Ghost

Neil Gaiman writes a chilling yet reassuring piece on why Ghost Stories still have relevance in the 21st Century:

Technology does nothing to dispel the shadows at the edge of things. The ghost-story world still hovers at the limits of vision, making things stranger, darker, more magical, just as it always has ....

There’s a blog I don’t think anyone else reads. I ran across it searching for something else, and something about it, the tone of voice perhaps, so flat and bleak and hopeless, caught my attention. I bookmarked it.

If the girl who kept it knew that anyone was reading it, anybody cared, perhaps she would not have taken her own life. She even wrote about what she was going to do, the pills, the Nembutal and Seconal and the rest, that she had stolen a few at a time over the months from her stepfather’s bathroom, the plastic bag, the loneliness, and wrote about it in a flat, pragmatic way, explaining that while she knew that suicide attempts were cries for help, this really wasn’t, she just didn’t want to live any longer.

She counted down to the big day, and I kept reading, uncertain what to do, if anything. There was not enough identifying information on the Web page even to tell me which continent she lived on. No e-mail address. No way to leave comments. The last message said simply, “Tonight.”

I wondered whom I should tell, if anyone, and then I shrugged, and, best as I could, I swallowed the feeling that I had let the world down.

And then she started to post again. She says she’s cold and she’s lonely.

I think she knows I’m still reading ....

I guess you wouldn't believe me if I said that I'm not who you think I am, would you? No. I don't think I can pull it off.

Read the full article here.

Robert Jordan passes away

The man who gave the world 'The Wheel of Time' series died yesterday, 16th of September 2007.

I'm currently into the 6th book in his series of 11. Although the series remains unfinished, I will read the rest of it whether or not the publishers manage to come out with the 12th final installment based on his notes that he left by in case of this eventuality. As an ode to the man who gave me a tale beyond all mythologies and legends. Rest in Peace, Dragon.

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose.... The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of time.
But it was a beginning.

Eclectica

Eagerly awaiting the release of these movies. That is, unless they all die a premature death as have most other ambitious Comic-to-Movie projects. Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd would be most interesting.

Tickets for Transformers lie in my wallet. Tomorrow's show. Review will be posted. I promise.

I don't know how many of you have heard of 'The Wheel of Time' series. What with all the Harry Potter hype that tramples over the now fading glory of the LOTR series, this is a must read. It is quite obvious where J.K. Rowling gets her inspiration from and at the same time you cannot ignore the the influence of Tolkien's works in the series. The difference being, the plot is way more complex. The characters are much more detailed and a lot more human than in the other two series but yet never slow enough for you to take a break. I'm already into the second book in the series of 11 and counting. Start on it asap if you're a HP and LOTR fan.


I hear rumours in my office that we're all to soon shift from our current location, prime of Hosur road and 100 mts from Forum to Sarjapur road by next month. That makes my travel from home to work extend from 2kms to 10kms. Curse them bastards! There is a meeting now with a 'General' agenda where I will be told of this blasphemy. Officially. I wonder if they realize that almost every time we know whatever is to be announced in these meetings. Damn!

Reviews

After a long hiatus from books, I have been back to reading quite regularly of late and thought it would be worth recommending two particularly brilliant books:

Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut (1961)

In the preface of this book, Vonnegut says that this is one of the few of his works with morals. One being "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be" and the other is "Make love when you can. It's good for you".

It's the story of Howard W. Campbell Jr., an American working as a playwright in Nazi Germany where he plays an apparently big role in spreading the Aryan Propaganda on radio but is secretly an American spy. His public image forces him to say things he never really wanted to and is worshiped as a Nazi Hero, which he despises. But in the process of his real time performance he gets really cynical about the whole world. Particularly after losing his wife Helga with whom he describes his existence as "Nation of Two".

Mother Night is tragic and funny at the same time in trademark Vonnegut style.

"If you really want to hurt your parents and you don't have nerve enough to be homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts."

Was short enough to be read during my to and fro flight duration from Bangalore to Delhi.
A must read.

PS: Later discovered that there is also a movie based on the book.

Lord of the Flies - William Golding (1954)

A haunting book that delves deep into the primitive human psyche that could never come out of social confines. It is an Allegory about the element of savageness that we all have which is depicted in the book in the form of a group of boys who survive a plane crash on a remote island. Their joy, fear and innocence slowly warps into a basal animal instinct that makes murderers out of regular school kids as they fight for their own survival. Scary as hell and deeply moving.

In a scene describing the boys hunting down a pig, the author puts down the theme of the book thus:

His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink.

This is the book that got William Golding his Nobel and he deserves no less for such a masterpiece.

Which of The X-Men are you?

Wanted to be Wolverine :(. But Hey! The Ice is quite cool. :D

Coming Soon!

This is going to be One Good year! Especially if you are as big a fan as I am of the comic/pulp movie genre.


Ghost Rider - Trailer
Ghost Rider has always been one of the elusive comic book anti-heroes whose out-of-the-world features would make any movie maker run miles away. But the trailer looks promising and Nicholas Cage seems to fit into the role pretty well.




Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer - Trailer

I've never really been a Fantastic 4 fan and found the first installment to be rather boring. I guess the producers realized it too and roped in The most amazing planet hopper aka The Silver Surfer to add that extra sheen and I believe it's a mix that cannot fail. Check out the Human Torch chasing the Silver Surfer in the trailer. Good Times!


Spiderman 3 - Trailer
Venom + Sandman + Green Goblin + an already established mega million fan base, would undoubtedly make Spidey 3 the hottest thing to hit the screens this year. It's always good to see a movie exploring the idea of losing oneself to the dark side and the struggle within a Superhero. Which is exactly what this movie is about - The Battle Within.




Transformers - Trailer
Anyone who has grown up on the Transformers cartoon would still have that tank which folds into the evil Megatron. Director Michael Bay of 'Armageddon' fame will not let us down on this one. It would be interesting to observe the extent to which detail can be incorporated in such movies that require a tremendous amount of animation.





Grindhouse - Trailer
What happens when you bring together the Directors of 'Desperado' and 'Pulp Fiction' together? Pure unadulterated sleazy action witfest!!
This movie is actually made up of two stories: Death Proof and Planet Terror, one each by the maestros, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, each promising to bring back the grindhouse theater going experience of the 70s and 80s.


Now I know that not all of these may turn out to be as good as expected but I can't help being partial to them.. I guess we'll just have to wait and watch!

Man and superman

George Bernard Shaw's plays carry the most potent mix of humour, sarcasm and bare naked truth that I have ever come across. A selection of his plays that I picked while visiting Blossoms with a bookworm friend of mine, brought back to me the genuine pleasure of reading which I thought had been long forgotton.

Take 'Man and Superman' for instance:
A brilliant play where Shaw compares two sides of the male psyche and its helplessness when inevitably subjugated to the female will. An breif description of the superman is given here:

THE STATUE. I remember: he came to heaven. Rembrandt.
THE DEVIL. Ay, Rembrandt. There is something unnatural about these fellows. Do not listen to their gospel, Señor Commander: it is dangerous. Beware of the pursuit of the Superhuman: it leads to an indiscriminate contempt for the Human. To a man, horses and dogs and cats are mere species, outside the moral world. Well, to the Superman, men and women are a mere species too, also outside the moral world. This Don Juan was kind to women and courteous to men as your daughter here was kind to her pet cats and dogs; but such kindness is a denial of the exclusively human character of the soul.
THE STATUE. And who the deuce is the Superman?
THE DEVIL. Oh, the latest fashion among the Life Force fanatics. Did you not meet in Heaven, among the new arrivals, that German Polish madman? what was his name? Nietzsche?
THE STATUE. Never heard of him.

The fundamental premise of the play would be the battle of sexes where man is tricked into believing that he has the upper hand.

The Don Juan play, however, is to deal with sexual attraction, and not with nutrition, and to deal with it in a society in which the serious business of sex is left by men to women, as the serious business of nutrition is left by women to men. That the men, to protect themselves against a too aggressive prosecution of the women’s business, have set up a feeble romantic convention that the initiative in sex business must always come from the man, is true; but the pretence is so shallow that even in the theatre, that last sanctuary of unreality, it imposes only on the inexperienced. In Shakespear’s plays the woman always takes the initiative. In his problem plays and his popular plays alike the love interest is the interest of seeing the woman hunt the man down. She may do it by charming him, like Rosalind, or by stratagem, like Mariana; but in every case the relation between the woman and the man is the same: she is the pursuer and contriver, he the pursued and disposed of. When she is baffled, like Ophelia, she goes mad and commits suicide; and the man goes straight from her funeral to a fencing match.

The play takes a dig at everything despicable in the human world. Mendoza, a brigand speaks to his politically inclined band:

MENDOZA. But I am well aware that the ordinary man—even the ordinary brigand, who can scarcely be called an ordinary man [Hear, hear!]—is not a philosopher. Common sense is good enough for him; and in our business affairs common sense is good enough for me. Well, what is our business here in the Sierra Nevada, chosen by the Moors as the fairest spot in Spain? Is it to discuss abstruse questions of political economy? No: it is to hold up motor cars and secure a more equitable distribution of wealth.
THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. All made by labor, mind you.
MENDOZA [urbanely] Undoubtedly. All made by labor, and on its way to be squandered by wealthy vagabonds in the dens of vice that disfigure the sunny shores of the Mediterranean. We intercept that wealth. We restore it to circulation among the class that produced it and that chiefly needs it: the working class. We do this at the risk of our lives and liberties, by the exercise of the virtues of courage, endurance, foresight, and abstinence—especially abstinence. I myself have eaten nothing but prickly pears and broiled rabbit for three days.
THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT [stubbornly] No more aint we.
MENDOZA [indignantly] Have I taken more than my share?
THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT [unmoved] Why should you?
THE ANARCHIST. Why should he not? To each according to his needs: from each according to his means.
THE FRENCHMAN [shaking his fist at the Anarchist] Fumiste!
MENDOZA [diplomatically] I agree with both of you.
THE GENUINELY ENGLISH BRIGANDS. Hear, hear! Bravo Mendoza!

It is hard to describe genious because if you could, it would cease to be. These plays aren't just about global issues and problems faced by the world but of personal issues in a world of crisis and the silly causes of these problems. After reading this I came to the conclusion that all men were born as supermen but very few manage to remain so. We aspire to do many things but in the end we are tied down to do what everyone expects us to do.
I think the best that we can do is to atleast accept it:

RAMSDEN [very deliberately] Mr Tanner: you are the most impudent person I have ever met.
TANNER [seriously] I know it, Ramsden. Yet even I cannot wholly conquer shame. We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins. Good Lord, my dear Ramsden, we are ashamed to walk, ashamed to ride in an omnibus, ashamed to hire a hansom instead of keeping a carriage, ashamed of keeping one horse instead of two and a groom-gardener instead of a coachman and footman. The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is. Why, youre ashamed to buy my book, ashamed to read it: the only thing youre not ashamed of is to judge me for it without having read it; and even that only means that youre ashamed to have heterodox opinions. Look at the effect I produce because my fairy godmother withheld from me this gift of shame. I have every possible virtue that a man can have except—

And finally, to end with, the clincher:

That the real Superman will snap his superfingers at all Man’s present trumpery ideals of right, duty, honor, justice, religion, even decency, and accept moral obligations beyond present human endurance, is a thing that contemporary Man does not foresee: in fact he does not notice it when our casual Supermen do it in his very face. He actually does it himself every day without knowing it. He will therefore make no objection to the production of a race of what he calls Great Men or Heroes, because he will imagine them, not as true Supermen, but as himself endowed with infinite brains, infinite courage, and infinite money.

Gallery

Hulk: Big , Bad and Green. I love him more as the evil monster out of control than the nice hero within.

Wolverine: With those sharp 'fingers' and even sharper wit, he is a treat to watch.


There is a point in superman history where he actually campaigns for Lex Luthor and makes him President.


This is how the sketch actually is made. The colours are filled in later based on the greyscale gradient.

Frank Miller can make kids look scary. And this is spawn.
Neat Effects. Frank is known to create superb effects with very few colours.


Spidey has been tried with various costumes. Needless to say, the original is the best.


You simply HAVE to love The Joker's guts.


Any guesses who the rider is?

Know what the difference between him and the Lantern is? He makes this look GOOD.

Tribute

I distincly remember the first time I read a comprehensive comic book. I was 6 yrs old and was about to be 7 in a couple of days. Till then, the cartoon strip in newspapers was all I knew of cartooning and never pictured that there could be books full of them. It was the first edition of ‘Tinkle’ which cost Rs. 6 and was reluctantly financed by my mother in exchange for not watching a movie which apparently wasn’t made for my age group (I’d kill to remember which one). I bought it at the newspaper stall right next to our place which remained my library for years to come. I lapped it up within an hour, which btw, should be an accomplishment for a kid who was not yet 7 :) ! Then I moved up to Archies, Chandamama, Jataka Tales and very soon into the streets of Gotham City and Metropolis.
I was lucky to have had prior introduction to Superman through the movie which I watched at my uncle’s place… my first movie on the VCR. I was blown away! I used to simply stare at the comic book cover for hours together dreaming of wearing that holy red-and-blue suit and ripping through space at unimaginable speeds (I din’t know the speed of light then and hence couldn’t compare). Slowly I became an even bigger fan of the Dark Knight aka Batman. The best part of him was that he was human. Just like any of us but bigger than all of us. He was vulnerable, yet infallible. Dark, yet a Hero. That day on, I was a Believer. Every day after school I used to come straight to the newspaper stall, pick up the latest comic and read till I could hear my mother screaming at me from the balcony. I swept the entire range. From Mahabali Shaaka, and Nagaraj to Phantom and Mandrake to Justice League and later on Tintin and Asterix. Years passed by but I still hold on to those stories.

Its not that I haven’t grown past them, I’ve grown with them. And come to think of it, I never want to let them go. I don’t want to sound obsessed like Samuel L Jackson on a wheelchair in ‘Unbreakable’, but those comics were the building blocks of some of my principles and ideals. They were to me the perfect example of what my mother used to call the ‘Win of Truth over Evil’. The pristine thought process of sacrificing your personal life, fame and fortune to help the less fortunate was too priceless for me and still is. In this era where life in its shades of grey has been accepted as the norm, we need to turn back to something everytime there is conflict of choices available. Fairy Tales probably have more significance than we think.
Its probably why such tales are classified as ‘Fantasy’ .. ‘cos in this world, they would never fit in.