Bugger of the Day

How does a band go from creating an artful album like These Days to creating a drab song like It's My Life?

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Savior of Bangla Cinema

.... .... ... Or so I am told. 

And the age old question, "What is love?"

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Art of Talking (or Spaking*)

From watching this program to that during this eid holiday, a noticeable thing was the way people on TV are talking. Being able to describe someone as 'articulate' is tough these days, unless you have someone like Abdullah Abu Sayeed as a guest or presenter. There are not just problems with phrasing and vocabulary, but also with pronunciations. A regional dialect is hardly meant for a national TV channel anywhere in the world, but even from our news reporters, we hear such speech.

During a better part of the morning, we were mesmerized by the stories told by Saadi Mohammad on '71 - Ekattor TV's Facebook Page (a channel), on a live music show hosted by Alif Alauddin. The show was very entertaining where the songs were being presented on the self-narrated timeline of Saadi Mohammad's life (though prompted by the host), starting with his childhood, to first growing a liking to Tagore music after hearing Hemanta Mukherjee on the radio, to his time at Santiniketon as a student and so on. He also mentioned how pronunciation was an issue with some of his students. People may tell me off for criticizing someone for having a dialect on the news, but what happens when people are trying to sing a song? It makes for temporary comedy, but on a larger scheme of things, its sad. Saadi Mohammad himself mentioned at that point of the show, that its nice to hear someone articulating thoughts and emotions properly, especially for singers and people on television, but really, for everyone (even a prime minister, he proceeded to mention).

Having seen that, when later at night, we see an interview of Ananta Jalil by Munni Shaha, its frustrating.

Ananta Jalil, with all his money and stunts, thinks he has found the formula for good movies, and is out there to claim that he is a properly educated inidividual who has passed O' and A' Levels, and has a bachelors in business (BBA) from the UK (though its commonly known that they provide BComm and not BBA). These claims are meant to throw off everyone who says he has pronunciation poblems (he is often heard with a silent 'r' when it should appear after a 'p') in both Bangla and English.

On the other side of the ring was Munni Shaha, who is a senior reporter for ATN News, and conducts a lot of interviews. Ignoring her annoying nasal voice and frequent 'ehhh's when shes browsing her vocabulary mid-sentence, she (like a few others) has a habit of trying to put words into the mouths of her guests. All in all, it was a pretty bad show of where we are, and who gets to be on our 'media'.

Thats another thing, I see a lot of so-called celebrities, refer to themselves as 'people of the media'. I don't get that! Its like they are trying to elevate themselves to somewhere or something, their own little planet. It just sounds weird to me.

Related:

* Ananto Jalil @ Radio Foorti 88.0 - with English Subtitle

Lawmakers should talk and behave with dignity says Prof Abdullah Abu Sayeed

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Stuff on Satyajit Ray

Found a site where a lot of pictures, interviews and information can be found on Satyajit Ray. 

Visit :

 http://raylifeandwork.blogspot.com

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The Lunatic is on the Grass

Here is Roger Waters singing "Brain Damage" in a studio for the Making of the Dark Side of the Moon documentary.

The lunatic is on the grass
Remembering games
And daisy chains and laughs
Got to keep the loonies on the path

The lunatic is in the hall
The lunatics are in my hall
The paper holds their folded faces to the floor
And every day the paper boy brings more

And if the dam breaks open many years too soon
And if there is no room upon the hill
And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon

The lunatic is in my head
You raise the blade
You make the change
And you rearrange me 'till I'm sane
You lock the door
And throw away the key
And there`s someone in my head, but it's not me

And if the cloud bursts thunder in your ear
You shout and no one seems to hear
And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon

Roger Waters explains in that documentary that a "Do not step on the grass" sign inspired him to write this song. Society lays down the rules - some explicit, and some implicit which comprise an overall structure in which to operate. But often the rules make no sense to some. And to others, those who oppose them make no sense - they are criminals or lunatics. Interestingly, the bauls of Bangla also commonly sang describing themselves as "pagol" or "pagla" (lunatics, mad men). It does seem that they derived that title for themselves from what people around them were saying about them. They were on the grass.

জাত গেল জাত গেল বলে
একি আজব কারখানা
সত্য কাজে কেউ নয় রাজী
সবই দেখি তানা না না।।

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Movievolution - Bangladesh

Picking up a fashion magazine, it took me no time to browse till the back cover, and finally, I read. It was an ad for the latest Ananta film "Speed". I hear the producer, Ananta, is a very successful businessman, and this is as far as I know his second movie. I saw the first one "Khoj: The Search", and this is a followup "Goti: The Speed". In both, he is the star actor, the hero.


Back to the ad, it did a marvelous job of marketing it, boasting such things as:

• a Russian Dancers - I assume all women
• a film crew from Gujrat or some other place in India
• use of cameras that are used in Hollywood, etc...

I quickly remembered another movie that came out, "Lal Tip: The Red Point". (Apparently, Tip doesn't have a proper translation into English, but its a colofrul, circular or often leaf shaped ornamental piece, that women from the Indian subcontinent can put on their foreheads, a little above the level of the eyes. Point, however sounds wrong). This movie also boast such things:

One single love story, 2 continents; 4 countries involvement, 4000 actors & extras, 180 different locations, used 3500 individual shots, more than 200 crews at home & abroad, best music, IMPRESS TELEFILM's biggest venture, Swapan Ahmed with his promises = LAL TIP

 The above is quoted from their trailer on YouTube. You can actually catch the trailers for both these films over there - Goti: The Speed (Trailer) | Lal Tip: The Red Point (Trailer)

From these trailers, I am not intrigued. These are not movies I am looking forward to watching. The intention behind watching Khoj was to get a few laughs, even though its from the action genre. For as long as I can remember, India has served as the inspiration of our mainstream film makers. Their films of the late 80's are still copied and imitated. Think Jitendro, Anil Kapoor, shirts unbuttoned near the chest showing some of those man hairs, comic relief characters in the backdrop of a social drama or an action flick, rape, corruption, heroes saving the day in the end bringing feuding family members together.

Lal Tip and Goti are instances of breaking away from that, and many claim that its something we should be thankful for. These are now just imitating the Bollywood movies of the late 90's, or maybe someone like Karan Johar. Good cameras, shooting in foreign lands (France, Italy, Malaysia, etc), item songs (google that if you don't know, can't bear to explain), etc.

My bone with these movies, is the lack of attention to a story. A story that is hard to turn away from, a story that says something relevant to our times, a story that awes and evokes and entertains. Those, to me, are the reasons people make movies.

If we are to look towards India, I'd like to urge our film makers to take a quick glance at this brilliant film "Nobel Chor"


There are lots of other examples out of India which have showed an extraordinary understanding of storytelling and movie making then and now, but I think the wrong reasons for making movies are driving what we call Dhaliwood.

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Playing on technicalities

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Banksy - a link.

I have been thinking about the walls of Dhaka and how they were spread with posters (which i dont mind) and also messages praising some political leader or some bullshit religious message (one once saying something about 'beporda' imams on tv channels being hellbound or something). While that was inspiring me to some acts I wont detail here, I came across this artist during some class discussion that i can't remember. Later on I saw some further presentation of his works during the ARS Electronica festival in Austria last summer. Well, instead of talking further, i'd like to present the url to his website, so the interested can take a look.
Website

Related

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Link to Pranab Kairy

http://www.freewebs.com/pompuspb/index.htm

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ARS Electronica

From Austria with Love....


The Festival

The Grafiti Research Lab

Convivio Networks

The Scapha

OpenFrameworks

Kottke

Runme.org

Gary Chang, Architect

Ciao.

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Hidden Video!

Wow! Good work Freddy!

Link

I just saw a lil video freddy made up from footages he took of the exhibition we had at the end of the first term at this art and technology madness. The music in the background is a part of one of Alejandro's compositions.

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Back from a trip

As usual, i forgot the name of the place we went. The trip was a part of a course we have which deals with narrativity, and thus character building and all that. So on this trip we were to assume the roles that we had some time to develop over the past few weeks. Firstly however we were broken down into groups, so that each group had a theme, and then we developed the characters with relation to those themes.

Anyway, there are pics from that trip on my flickr site and the place was just soooo beautiful, I shall urge all to look at the pics from there.

Meanwhile, as far as beauty and photographs go, I would like to point out this link too:

http://www.parkeharrison.com/index.html

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CGBrainChild - Inspiration.

Amazing how you see people and talk to them, but there are always things you never really know about them! Nikolai from my class is one of these people. He is an architect from Serbia who was the person to join the class the latest! lets say a week or so before the end of the first semester when we were all just wholly occupied with our upcoming exams.

Anyway, he has opened up a new website and it is called CGbrainchild. here is what he had to say about it:

Only aim of this gallery is to give inspiration to Artists. CGbrainchild is mainly about Computer Graphics, but every other piece of art, sketch, art studies, story is welcome, because this is about Inspiration.

So if you have some artwork that you would like to show, and you think that it can be inspiring for others, go to www.cgbrainchild.com and see Sending Your Artwork Details.

CGbrainchild is now on search for:
| 3d Artwork (created with 3dmax, maya, softimage...)
| 2d Artwork (created with Photoshop, Painter...)
| Sketches, initial idea drawings, studies
| Traditional art images
| Stories about success or better failure and what you learned from that experience
| Or maybe you have a suggestion

Be sure to also check out the links at the bottom of the pieces from the gallery of the artists' pages too!

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Hashem Khan

When in school, two things inspired me to drawing, sketching... one is comics, and the other is the illustrations of one man in our Bangla text book, Amar Boi. That man is Hashem Khan. Today i found an interview of him on the Noboborsho supplement of the Daily Star. Read.

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Onek Din Por...

Onek din por email porlam, onek din por blog porlam.. onek din por blog korchi. asholey temon din porey na... tobuo mone hoy onek din por. shob mathay. shobi dharona. gotokal noboborsho'r ojuhatey ekta choto khato onushthan kora holo Chalmers-ay. Oder kaukey temon bhalo chena chilona agey... jehutu amar class hoy onek durey... nodir epar opar bepar shepar. Ei onsushthaner prostuti ebong shomapti'r moddhe koyek joner shathey ekhon ektu bhalo porichoy holo. Chobi tola hoyeche kichu.. shegulo ekhaney:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tanm2006/sets/72057594108291418/



And while it lasts... Daily Star's City in Frame

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