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Movie Review : The Departed

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What are the chances a director will take an ensemble cast, an Americanized script of a Hong Kong classic, terrific background score and botch it up completely?

Nil. If you are Martin Scorcese directing a film titled “The Departed“.

After what must be years decades, Martin Scorcese finally returns to his roots, an area he is so familiar with and delivers probably a movie, a crime drama, a spy caper, but importantly his best since “The Goodfellas”. Yes, its been that long. Spending years together on “I-want-an-Oscar” movies like “The Gangs of New York” and “The Aviator” have taken Martin Scorcese nowhere, and with “The Departed”, it almost seems as if Scorcese has given up on the trophy, and concentrate on what makes a good movie. The irony of it all is The Departed could very well end up fetchig quite a few nominations this Oscar and may win a few. A superb screenplay, and brilliant performances from its actors are merely enough to carry this movie on its shoulders. Martin Scorcese might have just guided the way behind his lens – which is what a good director should do.

Meet Billy Costigan (Leonardo Di Caprio) and Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), both who grow up on the streets of Boston, both with a bitter childhood who enroll in the police academy for entirely different purposes. Meet Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), the gangster who controls the mean streets of Irish Boston, and a godfather to Colin Sullivan. While Billy tries hard to be a “real” cop with real identity, his background and his previous life only serve as a perfect getup for him to be an undercover cop, a cop without any identity or, a mole. Reluctantly enough, Billy accepts his job to infiltrate Frank Costello’s gang and serve as a mole to the cops. Frank Costello however, has the exact same plans for his godson – Colin Sullivan – a mole in the special detective units who works for him so that he could be one step above the law.

The fun begins however Frank and the Police discover that they both have mole amidst them. Oblivious to each other’s identity, both Billy and Colin’s job from there on is to find the mole. And in that, The Departed scores quite handsomely.

Almost Shakespearean in its approach, The Departed provides ample time and scope for characters to display gamut of emotions. It has it all – a love triangle, humor, overthetop scenic compositions et al. By the time the movie ends, one leaves with a feeling of having watched a Shakesperean tragedy played to perfection. A contrived love triangle doesnt add much to the story but brings about the vulnerabilities of both Billy and Colin beautifully. Leonardo in particular impresses as Billy, the reluctant mole searching for his identity. The cocky arrogant attire suits Matt Damon very well, and he plays his part to the hilt. Impressively the supporting cast consists of accomplished A-list actors like Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Mark Walhberg who only compliment an already perfect cast. But the movie, as always, in any movie that he is, belongs to Frank Costello played by Jack Nicholson.

Here’s an actor who so completely breathes his role that its almost possible that Jack Nicholson is Frank Costello in real life – the overthetop costumes, overtheedge personality and wily humor – all of these traits suit Jack Nicholson perfectly and he carries it off brilliantly. Any other actors might have gone overboard in their roles, but at the expert hands of Martin Scorcese, nothing of that sort happens, and we are treated some brilliant performances from its star cast.

Since this is a gangster film, and a R-rated one at that, expletives free flow into the movie; It would be impossible to hear a 3 line conversation without an expletive exploding – but it only brings about the old-good feel of Goodfellas. The humor is crude, racist, vulgar and dry – but works splendidly. The Departed scores in another department : Finally a movie where cops and gangsters shoot each other where they should and get instant gratification.

To say the screenplay is almost too good for itself is an understatement; because by the time you leave your seats, even glaring loopholes in the plot and Martin Scorceses irrelevance to a very important part of the movie seems almost meaningless to ponder upon. You dont care about it anymore. The Departed draws you in the story of the main “characters” not the “story” around the characters. And there in lies The Departed biggest strength.

Bottomline: Easily one the best movies to have released this year, and certainly a welcome relief for fans of Martin Scorcese. If you like Goodfellas, I bet you’ll like The Departed.

The Letter

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It was the cold february evening of 2005 when I had just scampered from the parking lot to the entrance of my building. It was a very cold evening, and even with multiple layers of clothes and gloves on my hands, I couldnt wait to get into the building. Our building has two glass doors, one of them which opens automatically leading you to a enclosure, and another door through the enclosure to which an access key is required. As I fumbled to get the keys out of my pockets, since my hands were gloved, the mand behind conceirge desk noticed me and opened the door himself; this was usual – the conceirge desk has full view of people in the enclosure and will many a times open the access door themselves. This usually leads to a “thank you” and then “how’re you doing?” and “its cold/hot/sunny/rainy” discussion with some pleasantries.

Right behind the conceirge desk also lie mail boxes for each appartment – they are different from the normal mailboxes in the sense that these boxes are used only for official purposes and handling of notices from management staff. On any other cold night, if I had opened the door myself I wouldnt have stopped to say hi-hellos, but since the man behind had done the deed, I had to make an obligatory nice talk to him. As I thanked and walked towards him to chat with him, I noticed that all the boxes had a yellow envelope stuck in. Must be another useless notice of fire alarm testing or water pump repairs, I thought while offering my pleasantries to the man.

After indulging myself in yet another small nice talk, the man handed over the yellow envelope meant for my appartment to me – the first look at it, and something about it stuck as odd – normally, building notices wouldnt come to us in such a polite way, but rather on a whilte plain paper with bold fonts – this was a proper evenlope, and there was certainly a letter inside. Must be another of those please-donate-to-building letters I amused myself (ever notice how all charity letters are always politely wrapped in a nice envelope whilst notices are always on a plain paper shouting at you on the face?), and decided to take a look at it once I entered my appartment.

Tearing open the letter in my appartment, I was in for a surprise. This was not a building notice, nor was it a charity letter. It was a “Thank You” letter, addressed personally to me. By the building manager – Elena.

Elena had written that Thank You letter, neatly typed on a nice cream colored paper. As I read on however, it was clear that it was more of a “Goodbye” letter than a Thank You letter. I must admit that she was an excellent writer. Elena was leaving her position as a building manager and would now join college to pursue her degree.

I was surprised – Elena looked old enough to be mother of three; and it intrigued me that why would she leave a good job and join a college again. I kept reading.

Elena talked about the wonderful time she had had in the building and the wonderful people she had met. She briefly mentioned about her co-workers and the work she did. And then she also delved on why at this stage of her life, she had made a decision to pursue a degree in college. Elena always dreamed of pursuing a college degree, but as bad luck would have it, she couldnt finish her college. She had to work her way up to where she was, and it had taken her many long years of her life to do it. But now, it was time for her to stop, go back, and achieve what she had really set out to do when she was younger. It had kept bothering her many a times about not being able to finish her degree and not being able to explore or use her education to something else.

Hence she had made the decision that she would leave the job and go back to college to pursue her degree, finish it and then take her life from there. She wished all of us good luck, thanked us for supporting her, and looked for our wishes in her times ahead when she would go back to college – to begin again. To start a new life, again.

She ended and signed off the letter, with a beautiful line:

“Its never too late to be what you want to be.”

Months ahead, I have lost the letter, but I have not forgotten the content or the message at the end of it. The last line had made me moist even that day – it was the inspiration I had been looking for in my worst times during my weight-loss journey. I had barely begun running, and I was being down with injuries, tiredness and the general sense of failure that I would not be able to reach my goal. And yet, this beautiful piece of line helped me during those times when I felt it was not worth it, or that it was not humanely possible for me to lose weight or when I had to take injury timeouts. I always looked back at that last line and then thought about how many times in my life had I wished i was thin and athletic instead of fat and obese, and yet how many times had I demotivated myself from doing anything about it. Whilst it seemed silly that when half the world around me supported me during those times, it was that line that inspired me the most.

When I think about it now, I have begun to feel that unless inspiration comes from within yourself, it does not matter how much the world supports you or not. Sometimes, somethings as irrelevant as a goodbye letter has the power to motivate you – you just have to look. Once I found the inspiration within myself, it didnt matter what happened around me anymore.

That line helps me to this day, and will forever – there are a thousand things that I didnt do that I wished I had done earlier. A thousand dreams that I wished I lived through earlier. A million things I could have been.

The good part about it though: it’s never going to be too late to be what I want to be.

Truer words were not spoken!

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(via Desipundit)

Some journalist (Shoban Saxena) from TOI has taken the desi bloggers to task in his article. As expected the desi blogosphere which is already brimming with more egoistic elites than it can handle, have not take his comments lightly. Even more expectedly, the usual suspects (Amit, Shivam and co) have responded in kind (trust me they are boring and nothing worth linking). I am expecting more famous “bloggers” to make their case felt.

Head over to Desipundit – they are constantly updating their feeds from reactions from expert panelists who must speak for us, and catch up on all the debate – (If you need to that is :P)

Though, the point of this post is not that. While I AGREE with most of what Shoban Saxena has to say, the ending comment was simply piece-de-cake (eh?).

I whole heartedly subscribe to this priceless comment:

“It’s easy to dismiss journalism as literature in a hurry, but blogging is just organised gossip.”

Jassi Comes to USA

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Ugly Ugly Betty Jassi

…in form of Ugly Betty. Catch it on Thursdays at 8.00 pm on ABC.

A 2 minute search revealed, both Betty and Jassi are umm remake of “Yo Soy Betty La Fea”

And for a few brief moments I almost felt Betty was inspired by Jassi!

And I must mention, the original Betty is the ugliest of them all! There. (The one featured in this post).

Damn!

Herge, the Genius. Part 2

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That I am a huge fan of Herge and Tintin is no big secret, but I came across something very recently (as recently as 2 days ago), while I was reading Tintin and Picaros, for the n-th time probably.

Note the image below – General Tapioca along with Tintin are now going to Tapiocapolis to take over the evil government dressed as circus clows – The air is full of festivities and its carnival atmosphere. Given Herge’s genius in carving minute details in such large canvas, to look for something unusual.

And unusual did I find 🙂 – If you notice carefully, somewhere in this carnival, you will see:

Asterix.

Yes. Asterix – I had least expected to find Asterix in a Tintin comic – given that they both existed around the same time, and both of them were equally famous in their own realm, I had never thought about the possibility of Tintin and Asterix being together. But then I guess, its only fair that this was bound to happen, and be very cleverly hidden by Herge’s artists.

Funnily enough, a little google search revealed that this favor was returned by Albert Uderzo in Asterix in Belgium (pretty appropriate when one would think about it!)

And who features from Tintin – land? No one else, but Thomson and Thomson – with a P.

(Original image from here)

Discover: Kent

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Although relatively unknown outside of Sweden or perhaps Europe, Kent since its early inception as an indie-rock band has been a hugely successful and popular band, especially in Sweden. I discovered Kent last year through Pandora, when the song “Sundance Kid” came up as one of the songs in my Coldplay radio station.

The first time I heard Sundance Kid, I was floored. It was just I had been waiting to hear on my play-list. I am a firm believer that music knows no language – hence the fact it was a Swedish song or a Swedish band didn’t matter. I was hooked to the song, the tune, the guitars, and the electric techno-rock. Mentally I had made up my mind to dig up more on Kent later.

Over the year and much listening, I have to say this: Kent is to Sweden as U2 is to Ireland or Coldplay to England. The fact that I am clubbing them with U2 and Coldplay doesn’t mean they are as good as both of them (nor is Coldplay as good as U2), but they come pretty close.

Both Coldplay and U2 however have one big advantage over Kent in that their language of choice has been English, a huge factor when coming to universal acceptance. Kent tried twice to re-record their albums in English for English audience; unfortunately the effort showed that they are clearly not comfortable in the English language. It is not much of a surprise then that the only reviews and 5-star ratings you read on Amazon for their albums stem out of English speaking population who heard of Kent either through their Swedish friends or in most cases listened to them in Sweden itself.

Mentioning about the band’s history and acting a smart ass is pretty much useless, as much of band’s progress, history, singles, #1s have all been covered in great detail on Wikipedia , and if you did be interested, you should definitely check it out about the band’s progress. What I do want to say here is why I like their music and why it has appealed to me more than any of recent European rock bands.

The first reason I like them, is well, they are a European rock band. That European rock rocks is a given; Almost all American rock bands sound like one another in recent times (Save for Red Hot Chilli Peppers), and frankly it’s a puzzle to figure out if a certain song was sung by Audioslave, Nickleback, Snow Patrol or Creed – they sound just the same! Contrast this to Europe – U2, Coldplay, Radiohead, Oasis – need I even say anything about any of them? And may I add another to that list – Kent.

The second reason I loved Kent is their style of music is follows a very techno-rock style, which I have come to be addicted to. Heavy beats with rock-ass guitars form a base for most (make that almost all) songs – clearly Kent knows their strength, and plays according to them. One can argue that they may not bring the variety to table as other European bands, but I am not complaining – because what they do, they do exceedingly well.

Another reason I highly recommend Kent is the lead vocals by Joakim Berg; I was highly impressed that their songs didn’t really need him to use false-highs to sing in high pitch (something which Chris Martin, does, and does very well). His English renditions don’t sound as appealing as Swedish (though I don’t understand a word), but one cant complain about his vocals in his native language. Like Bono, Berg would be another candidate I could listen to on and on.

Most of their music would be seem like a toned down version of Rammtien, but that is what sets apart Kent. While still using similar style, Kent could as easily be inspired by Coldplay (to some extent – though both bands came out together around the same time – so its not possible to say who inspired whom), U2 and most notably Radiohead. Interstingly, although its rock music at its core, most of Kent’s music can as easily be disguised as perfect dance tracks.

At this point you may wonder that I have gone on and on about Kent, without mentioning an album or single yet.

Kent has consistently dished out one good album after another, and I find it actually difficult to pinpoint any one album as a brilliant – they are all up with one another, but my personal favorite has to be Vapen & Ammunition. On the heels would be what many consider their back to back masterpieces – Isola and Hagnesta Hill (both of which were released in English versions which went unnoticed). They released their 5th album last year titled Du & Jag Doden, which again continues in the same vein, and contains a lot many hits. They also released a b-sides album, which frankly speaking contains so many good songs that many fans wonder if it actually deserved to be a b-side album.

While almost all their songs are good to great to brilliant, and I have hardly come across any band song by them, here’s a quick list of my favorite songs from Kent, which has dominated my music player for a while now.

Song (Album)

FF (Vapen & Ammunition)
Socker (Vapen & Ammunition)
Karleken Vant Ar (Vapen & Ammunition)
Dom Andra ( Vapen & Ammunition)
Parlor (Vapen & Ammunition)
Sundance Kid (Vapen & Ammunition)
Jag Vill Inte Vara Rddd (Kent)
Heavenly Junkies (Hagnesta Hill)
Music Non Stop (Hagnesta Hill)
The King is dead (Hagnesta Hill)
Mannen I Den Vita Hatten (Du & Jag Doden)
Romeo Atervander Ensam (Du & Jag Doden)
Max 500 (Du & Jag Doden)
Palace & Main (Du & Jag Doden)
Du Var Min Arme (Du & Jag Doden)
Den Doda Vinkeln (Du & Jag Doden)
400 Slag (Du & Jag Doden)

Do give Kent a try. You won’t be disappointed!

Vande Mataram

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It was the year 1995, the last year we would be in “school”, the 12th standard. Thanks to schooling system in Gujarat, unlike many other states, 11th and 12th were not pre-university colleges, but still schools, which meant we were not really college material, yet, but school kids, who needed to be taught and guided. I studied in a catholic school those years, which had a healthy mix of Christian, Hindu and Muslim students. The school also housed in what must be one of the most peaceful places around the campus – the church.

It was patriotic singing competition time during that year, near August 15th. After endless debates about which song to be sung, ultimately my class, class XII A decided we would do a rendition of Vande Mataram from an old Hindi film, and add a bit of our vocals. We practiced day in and out – several fellows provided the background with the tabla, the keyboard and the guitars, while one girl who had a good voice would hold high pitch that Lata Mangeshar does in the original. After the trials before the event with other competitors, it was pretty evident that we would be amongst the top contenders.

On 15th of August, when we sang the song in the patriotic day celebrations, the school and the judges were enthralled. As expected, we won that competition, making it a memorable 15th of August for us.

2006.

Nearly 11 years later when I learnt about the events surrounding the controversy of singing Vande Mataram, I was deported back to those days of my school. In that bunch of school kids who sang Vande Mataram that day were Muslim kids, Hindu kids, and Christian kids. The lead vocalist was a Christian without whom we would have not clinched it. Hindu kids rubbed shoulders with Muslim kids singing “sujalam suphalam malayaja sheetalam”, in chorus, while our background musicians gave great fillers with their instruments. It was a team effort, truly, by the “class” of 12th standard students. Who could have cared if the song addressed a man, a woman, a god or someone else – what mattered back then was we wanted the prize.

And we got the prize because we worked as one, towards a common goal, without letting our backgrounds and places we come from bother us.

Sadly, where is that spirit in my country today?

Why is Vande Mataram a debate of such proportion? It’s a sad issue to see that the fanatic Mullahs, who don’t really represent anybody but themselves have successfully created a furor about how the song addresses a god other than Allah, and hence it is sacrilegious to sing the song. An unnecessary controversy created both by the political parties and religious heads serving no purpose, because the fundamental logic behind each party’s logic is flawed.

When you put religion before state, anybody’s argument is a good as another – either for or against. Political parties can use Muslim religion’s hesitation to sing as a sign of disloyalty to the nation, while the Mullahs can use the same excuse as being “alienated” and “threatened” in the country.

Frankly, I am pretty sure that to an ordinary Muslim on the road, it would have hardly made any difference singing Vande Mataram tomorrow. But the fact the mullahs chose to highlight the issue to such an extent means that every single citizen tomorrow will first think – “Am I Hindu or Muslim?” “I am Muslim, so I must not sing” “He’s Indian, but he didn’t sing the song because he’s Muslim – what a loser” and such.

So on a day, when Vande Mataram needs to be remembered because it was the cry of a generation in our independence struggle, thanks to our local fanatics, we will successfully achieve exactly the opposite.

In a lighter vein, I believe Hindu leaders and Muslim leaders MUST come to a consensus on these important issues:

1. The song “Allah tero naam, Ishwar tero naam, sabko sanmati de bhagwan” must be immediately banned from Muslim religion as with Allah, Ishwar is also addressed in the song and that is absolutely insane. Any Muslim singer on Indian Idol or Sa Re Ga Ma or Fame Gurukul must be strictly forbidden to sing this song. If not obeyed, then the singer shall face fatwa.

2. Likewise, if Hindu singers want to sing the above song, they must put Ishwar before Allah, as Ishwar is addressed second and not first. Hell, Allah should be replaced by Vishnu or Brahma, and song can be sung then.

3. A. R. Rehman must banned from making any more patriotic albums, and his song “Vande Mataram” banned forever. All those Muslims who bought that album must now destroy that CD immediately and send hate mail to A. R. Rehman, and strictly advise him from composing it again.

4. Hindus must reject all filmy songs which address Allah or Ali or has Muslim references. “Ya Ali” must immediately change to “Hey Bhagwan”. Likewise, “Maar daala…. Allah… Maar Dalaa” must immediately change to “Maar daala…Shiva… Maar Daala”.

5. All Muslim school kids must immediately tear out the page from their school diary which has “Vande Mataram” listed as national song. Most school diaries do – and this is sacrilegious. Muslim parents must take special notes to see if their children’s school diaries contain references to “Vande Mataram”. Additionally if the school diaries have references to Saraswati or Jesus Christ, they must be promptly tore off too.

6. Hindus must reject any movies that have any actors of Muslim religion – that includes SRK, Salman Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Aamir Khan and the rest. In future, Hindus should only watch movies that have Hindus like Akshay Kumar, Tusshar Kappoor, or Esha Deol. Likewise, Muslims should not venture to see any movies which don’t feature their religion actors. They shouldn’t complain as they will walk away with 80% of Bollywood anyways.

And last but not the least:

7. From tomorrow Muslim bloggers should stop reading any material by Hindu bloggers…and vice versa!