Zombie Lapdance

my bollywood kick has hit another couple of speedbumps.

this afternoon while patching the holes in my dickies, i watched the film "bhoot". apparently bhoot is hindi for ghost, as in, "that ghost is going to bhoot you in the head." this is a brave attempt to clone a j-horror film, right down to the spooky blue dead kid and the dead woman with stringy hair. the imdb says that "bhoot" is unusual for a bollywood film in that it has no musical soundtrack at all, and that it is a MERE two hours long. although it doesn’t have the precision of a pang brother’s film, it almost kinda is scary a couple of times. personally, i would have liked to see the dead people do some song and dance.

the second movie on the list "boom" is a brave attempt at cloning a quentin tarantino or guy ritchie film. three supermodels —

played by actual supermodels, get embroiled in the mumbai gangster scene because they did something catty to a gangster’s moll on the catwalk, causing a lot of diamonds (paapas in hindi) to go missing. there’s plenty of quirky moments, internationalism, and drug use. and supermodels strutting around. the dance numbers, although not up to bollywood standards were actually motivated in scene.

you can see in virtually every scene how the director tries to experiment with the cinematic form, wiggling as much slack as possible into the rigid bollywood system. apparently "boom" had to go through the indian censor board several times before it was allowed release.

where it collapses, is where the supermodels perform their brilliant mastermind double-cross. it is as contrived and unbelievable as the climax to "basic instinct 2".

consider the comments about this movie on the imdb. in general the feedback comes in one flavor: hateraid. "boom" suffers the hybrid’s lament. it is not bollywood enough for the indian audience and it is not up to the hollywood standard of pop film. if it was precious or hoity-toity or some sort of costume drama, then it could fly as a proper foreign movie. but it’s trying to be cool. "boom" wants to be hip and slick, but it comes off as square as a japanese hip-hop group.

let’s just say it’s pretty good for bollywood.

in the tradition of jailbird bollywood celebrities, kaizad gustad, the director of "boom", is facing charges in connection with getting his assistant run over by a train. so we might not be getting too much more edgy cinema from him.

like most democratic art forms, mural art taps into a particular live wire of the collective unconscious. in austin that "group id" if you will, surges from a particularly delirious and psychedelic wellspring.

take for instance the prevalent and re-occuring imagery of Mothra.

also known as "Mosura", this vastly over-scaled lepidoptera is generally considered to be the most mystical of all the giant monsters. among the kaiju, only Mothra has an active congregation of worshippers, and, most tellingly, appears to answer their prayers in a proactive and effective manner.

consider now, this mural painted on the side of the habitat for humanity warehouse along austin’s east fourth street.

Mothra appears in Her "silk moth" aspect, partially eclipsed by the earth. to the immediate right is madonna, in her "leather whore" aspect. madonna appears to be crooning to Mothra, worshipping the kaiju in a distinctly intimate matter. is Mothra hiding behind the earth coquettishly? is that a ghostly skyline around madonna’s knees? is madonna being elevated to the same over-scaled status as the kaiju?

now consider this mural, only a few blocks away, painted on the back of the taco factory:

here we see willie nelson standing in front of the rolisican flag. once more a musician is attempting to placate the fury of the giant moth, and here Mothra is less shy, leaning into willie nelson with what could be either amorous or murderous intent.

just off "the drag" in the "renaissance market" we find this mural:

here Mothra appears in Her "monarch" aspect, a butterfly type which signifies not only royalty, but for the tejano population of austin, the monarch butterflies’ epic and yearly journey between "el norte" and the homeland of mexico represent the migrations of the family and the return of the dead. notice that the foremost worshipper has so prostrated and defiled himself that he has removed his clothing and scored his skin with the letter "T", which represents the "terror" of judgement. he has also painted his face white in a practice similar to that seen in day of the dead festivals. the entire crowd of worshippers have arrayed their hands in the "sign of the antenna."

these, and many other examples, are only the first heralds of Her presence, as we all await the day when Mosura shall return and cleanse this land of its sin beneath Her fuzzy wings.

so i was messing around with sanjay, my photocopier, trying to even out some nearly micro-scopic bumps on the optical scanner rails, and i was watching a sanjay dutt movie at the same time.

the movie is called munna bhai MBBS and it’s generally considered to be the movie which propelled him to superstar status, and which incidentally got him off the hook for the whole terrorist bombing thing. it’s probably the best bollywood film i’ve seen yet. the comedic format seems to work a lot better with the singing and dancing thing than does grim futuristic thrillers.

sanjay plays a mobster in mumbai, but he’s a really nice gangster! when he beats people up, or kidnaps them for not paying their debts, it’s done in a funny, hearfelt kind of way. when his father comes to visit, he puts on an elaborate ruse to pretend that he’s actually a doctor. when this falls through, he decides to actually go to medical school. imagine "back to school" meets "patch adams" but actually funny. the gangster clashes with the dean, cheats up a storm on various exams, and teaches everyone the healing power of hugs. okay hugs-slash-thugs.

having seen this movie i can now understand the sentiment of the indian public in regard to sanjay dutt’s criminal record. it’s like "sure he’s been implicated in the mumbai bombings, but he’s so well-meaning!"

let’s hope robin williams doesn’t decide to go on a killing spree.

i also watched "the fog", not the movie you’re thinking about, this one’s a bollywood slasher film. and there doesn’t seem to be any actual fog in the movie. it’s just mentioned by the heroine in a song-number while she’s walking through the spooky house singing about "the shadowy figure in the fog".

the song and dance numbers don’t work so well with horror.

if you actually watch this, other than just watching the "songs" option on the DVD, fast forward to the end where the villian who’s been killing people with a rake while pretending to be a dead man takes a full ten minutes to explain his plot.

damn bollywood movies are long.

i should be posting a buncha content to here:

http://www.revolutionsf.com/bb/weblog.php?w=8

a little earlier i mentioned that i’d seen a couple of films recently starring indian actor sanjay dutt. a couple of women have told me, unsolicited and in front of their boyfriends, that sanjay dutt is pretty sexy.

so i thought the subject needed more investigation.

turns out he’s been implicated in the 1993 mumbai bombings which killed several hundred people. he already spent 18months in jail and he’s going to get sentencing within the next month or so.

american actors are such pussies.

oh, and the photocopier is now named sanjay.

so i jiggled things a bit, made certain the corona wire and the drum assembly were as close together as they could be, and what do you know, i had a perfectly functioning copier.

if you’re going to world fantasy con here in austin next weekend, you’ll probably get one of the complimentary space squid themed austin guides which i printed out last night. there’ll be at least one for all 1200 of you. all because of my wonderful, wonderful copier!

however folding the guides into a pocket-sized map was a little time-consuming. there was a point at around 3 last night when i timed myself and noticed that i could fold slightly more than three guides per minute. then i looked at the pile of 800 copies on my coffetable and realized that the extra daylight savings hour was going to be vital for finishing the project by morning.

so i folded and i folded and i watched a lot of TV.

i saw the BSG episodes from last week and the week before. i don’t know about this warping into a planetary atmosphere nonsense, although it looks jaw-droppingly cool.

i saw this indian movie: "love in nepal" about obnoxiously good-looking and young advertising executives on a photo shoot in nepal. because it’s an indian movie there are unmotivated dance numbers, most notably one about how great it is to smoke pot. there was also a lapdance-in-panties sequence which no-doubt came a hairs-breadth from the limits proscribed by the indian censors (the hero does pass out before anything as disgusting as lip contact occurs).

i saw lucio fulci’s "city of the living dead" aka "gates of hell". gotta love any movie where the zombies not only go after people’s brains, they can tear the brains out of the skulls one-handed. also noteworthy: the blizzard of maggots and the unmotivated vomiting of an individual’s entire suite of internal organs. there may have been a coherent plot i missed while i was folding, but i kinda doubt it.

i saw an indian revenge film called "zinda". no singing, no dancing (except in the extras) and it had extreme acts of violent crowbar dentistry and even KISSING!!! it’s about a man who is kept in a private prison for 14 years and then seeks revenge on the man who had put him there (as it turns out, for revenge). because it’s an indian movie the 129 minute length seems like 14 years. the action sequences reminded me that india doesn’t really have a native martial art, but the lead actor, sanjay dutt, works well with what he’s got. i’d seen him before in the equally long and serious "rudraksh". dutt looks and acts kinda like jean reno if jean reno was also your uncle. he has sleepy, hangdog eyes and an action hero’s grim countenance, but he never has that sadistic edge common with american action stars. even while taking a crowbar to a bad-guy’s overbite, he kinda looks like he would rather be quaffing a cold brewski somewhere.

gotta go. gotta get back to my photocopier publishing empire.

i know you shouldn’t look a gift copier in the mouth, but this copier jay gave me is just one pain after another.

first off it had a paper jam. easily enough fixed. then it developed streaking and toner-leaking problem. i think i took care of both of them — apparently it’s just a matter of taking out the entire photo-drum assembly, replacing the cleaning blade and mucking around with the magnetic toner-application roller.

only i don’t know if that’s the problem because now it’s apparently developed a problem with the corona wire (the device that statically charges the drum before it’s exposed to light) or more likely there’s a problem with the electrical block which the corona wire slips into, but either way the damn thing only prints blank copies.

i know you shouldn’t look gift copiers in the mouth, but if i could get this working, then i would be a tiny little publishing industry; just me and my copier.

but right now i hate it.

from a front porch just west of burnet and 43rd.