The House Bunny

I wanted some cheap thrills after having lost the who-gets-to-use-the-internet war with my sister, I take to the idiot box, to stake my claim. So in between all the random surfing of channels, I end up watching this movie called "The House Bunny" staring Anna Faris, Cindy of the Scary Movie Series, Emma Stone, Colin Hanks and others (I can't keep switching tabs to Wiki). It is a really cliched plot line, an extremely dumb movie about a play boy bunny (Anna Faris) moving out of the Play Boy mansion and moving in with Plain Janes, freaks etc. the cliched coterie you find normally in such movies. And yes I am no Santa, so no prizes for guessing what ensues, she does the whole makeover bit and saves the day with her Miss World speech.

What surprises me is how intelligent actors end up doing such trashy movies, I guess every one at some point or the other does something one is not proud of just to make ends meet. If that is the case, I forgive you for the horrors, for you make me feel smarter. Sigh, what have I been reduced to.

Cheap thrills I tell you. Yes, the armistice continues with my sister, after having guffawed at the incredulity of this movie. 

Wilt - Tom Sharpe

Thomas Ridley Sharpe's book, the first among the Wilt series, goes by like a breeze and at the same time keeps you hooked. You can't help but connect with Henry Wilt's predicament wherein he is falsely accused of his wife, Eva's murder. The book starts off with Henry and Eva being in a twelve year old marriage which hasn't yielded any kids, is therefore definitely sexless, full of constant nagging on part of Eva and Henry constantly fantasizing about killing his wife. Eva, who has an otherwise an irresistible zest of life, going for Pottery, Flower Arrangement, Judo and Yoga classes, to name a few, to make up for a rather lackluster marriage. And Henry on the other hand, is a Grade 2 Lecturer at the Tech, who has been teaching Mechanics, Plasterers, Butchers and the works for more than ten years and whose promotion has always been rejected, for the sheer reason that he has never demanded it of the Board. Then enter the Pringsheims and the roller coaster begins from there on. 

The book titillates, makes you laugh and the prose just bowls you over. Extremely tongue in cheek humour, the satire, the loud pseudo talk, women's liberation (:P), sexual emancipation and of course just the way, Henry just weaves his way out with words when in custody, makes you want to read through it again. It's an absolutely brilliant book and a must read. And come Bangalore, finishing the Wilt series, is one of the few plans I have up my sleeves. 

It's just one hell of a book, it made me laugh while reading it and therefore goes to say a lot. :)

Happy Reading everyone!!!!

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

Finally I finished a book in two days flat (I know its still a lot) but considering how much my reading pace had slowed down it was quiet a feat. 

This is the only novel written by Sylvia Plath who is known more for her love sonnets and poems and is a semi-autobiographical account of her slip into depression and was published only a few weeks before her suicide. It starts out with the protagonist Esther Greenwood, apprenticing with a magazine in New York away from her small town of Boston and living the high life, going to parties, shopping, doing writing, fine dining and the works and is a delight to read till Esther after her month at New York moves back home, only to be rejected for a writing course. The whole idea of having to spend more than a week at home, doing nothing and also not knowing what she wanted from life in spite having had an impeccable academic record, makes her slip into depression and she continuously keeps thinking of ways to commit suicide. In all of this she becomes insomniac, is not able to read or write, the two things she loved doing and really sees no point in the very existence of human life if it has to die and wither away. It is a downward spiral from there on, but by the end of it she does survive the ordeal unlike in Sylvia's real life.

The narration is extremely lucid, and therefore the description of her depression and her suicide attempts and stay at the asylum are so vivid. It's a genius' struggle to deal with the triteness of everyday life, of dealing with male attention and dealing with inadequacies while one see everybody else leading a normal life. What really makes you connect is that you see somebody like Plath facing the same issues like an everyday normal woman, the same dilemmas, confusions and questions from oneself. The reference to Bell jar, is the stifling feeling one gets when one is covered with it and also to the pickling babies, Esther sees at the hospital. All in all book I loved reading and would love to go over it again.

Shanghai -The movie

My first reaction to the movie was Brilliant stuff but that is also because I have been reading too much about totalitarian regimes, bureaucracy, human life having no value to all etc. kind of things too much lately and therefore I guess I reacted that way, for seemed so apt to what my thought process has been. 

But after having given it a second thought, I realised the best part of the movie was the acting of Emraan Hasmi and Farooque Shaikh. Sadly the story is no hero, as you would expect from a political drama. Most of the background work looks half baked, there is no relationship or angle to the movie which has been done justice to. Be it Prosenjit's relationship or lack of it with his estranged wife (played by Tilotima Shome, the maid Alice from Monsoon Wedding or the lesbian friend from Turning 30), or that of his with Kalki neither the political nexus, other than mysterious accidents and murdered and mutilated bodies turning up, nor the whole displacement of people due to development work being carried out, really been explored. It's more like a bird's eye view into the story. 

You don't understand why was the movie named Shanghai, for in the movie there is just an offhand mention of 'Cheen' and never the talk of how extensive the development was going to be, of its transformation into Shanghai instead the town of Bharat Nagar is transmogrified into a town of looting, vandalism, shooting, destruction etc. The movie feels in complete and the intermission you feel comes too soon, as if you are really expecting more should have happened.

It's a movie which does not satiate you although of course the loose threads do connect at the end but what really stands out in the movie is the acting of Emraan Hashmi. He is brilliant and to think he is the guy who is known more for his kissing than his acting, he is one guy who beats the other stalwarts in the cast of this movie. Farooque Shaikh is a delight, as the corrupt Principal Secretary and being such a huge fan of Abhay Deol, I really thought there wasn't enough homework done, some of the pronunciations were really forced, even the tamil did not look genuine enough. Not all tamilians, talk with a tamilian accent, he could have been a tamilian IAS officer without the accent, which really seemed to take alot away from his acting. Kalki gets it right, as she usually does as a troubled girl having personal issues of her own and at the same time dealing with other issues. Pitobash really just repeats what he does in Shor in the City. Supriya Pathak has about a couple of scenes in the entire movie, while she is the one who plots Prosenjit's murder. More screen space, more details is what I wanted. 

This movie is an attempt in the right direction but does little after that. We know the stories, we know how the police gets henpecked, how people are murdered for political objectives, how in coalition politics there are no friends no foes, and how investigation commissions/committees are a big sham, what we would have really wanted is some more insight into things which are already known. I was expecting more dirt, more gore more black but I was given a little bit of this and that.

I guess I went in expecting a tad too much, from the Dibakar Banerjee and his crew and the movie did leave me disappointed. I wanted a lot more, a lot more insight instead I got only a reconnaissance of the theme. I give this movie 3 stars out of 5. I don't understand why the movie is being given rave reviews, when really it could have done a lot more. Unlike RDB, it will not revolutionise nothing. 

Catch 22

So I finally finished the book and here is the review as promised. I loved the book, for the way its been written but of course, it did require a dictionary by my side. The book is a peak into how men in power get their way by means of bureaucracy and sycophancy to people who are even more senior. Ambition without moral, without scruples and subjecting the naive and powerless to diktats, to new rules just so that work is done by somebody else in the name of work delegation and life is jeopardised in the ever increasing number of missions one has to take, is what the book is all about. But in all of this, is Yossarian the protagonist of the story who has his way come what way, even gets a promotion even when it's his fault, has the audacity to refuse his seniors to fly any more missions and in spite of all his lecherousness and rebellion he is somebody with his heart in the right place. He is the only sane guy in the whole of combat forces, who has the courage to say no to flying any more missions, while others ostracize in the light of the day, at night they sidle up to confess that they wanted to do the same as him. 

Catch 22 is best summarized in the line that "One is allowed to do anything and everything that one can't be stopped from doing". It is the inherent constraint that comes in the situation, that really makes it so difficult a conundrum to get out of, in short it is what you call a vicious circle. For e.g. in the case when a pilot refuses to fly any more missions and wants to go home is deemed sane and because of the very saneness he has to fly more missions as only somebody who is deemed crazy would be sent home and declared unfit for flying. 

The book starts out with the narration of different incidents which has happened in different times by way of explaining the various characters in the story, so the chapters don't necessarily follow each other chronologically until the very end, when everything starts to piece together. And also the huge number of characters are difficult to keep track of (atleast for me), but by the end of the book they really don't appear to be too many characters either. As slowly most of Yossarian's friends die while on mission. 

Its a brilliant tale on the tom foolery that is carried on, in the name of bureaucracy and how spineless the people are who are part of it. It is hillarious at the same time dark and an absolutely brilliant piece of work when it comes to technique.