It’s raining alphabets again

A friend had an interesting status message on her Gmail chat last night.

It's raining alphabets again

A friend had an interesting status message on her Gmail chat last night. It said "My bro is a hero." She told me a wonderful story when I asked her why.

The two were returning home from work, when the motorbike they were riding yesterday was suddenly caught in the floods on a main road. The water was knee-high, and the boy was forced to stop the bike. He jumped off, and wouldn't let his sister get down in the water. He pushed her all the way to safety while she sat on the pillion. The rain is said to evoke the most beautiful memories, but for those of us who have to make our way through the dangerously flooded roads of Bangalore, it is a nightmare.

But the story I heard yesterday seemed like a scene from a master filmmaker. "Shake your brother's hand on my behalf," I messaged her.

Last week, I saw the animation film Up, and a week before that, I happened to catch Kaminey.

Up is made by the Americans, and has all the cutesy elements that go into the making of a children's film, but it is at the same time a simple, mature story that talks of adventure, love, ambition, lossu00a0 and grief in a
straightforward, uncomplicated fashion. The best scene in the film is when the grumpy old man (grumpy because he has lost his adventure-loving wife), decides to use his balloon-making skills to take his house flying towards his dream destination in South America. It works as a sweet metaphor for the sprit of escape one can unleash in the most trying of circumstances. The old man is trying to escape aggressive real-estate developers who want to break his house down, and what better way to do it than to fly away! One more thing about Up. I liked it because of its music. It is pleasant, symphonic, and very warmly European. Kids generally dread going to the movies because they find the sound unbearably loud. The one I went with usually refuses to enter a cinema, and if he is forced to, stuffs his ears with cotton. He sat through Up happily.

But I can't say the same of Kaminey. Vishal Bhardwaj's Maqbool, based on Shakespeare's Macbeth, was a subtle masterpiece, but here, he attempts something on the lines of the Mumbai masala flick. All very fine, but the close-up and wildly swinging camera angles, supposedly inspired by the Hollywood director Tarantino, left me dizzy. Vishal is a very innovate music composer. Don't know why, in Kaminey, his score sounded so painful. Why did I like Up's soundtrack more than Kaminey's? Was it bad cinema sound or bad music? Or, to return to an old debate, was it the digital bombardment of keyboards and synths versus the warmth of natural instruments?