*michael parekh on IT*

ON A VIDEO HOMAGE RE-IMAGINED

ROCKS AND ROLLS

One can't be too sure about most things these days, but one thing that is almost a sure thing is that the query "#TBRB" is going to be one of the top trending topics on Twitter within a day or two of September 9th.  TBRB, as Dan Neil of the LA Times explains, stands for "The Beatles: Rock Band", and

"... will consume much of the industry's advertising bandwidth this summer ahead of its Sept. 9 release.
A collaboration between MTV Games' Harmonix and the Beatles' Apple Corps Ltd., TBRB -- which had its press debut at the E3 gaming convention in Los Angeles this month -- lets players stand in the Beatles' pointy Italian boots, singing and playing along on peripherals fashioned to look like Paul McCartney's Hofner bass and Ringo Starr's Ludwig drum kit. That's coolness measured in Kelvins."

The reason this piece merits a complete read in my view is this description of how the game is introduced to millions who are both familiar, and not too familiar with what made the "Fab Four" so cool:

"Summing up the Beatles' story is no easy task, and yet -- as per the conventions of video game design -- a summing up of the story, a reprise of the narrative world, must be built into the game itself. These mini-movies are called "cinematics," and they usually appear when the game is booted up. They are also crucial parts of a game's advertising campaign, amounting to online commercials that air endlessly and freely on YouTube and Hulu. These films are a rare instance of meritocracy in advertising art; the better they are, the more they get watched.
For TBRB, Harmonix called on London's Passion Pictures and director Pete Candeland, who have created one of the most beautiful and compelling animated sequences I have ever seen, a pocket masterpiece that in its surrealistic bravura is worthy of "Sgt. Pepper" and "Yellow Submarine." It's also startling in its economy, telling the Beatles' saga in 2:45 minutes. Not bad for a video game."

He goes on to describe in detail how this piece is laid out, and is worth reading even though it may be a bit of a spoiler when we all get to see the clip on YouTube, and when the game is out.   Sounds like it's quite a bit of work, and does it's subject ample justice.

ON INDIA WITHIN AND WITHOUT

GLOBAL CATALYSTS

The UK's Guardian addresses the debate that's been developing around the movie "Slumdog Millionaire", and discussed in my post a few days ago:

"After its rapturous reception in Britain and America, knives are being sharpened for Slumdog Millionaire. "Vile," is how Alice Miles described the movie in The Times. "Slumdog Millionaire is poverty porn" that invites the viewer to enjoy the miseries it depicts, she adds.

Even that old iconic Bollywood blusterer, Amitabh Bachchan, has thrown his empty-headed two rupees' worth into the mix. "If Slumdog Millionaire projects India as a third-world, dirty, underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations," he bellowed. "It's just that the Slumdog Millionaire idea, authored by an Indian and conceived and cinematically put together by a westerner, gets creative global recognition," he added.

Bachchan is no doubt riled, as many other Bollywood no-talents will be, about the fact that the best film to be made about India in recent times has been made by a white man, Danny Boyle. Just as Spike Lee got hissy with Quentin Tarantino after he proved he could make hipper films about black people than Lee could (Lee ostentatiously criticised Tarantino's use of the word "nigger" while littering his own films with the same language), so many Indians will be upset about a westerner having a better understanding of their country than they do."

The piece goes on to give a rationale for why this state of affairs may have come to pass:

"The bitter truth is, Slumdog Millionaire could only have been made by westerners. The talent exists in India for such movies: much of it, like the brilliant actor Irrfan Khan, contributed to this film. But Bollywood producers, fixated with making flimsy films about the lives of the middle class, will never throw their weight behind such projects. Like Bachchan, they are too blind to what India really is to deal with it. Poor Indians, like those in Slumdog, do not constitute India's "murky underbelly" as Bachchan moronically describes them. They, in fact, are the nation. Over 80% of Indians live on less than $2.50 (£1.70) a day; 40% on less than $1.25. A third of the world's poorest people are Indian, as are 40% of all malnourished children. In Mumbai alone, 2.6 million children live on the street or in slums, and 400,000 work in prostitution. But these people are absent from mainstream Bollywood cinema.

Bachchan's blinkered comments prove how hopelessly blind he and most of Bollywood are to the reality of India and how wholly incapable they are of making films that can address it. Instead, they produce worthless trash like Jaane Tu, Rock On!! and Love Story 2050, full of affluent young Indians desperately, and mostly idiotically, trying to look cool and modern.

Slumdog Millionaire is based on the novel, Q&A, by Vikas Swarup. I know Vikas – an Indian diplomat, he loves his country as much as anyone and did it the service of telling its truth with great warmth and humanity. And Danny Boyle's film continues in precisely the same vein. His innovative brilliance, fresh perspective and foreign money was vital. As an outsider, he saw the truth that middle-class Indians are too often inured to: that countless people exist in conditions close to hell yet maintain a breath-taking exuberance, dignity and decency."

It's an important point to keep in mind about India in matters far beyond movies made about India by Indians or foreigners.
India is still a developing country, with only a 2 to 300 million of it's 1.1 billion souls living a middle-class or better life.  Most people in India do not yet have access to clean water.
A couple of days ago my friend Rajesh Jain had a post on his blog wondering when India would be able to get it's own Obama and a government that would pro-actively address the many issues and opportunities ahead for the country.  A comment by one of his readers, Antariksh Patel, hit home:

"Indians who watched the swearing in of Obama or who use technology consist only a fraction of the population. ultimately, its the rural India that's going to decide who’s gonna rule for next 5 yrs, just like last time. and while voting, rural India considers Bijli, Paani, Sadak and also cast and creed. educating them is the only solution to allow them to think beyond petty politics."

Antariskh is referring to electricity, water and roads with his comment on "bijli, paani and sadak", and it'd be a great start to addres those infrastructure issues head-on for India to go the next level.  China has long started to do this and is accelerating efforts with it's recent commitment to infrastructure spending to address the global downturn.
India's politicians, be they Obamaesque or not, have an opportunity to really step up to the plate as well. 
But in the meantime, Indians will do what they did with the India outsourcing miracle (Satyam notwithstanding).  They created global opportunities for themselves not because of their government, but despite them. 
Coming back to Indian movies, "Slumdog Millionaire" is just an example of a movie about India getting global recognition not just because of the Bollywood establishment, but despite them. 

ON A DIFFERENT BOLLYWOOD REACTION

GLASS HALF EMPTY
Slumdog Millionaire had been on my list of movies to watch before sweeping four Golden Globes a few days ago (best director, picture, screenplay and score). 
Here's a review from the LA Times if you're not familiar with the movie.
One of Bollywood's biggest stars, Amitabh Bachchan has an unexpected take on the awards.  Here's an excerpt from the UK's Guardian:

"Slumdog Millionaire may have been thrown bouquets by western critics and audiences, but brickbats are flying in its direction in India.

Although the film was a big winner at Sunday's Golden Globes and is seen as a frontrunner for the Oscars, Amitabh Bachchan, Bollywood's top actor and perhaps one of the most famous faces in the world, has voiced bitter comments about the movie's portrayal of India.

Writing on his blog, Bachchan said that "if SM projects India as [a] third-world, dirty, underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations."

There has been some debate about the "Indian-ness" of the movie. Slumdog Millionaire was directed by the British film-maker Danny Boyle, best known for the noir comedy of Trainspotting. The film is based on a novel, Q&A, by the Indian writer and diplomat Vikas Swarup, and adapted by Simon Beaufoy, the British screenwriter of The Full Monty.

Bachchan added that an Indian director making a western-style film might not meet with the attention lavished on Slumdog Millionaire: "It's just that the SM idea, authored by an Indian and conceived and cinematically put together by a westerner, gets creative globe recognition. The other would perhaps not."

It's an interesting point, but in general, a big win for this movie seems to be a big win for Bollywood down the road.

ON A HARD WORKING BOND CAR

FOR KINGS IN ALL COUNTRIES

I'm a sucker for well-written car reviews, and this one by Lawrence Ulrich doesn't disappoint, especially in his sensitivity for the current economic climate as he reviews one of the world's most expensive cars:

"STARTING in 1965 with the DB5 in “Goldfinger,” Aston Martin has been linked at the tuxedoed hip with James Bond; gadget-packed Astons have been driven by Connery, Lazenby, Dalton, Brosnan and Craig.

But given the economy, anyone who can still afford a $270,000 Aston Martin DBS might inspire a real-world film, with enough supervillains and world domination to make 007 quiver.

Call it “The Man with the Golden Parachute.”

Wafting above the crowd is certainly the point. With 510 burbling horsepower from the V-12 power plant, angry stockholders vanish in the mirror. Seething mobs of the unemployed are drowned out by the 1,000-watt Bang & Olufsen sound system"

C.E.O.-envy aside, the roughly 300 Americans who will drive home a DBS this year need to know the score."

The actual review's pretty good too, not to mention the car of course. 
Then, if one still can't get enough of the DBS, there's always the movie it currently stars in again.
Don't worry, it didn't fare much better in the last one either.
But it always recovers fully in time for a sequel, and of course for Queen and country.

ON A TOXIC ASSESSMENT

MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO

Fortune magazine has an article worth reading on Blackrock, a major asset management institution that much of Wall Street is retaining to analyze their sub-prime exposures.  Here's a taste:

"AIG, Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac had all hired BlackRock over the past few months. As Fortune went to press, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson had BlackRock on his short list to manage, well, your money - a chunk of the $700 billion bank bailout known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.
The reason so many CEOs have kept him on speed dial in recent months is simple: No other firm is trusted to pick through the exotic securities infecting banks' balance sheets and place an accurate value on them..."
"At a time when the credit-rating agencies like Moody's and Standard & Poor's have lost face, BlackRock's valuations have become a kind of de facto Good Housekeeping seal of approval that buyers and sellers of distressed assets trust.

"I think of it like Ghostbusters: When you have a problem, who you gonna call? BlackRock!" says Terrence Keely, a managing director at UBS..."

While much of this is good news for Blackrock, it's not been all smooth-sailing at the firm, as Fortune observers:

"BlackRock itself has not been unscathed: Its money market funds saw $50 billion withdrawn in the month of September. In the third quarter, assets in its fund-management business lost more than $100 billion, dropping from $1.4 trillion to $1.26 trillion. Its stock, trading at $113 on Oct. 23, is down 40% for the year."

My favorite line in the piece is by Blackrock CEO Larry Fink, who was in transit from the U.S. to Asia on September 13th, disconnecting him from critical market events.  As Fortune went on to describe it:

"When Fink landed in Singapore at 5 a.m. on Monday morning, he checked his BlackBerry and scanned the headlines: Lehman bankrupt, Merrill Lynch bought by Bank of America, AIG collapsing. "I felt like Charlton Heston landing on the Planet of the Apes*," says Fink. "My world had transformed."

So has ours, and the Fortune piece is a good way to survey some of the aftermath, and get a glimpse at how the globally shaky house of cards really got built.
*Image source.

ON A SPAGHETTI WESTERN RE-INVENTED

BUILDING ON THE PAST

Every once in a while one runs into a non-mainstream piece of entertainment that just clamors for your attention, even if only for a short moment. 

The New York Times reviews a movie called "Sukiyaki Western Django" with one compelling title: "Sergio Leone meets Reservoir Dog in Japanese Pastiche".  Here's how they whet the appetite of any fan of those old Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns:

"“Sukiyaki Western Django,” the latest offering from the protean and prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike, is a feast for genre fetishists, a loving and lurid pastiche of the spaghetti westerns that were themselves lurid pastiches of classic Hollywood cowboy pictures."

Of course, Quentin Tarantino is involved with the project, as the review describes:

"It is fitting that the honorary master of ceremonies at this film-geek orgy is Quentin Tarantino, dean of the international film-geek fraternity, who elegantly disembowels a snake in the opening scene and who appears later to fill in some plot holes and speak in bizarrely accented English."

It goes on later to add:

"An acknowledged source is Sergio Corbucci’s “Django,” a raw, ripe 1966 Italian western, but there are also references to Shakespeare’s “Henry VI,” Rambo and plenty of other high- and low-cultural touchstones.

The run-down local saloon, you may notice, is called Eastwood’s..."

They had me at Sergio Leone.

I've already added it to my list of off-beat movies to see at the first opportunity.

ON LONG-AWAITED SEQUELS

MOVIE MAGIC

Indiana Jones fans of course will be lining up this holiday weekend to catch the fourth installment of the franchise, given that it's been two decades since we saw the last Indy flick back in 1989.  Regardless of the reviews, which have been lukewarm to positive, it'll be on the must-see list of even the most casual Indy fan.  As the New York Times reminds us:

" “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” is a movie for boomers of all ages, though you can bet the bank that plenty of tots will be tagging along with Mom and Dad, Granny and Gramps.
Like the 1981 blockbuster “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” the first in a monster franchise that has spawned two previous movie sequels, a television series, comics, novels, video games and Disney theme-park attractions, this new one was directed by Steven Spielberg, cooked up and executive produced by George Lucas (with Kathleen Kennedy) and stars Harrison Ford as the archaeologist-adventurer-sexpot with the sardonic grin, rakish fedora and suggestive bull whip."

The movie apparently brings lots of old characters back, along with a sprinkling of some new faces:

"The bad guys this time are cold war Reds first seen poking around an American military base and led by Irina Spalko. A caricature given crude, playful life by Cate Blanchett, Irina owes more than a little to Rosa Klebb, the pint-size Soviet operative played by Lotte Lenya, who took on James Bond in “From Russia With Love.”

Dressed in gray coveralls, her hair bobbed and Slavic accent slipping and sliding as far south as Australia, Ms. Blanchett takes to her role with brio, snapping her black gloves and all but clicking her black boots like one of those cartoon Nazis that traipse through earlier Indy films. She’s pretty much a hoot, the life of an otherwise drearily familiar party. Among the other invited guests are Ray Winstone, John Hurt and Shia LaBeouf, who plays Mutt, the young sidekick onboard to bring in those viewers whose parents were still in grade school when the first movie hit. Karen Allen, who played Indy’s love interest in “Raiders,” is here too, with a megawatt smile and a bit of the old spunk."

But speaking of long-awaited sequels in movie mega-franchises, we all have a new Terminator movie to look forward to soon, as Gizmodo notes:

"Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins has started production in the New Mexico deserts, with Christian Bale and Sam Worthington on board to star in the film as John Connor and Marcus Wright, respectively...

"Terminator Salvation will be set in 2018 where John Connor is fighting Skynet to ensure the future he's destined for..."

""Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins" marks the latest installment of the multi-billion dollar Terminator franchise and will be the first film in a new Terminator trilogy. The film is scheduled for a North American theatrical release May 22, 2009."

Hopefully, the second and third movies in that trilogy won't keep us waiting for a couple of decades.

ON CRICKET RE-MADE

SLICE AND DICE

The Wall Street Journal has a great story on how Cricket, one of the world's biggest sports, and almost a religion in India, is being dramatically morphed and gussied up for big-time media commercialization in that country with over a billion fans:

"A new cricket league in India is attempting to take over the sport, backed by nearly a billion dollars, loud music and cheerleaders.

The Indian Premier League, which began its first season three weeks ago, is a massive departure for cricket. In the traditional format, team members dressed in white play eight hours a day for five days, with breaks for lunch and tea.

In the new format, games last about three hours total. During breaks, spectators sing and dance along to Bollywood songs. One team flew in the Washington Redskins cheerleaders for three weeks to train its squad of dancers and perform at matches.

The league consists of eight teams based in different cities around India, and they will compete in 59 games total over six weeks. It is the first ever city-based cricket league in India and the first to allow foreign players. Foreign players make up about 35% of the league, but each team can play no more than four per match. (A team can have 11 players on the field at a time.)"

The money commitment to date is also big, as the article goes on to explain:

"Backing the teams are some of India's best-known names from business and entertainment. Mukesh Ambani, head of part of the Reliance corporate empire and one of the world's richest men, and liquor baron Vijay Mallya each paid about $112 million for a franchise. India's biggest Bollywood star, Shah Rukh Khan, spent $75 million along with two partners for a team in Kolkata, formerly Calcutta.

The total paid for all eight teams was more than $700 million. Sony Entertainment and Singapore-based sports agency World Sport Group paid $918 million for the 10-year broadcasting rights.

Games are also being shown globally. Willow TV, a California-based company that provides live video of cricketing events on its Web site, owns the rights to distribute the games in North and South America across television, radio and the Internet."

It's too early to tell how successful this venture will be, but there are signs that the new cricket format is attracting new viewers, especially women. 

It also remains to be seen how successful the new format and league team end up being with the broader population of Indians around the world.  In recent years, this Indian diaspora has also been a great growth market for traditional Bollywood movie fare in the form of DVDs, Pay-per-view, and theater exhibition.  Perhaps Cricket 2.0 will be as well-received around the world over time.

ON AN IRON-CLAD REDEMPTION

SEQUELS

One of the summer movies I'm looking forward to is Ironman, which opens in theaters on May 2nd.  This is due not only to the fact that I was a long-standing fan of Ironman comic-books as a young boy, but also because the lead is being played by the talented Robert Downey Jr., who has a controversial past to say the least. 

I'm a fan of his work as well, and also look forward to his performance in the upcoming war comedy Tropic Thunder, where he plays an Australian method actor who plays a black American soldier in Vietnam.  It's a role that brings with it some controversy, could possibly bring Mr. Downey an award or two, after everything is said and done.

The New York Times goes on to explore the redemption of Robert Downey Jr. in detail in this weekend article, laying it out as follows:

"LOOK at him standing there, a great big movie star in a great big movie, the Iron Man with nary a trace of human frailty.

A scant five years ago the only time you saw Robert Downey Jr. getting big play in your newspaper came when he was on a perp walk.

Yet when it came time for Marvel Studios  to cast the lead for a huge franchise film, “Iron Man,” it bet on Mr. Downey. He is not only back in the game but at the top of it. Is this a great country or what?"

It goes on to emphasize the point with this anecdote:

"His romance with mood-altering chemicals didn’t end after he got out of prison. By 2003 he was an uninsurable serial relapser famous for being pulled out of hotels or other people’s homes in an addled, disheveled state.

As a movie star with a lot of pals, he lived a life beyond consequence until he finally wore out the endless mercies of the entertainment business. After he was fired from his spot on “Ally McBeal,” the bottom finally came, at a Burger King of all places.

On or around Independence Day in 2003, he stopped at a Burger King on the Pacific Coast Highway and threw all his drugs in the ocean. And while he was sitting there chewing on a burger, he decided he was done.
This being America, five years later you can walk into that Burger King, and if you order a Kids Meal you can get your own Robert Downey Jr. action figure, wrapped up in gadget ware."

Now that is an American happy ending, true Hollywood style.

ON CONFLICTS WITH FOOD

FAST FOOD

When I first saw this YouTube video last night, thanks to Marc Andreessen's blog post titled "Food Fight", I saw it as a metaphor for our financial markets last weekend, over the weekend, and likely this week. 

But take a closer look at this five and a half minute video, and see what story is being told here.

Want a hint?  It's title is "An abridged history of American-centric warfare".
Watch it again.
You'll see every major conflict since World War II in there, including the war in Europe, the war with Japan, the Cold War, the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, the Arab-Israeli wars, the Gulf War, 9/11, and the current war in Iraq. 

All accompanied by a terrific music track, complete with sound effects.

The creators of this insane food fight managed to cram all that into this little bitty, funny, but thoughtful video.
Thought we could all use a smile this Monday.