As a Mumbaikar (i.e resident of Mumbai, India), the recent events connected to Raj Thackeray and his MNS party has worried me. No, not from fear of being beaten up and being driven out of the city (as I’m not a Maharashtrian, but a Bengali from Kolkata in eastern India), but from Raj Thackeray’s view of politics and the bigger question of political thought and behaviour.
It’s no doubt that political thought and behaviour play an important role in our lives. For some of us, like the Mahatma Gandhi and Raj Thackeray, it even becomes a life’s ambition and a driving force. Unfortunately, politics has never interested me. However, with the recent turn of events in my city, I’m beginning to wonder how an individual’s political attitudes, intentions and decisions are shaped.
Are these environmental, ethnic or national dispositions? Or, are they matters of garnering votes, winning elections and achieving political prominence? Are we, Indians, or humans for that matter, naturally communal? Or, is there something else at play which I don’t understand?
14 February 2008
13 February 2008
Understanding children today
Unlike my generation, where we used to be outdoors most of the time when we were at play, today’s children are more used to watching TV at home or being cooped up in their rooms in front of their computer screens for hours on end.
Where our social skills were groomed by interaction with each other through flesh-and-blood face-to-face communication and physical engagement in outdoor or indoor games, today’s children are happy communicating with each other through their mobilephones, computers and the Internet.
Mobilephones, video games, MP3 players, computers and the Internet have captured the attention of our children so overwhelmingly that their learning and social skills are now geared around these digital media/devices, rather than from actual interactions between human beings that my generation is used to. These digital media/devices have become their passion, as books and outdoors games were ours.
As adults, if we can understand, harness and innovatively manage this passion, there is a chance that we’ll be able to engage our children more productively in learning and play… and understand them better.
Where our social skills were groomed by interaction with each other through flesh-and-blood face-to-face communication and physical engagement in outdoor or indoor games, today’s children are happy communicating with each other through their mobilephones, computers and the Internet.
Mobilephones, video games, MP3 players, computers and the Internet have captured the attention of our children so overwhelmingly that their learning and social skills are now geared around these digital media/devices, rather than from actual interactions between human beings that my generation is used to. These digital media/devices have become their passion, as books and outdoors games were ours.
As adults, if we can understand, harness and innovatively manage this passion, there is a chance that we’ll be able to engage our children more productively in learning and play… and understand them better.
12 February 2008
Adele, 19
With all the fuss over Amy Winehouse at the recent Grammy Awards, would you be interested in Adele Atkins? Probably not. You’re more likely to ask, ‘Adele who?’ But if you like Soul/Blues or even Pop music, then I’d say Adele Atkins’ debut album 19 is worth listening to.
Like Amy Winehouse, Adele Atkins is also from London, but not half as famous. No Grammys or millions of sold CDs/downloads (or drug rehab, for that matter) for Adele yet – though her single ‘Chasing Pavements’ (Amazon.co.uk video) did hit the UK charts big-time and bring her some deserved attention.
Adele writes her own songs too and, from what I’ve heard on 19, I’d say she has a talent as a songwriter as well. Adele’s music is more Folk/Blues/Pop than Winehouse’s (which is Soul/Jazz/R&B), still she prefers to label it Soul/Pop. 19 is full of young love, with enough maturity to hook an old-timer like me. So, do listen.
For more on Adele Atkins, visit her MySpace page.
11 February 2008
The Proposition
Directed by Australian John Hillcoat and written by rock-pop musician Nick Cave, who is Australian born but now living in the UK, The Proposition is a disturbing film.
The film is like a Western, set in the Australian outback in the late 1800s when Australia was inhabited by, apart from the indigenous Aborigines, White convicts and free settlers under the British Rule. The scenery is harsh, and so is life. There is no water and you can see and hear the buzz of flies all through the film. The people living here seem emotionless, hardened by the climate and their hardships of the land.
The story is about an army/police officer, Captain Morris Stanley (played by Ray Winstone), who has to bring to justice a gang of criminals – the Burns brothers – who have raped, murdered and robbed an innocent family. The film starts with Stanley and his troopers raiding and, after a gun battle, capturing two of the Burns brothers: Charlie (played by Guy Pearce) and Mike (played by Richard Wilson). The oldest and vicious Burns brother, Arthur (played by Danny Huston), remains at large, hiding.
Stanley returns to town with the captured younger Mike, leaving Charlie with a proposition: if Charlie hunts down and kills his older brother Arthur (the mastermind behind the crimes and ‘a monster’) before Christmas, Charlie and Mike will be allowed to go free. If not, Mike will be hanged on Christmas Day. However, Stanley keeps this proposition to himself, lying to the town’s people about the capture of the Burns brothers and making false promises.
As Charlie sets off to find Arthur, the film focuses on Stanley trying to maintain a balance between several worlds: the harsh Australian outback; the politics amongst his troopers; the town’s people, led by a businessman/mayor, demanding justice for the crimes and insisting on a gruesome lashing of Mike; and his English wife (played by Emily Watson) who tries to create a secluded fenced-in pure English home in the middle of the harsh Australian outback.
Charlie eventually locates Arthur but is unable to kill him, being rescued by Arthur twice: once from an Aborigine attack (when Charlie is impaled by a spear and almost dies); and again, when an English bounty-hunter (played by John Hurt) captures him. On the contrary, Charlie is enamoured by Arthur – a survivor and philosophical man, in love with the beauty of the land; and Arthur’s partner-in-crime, Sam (played by Tom Budge) – a rapist/murderer who is also a beautiful singer.
That’s the strange thing about The Proposition. The film presents a set of contrasts: good and evil, beauty and bleakness, murder and music, fragility and strength, heroes and villains. Yet, these contrasts seem intertwined, at times taking up opposite positions, bringing up questions of morality. First, overtly, when dealing with the Burns brothers as criminals; and then subtly, when questioning the governance and treatment of Aborigines (in the film’s background).
On instances, both director Hillcoat and writer Cave introduce Charles Darwin (who was most certainly in the news in late 1800) and Darwin’s theory of how we, as men, share the same ancestry with monkeys; how we have survived the worst to evolve as civilised men; and how, in the name of civilisation, we can do no wrong – even when we relapse into our basic genetic behaviours. The film seems to rationalise the fact that, when it comes to survival, we are all products of our environment.
This sense of fatality is what disturbs me. Although The Proposition ends with good winning over evil, I am left with a strange mixture of revulsion and respect. The film reminds me of William Golding’s novel ‘Lord of the Flies’.
[The thing I did not like about the film was the mumbling of dialogues by the actors. Perhaps the print I viewed was not a good one.]
The film is like a Western, set in the Australian outback in the late 1800s when Australia was inhabited by, apart from the indigenous Aborigines, White convicts and free settlers under the British Rule. The scenery is harsh, and so is life. There is no water and you can see and hear the buzz of flies all through the film. The people living here seem emotionless, hardened by the climate and their hardships of the land.
The story is about an army/police officer, Captain Morris Stanley (played by Ray Winstone), who has to bring to justice a gang of criminals – the Burns brothers – who have raped, murdered and robbed an innocent family. The film starts with Stanley and his troopers raiding and, after a gun battle, capturing two of the Burns brothers: Charlie (played by Guy Pearce) and Mike (played by Richard Wilson). The oldest and vicious Burns brother, Arthur (played by Danny Huston), remains at large, hiding.
Stanley returns to town with the captured younger Mike, leaving Charlie with a proposition: if Charlie hunts down and kills his older brother Arthur (the mastermind behind the crimes and ‘a monster’) before Christmas, Charlie and Mike will be allowed to go free. If not, Mike will be hanged on Christmas Day. However, Stanley keeps this proposition to himself, lying to the town’s people about the capture of the Burns brothers and making false promises.
As Charlie sets off to find Arthur, the film focuses on Stanley trying to maintain a balance between several worlds: the harsh Australian outback; the politics amongst his troopers; the town’s people, led by a businessman/mayor, demanding justice for the crimes and insisting on a gruesome lashing of Mike; and his English wife (played by Emily Watson) who tries to create a secluded fenced-in pure English home in the middle of the harsh Australian outback.
Charlie eventually locates Arthur but is unable to kill him, being rescued by Arthur twice: once from an Aborigine attack (when Charlie is impaled by a spear and almost dies); and again, when an English bounty-hunter (played by John Hurt) captures him. On the contrary, Charlie is enamoured by Arthur – a survivor and philosophical man, in love with the beauty of the land; and Arthur’s partner-in-crime, Sam (played by Tom Budge) – a rapist/murderer who is also a beautiful singer.
That’s the strange thing about The Proposition. The film presents a set of contrasts: good and evil, beauty and bleakness, murder and music, fragility and strength, heroes and villains. Yet, these contrasts seem intertwined, at times taking up opposite positions, bringing up questions of morality. First, overtly, when dealing with the Burns brothers as criminals; and then subtly, when questioning the governance and treatment of Aborigines (in the film’s background).
On instances, both director Hillcoat and writer Cave introduce Charles Darwin (who was most certainly in the news in late 1800) and Darwin’s theory of how we, as men, share the same ancestry with monkeys; how we have survived the worst to evolve as civilised men; and how, in the name of civilisation, we can do no wrong – even when we relapse into our basic genetic behaviours. The film seems to rationalise the fact that, when it comes to survival, we are all products of our environment.
This sense of fatality is what disturbs me. Although The Proposition ends with good winning over evil, I am left with a strange mixture of revulsion and respect. The film reminds me of William Golding’s novel ‘Lord of the Flies’.
[The thing I did not like about the film was the mumbling of dialogues by the actors. Perhaps the print I viewed was not a good one.]
10 February 2008
Bíró and the ballpoint pen
The ballpoint pen, though ubiquitous today, became popular in India only in the 1980s, much later than the rest of the world.
Those of us brought up on the fountain pen – which produced splotchy writing and ink-stained fingers, not to mention messy exercise books and soiled school uniforms – know what a blessing it is to use a ballpoint pen now. So, when I came across this article on the Net on the ballpoint pen and its origin, I just had to share it with you:
“When László Bíró saw a ball rolling through a puddle on the street and leaving a trail of water behind it, he conceived an idea that would go on to change everyday life forever. Based on what he had seen, the Hungarian journalist, along with his brother Georg, began to work on the first commercially successful ballpoint pen.
Bíró had become frustrated by the time spent filling up fountain pens and waiting for the ink to dry. He had seen that the ink used to print newspapers dried much quicker and so decided to create a pen using the same type of ink. In 1938, the Bíró brothers patented a design which featured a tiny ball in its tip, which turned freely in a socket. As the ball moved along the paper it rotated, picking up ink from the cartridge and leaving it on the paper.
Whilst ballpoint pens had existed in the past, none had proven very popular due to constant problems with clogging, leakage and ink distribution, and the Bíró was the first pen that significantly overcame these problems.
After relocating to Argentina in 1940, the Bírós licensed their design to a number of makers in the US and Britain. But it was almost ten years later when the design was mastered and introduced to the rest of the world. Marcel Bich, a French pen manufacturer who had bought the ballpoint pen patent from László Bíró, ironed out the remaining design problems (mainly ink distribution) and began huge, low cost mass productions of the ‘BIC CRISTAL’.
It’s not surprising to hear that, in 2005, BIC sold its one hundred billionth pen, when you consider just how many of their pens you might have owned, borrowed or even stolen. At the same time, as being an icon of democracy – almost anyone can afford to buy one – the ballpoint pen is also one of the first products of the throw-away culture in which we now live.”
More information on BIC ballpoint pens is available here.
[Citation: Text reproduced from designboom article reinventing the bic pen. Image reproduced from dkimages.]
08 February 2008
Reggie Pedro – glimpses of possible narratives
78 Stone Wobble, 2007
“Reggie Okerheire Pedro's approach to his work would appear, at least in a non-literal sense, to be a reflection on his perceptions and experiences, growing up in London. One of the first things an artist of any nature might say to you about their work is that the work comes from their experiences, but then what other basis or foundation could an artist have for expressing themselves as honestly as possible, than to come from a perspective that is as true to them as they are to it. This would also beg the question as to what is experience, and how do we measure an artist's performance or body of work in relation to their experience in life.
For Reggie Pedro, his experience growing up in London only really offers a superficial component to his work, which isn't to discredit the fact that London lifestyle has a lot to offer to artists culturally, from a social-political viewpoint or just aesthetically, but really to say that the real expression in his work can be found in the interplay amongst his depiction of characters or in the lone character, in how these characters are portrayed within the bold use of colour, outlines, flat planes and surfaces, occasional handwritten text sometimes giving a hint or indication to, or emphasising a theme or subject-matter within multi-layered images that trigger the viewer's imagination through their glimpses of possible narratives.
It is when dealing with these aspects of the work, ignoring momentarily the urban settings in the work, that you can identify maybe on a more holistic level with the subjects that Reggie attempts to give life to as paintings. The fact that Reggie uses the visual medium of paint to articulate his ideas shouldn't be seen as a technique which has been given little thought or as an outdated medium in today's computer generated image world. But on the contrary, paint which is essentially pigment like any other use of colour can be used, and has been used in a variety of ways depending on whose hands are using it and how they view the world around them in relation to how they treat the medium.
His paintings are the site of tension between representation and creative intervention, between seriousness and upliftment or humour. The work spans areas of our lives which deal with civil unrest, love, boredom, isolation, exuberance, spirituality, to name some of the literal concepts that Reggie Pedro tries to tackle. There is a lot of struggle that takes place in the creation of his work, struggles within figuration, semi-abstraction, and abstraction. His will is to render our existences as sincerely as possible without losing sight of his creative artistic endeavours.”
Reggie Okerheire Pedro, British illustrator and painter, passed away last November at the age of 35. His work can be seen on his website.
[Citation: Image reproduced from Eyestorm. Reggie Pedro’s profile, by Bruegal Futtywheat – Artspew, quoted from Reggie Pedro’s website.]
06 February 2008
Not your usual gangster film
Ridley Scott’s American Gangster is undoubtedly a great film, but, after two and a half hours of viewing, it left me a little dissatisfied. Not because of the length of the film (which is justified), but because it lacked the intensity I had expected from an epic gangster film of its genre – which includes films such as Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Godfather’ series, Brian De Palma’s ‘Scarface’ and ‘The Untouchables’, and Martin Scorsese’s ‘Mean Streets’ and ‘Goodfellas’.
The lack of intensity, and gangster meanness, in American Gangster is in the portrayal of rivalry between the two lead characters: Frank Lucas, a druglord in Harlem (New York) selling heroin in the early seventies, played by Denzel Washington; and Richie Roberts, an honest but philandering New Jersey cop pursuing the underworld of drugs, played by Russell Crowe.
The film is based on a true story. Frank Lucas as a Harlem druglord did exist (apparently he made a million dollars a day from selling heroin on 116th Street in New York in the seventies), is alive today (in a wheelchair), and was consulted for the film. However, I’ve read in the media that, writer Steven Zaillian and director Ridley Scott have taken a lot of creative liberties with the film.
The acting by the two lead characters is fabulous; although I must say that Denzel Washington outshines Russell Crowe by a mile. The film, after all, is about Frank Lucas – his rise from a driver/bodyguard/collector for an earlier druglord to becoming a kingpin in New York’s seventies drug business. And Washington, in Lucas’ role, is superb. If anything, the film is worth watching because of Denzel Washington’s acting.
I was curious to note that, in the film, Lucas, in spite of his heinous crime of selling heroin, considered himself a progressive Black businessman. He contributed to his family’s and Harlem’s welfare. He talked about principles of business such as markets, product sourcing, product quality (purity), branding, pricing, value proposition and distribution. I was impressed.
Where American Gangster falls short is in portraying the relationship between the two rivals: Lucas and Roberts. Both characters are likeable – strong on ethics, outcasts in their fields – in spite of their negatives (Lucas as a druglord and gangster; Roberts as an honest cop and philanderer). They live separate lives, unknown to each other. Not until the very end of the film is there any rivalry, or relationship, between the two men.
Roberts considers Lucas a suspect much later in the film – first on a hunch, and then confirmed almost accidentally by one of Robert’s (mysterious) friends. Lucas doesn’t know Roberts is after him, doesn’t believe he’ll be caught (a touch of invincibility – his folly), and continues to live his life, expanding his business (Lucas had ensured that the heroin cannot be traced back to him).
Even when Lucas is caught, an understated event after a shootout, the face-off between the two men is civilised and gentlemanly – as if they are in admiration of each other. A touch of Steven Spielberg’s ‘Catch Me If You Can’ is what I felt, washed off all the intensities expected from the usual gangster film.
The lack of intensity, and gangster meanness, in American Gangster is in the portrayal of rivalry between the two lead characters: Frank Lucas, a druglord in Harlem (New York) selling heroin in the early seventies, played by Denzel Washington; and Richie Roberts, an honest but philandering New Jersey cop pursuing the underworld of drugs, played by Russell Crowe.
The film is based on a true story. Frank Lucas as a Harlem druglord did exist (apparently he made a million dollars a day from selling heroin on 116th Street in New York in the seventies), is alive today (in a wheelchair), and was consulted for the film. However, I’ve read in the media that, writer Steven Zaillian and director Ridley Scott have taken a lot of creative liberties with the film.
The acting by the two lead characters is fabulous; although I must say that Denzel Washington outshines Russell Crowe by a mile. The film, after all, is about Frank Lucas – his rise from a driver/bodyguard/collector for an earlier druglord to becoming a kingpin in New York’s seventies drug business. And Washington, in Lucas’ role, is superb. If anything, the film is worth watching because of Denzel Washington’s acting.
I was curious to note that, in the film, Lucas, in spite of his heinous crime of selling heroin, considered himself a progressive Black businessman. He contributed to his family’s and Harlem’s welfare. He talked about principles of business such as markets, product sourcing, product quality (purity), branding, pricing, value proposition and distribution. I was impressed.
Where American Gangster falls short is in portraying the relationship between the two rivals: Lucas and Roberts. Both characters are likeable – strong on ethics, outcasts in their fields – in spite of their negatives (Lucas as a druglord and gangster; Roberts as an honest cop and philanderer). They live separate lives, unknown to each other. Not until the very end of the film is there any rivalry, or relationship, between the two men.
Roberts considers Lucas a suspect much later in the film – first on a hunch, and then confirmed almost accidentally by one of Robert’s (mysterious) friends. Lucas doesn’t know Roberts is after him, doesn’t believe he’ll be caught (a touch of invincibility – his folly), and continues to live his life, expanding his business (Lucas had ensured that the heroin cannot be traced back to him).
Even when Lucas is caught, an understated event after a shootout, the face-off between the two men is civilised and gentlemanly – as if they are in admiration of each other. A touch of Steven Spielberg’s ‘Catch Me If You Can’ is what I felt, washed off all the intensities expected from the usual gangster film.
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