Copy-paste nation
One fine evening, I found myself at a chain bookstore outlet. However, since chain bookstores are not in the business of selling books and instead focus on selling music, movies, soft-toys, stationaries and chocolate, that evening found me browsing through the movie shelves. There in one of the shelves, hidden away in the far distant corner of the store, I found a copy of Ganashatru, the Satyajit Ray movie.
At this moment, I will have to provide you a very grainy foto taken with my five generation old phone's camera.
Since, the image is very grainy, I have copied the description for easy comprehension:This has to be one of Ray's leaser inspired works. He Has made minimal effort to adapt the script of a play into an entertaining movie. The story, like all his movies, depicts struggle against social stigmas. But its dull. The characters fail to generate any bonding with the audience. The pace is extremely slow and the dialog stilted. This could be because Ray was cautious of the sensitive issue being dealt with in the movie. He may right. The collusion of media and bureaucracy exposed by the movie is admirabel. Bottomline, I would rather watch the same performance as a play instead of the movie format.
Now, dear reader, you would have realized that something is black in the lentils. For instance, unlike a standard DVD/VCD package, this one doesn't try to tell you that the movie would blow your mind off, that it will change your life and your socks. Instead, it drops you naked and unaware into the territory of movies that are no better than they should be. Even more shockingly, it states in black and bold letters that Satyajit Ray, the light of Indian cinema, the god of the celluloid, the Renaissance Man could and did make bad movies.
The explanation is a lack of imagination and an acute case of lazy googling. It is fairly obvious from the tone of the description that someone given the task of writing the description picked up the review from the net and didn't bother to clean it up. A Google later, it is obvious that the source is this comment at IMDB.
I can understand bossman going to the corporate serf and saying something like, 'I want descriptions of these 150 movies by 3 o'clock, so that we can send them over to the printer by EOD.' The serf would splutter, '150 movies? How do I do it?' To which the bossman apparently said, 'You don't have to watch them. They are in Bengalee anyways. Just pick the description from the interwebs.'
Now, the fact that it was picked up from IMDB suggest a slightly more imaginative approach. Someone could have written a script to take a list of movie names and pick up the first review with more than 50 words and above 5 stars from IMDB. That would be an elegant solution. However, I don't think that is the explanation.
Because not only have they copied the description from the net, but they failed to do even that well. Consider the following facts:
a) There is this strange line that reads "He may right." The original line had read " He may have deliberately presented such a clinical version to avoid a clash with the religious right."
This could be a deliberate bit of editing with some (nutty) thought behind it. Or, as seems probable, it could have been undertaken to make the text fit the available space.
b) The errors: leaser, Has, admirabel. Suggesting that the copy paste job was done by someone who couldn't even do a copy paste right.
At this moment, I will have to provide you a very grainy foto taken with my five generation old phone's camera.
Since, the image is very grainy, I have copied the description for easy comprehension:This has to be one of Ray's leaser inspired works. He Has made minimal effort to adapt the script of a play into an entertaining movie. The story, like all his movies, depicts struggle against social stigmas. But its dull. The characters fail to generate any bonding with the audience. The pace is extremely slow and the dialog stilted. This could be because Ray was cautious of the sensitive issue being dealt with in the movie. He may right. The collusion of media and bureaucracy exposed by the movie is admirabel. Bottomline, I would rather watch the same performance as a play instead of the movie format.
Now, dear reader, you would have realized that something is black in the lentils. For instance, unlike a standard DVD/VCD package, this one doesn't try to tell you that the movie would blow your mind off, that it will change your life and your socks. Instead, it drops you naked and unaware into the territory of movies that are no better than they should be. Even more shockingly, it states in black and bold letters that Satyajit Ray, the light of Indian cinema, the god of the celluloid, the Renaissance Man could and did make bad movies.
The explanation is a lack of imagination and an acute case of lazy googling. It is fairly obvious from the tone of the description that someone given the task of writing the description picked up the review from the net and didn't bother to clean it up. A Google later, it is obvious that the source is this comment at IMDB.
I can understand bossman going to the corporate serf and saying something like, 'I want descriptions of these 150 movies by 3 o'clock, so that we can send them over to the printer by EOD.' The serf would splutter, '150 movies? How do I do it?' To which the bossman apparently said, 'You don't have to watch them. They are in Bengalee anyways. Just pick the description from the interwebs.'
Now, the fact that it was picked up from IMDB suggest a slightly more imaginative approach. Someone could have written a script to take a list of movie names and pick up the first review with more than 50 words and above 5 stars from IMDB. That would be an elegant solution. However, I don't think that is the explanation.
Because not only have they copied the description from the net, but they failed to do even that well. Consider the following facts:
a) There is this strange line that reads "He may right." The original line had read " He may have deliberately presented such a clinical version to avoid a clash with the religious right."
This could be a deliberate bit of editing with some (nutty) thought behind it. Or, as seems probable, it could have been undertaken to make the text fit the available space.
b) The errors: leaser, Has, admirabel. Suggesting that the copy paste job was done by someone who couldn't even do a copy paste right.