Sneha Jaiswal's Blog, page 283

Death & Darker Realms #29

“One the concrete tiles of a broken house

Was the trail left by her hurt feet

She ran around in her golden blouse

Unaware of the cut from some street

Floor painted in small red streaks”

First few lines of poem number twenty-nine in ‘Death & Darker Realms’, a collection of 40 poems. This one has an open-ended conclusion, one left up to the reader’s interpretation.

I haven’t been promoting this book as much as it deserves because we already live in troubled times and dark poetry isn’t exactly the best thing to dwell upon. However, I have been reading a lot of poetry myself and seem to find solace in the sadder ones than the ones that try to thrust positivity down your throat.

For the full poem, you could get a copy on Amazon. The e-book is just Rs 49 for Indian readers. Following are some country specific links  –

Amazon India

Amazon U.S

Amazon UK

Amazon Australia 

If you are not into poetry, then maybe you could check out my debut fiction book “Love, Loss, Lockdown“, a collection of short stories set against the Covid19 pandemic. It’s free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers.

Enola Holmes Review – A Formulaic But Fun Feminist Yarn

Sherlock Holmes is one of the most popular fictional private detective in the literary universe, perhaps even more than the beloved Hercule Poirot who cracks murder cases in Agatha Christie’s mysteries. While Sir Arthur Conan Doyle penned the British genius in the 1880s, Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat made Holmes capture the imagination of the millennial generation through their 21st century ‘Sherlock’ played by Benedict Cumberbatch. It even led to a Japanese Manga adaptation.

I mentioned all of that to establish just how lucrative the Sherlock Holmes world is. So why did it take so long for a movie to come out on Enola Holmes? The fictional sister of Sherlock Holmes was created by writer Nancy Springer way back in 2006. While I don’t know the answer to that, I do know that the movie is a little dated for its feminist spin, and even worse – predictable.

Directed by Harry Bradbeer, “Enola Holmes” is set in the Victorian era and starts off with an adorable mother-daughter montage. The images are of an unconventional childhood for a girl – involving reading, playing games and learning combat, in an era where women were expected marry and become domestic accessories.

Things change when one day Enola’s mother disappears, making the 16-year-old the ward of her eldest brother Mycroft, who wants her to go to a finishing school and become a ‘proper lady’. But Enola aspires to be more like her detective brother Sherlock and runs away from home to crack the case of her missing mother. She is side-tracked from her mission when she meets a young viscount who is also on the run.

Actor Millie Bobby Brown is quite likable as the intelligent, free-spirited Enola and Helena Bonham Carter is just the perfect pick to be the mother of the three uncanny Holmes’ siblings. It’s the cast that makes the movie more fun that it should be, for starters – they are all good looking, so it’s easy to like them. I mean Superman (Henry Cavill) plays Sherlock Homes and does a pretty neat job. Louis Partridge who plays Viscount Lord Tewksbury makes a prettier boy than Millie when she is disguised as a boy in the film. Partidge’s character has an innocent allure to him. And despite his villain-ish beard, Sam Claflin makes for a handsome Mykroft.

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The other thing that works in favor of the film is the setting. The makers bring out the Victorian era London quite vividly, however, the it’s the lush countryside and the brief lavish appearances of the Viscount’s estate that make for delightful viewing. Enola gets a lot of action sequences and it was both empowering and comical to see her fight the bad guy in a stifling gown. Two birds killed in one shot – you get both action and comic relief.

What doesn’t work for the film is the formulaic predictability of it all; and the very text-book, almost stale feminist lines sprinkled through the plot. Also, the protagonist keeps breaking the fourth wall, which becomes quite an unnecessary distraction towards the second-half. There are also some emotional sappy scenes that weren’t needed and dragged the pace down.

Except for a very little twist in the end, ‘Enola Holmes’ is a very basic level mystery movie, with no impressive wit to it. It’s based on a book meant for children, but since the makers made the movie Enola older, they should have perhaps made some other changes to the original story to make it more compelling and clever. But since the characters are charming and the setting pleasant, it makes for a fun watch. It’s a 6/10 for me.

Calling Mr Nelson Pugh – Review

Have you ever read a book where the protagonist sounds eerily like someone you know and each page makes you feel like it’s off their personal diary? Well, reading ‘Calling Mr Nelson Pugh’ by Christopher Opyr felt like that, at least in the initial few pages.

The book is a horror novella, although psychological thriller would be a more apt genre. It centers around Nelson Pugh who suffers from crippling anxiety which is usually triggered by the excessive travelling his job entails. I have a friend who is quite like that, anxious, has panic attacks, hates work related travel and is excessively paranoid, just like Mr Pugh. But he soon has bigger problems on his hands.

I got the book on my kindle and intended on reading just a few sample pages, but it was quite interesting, so I ended up reading the entire novella in one go. It’s short, with limited characters and most of the story takes place during the course of one night. And the author describes every thing so vividly that one can imagine this being an intense indie film.

The first half is spent in intimate glimpses to Mr Pugh’s internal demons, his equations with both his wife and his therapist. The title is quite apt, since most of the action takes over long distance phones calls. In-fact, the phones serve as characters in themselves, given the fear and loathing our protagonist feels towards them.

The author first lulls you into believing that it’s a simple story about a man with severe mental health issues due to which his family life is at risk. However, there is an interesting twist towards the end. Will Pugh be able to keep his sanity and his family together? That’s the main theme of the story.

I feel like maybe there could have been more back-story to the protagonist and those in his life, but since this is a novella, there is obviously not enough space to do that. Author Christopher Opyr keeps it simple with the language and the plot, and it works in the book’s favor. There is little scope for plot-holes.

“Calling Mr Nelson Pugh” is a 4.5/5 for me and is great for a quick thriller night. Also, you get that instant gratification of finishing an entire book in one sitting.

Studio Ghibli’s Gift To Fans – 400 Free Images

Studio Ghibli is going to make its fans cry tears of joy! Earlier this year, they surprised animation enthusiasts across the world when they tied up with Netflix and released almost all their films (except one) on the streaming platform. But little did fans know that there was another surprise up their sleeve.

Our favorite animation studio has released 400 free to download images on its official site for fans to use as they like. There 400 images are from eight Ghibli films and as per their site, they will keep releasing more images in the coming months. So if stills from your favorite animated movie is not out yet, it eventually will be.

From this month, we will provide scene photos of all Studio Ghibli works in sequence. This month, we will provide 8 works, mainly new works, for a total of 400 pieces.

Feel free to use it within the bounds of common sense.

Studio Ghibli

Love the sarcastic little rider about the image usage. Guess it’s just a witty warning about not to misuse the pictures. To those who don’t know about the Japanese studio – they are known for using stunningly beautiful hand-drawn sketches/painting for most of their animated creations. Hayao Miyazaki who is one of the founders of the company, firmly believes that traditional drawing is fundamental to animation.

It just took me a few minutes to go through all the 400 pictures and I cannot wait to draw a few of them. Also, I’ll go back to older film reviews and change the bad quality YouTube screenshots I used for some of the posts.

The eight films to have their stills out include two I absolutely love – ‘The Tale of Princess Kaguya’ and ‘Ponyo’. It also includes the most iconic Ghibli film ‘Spirited Away’.

‘Ponyo’ is perhaps among the most underrated productions, it’s a modern twist to the Little Mermaid. Actually, it’s nothing like the Little Mermaid. It’s an absolutely adorable weird film with two kids as the main protagonists, one is a human boy, while the other is Ponyo, a fish that can turn human. Their unlikely friendship will tug you heart-strings.

Well, here are some of my favorite images from the ones that have been released –

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Drag Me To Hell Review – Draggy Hokum

Maybe you don’t need to read this eleven years too late review. I mean Director Sam Raimi’s horror film ‘Drag Me To Hell’ came out in 2009 and it took me all those years to finally make up my mind and watch it. Maybe I shouldn’t have.

Let’s start off with the plot – it’s about how loan officer Christine (played by a helpless looking Alison Lohman) is cursed by an old lady over the denial of a loan extension. Christine soon finds herself haunted by terrifying things and her eventual fate is to end up in hell, unless she finds a way to cancel the curse.

Sam Raimi and team rely on the usual loud music and cliched jump scares throughout to move the narrative. Some people would like to classify this film as a ‘horror comedy’ even though most agree it’s more horror and less comedy. For me, it was neither of the two. It’s neither funny, nor scary, not even gory, but kind of gross in parts.

“Yuck!” I exclaimed out loud and looked away at least thrice during the course of the film. For example, there is a scene where the old lady sort of pukes into the mouth of Christine. There is a difference in being disgusted and scared. For example, let us consider a person who is not scared of worms, they would happily stamp them to death if the buggers get too close, but give them worms on a plate to eat and they would rather starve than eat that shit. No offence to those who love eating worms. You get what I mean?

There were definitely some scenes that were so silly that it will make the viewer laugh. Some of those scene were probably not even intended to be funny. The graphics of film is very last century. The cast however does a decent job, not like it helps much. The story is just too long and boring in many bits.

‘Drag Me To Hell’ is basically draggy hokum and just not entertaining enough, although it did have a lot of potential. Anyway, I don’t want to waste more of my time by writing a detailed review. If you are a horror fan and haven’t seen this film yet, you are probably better off without it. Probably.

Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare Review

Imagine being the new girl in a big city, where you are having a good time at an amusement park with your first cousin. There are bright colors, all sorts of joyrides, fun photo-booths, your face spread in a wide smile, only to be marred by an unwanted touch; from your brother-in-law. Most Indian women would brush it off and tuck that unpleasant moment in a forgotten corner of their memories. But not Kajal AKA Kitty from Director Alankrita Shrivastava’s new film ‘Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare’.

All of this happens in the first five minutes of the film and is also part the trailer, so no spoilers here. This is a tale about two cousin sisters from Bihar, Dolly (Konkona Sen Sharma) who is married with two kids and Kajal (Bhumi Pednekar) who comes to stay with them in Noida to work. The makers explore how their loving relationship turns bitter-sweet after Kajal confesses to Dolly that her husband has been making inappropriate passes at her.

Bhumi Pednekar (who is used to playing small-town girl roles by now) aces her part as Kajal, who tries to take charge of her life and immediately moves out of her sister’s house before things can get complicated. She finds a shady call centre job that caters to horny lonely men on the phone. ‘Kitty’ is her work name. Konkona Sen Sharma won me over as the unsatisfied dreamy Noida wife with a drab job, who just wants to upgrade her life. Since I am from Bihar, I was very impressed with her accent in the film. It wasn’t over-the-top, but was subtle enough to establish her character’s roots.

The casting guys did a great job on this film, with actors managing to shine even in the smaller roles. Vikrant Massey was great as the sleazy man who woos Kitty. Kubbra Sait shines as Kitty’s new friend in town, she is confident and unapologetic about using men for her own needs. Karan Kundra as a DJ is your typical Delhi boy and serves as decent eye candy.

The cinematography in this film was interesting. I feel like they slightly overdid the interiors of Dolly’s house, which looked like a shady love motel. Her room is washed in red tones, red bed-sheets, red heart pillows, with loud pink wallpapers on the wall. Perhaps it’s supposed to be a reflection of Dolly’s garish taste or maybe a metaphor of how love only resides in the in-animate objects of the home and evades the occupants. The few outdoor scenes were very realistic and add to the whole rawness of the film.

Let me be honest, I didn’t like the trailer of this film, but was completely taken aback by how engaging it turned out to be. Despite being 2 hours long, the pace was almost perfect and the narrative keeps you hooked. It’s all about the sisters stumbling and finding their own path the hard way. The makers also deal with multiple themes, including impotence and gender fluidity, a topic that very few Bollywood films touch.

In-fact the most touching sub-plot in the film was about Dolly’s younger son, who loves playing with dolls and dressing up in girl’s clothes. Initially, the mother is confused and deals with it the way Indian moms know best – gives the boy a good thrashing. Contrary to my fears, the makers do not end this sub-plot in an insensitive and gender-conforming manner. There is a heart-breaking scene towards the second half of the film that finally helps the little boy’s mother understand him a little bit, if not completely.

This is the kind of film where there could have been a lot of drama and bawling but director Alankrita Shrivastava explores each theme with maturity. Despite being from sheltered families, the lead characters are emotionally intelligent and not exaggerated caricatures that make grand declarations of love or hate. Also, it was nice to see the leading ladies casually cuss without a care in the world when they are angry.

It’s the climax of the film that was very unexpected, while for most part, the film sailed on calm waters, towards the end, things escalate quickly, as if a storm arrives without knocking and destroys everything. The sudden twist in the end is a tragic turn of events and the lead characters are forced to seriously introspect their lifestyle choices and take tough decisions. Both Dolly and Kitty choose their own stars and leave the audience happy. At least I was mighty satisfied with the ending, even if part of it was slightly cliched, but the rest of it was refreshing. It leaves you with a smile on your face.

It’s a 4 on 5 from me.

Masculinity Digs A Grave Over My Body

Finished reading book number 59 for the year – Masculinity Digs A Grave Over My Body by Soz (pen name).

It’s been a while since I’ve read fiercely personal poetry, like the words burnt on the tongue of the poet and then set the pages on fire. Perhaps it’s the anonymity that enables the poet to bare his soul to us.
“To my mother. For I do not have the courage to read these to you”, the dedication in the first page declares. And then we enter the world of a gender fluid adult who is forced to live in the closet during the days.

“In this country,
only women have fought
for inheritance rights.
I too will fight
to inherit my mother’s saris
knowing
I am not her daughter,
knowing,
she is my mother.”

Soz

Soz the poet laments how patriarchy shackles not just women, but even men, who are forced to live up to standards of masculinity, forbidden from walking a certain way, from dressing in certain clothes and from loving those from the same gender.

“Masculinity Digs A Grave Over My Body” is an essential read for anybody who is interested in queer literature.

The Devil All The Time Review

I hadn’t seen the trailer of the new film ‘The Devil All the Time’ before I decided to watch it on its Netflix debut day, so I didn’t know what to expect. Directed by Antonio Campus, this is a dark, disturbing film that stirred a myriad of emotions in me.

Based on a novel by the same name, the film starts with a voice-over by author Donald Ray Pollock. The narrator tells us about a small town called ‘Knockemstiff’ which had a population of just 400 back in 1957. The town’s name made me giggle, since it puns on “knock them stiff’. The first ten minutes are intriguing and focus on Willard Russel (played by Bill Skarsgard) and how he meets his wife.

Things soon start to get bizarre. On display is the religious zealotry at Willard’s local church, where the reverend passionately talks about the ‘holy ghost’ and the importance of prayer. In fact, Christian fanaticism is one of the central themes of this movie. The overall plot is about how the life of Willard’s young son Arvin Russel is influenced by those around him.

Tom Holland of Spiderman fame plays Arvin, who is deeply impacted by his parent’s deaths, especially due to the disturbing nature of their last days. While a young Arvin goes to live with his grandmother and his step-sister Lenora (Eliza Scanlen), we see a parallel story about a serial killer couple on the loose in the same region.

The casting team has done a fantastic job, because each actor is eerily convincing in whatever little role they have. Most characters are evil and as a viewer you feel a revulsion towards them. Robert Pattinson completely disappears in his character’s skin – a sleazy, lustful, gluttonous priest who preys on young vulnerable women. You can’t see any traces of the vampire heart-throb. Holland is also authentic as the angry young man wanting nothing but to protect those close to him.

‘The Devil in the Dark’ works really well as a psychological thriller, there were several moments where I had my hands folded with anxiety about what would happen next. No horror movie in the recent past made me flinch this much. I think real evil people are always scarier than ghosts and demons. A lot of both mindless and well-intended killing that happens throughout the course of the film. The scenes are raw, unbridled and troubling.

There is a chilling flashback scene in the very first 10 minutes, which shows Arvin’s father Willard serving in the war. He shoots a fellow soldier as an act of mercy, because he was tortured and crucified by the Japanese. That scene made me shudder.

The pacing of the film is a slight problem, while I won’t say it’s slow there are some scenes that didn’t need any screen-time. There a ‘corrupt cop’ sub-plot that could’ve been shorter. Director Antonio puts in too much efforts in giving everybody a substantial back-story. However, I liked how the makers stayed true to the dark tone and didn’t put in any unnecessary jokes in the story. The flip-side to it is that the film gets a little overbearing and can get emotionally draining after a while. Maybe take a little coffee/cola break in between. I did.

Given the somber setting of the entire film, it obviously doesn’t have a traditional happy ending, but to the screenwriter’s credit – it’s not ambiguous and disappointing either. While there are some things that happen early on that make the viewer wonder “why have this scene at all?”, it all ties down neatly in the climax and makes sense.

The cinematography and all the religious songs in the playback track just add to the whole dismal mood of the tale. You will hate a lot of what’s happening and that’s just the kind of response that’s expected out of the viewer. It astutely shows just how toxic and destructive religion can be. Each character has a complicated relationship with ‘God’ and the one who is the most religiously distant is interestingly the sanest one. Not sure if there was deliberate messaging here, but this film shows us the dark side of those who believe in the power of prayer.

To anybody looking for a dark thriller, this one makes a good watch. Don’t see it when you are feeling low, because ‘The Devil All The Time’ is not intended to give you a good time.

It’s a 7/10 for me.

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Pablo Neruda – Love

“I like for you to be still; it is as though you were absent,

and you hear me from far away and my voice does

not touch you.

It seems as though your eyes had flow away

and it seems kiss had sealed your mouth”

-these are the first few lines from a poem by Pablo Neruda titled “I like for you to be still”.

I had borrowed a small book of his love poems from a friend last week. Started reading it on a night when I wasn’t in a good head-space. So I curled up with this little book on the bed, reading Neruda’s poetry softly to myself. Quite frankly – I didn’t understand what the first one meant, at least not at the first reading. So I read it out two times more and then deduced my own meanings from the lines. They are probably far from what the poet meant.

“I like for you to be still” was the second poem in the book and is my favorite from all the ten. Though short, the end brought a smile to my face and of-course, I read it once again. I moved on to the next poem titled ‘Poetry’, which talks about how the poet was inspired to write his first few lines. There is no tangible muse, the poet claims it was poetry that came looking for him and he knows not from where. For me, I felt like the idea of this poem was to tell the readers that it doesn’t matter what inspires one to write, what matters more is what that writing does to the writer. In this case, Neruda talks about how poetry sets his heart free. I was content with reading just three poems that night and then fell asleep earlier than usual in a long long time. Neruda’s poetry was soothing.

The next day, I texted a friend about how his poetry comforted me when I was feeling low for no reason whatsoever. And she told me how some of her lovers had tried to impress her by reciting Pablo’s poetry.

“Tonight I can write the saddest Lines” she texted and then sent me the link to that poem.

“It’s the most cliche break-up poem but the fact that men make the effort to make you feel guilty, it’s crazy” she added.

Since I hadn’t read all the poems in the book, I didn’t know that the same poem was part of the collection too. It’s poem number nine and beautifully written, a resigned sorrow permeates all the lines. “Love is so short, forgetting is so long” Neruda laments and with that one line he resonates with everyone who has ever loved and lost.

There was just one poem that I thought was a little odd in the collection but since this collection is supposed to have works that were consequential to a film on Neruda called ‘Il Postino’, I don’t have much context. The poem is about a naked mermaid who accidentally stumbles into a bar full of drunks and is treated like dirt; men spit on her, put out their cigarette stubs on her skin. For some reason, it reminded me of a disturbing art experiment, where an artist stood still for hours and said people could do whatever they wanted to do with her. At the end of it, people had disrobed her, groped her, even made cuts on her body. It was horrifying.

The last poem in the book titled “Ode to the Sea” made me nostalgic about the beach city I grew up in, where my parents still stay and I haven’t seen them this year at all. So while Neruda’s poem comforted me in the beginning, they left me longing for home in the end.

It’s a five on five stars from me.

Cargo Review – An Overload

‘Cargo’ the 2020 sci-fi film which marks the directorial debut of Arati Kadav, is 100 minutes too long. The total runtime is 113 minutes. I finished watching the film about a minute ago and my head feels a little numb due to the boredom it experienced.

Let me start with the plot – it’s set in 2027, where the human species co-exists with demons (yes, this science-fiction flick combines mythology too) in peace. Our protagonist is Prahasta (Vikrant Massey) a demon who is responsible for the transition of mortals to the afterlife. This work is done in a very cool space-ship and the dead people undergoing the process are simply referred to as ‘cargo’.

Honestly, on paper, this might have sounded like a very interesting concept, but on the screen, it absolutely did not work, at least not for me. Within the first 10 minutes I was beginning to lose my patience, a rare occurrence. The makers attempt to do witty fictional parallels which was just mundane; for example – the first ‘cargo’ in the film is a magician, fashioned along the lines of famous Indian illusionist PC Sorcar. There is a Steve Jobs rip off who gives a TedX type talk on the work of demons and their world.

The biggest problem with ‘Cargo’ is that the makers overload the script with too many themes. There was this very forced fake shouting down Prahasta gets from a senior for requesting a male assistant. “Women are making a lot of progress, if Men have reached Mars, women have reached Jupiter,” his senior fumes at him. It looked like the writer decided “hey, we should have some feminist bit about how women can do everything men can!” and then squeezed that random scene in. Idiotic.

If one had to pick a central theme for this one, then it is perhaps loneliness. Prahasta has been doing his job of transitioning humans for 75 long years, all alone, in space. He speaks to his team via internet or what looks like an old radio with a screen equipped for live video calls.

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Things are supposed to shake-up for him when a new assistant Yuvishka (Shweta Tripathi) is sent up the spaceship. But even the new livelier entrant is not able to pick up the tempo of this depressingly dreary film. It’s like everybody needs some glucose or red-bull or some damn drug to infuse a little life in them.

After 47 minutes, I just wanted to stop watching it. It was too drab. I couldn’t understand if they wanted it to be a satire, because there was neither any wit or any humor in any of the scenes. The script writers have done such a shoddy job, that they should be given an award for ‘exceptionally bland writing’. Also there are too many loopholes, but since I don’t want to give any spoilers, I will write only about one instance. The viewers are told and shown that part of Prahasta’s job is to heal any physical damage the mortal may have suffered during death, before they can be sent to the afterlife. So his ‘cargo’ is usually damaged, with wounds, burns or whatever physical failing that led to their demise. But when a wedding party dies in a bus crash, all of them continue to play and dance when they arrive at the ‘after-life’ space station. Did they all miraculously die without any injuries in a bus crash? Give me a break. There are many other glaring mistakes like this throughout the course of the film.

As far as the actors are concerned, well, they were just very mediocre. Shweta Tripathi as Yuvishka even seemed annoying at points. Konkona Sen Sharma has an almost blink and miss cameo. The others were all forgettable in their little bits too.

The climax was unexpected, but that doesn’t mean it was any good. It wasn’t even like a sudden turn of things, like the rest of the movie, the climax was sloooooooooooow, even if unpredictable. It has an unconventional happy ending, but by then viewers like me couldn’t care. I feel like if there was a race between ‘Cargo’ and a tortoise, the tortoise will win.

“Chutiyaap” I exclaimed as the credits rolled in. There is no English equivalent for the word, so sorry, I won’t be able to explain the word. “Fuckery” might come close, but it’s not really a dictionary word yet.

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