Desicritics Author: Ashok Banker

Beyond Black, White and Grey

Ashok Banker — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 09:43:44 EDT

Two words that seem to pop up with boring regularity with regard to the fantasy genre: 'Good' and 'evil'.

I have to confess: I don't believe that these two extremes exist. At least not in the 'absolute' sense that most westerners use the terms.

In India, we don't really have words to express the concept of 'evil'. You could even go so far as to say that we don't subscribe to these twin extremist modes of thinking.

In these terrorist-ridden times, it's tempting to think of humanity as divided into two disparate 'sides': one representing absolute good, the other absolute evil.

The reality is somewhere in between.

People use the term 'grey' to describe it. I prefer to think of it as being a kaleidoscope of infinite shades. People aren't black or white; neither are they grey. They're every shade of colour imaginable!

In fact, each person is a unique shade of colour of his or her own. A melange of good, not-so-good, bad, very bad, and all shades between. We're the sum total of our ancestry, heritage, our upbringing, our own thoughts, deeds, words, etc, etc...how can you sum all that up simply by saying so-and-so is 'good' or 'evil'?

There are evil deeds and good deeds, it's true -- or, to be more accurate, right deeds and wrong deeds, the rightness or wrongness of which is decided largely by the social mores the individual is subject to -- but there are no intrinsically good or evil people.

If there were, then none of us would be worth saving, and all religion would be useless. Think about it. The cornerstone of every religion is salvation. If some people are outright evil, then what does that make God Himself (or as I prefer, Herself)?

A common misnomer applied to the Hindu epic Ramayana, including my modern-idiom retelling, is that it's a war between absolute good and absolute evil.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

At the outset, the Ramayana may seem to force you to take sides, to choose (naturally) the young, idealistic, romanticized hero in his struggle against the 'dark' lord and his forces of 'evil'.

But as the tale progresses, as you go deeper into the jungle of story that is this great ancient Sanskrit epic, you realize that first appearances can be so deceptive.

In fact, Ravana, whom you thought of as the ultimate villain, is a great and inspiring personality in his own right. One who has committed many terrible deeds in his lifetime, no doubt. And done much good as well.

And Rama, or the others supposedly aligned on the side of 'good'ness, have committed shameful deeds of their own, as well as compromised their own ideals to achieve their goals at times.

In the end, as the tale approaches its close, the conclusion can only be that there are no good and evil people, only right and wrong choices made.

I was raised in the Christian faith as much as in the Hindu faith. With close friends who were Muslims, Jews, and Parsis. I was attracted to the tenets of Buddhism, and married a Jain.

My own personal conclusion: People are beyond black, white, or even grey.

They're all colours. We may not like some colours -- or we may be conditioned to like some colours more than others.

But they're all good. They're all beautiful shades. God's shades.

Movie Review: Dor

Ashok Banker — Mon, 2 Oct 2006 14:54:48 EDT

I don't see many Hindi movies -- and I watch even fewer Bollywood movies. If you're wondering what the difference is between the two, you need to see Dor. It falls into the slender but cherished list of films that do this country proud -- the kind of cinema that is represented at its peak by this year's official Indian entry to the Academy Awards, Rang De Basanti.

Dor is a simple film. I think it's Nagesh Kukunoor's third (or fourth?) film. It so happens I haven't seen his earlier films, and wasn't particularly keen to see them either. I've seen bits here and there on TV repeats, but they didn't seem compelling enough to watch from start to finish on DVD or screen -- and I wouldn't do him or any other filmmaker the injustice of judging their work based on a few minutes glimpsed on TV between commercials and distractions.

I saw Dor as it should be seen -- as any good film should be seen -- on the big screen. And it was the best Hindi film I've seen for a while (although, as I said before, I don't see very many). The film itself has a simple enough storyline: it is really just about two young women, one an independent-minded Muslim woman living in a remote village in Himachal Pradesh, the other a bashful young newlywed in a small Rajasthani town. Their husbands both leave home to work in Saudia Arabia, with the promise of returning soon to their beloved wives with much-needed earnings.

They never do. Return, that is. In fact, both men exit their homes, and the film, never to return. What does reach their wives is news of a tragedy. Apparently, they were both sharing an apartment together in Saudi, and one of them fell from a balcony during an argument. The other man has been arrested and charged with his death, and under Saudi law, he is to be executed within two months. The only way he can be reprieved is if the widow of the victim signs a mercy petition.

So begins the journey of one woman to seek out the other, a complete stranger, and attempt to obtain the forgiveness needed to save her own husband's life. Gul Panag plays the Muslim wife whose husband is condemned to die for a murder he probably didn't even commit. Armed with only a photograph of her husband and his dead flatmate, she sets out to find the other man's wife, played by Ayeshia Takia. En route, she meets a beharupiya, a Rajasthani actor-trickster, played by Shreyas Talpade, who cheats her, steals from her, and then returns, abashed, to aid her in her seemingly impossible quest.

Shreyas Talpade plays a character so different from his highly lauded turn in his debut film Iqbal (also by Kukunoor) that you really sit up and take note of this amazingly talented young actor. Most of his role consists of mimicry, endless imitations of various classic and contemporary Hindi film stars and singers, an endless litany of pitch-perfect take-offs that would win him the Johnny Lever Soundalike Award, if such an award existed. But more amazingly, he goes beyond this mimicry to add dimensions of vulnerability, affection, even unrequited (and unrequitable) love that help round out his much-too-convenient character into a three-dimensional personality. It's quite obvious that his character is written in and the role padded out by writer-director Kukunoor to balance out the otherwise one-track monotonous storyline of the two women. But Talpade's talent, and Kukunoor's deft touch, turn this deus ex machina into a necessary angel. You can watch the film for Talpade alone, and it's total paisa vasool. This actor does Maharashtra, nahi, yaar, India proud.

But the real surprise packages of the film are Ayesha Takia and Gul Panag. Both women outdo one another in sheer quality of performance. Gul Panag turns in a performance that, for me at least, matches the cinematic economy, physical ease, and eloquent silences of one of my most admired movie roles of recent years -- the luminous discovery Catalina Sandino Moreno in Maria Full of Grace. And for me, that's saying a lot! Panag is magnificent, so perfectly attuned to her character's strength, stong-will, uprightness and delicately maintained feminine sensitivity, that it's hard to believe the numerous newspaper reports claiming that she wasn't able to perform to director Kukunoor's satisfaction during the filming. Her voice was apparently dubbed by Executive Producer Elahi Naptoola, also as an outcome of these problems, which is a pity, because while the dubbing is adequate, even well done, it would have rounded off a great performance to hear her own voice deliver Kukunoor's immaculately crafted dialogues.

Ayesha Takia marvels in her role as first a bashful yet love-struck young bride, later as a shattered widow, and finally as a woman discovering her own self-esteem and identity. She's a treat to watch, and the moment when she dances in the bylane to a Bollywood song playing on a transistor radio, glancing around in fear of being noticed, is a moment she should record for posterity -- a pun, which you will excuse me for, because in the scene in question, she literally acts with only her back visible. Like the famous Humphrey Bogart scene in Casablanca where he is forced to emote in a key moment of the film when only his shadow on a wall is visible, Takia communicates more in that behind-the-back shot than most Bollywood actresses can manage in their entire career. Her performance reminded me powerfully of Tabu's equally brilliant (and similar, in some ways) role in the film Viraasat. Her transition from meek and obedient bahu to the rebellious and independent-voiced widow retaking control of her life is also delicately and convincingly done.

Kudos also must go to Kukunoor. On the evidence of this one film, I'd rate him as one of the best Indian film directors working in the biz. There's some controversy about whether the film is based directly on a real-life incident, or on a Malayalam film (to which Kukunoor duly bought the rights), but either way, it doesn't matter once you see the film itself. I'm truly impressed and ecstatic about his ability to take a simple one-line idea and transform it first into a pitch-perfect screenplay, perhaps one of the most perfect screenplays I've seen filmed in a long time (not great or hall-of-fame material, mind you, not a great gaudy epic masterpiece, but simply a minor gem of craftsmanship, economy and elegance) and then turn that screenplay into a film that actually makes its obviously limited budged, locales, small cast and other limitations into strengths.

This is a film that would have been ruined had it been 'mounted' large and bold like most Bollywood producers would do. The absence of songs and dances, the skillful use of a few evocative tracks (by the very talented Salim-Sulaiman team of composers who've scored several Ram Gopal Varma films before), and the masterful use of classic film narration devices to add an extra emotional dimension to the minimalistic scenes (the crane up shot with sweeping musical overtures) actually seem just-right, and are used to excellent effect. Kukunoor has come of age, and I'm going to watch out for anything and everything this filmmaker does next.

The supporting cast is uniformly perfect, clearly working to their strengths under a director who knows exactly what he wants and how to get the best out of his entire cast and crew, even working against difficult deadlines and limitations (according to newspaper reports). Even Kukunoor, woefully miscast as a Punjabi contractor (Chopra) and with an accent that no Punjabi could ever match, does his part effectively, even though he smiles a bit more than needed. Then again, perhaps he was just happy as a director, knowing this would be the film that would break him out into the big-time!

All in all, Dor is a surprisingly entertaining movie -- thanks in part to Talpade's laugh-a-minute performance and Kukunoor's direction, but also due to the two bookending performances by Takia and Panag. Both deserve major acting awards, and here's hoping they get them.

I'd even go so far as to say that Dor, like RDB, is the kind of film we should be making more of as a country, and sending out for Oscars. This is the voice of India today, our voice. And it must be heard, even if we have to whisper loudly.

[Editor's Note: The Buddha Smiled's review of Dor is also available on Desicritics.]

Book Review: On Beauty by Zadie Smith

Ashok Banker — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 03:16:55 EDT

It takes bollocks to model oneself on an acknowledged master of the English novel of manners, that too no less a personage than E.M. Forster, whose mastery of craft was equalled only by his erudition on the craft of literary masterpieces. It takes even bigger bollocks to then take Forster's most accomplished masterpiece, Howard's End, raze it to the ground, strip its materials to brick, mortar, plank and panelling, relocate every item in the manner of a self-titled Lord of New England moving his just-purchased Scottish castle across the Atlantic, and rebuild it painstakingly into a literary edifice that seems perfectly at home in its new location and time.

But having taken on that challenge, it then takes bollocks the size of cannonballs to go ahead and title the book in question On Beauty and then make it beautiful in every sense: prose, structure, characterization, dialogue, metaphor, even the artful references to art woven into the narrative. An astonishing literary act of genius, that actually manages to out-Forster Forster and out-Zadie Zadie Smith. And yet, that is Zadie Smith's third novel, the Booker-nominated On Beauty.

Pause here for applause. A long pause.

Smith might have lost the Booker, but not by much. In any case, the whopping success of On Beauty guarantees her much fatter royalty cheques than the long-deserving John Banville whose superlative The Sea neatly kippered the coveted prize from under her polished fingernails. She won't be left grasping: already laden with her share of trophies, she can be sure to fetch more for the groaning mantlepiece in the months and years to come. One of Britain's youngest novelists, she has not stopped manufacturing brilliance ever since she burst onto the literary scene with White Teeth, and while her sophomore effort The Autograph Man disappointed a few, she more than makes up for it with this elegant, poised, and almost perfect third submission.

That On Beauty is a masterpiece of modern fiction, you need not doubt. Lay it out bold and clear in 22 pt. sans serif font for the literary headlines. This is not simply a very good book, it's a great book. Granted, it's subject and content may not warrant such adulation, this being a simple comedy of manners rather than the epic saga of an entire nation beset by war, civil strife or some more heart-rendingly important crisis. But it's not so much the book itself or the material therein, as what Smith achieves with it. Like stale clay grown hard in desert winds, she pours wet talent and breathes warm life to create a flesh and blood being with pink cheeks, hot breath and a figure that Salome would die for.

The plot is nothing to write home about--or waste much of a review on. Like Forster's classic Howard's End, this is a novel about family, the connections between its members, and the lack or loss of those connections. The Kipps, a racially mixed (and very mixed-up) family living in New England, USA, form the core of the story. A failed, embittered Rembrandt scholar, the white English father Howard (of course) is struggling after an extramarital indiscretion to woe his African-American wife Kiki, while fighting a losing battle to keep the filial links to his two sons and daughter. The novel starts with a crisis as Howard flies to London to try to rescue his younger son Jerome from a hasty marriage to the daughter of a rival intellectual, who seems to acquire the success Howard craves so easily and plentifully. Later, when the Belseys come to stay in the USA, becoming virtual neighbours to the Kipps, the bitter long-running rivalry, lingering heartache, smouldering sexual attractions, class envy, all simmer to a boil.

There are times when On Beauty seems poised to slip into Tom Wolfe territories of racial-class conflict, but almost at once slips quicksilver-swift into a variety of homages: apart from the intrepid Wolfe-ish play on the human politics of race differences in contemporary America and England, there's also a vivacious post-Dickensian dissection of social politics, constantly running, incisive intellectual debate-in-dialogues that would have made the late Robertson Davies proud, the uneasy explorations of self and mood that strongly recall the best of Beattie, those wonderfully rambling artistic descriptive digressions of Updike...there are too many minds at work here at times to seem plausible even in a pastiche, yet Smith writes masterfully in all these many hands, drawing them all together like a coach-master wrangling a 16-horse team, to make the whole entirely her creation. Not once in this ambitious, building, resonant novel does she falter, there are no weak passages or clumsy rifts. Every marvellous sentence, every metaphor, every finely observed nuance of action, profane slang, class mannerism, is pitched forth with perfect effect. What does one do with a book this well crafted except acknowledge it for what it is: a masterpiece in its own right.

This is the first Zadie Smith novel I've read. I voted it down, unread, when picking my preferred Booker winner, and by a remarkable coincidence (or very fine judgement) my choice won. But having read On Beauty now, long after the hue and cry and hype has died down, I can't but wish that she wins many other prizes, to add to the already chart-topping sales she's currently enjoying on both sides of the big salty Atlantic. This is one new writer who can't be hyped enough, and whose talent is too big to be contained in any one book, however brilliant. Zadie Smith has big bollocks, massive ones, and it looks like she's going to put them to great use in a great number of books. And we're the better for it.

Book Review: Sacred Games, Vikram Chandra

Ashok Banker — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 01:23:15 EDT

Push away your cup of tea, fold away the Sunday papers, get off your comfortable couch or bed, smooth down your crumpled pj's, and put your hands together. This is a moment worth marking. It's a landmark in the history of Indian English literature--and in the history of literature itself. Decades from now, we'll be looking back at the roster of great contemporary novels, and the title Sacred Games will trip off our tongues blithely and reverentially. So let's hear it for Vikram Chandra. He's just written one of the most masterful works of literature, a great crime thriller, a magnificent city novel, and an exploration of the Indian psyche at the close of the millennium that has never been attempted before on this scale, and has certainly never been accomplished this masterfully.

This is a big novel in every sense. 900 pages in full-size hardcover. That's impressive by any standards. But unlike so many other doorstopper tomes of this heft and size, there's never a sense that the editor was MIA. On the contrary, every page is a minor miracle of style, empathy and insight. The obvious comparison, of course, is Chandra's namesake Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy, which taxed readers' wrists and sprained brains with its staggering 1359-page bulk, a record for a one-volume novel. The comparison is a fair one, if only for reasons of word-length and the implied authorial ambition that goes hand in hand. A big novel is almost always an announcement by an author: "This is it, my big book, my breakout title, my blockbuster."

In that broadest sense, you could, I suppose compare A Suitable Boy and Sacred Games. Both are clear declarations of literary chutzpah, massively bold word monsters flexing their prodigious size to muscle their way into the literary canon.

But while A Suitable Boy was a social novel of manners in the fashion of Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope--by Seth's own admission--Sacred Games is a different breed of steroid-pumped book altogether. Firstly, A Suitable Boy, in my opinion at least, was best read in short bursts, and often smelled like the work of an eloquent young adonais madly in love with his own powdered-and-perfumed self (the titular character was a thinly veiled alter-ego of Seth himself, one suspected) and obsessed with a British hangover: At its most sugary, it was like the longest Harlequin romance ever written, grotesquely transplanted to post-Independent India. And the first 400 pages were like a book unto themselves. Seth might have been better off with less ambition--and a lot less sugar!

Sacred Games, in stark contrast, is a richly imagined and perfectly rendered realistic novel of the streets, the gullees and the back alleys, the gutters and the chawls, police stations and bastis, slums and skyscrapers. This is a world straight out of Ram Gopal Varma films--the foul Bumbaiya tapori argot, the rough characters, gritty locales, blood, booze and broads. But no Varma production could ever hope to delve so deeply into the psyche of the characters as Chandra does, to show us not only protagonist policeman Sartaj Singh (who first appeared in a story in Chandra's collection Love and Longing in Bombay), but also his assistant, and Singh's mother's recollections of Punjab and Partition, as well as an extended autobiographical rumination by Ganesh Gaitonde, perhaps the most mesmerizing character study in the book, and brilliantly achieved vignettes and flashes of hundreds of minor characters and man-on-the-street sketches.

Then there's the setting. Bombay. More than a setting. It's the book itself. Chandra brings it brilliantly, deeply alive. In all her foulness, filth and stained beauty. Early on, you see how easily he could have made this just a crime novel--a very good one at that. But within a handful of pages, you see how he's reaching far beyond genre, beyond literary categories and boundaries. He's reaching, you realize, with a lump in your throat, for life itself. And, amazing to behold, he actually comes close to grasping that slippery wrist. Not through verisimilitude--if anything, at first, the curious use of perfect English and Hindi abuses makes for a jarring, disorienting read. But once you understand what he's attempting--to transcribe the Bambaiya idiom in literary English while retaining the syntax and vocabulary of the characters--you begin to see the lines of beauty etched into the face of this aging courtesan. No other novel has attempted so much, and achieved it all so gracefully, elegantly, quietly.

Chandra coaxes a life's best performance out of this bar dancer of a city, this mad metropolis with a thousand eyes stitched across her undulating body, this profane and obscene work of art crafted by countless street artists, and what a performance it is. Sacred Games unfolds in prose just right for its purposes, foul language that has never felt so right and so vital, exterior descriptions and interior monologues that are as real as your own thoughts and observations, building like a Virar Fast with a bomb planted in the First Class Compartment. This is a great novel, perhaps the greatest book on Bombay ever written. Certainly a contender for the Great Indian Novel. It deserves a standing ovation and a crisp street salute. Smartly done, bhidu.

Book Review: Kama Sutra by Deepak Chopra

Ashok Banker — Fri, 8 Sep 2006 12:26:19 EDT

For over a century, our knowledge of our own classical literature has come mainly from translations and interpretations by British or European authors. Perhaps it's a colonial hangover--the old 'British knew best' attitude that continues to plague the English-educated urban elite in India even today. Take Vatsayana's Kama Sutra for instance.

From the 19th century translation by Sir Richard F. Burton down to the latest glossy coffee table book with glossy pictures of blonde couples contorting in uncomfortable postures, our experience of this classic work has come to us almost entirely from the west. And sad to say, that interpretation is almost always a biased one, no matter how cleverly repackaged and reinvented it may be, replete with subtle racial bias and overt Catholic guilt.

So it's with an element of hopefulness that one looks at this new edition, with original illustrations instead of the usual embarrassing pictures, and text by the one-man-new-age industry, Deepak Chopra.

And Chopra actually delivers. He brings an instinctive Indian understanding of the work that is missing from those endless versions by Western authors. His tone captures the eccentricities of Vatsayana's mischevious style perfectly, conveying that sense of wicked leela that permeates this evergreen classic. Unlike those ubiquitous foreign editions, there's no attempt here to market the KS as a pornographic sex manual. In fact, the sexual positions--most of which are impossibly gymnastic--are the least interesting part of the Kama Sutra. It's the insights into human relationships that made this a seminal work of our culture. When Chopra translates the passage about a husband dreaming of the celestial cow Kamdhenu with his estranged wife's face, and of the subsequent reunion of the couple, it's an unmistakably Indian moment: Which western male would consider viewing his spouse's face superimposed upon cattle as a spiritual revelation? Chopra uses simple, deftly chosen words and phrases, to convey the essential quirkiness of this moment, as well as the eroticism of the subsequent reunion.

This is all done at the Post-it note level of writing prose, mind you. Everything is reduced to byte-sized fragments, quotable quotes and pithy epithets. You could produce a couple of hundred greeting cards from this book--or a few dozen evocative love letters! But it's done with great sensitivity, skill and a holistic sense that balances the spiritual messages alongwith the erotic mischief.

In place of the typical blow-up pics, the book is illustrated with an excellent selection of stylishly provocative paintings. The style is modern and perfectly suited to the text. Refreshingly, there's no attempt to illustrate every single position. Instead, the paintings are tastefully erotic, subtly sensual. There is both male and female nudity in plenty--this is the Kama Sutra after all!--but it's gracefully displayed, with R-rated suggestiveness rather than X-rated explicitness.

Most of all, there's the sheer delight of seeing Indian bodies, Indian complexions, faces, features, details, that no western edition can ever match. Both illustrations and style capture the essential Indian spirit of this evergreen masterpiece with an economy and elegance that makes the book well worth possessing for any young couple.

To put it in sms-speak: The DC KS rocks.

Book Review: India In Mind, edited by Pankaj Mishra

Ashok Banker — Thu, 7 Sep 2006 00:03:44 EDT

When I cracked open the cover of this anthology and saw, on the flyleaf page, a prominent picture of the editor grinning up at me, above the usual self-congratulatory bio (in the Indian paperback edition, that is), it made me think. Do literary anthologies exist to publish good writing that would otherwise go unseen? Or do they really only promote the careers of their editors?

I personally know or know of at least three excellent editors based in the US and UK who make a decent living only by editing anthologies, and horror-fantasy anthologies at that. Between the three of them, they invariably win one or more of the major editing awards in their genre year after year, and have done so for the past decade or so. Writers come and go, but their careers flourish.

So when you look at Pankaj Mishra's picture and bio, then read his fairly general introduction, rehashing mostly what one already knows about the western "discovery" of India over the ages, you are tempted to dismiss this collection as just another way for Mishra to add one more byline, and a decent editing fee, to his resume. But that would be a mistake.

The truth is, this is an excellent anthology. If you can get past the Alberuni-ish conceit of western writers writing about India, with the inevitable exoticisms and occasional "gosh golly, there goes an elephant in a sari" kind of Kiplingisms, you will find much to enjoy and cherish.

Mishra's choices, while virtually all classics of this colonial sub-genre, are particularly well-picked and arranged. In some cases, as in the pieces by J. R. Ackerley and Allen Ginsberg to give just two striking examples, he has chosen writers as interesting as their work.

The usual suspects deliver unusual gems. Sir Naipaul rubs uneasy shoulders with his one-time protege Paul Theroux. Fellow travel-writers Pico Iyer, Mark Twain and Bruce Chatwin co-exist outside of time, each brilliant in his own individual way, the combination sparking new illuminations in the reader's imagination.

Ved Mehta, George Orwell, Maugham, and Gore Vidal are unlikely co-travellers on this orient express, chugging through exotic climes that are halfway familiar, while still seeming alien as perceived through their western-tinted eyes. Hermann Hesse and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala share the heat and dust and passion of eastern mysticism. Robyn Davidson, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Rudyard Kipling (of course) join voices with E.M. Forster to receive back the mystifying echo that's first heard in the cave at Malabar in one of the most famous and haunting scenes in English/Indian literature.

The cover and book design are so clearly designed for the foreign reader--after all, it is an American edition!--that they make you queasy about the whole "Indian on a stick" genre that seems to be springing up in the bylanes of New York publishing these days, but in the end it's the contents themselves that charm you despite your petulance.

After all, new writing anthologies may aid some of the authors included and leave others unaffected and unsung, and anthologies like this one, collecting seasoned veterans as well as as longdead icons of their field, may not matter a whit to the authors included while gaining a few good reviews and a few more dollars in royalty for their grinning-in-black-and-white editors.

But what the hey. The book's good. The reader gets his or her money's worth, and hopefully, when you turn the last page, you'll have come a millimetre or two closer to understanding the state of mind that constitutes "being Indian." Or at the very least, you'll have "India in mind" for a day or three, as the book's title suggests.

So let the editor have his day. He's done his job and done it well.

More Than a Grudge and a Ring: Why Asian Horror Films Rock

Ashok Banker — Wed, 6 Sep 2006 11:55:42 EDT

I've been a fan of Asian cinema in general, and horror in particular, for a long time. Long before the recent Ring craze.

Over the last decade or so, Asian cinema has taken over the horror film genre, and effectively left its own indelible stamp upon it. While western film makers continue to recycle the tame tired plots and ideas, Asian movie makers have gone into their cultural well to dig out new tropes and concepts - or, at least, new variations on very old cultural tropes.

Probably the surest indicator of how successful Asian horror cinema is the speed with which Hollywood is churning out remakes of Japanese and other Asian horror films--and the sizable earnings these films are raking in at the US box office, at a time when even the biggest summer blockbusters are going a-beggin'.

To be fair, these remakes are pretty good too. The Ring, Ring 2, and The Grudge, are all decent rehashes, partly because Hollywood was smart enough to involve the original Japanese creators in the remakes (in the case of The Grudge, the same writer-director helmed the American version as well, bringing interesting changes to his own story).

And, after all, film being what it is, even the Japanese 'originals' (if there is such a thing) deviated quite sharply from their own sources, namely the novels on which they based the film versions. So, for instance, you can read the true original Ring stories in the novels by Koji Suzuki.

The novels are much richer and very different from the film adaptations. Definitely better, in my opinion. Suzuki's novel Spiral, not yet adapted into film, is also a brilliant spine-tingler, a must-read for fans of horror fiction looking for something different but good.

Some of the best Asian horror films are movies you haven't heard hyped to the skies. Let me pick just two recent examples, out now on DVD, that will give you some notion of what I'm talking about. One is a Korean flick titled Tell Me Something.

It's a serial killer/cop murder mystery that's probably the best of its genre I've seen in a long while. And when I saw 'genre', I don't just mean Korean cinema, although that's doing great things right now too, I mean the thriller film genre in general, be it American, British or any other nationality.

Tell Me Something is genuinely hair-raising. The film is about a string of gruesome murders around Seoul. The murders, which are shown in all their gruesome gory detail, involve cutting off the limbs of victims and mismatching limbs with torsos. The killer then dumps each mismatched set of body parts in black garbage bags (double strength double-large, I presume!) and delivers them to a place where they're likely to be found by...the next victim.

The cop assigned to investigate the killings finds a common link: a woman who was involved with each of the dead men (yes, the victims are all male, for a change) at some point. The woman in question is exceptionally beautiful and very enigmatic. What follows is a fairly typical cop noir tale: beautifully shot scenarios; much brooding, angst, on the part of the cop; much introverted silence on the part of the woman.

Also predictably, the cop develops an attraction to the woman. But nothing else about the film is as predictable as you might think. Sure, there are the usual red herrings, twists and turns, and a shocker of a twist at the end. But it's all done with great panache and style.

Beautifully filmed, edited, with a terrific music track - some of the best use of Western Classical music (of all things) in a film I've seen of late - and very well acted by all the leads. It's a murder mystery that'll keep you on your toes for its entire length.

So why do I call it 'horror'? Well, I don't. It's labelled horror because of the extreme gore depicted, which is definitely not meant for your run-of-the-mill murder mystery aficionado. But if you can stomach those occasional scenes of blood-buckets, this is a tense, gripping, emotionally involving murder thriller that really delivers the goods.

If you're looking for more supernatural horror, then you can't do worse than the Thai smash hit, Shutters. This one's a more typical 'horror' flick, almost to a fault. There's the now-cliche female ghost, complete with chalk-white face, hair streaming over her eyes, and clutching claw-like hands reaching out.

But what sets Shutters apart from the usual Hollywood product - or even the usual Asian horror product, because there's plenty of trash in our backyard as well, I admit - is its careful, painstaking attention to detail and quality. The script is brilliantly structured, with chills and thrills coming at you right from the first two minutes, all through to the shocking twist at the end. And trust me, that twist is really a shocker!

The cinematography is terrific, with some really daring shots and set-ups that push the boundary and make the whole experience a pleasure. Most of all, it's a very good relationship drama, about a young couple trying to hold on to one another through a terribly traumatic series of events. And this is where Shutters scores, because you care so much for these people, it's really harrowing to see them being hounded. And yet, you learn why this is inevitable and what they did to deserve this fate.

Shutters is a must-see for anyone who likes a good scare as well as good cinema. Asian horror rocks. And with the Ring movies, The Grudge and others ringing up the cash counters in US cinema halls, you can count on a lot more scares in the dark, stylishly delivered!

Some chilling examples of recent Asian horror:

Tell Me Something
Shutters
A Tale of Two Sisters
Memento Mori
The Eye
Phone
Ju Rei
Koma
Whispering Corridors
Acacia
Wishing Stairs