Television – Page 4

I’ve got a sore throat for the past few days, so I went to the chemist to restock medicines prescribed by my doctor. It is there that I had a sort of epiphany. Yes, life finally makes sense to me now. I found out today that I’m (Johnny) Cash.

I thought chemists treated you well and immediately brought medicines to you because of Bapu-ji‘s moving words (on currency notes, you know). It is only now that I realise that I’m Mr Cash.

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I also went to my ICICI bank branch today, to sort out some foreign exchange transactions. Now the forex desk is located near the sanctum sanctorum of the bank – the bank vault. This is where they have their wealth management division, demat services, NRI banking, and as I mentioned, forex desk. So while I was talking to the forex banking officer, she received a call on her landline phone – one of those wireless Reliance WLL handsets. She took the call on speakerphone and guess who the caller was – a telemarketer from ICICI Bank offering her loan! I had this laughing fit right there, and a pretty noticeable one at that since that section is such a quiet area given that 3-4 senior bank officers sit in this particular section. All of them looking at me stern faces silently tut-tutting. One of them was this authoritative looking mustachioed guy, the type you know instantly when you look at him that his name must be Thyagarajan or something similar. (I wasn’t very much off the mark; his name turned out to be Srikanth.) I assume at least one of them thought of locking me up in the bank vault to shut me up but then…the customer is always right. 😀

If I ever get into an argument with an officer at ICICI Bank, I hope they’ll try to terminate my account. In my defence, I’ll say that my conduct was not ‘unparliamentary‘ since I wasn’t in the Parliament in the first place. 😉

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My rating of Sin City: A+ (Oscar-worthy)
Cast: Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Clive Owen, Benicio Del Toro, Bruce Willis, Nick Stahl, Mickey Rourke, Elijah Wood, Devon Aoki
Directed by: Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller, Quentin Tarantino
Studio: Dimension Films

Frankly, I haven’t a clue myself why I’m clubbing a section on Sin City in blog post starting off with Johnny Cash and ICICI Bank anecdotes. The only semblance of an excuse that I can mumble out is “I saw the movie today, again, on Star Movies”. Not quite the same, what with all the editing to make it that Indian movie channels are forced to do but still a breathtaking experience nevertheless. There is something about Frank Miller’s movies that brings tears to your eyes for the sheer beauty of it like Sin City does. 300 too, for instance.

The film noir style of the movie grips you from the very beginning, even if you’re one of the squeamish ones who doesn’t like gore. The whole feel of the movie is so unique that you can’t help but watch it again and again; marvel at the amount of work that must have been put into making each and every scene. In a way, Sin City strongly reminds me of A Scanner Darkly. Every frame jumps out as if it’s a page from a graphic (in both senses of the word) novel.

Watch the theatrical release trailer for Sin City

The film’s substance is based more on style than anything else. It doesn’t have mindblowing story or particularly quirky dialogue (like the ones you’d find in Tarantino movies). Still, a star-studded cast and knock-your-socks-off visuals keep you hooked. Bruce Willis does a Die Hard cop routine. Clive Owen – the soul brotha of Jason Statham in that he was too poor to afford anything other than ‘the intense-look class’ at acting school while doing part-time taxi driving – does what he does best in looking intense, broodingly delivering dialogues, and driving ‘a hard top with a decent engine’. Mickey Rourke does a good Hulk impersonation. Then there’s the cute little Devon Aoki who plays Miho the assassin, a role similar to what she played in the critical flop DOA: Dead Or Alive (DOA is certainly one kickass popcorn movie). Jessica Alba is…Jessica Alba (you don’t need a reason to watch a Jessica Alba movie).

Don’t miss this movie the next time it’s on telly, if you haven’t seen it already.

Am I the only one who finds laughter tracks in so-called ‘comedy shows’ irritating? Wherever you look, there are TV shows masquerading as laugh riots when they actually aren’t. And why are they considered to be comedy? Simply because they have a laughter track. The ol’ faithful Wikipedia points out…

It was believed that the absence of guffaws meant American viewers could not tell if the particular show was indeed a comedy.

…which is then followed by a list of TV shows that got their asses kicked for not including laughter tracks. Seriously? Are our American brothers that dumb that they can’t recognize comedy without having crutches to guide them when to laugh?

So why did I snap now? The last straw ‘joke’ that broke the camel’s my back was this show they’re showing on Disney Channel called Home Improvement. Apparently, “in the 1990s, it was one of the most watched sitcoms, winning many awards“. Should have a reasonable amount of comedy, right? So I decided to watch one episode. Here’s a ‘joke’ from the show, in its entirety:

My mother-in-law is coming next week. [laughter track with wild hoots of laughter]

And then, every second sentence there’s canned laughter, regardless of whether any sane guy would call it a joke or not. Adding a laughter track does not make it a comedy show. It makes it a lame attempt at comedy, but not comedy. You know which other show on Disney Channel is guilty of the same crime? The Hannah Montana Show, featuring SnakeMonster.

It’s a show which revolves around one and only one ‘joke’ – Billy Ray Cyrus calling out to “mah-lee”. But when it comes to not making any sense at all, having no jokes, and stuffing canned laughter into every second of an episode, nothing beats……F.R.I.E.N.D.S. Every second of the show is carpet-bombed with canned laughter. And that’s still okay, if there are any jokes. That ‘if’ is never fulfilled as the canned laughter is played out even in normal conversational dialogue. Maybe the cornerstone of F.R.I.E.N.D.S.‘s success lies in the fact that Americans are too dumb to recognize what’s comedy, so when a show comes along where lots of laughter is pre-included, they think it’s a very funny show. In overseas territories people might laugh along assuming there must be some pun in English they didn’t get.

I know I must be the odd-one-out in not ‘liking’ F.R.I.E.N.D.S., but I also feel that shows which include laugh tracks are trying to insult the intelligence of the audience. Here’s a clip from the South Park episode Jakovasaurs parodying sitcoms with nonsensical laughter tracks:

Watch the ‘Jakovasaurs sitcom’

PS – If you are a fan of F.R.I.E.N.D.S., could you please explain to me what is so funny about the show?