Love in the time of Terror

First things first, the title of this article does not refer only to the plot summary of Bollywood's latest offering My Name Is Khan (a film layered in controversies ranging from its plot to its lead actor being detained for hours at an airport for questioning and not to mention the famous pre-release controversy where once again Shiv Sena were adamant to disrupt the screening of the film following some comments from the leading actor regarding Pakistani players not being given a chance to make an appearance for this years Indian Premier League). It is often said that love and terror are the two poles of extreme human emotions. The statement might be slightly difficult to understand given that many will dismiss its authenticity. How can love and terror be parallel emotions?

Once again its one of those terror related questions which are extremely difficult to understand and answer. One of the principal questions My Name Is Khan asks the viewer is what is terror? What is its nature? How does terror differ for a victim of the 9/11 tragedy or a mother (portrayed valiantly and brilliantly by Kajol) who's son gets killed as a result of the racial hatred prevalent in the West following the events of 11th September, 2001. Terror is not an entity. It does not have a distinguished appearance. Its unknown. Its movements are unknown. The worst thing is that it can strike anywhere, physically, mentally, socially and politically. Since terror is without a proper form its deceptive. So the pain it causes is similar even if the medium of its' strike are different. The reason why I liked My Name is Khan as a film is because it weaves the message of multiple terror activities. Films on Islamic terrorism are not new in Bollywood. Mani Ratnam's Roja (1992), Anurag Kashyap's masterpiece Black Friday (2004) or the more recent New York and Kurbaan (both released in 2009) had storylines featuring the portrayal of Islamic terrorism. These films no doubt had a noble theme but focused on a single aspect of terrorism. Terrorism in these films were limited to a group of communally wronged people who were on the receiving end of exploitation for years and then decided to retaliate. These films are all very well made and have a noble message for the viewers as well. But what makes MNIK superior to these films is that terrorism itself becomes a supporting character and that too without the presence of any blasts and gunfights. The presence of terror as a character is so much haunting and disturbing throughout the film that is seems that terror is a primary antagonist and it is upto Khan (the protagonist and a religiously devout Muslim) to win back the love and affection of his wife using Love as the only available medium to do so.

This is something the world must have realized by now. Terror cannot be countered by terror. That is something we have been trying to do for years and the results are known to us all. And this is applicable for terror of all kind of all forms. Religious, racial,social whatever. What we need is proper realization and change. People who promote any form of terror should realize how futile it is and how it hurts the whole of humanity. Killing thousands of innocents will never succeed in changing the world's views or heaping atrocities which has been going on for decades. If whatever happened on the 26th of November 2008 is labelled as terror we cannot deny that the destruction of the Babri Masjid was equally terrorizing and frightening as well. I believe Shiv Sena's hooliganism regarding the release of My Name is Khan is a terrorist activity as is the killing of hundreds of missionaries in Orissa. Terror today has itself become a religion, an activity which speaks for itself. It does not need religious or social or racial fuel to burn and create division amongst human beings. Change can only be brought if we fight back and not using guns but something which will stop this forever. Love. Love can conquer anything, everything. We all need to love ourselves, love each other in order to fight against this ghastly menace. Only love can change those affected by this disease, those who think bomb blasts and killing innocents will help them in any possible way. The principal theme of My Name is Khan is Love. Love which is universal, which knows no boundaries and which should be used to combat terror,wherever it prevails.

Academy Awards 2010

Since the announcement of the nominations for this year's Academy Awards contenders, Hollywood is filled with buzz, speculation and interest (yes, that also consists of whether Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie will walk the red carpet together or individually). Now like every organized industry, Hollywood too has its groups and factions which tend to influence the award nominations. By the end of the year, leading newspapers,critics and fan created websites usually publish a list for the films which will be favored by the Academy when the nominations are announced. By the end 0f 2009 it was more or less known to the public which films might get a nomination for the prestigious and most desired award. And since this is the first time that more than five nominations for the Best Picture award is being given out the media buzz coupled with public frenzy is at its highest.

Coming to the nominations the films nominated for the Best Picture Award (namely Avatar, The Blind Side, District 9, An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious, A Serious Man, Up, Up In the Air) are a mixed bag. It seems that the Academy itself was too excited with the more than five nominations part and hence overlooked some of the best films produced this year. Not for a moment will I say that the ten films which have been nominated are no good films. They undoubtedly are. But for an award which is considered to be the most prestigious, most respected in the world of cinema and securing which is every director's dream I personally feel that the nominations (especially the ones for the Best Picture) should be more in respect with the content of the film rather than the names associated with it. With James Cameron's epic 3D Science fiction film Avatar getting a nomination, people from all the related fields of cinema were generally surprised. The common criticism Avatar received from critics as well as the audiences was the lack of an original story and any attempts to design character depth. Avatar undoubtedly was a visual marvel and perhaps the best viewing experience in the history of cinema. But since the Academy claims to encourage content over anything else when it comes to the awards, Avatar being nominated is slightly disheartening for film buffs like us. Something similar happened last year when The Dark Knight was not in the list of nominations for the best film award since the Academy considered it to be too dark and psychologically complicated a film to be honored with an awards as prestigious as the Oscar (a statement controversially issued by a very renowned member of the Academy who later apologized). The problem lies not in the fact that a film having least cinematic value (from a storytelling point of view) like Avatar getting a nomination. What bothers me is that many films telling far more original and better stories are being overshadowed for quite some time now due to the politics being played by various factions who are a part of the voting panel of The Academy and the studios controlling a major chunk of the voters. It was very shocking to see a film like Avatar with such a cliched script and a story extremely unoriginal (some critics even accused Cameron of copying elements blindly from Dances With Wolves and At Play in the Fields of the Lord) story securing a nomination while a film like 500 Days of Summer which is filled with freshness, a lovely heartwarming story,dazzling performances and a rocking soundtrack being unnoticed by the Academy. It was also very surprising to see The Blind Side getting a nomination because if one takes out Sandra Bullock's career best performance from the film all that remains is a melodramatic,predictable story, good for viewing with your family on a Sunday afternoon but definitely not enough to secure an Oscar nomination. Well written anddirected with extreme effort and dedication, films like Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience, Francis Ford Coppola's Tetro and Duncan Jones' Moon were ignored by the Academy. While the first two are certainly not Soderbergh and Coppola's finest works, they surely are films with good stories and great direction which I believe are what the Academy should consider when nominating films for the Best Picture Oscar. An Education a coming of age film about a young girl residing in London during the 1960s got a nomination as well. While certainly a very well made film An Education tells us a story on which films have been made previously as well. Repetitive content should be discouraged where new ideas are originating almost everyday. Sophie Barthes' Cold Souls, a hilarious debut by the female director (best known for her series of short films regarding the 9/11 conspiracy theories) having a brilliant,humorous story and stellar performance by its leads has been surprisingly ignored by all major film festivals this year. Also director Robert D Siegel's Big Fan a tragicomedy about a lonely sports fanatic and his empty discontented world was hardly mentioned in any critics' list for the top films of the year and was ignored by the Academy as well. Comedies Whip It (dir. Drew Barrymore), Zombieland (dir. Rubein Flescher) and The Informant (dir. Steven Soderbergh) had a very well written screenplay which balanced adequately between comic and dramatic moments. Nicolas Winding Refn's Bronson a gritty and dark portrayal of prison life and its hazardous consequences was one of the best films of 2009 which hardly got any exposure from any section of the media giving The Academy a great excuse to ignore it. The Coen Brothers' most matured film till date (A Serious Man) failed to earn them a Best Director nomination which was annoying since a film with such careful, affectionate direction deserved more than just a Best Picture and Best screenplay nomination. Michael Stuhlbarg, Robert Downey Jr, Nicolas Cage, Tobey Maguire and Viggo Mortensen were at the best of their acting abilities in A Serious Man, Sherlock Holmes, Bad Lieutenant, Brothers and The Road respectively. George Clooney (Up In The Air) and Morgan Freeman (Invictus) have given performances far more superior than the portrayal of their respective characters in the films for which they have been nominated this year. I guess its time The Academy learns to encourage films which are not produced by the Big Studios dominating Hollywood for decades and sticks to what it claims to stand for. If this continues for long the importance of The Academy Award will gradually decrease and so will the fact that it is respected by directors, producers,critics and fans all over the world.

Hemingway

This is a beautiful photograph. Ernest Hemingway with his two sons, playing with kittens on the pavement. Got it from Wikipedia.

Hemingway is currently my favorite author. I love his now (in)famous terse, gritty writing style. Not always, mind you, but when it works, it really does. To the uninitiated, Hemingway uses a style which basically does away with all the excesses and baggage that comes with writing. He uses a lot of stream of consciousness (I love using these terms), and his descriptions are beautiful, more often than not. At the same time, its very easy to overlook it all if you're in a hurry, which is one of the mistakes I made while reading A Farewell to Arms. A Farewell to Arms got me irritated the first time I started reading it: seemingly endless descriptions of a war torn country, and short, extremely short dialogues and a dry style of narration with not an ounce of emotion in it. Well, not emotion in the traditional sense anyway. Hemingway, it seemed to me then, had left out not only the 'excesses' but also most of what it takes to write a good novel! I was wrong. He leaves a lot to imagination, and I like that perfectly fine. He uses the imagery to help the emotions come to life, not blatant descriptions of feelings. He lets the reader decide what to make of a certain scene, and how to read the people in it. And the style works wonderfully in a war novel like A Farewell to Arms: war is ugly, and this dry, tough way of writing really brings out the futility and sadness associated with war, without giving in to emotion. Surprisingly, and ironically, this often leads to a greater emotional impact on the reader than usual. The last one-third of the book will shock you, not with what happens (the ending you can easily predict, especially if you have also read For Whom the Bell Tolls and Old Man and the Sea; Hemingway is not known for happy endings) but how it leaves you empty and drives home the point, all over again, that war is probably the most stupid, futile and sad thing on Earth.

I am reading For Whom the Bell Tolls now, and I think this will turn out to be the best Hemingway novel I've read yet. Also, he was a master short story writer, and I think he wrote short stories much better than he did novels. Which says a lot, considering how much I like his novels too.

I walked down a road with three friends mine
We were hungry and were looking for a place to dine
We settle for fried fish and whined
about a misunderstood psyche.

Runman and Platformers

I love platformers. I grew up playing them, and I think I prefer them over a first person shooter anyday. I don't know why I cannot have fun shooting people and taking headshots, but that's just me. I've tried. I have terrible reflexes when it comes to shooters, and in real life as well. The only fps I enjoyed playing was..erm..I forget. You get what I mean.

But a 2d platformer is gaming heaven if done well. Consider two examples which even a non-gamer would probably have heard about. Sonic the Hedgehog and Mario are two prime platforming icons, and while I'm not a fan of the former, I hold Mario in very high regard when it comes to pure, fun platforming action. Platformers need good reflexes too, just in a different way. You mainly jump around, gain powerups which help you kill your enemies with fireballs or become invincible for a short period of time. This formula has been copied, rehashed and run into the ground over the years, but it has also led to some unbelievably charming and interesting games as well. The later entries into the Mario series, for example, have all refined this tried and tested form of gameplay, with weirder powerups (frog suits, racoon suits, flying suits etc) and even more varied tweaks. Yoshi's Island had Yoshi firing eggs while jumping around in front of a hand drawn crayon background. You could eat eggs too, and poop eggs as well to store as ammunition. You could transform into helicopters, moles and what not. But the basic premise remained: jumping is the name of the game. Thats the foundation over which a platformer rests. So, Metroid is not a platformer. Yes, you jump from platform to platform but it isn't as important as that in a game like Ristar. In Metroid, you shoot, and then talk. Ristar is another little gem of a game released for the Genesis, very late in its lifespan, where you're a star with no power except grabbing onto things and propelling yourself forward or hanging on or throwing. But this simple little talent can be tremendous fun: actually, since it does away with stuff like powerups and special moves, you rely solely on your hands and this makes the game mechanics a lot more easier to grasp yet tough to master.

Platformers were probably the top selling genre around the early 90s, and by the advent of the Playstation, they were not all that popular anymore. Super Mario 64 brought the 3d platformer to the forefront, and led to some legends in the genre: Banjo Kazooie for instance. A bear and a bird in the bear's backpack which flaps in midair to help the pair stay afloat for a while, and performs a wide array of moves which include pecking, jumping very high, a rolling attack, and even flying around vast levels chock full of things to collect, jigsaw puzzle pieces at that, which when pieced together, lead to the next level. I'm telling you, this game took over my life. I'm not ashamed, not in the least, to admit that I spent a month doing almost nothing in my spare time but flying around and jumping about with a bear and a bird and collecting jigsaw puzzle pieces while I was at it.

If I haven't convinced you to give your fps s a rest and try out a platformer by now, I don't know if I can ever. But please, try Runman out. This is a free game, just 22 mbs, and I can honestly say its the most fun I've ever had playing a game since...I dunno, Beyond Good and Evil and Banjo Kazooie. Its what Sonic should have been, like many websites are saying. It takes inspiration from Mario, Sonic and even Yoshi's Island to a certain extent (simple, colorful MSPaint backgrounds, everybody!) but stands apart as something very very unique. You cannot die. But this game is a lot more than moving from point a to point b ...its moving from point a to b without stopping. Trust me, it starts out easy, but gets terribly difficult to master later on, especially if you're hell bent on topping your best scores. You'll spend a lot of time figuring out how to perfect your run, and whats most important is, you'll have plenty of fun doing it. Runman is a game a casual gamer would love, but if you're serious about gaming, and if you cannot rest without having figured out every trick a game might be hiding from you, Runman is your game. Platforming simply doesn't get much better than this.

http://www.whatareyouwait.info/
Runman link. These guys are geniuses.

Who's who

In order to inaugurate this...this thing, I decided: what the hell. Let's think out of the box. What can I possibly write about which won't have the words 'comics' and 'hemingway' in it? Then it struck me like a deep, booming voice we've all come to know and love...why not write about the other four soon-t0-be-contributing-I-hope-fervently members of this merry band who blogs and does other things.

So, do I define this group individually, or, you know, as one indestructible unit we have lately become? I decided to go with the latter.

See, once upon a time, there was nothing. Nothing interesting enough to write about. And then suddenly, there was too much. And we love it that way. There was too much of fooling around, too much of indifference to serious matters, and too much of seriousness when the shit hit the fan. Too much of life. Too much of harmless fun. And too much of a need to find our footing. Especially while catching hold of remarkably hard baseballs.

So, when this little life form finally saw the light of day, it also identified within itself distinct sections. These sections were so diverse they almost tore each other apart. Well, not all of the sections...some of them. And yet, at the same time, they were so similar, they reveled in this similarity and decided they'd fare better as a team. And while the real life seldom supports entirely either alternative, when this form finally learned to strike a balance, it gave rise to something beautiful.

We haven't named it yet. Its still learning to walk. But thats probably because it was born to zoom around in rocket propelled boots anyway.

I'm choking with emotion now, and also because I read a message sent by one contributor a few days back and can't stop laughing.

This could be the start of something beautiful. Or tremendously ugly. But it'll be fun, whatever it is.

Introduction

I pray to our collective gods this things lasts beyond this post. Our lives depend on it.

No, I'm not being sarcastic, S-----.

That reminds me, we have to come up with pseudonyms.

Hop on everybody.