guangzhou . shanghai . beijing

guangzhou / shanghai / beijing

an exchange programme with me and ten students to guangzhou for 20 days (or so). in pictures and captions... long and self indulgent. so be warned. photographs on facebook. :)

day 1 - thursday

night flight to hong kong and a coach across to the mainland. hong kong felt right. dark green hills dipped in the sea connected by bridges crisscrossing over ferries and those skyscraper apartments glittering in the morning light. spectacular skyline. wish i had more time there- but maybe next time. into mainland china- another passport check and a highway zooms over worker housing and factories and farmlands all mixed into one surreal landscape. boundaries blur. high rises in the middle of old docks and duck farms.

at guangzhou we meet the chinese kids who had come to india and they take us to the hostel where the students are living- overlooking the pearl river. balconies. back to guangzhou academy of fine arts (gaga) for me where i meet yang and wang ge- whose house i live in.

the first big dinner of hunan food- duck. frog. stomach of pig. fish. and a lot of other things i can't remember.

day 2 - friday

wang ge's house is on the 15th floor close to gafa. a bachelor pad where i have a room. the other is shared by wang ge and xiao gu- his animator friend from beijing. introduction to the workshop at 10. urban video with 5 groups- tea ceremonies / flyovers / a heritage area - dong shan / the guangdong markets/ the dream of the city.

i took a ride to the dong shan area with the group and began my first walk. sweet red buildings encircled by high rises and hotels. a church. a market. a house in floor plan tiling as a reminder of what once was. the walk back across the river and the riverfront preparing for its celebration- the opening of the asian games on the 11th of november.

day 3 - saturday

after my chinese breakfast of some kind of rice cakes with meat inside, i met sagar and ambre's group at gafa and took the metro to the old town. the main pedestrian street with shops on both sides and then a plaza of high rises with enormous digital screens. i left the group and walked on alone- through markets of wholesale cloth in narrow streets until arriving and megastructure for clothes. people spilling out of the building into the streets. the cultural park close by had inflatable asian games mascots and tai chi old people. some musicians.

then i moved north off the main streets into the inner lanes that you enter through these gateways. fruit markets, vegetables, old men playing mah jong on the streets and right next to it unashamed high rise apartment buildings with clothes drying and grillwork. a maze. and through the walk you walk across one more main road clean and ordered and then you plunge into the maze again. north and west and southwards through a chor bazaar everything discarded is resold, and the chen clan academy; and another little temple to the plaza again.

after a lunch of fermented eggs near gafa saw 'qui xi'. more on the film later. dinner was at wang ge where his friend cooked australian fish and rice with chicken soup.

day 4 - sunday

this time a trip north south from wang ge's house. the road went past the 2nd workers cultural palace where construction work was booming and past shops selling wedding clothes in western and chinese styles across the bridge blown up in qui xi when the communists took over the city into haizhu square. that day was religious tourism as i walked into and past the church and into the neighbourhood surrounding it past residential neighbourhoods to the old mosque with only one minaret existing and the chinese temples- buddhist and taoist. prayer towers and incense. lotus ponds with fish. heading back down south through 'peoples park' at the heart of the city. tai chi and waltzing old people. beijing lu is a pedestrian shopping high end madness with an ancient road made into a glass encased exhibit in the middle. later i spent an hour on the waterfront watching the asian games floats go by. taj mahal in pink for india.

day 5 - monday

met kang and bi wei who was to be my caretaker for the week. turned out that he was busy for most of it- but i did manage to see two places with him. they took me for lunch at a spectacular seafood place with all kinds of specialities to choose from. i threw up my hands and kang ordered for sting rays, shrimp, octopus. bi wei and me to shamian island where the europeans had moved to after a fire in the 'thirteen factories'- the only place in china that they were allowed to be live in to trade in cotton and opium. until the opium wars. wide avenues, mansions and a church. today the home in guangzhou for the european community. then the fish wholesalers nearby. later bi wei showed me photographs of his parents and friends on his blog in his dorm room.

day 6 - tuesday

bi wei took me to sun yat sen university where red brick buildings march down a lawn to the river. two of his friends joined us and kept wanting a photograph with me to show that they touched brown skin. felt like a white skin in rajasthan. they left at the waterfront though and i walked all along the river looking across at the museum and theatre on the other side and walked across the river through the new zaha hadid opera house. folded concrete frog. the beginning of the new ceremonial axis along with the guangzhong museum. the southern tip is the canton tower- twisted and turning 'like a damsel'. the axis shoots up past newly completed glass towers and lawns through a residential area prettified by plastic flowers in the windows to a stadium and enormous digital displays. took a metro finally and went back to gafa where kang was waiting. he drove me through some factories and farms to the new city made for the university to the south east. u-town. a mall greets you first and oversized avenues empty of people connect gigantic campuses. a cricket stadium is being built next to the red brick high rise of gafa and the village nearby has been provided with red roofs free of cost by the government to make it look pretty for the asian games. china face-ism. :) at gafa the facilities are incredible. and the lecture went well enough with the help of a translator. dinner was at a small village dhaba. rice in a bamboo shoot and duck.

day 7 - wednesday

relatively lazy day. peasants movement institute with state propaganda and patriotic sloganeering in chinese. the relics of revolution in glass cases. nearby martyrs park. socialist realism meets boulee monumentality. an axis meets hands reaching out to the sky. another climbs a hill and in the middle a mound of lawn makes a stupa. at the two pavilions dedicated to soviet and korean friendship a group of old people rehearse a patriotic song. another group sing cantonese opera and still others play instruments. i listen.

day 8 - thursday

curious about the north i head to the baiyun area. where a huge monumental exhibition and conference centre stands at the base of the hill and across the road past empty land is a housing colony. the guangzhou version o f an sra. tall buildings with less than one meter in between and no light or ventilation and a market street. southwards the road led past the clubs at the base of the hill. the next segments took me past the monumental red facade of the building for the tombs of some emperors and then to yuexiu park. lazy afternoon sun and views to the city. more cantonese opera. the large sun yat sen memorial hall on the main road. red and a lawn and plaza in front. xiao gu and me had dinner in a chinese restaurant and communicated in hieroglyphics.

day 9 - friday

final presentation day. the workshop is over. some communication issues but otherwise very lovely as an experience. for some reason the group working in dongshan gave it up and made a generic lights of the city film. the exquisite corpse was a good idea that needed to evolve more. after the presentations the students and me were invited for karaoke to 'neways' by some of the chinese students. on the third floor of a building an entire floor of tiny rooms connected by corridors in which chinese sings are interspersed with pop hits. we hired us one room and sang.

day 10 - saturday

a day trip to kaiping- an hour and half south west of guangzhou where chinese american millionaires have made themselves farmhouses. idyllic with bridges over canals and three to four stories of hybrid ornament. liyuan gardens. a trellised pavilion and lawns. close by is 'cinema city'. where period dramas are shot. here history is allowed its patina. the buildings overlook a river and are allowed to crumble- unlike the villages in cities. the road to kaiping has these enormous factories where almost all the tiles in the world are made. at night a foot massage with xiao gu, wang ge and miss lu after a hot pot dinner.

day 11 - sunday

kang and wang ge drive me to huang pu- the old port of canton. old family temples on water bodies and a market selling fish. meanwhile some streets and buildings have been isolated for 'upgradation' which means more chinese face-ism. a thin stone veneer is applied too everything. anything in the way is summarily demolished and green plastic roofs mimic roof tiles. the gallery of the project managers displayed huge posters promoting the same. wang ge and kang shrugged their shoulders in protest. i was then dropped off at the 'creative district- where an old socialist factory now serves as a designer outlet. later i learnt that the basic set of moves for all the three cities to upgrade them into international status are the same. spectacle, some arts districts, some historic cores converted into n heritage districts. anyway here artist and architecture studios were allotted space and an exhibition was one of some art school. from there the canton tower was close enough to walk. and i did. and went to the top and looked across at the spectacle of the new axis and the array of buildings along it. the new stadium for the games was being readied. i was to meet the kids in the front of the museum. and they were late so i walked lazily to the museum and waited until they came. inside a big black atrium with confused galleries on all sides confuse the relics with the replica with abandon. entertainment is the primary goal. everything is recreated - or at least seem like they are until it does not matter which is which. the sunset on the steps of the zaha opera house. and then the light and sounds of the axis in the evening. like a bride waiting to be married. floor is lit. disney plays on the giant screen in front of the children's museum. rehearsed singing and dancing. and lazers everywhere. up the axis and to gafa again where wang ge met me and we went to kangs new office where i made a presentation of krvia work, while feng feng showed his design for the tomb made of trees. poetic.

day 12 - monday

the last day in guangzhou i spent lazily sleeping until wing invited me to her grandmother's house. ambre and me played mahjong with her and wings uncle and spoke through wing about her new house on the 21st floor away from the older neighbourhood where she lived. she loves the new house despite our romanticization of the older traditional house. vies across to the river and the new towers. moon cake and tea. at night xiao gu and wang ge sang songs from his rock back 'full metal jacket' on his guitar.

day 13 - tuesday

early morning to the airport by coach. confused airport misery at shanghai until we caught the bus and were dropped off close to the hostel. pretty hostel in an upgraded historic area. cobbled streets and similar unified facadism. one step away from the main street and we are in a real city. the mumbai connection is unmistakable. it is in the air. the energy and the people. the night walk was through street markets and busy main streets. i walked aimlessly- got lost - and found my way back in the dark through instinct. always taking the darkened road over the new one.

day 14 - wednesday

with the students we decide to walk to the main city. slowly. across the bridge over the suzhou river and into the british concession with its colonial buildings like ballard estate. a museum on the way had multimedia exhibits. lots of video. and the bund was art deco all along the river. a monument stood at the northern tip where the suzhou met the huangpu. there is no way for a pedestrian to go across from shanghai to pudong across the river. there is a metro, there are ferries and there is a ridiculous silly ride underwater in a capsule with juvenile special effects. that's the one we took. on the other side the real city is made into something from a jacques tati film. landscape is manicured and the streets are sanitised. one high rise after another. the disneylike orientalist fantasy of the tv tower, the empire state made glass and frizzy- jinmao, and the gucci handbag made gigantic. which is the tallest. nearby construction is on for the shanghai tower- taller than all. the view was all right though the kids were excited. to have an observatory without 360 degree views made no sense. the glass floor was a little scary. in the building an exhibition on tokyo was fun. mamuro oshii had a frightening tokyo scanner film on where parts of the city are mapped like they are under surveillance- in anime. took the ferry back after walking past the privatised waterfront in pudong. clubs and restaurants. the ferry dropped us off at the bund and then nanjing road's neon lights and evening buzz. the little touristy tram. ended up in a film later on - 'wind blast'- more on that later.

day 15 - thursday

the kids went elsewhere and i walked alone and encircled the whole city. first headed east through the neighbourhood where a memorial to communist writers and the places that they met were marked in statues and plaques. the area is now upgraded to new oldness and is popular as backdrop for photo shoots for fashion and wedding albums, heading east through what was the american concession and near the railway station where old shanghai neighbourhoods survive- but barely. narrow lanes and decrepit buildings are being reconstructed to make way for enormous malls. the wholesale market is now in a big building. there are no apologies anywhere on the horizon. the newspapers claim that the existing establishments are being 'encouraged' to look for areas with lower rent. along the suzhou river a cleansing project makes pretty a river that once was infamously polluted. across the bridge on to the british concession the art deco and colonial buildings and the touristy 'peoples park' around which all the museums are. the museum of contemporary art showed chinese installations and multimedia work. was met by a chinese girl and her friend on the streets afterwards. she was an english teacher in a school on the russia border and they invited me for a traditional tea ceremony. in a shop in a mall. a girl in a red chinese dress gave us lots of different kinds of tea and played up the rituals and their symbolism. the streets behind the bund were more art deco offices. and the temple in the northern part of the old city was overwhelmed by cleansed cute chinese replicas of itself. a bridge went criss cross over a water body. all the new stuff looked exactly like the old. but while the old was a temple the new was mcdonalds and kfc. you couldn't make out the difference. walking westwards into the french concession, past the lake and the location of the first congress of the chinese in july 1921 to the cleansed shikumen or traditional houses now turned into book shop cafe boutique globalised nowhereness. more foreigners around than chinese. this urban design banality run all over the neighbourhood to tianzifang where a neighbourhood has been converted into touristy arty land. galleries and boutiques. 'edgier' if you please than xintiandi. moving north again through the gentrified french concession and into the high rise glass towers to the north and the jingan temple. the walk to the railway station was through the eastern end of nanjing road and then beijing road upwards over the bridge to deserted lands darkened. the road back to the hostel was long and i was exhausted.

day 16 - friday

the last day in shanghai. i walked east towards what was the jewish ghetto but then decided to spend some time in the museums instead so took a metro to nanjing road. the development museum on 'peoples park' was fun. huge model of the city showing the neighbourhoods, multimedia displays for promoting the airport, the metro, the sustainable sewage systems. shanghai bids for global city status. a 3d movie takes over and through the main landmarks of the city. reminded me of tokyo scanner. surveillance from the sky. or maybe that's just me.

across the road and through the underground 'street from the 1930s' is the shanghai museum. around a central atrium chinese calligraphy, paintings, jade, coins... walked down to xintiandi again and took a metro to nampu bridge. there i looked across the river at barges that were dismantling the expo. the walk through the south of the inner city was great. narrow street, markets. looking for tianzifang again i got lost in the french concession- and finally when i did find it didn't feel like buying anything. that night some of the kids and i went to a club in the 'art district' of the city. in a warehouse a chinese rock band sang 80s era derived rock pop funk punk. the audience was mostly foreigners. later we went to a jazz club- the cotton club where a white woman sang sam and dave. very international. we could have been in berlin.

day 17 - saturday

early morning flight to beijing. and arriving there are stranded after a bus ride in a landscape of cold high rises on enormous avenues shrouded in mist. reminds me of delhi- except for the gigantic socialist housing. the scale is all overwhelming. so unlike the density of shanghai. i don't know why this does not surprises me. no taxi wants to take us to the hotel. claire, a helpful bystander, misreads the directions and we instead troop with all our baggage into the madness of the beijing subway. then the long walk on the pedestrian street with screens and malls to the hostel. this time in a hutong- a traditional beijing neighbourhood- all spick and span and 15 minutes from the forbidden city.

day 18 - sunday

the forbidden city is close and we walk along the moat with the wind blowing cold and wait for it to open at 8.30 am. when it does, crowds of tourists along the axis. courtyard after impressive courtyard along the ceremonial central. and off from it to the west a series of smaller courtyards - systems of privacy choreographed and every courtyard just this slightly different from the previous. museum rooms and relic until at the end the imperial garden- rockwork and a vista back to the pavilion on top of the hill. the way back went through a strange burned out colonial pavilion. out of the main gate on to tiananmen square. red flags flutter above mao's face. and along the axis his tomb. a student asks me who mao was. my jaw drops and i ask around to the rest of the group. one knows. i shudder. nearby is the national theatre- the silver egg glistening in the morning light, dipped in water. a walk further south took us to two parallel streets one cleaned for the tourists and running parallel to it a local market still selling fermented eggs and pork. not too difficult to imagine which i preferred and which the students did. at the southern end we took cycle rickshaws beijing style to the temple of heaven. circle symbolises heaven, the square - the earth. ritual sacrificial platforms and abstinence pavilions. tier upon tier of geometries down axii- north south east west. again at the southern end a taxi past sino soviet monumental ugliness and glass clad monstrosities to the north western corner of the city where a wind was blowing wild over the water in the summer palace. the evening light hit the palace front head on. along the water through the endless corridor with paintings in every bay and climb to the top with views across the city. further down a marble boat and bridges. a metro took us to the silk market which turned out to be a shopping mall. the kids decide to shop and i decide to go see the koolhaas cctv nearby. shrouded in darkness with the plaza closed off from the street. the twisted section not so impressive anymore. the steven holl linked hybrid that we saw on the way from the airport- much more exciting. the night walk took me through the embassy area with guards standing like statues ; and then within the 2nd ring road through old hutongs given pretty skins. to walk within them is much nicer.

day 19 - monday

the great wall with a bunch of iranian men in the car who know india through shah rukh khan and raj kapoor. sholay. one of them sings for me. the ride to the great wall to the north and then the long climb up a portion teeming with tourists. my knee starts acting up on the way down. posing for photographs. the way back through a jade museum and a silk museum in the city- jack- our guide annoys. we leave the group at the birds nest olympic stadium and the water cube. spectacular scale, spectacular skin. light in the evening on the plaza.

day 20 - tuesday

morning back to hong kong at the foster terminal 3. red roof. and then bombay- about time. movies- 'ocean heaven'. 'fame' . 'waqt'

the women . pitfall . the big sleep .max payne . dong

an all woman cast in new york high society calls for a bunch of stars playing type with glee. suffering divorcee, strong independent woman and husband stealing bitch by joan crawford. and the thing that they all discuss the most is men- how to please them, how to keep them, how to ditch them.

the pitfall in the insurance man’s suburban boredom with wife and child happens when in search for adventure he has a one night stand with the girlfriend of convict. turns out that the real bad man here is the ex-cop who now scans potential insurance beneficiaries who also lusts after the same woman. ‘stay in the suburbs!’ the film screams out- american men don’t have the intelligence to understand the complexities of the city.

then there was howards hawks fantastic version of the raymond chandler 'the big sleep'. lauren bacall plays the sexy seductress to humphrey bogart's philp marlowe. she is smarter one of the two daughters of a rich biollionaire being blackmailed. The twists go on forever and so do the one-liners.

another noir, but recent, takes off from a self conscious noir graphic novel- whose central character is a snarling detective with dead wife looking for revenge. a banned drug makes victims see black bird fly through the sky before they tear your body to pieces. this one is very forgettable.

jia zhang ke’s documentary ‘dong’ made parallel with the gorgeous ‘still life’ pales in comparison. the staged long pans over the ruins of cities in the three gorges valley are intercut with a narrative of a neorealist painter trying to paint laborers in the landscape. this is the first half which ends with a cringe inducing sequence when the painter goes with photographs and toys for the wife and children of the laborers he has painted in the their distant home town. the second half follows the painter as he goes up and down bangkok’s various transportation systems and tries to paint an array of women who are probably sex workers.

laura .. a single man . an education . paranoid park . the day the earth stood still .10 things i hate about you .

on the noir trip that i am on, otto premingers ‘laura’. a mysterious murder of a top advertising executive leads to suspicions flying all round, including her fiance and her much older mentor. most of the action takes place in the apartment of the dead woman and the central character is a snarling detective complete with crush on said victim. really not that mysterious but fun to watch.

it is apparent that a fashion designer was behind the very stylish visuals of the gorgeously shot ‘a single man’. carefully recreating the chirstopher isherwood novel the film follows a day in the life of an english professor in los angeles as he reminisces about the lover he lost a few years back. as he contemplates suicide the world reaches out to him to love and cherish in precise detail, colour and texture.

a romance with an older man offers a bored exceptionally bright girl in britain a chance to really experience life- as defined by restaurants, concerts and a trip to paris. too bad that it turns out that he is married. a straightforward coming of age period drama. straightforwardly and smartly made.

but ‘paranoid park’ is something else. below a bridge young men ride skateboards rolling, swaying, swinging- freedom on the edge. they all seem to be escaping from something. our hero- young wide eyed innocent – from a family that is breaking up and a girlfriend he does not care for, and his own shyness. an accident where he kills a security guard forms the basic plotline of the film- but really that does not matter too much. the long slow motion skateboarding scenes, the muddled complex soundscape, and the gentle boys who are playing at being men, all reminded me so much of gus van sants earlier american suburbs and violence epic- ‘elephant’. loved that too.

i am supposed ot like ‘the day the earth stood still’ a sci fi special effects extravaganza where aliens invade the earth yet again- and destroy it- yet again- all because the human race is incapable to keeping the greenhouse gases under control. so keanu reeves arrives with a single expression on his face accompanied by a gigantic cyclops like figure in the middle of central park (where else?) the films tries to get all profound and philosophical and fails spectacularly. if only they had embraced more wholeheartedly the silly hollywood fluff it could have been.

a run of the mill prom king / queen high school comedy in ’10 things i hate about you’. the only real highlight is heath ledger and julia stiles as the guy and girl that everyone is afraid of in the school. the rest is bubblegum.

vixen . cradle 2 the grave . how to murder your wife . suspicion . fury . gilda . the conformist . the name of a river

tongue in cheek almost porn from russ meyer. vixen, the big busted heroine sleeps with absolutely everyone on screen- and that is the story- until a ridiculously silly discussion regarding racism and marx on a flight kidnapped to cuba from canada.

i feel sorry for jet li in every american film. the man is so out of sorts. he scowls one dimensionally and kicks butt like a robot. surrounding him in this flat crime drama are generic black types involved in some caper involving black diamonds.

jack lemmons apartment in 'how to murder your wife' is transformed from designer bachelor pad to girly kitsch when he marries a hot italian woman who jumps out of a cake. his misogynistic butler threatens to leave him over the woman and guess whose side lemmon takes. very sexist, fairly funny.

the hitchcock mystery 'suspicion' wasnt very suspenseful. a wife suspects her dandy of a husband of a possible murder- and that is the only thing that is scary. cary grant is smooth as the husband though.

'fury' was fritz langs noir. for a change the city was the place of civilization and sanity. spencer tracy plays a good guy suspected of being a kidnapper by a bunch of idiot villagers looking for a fight. when, in a mindless rage the burn down the jail they think tracy is dead- but tracy is still alive and looking for revenge. good film, i thought.

in 'gilda' rita hayworth is all glam in the lead role. her big boned all american-ness is foil for the complicated seductress she plays. she is in a complex love-hate relationship with her husbands right hand man - set in argentina. both the men in her life work in a casino that's a front for smuggling tungsten. (?)

in 'the conformist' bertolucci's film on italian fascism and its politics (and aesthetics) of order and fear, the reason for the lead characters self-effacement and lack of courage seems to be placed on an incident that occurred when the man was merely a child. a chauffeur almost seduces the boy and is believed to be killed by him. is this the scar that leaves him with a perpetual fear making him conform to all the unreasonable violence of the party. he follows his orders even when he is asked to betray his teacher and the woman he probably loves. but really, the film is really about the way it is staged. elaborate and cold styling in italy- the offices of the bureaucracy, or the streets of paris- all blue and cold with only the light from the shops selling the latest fashion giving warmth or the brilliant assassination sequence in the forest.

and last night we saw 'the name of a river' a tribute to ghatak that name-checked so many films and incidents in his life. the images were stunning- calcutta from the river and the sky, rivers and boats, the airfield from suvarnarekha; and osme of the music. but finally at the end of it the relentless inside references, the perpetual, very bengali, angst was a little too much to take.

robot

the film is beyond brilliant. expecting a rollercoaster star vehicle like sivaji, i was taken in by the first half's mad over the top jokiness. so you can imagine how stunned i was by the dark oedipal drama of the second half.

rajni the scientist ignores his lover in the quest for making a machine in his image- his child, born from him, and carrying in his metallic body all of whom rajni wants to be. except that 'one thing'- 'feelings' is what we are told but really we all know it is the phallus. this inability for a robot to reproduce is mirrored in a sequence when danny's rival robot humps the ground in a useless gesture of failure and ends up shooting the groin of an outline of a man used as a target.

the girlfriend of the scientist adores this harmless de-masculinised version of her lover who follows her every wish and saves her from being raped. these infantile antics are mistaken for much more by the robot when he develops human emotions as love. the father and the son fall for the same woman. a competiton between them leads ot the father destroying the son in an act of spectacular violence.

all this while we believe that the film is, like so many other science fiction films, a love hate relationship with technology and its possibilities and dangers- the danger of super rationality and the irrationality of our desires. and this is a theme through the film- in many a dialogue and scene. man against machine. the power of man's mind and the fear of uncontrollable technology.

in the second half the robot reappears in a violent form- corrupted by danny's jealousy. danny is now a foster father. faced with his own extinction the robot begins to reproduce. multiple versions of himself form an army of him- without that one missing part- feelings / phallus. the girl is kidnapped and kept in a sexless imprisonment until she agrees to make robosapiens with the villain- more sexless reproduction. the only difference between machine and man is sexuality.

in a superb climactic fight, the multiple robots come together, merge all their identities to become one overpowering machine.. they form and reform into spheres and walls, snakes and screws, joined together by one brain in multiple centers- a rhizome that can only be destroyed through a virus that penetrates through all defences. it is only apt that this sequence is filmed in the disconnected half built mind-spaces of chennai and mumbai. here glass clad building overlook these mad machines escaped from the call cnters on desolate streets with half built infrastructure everywhere, buildings under construction and flyovers leading into the sky. the internal sequences are in lab like antiseptic chrome and glass.

so well done- and so much darker than i had thought it would be. even the music seems to come out of some strange fusion of machine and man. the song sequences and dances are cyborg dreams. there is no real happy ending here. even at the end when the son dismantles himself to save his father, he is still in love with his mother.

long overdue photopost

oberoi mall in the rain

juhu gally high rise

sanaa and me

oberoi mall under renovation

mill land / phoenix

dadar dadar dadar

farewell to neelima, dipti, aditya and rewathi

bandra skywalk

edward theater and the cinema city screenings

billboards in the rain

sndt, juhu

joanna's birthday

ganpati at home

ruin at opera house

gulshan sonal hussaina

bharat nagar biryani party in college (in celebration of id and the registration of the society)

workers at avon

moms birthday at prego

bharat nagar community meeting

choudhary farms, umargaon- family party

usha maushis factory at umargaon

antichrist . pierrot le fou . the quiet american . the italian job . the fountainhead

another suffering heroine in a lars von trier film. here after losing her son in an accident her psychoanalyst husband takes her deep in the woods to 'eden' where she is to confront her fear of nature. nature is the garden of death. but it is also woman- and herself. evil resides in her as passion as she rebels against reason and the phallus; and her own womanhood in gruesome scenes of genital mutilation. gratuitous violence that i could not bear to watch. incredibly well made with all kinds of biblical allusions thrown in. not that i figured out most of them. but nowhere as complex as dogville.

a similar conversation that pits male rationality against female romanticism occurs in the middle of pierrot le fou, jean luc godard's wild ride with ferdinand or pierrot and anna karina- the wild child that leads him away from his stultifying bourgeois life- wife and kids and parties where the latest commodity is discussed in detail through coloured filters. pop culture and cultural references pop up everywhere- from proust and james joyce to film noir. film genres switch in staccato rhythms. seemed like a pop art film with its in-jokes about film making, its palette of primary colours and its set design with posters o art reproductions and designer chairs. lenin and coke are discussed in the sun drenched south of france; in the genteel sun and sand american culture is lampooned and loved, the vietnam war becomes a game.

graham greene's hero in 'the quiet american' is a world weary british reporter in love with a beautiful vietnamese woman, when a young american arrives in saigon with visions of a different future for the country. this white man's burden is to save the vietnamese from the evils of communism and the ineffectual colonial rule of the french; no matter what the cost in human lives. after all it is the larger ideological battle that must be won. echoes of every american war since. iraq especially.

'the italian job' is good american pulp. mark walberg and a huge bunch of stars including donald sutherland and edward norton in a oceans eleven style crime caper. something about gold bricks and a double crossing partner. with all the cool gadgets and lines this really should be much better.

in the film version of ayn rand's 'the fountainhead' gary cooper as howard roark is the first laugh. and then there is the dominique francon who gets an orgasm everytime she sees his sweat drenched shirt- or when she sees him drill the limestone with his strong arms; or the 'radical' architecture that roark is supposed to have built which all look like bad renderings of modern architecture that you find in every architecture magazine even today. the film manages to stay true to the book and brings out its inherent silliness. the 'inspiring' speech at the end when roark justifies his individuality over the collective is hilarious especially since he has just blown up a low income housing settlement because the evil mediocrities have prettied it up. the howlers in the dialogue make this a must watch for all architects.

high noon . the searchers . things to come . el topo . dabangg . raja babu . hum dono. once upon a time in mumbaai . vincere

so many films to review. i am falling behind every week. maybe i should start off with the westerns- two of them- the first one 'high noon' in which gary cooper plays a lawman recently married waiting for two hours for a train to arrive that carries his nemesis. as he goes from house to pub to church to enlist deputy sheriffs to help him fight the villain, all of them desert him, cursing him instead for the violence that is sure to follow. the two women in his life- his mexican ex-girlfriend and his very white and blonde wife also desert him until one of them has a change of heart at the end. no prises for guessing which one. the stereotypes are all there. what really works is the tension of the impending arrival through the whole film. the climax at the end ends up being a let down. john ford's 'the searchers' places a few twists in the typical western. far from being a white washed hero, john wayne plays a racist cowboy who snarls his contempt for anything red indian. his companion is a 'half breed' as they travel the gorgeous utah deserts in search of a young girl kidnapped by avenging tribes of ululating, horse riding, teepee living indians. when she is found she is a squaw of the tribe leader, which leads to our hero wanting to kill her for miscegenation. the final reunion at the end is lovely in spite of the cringe inducing racism that underlies the whole film- in spite of its relatively progressive stance.

i finally got down to seeing 'el topo'- the mole- a western of sorts but packed to the brim with allegories and symbols that i assumed to have profound importance but could not for the life of me understand. not that it mattered. the film seemed to be divided in three parts. in the first 'el topo' rescues a community from a murdering tribe and leaves his son in their care. in the second he travles with a woman through the desert to defeat 4 people, each with their own powers and geometric symbols; and in the third he helps a band of deformed underground people dig a tunnel to the world above. mesmerising and completely obscure.

thank god for 'dabanng'. i am sick and tired of the smooth over produced chic of multiplex films- those that dont aim for more than a smooth surface finish, or (even worse) those that claim to have a social conscience - think 'peepli live'. dabanng has no such pretentions. i was afraid with the image of salman's sunglasses reflecting the lighted heart, that the film might be too self conscious about its own masalagiri to really go out and enjoy it. always keeping a respectful distance from getting down and dirty in the genre and instead 'appreciating' it as a clever 'take'. 'wanted' had no such inhibitions and 'dabanng' had only a few. salman khan is salman khan, no matter if you call his chulbul- and he is great- especially in the action sequences- a closed warehouse with a bunch of goondas where he flexes his muscles to get out of the clutches of the villains or the way in which his shirt comes off in the final scene. sonakshi sinha is stunning but had little to do. and the story... i cant remember. on a whim i also saw david dhawan's 'raja babu' yesterday. entertaining if you can carry your brain with you and pretend to read too much in everything- otherwise it can simply be shrill and hackneyed. govinda's comic timing is fantastic and so are the dance sequences- the sari lifting in 'aa aa ee' being a highlight and of course the multiple and complex pelvic thrusts. the groin is the centre of the film - whether that is the phallus/candle that karisma burns for govinda or the nadas- in stiff and limp state that shjakti kapoor fights with.

i have always loved the songs in 'hum dono' but had never seen it (ages ago on doordarshan does not count) what struck me in the film were long silences and the gentle ease y which the story is told from the very first scene where an entire silent flirtation leads into 'abhi na jaao'. in fact all the songs are placed beautifully. as a weepy it is totally successful; i sobbed away. partly becasue the music - especially 'allah tero naam' is just simply divine.

'once upon a time in mumbaai' tries so hard to be cool. the narrator speaks in a decorous monotone, so do all the actors - no one screams, ajay devgan mumbles and scowls, the photography is lush period homage and very tasteful. everything is so smooth that the film is completely flat. it plods along from incident to incident. the only one who tries to fight the eternal smoothness is emraan hashmi who manages for some time to look human enough to be petulant and vulnerable. prachi desai as his girlfriend benefits from this, but poor kangna ranaut is submerged under the perpetual good taste of the film. boring.

'vincere' follows an affair that Mussolini had with a woman who he later discarded and declared insane along with the son they had together. high on production design and operatic staging. every moment is pushed to the extremes of high tension through stylized photography and sound design. i did not hate the film- but it did not leave me with much either.

inkheart . high school musical 3 . savage planet . antonio gaudi. force of evil . the band wagon . khel khel mein

i should really have liked 'inkheart'. i fall for most films where fantasy is an excuse for some really spectacular special effects. in this case brandan fraser plays a man gifted with the power to make what he reads come true. a fairy tale called inkheart comes alive and takes his wife in leaving a band of murdering villains instead. fraser wants his wife back and some mummy-like action follows. not nearly as lovely as it could have been. brain dead disney silliness is 'high school musical 3' so forgettable. at least the music could have been less annoying.

the french fantasy animation film ' fantastic planet' pits humans against a race of blue giants on a strange planet. the humans are kept as pets while the wild ones live free in an abandoned garden. when one domesticated animal escapes with all the knowledge of the blue people there is a revolution. scientific thought can save the world. a similar sentiment is seen in 'things to come' a 1936 science fiction fantasy. written by h g wells as a polemic of sorts against irrationality and its dangers. the film is set in everytown, where a war breaks out on christmas eve and over a few years the world is plunged into a dark age where tribes battle with one another headed by a chieftain like figure. but somewhere around the Mediterranean scientists, teachers and professionals have evolved an idyllic bastion against this madness. a grey haired wise man arrives in this devastated town as a beacon of a better life spreading his peace gas over the population. everytown then is transformed into a perfect city with a baroque inspired plan and futuristic white high rise living. but as the scientists reach for even greater heights, a sculptor rues the loss of the 'human' and creates a propaganda war against progress. as a rocket shoots towards the sky mad mobs invade the launch pad. good film for my theory of design modernism class.

hiroshi teshigahara's antonio gaudi is a relief. unlike 'my architect' that aims for some profound psychlogical insight from louis kahns work, in this film the buildings speak for themselves by intercutting what might have been gaudis sources with the voluptuous sensuality of gaudis buildings. not having a voiceover telling us what to see was a great help.

i love the moral ambiguity of film noir. in 'force of evil' a brother who has sold his soul to the devil to make a million overnight is confronted by his morally upright, but weak brother who runs a gambling joint. as the lawyer brother tries to make amends for being the black sheep he is consistently snubbed by the older brother. who is good and evil is debateable. the sequences in new york are beautifully shot- wall street deserted in morning light and especially, at the end' the descent to the banks of the river where the body of his brother lies.

more new york sequences (and lovely ones) are in 'the band wagon'. the first being the shoe shine song in the penny arcade on 42nd street where a black man shines fred astaires shoes like a happy slave; and the second the lovely romantic dance in central park with fred astiare and cyd charise. astaire plays a has-been Hollywood star trying to make it big again in a stage version of 'faust' by playing opposite a ballet dancer. the show fails because it is serious. the message being that nothing should be taken seriously- all is airheaded happiness- 'that's entertainment' the world is a stage and the stage is a world.

more airheaded happiness leads to a multiple murders in 'khel khel mein'. rishi kapoor, neetu singh and rakesh roshan play teenagers who love to flirt with danger. one day a prank goes wrong and they are implicated in a crime involving the murder of a jeweller and the evil 'black cobra'. poor aruna irani plays the suffering vamp- 'sherri'- she had to be christian.

police story. once upon a time in china 1-6 steamboy. the best days of our lives . bride wars .

it is the opening of police story and that incredible chase down the hill through the slums that most sticks in my mind. no stunt compares to that one through the rest of the story about a policeman assigned to guard a potential witness. jackie chang is fantastic fun. the other hong kong kung fu king whose films i have been watching back to back is jet li.

while chang plays the action for comedy, jet li makes it ballet. and it is not as if his characters are all tension like bruce lee. instead there is a gentle sweetness and often a sort of buffoonery that offsets his seriousness. in fact when he plays wong fei-hung his self-seriousness is often what is funny as he surrounded by his girlfriend and disciples who seem instead to have a better understanding of the world. ji is the distanced slightly eccentric pure soul. he is the star of only 4 of the six films and when he is not around the films suffer terribly. his charisma more than makes up for the interminable lion and dragon dances in the third film and the pseudo cowboy and indian story in the sixth. every film has a white man to hate- the first being american, then the russians, then the germans.. the list goes on. these white people are conniving through business to take over the china. wong fei-hung westernizes just enough to be able to fight them on their terms- but only in the later films. in the first two it is good old fashioned kung-fu that helps win all the battles.

i love the way that space is used in these films. it serves as both obstacle and prop for the body. while containing the action it also becomes something that can be used against the opponent. the body traces out the space in all dimensions and maps the structure and material of the building. the scale of the spaces, their strong and weak joints, the way that they come together are all unravelled the the action proceeds. some of my favourite sequences happen again in the first two films when cgi and wire tricks have not completely made the body weightless.

the action in the anime 'steamboy' occurs during the london exhibition of 1866. across from the crystal palace an enormous steam castle is built which is going to change the world. superb animation includes brilliantly designed steam engines that run off tracks and gorgeous visuals when the steam castle runs out of control over the city of london. the story involves the grandson of a family of inventors and a rivalry between his father and grandfather over science and its relationship with rampant capitalism.

'the best days of our lives' begins with three war veterans meeting in an airport trying to get back home to boone city where the women wait to care for them. the men have trouble fitting in again- one drinks too much, the other is ashamed of his disability and disfigurement and the third comes back to find himself jobless. . the women that they come back to are strong and supportive as they are supposed to be- and if they are not- as one veterans wife is portrayed, she very quicly in villianized. a propoganda film like no other- beautifully made and acted. for me the most beautiful sequence involves the airfield with the discarded carcasses of planes. i am a sucker for ruins.

and 'bride wars'.. if it wasn't for anne hathaway and kate hudson, who really are too lovely for this film, it would be completely unwatchable. like two bridezilla episodes rolled into one. the best of friends vying over each other to have the most perfect wedding which involves every cliché in the book. vera wang wedding clothes and a location to die for. after a while you cant care less about these women and their annoying tiffs.

chandramukhi . public housing. this film is not yet rated. terminator- salvation

in a fantastic entry sequence that begins with the sole of his shoe rajnikanth enters the film as a psychoanalyst who has made up his mind to debunk the myth of the ghost of a dancer that haunts the rooms of the palace. from a room to the rear of the building she is said to look down at her lover's house who was killed mercilessly by the tyrant husband. in the climax an easy solution is found to the tamilian schizophernia that pits science (all those iit-ians) against the mystical/religious (tirupati/ rajnikant) by making the yogi and analyst work together to rid the heroine of her poltergeist. whether it was a real spirit infestation or only a manifestation of internally repressed feelings is never resolved.

frederick wiseman's 'public housing' is a curious film. almost three hours of fly-on-the-wall gazing at everyday life in a housing scheme in chicago. except that the everyday life he has access to comes from the chicago housing authority which also has a special police squad for the colony. so we spend most of the time watching the poor, drug infested, dysfunctional neighbourhood on its best behaviour under the gaze of figures of authority- whether that is the social worker, the policeman or the plumber. the film is strangely un-self-conscious about the camera and its power to transform the object that i looks upon.

'this film is not yet rated' is an expose of the film rating system in the usa which is controlled by a secretive group of parents who work as a moral police for the nation. the premise to expose these people to the general public and he hires a lesbian couple as a private detective agency to help him. pretty straightforward with a michael moore kind of humour where the filmmaker submits his own film for rating.

the latest of the terminator series was damp and vapid compared to the others. in fact, i think after 2 the films have gone downhill very fast. some great action sequences and sets. the world i now almost completely run over by machines and a revolutionary army is trying to overthrow them. nothing to remember except for the thrill of two or three chases in gorges and river beds.

son of india . mandi . bhumika . le million. follow the fleet . los angeles plays itself

mehboob khans mega nationalistic epic gets its metaphors mixed up- i think. the 'son of india' leaves dehradun and traipses through new delhi monuments singing and gets to the evil city of bombay to find the father who has abandoned his mother and him. while two street songs catalogue Bombay's postcard images- gateway of india, marine drive, etc; it is the set piece that really explores the darkness of the evil empire with the degrading conditions of living in slums/ villages -a brilliant rooftop chase sequence to a bridge below which the homeless father lives, to the huge elephanta statue just off a village street where god delivers his protection and judgement. but for me the images that really stay in my head are the action scenes in the sewers below the city that lead directly from the warehouse of the villain.

the brothel in mandi reminded me of another house of women in beijing in 'raise the red lantern'. but here the rules are made by the doyenne played brilliantly by shabana azmi. under her protection are a collection of terrific women actors- smita patil plays the virgin illegitimate child of a local powerbroker, soni razdan a brazen prostitute, neena gupta a childlike dancer- and the list goes on. it is a relief to say the least that the film does not make complete victims of these women, even when they are asked to be removed from the city by the moral police of the town, by keeping the tone tragi-comic rather than out and out melodrama. that cant be said about 'bhumika' though. based on a real life, i guess it does not have a choice. smita patil plays an actress caught in a marriage with a gold digger husband who controls her every move. his jealousies and manipulations drive her to other men who each creates a prison for her in their own way. the tragedies and disappointments do not end. naseeruddin shah and amrish puri play love interests. but if there is anything that makes the film constantly watchable it is smite patil who looks searingly beautiful throughout.

the first shot of 'le million' is a pan across the roofs of paris until we look through a dormer into a large hall where celebrations are on. the early french musical plays like a p g wodehouse comedy of errors when a lottery ticket is won by a down-on-his-luck artist- and then is lost by his fiance. through the rest of the film the jacket with the ticket is chased through town with a group of underground thieves and an opera singer. one beautiful sequence is the love song in the opera where the real love story and the operatic love story intertwine. the false setting and paper flowers are loved and adored for their artificiality and their fakeness.

no such moments of magic in the american musical 'follow the fleet' with fred astaire and ginger rogers although some terrific dancing. two sailors come into town and fall for two sisters; and then leave. one particularly memorable dance sequence is the sailors performance for the guests on the ship who are longing for some american music.

'los angeles plays itself' was a perfect cinema city film looking at locations in the city made mythological through cinema and the history of those real spaces, all underpinned by an anger emerging out of a belief that the movie industry has disrespected and lied about the city that it claims to represent and live within.

my architect . breakfast at tiffany's . hedwig and the angry inch. south park - bigger, longer, uncut . the weathering continent. phoenix 2772 .

it has been a long list of films since i last posted; and that is mainly because being at home all day i end up watching all kinds of nonsense back to back until they all dissolve into one giant mess of a image mash up at night when i sleep. so here i try to sift some of these images out into their proper slots.

'my architect' displayed a remarkable facility for ickiness throughout the film. i cant remember the last time a film made me cringe so much. maybe it was the very premise of the film where an illegitimate son tries ot rediscover his absent father through his legacy so every stone or shaft of light in louis kahns work signifies some profound psychological insight into kahns very soul; or maybe it is the fact that the son so shamelessly in the bald confessional tone of an oprah winfrey show asks his mother intimate details about her relationship with his father on camera; or the mystic indian yoginess thrust upon kahn by his devotees in india who make him into a seer; or the bengali architect at the end of the film who simpers and sobs away in the dhaka assembly and credits kahn the american for bringing democracy to his underdeveloped country. at the end of the film the son stares at the son setting behind kahn's monumental tomb like assembly and 'listens to the silence' and finds his father. if this was television it would be a rendezvous with simi garewal. meanwhile kahn's architecture which i so admired for their clarity and monumental sublime become merely enormous phallic replacements for a man desperate to leave a legacy to the world and could only find them in the mute ruins of a classical past. all his buildings become tombs to him.

in new york two loners try and find their selves both by selling their bodies and their youth. the man, a wannabe writer, finds an older woman emntor who takes care of his every need while the girl has escaped from her past to reinvent herself in an permanent nomadic mode wearing fanciful costumes and scouring the city for a rich man to get married to. her only companion is a cat with no name and an obsession with a jewellery store. true happiness lies in this landmark of a capitalist paradise. here even the clerks who know you cant afford any of their wares do not condemn your desire. a similar paradise existed in 'modern times' where in one night of pleasure chaplin and the tramp roam free and play out suburban fantasies inside the shopping mall. in 'breakfast at tiffany's audrey hepburn lives a perpetual fantasy of a richer future until clear and present love reigns at the end. it is a happy ending - of sorts.

hedwig and the angry inch is a movie based on a broadway musical whose central protagonist is a transgendered rock singer who came to america just before the berlin wall fell from east germany. she fell in love with an american marine and lost most of her penis in a botched up surgery leaving her with an angry inch. in america she is betrayed by her teenage lover who uses her songs to top the charts without giving her any credit. the film follows hedwig as she follows this cheat across his tour of america. fantastic over the top fun, and although some of the songs are a little corny the film more than easily carries it along with its flair for fantasy and melodrama.

i am not really so much of a 'south park' fan. i dont really get the humour. i understand it but i dont laugh. in the feature film a tv show is to blame for the spread of cuss words and bad language thorughout the youth of america and the americans blame canada leading to a war between the two nations. the films targets everybody liberals, conservatives, war mongers and peaceniks but much of the jokes are predictable. but then they would say- that's the point. ok i get it, but so what? now if only they had managed to lampoon themselves..

'the weathering continent' feels like a short story for a feature length anime. a boy, a warrior and a gender unspecific mystic are journeying to a town looking for water on a continent buried under sand. on the way they come to a city whose inhabitants have recreated a world of pleasure in death. all the bodies are like wax statues in position performing theatre or dance, but their faces are hollowed out masks. bandits are raiding this city and are going to be cursed. great premise for some fantastic set pieces but the animation is basic and so is the story.

'phoenix 2772' has a typical tale to tale of environmental destruction against technological progress. a shape shifting robot in love with her master is merely one of the many cute osamu tezuka style characters in the film which include a dice with arms and a head, a walking accordion, etc. our hero is to save the world by bringing back the firebird 2772 from a galaxy far far away.