The Borrowers: Road, Movie and Action Replayy

Dev Benegal's Road, Movie (2009) holds out the promise of being a cross between Y Tu Mama Tambien and Cinema Paradiso. Like the former, it features a young man (Vishnu, played by Abhay Deol) on a road trip/rite of passage during which he picks up a beautiful woman (Tannishtha Chatterjee) with whom he becomes involved. Like the latter, it invokes cinematic nostalgia: the ancient truck that Vishnu and his fellow travellers are nursing across the desert is a travelling cinema, with a trove of old movies in back.

Unfortunately Road, Movie doesn't resemble either of its models closely enough. Instead we watch Vishnu and his passengers—Mohammed Faisal as a footpath boy, Chatterjee as a gypsy woman, and veteran Satish Kaushik, who steals the movie from affectless Abhay—rolling across endless vistas of flat, featureless desert in search of a village festival at which to show their movies. The (existential) joke—mild spoiler alert—is that the the festival only materializes once they stop looking.

—End of spoiler—

Another joke, or at least I hope so: they quickly run out of water, but are able to drive for day after day without having to replenish their fuel. Ah, the magic of the movies!

Road, Movie is supposedly based on writer/director Benegal's experiences with a travelling cinema in Rajasthan. And there is a great moment when we watch a group of villagers gazing raptly at a scene from the classic Deewar (1975). But either Benegal had trouble getting rights, or perhaps he realized that showing scenes from classic films might invite unwelcome comparisons to his own effort. In any case, there are only two instances where a film-within-the-film is shown. And the second one, where a silent film comedy is shown to a group of impoverished Rajasthanis, is a scene straight out of the Preston Sturges comedy Sullivan's Travels (1941)—another road movie, come to think of it. Add in the improbable encounters with Chatterjee and with a too-easily-mollified band of dacoits, and Road, Movie satisfies neither as slice-of-life realism nor as an homage to past film classics.

Speaking of movies that borrow from other movies, Action Replayy (2010)—a thinly disguised Hindi remake of Back to the Future (1985)—also disappoints. Bunty (played by Aditya Roy Kapoor and his hair) takes a trip in the time machine of My-Name-Is-Anthony-Gonsalves (Randhir Kapoor) back to the 1970s; he wants to make his parents (Akshay Kumar and Aishwarya Rai) fall in love and stop their bickering in the present. Don't think about that chronology too hard—wouldn't that make college-boy Bunty well over 30 in the present day? And wouldn't it have been easier (and avoided a few time-travel paradoxes) just to have convinced his parents to go to couples counseling?

Anyway, the only justification for a plot this lame is to provide an excuse for some fabulous 70s fashions and music, plus some comic future-meets-past scenes. Most of these opportunities are missed, with the biggest disappointment being Pritam's distinctly uninspired musical efforts. Perhaps the anti-plagiarism indemnity director Vipul Shah allegedly made Pritam sign inhibited him; if there was ever a soundtrack that could have used some borrowing, it's this one. The Holi song "Chhan Ke Mohalla" the only number that's at all memorable. Which is not to say that it musically attempts to evoke the period, because it (like most of the rest of the soundtrack) doesn't:

Aish is the one bright spot in the movie, but the focus is unfortunately on Akshay. I won't even mention the story's regressive sexual politics, because there are too many reasons already to skip this one.

Poly Styrene, 1957-2011

Poly Styrene died yesterday of breast cancer. As a teenager she was the lead singer and songwriter for one of the best punk bands ever, X-Ray Spex. She was a nonconformist even among the rebels and misfits of punk rock: she was short, wore braces, wasn't rail-thin, designed her own clothes (often in bright colors, an anomaly in punk), and was multi-racial. She was smart, wickedly funny (her lyrics are great), and absolutely electrifying onstage. Her voice was and will remain unforgettable:

Video for "Identity" (1978); thanks to goldenhinde

Why BBC literary adaptations are so delightful: Daniel Deronda edition

1. The screenplays are literate

(Usually a very good sign: he wrote the screenplays for Pride & Prejudice (1995) and Bleak House (2005), among many others)

2. The direction is striking

(He also directed The King's Speech (2010))

3. The casts are excellent

Amanda Root (of the exquisite Persuasion (1995)) as Mrs. Davilow

Hugh Bonneville (of Downton Abbey (2010)) as Grandcourt

Romola Garai (of Emma (2009)) as Gwendolen

Hugh Dancy (of The Jane Austen Book Club (2007)) as Daniel

Johdi May (of The Mayor of Casterbridge (2003)) as Mirah

4. The interiors are amazing

(Shweta, I hope you're noting the chandeliers!)

5. There's passion...

6. ...and skullduggery

(You may recognize David Bamber, the loathsome Mr. Collins in Pride & Prejudice)

7. Not to mention immense staircases

8. ...immense chignons...

9. ..and last but not least, immense bustles!

What's not to love?

Facebook is selling your information to advertisers

There's an article in the Los Angeles Times this morning by Jessica Guynn about how Facebook is mining its users' profiles, status updates, posts, likes and friends, and selling that information to advertisers. Guynn gives an example: "If a Facebook user becomes a fan of 1-800-FLOWERS, her friends might receive ads telling them that she likes the floral delivery service."

"Facebook says it does not disclose information that would allow advertisers to identify individual users, but filters them based on geography, age or specific interests," Guynn writes. "It also lets users control whether companies such as 1-800-FLOWERS can display the users' names to others to promote products."

Perhaps someone can explain to me how an advertiser can show an ad to your Facebook friends which is based on your interests and which contains your name, and yet not have received any personally identifying information about you.

Here's a link to the complete article: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-facebook-ads-20110417,0,1887797.story

Update 18 April 2011: The Guardian UK has posted a video interview with Cory Doctorow in which he points out that users of social networking sites are actively rewarded—with attention, links, friends, etc.—for disclosing more personal information online, resulting in what he calls a "privacy apocalypse." You can view the interview here; Cory Doctorow has his own site, craphound.com, where you can also view this interview, as well as find links to his articles, stories and books.

John Steane, 1928 - 2011

Anyone who has ever tried to write about music, and particularly singing, in a way that is both meaningful and free of technical language knows how incredibly difficult it is. John Steane was brilliant at it, as he proved over many decades of writing about music: first as the author of the never-surpassed The Grand Tradition: Seventy Years of Singing on Record, 1900-1970 (Scribners, 1974), then as a columnist for Gramophone, Opera Now and other publications. He had deep knowledge, boundless enthusiasm, and unassuming eloquence at his command. Most of all, though, he conveyed the emotional power and distinct individuality of the human voice, and made his readers want to listen with the same keen intelligence and warm appreciation.

Here is a small sample of his work, from a post I never quite got around to writing about words in opera (and Indian film songs). It is from his "Aria" feature in the May/June 2008 issue of Opera Now; he's writing about Lensky's "Kuda, kuda vy udalis" from Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin:

"Rather in the spirit of that famous child who is supposed to have expressed a preference for radio over television on the grounds that 'the picture is better,' I find much to be said for opera in a foreign language. In Italy, for example, I'm told that opera might be more popular among the young were it to be sung in English so that the embarrassing words would not be quite so mercilessly intelligible. To us, poor Lensky's solo before the fatal duel on the early winter's morning is beautiful and intensely moving in Russian, German, Italian or French. But oh, how banal the words sound in English translation. And not just the words. The ideas seem trite and the emotions sentimental. Not that we require originality from Lensky in his predicament, still less literary polish (even though he is a poet by profession, and creation of Pushkin). It is that these formalized expressions don't ring true, and the more clearly we hear and understand the words the less conviction they carry as the real utterance of real individual in these dire circumstances."

I have to interrupt here to say that my objection to English words is somewhat different. I don't require the words to simulate "the real utterance of a real individual," but rather that the words help convey the emotional truth of that character in that moment. Heightened expression is fine with me; overwrought or thuddingly obvious expression isn't.

Back to J.S.:

"The music is a different matter altogether. The sad melody we have heard in the prelude played over by the cello perfectly embodies our pity for the young man. As elegiac phrases gather urgency, so our compassion is intensified, and when the climax is reached, with the aria's single fortissimo, the heart opens in sympathy. Then, when Tchaikovsky brings back the opening phrases as in a musical coda, the effect is of more than formal artistic satisfaction: rather the forlorn reiteration of an unanswerable question and the sorrowful acceptance of a young life lost.

"It is music that, as we say, 'speaks' to us. We don't want to rob Lensky of language—we want to hear his voice, but at the same time to have the freedom of illusion which spares us the banality of:

"Shall I survive the day's dawning?
I vainly try to read its warning.
It shrouds itself in mystery:
No matter, this is fate's decree."

This insight—that opera communicates on levels that transcend the literal meaning of the words—is one that I remind myself of every time I find myself squinting at supertitles rather than really listening. John Steane always listened, with deep attention, and had the ability to express what he was hearing with a rare generosity of spirit.

Here is a link to the obituary published today in the Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/mar/28/john-steane-obituary

Update 29 March 2011: I wrote this post last night as soon as I heard the dismaying news about John Steane's death (he died on March 17, but his Guardian obituary was published yesterday). This morning I took The Grand Tradition off my shelf and looked at its author biography (probably written by Steane himself): "John Steane is best known for his work in the field of Elizabethan literature. He has written a critical study of Marlowe, and edited plays by Jonson and Dekker, as well as the major works of Nashe and Marlowe's complete plays. He has also written a book on Tennyson. His life-long amateur interest, of which this book is the culmination, has been in singing and the gramophone." Lovely, and characteristic of his unfeigned modesty, that the "amateur interest" in music (which has resulted in the 600+ pages we're holding) is only mentioned in the last sentence. Unmentioned entirely are the decades he spent as a beloved teacher of English at Merchant Taylors' School.

You can find a partial list of his published works at WorldCat; it excludes the many entries he wrote for the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, the New Grove Dictionary of Opera (now both part of Oxford Music Online), and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. And, of course, it excludes perhaps his most widely-read works: his many articles and columns for music magazines.