at this time

because i too am a sucker for a sunset photo.

our lady

"'first love,' hina alvi says, 'is like your first heart attack. chances are that you'll survive it, but you don't outlive it. that first gasp for air is the beginning of the end. you have managed to breath some air in, and you think you are all right. you might think it's a matter of lifestyle, quit this, cut out red meat, walk, run, get a personal trainer, try shitting standing up, but...it'll get you in the end.'"  -our lady of alice bhatti

our lady of alice bhatti is pretty unusual for a pakistani novel. there is  fair bit of violence in it, and sex too, which may not appeal to the exact stratum of society that especially needs to read it.  while much south asian literature tends to vacillate between depicting pakistan as a nostalgic space of diaspora or a geopolitical hotbed of fundamentalism, this novel does neither. it offers a portrait of contemporary urban pakistan that is complex, layered and entirely unsentimental. at times it is brutal, but the dark brutality rests on a kind of insight that should not be dismissed.  a lot of pundits continue to ask why pakistan remains a country at crossroads sixty five years on. this is not a book specifically setting out to answer that question, but it does get at a certain kind of truth about it.

like mohsin hamid’s moth smoke, our lady unfolds as a modern crime noir. it’s a tragedy about a woman who is punished not for what she has done but for who she is. she is a reluctant femme fatale- her sexuality a weapon not because she chooses to wield it but merely because she possesses it.  and her story is an indictment against a society that remains handicapped not by it’s polarization against the west as the nightly news would have us believe, but rather because of an internal class based system of misogyny that is condoned by a corrupt church-state system. this is a country out of order, and the external pressures of the new great game have spun it out of control.

despite all this it would still be dismissive to categorize this novel as a timely political thriller, because i think it gets at something even deeper than the current state of affairs in pakistan. at it’s heart it’s a feminist novel. it’s about how the bodies of women are being trampled, displaced and discarded in lieu of rational discourse. this war is not being waged by outlaw forces in turbans but by fathers, husbands and brothers who have acquiesced to a society of inequity. and it’s happening because a country has turned in on itself. the daily human suffering that has come out of this cannibalization is what our lady is really about. combined with hanif’s previous a case of exploding mangoes, it’s a must read.

newegg

i came across this nest of seagull eggs on the rangatira side of kapiti island. a little girl found it on some rocks near the shore and immediately ran back to the tour guide pleading that someone had to help the baby bird because it wants to get out! it seemed to be going at a steady clip, no doubt it was out soon enough.

there were also loads of cheeky weka birds walking around. they are so fast and clever. one pretended to saunter by me in a disinterested manner then out of nowhere dived into my bag and grabbed a piece of foil that was somewhere in the middle of the bag and dashed off before i even knew what was happening. moral of the story: don't trust a weka.

velvia.velveeta

on some of the shorter walks in tongariro i took along a medium format film camera i have been learning how to use. it certainly involves a lot more effort to get results but it's pretty interesting comparing the same image to one taken with my canon digital slr [see below]. the fidelity of color and depth of detail in the darks kinda blows my digital version away. i also think the developed positives have a charming quality on their own. here i used a film stock called velvia which is known for its ultra rich color. velvia the word [and the results] remind me of a kind of processed american cheese known as velveeta. if you grew up in america in the 80s i don't need to remind you how rich, creamy [i daresay delicious] that synthetic cheese was. think there's a reason the two words sound similar!

merry kiwi xmas

not the crossing

i didn't do the crossing while out in tongariro last week, but i did manage to get in a few hours of rigorous tramping. even the baby hikes offered stunning views.

don't look back now

recently i realized that i rarely stop to look back when walking along a trail. instead, i just charge ahead. if the signage on the trailhead says it will take two hours to complete the walk i'm mentally trying to beat the clock. so recently walking along on kapiti island i decided to pause along the way and look back. the point of view dramaticly changes. perhaps there is some larger lesson to be learned here. looking ahead is practical, but looking back can also afford some pretty nice views!

film crit roundup

over the years since leaving college and becoming a working professional, i've stopped frequenting libraries. it's not something i'm proud of because libraries are some of the most wonderful inspiring spaces around. wandering deep into the bookstacks always gave me this strange feeling of isolation and privacy cocooned within a public space. there is no algorithm that can mirror the feeling of walking over to a shelf and then browsing its length and randomly finding other interesting books. the dewey decimal system really does rule.

but location, modernity and a busy lifestyle have for me supplanted the library with amazoning. it's not the same thing. one doesn't get lost in a database in quite the same way. but there is a specific pleasure to be found in browsing a vast array of books in your pajamas at 1am in the morning when you decide you just really need to find out what the new umberto eco novel is all about. and then wirelessly downloading it to your kindle in mere moments? pretty sweet.

in addition to the physical action of browsing, i also find myself missing being able to cull through back issues of journals. as a student, this was perhaps where the most golden nuggets of information could be found. but again, the internet offers some recourse. it seems many of the best journals for film have a degree of online access. additionally, there are strictly new online resources of varying depth and scope. Here's a hitlist of my favorites:

traditional film journals:

http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/content/current
http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/journals/jvlt.html
http://cameraobscura.dukejournals.org/
http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/

online blogs offering thoughtful criticism, theory and the virtual cinematheque experience:

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/
http://mubi.com/notebook/
http://www.cinefamily.org/
http://www.criterion.com/

design oriented approaches to looking at films:

http://www.artofthetitle.com/
http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/

sirocco

last month i had a chance to go see the famous sirocco at zealandia. as far as birds go he is definitely a celebrity. he is also a very inquisitive fellow. i was wearing a baseball hat with bright letters on it when i went to visit him and i was convinced he kept walking over to me because he found the hat unusual. i could be wrong but i maintain he was into my hat!

the tree of life

it's been suggested that the tree of life may be a film made for cinephiles, but i think this sells both the film and the audience short. like 2001: a space odyssey, it's a film that contains experimental elements, a philosophical stance, and a story providing a framework for answering the really big questions. it's exciting to see a mainstream big budget film depart from conventional ways of storytelling and ask the audience to to take a leap into abstraction.

these moments of abstraction- exploding super novas, the origin of life, our primitive world and it's natural processes seemed to push the depth of the narrative. the core of the story- a family melodrama is fairly conventional. the way in which this story unfolds is not. when we step outside the story into the universe we learn that the idea of grief is as old as time and only something massive like the universe and time itself can begin to quantify the feelings of loss and rage in the face of death.

the dinosaur tableau in particular is a divisive moment in the film. audiences seem particularly polarized by it's relevance. i found myself thinking that in a post jurassic park world, computer generated dinosaurs are expected to be hyper realistic. perhaps the shortcoming here was that these particular dinosaurs were not and thus functioned on the level of distanciation, pulling us out of this fantastic world and into the banal one of computer “wizardry.” nevertheless the moment is still relevant as a symbol of the father. we learn that the need to dominate is ancient and pervasive. it is not specific to man- it's nature vs. grace.

the complexity of the family unit, the roles both children and parents play in both it's cohesiveness and the way in which it can shatter apart is what really spoke to me about this film. the story of families, how we celebrate, grow and suffer together is dynamic. it is more often a push pull dance between the parts than the force one single person exerts upon it. the family is not just the kernal from which all life springs but also a reflection of the world we inhabit, putting us on a continuing trajectory of suffering, grief, joy and love.

 

stills from terrence malick's the tree of life, 2011