Where did the 12 Monkeys come from?

I was recently made aware that Terry Guillam's 12 Monkeys is derived from an older work. Of course, the theme of time travel from a post apocalyptic world into the past is not new.. it has been explored in the literature rather extensively. But 12 Monkeys was a rather nice piece of work. Bruce Willis pulls off one of those confused roles which he seems to fit so well in, and Madeline Stowe is quite delectable as the psychotherapist trying to help him. But the cake goes to Brad Pitt, around whom the entire film revolves.. aarrr.. go see it yourself.

So.... 12 Monkeys was inspired by, and gathers a certain part of its compositional aesthetic from an older film, called La Jetée, a 1962 B/W film which was composed almost entirely out of still shots! Some of those shots were undoubtedly painstakingly staged, some others, I am not so sure. But the film is something worth watching. Reminds me of another experiment in cinema which I have spoken about earlier here.

Which camera

Sometime this year, I will be flipping a lot of cash (presumably enough to buy a couple of kidneys on the black market) over for a camera and some associated paraphernalia. I have a few choices. But before that, let me talk about what the dream-wishlist.

1. The Leica M9. Just released. An astonishing 18 MPixels in a full frame 24X36 mm sensor. The legendary Leica M series construction. And of course, the ability to use any number of prime lenses from the Leica Summilux/Summicron/Elmarit series. All the way to the ultrabright 0.95 Noctilux 50 mm lens which goes for a cool 10 thou... This belongs to a type of camera called a rangefinder. The principle of operation is very different from an SLR. No swinging mirrors or anything like that. This leads to a much quieter machine which is discreet. Something that a master of street photography like Cartier Bresson apparently loved. Here is some of his work. One of his most famous photos, the man jumping over a puddle was taken with an M3. But the point remains that Leica's are quite insanely expensive. Not for me.
   

.. to be continued

Office suites

I feel the need to express my disappointment at MS Office. The version on the lab iMac is the Office for Macs 2008. The Powerpoint package is somewhat unstable and crashes easily. This has happened to me before, but I was usually running multiple things and Office is something of a resource hog. But this iMac was running almost nothing else, just a Safari window. Strange? Yes.

But that can be dealt with. Coming from the Linux world of OpenOffice, which is nowhere near as snazzy as Office (but gets the work done), I am used to hitting Ctrl-S or Cmd-S every ten seconds. (Back in the day, OO used to crash ALL the effin time). HOWEVER, and this is a huge lifesaver, OO has a file recovery system which kicks in when you restart the suite, and should recover your files from the last autosave. Does MSO not have it? Am I missing something here?

Movies lately

So, I ended up seeing "My Name is Khan" with a couple of labmates a week ago. Our man Kaushik told me that this movie "sucks arse". Not true. It is not horrid, just ambitous, but does not really make it. It was a treat to see Kajol again after a while... she has aged rather well, methinks. Shahrukh Khan is stuck doing his "Kikikikikiki Kiran" act again. I mean, this bloke finished optimizing his acting skills in the mid 90's with Darr and has been putting the same shite out for the public ever since. (sorry Rachna). And for some unknown reason, the Indian movie going audience laps it up and comes back for more. Also, Karan Johar believes in force feeding emotions down your gagging throat, so there is also more of that. But for all its tackiness, this fillum does challenge several important questions today... such as the perception of Muslims in the West, and tries to do a good job of it. But there was too much of Forrest Gump meets the 40 Year Old Virgin there for my liking.

3 Idiots was quite nice. Aamir Khan doing his usual awesome act. This guy is so versatile that all our desi actors should take lessons from him. Mahadevan and Sharman somethingortheother bloke were pretty cool too. But the cake goes to Bomman Irani for another absolutely wunnerful role as the college principal. And the Chamatkar speech is something to enjoi.