Desicritics Reviews

Book Review: The Wish Maker by Ali Sethi

Vinod Joseph — Fri, 3 Jul 2009 07:34:40 EDT

I have just finished reading The Wish Maker and the sights, sounds and smells of upper-middle class Pakistan are still with me. Though I am nowhere near Pakistan, I can still see around me the crowded thoroughfares of Lahore. If twenty-four year old Ali Sethi’s main objective was to convey to his readers an idea of what life is like for Pakistanis of his class and ilk, he has succeeded admirably.

Having spent all his life in Pakistan, except for a brief holiday to Spain, Sethi’s protagonist Zaki Shirazi goes to the US for his higher studies. The novel starts with Zaki’s return to Lahore from the US for his cousin Samar Api’s wedding. Actually Samar Api is not his cousin, she’s his father’s first cousin and consequently his aunt. However, Samar is generous enough to treat him as a cousin most of the time, though occasionally she reminds him otherwise.

Zaki’s father was an airforce pilot who died in an accident when Samar was ‘minus two months old’. Zaki is brought up by his mother Zakia who is a journalist and a political activist. Surrounded by women, his mother, his paternal grandmother – Daadi, the domestic help Naseem and Samar Api, Zaki has an unusual childhood. For example, he gets to accompany his mother to a political protest and they end up spending the night in police custody. Zaki is sent to a posh school where he makes some friends and even tries to get picked (by his teachers) as a class monitor. There is a surprising amount of politicking, buttering up and back stabbing involved in getting picked as the class monitor. School politics almost mirrors the politics played by adults in the big, bad world outside. Zaki gets into trouble once in a while. What child doesn’t? Sethi does a very good job describing Zaki’s school life. I’ll leave it to you to read the book and find out more for yourself.

Zaki’s cousin Samar Api is an Amitabh Bachchan fan and when she has an affair, she is looking for her Amitabh. When Zaki returns to Pakistan for Samar’s wedding, he knows that the London educated lawyer she’s marrying is her Amitabh.

By way of flashbacks and otherwise, Sethi tells us the story of three generations of Pakistanis. We are shown Papu and Mabi, his maternal grandparents. Papu migrated to Pakistan from his ancestral home in India and he ends up as the General Manager of a posh hotel. Mabi is the hostess of a Chinese restaurant inside the hotel. We get to know how Zaki’s parents met. We are shown the (decadent?) lifestyles of some of Zaki’s cousins. As I have mentioned earlier, one gets to smell the real Pakistan, albeit from an upper class balcony.

Political events in Pakistan form the backdrop to this story. One gets bits of commentary on everything from the Partition, the various coups that took place in Pakistan, Zulfikar Bhutto’s execution, Benazir Bhutto’s election etc.

Sethi’s language is pretty straight forward and matter of fact, except when he makes a conscious effort to use poetic language. This happens only in a few paragraphs and they stand out. No, I’m not saying they don’t gel with the rest of the book, but they do stand out.

All in all, I would definitely recommend this book, though I am sure that Sethi’s best is yet to come.

SPOILERS AHEAD – DON’T READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU ARE PLANNING TO BUY THE BOOK BASED ON WHAT YOU HAVE READ SO FAR

I have a few grumbles about the book. My main crib is that Zaki’s relationship with Samar Api is not covered as well as it ought to be. After Zaki lands in Lahore for Samar Api’s wedding, he doesn’t go and meet her and the reader doesn’t meet her either, except when the wedding actually takes place. You are told that Zaki and Samar are very close, but you see Zaki going around town with his other cousins, and Samar doesn’t make an appearance for a while. In fact, the only time Zaki and Samar are shown to be close and talking and exchanging secrets is when they are both very young and they have a few mutual friends. After Zaki is moved to a posh school, Samar Api sort of disappears. Samar Api doesn’t have a presence in a large swathe of the book.

My only other point of dispute with Sethi, and I am nitpicking here, is the scene which takes place in the days just after the US started to help the Mujahhidin fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. Zaki’s mother, the political activist, is shown telling a retired Brigadier that the US and Pakistan were making a mistake by helping the Afghan fighters. Just before she does that, a visiting American intellectual and a friend of Zakia, declares that the blowback (from helping the Mujahhidin) would be costly. If Sethi didn’t have the benefit of hindsight, I doubt if he could have written anything of this sort. Just after the Soviet invasion, I don’t think there were any Americans or Pakistanis worrying about the “blowback” from helping the Mujahhidin. In those days, the only serious dangers the world faced came with a capital C – Capitalism and Communism, depending on whose side you were on. Religious fundamentalism was not a major problem. Many Arab nations such as Egypt were going through a phase of Arab nationalism and socialism. I’m sure we’ll get to read a lot more of Sethi in the days to come.

Book Review: SQL and Relational Theory

Ganadeva Bandyopadhyay — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:08:28 EDT

This book is intended to be an improvement over an earlier book on the same topic by the same author, namely 'Database in Depth: Relational Theory for Practitioners' . As the author states, the current book is a product of his realization of SQL being such a difficult language that it was far from obvious how to use it without violating relational principles even when covered in much depth in this earlier book, primarily for database practitioners.

One of the main features of the current book hence is the additional effort taken to have enough elucidation to connect the theory with practical SQL examples. While the theory discussion about the relational database model remains largely similar to the earlier book, there are exercises at the end of each chapter for better connecting the concepts with more examples. The answers to these exercises are included towards the end of the book.

There are about half a dozen chapters in the center of the book starting with “SQL and Relational Algebra I:The original operators” through to “Miscellaneous SQL Topics” which are the highlight of this book. There are some really lucid examples of implementing the relational definitions and theory in proper SQL in these chapters.

The slightly sarcastic tone of discussion of the author on the popular and theoretically doubtful usage of relational terms seems to be a constant companion for use of terms such as “duplicate elimination” instead of the more correct “duplication elimination”. This seems to be an attempt to challenging the maintenance of a continuous approach to try and match the SQL implementations to the theoretical definitions and concepts of Relational Model for Database Management.

One of the recent implementations of newer database models seem to be the Google proprietary Bigtable distributed storage systems. Since such proprietary models are out of public domain, it would be interesting comparing the principles behind them and the widely used relational database management systems.

To summarize, the book is a recommended read for all the database practitioners and other related professionals looking to match their implementations with the theoretical concepts and hence improving usability of the relational database model implemented within the enterprise.

Khuda kay Liye and Ramchand Pakistani: A Comparison

Zia Ahmad — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:09:45 EDT

Ramchand Pakistani has come and gone and has made another addition to the slowly and lets hope surely upward struggle for the revival of Pakistani cinema. With the lack of any other appropriate banner for these films to be categorized under, no room for “New Pakistani Cinema” or “Reasonable/Sensible Pakistani Cinema”, “Revival of Pakistani Cinema” is the nomenclature that has been agreed upon and Shoaib “Showman” Mansoor’s Khuda Kay Liye has been accorded the privilege of ushering in this revival.

In this light it is only natural to compare Khuda kay Liye and Ramchand Pakistani. Both are made by directors with a strong television background with Shoib Mansoor, a veteran of thirty plus years who has been associated with quality productions and Mehreen Jabbar who has been making consistently capable TV productions and short films that display uncharacteristic depth and sensitivity in the age of crass commercial TV for more than ten years now.

Past efforts to revive Pakistani cinema had been made in the previous decade but failed miserably to cut the mark. Notable mentions were Salman Pirzada’s still largely unseen Zargul, which for all purposes might have been an adequate piece of cinema only if people would have actually seen the film and the overwrought dismal project that was Jinnah, an expensively mounted feature that got bogged down by strange apparitions and over-weight angels in front of playback monitors and imposing upon us to exercise our patriotic duty by watching it on the big screen.

When it was announced that acclaimed TV director Shoaib Mansoor was helming a feature film, the news generated considerable excitement and anticipation. Geo TV effectively cashed in the excitement by thunderously promoting the film. Riding upon the wave of massive local publicity and promotion and by the virtue of being the first in line, Khuda kay Liye was hastily set as a standard by which all subsequent Pakistani films as against to Lollywood films would be measured.

A year later Ramchand Pakistani was released with much less fanfare and though it didn’t go unnoticed, it made more of an impact in the art house circles and festivals and earned glowing reviews if not as much box office receipts. And that is the way it should be since box office receipts don’t necessarily vouch for a film’s excellence but rather its populist appeal. Khuda kay Liye clearly had that appeal, with its Shan-led cast and US, UK locales replete with a patriotic agenda.

Paraphrasing Omar Khan, the content and form of the film exercises sledge hammer subtlety and never quite lets up in that regard. The central characters are thinly drawn with superficial complexities to contend with and are at the absolute mercy of the plot to get them around the world and emote blatantly as required. Performances are generally uneven with the absolutely stoic, the actor playing Iman Ali’s father, to painful variations of hamming it up, from the absolutely atrocious Iman Ali to Shan doing his Shan thing, to the commendably professional, Naseer-ud-Din Shah on loan. However, it is Rashid Naz who own every scene he's in and is genuinely impressive in the way he lends equal measures of soft spoken charm underlined with unsettling threat so commonly associated with charismatic maulvis

For what it’s worth Khuda kay Liye didn’t disappear in the dust of irrelevancy like previous contenders of the revival of Pakistani cinema and for a while did give the purveyors of Lollywood sleaze a run for their money which is an achievement in itself. Ramchand Pakistani didn’t quite match that feat but established itself in other meaningful ways.

It is said to be based on a true story and while Khuda kay Liye as well has its basic exposition influenced by timely circumstance, events in Ramchand have a more immediate ring. Where Shoib Mansoor’s film echoes of jingoistic tendencies, Ramchand is more so a human document rather than a political polemic.

The performances are relatively even through out with instances of miscasting here and there as in Noman Ijaz’s street vendor doesn’t strike authentic, a lesser known or glamorous actor in his place would have been more credible. So is the case with the staff of the Indian jail that ends up looking a tad bit less gritty and more compromising including the casting of Shahood Alvi, whose cultured diction betrays the speech mannerisms of a jail warden in Indian Gujarat. The presence of Nadita Das helps though she is not left much to do with and her range is not fully realized.

Along with the story it is the father/son relationship that forms the core of the film and drives it forward. This is more than ably helped by unaffected performances by child actors. Especially the younger Ramchand displays the natural performance often associated by neo realist non professional actors. The older Ramchand invests the role with unmentioned longing balancing it with a loss of innocence.

Strong yet understated performance by Rashid Farooqi convincingly demonstrates his character’s hurt, anger and despondency that provides the film much emotional resonance and helps give the father/son dynamic in the film a warm honesty not familiar in Pakistani films.

Book Review: Using Google App Engine

Ganadeva Bandyopadhyay — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:54:36 EDT

Using Google App Engine starts with introducing cloud computing and the App Engine as a concept within the Google Implementation of cloud architectures. There is some discussion about the basic ways of developing web applications in HTML and CSS, Python and enough concepts to begin interacting with App Engine server using HTTP protocol commands. Python is to be used as a sort of controller to the HTML and CSS in front-end.

The concept of mostly HTML template to be rendered from Python code uses the Django project for the default syntax used in Google App Engine. The database that is at the back end of the Google App Engine uses a hierarchical object-oriented storage approach called as Bigtable technology. The interaction with this type of database being different from the widely used relational database models, there is an entire chapter dedicated to interfacing with this database.

The memory cache comes between the web application and the datastore and is one of the mechanisms used to improve speed of web applications. There is an interesting discussion about using the memory cache of Google App Engine as a sort of large Python dictionary.

In addition to the all these topics, the book gives a good amount of information to properly using the App Engine webapp Framework, setting up and using Google Application Engine accounts, using JavaScript, jquery and Ajax and finally, downloading and installing Google App Engine Software Development Kit (SDK) for Windows XP,Windows Vista,Macintosh and Linux Systems.

Google App Engine is part of the Platform-as-a-service approach that the Google cloud uses. Adding to the rapidly growing technical literature dealing with implementation of applications to clouds, this O'Reilly-Google Press book is dealing with making the usage of Google App Engine as detailed as possible starting from budding application developers to advanced professionals. This is a recommended read for the professionals looking to begin and ramp up their web application deployments quickly and as cleanly as possible to the Google App Engine.

Book Review: Cloud Application Architectures

Ganadeva Bandyopadhyay — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 21:19:43 EDT

Cloud Application Architectures is directed more towards the higher management personnel in IT, as an audience for making the decisions based on the latest status for this new technology.

There is an intensive discussion near the beginning of the book, as to the points of comparison between internal IT divisions, managed services outsourcing and the cloud computing environment. There is one article worth mentioning in this regard.

There are the two major cloud infrastructure approaches of Infrastructure-as-a-service, with the example of Amazon Web Service(AWS), and Platform-as-a-service, with Google Apps being an example. In IAAS, the customer owns the instances /servers on demand whereas in PAAS, there is a lock-in to the vendor APIs with respect to the software development that can use the back end vendor cloud infrastructure. IAAS is the model discussed in this book.

One of the main intentions in this book is to enable writing applications to make use of cloud computing in the IAAS model. While achieving this, the author familiarizes us with the Amazon specific terms such as elastic IPs ,buckets ,block storage volumes, Amazon Machine Image(AMI), Security Groups, etc. There are brief discussions on some important considerations to get ready for the cloud such as service levels and the mapping of different AWS services into them, security and risk profiles, database management in the cloud , among others.

The book gives a lot of exposure to Amazon Web Services with a brief look at the Rackspace and GoGrid offerings at the end. With the rapid mushrooming of different cloud offerings from competing vendors in the market, this book should be a good introduction to compare and get used to the difference in implementation technologies. One of the possible improvements for this book could be some basic simulator software examples in addition to theoretical discussions.

Muslim Social Gandasa in Pushto: Pakistani Film Genres

Zia Ahmad — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:05:39 EDT

Genre films are best exemplified by Westerns, Sci Fi, Musicals, Action/Adventures and any number of such labels that are designed to lump films together that share certain similarities. Such commonalities may be tonal (Film Noir, Horror), conceptual (Sci Fi, Fantasy) or textual (Biopic, Period Drama, War) in nature.

Genres enable the viewers to form certain expectations from films that work as an identifying device. For instance, with the knowledge of watching a Film Noir, the viewer anticipates the basic set of conventions and motifs that operates as a comforting and familiar visual as well as a cerebral experience.

Having stocked up a sizeable movie watching experience in Pakistan, some of us have nurtured a finer appreciation for genres that goes beyond the broad and loud “Comedy”, “Full Action”, “Love Story/Romantic” and “Harrar” tags. The manifestation of esoteric genres can be observed in various ways; a crossover between genres as in Romantic Comedies/Sci Fi-Horror/ Musical Westerns, or a finer distinction of existent genres as seen in Gangster films or discovering strange new samples in quirky offbeat films. In a nutshell we are consciously or subconsciously aware of film genres owing to our exposure to Hollywood films.

Looking right next door at Bollywood, classifying genres can be a bit problematic. By default, virtually every film is a musical which is embellished with elements from other divergent genres that stews up to a Masala film which has everything for everyone. Any one can find comedy, action, romance, domestic drama replete with the essential song and dance routine that make up for the consummate Bollywood film.

In our own backyard, we see three well bodied genres that have featured significantly through local films. These genres are resolutely Pakistani that over the years have minted a distinct impression in terms of form and content enjoying populist approval through the times. From a critical standpoint, the films may fall suspect in objective quality. It would be a Herculean task holding up any of the films in front of the ranks of Citizen Kane to Pulp Fiction, but as a genre, it stands a good chance of putting up residence on the fringes of cult cinema as Italian Horror and Chinese Wuxia (Martial Arts) films did in the 70s.

A cursory glance at these three indigenous film genres is in order now. Please indulge:

Gandasa Films:

In the absence of any agreed upon label, the spew of violent Punjabi films can safely be categorised under this genre that derives its name from the indigenous axe amply brandished in such films. In the same manner as the Western, the Gandasa genre is primarily informed by its geographical setting, namely the rural plains of central Punjab.

The geographical framework of the genre arbitrarily represents the culture of the setting which provides basis for the subsequent conflict. By design it is a sequence of events channelled through a narrow spectrum of vengeance, punctuated with intermittent bursts of violence. At the centre of the narrative is the traditionalist male hero who, more often than not, either attends to a personal vendetta, some issues regarding honor, or takes up a woolly headed cause against a significant adversary. Occasional twists have been introduced into the genre with the action brimming out to urban centers (Maula Jutt in London (1981) is a blaring example) or the placement of a female protagonist (Wehshi Aurat) (1995).

Basheera (1972) is commonly identified as the film that kick started the Gandasa trend and appropriately featured Sultan Rahi as the titular character. For the uncomprehendingly uninitiated, Sultan Rahi personified the genre, similar to John Wayne’s stature in the Western. It wasn’t until Maula Jutt (1979) that the genre established itself as a resolutely steady trend that has survived to this day despite its main progenitor’s ironically violent demise in 1996.

So far the genre has immensely benefited from its core Punjabi speaking working class audience that doesn’t seem to get enough of the same premise that has been rehashed infinitely since Basheera. Shaan has effectively replaced Sultan Rahi as the 21st century Jutt/Gujjar/Chaudary/Malik, prone to dispense his brand of justice with guns rather than Gandasa.

Stock players: Sultan Rahi, Mustafa Qureshi, Aasia, Anjuman, Shaan, Saima

Notable Films: Basheera (1972), Wehshi Jutt (1975), Pindiwal (1976), Maula Jutt (1979), Asoo Billa (2001), Humanyun Gujjar (2002)

Muslim Social Films:

This genre is a relic of its time. Early to mid 70s saw a rise in the Muslim Social genre that exults the virtues of eastern tradition and morals conversely demonizing western culture as debauched and decadent. This reflected the utter sense of shock and fear experienced by the conservative status quo in the wake of the cultural/social/sexual revolution in the late 60s. The custodians of morality felt threatened by the revolution seeping its way out to the east. The intimidation felt by their western counterparts was manifested in attempts to clamp down a new sense of personal freedom the Pakistani youth may have started to enjoy. To borrow an oft-quoted line, the revolution was in the air and the moral brigade in Pakistan was petrified of it.

A broad insight into the conventions of a characteristically melodramatic Muslim Social film sees a downward slide of a misguided soul, a part normally played by Shahid yet occasionally filled by Waheed Murad and Nadeem, that has embraced western values. The subsequent cause and effect trajectory leaves no stone unturned in vocalising the inherent flaws and sundry moral vices that are part and parcel of such “decadent” values.

This would invariably lead the wayward hero/antihero of the film to break up his family, earn alienation from his peers and the utter contempt by society at large. The hero/antihero is almost always saved from a dismal fate by an angelic personification of unadulterated Eastern Muslim tradition (in the face of a beaming, clad in white Rani). Such were the ways of the Muslim Social films whose certain demise became inevitable with the passage of time.

Stock Players: Waheed Murad, Shahid, Nadeem, Rani, Sabeeha Khanum

Notable films: Tehzeeb (1971), Daulat aur Duniya (1972), Daman aur Chingari (1973), Miss Hippy (1974), Ek Gunah aur Sahi (1975), Muhabbat Zindagi Hai (1975), Playboy (1978)

Pollywood:

Unlike Gandasa films and Muslim Social films, the labelling of a select number of Pustho films is a tad challenging. It appears unfair to brand a collection of cheaply made exploitative features solely on the basis of language. Then again, it is hard to ignore a prevalent trend in a majority of films made in Pustho that exhibit similar stories and a camp sensibility that safely qualifies to be categorized under a genre. For the sake of convenience and impartiality we shall refer such cluster of films as the Pollywood genre.

Following the rise of Gandasa film in Punjab, in the wake of military rule in 1977, Pollywood film witnessed a significant growth in the next decade. By the early 90s, various elements gave Pollywood films a distinct identity that, on a theoretical level, communicated by invoking a certain tone entrenched in camp and low brow taste on screen.

Colorful casting, horrid performances, logic defying plots, garish costumes and makeup, unintentionally surreal sets, positively baffling song and fight sequences add up to an exercise in administrating a mood that often outstays its welcome but works strongly at given moments.

The limited sustainability to channel this visceral tone is subjective to the viewer on either receiving it as exploitative, titillating escapist fare or surreal Dadaist artwork. Inasmuch, Pollywood films qualify for generic recognition under the common ground provided by the telegraphed mood rather than any shared setting or pointed issue.

Stock Players: Badar Munir, Mussarat Shaheen, Asif Khan

Notable films: Haseena Atom Bomb (1990), Adam Khor (1991),Da Khwar Lasme Spogmey (1997), Kacha Ghotay (1999), Shock Maar (1999)

Going over this limited list, it is apparent that as much as Pakistani cinema is scoffed off as a rag tag bunch of sub-intelligent films, the aesthetic and critical liability can be turned over its head inviting informed insights. The strange celluloid treasure grove is open to be minted for its cult potential and find relevance in our times through a post-modern set of exercises such as constant interpretations, incisive deconstruction as well as attaching culturally stronger currency to its symbols, icons and images.

An encouraging example can be found not far away from home in the Chinese Wuxia genre mentioned at the start of the article. The martial arts films were as cheesy and paper thin as our Gandasa films in the 70s but now have graduated into artworks worthy of critical re-appraisal and getting glossier big budget as well as thematically complex treatments as seen in a spate of recent Far Eastern films; Hero, Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon, Curse of the Gold Scorpion and House of the Flying Daggers amongst others.

By all accounts, the unmistakably Pakistani genres have it in them to break out from the rusty vaults and make a distinct impression to the outside world. All is required, is to step out from the complacent habit of criticizing ourselves and look at things from a fresh set of perspectives.

Movie Review: Bolt - Animals Are People Too

IdeaSmith — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:10:16 EDT

I’m not a dog-lover. In fact I am not even an animal-lover, though I could fairly tolerate a cat’s company. It’s not that I have anything against them, animals just never touched me. I’m a people-person, not an animal-person.

But what if animals were people too, just on fours and oh, with paws and fur instead of fingers and hair? Hmm. My animal-loving friends tell me that every pooch, every kitten, every bird has its own unique personality, just like human beings.

I’m convinced now that I’ve seen Bolt. Bolt is a white dog who adores his mistress Penny, frolics and chews a carrot-shaped toy and chases his own tail. He’s a dog like any other – with one difference. He thinks he’s actually a SuperDog with special powers like an iron-bending forehead, a fire-shooting glare and a SuperBark that can blow them all away (a special genetic contribution from his ancestor, The Big Bad Wolf, one supposes).

How does a normal well-fed dog with a loving owner come to suffer such delusions? Bolt, it transpires, is the star of a television series and the entire world that he sees around him, is an elaborately constructed set with actors playing every role. All so that he genuinely believes in the character of Bolt the SuperDog and acts accordingly. Method acting at its finest.

Bolt is a 3-D movie. Yes, the kind where you get to wear multi-coloured spectacles while watching! You can imagine how much that adds to a story about a dog with great powers and even greater imagination.

John Travolta provides the heart-warming, sometimes whiny, sometimes growly voice of Bolt. Penny, Bolt’s ‘person’ is played by Miley Cyrus. If you listen carefully enough, you can discern the shift in Penny the TV star and Penny, Bolt’s doting owner. During the shooting, when Miley began laying tracks for the scenes where Penny plays with Bolt, she imagined herself playing with her own dog and spoke as she would at home, with a Southern accent. So Penny naturally speaks with a drawl. But while shooting for the TV show, Miley was asked to record without the accent, so the actress Penny delivers her instructions of ‘Bolt, zoom zoom!’ on a crisp note.

When I first saw the promos detailing this story, I thought it was a tad contrived. But the nice part of the movie is that the story actually begins after Bolt accidently gets out of his set and what happens to him in the real world.

The story had a chance to go the ‘Babe in the city’ way with a smirking look at the mistakes of the uninitiated in the big, bad world. Instead, it took a strong bouquet of characters and carried a simple plot with style.

The bad guys are just circumstances (or circumstantial as in the case of Penny’s slimy Hollywood agent, but aren’t all TV agents supposed to be that way?), the good guys leave you wondering if it would be too much of a sin to give them a good kick now and then. Just like human people. We meet Mittens, the smirking New York alley cat, extortionist bully of the neighborhood bird community and expert in the matters of men and dogs. There is Rhino, an exuberant Bolt-groupie hamster energetically running around inside a plastic ball who alternately provides comic relief and the Yoda for Mittens’ hard-bitten cynicism.

And then there are the pigeons! Ever wonder what pigeons keep going on about while they goobgoob at each other from telephone wires and window parapets? Here’s what - they complain about bullies, they play tricks on people, they gossip about people (and dogs) walking about and in Hollywood, they even pitch movie ideas to any stars that they inadvertently bump into!

In all fairness, Bolt is exactly the way I see most dogs. Sweet, sometimes irritating in his antics, pretty lovable but nothing remarkable in himself. The other characters of this story are what make it really special and worth every minute of it.

*Bolt will premier at the multiplexes tomorrow, finally a good movie after the long wait! This movie was brought to me by The Social Media Catalyst.

Movie Review: Zibahkhana - Of Zombies and Baby

Zia Ahmad — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:16:00 EDT

With Shoaib Mansoor’s big and important Khuda Kay Liye along with Mehreen Jabbar’s humanist Ramchand Pakistani, Omar Khan’s Zibahkhana rounded up 2008 as a fruitful year for Pakistani cinema. Unfortunately, rather than continuing the trend, the subsequent year has been overshadowed by fundamentalist experiments in Swat, monumentally insipid performance by an elected government and uncertainty coming to fore as the defining Pakistani adjective. Nonetheless, Zibahkhana made a significant impression in niche circles here, there and everywhere.

The greatest strength of Omar Khan’s Zibahkhana is that it follows an oft-used template for a genre zombie horror film and then scrupulously molds it in a thoroughly indigenous Pakistani artwork. But then again, according to some self appointed custodians of culture, artwork per se is required to be looked up to, to be appreciated in aesthetical detail, demanding to join ranks with the sublime. Zibahkhana doesn’t make any pretence to masquerade as high-art. Omar Khan has for sometime been establishing himself as a connoisseur of ‘lowbrow’ cinema, be it the Western grade Z genre flicks, displaying a wholesome familiarity with cinematic wonders scooped out from the lowest depths of camp. He broadens his horizon of charting the depravity of camp by dwelling on Pakistan’s own indigenous film culture – blemishes, warts and all. Blood-soaked gandasa flicks from Punjab and smut-peddled Pushto fare has been given full recognition by Omar Khan that always eluded a critical eye.

Zibahkhana being his first feature, it was only natural for Omar Khan to fuse the two disparate influences and show to us all how seamless the results are. The basic premise might be awfully familiar to those who ever chanced upon witnessing a generic slasher/horror film. A group of teenagers hit the road into wilderness, and fall victim to all sorts of zombies and slashers. Right from the opening credits, the film promises to be a vehemently Pakistani feature with successive shots of street vendors and inner-city market hustlebustle played to a spunky Naheed Akhtar filmi song. Four of the young protagonists are introduced in separate scenes that establish their background, affirming to the slasher movie archetypes they will subsequently embody. Tagging along, in a ramshackle van to a rock concert, the crowd comprises Roxy, the in-the-moment “chilled” girl; Ayesha, the restrained, cautious girl; OJ, the token stoner; Vicky the older dude, and finally Simon, the sensitive one. On their way to the destination, they take a detour in the wilderness which brings them in contact with sordid characters and a series of grisly events.

The mayhem-laden scenes, replete with mucho gore and blood and guts and splattering lend credence to the warning supplied to us by Z grade horror films on local exhibition in the 80s: “kamzor dil hazraat na tashreef layein” (The faint-hearted need not attend). The unprecedented use of all manners of gore is tweaked through unique Pakistani shadings of zombies ambling in shalwar kameez (the dwarf zombie is a hoot) and a shuttle-cock burqa-clad flail-wielding slasher ‘Baby’ (more reminiscent of the masked John Merrick in David Lynch’s The Elephant Man).

The mannerisms of the central clique are authentic in the initial scenes in the observation of how young Pakistanis from privileged backgrounds interact amongst themselves and others. Indeed, a subtextual Marxist reading of the film would suggest how the move the carefree and young protagonists make out of their comfort zones, built upon the cozy familiarity of luxurious living in affluent neighborhoods, flows into subsequent horror upon confronting head-on with the unfamiliar and the strange. The trek through the unknown, a misguided endeavor elicited by the impulsive need for the quick and fast concludes with blood and carnage. The marauding zombies just as well may stand for age-old conventions that have gone stale and alienating for the central Generation Now protagonists.

Another interpretaive layer is introduced by the inclusion of the crazed faqir, played by Salim Mairaj, that channels the anxiety directed at hard liner religious elements insistent upon showing the wayward the “right path”. Sacrifice and rigid unquestionable devotion is demanded to ensure the journey, which the youngsters are simply not prepared for. This leads to a violent struggle which sees the crazed faqir fatally overpowered, inviting retribution by a significantly more ferocious threat.

This is articulated through the burqa-clad slasher, brandishing medieval weaponry, denoting the utter terror that extremist and uncompromising elements invoke amongst those who are unprepared to encounter it. Such subtextual readings add topical layers and subversive pleasure into viewing a genre film that is dismissed as visceral fun at surface. At the same time it is peculiar to note the coherency between the formulaic narrative of the film and the passage of events that just may have reached a tipping point in our turbulent history.

Apart from reading between the lines, the film gives representation to a select crowd (colloquially known as the mummy-daddy/English-medium sorts) that was previously depicted in a patronizing and laughingly manipulated manner in Pakistan. This is a worthy effort to lure back a sizable audience along with the rest who crave for the new and the different who had turned away from local films a long, long time ago. Surely they are thrilled in identifying themselves on screen even at the cost of seeing their cinematic surrogates getting hacked and diced by our burqa-clad Baby.

Book Review: A Nice Quiet Holiday

Vinod Joseph — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 05:15:40 EDT

Lawyer turned detective novelist Aditya Sudarshan’s debut offering borrows at least one idea from Arthur Conan Doyle’s creations. A Nice Quiet Holiday has two men working in tandem not unlike Sherlock Holmes and Watson. The detective is a portly, courtly and old worldly Additional Sessions Judge from Delhi, Harish Shinde. Shinde’s law clerk Anant, the narrator of the story, is not unlike Watson doing most of the spadework for the Judge who prefers to be an armchair detective. No, Judge Shinde does not smoke a pipe or wear a bowler hat, he’s too Indian for that. However, just like Holmes, Judge Shinde is a student of human nature and does not hesitate to spout arguments and analyses at the drop of a hat (or turban if you will).

It was not just Arthur Conan Doyle’s creations that Sudarshan’s work reminded me of. The setting for the crime, a murder, is a family home in the foothills of the Himalayas where lots of friends, family and guests have gathered, smacks of something from an Agatha Christie, with a heavy Indian flavour of course. Except for the initial bit of the novel, the entire story is played out in that family home.

Sudarshan writes well, in simple English and in a manner that is both elegant and pleasing. In fact, his style of writing is good enough to iron over the few minor cracks in the story. For example, as Sudarshan explains, clerking for Judges is not a common practice in India, especially in the case of District Judges. However, Sudarshan’s style of delivery makes it look very natural.

One of Sudarshan’s achievements is that he treads the fine line between pulp fiction and literature very well. A Nice Quiet Holiday has all the ingredients needed for a best seller. It has a murder, exciting court proceedings, a tall and intelligent lawyer (the narrator), a damsel almost in distress, mob violence and a philosophising detective. Despite the presence of so much spice (or masala if you so prefer), Sudarshan’s fine writing makes it difficult to label ‘A Nice Quiet Holiday’ as pulp fiction. The best bit about this novel is that Sudarshan keeps us guessing till the end as to the identity of the murderer.

A Nice Quiet Holiday runs to 224 pages and the word count doesn’t exceed 50,000 (my own estimate). In other words, it is a fairly quick and light read and is ideal for train journeys. It wouldn't surprise me if the judge and his clerk make many more appearances in Sudarshan's future works and solve more crimes.

Book Review: A Stranger Called I - Pritish Nandy

Amitabh Mitra — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:37:53 EDT

A page from the The Nowhere Man'

Just as there' never been anyone like you or me, concede there's never been anyone like me. Every song I have sung for you, every whisper we have shared, every poem I write for you declares this simplest truth. Let the future pass away, let tomorrow be gone: the blossoms in our mind will cling to this dawn.....
A Stranger Called I

Published in the seventies, this small square book published by Arnold Heinemann with its poetry remains proof of a domain of which Pritish Nandy still is the emperor. 'A Stranger Called I' is the poetry of the Indian youth finding love in seasons heralded by a rainstorm of magical verse that only Pritish can create. An Indo-English Poet who refused to reason with the conventional language of poetry, he started a movement where words merged with music and arts where lovers shared the palpitations of words, where a stolen kiss was the ultimate seal of the eye of his poem.

I gave this book to an incredible beautiful girl during the same period and our long poetry in a stranger dimension just happened.

In 2009, Pritish Nandy, poet, writer, film maker and the well loved stranger remains the greatest poet, that India and the world is proud of.

From his celebrated book Lonesong Street -

What happens when the disc runs out The fevered evening reaches out What happens when the phone bell rings The dark is empty and so am I