Train of Thought

I don’t think there will ever be a Dream Theater album that I will ever like more. This dark album features some of the most (personally) interesting and sometimes disturbing lyrics, fast-constant-rhythm and great work by Mike Portnoy. Having begun with listening to Dream Theater’s slower music (Hollow Years, Take Away My Pain… Peruvian), this was my immediate and permanent favourite-genre switch.

Songs from the past that I would place in the album would’ve been Strange Déjà vu, Degrees III & IV (Score versions) and Dying Soul.

If the pop of the 50s-80s is considered to be ‘easy-listening’ music, then this is definitely the counterpart. Like more instrumental Jazz, Dream Theater can be considered as acquired taste because the flow of music from each instrument is so complex and intricately interwoven that it takes a certain amount of internalising for a person to follow the patterns and appreciate their ‘concealed’ melodies.

The reason I like Dream Theater’s music is the same on which I base a lot of my liking of movies: it’s a finished product. None of their music is based just on the feeling at the moment or a simple tune. Lyrics almost always revolve around a story; the accuracy of the instrumentation betrays the varying depth of meaning, passion or pain, in the intricacy of the layering, amplitude and note.

Goa

As I lay floating in the waves under the overcast

purple Uttorda sunset, I traced the millions of rays

of light- flashing as they pierced through the clouds,

like a hail of arrows shooting down to the horizon

and blazing on the rippling water.

MY Sassy Girl

This is one Korean movie that will stay, if not vividly, in my memory for a long time; and the third from a country that earns merit in my books, purely for being refreshingly original.

This is a movie about a very simple, docile boy (Kyun-woo) who ‘meets’ this girl while riding the subway to his aunt’s house. After a series of quirky incidents, they become friends… of a sort. She’s the very dominating type (whose standard retort to a ‘no’ is ‘wanna die?!’) which leads to Kyun-woo having to do some ridiculous things for her.

I was critical of a few parts of the movie, notably the stories that the girl wrote (spoofs of terminator, matrix etc) and the scene with the escaped soldier at the theme park… that was just the writer going buck wild.

The movie does not have much plot-progression, but delves more into the development of the relationship between these two. This is an exceedingly original and humourous love story with very finely portrayed characters. I found the movie to be very involving but unlikely to appeal to a wide audience.

The girl (played by the very pretty Gianna Jun), manages to irk you at first, makes you dislike her later and completely enchants you by the end of the movie.

I’d recommend this to any broad-minded person with the tolerance for a touch of melodrama.

Kiss Kiss... Bang Bang??

If I was to choose the best script of the year for 2006, I think it wouldn’t be too hard to select The Prestige (although, it was an adaptation, actually…). My vote for 2005 would be Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

The introduction to Harold (Robert Downey Jr.) is what sets the pace and feel of the movie:

Harry (Harold) steps in to prevent this perve from pushing up the skirt of this hot girl who’s passed out at a party. The guy’s an asshole and threatens to fuck up Downey if he doesn’t get out of there. Tough-as-nuts-Harry retorts cockily, in-stride, and warns him that he would only fail miserably the story would turn ugly.

The next scene shows Harry getting the crap beaten out of him by the perve… his head being helplessly rammed to the ground.

Ironically, minutes later, the hot girl passes him, laughing, in the arms of the

perve, while he’s asking her what she was thinking.. falling asleep at a party like that.
Harry's luck:
Manages to chat up the girl of his dreams but sleeps with the wrong one by mistake
Gets hit on the face for someone else's wisecrack
The above incident and a lot more

Val Kilmer plays his funniest role ever – 'Gay Perry. Besides the obvious, he is extremely sharp, professional and snobbish. He sizes Harry up the moment he sees him and has absolutely no qualms with letting him know what he thinks of him.

The plot goes something like this: Harry (thief/newly instated actor) arrives at a party, sees this girl (Harmonie), tries to chat her up at a pub later where realizes that she's his childhood crush. He meanwhile goes through detective-training with Perry to aid his acting. In the midst of a supposedly boring assignment, ends he witnesses a crime. He then moves on to helping Harmonie solve the murder of her sister. At the end Harry solves both cases, which turn out to be related. While that would seem simple enough, the plot (not movie.. plot) manages to incorporate: pissing on a corpse, killing a guy by mistake (poor math), getting a finger cut-off and later eaten by a dog and the somehow-hilarious screaming on Harry's part when he is being electrocuted.

The movie boasts of trippy narrative, a mystery that’s revealed in twists and turns, colourful characters, wit-filled chemistry and quick humour. Recommended for viewing with subtitles.

Oldboy

On watching this movie for second time, I felt that the director had a very refined idea of what he wanted to portray.

Although the movie might sell as a revenge-fest, (which cannot be denied either), the director clearly had so much more in mind. There was nothing noteworthy about the protagonist before he was imprisoned. His first scene shows him as drunk and out-of-control. A childhood flashback showed him as a bit of a jackass and a perve, but there was nothing particularly negative about him either. However, when something as extreme as a 15 year imprisonment was imposed on him, I don’t remember feeling sympathetic towards Oh Daesu at all.

Chan-wook Park has chiseled his character in a way that promotes him to Higher-Than-Thou.

‘AB blood types raise your hand. Go, he lost a lot of blood'

'I wrote down all the people whom I fought with, bothered, and hurt'

'Women's hands are usually warm so they can't make sushi'

Oh Daesu reeked of the presence of mind, intelligence, physical fitness, and knowledge that one would feed into a created being... knowing it possible but never expecting someone to actually follow-through on it, unless facilitated by circumstances… so true, and so well incorporated here.

This movie does not use the conventional instruments of audience torture used nowadays in movies like the Saw series. What grips you is the same anguish and horror that drives Daesu.

I often wondered if it was the the hard-hitting content (eating a live.. squid?, gums bleeding as a tooth is yanked out, incest) that beats the viewer into submission... that wrenches out that awe (vocally, on my part). Perhaps it is this that capacitates you to empathise with the extremism exhibited by the protagonist.

Chan-wook Park has also ensured that the content is not purely plot driven. He takes his time with each scene, subtly incorporating environmental objects (fish-tank, ants, the suicidal man who wants to tell his story) into a well-paced plot.

All in all, this is an awesome, well-thought-out movie that will dazzle any viewer of the genre - a definite for any Tarantino fans.