55 Word Fiction: Mirror Image

Got this idea from another blog. Trying it here. The above words are not part of the 55

The same question. Every time, every week. Painful, but I was bound to her, and the truth.

She asked, and I let my mind free, searching for the inevitable answer.

Except this time, it was different.

This time, it was a new face, and a new name.

Snow White.

Oh, shit.

Movie Review: Snow White and the Huntsman

Warning: There be spoilers

Snow White is a grim, dark, joyless and usually humorless movie. It's not bad per se, and technical elements like the sets, locations and battle scenes are impressive in their own way, but the movie never really gets going until the last 20 odd minutes or so, and when it does, I had yawned one too many times to care. The story is a retelling of the classic fairy tale, and by retelling, I mean it's almost nothing like the original story. That much is obvious; a faithful retread in a big screen adaptation would be disastrous for a story as familiar and as paper thin as the original, but there is no story here either, at least not one to justify the movies 127-minute running time. The fact that this is the director's first crack at a feature film is glaringly obvious. The fact that the movie has three screenwriter credits is baffling.



So here's the story in short. A beautiful but frail queen has a daughter who is pure of heart and Kristen Stewart of beauty, the kind who expresses concern at the broken wings of birds. When not playing Florence Nightingale to actual nightingales, she gambols around with William, son of the local duke. Will they fall in love as adults? One wonders. However, after a particularly harsh winter, the queen dies, and almost simultaneously, an army attacks the kingdom. The army is defeated, but the king is bewitched by the beauty of one of their prisoners, and makes her queen. The queen Ravenna (Charleze Theron) kills the king on the wedding night and opens the castle gates for her creepy brother Finn to come in with an army, slaughter the residents, and initiate a hostile takeover. William and his father, the duke, escapes, but cannot rescue Snow White, who is incarcerated in a tower. Of course, the queen has magical powers, and a magic mirror who she bothers constantly by asking who the fairest of them all is. The creature, who actually comes out of the mirror and stands before the queen, looks like a man with a liquid gold bedsheet over his head. The special effect where it oozes out of the mirror in a slow moving river of gold is impressive.



Anyway, so the queen retains her youth and beauty by feeding on that of other young girls regularly. The kingdom suffers, the people beg on the streets and feed on scraps, and the queen and her brother trade various expository dialogue that go nowhere. Time goes by and one day the mirror tells the queen, who looks like Charleze Theron, no doubt in a fit of temporary insanity, that Snow White, who looks like Kristen Stewart and will soon come of age, will be the fairest of them all. Process this, if you will. But wait! There's a convenient plot point! If the queen consumes Snow White's heart, she will be immortal and forever young. Instead of shattering the mirror into a thousand pieces for holding back crucial information like this for a decade or so, Ravenna asks Finn to bring Snow White to her. Finn, understandably frustrated beyond belief after ten years of watching Charleze Theron disrobe and take milk baths right in front of him but not getting any, uses this opportunity to paw Snow White (Apparently Ravenna had forbidden him to go into her cell), and promptly gets stabbed for his trouble.



Snow White escapes into the dark forest, where few go in. Even the queen's magic is impotent there. Thus, they employ Thor to get Snow White for them. Unfortunately, Thor is tied up with the Marvel movies, so they get the huntsman, who Chris Helmsworth plays EXACTLY like Thor, and is apparently the only one who knows the dark forest. He catches up to Snow White, but is turned by her beauty, her spirit and her heart, and joins her in her quest to reach the Duke's castle. Snow White demonstrates all those qualities by falling down a lot and looking gravely concerned when the Finn and his men catch up to her, which is often.

The primary problem of the movie is that it tries to do too many things at the same time. It's not enough that the queen is evil, she has to be given a tragic backstory. However, because not enough time is devoted to this, it remains half baked, a collection of flashback sequences that flash by too fast, and snippets of a story that vaguely allude to her being used by others.



Snow White, in her travels, stumbles into a number of characters, including, of course, the seven dwarfs (who are actually well known British actors like Bob Hoskins, Ian McShane and Ray Winstone, converted to dwarfs via CGI and camera tricks). Again, there's too many of them, and thus, they rush by, their perils plucking no emotional chord because we barely spend time with them. Even central characters reveal little character attributes beyond what is strictly necessary. For example, we know the huntsman lost his wife because later it has to be revealed that one of the villains had something to do with it. It's a baffling reveal, and creates a forced connection by resorting to extreme coincidence. But what else? Nothing. The Duke's son shows up to be the love interest, but doesn't have any character traits beyond being the love interest, and while the movie does play with the idea of who Snow White will end up with, it's too scared to answer that question and leaves it hanging. Thus, characters do, feel and reveal exactly and only what is required, and not an iota more.



So other than the locations and CGI, what works here? Charleze Theron. Where rest of the cast, and even the movie itself seems to take material like Snow White being helped in her escape by birds (cos her heart is pure and she fixed the wings of one of them years back, get it?), Theron hams it up and chews so much scenery that she nearly swallows the movie whole. And it works. Where she can grimace, she snarls. Where she can snarl, she screams. Where she can scream, she unhingles her jaw like a snake and yells loud enough to wake the dead. It's over the top, and it's great. It's exactly what the movie needs. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast believes it's playing Shakespeare, and thus dialogue like "You have eyes huntsman, but you can not see! She is the One!" is uttered with gravitas and seriousness.

Snow White isn't a bad way to spend a couple of hours, but it could have been so much more by being a little less. The characters have potential but are never explored fully because there's so much happening. Kristen Stewart is a workmanlike Snow White, but doesn't bring the spark and determination that the character required, which makes her actions in the last 20 minutes so jarring. If you watch this movie, watch it for Charleze Theron. 

Hunger

It was late afternoon when it hit me. And when it hit me, it hit me HARD.
The desire. The craving. The...dare I say it...lust? Whatever name you know it by, I had to have it, and I had to have it now.

A cocktail of revulsion and desire swirled inside, warning me, censoring me, and yet, egging me on. I could see it inside my head, you know. I could see myself. Hell, I could taste it. Feel the soft flesh ripping under my teeth, bones and ligaments tearing, cracking, grinding under the force of my jaws. It was horrible to see myself like that, to realize that I could descend to a state as primal as that; guided wholly by instinct and hunger.
If there was a battle inside of me, it was over before I even knew of its existence. A lone voice of caution and conscience blinked in and out of existence in an instant. I was slave to its demands, hypnotized by the smell and taste of what I was to do. And all for what? For something that I knew would only hurt me...no matter what momentary pleasures it brought.

She slept beside me, innocent of my thoughts. Her breathing even, slow, sensuous. Sweat glistened on her, pooled beneath her eyelids and drenched the pillow under her head. The day was hot and muggy, but that made what I was about to do all the more alluring. How would she react, I wondered? Would she love it as much as I did? Would she want it as much as I did? Only one way to find out...

I leaned close to her, my fingers brushed her shoulder.

She awoke with a start.

"Honey, its really fucking hot. You wanna go to the mall and have lunch at KFC? I have a hankering for fried chicken like you wouldn't BELIEVE."

147 Dosas and Nothing To Eat

Disclaimer: This is an experience in one particular branch of a chain restaurant, and only with the items we ordered, and in no way reflects the overall quality of the franchise. Or at least I hope it doesn't, because that would mean India has lost its collective taste buds. 

Sure, cooking is an art form, but the one thing that will always separate food from, say, movies or music, is that with them, there are always a few samples that fall in the "so bad it's good" category. With food, there's nothing like that. With food, there's just "so bad it's pretty bad", "so bad it's really, really, really, really bad" and  "so bad that even years later it makes you physically ill to think you ever paid for it". You can probably see where I am going with this.



It's my fault, really. After all, the warning signs were everywhere. The first was outside, where the billboard, about as tasteful as a combination of orange and green can be, boasted of a hundred odd dosas. Impressive at first glance, but there's a reason why Domino's does not have a hundred odd topping combinations even though it theoretically can.



The second was was when we settled into the American diner-style seats (those just SCREAM dosas, don't they?) and I ordered a cold coffee. Service was quick, I'll grant you this. One sip, and I knew why. It was white as Voldermort and thin as clear soup. It was like the server had just heard "cold" and walked away, omitting the "coffee" entirely. It was cold coffee from a fucking vending machine. In a South Indian restaurant. I know that's probably stereotyping, but when I walk into a specialist cuisine restaurant, I want my stereotypes dammit!



The third was when the lassi my wife ordered arrived. Or rather, didn't arrive. And didn't arrive. And didn't arrive some more. I make it faster at home, and I use a spoon. When it finally did, it was like someone had used the salt shaker to mix the curd. Admirable of the staff to watch out for our health like this, and granted, we are a couple that looks like we should really cut down on the sugar intake, but I prefer it when my servers don't take dietary decisions for me. So I sent it back, and then guess what happened? Yep, more waiting. Oh, and remember when I said that the server just heard "cold" and walked away for coffee? Turns out, that time, he was actually paying attention. The lassi wasn't even cold.



The fourth.....you know what. This is depressing. Instead of the fourth warning, let me offer the management and staff of the fine establishment some advice. See, when a couple walks into your restaurant and orders, and I'm being completely hypothetical here, say, a cold coffee, a lassi and a couple of dishes, it's kind of a given that they know each other and hence, would like to eat together. As in, at the same time. Now granted, there may be a bit of confusion about the timing of the drinks and the food as a group. Did the couple want the drinks WITH the food? BEFORE the food? AFTER the food? In little doggy bags to take home??? Oh how will we ever know? So I will give you guys that. I will also accept that somewhere in the deep dark recesses of your kitchen lies a dosa bible that expressly states "thou shalt not do the logical thing that servers in every other establishment does and actually ask the patron when he wants his drinks". But why would you ever think it's ok to serve one drink first, a salted version of the next drink 10 minutes later, the proper version 10 minutes after that, the first dish 15 minutes after that and the other one, again, after a 15 minute gap?



I was feeling experimental, so I had ordered something called a Paneer Crispy Dosa. It was crispy all right. It looked like the crispiest shade of black this side of a house fire. I poked at it gingerly. Oil oozed out like it had been laid by BP. I lifted the crusty lid with all the confidence of a teenage student in a slasher movie and inspected the contents. The "crispy" theme had permeated through and through. Among the shredded, blackened (I assumed from an overdose of sauce and not because it was "crispy". Or at least, I hoped so) vegetables lay slices of....what? Carrots? Potatoes? Paneer? Black chalk? I speared one on my fork with some difficulty and nibbled on it. It tasted very, very crispy. My wife took a bite. Have I mentioned how brave a woman she is? After a couple of chews she proclaimed "Potatoes". I looked at the menu. It listed the basic ingredients of the dishes - invaluably helpful as far as we were concerned. There was no mention of potatoes. By a process of elimination we settled on paneer. We had to. It was right there in black and white, and we had no evidence to the contrary other than the fact that it was like no paneer I had ever tasted.



Suffice to say, I didn't even try what my wife had ordered, an unholy concoction of paneer and mushroom. It had one great advantage over the dosa, in that I could tell which was which. But I still dared not taste. I wanted a brownie. Or at least something sweet. I flagged down the nearest server "Do you have any dessert.", I whispered, in my most apologetic voice. IA menu was flung in my direction, along with a mumbled "Sorry, no ice cream avelable". I have never heard the word "sorry" spoken with such a combination of disdain and disinterest before, and I include the time my sister told me she was sorry I had even been born. I opened the menu and saw a large list of nothing but ice-cream, which basically meant a large list of nothing. The bill was quick to arrive though. That was a relief. Suffice to say, we aren't going back to try the other 147 or whatever-the-number-is dosas.