My rating of Discovery Channel’s Smash Lab: 9.9 / 10 (The only reason it isn’t getting a 10 / 10 is because THAT is reserved for the old seasons of Junkyard Wars.)

The Discovery Channel has been showing this new series (’new’ at least in India, I reckon that it’s already in its second season in the US) called Smash Lab for the past few weeks - and it’s really fun! The basic premise of the show is to take some accident scenario - a bomb exploding in front of a building, a car breaking through traffic dividers on a highway, a speedboat on collision course, a lifeboat being ejected at breakneck speeds - or a hurricane hitting a mobile trailer. What amazes me is how over-the-top this series is, and how much money they burn up each episode. Sure, they product placements, but the episode today - the hurricane one - really dazzled.

What they did is to take a mobile trailer home, and then cover it with carbon fibre to see if it could stand hurricane-force winds. And guess what they did to generate that? Since Hollywood-level wind machines weren’t enough to produce that strong winds, they hired a friggin’ Boeing 737 and used it’s jet exhaust to try and blow apart their reinforced home! And astonishingly, the carbon fibre worked - the whole home turned turtle but it stayed in one single unit. Plus, along the episode, they also trashed 3-4 more trailers, just to make a point.

If bringing in a jet plane wasn’t enough, consider this - in one episode they constructed a whole building, and then coated it with a special kind of polymer paint which has very high tensile properties. Then, they loaded up a car with dynamite, parked it right in front of the house - and blew it up. Oh, and BTW, before that? They also blew up 2-3 pickup trucks before they did this, just to ‘analyse the forces involved in impact’.

I’m pretty sure their budget would rival that of at least some mid-level Hollywood movies. It’s not just the over-the-top approach - what makes the show exciting is their totally crazy ideas which they work on and actually make to work, in most cases. Like another episode, in which they made a sand pit which could be turned into a fluid mass at the flick of a button - as a security measure to stop a, say, bank robbers’ getaway vehicle at a bank. As far as the coolness factor goes, Smash Lab is right up there with other Discovery Channel classics like Junkyard Wars and Future Weapons. You can read about their episodes on the Smash Lab blog too.

I noticed one more thing. Discovery Channel had an India-specific site earlier at discoverychannel.co.in; but if you visit it these days, it simply redirects you to the International page of Discovery Channel UK! Talk about cost-cutting measures!

Chef in Darth Vader costume in South Park

Isaac Hayes, the singer, died day before yesterday - but he’ll probably be better remembered (at least by me) in the role of Chef in the South Park TV series. Too bad that he left the series over a silly dispute on Scientology, especially since everyone in South Park seemed to liked his ‘chocolate salty balls’. Till the time he was on air, he used to be quite funny, with his constant advice on how to ‘lay women down by the fire’. This particular picture on the right was a parody of the Star Wars series movie Revenge of the Sith, where Chef is dressed up as Darth Vader (complete with a glowing spatula). This episode was especially funny, as they ripped Scientology apart once again. Now only if Matt Stone and Trey Parker would get back to their humorous streak…

Chef in the South Park episode Scott Tenorman Must Die (that one was so AWESOME, to use Cartman's catchphrase)

Gattaca movie

Gattaca (Yahoo! Movies page)
My rating: C (Mediocre)
Directed by: Andrew Niccol
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Jude Law, Gore Vidal
Released by: Sony Pictures

I saw Gattaca on Set Pix a few days ago…and I was greatly disappointed. I’d come across this movie on many ‘Greatest Sci-Fi Movies of All Time’ sort of lists, and had come to expect a lot from this movie. It must be something to have stayed at the top of so many lists. Sadly, it falls short of expectations. It’s hardly a ’sci-fi’ movie at all! It’s more of a human drama, a love story maybe with a futuristic setting, but true-blue science fiction it most definitely isn’t.

Plot development is very one-dimensional, because it focuses only on the fact that societies in the future may base a lot of their structure on genetic engineering. Ethan Hawke as the genetically invalid trying to go to a space settlement in Titan (a moon of Saturn) - that’s the end of the story. Oh, and with a love affair thrown in as an afterthought, which only develops in the last few minutes of the movie. I understand low budget, but this movie is pants! Those black-and-white monitors which act as biometric security gates look like they’ve been bought second-hand from the sets of 1984! They should take a few lessons from Kurt Wimmer on how to make a classy looking sci-fi movie on a low budget, like Equilibrium. It would also help to take advice on how to work with pathetic actors like Ethan Hawke.

Ethan Hawke’s portrayal of the character, while not as wooden and expressionless as other actors like Christian Bale, leaves a lot to be desired. I rather thought Jude Law as the crippled but genetically superior guy was exceptional in his role. He was the only person who gave a stellar performance in that movie. You also get to see a young Uma Thurman, who for once looks good; unlike her later movies where her age clearly shows. Uma Thurman’s character hardly gets to play anything, except in the last few minutes; that too seems like an afterthought to give a romantic angle.

Gattaca was a great disappointment for me, specifically because it was pitched as a science fiction movie, which it isn’t. Maybe if I had seen it expecting a drama, I’d have given it a higher rating. Maybe. Because Ethan Hawke isn’t going to win any awards soon.

Amul Star Voice of India logo

I happened to be channel surfing today, and accidentally ended up at (horror of horrors) Star Plus. They had another of those idiotic song reality shows going on, called Voice of India or something. I watched it for a while, and although I’ve never seen it earlier, I could tell that their anchor guy doesn’t seem to be enjoying the show. He constantly has a facial expression which seems to have been brought about by the fact that someone forced him to drink a whole bottle of Pudin Hara, mixed with a generous dosage of castor oil. Or maybe it’s just his paycheck. Anyway, I didn’t watch this travesty of a show for long, but during the few minutes that I *did* watch, it was quite evident that quite a few of the folk participating were nothing better than bathroom singers - and terrible ones at that. It didn’t stop the judges judges from swaying around as if a K L Saigal LP record was being played in the studio, but I’ll gloss over that fact. In fact, the judges seemed to have nothing more to mutter than sweet nothings after a contestant had their go. I guess a desi Simon Cowell won’t work with Indian audiences. The footage of the show also appears to be VERY jerky, almost as if it has been shot at a frame rate of 15 FPS. I just don’t get why people watch this kind of stuff. 20 minutes of THIS had me puking.