The Film Far(c)e Awards

Planet of the Apes

On February 27th 2010, all the stars of “Bollywood” descend from the sky at their pretentious best, shamelessly aping Hollywood right from concept to the red carpet, from the nude statues to the fake emotional speeches, from the late after-night parties to the press conferences next morning, from the way they give interviews to the way they profess their love to “mommies, daddies and everyone else in their extended families”, and all of this captured by the shamelessly greedy media masturbating loads of fake enthusiasm trying to ape the paparazzi of America! (Ta da! I think I just wrote the longest sentence ever!) With all the aping and all the taping, it is one big planet-of-the-apes award ceremony. Yes, we are talking about the filmfare awards.

Its in the Name

A lot of people are of the opinion that the name Bollywood should not be used because it is ripped off from Hollywood (like that is the only thing they ever ripped off from Hollywood!). They want it to be referred to as the “Hindi Film Industry”. To be honest, I'm offended. We all know that Bollywood is not an industry; just look at it. It is a small bunch of families living off the dollar exchange rate by making movies for the million odd NRIs while neglecting a billion odd Indians. That is not how industries run; Bollywood is at best a mom and pop store!

Film Farce Awards

I don’t entirely hate Bollywood, only 97% of it! The sole reason being the “gibberish with English titles” that they market as movies. And the reason I have no respect for awards (apart from the reasons aforementioned) is because they just reward the stars. How else would you justify the huge number of nominations for Paa and 3 idiots? They are successful and entertaining movies but if you are judging them as a form of art, how do they fare? Does the screenplay of 3 idiots compare with that of DevD? Is Amitabh Bachchan’s acting masked by 3 inches of makeup in Paa better than Ranbir Kapoor’s almost no makeup act in Wakeup Sid? And Gulaal is not even nominated for best film!

The thing is, star studded movies like 3 idiots and Paa will sweep all the awards while the really deserving ones like DevD should be content with the critics’ choice award and that is my reason why filmfare awards should be renamed to filmfarce awards.

Note: the author is neither a fan of Ranbir Kapoor nor Wake up Sid. The references have been used just for convenience.

Film Far(c)e Bingo

As a reader of my blog, I assume you are fairly intelligent and hence not watch the filmfare awards. However if you do, I suggest you play gtoosphere’s very own filmfar(c)e bingo for some extra fun.

Image courtesy: http://allbollywood.wordpress.com

sachin tendulkar in "200"

P.S: Don't expect a real movie, this is just a poster for the highlights :p

Its a bad ad world

My tolerance for Ads is pretty high, you give me a pretty girl to look at and I won’t be very critical. However if there is no pretty girl, it better be intelligent! I have stopped watching TV (except for sports) ever since I reached the age of reason (circa 2004 CE according to the urban legends).

I kind of made my own set of rules when it comes to advertisements. As a rule of the thumb any ad featuring Irfan Khan is boring, any ad featuring Akshay Kumar is dumb. Mobile company ads are usually interesting but the Docomo music is so over done that it now feels like inspector Dreyfus scratching a blackboard with an iron glove! The nerve on those people to run the ad so many times! Who do they think they are? Airtel?

Bad commercials are tricky; they stay in our minds for a long time. They are kind of quasi-successful in that sense. How can anyone forget Aman Verma cleaning toilets in the Harpic Ad? I remember the first time I saw it; I kind of forced my mom to boycott Harpic because that is the only way to punish them for inflicting the misery on citizens of India (g2 gets patriotic sometimes).

Speaking of cola ads, Mountain dew is the worst. What are they all excited about? Jumping from the planes, suspended from the air, breaking through glass to spike volleyballs at girls wearing scanty bikinis while riding sports bikes and all that enthusiasm just to drink something that looks like stolen urine sample from a diabetes clinic (now you know why the bottle is green :p).

But there were good ads too. I am sure a lot of us remember coca cola’s “pandav kitne the” ad which urged people to pay only 5 rupees for coke (most shopkeepers used to charge one rupee extra). It was around the time this ad was popular, a shopkeeper asked 6 rupees for a coke. So one of my friends making a reference to the ad asked the shopkeeper, “Pandav kitne the?” And the shopkeeper promptly responded, “Draupadi kosam oka rupayi egestra andi“, which translates in Hindi to “draupadi ke liye ek rupee extra saab”

Lazy Evolution

Chapter 1: the Q and the A.

What is the most fundamental human characteristic? Fear, hunger, procreation, feelings, being social et cetera etc. These are all important characteristics, but most of these can also be observed in dolphins. What is the characteristic that makes us human? In my opinion, it is laziness. Yes, laziness is what differentiates us from animals. For most species, any attempt at laziness will result the animal dying of starvation or being hunted down by other animals that were not lazy. In a way, no other species can afford to be lazy. I think dogs make a good exception but in their defense, everyone from Plato to Pavlov rewarded them for laziness.

Chapter 2: Indulging in Indolence.

Laziness is not as bad as it sounds. It’s just the habit of resting before even getting tired. If you want to sound classy, don’t say you’re lazy; say that you are “indulging in indolence”. Progress for humanity is not achieved by people who toil for 14 hours a day but by lazy people who are continuously searching for easier ways to do things.

Procrastination is a close cousin of laziness. Trust me, it is not half as good as real laziness. The problem with procrastination is that makes you lazy for tomorrow. So my advice to you is “Do not procrastinate because NOW is the time to be lazy”. The only catch is that laziness begets boredom but don’t worry boredom is healthy and necessary.

Chapter 3:Lazy Evolution

The whole human race has a collective assumption that our species moves forward to find ever better and more enlightened ways to live. The assumption is that the current scientific world is better than the pre-scientific world that we read about in history.

In the past human beings wanted to be saved, or improved, or freed, or educated or just survive. But now we have come to a stage where we need to be entertained. The greatest fear we have is not that of death or disease but of boredom, a fear of having nothing to do, a fear of not being amused enough. This is the intellectual reality of the 21st century (at least for most of the well to do societies). This is what we have evolved into… lazy people with an attention span of 25 seconds!

Is this the direction humanity should be moving?

P.S: This is what comes to mind when you finish a Michael Crichton novel and then follow it up by watching the movie, Waking Life

Bloggy Valentine

P.S: comment if you find any typos in the comic.

Comedy is the Opposite of Poetry

poetry is a destructive force

A lot of people write poetry in their blogs. I don’t read any of them. I don’t read poems at all. It is because I find most of the poems to be incomprehensible, kind of inexplicable, sort of unclear, very unintelligible, sometimes dark and pretty obscure, often puzzling, lost or may be missed.

The problem with poetry lies not in the art but with the artist. It is the poet who wants to be perceived as enigmatic, unfathomable, complicated or lost (often in deep melancholy :p). Poetry is such a self-centered and narcissistic exercise.

The luxury poets have is that you (as the reader) do not understand the poem. You think you do, but you don’t for it is not meant to mean anything. The bigger luxury the poets have is that you are afraid to admit that you do not understand anything. And they exploit it and use it almost like a power that forces you into finding a meaning in something that was intentionally made to be meaningless. In a lot of ways it is no different than the symmetric inkblots psychologists use to experiment on you.

In this respect, comedy is in many ways the opposite of poetry. Comedy has to be approachable, comedy has to be clear and simple, comedy has to be succinct and more importantly, it has to be funny. Comedy has to be all of these in 30 seconds. Thirty seconds is all you have to make a joke.

The primary difference between comedy and poetry is that in poetry, the responsibility of entertainment is transferred back to the reader. Entertainment is a big responsibility, and the comedian has to carry it on his shoulders every thirty seconds.

And so poetry sucks.

P.S: Fans of poetry and amateur poets, you might want to defend your views.

the cartoon

 

The Beginning of a New Era

The new Era

It was in the summer of 2008 when I started taking my sketching seriously. I started the blog to showcase my sketches. Just showing the sketches did not make sense, so I started writing a small note on the sketch for the week. But a few months down the line, I realized that my skill levels in drawing and writing is pretty much the same (very basic). Unconsciously, writing took center stage and the sketches ended up being complimentary to what I was writing. With time, the sketches became cartoons, cartoons became photoshopped images and photoshopped images became cropped images from google image search.

But I plan to change it all and that’s one of the reasons for the blog’s new look (if you haven’t noticed yet). You can explore some of the old favorites in the “explore” page or you can read a wiki article about the creator of gtoosphere in the about page. The Gallery page will have sketches, cartoons and photos taken by me (and some of my friends). So explore and enjoy.

P.S: Please give feedback and suggestions on the design, the structure and what you think in general :)