Movie Review: Ratatouille

After the release of Finding Nemo, the general consensus seemed to be that Pixar had made their best movie and it was unlikely that they would top that. And then came Ratatouille. The glowing reviews of this new movie prove that Pixar still have a trick or two up their sleeve.

Ratatouille is the story of an aspiring chef named Remy (Patton Oswalt) who wants to be the best chef in Paris. There is just one problem - Remy is a rat. The movie opens with Remy's refined olfactory sense landing him the job of a poison detector in his father's colony. Exasperated with his family's lack of appreciation of fine food ("If you can sort of muscle your way past the gag reflex, all kinds of food possibilities open up!"), Remy sneaks into the countryside cottage of an old woman and secretly watches a cooking show featuring his inspiration Chef Gusteau (Brad Garnett), whose spirit incidentally, is his guardian angel.

Circumstances then bring him to Paris and fortuitously to Gusteau's restaurant. Unfortunately, Gusteau has passed away and his namesake restaurant is now being run by Skinner (Sir Ian Holm). Along comes bumbling, loopy Alfredo Linguini (Lou Romano) who gets a job as a cleaner in the kitchen. One day, when Linguini accidentally makes a mess of a soup, Remy surreptitiously tries to improve it and gets caught. That is the beginning of a secret relationship between Linguini and Remy. He hides in Linguini's toque and controls the latter like a marionette by tugging on his hair. In the meanwhile, Linguini begins dating Colette (Janeane Garofalo), a tough yet charming chef.

It then transpires that Linguini actually is Gusteau's son and after ousting Skinner, he takes over the restaurant. News of the success of the new chef reaches food critic Anton Ego (Peter O'Toole) who previously had written a scathing review of Gusteau's that caused not only the restaurant to lose a star but also its head chef's subsequent death. That day, Remy and Linguini have a falling out and they part ways. The next day, as Ego is waiting for his meal, Linguini admits to his lack of culinary skills as well as to Remy's help at which all the chefs including Colette walk out. Remy comes back to Linguini bringing with him his rat colony and with the help Colette (who also returns), they all prepare a simple stew (inspiration for the title of the film) for Ego whose reaction on tasting it is nothing short of brilliant. Ego insists on meeting the chef and when the restaurant closes for the night, finally meets Remy. His review the following day is as good as they get. Unfortunately, Skinner, miffed at losing his restaurant has set a health inspector on to Gusteau's who upon finding the kitchen swarming with rats closes it down. A secondary consequence is that Ego loses all credibility as a food critic. However, this being a Disney/Pixar movie, it all works out in the end.

Rats are nasty, filthy, foul vermin. We hate them everywhere, but especially in our kitchens. That is why the idea of a rat who wants to be a chef should never have worked. Yet, it does. It is impossible to not fall in love with Remy, to not cheer at his triumphs, to not laugh with him or to not feel sad when he is miserable. The animators have performed a minor miracle. They made Remy look like a real rat and at the same time, made him adorable. Pixar has the tradition of using the best voices regardless of the actor's star power for their characters and that is eminently clear in Ratatouille. Patton Oswalt is perfect for Remy. No one else could possibly be better suited. Linguini as the awkward, slightly slow, yet occasionally sharp-as-a-tack janitor/reluctant chef is another lovable character. His scenes with Remy are either hilarious or wonderfully touching. Lou Romano, who actually works for Pixar, was so good as Linguini in the initial rehearsals that the directors decided to keep him on, which was a very clever decision.

Of the supporting characters, Janeane Garofalo as Colette, the feminist chef and Linguini's love interest is acerbic and very funny. Sir Ian Holm is impeccable as always. He manages to convey Skinner's meanness, greed and ambition through a most realistic French accent. One of the best characters has to be Anton Ego voiced brilliantly by Peter O'Toole. Everything about this character is supposed to spell doom for the restaurant he is critiquing - from his vulpine appearance, to his coffin-shaped office and his typewriter which vaguely resembles a skull, and it does quite effectively. Brad Garnett as Gusteau is excellent and does full justice to the portly and benevolent chef.

Ratatouille works as well as it does because it is visually gorgeous. Paris has never seemed so authentic in an animated film. The panoramic views or the cobble-stone streets are so rich in detail that they almost seem like photographs. The kitchen at Gusteau's looks like one at any restaurant - with all the different chefs, their stations and their pots and utensils. The food also looks like a gastronomical treat. The simmering sauces, the steam wafting up from them, the play of light and shade on the fruits and vegetables makes it all seem incredibly real. The rats as mentioned above are almost life-like. In fact, when one sees the kitchen at Gusteau's filled with rats cooking for Anton Ego, it is quite difficult to suppress a shudder of disgust. The scenes where Remy gets electrocuted or is soaking wet deserve a special mention because that is exactly what I imagine an electrocuted or a soaking rat would look like.

While the entire movie is fantastic, there are a few scenes which are simply brilliant from a story-telling point of view. One of them is the first time Remy tastes some mushroom with cheese and herbs. The screen behind him darkens and there is a cascade of fireworks in the background to show the audience through his synesthetic experience just how much he enjoyed that bite. Another inspired scene is when Anton Ego first tastes the ratatouille that Remy prepares for him.

Disney/Pixar movies always have a lesson in them. Ratatouille is no exception - in fact, it has a few. However, the central theme is as Anton Ego says, "Not everyone can be a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere." Remy is testament to that.

In conclusion, Ratatouille is arguably Pixar's best movie to date. Do go watch it. It will be better than any other movie playing in the theaters - I guarantee it.


This article can also be found here.

Harry Potter vs. The Lord of the Rings

When the Harry Potter (HP) and The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) mania was sweeping across the world, I resisted its call for as long as I could. However, a couple of days of mind-numbing ennui on two separate occasions, forced me to pick up the books and/or movies and now, I have finished reading all the HP and LOTR books and watching the movies. To my surprise, I found some striking similarities between the two stories - so striking in fact, that I began to wonder if HP was inspired by LOTR. For instance:

1. Both are stories about underdogs who have been predestined to be the key players in the ultimate battle of good versus evil. Both accept their roles very grudgingly. Neither is physically imposing or exceptionally intelligent, but both have an innate courage and strength to persevere and complete their tasks. (I am going to assume that Harry is able to destroy Voldemort, because really, how else would the series end?)

2. Both are fighting the most powerful forces of evil of their time. Sauron and Voldemort are both omnipotent villains, who if victorious, would plunge the world into decay and darkness. Furthermore, both are disembodied as a result of a previous defeat - Sauron is a giant fiery eye and Voldemort, at least in the first half of the series, is an incorporeal being as well.

3. Both are assisted by the most powerful "good" wizards of their time. Gandalf and Dumbledore both have long hair and beards, large noses and wear pointy hats. They are instrumental in helping Frodo and Harry respectively with their tasks, but even they must leave the final fight to their mentees.

4. Both HP and LOTR have the brilliant concept of the soul or the spirit of the villains being contained in one or more objects. These objects must be destroyed in order to kill the villains. Voldemort's soul is in the seven Horcruxes while Sauron's spirit is in the One Ring of Power.

5. The Ring-wraiths or the Nazgul in LOTR are quite like the Dementors in HP. In addition to similarities in their wardrobes, they both inspire chilling dread and despair amongst those they encounter. Furtheremore, just as a Patronus charm is used to dispel the Dementors, so too does Gandalf project a beam of bright white light to scatter the Nazgul.

6. Giant spiders make appearances in both books. Harry and Ron have to escape from the clutches of Aragog (which sounds awfully like Aragorn) and his family while Shelob tries to make a meal out of Frodo and Sam.

7. Wormtail (Peter Pettigrew) and Grima Wormtongue (the advisor to King Theoden) are both weak creatures who are greatly influenced by their evil leaders (Voldemort and Saruman respectively) and betray the people they are supposed to protect, namely James and Lily Potter in HP and King Theoden in LOTR.

8. Voldemort is supposed to inspire so much fear that magical folk do not even like to speak his name out loud. Instead, they refer to him as He Who Must Not Be Named. In LOTR, instead of calling Sauron by his name, Faramir calls him The Unnamed, The Nameless and most interestingly, He whom we do not name.

9. This point is a minor point, but the name J.K. Rowling is quite similar to J.R.R. Tolkien. Most people would know the names but not what the letters stand for. (I did not myself, and had to look it up.) Incidentally, the initials stand for Joanne Rowling (the K is for her grandmother's name Kathleen) and John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.

Admittedly, any fantasy series involving magic must be given a little latitude because great forces of good and evil battling for control over the world, a Merlin-like wizard, characters preserving their souls in a separate object and so on are not exactly uncommon features. It is quite easy for one to seem inspired by another. However, there are some elements in the HP series such as the name used for Voldemort in the magical world (He Who Must Not Be Named) and the Dementors which seem to have been shamelessly pilfered from LOTR. Consequently, this makes the reader feel less charitable towards all the other similarities.

Despite all the similarities, it seemed as though in many ways the HP series is a diluted version of LOTR. Having finished the latter just a few days ago, I am still a little awed by the scope of the book. J.R.R. Tolkien has created one of the most incredible worlds in fiction. He clearly could picture every house, field and crag of Middle Earth in his head - from the bucolic Shire to the gorgeous Rivendell and Lothlorien to the eerily magical Old Forest to the dismal and terrifying terrain of Mordor. No wonder then that he needed over a thousand pages (in an omnibus) to describe the minutiae of all these places and more. On the other hand, J.K. Rowling set her series in contemporary England which made her task not quite as creatively challenging. This by no means detracts from the clever way in which she incorporated her magical world into the real world (for instance, Platform 9 3/4, Diagon Alley etc), but as far as the scale of the books is concerned, LOTR surely wins.

There is a certain amount of disparity between the characters as well. Most of the characters in LOTR are larger than life. For instance, Aragorn is every man's man. He is "faithful in love, and dauntless in war", he is intelligent, resilient and is also a healer. In short, he can do everything. Gandalf, too, is another example. He is so powerful, especially as Gandalf the White, that he actually glows with an inner light. In one of the best scenes of the book, while trying to protect the Fellowship from Wargs (wolf-like creatures, but worse), he mutters an incantation and just like that, a tree bursts into flames and soon, the entire hill is on fire. He is infallible. He is not just powerful, he is power. On the other hand, in HP, the main characters are not perfect. Dumbledore, while very powerful, is not infallible. The readers also get an unnecessarily detailed description of Harry's adolescent angst in the fifth book while Ron adds to the tedium of the sixth book with his Don Juan-esque behavior. Perhaps, the charm of HP characters lies in their very flaws and their "normalcy". These characters are going through trials and tribulations that we all have encountered, though in a different context. This makes it much easier to relate to the teenage Harry in England than it does to a fifty-odd year old hobbit called Frodo in the fictional Middle Earth.

Whether it can be considered a somewhat watered-down version of LOTR or not, Harry Potter is a phenomenon. Since it is one that had encouraged children to turn off the TV and pick up a book, I cheer whole-heartedly for it. I must admit that I too am a huge fan and am eagerly anticipating the last installment in the HP series. J.K. Rowling has already told us that two of the main characters are going to die. Is it going to be Harry? Ron? Or Hermione? Where does Snape fit in all of this? What are the other Horcruxes? And who is R.A.B.? I can't wait to find out.

This article can also be found here.

M.C. Escher

One of my favorite artists of the 20th century is M.C. Escher. Born in the Netherlands, Mr. Escher is particularly adept at playing with perception. The angles that he uses in his works make the most implausible things seem plausible. Many of his works feature tessellations (repeating tiles so that they perfectly fit in a given area) and impossible constructions. Some of my favorites are:

Day and Night
Drawing Hands
Ascending and Descending (notice how the step are continuously ascending)
Reptiles
Hand with Reflecting Sphere
Sky and Water (perfect example of tessellation)
Belvedere (look at the columns carefully)
Waterfall
Snakes (this one isn't one of my favorites, but it reminds me of the one of the doors in the Chamber of Secrets in the second Harry Potter movie. I wonder if this was their inspiration.)

Stay the Course or Cut and Run?

Last week, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives passed a bill which committed $100 billion to the Iraq war with the provision that troop withdrawal begins in October 2007 and is completed by March 2008. Mr. Bush has already said that he is going to use his presidential veto for this bill.

This is such a tricky issue that I spent the last few days trying to understand where exactly I stand on it. It is clear that thus far, the American occupation of Iraq has been a hopeless failure. After the much touted WMDs did not materialize, spreading democracy in the theocratic and/or autocratic Middle East became the next goal. Even that has not been achieved. Due to the poor performance of the Coalition Provisional Authority led by L. Paul Bremer III, the Iraqi economy is in a shambles, and the current Iraqi government has been unsuccessful in reviving it. The supply of basic amenities like electricity and water is very erratic. Health care facilities are woefully inadequate. The state of educational institutions is shameful. Of course, the problem that dwarfs everything else is security, or the lack thereof. The senseless and relentless carnage that occurs on almost a daily basis has left the American and Iraqi forces reeling. A civil war has erupted between the Shias and Sunnis and they seem quite intent on destroying each other. Most of the recent bombings have targeted one group or the other. The reason the Americans want to pull out is that their presence there does not seem to be making any significant difference. Moreover, many Iraqis want the occupation to end. Both of these make for a very compelling rationale for the Americans to withdraw from Iraq.

On the other hand, the Americans did create this dangerous situation in Iraq. Do they have some kind of a moral obligation (if nothing else) to leave the country safer than they found it or in other words, clean up the mess they made? More importantly, would the violence escalate even further after they left? Is the current Iraqi administration capable of stemming it and eventually forming a peaceful and united nation without the presence of the American military? Will it be able to stabilize the economy to the extent that the Iraqi citizens can live comfortable lives? I know it is difficult to imagine the situation getting worse than it currently is, but it could. The militias could get even more active and there is a possibility, though slight, that a massacre of the minorities, a la Rwanda, might occur. Millions of Iraqis have already fled the country and another mass exodus would be detrimental to the economy.

I fear that the solution to Iraq is going to be a complex and protracted one. Part of that solution would be to prepare the Iraqi forces well before the Americans leave. Another part would be to carefully analyze the consequences of the absence of the American soldiers as much as their presence. Unfortunately, I don't think I have nearly enough knowledge about Iraq and Iraqis in general to make that call. So, whether the troops should withdraw from Iraq - I still cannot make up my mind. On the other hand, the Bush administration and the US Congress are better equipped in that manner, and I hope that for once, they do whatever is in the best interests of the people of the country they needlessly invaded.

Gun control in the US

On April 16, 2007, a student at Virginia Tech shot 32 other students and professors before killing himself. We have yet another wake-up call for America to tighten its gun laws, and it is almost certainly going to be ignored.

The issue of gun control has always been somewhat of a political hot potato in America. When confronted with the issue, gun enthusiasts first invoke the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. They have a right to bear arms, and so help them God, they will. Unfortunately, they seem to have a selective memory regarding the Second Amendment. It actually states, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." To put it in its proper perspective, this was a provision made by the founding fathers to protect Americans from a British invasion after the American Revolution. Today, obviously, civilians do not form a militia for the defense of the country and the amendment is thus being willfully misinterpreted and bandied about by right-wing, trigger-happy, aspiring Western movie cowboys.

Another argument is that other countries like Canada or Switzerland also allow their citizens to own weapons, but since the rates of gun crimes are substantially lower there than those in the US, the link between stringent gun laws and gun crimes is tenuous. This could very well be true. Maybe the problem has to do with social pressures and expectations. However, this does not change the fact that homicidal-suicidal psychopaths (of whom an inordinate number seems to make headlines in the US) find it ridiculously easy to obtain guns and go on killing sprees. For instance, Texas residents do not need a permit to own a gun, nor do they have to register it (The Economist, 19 April 2007). I also recently visited http://www.armedamerica.org/ which has photographs of civilians brandishing guns they have absolutely no business owning. Do people really need Bushmasters and AK-47s in their homes? Clearly, regardless of whether lax laws are the disease or a symptom, they most certainly need to be toughened.

There has also been a frenzy of damage-control interviews from various members of the pro-gun faction. One idea that literally leaves me bereft of speech is to arm teachers in schools and colleges with guns so that they can effectively stop any rampages by madmen on the campuses. In effect, fight guns with guns. Maybe I'm being completely myopic about the situation here, but should not the general idea be to try to reduce the number of guns on school/college premises? Furthermore, whether the teachers carry their weapons on their person or store them somewhere, it would not be too difficult for a determined and clever student to get his/her hands on them. I really do think that in this case, the risks will always outweigh the benefits and I hope that reason prevails and such idiotic ideas are summarily dismissed.

Unfortunately, no politician wants to touch this issue any more. In general, the Republicans firmly stand behind their right to their guns and the Democrats worry about losing votes in the swing states (like Virginia). Any efforts made by Bill Clinton towards gun control have been undermined by the Bush government. In 2004, due to the heavy lobbying by the National Rifle Association (NRA), a 1994 ban on assault weapons was allowed to lapse. Even now, after the Virginia Tech massacre, there seem to be no serious discussions in the government regarding gun control.

The mantra of the members of the NRA is, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people," but to quote the British comedian Eddie Izzard, "I think the guns help." A disproportionately large number of people are killed in the US by gun assisted homicides and suicides. It is past time that the government realized that the lives of its citizens are worth far more than an archaic and anachronistic provision in the Constitution, and actually take some steps to fix it.

Homophonous Phrases

I was directed to an entry on Wikipedia on homophonous phrases:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Homophonous_Phrases

One of my favorites has got to be Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. In this instance, buffalo can refer to a) the city in NY, b) the animal and c) the verb meaning to bully. So in essence, the statement means those buffaloes from the city of Buffalo that other buffaloes from Buffalo bully, themselves bully other buffaloes from Buffalo.

The one about badgers is also quite amusing.

Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone

I just finished reading a book by a Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran called Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone. The book details the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion by the Americans and delves into their policies to rebuild the country as a mini-America. One of the first groups of Americans in was the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Aid, most of whom were grossly unqualified and were given inadequate resources. The ORHA was then reorganized to form the Coalition Provisional Authority and L. Paul Bremer III was appointed the viceroy.

The most striking aspect of the book is that it illustrates just how much the Bush administration valued loyalty over competence. Applicants for CPA positions were often asked questions regarding their party affiliations, opinions on Roe v. Wade and so on. Consequently, important tasks were given to people eminently unsuitable for them. For instance, a 24-year-old with no prior experience in finance was put in charge of reopening the Iraqi Stock Market. His attempts to bring in state-of-the-art equipment and to enforce new laws failed miserably and eventually, the Iraqis reverted to their whiteboards and hand-written notes. The mishandling of the State-owned companies is another example. Some of the CPA staff had come to the conclusion that only a handful of the 48 State-owned companies were viable and that the most efficient use of their small budget would be to allocate it to these companies. Paul McPherson, Bremer's economist, believed otherwise. He decided to use the money in Iraqi banks to pay off private depositors and State-owned companies would start with a clean slate. $60 million was to be distributed among the 48 state companies. Unfortunately, the companies which were doing better and had some money to be used as start up capital lost it all, and companies which were heavily in debt were in the clear.

The book also makes the hubris and delusions prevalent in the Bush administration all too clear. Clearly, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Wolfowitz made no attempt to understand the country they were invading and the people they were "liberating." They thought they would be done in a few weeks at most and would be welcomed by the Iraqis. They failed to keep their promises, and yet after the botched 2005 elections, when Mr. Bremer handed over sovereignty to the Iraqis, he called the CPA's time in Iraq a success. Now Iraq lacks a decent supply of electricity and water, adequate health care, acceptable educational institutions, and most importantly security. The country is in the midst of a civil war, there is a mass exodus of Iraqis from the country and despite glaring evidence to the contrary, no admission of error is forthcoming from the administration.

I highly recommend this book. As distressing and disappointing as the information is, it is quite an eye-opener. The breathtaking stupidity of some of Mr. Bremer's beliefs and policies, the prevalent bureaucracy, the self-serving agendas and the incomprehensible inflexibility to adapt to changing circumstances make it crystal clear that Operation Iraqi Freedom was doomed from the very beginning.

PS - In honor of the approaching tax deadline, a little tidbit I picked up on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show is that $8.8 billion of cash (in bricks of paper money) that was sent for reconstruction efforts went missing, and Mr. Bremer, who was still in Iraq then, is unable to account for it. $8.8 billion of your tax money...MISSING...think about that for a while!

Movie Review: Guru

Guru is the story of Gurukant Desai (Abhishek Bachchan), a street-smart adolescent in a small village in Gujarat, India. After failing his exams in school and yet another tiff with his father, he leaves for Turkey to take up a job there. A few years later, fed up of working for the "goras", he returns to India where he gets married to Sujata (Aishwarya Rai). He uses her dowry to start up a business in polyester. As his business grows, he gets involved in increasingly murky dealings. Eventually, the owner of a newspaper Nanaji(Mithun Chakraborty), who once was like a father to Guru, realizes the extent of corruption prevalent in Guru's company and is determined to bring him to justice with the help of his trusty editor Shyam (Mahadevan). Guru is required to appear before a commission where after a rousing speech, in typical Bollywood candy-floss manner, he is let off with only a minor fine.

As I wrote the above summary, I realized that there really isn't much going on during the almost-3-hour movie. It could have been mind-numbingly boring were it not for Abhishek Bachchan, who really gives a wonderful performance. He effortlessly portrays Guru as a man with naive arrogance, boyish exuberance, steely determination and almost frightening ambition and ruthlessness, and makes him quite likable. Even though there were moments when one could see the Amitabh Bachchan in him (which isn't necessarily a bad thing), one can see that he has come into his own. Aishwarya Rai, for a change, is pretty good as well. She doesn't giggle or ham, and the difference between her in Guru and in Dhoom 2 is remarkable. Mithun Chakraborty and Mahadevan are pretty good. Vidya Balan's character in the movie did not add anything substantial to it and was quite pointless.

AR Rehman's music was pleasing, though a couple of songs were redundant and misplaced. Mani Ratnam has again given us an eminently watchable movie with some stellar performances. While tighter editing would have helped, Guru is one of the better Bollywood movies I've watched in a long time.

Rating: ***

[Rating Scale:
****: What a fantastic movie!
*** : Pretty good. Could be better, but not bad at all.
** : Below average. Snooze fest.
* : Seriously, what were they thinking? How dare they put their audience through such hell? This movie should really never have been made. I want my money back!]

Kunal Kohli's MSN columns

I recently came across these articles by Kunal Kohli, a Bollywood director from the Johar-Chopra camp, who has on MSN a column imaginatively called "The Kunal Kohli Column":
http://content.msn.co.in/Lifestyle/Moreonlifestyle/LifestyleIS_1242.htm
http://content.msn.co.in/Entertainment/Bollywood/special_kunalkohli_column.htm
Reading these articles just reinforced the notion that the Bollywood folk have distressingly been placed on pedestals, resulting in gigantic egos and are very much in need of a reality check.

In his first article, he describes how he had to re-evaluate the movie awards system in Bollywood when his movie Fanaa was not nominated for Best Film and he was not nominated for Best Director at the Screen and Filmfare awards. I congratulate him on realizing at last that in a country where every TV channel and unhealthy food brand has its own movie award, it really isn't much of an honor to win one of them. What I am amazed at is that it was his exclusion from the awards that led him to this introspection and subsequent conclusion. He clearly thinks so highly of himself and his movie that by not nominating him, these awards have opened his eyes and proved their worthlessness to him!

The second article would be fantastic were it a tongue-in-cheek article. Mr. Kohli is unfortunately, perfectly serious. The basic premise is that Bollywood has the potential to make a Grand Canyon sized mark in the global market, and eventually to buy out Hollywood. We have a lot of new and bright film makers with fresh ideas that would have universal appeal. I was quite amused to see Hum Tum (his first film) in the examples of movies with an unusual theme. Somehow, I really doubt the Western audience would want to watch Hum Tum when they can watch When Harry Met Sally with the delightful Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal instead. (Hum Tum is a shameless and blatant copy of When Harry Met Sally.) He further states that piracy of Indian movies results in enormous financial losses that could be used to make bigger and better movies. I hate to disillusion Mr. Kohli but the problem in Bollywood is a paucity of interesting stories, skilled directors and actors who do not ham their way to the end of each film. Regrettably, injecting more money into each movie is not the solution. Maybe I'm being myopic and/or pessimistic, but an Indian film maker making something on the scale of Lord of the Rings or even Spiderman is really quite inconceivable. They cannot even do a decent job of something like Salaam-e-Ishq. The second problem is that in Bollywood, bigger and better is defined as having more glitz and glamor, a la Dhoom 2, which I feel is the last thing we need. Indeed, if the movies got any glossier, we'd need sunglasses just to watch them. Finally, Bollywood movies in general tend to be so disappointing, that the audience feels loath to spend money on the tickets. So while I'm not advocating piracy in any way, I do think the industry needs to realize its responsibility to give us something watchable and enjoyable, and stop blaming us for their shortcomings.

I am also continually amazed at how much Bollywood overestimates the interest that Western society has in our movies. Indian movies make the kind of money they do abroad because of South Asians living abroad. Period. That is because these folks will watch any kind of Hindi movie, no matter how outlandish, garish or silly, because it re-connects them for a couple of hours to their home in India that they left behind. There is a very small group of westerners who will watch some of our movies, much like Chinese or Spanish movies, and we will lose this audience if we don't focus more on substance and less on barely-there stories and clothes.

Buy out Hollywood indeed! Just how deluded are these guys in Mumbai's Tinseltown? But enough about Kunal Kohli and his self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing and utterly misguided comments. I really should get back to work now.

Indian S.C. Stays Reservation Bill

The Indian Supreme Court ordered a stay on the controversial plans to implement a 27% reservation for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) at the IITs, IIMs, AIIMS and other institutions of higher education today. This is in addition to the 22.5% reservation already established for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SCSTs).

The latter quota was adopted approximately 50 years ago at the time of India's independence. Then in 1979, the Mangal Commission was set up by the then Prime Minister, Morarji Desai, to determine what classes/castes should be included in the OBC group, what criteria should be used to formulate this list and finally what their quota should be. The commission then compiled a list based on socio-economic status and education levels and determined that a further 27% of seats in government institutions would be reserved for the OBCs. When the PM at the time, Mr. V.P. Singh tried to implement these recommendations, there were nationwide protests. The quotas were enforced nonetheless.

Until recently, however, institutions of higher education like the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and medical colleges like the All India Institute of Medical Scienced (AIIMS) were exempt from this law. In 2006, Human Resource Development minister Arjun Singh announced that he wanted this law to apply to the aforementioned institutions and gradually to colleges and companies in the private sector. This immediately sparked a series of student protests. At one point, medical students were joined by doctors and health care in certain hospitals actually came to a standstill. This was followed by a spate of suspensions of the doctors, and more rallies and hunger strikes by the protesters. Eventually, the Supreme Court was forced to intervene and directed the doctors to resume their work. In the last few months, the government established various committees and commission to prove to the Supreme Court that this affirmative action is required. Finally, today, the Supreme Court ordered a stay on the additional reservations and mandated the government to provide them with numbers based on a more recent population census.

The Mangal Commission came under a lot of fire because of various discrepancies in their population figures and those of the National Sample Survey. Furthermore, according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandal_commission), the commission has used some dubious methods to determine the number of people who fall in the OBC category. For instance, they seem to have counted those who fall under the SCST category but who have a slight change in the spelling of their names. They also seem to have included certain sub-castes even though the caste as a whole is an SC.

Personally, I think the whole affair is just a stunt employed by our vote-mongering politicians, especially the likes of Arjun Singh. It is an uncomfortable but irrefutable fact that the lower classes and castes have been discriminated against in the past and the despicable practice continues even today. They also may not have the resources necessary to ameliorate their situation in life. In such cases, the government does have an obligation to assist them in their endeavors. However, perpetuating the caste system is only going to stoke more inter-caste resentment and discrimination, thereby defeating the purpose of the reservations in the first place.

For example, I know that the IITs already have a quota for SCSTs and more often than not, despite relaxed standards for them (2/3 the score of the last General Category applicant accepted), many of these seats are not filled. They are not opened up for other students either. Instead, SCST students who don't make the cut are offered a one-year preparatory course and then if they clear the exams, are given an SCST seat. Obviously, the numbers don't always match, and there are often some seats that remain unfilled. So to return to my earlier point, some students who were just barely on the wrong side of the cut-off might resent the fact that despite scoring higher than the SCST students and that open seats were still available, they still didn't make it.

In addition to antagonizing the students against each other, the quality of the graduates of these institutions is going to be severely compromised. The purpose of the IITs, IIMs and so on is to train professionals who will be able to work at the top companies of the world and hold their own in that environment. To achieve this, each incoming class has to be of a certain caliber so that they can take maximum advantage of what their university has to offer them. Ultimately, by admitting students with sub-standard academic qualifications, the institutions are going to jeopardize their own reputations and therefore their graduates.

If Arjun Singh et al really wanted to make a difference, they would immediately realize that this is a problem that requires the changing of people's attitudes about each other and about education in general, and therefore does not have any short-term solutions. In my opinion, one of the most effective ways to go about it would be promote education among lower castes/classes. Providing a solid foundation in primary and secondary education to EVERYONE should be one of the top priorities of the government. This would, of course, mean investing in infrastructure, quality teachers and financial assistance. By ensuring equal educational opportunities for all students, we can enable them to compete at the same level and have a truly meritocratic system of education.

Clearly, though, such measures take a long time, and will not help the current powers-that-be to garner more votes in the upcoming elections. I have a sinking feeling in my stomach that our incompetent, venal and stupid politicians will simply not see the issue in a sensible light and what we are going to have on our hands is unprecedented Brain Drain. What are we going to do then?

I would like to end this rather long post on a "hhmmm" note - I seem to remember that ex-Prime Minister Mr. Singh used to (and perhaps still does) run off to doctors in London at the first sign of a sniffle. Even as one of the loudest proponents of the reservation laws, he does not trust Indian doctors, OBC or otherwise, to provide him with the best health care possible.

India out of the World Cup

*sob*

Friday, March 23, 2007 - one of the most dismal days in Indian World Cup history for the past two decades. Actually, now that I think some more about it, it is a toss up between that and March 17th, the day of India's humiliating loss against Bangladesh.

*sob*

In the Bangladesh match, our top batsmen scored as follows: Sehwag 2, Uthappa 9, Tendulkar 7, Dravid 14, Dhoni 0. Only Ganguly, 66, and Yuvraj Singh 47 made scores of any significance.

Against Sri Lanka, in the must-win match, our intrepid batsmen scored as follows: Uthappa 18, Ganguly 7, Tendulkar 0, Yuvraj Singh 6, Dhoni 0 (again). Sehwag 48 and Dravid 60 demonstrated that they had had a spine transplant in the intervening period.

I'm not going to talk about Bermuda, because if they had lost against Bermuda, it would have been time for the boys in blue to give up our status as an international cricket team and go back to playing the game on the streets and by-lanes of Indian cities.

*sob*

How can a team that has such incredible talent and potential do so miserably? The question is rhetorical, because the answer is obvious - our cricketers quite consistently fail to deliver the goods when under stress. In all fairness, they do carry the burden of the tremendous expectations of over 1 billion people. The fact that they don't have an unusual gait because of buckled knees is a bit of an achievement in itself. But only to a certain extent, because at that level, they need to learn to get over that.

The other problem is the Indians themselves. We put our cricketers on a pedestal because of our passion for the game and expect unrealistic achievements from them. (Though, making it through to the Super 8s is hardly an unrealistic expectation.) The media stroke their egos by writing odes to "Team India" and all the great things that they are going to do. Bollywood puts up shows in their honor, because unless Shah Rukh Khan dances for them, how would they even be able to lift their bats? Companies sign them up for obscene amounts of money to endorse their products. Unfortunately, somewhere in the midst of this circus, the focus on the game itself is lost. Instead, it is all about fame and fortune.

I'm not saying the whole team has lost their way. Rahul Dravid is one of the few guys who has his feet firmly planted on the ground. On the other hand, perhaps if Mahendra Singh Dhoni concentrated less on the upkeep of his blond highlights and more on his batting strokes, he might have made a more significant contribution. As much as it hurts me to say this, perhaps it is time for Tendulkar to retire. Don't get me wrong - I love the man. He was, arguably, the best contemporary player in the world at one point for an astonishing number of years. But he is not really able to deliver what we need in crunch situations any more, and I'd rather he left now, when he is still much loved, than wait until a time when everyone is baying for his blood. Much of the team is young, and hopefully, still fairly malleable. Maybe this crushing loss can serve as a wake-up call and help them to realize that it is now time to apply laser-like focus on the game itself and that glitzy non-cricket matters need to recede into the background.

But for now, I am going to stop crying and make a resolution to stop caring about cricket so much. It's really not worth the effort. I am going to strive to be only mildly curious about it, so much so that if India does win the World Cup in the future, my only reaction is going to be a raised eyebrow and a "Oh, how delightful!"

Yeah. Right.

Movie Review: The Namesake

I went into the theater to watch The Namesake feeling a little apprehensive for two reasons. First, I am one of the few people who felt a little disappointed at the end of the book. Second, would I get to see the genius of Mira Nair as in Monsoon Wedding or would it be the debacle that was Vanity Fair? Fortunately, it was the former.

The Namesake is the story of two generations of a Bengali family living in America. In the late 1970s, Ashok (Irrfan Khan) is traveling in a train that is involved in a serious accident. Ashok is saved and the book he is carrying at the time (Nikolai Gogol's The Overcoat) becomes a symbol of a great life that he almost never had. A few years later, he gets married to Ashima (Tabu) and takes his new bride to America.

The first half of the movie focuses primarily on the relationship between Ashok and Ashima. The heart-warming development of their love and respect for each other is deftly interspersed with some really hilarious moments such as Ashima's first breakfast in America which is a bowl of rice crispies mixed with peanuts and a little chillie powder. Their bond continues to strengthen and Ashima soon has a baby boy. They decide to temporarily call him Gogol while awaiting their families in India to send them a "good name." He is followed by a girl, Sonia.

As an adolescent, Gogol (Kal Penn) rebels against his family and his culture (a stereotypical A.B.C.D.). He resents his name and Anglicizes his good name Nikhil to Nick. A few years later, he is involved with an American girl (Jacinda Barrett) when he hears of his father's unexpected death. The shock acts as a wake-up call for Gogol. He begins to go back to his roots and culture, dumps Max and starts going out with Moushumi (Zuleikha Robinson) who is also from a Bengali family, but is the antithesis of the girl Ashima would want for her son. The rest of the movie delves into the Gogol-Moushumi relationship and the way Ashima copes with the loss of her husband.

The movie is visually pleasing. I couldn't help but notice the liberal shots of bridges (the Brooklyn Bridge, I think, in New York, and the Howrah Bridge in Kolkata) that tell us which country the director is taking us to. The dialogues are funny, poignant and engaging, and wickedly illustrate the cultural diffrences between Ashima and Ashok and their children as well as the Americans.

As far as the performances go, the cast does not disappoint. Irrfan Khan gives a fantastic performance as the gentle, loyal and loving husband and father. Kal Penn brings a little bit of delightful pot-headedness into the first half of the movie, followed by a mature portrayal of a young man in the midst of an identity crisis in the latter half. Zuleikha Robinson and Jacinda Barrett are okay. But I think the film easily belongs to Tabu. She is simultaneously luminous, funny, heart-breaking and most importantly, very real and believable. Other Bollywood actresses could really take a page from her book and learn how to deliver a flawless subtle yet powerful performance. She engages the audience from her first appearance and doesn't let go even after the very end. In other words, she is simply brilliant!!

The Namesake is a must-watch film. Fantastic acting, a great screenplay and wonderful direction make it one of the best movies I've seen in a really long time. Kudos Ms. Nair!

Rating: ****

[Rating Scale:
****: What a fantastic movie!
*** : Pretty good. Could be better, but not bad at all.
** : Below average. Snooze fest.
* : Seriously, what were they thinking? How dare they put their audience through such hell? This movie should really never have been made. I want my money back!]

Bob Woolmer's Tragic Death

March 17, 2007 will go down as a historic day in the annals of the Cricket World Cup. First, India suffered a 5 wicket loss to underdog Bangladesh. Then, Pakistan lost to another underdog, Ireland, by 3 wickets. Not too many hours after that, Pakistani coach Bob Woolmer was found unconscious in his hotel room, and pronounced dead the following morning.

A bad day all around for over a billion South Asian cricket fans. The word "fan" is woefully inadequate and somewhat misleading when describing the depth of feeling South Asians have for our cricket teams. It does not fully capture the complex and fickle love/hate relationship we have with our cricketers. Cricket is a religion, one we follow with a passion. We love our cricketers and revere them when they win; we despise and denounce them after each loss. Our idols' falls from grace are not forgiven or forgotten until the next scintillating century, the next brilliant win.

It was, therefore, not very surprising that Pakistan's ignominious early exit promptly sparked a furious backlash against the team. Being Indian, I can understand that completely. After all, the World Cup is the Holy Grail in the cricket world. I wouldn't be surprised if a defeat like that would make some people go through the Five Stages of Grief according to the Kubler-Ross model: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. In the time that had elapsed before the news about Bob Woolmer, most would probably have been in one of the first two stages.

However, at some point between denial and anger, the word was out that Mr. Woolmer had died. Needless to say, every cricket follower was in shock. The initial reports about his health and other circumstances surrounding his death were contradictory. This morning though, the Jamaican police stated definitively that Mr. Woolmer had been asphyxiated by strangulation. He most likely was killed by someone who he knew - one needed to swipe a card to even get on to his floor at the hotel, and there were no signs of a forced entry. Mr. Woolmer was also a big man, and it could have taken more than one person to subdue him.

NDTV reports that after Pakistan's elimination from the World Cup, Mr. Woolmer had emailed his decision to resign as coach to a member of the Pakistan Cricket Board. As of now, all the Pakistani cricketers have been questioned (Inzamam for an hour), fingerprinted and possibly DNA-tested. They have also been asked to not leave the islands for a little while longer. Interestingly, NDTV also spoke to Dinesh Kaneria, who was in the room next to Mr. Woolmer's and who stated that he had not heard any unusual noises coming from the coach's room. The mystery deepens and the investigations continue.

This incident illustrates perfectly just how seriously we South Asians take our cricket, that is, far too seriously. After all, at the end of the day, it IS just a game. I don't mean to say that one should not be passionate about it, but rather that losses should not inspire malicious and malevolent acts like burning effigies of the cricketers or destroying the new house that Mahendra Dhoni is building. As for murdering the team coach? COME ON!!! This kind of maniacal fanaticism can only be detrimental to the sport. For instance, it would now require quite an intrepid soul to take on the responsibility coaching the Pakistan (or Indian) team.

What a dark chapter in the history of cricket this World Cup has turned out to be! From what I have read, Mr. Woolmer was somewhat of a controversial coach in terms of testing the boundaries, but he also cared for teams he coached and the direction they were going in. My condolences go to Mr. Woolmer's family as well as his friends and colleagues who will be trying to cope with his senseless death. I also fervently hope that all the cricket fanatics realize that no sport, no team and no person is worth this sort of intense idolatry.

Applying to Grad School

What a truly horribly gut-wrenching, agonizing and (almost) soul-crushing exercise this is!!

It begins with the GREs - one of the biggest rip-offs perpetuated on us already impoverished 20-something folks. Not only is there a hefty fee for taking the test, but there is an additional charge for sending your scores to more than four schools. All of which would be acceptable, were it not completely meaningless and pointless. It is not really a test of your abilities, but more a have-you-learned-the-tricks-to-beat-this-thing sort of an endeavor. I'm not even sure what the schools actually learn about their prospective students from these test scores. Hopefully, the powers that be in graduate schools will do away with this colossal waste of time, energy and money the way some undergraduate colleges are beginning to not require the SATs.

This is then followed by the selection of the colleges you want to apply to. (Ideally, one looks into this prior to taking the GREs, but I'm not that one.) If, like me, you're interested in Clinical Neuropsychology, you will soon find out that there is no such thing as a perfect program. This is just one of those quirky laws of the universe. Consider the following: a program doing research in your area of interest, a good location, good financial aid packages and a good reputation. I know you are thinking at this point that this is only four variables. Surely, it wouldn't be so difficult. It is. I could put the following statement in stone: No program will do better than 3 out of 4. Each program WILL involve some sacrifice on your part. For instance, you could be in a great location in a not-so-great program. Or the program will be everything you want, but in the back of beyond the middle of nowhere.

Once you have selected the best of the "3 out of 4" programs, you begin the applications, namely the much dreaded personal statement where you try convey to a group of strangers that you are brilliant, kind and decent, or in short, a worthy nominee for a Nobel peace prize. After much head scratching and hair pulling, I finished mine, but to be honest, I still am clueless as to what the admissions committee is looking for.

Upon completion of the glowing testimonial to yourself, the waiting game begins. This is when you wait for interview calls. Six or more weeks of "Was I good enough or did they find me lacking in some essentials?" Nothing quite like this time to bring you down a peg or two.

Finally, the calls for the interviews come in and you begin to feel validated. You make your travel arrangements (thereby burning another hole in your wallet) and arrive at the school bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to convince your interviewers that you are the best thing that would ever happen to this school. EVER. However, lest your confidence levels are high and you are reasonably assured of your own competence, you learn that this is an extremely competitive program and that 75% of the people present will not make the cut. Shaken though you might be, you nevertheless, put on your best interview face and try to emerge unscathed at the end. Sometimes, you are lucky enough to have an interviewer with whom you can really connect, but occasionally, you come across one that appears to be like a benign Mother Theresa but is actually a pit bull or a rottweiler on the inside and relishes the process of shredding you to bits.

Having survived the interviews (some barely by the skin of your teeth), you have to wait some more. During this time, you imagine all the permutations and combinations of schools you get into or are rejected from and then have to decide which of the schools you get into would best make you happy. Since all of these schools have "3 out of 4" programs anyway, a daunting task lies ahead.

This is the stage I am at right now. When people ask me how I'm doing, I tell them I'm fine. (What they don't know is that I mean the "fine" as described in The Italian Job - Freaked out, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional.) I haven't received any offers from any of the schools, but somehow I have convinced myself that if I do, no matter which school I pick, it is going to be the wrong choice. I can practically feel the ulcer in my stomach.

More on this when I hear back from my programs. Sigh.