On Dravid

A superb article on Rahul Dravid by Suresh Menon in Tehelka. This line sums up Dravid's ethos quite beautifully.

"While Tendulkar dominates through attack, Dravid lets his domination remain a secret between the bowler and himself"

Thoughts on Inglourious Basterds

Going into a QT film assures at least one thing - it will never be a staggeringly bad film. Which is not saying much but at least you know where you stand. Quentin Tarantino understands, and appreciates, badassery like few other directors do. Or to put it more accurately, Quentin's films and characters are more consistently badass than most other directors. My favorite bits in all his films are the digressions characters choose to take during key conversation pieces and how it all ends with almost poetic violence.

The opening scene in Inglourious Basterds is a classic instance of how to build up to a denoument which the audience already anticipates. From the moment the farmer hears the hum of the German motorbikes approaching you know serious evil is afoot and that people will die before the scene ends. But its the treatment of the scene that takes the breath away. And of course it helps if you have a character like Hans Landa to work with. Chrisopher Waltz approaches the character like a chemist would when performing a titration experiment. His affect on people around him (and the audience) is slow, assured, awe inspiring and eventually deadly.

Sylistically Inglourious Basterds is a departure from Kill Bill, infact almost its mirror image in the sense that KB was a series of set piece action sequences with sporadic bursts of dialogue where as IB is a series of conversation set pieces with intermittent spells of violence.

A nod especially to Melanie Laurent's Shoshanna who is hauntingly gorgeous in every frame she inhabits. The Basterds themselves were fun but, ironically, probably the weakest link in the film.

On Interesting and Unreal Place Names

A lot of wailing and gnashing of the teeth has manifested itself over the years among the anti-cognoscenti in this country over the naming/renaming of landmarks and roads and places and other eyesores that pop up from time to time. The majority market share has remained with the Gandhi family with a spot of competition from assorted regional and mythological players. In my book its a crime at par with defacement by photoshop, another national pastime.

Indian cities are such a repository of exquisitely named places, its a pity that very few have been analyzed or dissected in great detail. For example the Kempegowda Bus Stand area in Bangalore, is popularly known as "Majestic". Someone coming across"Majestic" for the first time might imagine that the city probably has more places like it - "Splendid" perhaps or "Pathetic" or even "Far-Fetched". Another favourite of mine in Bangalore is "Michaelpalya" which is just a very cool name.

Its hard to think of any Indian city that I have been to and not found a name that's profoundly WTF and memorable. Agra's Chippi Tola ( a place that sells springs of all sorts), Gadha-Pada, Man-Tola and Raja Ki Mandi; Lucknow's Bakshi ka Talab and Narahi; Raipur's Lendi-Talab, Mumbai's Chinchpokli, Tulsi Pipe Road are just some that I can think of right now, but I am sure there are hundreds more.

Will probably do a more detailed list of all such names that I can recall, later perhaps.

On Character Backstories

Dr Evil's is my favorite.

"The details of my life are quite inconsequential... very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds- pretty standard really. At the age of twelve I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum... it's breathtaking- I highly suggest you try it"

The Advent of Jacky B

I wait
with eager anticipation
for a starson
to debut
last name Bhagnani,
if you thought that was tacky
his first name is Jacky.