically farcical about pet-lovers? Only ever so slightly more deranged than the regular ones. And yes, with Irish accents.

an alien in america: entry 5: the games we play

dubai, mumbai, shanghai. or else, goodbye...

...the joke circulating on my vacation.

an alien in america: entry 4: on parole

6 bags, 2 escorts, 7 flights and 2gb photographs later, I'm back on parole....

A Conversation among Adults

A reminder that an anti-PC converstion need not only be a comedic routine or a self-righteous rant against status-quos...it can be irrevocably gracious, sincere and free of any rancour - academic or otherwise. Regardless of the outcome of these elections, there is something so inspirational, yet pragmatic about Barak Obama. Bravo, and thank you.

(click on picture to start video)

wow?

Congratulations to Al Gore and the IPCC. The conflation of issues the NPP recognizes is certainlygetting interesting...although I cannot ignore the irony in an American winning the prize for work towards global climate change! It would have been entirely justified to award the IPCC the award by itself given how much global impact the publication of its fourth report had earlier this year, but the inclusion of Al Gore is a potent reminder to the Americans - who still hold most of the trump cards at such talks - by the Nobel committee about who it feels is on the right side of this debate, with the implication that Bush, Gore's political nemesis, being still very much on the wrong side. With Bush thankfully now into the final phase of his disastrous presidency, it can be safely assumed that he has his legacy very much on his mind. Anything that can nudge him towards choosing the right course of action on climate change is welcome - but I suspect forlorn.

As for Gore, I wonder whether this will now persuade him

to go again for the biggest prize of all? Well, the $1.5m Nobel prize fund should help pay for a few hours on the campaign trail, if he does.

I love the BBC readers' forum on this one....10+ pages and counting!

Precious cover, blank book

This weekend's movie accompanying take-out-Chinese, turned out to be a teasingly unsatisfying meal. For all its hip-and-trendiness, Japanimations can be downright vacant. Lavish graphics, cartoon plot. The wonderfully detailed animated Japanese flick "Tekkonkinkreet" is a wonder to look at, even as its increasingly pretentious manga-inspired story line outstays its welcome.

It's set in a crumbling Bladerunner-esque metropolis called Treasure Town, where a childlike (I suppose because he is one) 11-year-old urchin named White and his slightly older friend Black fly through the air - and get caught up in a Yakuza boss' scheme to level the old city and replace it with an amusement park. Save for an avuncular prune, Gramps , the adults who pass through their lives, including a couple of kindly cops and some oddly dressed gang members (they look ready to rumble with droogs), generally pass through without much comment. They offer the children greetings though precious little else, which makes the loneliness that clings to Black and White — illustrated by the expressive use of negative space — all the more poignant and unacceptable.

Beautiful and a touch bewildering, “Tekkonkinkreet” kinks up a fairly familiar story of love and loyalty with a helping of underworld crime action, the usual juvenile agonies and fuzzy philosophy. And more exasperatingly, this well-worn record seems to be stuck on a never ending "replay". The first-time feature director Michael Arias, an American who lives and works in Japan, stuffs a lot of exposition and action into 100 baggy minutes. Amid all the sharp turns, the periodic slicing and dicing, the gangsters and the shifty deals, the old man in the bathhouse and the snake in its lair, it can be tough to pinpoint what precisely Black and White are up to, much less the filmmakers.

Even so, “Tekkonkinkreet” demands to be seen, if only for its beauty. The generally bright palette and overall soft look work a nice contrast to the dark theme, as if the world itself were on the children’s side. The character design of the boys is particularly lovely, almost loving, from the scar slashed across Black’s right eye like a warning to the hat shaped like a bear’s head that White wears, his mischievous, smiling face peeping through the animal’s open mouth. There’s a touch of Saint-Exupéry’s “Little Prince” in these two children, whose adventures and lessons seem plucked right from this book: “To forget a friend is sad. Not every one has had a friend. And if I forget him, I may become like the grown-ups. ...” And that, as everyone knows, would be disastrous.