2009 ten most beautiful in bollywood.

This is in no particular order..This is  a somewhat south India weighted list, but thats just how it happens to be…if more beautiful gujaratis or oriyas come to work in films there’ll be more of those ..

1 Anushka shetty

2. Shradha Sharma

3. Sneha(suhasini) rajaram

4. Deepika Pudukone

5. Meera Jasmine

6. Tanisha Mukharjee

7.  Sonam Kapoor

8.  Freida Pinto

9. Bhoomika Chawla

10. your name here..

Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi : A poetic translation.

Hazaaron Khwaishen Aisi is the Anthem of the ghazal buff. Everyone that reads Ghalib and Urdu sher has a translation. To some it’s philosophy (where inexplicably, the beloved is god, and the winestore is “nirvana”. ) to others it’s drunk poetry where , as the poet goes deeper into the ghazal it becomes bloodier and filled with morose thoughts of self mutilation and pain(..funerals…death…last breath….).

This is an attempt to translate the poetry, and it tuns out all is well in the romance.

Presenting…

(The clip above is from the serial “Mirza Ghalib” Gulzar directs, Naseerudin Shah acts, Jagjit Singh Sings the Ghazal)

hazaaro.n Khvaahishe.n aisii ki har Khvaaish pe dam nikale
bahut nikale mere armaa.N lekin phir bhii kam nikale

There are thousands of ambitions that each such wish could consume my life

My desires , and I experience them all intensely, aren’t enough for this one lifetime.

Dare kyuu.N meraa qaatil kyaa rahegaa usakii gardan par
vo Khuu.N jo chashm-e-tar se umr bhar yuu.N dam-ba-dam nikale

so don’t cry , my love, you didn’t cause this pain

It was my fault that I fell so intensly in love with you.

nikalanaa Khuld se aadam kaa sunate aaye hai.n lekin
bahut be-aabaruu hokar tere kuuche se ham nikale

Of the(unclean* ) birth of man, from the womb, one has heard

but you must see my rebirth when I passed shamelessly by your door!

bharam khul jaaye zaalim tere qaamat kii daraazii kaa
agar is turraa-e-purapech-o-Kham kaa pech-o-Kham nikale

The beauty of your flowing, offending, tresses can be fully exposed/experiened

only when I let down my hair (proper attitudes) as I would open my turban.

magar likhavaaye koii usako Khat to hamase likhavaaye
huii subah aur ghar se kaan par rakkhar qalam nikale

( for a long while), I wanted no more than that I get to write the poetic letters

your many admires make me write to you,

huii is daur me.n ma.nsuub mujhase baadaa-ashaamii

phir aayaa vo zamaanaa jo jahaa.N se jaam-e-jam nikale

and I was acquainted with such intoxication during this period(of knowing you), my love

that the world , after ,  appeared  passionless and dry.

huii jinase tavaqqo Khastagii kii daad paane kii
vo hamase bhii ziyaadaa Khastaa-e-teG-e-sitam nikale

I wandered looking for sympathy (to god)

who was himself , it turned out,was  lovesick for you

muhabbat me.n nahii.n hai farq jiine aur marane kaa
usii ko dekh kar jiite hai.n jis kaafir pe dam nikale

then for me, there was no difference between living and dying

and I lived , each last breath looking at you (the infidel) from afar,

zara kar jor siine par ki tiir-e-pursitam nikale
jo vo nikle to dil nikale jo dil nikale to dam nikale

I then steeled myself and  prised out the arrow of cupid from my heart

so that when it left, it took my heart with it, and with it, my last breath.

Khudaa ke vaaste pardaa na kaabe se uThaa zaalim
Kahii.n aisaa na ho yaa.N bhii vahii kaafir sanam nikale

but now you come back to me, and ask me to lift your veil(marriage for the moslems),

Stop!  because you may find me as unfaitful(as you once were) in love..

Kahaa.N maiKhaane ka daravaazaa ‘Ghalib’ aur kahaa.N vaaiz

par itanaa jaanate \nhai.n kal vo jaataa thaa ke ham nikale

And now my love, that we have  both been love sick like this , I wonder

Where were those days of intoxication, and what is this call to faith

(it’s like we’re in revolving doors..You now want me to be married and faithful, when at one point I would have been nothing but that, from my intoxication! )

hazaaro.n Khvaahishe.n aisii ki har Khvaaish pe dam nikale
bahut nikale mere armaa.N lekin phir bhii kam nikale

All these desires now drive my heart

and I could die of each

that no matter how much I suffer from them,

it’s still not enough .

Sita Sings the Blues (full movie), Nina Paley 2008 (I think…)

Available for free download at archive.com vide a creative commons liscence by nina paley at sita sings the blues dot com

Also: Buy nina endorsed merchandizing below:

The film features the comic soundtrack of three “learned Indian voices”

Our very own Assem Chabbra,  the filmmaker Manish Acharya and Bhavna Nagulapally.. The Youtube encoding courtesy :

Drakar2002(Mike Schmitt)

Nina Paley on copyright.

Extra!! : Sita trailer

Movie catchup

Terminator salvation(franchise, 2009):  Part (the 2002 film) Reign of Fire and part disaster film 28 days later, This CGI instalment is only distinguished by its unrelenting sense of Celtic purpose as the franchise holds on to its joycean visions of privileged humanity, that elevated Aahnold into a universal studios ride. The only thing I really got was : John conner = good.

Heaven on Earth : Deepa Mehta (2008) : Woman confronted by domestic violence stares down the bullies with the aid of an imaginary cobra, in an inefficient attempt at personal mythology by the director of the feminist trilogy. It is obvious mehta misses Lisa Ray (I would too, if she were my bitch . Giles Nuttgens (Earth , water) Camera makes people look like museum specimens preserved in formaldyhyde.

Gulal(Anurag Kashyap, 2009) : This unfocussed redcam film is a set of patchy still shots of mock art of no filmic meaning. The film is tone deaf, and the visuals reference a faux film noir tradition dating back to Sanjay Gupta ramgopal verma and Sriram Raghavan. This film is more meaningless tho. full credit for getting it made, I wouldn’t even have dared.Near about I can make out, its a film about rajput politics.

Stoneman Murders(manish gupta 2009) : A delicious mood piece remiscent of david cronenberg, this is narrated straight with goofy ramsey brothers music. the blues and blood reds take you over and threaten to haunt your dreams. The Jack the ripper style killings in Sion – Matunga in mid 80’s mumbai is only an excuse for kay kay menon’s underplayed romp through wet mumbai nights in search of the serial killer that used to brain his footpath dweller victims with a big stone (hence stone-man-killer, geddit?)

The Ojai Krishnamurti film festival

To the people who showed up, thank you!

Local Currency

Over the weekend, I attended a presentation by Steve Burke, the man who invented Ithaca Hours- a local currency advocate on the virtues of a local currency. Its an interesting move to medievalism. It disturbed me enough into blog posting.

A local currency is not a new concept. historically every medieval european potentate issued his own currecny. most indian royalty isuued currecny local to them. Every credit card transaction..and every virtual money transaction is a fungible(transferrable into US dollars) local currency. So what is so different about ithaca hours?

 

Ithaca Hours

The concept is very simple. Ithaca hours are issued by a central issuer in Ithaca(New York) and promises to pay  one hour of the issuer’s labor in exchange for the note of “an Ithaca hour”. I can therefore take an hour’s bill to , say, a plumber , who will work for an hour at my home and take the ithaca hour as currency. now that he has the ithaca hour, he can go to a restaurant in Ithaca , that accepts the ithaca hour, and eat a meal, the restaurant can then use it to get its pipes fixed..or its washing done …or its deliveries taken care of.

The economic fundamentals of a local currency

The effect of having a local currency work for a city is that the barter trade is monetized effectively. most small towns function on a barter system that have economics independant from the dollor and cent economies that include credit cards and instalment payments(and inflation). Often my need for a loaf of bread,which can be locally supplied, is independant of what I can charge for my labor, In other words, no matter who pays me what, I still need to be able to feed myself and am willing to work for this . also, if I can accumilate enough earned “subsistence barter wages” I am safe in a hyperinflationary world.

 

Hyperinflation 

 The textbook case for hyperinflation goes back to the weimar republic when a well and truly screwed up german central bank, in the Mid 30’s issued currency which , between the morning and the afternoon lost half its value. people went back to barter trade and the money became worthless as it was printed.

Are there fears that this will happen in the united states with the latest administration taking on enoromous quantities of debt?

US federal debt

 

America’s federal debt is expected to grow to $ 11 trillion at the end of Obama’s Stimulus bill. with this, the Government component of the gross domestic product is likely to be about $ 5.4 trillion.(about half the US GDP- of every dollar spent in america the federal government is a counterparty EVERY SINGLE TIME) The fear in the boonies, therefore is a legitimate one. with the government controlling so much , it is easy for value to be manipulated stolen taxed or converted into federal ownership. Obama is , after all, a “tax and spend liberal” an anti rush limbaugh . maybe the anti christ.

The virtue of a local currency

a local currency is , however much more than the sum of all our fears. It is a way to price a local economy of goods and services independantly of the national economy for them. An national Angies list of plumbers is useless if I only want a plumber within the 25 mile radius of my house. A functioning local currency provides me not only a benchmark for local apples and local restaurant meals, it also gives me an indication of what local labor and services are higher priced and which available. A valuable guide for living locally.

And local is a misnomer. Walmart can issue a local currency for its shoppers/suppliers and it would be a functioning universe complete with a central bank and currency fluctuation. A group of university town can issue a local currecny to price the value of books services and lodging it can provide to its students(who might pay in “university hours” for tution). A tourist map may provide the local currecny for a backpacker working hiw way through a round the world trail….thus a local currency in an increasingly global world is an idea well worth pursuing if only to maintain economies independant of supply and demand shocks that need not directly impact them.

 

The question of legality This comes up not only on count of the central bank’s ability to regulate a local currency (if a mexican drug cartel issued a local currecny, would it be an illegal one?) and taxation(how would you tax and pay taxes in a local currency? would you work off your tax burden by cleaning the IRS toilet for two hours?)  but also in terms ot the legality of small things.  who prices the value of labor? what is the quality of labor certified in the local currency? there is also the question of how one person/ business that is much in demand being able to wipe out the currency from the city by , quite suddenly owning all of it, and the inevitable question of how a corrupt local central bank can enrich itself and pretty much enslave all it’s constituents by flooding the market with spurious “ithaca hours”

 

Takeaways

The takeaways from the thought experiment about local currencies is that it is possible to develop a sense of the local by promoting them as a tool to monetizing the local economy and pricing local goods and services. It helps keep local goods valuable in times of economic stress and hyperinflation, and maybe seperate out needs and suppliers that are local (where economic interdependencies are unnescesary) from those that call for nescesary interdependancies with a national economy. They also encourage the formation and maintanance of local market structures and in the age of the Internet, they can be used to maintain markets that are local to an Idea and an interest rather than merely to a geography.

A local currency can also be a guide to which part of our mega economies are overheating and can be a valuable tool used to isolate the problems caused by crisises such as the mortgage crisis, pretty soon. People could go dollar bankrupt with more ease , because they could subsist on their labor hours.

 

Interesting times call for interesting strategies.

Quick Gun Murugan(tm) (2009,Ghosh)

Shashanka Ghosh’s Quick gun murugan previewed at the Indian film festival at los angeles(IFFLA) , friday night. Many people were completely confused. many others were angry. The movie is a zen koan couched as an exquisitely detailed badly played out joke on the tamil (and Indian) B movie industry(which makes abut 65% of the 1000 films produced each year in India. It is also simultaneously a tribute to the westerns which have provided the generic body for some of these films (Sholay included) to hang their hats on.

Little Flower

The authenticity of the set design and the labored contextual jokes in the film add up to much more than a send up comedy about archaic tamil film production values. If you wanted to see only that , go see Shah rukh Khan’s testosterony comedy routines in Om Shanti Om.

QG Murugan is more a tragic meditation from a cinematic psyche wounded from watching three hours of a b movie genre blender trainwreck, between cowboys and Indians in tamil films.

Rajinikanth in Thai meethu Sattiam, which could easilyhave  been the “murugan” prequel.

It’s difficult to even begin to describe the equisite detailing in the film(it’s like a kancheevaram saree in purple (katrippu kalar)stars and stripe buttas). It is an Authentic south Indian cowboy film. I was commenting after the film that the makers should dub it in tamil and do a full fledged posters and all release in  B and C centers in South India(and in the UP, and in Bihar….) they will have a super hit on their hands and Dr Rajendra Prasad, at age fifty something will be busy doing cowboy movies all his life.

Shatrughan Sinha, BJP MP from bihar, now.

Indeed it looks like one of those loudies Shatrughan Sinha might have done when he was in demand. Shashanka ghosh admitted after the screening that he had never actually  seen an old south indian film he was mocking, but went by the details his driven screen writer (Rajesh Devraj) who coincidentially , was part creator of the quick gun murugan (vegetarian Cowboy) TM charecter, had given him.

Shashanka Ghosh

Alas, the earnest Shashanka Ghosh seems to have more arts festival-y ambitions for the film. Maybe that’s the film’s downside. It is a serious introspection into “where we went wrong” (ever tried to tell a producer that?) in “genre blending”(aka copying bollywood movies). The spoonful of medicine is missing the sugar.

Sugar

Good grief is that ramba?

Rambha was never really a thin actress. In this film , she looks like jaya malini in her heyday of tamil caberet. (context: Jaya malini must have had the widest hips in the world for a bellydancer-caberet artist…like in evvver, but that didn’t stop her from shaking them…all of them…in every movie in the decade commencing 1972). Rambha also speaks english dialog like she were parrotting the shorthand script written by a internet film school freshman,and the effect is dramatic. we now, quite unintentionally, have a genre blender inclusive of the “bad NRI film ” genre.

What’s up with the language blenders?

Half the film is in tamil film dialog tamil, the other half is in english. The villain of the film (Rice plate reddy..take THAT telegu Association of North America’s Reddy caste wing!) looks half like a “minor” from Andra pradesh(a minor is an aging village playboy landlord steriotype prevelent in south India) and half like the Austin powers villain. everybody speaks english in the second half, as if amchi cembur’s lingua franca changed in  the last hundred years. Its freaky to see an old mami wearing the crumpled green madisar speaking to the men of the house in english “wait wait let me get you some masala dosa to eat”…etc

What’s up with all the english anyway? the film might even have been so good that it’s good if it were in tamil through and through. Shashanka ghosh sold out on tamil B movie audiences, and they will remember…mind it.

Quick Gun Lives on….mind it.

Quick Gun Murugan adds up to less than the sum of its parts ,which is a pity because with some cosmetic changes this film could have been a really bad film that was fun to watch. and on the plus side, The Quick gun Murugan (vegetarian cowboy) tm charecter lives on, to go to America.

Warner Bros And Benjamin Button

This  story is a huge belly laugh.

Benjamin button is a 1921 story by Scott Fitzgerald in which he channels edgar alan poe(or those newfangled french science fiction writers, such as jules verne), writing about a case of a Louisiana born child that ages backwards.

It was made into a Hollywood film by David fincher, as a showcase of classic Hollywood movie making, probably in response to reports that the alternate Oscar bait for the year was Danny  Boyle’s  Slumdog Millionaire. It starred Brad Pitt,who must be at least as popular internationally as James Bond  is, in a role reminiscent of one of Pierce Brosnan’s moody essays. The film also evoked all the charm of a John Irving novel, which is to say it was more serious than winning, and seemed to have very little point to it other than screaming out aloud “OSCAR ME!!”.

I loved the film for all its conceits and pretensions.

Now jumpcut to Akshay Kumar. Dude is an erstwhile Shilpa shetty beau, whose living down the fact that the much in circulation Ms Shetty is now with a British Indian billionaire, Drowns his sorrow making some of the biggest Indian kistch films with Salman Khan’s May  September girlfriend-fiance…whatever…Katrina Kaif, who is one of the few mannequins in bollywood that looks so consistently good in tanktops and cocktail dresses, that she’s made it a profession , nearly a genre, singlehandedly.

Akshay’s producer for the film, called “Action Replay”, is vipul shah , classical bollywood as they come, and an Akshay loyalist (made Singh is Kinggg and Namastey London with him) , is the color of Bollywood money all the way.

The genesis of this clash  looks to be multifarious. Warner brothers distributed the Rohan Sippy produced, disaster “Chandni Chowk to China ” starring the same Akshay Kumar , acting  the combination of a buffoon and a monkey in an attempt (for his character, and presumably the film) to crossover from bollywood to china, thus setting back indo chinese movie relations at least to pre cultural revolution days(when they were fairly good relations, really,). A disaster all round except that it made a shitload of money for everyone. Apparently critical failures can be box office successes whouda thunk.

Mr Kumar making Button(or a film about a   dude aging in reverse to the sound of blonde girls in cocktail dresses gyrating near film sets made to resemble, simultaneously  a broadway stage , a designer bathtub and a five star hotel urinal, must have so had warner brother quaking in their chaddis that they decided enough was enough. this lyin’ cheatin’ plagaristic piracy canna go on…. begorrah,

but I somehow don’t think this is so.

Copyright grab

This seems to me to be a desperate grab at a lost cause by one of hollywood’s biggest studios. Sometime in the past three years, Sowbiz industry lobbyists got a copyright law rewritten to bring back into copyright  “national treasures” such as Disney films based on fairy tales. This remarkable piece of cultural land grab was called Copyright term extension act(or the Sonny Bono Act), gave works made after 1923  a fixed term extension of copyright until 2018. 95 years .

Now What does this have to do with Button you ask?  I wonder who holds the copyright to the Scot Fitzgerald story, because surely if this were a piece of literature in public domain, anyone could make a version of it , even Akshay Kumar’s Blondes.

So what is Warner Bro’s motivation to go sue Akshay kumar;s producer in New delhi, of all places? My personal theory(and I do not have an inside source) is that the legal department of Hollywood studios’ Indian operations(and every one of them has a big Indian operation these days) is getting set to roar.

A big part of doing entertainment commerce in the third world is fighting  well established local competition, who understand the discrepencies between copyright regimes very well, and have been gaming the system to their benefit for years. After all, American films have been distributed in India china or the South east of asia for a century , now.

Part of the success of a  business model of the Strongly local(to LA) hollywood film  business, is the ability to be able to “remote control” the production distribution and collection of entertainment products and revenue, through the use of highly paid professionals in peripheral services(media, Journalism, law, accounting etc) who keep the busines environment friendly by influencing laws and practices beneficial to the remote overlord( Warner Bros, in this case).

In my view Warner bros believes that the time is ripe,( given the Indian producers strike and all) to help change the Indian legal framework in copyrights to align it more with the(Hollywood studio friendly) American regime of laws and practices.

So its not as if button is not LEGAL to reproduce in red dancing shoes, or even in BAD TASTE, its merely that Jabba the Hut (c) is displeased.

( (C) the george lucas empire).)

ojai and jiddu krishnamurthy

I just found out that I’m staying at the mary gray estate that jiddu Krishnamurthy lived in when he was declared to be enlightened in the 1920’s by the theosophists.

I might even have the same bedroom!

how cool is that!

embeded video of a saanen talk from 1981

Roadtrip Pictures

upstate NY Smokestack.

Toronto: My cartier bresson hommage

Queens Park

Sick kids hospital Ad

Toronto silhouette

Upstate Snowscape

Niagra Giftshop

What a complete cutie!

Jetty

Trees near a lake (beautiful day)

Check back for the next roadtrip! happenning soon!