[Pic: imdb.com]

Manoj Night Shyamalan‘s Village isn’t still out in Chennai. But the promos have already started. Last week, Star Movies featured two nights of Night’s movies. The first one was his not-so-hit movie, Unbreakable. Unbreakable is unmistakably one of unnoticed Shyamalan’s movie that had an amazing surprise twist. Even Signs didn’t have a surprise twist on par with Unbreakable. Forget Sixth Sense, it’s a movie par excellence. Unbreakable is also one of my favorite movies, all time.

Most of us believed in comic heroes, at least during our childhood. And so a kid also believes in comic heroes. What if his father itself is a real life comic hero? What if the comic hero himself takes time/effort to believe that he is one? What if life leads a man to a secret labyrinth after an accident? So goes the premise of Unbreakable. Being a comic addict, I just loved the idea of the movie made on a comic hero.

Bruce Willis as David Dunn amused me with his startling performance. We have seen Willis perform as an action hero but here he is an action hero without knowing he is. And so his subdued performance lightens up his capabilities as an actor. Samuel Jackson as Elijah Price, who is a physically frail comic book fanatic, creates ripples in us. The last time I enjoyed this duo was in the third serving of Die Hard called Die Hard: With a Vengeance. Remember Jeremy Irons saying ‘Simon Says’ in that mesmerizing voice.

Though many were disappointed by Shyamalan for Unbreakable after a movie like Sixth Sense, he proves his story telling ability once again. With two people who are connected to each other by their extremities, Shyamalan weaves a web of beliefs, comic books, super heroes and so so.

Samuel Jackson’s characterization as MR. Glass inspired me a lot. A true believer in himself, an optimist, a man despite his physical illness gets out finding a man who is directly opposite to him physically. No one, No one except Samuel Jackson would have done this role such perfectly. Let me know if you didn’t love that character when he shouts in agony, They call me MR. Glass. Riveting performance. And as he extends his hands to Bruce Willis in the final scenes, I never expected IT to happen.

I watched the movie a couple of years back in the DVD, I couldn’t believe the surprise twist in the ending and re-played the final scenes again. It’s easy to create a mystery from the beginning of the movie and keep it alive but what’s important is to unleash it by fulfilling the expectation bestowed on the mystery. Shyamalan did it convincingly.

I hope his latest offering The Village, keeps up to the same expectation that we have on this Indian storyteller.

Writer Sujatha‘s blog(thanks to desikan for that trivia), Katrathum Petrathum, in Ananda Vikatan is up for it’s third serving, two weeks back.

For those who have read Sujatha‘s previous two series of Katrathum Petrathum, would know what to expect. So expectedly in the current issue, he blogs about the concept of blogging and compares it to the handwritten magazines, which was a concept in yester years. He say it is for that fifteen minute fame, bloggers all over, write and wait.

While talking about writing for the web, he says it is the frozen permanency that makes web an amazing medium for writing. So whatever written now, can also be searched and read by any single man even after 50 years and it’s that longevity of writing that makes the web a viable medium for writing to prosper.

That’s from the horse’s mouth. Read more of Katrathum Petrathum.

On another note, Google’s Gmail is giving out it’s next set of invites. This time it’s just 4 invites for a set unlike the 6 invites last time. I have a couple of them and also a couple of reservations done for them too. But if you need one, leave a note and I will give it as I get it.

Guest Blog #32 – Anand C

The piece, “What should you do if you are #2?” which I got to from Marketing Playbook, got me thinking…

As Laura Ries says in this post, Avis is one of the most memorable #2 campaigns (some other examples are also listed), focussing on why they are different from Hertz. This ad, created by Bill Bernbach is indicative of the theme of the campaign that converts disadvantages to advantages:

Of course, positioning runs deep in Laura’s blood. Her father, Al Ries (literally) wrote the book on “Positioning”, in addition to several follow up (and not as interesting) books.

Her post has a lot of lessons for the harris jeyarajes, the bharardwajes, vidyasagars and Raja family’s second generation (and the other umpteen upcoming tune-makers). Instead of trying to be AR Rahman clones (the undisputable #1) that seems to be the way to go, it makes a lot of sense to differentiate from the #1 as much as possible – like focus more on melody and less on percussion, put out pieces inspired by village and folk music, more lyrics-inspired music, more situational tunes, etc.

In a way, this is a painfully long restatement of Guru’s simple plea earlier… there is no strong #2, and there seems to be scope for an Avis.

Guest Blog #31 – Anand C

I’ve been getting into several conversations about why I blog… in an attempt to try and answer that question, here’s a compilation of the things I’ve been intrigued by, as represented by past blogs:

Co-Blogs with LazyGeek: (World Themes for Indian Cinema)

1. The Man Who Saw Infinity – on Math Genius Srinivasa Ramanujan
2. ‘EYE’ THINK, THEREFORE ‘EYE’ AM – on Dr.V (Arvind Eye Hospital)
3. The Man in the Mirror – first attempt at verse.
4. Art for Art’s Sake – on dance and the arts.
5. LAUGHTER, THE BEST MEDICNE (Nightly Dose) – on NBC’s Jay Leno
6. Coming Soon…
7. ???
8. ???

The Lonewolf blogs:

1. Vairamuthu’s magAKK! – what kicked it all off!
2. Satrangi…Only You… now Fanah! – on ARR’s magic!
3. Social Influence in Media – Art or Science? – Influence is one of my favorite non-fiction books.
4. Funda on Fanah – Ripples thought this was interesting!
5. Footprints… – Bengali poetry in Hey,Ram translated into English.
6. Thillana’s Mann Vaasam – blogging about a concert.
7. Happy Birthday, Mr.Feynman! – learned he is Kingsley’s idol.
8. Reflections on Mani Ratnam’s Aayitha Ezhuthu
9. What makes NEWS? – rant!
10. Mani Ratnam and the “relative grading” syndrome!
11. On Coincidence… – 5 movies that impress upon the theme.
12. Week in Review – Once upon a time… – remembering a old teacher.
13. Mr. India, redux?
14. Goodbye, blue skies? – on space travel
15. The road to Nirvana… – wondering why Kurt Cobain died young!
16. Aayitha Ezhuthu titles – an easter egg? – thanks, Pradeep!
17. Fahrenheit 9/11, Control Room and the rise of a new genre? – Mitochondria didn’t think so!
18. An ode to 90 school children… – Kumbakonam fire tragedy.
19. Joy of getting something unexpected… – On hearing Matt Damon, watching Catch-22.
20. Glass-bangles Vinayaka (OR) Beauty is skin deep? – on R Parthiban
21. A tale of two Flip-flops
22. HmmM… Night?
23. David VS Goliath and the spirit of August 15th – on independent shops VS 800 pound corporations.
24. You may say I’m a dreamer! – titled after John Lennon’s lyrics from ‘Imagine’.

Looking at the topics above, I think I blog for the experiences it brings… for the interesting new people it introduces me to…for the freedom to think about the things I like.

Thoughts?

Guest Blog #30 – Anand C

We’ve all heard the “graduation speech” bit in most schools about the need for the young to dream. But it’s interesting to see Ms. Marilee Jones, the Dean of Admissions at MIT, integrate “day-dreaming” more of a criteria in the application process. More importantly, kudos to her for coming out and telling the public about it.

This response from her captures the essence of the problem with conventional admission systems:

Baby boomers have such high expectations for themselves and for their kids. The parents think kids have to have music lessons. They’re expected to play two or three sports. They’re expected to belong to certain clubs. They’re expected to do community service. Each one of those activities is headed up by an adult, who expects a lot from those kids.

About three years ago, I asked a group of students: “What do you daydream about?” And one kid said to me: “We don’t daydream. There’s no reward for it, so we don’t do it.” Boy, that hit me right between the eyes.

We tend to make our lives appear planned, smooth and thought-through on any college application, because “sat next to the window and dreamed about doing good for my hometown” or “read every spy novel in my library for no good reason” does not get any points or consideration in an admission process – until now. By giving kids the ability to be flexible and by giving the admissions process the flexibility to take in these flexible kids, MIT is sending out the impression that it’s OK to not be perfect and still succeed.

This new system (50 out of 1,665 would not have made the cut otherwise), is definitely a first step in the right direction.

Maybe we will discover the Ramanujans when they are young if our school systems thought about a similiar system of admission…