Boggarts beware!

No, not Humphrey. I mean Boggarts with two g’s, the magical creatures that will take the shape of that thing you fear the most. The method of banishment involves thinking of something funny, pointing your wand and saying Riddikulus! If none of this makes sense, you might want to borrow a set of Harry Potter books from somewhere and get cracking.

Now, in case this Boggart thingy isn’t fictitious and there is a ghost of a chance that it might pop out of your cupboard and scare the crap out of you, I suggest you watch Zulm Ki Hukumat at least once. It is an Indianized remake of The Godfather with Govinda in the Al Pacino role (playing a character called Pratap Corleone Kohli), Dharam-paaji in the Brando role and Paresh Rawal in what can only be called a critical value-addition to the script — a fake Swamiji who deals in drugs. He even has a disciple (Archana Puran Singh) dressed as a sadhvi who, when the situation necessitates an item song, will change into something that Cher might’ve discarded as being too trashy.

For best effects, watch it every week. You will radiate such an aura of induced ridiculousness that Boggarts will find some other cupboard to haunt. I’m guessing that Govinda in a gold jacket and a yellow waistcoat that has a huge heart symbol on its back might also work as a patronus.

ps: Oh, and by the way, Aamir Khan did a Godfather remake as well — I think it’s called Aatank Hi Aatank, and features him with slicked back hair and a cheroot in his mouth and looking like a brand ambassador for Isabgol. It might not work as well as Zulm Ku Hukumat but might serve in a pinch.

 

 

Thank you, etc.

Not from me, although I have much to be thankful for. This one is about acceptance speeches.

My friend Rajendran posted a comment to my Kate Winslet post asking whether the reference to Emma Thompson was due to her acceptance speech at the Globes years ago, for Sense and Sensibility (Thompson won for Best Adapted Screenplay). And I realized that not many people might know about this little gem. So here it is, in full:

 

Thank you very much. Good Heavens. Um, I can’t thank you enough, Hollywood Foreign Press, for honoring me in this capacity. I don’t wish to burden you with my debts, which are heavy and numerous but, um, I think that everybody involved in the making of this film knows that we owe all our pride and all our joy to the genius of Jane Austen. And it occurred to me to wonder how she would react to an evening like this… [Puts down statue on stage, reads paper] And this is what I came up with.

Four a.m., having just returned from an evening at the Golden Spheres, which despite the inconveniences of heat, noise and overcrowding was not without its pleasures. Thankfully, there were no dogs and no children. The gowns were middling. There was a good deal of shouting and behavior verging on the profligate, however, people were very free with their compliments and I made several new acquaintences. There was Lindsay Doran of Mirage, wherever that might be, who’s largely responsible for my presence here, an enchanting companion about whom too much good cannot be said. Mr. Ang Lee, of foreign extraction, who most unexpectedly appeared to understand me better than I understand myself. Mr. James Shamis, a most copiously erudite person and Miss Kate Winslet, beautiful in both countenance and spirit. Mr. Pat Doyle, a composer and Scot, who displayed the kind of wild behavior one has learned to expect from that race. Mr. Mark Kenton, an energetic person with a ready smile who, as I understand it, owes me a great deal of money. [Breaks character, smiles] TRUE!! [back in character] Miss Lisa Hanson of Columbia, a lovely girl and Mr. Garrett Wiggin, a lovely boy. I attempted to converse with Mr. Sydney Pollack, but his charms and wisdom are so generally pleasing, that it proved impossible to get within ten feet of him. The room was full of interesting activity until 11 p.m. when it emptied rather suddenly. The lateness of the hour is due, therefore, not to the dance, but to waiting in a long line for a horseless carriage of unconscionable size. The modern world has clearly done nothing for transport.

P.S. Managed to avoid the hoyden Emily Thompson, who has purloined my creation and added things of her own. Nefarious Creature!

Thank you.

 

This is the sort of speech that makes for a wonderful trivia question, and warms the cockles of my quizzing heart. She followed this up with an Oscar win as well, although that speech was marginally less wonderful:

 

I don’t really know how to thank the Academy for this. And if I try we’ll be here till Christmas. So I better get on…

Before I came, I went to visit Jane Austen’s grave in Winchester Cathedral to pay my respects, you know, and tell her about the grosses. I don’t know how she would react to an evening like this, but I do hope — I do hope she knows how big she is in Uruguay.

Profound thanks to Columbia Pictures and the lovely forms of Lisa Henson, Gary Wiggan, and Mark Canter for hiring a first-time writer; to James Shamus for his rare intelligence; to Sidney Pollack for asking all the right questions, like ‘Why couldn’t these women go out and get a job?’ Why, indeed. To the cast and crew, for being impeccable. To my friend and my teacher, Lindsay Doran, for being the single most frustrating reason why I can’t claim all the credit for myself. And finally, I would like with your permission to dedicate this Oscar to our director, Ang Lee. Ang, wherever you are, this is for you. Thank you.

Source: Wikiquote

Bonus feature

Since I am in a generous mood (also since I don’t have to do much else other than cut-pasting these items here), here are Youtube links to Hugh Grant’s acceptance speech for his second Golden Globe win (Best Actor in a TV Series – Drama, for House):

 

 

Will the real Hari Puttar please stand up?

A few weeks ago, Memsaab posted a review of Makdee wherein I had commented that Shweta Prasad would be my choice for Hermione if someone were to remake Harry Potter in Hindi. So I got to thinking: If I had to remake the Potter franchise in Hindi, what would my casting choices look like? I’m gonna assume that I can pick actors from across the ages to play various roles, so that a really appropriate casting choice doesn’t get thrown out simply because I didn’t have a time machine handy.

Ron Weasley: Kunal Khemu.

Hermione Granger: Shweta Prasad, hands down. 

Albus Dumbledore: Amitabh Bachchan. One of those choices that seems obvious in hindsight, but trust me, I spent a lot of time agonizing over this one before deciding that it really had to be AB. For what it’s worth, my next choice would’ve been Prithviraj Kapoor.

Severus Snape: Kay Kay Menon.

Sirius Black: I’m thinking Vinod Khanna.

Remus Lupin: Boman Irani

Minerva McGonagall: Dina Pathak. 

Hagrid: Dara Singh.

Draco Malfoy: Really can’t think of anyone for this role.

… and in minor supporting roles:

Arthur Weasley: Anupam Kher

Molly Weasley: Kirron Kher

Lucius Malfoy: Jeevan.

Gilderoy Lockhart: Salman Khan. A lot of people can play handsome, but Salman can play silly like few others can. He comes by it naturally, I think.

Horace Slughorn: Utpal Dutt

James Potter: Dharmendra

Lily Potter: Sharmila Tagore

Peter Pettigrew: Pankaj Kapoor. 

Mundungus Fletcher: Keshto Mukherjee. Not really a major character, but I had to give ol’ Keshto a part somehow

And finally…

Lord Voldemort: Naseeruddin Shah.

Any suggestions on who should play Harry? Write in with your casting choices, or post them on your blog and drop me a note. I’ve restricted my choices to Hindi cinema, but one can consider other Indian languages as well.

 

man in the sun

I could rant and rave about how beautiful this is, and what it means to me and how more than a third of my conversations with Ratul about writing end up referring to it. But like most good poetry, if it doesn’t grab you by the short hairs, it’s just so much prose with broken up sentences and the occasional rhyme. So, without further ado:

man in the sun

she reads to me from the New Yorker

which I don’t buy, don’t know

how they get in here, but it’s

something about the Mafia

one of the heads of the Mafia

who ate too much and had it too easy

too many fine women patting his

walnuts, and he got fat sucking at good

cigars and young breasts and he

has these heart attacks – and so

one day somebody is driving him

in his big car along the road

and he doesn’t feel so good

and he asks the boy to stop and let

him out and the boy lays him out

along the road in the fine sunshine

and before he dies he says:

how beautiful life can be, and

then he’s gone.

sometimes you’ve got to kill 4 or 5

thousand men before you somehow

get to believe that the sparrow

is immortal, money is piss and

that you have been wasting

your time.

– Charles Bukowski

From Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame (Selected poems 1955 – 1973)

 

The worst news I’ve heard all week…

 I’ve had a rough week. Way too much work to do and not enough time to do it. But by far the worst news I’ve heard is that Terry Pratchett, that wonderfully funny author of Discworld novels, has Alzheimer’s. In typical fashion, he adds a postscript to his announcement saying:

PS:  I would just like to draw attention to everyone reading the above that this should be interpreted as ‘I am not dead’.  I will, of course, be dead at some future point, as will everybody else.  For me, this maybe further off than you think – it’s too soon to tell. I know it’s a very human thing to say “Is there anything I can do”, but in this case I would only entertain offers from very high-end experts in brain chemistry.

Keep writing, Terry. You will not be forgotten.

 

Harry Potter and the Hollywood Movie

But it’s remarkable, isn’t it, that the Brits have produced Narnia, the Ring, Hogwarts, Gormenghast, James Bond, Alice and Pooh, and what have we produced for them in return? I was going to say “the cuckoo clock,” but for that you would require a three-way Google of Italy, Switzerland and Harry Lime.               — Excerpt from Roger Ebert’s review of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

So I got to thinking: if there had been no Harry Potter books, and some screenwriter in Hollywood had come up with the idea of a movie about a teenager discovering that he has magical powers, going to a school for people like him and battling a famous dark wizard, what would it be like? Here’s what I got:

• Hermione wouldn’t fall for Ron. No way Jose. She’d fall for Harry, and it might even be a cause for a minor fight between Harry and Ron. Then again, she might end up dating both in the fullness of time, a la Joey Potter in Dawson’s Creek.

• Ron would probably end up dating Luna Lovegood, and would be written primarily as comic relief.

• All confrontations with Voldemort would happen on prom nite.

• Dumbledore wouldn’t be a benevolent grandfather-figure but a crusty old man who puts Harry through a rigorous magical training regimen while a dramatic score plays in the background. He would also have a past, where he confronted Voldemort and failed/lost his nerve. Or better still, used to be V’s trusted lieutenant. That way, you could do away with Snape as well.

• No way Dumbledore would get away with just saying that his brother Aberforth got expelled for performing inappropriate charms on a goat. We’d have a flashback scene explaining exactly what charm, what the goat’s reaction was, and who walked in on the scene.

• There would be only one movie to begin with. If it made money, there would be a second and a third, and so on. Each movie would concentrate on Harry trying to find some famed magical object. No obscure stuff like the Philosopher’s Stone, which got renamed as the Sorcerer’s Stone in the US because, as Miss North Carolina recently said, most people in the US don’t have maps. We’re talking famous artifacts that most people have at least vaguely heard of. Like the Holy Grail, Pandora’s Box, Delilah’s Vibrator and so on.

• Okay, probably not the Delilah thing. I hope.

If you, dear reader and Pottermaniac, have any more possibilities to offer, please do so. The wand is yours. May the force be with you. Yippie Kai-yay etc.

 

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Yeah, I know what this blog is about. Consider this a post written about a movie yet to be released.

Warning: Here be spoilers!

First off, I loved the book. Thought it wrapped things up nicely and gave the series a satisfying conclusion. The final confrontation between Harry and Voldemort totally worked. When Harry calls Voldemort by his original name (Riddle) and then responds to the latter’s enraged shout with “Yes, I dare!”, I felt exhilarated. Calling him Voldemort instead of You-Know-Who was one thing, but calling him Riddle meant that Harry had finally gotten the self-confidence to face his nemesis. Harry became a man when he walked to his death a few scenes earlier, but this was the moment that Voldemort realized it.

I was also quite pleased with myself on account of the fact that most of my predictions were on target. Harry being the last Horcrux was more or less universally cracked. But the one that surprisingly few people seemed to have gotten was about Snape: I guessed long ago that Snape betrayed Voldemort because of his love for Lily. The flashback scene in HP5 where James torments him and Lily comes to his rescue was what gave me the idea.

The other reason why I thought so was – believe it or not – Star Wars. Many of these stories have some similar themes. There’s a memorable scene in The Empire Strikes Back, where Darth Vader tells Luke that he is his father. I didn’t think Snape was Harry’s real dad, but him being in love with Lily seemed eminently plausible.

The big surprise, and in some ways a very satisfying one, was the way Dumbledore’s character was developed. Until this book, he had no shades except snowy white. It was interesting to see him as more human, less godlike. This is something where I see a similarity with The Lord of the Rings. A common theme in both books is how people react to having power. Sauron seeks the power in the ring, but is thwarted by Frodo who, as it happens, is tempted by it himself. Voldemort seeks power over death, but so does his arch-enemy Dumbledore.

Finally, the epilogue. For the most part, it’s just a feel-good section that allows you to close the book (and the series) on a happy note. It does, however, have one line that makes it all worthwhile. Just before he boards the train to Hogwarts, Harry’s son Albus turns to him and expresses his fear that he might be sorted into Slytherin.

“Albus Severus,” Harry said quietly, so that nobody but Ginny could hear, and she was tactful enough to pretend to be waving to Rose, who was now on the train, “you were named for two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew.”

I found that line very moving. When Snape dies and Harry receives his memories, the plot is proceeding at a breakneck pace. Yet, since it is so important, everything halts until Harry understands what really happened. But this chapter turns out to be a double whammy, since it reveals both Snape’s true nature and the fact that Harry is a Horcrux. Besides, once the revelations are done, Harry (and therefore the reader) only has enough time to process them and figure out what to do next.

It is only after everything is over that he has the time to reflect upon what he knew of Snape in the last seven years, and how little he understood. So, when he calls Snape as “the bravest man (he) ever knew”, you finally feel like Harry has finally achieved closure with one of his most important relationships.

 

Moving Pictures

Ah, Discworld!

I remember having a discussion about aviation with one of my colleagues over lunch. His theory was, if people actually knew how airplanes worked, they wouldn’t get in one. I mean, try telling people that you have this HUGE odd-shaped tin can than you’re gonna put them inside, move it really fast and hope that some kind of pressure differential will make it fly. The majority of reactions would fall somewhere within the spectrum of a polite “Thanks, but no thanks” and sending you to the funny farm.At least now, you see so much air travel that you might have the luxury of assuming that, if so many people have survived the experience, you might as well give it a try. Imagine being among the people the makers of the first aircrafts pitched the idea to. How would you have reacted?

To me, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels are like that. He takes something we’re used to, transplants it in a world of his making, and explains it in the simplest possible terms. And when he does that, it sounds utterly absurd. For instance, in The Truth, a man called William De Worde begins to publish a newspaper (a concept nobody in Discworld has heard of), and his assistant comes up with the idea of putting ads in it for money. They recruit a man named Cut-me-own-throat Dibbler to sell the ad space. The exchange is as follows:

‘Oh,’ said Dibbler. ‘So . . . what would I be selling, exactly?’

Space,’ said Sacharissa.

Dibbler beamed again. ‘Just space? Nothing? Oh, I can do that. I can sell nothing like anything.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘It’s only when I try to sell something that everything goes wrong.’

See what I mean? One of the chief pleasures of reading Terry Pratchett is to rediscover normal life and laugh at its absurdity.

All of the above exposition serves to explain why, to a film lover like me, a book like Moving Pictures is a small treasure. It’s not the best of his books (it doesn’t have the satisfying weight of his Night Watch series), but it does have some amazing send-ups of Hollywood. It starts with the following paragraph, which should give you a fair idea of how it works:

This is space. It’s sometimes called the final frontier.

(Except that of course you can’t have a final frontier, because there’d be nothing for it to be a frontier to, but as frontiers go, it’s pretty penultimate . . .)

The book is set in a once-deserted place called Holy Wood, where a bunch of people have set up studios to produce motion pictures. The technology to make them involves having a bunch of imps sitting inside a box and painting each frame of a scene onto a film of octo-cellulose. There’s a man who moves a little handle that advances the film frame by frame. The handle also drives a whip to hit the imps and make them paint faster. “Isn’t that cruel?” asks one character of the handleman. “Oh no, not really. I get a rest every half an hour,” comes the response.

The book traces the rise and fall of Holy Wood – the profusion of movie studios, megalomaniacal producers, the celebrity status accorded to movie stars, big budget extravanganzas – until it all comes crashing down and takes the Discworld to the brink of destruction. The saviour turns out to be a large golden man with a sword whom everyone thinks looks like their uncle Oswald.

What makes this book such interesting reading is the sheer volume and diversity of inside jokes. The leading lady says at one point, “I want to be left alone.” She has dreams of walking over a grate and having her skirt billow up. A movie producer gets an idea of making a big budget production called Blown Away – a love story set against the backdrop of a civil war. It ends with “Frankly, I don’t give a damn.” A troll says to a restaurateur called Sham Harga at one point: “Play it again, Sham.” A movie producer comes up with the idea of inserting a single frame with an ad inside the film. There’s a wonder dog called Laddie, and a talking dog that acts as its agent and teaches it the concept of “percentage of the gross.” An alchemist called Peavie even comes up with the following idea:

“Well,” said Peavie, uncomfortably, “what you do is, you take some corn, and you put it in, say, a Number 3 crucible, with some cooking oil, you see, and then you put a plate or something on top of it, and when you heat it up it goes bang, I mean, not seriously bang, and when it’s stopped banging you take the plate off and it’s metamorphosed into these, er, things . . . “ He looked at their uncomprehending faces. “You can eat it,” he mumbled apologetically. “If you put butter and salt on it, it tastes like salty butter.”

He calls it banged grains.

And above all this, my favourite image from the book, and one I am tempted to list as a Freeze Frame post: At one point, a giant woman carries a screaming ape while she climbs up a tall building.

The giant eventually falls from the tower and dies.

“’Twas beauty killed the beast,” said the Dean, who liked to say things like that.

“No it wasn’t,” said the Chair. “It was it splatting into the ground like that.”

 ps: If you haven’t read anything by Terry Pratchett, this might be a good time to start. I recommend Guards! Guards! as a starting point.

 

Dead Tree, Celluloid and The Hobbes Effect

With movies that are adapted from books, you find lot of people saying: The book was better. In many cases, I’m inclined to agree. With a well-written book, our imagination creates a more interesting experience than is usually captured on celluloid. Mind you, more interesting is usually just another way of saying different. Another factor is the use of a narrative voice: an author can spend pages describing what an actor has to convey through just a look. Few actors can do that, and fewer directors and screenwriters can set the scene up up so that it works. I’m sure there are more reasons, but I’m not inclined to explore it right now. Maybe later, in another post.

So I asked myself, are there movies I’ve seen that have clearly improved upon the book? So far, I can only come up with a short list of three. In no particular order, these are:

Train to Pakistan: I read the book just before I went to watch Pamela Rooks’ adaptation. And was absolutely blown away by it. The book is quite good, but the movie manages to create a sort of visual poetry that Khushwant Singh’s prose did not, in my opinion. The scene with the dead buffaloes floating on the river still gives me the chills when I think about it.

Ice Candy Man: Bapsi Sidhwa wrote a great book centered around a little Parsi girl growing up during the Partition. The only problem was, she ended the book where the story ended factually. On the other hand, Deepa Mehta ended the movie (1947: Earth) where the story ended emotionally. When you walk out of the movie hall, the scene of Lenny’s mistake is still fresh in your mind.

The Third Man: Quite a good book by Graham Greene. The movie manages to equal it with its sardonic voice-over, the visuals of a bombed out Vienna and Orson Welles’ scene stealing performance (not to mention the cuckoo clock speech) prove to be much better. The differentiator is the ending. Graham Greene copped out when he had Anna go to Holly. Carol Reed understood that, for the story to work, she had to keep walking.

If you can think of some more, do post your comments on this.

As to the term The Hobbes Effect, one of Bill Waterson’s objections to having Calvin & Hobbes stuffed toys was that it resolved the mystique of whether or not Hobbes was really just a plaything. He said something like: “The world sees Hobbes one way, Calvin sees it differently, and I’d like to keep it that way.” You can see the analogy, I’m sure.

Ashok has a term for this sort of gratuitous phrase coinage: Jilpa.

 

Freeze Frame #27: Dil Chahta Hai

Everybody talks about the scene at the Opera House in Dil Chahta Hai. Sure, it’s a good scene, well timed and acted, but I found it less than perfect. More on that later. First, my pick for the best scene in DCH:

Shortly before the scene at the Opera House, there’s one in a Sydney metro station where Akash gets on the train and Shalini misses it by a whisker. It’s late at night, she’s alone on the platform. There’s a lonely derelict sitting on one of the chairs there, and Priety doesn’t quite like the look of that guy. Farhan lets the apprehension grow for a few more moments, then you see Aamir – he’s gotten off at the next stop and rushed back here for her. You see her fright, his determination to keep her safe, the relief in her eyes… and then Aamir blindsides you with a move that is less than obvious, yet perfect for the situation.

The way the entire scene plays out is an example of how a well-acted scene can do away with the obvious. There isn’t a single line of dialogue in that scene that is obvious, and that is because the director trusts us to fill it in for ourselves. That’s intelligence – knowing what *not* to say in a scene. And it wouldn’t have been possible to use this intelligence unless Aamir, and more importantly Priety, hadn’t done such a wonderful job. In fact, the latter is so brilliant that I’m left searching desperately for superlatives.

As for the opera scene, here’s my take on that one: it’s a good scene, and the timing of every little part of that sequence, so important to its success, is perfect. In the hands of a lesser director, it could’ve been awful. But Farhan had already proved that he was capable of such brilliance in the earlier railway station scene. No, the thing that caught my attention wasn’t what was so good about that scene, but the one aspect that was less than perfect. At a crucial juncture, Shalini asks Akash to close his eyes and think of the one person for whom he would ask God for another day, so he could express his love for this person. And as he closes his eyes, we are treated to a holographic tour of his thoughts as they pass a number of people in his life and finally settle on… obviously Shalini. He opens his eyes and, as if for the first time in his life, looks at her. All of us know how this scene would play out, so why couldn’t he have acknowledged this fact and cut out that entire holographic sequence? Just have him close his eyes and open it after a short pause and look at Shalini – it would’ve been more potent in my opinion. Every one of us knows what that tour of his mind would’ve been like. As it stands, it’s a great scene, but not perfect.

Aside: To me, the relationship between the railway station scene and the opera house scene is akin to that between a couple of scenes in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. GOST ends with the pivotal scene in the movie – the one where Ammu and Velutha consummate their love for each other on the island. Roy totally nails it with her description of that scene, and what it would result in. Structurally, it’s an interesting choice to make – she took a tragedy and ended it at its turning point – the raveling and unraveling came before that.

But to me, the key moment wasn’t when Ammu and Velutha decide to sleep together. The key moment was when they began to see each other as desirable. This happens during Sophie Mol’s welcome party, when Ammu gets bored with the whole charade, looks out the window and sees Velutha playing with her daughter. At that moment, he turns to look at her as well. Roy describes that moment with the following line:

Centuries telescoped into one evanescent moment.

To me, that was the best line in the book. That was the turning point. Whatever the two of them did after that, it was simply mechanics – the ball was set rolling in that evanescent moment.