busy-ness / harishchanrachi factory . natrang

after a long time i feel like i need to post. this in spite of the fact that there has been a lot- almost too much going on- most of it connected with the fact that we leave today for berlin- presenting cinema city at the berlinale- or the berlin international film festival. kausik is making his bioscope; i have been working on a book; and then there is all the other stuff- calendars, interactive maps, etc.
meanwhile some film updates- this time two films from the marathi film renaissance- ‘harishchandrachi factory’- which is feel good fluff. not as slapstick and not really as funny- but adamantly heartwarming- and yet manages not to get sickly sweet. the girgaon reconstructions were too set like for my own tastes. i much preferred the gender sexuality complexity of ‘natrang’ at least while it was complex. atul kulkarni is perfect as the wrestler turned nachya and the music is pretty good- especially the lavni. the background score though owed too much to sanjay leela bhansali. it tells us what emotion to feel- like a sign. too luscious for the narrative.
Anyway- more from the berlinale much later- 21st is when I am back.

top hat . hairspray . chance pe dance . anvil- the story of anvil . blood

i love musicals. with their over- the –top song and dance set pieces and their characters full of charm and wit easy to love and laugh with. top hat’ is this classic fred astaire and ginger rogers farce from the 1940’s. some mindless plot about about mixing up identities is merely an excuse for some gorgeous dancing in pure white luxurious hotel rooms styled in florid hollywood art deco or in pavilions in the rain, and that lovely dance sequence in an italian hotel. and the conversations between the players are funny and sexy. ‘hairspray’ is john waters super camp tribute to college films of 1980’s looking back at the fab 60’s- think ‘grease’. while ‘grease’ could be seen as a classic to uphold all of the heteronormative values of the american dream- waters exaggerates these to show just how gay middle america really is with its big hair and over the top smiles. subversive but so endearing. nothing like that can be said of the awful ‘chance pe dance’. while shahid kapur and genelia try to make the best of it by being unwaveringly charming and perky the film plods along the same old same old route- delhi boy comes to bombay to make it big… and eventually through reality television does. and you know something is wrong in a dance film when you cant remember a single song. having hear raves about this film about a metal band which having had its 15 minutes of fame (by playing beside bon jovi, of all the people, in japan) in the 1980’s disappeared into nothingness; i thought it would be more than merely a rockumentary from vh1- it was not. except that it was also a reality tv show that follows the band as it scrounges together the money to record their 13th album. ‘blood’ which i just saw early morning today was a gorgeously made anime set in post-war japan. the last vampire is hired by the us to kill the shape shifting monsters. it all happens one halloween night. nothing earth shattering in terms of plot- in spite of the shallow metaphor regarding war thrown in at the end – how we kill each other in wars- but so so beautiful. to watch.

top hat . hairspray . chance pe dance . anvil- the story of anvil . blood

i love musicals. with their over- the –top song and dance set eices and their characters full of charm and wit easy to love and laugh with. top hat’ is this classic fred astaire and ginger rogers farce from the 1940’s. some mindless plot about about mixing up identities is merely an excuse for some gorgeous dancing in pure white luxurious hotel rooms styled in florid hollywood art deco or in pavilions in the rain, and that lovely dance sequence in an italian hotel. and the conversations between the players are funny and sexy. ‘hairspray’ is john waters super camp tribute to college films of 1980’s looking back at the fab 60’s- think ‘grease’. while ‘grease’ could be seen as a classic to uphold all of the heteronormative values of the american dream- waters exaggerates these to show just how gay middle america really is with its big hair and over the top smiles. subversive but so endearing. nothing like that can be said of the awful ‘chance pe dance’. while shahid kapur and genelia try to make the best of it by being unwaveringly charming and perky the film plods along the same old same old route- delhi boy comes to bombay to make it big… and eventually through reality television does. and you know something is wrong in a dance film when you cant remember a single song. having hear raves about this film about a metal band which having had its 15 minutes of fame (by playing beside bon jovi, of all the people, in japan) in the 1980’s disappeared into nothingness; i thought it would be more than merely a rockumentary from vh1- it was not. except that it was also a reality tv show that follows the band as it scrounges together the money to record their 13^th album. ‘blood’ which i just saw early morning today was a gorgeously made anime set in post-war japan. the last vampire is hired by the us to kill the shape shifting monsters. it all happens one halloween night. nothing earth shattering in terms of plot- in spite of the shallow metaphor regarding war thrown in at the end – how we kill each other in wars- but so so beautiful. to watch.

avatar. beaches of agnes. man on wire. the return

decidedly under whelmed by the pull-out-all-the-stops spectacle of avatar, i am not sure as to why some of the mega-budget did not go into writing a tighter script- or even imagining an alternate world a little more creatively. after all aren’t pandora’s strange blue people merely another version of hollywood’s neo-colonial obsession with the purity of untouched nature and those tribals who have this supposedly intimate connection with it. weirdly (and typically) this romanticism against technology is played out through a cinematic shock and awe juggernaut like you haven’t seen before. if only the imagining of the ‘other’ world went beyond the 'saawariya' blue and the floating mountains with some jurassic park creatures thrown in for thrills.

in ‘beaches of agnes’, agnes varda looks back on her life through the beaches that she knew growing up. often moving in the beginning, the film traced her history thorugh the people she knew, anecdotes about people she knew and staged installations thorugh which she wanders on the beaches. unashamedly sentimental, especially when it comes ot speaking about her late husband, some parts, i must admit made me cringe. but isn’t that going to be so when someone speaks straight ot the camera about the obsessions that have driven them so far. two images stand out from the film. the first, right at the beginning when a complex mirror game si set up on a beach; and the other at the end when she takes us to a pavilion completely made of film strips.

the build up to the tightrope walk between the two towers of the world trade center is described way too long- interspersed with stories of and from the team of madmen who planned it. thankfully in ‘man on wire’ 9/11 is not mentioned, except elliptically. the whole film is a straightforward talking heads documentary with a few staged historical shots hrown in for good measure. but everything does not seem to matter when he steps out into the sky and hangs suspended over new york, or between the towers at notre dame or from the sydney bridge. this is a strange kind of terrorism that makes beauty awe inspiring. i don’t mean to make too harebrained a parallel but was it a similar kind of feeling when we sat and looked at the wtc collapse? disbelief at the obsessions that leads ordinary men to such extremes to challenge the status quo?

the ‘return’ seemed to be an allegory. from the authoritarian father who has disappeared from the lives of the two boys and returns to teach them to be men, to the journey across the water to a deserted island where more tests of manhood are waiting, to the fear that leads to the tragedy at the end and the water beneath which everything is buried. maybe these were over-readings prompted by the few tarkovsky references thrown i at the beginning; maybe not.

idiosyncrasies / bioscope

what is one to make of this one- a mosque at the corner of linking road sells thai massages (original - like in bangkok) on its facade; or the next image which is a man in a dhoti and kurta in the middle of the street at juhu with a placard that says- 'apne dharm par chalo- sabse prem karo' on one side and its english translation- 'everybody follow your religion- love everyone' on the other side. and he smiles as the drivers of the cars wave at him.

and some images of the bioscope- under construction.

3 idiots. la luna. u. dreams of taleem. hunger

i understand the fascination with ‘3 idiots’ completely. it knows its target audience like the back of its hand. if only i was proved wrong and it didn’t but the laughter in all the predictable places in the hall and the gushing enthusiasm of everyone who has seen it shows that the team behind the script and the marketing knew exactly what they were doing. it must be only me, grouch that i am, that the fart jokes, underwear jokes and the piss jokes were plain juvenile; or that the caricaturish stereotyping of outsiders like studious tamilians or the poor or the sick was vicious. and in between all of this crowd pleasing ( for the target ausience is clearly the 22 year old almost adolescent men who would idolize pissing on doors as a sign of rebellion- or 39 year olds who wish they had done so in the non-existent glory days of their pasts) is the sermonizing- all done by the incredibly annoying aamir khan. he preaches to the principal, the parents, the girlfriend, the friends and to us about what learning is, what love is, what duty is, what truth is. and if this was not enough he does it while pretending to be a college kid by slouching his shoulders and raising his eyebrows and looking jaunty. that’s all it takes for a reviewer to say he acts well. around him is a cast that does not ham it as much. madhavan is workable while sharman joshi actually manges to be likeable. and even kareena kapoor is better. but joining aamir in the awful annoyance category is boman irani who rehashes his domineering patriarch role yet again- but this time with another fake accent.

another awful- but quite ina different way- was bertolucci’s ‘la luna’. an opera singer and her lustful relationshiop with her son- in italy. a ridiculous plot made even more so by everyone being just so serious about all the ridiculous mom on son sexuality. some rubbing, some kissing- all lit in gorgeous golden light. soap opera arty style.

‘up’ was much better. pixar animation about a man who after losing his wife takes his house on a trip to south america to fulfill her dreams. beautifully made and really quite moving in so many parts. even though in the later half the villain leers and action sequences are par for the course, the beginning is lovely – especially when the house lifts off the ground for the first time and soars through the city.

‘dreams of taleem’ was sunil’s tribute to chetan datar. a play within a play where a diector (probably datar) and his lover rehearse 1 madhavbaug- a play written by datar about coming out to a mother. extremely moving in so many ways the themes echoed against one another in the narrative and the sudden flourishes of camp whether devdas or the men in silver tights made sure that everything did not become too preachy.

‘hunger’ told the story of bobby sands who starved to death in the 1980s in dublin to protest against the british governments stand in northern ireland. the film follows characters around the prison where he is being kept for a long time including a prison guard and other fellow prisoners through their days in confinement before a conversation between sands and a pastor sets up the finale where in excruciating detail bobby sands dies. beautifully made.

bhiawandi . annual days and lecture series. visitors

bhiwandi

some time last week paul and me took a long arduous drive to bhiwandi to the offices for water supply, agriculture and small dams for data on the tansa river valley. and on the way we were caught in the smoke and squalor of the road and the heavy truck traffic of this industrial town that lies almost completely below a flyover by passing the main town. a truck scratched my side and i pitied the man and could not pick a fight .

a follow up the dutch trip took place in the conference room in school where we discussed collectives, partnerships and strategies for new alliances for architecture in the city.

the dinner at country club, andheri

the iudi conversation on 'alternatives to the master plan'

dad in college

mitali from the first year who won the gold in the commonwealth chess championship

in college the soap opera of the school continues. tears flow, tempers rise and it constantly seems like the world is falling apart at the seams- what with workshops where magic and music, graphic novels and the ubiquitous btech all compete for space- along with the cinema city exhibition being readied for berlin and the ‘looking east’ conference on asian cities. us looking at them?? regardless the chinese and the taiwanese guests were wonderful. joan du spoke of the shenzen area; professor shih wei lou of time and sheng huang showed his beautiful warm work` with a sense of humor that was most refreshing. especially after watching so many traumatized urban design proposals to save the cities of india. the recondition of design is assumed to be a problem- which means that the only way to see cities is through trauma. trying this. this is not to say that all is hunky dory. btu our resolutions to the conflicts within cities is always then based on some presumptions of what can solve them- and in the urban designers vocabulary these are – connectivity, merging, uniformity. this reminds me of the undisciplined city conference and the fundamentally unresolvable conflict between the vitality of the city and the static nature of policy.

as you can imagine, it is social life time all around too. medha is getting married in february and the kelwan was held in borivili which i could not attend because of the annuals. we met them the next day though along with the rest of the family.

atharva ayushka

and later we were surprised by kiran, karen, alison and feroz along with kiran’s girlfriend jessie from australia.

feroz, kiran, jessie, karen and alison

medha

arav

gauri

days of heaven . police, adjective

i find it hard to be able to understand what to make of ‘days of heaven’. a story about three iterant laborers who swindle a rich lonely landowner for his property. not that the story mattered much- or at least for me it didn’t. not even the landscapes or the time that they represented (1919)- for me the film was only about the gorgeous way it looked- bathed in a perpetual golden light. (a ‘magic hour’ film) i was told. the most incredible for me was the scene where the locusts descend on the fields and rise in dark clouds across the sky until an angry fire burns everything to the ground.

it was just yesterday that i wrote part of the brief for this years ‘reflections’ on our gangtok and leh studies where i present a case for the disintegration of known word and meaning associations into constellations of meaning. police, adjective, a romanian film about the gap between law that civilizes and the “right thing” to do. a police inspector spends days following three youngsters after they are reported to have smoked hashish. the law insists that he prosecute while he dithers. it is only when faced with the unflinching clarity of a dictionary defining ‘conscience’, ‘law’, ‘moral’ and police that his humanity is laid to rest.

dark city .goodbye solo. code 46 .meet me in st louis. a christmas tale. tulpan. and duluth/ the possibility of an island/ the city and the pillar

if there was a theme through all my fever films over the past few days holed up at home it must be the possibility of another place that always exists.

away from the perpetually dark city that transmogrifies every night into a new configurations- where identities are erased and reassigned is ‘shell city’- on a postcard and a billboard; and as an enormous poster on the edge of the city- beyond which is nothing. a bikini clad woman mechanically waves at us to join her in the sunlight and to walk in the waves. the perpetually shifting city rebuilds itself every night but this other place always stays. away.

all joy and laughter and pretty petty little things make up the musical ‘meet me is st louis’. in idyllic suburban st louis where the biggest show in the universe is being readied – the worlds fair. the two sisters vie to get married to their respective beaus as new york plays the part of the other place pulling them away just as their dreams begin to take shape. the big city where they will live in a flat away from everything that they know can never replace the pastoral friendliness of the small town that is anyway soon going to be the center of the world with its dazzling display of electric pavilions and neo classical splendor. judy garland’s voice quivers in the gorgeous ‘have yourself a merry little christmas’.

in a very different context- this time the steppes of kazakhstan- the theme is echoed. the suburban house is now a yurt where asa lives with his wife, her husband and their kids. his dream is drawn on the collar of his soldiers uniform. it is a yurt in the desolate landscape lit by the sun and the stars. tulpan is the girl he needs to marry to set up home and whom he will never have. the only eligible girl on the steppe. the city and the port where busty women will have their way with him and where he can be free (and has been) holds no interest for him. he has seen the world and settles instead for the dust storms, the sheep and the news of the world recited to him by his nephew rote from radio kazakh. stunning landscapes and lovely film.

‘a christmas tale’ was all it might have been if it was a hollywood weepie starring, i don’t know, diane keaton (?) as the dying matriarch whom the entire family gathers around to support and donate bone marrow to so that she survives. except that it was not. catherine deneuve plays the dying mother of a completely dysfunctional but strangely lovable family. a sister has banished a brother from the family and the mother has almost no capability of affection. more bergman than spielberg.

in code 46 delhi is a place for bat specialists and in shanghai in a sterile building called the ‘sphinx’ a woman is making fake ids for people to get out. an investigator who can read minds with a empathy drug finds her out and falls in love with her only to discover that she shares exactly the same dna as his mother. but more than the tale of love torn apart by the horrors of biotechnology gone mad, the landscapes were fantastic- the desert outside shanghai, the dark liquid lit city and the grubbiness of the ‘outside’ where people fall once they don’t follow the rules.

does solo live in this outside? a taxi driver originally from senegal in small town american where he meets william – another man on the edge of the american dream- who long for his family under cover. like ‘ a taste of cherry’ the pact is for the solo to drive william to a place outside the city where he is going to kill himself. solo find himself again in his family though and william disappears.

the ideal place for future man is an island. in ‘the possibility of an island’ the story of a very human comedian is told juxtaposed with those of his exact clones who have descended from him. they sit alone in a room surrounded by an empty landscape listening to the life of their ancestor- with its sexual obsessions, jealousies and fear of loneliness and death. eternal life has to be an island.

more novels: ‘the city and the pillar’ gore vidal’s really not that controversial gay love story. it seems so tame today but it must have created a furor when it was released. murakami’s ‘the wind up bird chronicle’ whose surreal intertwining stories make profound metaphors of everyday objects- like the deep well in which he finds himself. outrageous and hilarious is ‘duluth’ – another gore vidal. here two women die in a car caught in a snowdrift. one is reborn as a tv star who remembers who she was in her earlier avatar and the other as the heroine of a harlequin romance. somewhere along the way the narrative also picks up a sadistic blonde policewoman who likes to shave the pubic hair of mexican immigrant and a red spaceship shaped like a tack on the map of the city.

photopost and descriptions : nai in the netherlands / 'the undisciplined city' in delhi

amsterdam station

the lloyd hotel

the whale

pier developments

lloyd interiors

the night walk

my room

the lobby at lloyds

the jazz center

library

amsterdam harbour developments

ainsley's room

dining room

the ship

to rotterdam

nai

open city exhibition

the hotel

zus offices

morning rainy walk in rotterdam

maritime training institute / school

kunshtal

final presentation

modernist homes in rotterdam

rotterdam- this side of the bridge

the bridge

renzo piano

the luxor

housing across the harbour

the other bridge

rotterdam harbor (and a wedding)

cube houses

shopping on the central pedestrian street in rotterdam

pathe

walking in the rain

from my hotel window

the smell of garbage in the air really hits you when you step off the airplane after 7 days in the cold wet overcast cities of the netherlands. the nai hosted a workshop where 9 of us sat in conference rooms and discussed slums and social housing all day. in amsterdam we lived in style. the lloyd hotel designed by mvrdv with its dining room that shoots up 6 floors and the capital ‘d’ designer rooms. mine was on the top floor with a dormer window overlooking the harbour, prasad and rupali had the signature bathtub in the middle orange room while ainsley’s room became a bathroom with a turn of a wall.

the first day we met in a conference room in the new jazz center overlooking the city. ‘unsolicited architecture’ is an interesting turn of phrase. architecture that has no client but has a concern. on the first day we spoke to architects in the netherlands now but who originated in countries from around the world including brazil, colombia, south africa, china, indonesia and spoke of parallels and differences between policies and implementation in those countries. when a metaphor becomes the way in we see so many reciprocities. ‘disease/resource/ organism/ commodity… fine… but weapon???’

that evening we walked a long walk down newly developed piers along the waterfront where housing that ranged from tiny houses to enormous bulky brick dinosaurs protect inner courtyards and face out to the rain. across the water on some of the other piers was ‘the whale’ and an enric miralles housing project.

the second day we spent at the hotel and were visited by a few architects who had come to mumbai in september. 2012 architects showed us some of their work were kitchen sinks and windmill propellers become façade cladding and a playground respectively. the ‘harvestmap’ locating local resources was a terrific idea.

that evening i saw my favorite building in the netherlands. ‘the ship’ by de klerk is a post office and a housing project on the outskirts of the old town. red brick moulded into an expressionistic sculpture with intricate details and perfect scale. while most of the other work in the netherlands was essentially about surfaces and floating boxes- here the building worked in all scales- form the urban gesture of the tower and perimeter block to the organization where different units combine together in complex ways to the delicate and exotic detail on the surfaces.

dinner that night was at a fancy restaurant in an old hospital- the ‘smart’ project. in a room nearby- art exhibitions and on the plate- rabbit’s foot.

the inner city of amsterdam is excruciatingly pretty and touristy in a good way. even the red light area and other such sleazy entertainment is safe and easy. i am not so sure whether i liked it more than the much uglier and grittier rotterdam where we went the next day. completely bombed out in the war the city is filled with the anonymous modernism of post war reconstruction. today it is even the site for so much contemporary avant garde architecture that the netherlands architecture institute set up its center here. and what a center it is. huge exhibition space (where the ‘open city’ exhibition took over the whole space) an archive that ole walked us through and the offices where had our meetings. on the first day we were told about the urban renewal plans of the state in the netherlands and the evening we met zus- architects who have squatted an old neglected skyscraper. they spoke of the tenuous relationship they share with city authorities and the original owners of the building and of the plans they have for saving the building from demolition- including opening an exhibition/art space on the ground floor off the street.

we were supposed to go for an architecture tour on thursday morning but were completely rained out. but still we ventured huddled under our umbrellas to the harbor and looked across at the new bridge and the renzo piano skyscraper. a water taxi took us then northwards for more walks down the windy piers and up the gigantic maritime university. later the mvrdv offices were close by and we walked through their projects around the world.

on the way back we went through the kunsthal- close second on my favorite buildings list. like corbusier, mies and some roadside mall have been put through a blender and remixed into a modern art museum. postcards and toys. the last conversation was about discursive space and blogs reared their illegitimate head again. perhaps i need to spend more time on this again.

the possibilities regarding what can emerge are promising. too many different agendas perhaps. dinner was at a lively moroccan restaurant.

the ‘free day’ was spent waling around the streets of rotterdam. hanging boxes (again) bridges, housing projects (like the cubes), designer shops and later supermarkets and clothing stores and rupali and ainsley go crazy shopping.

and then we are back for hardly a day and i am off to delhi for a workshop called ‘the undisciplined city’ organized by the center for policy research at the habitat center. a cross disciplinary exploration regarding the informal city- discussion revolved around the nature of policy and the difficulties it has capturing the dynamics of the informal or the ‘undisciplined’. solly deconstructed all attempts at clarification by extolling the values of obscurity. and screwed us architects in the process - or challenged us to find new modes of practice. i wonder sometimes whether the aesthetic rather than the functional role of architecture can allow that space of intervention where architecture is not about making and breaking but rather about creating new possibilities. is architectures role then addressing the genius loci / myth of a site as a mode of re-reading the city. is this the lesson surrealist games can have for imagining the city. isn’t that what our second year projects have been about? cyborgs / tarot cards / exquisite corpses… as methods of rereading existing situations in new ways. other conversations further simplified the city into mutually exclusive formal and informal binaries, but almost everyone felt the need for new ways of speaking. the second day we spoke of the jnnurm largely and its successes and failures. bureaucrats, economists, social workers, political scientists, urban planners and architects promised to speak to each other again- soon.

daisies. ajab prem ki gazab kahani. of time and the city. neelkanth nirala. sharira

terrific in its irreverent frivolity, ‘daisies’ was a blast. two girls decide to go ‘bad’ and dump hopeful elderly men as lovers, gaily destroy a well laid out feast and generally run around doing naughty things to the ‘establishment’. when it was made, it was a critique of the soviet iron hand over czechslovakia. today it rails against ‘the man’ using surrealist imagery and mad cap pop humour.

‘ajab prem ki gazab kahani’ is only redeemed by the prettiness of ranbir kapoor and the easy going nonchalance of katrina kaif. they salvage the nonsense around them that makes character speak loud and shrill when they have to be funny and a plot that no one bothers to make sense of.

liverpool is the stage of a coming of age documentary drama in ‘of time and the city’. using mostly found footage and gorgeous soundtrack and a reminiscing voiceover terence davies tells its story and his. he longs for the past like all of us watching cities transform into beings we no longer know. t is unashamedly sentimental and lovely to watch- but nowhere as brilliant a journey as guy maddin’s similar bittersweet paean to his hometown ‘ my winnipeg’.

after a week since seeing ‘neelkanth nirala’ on stage i am still ambivalent about it. at one level the same anxiety of loss – this time of language- as a classical form- i understand. after all don’t i also dramatically rue the complete illiteracy of coming generations. i could not wholeheartedly participate in this grieving for the loss of what has after all become the national language; nor could i get incensed by its reactionary tone (the devoted wife/ daughter)- given my own anger at similar posturing by the mns- but this time for marathi. the trope of suffering artist turning away from worldly fame and fortune has been seen before too many times and this play did not add much beyond. perhaps the theater as a space flattened the characters even more- but then there was the language itself. the cadences and rhythms, the over reaching metaphors whose ambitions and registers we are to embarrassed to speak in. the language was beautiful.

so stylized and precise it left me cold- ‘sharira’ where dancers from kalakshetra danced to live music by the gundecha brothers at the ncpa. fantastically mounted, the bodies of the dancers stood still and moved slowly through incredible postures in excruciating slow motion. the eroticism only exploded once in a while when their humanity- impatience, irreverence, anger- were allowed to break through the stone like perfection of the movements. the music filling the room was beautiful.

new phone photos / The Man's Woman and Other Stories. eccentricities of a blonde girl . gigante

informal cities

shop at cpaa

mami 2009

amit dutta's new film 'The Man's Woman and Other Stories. was, like 'gandha', structured around three short stories. the stories though were much better than the ones in 'gandha' and the film making also way more ambitious. self consciously formal and carefully constructed, the highly stylised film made profundity of every single moment with super wide angle shots, slow pans and tracking shots and sudden cuts, until everything was weighed down by a gravitas that made you feel like there was more that was beyond your own meager understanding. 'eccentricities of a blonde girl' by manoel de olivera made nothing out of another short story about a love affair between a girl in a balcony and the accountant who stares at her from across the street. tedious. i am a little tired of these low budget love stories that are steeped in the everyday lives of marginal characters. in 'gigante' the love affair is between a shy, huge security guard and a clean woman in a mall. he falls in love with her over a surveillance camera and stalks her until they finally meet at the end on a beach.

informal cities. gandha. soundtrack for a revolution. genoa.la pivellina. the girlfriend experience . bank robbery

on saturday with photographs and videos that ranged from the rooftop shanties in hong kong to a housing colony below a bridge in manila discussion at the ‘informal cities’ revolved around the role and responsibility of the artists as ‘voice for the oppressed’. often, as it was destined to be, aesthetic questions kept jostling for space against the sloganeering.

at mami on sunday we started off with ‘gandha’ a marathi film with three episodes about the sense of smell. while the first was charmingly over the top when a typist in a college falls in love with the smell of agarbattis from a student, milind soman and sonali kulkarni in the second episode where he is hiv positive and smells of medicines was too soap opera for me. in the third episode neena kulkarni sits aside in ‘that time of the month’ and listens and smells the birth of a child in a house in rural maharashtra.

speaking of the sanctity of good intentions standing in for any aesthetic ambition; ‘soundtrack for a revolution’ intercut history channel footage about the civil rights movement with the ‘we shall overcome’ style chants of the protestors. in between these talking heads gave us struggle stories that we have heard too many times before and contemporary r&b singers like wyclef jean, the roots and joss stone sang updated versions of the songs. not nice in spite of the incredible voices.

in michael winterbottom’s ‘genoa’ way finding in the labyrinth of the medieval italian city becomes an allegory for the process of healing after the death of a family member. two lovely girls and their father played by colin firth spend a summer in the city of narrow lanes between tall buildings where every street looks the same.

the gritty realism of many new european films i am seeing nowadays focuses on the lives of the those living on the edge of the mainstream. in ‘la pivellana’s case it is a group of circus performers living in mobile homes surrounded by animals. shot in that grainy hand-held way that all these films are, the plot concerns a little girl abandoned by her mother who is found by a family and raised for a few months. everyone in the film is invariably and tryingly sweet and caring despite the relentlessly bleak surroundings.

yesterday we saw two films, starting off with steven soderberg’s terrific ‘ the girlfriend experience’. unclassifiable in any genre- somewhere between reality television and fiction (as if there is such a difference) the film follows a high end escort in new york as she navigates her life between her live in boyfriend, her many clients and her image as projected on the internet.

after a few drinks are ‘firangi paani’ the estonian film ‘blank robbery’ looked really tacky. grainy as hell, the story did not make watching the film any easier. some conman comes out of jail and fails at trying to come clean when his nephew forces him to rob a bank with him.

new phone / dogtooth . rage . my blueberry nights . ratatouille

i was so complete idiot yesterday when i left my phone alone for merely a second while i opened the car for the guy to change the tires. in that millisecond it was gone and i was forced to carry out ridiculous body searches on the guy who had just passed by. i was so embarrassed. that effectively meant that i had to get me a new phone and i got one with a better camera but way slower in response. oh well, live and learn.

meanwhile the film watching just got more intense with the main festival that started today- and we are already two films down. sally potter’s ‘rage’ purports to be a story shot on a cell phone backstage of a fashion show. fashion models (including a deliciously camp jude law), designers, businessmen, cops and all sorts of fixers speak against a blue (or pink/orange/red) screen to the camera over seven days while accidents and murders occur on the ramp. it must have been the acting that redeemed the film because i really liked it – in spite of its pretensions and the fashion industry expose storyline and characters. but ‘dogtooth’ took the claustrophobia of domesticity and made it horrifying- but never unbelievable and always with a nasty sense of humour. two girls and a boy are kept captive in an ideal house- swimming pool and sundeck- by their parents. complicated plots are woven to make prisons inside the prison- rituals of celebration and rewards, competitions and games. only one outsider is allowed to enter to satisfy the sexual urges of the boy. it would be unwatchable if it was not so brilliantly funny in parts and shockingly dark in others- like the killing of the cat, or the scene where the elder girl finally gets a name ‘bruce’ by watching jaws, or the removal of the dogtooth by the dumbbell.

without christopher doyle wong kar wai has gone crazy with darius khondji over ‘my blueberry nights’. the scenes in the bar where the two would be loers meet shimmer in glazing and mirror- hazy dizzying madness. as norah jones journeys across the country to find herself after a break up- it merely gets more visually gorgeous and utterly pointless. all style going nowhere.

ratatouille made me hungry. a rat cooks up french cuisine in a fancy restaurant in paris. my favorite scene was the rat rising from the sewers of paris climbing the pipes of an apartment building watching murderers and lovers until he gets to the roof and looks across at the eiffel tower. it reminded me of my favorite of the paintings that ranz, sau and pottu had made- ‘the boy in the balcony’.

pen

got back from the third year study trip yesterday. pen. just across the harbor from the city. not that far, just off the mumbai-goa highway and the scene of some of the most atrocious land grabs by india shining. between the highway and the coastline is a land of incredible fertility. flat rich soil that has been reclaimed form the sea by the ancestors of the agri community. this is a fact that is reiterated by almost everyone we met over the two days that i was there. they are very proud of this part of their history as they are about the agitation for land that they carried out in the 1930’s for land reform, by not tilling the land for 7 years straight. they won that war; and now they hope ot win this one. on the road to the coast that runs through paddy fields as far as the eye can sea we saw a board that advertises ‘arrow city/ manhattan’ which i assume is aprt of the sez being planned for that area by reliance – maha mumbai. the war is against this- and it seems well organized, articulate and firm about its position. there are books of poems written against the sez which are to be sung by to tunes of popular hindi and marathi songs, a booklet on the culture of the agri community, posters that tell the farmers of what future waits fro them if they do sell their farms to the sez. there are even ideas regarding what other possibilities can be there for development within the area. these include aquaculture and organic farming. every house has a pond to the rear where fish breed; one farmer has a prawn farm which makes him tons of money. why in the world would they want to sell out? it seems that the state has done everything within their power to stifle the farmers in the area. a pipeline that was to bring water to the area so that they could have a second crop has been stopped. abandoned pipes lie across the landscape. maharashtra is the only state, it seems, where industry gets preference over agriculture for water supply. every corner and at every house we were asked about our business there. the kids are studying families from different classes, their homes and the institutional networks that they access. the idea is to examine what role architecture can perform in this context- besides the most obvious one- colluding with the sez plans for it parks. it might be another matter that we lived in a fancy hotel on the highway with a swimming pool.

first meeting

the backyard pond

pipes in wait

backyard fish

sunset shot

thakur's house

to site

the meeting

sizing up the poultry

house no 2

prawn farm

swimming pool

house in vithalwadi

the bund that keeps the sea at bay

rice mill

temple

the lake in vashi

the historic dam

blue. 42nd street . three monkeys. fando and lis . the manchurian candidate . grave of the fireflies. gaslight

please, no one watch blue! i admit to making the mistake in spite of detesting akshay kumar films. it was only because amit insisted that i sat through the awful film where motorcycle chases go on endlessly with no one caring to know who is chasing whom or why; lara dutta wears a bikini and otherwise mouths three unnecessary sentences to showcase her acting skills, sanjay dutt mumbles incoherently about a childhood trauma that keeps him from the ‘lady in blue’ and akshay is just plain annoying as the cool dude. there is nothing to recommend the film- not even as bollywood fluff. it is boring.

the whole of 42^nd street concerns the putting on of a musical. the mousy first timer ends up becoming the star and everyone ends up happy. the busby berkeley showstopper at the end has all the ingredients of an oscar interlude. grand staircases leading to the sky that light up with every step, showgirls kicking high heels high and top hats on most of the men.

so very avant garde was alexandro jodorowsky’s ‘fando and lis’. fando pulls along his lame lover lis along a barren landscape on a cart with a drum and a phonograph towards the mythical city of tar. along the way flashbacks and surreal madness include seductions in a graveyard to cars, bodies slithering in a muddy swamp and a spiraling canyon.

the apartment where most of the drama of ‘three monkeys’ occurs is shot as a labyrinth of doors, mirrors, glass and wood frames. spaces open and close as characters move in and around the labyrinth. through the window beyond the tracks and the highway is the mediterranean. the story concerns an affair between the wife of a chauffeur and his employer politician as he takes the fall for a hit and run accident that he was no part of. the son gets to know about the affair and hell breaks loose.

a perpetual downer but so beautifully made is ‘grave of the fireflies’. it starts off by the death of a young man in a trains station and flashes back to the last days of the war when his family was torn apart by the bombing of his hometown. losing his mother and father he tries to take care of his little sister as a vagabond living in a bomb shelter on the outskirts of the city. the sweet girl dies of malnutrition. terribly serious and extremely beautiful.

nothing special but entertaining enough was ‘the manchurian candidate’ a spy drama about the evil communists using the evil ambitions of american politicians to take over the united states of america. a killer is created out of a war hero by hypnosis. he can do absolutely anything after game of solitaire and a look at the queen of diamonds including murdering his fellow officers and even his wife. angela lansbury plays the scheming woman. in ‘gaslight’ she is the tough talking maid who keeps ingrid bergman prisoner in her own house. she inadvertently is party to the grand plan by bergman’s husband to convince her that she is mad. the gaslight in the rooms mysteriously goes up and down and dark shadows crawl up the walls in classic noir style.

sunday diwali at powai

concert. leh. cinema city preview

so… i guess its time to update the blog after a long time. got to keep it running in these times of down time- in case i feel inspired again a few months away. likely? who knows?

i guess there are three highlights since the time i left this space- the first was the concert at mukul’s house where my mother sang in public for the first time since the accident last october when dharmu mama fell asleep at the wheel on the pune expressway. mom was thrown against the back seat and has been weak ever since. i missed most of the first half all because of the unbelievable popularity of the new branch of the ‘borivili biryani center’ at chikuwadi where i waited for food for more than an hour. this was the 2^nd of october.

we left for leh the next day by the punjab mail. such a long journey. i spent all of my birthday traveling. i don’t mean to make it sound like a drag. the retreating monsoon made the journey actually very lovely, although waiting for the morning while sleeping on the uncomfortable seats at delhi airport was a bit much.

it was a second year study trip- and i was so hoping that the particular class that had given us so much trauma over the past semester would be transformed by the rarified air and the freezing cold temperature. we studied a part of the old town behind the main mosque where a street runs from an old stupa gate of the city to the palace. sonal seeing the photographs called the city an anthill- and it was. the houses straddle complex levels making underground labyrinths. it was a very difficult area to study. and the kids looked excited. the city is completely abandoned and is waiting to house tourism/ cultural facilities. manisha who has helped restore the old munshi house at the feet of the palace and andre from the ladakh old town initiative seem to be trying hard. there is so much potential for exciting work in the city.

we spent most of the time in the old town, although we took one day trip- to alchi where we touched the indus and to bazgo with its spectacular ruins of a palace and temple. another day it snowed, much to the delight of the class who were seeing it for the first time

i had to leave early to come back for the ‘cinema city’ preview on the 11^th at ncpa where kausik had designed the exhibition. the event had to be classified as a mega success- much to our delight- as it turned out that double the number of people expected turned up. the post-event party was at neera’s.

the soul of a man . cat soup. offside . taking woodstock . day for night.

i have managed to arrange it such that i can now watch movies in my room with the huge sound system. the system was inaugurated by ‘the soul of a man’- wim wenders film for the martin scorsese series ‘the blues’ that follows early blues artists like blind willie johnson, skip james and j b lenoir. the music was divine. the film tried some clever tricks but most of them were not so pretentious that they took away from the heartbreaking voices of the singers- whether the original or the new versions by contemporary artists like bonnie raitt and beck.

in ‘cat soup’ death plays too much of a role to be a children’s film. the narrative includes a dead sister, a broken arm, a frightening magician. the connections made are random, surreal, beautiful.

still more films to record here- this time from after the leh trip. the first is ‘day for night’ which madhu had recommended for its ‘behind the scenes’ narrative. truffaut plays a version of himself as he tries to make a seedy family drama about a love affair between a father in law and his sons wife. the action behind the camera becomes as torrid as that in front. somewhere in between in truffaut’s adoration of the process of film making itself- the movement of the machines, the madness, the horrors, the insecurities.

jafar panahi’s ‘offside’ was a sweetheart of an almost real time look at a group of football crazy girls and their attempts at entering a football stadium to watch a match that i going to seal irans entry into the world cup. so gentle and sweet, but still not cloying.

which cannot be said about ‘taking woodstock’ ang lee’s recent family drama about breaking away from the loneliness and heartbreak to ‘find yourself’- this time helping organizing the love fest ‘woodstock’ provides the catalyst- the ‘peace man’s, the tie and die shirts and more than a little help from some acid. nothing much happens, not that it had to.

the cabinet of dr caligari . ghost in the shell, wanted . alphaville. deewar. arrival. the choir . howls moving castle . love meetings . poison

not really very frightening- thankfully- or i wouldn’t be able to watch at all, but the cabinet of dr caligari lived up to its reputation of being all expressionistic set design. the streets twist and turn, the walls seem like they are falling. the only space relatively stable is the courtyard of the mental hospital where the madmen meet each other and tell stories.

in ghost in the shell where machines become men and men machines, the ghost is some longed for spirit in the films surprisingly very serious soul searching for spiritual/philosophical depth. not that i was completely taken in by it, but was stunned by the long languorous shots of the future city- the canal that runs through the glittering street that are somewhere in south east asia; or the action scene in the narrow alley that suddenly ends revealing a high wall of housing facing emptiness. gorgeous- and in many ways what this city is going to be like. alphaville was quirky film noir craziness- again repeating the trope about the machine against love. but this time the evil machine was represented by the modernism of 1960s paris- rcc towers, curtain walls and corridors that went on forever. the ordinary was transformed into the strange.

i have been recommending 'wanted' for all who have forgotten how much fun hindi films can be after being battered by the relentless nri punjabi films of the past few years. a shameless action film with no pretensions, especially not those who claim to indulge in childish fantasy because they are so above it. instead this plays the genre with relish but takes it to another level with the attention it plays to the detail- whether that it the movements and action/reaction of the bodies in elaborate and super violent action sequences; or in the small talk and silliness of the love scene. the clichés are the film and there really is not point complaining about things like the representation of women or the gratuitous violence. fabulous.

on the other hand my reaction to another great macula film was different. at the risk of being blasphemous i could not watch 'deewar' without getting slightly bored. some scenes were wonderfully iconic like the 'mere peas mama chain' or the action sequence on the docks, or even the marine drive shot; but everything seemed a little dated. still enjoyed i - but i think i expected more.

as far as short films go mani kaul’s ‘arrival’ an fd film was fantastic. a quotation from marx (i think) somewhere frames images of migration, consumption, production and death. the slaughterhouse in deonar and people gorging themselves with food.

the french film ‘the choir’ followed the clichés of good teachers in bad schools genre- that range from the icky (now that i think about it) ‘dead poets society’ to ‘the class’. here the teacher in question teaches the class to sing and wins over their hardened hearts. the principal as usual does not approve of these new fangled feel-good techniques.

miyazaki’s anime fantasy ‘howls moving castle’ allows different spaces to morph into one another through the doorway of the crumbling wheezing flying castle of the wizard ‘howl’ every door opens into different fantastic landscapes- from a ostentatious european town to a pasture from a dreamscape.

i was incredibly unmoved by pasolini’s cinema verite documentary exploring masculinities and sexuality in italy. the characters trade in stock answers for too long a time. and most repeat the clichés that have been superimposed on them.

todd haynes ‘poison’ tells three stories, independent of each other- each stylistically very different. the first is a noir serial killer mystery about a potion that spreads a disfiguring disease through the city, the second a pseudo documentary about a boy who flies away through a window; and the third a very sensual prison love story that derives much from jean genet’s ‘un chant amour’. sex might be the poison that joins all three stories. the scene where the boys spit in slow motion into the open mouth of another to humiliate him is oddly disgusting and sensual at the same time.

lsr 94 class reunion

this sunday 15 years after leaving college we meet again in a room overlooking the cricket lawns of the mumbai cricket association in bandra kurla complex. people i had not met for years- strangely familiar though i doubt i would have recognized them if i had seen them in a restaurant..

the edge of heaven. head on .district 9 .i cant think straight .fabulous .beau travail .kadachit .8x8 a chess sonata .blind dating. bolt. coraline

accidental deaths that mirror each other across turkey and germany make strangers into friends in fatih akin’s ‘the edge of heaven’. in an earlier film ‘head on’ a jealous rage leads to another killing- this time making a marriage of convenience into something like love. istanbul in both films is a city of labyrinth like streets where some escape from their disjointed existence in germany while others come to die. in ‘the edge of heaven’ a son escapes from the embarrassment of his father’s murder of a prostitute and tries to find salvation through saving his daughter, while she herself in running from the law to germany where she falls in love with a lovely generous white girl. in ‘head on’ a marriage is arranged between a girl trying to get out of her family and a man who cant care less whether he lives and dies.

district 9 blew my mind away. pretending to be pseudo-documentary on the sudden appearance of a wrecked spaceship above johannesburg the film follows a systematic process of cleansing of their colony – district 9- when suddenly he pure white blood is contaminated. more about race relations than a typical alien film it does however end with a great big mash up- shootouts, chase sequences, explosions and a hollywood salvation through self sacrifice- could have done without that- but the first half is just brilliant. the great shock is when we realize that we actually identify with the non-cute et but rather ugly frightening prawn like aliens. it screws with our presumptions.

the tv documentary ‘fabulous’ followed American queer cinema through some iconic films. informative enough, like a chronological check list- from something called fireworks through to brokeback mountain with ‘bound’, gus van sant’ and john waters along the way. the films are naturally the ones most explicitly ‘gay’ . i wonder whether ‘beau travail’ would have made the list. based on a Hermann melville story and a benjamin britten opera ‘billy budd’ the action takes place in french africa in a group of legionnaires. strong young men wrestle with each other in the desolate beauty of the desert as jealousy raises its ugly head. the passions are all very controlled and rarely find any sense of release except in the strenuous physical exercises on the beach and the frenzied dancing that breaks out at certain times.

the more conventional gay love story was ‘i cant think straight’- a coming out inter racial story set in Jordan and London between a Jordanian free spirit who is curiously closeted and a nice Hindu girl who is more at ease with herself. in an otherwise very passable and yet somehow enjoyable film Lisa ray is absolutely stunning. i couldn’t take my eyes off her. didn’t know she could act too.

more difficult love stories in romantic comedies- this one between a blind white boy and a Indian girl- ‘blind dating’. fluffy fun- but does confirm the fact that a nice white boy who grew up to be captain Kirk really needs to be blind to fall in love with a brown girl.

why are Marathi films so moral? and badly made? ‘kadachit’ the story was fine and so was the acting. ashwini bhave plays a gutsy doctor who loses it when she confronts the truth about the dad she put away for murder. she only manages to get her act together again when she is told another lie. to its credit the film did not try to resolve things with a happy ending where everyone lives happily ever after. the father walks away alone into the sunset, but it could have been made less like a tv soap, i think.

not as weird as the nightmare before christmas but coraline’s frighteningly sweet alternative world of a mother and father with buttons for eyes is pretty spooky. an alice in wonderland story with a cat that speaks, fancy french performing mice and couple of british actresses who are terrific at the trapeze. ‘bolt’ was sweeter. a dog lives a truman show existence until one day he is lost and discovers the real him on a road trip from new york to los angeles. his company is a wise cracking cat and a hamster in a globe. the in-jokes are thankfully not too many making it easily less offensive than lets say ‘a sharks tale’. really quite a lot of fun and towards the end i felt really bad about the cats out on the terrace that we have decided not to feed anymore.

i did not particularly care to ‘get’ but still enjoyed the images of hans richters experimental 8x8 a chess sonata’. 8 episode feature different guest artists and some surreal games in streets and in gardens. the sequence in alexander calders studio is beautiful and so is much of the other imagery.

yi yi . black cat white cat . my winnipeg . berlin: symphony of a great city . 9. the golem . up the yangste . dazed and confused . wendy and lucy

a long winded drama about the middle class in taipei, yi yi( a one and a two) spent too long developing stories that didn’t finally lead up to much- some weddings, some insecurities, old girlfriends. not that the dreariness of the everyday was the problem (if only); the film stayed precariously close to becoming a tv soap and finally descended into the pit when the cute kid reads a letter full of profundity to his dead grandmother at her funeral.

'black cat white cat' is set in some strange world completely out of control. a crime film and romantic comedy of double crossing gangsters trying to get their tiny sisters married and sweet faced lovers whose parents are more than willing to sell them off to the highest bidder. the speed by which things happen and complete randomness of it all reminded me somewhat of sankat city- which also i loved.

‘my winnipeg’ is a love poem for the city in which guy maddin spent his entire life. he wants to get out of there but finds it impossible as people keep falling asleep. in faux silent cinema black and white expressionism intercut with pseudo (?) documentary newsreel footage as he hires the house he grew up in and populates them with actors to play the parts of his mother and siblings,, the stories grow out of a free flowing inventive mix of fact and fiction- as when a fire in stable sends the horses racing into the freezing river and their heads frozen in gruesome screams of death become props for romantic walks for winnipeggers. when he decries the demolition of the older buildings of his history he does it without trying to put on an objective face. instead he hurls invective at all the atrocities committed on the city in the name of progress.

an early city film ‘berlin- a symphony of a great city’ made between the wars is in love with modernity. the working day, children going to school, the cultural pleasures of the city and above all the obsession with time. trains rush through the landscapes, clocks move in synchronization with the citizens. speed and germanic precision across the classes- man and machine are one. this love-hate relationship has been seen too many times by the time we get to ‘9’. in a future after the great man-machine war when the world is completely destroyed 9 “stitchpunks” take on the evil smoke spewing multi tentacled b.r.a.i.n. the visualizations are jaw-droppingly beautiful but after the first half when the narrative begins to show its formulaic one dimensionality you cant help but be disappointed. machines are evil and in the end we are saved by the “soul” of one man. this regressive nonsense is further aggravated in my imagination when the only space of safety in the shattered city are a gothic cathedral and a neo-classical villa. the end sequence with mystical rituals and souls rising to heaven in glowing green spirals managed to seal my opinion on this one.

‘the golem’ a silent film from 1915 plays with the same ideas- a frankenstein like character is created through a mixture of science and religion to save the ghetto from being demolished. the golem turns evil towards the end and is only destroyed by an innocent gesture by a young girl- but not before he has caused some serious mayhem and murder. over the top light and shadow expressionism makes gothic horror as lovers preen, wizards cast frightening spells, and the history of the jews is told as a film within the film to the heartless king.

now that i think about it, it is a strange coincidence that both the b.r.a.i.n. of ‘9’ and the golem are given life by plugging a strange mystical medallion into their chests- and their deaths are associated with its removal.

in ‘up the yangtse’ through a canadian chinese lens we experience the heartbreak of losing your history below the relentlessly rising water of the three gorges dam. the farewell cruise carries foreigners over the silver grey still surface of the river and stories are told to them of the cities that are going to be no more by young chinese men and women who don on american names and speak americanese for tips. the scale is astounding. jia zhang ke’s ‘still life’ took the same situation and turned it into a melancholy science fiction film. in this film we are introduced to two kids of differing backgrounds who are interning upon the farewell cruise.

a couple of american films to end this post. ‘dazed and confused’ is richard linklater’s classic 70’s slacker film that follows a group of young men and women through the medieval rituals of the last day of school. the film checklists the types, speaks very cleverly, plays a lot of 70s rock and still manages to make more out of the genre film that expected.

‘wendy and lucy’ takes all this suburban disenchantment and turns it into a sad sweet story about a girl and her dog living on the very edge of poverty. on her way to alaska the car breaks down and she is caught shoplifting. then the dog disappears. she wanders through the still decrepit small town in oregon looking for lucy and finding her lets her go.

twisted fairy tales

the first year workshop came to an end yesterday

workshop / matchmaking / kanheri

some more photographs of the past few days.

the first year workshop is writing alternate fairy tales. the kids still dont know what hit them. i think.

the dutch-indian architect matchmaking session went off entertainingly. so we spoke of the low income housing work and wondered how the international connection can work to both our advantages. some talk of 'space' other talk of 'networks'.

and today, after a long time- kanheri. still as lovely.

this is what 80 looks like

party snaps- why i need a new camera phone

at surabhi's /at johns / for benita at vinita's/ for prasad at defacto / at mukul's / the almost preview

tokyo godfathers. sankat city. wall-e . g i joe – imitation of life . the general . kaminey . vantage point .

the bums from tokyo godfathers with a heart of gold with all the homoerotic undercurrents was a new thing to see in an anime film. no high tech / fantasy concept here. just a lost/ stolen baby and the three homeless people trying to find its parents. though i did love both the mumbai/bambai crime caper films the devil-may-care madness of sankat city was terrific fun, while kaminey could not completely shake away the satya hangover. but the locations in both were fabulous- whether that is the steep road in dindoshi where the bags get exchanged or that gorai garbage dump which mirrors the real city in sankat city; or the abandoned railway compartment in ‘kaminey’ and the cul-de-sac within which the final shoot out occurs. in wall the garbage dump takes over the whole planet and human civilization is a capitalist consumer fantasy on a distant spaceship. the entire first half where wall-e dutifully organizes the garbage on the planet into towers made of little cubes is gorgeously imagined. when the love story begins the hollywood formula begins to show. but until then it is lovely. ‘imitation of life’ is shamelessly over the top camp. without any trace of embarrassment and (thankfully) without a sly wink to the camera it takes its world of high melodrama very seriously. the torrid lush tearjerker concerns the relationships between two women and their daughters, while race comes in between one black mother and her daughter who is ashamed of her heritage, the white woman’s daughter falls in love with her mothers suitor. naturally it all ends with a death and mahalia jackson’s soaring voice in a church. g i joe is worth watching only for one fantastic chase sequence on the streets of paris when the joes try to stop the bad people from releasing nanomites that are going to eat the eiffel tower. it is the only place where the hollywood action really kicks in. the rest is standard stuff about a white leading man, his black best friend, some international hotties and lots of blow ups because of evil corporate types. another hollywood action film was ‘vantage point on tv which tries a rashomon like kaleidoscopic shifting points of view of a presidential assassination attempt. the tape rewinds and plays and rewinds and plays again until you cant care really what happens as long as it gets over really fast. neither of these manage the action-comedy of ‘the general’ whose basic story involves nothing more than one long chase sequence; first towards the north and then towards the south. in the end as has now become default some explosions bring the proceedings to an end.

tokyo godfathers. sankat city. wall-e . g i joe – imitation of life . the general . kaminey . vantage point .

the bums from tokyo godfathers with a heart of gold with all the homoerotic undercurrents was a new thing to see in an anime film. no high tech / fantasy concept here. just a lost/ stolen baby and the three homeless people trying to find its parents. though i did love both the mumbai/bambai crime caper films the devil-may-care madness of sankat city was terrific fun, while kaminey could not completely shake away the satya hangover. but the locations in both were fabulous- whether that is the steep road in dindoshi where the bags get exchanged or that gorai garbage dump which mirrors the real city in sankat city; or the abandoned railway compartment in ‘kaminey’ and the cul-de-sac within which the final shoot out occurs. in wall the garbage dump takes over the whole planet and human civilization is a capitalist consumer fantasy on a distant spaceship. the entire first half where wall-e dutifully organizes the garbage on the planet into towers made of little cubes is gorgeously imagined. when the love story begins the hollywood formula begins to show. but until then it is lovely. ‘imitation of life’ is shamelessly over the top camp. without any trace of embarrassment and (thankfully) without a sly wink to the camera it takes its world of high melodrama very seriously. the torrid lush tearjerker concerns the relationships between two women and their daughters, while race comes in between one black mother and her daughter who is ashamed of her heritage, the white woman’s daughter falls in love with her mothers suitor. naturally it all ends with a death and mahalia jackson’s soaring voice in a church. g i joe is worth watching only for one fantastic chase sequence on the streets of paris when the joes try to stop the bad people from releasing nanomites that are going to eat the eiffel tower. it is the only place where the hollywood action really kicks in. the rest is standard stuff about a white leading man, his black best friend, some international hotties and lots of blow ups because of evil corporate types. another hollywood action film was ‘vantage point on tv which tries a rashomon like kaleidoscopic shifting points of view of a presidential assassination attempt. the tape rewinds and plays and rewinds and plays again until you cant care really what happens as long as it gets over really fast. neither of these manage the action-comedy of ‘the general’ whose basic story involves nothing more than one long chase sequence; first towards the north and then towards the south. in the end as has now become default some explosions bring the proceedings to an end.

strange early morning dreams

last night i dreamt a comic book. or was it animation?
a young shostakovich is suspected of being a dissident in an america where everything european is under surveillance. strangely he looks like me. in a car on a main street that looks like baltimore the twelve year old is huddled in the front seat of a black hooded car with many other older refugees. another replica of the car follows them inches behind at high speed. to escape shostakovich suggests a quick turn around. as the car swerves the following car also turns but it only manages a 180 degree turn which our hero is again heading in the current direction.
as the following car begins to rain bullets the suspects jump out of the car and being to race through what looks like the back alleys of greenbelt, maryland. the rubber-stamp housing colony to the outskirts of the city is where the action continues which he enters thorugh a tiny back alley that is revealed in between the relentless facades of the townhouses. choosing the lush green backyards away from the main road our hero runs past lounging black men (all of whom appear bald) into the darkened stairway of one. a family asks for an address to one of the men lounging on the stairs. 4th floor ‘kasuba’ he says. ‘kasuba?’ says the elegant black lady asking the directions. ‘refugees’ says the black man. ‘uff’.
another man stands overlooking a way out of the stairway prison. he turns out to be the man who has given out the location of the hiding refugees and received pardon from the state. other loungers dismiss him as a traitor. i sneak out of the back stair and he sees me- so does the elegant black woman. as i run out the woman points me out to my pursuant.
now i race through fancier streets. it all looks like a manhattan dream. glittering shop windows (an in my head paul simon mis-sings ‘the boy in the bubble’ : “glittering of shop windows, the boy in the baby carriage was wired to the radio”. or as the chase continues i think – this is a good idea for a city film. a chase through the various classes and districts of the city.
the last scene i remember before it dissolved into an animation montage of different styles floating on a black screen was: i suddenly see something in a shop window. cut to the glittering thing handing in soft focus in the foreground as i run towards it. shift focus to the entangled strands of silver as i grin in soft focus leeringly at the jewelry.
another unreported dream was when me, my mother and my father are sitting in front of the television as britney spears dances gyrating while wearing prosthetic male genitalia as i try and convince myself (and my parents) that it is some form of protest towards artistic self expression and protection of her privacy. huh?

public space mumbai

thakur mall on a sunday

street shots

the wizard of oz. the rat trap. m. double indemnity. 'the yiddish policemans union, one way street. hearts and minds. across the universe.love aaj kal

in spite of all my reservations about the over-hyped ‘somewhere over the rainbow’ it is the one moment in ‘the wizard of oz’ where something magical really happens. the rest is a fantasy, distracting enough, about a girl trying to find her way back to the safety of home with three allegorical figures- a man of hay with no brain, a man of tin with no heart and frightened lion. someone should show them ‘the rat trap’.

there is no film like ‘the rat trap’ that makes the sweet domesticity of the rural home into such a claustrophobic space. the only way elder sister rajamma an escape its tightening grip is by falling ill and being rushed out while her brother has to be carried out by villagers and dunked into the family well.

then there are all the detective stories beginning with ‘m’. a child killer cant help himself from murdering little girls. the underworld and the police chase him through the streets of berlin as the city drives itself insane with paranoia and suspicion. no identifiable heroes or villains except for the man with the overcoat marked by the letter.

raymond chandler co-wrote billy wilder’s ‘double indemnity’ and even though the film begins with the confession of sorts the suspense is terrific; a murderous plot in noir black and white and a plot within a plot with a gorgeous blonde with evil in her heart. the poor shmuck insurance salesman who falls for her hard has really no chance.

taking the possibility that israel was never formed and the jews of europe were settled in sitka, alaska michael chabon makes ‘ the yiddish policeman’s union’ a strange desolate story of a dead junkie messiah, a detective at the end of his sanity and career (much like a chandler hero) and a jewish plot to take back jerusalem by blowing up muslim monuments.

unable to articulate what exactly i love about reading walter benjamin ‘one way street’ managed to get many scholars to tell me. how the fragments of experience can be collected to make meaning- partial but profound or the act of collecting moments and making each account for so much more. like a poetic or a psychoanalysis of the everyday.

'hearts and minds' was numbing beyond a point until the shocker of a moment when a man is shot on screen. it passes by so quickly you hardly notice it but it stays with you perpetually. unforgettable documentary about the vietnam war. strangely later in the day i saw ' across the universe ' the new film that takes beatles songs to tell a story about lovers torn apart in the 60s by war and protest. great songs.

and aargh! the ultra cool so annoyingly wannebe clever ‘love aaj kal’. this particular kind of bollywood makes no sense ot me where everyone is hep and colour coordinated in foreign locations. i felt like slapping all concerned. only deepika padukone looks better than the film. otherwise – yuck!

class reunions

the first batch of the masters at sea view

bahaar at home

after chaitanya's talk on asian art at gokul



at eli's place at ncpa apartments (lsr)

synecdoche new york . satah se uthata aadmi . the bicycle thief . agraharathil kazuthail . 26 bathrooms

like ‘the trial’, which a character is reading in the beginning of the film, ‘synecdoche new york’ is a vortex of reflections affecting each other in perpetually shifting scales. sometimes the city is found in another one or you see yourself in miniature. while blurring the line between dream and reality the identity of all the characters and all their relationships are themselves blown apart until almost nothing is real.
in ‘satah se uthata aadmi’ a similar story within a story revolves around the act of writing as a voiceover reads passages about characters and they in turn read out other stories that turn into images until all intertwine into a fever dream somewhere in small town india.
i liked ‘the bicycle thief’- not so much for the sweet downer of the story about losing a bicycle but more the rome of the working class neighborhoods with rationalist apartment blocks relentlessly plodding on the horizon or the other ancient city of market squares and labyrinthine roads where the hunt goes on.
in ‘a donkey in a brahmin’s village’ at the end when the fire in the skull of the donkey sets fire to the village the film suddenly expresses the anger that is until then suppressed under never completely lighthearted comic episodes. the pollution that the donkey represents is used by the hypocrisy of the villagers for their own means until even its death becomes something that can be used to wield power by making mystic its aura.
from a to z ‘26 bathrooms’ is peter greenaway’s checklist of ideas clustered around bathrooms including lost soaps, public washrooms, tiles and mirrors punctuated by a discourse on the history of british bathrooms held forth by an expert. another film for my architecture collection.

wizards . millennium actress . the children’s book . opera java . tren de sombras. in which annie gives it those ones. mindgame.

the collage like madness of the war sequences that splice nazi war footage with the exaggeratedly cute and evil brothers and their war between normal people and the mutants. the real villain is of course the movie projector that blinds the mutants under the supreme commander – the bad brother in the darkness hatching his evil plots to take over the world.

the pop singer in ‘perfect blue’ is now a reclusive actress hiding away from the media glare. a filmmaker fan follows her to her house and become embroiled in the telling of her story as characters in her history on and off screen. not really as maddening and beautiful as perfect blue but still gorgeously made.

the music in opera java was divine even though the pieces did seem to go on a little too long – as did the story of ravana and sita in indonesia. here too the performed and the lived lives of the characters intermingle and blur. typically the ravana character stole the show with his creepy dance in the abattoir and the tango on top of the bar table. ram as usual is the most boring and only becomes interesting somewhat in the threesome with ravana and sita and when he kills sita. the ugly subtext about the story being an allegory of american imperialization was awful and clumsy but i still loved the movement of arms and the watery layered sound of the music.

regardless of the conceits of ‘experimental film’- the concern with the act of film making and representation or the ‘truth’ o the image, or the texture of film itself- ‘tren de sombras’ was pretty much a colour by numbers kind of mystery story. the film is arranged in three or four sections. in the beginning is the ostensibly found footage of a photographer who disappeared in 1930. the trouble is that besides the artificial cracks and blurs of the footage much of it is not framed like it was shot in that ea. at least not to my untrained eye. the second half looks for clues to his disappearance in the house and the garden while the third rewinds the footage and discovers possible leads in what really happened.

also about a family splintering apart at the end of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th century is the gorgeous new novel by a s byatt ‘the children’s book’, as the community of artists live out their bohemian lives considering modernity through the arts and crafts movement into art nouveau flourishes of marionettes, fairy tales and beautifully decorated pots.

complete anomaly that i am i had never seen that cult architecture film ‘i which annie gives it those ones’. finally getting my hands on it i sat down to watch and was curiously disappointed or rather saddened by its perpetual cynicism about architecture itself. not that taking the systems apart is not necessary but all we get in return is a tired old 70s flower child rant about ‘poor people’ punctuated by (naturally) music stolen from the beatles. but then again my reaction might stem from pure self defense. it must be because i spend so much of my time on the side of the table that was being taken apart. what is strange is the odd inversion- the violent (often simplistic) ranting about ‘poor people’ nowadays happens from the faculty while the students speak the language of the market.

like ‘wizards’ the anime ‘mindgame’ is happily unhinged switching between all kinds of animations styles- sepia tinted rounded characters in a flattened landscape, to long angular lines, to photographs. the story follows nishi and two girls as they choose life while running from the law and a drug mafia who are inexplicably dressed up as football players. while running away the group gets swallowed up by a giant whale from which they escape into their many possible futures. 

surreal encounters on the highway

tarpaulin images on a ganpati workshop and discarded dolls

still more rain drenched streets through my car window

from college through andheri link road to marol pipeline

oshiwara in the rain

fragments of beauty drenched in the half light of the long dark corridor like shops. nothing is seen completely- only an arm, a curl, a twist, a pattern carved. on the other side of the tunnel are the workshops overflowing with new versions of antique desks we were making for mahim. 

vinita, chitra, namrata / kalpit / stephan, rupali

last sunday at home

the wine party before watching the science of sleep at mukul's

the rain

royal palms at goregaon with a slum of skyscrapers, gross baroque hotels and a golf course overlooking national park / drenched chawls in dadar while looking for door knobs near the station /the first drive across bandra worli sea link / walking down to haji ali dargah after coffee at indigo deli and some gateway and marine drive/ chatting about the future in the canteen / the krvia muddy football match. 

graphic novels, animation films, etc.

it was during reading ‘the amazing adventures of kavalier and clay’, coincidentally that i bought ‘zot!’ by scott mccloud. the escapist helps in kavaliers reprisal against evil nazis making him one of the most popular superheroes in world war 2 new york. the loveliest scene for me for the love scene between the beautiful blonde actor and sam clay at democracity- the ideal new town of the future with flyovers and flashing lights at the worlds fair. pure magic. democracity is almost zot’s world – a parallel universe whose perfection is seductive to the teenagers who have walked through the portal to the other side. my rising interest in graphic novels led me to read ‘understanding comics’ a step by step proposition to read the comic book as serious art. me? i believe! especially after going on this massive downloading spree of graphic novels. 

one of my favorite was the intertwining and completely silent ‘the system’. stories of the everyday lives of new yorkers play kho-kho with one another through dissolves and sudden juxtapositions in a narrative of steeped in the paranoia of a post terror world. 

in alezandro jodorowsky’s future landscape of a planet/city mad of layers that rise from the bottom sewers where the mutants live to the middle where the red light area glitters to the very top where an elite with haloes rule. the other story was about the rise of the metabarons- a race of fantastic mercenaries. 

the other crazy fictional landscape was the one in ‘aetheric mechanics’ whose early 20^th century landscape is populated with semi-fictional heroes and detectives including an almost holmes/watson team. these science fiction landscapes of the future. some of the other stories were ‘death – the high cost of living’ where death is this hot girl in search for someone’s heart and ‘the sandman chronicles- the dream hunters’- where a fox falls in love with a monk and saves him from a merchant who has cast an evil spell over him.

i have also gone completely crazy watching animation films. 'my neighbor totoro' is miyazaki’s sweet story about two sisters and their strange friend totoro who lives in the tree in the backyard of the new house. a far cry from the charm of that film was ‘perfect blue’. a teenage pop star who is intent on changing her image to become a more serious adult actress is haunted and hunted by a vicious innocence until the difference between dream and reality blurs beyond recognition. ‘voices of a distant star’ was a love story where time stand still on one end of the universe while at the other end of an sms a waiting lover grows older and older.

complete non stop madness in 'duck soup'. the marx brothers save freedonia from defeat in complete mayhem. the one liners come fast and furious and the physical comedy is hilarious. 'chandni chowk to china' is terrible- in spite of deepika padukone. saw it on an airplane from delhi to bombay. 

in the american documentary ‘home movie’ 5 strange ways of living are followed through a day. there was something annoying about the ease by which the domestic space was made into a narcissistic fantasy space. one becomes a tree house, the other a futuristic machine, another is taken over by cats while a fourth is a bunker under the ground. it seemed so easy. get inside your house and detach yourself from the world. one of the character who lives on a houseboat explicitly says this too.

the music in 'dhrupad' is sublime. so is the architecture that is shot so lovingly. from mandu to fatehpur sikri to the final shot when the camera meanders long on an aerial shot of the city blurring away and fading to white. my mother was delighted seeing her teacher sing and play the veena. one of the best films i have seen on music. the city in which 'los olvidados' takes place feels like a bombay. ruins in which the runaway child finds a place to live and the construction sit where the good boy is murdered. like an old raj kapoor film on the city but with no happy ending.

there are some incredible scenes in ‘shakti’. every one of them has dilip kumar in it. he eats up the competition- amitabh bachchan included. when smita patil comes t meet the estranged parents of vijay i sobbed away as i did when rakhee dies and amitabh comes to meet his father from the jail. some great city shots too- the fight sequence in the train and at versova fishing village should be on the cinema city map, as should the father son confrontation at bandra fort.

the last film of this post is ‘blowup’. as the egoistical photographer enlarges the photograph it reveals more as it enlarges into pixels- a pointed gun and the fallen hand of a body behind the bush. i had somehow expected more. or maybe i did not get it.