Something to think about..

I do not agree with everything he says but it is something to think about..

I'm back

Mostly because it is raining non-stop from Madikere onwards. Interestingly, there was not a drop of rain on the way back from Kushalnagar. It was truly frustrating to be in one of the most beautiful places in south india and not being able to whip out my camera and capture a part of what I saw.

some pictures..







More pictures here:

July 08

Impressive

Britains Got Talent - Connie, 6, WOWs Simon Cowell !!! - For more funny videos, click here

This blog will be silent for a couple of weeks as I am going travelling...

Map of Bangalore..

According to CNN-IBN!

Blasts in Bangalore.

Five to seven, according to different sources. Some pretty close to my home.

They tried but they could not get me!

If you love music as much as I do..

You will absolutely love this movie and this song...



Once.

It is really a simple story about two people, their loneliness and their friendship. And, of course, music.

Another song.

Fusion

A nice mix. To my friends, it is well known that I detest fusion but it is usually fusion of Indian classical and Western classical that I hate. Mainly because it sounds discordant to me. I get these mixed reactions to the different forms of music and then when they are mixed together, I do not know which way to swing... :)

In this video, I liked the sound of the violin more than the DJ's sounds in the background and thankfully, it is in the background, giving it a nice feel overall

Four days into my new job..

And I already miss my Macbook Pro. Well, technically, it was never mine but as along as I was in the company, it was as good as mine and I have gotten so used to the amazing interface, particularly the two fingered scroll or the two fingered right click on the touchpad. So used to it that I keep doing it on the laptop that I am working on now, which is not a MAC and which has Vista! This being my first experience with the Vista, I can honestly say, "Holy crap!". Though it is not holy, unless we find out that the Pope has endorsed the Vista as the God Machine.

The next machine that I buy will definitely be a MAC.

Good stuff

This video is pretty good. Funny and right on target...

Last day in my present company

Oh well, here it finally is. A tryst with destiny, I guess. But one that I did not envisage would happen when I joined, though in four months I was thinking of leaving. That was over 18 months ago...

Quite frankly, my present company is perhaps the best place for a techie in Bangalore. And it was just not good enough for me.

So long, Google.

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.