January 12, 2009
January 11, 2009
January 10, 2009
November 30, 2008
Two for the Money
We watched National Treasure: Book of Secrets and Bachna Ae Haseeno yesterday and both were entertaining, at least 🙂
Of course, Book of Secrets was a bit too predictable and had a bunch of large plot holes. Like the one where they are all stuck in an underground cavern and there’s water pouring in. They got to that place by figuring out that the water from a cavern above had to drain out. So they stopped the water in the cavern above, get to the one below and then when the water starts flowing again in the cavern above, discover that the water does not go anywhere in the new cavern unless a door (which is closed) is opened. So where was the water going to earlier? Confused yet? I was!
But it did have some neat historical points which had me scratching my head wondering if the facts were real or made up. It looks as if at least some of the facts were real – there were indeed three copies of the Statue of Liberty and the Resolute Desks actually exist. Of course, there are other minor items which were altered, or created out of whole cloth, to drive the story. Overall, Book of Secrets was entertaining but nothing special.
Bachna Ae Haseeno was, on the other hand, a gem because it’s an atypical Hindi/Bollywood movie. It’s a movie in three parts and the first part does seem to draw some inspiration from Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge while it also makes fun of some of the items from DDLJ. But overall, the concept of the movie seems to have a marked resemblance to Autograph but unlike the usual Bollywood "adaptation", which simply copies other movies scene for scene, all the events in Bachna Ae Haseeno were totally different. So I’m left wondering if this was actually a case of coincidental resonance or if the writers for the movie did start with the core of Autograph but then went their own way.
An interesting factoid about Bachna Ae Haseeno is the title song. Like Unforgettable, where Natalie Cole and Nat King Cole collaborated across the divide of time, Bachna Ae Haseeno (the song) has Kishore Kumar posthumously collaborating with his son Sumeet Kumar. But the interesting thing about this particular song is that there’s another father-son collaboration (or pairing) at work here. The song was originally used on a movie starring Rishi Kapoor, the father of Ranbir Kapoor, the lead actor in Bachna Ae Haseeno 🙂
The story? I won’t spoil it for you. It’s worth watching the movie to enjoy the whole thing completely 😀
November 7, 2008
The Stuff Nations Are Made Of
I just finished reading PTerry‘s Nation last night and it was quite the experience. Shakespeare, in As You Like It if I’m not mistaken, says that there are seven ages to man. There seems to have been, at least so far, three stages to PTerry’s writing 🙂
First there was the the spoofing PTerry, the one who made fun of fantasy clichés and parodied pop culture. Then there was the PTerry from around Small Gods who (or was it later, when Vimes began transmogrifying from a regular character into something different?) wrote much more thoughtful novels; in fact, he might just have moved from spoof to satire around this point. Of course, this is just my opinion, others might think differently 🙂
But with Nation, you have a new PTerry, or the third age of PTerry, where the tone is more serious. The usual PTerry humour is there but the tone of the novel is not of parody or satire, it’s about telling a story and it’s a story of ideas. Little ideas which can set big ideas rolling and big ideas which can move entire worlds. In fact, the whole novel is chockablock with ideas packed tight like sardines in a can 🙂
But the thread underlying it all is simple. It’s about the concept of a nation. When you are one person all alone in the world, there’s just you. But when you have two people facing all that may come there way, you have a nation. When a small child creates an imaginary friend, he’s creating his own nation that will let him be all that he wants to be. When an adult creates an alter ego that does heroic things when he can’t, he’s creating a nation that lets him cope with the world. We all rely on nations, whether consciously or subconsciously. But Nation takes the concept and shows us all that goes with being part of a nation.
There’s more to the story than that of course. But why should I spoil the joy of discovering these things for anybody? There’s a lot going on and given that I read the novel rather quickly, it seemed to all happen so fast. But it works and it works well.
About the only thing that didn’t work for me was the ending. And that has nothing to do with PTerry’s writing. There are two children at the end of the novel who ask somebody who’s telling them the story that was the story of Nation, why it couldn’t have ended differently. They don’t want a happy ending for nations, they are not interested in the bigger picture. They wanted a happy ending for individuals. I am like those children.
I can understand that reality is different, that you don’t always get the happy ending you wanted. I can also understand that when you look at how things turn out overall, that it was a happy ending for all of humanity perhaps. But still, I yearn for the happy ending that I wanted. Perhaps it’s because I’m like those children, I still haven’t grown up. But then again, I don’t want to grow up if it means that I have to give up my hopes for happy endings :p
On the other hand, I have enjoyed every bit of PTerry’s writing that I’ve come across over the years. While I found some of them were profound, they were still like a good dinner that you enjoyed a lot but forgot about after a few days – you take the idea with you but the details get lost as time passes. But Nation is like that one enjoyable dinner where you swallowed a fish bone by mistake and even after the dinner is forgotten, you remember the fish bone. Perhaps that’s why this particular ending is there – you remember it when all else is forgotten.
Overall, I think this is the best PTerry novel so far and while I probably would prefer that he goes back to the good dinners of the Discworld, I wouldn’t mind a fishbone-included-dinner like Nation every once in a while 🙂
November 5, 2008
Finding the Foundation
I have been reading Isaac Asimov‘s Foundation series lately though I have taken a break to quickly finish Terry Pratchett‘s Nation before getting back to the next novel in the Foundation series. (Yes, I know, I should have read the Foundation series a long time ago! But I was waiting till I had all the books in the series and then I did have the books but didn’t have the time … and you know how it goes …)
The Foundation series started sometime way back in 1942 and the first novel in the series, Foundation, was actually a collection of short stories which was later published as a novel in 1951. The other two books in the original trilogy, Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation, were similarly combinations of short stories and were published as novels in 1952 and 1953 respectively. You do have to keep these facts in mind for what follows 🙂
Basically, while I found the books in the original trilogy enjoyable, I did find them also slightly dated 🙂 See, I don’t recall noticing so many inconsistencies and implausibilities when I read Gordon R. Dickson‘s Dorsai!, and that was written in 1959. Of course, this might simply mean that I wasn’t as critical when I last read Dorsai! or that a lot changed between 1951 and 1959 🙂
Whatever the case, there are things which bug me about the early Foundation novels. For instance, you have a galactic civilization which spans from one end of the galaxy to the other but which still relies on paper! Communications are sent via capsules which contains thin strips of paper, paper is used in all reports, and they have what are called book projectors which seem to indicate that it’s some sort of machine which throws an image of a book on to the wall. Rather primitive when you consider that these people are also supposed to have hyperspatial travel and can go from one star to another in a few days, if not hours!
This perhaps can be attributed to the level of technology existent at the time Asimov wrote the books since there is no mention of computers either. Such an advanced galactic civilization appears to do all their navigational calculations by hand 🙂 And I found that rather funny. But at the same time, given that we have taken computers for granted, I am not sure if I can try to imagine if it would have been possible to imagine back then how ubiquitous computers would become a mere 50 years later.
Plus, I find myself wondering if I were to write a novel of the future and included handheld computers which are the equivalent of the super-computers of today, whether somebody 50 years from now would find that reference charmingly antiquated because technology had moved on in a completely different direction and electronic computers are as outdated as paper 🙂 That I guess is part of the joys of science fiction, trying to anticipate (and sometimes succeeding but also failing at times) how technology will change …
Of course, Asimov corrects these issues in his later Foundation novels 🙂 He returned to the Foundation series after a hiatus of about 30 years and so, the next novel in the series, Foundation’s Edge, was written in 1982. This book does not mention paper very much at all and everybody uses computers. In fact, they have computers which can be controlled via the human mind! So that was quite interesting in how changes in technology changed how a fictional universe worked in under about 200 years according to that universe’s timeline.
I have read only up to Foundation’s Edge and so have no idea if technology would change further in the novels. Additionally, I’m curious as to if Asimov’s Foundation prequels, which were written even later, would include computers and so change the history of the original novels or not. I have read the prequels before but I wasn’t paying attention to technology at that time. So it will be interesting to find out … 🙂
May 30, 2008
The Expectations of Imagination
I just finished reading [amtap book:asin=0380803267 type=”url” text=”King of Foxes”], the second book in Raymond E. Feist‘s Conclave of Shadows series. I woke up in the morning thinking of something that I had first thought on reading the first book in the series, [amtap book:asin=B000J3EGQC type=”url” text=”Talon of the Silver Hawk”]. So what was I thinking? I was thinking that it ruins the magic of an imagined world when the author takes shortcuts 🙂
Of course, I must start off with the disclaimer that Raymond E. Feist is a successful author and I cannot claim to be anywhere even remotely close to his level as a writer, in terms of success. However, I’m not writing as a writer but as a reader and all a reader needs to criticise a book is the fact that they didn’t enjoy it thoroughly 🙂
Now in the case of Raymond E. Feist, I can’t say I haven’t enjoyed his writing. in fact, quite the reverse. However, the more I read his work, the more I realize that he tends to use shortcuts in building his world and this tends to disappoint me. I expect a completely new world springing forth from the author’s imagination when I read a novel which is set in another world, not a pale imitation of our own clothed in slightly different trappings to hide the fact.
I don’t know if I was aware of the similarity to Japanese culture in Feist’s Tsurani when I first read his [amtap book:asin=0553564943 type=”url” text=”Magician”] and the other two novels in the series. But then again, that was close to 20 years ago. However, when I read Talon of the Silver Hawk, I was immediately aware that his Orosini were lifted wholesale from various North American Indian (or Native Americans or First Nation or whatever they are called today …) tribes. Then I woke up today with the realization that the continent on the other side of Midkemia, the world that Fiest’s stories take place on, is called Novindus. Nov + Indus as in New India, get it? Like Columbus thought America, the continent on the other side of our own world, was India. (Then again, apparently Novindus is supposed to be shaped like India and so it is actually India since the known world in Midkemia might be the Americas …)
There probably are other races and other places modeled after our world in Feist’s novels. And I’m not saying a writer has no right to do that, it’s a writer’s prerogative to write their story (and build their world) in any fashion they choose. But as far as I’m concerned, when somebody copies stuff from the world we know simply because it’s easy, it takes something away from the overall story. Now Terry Pratchett copies countries and people from our world in his Discworld series but that’s for satirical effect, there is a purpose to it. Not to mention that PTerry’s copies are never exact copies 🙂
But I see no real purpose to Feist’s wholesale copying of nations and peoples except that it’s easier to do that than to create something completely new. Perhaps I am mistaken and am assigning incorrect motives to Feist, Perhaps he did have a reason for creating these parallels. But if so, I can’t see that reason. All that it’s done for me is to slightly dilute the enjoyment of reading his work. And I don’t think any writer wants that ….
[amtap book:asin=0380803267][amtap book:asin=B000J3EGQC][amtap book:asin=0553564943]
May 12, 2008
Dresden, Files not China
I’m feeling much better than I have in almost a week 🙂 Give me a couple more days (or weeks …) and I should hopefully be completely back to normal.
While I was sick, I finished reading the (currently) last book in the Dresden Files series. It made me wonder why I had never talked about the books here because the more I read from this absorbing series by Jim Butcher, the more I like it 🙂 And now that I’ve reached the end of the series, I can’t wait for the rest of the books in the series to make their appearance. With 20+ projected books in the series, and only 10 written so far, there’s a long time to go before I can complete the series, and the anticipation is killing me 😀
I didn’t even know of Jim Butcher or his books till I picked up the DVD boxed set for the Sci-Fi channel series by the same name. At that time, I found the similarities between a wizard named Harry living amongst normal humans who are oblivious to the existence of magic, and another young wizard named Harry living amongst muggles, a bit too comical. The show wasn’t all that great and was too full of inconsistencies and plot holes to make it very appealing. However, the show did its job in getting me to read the books …
I read the first book and liked it. The second book wasn’t so good, in my opinion but this was mostly because the plot for the second book was given away by an episode of the TV series. I liked how the book handled werewolves much better than the clichés the TV series used but I couldn’t enjoy the book fully. By the time I read the third book, my interest was back. The fourth book, I was hooked! And since then I’ve been rushing through one book after another, always eager to find out what happens next.
The best thing about the Dresden Files is how intricately they are plotted. While each book is a story in its own right, it also advances a much bigger, overall story arc. This wasn’t as evident in the early books but now into the middle of the series with book ten, it is well-and firmly established that these things are all leading up to what we hope will be a very satisfying culmination.
The other thing I’ve noticed is that each and every book seems to pit Harry against bigger and more stronger opponents than before. It’s almost as if Harry is being trained to go up against the biggest opponent you can think of in the final book and these are simply to get him trained both mentally and physically to meet that challenge.
And of course, Harry’s friends are a topic unto itself. Each character has been fleshed out and expanded upon over the course of several books. Some of them have started out as really negative characters who have over the course of time have become much more morally ambiguous. Others have always been what they started out as but have still managed to show different facets as the journey progressed. And that probably is the biggest reason for enjoying the books – the journey itself, the things you learn about people (and about yourself) as you read these books.
If you’re into fantasy or crime noir (or both), the Dresden Files will prove to be well worth the read if you stick with it past book four or five 🙂
February 22, 2008
Double Whammy
In recent times, I’ve complained vociferously about the lack of originality in any offering from Hollywood. Heck, I’ve said that their totally bankrupt of any imagination since what we got out of Hollywood has been consistently dreck. Imagine my surprise then to find not one but two great movies over the course of just two days 🙂
The movies couldn’t be any further apart even if somebody tried. One shines for great writing, great plot and very few plot-holes. The other has a plot so wafer-thin that it is almost invisible. Probably a good thing since otherwise the gaping plot-holes would have made it look like a swiss-cheese that had been machine gunned :p But both were great movies.
The first, Stardust, surprised me because it turned out to be a Neil Gaiman novel which was adapted as a movie. To be honest, I’ve never read any Neil Gaiman. But that’s mostly because the vibe I got about his books wasn’t something I really liked. So I was surprised to see this beautiful, sensitive, brilliantly plotted movie and to learn that it was based on a book written by Gaiman. I was determined to get the novel and read it after the movie but then I learnt that the movie is considered to be more "kid-friendly" than the book because the book is supposed to be an "adult" fairy tale. That kind of killed my enthusiasm to read the novel but I’ll still probably read the novel just because I’m curious as to how true the novel remains to the storyline in the movie.
The movie itself is wonderful. It’s magical. It’s romantic. It simply scintillates. I won’t give away the plot or any story elements here but suffice it to say that if you love fantasy and movies, that this is a must see.
Speaking of fantasy, the other movie, Shoot ‘Em Up, is a true work of fantasy :p The situations are improbable, if not downright, impossible; the action scenes out-Matrix the Matrix; and it all looks like something created by John Woo on speed 🙂 But if you’re having the kind of day where you just want to punch somebody in the face, this movie will work wonders for you since you see people being killed right, left and center like so many bowling pins. It’s just so much fun to see so many people being killed in such amazing ways 🙂
In fact, the movie felt a lot like Kill Bill in a way but was a much more fun ride. The action sequences were to die for because they seemed to have the best action sequences from most movies made down the years. There are classic John Woo scenes as well as ones I might have seen in a Bollywood movie or a Hong Kong flick. But all are a treat to watch and it’s mostly action all the way. This is wonderful and fun ride as long as you’re willing to leave your brain behind 🙂
October 5, 2007
It’s amazing what race brings up …
AXN started showing "The Amazing Race" season 10 on satellite television over here yesterday. Of course, one of the first things I noticed was that they had a Muslim team in the race this time (not to mention a lot of other politically correct/ratings-oriented groups, but that’s another story).
Right off the bat, I was wondering how it was going to turn out both because of the current political climate in the USA and a majority of the people’s perceptions about Muslims and also because I had wondered myself watching previous episodes of "The Amazing Race" as to how I would conduct myself in the race if I was on it. There have been instances when contestants have had to eat things like fried grasshoppers that Muslims cannot eat due to our religious dietary restrictions. Would I eat the grasshoppers anyway just to win a million bucks? Do the producers take the religious restrictions of contestants into account when they set up challenges? I was hoping I could find some answers to these questions this season. Of course, then the Muslims got eliminated at the very first leg of the race :p
That probably would have been that and I’d probably have forgotten all about it if I hadn’t decided to check out the reactions of others to the first episode online. Now I know that a lot of Americans seem to think that they are engaged in some sort of war with Islam for some weird reason and so I should have expected the reactions I found. But still, I was surprised at the level of hatred and prejudice that was displayed online.
Posts like this, and this, and this, and this seem to indicate that Americans seriously believe that all Muslims are terrorists and that they will not be satisfied with anything but the total and utter destruction of America. There’s talk of Islamofacists, "Religion of Peace" (quotes theirs, not mine), revenge on an entire religion for an act of fanaticism, how the Muslims not shaking a woman’s hand is derogatory towards all women and so on and so forth.
In fact, I’m surprised that some consider Bilal and Sa’eed to be fundamentalists because they were dressed in "flowing Arab garments" and "tangly beards". I thought them to be less than fundamentalists – in fact, I was wondering about how well they practiced their faith since they seemed to have no trouble in simply standing up and praying in a dirty airport waiting room without even bothering to wash up for prayer :p But then again, I have no idea how much coaching there was (what? you thought reality shows were really real? :p) or if the two friends had decided to portray the "true face of Islam" to the world on their own or even if it was a mix of the two. Personally, I thought they were a bit too showy and seemed to be flaunting their religion for the camera and to think that God cares enough about whether you win a race on television is to think very little of God or way too much about yourself 🙂
Now don’t get me wrong. There are balanced stories about this particular episode. Places where people couldn’t care less whether Sa’eed and Bilal were Muslims or solipso-agnostic Martians from the moons of Phobos – entries like this and this. With no evidence to the contrary, I assume that these were written by Americans as well. What I find disturbing is the number of Americans who give into the paranoia and hatred and assume that an entire religion is out to get them. I wish they’d do the math: the population of the US is slightly over 300 million and there are over a billion Muslims in the world; if all of Islam wanted America taken out, it would be a really uneven battle 🙂
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