500 Days of Summer

500 Days of Summer - The title of the movie made me visualize it as a breezy love story set in some warm sunny beach on the West Coast. The opening scene by itself was a surprise as it showed a couple holding hands, smiling silently, with the lady wearing an engagement ring, sitting on a bench in a public park with an ambiance which was far from being anything we would call sunny! More like a shot from Woody Allen's earlier works. But in this case it was not New York, but LA. From there it began. And what a ride it was.

The story is narrated in a non-linear fashion, but less intrusive & easier to follow than a Nolan's movie. You easily get into the flow of narration in a couple of shots. It is so wonderfully intuitive. Now let’s get into the movie.

The speaker in the background says that this is yet another 'Boy meets a girl' movie but not a love story! You would be intrigued because how else these candy floss movies could otherwise be made. But the director adds a punch inside the movie which would strike a chord with every man in the world, one time or the other in his life...

The movie begins, as said before, with a couple holding hands effusing warm feelings. The very next scene throws you into the utter chaos which the lead of the movie, Tom has created. Tom is an average Greeting card writer who aspires to become an architect (which he had studied in the college) and is highly dissatisfied with his mundane job. Then comes Summer, who doesn’t literally blow away Tom’s life like a hurricane, but enters his world slowly. Tom feels a particular attraction towards with Summer, the first time he sees her. But Summer doesn’t. She has a peculiar way of looking at things, claiming that ‘true love’ is an adult version of Santa and is extremely commitment-phobic. Then begins a series of courtship between the lead characters, which captures every aspect of emotional turbulence that every pair in the world goes through.

The ups and downs that Tom goes through in the relationship and for a lesser extent what Summer goes through is shown in such a frantic pace that you literally laugh and feel sad at the same time. The script is so fast paced, that you don’t have time to feel the hangover of the previous scene. The lead characters are also well developed and you wouldn’t find them behaving in clichéd ways. Humour in this movie is so subtle that you actually laugh without understanding why you are laughing in the first place! The dialogues are crisp and insightful. Some words like ‘I felt something for him, which I never was sure in your case’ are just so plain yet powerful. One should watch the movie carefully to appreciate these jewels.

The background score and other songs in the movie perfectly blend with various moods portrayed. Marc Webb’s music video backgrounds show up clearly in this movie. The song Tom dances to when he’s happy is a treat to the eyes. But gives a ’seen already’ feeling.

The same scenes revisited in different moods show different meanings. And then again all this boils down to how our mind interprets things the way it wants to see it. The expectation / reality sequence is so original and the way it is shot is simply superb. It appears that one can never best the way Tom’s disappointment is shown in the movie.

In the climax, the movie really appears to fall into the usual cliché tic ending. But Webb pulls it back into reality and avoids the mistake so many others have made before. And in the end the movie ends in Ivan Goncharov’s ‘Same Old Story’ fashion, which is perfectly the way things turn out in the real world. Webb has artfully wefted in so many different feelings that one can possibly go through in a relationship in this compact 90 minute delight. All in all, 500 days of Summer is definitely a ‘not to be missed’ movie. 

P.S.: This post is taken from my other blog : http://vijaykpillai.wordpress.com/

Pirate Latitudes – The book that was never meant to be!

I was pleasantly surprised last winter with the news that one more book of my favourite writer, Michael Crichton was being released by Harper Collins after being found as a complete script in his hard disk. It was also said that the novel was written way back in the 90’s but not sent out for publishing. Also news confirming Spielberg’s interests in making a movie out of the book surfaced at that time. As many would know, Spielberg’s last movie dealing with history & sea-journey, Amistad, was a dud despite having some really good visuals. The in-your-face kind of Spielberg effect was obviously absent in the movie and it sunk under the might of Titanic at the Academy awards that year. Hence I was a little apprehensive at first as to how effectively would Steven would pull this one, especially if it involved moral dilemma and all those Amistadic stuff. But after reading the book, I am supremely confident that this would make a really good treatment of Pirately Adventures if Steven finds his way of narration in this movie.

Now, coming to the book itself, it is set in the 17^th Century New World. This was the time when Spain was commanding the Western Waters with its magnificent Armada. The story actually starts in the tiny British Colony of Jamaica with its bustling Port Royal. The colony is ruled by the corrupt Governor Sir James Almont who sides with private raiders to plunder Spanish wealth to fill up Britain’s coffers and in the process becoming rich himself. This looks the most reasonable way a lesser power can act in such a hostile territory, bullying a bigger rival. In many ways, the situation looks more like modern day Somalia. People who are considered pirates by the outside world are the ones who command the most respect in the society. Their economy is built and sustained by these so-called ‘privateers’. In this Symbiotic relationship, both of them flourish.

The book begins by chronicling the activities of the Governor in the little outpost of the British Empire, which is maintained for the sole reason that the King can make claims of a string footing in the New World, whereas in reality it is not even a toe-hold! The Governor during his errands comes to know about a Spanish Galleon, which he believes would hold immense treasure, taking shelter in the Spanish strong-hold of Matenceros. He then invites the famed Harvard-educated privateer Charles Hunt for a dinner to discuss over the spoils and shares for bankrolling a raid on Matenceros and capturing the Galleon. The Governor’s new secretary who is present in this meeting proposes strong objections to the Governor’s proposal and is unceremoniously silenced by Hunter. With the Governor’s backing, Hunter plans for the most ambitious privateering raid in a century. He then collects and forms a formidable team of marauders for the raid and leaves for the Galleon.

Hunter and his team in their journey to bring the treasure, meet their greatest enemy, climb a 400 feet rock face, destroy a harbour, out-manoeuvre a clever captain, brave an hurricane, outrun a tribe of cannibals, fight a mythical sea-monster all to find themselves caught in a web of cunning politics back home. The Governor is put under house-arrest and the Secretary and the police captain assume control of the colony. An aide of Hunter joins force with them and betrays him for a larger share of the treasure. Hunter is sentenced to death and sent away to a rotting jail. Hunter escapes with the help of Governor’s mistress and executes a series of Godfather’esque killing which finishes off all his enemies and betrayers. In the end, order is restored in the colony and things get back to the way they were. Hunter though, loses half his treasure as his betraying aide buries it somewhere and Hunter never succeeds deciphering the map.

The book, for whatever reason Crichton chose not to publish, looks more like a work in progress. The main characters are under-developed, though we can never perhaps say that Crichton has ever done full justice to a character in any of his novels. It looks more like someone had come up with a list of what are all the things that can happen to a pirate on a sea-journey and then developed a story around it connecting the dots. This approach which perhaps work out wonderfully well in sci-fi novels, for which Crichton is immensely popular, fails miserably in this book. But if it were written for the creating a rich cinematic experience, then this book would pass off as OK. Who knows, maybe that was the intention of the author. Crichton would have turned up in his grave for this grave mistake his heirs have done. May be the script could’ve been directly sold to Steven for making a movie instead of printing & publishing it and in the process killing all those trees and time of die-hard Crichton fans. One thing that you have to give away to Crichton is his ability to retain the attention of the reader, even for a bad book!

All in all, Pirate Latitudes is a lame novel but a wonderful material for a movie. Hope they don’t mess it up and give us something that looks more like a rehashed version of Pirates of the Carribean with only the faces of the characters morphed!  Crichton, I wish your name’s not remembered after this forgettable material! RIP!

P.S: This post is taken from my other blog : http://vijaykpillai.wordpress.com/

Hello World, Here I come…

Hello World!

So finally I’ve started blogging!… after years of courtship with various mediums… With so many great starts and not so great follow-ups…Hope I keep up this time around.

I’d always wanted to put out my thoughts on the web, not only for getting them heard but also show up on the Google….After all if you don’t appear in Google, you literally don’t exist!

Hmmm so what was it that kept me away from this wonderful medium for so long time. I started pretty early, the time when blogger was in the rage (before Google bought it), created a blog and wrote a post and waited for days for it to show up on Google Search! And it never showed up


Then wondered if I can start blogging under a pseudonym about stuff that really don’t matter to anyone…That was the time when I was enamoured by the cartoon series: The Mummy & The Secrets of the Medjai. So when I was looking out for a title for my new blog, I dint think twice to name it after the same series. Don’t even remember posting anything on it though… And finally blogger deleted both of em.

Played around with few other domains including Geocities, msn sites and all for a while…But none really stuck out. It was at that time that Google came up with the GooglePages. Jumped at the opportunity, created a site, put out content (copy paste from some good mails, actually) in multiple tabs and in a day or two had a complete website with around 7,8 pages including a few original content. I’d even posted a few books in the public domain for the benefit of visitors. Added stat-counter and set its initial count to somewhere around 10000 (common anything less than that would give away me as a newbie!). And there it was! Finally a page that will show my name on the search engines. Got it registered with Google webmaster thing and waited for it to get indexed. A week went by, then a month…My site never showed up in their engine for the first 3 months and the initial enthusiasm weaned off (Offline life was a little hectic then!). Then finally it did show up. Now the page is no more as I seem to have opted out of migration to the Google Sites by mistake

But one good thing about the Google pages was that it offered me a way to host media files on the web. So started using the site to write media-rich scraps on friends’ scrap books…That made me look a bit of a techno-wiz in the eyes of so many people And I thoroughly enjoyed it…Once people were made to understand what I really did, the magic & the admiration went off…Just as they say in The Prestige – People will clamour for your secrets. But once they know it, you are worth nothing to them. But dissemination of knowledge is also important right. And this stuff was not a ’secret’ in the Prestige’s sense and I don’t have to make living hiding things from people. So no harm done!

Ok I’m just veering off the topic. Lemme  get to my next blog. It was a Knowledge Management initiative for the employees of the company and was closed to the outside world. But when you have 60,000 potential readers, this ‘closed’ thing is no longer an hindrance for any. Even there, I was a pioneer…Among the first few 100 bloggers. Put in some good content. Got some points for that also. In those days of initial euphoria, serious contents were frowned upon. People after all, turn to blogs to relax from their stressed lives and they wanted perfect ‘masala’ posts with all those lame jokes scourged around the net & comic strips. Had some success following this strategy and I was happy getting comments (they were my friends though…But commentators nevertheless)…Ad when I started putting out some serious stuff, those comments dried up and my posts with them…Started a series aimed at simplifying Science topics but dint go after the first post cause of the wonderful response I got.

Then jabbed around blogger for a while, trying to get paid by the AdSense stuff. There I found that I had to literally plagiarize stuff to get the eyeballs. Decided against it and surrendered all my interests to a friend of mine, who continued it for a while and stopped after looking at the returns from the AdSense which never went above a few dollars.

And now I’m finally back at blogging. This time I’m in for a long term. Yes, back then when I was a student and a fresher, I was impatient at getting results. Was frustrated at times looking at why some sites captured so much attention while some got completely ignored. Then the truth dawned upon me that it is the content that rules. And when you are doing something with an end result in mind, you end up becoming frustrated and dis-illusioned when the end is not something that you wanted.

Now I’ve started blogging, not for getting those mentions in Google Searches, Not for scoring those measly points for getting a branded coffee mug, Not for all those dollars and pounds from the AdSense system. I’m blogging for the joy of writing, for the joy of putting out what I think, for the pure joy of capturing my thoughts for eternity. I plan to follow a disciplined approach this time. At least a blog a week while starting and increasing the frequency as the momentum builds up until blogging every alternate day becomes a habit!
Ok so this has been a really long post for a ‘Hello World’. But this no longer is my first Hello World. Hope I don’t have to write an Hello World in another blog at another time…And because of Ken & Dennis, we still have to put up with this Hello World thing, every time we start something new in the computer field!

And as Sir Francis Bacon said, writing maketh an exact man…Making the leap from a full man to an exact man…Hello World, Here I come…