Bollywood Review Of The Week: Asoka

This week I'll review Asoka (2001)

You may be wondering whether if this is a weekly feature if you've missed past reviews. Well, quit yer wondering, this is the first one, I'm trying it out for size, see if I can keep doing a weekly review of some Bollywood film that strikes my fancy.

Asoka is the story of an Indian prince from the 3rd century BC, an historical figure who played an important role in the early history of Buhddism in India. Asoka's story is given the lavish, sort-of-based-in-fact-except-when-a-big-song-and-dance-number-is-needed and we-need-more-love-interest-to-keep-this-story-moving treatment that Hollywood has pioneered and exported to the world, bless their revisionist hearts. From the comments I read about it, it seems the film enflamed a few of the purists' sentiments, but I watched it from the standpoint of ignorant film-watcher (no different than normal, then).

I should also give a little background to the way Donna and I watch Bollywood movies. They're often so long (three, four hours plus) overstuffed with bounty such as minor character subplots, digressions, long song-and-dance numbers, he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not laments, that we'll start the film, and if a song-and-dance number goes on and on, we'll fast forward to the next scene, or go and make a cup of tea or, go for a 5 mile hike, and return knowing we've not missed anything important.

The film establishes Asoka's past with very quick, short scenes as his cold, warrior heart emerging from and conflicting with his innocent child's nature, when he accidentally kills some small birds he's been caring for with a stray arrow. The early scenes come and go at such a pace, you hardly have time to re-orient yourself to the leaps in space and time. It's very efficient, and I liked that, yet at the same time some build up in pace to the more dramatic moments would have been appreciated (armies of hundreds fighting! Oh, no, wait, they're all dead). It's beautifully shot, almost all of the movie is outside in gorgeous landscapes and open scenes. There are so many locations that I kept imagining the planning and time it must have taken to get the production moved and set up at each place, all the extras organised, all the choreography worked out, etc. There was an expansiveness to the movie that harkens back to earlier Hollywood films. Nowadays we fill in the blanks with digital environments and casts of millions yet that somehow misses the 'oh wow' factor of a few hundred poorly paid extras rushing at each other with blunt but still potentially harmful props, as happens a few times in Asoka.

One of my theories about Bollywood movies is that they often ape Hollywood techniques in shooting and editing, trying to stay hip, except that they are about ten years behind. In Asoka, I couldn't shake the feeling I was watching a Michael Bay movie.. from 1995. No camera angle too superfluous, no edit too fast, no scene that could be told in 10 cuts that therefore couldn't be told in 300. Fast cuts, repeated shots, white-outs, rapid zooms and pans, sudden changes in film speeds, sweeping camera moves... and that's before the credits finished rolling. Truth be told that's not too different from Michael Bay of 2006, but, say, if you remember the Matrix in 1999, it seemed every film released in the following year had to use bullet-time, no matter how superfluous or unnecessary to the story, until audiences became sick of it, and now filmmakers are much more cautious about when they use such techniques. Well, no one told the makers of Asoka. Instead of being applied only to action scenes, no scene was too small, no song too intimate that the melodrama couldn't be amped up with a spinning camera above the actors' heads, or slow-motion shots of the actress' hair as it glistened with water. It set the film at a constant fever pitch, as if someone had said "you know, these Bollywood movies are just not melodramatic enough, we really need to drive it home with this one".

Despite all this, the film drew me in and I was entranced. I couldn't wait to see who would double-cross who, who would triumph, and how Asoka would resolve the conflict between his cold warrior's nature and the devastation it was bringing to the land. It might have also had something to do with these two.




There's never any doubt about who the stars are in these movies.

Bollywood | Review | Movies | Asoka

A brief tour of the Presidio

My hefty Seagull medium format camera and I went on a jog around the Presidio

A steady uphill road led to this sight,



the beginning of the Lyon Street stairs. It may not look like much here, and it wouldn't have been so bad if at the top of these stairs you weren't greeted with this



but it was all worth it at the top, when turning around you see this.



If I do this every day, I'll lose those 15 pounds that'll make all the difference.

From here I ran along the southern edge of the Presidio to the Arguello gate, when I headed into the groves of eucalyptus trees. After a few twists and turns I came upon the National Cemetery. Something about this view, glimpsing the gravestones and the bridge between the trees struck me.



The cemetery was empty but for a worker or two. I entered via a small gate and quietly wandered the gravestones.



There are many buildings on the Presidio that lie abandoned and derelict from its days as an army base. I know one day they will all be torn down and something clean and new and shiny and profitable will be put up in their stead. The old buildings have a haunted feel, I hope they don't go soon.



For more of my photos, click here

Photo | Presidio | Cemetery | Golden Gate Bridge | San Francisco

In Vino Veritas

Whilst writing the episodic adventures I didn't have a chance to post about other fun things we'd been getting up to. A couple of weeks ago we co-hosted a Wine Tasting Party along with our friend Eric at his place.


Nothing sets off nerves quicker amongst twenty and thirty-something professionals in San Francisco than the thought that they might be unable to tell the difference between Two-Buck Chuck and Opus One. Without these benchmarks, how can Northern Californians comfortably uphold their stance of cultural superiority towards the rest of America (save, perhaps, for a few corners of New York)? Goodness me, without this we might as well all be living in SoCal, or worse, some dreadful red state where they kill cows and eat them.


We wrapped the bottles in foil that people brought so that they couldn't see the labels, and identified the bottles with 'Hello My Name Is' stickers using the names of famous actors (for reds) and actresses (for whites). So, for instance, you might hear "Michael Douglas is great, but Al Pacino left a bad taste behind!".

Fortunately, everyone came away with their cultural pride intact, giving the bargain-basement wines the thumbs down, but there were still a few surprises - unassuming wines that might have otherwise been passed over getting high marks (Colombia Crest Cabernet, Bogle Petite Syrah to name a couple in the $5-$8 range).


The porron was a party favourite.

To see more of my photos in this series, click here. Eric posted his photos of the party at his site here.



The next day we had been invited by our supper club friends Franklin and Fung Yee to a picnic they were hosting at the Harvest Moon winery in the Russian River Valley. We were reluctant to go after so much wine consumption, but it was too good of an opportunity to pass up. I posted those pictures here.

Photo | Wine | Harvest Moon | San Francisco

Juan's big adventure, Part VI

Part I was The Terminal
Part II - Strangers On A Plane
Part III - Lost In TransLAtion
Part IV - Lost In LA Too
Part V - Look Who's Lost Now!

.. and now, the bug of hope meets the windshield of destiny ..

Day one in Los Angeles hadn't passed smoothly, but I had high hopes for the ones to come. Fay had called me, and promised to be a better and prettier guide than my pull-the-rug-from-under-me housemate Steve. I was resolved to find a new place as soon as possible, and seek out those places in LA where people might leave their cars behind and use their lower appendages for locomotion between establishments (ie. stroll around the shops). I had heard whispers about a Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. Promenade, I thought, that sounds promising.

The sun was just rising as I drove West down Santa Monica Boulevard. Sheryl Crow came on the radio, singing "All I Wanna Do". I've been fascinated by LA as it's shown up in popular culture (for instance Die Hard, Heat, Point Break, TJ Hooker (don't laugh, it's a William Shatner thing)). I sang along with her ditty to LA, right to the last line -All I wanna do, she sung, is have some fun, until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard. For a few minutes, I was in a slo-mo empowering Working Girl-style montage of my own.

The Third Street Promenade was fine, but aside from the fact that I was there a good hour or two before the shops opened, it had something of a manufactured, hyper-real feeling to it, much like Main St in Disneyland.



The Barnes and Noble bookstore was open early, high ceilings and broad aisles, not cramped and tiny the way British bookstores were, and more amazingly, a large magazine section where people grabbed whatever they were interested in, sat on the floor and read, without having to buy them!

Thoroughly sated with useless information, I had to leave Santa Monica to meet up with Fay. She had suggested meeting up in Westwood, a part of West LA between Brentwood and Beverly Hills where she had first lived in LA, and where she believed I might find it appealing enough to do the same. I drove into Westwood along the massive Wilshire Boulevard which bisected it cleanly, one side with homes, flats, a public park and large office buildings including the large federal building, and the opposite side had smaller streets with shops, restaurants, cinemas and an art museum.

It was nice to see Fay again, and I was very grateful that she was my tour guide. There was a lot of activity, and most of it apparently on foot, and even some public transportation. University students from the UCLA campus just to the north wandered the music shops, cafes and pizza parlours. I counted 4 or 5 cinemas within a couple of blocks, including the Fox cinema, at which the majority of Hollywood premieres (think red carpets, photographers, screaming fans, etc.) are held. Westwood certainly wasn't the fanciest place in the world, but it had a lived-in feel with a mix of urban culture, film industry activity and decent living that I found immediately intriguing. It seemed like the kind of place where I could live without having to take my car out, and still not miss out on anything.

We wandered into Starbucks, and before she ordered, the girl's eyes behind the counter went wide.
"Were you in The Power Of One?", she asked Fay.
Fay said yes and they exchanged a few polite words. Clearly it wasn't just me who recognised Fay, she was a bona fide celebrity, and she was having coffee with me. I don't believe this, I thought.

Fay told me her schedule for the next few weeks, including lunch with Kevin Costner (who was casting for the female lead in The Postman), some auditions, and reconnecting with her old group of friends. I wondered why she would be helping me out like this and spending time with me. It wasn't romance, any notions I may have entertained had been quickly extinguished, as she often spoke of someone else, an unresolved relationship from when she'd last lived here. I wanted to believe that she wanted to be friends, but more likely she took pity on me and my situation, and perhaps wanted to give me some guidance that she may had lacked when she had first moved to LA. Regardless of her motives, I welcomed the help and hoped we would eventually be friends.

A couple of weeks later, with the help of my uncle Eddie who came out from Illinois, I had found an apartment in an acceptable if non-descript building just south of Wilshire. Westwood Riviera Apartments, it said on the sign. I couldn't see a riviera from my balcony. Or a marina, or boats, water, river, ocean, pond, pool or puddle, but aside from that it was a completely accurate description. I couldn't have moved out of Steve's house fast enough into my bland and empty apartment. Out of the blue, Fay again came to the rescue, offering me almost an entire apartment's worth of free furniture and other knick-knacks. They were in storage, left over from when she was living there, and in her current place she had moved in with a friend and no longer needed them. Amongst other things she gave me a bed, a bulky cable car phone (a rich source of ridicule - just look at it - but I loved it. I mean, it chimed like a real cable car instead of ringing like a normal phone. Who wouldn't love that?), steak knives, pots and pans, soup ladles (plural), glasses and plates. She was wistful about handing over these simple, utilitarian items to me, and I think I understood why. Beyond the basic pragmatism of handing cheap yet useful items from one person who no longer needed them to someone else who did, there were sentimental memories in the cable car phone, the plastic-handled steak knives, the probably unused soup ladles and the flimsy metal bed frame. They were her first apartment furnishings, and they would be mine. As the years passed and I've re-gifted, yard-sold or (I hate to say it) lost or thrown away Fay's items, I've always remembered this time of my life. The cable car chimed its last chime long ago, but I still have a couple of the steak knives and, yes, the soup ladle.

Fay and I hung out a few more times, going to the movies (I remember we saw Absolute Power in Century City), chatting on the phone about her lunch with Kevin Costner ('we had no chemistry', she said, and it's just as well because The Postman was a huge bomb), but things were changing. She was becoming harder to talk to, her attentions wandering, her attitudes more fickle. One day her agents were the greatest people in the world, the next day they were fired. Her voice had become inflected with a mid-Atlantic twang, losing her charming British enthusiastic patter for a more laid-back California drawl. In short, she was turning Hollywood, and I sensed our burgeoning friendship wasn't going to last. When she returned to LA from filming a small role in Steven Spielberg's Amistad, she came by to claim her storage room key that I hadn't gotten around to giving back to her, and announced simply that she was dedicating her energies to her 'other' group of friends and relationships and that we wouldn't see each other again. I was disappointed if not surprised; I never reached the point of seeing her as a friend, as just another person. She was a celebrity I happened to be spending time with, and whose life happened to intersect briefly with mine.

Over the next months I was curious to see what path her career would take. I caught glimpses of her in tv shows and films, playing a supporting role giving a decent character performance in otherwise forgettable films. She hasn't yet become a superstar or risen to prominence in the way I thought she might from the strength of her early performances, but she seems to be working constantly in films with good directors and actors, something most actors cannot claim.

In the years since then I've met other people more significant to me (Clive Barker), more famous (Tom and Nicole), or notorious (intimate dinner with Vinnie Jones? Sign me up!). I've thought about letting her know I settled in eventually and 'made it' (if you consider having an entry in the Internet Movie Database 'making it') and say thank you for helping me get on my feet, but I've never done it.

Besides, I'm too famous now to hang out with her.

Travel | Movies | America | Los Angeles | Fay Masterson

Juan's big adventure, part V

Parts I, II, III, and IV

Apologies for the wait, it's been a busy week.

Standing on a strange street in Los Angeles, with a family of strangers staring at me, a small, obvious rental car (with too much liquid cash in the back seat), I felt ridiculous.

Another memory from the trip to Illinois when I was thirteen (with the ill-fated attempt to buy sugary cereal detailed in part III), came to mind later on when I thought back to this moment. My grandma was in a nursing home with advanced alzheimer's a couple of miles from my Uncle Eddie's house, where my mother and I were staying. My uncle's house was in an American suburb that must have sprung up in the post-war period, large, comfortable houses without fences between neighbours, stars and stripes flying on street corners every few blocks, and wide, wide streets. If you've ever read Calvin & Hobbes, you'll have an idea of the kind of place I mean. We would go and visit her almost every day. After one of those visits my cousin Nola and I were cycling back to the house. I can't remember why she and I were alone, perhaps my mother drove home before us. Along the way, wanting to explore a different way home and convinced I knew what I was doing, I turned off the main road while Nola continued on. Within a couple of blocks, I knew I had made a terrible mistake, and was in an unfamiliar neighbourhood. All the houses looked the same, the streets strange, and with the light failing I knew I had to find where I was quickly. I came across a group of men drinking beer on their porch, so I asked them for directions, trying to stay calm and appear grown up and behaving 'like a man' (note: a 13-year-old with a bicycle). I couldn't understand their directions, they weren't too sure themselves. I remember seeing the street numbers climbing and becoming panicked, they seemed SO high, tens of thousands. If a house number was thirty thousand and something and I needed ten thousand and something - how far away was I going from home? Walking with my bike and in floods of tears, I felt cornered and had no choice but to walk up to one of the front doors and bang on it desperately asking for help. A confused but kindly elderly woman answered. Through sobs and gasps I told her that I was lost, and sputtered out the address I thought my uncle lived at. She tried to direct me with words and gestures, but I didn't want information, I wanted comfort, a guardian, a parent, someone to take me by the hand and make everything alright. Fortunately she was a generous woman, and although she stopped short of adopting me and baking me cookies, she still came on to the street and walked with me, guiding me as far as I needed to go. Of course I was mature and sanguine about the whole situation when I was inside, pointing the finger at my cousin and accusing her through angry tears that it was her fault I'd gotten lost.

So, back in Los Angeles without my mother, a cousin to blame, or a kindly old lady to take me by the hand, and a car instead of a bike. Even if a kindly old lady had been around, or I'd felt brave enough to approach the family on the stoop, I wasn't thirteen any more. Isn't part of being an adult having to take responsibility for ones wrong turns? To have in ones back pocket the ability to make a reasoned decision, problem solving things to be able to get out unscathed of a tight corner? I knew only two places in Los Angeles - Rhythm and Hues, and Steve's house. I had managed to lose one of those, so the only option I could think of was to return to R&H, and figure it out from there.

The drive back to R&H was agonising, I kept turning the information I had over and over trying to see what simple yet crucial assumption I'd made that left me on this strange street. I didn't want to have to face Steve and tell him I'd failed to find his house. I didn't want to ask Steve to be the kindly old lady and help me find the house. He wouldn't have looked good in a dress anyway. I had no choice, however, I had to face him. I stomped into his office, red faced, dejected and with frustration evident in my voice.

"Steve," I said, "I can't find your house. I've been driving up and down Barbara Street, and I can't find your house. I don't know what I've been doing wrong..."
My words were coming out in a rush, faster and faster.
Steve jumped in - "Where were you?"
"Barbara Street. Mar Vista!"
"Why were you there? I haven't lived there for six months," he said looking confused. I brandished the piece of paper he himself had written that morning with his address on it and, hand shaking, held it up to his face.
"Oh. Huh. Hmmm. Yeah. I must have given you my old address. Haha"

I was seething. All this doubt and confusion I'd just gone through was his fault, not mine. Unlike my innocent cousin, I could point my finger at Steve and blame him for everything. Still, the mature response would have been to shrug it off and get on with it. But I wasn't very mature back then, and to this day I've not forgiven him for the mistake. At least I didn't attack him on the spot, although I was tempted.

I drove home, and everything looked a lot more familiar, my feelings veering between joy and disbelief at what had happened. At home there was a message from Fay, suggesting we meet up, and giving me a direct number to reach her. Jet lag was settling in again, and my first day in Los Angeles was finally over.

(Almost definitely final) Part VI, soon, I promise!

Travel | Movies | America | Los Angeles | Rhythm and Hues