Yesterday, I did my part to support the MPAA by visiting a pirated DVD store in Besant nagar, Chennai. I saw something there that made my eyes pop. Sometimes, there are things in this world that stand out and scream “Blog me! Blog me!”. This is one of them.
The place was flooded by 9-in-1 movie DVDs made by a Chinese (who else?) company so very ethnically titled “Mickey Movie Corporation”. They even had Disney’s boring rodent in their logo. As a smart marketing move, the company has chosen specific movie themes for their packaging. For instance, Mackenna’s Gold, Unforgiven, Shanghai Noon etc is likely to be in the “Classic Western” pack. Right? No.
This was a case of throwing together random movies and using a uniquely Chinese way of inventing the underlying theme of the complete package. And the combination of the Chinese way of using very abstract, ideographic symbols for describing things and questionable translations from Mandarin to English lead to the following:
(Sorry about the blurry images. I was trying to capture them with my phone camera while the shop assistants were eyeing me suspiciously.)
Selected movies with mindblowing action. Defence is not on the hero’s mind. Defence is for sissies. This is all about the opposite of defence.
How do you combine drama, comedy and war films in one collection. Simple. You use the ancient Zen concept of the “Middle point” and harmonically combine it with “amusement”.
There are explosions. There is fire. There are big plots.
Movies with treachery. Lies. Deception. Robberies. Hard fought contests. Prisons. Torture. Suffering.
Cutting edge science fiction from around the world. With well-dressed actors presumably.
Slapstick comedies. Some large bodies of water involved perhaps?
And finally. Gore. Blood. Nightmares. The best of Hollywood Horror. Ta Da. <drum roll plays> What adjective induces terror? You guessed right….
So what does one do when one finds something so temptingly and all-encompassingly bloggable? How does one deal with the diversity of subjects? How does one combine the blogosphere, the abundance of subjects to blog on(like the one above) and weave in the imagery of the impending monsoon. One uses the ancient Chinese method outlined above and calls it
“Blog temptation monsoon waterfall object”
Technorati Tags: Chinese, Piracy, DVD, Chennai, Besant Nagar, Zen
Doing Jalsa & Showing Jilpa 
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