Here are some more photographic experiments that I did, since last time.  All of these were taken with my HP laptop webcam and post-processed in Picasa (hence, only low resolution images are available).  These were/are used as profile pictures on various social networking sites, and I also posted these on my deviantART gallery.

This first image is called Action Movies and is inspired by the old 1980s and early 90s action movies, the kind that we grew up on!  The kind of movies that we were way too young to see, but watched anyway.  The kind that they don't make any more.  Some of them are bonafide classics (like Die Hard) that were influential, others kept the clichés alive, but all were entertaining.  Remember the bullets, shootouts, explosions, extreme violence, hand-to-hand combat, punches to the face, broken limbs, the hero with a mysterious past (mostly an FBI or CIA agent)?  I bet these names will bring back fond memories — Arnold Schwarzenegger's Commando, Predator, Total Recall, Steven Seagal's Marked for Death and Under Siege, the Lethal Weapon series, and many more.  Sure, the final image above may not convey all these things, but that was the inspiration for the picture.  By the way, the shirt I am wearing is the one Varun made for me some months back (a shirt with images of my drawings).  [deviantART entry]

This picture is called Emotional Atyachar and obviously it is inspired by the Anurag Kashyap movie Dev.D.  This got some pretty good comments, and is inspired specifically by the scene where Abhay Deol dunks his head in water and then emerges back out.  I didn't have a bucket of water close by, so this is the "dry version" of Emotional Atyachar.  Music inspiration is the "Emotional Atyachar Rock Version)" from the movie.  [deviantART entry]

The next set of images is interesting — it is from a time towards the end of April when I got my hair cut extremely short.  I'd been intending to do that for some time anyway, and when Varun had come home to visit and said that he was going for a haircut, I decided to go for it.  It was an impulse decision, and I later associated inspirations to the new look — the Space Monkeys from Project Mayhem in Fight Club, the Ghajini look, the skinhead look from American History X or the Jason Statham look from The Transporter or Crank.  At any rate, I've kind of got used to not having to comb my hair for the last month or so now!  [deviantART entry]

Some weeks back, I was doing some random doodling in a notebook at office, and this is what I came up with —

Of course, this is just the one strip with 3 panels, it wasn't actually intended to go anywhere.  Done in ballpoint pen, inspiration is the trashy post-apocalypse SF-action-horror movies from the 1990s.  If I absolutely had to develop this into a full story, then it would be something along the lines of Cybertech Inc creating artificial duststorms containing Smoke (for some mysterious and ominous motive), and a lone defender finding this out.  Of course, I would have to include cyborg kickboxers (or kickboxing cyborgs) in there somewhere.

In February, I had the pleasure of watching director Anurag Kashyap's movie Dev.D in a theatre.  I liked it a lot and was very inspired by it, which led me to do the below drawing —

This drawing has been added to the Gallery, click on the above image to see the respective page.  A little bit about the movie now — Dev.D is a modern retelling of the 1917 story "Devdas".  A disclaimer here: I only have a very superficial background of this story, because neither have I read the original story, nor have I watched the 2002 Shah Rukh Khan film Devdas (not my type of movie).  Anyway, familiarity with the original story is not essential to one's enjoyment of the movie.  Abhay Deol stars as Dev, the spoilt rich son of a wealthy Punjabi businessman.  Dev loves (or rather, thinks he loves) Parminder a.k.a. Paro (Mahi Gill) since childhood, and they keep in touch inspite him going off to London to study.  On Dev's return, his attitude towards Paro causes her to reject him and marry someone else, and thus begins Dev's downward spiral into self-destruction!  Dev finds solace in his relationship with Leni a.k.a. Chandramukhi (Kalki Koechlin), a young girl turned to prostitution.  There isn't much more to the story — but you should simply enjoy how the whole thing is put together.  Great cinematography (Rajeev Ravi, who worked on the director's earlier No Smoking and his next film Gulaal), songs and music, and performances.  It's not a movie for everyone though — people who are expecting a linear storyline that develops in a traditional way would find the movie boring.  But I loved the movie, and thus far, it is definitely my favourite Hindi movie of 2009.  The movie has a style all its own and uses several camera tricks — the "SnorriCam" which you might remember from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and an entirely bizarre "tripping out" movement where the camera circles around the actors rapidly with lights streaking past.  Apart from the photography, the director uses music and songs (there are around 18 songs on the soundtrack, in various styles) to convey emotion, or rather, the "Emotional Atyachar" of the characters.  The UK group "Twilight Players" show up at different places performing to some of the songs, and move the plot along.  It's a great experience watching this movie — right up to the end credits, which start off upside down (all text is inverted and it starts dropping from the top of the screen) and then the entire screen rotates and the credits resume their normal style.  One thing I noticed, is that Dev uses Bose Earphones throughout the movie — the same ones I bought for Rs 4950.

Extra Reading and References

Check out the following links for more about Dev.D and Anurag Kashyap —

• Dev.D Theatrical Trailer — Check out the trailer, this will give you an idea of what the movie's like, and you can see some of the stuff I talked about.  The trailer has the song "Emosanal Atyachar (Brass Band Version)" playing in the beginning (starts at about 55 seconds in).  Then, at 1:44 you have "Emotional Atyachar (Rock Version)" which begins with a scream — that is the director screaming on the soundtrack.
• The Making of Dev D — Amazing!  A documentary that runs about 30 minutes long and talks about various "behind the scenes" aspects of the movie.  For instance, as the movie starts, you see "Special Thanks: Danny Boyle" mentioned.  That is because, Danny Boyle gave suggestions to Anurag Kashyap on how to shoot some of the tripping out sequences in the movie.  They were actually done with a still camera.
• Emotional Atyachar X Rated Version — A cheeky, completely dirty "re-dubbing" of the song!  Very funny.
• Dev.D Official Website — A nicely done official website for the movie.  The "Loading..." progress bars become lines of cocaine!
• Gulaal Trailer — The trailer for Anurag Kashyap's next film Gulaal (which was released in March).
• Anurag Kashyap's posts on Passion For Cinema — Check out some of the posts that the director has written on the film blog Passion for Cinema.  Out of the posts related to Dev.D, you can have a look at these: the Genesis of Dev.D, which talks about how Abhay Deol suggested the idea for the movie, which was later built by Anurag Kashyap and screenwriter Vikramaditya Motwane into the current film, and about Emosanal Atyachar.

DVD Review

Ever since I saw the movie I have been waiting for it to hit DVD, and that happened a couple of days back!  The DVD is released by Moser Baer Home Video, and I bought it as soon as I could.  It is worth every rupee of the Rs 149 I paid for it!  It is a 2-disc edition.  The first disc has the movie in a quality transfer (which is essential to enjoy the movie's excellent cinematography), with a 5.1 surround sound mix and the usual English subtitles.  The movie runs 2 hours and 18 minutes and as far as I can tell it is exactly the same as the version released in theatres (no extras).  There are a few trailers included on this disc as well.  The second disc has over two hours of behind the scenes footage (essentially comprising of an extensive documentary that touches upon different aspects of the movie).  Here is what they have included on disc two —

• The Short Making of Dev.D (26 minutes) — a compilation of "highlights" from the other features.  This is the exact same video I linked to earlier on in this post.
• The Story (10 minutes) — Anurag Kashyap and screenwriter Vikramaditya Motwane talk about the development of the story.  Similar ground is covered in the Passion for Cinema post I linked to earlier.
• The Characters (51 minutes) — This feature talks about the characters of Dev, Paro, Chanda, Chunni.
• Styling and Look (9 minutes) — Interview with the Costume Designer about the look for the various characters.
• Production Design and Art (13 minutes) — Interview with Production Designers about how they "dressed up" the various locations in the movie.  The "waiting room" in the brothel that Dev goes to, has comic book pages as wallpaper — apparently that was the director's idea and they used pages from an issue of Heavy Metal.
• Locations and Photography (18 minutes) — I would have loved it if this feature went into more technical detail on the cinematography, but we'll have to settle for what we get.
• Music of the Film (25 minutes) — Interview with Music Director Amit Trivedi and Lyricist Amitabh Bhattacharya on the songs of the movie.
• About the Director (11 minutes) — Kind of like an overview / wrap to the special features.

There are a few deleted scenes from Dev.D that are available to watch on YouTube, but they're not included on this DVD.  And it would have been nice if they'd have included the X Rated Emotional Atyachar song too!

I have been very busy at work recently, that's why I have been posting infrequently.  But I did get to see some major movie releases recently —

• 13B — Seen on 21-Mar-09 in BIG Cinemas.  Decent movie, but I didn't think it was groundbreaking like some people said.  A pretty standard horror thriller about Manohar (R Madhavan) and his family moving into a new house, and the strange things that happen.  Technically the movie was good but it is quite similar to one of those Japanese or Korean spook movies.  One small nitpick I have is that they show newspapers supposedly printed in 1977 and they are typeset in Arial and Times New Roman!  Arial is an 1980s typeface and it seemed totally out of place.  Anyway for the movie I'd give a 6/10.
• Gulaal — Seen on 22-Mar-09 in BIG Cinemas.  I would call this a treat for the senses.  It is about politics in the fictional state of Rajpur, so not typically my kind of movie, but I went to see it anyway because of the director.  The movie is beautifully shot and it's just great to see everything come together (acting, editing, music, cinematography) the way it did.  Lots of little touches like the names of wine brands all having a political theme (Democrat, Republic, Communist, etc) and the neon sign that says "Hello There" being turned into "Hell here" when the O and the T blink off.  This is the next DVD release I am waiting for!  Rating: 8/10
• Watchmen — I've waited over a year to watch this movie.  Finally got to see it on an IMAX screen on 28-Mar-09.  Like when I saw Sin City it was difficult for me to consider the movie on its own merits, because it was so close to the source graphic novel!  What they pulled off with this is simply stunning.  Some aspects of the movie exceeded expectations, while some others fell a little short (the portrayal of Ozymandias's character for example).  Anyway, the movie seemed too short even at 2.5 hours, so I will wait for the 3.5 hour extended version to come out on DVD.  I'd rate it 9/10.

The weekend that I watched Gulaal, I got a bunch of art supplies as well (sheets of canvas, acrylic paints).  This will be made use of, soon.

A few months back, there was a vending machine installed in our office cafeteria.  This thing had a slot where coins could be put in, and I thought, what happens when it's supposed to give you change?  Does it shoot out coins from that same slot?  (Answer: No, there's a separate slot where change is dropped.)

As you can tell, I was just clowning around with this.  Done in ballpoint pen on a notepad.

I was going through some old images from my TAPMI days, and came across a drawing that I'd done in 2004 (I almost forgot about this actually).  This was based on a line of dialogue from the Fight Club book by Chuck Palahniuk, which doesn't appear in the movie.  The line is quite disturbing and funny at the same time!  So this time, I decided to do a photo based on that (I am the one in the photo as well as the photographer).  Take a look —

Perhaps the quality of this photo isn't up to the standard of the previous effort.  The "digital bruises" could also probably be done a little better.  Anyway, I think overall it turned out pretty well.  For the record, here's the drawing this photo was based on —

Hard to believe it's already been four and a half years since I did that!

One of the movies I'm waiting to watch this year is Crank 2: High Voltage (it's one of the movies featured in my 8 Movies I Want to See in 2008-09 drawing).  This movie will be released on 17-Apr-09 in the US and is a sequel to the 2006 movie Crank.  That movie had Jason Statham as assassin Chev Chelios, who is injected with a "Beijing Cocktail" of poisons which will stop his heart, unless he keeps his adrenalin level high.  The sequel has some Chinese mobsters stealing Chelios' heart and replacing it with an electrical heart, which requires regular jolts of electricity to keep it ticking!  Crank 2 seems like it will be a very enjoyable movie (it is rated R for "frenetic strong bloody violence throughout, crude and graphic sexual content, nudity and pervasive language" — which can only be a good thing).  There are two trailers for this movie that were released in January, and I was so inspired by them, that I made this drawing —

You can click on that image above, to see the gallery page for this drawing.  As expected, you'll be able to see a large (1000 pixel wide) version of the drawing, and the black and white version too.  I haven't yet made the official video for this drawing, once I do it, it will be added to that page.  Have a look and tell me what you think!  I am off now, to complete the Watchmen drawing I wrote about earlier.

I'm sure you'd have seen my "Best Movies of 2008" drawing by now, in some form or the other (if not, here's your chance!).  Most probably, you'd have seen the photo of it that I uploaded at various places.  Anyway, this weekend, I scanned it and prepared a high-quality version for uploading here, and I also coloured it in Photoshop.

Click on the image above, to view the "official" page for the drawing.  You can view the large-size coloured version, a high-quality B&W scan, and also check out the video that I put together, which shows me actually drawing the thing.  I am taking a print of the B&W version to put up in my office cubicle wall.

The 81st Annual Academy Awards are going to air in a couple of hours from now.  Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, which is featured as part of my drawing, has 10 Oscar nominations.  Will it win Best Picture (or at least, a Best Director prize)?  David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is probably a close competitor, with 13 nominations (though, as I haven't seen this movie yet, it isn't part of my drawing).  We'll have to see what happens...

A couple of weeks back, I started doing a drawing based on Watchmen.  I call this one "Old Photographs" and it is based on a scene from Chapter IV ("Watchmaker") in the book.  This was inspired by the Illustration Friday topic "Time".

This chapter from the book came to mind immediately when I thought of "Time".  This chapter presents time in a very unique way — Dr Manhattan in the book is a character who experiences time simultaneously.  For him, all events, past, present and future happen at the same time.  The chapter starts with Dr Manhattan looking at an old photograph on Mars in 1985, and then it goes back and forth in time, covering 40 years worth of events.  It's an outstanding piece of writing and art in a book that is a masterpiece.  So brilliant.

The concept for my drawing is simple — you have Dr Manhattan looking at the photo, and the actual photo (with Dr Jon Osterman and Janey Slater in 1959) is in the background.  It is being drawn in pencil, and I am doing the shading in a more realistic manner rather than going by the comic-book style.  At the same time, I am not using photo references from the characters in the upcoming movie.  Rather, the reference used for Dr Manhattan here is Ed Harris.  I hope the drawing turns out well (I have always been intimidated at the thought of drawing something based on Watchmen, because I doubt whether I would be able to do justice to that magnificient piece of work).

On a related note, it's not long before Zack Snyder's Watchmen movie adaptation will be released in theatres (March 6).  I do hope it'll be released in IMAX here, and you can bet I'll see it the first chance I get.  Going by some early reviews that have hit the net (see here), the movie is supposed to be EXTREMELY faithful to the book except for a slightly altered ending.  If they do pull it off (and I believe that Snyder would have done it), Watchmen will be the greatest movie of 2009.  The theatrical cut is supposed to be 2 hours and 36 minutes long, with an extended edition running 3 hours and 10 minutes that'll be released on DVD later.  A third version of the movie (with the animated story The Tales of the Black Freighter reinserted into the main movie) will run 3 hours and 25 minutes.  I would want to own all these versions (see here for more details)!

Oh, and while doing this drawing, I have been recording footage that will be compiled into a short video later on.  One significant bit though, I have uploaded on YouTube.  This is me drawing the Hydrogen atom symbol on Dr Manhattan's forehead.  You can view the video here (it is just 56 seconds long).

Friday, 6-Feb-09 was an interesting day, because myself and a few friends from work gathered for an evening movie screening of Fight Club!  I brought my laptop (and speakers and other stuff) to office in the morning, and showed the movie on it.  Like in a theatre, trailers were shown before the main feature and I was giving commentary on the movie too!  Trailers shown included Watchmen (of course), 300, 2012, Terminator Salvation, Banlieue 13 and the sequel Banlieue 13 Ultimatum, Blade Runner: The Final Cut, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and G I Joe: Rise of Cobra.

It was great to watch the movie again — I was reminded of how much I love this movie and why.  I have seen Fight Club numerous times from Engineering days, and I could always relate to it.  Edward Norton's character of the Narrator is supposed to be an "everyman" which means that he is representative of all of us who can't take control of our lives and let external situations govern us.  Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) is the way we all wish to be — smart, cool, and powerful (because he has nothing to lose).  Now I can't obviously speak for others, but I can definitely relate to this!  There's a little of Tyler in everyone.  In the movie though, this "breaking free" is taken to an extreme and it goes out of control.  But I love the underlying theme (a similar theme runs through American Beauty as well, just that it's a much lighter movie).  I guess having the movie explained allowed the audience to appreciate it more, and I hope to do more such "screenings" in the future!

I was extremely inspired after watching the movie this time.  I did two photo manipulation experiments, based on the movie.  Of course, I am only the "model" for both these photos.  This was the first attempt —

I do think I went a little overboard on the FX in this one though.  But I think it turned out pretty nicely.  At any rate, I think it's not a bad effort, for a quick photo taken with my laptop webcam and ten minutes spent in Photoshop.  The next experiment though, was far more successful in my opinion —

This one was taken with my Nokia N82 cellphone camera and I am quite proud of this.  I think it's a more restrained picture due to which the effect stands out better.  Again, all bruises are done on computer only.  I want to do further movie-inspired photos like this — planning to buy a proper camera and then set up the photos better (a little better staging, lighting, props, makeup FX will go a long way!).  By the way I have recorded a number of videos also inspired by Fight Club, but these are not being uploaded on YouTube or anything (as people will doubt my sanity then).

It has been quite a while since there's been a post on this blog, hasn't it?  Well, it's just that I've been lazy to write posts (and I have also been extremely busy at work).  There have been some images and other stuff that I have put up at other places (orkut, Facebook, deviantART, YouTube), but I thought it was high time I formally make some updates here.

To begin with, last time I mentioned that I would be going on a vacation to Goa.  I did just that, between 22 to 27-Jan.  This was a trip planned by me and the "Ambattur Boys", that is, my roommates when I was staying in Chennai.  Below are some photos from that trip (all taken with my Nokia N82 cellphone camera), and you can click on each one to see a larger version.  I enjoyed the vacation as it was a much-needed break from work.  We stayed at Ronil Beach Resort and places visited during the trip include Baga Beach in Calagunte, Church of St Francis, Basilica of Bom Jesus and the Christian Art Gallery.  Went parasailing and also got a temporary tattoo done.  And watched a few movies (including Hostel, Vaaranam Aayiram, Taken, Saw V), of course.

At Rajiv Gandhi International Airport Shamshabad, I spotted this, a hardcover version of Watchmen.  I so wanted to buy this outright (it was priced at Rs 1792), but then, since I already own a paperback version, I decided that I would later buy Absolute Watchmen.

The next couple of pictures were taken at Baga Beach.  Now those glasses I am wearing are a knock-off version of Ray-Ban, which I got for just Rs 250!  The significance of the next photo (me drinking Assam Tea) is that it was taken at around 3 AM.  There was a Cafe Coffee Day outlet that was open 24 hours, which was good because I like to drink tea late at night.

The next few pics were taken at the Churches visited and at the Christian Art Gallery.

And finally, this next photo was subsequently used as my profile picture at various places online, for obvious reasons!

Well, that covers the Goa Trip.  The next important event to write about, is the movie screening that I did of Fight Club early this month.  There were a couple of photos that I made as a direct inspiration from that.  This is coming up, in the next post.