Sneha Jaiswal's Blog, page 282

Life Like – A Review

Directed and written by Josh Janowicz, the trailer for the 2019 film ‘Life Like’ looked too intriguing to be ignored. It’s about a couple Sophie & Julian who inherit a LOT of money when Julian’s father dies.

Addison Timlin who plays Sophie is very pretty for the role but her character arc is absolutely flat and annoying. While Julian (Drew Van Acker) struggles to take over his father’s business, Sophie has no job or ambitions whatsoever and does nothing to make his life easier. The bratty bitch instead fires all their house helps & then expects her husband to abandon work and rush back home to mow the lawn. Seriously?

Julian ends up buying a robot that is eerily human-looking to help Sophie in maintaining their mansion, without the guilt of having a real human work for her. The robot is called ‘Henry’ and does everything around the house to keep the couple happy.

Steven Strain who plays Henry is quite convincing as a robot that keeps evolving based on his interactions with his human owners. The fact that he is so ‘life-like’ begins to create problems for the couple as Sophie is unable to treat him like a machine. Again, I can’t emphasize enough how unlikable her character is.

Aesthetically, the film is very pleasing to the eye, most of the cast is very good-looking and move around in beautiful spaces. Everything is so perfect on the surface, that you sense that there are deeper problems lurking around the corner.

There is a very unexpected twist in the end, and it’s unexpected because it just doesn’t fit in with the rest of the narrative. I will have to give a big spoiler to explain what the problem is, but instead I’ll just say this – the twist makes the entire film look like a LOAD OF BULLSHIT. Too many loopholes and questions begin to pop up in your head and one wonders why the director didn’t think of them at all?

The film is bearable only because of the combined charm of Drew Van Acker & Steven Strain, otherwise it’s just a forgettable below average film.

A Rapper’s Confession & A Long Rant

If you want to sell something online these days, a lot of your marketing strategy just boils down to ‘brand influence’. How many followers do you have? How many likes do your posts garner? How many people are talking about you?

As a newbie writer, most articles bombard me with information on how I should concentrate on being heard on social media sites to sell my book. And man, it is hard to get even an iota of attention on any platform. It’s bloody fucking difficult.

Here’s the most annoying bit of having few followers online — people think they can take you for a ride. For example, I have only about 300 followers on my Instagram account and several people who call themselves ‘book reviewers’ keep reaching out to me, asking me if I would like to pay them for a review. Some of them had 100,000+ followers. I felt flattered, but there was no way I was going to pay anybody for a review. However, out of curiosity, I checked their Instagram pages, and what surprised me was the low engagement on their posts. Despite having 100,000+ followers, they had only an average of 100 likes per post. That just seemed a little odd and made me wonder if most of their followers were just bots. Or people with fake profiles. I mean I have friends who are just regular friendly people, who are not trying to become ‘influencers’ and their posts rake up 200/300 ‘likes’ with just 700/800 followers. And that’s because regular people have their friends and family following them, or people who are actually interested in their life. Not bots.

Days later, I see an interesting news article on my feed — RAPPER BADSHAH ADMITS HE PAID RS 75 LAKHS TO BOOST LIKES, VIEWS.

Rs 75 lakh is almost 10,000 dollars. I am not even kidding. This Badshah guy is pretty popular in Bollywood, consider him Kanye West of South-Asia. He apparently paid some firm to gain more views and likes on his music videos and confessed the same to cops. While I first laughed at the news article, I thought about just how desperate even established artists are to gain more ‘likes’ and ‘views’ on their content to establish they are popular or whatever. It’s just sort of sad.

A popular Bollywood singer lamented how even established personalities succumb to such cheap tactics to maintain the optics of their brand. Here is a screenshot of the tweet —

Well she is right about the artist being ‘lazy’, because garnering organic likes and followers is a hard hard job. While some of his songs are very catchy, the bulk of them are pretty average and their lyrics even worse. Sample the fucked up lyrics from one of his songs — ‘If you follow your diet plan, your figure will make me change my flight plan’ — the fuck? March this year he dropped a song whose title sounded like an already popular song and what he came out with was just a ‘cringe-fest’. At least 700,000 people have hit the ‘dislike’ button on the video. Take a look for yourself —

(YouTube Screenshot)

Sure, you might argue ‘hey, cut him some slack, the video has 4.5 million likes, so what if there are some haters?’. But well, we don’t know if he bought those ‘thumbs ups’, do we? It totally makes sense that this guy needs to pay people to increase the positive buzz around his creations.

And this just makes you question just how ‘real’ the millions of followers of certain celebrities are. Remember the time when big names like Opran Winfrey, Ellen has lost million+ followers when Twitter decided to eliminate suspicious accounts on its site?

Well, here’s the link the the NYT article to jog your memory — In Twitter Purge, Top Accounts Lose Millions of Followers.

Kim Kardashian West lost about 3 percent of her Twitter following, dropping down to about 58.5 million as of Thursday evening. Justin Bieber had been stripped of about three million followers so far, while Ariana Grande lost about 932,000. -Excerpt from the same article.

I am not saying these guys paid firms to boost their followers, but it just establishes that there are millions of fakes accounts and bots that just follow several famous accounts. And some these accounts are obviously owned by firms that offer services to people to buy ‘likes’ and ‘follows’. And some celebrities were indeed found guilty of paying firms to get them more followers. One celebrity lost over 70% followers after the ‘clean up’.

A lot of sites now have stricter policies when it comes to fake account and you can end up being banned if it’s found that you have bought followers. Because being an online ‘influencer’ is serious business, with brands paying people with a large following, because they believe their followers are ‘real’.

As a new writer, I see no point in paying anybody anything, because I want to make money out of my books. I want people to pay to read my book. I don’t want to pay them to read my book. That’s just fucking stupid. Me paying any sort of money to buy fake followers also wouldn’t help me in any way either. I need real people following me, showing real interest in me and my work and actually bothering to buy my damn book and leaving a review because they wanted to and not because I paid them to. That’s like setting up a shop and then giving away your product for free to the customer and topping it off by giving them money for taking it for free.

I have been reading books all my life and only after becoming an published writer am I beginning to understand some knew facets of the publishing world and how some writers work. Now I have a concrete idea as to why some SHITTY BOOKS become bestsellers — they are probably by writers who are simply buying favorable reviews. Some ‘reviewers’ ask for less than one dollar to do review books, so if you can set aside 100 dollars to pay small-time reviewers to leave a reviews on a bunch of sites, you can easily rake up 100+ fake positive reviews. That’s just insane. Because getting product reviews on any site is a herculean task. It took me 6 months to get 10 organic book reviews on my debut book. And I have seen somebody on social media get 100+ reviews on their book within a month and I know for a fact that almost all of them are paid reviews.

Here is the thing — I can definitely afford to set aside 100 dollars to just get paid reviews on my book. One just needs to make up their mind about looking at it like an ‘investment’. A 100 favorable reviews will obviously give my book a massive boost, both in terms of visibility and rankings and will definitely influence other unsuspecting readers into thinking “ooh this book has such great reviews, let’s me try it out”. Next thing you know — BOOM — you are probably selling thousands of copies due to a ripple effect.

I just can’t ever get myself to do it when it comes to my books. I have been reading books since I have no idea when, those are my fondest memories. I might have become a writer only recently, but I have always been a reader first. Books are my first love, they were in my life before music and films became an obsession. As a reader, I could never betray/mislead fellow readers with paid reviews of my books. I just cannot.

Nobody is getting a single dollar out of me, forget 10,000 dollars. I do believe in giving free copies of my book in exchange of a ‘honest review’. A fair trade? That’s a debate for some other day.

Disclaimer – I originally published this post on my Medium account – Would You Pay 10,000 Dollars For ‘Likes’?

A ‘Blah’ Kind of Day

It’s a Sunday, I don’t even have a regular job anymore and still feel like Sunday is supposed to be a day when you sleep late and do nothing. It’s supposed to be your reward for slogging your ass off for the rest of the week. I didn’t do that either. And yet, my morning was spent in sleeping.

All I did the whole day was eat, drink and see a film – The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, which by the way was a good film. My original plan was to write a full-blown review, but guess what? I don’t feel like it.

Do you have these days? Where you want to do nothing, so you do nothing, and yet you feel frustrated for wanting to do nothing? I feel like that today. So I just browsed through a lot of art and random articles that add no meaning to my life. I didn’t see anything moving or read anything worth remembering. It’s was just a ‘blah’ kind of day.

Her – Uncomfortably Real

Theodore Twombly, an introvert writer, buys an Artificial Intelligence system to help him write. However, amazed by the AI’s ability to learn and adapt, he falls in love with it.

That’s the Netflix description for the 2013 film ‘Her’

I wonder what served as inspiration for this Spike Jonze film starring Joaquin Phoenix. While for some, the premise might be bizarre/laughable, humans falling in love with AI systems doesn’t seem too futuristic or fantastical. Men in nations like China, where the gender ratio is skewed, already live with sex dolls and treat them like ‘real’ partners.

So when Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) buys a new computer system that supposedly has a ‘consciousness’ of its own, him falling in love with the operating system that calls itself ‘Samantha’, it doesn’t seem weird at all. In fact, even the film doesn’t treat it like an anomaly. Only Theodore’s estranged wife thinks it’s his way of avoiding responsibilities of a ‘real’ relationship.

Phoenix brilliantly plays a lonely man who writes letters for a living and is on the verge of a divorce. A divorce he didn’t want until ‘Samantha’ came into his life. Theodore’s loneliness & need for love is palpable in his eyes, you just want to pat him in the head and tell him “everything is going to be all right”.

But can a relationship with an AI system – one that can think for itself, that’s constantly evolving and is beyond intelligent – come without its own complications? Can it really be that easy, without any ‘real’ consequences?

And those questions make the viewer reflect on one little problem with the plot – why would an intelligent system bother being in a virtual relationship with a mildly interesting man? I thought this to myself while watching the film and then pretty much guessed what the climax would be. So the film is a little predictable but also has its ‘what the fuck’ moments.

It’s Scarlett Johannsson’s voice that breathes in life to this film, despite her Samantha being a formless entity, the AI’s voice has more life than all the characters put together in the film. ‘Her’ is a unique film, that falters a little towards the end’ Fortunately just when it’s on the verge of becoming overbearing, the director thankfully wraps it up. So while the pace is not perfect, it comes pretty close.

‘Her’ makes for a compelling watch, giving the viewer a lot to think about, especially about where human relationships are headed in a world increasingly dependent on technology. I mean, aren’t a lot of us guilty of being excited about talking with a random stranger online – because without a body, the possibilities of who they could be are infinite.

And here’s why I had pushed washing this film for all these years – because the plot sounded uncomfortably real. Having your system talk to you, sing to you, laugh with with you, even dirty talk to you – that’s the dream for asocial, lonely people.

“This is like being in a long distance forever,” I told husband, as the two of us watched Theodore romance his operating system’s voice through his phone.

“We wouldn’t have lasted in long distance forever,” he laughed.

And that’s the moral of Theodore’s love story with his operating system – virtual relationships aren’t easy either.

P.S – I published my second book ‘Love, Loss, Lockdown’. It’s a collection of short stories set against the Covid19 pandemic in India, get a copy if it piques your interest.

If… Time Could Stay

It just blows my mind – the pace at which time is flying these days. More than half of the year is over and it still feels like all the fear & paranoia around the pandemic had only began last month.

For some reason, I ended up reading the poem ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling. It’s probably because poetry makes you feel like time has slowed down a little, as you read each word slowly. I first read the poem when I was 11, it was in our English textbook. And today, I am just going to share it on my blog, for those who might have not read it –

If you can keep your head when all about you   
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;   
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

– Poem by Rudyard Kipling

Top 5 Books From 50

It’s only August and I have already finished my goal of reading 50 books this year. Here are the five books that I enjoyed reading the most from them.

Such A Fun Age by Kiley Reid – This novel was so breezy and enjoyable that I stayed up all night to finish it. It’s something I hadn’t done in YEARS. Reid’s story deals with racism and how even the most well-meaning people can be total dicks. The debut novel made it to the the Booker Prize 2020 longlist last month. So happy for Reid! Heartstopper by Alice Oseman – Okay, this is not one book, but a three book series which is absolutely adorable. Set in an all boys high school, Hearstopper is the story of how openly gay Charlie falls in love with the clearly straight jock Nick, only to realize the feelings are mutual. If you are looking for some cute LGBT material, this is it. Are You My Mother by Alison Bechdel – This graphic novel memoir by Bechdel is painfully honest, self-introspecting and is peppered with a lot of insights of a famous psychoanalyst. She grapples to explain her relationship with her mother and does a pretty good job of it. Her mother doesn’t really approve. Of course. Jerusalem by Guy Delisle – Another graphic novel, I can’t help it if I love the medium too much. Delisle gives us glimpse of the politics, religious tensions & internal conflicts in the region in his unique comic book style drawings and refreshingly personal perspective. The Nasties by Mark Hurst – This novel falls in the horror genre and is the story of how a 10-year-old is tasked with fighting sinister monsters devouring children in his sleepy little town. In an earlier book review post I had mentioned how the book reminded me of Stephen King’s ‘It’, and well King is the King of Horror, so that’s obviously meant to flatter the author.

P.S – I published my second book ‘Love, Loss, Lockdown’. It’s a collection of short stories set against the Covid19 pandemic in India, get a copy if it piques your interest.

Solitaire – A Review

I loved, loved, loved ‘Heartstopper’ by Alice Oseman, so it was but obvious for me to get curious about her other work. Solitaire’s cover proclaims it is not a love story. True. Here’s what it is instead – a cliched, irritating, repetitive story of Tori, a girl who constantly tries to convince us that she is “different”, but she is nothing but a whiny, ordinary, introverted teen with no real problems of her own (her younger brother Charlie has some real issues though).

It’s pretty hard to like the book if you do not warm up to the protagonist, and Tori is just a very mediocre character. Oseman tries really hard to make the heroine of the story seem ‘cool’. And the plot is not very intriguing either. It’s about how an anonymous blog called ‘Solitaire’ starts orchestrating pranks in Tori’s school. Slowly, the pranks get sinister and a new boy at school called Micheal Holden believes that the blog has something to do with our heroine. So Michael Holden decides to solve the mystery with Tori (who is not interest) of the anonymous blog and this leads to an uncanny friendship.

The writing style is nice, nothing too impressive, but keeps you interested in flipping the pages. Like I said at the start, some of it is repetitive & irritating, for example, Tori keeps saying things like – “I don’t do much at all”/”I don’t want to do much at all”. We get it. She really doesn’t do much at all. The only bits I really enjoyed were Tori’s interactions with her younger brothers at home. They are filled with genuine sibling affection and makes the reader smile.

It’s commendable that the book attempts to explore issues like mental health problems, eating disorders, bullying, homophobia, but doesn’t go into the depth of the matter. So you have a very ‘touch & go’ approach to them and don’t feel emotional about what is happening. At one point, I just kept reading because I wanted to know what happens at the end, not because it was enjoyable. There’s a difference between “ooh, so exciting, I really want to know what happens in the end” versus “ugh, can we just get to know what happens in the end please?”.

The biggest problem with the book is that it pretty predictable. There is one minor unexpected twist after the major one in the end, and it is so pretentious that I sighed out loud and skipped paragraphs. The end reminded me a little of Stephen King’s Carrie, you will only understand why if you read the book.

To Alice Oseman’s credit – she wrote ‘Solitaire’ when she was only 17. Well, that’s amazing and maybe that explains the immaturity plaguing the story. Doesn’t change the fact that this book was a disappointment. It’s a three on five for me.

FYI – This is book number 50 for the year!

Life On The Line

The Japanese mini-series ‘Life Senjou no Bokura’ also known as ‘Life on the Line’ is a cute little love story about two teen boys – an over-imaginative Nishi and the more restrained Ito. It charts their relationship from their high-school days to adulthood and is a little unconventional.

When I started watching this series, I had no idea that it was based on a manga. But when you watch the first episode, as a viewer you get the sense that this series a literal adaptation of a comic book. It starts off with Nishi taking careful steps on the white markings on the sidewalk on his way to school. He likes to imagine he is treading on a dangerous pole, one wrong-step and he could fall into the jaws of sharks or something more sinister that would result in instant death. His life gets more interesting when he bumps into Nishi, a boy from a different school who likes to walk on the white markings too. What starts off as a strange friendship, soon evolves into more.

While some stuff is borders on being slightly unrealistic, most of the story-line is believable and doesn’t have the usual exaggerations of Japanese dramas. The only thing I didn’t really like was the hair-style of lead actor Raiku who plays Nishi; while he is quite adorable, the hair is just ‘ugh!’. Shirasu Jin who plays Ito, is damn good in the role of a young man who is pining for something more serious with the boy he falls in love with.

The two eventually start a relationship in earnest and live a largely happy life. I loved the fact that this series unfolds over several years, showing us a gay couple in a steady relationship. Nishi & Ito start living together after finishing college and spend years in relative peace & bliss. But obviously it cannot be all hunky-dory forever, as they get older Ito finds himself torn between his love for Nishi and his parents who expect him to marry a girl & give them grandchildren. You will have to watch the series to know what happens.

I really liked the pace of the series, I have seen some users complain that it was too short, but in my opinion it was near-perfect. There weren’t any needless sub-plots, or unnecessary scenes for comic relief. The focus is on the lead couple and the highs & lows of their relationship. Their story will tug at your heart and make you want to root for them.

If you are looking for a short LGBT series to watch, ‘Life on the Line’ is just the thing you need for some weekend watching.

Dear Life – A Little Diary

Before I begin writing my thoughts on ‘Dear Diary’ by Alex Jo Haber, I must declare this – despite writing a lot of poetry myself, I rarely read poetry books. Also, I almost never review them, because poetry for me is something very personal, something that cannot be critiqued. But now that I’ve read this book, I am going to pen down what I thought.

‘Dear Life’ reads like a personal diary, as if you are peeking into someone’s raw emotions and thoughts. It felt like I had picked up someone’s notebook from their bed without their permission (and I am capable of that). This is the first time I am reading a work that delves into someone’s gender transition. The pages are a mix of emotions, while some exude a sense of calm and acceptance, others are laced with rage and despair.

There’s a tinge of innocence to some of the text, as if you are reading the inner thoughts of a troubled teen. It’s amazing how some writers aren’t scared of sharing a piece of their heart with the world and do not mind giving them a glimpse to the darker parts of their minds. Some of the poems capture the angst of being trans, of being judged and being misunderstood by those you love.

Only one or two poems struck me as a little odd, because they didn’t have the personal element like the others, for example – there is one about a farmer struggling to make ends meet. But apart from those anomalies, the rest of the book is in sync with what the writer wants to share. Alex covers a lot of themes, including love, complexities arising at home, mental health issues, eating disorders and the struggle to accept oneself for who they are.

‘Dear Life’ is a nice little book for youngsters who want to read some raw, emotional poetry.

Sunday Giveaway

It’s Sunday in my part of the world and I am giving away my debut book ‘Death & Darker Realms’ for free. So the e-book is basically free to buy on Amazon kindle stores across the world today. Not just of kindle unlimited members, but for everybody. So grab your copy now. Leave a little review if you read it.

Here are some country specific links –

Amazon US
Amazon India
Amazon UK
Amazon Canada
Amazon France

Little about the book – it’s a collection of 40 poems exploring themes like death, depression & dysfunctional relationships. The poems in it have been written over a decade and weren’t penned with the intention to publish.