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Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Ford County - John Grisham

I have just finished reading "Ford County",written by  John Grisham.  John Grisham's stories are intense as well as subtle. Every story narrated is full of simplicity and subtle comical that will  make you smile.

Ford County is the collection of short stories based in small Southern town of Clanton, whose population is about 10,000. The little town is surrounded by woods and farmland, which is home to poor farmers. The  racial segregation is prominent in Clanton with Blacks residing in the dilapidated low-town.

When I read these stories, I remembered the evergreen stories of Malgudi. Malgudi was also a small town similar to Clanton. The stories of Malgudi brought every minute character to life with enthusiasm. Similarly, Stories of Ford County  gave dimensions to every small character mentioned in the book.

The book begins with hilarious story of  "Blood Drive", in which one of the youth of Clanton is injured in accident in Memphis and has been admitted to hospital there. The county sends three youths to Memphis to provide blood since there was rumor that the hospital in which the injured man was admitted is out of supply of blood. The story revolves around three youths and their misadventures, which includes boozing and attending strip-clubs and also having a fight with bouncers, in their journey to Memphis.
 
In  "Fetching Raymond" , two "sometimes criminal-sometimes not" brothers  along with their mother attend the execution of their other brother, Raymond. The story was about self-introspection by mother and brothers while they were riding towards prison. The story was also about  Raymond's optimistic outlook till the day he is executed.

"Fish Files" is a story of an unhappy divorce lawyer married to a woman from an affluent family in the town. Some corporation wants an out of court settlement with this lawyer's clients, related to the old case, which the lawyer has nearly forgotten. The story describes how this change of fortune helped him to come out of unhappy marriage.

A woman dumps her husband for being simpleton and having  not so lavish lifestyle. Husband gets depressed and goes to casino so that he can forget his wife . He comes to know that casino is owned by a man for whom his wife has left.  He takes the revenge on the casino by winning huge stakes in Blackjack. How he does it explains the central plot of the story "Casino". The story also mentions in details how the casinos had been established by dubious builders on Native Indian's land.
  
There are many more stories which explore the lifestyle of every social class in the town. This exploration  helps us to understand multiple dimensions and interpretations of human nature and its effect on other humans as well as nature. Readers expecting twists and turns with big suspense will be disappointed. Even without major twists and turns, each page in itself is a page turner and thought-provoking.



Monday, January 18, 2010

IMDB: Every "Movie-Watcher" Counts

Generally in every decade, film institutes, film critics and magazines list out the “best films of decade”, “best films of all-time”. Lists vary from each other, though some films are common to all those lists.  Not all those films are commercial hits, nor films which are the viable commercially are present in those lists. So many movie-watchers (not necessarily the followers) remain skeptic of those lists.

If the film is released today, do we have to wait for another decade to know the where does the film stand in comparison to other great films. You may argue that released movies are rated in the first week itself my multiple critics. Though movie is rated, it is not ranked. The movie may be great for that summer or that period, but can that movie be compared to the great cinema of past or withhold its greatness with passing time.

The movie is declared blockbuster purely based on their box-office success. The box-office success is nothing but is somewhat proportional to the people who have watched the movie in theaters. This means, the movie-watchers of future generation will not be able to contribute to its box-office success. So we can say, the decisive power to declare a movie great lies with the people who have time and ability to watch it in theaters when the movie was released. Does it appear fair?

People have to pay first, then are allowed to watch the movie. This means, irrespective of movie, they are contributing to its greatness. Instead, if people are allowed to pay after they watch the movie proportional to their liking, then this will help to judge the movie in true sense, though it sounds foolish.

So, there is a need for a system, where movie viewers must have the power to judge the movie after they watch it and make their voice heard. The system should have ability to allow the recently released movie to be included in their overall ratings and ranking.

Have you heard about IMDb?  IMDb stands for Internet Movie Database. It is the database in real sense as it has information nearly of all the movies made. It allows the registered users to rate any movie. The users vote gets counted, if they have at least voted for 5 movies

The formula for calculating the ratings of movies by using  Bayesian estimate :  (Source:www.imdb.com)

       Weighted Rating(WR) = (v / (v+m)) * R+(m/(v+m)) * C
where
  • R = average for the movie (mean) = (Rating)
  • v = number of votes for the movie = (votes)
  • m = minimum votes required to be listed in the Top 250 (currently 3000)
  • C = the mean vote across the whole report (currently 6.9)
(For the Top 250 movies, only votes from regular voters are considered.)

The advantage of this system is that it considers serious voters, and also has no time frame for voting. It allows voting for any movie any time. It periodically (thankfully, not a decade) refreshes the list, after considering new votes. As number of votes increase, the movie drifts toward its nearly true rating.

Each user is entitled to one vote only for each movie. he has the liberty to change it whenever he thinks so. Because ,the viewer may like particular movie instantly and give higher rating, later he may realize that particular movie is not entitled to such high rating. Similarly, viewer initially may not understand a movie and give lower rating but as his understanding of movie increases, he may want to increase the rating.

This rating system gives decisive power to people who have seen movies in DVDs and television. So this list is not a mere reflection of list of high-grossing films (Blockbusters).

Thus this rating system can be considered to be closest to what can be called as people's choice. Not Surprisingly, this list and "critics  choice" list has lot of common names as compared to "blockbuster movie" list and "critics choice" list.

If you rated a particular movie will low score but it  is present in top movies list, don't get disappointed, because your vote may have contributed in bringing down the median score of that movie.

Note: I am not a PR guy for IMDb.I was inspired to write this blog when I came across few discussion forums in imdb.com where people were discussing the credibility of list since their personal favorites were not in the list. 


Individual rating counts, but only when it is a part of overall rating.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Art of Narration

Most of us know lot of stories and want to write it, but choosing the style of narration is always a problem. How interesting is the  book or a movie depends on the way the story is narrated. There are different styles of narration. Let us first define each style and then understand their importance.

First Person Narration: The narrator is part of story and narrates it as seen by him and experienced by him. The reader/viewer/listener only knows that part of story in which narrator is present. Out of the multiple events that happened at particular time-frame , the viewer can know only the details of the event in which the narrator is present.
Eg. 
        I went to Ram's  house and rang the bell. He opened the door and asked surprisingly.
           "Why did you come so early?"
         "I had no other work at home. So i left the home early."  I replied cautiously.


Third Person Narration:  The narrator tells the story from a general perspective. He has knowledge of all the events happening during that instant. If the narrator in this style of narration is not known, then author himself is considered to be the narrator implicitly.
Eg.
   Sam went to Ram's house and rang the bell. Latter opened the door and asked surprisingly.
           "Why did you come so early?"
         "I had no other work at home. So i left the  home early." was  Sam's cautious reply.

Unreliable Narration: Whenever narrator stops being objective and becomes subjective, then the reliability of his version is under suspicion. Here narrator tells the story from his perspective and expects viewers/listeners too agree with his views.


You people may have doubt in mind regarding the absence of  "second person narration".  First we have to understand who can qualify for the second person from above examples. Ram is the second person since 'I' is the first person.  If you write from the perspective of  Ram then  Ram becomes 'I' and 'I' becomes Sam. So "second person narration" is positively  interchangeable with "First person narration".

Let us answer few questions to understand importance of each style of  "Narration".

 When and how does the "First Person Narration" style helps?
First person narration works in detective stories because it helps to maintain the suspense. Since, whatever is known to the narrator are the only things we are also sure off until the some concrete evidence comes in the hands of narrator. Most famous detective stories about  Sherlock Holmes, Hercules Poirot(few of them) and Byomkesh Bakshi  are the first person narration and narrator is their closest friend and chronicler. The methods of deduction,threads of thoughts and logic application of  these great detectives are unknown  to these narrators most of the times, thus bringing surprise element to the readers when detectives explain their deduction logic to their chroniclers at the end of the stories.

Besides detective stories, "First Person Narration" will be helpful in what other stories?
This type of narration is useful in autobiographical stories where readers can relate to the central character and feel his experiences, both joy and hardships.

When and how does the "Third Person Narration" style helps?
When a story has  multiple central characters and each one's story needs to be told and also when  the story has multiple important events taking place in same time-frame and they need to be told at that moment itself. For these types of stories, "Third person narration" is needed. Third person narration is mostly used, since story-telling gets easier as sudden scenario and time-frame jump  is possible. Some events are purposely left unexplained by author to create environment of  suspense. This methodology sometimes makes us feel that author is cheating us by cutting a scene at important moments though he is aware of all incidents happening at that moment.

 Are there important subdivisions of "Third Person Narration"?
 This narration can be objective as well as subjective. In objective narration, author builds it characters such  that their behaviour and characteristics itself is sufficient for readers to judge personality of characters while in subjective narration, author also judges the personality of the characters.

Which type of narration is suitable for screen?
'Third Person Narration'  is used for writing for plays. For movies, both types of  narration can be used. If 'First person narration' is used in movie, the narrator has to share nearly equal screen-space with protagonist.

Can we use both types of narration is same story?
Yes, In a First Person Narrated story, If there is a scenario where narrator is not present but it is necessary to be explained to readers/viewers, then the author narrates that particular scenario in third person.

Where is unreliable narration style used?
This type of narration is basically used in movies. Subjective narration is sometimes unreliable. Some narrators do it for purpose of introducing comic twists or some want to make viewers think. Some examples of unreliable  narrators are Verbal  Kint, played by Kevin Spacey, in The Usual Suspects, Leonard Shelby, played by Guy Pearce, in Memento and Future "Ted Mosby" in sitcom How I met your Mother.
Viewers know they are unreliable when the scenes or sequence of scenes displayed on screen are contradictory to what they mention in narration, which runs parallel to displayed scenes.
It is difficult to write books using unreliable narration style, unless author mentions both what actually happened and what the narrator wants the reader to believe. Therefore,we can say that this is not impossible but tough style to adapt in books.

How does narrating a story in book different from that on screen?
Third person narrated books can reveal everything without telling anything which is not possible on the screen.
for e.g. consider a scenario in which two persons are discussing about a crime which they are going to commit.
In Books, the particular scene can be written as follows:

   "When should we commit the crime?", asks man in black suit.
   " Tomorrow evening " ,replies other man who is sitting opposite to him.

In another scene of same story, a character called Sam is introduced. The author has liberty to tell when should those two men's identity to be revealed and is one of them is Sam.

Consider same scenario in a movie. If two persons are talking in a particular scene , they are visible on the screen and they are easily identifiable. In later scene, character called Sam is introduced, the viewer can easily identify that Sam is not one of those men. The suspense element in the story which was maintained  in the book is lost in the movie.
 

Importance of  narration is clearly explained by above answers. So whenever we need  to write a book or screenplay, I hope we will chose the style of  narration which will be suitable for our story. Narration is not just a style but also an art of expression.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Sherlock Holmes - The movie


I have read the canon series of Sherlock Holmes multiple times. I believe many other Holmes fans would have done same. Here i will analyse the movie as both a movie fan as well as Sherlock Holmes's fan.

Guy Ritchie did a wonderful job of resurrecting Holmes back to screen. There have been many attempts to present Holmes on the screen. I felt the characters in those attempts were just reading lines from the book. The stories in the book were chronicles of Holmes and narrated by Watson.  However in the movie, Ritchie is supposed to be narrator so he gave his own interpretation to the character which included witty dialogues differing from the book. Deduction techniques were similar as book which will make loyal canon fans happy. Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law has done complete justice to their characters. Ritchie gave a aggressive touch to the characters. Though Holmes was expert in boxing and martial arts, most of the time he even completed the dangerous cases without being violent. The movie's homes was closer to James bond compared to book's Holmes.
Romance between Irene Adler and Holmes was cheerful. Even in books also it was maintained that Holmes stayed away from Fair sex but he had a soft corner for Irene.Irene was well characterized by Rachel McAdams. Another deviation of characters was that, in movie it was mentioned that  Mary Morstan met Holmes first time when Watson introduced each other in restaurant.  However in canon, Mary Morstan was client of Holmes in the novel "The sign of Four".
The screenplay and cinematography was awesome.The chronological facts were maintained by showing half constructed Tower-Bridge and reproducing the dirty and polluted Victorian-era  London.

The movie is must watch for persons who don't know who Sherlock Holmes was or who have never ever read the Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.


===================SPOILER================.

The weakest point of the movie was its plot-line, as the movie was more concentrating on the personality of Holmes and his relation with Watson. By centering the plot on fictitious brotherhood and occult,  Holmes resembled more of Robert Langdon of "Angels and Demons" fame. Antagonist, Lord Blackwood, was also not properly sketched and the methods he applied didn't need the wits of Holmes. His methods were privy to many persons,esp the constable in jail whom he bribed. Mumbai police could have easily solved that case. The cases in book though are simple but are singular(Standard Holmes' vocabulary) in nature. The methods of crime are known to  criminal himself or his accomplish. Here Blackwood had many accomplishes like constable in jail and cemetery caretaker. Holmes here didn't cared to interview them. In Book, he suspected everybody until proven innocent. He judged the person and could have told there background just by looking at him for few moments. I think Ritchie has read 1 short story and started writing for this movie.Though not all, but 1-2 novels of his are must read to know his persona. Thankfully, Ritchie  introduced Holmes' arch-nemesis Prof. Moriarty in end to start a  Holmes' Franchise of movies. Since "not yet read Holmes stories" viewers have finally got introduced to Holmes and Watson' personality,I  hope,in next movie more of Holmes grey skills must also be displayed,along with his other skills,  so that world can know "why is Sherlock Holmes  known to be  the  greatest detective ever."  Ritchie can take any liberties in  writing  the next venture's plot but the solution of the cases must be achieved  by answering the lines like "Why didn't the dog barked" or " Why and where did the one of pair of dumb-bells gone?".

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Movie Viewer's Rating: 3.5/5
Sherlock Holmes Fan's Rating: 2.5/5