Showing posts with label Vish Dhamija. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vish Dhamija. Show all posts

Monday, August 16, 2010

Inception. Simplified: Vish Dhamija




     Like all sci-fis, to begin with, you need to accept that it's possible to steal information from Johnny when he is asleep and dreaming. If you accept dream-burglary, you only need to push the boundary a little to agree it's possible to seed a new idea into Johnny's mind, while he dreams. If you are, now, on the same plane and convinced it is possible, I can begin explaining Inception.


Rules of the game: 
If you die in a dream, you wake up.
If you die in a dream within a dream, (II layer of dreaming, mind you) you can be left in a limbo for a lifetime.

     Leonardo Dicaprio is tasked, by the baddie, to plant a wicked Inception in Johnny's mind. To ensure the implant happens correctly, and deep enough, the team (LD's team) decides to sedate Johnny and take him to the second layer of dreaming. According to the plan, Johnny is tranquilised on a 10 hour flight from Paris to LA (in dream arithmetic, 10 seconds = 1 hour and, somehow, 10 hour flight = 1 week, but please don't ask me why or how?)
     As luck would have it (or to lengthen the movie/story), Johnny is versed with dream-invasions and his auto-defence kicks in, which in the movie is depicted as security personnel shooting bullets at the speed of Concorde. One of these, freely raining, bullets hits Johnny, hence, before he dies, and to prevent him from getting into a limbo, the team decides to take him to the III layer of dream (hold your breath  it's a dream, within a dream, within a dream) and succeed in seeding the villainous idea.
     If that's not enough, and it hasn't got your head spinning by now, Leonardo Dicaprio (who is accompanying Johnny in the III layer of dream) decides to go in layer IV (dream, within a dream.........within a dream) to settle an age old agony/dream.
     Statistics in US reveal that the movie has attracted repetitive viewing by audience, as a lot of viewers went into a limbo.
     Why am I not surprised?

Recommendation: Watch at your own risk. You might have to watch it second time :-)

Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Queen of Crime: Agatha Christie by Vish Dhamija


This bank holiday weekend in the English Riviera reminded me - as if I ever forgot - of Agatha Christie. Born in 1890 in Torquay (Devon) and, except for a few years, lived there for most of her life and wrote 80 crime novels, 19 plays, 6 romances (as Mary Westmacott), two books of poems, one of reminiscences and one autobiography. 
Amongst others, she created two of the most famous characters in crime fiction - Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple - that live on, even to this day.  According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the  "Queen of Crime" is the best selling author of any kind (along with William Shakespeare) and her work has been translated in over 100 languages. As an ardent reader of "whodunit" mysteries, I admit I am a fan and also marvel at her brilliance. 
        Having known some authors personally, I am aware that it takes more or less a year to finish a manuscript. Then it, obviously, needs editing, polishing, re-editing et al., before it is in any shape or form to be sent to an agent or publisher. Hence, even if you are not a fan of hers, or not impressed with her style of writing, you have to acknowledge her sheer genius to have come up with so many plots, and then put them on paper brilliantly. Good enough for 4 billion people to buy them, besides all the adaptations for films, television, theatre and comics. All this with no computers to work on, back in the day.
        In September this year, there is the annual Agatha Christie Festival in Torquay (English Riviera) and it promises to be the best so far, as it coincides with her 120th birth anniversary.