And...

I am off to Delhi to meet parents, friends, etc.

After the announcement of DIII (see previous post), now this...

** drool **

I have been saving up to buy a D300. With D700 on the way, I am thinking it is time to buy a lottery ticket. At $3000, it is way above my purchasing power. :`(

So true..

Mamma mia...

** drool **

And..

I am off to Kudremukh.
Goodbye cruel world...

The award for the most boring quarterfinal in Euro'08 goes to...

Italy Vs Spain

Bah! Two hours of my life that is never coming back. I knew 10 minutes into the game that this will be either an 1-0 finish or a penalty shootout. It was the later, though I have to say that Spain was the only team that looked like it wanted to score. Typical Italian game. Defend like mad and try to hit a goal on counter.
Though I was cheering for Spain throughout the match, I supported Buffon during the penalty shootout. I think he is one of the greatest goalies ever...

Semis prediction:
Germany Vs Turkey - Germany
Russia Vs Spain - Russia

Can Indians play Indians?

I saw that a new movie has been released this week called Love Guru. Mike Myers plays a guru from India. Way to go Hollywood! I guess they are still stuck in the 60s.

Two movies and one review

Over the weekend, I watched a couple of movies. First was a delightful new movie that I have been waiting for quite some time - Michel Gondry's "Be kind, rewind" and the other was a shallow shell of a movie based on the premise that if you throw in a few big names, you can get away with anything and still make money, "Sarkar Raj".

First let me talk a little about Sarkar Raj. The reason I went to this movie was because me and my brother-in-law had nothing better to do on a saturday morning (my sister was writing an exam that day) and we ended up buying tickets for this movie. Firstly, I was shocked by the cost of a ticket (200 for a morning show, arguably on a weekend) and secondly, I was more shocked to see the theatre full! No wonder the multiplexes are raking in tons of money. The movie itself was ridiculous. An insane plot, bad screenplay and poor acting was just expected but what was incredible was the fact that the character who is shown in good light is one who says things like, "If he doesn't agree to my views and stands in my way, I will kill him". Intolerance seems to be the order of the day and people seem to like watching such movies about a "good man" who does not like being told he is wrong. Yikes, that was a ghastly movie and I hope the Bachchan family popularity dies a quick death. I think they are far worse than SRK, who is quite unhypocritical about what he does.

Be kind, rewind is a fun film. How can it not be with Jack Black in it? But it is also a very well written script that is a brilliant commentary on Hollywood and the movie business. The premise of the movie is absurd. Jerry, played by Jack Black, gets magnetised after a botched attempt to wreck a transformer and erases all the tapes of the video store owned by Fletcher (Danny Glover) and where Mike (Mos Def) works. After that, they have to recreate all the films that they have destroyed in order to satisfy their customers. Watch the trailer below:



The first movie that they re-shoot is Ghostbusters, which is one of the iconic film of popular cinema. They create the effects using relatively simple methods, like turning on the negative switch to make it look like night (day-for-night would perhaps have been too exotic), creating small figures and shooting them close up but making them look in the actual film. We see this happen over and over again, as they very creatively reinvent science fiction films like RoboCop, Men In Black, King Kong, 2001: A space odyssey. I would say it is a commentary on the illusionary nature of films and how visual effects can be created using simple, inexpensive methods. Camera is a tool for creating illusions, contrary to the belief that something captured by film would have be real.

I also think the film comments on the racial politics that exist in Hollywood. Since they reshoot movies already created by Hollywood, Jerry is inevitably the star of all the movies because he is the white guy and this is subtly pointed out when Mike becomes jealous of Jerry's stardom. It is a well known fact that in early Hollywood movies, asian characters were played by white guys because "asians were too asian to play asian". And in the film, the second movie that they shoot is Rush Hour 2 and Jerry plays the part of Jackie Chan.
Race does play a major part in the film since three of the four major characters are non-white and Jerry, the white guy is more of a goofy character than the 'hero', a character stereotype that is usually played by a black guy (example, pick any movie of Eddie Murphy). One of the customers of the store is a white woman who likes to see Driving Miss Daisy and later requests that movie to be sweded, ie, remade, which is a movie about how an old white lady teaches a Black man to read and write, a theme that Hollywood seems to be very fond of and something that MAD TV brilliantly parodied in this skit.



Very soon, the team of two guys is joined by Alma, an hispanic woman whose role in the movie in the movie is not just limited to being a prop. Her quick thinking and fast talking gets them out of trouble a couple of times and she has a sense of humour too. Quite unlike roles given to women in Hollywood movies. So, we have two black characters, one white guy and an hispanic woman and that's where the racial representations ends. Of course, you cannot represent every race in a movie but can it be looked as a analogy to the way the rest of the races, except for perhaps the chinese, are rarely represented in Hollywood movies anyway?

The store is a video store which is kind of archaic in this day and age. The title asks the audience to 'rewind'. Fletcher is advised by his friends to adapt to the market and give the people what they want. He then researches the 'market', particularly staking the shop(s) of what seems to be a big video rental chain and he makes a lot of observations: "limited choices, lots of copies, digital video, easily recognisable uniforms for the employees, no specific knowledge required", etc, etc. This throw back to a previous era is mirrored by another subject of the documentary they make, Fats Waller, who Fletcher claims was born in the same building as the video store. In the end, Mike with the help of the community create a documentary on Fats that they screen on the day the building gets torn down.

Film technology has evolved over the years. For a long time, VHS ruled the roost till digital video came along and then digital video improved manifold with the introduction of DVDs. Now, it is time for DVDs to die, though that it still a while away. Fats lived merrily but died an early death in a train. The video store lasts 90 minutes. For a lot of us, video seems to be an archaic technology but it lasted much, much longer than any of the digital technologies that are prevalent right now. This is quite similar to film making technologies. Celluloid is probably the oldest and still the most widely used medium of film making. But as the digital technologies get better and better, making film making cheaper, more efficient and a lot more accessible to people but it comes with its own problems - different and varying formats, lack of standards, lots of choices making it tougher to make a choice without a proper technical know-how, etc, etc. This film kind of just hints at these problems though it does not deal with it in any great detail.

The film also deals with the legal idea of 'copyright'. The films that Mike and Jerry remake literally gets crushed through legal action. There has been a lot of debate about what constitutes violation of copyright. Are creative reenactments, reediting (like the mashup I blogged about in my last post) violations of copyright? It is big debate and one that is not likely to be resolved very soon. Till then, creativity will be crushed by the movie companies citing copyright violations.

There are a lot of other things that I wanted to write about but I guess this review has already become very long and if you really are reading this line, which I doubt very much, I will let you know that I am stopping here. Watch the film and if you want to discuss more, the comments section of this post is always open...

A mashup

Two movies which on the surface would seem to be poles apart but brought together by a brilliant mashup of audio from one and video from another.
"Ferris Bueller's day off" is an underrated classic, in my opinion.

This made me laugh

I do not usually post the search terms people use to get to my site but this one made me laugh out loud. :)

how do i tell my wife i was arrested for postitution

which inexplicably led that person to this post.

Learning new things

It is the phase in my life that I turn to new things and learn something new. Right now, I am excited about this new technology that lets you create flash applications more or less programmatically. It is a called Flex, a technology created by Adobe and one that is really cool indeed.

The great tragedy of the twentieth century is that individuality was lost in an era that idiolised individualism.

-- Me, 28th May 2008

My first photobook!

You can buy it here.

Legality of prostitution

Originally from here.

LOL

Photographer

Photograph by Paul Jeffrey.

A midnight trek to Skandagiri

There is a flickr that I am a member of that is basically a bunch of photography enthusiasts from Bangalore who try to shoot regularly. I have been a member of this group for a few months and so far, have been on a few expeditions with them, made a few friends and have learnt a lot.

I fancy myself as a photographer but sometimes am brought to earth when I have conversations like these -

[Mom calls up]
Me: Hello!
Mom: I saw the pictures of Huliappa (my nephew).
Me [expecting appreciations of my abilities] (eagerly): and...
Mom: Ella shake aagabittaithalla? One of them is nice but the rest have been ruined...
Me [bubble bursting and too stunned to say anything]: ...
Mom: You are not taking pictures properly. You should learn from your Dad.
Me [finally something to say]: So, I was thinking of coming over next month. (I like to give them hope :)

I also fancy myself as a trekker. I like to walk and when everybody took the bicycle in the recent company offsite on an island resort, I preferred to walk all over the island carrying my camera and bag with all the accessories (I took 1500 pictures in four days and I am still in the process of processing them and uploading them to flickr). So, when Dr Vivek posted an invitation to trek to the Skandagiri peak, supposedly a two hour trek to the top on a full moon night, I thought to myself, 'why not?'. Of course, I knew that I would be the slow one but I figured I will make it because after all, it is a two hour trek... Peanuts, I thought for a walker like me... Boy, how wrong was I.

The day of the trek, I picked up the sleeping bags from Venky (another BWS member), made arrangements with BOSS who graciously offered a ride in his car. The plan was to meet at BOSS's place at 7 pm and leave for Skandagiri from his place. I got there in time and was introduced to Sreelesh and Deepa, and Megha, BOSS's wife, who were also coming with us. We met the rest of the gang (and the gang was huge - 15 people) near GKVK college near Yelahanka and had dinner in a nearby place and started off from there.

Skandagiri in a small hill near Chikkaballapura which is on the Hyderabad road. Once you reach the town, you take a left turn and follow a narrow road toward Papagni mata which is at the bottom of the hill. Dr Vivek had made arrangements for a guide and he seeked him out. I guess a guide was needed since none of us had been there before and internet had not been helpful. Kempanna, the guide, walked up to me and asked me whether I had trekked before but I had the distinct feeling that he was sizing me up and had made a judgement, perhaps the right one, about my abilities. My mental thought was, "this is not a good sign..."

The trek up the hill is quite steep and you have to literally climb rocks. The moon was full and there was no need for a torch was I was burdened by two sleeping bags in my hand, which was thankfully taken away from me. I was almost immediately left behind but I am used to trekking alone and I would have still climbed without company but Dr Vivek and later, Peevee, kept me company. It was a pretty long trek and since we could not see the top, we were always guessing where the top was and it seemed to be further and further away. I would stop to catch my breath, sit to rest my tiring limbs and then walk a bit more, which is usually how I trek. But this was a steep climb and it reminded me of the time we (me and my college friends) trekked up Chembri peak in wayanad, though that was in the daytime and when it was raining!

Midway through the trek, my legs started cramping and I slowed down even more. Thankfully, Peevee was with me and he had water that I desperately needed. But it also meant that I slowed down a lot more. I would take 5-10 steps and stop. And this went on for some time. My legs completely cramped when I came to last bit of the trek where Dr Vivek, Kempanna and Sivu were waiting for us. I sat down for a while and then I pushed on because I just wanted to be at the top and the top seemed so much closer (though this had been a recurring apparition). Dr Vivek is a seasoned trekker and did not seem to have even broken a sweat while I was there trying to push my legs to do things that they did not want to do and if they had minds, there would have been a internal revolution of the proletariat! But I finally made it and that too just in time to enjoy the bonfire that the guys started over there. It was a relief for the cold winds that was now beginning to matter since I had stopped walking. The guys pitched the tents and I finally got to rest inside.

In the morning, people in the tent left to see the sunrise but I stayed inside, too tired to go out. When I finally came out of the tent, the sun was up and the the top was covered in fog. After packing the bags, we climbed down. The climb down was far easier and there were no mishaps... After reaching the bottom, it was a relief to sit in BOSS's car and rest all the way back to Bangalore...

It was a photography trip but I hardly took any pictures. But I have no regrets. It was a fun trek, I got to meet Dr Vivek (been a fan of his work for quite some time) and got to know Peevee's age (I was surprised that he was that old) and I renewed my commitment to lose some weight. :)

Victor Wooten

Ok, this is even better..

AC/DC - She's got balls

Let the games begin...

This is what Steve Waugh wrote in his column titled "A case of cultural differences" today in The Hindu.

Indians too would be finding Australia’s aggression and desperation on the field way beyond what’s acceptable. But we play hard from the time we are youngsters in the backyard, and even our politicians go hammer and tongs at each other on television!

And this is a news item on CNN IBN...

The Indians argue that "monkey" is not racially insulting in their country. Hogg is understood to have said, "I'm looking forward to running through you bastards," and the Indians claim "bastard" is deeply offensive in their culture.

Seems like the relationship between the two teams is at rock bottom these days...