+: etcetera :+

This self-consciously gorgeous biopic rehashes the rags to riches to in and out of rehab formula one has had just about enough of. Director Olivier Dahan traces the life of France’s much beloved singer and icon Edith Piaf from her childhood to her last days. Apparently, French singers are no different from American ones – they start poor and miserable, get discovered, betrayed, married, lose loved ones, get addicted to substances legal and illegal, and die. Their music apart, the sequence of these events helps distinguish one singer from another. However, thanks to the chronological collage that passes for editing in this movie, you’re never quite sure when all of these events did happen in Piaf’s life.

This beautifully shot movie packs in a powerful performance from Marion Cotillard, as well as a first-rate soundtrack of French cabaret classics. But too many scenes feel as if created to show the world “And zis is ‘ow you make a biopic!”

The singer biopic has become the summer tentpole for Baby Boomers - story lines and performances to draw them to the theaters and a soundtrack smothered in enough nostalgia to get them to even buy a few records. What happens when we exhaust our supply of singers from the 50s and 60s? Some day, we will run out of singers no one is ashamed to own up to liking a year later. What will they come up with for this generation? Hit me baby one more time. Ouch.

Tamils have certain rituals. What appears perplexing or perfectly disgusting to others is heavenly to us, and we swear life isn’t worth living without it. For instance, we take some rice, mash it all up, add some yoghurt to it, mash it up some more, and then we stuff our faces with it. We like our heroines with some fat on their thighs and our heroes with some hair, well, everywhere really. And we like directors called Mani Ratnam. Because that’s what we do.

If you were a kid during the 80s and 90s, you’ll remember your first Mani Ratnam movie. It’s probably different for different generations – Agni Natchatram, Nayakan, Thalapathy, Roja, whatever. It was the only movie you’d ever seen which had dialogues like “odi poyidalama?” It had jokes your parents didn’t want you to get, and the odd song they wished you wouldn’t hum. But even they couldn’t hide their enthusiasm when a new Mani movie was released. Ratnam’s movies were among the few I could be certain about watching in the theaters, instead of waiting for a decade or so for Doordarshan to stoop down and broadcast it.

I feel duty bound to hate all holy cows. They are very annoying and demand adulation, even when they’re doing very little to deserve it. The reason my enthusiasm for Mani Ratnam has remained strong over the years is because I didn’t really see him as a holy cow. His movies were just another artifact from childhood. Also, I was just a little proud of the one Tam movie personality I didn’t have to defend to my northie friends. Not to forget the feeling of infinite superiority I derived from knowing that these northie friends didn’t have a clue about Mouna Ragam or Agni Natchatram – a feeling very similar to that one has for people who discovered Tolkien via Peter Jackson. You are glad they finally got on board, but Jesus, the effort it takes to convince them!

The experience of waiting for and finally watching Guru brought back a lot of memories. When we lived in Cuddalore (where I watched my first Ratnam movie – Agni Natchatram), we didn’t have 24 hour television, and it was possible to actually look forward to something. For some reason, I didn’t watch this movie with my parents. I watched it with a couple of friends, and a random adult who’d come along to baby-sit. I remember desperately wishing during the movie that it wouldn’t end, and I remember emerging from the theater in a daze.

One of the friends who watched the movie with me managed to get her parents permission to buy the audio cassette, and we listened to the songs for hours. We even tried to write down the words – I was in charge of the cassette player and T wrote down the words, as she was the one who knew to write in Tamil.

Perhaps thanks to being away from India, the weeks running up to Guru were, for me, quite like the weeks running up to, oh, Nayakan or Anjali. I knew it was coming, had a very vague idea of what it was going be about and who was in it, but nothing more. What’s more, I didn’t have to wait for my opening-weekend-averse parents to take me to the movie. I’m not going to review the movie here, other than to say it is an OK movie and no where in the vicinity of Nayakan, which it tries to invoke.

When I turned on Namaste America the next day (a Saturday morning ritual, if I manage to get up early enough), I found out that Mani Ratnam and other stars from the movie had been in Manhattan to promote the movie. They were all asked extremely silly questions by the desi press, to which they managed to give boring and occasionally charming answers.

That press conference, with its multitude of gushing desis was the first inkling. Since then, at almost every desi DVD store I’ve been to (and I went to several while on a mission to buy DVDs for a friend who’s recently moved out of NY), I’ve had people incessantly gush about Guru. Much of it has to do with the movie’s pedigree. I’ve finally reached the deeply saddening conclusion that Mani Ratnam is now very much a holy cow, if not one of the holiest.

It’s a good thing I didn’t come to this conclusion before watching the movie. While I was watching Guru, my only wish was for it to be not a lousy movie (and I mostly got my wish, until the very last bit, of course.) But since then, every time I read one more hyperbole about how fantastic Abhishek’s acting is or how brilliant a director Mani Ratnam is, I just want to grab the person and shake them for a minute or two. Have people become so inured to exceedingly lousy movies that a mediocre one appears superlative by default? Or is all this gushing the dues we owe a holy cow? If it’s the latter, it’s a pity, for it confirms his bovine status. And it makes it almost certain that he, too, will turn into a monstrosity, like the Big B has.

We don’t much care for good stories, high-quality acting or great direction. But mostly, we hate underwear. Yes, yes – that time of the year again – the nominations are out.

I watched a great number of movies this year. And most of those, which I consciously left out get nominated. I’m OK with that part, really. What am not OK with is this obsession with Babel. What is wrong with you, Hollywood? Gaah!

Every year I swear am done with the Oscars. And every year great movies kept getting made, and I get suckered into that fine art of torture called the Academy Awards… But if there was ever a time to stop following the Oscars, this year is it. Crazy Japanese chick who hates clothes gets nominated? Gaah!

This week-end I watched the second part of Clint Eastwood’s two-part series on the Battle of Iwo Jima. Having already watched Flags of our Fathers (reviewed here), and not being averse to buying a box of Kleenex along with the pop-corn, I felt I had to watch this one. But this movie doesn’t deliver any of the sense of completion, loads of which had been promised. Despite being touted as the “Japanese version” of the same story, it is in every way, an American movie, made for American audiences.

A large part of why I was drawn to both movies (other than that they were made by Eastwood) was the novel idea of two movies about the same incident, an extended, and considerably more expensive Rashômon, as it were. As great an idea as this is, it doesn’t really work when there is little more than a superficial connection between the two movies. The first movie is more a social commentary on a country at war, specifically the United States of America, than it is a movie about one particular battle. While some of the most spectacular bits of the movie are set in Iwo Jima, much of it actually takes place back home, where we learn the many ways in which a minor incident in the battle at Iwo Jima impacts the lives of thousands, if not everyone in the home country.

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Curse of the Golden Flower: Garish soap opera
SEVERAL SPOILERS!

Curse of the Golden Flower is the final part of Zhang Yimou’s (or is it Yimou Zhang’s?[1]) trilogy. It is also the darkest of the three movies. That the terms betrayal, incest, adultery, fratricide, filicide, and bigamy do not exhaustively describe the story should tell you something about the movie. Chow Yun Fat, who plays an Emperor, returns to his kingdom after many years to find that almost no one has remained loyal to him. Gong Li, playing his beautiful and treacherous second wife, has been carrying on behind her husband’s back (or not, as we later find out) and isn’t too pleased to hear of the Emperor’s return. The court scene is made murkier thanks to a few disgruntled crown and wannabe-crown Princes, their lovers, an ex-wife, a conniving court doctor and hundreds of Asian women in push-up bras[2]. How and whether all of this gets sorted out is what the movie’s about.

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[The post below solely reflects the author's personal views and opinions and is not meant to hurt or insult die-hard fans of any actor who has played Bond in the past. And yeah there are also some spoilers.]

I just got home from watching Casino Royale. Daniel Craig is the best Bond, ever. Bar none, in case you didn’t get that the first time around. He makes Pierce Brosnan look like a souffl� with a whipped cream topping. Heck, he makes Ursula Andress look too soft and lumpy in all the wrong places.

The movie, on the other hand, is merely good. Not great. Perhaps it might have worked better had it come before one had been glutted with the current obsession with wanting to get to the “root” of things - before one was told why Peter Parker became Spiderman, or Bruce Wayne became Batman or Jason Bourne became, well, Jason Bourne.

The best thing about Craig’s Bond is that he is a man who gets the job done. It is when he attempts to do more, such as be charming, that he isn’t very convincing. In every mushy scene (and am afraid there was as much mush as I’d feared there might be), I was impatient for him to stop and turn back into the cold killing machine he is so clearly born to be.

That this movie isn’t the sort of Bond movie we’ve become used to in the last few years is evident right from the opening credits. Psychedelic patterns of suites of cards float around, as Bond kills man after man. There isn’t a single naked woman in sight. In keeping with the opening theme, this movie is all about Bond, really. If there’s

killing to be done, Bond does it. If there’s running to be done, Bond does it. If there’s stripping to be done, Bond does it.

With Brosnan, there was a consistent attempt (in rare cases successful) to turn Bond girls into Bond partners. This movie smoothly reverses the trend. And when one female character is given importance, it’s not in a Michelle Yeoh or Rosamund Pike manner. And I found myself wishing how much better it would’ve been if they hadn’t bothered with making even this minor concession.

If you’re the sort of fan who enjoys Bond movies for their formula, you’re in for a mixed bag. Some golden, even holy Bond traditions have been dispensed with* in this movie, but most of the stock phrases make an appearance. And they do so at such unexpectedly delightful moments, that you fall in love with them all over again.

Action fans take note - Casino Royale may well be the most physically challenging Bond movie ever made, and boy, does Craig pull it off. I can’t imagine any other Bond doing any of the key stunts in this movie**. Just as one’s no longer impressed with Matrix-style stunts, one was also tiring of the blow up party that’d become part of the Bond formula in the Brosnan movies. Casino Royale has hopefully begun a new phase of stunts on a low-TNT, high-adrenaline diet.

So why do I insist that this is only a good movie? Here’s the thing - when I was walking out of the theater, in those 2-3 minutes before I had a chance to ask the mandatory “So?” to my companions, I kept willing myself to love the movie because I so loved Craig. And that’s precisely the point - you don’t need to talk yourself into liking Craig. You just do. Not so with the movie, and in my book, that’s not the sign of a great movie.

I sure as hell hope that Craig will make many more Bond movies - perhaps some script will finally let him be the cold-blooded spy he is.

*I for one didn’t even notice their absence till I started writing this post. And when I think about it now, am quite relieved and happy they didn’t try to force them in. Craig doesn’t do breezy charm very well, and having those scenes would have only embarrassed him and the audience.

** And hats off to the extremely nimble and sure-footed Sebastien Foucan for an incredible chase in the first third of the movie

Last night, I watched the new Clint Eastwood movie. It will probably win some Oscars. At the very least, it is likely that it’ll be nominated for many. This post is not meant to be a review, so let’s get the brief summary over with - Flags of Our Fathers is a straight forward story with an ensemble cast which delivers what is required of it. It’s a movie typical of Eastwood - has great production values, and a good old fashioned telling of an old fashioned story. The only “edginess” comes from the amount of gore the audience is exposed to (Spielberg eat your heart out - you only showed us severed limbs. This old man shows us much more and much worse).

The theater seemed to have an almost equal mix of the very old and the very young. Some of the latter walked out during the movie. While some returned (notably the couple sitting in the same row as I, each of whom had to go out and come back in - separately!), I’m not sure if all did.

I wonder who this movie was made for (other than the Oscar jury, of course). Why does Eastwood insist on telling this story to a generation, whose members if they had sat through the entire movie will now forever associate Iwo Jima with Ryan Phillippe? Eastwood’s age refuses to go away from my mind. He is 76. Is he leaving behind a legacy? Is this an attempt to immortalize his generation and the values that mattered to them in a world which has forgotten both?

I can’t help feeling a little jealous of his generation. At least they have these big ideas they can claim as their own - patriotism, courage, honor - even if with time they might feel that these are only words. What do we have except our collective cynicism and Jon Stewart?

In this movie, when a heroic moment is suspected of being staged, it makes almost everyone in the movie feel uncomfortable and shatters one or two. I can’t help feeling that if the same incident were to take place today, we would be surprised if the heroic moment actually turned out to be genuine. And even then, there will always be a few conspiracy theorists in every group who will make the rest of us feel guilty for being so gullible. Whether you are from the 40s or 90s, both sets of people have been lied to. The question is, is it better to be so used to being lied to that you lose your ability to think of anything as being true? Or is it better to not know you’re being lied to, and to break your heart when you find out about it? The grass is always greener on the other side.

The roomie’s gone away to India for a fortnight. Yesterday was my first evening alone in a long time. Celebrated by watching Pyaasa. I love this movie.

The language is a treat to listen to. Hindi, unadulterated by English or by ‘taporiness’. Being a confused Delhi-ite / Madrasi, my Hindi isn’t very good (my Tamil’s worse). I don’t completely understand the bits when the dialogue lapses into Urdu. But it somehow sounds more beautiful this way.

Either the period (1957) is just right, or Guru Dutt is a master of subtlety. There’s little of the melodrama I so dread in old movies. Some of the lines would sound a bit corny had they been in English or Tamil - languages that I am more in touch with, and therefore where I tend to be more judgmental. “Apne shauk ke liye pyaar karti hai aur apne aaram ke liye pyar bechti hai.” In English or Tamil, I’d have laughed at this line, instead of nodding along sagely as I did last night.

Guru Dutt: The hero as a sensitive young man

The story unfolds at a completely leisurely pace. An hour into the movie, I only know that the hero is a struggling poet, with the hint of a failed romance. These days, you feel like you’re watching a kaleidoscope on caffeine. So many facets to so many characters (and these are in the good movies) compressed into the first twenty or so minutes. And this crash course is just the foundation because even more information is going to be dumped on you from then on. All of this is nice. But occasionally, to not do this is also nice. So much less exhausting.

Did people in those times genuinely have a more positive outlook on life? Or were they simply more patient during the bad times? There is no three-point program to improve the sum total of the hero’s happiness in fifty-five minutes. When you make your life that deterministic, the risk of unhappiness only seems to go up. In old movies, characters are content to just drift along. Two hours into this movie, the hero goes from being a homeless, jobless, struggling poet to being an orphaned, alcoholic, loveless, homeless, jobless, struggling poet. I am surprised to realize that am still rooting for the poor sod.

But how can I do anything but? He’s a sensitive young man. Not an angry one. When he sees women being treated badly, he weeps for them. And he prefers communicating through poignant verse, instead of delivering kicks to the solar plexus. He owes his eventual success to someone else, and not in the way award-winners say they owe their success to God or their middle school drama teachers. He really owes this someone.

I’ve made him sound like a weakling, haven’t I? He’s actually stronger than many run of the mill heroes. When you are disillusioned with something, you can force a change in that something (aka the Bachchan route) or you can walk away. Who is the needier of the two? And delivering a philosophical diatribe against society in a mournful song beats any other lead in to a Hindi movie climax, ever.

Mostly, I just like the movie because it has Guru Dutt. I can’t think of any one else who can pull off playing a poet whose nemesis is an evil publishing magnate. Honestly, who makes movies like that in India? I don’t think this is a movie that’s at risk of being remade. Perhaps I shouldn’t tempt the fates. Am not exactly dying to watch a Sanjay Leela Bhansali version of Pyaasa. *shudder!*

For tomorrow, I have Deepa Mehta’s Earth and Rahul Khanna. Next week, I am going to pile on some friends and stay with them for a while. Perhaps I’ll trick them into watching Sahib Biwi Aur Ghulam.

Harpreet Kaur lives for Hindi cinema. She loves Amitabh Bachchan (in a platonic sort of way) and can’t imagine life without her daily dose of Lata. Harpreet is about a year into her Master’s in Computer Science at the University of Alaska. Her dad, back in Ludhiana and prone to hyperbole, never tires of telling people about how the Americans were bedazzled by his daughter’s intelligence and gave her “full aid” at the “best university in the world.” Harpreet did get financial aid, but she can’t get Computer Science for the life of her.

Srinivasa is the tall guy that sits with her in the Data Structures class. He hails from Nellore and has only a vague idea of how big Amitabh Bachchan is up north, but he gets Data Structures really well. He used to look down upon Harpreet because she sucked at Computer Science, but every time he did , he ended up staring at the prettiest pair of boobs in the world. And so, he fell in love with her.

Harpreet, on the other hand, liked the guy - especially on days he did her homework for her - but she wasn’t in love with him or anything. It didn’t help that he kept mixing up Lata and M.S.Subbulakhmi all the time. “I always have trouble differentiating between old women singing in alien tongues,” he told her when confronted. She wasn’t impressed at all by that answer…

Harpreet didn’t know it then, but change was in the air.

A few days later, Harpreet came down with a nasty flu that brought the meanest headache along. She took a Tylenol, and asked her roommate Aparna Shah if she could bring her a bowl of Campbell soup, but Aparna refused because the Campbell soup in the refrigerator was purchased from her share of the grocery fund.

Unable to counter her roomate’s sound logic, Harpreet went hungry that afternoon, and was delirious by the time Srinivasa came to visit her. He had stopped by to find out if she had really bunked classes to “be with her boyfriend,” like his friend Ravikiran had speculated.

Moved by her plight (and by the sight a pretty girl coiled vulnerably on a used Sealy Mattress), he made her some soup, and then sat by her bed and said comforting things to her until she fell asleep. He then watched the Tonight Show and spent the night on the couch in her apartment. He could’ve walked to his place, but it was his turn to cook today.

The next day, he woke up, used Aparna’s Listerine, made some coffee and drank it together with Harpreet. He experienced bliss, or something like it.

This pattern continued for a few days, and Harpreet no longer had the flu, though she was still not attending classes because she felt weak. Sri wasn’t going to classes either, “to provide her some company.” He was now a regular in Harpreet’s apartment, regular enough that his toothbrush was in her bathroom, and regular enough for Aparna Shah to demand that he pay 14% of the rent that month. Things were going very well indeed…

“What do you like? ” he asked her that afternoon, acting on advice from Ravikiran “to find out her likes and dislikes.”

“My favorite thing in the world is Amitabh Bachchan”

“My favorite thing would be my iPod. But I do like Amitabh Bachchan. He is a great actor.”

“Really? Thats so sweet. What’s your favorite movie of his? ”

“Err…I thought Shahenshah was great. So was Giraftar ”

“Shahenshah? Even I couldn’t stand that one. Tell me the truth now - how many Bachchan movies have you watched?”

“Only those two on the video coach bus from Madras to Bangalore. Nellore theaters only play Telugu and Tamil movies. But there was a lot of potential in his angry eyes.. I could see it very clearly.”

“Oh you poor thing. That’s such a sad story… I need to show you how much you are missing.”

So she said, and put in a copy of Black into their Apex DVD player. A few minutes into the movie, and Sri hits the pause button.

“So you say Amitabh Bachchan is a big star in Bollywood, right? ”

“Of course, he is a superstar. ”

“If that is so, how come the title card doesn’t say SuperStar Amitabh Bachchan. If I call him a Megastar, would that be ok?”

“Yes, he is a megastar, a superstar, a huge star. The biggest there is.”

“He can only be one star. Tell me which one. ”

“I don’t think I understand where this is going. ”

Sri takes her hand, and holds it against his chest.

“Baby, before you explain Amitabh Bachchan to me, let me explain the Southern movie industry to you. ”

“I am all ears. ”

And thus the lesson begins.

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Reviews: Kasthurimaan, Being Cyrus, Mixed Doubles

Kasthurimaan is the remake of a Malayalam movie directed by LohithDas with Prasanna and Meera Jasmine in the lead. The story is fairly simple - boy meets girl. Falls in love. Whether boy and girl overcome a number of hurdles to live happily ever after or not is what the movie is about. Where the movie departs from the beaten path is in the nature and magnitude of these hurdles. For starters, both of them are poor - not movie sort of poor - but real middle class sort of poor. It’s a challenge to make ends meet, but something gets done to make sure bills are paid (or at least the more important ones do). They are both ambitious, but willing to make the necessary sacrifices. One of them supports the other to achieve a long cherished ambition, and with success come complications. Of course, there is also a villain, who brings a twist to the story.

The point I’d like to stress is that absolutely nothing in this movie feels unreal. This is the sort of movie that makes you go, “Aaahhh! So it’s a remake of a Mallu flick? that explains it.” Every time I watch Prasanna play one more character with both-feet-planted-firmly-on-the-ground, I think to myself, “This was great, but isn’t he going to run out of these nice-guy roles?” I am happy to see that he continues to find roles that truly suit him.

Final verdict: Kasthurimaan has young people who don’t hate soap and water, whose ambitions are tempered by morals, and who manage to be happy and successful despite such crippling handicaps. A good movie for anyone fed up with movie-makers who believe that ‘Violent loser(s) + {pretty} female(s) + Ugly villain(s) = One great movie’.

Being Cyrus is an English (not Hinglish) movie with Bollywood stars. It is a dark comedy of manners, with a nice enough twist that some might see coming a mile off (for the record, I wasn’t one of them. But then, I am always surprised to find out that the butler did it). With Saif Ali Khan, Naseeruddin Shah, Dimple Kapadia and Boman Irani, the cast is impressive. The last three are fun to watch, but it’s Manoj Pahwa who is lovely in more ways than one.

Shah, Kapadia and Irani are members of a dysfunctional Parsi family. Shah’s character is a has-been pottery artist, who is more into pot than art at the moment. His unhappy wife, played by Kapadia, is not too discriminating in her choice of escape. Shah’s brother (Irani) holds the family’s purse strings, and everyone with the exception of Naseeruddin Shah is trying to get his hands on the money. Saif is Cyrus, an orphan who insinuates himself into this family. Then there is Inspector Lovely (Manoj Pahwa). This minority-hating, crass Punjabi serves as the perfect contrast to the glib Parsis that this movie abounds in.

Everyone thinks they are outsmarting everyone else. Some end up dead for their trouble. The nice thing about this movie is that you are not invited to like any one in it. Just when you start feeling sorry for someone, you’re shown a side to them that makes you feel that they deserve whatever they have coming. But while they last, they’re a fun bunch to watch.

Final Verdict: Decent. The closest comparable movie is The Perfect Murder, another English movie with many Indian characters about another murder. It’s a relief that the multiplex culture is starting to have some positive payoffs.

I was saving the best for last, so here goes.

Mixed Doubles is an absolutely delightful comedy directed by Rajat Kapoor. Some might remember him as the creepy child molester from Monsoon Wedding. This is his second feature length film, and there’s very little that’s creepy about it.

Sunil (Ranvir Shorey) and Malti (Konkana Sen Sharma) have been married for ten years. They have a kid in the first grade. Their love life has begun to pall, and Sunil hears of a way that might just put a little “swing” back in their lives. Despite his boundless enthusiasm for the idea, Sunil is quite an innocent when it comes to the practicalities of setting something up. Of course, it’s quite a feat to get the wife to consent to the idea in the first place. But he manages to get Malti to give the idea a shot after using every trick in the book.

Finding the ideal “broad-minded” couple is the next challenge. Several hilarious interviews follow - one guy interrogates Sunil closely about his preferences for fruit, and rejects him after Sunil expresses a preference for cutting mangoes over peeling them. Sunil is, of course, completely clueless through out the conversation. Enter Kalpana (Koel Puri) and Vinod (Rajat Kapoor) - rich, sophisticated, and almost everything Sunil himself wants to be. Whether or not the two couples go ahead with their plans is what the movie is about.

When I read my summary of the plot, I am afraid I’ve made it sound a bit staid. But trust me, the movie is anything but. The script is sparkling and the humor hardly ever vulgar. OK, before someone challenges me about the last claim- people, let’s not forget that this is a comedy about wife-swapping. And yes, while it is a comedy, it probably isn’t the sort of movie you want to watch with your parents-in-law. But I’ll still stand by my claim of this movie not being vulgar - there’s little of the nudge-nudge wink-wink type of “A” humor that one normally associates with the typical desi ‘adult’ comedy, and when people do make jokes about their sex lives, it sounds funny and natural.

Shorey and Sen Sharma make a great pair. Between the two of them, they’ve created the most natural on-screen couple I’ve seen in Indian movies in some time. I realize that if one remembers Shorey from his VJ days, one is quite old. But Shorey has grown up, and how! He is absolutely charming as the misguided husband who has as many excuses as he does double standards. That Shorey can pull off such a weighty part comes as a pleasant surprise, as does watching Sen Sharma play a woman who is vulnerable but also quite cute (I think I’ve let serious fare like 15 Park Avenue and Page 3 bias me about the lady’s range).

Kudos to Kapoor for directing a great comedy about grown ups without ever letting it slip into sleaze, despite the subject matter. And to Anurag Kashyap for dialogues that remain light and refreshing throughout.

Final Verdict: After all this praise, do you want me to spell it out for you? Go watch the movie, already! Am going to see if I can lay my hands on Raghu Romeo, Rajat Kapoor’s other movie.

Note to self: Watch Pudhupettai and lay off Indian movies for the next 6 months. You don’t want to break up this unbelievably lucky run.

Someone talking to me for the first time is usually struck by two things: How incredibly handsome I am, and how incredibly smart I am. If they can get over this, they’ll be struck by two more things: How much I love movies, and how much I love books.

Someone meeting Manoj for the first time is usually struck by two things: How much he loves movies, and how much he loves music. Ok, maybe they’ll also be struck by how smart he is. Whatever. That’s not the point.

So anyways, Manoj and I spend the better part of our days IMing each other. In normal English, capitalized first words and all. (The only allowance for IMspeak is the ubiquitous brb, which I thought was a misspelt female undergarment when someone first used it on me. Now I know, and love to use it coz it sounds so, um, kinky.)

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Generations of Tamil men have watched generations of white women come on screen, take their clothes off (or not), have sex, and go away. It must have been a bewildering experience. Why do these women live in the jungle? Why does whatever army they work for give them such big guns but not many clothes? What is that man saying to these women to get them to take off whatever little clothes they have on? [1]

These men need despair no more. Finally, there is comprehension on the other side of the peep hole. Dubbed versions of skin flicks make their debut in TN. I’m not sure how much sense it will make to “understand” the sequel to a 14 year old movie, if you didn’t watch the first one.[2] But, at least now connoisseurs of A padams are closer to understanding those vella-kaaris.

[1] Questions based on posters and not on any survey, scientific or otherwise, of men watching “A” flicks.
[2] Or assuming you didn’t understand it even if you had watched it.

Growing up in Tamil Nadu in the 1980s (we turn of the century souls are doomed to sound so old so soon, aren’t we?), one of the most important questions that you were judged on was, “unakku yaar pudikkum? Rijini-ya, Kamal-a?”[1] This question was an important divider, a quick and dirty way of determining if you wanted to continue your acquaintance with the new kid in class, or confer upon him / her the label of “weirdo” (or “loosu”, to use the vernacular) and take comfort in the knowledge that your life would not in the least bit suffer from not having this person in it.

I suspect this is a cultural phenomenon unique to the 80s. I don’t know if my parents were divvied up based on their preference for Sivaji or MGR or who ever was big in their days. And I doubt that this question matters today. Can you imagine letting say, Bharath or the Chimp (aka Simbu) define your identity in any shape or form? (*shudder*)

But as always, I digress. Us 80s kids had one more question that was an almost equally important divider - the Crazy Vs. S.Ve.Sekar question[2] [3]. Like the first question, this one too appears to be a purely 80s hang-up[4].

Personally, I have always firmly been in the Crazy camp. I was introduced to Sekar first. My cousin (who being older pretty much dictated most things taste-wise for me in those days) was a big fan, and used to watch his plays. Since I didn’t live in Madras, I used to borrow my cousin’s recordings (I remember the audio tapes of Kaatla Mazhai and Mahabharathathil Mangaatha). I loved them, and tried to hold on to them for as long as I possibly could.

I might have continued life as a Sekar fan ( I remember that that old line “ullae veliyae ullae veliyae ullae veliyae” used to make me laugh uncontrollably), but something happened that changed my loyalties forever. 4 words: Michael Madana Kama Raj.

MMKR is, bar none, my all time favorite Tamil movie ever. And am pretty sure it will retain its position for the rest of my life. There may well be funnier movies, but none will have the “I grew up with this movie” cachet that this one has. I still watch this movie once in a while. I don’t laugh at every joke any more - but just for my favorites (the incident of the poor mama’s false teeth, most scenes involving the dad in the last third of the movie (his wanting to make tea at the tea estate, his wanting to relocate discussions to inside the refrigerator), and others that I love because I remember these are my parents’ favorites (for some reason the line “kizhinjithu, ithula Telungu vera” used to make my Dad laugh the hardest I remember him laughing, the “thiruppu thiruppu” joke that always set my mother off, the “Beem boy Beem boy” thing that one of my cousins used to recite till we were convinced that the gift of speech, especially in boys under the age of 10, was something that the family should be able to turn off at will).

MMKR’s cult status apart, Crazy has done some awesome writing for a number of other movies and of course, there are the plays. I’ll move on after a brief mention of my favorites - A-Ha (my kingdom for the deaf thaatha, and the classic one-liners like “Sweet name. Jangiri”), Aboorva Sagodharargal (Manorama at the police station and Mouli get funnier with reruns and Janakaraj & Shivaji remain as fresh as ever), Thenaali (Dr. Panchabootham & his assistant Ramesh Khanna who always gets Thenaali’s name wrong), and Kaathala Kaathala (I don’t like this movie (too many kadi jokes), and mention it out of fear of legions of Crazy fans issuing a fatwa in my name).

I thought about why I came to prefer Crazy over Sekar. The answer lies in the fact that Crazy is closer to PGW than Sekar is. The intricate plots, characters that spill over from one play to the next, his masterly use of props (in one play, Crazy plays a character who’s supposed to kidnap someone, and goes around begging all the characters in that scene to take the chloroform drenched handkerchief from him, there’s another that involves a sack of coconuts), his use of Madras-English (he gets it bang on - his English dialogues remind me of grandfathers-who-write-to-the-Hindu-editor, convent-taught-kids (think Church Park, DB - the “old” schools), The Hindu, and well just Madras), and his ability to bend language to his purposes (”I mean what I mean, but they can’t be so mean” is a priceless thing to say when your main characters are losing their minds about fish in the Sambar).

S. Ve’s plays are funny too. In her post, Tilo calls him the Seinfeld of Madras. I agree. Seinfeld and Larry David are very funny, but do make their characters likable. The reason you laugh at Kramer or George or Elaine is because they are so uniformly obnoxious that it gives us immense pleasure to watch them falling flat on their faces. All of Crazy’s characters by contrast are immensely likable (at least I find them adorable). They have a Wodehousian detachment from reality. No one is remotely evil, political or social issues of the times are almost never dealt with, characters are mostly bumbling and adorable idiots. If you like your comedy to be of the escapist variety, Crazy’s a fairly dependable sort to turn to.

But of late, it’s a pity to see both Sekar & Crazy stuck in a rut. It’s as if comedians are like Russian dolls and have only so many jokes inside them. Once you’ve gotten to the last tiny doll, you can only reassemble them and start over. But I suppose it doesn’t matter too much, really. All you need is MMKR and your family around to escape from

[1] The truly hair-raising part is that this question continues to be asked. Only this time as an outdated, but nevertheless important conversation starter in arranged-marriage-first-phone-call conversations. Even the possibility that judgements about one’s character or personality are being made on the basis of one’s response to this question is at least one important reason why the process sucks.
[2] Important disclaimer: I haven’t watched any of the plays of either playwright, and my exposure is restricted to the movies they were involved with, the odd audio recording and any crumbs thrown to the masses via television.
[3] Somehow YG Mahendran never figured in this question. At least that was the case in my family. Perhaps there vast numbers of YGM fans out there put me in the, er, “loosu” category on the basis of my answer some secret question that didn’t actually mention his name. To these YGM fans, I’d like to say, “You were right”. I’ve never liked him, and we wouldn’t have had much in common.
[4] Then again, what choice do kids these days have? To actually harbour a preference for Karunas or the hundreds of Karunas wannabes means that you have not only seen their work, but know enough to distinguish between them… When you have been reduced to such lows, it seems too cruel to ask you questions about wit and timing and plot and all the other qualities that mark the good comedian.

Update: For non-Southerners, the closest Hindi example to MMKR is Jaane bhi do yaaron. MMKR is no where as cynical, though. Similarities are limited to the way the plot is set up (layers and layers of carefully planned and executed scenes that all add up to a wonderfully hilarious finale)

Some humorists make you laugh till your stomach hurts. Others can make you chuckle ruefully. Woody Allen makes me glad I’m me. [1]

I first fell for Allen’s words, not his movies. I read White Feathers first (or it may have been Side Effects) and moved on to the scripts of Annie Hall, Manhattan and a couple of others I don’t recall now. I must have been in my under-grad then. I’m not sure what directed me to his books at the USIS library, but I suspect I’d have found his works sooner or later. It’s difficult to imagine who would have replaced Allen had I not discovered Allen.

Over the years, I’ve watched many of his movies (although I’m glad that I still have quite a few saved for rainy days ahead) - from the truly sublime ( Crimes and Misdemeanors , Zelig , Annie Hall, Manhattan), the utterly delightful ( Deconstructing Harry, Manhattan Murder Mystery) to strictly-for-fans only ( Sleeper, Don’t drink the water, The Front, The Purple Rose of Cairo). It’s good to be the fan of a man who is not only a genius, but also prolific. Just compare the experience of being a Woody Allen fan to being a fan of, oh, David Mamet or David Lynch - with Allen you simply get more.

I suspect age may have had something to do with how thoroughly I fell in love with Woody Allen. For a 17 year old, to live in a big city, have sparkling conversations with friends, listen to jazz, visit museums, and yes, deal with existential problems (Allen’s characters almost exclusively have existential problems - infidelity, temptation, boredom… You don’t often come across characters who have bad jobs, or no-job, no-money, and most certainly never no-apartment) all represented the very best of “adulthood”. Allen’s world was the stuff my dreams were made of.

I’m older now, and I still want to turn into an Allen character when I grow up. Technically, I’m supposed to be living that life I dreamt about at 17 (and in a way, I suppose I am, although I don’t live in the Upper East Side or hang around Swedish film festivals). Now, I simply appreciate their fine escapist quality. I don’t resent the 20-something artists their real estate. They seem to be so sweetly unhappy with their lot that I don’t grudge them the odd 2-bedroom-apartment-with-terrace-and-view-to-die-for, in Midtown or Belgravia.

Also, Allen is an optimist. I can’t think of a single movie of his at the end of which I felt cynical. Things that are liable to make one want to kill oneself in real life - losing the love of your life, getting caught committing murder, or having your spouse of several years cheat on you - only seem to leave Allen’s characters perplexed and mildly annoyed. And in almost all of these cases, you just might manage to live happily ever after (or as happy as one’s neuroses will allow) after all. No, you don’t want Woody Allen for lessons in morality. You watch them to amuse yourself.

A good number of my friends are NOT Allen fans. Their complaints range from

“he looks like he does, and yet ends up with very pretty ladies”, “he married his own daughter, for crying out loud!”, “they talk too much in his movies”, to “he’s a twisted guy who makes twisted movies”… As for the first complaint, I admit it was a bit awkward to see him pair up with Julia Roberts, but in his old movies, honestly, it didn’t feel at all weird to see him with Diane Keaton or any of his other leading ladies. He’s never vain about his looks - whether he’s playing a cheesy, unsuccessful talent manager, an oily Latin lover, or a husband dumped by Meryl Streep for a woman, his looks are an essential part of the charm. As for his personal life, well, he’s no more or no less koo-koo than tens of other Hollywood stars (including the erstwhile matinee idol - Tom Cruise). Who cares what he does with his life as long as he makes such wonderful cinema?

This week-end, I watched Match Point. I found it a bit boring at first (the first two-thirds are pretty slow going), but the last third convinced me that the master hasn’t quite lost his touch yet. It is such a thoroughly delightful movie. But I fear that Allen may have become dated. The average age of the audience was 55. This figure was skewed by 7 or 8 odd people below 35, all of whom, I was glad to note were desis. I can see how selling Allen may be a difficult proposition when the mainstream audience needs Kiera Knightly to draw them into watching Austen, and Ashton Kutcher to make sequels to Sidney Poitier flicks (*shudder*).

I turn to the other humorists I’ve been writing about when I need to be cheered up, or need to get away from my life’s madness. I turn to Allen when I need to be reminded about myself. [1]

[1] Reading back, I realize some of this stuff sounds very vain - after all who am I to say that Woody Allen reminds me of me? I can only protest that when I say some of these things, I do so with the greatest degree of awe. A lot more of “Allen reminds me of the best I want to be”, with just the odd dash of “he reminds me of who I am.” [2]

[2] While I don’t want to sound very vain, I don’t mind sounding somewhat vain.

I had big plans of enjoying a “proper” movie after the disappointment of Chithiram Pesuthadi. And I suppose I did - watched Baatcha, in English - with Viggo Mortensen & William Hurt playing Rajinikanth & Raghuvaran. And I am curiously happy to say this - it was a lousy copy!
It’s Baatcha ++ Sex ++ Violence (broken noses are particularly abundant) - - family drama - - 8-philosophy, no auto-kaarans, and especially no achakkus in any form whatsoever, not even the stray gumukku. In all a pale copy that fails to do justice to the original. Ed Harris & William Hurt play evil dadas nicely - but the man who matters, the auto-karan (well, he’s a diner-karan here) is wooden. I swear I don’t get why they nominated Maria Bello for her role. She’s alright, but her performance is absolutely ordinary.

The last month has seen several truly remarkable things happen to this blog: We turned into a group blog with two real contributors, and several imaginary ones. Our fan following among pharmaceutical companies seems to have increased, and like all delirious new fans, they can’t seem to stop writing to us. (We might trash your letters, ladies, but your affection means a lot to us.)

We watched four horrid Tamil movies. While that in itself is not remarkable, what is remarkable is that we have refrained from reviewing any of them. Even this post is not a review per se. It is about celebrating the movies in question and rewarding them for the things they did.

And so, without further ado, Ladies, Pharmaceutical Industry Representatives and other Gentlemen, here we go.

The Freakist Bird Flu-ke Award:

Kamna Jethmalani, the lead girl in Idhaya Thirudan wants to send an anonymous email to her mom. She types up the email - whose contents are the proud recipients of another award - but she can’t figure out how to sign the email.

Unable to pick a random name, she picks up a pigeon hovering nearby and lays it gently on top of the keyboard. The pigeon walks back, then forth. Then forth again, and back once more. And then flies away, to leave the half dressed girl staring at the screen.

The pigeon had just keyed in T. Mahesh, which happens to be the name of.. you guessed it, the hero of the movie. What an incredibly clever way to move a story forward. Anyone out there who still thinks our moviemakers are unimaginative?

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Bhavna clutching an umbrella, Sunil clutching an underarm.

The boy: toughie, hired goon, bearded brute, all rough edges and bad acting, tall and dark and not so handsome.

The girl: heart that bleeds for all, assists helpless people cross roads, smooth and pretty and voluptuous and rich and pretty and smooth. Sigh. I mean, scratch the sigh.

How could they not fall in love? And how could he not turn over a new leaf, bringing a few oddball leaves along with him to keep him entertained at newdom? And how could their wedding plans not be rudely interrupted by her seeing him visit someplace not nice? And how could they not… well, no spoilers on this blog folks. By the way, for the record, this post is about a movie called Chithiram Pesudhadi.

“Ordinary plot,” you want to say, “hackneyed and trite, tried and tested (and failed).” True, we say, the movie is all that, but it has a little bit more going for it - it is disarmingly unpretentious and heartwarmingly earnest. The earnestness of a first time director striving hard - very hard - within his contraints to salvage something out of a mediocre script shines through every frame, drawing empathy from his viewers, and Chithiram manages to get off with sympathetic winces where another movie would’ve gotten a groan or two.

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The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.

This week end, I found myself in the unenviable position of having to defend Texas to a couple of friends from out of town. The questions flew hard and fast – haven’t you heard of building vertically? How do you survive here without a car? Why are meals always prepared for families instead of for an individual? I didn’t have answers to those questions. I repeat what I told them. This is Texas. It took me a couple of years to get used to it, and I have. I am positive that when I make that trip back home and visit my favorite restaurants, I will ask waiters for the rest of my food / coffee / whatever. I will probably feel disconcerted to leave home and arrive at my destinations in under 15 minutes. I may not feel motivated enough to drive without a Hummer honking away behind me. Yes, this is Texas, and I’ve gotten used to it. I didn’t realize how much of a Texan I’ve unsuspectingly become until I watched The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. I felt completely at home in this movie – with the accent, the terrain, ever-present Spanish. I particularly loved the lonely old man who listens to listen to Spanish radio because he likes the way the language sounds. I love watching Telemundo myself for the same reason. And for the fact that someone gets slapped every seventh minute (Ekta Kapoor and Radhika – ladies, you can learn TONS of lessons from these Mexican soaps).

Alright, alright, I’ll get to the point. You’d think Three Burials is a western, about cowboys and Sheriffs and vigilantes delivering justice to one and all on horse back. You have all of this. But the cowboys of Three Burials also round up cows in the middle of nowhere, shoot coyotes, sometimes get shot themselves, speak Spanish, and are quite poor (as a one-time watcher of “Dallas” and sometime resident of Dallas, I have become disabused of the idea that everyone in Texas owns a ranch dotted with thousands of cattle and the occasional oil well). Far from finding true love (don’t even dream of “forbidden” love, all you Ang Lee fans), here, an evening out with the town slut passes for romance. No, the cowboys of Three Burials are not glamorous. Tommy Lee Jones plays the guy to whom you attribute all the “cowboy” qualities you’ve distilled from years of Clint Eastwood and John Wayne (loyalty, honor, an apparently unshakeable sense of justice), because you’ve been conditioned to do so. That he turns out to be all of that, and also mad as a hatter comes as a surprise.

You’d think Three Burials is a story of redemption and justice. If you harm someone, even accidentally, you must be prepared to face the consequences. Barry Pepper’s character reminded me of Matt Damon in Crash. You begin by hating him, but end up feeling sorry for him, even rooting for him as the movie unfolds. But when you start laughing at him just as he’s having hot coffee poured on his lap and his nose broken all within a minute, it comes as a surprise.

You’d think Three Burials is a commentary on illegal immigration and callous government officials. Mexican lives are not worth as much as American lives, or so appears to be the general philosophy of both the Sheriff and the Border Patrol. That the Sheriff suddenly feels the need to visit Six Flags or drive his truck off the road in order to delay his investigation comes as a surprise.

Three Burials is full of surprises. If you love your Zane Grey, Three Burials is not the movie for you. It features mad cowboys, Sheriffs who need Viagra, and embalming lessons you will not learn in Six Feet Under. The best thing about the movie is its sheer nonchalance. The violence, the humor, and some truly disgusting things they do to a dead body (Think of the scene in Pulp Fiction where Travolta blows off someone’s head in a car, and they clean the car of blood and brain. Multiply it by a factor of 10 – yes, it is that gross and that funny) – everything is treated with a casualness that takes your breath away again and again.

But for all that, the movie doesn’t quite come up to scratch. There’s no meaningful “so what” at the end of it. And there are too many things that feel completely out of place (Pete Perkins’s proposal to the waitress, the Sheriff’s suddenly sprouting a conscience, the whole mystery about Estrada’s family), and keep this movie from being a truly great movie.

Final verdict: it’s a decent movie, full of pleasant and unpleasant surprises. However, it is a bit disappointing, as all of these surprises don’t really add up to much. Watch the movie to get a taste of Texas and a few laughs that will leave you wondering about your own tastes. And do yourself a favor, please skip the pop-corn and coke.

Go here to read Falstaff’s more enthusiastic review.

Update: I mean Matt Dillon, not Damon in Crash.

I watched three Tamil movies this week. There were a number of reasons why I’d sworn off Tamil movies, but as any self-respecting addict, I’ve forgotten them and went on a binge. After watching Aadhi, Thavamai Thavamirundhu & Athu Oru Kana Kalam, I surprisingly am not yet close to swearing them off again. I think am waiting for one more movie - Paramasivam, which my roomie keeps threatening to watch. I can then safely go back to a three or four month hiatus.

Since I’ve been accused of, ahem, over-obsessing over inconsequential things, I’ll try not to.

Aadhi: Experimental cinema or Blame it on Rajinikanth

Precedent says punch dialogues are good for the hero, especially if the hero dreams of being the next Rajinikanth. So the makers of Aadhi figured why not have more of the good stuff, indeed why not have a movie composed entirely of punch dialogues? The hero, the comedian, the villain, the villain’s side-kicks, even walk-on characters, everyone in Aadhi communicates exclusively through punch-dialogues. Here’s a sample:

Main Dada to another dada: Perfecta plan pannu. Panna theriyalanna enakku phone pannu.

Comedian: Naan podra shoe thaan Reebok-u. Pannra velai porambokku.

Hero:

Unakku kaila than kathi. Enakkau kaiyae kathi.

Thoda mattein. Thotta, vida mattein.

Neruppa thirippi pudichaalum, athu nimithuthaan eriyum. (This is my personal favorite.)

Note to readers:

1. I didn’t translate the lines into English, because they’d just lose their “punch”

2. The list above is only a tiny sample, there are tons more in the movie.

If you take away these dialogues, Aadhi is just another masala movie. It has all the ingredients - a tale of revenge, a little bit of suspense, gratuitous violence (heads and limbs chopped off, little girls molested), some comedy (this I admit was painful, and limited to Manivannan hitting on a Punju auntie. I forget what Vivek was doing in the movie), some utterly ridiculous stunts (hero rips door off a moving car in order to defend himself from the bad guys at one point), a pretty girl and of course, romance.

The reason I truly enjoyed the movie were the dialogues: the binding agent that brought all these elements together to make that perfect bad-good movie. This is a great movie to watch with friends. Just make sure you don’t have any squeamish girls around.

So, will this movie make Vijay the next Super star? Vijay may get the manager, and copy the dialogues. But Dhanush has the hot shot director / brother AND big daddy / daddy-in-law. Do the math yourself.

Thavamai Thavamirundhu: Long, but alright

Karthik already wrote about this movie. Just wanted to add my two cents’ worth. I quite liked the movie. If Aadhi was good because it was bad, Thavamai Thavamirundhu is good because it could have been so much worse. I have seen this plot lots of times before, mostly by Visu. I am grateful to Cheran because he doesn’t go over-board as Visu does. People are treated badly in this movie, but they don’t rave and rant like they usually do in Tamil movies. I agree with Karthik that we could have done without all the cycling they do in this movie, but am willing to forgive Cheran anything for putting together a simple story, and keeping it simple. And I think I liked the movie also because my parents, who don’t watch very many movies, did watch this one, and really liked it. Had I watched it with them, I might have felt obliged to protest against any number of things about this movie - the length, the crying, the cycling, the printing press, the omnipresent misery? but I didn’t watch the movie with them. Just thought of how it might be like to be back home again, and make silly arguments just to tick my parents off? And mostly for that, I liked Thavamai Thavamirundhu.

Athu Oru Kana Kalam - not for cynics.

Spoiler alert!

Athu Oru Kana Kalam isn’t your usual Tamil movie. It has all the elements of a perfectly decent tragedy / “realistic movie”- an ordinary looking hero, a pair of star-crossed lovers, well-meaning characters whose actions somehow wreak untold misery for all involved? and just when you’re all geared up for a “life sucks, and there’s isn’t a thing you can do about it” conclusion, Balu Mahendra ends the movie on a happy note. The lovers get to live happily ever after, after all. It felt like slap in the face. I got all huffed up, and made a series of speeches on justice and rule of the law and idiotic policemen who have respect for neither, and crazy directors who think the audience is gullible enough to buy stories about benevolent cops who let murderers get away and live happily ever after with their girlfriends? I guess the fault lies not in the Balu Mahendra, but in me. I’m too cynical for movies like this one. Just because seven eighths of the movie felt down to earth doesn’t mean that the last one eighth has to stay grounded too.

And am willing to watch many more movies like this one, so long as movies like this keep Dhanush away from disasters like Thiruda Thirudi or the other one where he drives around pretty girl in a yellow convertible in some South East country (Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong - take your pick).

Three very different movies and each was not bad for its own reasons. P.Vasu & Paramasivam, hit me with whatever you got, and let’s get this over with.

We are just a day or two into the new year. The year that just passed was a year in which Agatha Christie hogged more or less all the limelight, even though she is not that hot. In two separate studies, scientists claim to have unlocked the secret of why her books are so popular, even though they feature protagonists we’d rather not drink tea with.

Scientists at the Universities of London, Birmingham and Warwick “loaded Christie’s novels onto a computer and analyzed her words, phrases and sentences.” The results of the study show that

[S]he peppered her prose with phrases that act as a trigger to raise levels of serotonin and endorphins, the chemical messengers in the brain that induce pleasure and satisfaction.

[Another] finding was that she used a very limited vocabulary. “It means that readers aren’t distracted and so they concentrate more on the clues and the plots,” said Dr Pernilla Danielsson from the school of humanities at Birmingham University. [Link]

Here’s Mark Lieberman’s take at the Language Log.

Christie used a limited vocabulary, “pleasing and gentle” language even though the plots were macabre, and repeated certain “mesmerizing” phrases over and over again to stimulate serotonin and other chemicals in the body.

Favourite words or phrases, repeatedly used in a “mesmerising” way, help to stimulate the pleasure-inducing side of the brain. They include she, yes, girl, kind, smiled and suddenly. Common phrases include “can you keep an eye on this”, “more or less”, “a day or two” and “something like that”. [Link]

Let’s summarize the recipe for bestsellers: Repeating the same things over and over again, gentle presentation, familiar phrases, sixth grade vocabulary. And let’s also state our opinion of the whole stylometric study: Duh! Just read any three books by Robert Ludlum, and you’ll know. Familiarity sells. Familiarity and simplicity, we are convinced, are the key ingredients that make popular art so… popular. Actually, duh again. There is a whole industry in India, um.. I mean, South Asia that has been using the formula successfully for ages - Indian movies are all about familiar settings, dumbed down plotting and an insistence on making audiences feel good. The next time someone asks Ram Gopal Varma why he keeps remaking his own movies (and those of others), he should quote Professor Danielsson, stylometry, serotonin, Agatha Christie and Antara Mali. And Anu Malik - what can I say? I respect him a lot more now. Something like that.

The repetitive nature of Bollywood means titling movies is a hard, hard task. How many ways can you headline the same article? Guy beats up Bad Guys, falls in Love with Girl. Girl Falls in Love with Guy who beat up Bad Guys. Bad Guys beaten up by Guy that Fell in Love with Girl. Love fallen into by Girl and Guy who beat up Bad Guys. And so on. Which, by the way, is a great segue into the next Agatha Christie finding.

According to a statistical study commissioned by Lulu.com, Agatha Christie’s Sleeping Murder is the “perfect title” for a bestselling novel and John Le Carre is the most consistent producer of “good” titles. [Link]

Figurative or abstract titles, such as “Sleeping Murder,” or “Presumed Innocent,” produce more top-sellers than literal ones, such as “The Da Vinci Code.”

A title’s length does not affect sales — contrary to publishingindustry wisdom, which decrees that bestseller titles be short. Another increased respect moment here. Remember all those Hindi movie titles: DDLJ. HAHK. K3G. Damn. These guys knew.

Through the Language Log a link to the statistical analysis tool used for the study. The Lulu Book Title Analyzer. Please don’t forget to leave comments complimenting the intriguing figurative title I chose for this post.

[Previous Post on why Bollywood is high literary art.]

PS: Agatha Christie picture courtesy The Free Library.