Would you buy a clunkier watch that can lose minutes every month, will stop if you forget to wind them for a day or two, or if it’s an automatic it’ll stop if you stop moving it and has a hard to read alarm, stopwatch, timer function which you will never use?
Or would you prefer a watch with the latest technology that runs good for years and needs just one small (and cheap) battery?
Tweet summary – Felt cheated when saw Atlas Shrugged on celluloid. Apart from poor production quality and this blogpost there is nothing more to write about.
Raise your hand if you desired a film based on your fav book. Ok, now that you have made a fool of yourself by raising your hand while staring at the screen, you may come back to what you were doing with it. But irrespective of whether you raised the hand, it’s hard to disagree with Netflix’s print ad on nyc metro “Books made good movies”. Or at least, that’s what I thought.
But a question before I get to the case on hand, why turn books into movies? Apart from the obvious lack of good scripts? An author wants the movie to move to the next level, reach a wider audience, and obviously get some money. A reader on the other hand wants to take part in the hype, to acknowledge/honor the author, to show others what an intriguing book they have missed, to see an interpretation on the silver screen or for that matter on the hdtv or larger than life imax.
But time and again since moving pictures started talking, book adoptions rarely did justice to either the author or readers (and in most cases did little good to the producers). The non-reader audience might like it (well they even like a mindless action movie in which cars turn into robots), but it is hard to please the ‘book fan base’ – Exhibit A. Godfather. And as for the author – they are rarely involved in script writing – Exhibit B – Girl with dragon tattoo. One plausible reason being that film makers do it for a very archaic reason – money. That explains why Tom Hanks would compress a thrilling Da Vinci Code in 2hrs. Or sometimes the director’s lack of imagination is stunted by their cerebral capacities.
Now coming to the case on hand – “Atlas Shrugged” – a book which failed to live up on the screen. Most idealists, capitalists, pragmatists (and other similar ‘ists) swear by Ayn Rand’s heavy-weight, small font HBO mini-series script. Ok, not swear, but at least appreciate. So the other day I got excited when Netflix threw this movie on my suggested list. With all its good intention, the only thing it offered was a bad adoption. Apart from other things, it lacks improvisation. Even an MBA knows that a story needs to be improvised according to the situation. And if you want to cater to the book readers – either give them spectacular visuals (read A Life of Pi) or add more drama (aka this) or an interesting take on climax (aka this). Rather, the makers has a dull drama in two parts. Disappointing. I had to watch cars turning into robots part-2 to get over it.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 8,200 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 14 years to get that many views.
Short read: Sindhu > Hindus > Indhus > Indos > Indus > India
In light of recent “India and Bharat” distinction, I sort of got confused. Don’t they mean the same thing? But given in the land where every name has a meaning, I wondered what does India mean (assuming we all know that Bharat comes Raja Bharat who used to rule a bigger chunk of current India)
The Curious Case of India
Me: So, where does the word India come from?
Google: Pretty simple – right from the river Indus.
Me: Ok smarty search, now where does the word “Indus” come from?
Google: “your search did not match any documents”
.. For the unindexed, Indus is a derivative of the group of rivers flowing through erstwhile west India (the irony always amuses me)
like Nolan, lets trace its roots
India Begins – A Story of Hindustan and Bharat
Now back in the days when Sanskrit was the de facto language, this big group of rivers flowing through erstwhile west India was known as “Sapt-Sindhu” – which means seven rivers in Sanskrit – Indus and its tributaries – Sutlej, Jhelum, Beas, Ravi, Chenab and the now extinct Saraswati.
The people/culture/civilization living around Sindhu came to be known as “Sindhu”. The Persian traders started pronouncing it “Hindus”. The land of “Hindus” hence came to be known as Hindustan. So the people living in India before mughals were knows as Hindus or Hindustani. Which inherently means that “hindu” is actually another name for the people leaving in India and has got nothing to do with religion. After all, none of the religious texts in India call the people as “hindus”. This reminds me of the famous lines by Muhammad Iqbal:
“mażhab nahīñ sikhātā āpas meñ bair rakhnāhindī haiñ ham, vatan hai hindostāñ hamārā”
It’s all Greek and Roman
The early European traders picked up “Hindus” from asian merchants, esp persians. The greeks simplified the name further by calling it “Indos”, and then some bright greek scholar thought of substituting the “o” with ‘u”… and thus the name Indus was born. The Romans picked up the name and land of “Indus” came to be known as “India”.
Guess then I am a Hindu from the Bharat of India
Are artificial sweeteners carcinogenic?
We can’t say for sure. After all, today’s solution might be tomorrow’s problem.
Exhibit A – “Leaded petrol” – Internal combustion cars took over their electric counterparts in early 20th century. The major fuel source was gasoline which burnt well in the engine, actually too well which led to engine knocking. Cars would break down on the road due to knocking, let alone the discomfort caused on a knocking car. One fine day, Mr. Thomas Midgley discovered that he could add lead to petrol and make the engines perform smoothly. And thus Ethyl Petrol was born in 1923. More than half a century later people realized that leaded petrol was, ahem, not so good for us. The pollution concerns outweighed the engine performance improvements.
Exhibit B – “CFC” – Once again, our beloved scientist went on to solve the world’s crisis for a new product called the refrigerator. The refrigerators used ammonia, chloromethane and sulfur-dioxide, all of which were toxic but commonly used refrigerants. In defense of Dr. M, he was trying to solve the problem by providing a compound with low boiling point, low toxicity, and non-reactive. He came up with CFC, or chloro-fl…well every kid knows what it stands for and why it was later banned.
Inventions going the wrong way is nothing new. But, what keeps a check on them is a system called ‘peer review’. It is slightly different from the kind of peer review we indulge in with our friends while narrowing down on a restaurant. Instead, think of a review of restaurants by the top chefs, health inspectors, food connoisseurs (read kids) and self proclaimed foodies (yes! HOMP qualifies). It is this kind of peer review, but slightly sophisticated and with many doctors (both kinds) on board, which gave weight to the fact that lead is harmful and CFC are melting the poles.
Coming back to the question – based on a preliminary unqualified analysis of Google search result’s first page, sweeteners have not yet been ‘peer reviewed’ to the full extent to conclude whether they are good or not. But like all unproven myths, various websites recommend to avoid artificially synthesized products.
If u do not understand without an explanation, you will not with one…
Taking inspiration from Shekhar, trying my hands on short story. Do read all of his short stories (which are far-far better what you read here)
http://adventuresofatraveller.blogspot.com/search/label/55wordstory
The Room
The fans were at their best, but not enough for the tense atmosphere with its pin drop silence. Sweaty palms at the table, none dared ask for another one before finishing what is on table. Suddenly, he shouted. All eyes turned to see the courageous. He signaled the lady doing rounds – “Extra sheet please Ma’am”
He’s back…. Sanjay Patel is back with a new book and some new illustrations to crave for… “Ganesha‘s Sweet Tooth” – aptly titled, the book is available here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1452103623
Continuing his earlier theme on Indian mythology, Sanjay’s new book talks about illustrates Ganesha beautifully…. check the book cover at the bottom of this page… and he is out promoting discussing the book at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. So if you around SFO, do make it there and hear him out loud:
event link: http://events.kqed.org/events/index.php?com=detail&eID=23955&year=2012&month=10
and if you missed… Sanjay Patel is an illustrator with Pixar and has 2 other books under his sleeves with illustrations on many Indian mythology figures (not all, obviously)… read more about him and his work here: The Art of Sanjay Patel
pic from amazon
Promote art – a DEMONart initiative
