The BIOTE Diaries: Exit Hamster

With his rounded apple-cheeks and squeaky giggle, and his penchant for spewing technical gibberish, the Hamster proved to be a real cartoon; a cross between a Hanna-Barbera character and an IT geek. I (secretly) gave him the moniker partly because of his rodent-like appearance and mannerisms, and partly after a similarly annoying insider who followed the Australian team around in Tim May's book, Mayhem. Heaven knows why he decided to temporarily leave the Indian office and seek a project from the Sacramento center, given the barren nature of the job scene here. He arrived here a month-and-a-half ago, five years of work experience under his belt, having never lived away from home before. Being familiar with the bouts of homesickness and sudden helplessness which us mollycoddled Indian bachelors face when confronted with alien surroundings, we did our best to set him at ease and help him with the initial adjustments.

As early as on the third day from his arrival, the Hamster gave us an indication that he was all set to make a royal pest of himself. In this previous post, I talked about the stove-cleaning incident in the apartment which left me completely bemused. Let's just say as soon as his eyes fell upon the stove covered with the imprints of spluttering oil and gravy, the Hamster saw an attention-grabbing opportunity. Summoning up all of his whistle-blowing intent with the enthusiasm of an eighth-standard teacher's pet, he promptly complained to the office guest house coordinator of the same and earned us a reprimand. Well, I suppose we had it coming, but still..

Despite all the homesickness, the fairly orderly nature of the house meant that he became a little too comfortable, not lifting a finger to help with the cooking or cleaning. Over time, he would demonstrate previously unseen levels of tight-fistedness, seemingly believing in high thinking, simple living and maximum scavenging - but taking the last two much more seriously. He appeared to be a storehouse of technical knowledge, meticulously poring over books and numerous pdf files, and claiming mastery over several technologies on his three-page resume. He also seemed to think it was his duty to share his infinite knowledge and resources for the betterment of mankind, and subjected us to the same. Now this wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, when you consider his standing as an experienced pro and our state of being struggling engineers on the look out for adequate jobs. The problem was, our man's enthusiasm was greatly in excess of his ability to put across ideas. In his almost embarrasing excitement at dispensing advice, he often got way ahead of himself - whenever he spoke, his brain-mouth coordination seemed to disappear in a flash, and he ended up being plain incoherent. On most nights upon our return from the office, he would unwittingly excite the tinge of regionalism in two of my roomies, with whom he shared a common language. Typically, they would switch to the online stream of the regional channel's Election 2009 coverage, yak excitedly about the manifestos of the local politicians, and eventually drag us all into a their-state-versus-rest-of-India debate. The upshot of all this was, not only did it prevent the rest of us from crashing immediately after a long day's work (much to our chagrin), it elicited several complaints from the neighbours directly a floor below - whom we had successfully managed to antagonise earlier through the ill-advised move of playing cricket in the corridor.

He was as insufferable in the office as in the apartment, apple-polishing the associates whenever possible. During the classroom sessions he attended along with us, he displayed the peculiar habit of giving off a stifled laugh - sort of like the snickering of Muttley - upon hearing a random word, for no apparent reason. For example:

INSTRUCTOR: Struts is a widely used framework...
HAMSTER: Framework ehh heh eh heh
INSTRUCTOR: ...which you might find confusing initially..
HAMSTER: Confusing ehh heh ehh eh

If this scene were a cartoon strip, you'd have thought balloons with the word "spastic" floating over most of our heads. Eventually, he seemed to single me out for special treatment. I suddenly became the focus of his gyaan-giving trips, with him stopping about twenty times a day to peer over me working at my laptop, and professing advice on how do it differently. As I said earlier, he probably had only the best intentions, but somehow ended up sounding like Donald Duck on crack. Unfortunately one day, he happened to ask me a couple of questions after a particular session during which I had completely switched off, and came to the conclusion that I was suffering from attention deficiency syndrome and needed help. More gyaan from his end, then. In every ensuing session, he would suddenly turn to me with a weird smile on his face, one that seemed to say "So how's the concentration thingy coming along?", as well as "Got you by the balls!" at once. At this point, I decided I was having enough, and something had to give. I remembered Tim May's words, "Alcohol is the solution", and decided I needed to apply the same to this problem at hand. What could I do, get him drunk before a session to sedate him? Nah, not plausible, he'd probably end up talking all the more. Give him a round of straight talking? Probably wouldn't get through his thick skull. When and how would we get rid of him?

Two of the other roomies ended up solving the issue for me, bless them. I earlier whined about their stinginess and their obsession with keeping accounts to the last detail; but on reflection, managing accounts and expenditure for the entire lot is a thankless task and requires much focus and bloody-mindedness, and for that they deserved credit. Unknown to us, they got into some sort of a bitter argument with Hamster, ironic given the amount of Election revelry they had been indulging in together over the last month. They claimed that Hamster was unwilling to pay up his dues for the month, because he was unhappy with some of the items he was being made to pay for. Hamster told us instead they were coercing him to pay for the petrol/gas, which we had initially agreed would not be split even, and was adamant they were out to fleece him. The roomies then revealed that we had only recently revised the agreement on the petrol (apparently, I was not around at the time), and Hamster was trying to get off cheaply. Whatever breakdown in communication had transpired, the rest of us were being kept in the dark and simply decided to let the dispute stay between them. A few days later, Hamster got a call from a friend in town saying he would be away for a few months and subletting his apartment; he jumped at the opportunity of being able to use his friend's home, and was gone in the blink of an eye. He also announced he would be working from home for a long while, so we wouldn't be seeing him at office. A little later, I was soaking up a stiff drink and the sudden peaceful feeling which seemed to have engulfed the apartment.

Current Music: Coldplay - Viva La Vida

Don't Become a Techie: Reason #47

A relative who works at Intuit Inc., Mountain View, told me of Wipro chairman Azim Premji giving a talk at their California headquarters recently. One of the issues he had apparently touched upon was that of Indians returning from the US, which naturally got me very interested considering, like Yossarian stuck in Pianosa, I've always been hell bent on eventually returning to my home country only to find some 22 potential catches acting as obstacles in my path. In a thinly-veiled fit of nationalism, he commented that US-returnees were "cultural misfits" in the Indian corporate environment, and thus better off working in America which affords them the sort of work culture they might have grown accustomed to in the recent past. He added that Wipro would soon stop recruiting these kinds of applicants for Indian offices and post them in the US, where they belonged, instead. He cited the number of such people who were only too happy to get back to the US after a returning stint in India as justification. (It's difficult to escape the feeling that the translation might read: "Indian IT professionals are a largely one-dimensional lot, given to doing as they're told without really questioning everything around them, making them a manager's delight. Having US-returnees, with their revised expectations and their newly-acquired notions of voicing opinions, of being treated on par with their seniors in the workplace - not to mention their ridiculous salary demands - would be a hindrance to the conveniently implicit, understood hierarchical system prevalent in corporate India".)

If this is a common perception, consider an observation which anyone who's worked with a major IT firm such as Infosys, TCS, Wipro, or Cognizant will attest to. Such companies, whose customer base is largely made up of American clients, are extremely conscious of the image they project overseas; one of their major concerns is that many of their employees may be a liability when it comes to the art of schmoozing with foreign client representatives. They spend substantial amounts of time and money on holding training programs which deal with the "soft skills" aspect, covering everything from US workplace lingo and warnings about chatting with your co-workers in a regional language, to table-manners and fork-and-knife etiquette. So, us wannabe returnees will supposedly have a tough time fitting in with those who are preoccupied with trying to fit in.

Rich!

Current Music: Tiger Army - Through the Darkness

Rahman's Fab Five: Redux

I've shamelessly decided to piggyback on Swaroop's post, Rahman's Fab Five, and compile my own list. I did plan on putting up a Rahman-centric post on more than one occasion, but was too lazy to get down to it. So it seems Swaroop's list has provided me with an excuse to finally indulge and get this out of the way.

While I often claim to be an albums-and-not-singles kind of listener, my approach to music records is rather basal, focusing more on nostalgic value and spur-of-the-moment-feeling. Since I won't be able to dissect Rahman's albums with the same artfulness as Swaroop, my choices are perhaps more a reflection of the raw emotion and memories they bring with them. I grew up on a steady diet of Rahman's music through the 90s, but after the turn of the decade I tended to miss out on some of his later masterpieces. This can be put down to the fact that, from the end of school up till around the third year of college, I went through a phase where I thought of myself as a proper metalhead and was surrounded by peers whose musical philosophy was of the "louder the better" variety. Rahman was never far away however, and my renewed interest over the years has been rewarding. The post-2000 stuff also offers plenty from his catalog waiting to be discovered by me, definitely something to look forward to.

Again, this is not an all-time top five list, which is why Roja and Thiruda Thiruda don't figure in it. Rather, it is a loosely-chosen list of albums which perhaps best represent the spark that Rahman's music has time and again provided to the otherwise mundane process of getting on with life.

1. Rang De Basanti: While it is by no means one of Rahman's stronger efforts, I associate RDB with some really good times. Like the first half of the movie, it has a freshness about it that refuses to go away, and every song is an earworm. There was a trip to Kochi with friends in early 2006, during which the title track was played relentlessly, and it has since been stuck in my head. It was quite a masterstroke to get Daler Mehndi to sing it, briefly putting everyone's favourite Punjab da Puttar back on the charts. There's the delightfully cheesy Lose Control/ Pathashala, filled with mindless lyrics. Lukka Chuppi was a song which grew on me thanks to my Austin roommate who listened to it on repeat; Lata and ARR's interlocking verses are a treat, as is the lilting melody of Tu Bin Bataye. Roobaroo, however, stood out for me because it somehow managed to legitimise the ridiculous climax of the movie when I saw it for the first time; the fact that a simple tune (with the acoustic guitar providing a nice touch) was able provide this kind of uplift to a movie was simply the work of a genius. Overall, this is the sort of effort which ARR could probably have come up with in his sleep, but what the hell, it's all good.

2. Kaadhalan: There are two abiding memories of my vacation in Madras during the winter of 1994 - watching Shane Warne spin his web of magic around the Englishmen (particularly this hat-trick at the MCG) on the telly, and listening to the neighbourhood boys discussing the vagaries of the lyrics from the Kaadhalan OST, especially the superhits Urvasi and Muqabala. Now, this album is possibly the best example of how dubbing Tamil music into Hindi loses much of the sting of the original. The Hindi equivalent has not aged well, and many 'Northie' friends have pointed out that the lyrics are nonsense. Indeed, my clueless 11-year old self could not figure out why an adolescent might get a kick out of irritating a girl with lines like "Oosi pola odambirunda thevayille pharmacy". The bottom line is that such music was not conceived with the intention of fitting into the Bollywood scheme of things, and as a result is much more enjoyable when taken in its original context. Anyhow, this soundtrack is really diverse and contains barely any filler; there's the beautiful, sensitively crafted Ennavale, the earthy Erani Kuradhani (Gopala), the eminently hummable Kadhalikum Pennin, and of course that hilarious ode to Madras Bashai, Pettai Rap. The album sure is one hell of a wicked ride.

3. Rangeela: Talk about a seamless transition. Rahman's first original score in Hindi is chock-full of dependable delights. I'll remember this one in particular because a relative handed me the tape long before the songs were ingrained in public consciousness, with the words "Listen to this. This is going to be the next big thing." In what must have seemed like an unlikely arrangement at the time, Asha Bhonsle does the playback for 21-year old Urmila Matdonkar in Tanha Tanha quite stunningly. Asha also features on the infectious Rangeela Re, while Udit Narayan shines on Yaaro Sun Lo Zara, and Kya Kare ya na Kare. My personal favourite, however, is Mangta Hai Kya, with its pulsating, tense buildup and agitated percussion before Shweta Shetty's seductive vocal takes over. Indeed, just as he resurrected Daler Mehndi with RDB, Rahman provides Ms.Shetty with probably the high point of her career. Who would have thought she was capable of hitting those high notes?

4. Bombay: So distressed were we when Kuchi Kuchi Rakamma displaced Didi Tera from its long-standing no.1 spot on the Satish Shah-hosted countdown show Philips Top Ten, we actually wanted to get everyone in the building to sign a petition asking Zee Telefilms for a reversal (In retrospect, WTF were we thinking?). Rahman won out, and the gain was mine as I slowly got exposed to some of the best music I had ever heard. Bombay is one of those albums from which it's just impossible to single out a favourite tune. Kannalane, brilliantly sung by KS Chithra, haunts me every time I listen to it. Humma sounds equally awesome in Hindi and Tamil, Uyire is the album's moment of tenderness, and the Bombay Theme is simply one of the best instrumentals ever. Of late, I've been hooked onto Poovukku Enna (the "Halla Gulla" song), which previously used to annoy the crap out of me. All of a sudden, amidst a bassline which lends a sense of irreverence to the song, the yelling of those kids seems to bring out the..er..kid in me.

5. Indian/Hindustani: Indian occupies a strange, almost latent position in the Rahman catalog. I mean, ask a person to name as many Rahman albums as he can remember and the chances are Indian would figure very late in the list, if at all; but play him Akadanu Naanga and suddenly the memories start flooding back. I'll remember it for some of the most bouncy, energetic tunes ARR ever composed. Among them, Maya Machindram and Telephone Manipol, the latter featuring some memorable vocal work from the teenaged Harini. There's also the sedate and heartwarming Pachai Kiligal , sung by Yesudas.

Phew, that took some effort. Now if you'll excuse me, I have fifteen years' worth of music to catch up on.

Current Music: Thiruda Thiruda - Putham Pudu Boomi

Don't Give a Peep

This has been a particularly unproductive week, and for that I can blame Television all over again. I've stumbled upon this funny British sitcom and have been hooked for a while now. I've been mostly out of the TV game for the last few years, and generally watch only on recommendation. After watching the first few episodes, I found myself wondering how no one ever told me about Peep Show, given that it's five seasons old. Then again, accidental discoveries are the most memorable ones, so whenever I hear people talk about this show I can feel quietly smug about my nose for good TV programming.

Peep Show gets its name from the fact that the two main characters' lives are seen mostly from their own points of view, as though the camera were held in their hand all along. We get to hear their thoughts when the scene shifts to their individual POV. The premise is fairly simple; it follows the misadventures of two loser roommates, Mark and Jeremy (played by comedic duo David Mitchell and Robert Webb respectively), in their mostly futile attempts toward gaining social acceptance and wooing the women in their lives. They're essentially two ordinary blokes to whom weird things happen. Suitably, they are a study in contrast. Imagine George Constanza as a history nerd with even lower levels of self-esteem, and Joey Tribbiani as a desperate slacker with a nasty streak, and you'll get an idea...ah forget it. No point in trying to form analogies with other sitcoms, just watch and find out. They're well supported by a stellar set of characters. Among them, Sophie, co-worker and the object of Mark's confused affections; Super Hans, Jeremy's band-mate and fellow crack-addict; Johnson, Mark's smooth-talking boss; and Nancy, the American girl briefly married to Jeremy for visa purposes.

One thing I've always liked about British sitcoms - and Peep Show is no exception in this regard - is that even when they're flinging the most obvious jokes or predictable plot developments in your face, they manage to make you laugh out loud all the same. That comes with ace dialogue delivery and acting backed up by a razor-sharp script. Consider the scene in the office where Mark has managed to find the password to Sophie's email account. He's surfing through her inbox, and you know what's going to happen next; Sophie appears and catches him in the act. But it's all executed so brilliantly, you can't help but guffaw. And, rather than providing the characters with catchphrases, the creators seem to have hit upon an endless supply of memorable oneliners.

Where Peep Show really sets itself apart is the boldly obnoxious nature of its content - it relies on what many reviewers like to call the "cringe factor". It's all very bleak and cynical, and the fact that the main characters often come across as first-class jerks with little scope for self-betterment means it won't appeal to everybody. It still manages to be very realistic; I mean, you find yourself empathising with their problems but can't approve or sympathise with their actions. The situational humour revolves mostly around sex, drugs, liberal use of profanities, misanthropy, anger management and still more sex, pushing it firmly into 'adult' territory. That has probably denied it airtime on mainstream television, though I'm guessing it might have become a sensation in Britain by now (it is apparently selling very well on DVD). While it's true that shows like South Park and Family Guy are also characterised by offensive humour, they make full use of the cartoon medium to realise their ends. Peep Show, on the other hand, does not deal in escapism or shock value. It has a natural feel to it, switching scenes effortlessly back and forth, and ends up being (perversely) believable.

It's a pity each season is just six episodes long; every episode leaves me asking for more. Catch it online if you can, for it'll save you the trouble of having to look far and wide for the DVDs. I know I'll be buying them eventually.

Current Music: Alice Cooper - No More Mr.Nice Guy

The BIOTE Diaries: Down in a Dump

It's a really good thing this apartment complex has a 24-hour gym on the premises. It provides a reassuring and necessary constant to the daily grind, but being just about the only place for miles which stays open later then 10 P.M, there was never much of a choice when it came to looking for things to do here. The other night, after a long spell of steady rain, I was making my way to the gym as usual after work when I was greeted by a weird, almost surreal sight. I walked along the extremely narrow footpath, flanked by a garden on either side, and noticed that the thousands of resident snails had crawled out onto the path, leaving me precious little space to actually walk to the gym entrance. I had move forth on tiptoe to avoid stepping on them, and felt as if I was in Commander Keen, that old 2-D PC game in which the hero dodges poison slugs by jumping or using a pogo stick. It was a funny feeling, coming as it did in the middle of one of the more sordid concrete wastelands of suburban California.

Life indoors has been less memorable lately. It sucks having to remain in office till late, given that we've already missed a few of the pizza parties and bingo nights that keep happening in the building. While I've grown used to spending time by myself and even being cocooned if necessary, I'd at least like to be able to meet some people here. The University often kept me equally busy, but there were still places to go whenever you wanted to step out, back then. I'm getting a little fatigued with all this talk of H1-B visa processing, amazing job offers which some lucky souls have managed to snap up, requisite skill-sets on resumes, and engineers harbouring nothing but wet dreams of six-figure salaries in this country. Quite often, it's the little things that grate on your mind and it's all you can to do to laugh them off. The visa applications have been delegated to the India office, and the communication levels from their end have been insufficient (to put it mildly), resulting in a string of laughably pointless mails to and fro. Anyway, I'm trying to channel all this annoyance into planning my escape from this industry. Why is it that the monetary rewards of career paths seem to be in inverse proportion to how mentally stimulating they actually are?

Current Music: Avial - Nada Nada

The BIOTE Diaries: Beating the Bookstore

You know it's the start of a new semester at the University of Texas at Austin when you hear a certain clamour on Guadalupe St., known locally as The Drag. Students throng the stores on the Drag near campus, hastily stocking up for the new term, which means having to buy a whole new set of books. Make no mistake, books are expensive here, and that goes double for textbooks. Naturally, a bunch of places have sprung up where you can get your stuff secondhand or at a reasonable discount, among them a place called Beat the Bookstore. But "Beat the Bookstore" is no longer just the name of a store, it is now an unofficial motto of UT students, a philosophy. And this philosophy has trickled down to the issue of shopping at general bookstores, the ones which cater to the needs of Literature and History majors (among others), and book-browsers like me. But the situation only became clear to me during my final week as a resident of Austin, Texas. It felt like the end of an era in more ways than one.

On a Tuesday that week, around the same time I came to hear of Premier Bookshop's impending closure - and I like to believe this was more than mere coincidence - I was walking down the Drag when I saw the sign, a sign that the economic crisis was having its effect right in front of my eyes; the University had decided its main bookstore was dispensable, and would be closing it down soon. I stood in front of Intellectual Property, the place where I had spent many a leisurely hour over the past couple of years, and slowly read the announcement that they were discounting their entire stock by a sizable amount, before closing for good in a month's time. I duly rushed in to pick up one last title from there. On the Road (Jack Kerouac), which had in fact been recommended to me years ago, was unavailable, so I settled for Crash by J.G Ballard, at a reasonable 40 percent off.

To those Bangaloreans who swear by smaller places like Premier, Blossom, Bookworm and their ilk, the picture of IP above probably suggests that it was just another big corporate establishment with all the trappings, but devoid of any soul. The reality was way different; compared to glitzy monstrosities such as Borders or Barnes and Noble, IP was positively quaint. It combined the proprietary helpfulness of Premier with the immaculate arrangement of Sankar's, and the interiors were simple yet inviting. If you look closely at the pic, you'll notice a narrow long blackboard above the shelves running the length of the walls; this was typically decorated with quotations from literary figures, inscribed in chalk. Best of all, it was a peaceful place staffed by ever-smiling book enthusiasts who didn't mind if you hung around and flipped pages indefinitely. They had an excellent catalog, and although their books were first-hand and therefore priced accordingly, discounts were common. They featured a neat bestsellers' section which was regularly discounted by 30 percent; it got me acquainted with a range of titles which often left me bookshelf-dreaming, if nothing else.

Why did they close down? After all, every big University needs a decent bookstore, and this was located in a prime area teeming with potential clients. A friend of mine came up with an interesting theory, one which Malcolm Gladwell might have approved of. He observed that, with the door being perpetually open and the windows wide and big, thus allowing the sunlight to come in, as a casual browser or potential customer you had a constant view of the crowded outside world; you were thus compelled to leave sooner than you normally would. The interior of a bookstore should be designed to keep the customer's attention focused solely on the books, and that means paying more attention to little visual details. The same open-view-of-the-street was true of Premier as well, but that place had a fiercely loyal clientele which kept it on life support for about two years after the end of the road had been reached; perhaps IP's customer base was more fickle. As I made my final purchase, I had a quick chat with Dara, one of the staff whom I'd come to know over my regular visits to the store. She had some interesting insights to offer on the predicament of the friendly neighbourhood bookstore:

"You see, bookstores like ours operate on very small margins. We compete with the bigger chains as well as the downright secondhand places, and in our case we even had to supplement the income generated from books by including a Computer Products section. In hindsight that was a bad idea, because you already have a computer store on campus which fulfills the needs of the very customers we were hoping to attract. Perhaps we could have worked on the interiors and the arrangement a little, like having a properly organised History section to target specific UT majors. Our location also worked against us, there's no parking for miles in this crowded campus area. Of course college kids mostly don't read as much as they used to...that was pretty evident from the declining number of sit-in-readers we had over the last year. But I would say the biggest threat to our business is the emergence of the online bookstore. Now that people are getting everything they need cheap at Amazon, why would they bother with a place like this?"

There was a sense of calm acceptance in her voice, which betrayed only the slightest hint of regret, much like the matter-of-factness displayed by owner Shanbag upon his decision to close Premier. When I read this article on IP's closure, I found the last couple of lines (which talk about the opportunity to cash in on the closing discounts offered) particularly interesting:

Just because you couldn't be bothered to support a local bookstore while it was struggling to stay afloat in one of the riskiest pieces of real estate in the city doesn't mean you can't capitalize on its demise. That there is the American way.

More power to the American way, then. Nevertheless, I was happy to be around at the end, for it was consolation for not being able to make one last trip to Premier.

PS: Premier's closing had me going all nostalgic as well; I even commented on the resilience of the store in an earlier post. I'm too tired to write a piece on it here, but I do recommend Ramachandra Guha's tribute in The Hindu.

Current Music: Cut Copy - Hearts on Fire

On Watching the Watchmen

If you're wondering what the deal is with this new superhero movie, and intend on approaching it with caution, my two bits would be: read the book first. Hell, read the book anyway, whether or not you care about the film. Now I'm not trying to play the snob who's out to praise the book to the skies and trash the movie adaptation; I read the comic series a few months ago and thoroughly enjoyed it, but that alone does not make me a comic book connoisseur. (Disclaimer: I sure as hell don't spend my free time playing dungeons-and-dragons. I spend it writing blog posts.) If you've already read the book and liked it, you probably *have* to watch the film for no other reason, just like me.

[For a quick plot summary, read the wikipedia entry].

Watchmen, being commonly seen to represent the "kingship" of the Graphic Novel genre (which is probably justified), was ever a likely candidate to be turned into a film, sooner or later. The fact that it was mentioned in Time Magazine's 100 greatest novels list has only added to the legend. Porting it to the cinematic medium was always going to be a tall order, for it is a veritable African elephant, simply too big a beast to be tamed. While the film does eventually collapse under its own weight, the director Zack Snyder deserves an A+ for his ballsy effort to realise the impossible and keep it propped up. He was faced with two equally ominous options - playing it safe and keeping the fanboys happy by remaining as faithful as possible to Alan Moore's work, or doing a variation on the theme and risk being critically panned. He chose the former, and unfortunately the characters are "bottled up within that frame" as another viewer told me.

The movie clocks in at 165 minutes, and can be tedious to sit through. Like The Matrix, it is possible to get the gist of the plot and be spellbound by the concept if you concentrate hard. If you're expecting an evening of mindless entertainment, be warned; this movie is relatively low on action, and its depth of content it makes The Dark Knight seem like a pleasant little stroll of a tragi-comedy. Synder has really taken it upon himself to put the "Graphic" in this Graphic Novel adaptation; whenever violence surfaces, it often takes the meticulously detailed and brutal form that was apparently a defining feature of 300, but it doesn't seem to work well here. There's also a particularly violent rape scene as well, which was a little hard to stomach.

The best feature of the film, without a doubt, is the portrayal of Rorschach. Jackie Earle Haley does a splendid job of bringing out the vengeful hostility and vulnerability behind the mask of the story's most fascinating character. It's just a pity the movie had already run too long to delve deeper into the details of Rorschach's past. (Incidentally, The Tales of the Black Freighter, which serves as the fictional comic-within-the-comic in the book, was also left out, but will be released separately on DVD, detailing the characters' backstories. Now there's a neat marketing idea.) Also worth talking about is Malin Ackerman's solid performance as Laurie Jupiter a.k.a Silk Spectre II, despite her part in a most ridiculous scene which I've mentioned below. The rest of the cast, particularly Billy Crudup as Dr.Manhattan are less inspiring.

One of the most noticeable aspects of the film is the deliberate injection of accompanying music at various points, an almost blatant admission that its target audience likely consists of neurotic record collectors (yup, guilty as charged!). This can be extremely hit-or-miss; it works in the opening scene, as images from the past are played to Bob Dylan's The Times They are a-Changin', showing that Snyder wasn't too preoccupied with the original to add a few distinctive touches of his own. But Sounds of Silence at the Comedian's funeral and All Along the Watchtower while Rorschach and Nite Owl crash into Antarctica are way out of place. And oh yeah, there's Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah serving as the bizarre background to an ultra-passionate love scene between Laurie and Dan. What's up with that? Unfortunately, what could have been one of the movie's more surreal moments is completely spoiled by the activation of a flamethrower to signify Laurie's orgasm. Downright tasteless and stupid. I don't think I'll ever be able to listen to Hallelujah with the same ear again!

Alan Moore, who distanced himself from the film adaptation, had this to say about his work: "It's a comic book, not a movie. It's been made in a certain way, and designed to be read a certain way: in an armchair, nice and cozy next to a fire, with a steaming cup of coffee." Looking back, that is precisely the reason I enjoyed the book so much. Instead of having to take it all in at one shot, I was able to enjoy it piecemeal, reading one volume of the series at a time. Having sat through this monster of a film, I was, well...filled up, but definitely not satiated.

Current Music: Christy & Emily - Superstition