Feeling grave, anyway

Sometimes I think I need to book myself a "Crazy, Table for One". Everyone was waxing eloquent about Sandra Bullock and George Clooney's new movie "Gravity". The only stunning planetary body you will find there is Sandra's; she's worked hard and each golden, toned muscle thanks her for it. I love space movies, from "Alien" to "Mission to Mars", but I just couldn't understand why the otherwise-terrific Alfonzo Cuaron didn't figure out that for people like us we need to see, um, space. You know, the vastness of it, the silence of it, the terror of it, the nothingness of it. For the whole movie, Sandra is within touching distance of The Blue Marble. How are we supposed to feel what being untethered to anything must be like?
While "Gravity" is not boring, it simply doesn't realize its potential. Like for instance, at the end when touchdown is achieved, we want to see the heroic, immediate American response to disaster and rescue. And this is where Cuaron decides to show nothingness.
Clooney, like Pitt, meanwhile are now simply appearing in movies playing themselves it seems; you can't see a trace of effort in what they do anymore.
I wish "Breaking Bad" was still playing. That at least made terrific, crazy, wonderful sense, yo.

Ulysses goes home

He was like an avenging angel. He answered all our prayers by punishing the guilty and uncaging the deserving. And when he left the world he was happy to go. He had shed his sins, paid his dues and was free. This was Walter White, no longer Breaking Bad.

The series finale was, in a word, uplifting. I don't know what's in Vince Gilligan's brain but it should be patented. It's as though he knew what we wanted. We wanted Jesse to survive, we wanted the amoral gang who had him like a hamster strapped to a wheel decimated, we wanted Todd to die painfully by Jesse's hand, we wanted Hank's body found, we wanted part of the money to go to Walt's family (he had suffered so much for it), we wanted, at long last, the truth to fall from Walt's lips.

We wanted Walt to pay, yes, but we felt his pain, too. How do you reconcile those two things? Gilligan did it by keeping to the tenor of what went before for five years. In the final shots of Jesse screaming in relief and an at-peace Walter White who can now fold his black-and-white wings, Gilligan stayed true to the Breaking Bad motif of madmen, retribution and redemption.

Walt was dying in a cabin in the woods, so lonely as he's plugged into his chemo that he begs The Disappearer to stay for a while. Any alternate scenario would be welcome to this. So he begins his last journey, dons his final avataar. He terrorizes the couple who shafted him on Gray Matter Technologies; they are so loathsome that we, too, enjoyed the mathematical precision of Walt's revenge. Jesse's cohorts make another appearance, as does Hank in a flashback which was a lovely touch; we liked the former and admired the latter and we wanted to bid them a fare-thee-well.

When Walt rigs the machinegun and mows down Todd's uncle's band of unlovelies I, for one, was screaming Yes! They deserved their bloody end, as did Lydia in a ricin denouement that was part of Walt's wonderful orchestra of Judgement Day.

When he tells Skyler that his whole odyssey was not just about family, “I did it for me..I liked it..I was good at it...I was alive”, well, that was it, wasn't it. A man whom destiny led astray twice finally took it in his hands. He could have been rich and accomplished via Gray Matter but he was nobody both at work and at home. So when he had nothing to lose, he became a legend, a man whose brain and talent was nothing short of masterful.

In the final shot where he lay on the ground and the cops moved in, the look of satisfaction on his face and the way the camera angle panned his body surrounded by the law, you immediately thought this was a night they would speak about in whispers in drawing-rooms when they spoke of Walter White, the great Heisenberg. You can't help but feel to your bones for a man like that.

I feel to my bones for Bryan Cranston, bringing Walt to life with a look in the eyes, a swelling of the chest, a pursing of the mouth. And precision. Always precision.

I feel to my bones for Vince Gilligan whose own Gray Matter is a thing of terrifying proportions.

What a trip it's been.

10 Things.....

...a girl can't do without:

1. Black nail-polish. 2. Red lipstick. 3. J Brand jeans. 4. White button-down. 5. Black jacket.  6. Mulberry bag. 7. SK II. 8. Blahnik pumps. 9. Moleskine notebook. 10. Fictional character to fall in love with. (Mine's Stacia Kane's 'Terrible' from the Downside Ghosts series.)

Yes, please

Ate at this table in a Goa home recently and I have to say, it's exactly what I want in my own dining-room. Just whispers taste, doesn't it? And yes, to accompany the rolled napkins, a butler served. Sigh.

No, thanks

Isn't that online jewellery advertisement on Indian TV highly questionable? The male character is so off-putting I want to reach for an oil cloth and wipe him off, and the wife asking what's the occasion for his attention - I wouldn't want it if he was the last man on earth; searching for another species to procreate with would make better sense. Perhaps the ad men knew half-way there that something was not quite quite. I noticed a distinctly Jaws-like soundtrack playing, you know, to match the husband.

Almost as barf-inducing is the “Made for First Love” phone ad where the boy talking to his GF doesn't stop with the most vacuous conversation you will hear this side of the Milky Way. Hey, I was young once and in love twice but in my defence I never engaged in vapid talk. Surely at 18 it's all Kerouac and Kafka?? No? Wtf.

Free your mind

First superheroine comic book from India. Not bad. I always admire people who broaden their horizons and try something new. Created by that Shekhar Kapur, written by Samit Basu and quite gorgeously illustrated by Mukesh Singh. Now that we're all part of the Nerd Herd courtesy The Big Bang Theory all you now need to know is that I spied it at Blossom, Bangalore for Rs 320.

Riffs & Raffs

Was this year's Emmys the worst ever? I think so. Neil Patrick Harris seemed unhappy and dry-lipped; the only time he semi-sparkled was in the gay bandinage with Jane Lynch. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler showed him how it should have been done. That riff with NPH - “I think it would be degrading. Yes, but we would be degrateful” was just genius. I mean these girls are in the same class as Hugh Jackman and Billy Crystal; they are professionals who have what Jim Parsons noted was the key to it all when he commented on Bob Newhart's genius: Timing.

The winners were the least expected, like a bad Agatha Christie story. The one whose name I can't remember from “Nurse Jackie” who came on and said 'Thanks, um, I have to go now'? Honey, you ain't Jessica Lange who is famous enough and talented enough and cool enough to get away with something like that.

Jim Parsons, Anna Gunn and Michael Douglas were the only worthy ones up there. Jon Hamm not getting his is a matter of national shame (as, I have to say, was his beard); almost as absurd as waiting for years to give Scorsese and DiCaprio their dues.

But my Breaking Bad boys walked away with the honours, didn't they? That made me a happy camper.

Worst-dressed: Connie Britton. If it's too heavy to hold, don't.

Best-dressed: Kaley Cuoco. The right shade, the right off-centre design. Julie Bowen's Zac Posen creation was a close runner-up.

Worst walk-in-wear: Cobie Smulders whose dress was so tight she minced across the stage like Louis XIV.

Wtf moment: Carrie Underwood's underwhelming performance. So Yesterday.

Cast off

The Killing's casting is just as inexplicable as anyone thinking Nutella cookies are not all that. Why does Mireille Enos/Detective Linden have to be so dour, and not in a House-like, fascinating way? Her dialogue delivery is as dead as her facial expressions and no viewer is going to feel even a twinge of empathy for her fate. Now Holder, (Joel Kinnaman), on the other hand, has the requisite good looks, a dollop of animation and the desperate junkie manner to pull at a few heart strings at least. 

The series is interesting despite the way the main protagonists have been outlined, although it's obvious the writers are spinning it out for as long as they can with the slightly-crazed plot twists. The Mayoral hopeful (who wouldn't have a soft spot for Billy Campbell) and (spoiler alert) his aide who is obviously in love with him, (and I'm not talking about the chick), and the ex-mob father is what keeps my interest level up but if they don't do someting about Linden soon....Couldn't they kill her off and rope in Carla Gugino, for God's sake?

The other entirely insupportable element in this show is the way the mothers behave. With Linden, when the teen son has fever, she says take some painkillers and I'll be home when I can. He plays truant and she doesn't ask why. He badmouths her and she tells him Don't Do That. All with the same fish-eyed look she does everything else.

The mother of the dead girl turns out to be as inept as Linden. She says No to everything and when one child dies abandons the other two and leaves so she can deal with the rotten cards Her life has dealt Her. With mothers like these, one would rather be abandoned on a Church doorstep.

Seats reserved

Had my first laugh of the day seeing the British Airways ad To Fly To Serve. They certainly do - to the white protagonist featured on it. Try being black and flying from India to Europe on BA and you'll know what hell is like. A place where you are not served food on time, where the food you are served isn't fit for dogs; where the stewards look at everyone with that kind of cold contempt you last saw reserved for Sidney Poitier on In The Heat of the Night; where you disembark to catch the connecting flight from Heathrow to John F K and suddenly it's gold class treatment for everyone on board, most of whom it goes without saying, are NOT black. It's like when Australia Tourism suddenly flooded Indian TV with ads featuring Indians who said they found the Holy Grail in Brisbane, Perth, Sydney whatever - after a spate of racist attacks against Indian students in Australia was widely reported by the media. How stupid does everyone think we are. Very.

A crowd of cherries

I feel a bit Zen at the moment. As if the world has been balanced. Can you blame me after an embarrassment of riches via the Season 3 premiere of Justified, Sons of Anarchy and Breaking Bad? But first things first.

Downloaded and watched the full Spartacus series and wept and wailed as the final episode aired. What must it feel like to be Steven DeKnight? To have created something that people will remember forever? I've never seen a cast like this, unknowns for the most part who gave us a piece of themselves and gained immortality because they are so damn good at what they do. After Andy Whitfield I thought Liam McIntyre would “fall from fucking sight”, haha, but one episode in you could tell he had the intensity, not to mention the most sweetly vulnerable mouth, that would see him fly to Olympus. When Manu Bennett's Crixus died, the show almost stuttered to its end right then and there because his persona was always so aggressive that he ruled every frame he was in from the beginning of the series. Gannicus, by the time he was a “martyr on the cross”, had become a hero not just because he had that John Woo thing going on albeit with two swords instead of guns, but because he is so good-looking it hurts. And what a bit of directing his end was: Crucified, there he was reliving his time as a God of the Arena with the crowds going wild.

But the villains in Spartacus, aye, there was a crowd of cherries on top of the cake. Craig Parker as Glaber, Nick E Tarabay as Ashur, Todd Lasance as Caesar, Simon Merrells as Crassus, these are Gods of the Acting Arena. While my heart belongs to Nagron, I will go see anything with these guys in it in the future.

I have had to switch allegiances now that Spartacus is over, and there's nothing better in betrayal than Breaking Bad. Which other show can have an entire episode on a fly (that's not a euphemism) and keep us riveted? Watching Walter White turning from mild-mannered Chemistry teacher to a villain of Heath Ledger's Joker proportions is an exercise in how brilliant television writers can be. Imagine, in the first place, selling this storyline to studios. It is absolutely addictive, ha; such fun to watch a story evolving in an unexpected way: Junkie losers have moral cores, gentle husbands turn into wolves, drug dealers live by gentlemen's codes. I live my days spouting Jesse Pinkmanisms, bitch, and gasping at how easily Walter and his wife cross over to their Bonnie&Clyde avatars. If they can do that, what hope do the rest of us have really.  

An Ode to My Boys

Thank all the Gods for a rich inner life. I have been up nights, then rise early morning to YouTube, then muse all the live long day, and smile to myself like a crazy person while running errands because my thoughts are all of Nagron. It's the Domino effect of reading a book, then coming across Tumblr and fan sites and linking up with work that is similar to that single, and singular, book. The book is The Captive Prince, and Nagron refers to the characters of Agron and Nasir (such is the Brangelina effect of coining couple names which is seriously disturbing but what can you do) in the TV series Spartacus.

Really, Dan Feuerriegel and Pana Hema Taylor make Spartacus what it is to me: Timeless, and an ode to accomplished actors who can basically change your life by making you think about the nature of Love.

Nagron combine supreme fighting skills (gorgeously choreographed) with a romance made up of glances - that have the weight of a hundred explicit imaginings. You wish, idiotically, that the real world had heroes who fought for the unwinnable cause, merely because it is right. But, as it always is, it's the love that you remember. (Or as fans on the Net say, the Feels. So funny.)

The series is brilliantly made with that comic-book cinematography which has also placed Sin City and 300 in a unique slot, slo-mo and a chiaroscuro effect with the use of theatrical blood and gore being a part of it, but it is in Spartacus' directors that the core lies. There are nuances here that simply take your breath away.

The Castus-Agron-Nasir play had me gasping like a maiden aunt. When Agron 'commands' (he can't talk any other way) his rival Castus to remove his hand from Nasir, he holds out his own arm against Nasir's body, gently moving him away. For a man whose raison d'etre is the battlefield, that gentleness is the viewer's undoing. When Nasir makes him understand that his feelings are very real, the uncertainty in Agron's face, in that face that is so very sure of everything else, everywhere else will, I assure you, make you tear up like a putz.

But you have to see these actors in action to get their full appeal, one that thousands of disciples are languishing over as we speak. Dan and Pan (yes, we're on a first-name basis) are both straight and yet play lovers with an ease and passion that is astonishing. Cut to Colin Farrell wincing his way through a chaste and utterly uninspiring male kiss in Alexander (the way we winced through the entire movie) and you'll understand what a job my boys have done.

The entire cast, no exceptions, are the best we've seen on TV in years (I especially like Manu Bennett and Viva Bianca, and always mourn that beautiful man Andy Whitfield, the first Spartacus, lost to cancer), but they fade when faced with Nagron.

There is a reason why Dan Feuerriegel has a larger appeal than Pana, by the way.

1. While both are dropdead divine, Pana is married, Dan gloriously single.
2. Dan is an inveterate Tweeter and Instagramer. He even responds to fans' questions via webcam... is this an Aussie thing? I can't imagine an American star having such an appreciation for his reach no matter how late it was in coming. Pana is much more reserved going by his slight FB and Twitter presence.
3. Did you see Dan's photoshoot in the coffeetable tome In the Tub by TJ Scott? He was – barely – in it. 'Nuff said.

PS. A striking comment on YouTube was from someone who asked the immortal question: why do straight actors play gay characters so well? I have another: Why does gay love seem so much more intense, and so much more appealing, than hetero love? The answers may be a bit uncomfortable, so I'll give them only if you ask.

I leave you with this, (an insider thing, I'm sorry to say, but for those who have seen the show, priceless), again from fandom across the globe, a community which I really have come to appreciate: You mean we're not alone?

Superimposed over Agron's smouldering face:

“You Think I Can't Fight Because I Can't Hold A Sword?

Bitch I Survived Crucifixion.

I'm Jesus.”

My captive heart

I would like to believe that the life-changing books I discover are God's way of leading me onto the path of forgiveness. Mine towards Him. For screwing me over. But alas, there is, of course, no God. And I have to sublimate my pain over this non-life I live through wonders like The Captive Prince.

It piqued my curiousity after the third time I read a fan tribute on separate book sites, so I downloaded the damn thing just to get over another disappointment and you know, move on. (It was much like how I first read Brothers Karamazov: by stumbling across references to it in practically everything I was reading at the tender age of 16. And boy, did THAT book screw me over.)

But really, S.U.Pacat (not, I am certain, her real name although she may indeed be a very cool supercat) can write. Practically every page sings an aria like a stab through the heart, and you read and re-read immediately, thinking, no, she can't be this good. But she is. She has created a world from long ago where duelling princes find themselves and each other, making it so much more than a fascinating account of war tactics, or good v evil.

Damen is betrayed by his brother Kastor and lover Jocaste and sent into captivity where he meets the supercilious Laurent, neighbouring prince and all-out SOB. No one knows Damen's royal identity and the revelations of character that follow are utterly absorbing.

The interesting thing here is that what is 'good' and what 'evil' disappears like the best intentions when faced with Nutella or Tyler Hoechlin; with the latter you simply cave in and indulge, with the former your worldview is wrenched from its moorings.

A very clever twist to the tale is how Supacat has made heterosexuality taboo in her world, the norm is gay pairings. How smart is that in an instinctively homophobic world/readership.

She may slip now and then, using words like pellucid and mordant; they “gaze at each other” a bit too often, and once, shockingly, the phrase 'No kidding' emerged out of another century, but I will forgive her anything.

The last word must belong to either Damen or Laurent. Their dialogues are so clever, so subtle, so funny, so, and this is what kills me every single time, whether in the real or unreal world, so True.

My favourite early scene between Damen and Laurent is in the baths (Volume 1) where Damen senses the danger for the first time, although Laurent has already done so. He tells Damen: “Don't be presumptuous”. Damen sneers, “Too late, sweetheart”.

Or “Is there anyone at this court who isn't my enemy?"

"Not if I can help it," Laurent said.

― S.U. Pacat, Captive Prince: Volume One

But the following is powerful as well:

'That isn't why. She would have chosen him even if you'd had royal blood in your veins, even if you'd had the same blood as Kastor. You don't understand the way a mind like that thinks. I do. If I were Jokaste and a king maker, I'd have chosen Kastor over you too.'

'I suppose you are going to enjoy telling me why,' said Damen. He felt his hands curl into fists, heard the bitterness in his throat.

'Because a king maker would always choose the weaker man. The weaker the man, the easier he is to control.”

'She was intelligent, accomplished, beautiful. She was everything I could have asked for in a woman. But she was a king maker. She wanted power. She must have thought her only path to the throne was through Kastor.'

'My honourable barbarian. I wouldn't have picked that as your type.'

'Type?'

'A pretty face, a devious mind and a ruthless nature.”

'He was not wearing the woollen cap. His newly minted hair was uncovered, and he looked as fresh as he had emerging from the baths the night before, as he had waking beneath Damen's hands. But he had resumed the cool restraint, his jacket laced, his expression disagreeable from the haughty profile to the intolerant blue eyes.

'You're alive,' Damen said, and the words came out on a rush of relief that made him feel weak.

'I'm alive,' said Laurent. They were gazing at one another. 'I wasn't sure you'd come back.'

'I came back,' said Damen.”

― S.U. Pacat, Captive Prince: Volume Two