Ridiculity

Yes, he’s right. He walks into the class and starts lecturing “If you live in Nepal and expect to much,it’s your fault. You are an idiot to expect international teaching standards.” I admit I am an idiot but what name can I give him? Why would a teacher ask his student to compulsorily write a letter to the editor on his article and not dare to mention the connection.

This is it….

I am eagerly waiting to watch ‘This is it’. It’s getting good reviews the world over.Larry King had nice things to say about it and the BBC review was positive too. Ebert and Masand both gave it four stars. I am not sure when I will get to see it. It’s not released in Nepal yet. I hope ‘piracy’ does its trick and I get to see it soon.”This is it” I love this one liner. It’s cool,ambitious and very MJ.What say?

Deepak Rauniyar on his film:an interview

‘Threshold’ is the first film by a Nepali director to be screened in the ‘Short Film Corner’of the ‘Non-competitive category’ at the ‘Cannes Film Festival’. The film was the third prize winner in the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival 2008. It was also selected for the ‘Phuket Film Festival’ to be held in Thailand in june. Recently it won accolades in the Ahemdabad Film festival held in India and was also screened at Kumari Hall.
The director of the film is –Deepak Rauniyar. Here are excerpts from the interview taken by me before he left for France(almost two months ago).

What attracted you to films in the first place?
It was in 2047 B.S that I came to Kathmandu. Before, I used to work in Biratnagar in Radio Nepal. In kathmandu I worked in a number of print media like Nepal Samacharpatra, Himal and Kantipur. During that time I met a lot of Nepali film directors and got a chance to critique their work. There would always be discussions with directors and they challenged us to make films and show them.
That was how my seniors like Nabin Subba got into films and how I did too.

Do you remember the first film you saw?
No I don’t. But I remember when I was small there were no cinema halls in my village and televisions were rare. Only a few people owned television sets. They used to charge us two rupees to watch programs. We used to walk miles to watch World Cup matches on television at neighboring villages.
I however remember my first cinematic experience maybe I studied in grade eight. It was to watch ‘Shehansa’. We bought the lowest priced tickets and got the front row seats. We had to tilt out heads completely to watch the film. Amitabh Bacchan looked even more magnificent with his chain and hairstyle. The movie now as I remember seems to have been inspired from Spiderman. During the day the protagonist is a shy village boy but at night he turns into a superhero.

Which Nepali film directors do you admire?
I have worked with Nabin Subba and Tshering Rhitar Sherpa and admire their work. I also like Tulsi Ghimires detailing and use of Nepali sentiments in his films.

You have worked in print media, visual media and now you are working as senior editor and producer for ‘Katha Mitho Sarangi ko’? Which medium do you find the most effective?
Well, film is the most effective medium but radio is the pathway to awareness. Print landed me into films and now radio is helping me make films. It is teaching me how to make characters work.This visit to the Cannes will further add an expense of one to two lakhs. I don’t know where it will come from? My job is financially supporting my career as a film maker.

नेपाली

म नेपाली, नेपालीमा लेख्दैछु।

Delhi dilema

G for Ghajini, S for Short term memory loss

Ten days into watching Ghajini, I still can’t get over its tunes. I want ‘Guzarish’ as my ring tone but I don’t have the original version. The movie has grossed 100 crores in its opening week in the box office and has become the no 1 movie of 2008.

Ghajini turns out to be the re-re make of ‘memento’, its south Indian version was also ‘ Ghajini’ and Asin was in it too.

If you thought Bollywood was loosing itself without heroes fighting a dozen ‘gundas’ with the power of his biceps, heroines and heroes had stopped dancing around and there was no item song thrown at you for no reason- don’t turn away: ‘Gajini’ has it all.

Amir and Asin make a great pair. It’s only Amir who can make you believe he can ring a dandy’s neck with a swift punch and if you are a depressed lover with a short term memory you act like a mad bull.

I enjoyed the movie thoroughly (pura paisa wasool jo hua). There’s action, comedy, tragedy and romance all in one. Murgados has made a great directorial debut, Jiah Khan’s done her part by shouting ‘SSSSANNNJAY’, Asin’s the next big thing and Amir proves he’s can shine in both commercial and critical cinema. The villain’s(Was he Aswathama from Mahabharat?) dialogue delivery was impressive ‘Short term memory loss, tu mujhe samjhayega?’’

The script fits the plot and the action scenes are marvelously directed. But questions can’t be stopped:
• Who writes personal diaries now a days?
• Are we allowed to carry notes of One Lakh thirty five thousand bundled in jet planes(Oh!private planes…but??)
• Why does Amir never eat in the movie?
• Where does all that power come from (just from exercising??)

Besides these futile questions there’s no reason why you shouldn’t watch ‘Gajini’. After RBJ any movie could do the trick but Gajini is the chosen one.
I am looking forward to watching Asin in ‘London dreams’ and Amir in ‘Three Idiots’. A number of off the beat movies like ‘Dev D, Dil Kabbadi, Oei Lucky Lucky Oei, Luck by chance and Delhi 6 will be my priorities after the exams. For now I must go back to my books.Enjoy the upcoming weekends:Chadini Chowk to China is on its way.

No Rab no Jodi

Cool dance step

Sharukh towers above RBJ. If you didn’t watch the movie you didn’t miss any thing and you were spared endless moments of cliched crap.
Surendar Sahani is a well written character but nothing else in the script supports him. Aditya Chopra let me down. I was expecting a love story equal to DDLG-it’s far from being close. Anuska is beautiful, so what?
The plot is useless-all that dancing and Sumo fighting crap. The first half is bearable with Surendars presence on screen ,the second half too much to bear.I felt cheated in a way. The story is dragged unnecessarily and no ”leap of faith” can justify a wife not recognizing her husband with and without a thin mustache.
A hit isn’t a good movie. RBJ grossed 60 crores in the release of its first ten days. But how can I get my ticket money back?
The title of the movie is named so to cash on “Rab”. There is no logic to justify ” I see GOD in you, that’s why i love you.” What about atheists.

I am expecting more from Amir in Gajini.

Reading The Kite Runner

Reading The Kite Runner

By Dikshya Karki

The Kite Runner’ came my way from someone who was more willing to let me borrow the book than first read it. Khaled Hossenis tale is a soulful account of friendship and love. Amir and Hassan walk the beautiful landscape of Afghanistan and weave a tale that intertwines their lives forever. They are the closest of friends yet their social settings separate them as strangers. The distance between them is chalked out inerasably after a fatal accident that leaves Hassan devastated and Amir a shameless coward. Amir further distances himself from Hassan by excluding him from the life he shares with his only living parent. Amir escapes war-ravaged Afghanistan while Hassan toils to earn a living in his homeland. A thousand miles from each other and long past their childhood, they can never deny the past that will guide them all through their lives.

Flipping its pages in a pool of tears I was guided into the unvisited sites of my hostel days. The childhood meetings between the two boys, their love for kites reminded me of my time at the hostel. At nine years of age staying at a boarding school was never fun. After a rainy morning just as the sun was peeping out of the clouds I walked cautiously into the top balcony of the classroom buildings—a place where students weren’t allowed. I saw a beautiful purple kite perched dangerously at the end of the roof. I ran to it and saw that it was wet. I brimmed, imagining the gorgeous kite rising higher into the clouds and I at the end giving it direction. Just as I was moving farther into my imaginary world the bell rang and I left the kite with a heavy heart.

Late past noon when the sun was still murky I hurriedly reached the roof top to find someone else observing the kite-a friend with whom I shared the same name. We picked up the kite together only to see the wet kite torn in two places. She had an idea — a black cello tape could do wonders. Overjoyed by the idea we brought the tape and stuck it awkwardly in two places only to realize that our touch had torn the wet kite further. We taped the kite in all places and stopped to see what we had done. The kite was now a worthless piece of wet paper and hanging tape. Just as we were gazing at our stupidity someone from the balcony door shouted at us to come inside. Hurriedly we threw the dead kite and ran inside to be ordered by our teacher —’never enter the terrace premises again’.

The beautiful wet and worthless kite symbolized many things. When I saw the kite, for a moment I forgot all my grievances about boarding school. It was a sign of freedom. A call for me to stop being grumpy about my circumstance and enjoy my school years. Sadly the idea didn’t last long and I was homesick for a long long time. My friend left boarding school before I did and we lost contact. Still when I think of her I can see her, me and another pal holding the grill of the front window that overlooked the street across the hostel. We waited in that awkward position giving up our play hours, imagining our parents coming to pick us up. After I left school I made many unsuccessful attempts to fly kites with the help of little Laxmi next door. All we got from the attempts were a few laughs and a number of torn kites. My small desire silently waits to be fulfilled.

This is a beautifully-crafted book designed to instigate emotions in the readers but some incidents appear too good to be true. It could be the writer’s way of affirming that everything moves in circles. There is always space to correct mistakes, seek vengance and help the unaided. Friendship cannot be divided by borders and love is what keeps that bond alive. As Hassan tells Amir “for you a thousand times over,” one can be ready to do everything for a loved one.

An incomplete picture

I don’t know why we forget how happy we were, how much we loved each other and how perfect we found the world to be. Perfection isn’t a perfect word after all. We loved, got bored and decided to move on, to track back our derailed life.

We parted sweetly yet sometimes we remembered how once we thought we would be together forever. We smiled and did what we had to but missed each other when walking in lonely alleys with no umbrellas it rained down on us. Yes, we wished someone was waiting for us with umbrellas in the bending. It was a wistful thought that took us as afar as our door steps with smiles.

A cup of coffee and a little jazz put us to sleep. Suddenly in the middle of the night, a chilly breeze woke us up. We locked up our open windows and embraced our cozy blankets. The next morning, life was a new leaf. We forget each others lost company and stopped feeling melancholic. In the middle of another month and we were back where we had parted with a glass of gin in our hands watching the trees in our garden drenching in rain.

But we were afraid to complete the incomplete picture we decided to hang in our hearts. We had parted happily and a re union would spoil perfection. There were a dozen other things to do than bask in the joy of an ex lovers smile. There were noisy relatives, boisterous neighbors, never ending business assignments, music and yes parties where you drank so much you always ended in a new bed. Time flew and we were happy, the pictures we had of each other seemed to be fading. We danced to tunes we once had danced together. We could even watch the movies we watched together crying on each other shoulders without feeling a thing. We were finally moving on. Just then someone rang our doorbells. We were surprised at the sudden intrusion in our fun. We hurriedly opened our doors to find each other looking into each others eyes. We stumbled and realized it was someone else. They reminded us of each other. We welcomed them in to our lives. The light in their hair, their voices reminded us of what we once used to be. We made life long commitments and walked the aile. We waved at the world and yet before we said ‘I do’ we closed our eyes and saw each other.

Days became months and months were years. We welcomed new souls into our lives and cultivated our dreams in their eyes. We laughed when they did and cried silently when they were ill. They grew up and reminded us of ourselves. They loved, were hurt, broke down and we tried helplessly to soothe them with words. Then someone walked in to their lives and the tears stopped. There was music everywhere-wedding bells. We joined in the celebration and danced until we realized we were young no more. More happiness followed with the sprouting of little buds in our family tree. We couldn’t help being proud and happy no doubt. Our age struck the time bell and we knew it was time to leave. Lying on our death beds we looked out of the window with satisfaction at the setting sun. Our life was well lived but before leaving we wanted to take the best memory with us. We observed the fading rays of the sun and all we remembered was each other. Along with our best memory, we closed our eyes and promised ourselves that next time we would never paint an incomplete picture.

(P.S: Thanks to zade for the two pictures)

An interesting article from BBC..

This was something I found a long time ago but posting only now.Here’s a great issue for discussion.

The challenge of media regulation
Ofcom will incorporate five regulators into one

By Nick Higham
BBC media correspondent

Last week in a speech in Oxford, Lord Currie, the chairman of the new communications super-regulator, Ofcom, coined a new term, “co-regulation”.

One of the Big Ideas in the new Communications Bill is that broadcasters and others in the communications world should, wherever possible, police themselves rather than allowing a government-appointed busybody like Ofcom to do it for them.

They call this self-regulation, and one of the duties given to Ofcom at the very start of the bill is to “promote and facilitate the development of effective forms” of self-regulation.

Lord Currie
Lord Currie was appointed to Ofcom in July 2002
Getting the communications industry to draw up its own codes of practice, enforce them and handle complaints from consumers if the codes are broken is seen as more flexible than old-style statutory regulation.

Ofcom has now identified advertising as one area in which it could swiftly move to devolve responsibility to the industry itself.

There is already a successful model in the Advertising Standards Authority, which ensures that print, poster and cinema advertising is “legal, decent, honest and truthful”.

Why not extend that model to television and radio ads?

What’s more, some of the controls on TV and radio advertising are already exercised by the industry itself.

Co-regulation looks like self-regulation – except that the regulator sits next door with a big club

The Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre (BACC) vets the scripts for TV and radio commercials in advance, and tells advertisers if they breach the codes drawn up by the Independent Television Commission (ITC) and the Radio Authority (RA).

But self-regulation has its flaws. The Press Complaints Commission (PCC), set up after complaints about newspapers invading people’s privacy, has not been especially successful either in preventing stories about people’s private lives in the papers or in keeping the law at arm’s length.

Governments have long since dropped any serious plans for a privacy law, but some judges would still like to establish a right to privacy through case law.

The PCC’s modest achievements may be down to the fact that, as a voluntary body paid for by the organisations it polices, it cannot criticise newspapers too robustly for fear that they will simply walk away.

‘Unsuitable’ advertising

But self-regulation of broadcast advertising is unlikely to suffer from the same problems because Ofcom will have the same legal duty to regulate TV and radio ads as the ITC and the RA.

In particular, it will have to draw codes of practice to prevent “unsuitable” advertising (whatever Ofcom decides that is), which one assumes will be much like the ITC and RA codes.

Which is why Lord Currie coined his new term.

Co-regulation, he said, looks like self-regulation – except that the regulator sits next door with a big club.

Advertising industry watchers know that already – in recent months the ITC has several times overruled decisions by the BACC, upholding complaints about ads which the BACC has passed.

Not much, it seems, is likely to change under Ofcom.

A version of this column appears in the BBC in-house newspaper Ariel.