My latest passtime.... ORKUT

I found a new toy to play with and you have to experience it to know how fun it is, especially if you are a lonely and secluded person like me. It is browsing through the profiles of unknowns and old aquaintainces on orkut.com.

As you might already know , orkut is one of the largest personal network websites. I am not the kind of person who loves to peek into the personal lives of others, but browsing through the profiles of those old friends in your high school is very nostalgic and that feeling has to be experienced to believe.

I have always been an introvert and I hardly spoke to any girl in my life. But inside me, I was very desperate to know about some of the girls during my college days. I never longed for a relationship with anybody, but I just wanted to know what goes on in their minds. I would have given anything to know about them. What was their favorite movie, music, book; what kind of people they like; what kind of life they wanted to lead; how does their room look; what were the topics of discussion with their other girlfriends on those boring sunday afternoons...etc..etc.

One common thing that I observed in most of the profiles from the girls is that they never put their original picture in their profiles. More than half of them have the pictures of popular actresses, handsome hunks and some romantic flowers. I can understand when a girl puts a picture of Salman khan or hritik roshan but why aishwarya rai and sonali bendre ???

I joined in the communities of my high school and engineering college. It was shocking to see some pictures of those old buddies who I could only picturise in a school uniform with nicely combed hair, now in their mid 20's with a full grown moustache. Also, there were those girls who I silently admired back then, most of them now married and the remaining working in some MNC's in either bangalore or hyderabad.

I won't be a least bit surprised if none of the people back from my kindergarten to my engineering college don't even know my name. But is there a tiny possibility that someone from my school or college is now looking at my profile and wondering ..." Is that the same guy who always used to sit a corner, hardly spoke to anybody, rarely came to college and never spoke to a girl"...???? , the same way that now I am wondering looking at the profile of our librarian's daughter from my high school....

Bravo Vishal !!!!

After watching "OMKARA", on my way back from the theatre I overheard people saying "Gandi film hai yaar", "boring" etc...which then reminded me of Ram gopal varma's response to failure of NAACH. He said " I gave Ayn rand to a municipal school. That was my mistake." Though I didn't like NAACH, I agree with Varma there. May be we don't deserve a good cinema, we are better off watching senseless dances & vulgar comedies. When somebody makes an attempt to make a movie that does not take its audience for a ride and which tries to respect its audience, we reject it outright. After all, we don’t deserve to be respected.

I recently witnessed the situation where KRISH received an applaud from the audience at the end. If there is a bollywood movie which deserves an appulaud or for that matter even a standing ovation it should be OMKAARA.

Some people did not like the movie for its pure Bihaari accent. Vishal makes no mistake here. I am glad that he did not put his movie's authenticity at stake just to please a section of audience. He makes no reservations for village audience or for kids. He makes the movie as it is ought to be made.

I enjoyed every bit and moment of this movie. Even if you cannot follow the word to word meaning , you can just sit and enjoy the visual beauty before your eyes supported with a soothing background score. OMKARA puts all the so called biggie Chopra's, Johar's, Ghai's and Roshan's to shame. After watching a few movies recently from bollywood, I lost my faith in online reviews ( especially from Taran Adarsh) and so, I went to this movie only expecting to see a mediocre movie and I returned witnessing a classic.

We also get to watch the best performances from every single character from the movie. Ajay Devgan was as usually good but could have better in climax. Vivek was good but will be overlooked as the other performances in the movie are simply great. It is undoubtedly Saif's best performance till date and to my surprise Vishal succeeds in portraying Kareena as an innocent, sweet and cute girl ( I never expected anybody can do that). I have never seen Konkana sen's movies before but whenever she is on the screen, she is the one that your eyes will focus on. She is simply superb.

I am glad that Vishal is one of those directors who know that lighting and sound design can tell a story. I would not be exaggarating if I say that 95% of bollywood movies simply ignore the importance of lighting in their movies. Not this one. Even if you didn't like this movie for its storyline but if you have a slightest taste for visual beauty, you will adore this movie. I can only feel sorry for those people who felt that this movie was "gandi". They are better off watching "Kahani ghar ghar ki" & "Saas bhi kabhi bahu thi".

I remember vaguely the plot of "Othello" which I read during my school days from a book series called "Great stories in easy english". But I remember the closing line of that play "HE KISSED HER COLD LIPS BEFORE HE DIED". Well, that was not the ending of this movie, but for a second there it felt like Vishal's ending was more emotional. The movie is technically as perfect as it is in narrating the story. Never since Varma's Satya or Company has there been a movie which is so attentive to every little detail as this one. To me the movie leaves no room for any improvement and without a flash of doubt in my mind I feel this is one of the best movies of the decade. Watch this movie in a theatre only. IT DESERVES THAT RESPECT.

Confusing yet interesting

I have to confess that I understood only 25 % of this movie's plot, and even the best of the critics had a tough time following the plot on this Michael Mann's latest flick. But still it delivers the expected from the Man'n'. Don't bother much of what’s happening and just concentrate on how it’s happening and I guarantee that you will find this movie as a visual treat.

Colin Farrell looks awesome in his new avatar and Jamie foxx is as usually cool. Like Collateral, this movie too has got some great kill scenes. If you were thrilled and shocked by those scenes in Collateral, you might applaud and then have a good hearted laugh for one such scene in this one.

Unlike "Heat" and "Collateral", this one lacks depth and follows the beaten path of a routine Hollywood action flick. Nonetheless, everything is stylishly done and you wouldn't complain if you like predictable yet thrilling action films.

Bedtime story for adults.

Watching Shyamalayan's latest venture "Lady in the water" reminds me of what Sidney pollack said in his book (Making Movies) about the importance of "Style" for a movie. As per Pollack, style refers to the tone of the movie and the script decides the appropriate style for the movie. In my opinion this is exactly where this movie fails ( in finding the right style for the movie).

This bedtime story would have been bearable if it was told in a silly manner, like a cartoon. But Shyamalan makes an unforgivable mistake of adopting his typical way for telling this story. Imagine watching a bedtime story happening in a contemporary world where all the adults take part in ludicrous tricks without even questioning the cause and asking the audience to empathize with their actions. Undeniably, this is Shyamalan at his worst but if you are a fan of his style and approach and you don't mind wasting two hours of your time to watch a few moments of brilliant scenes here and there, go ahead and you will not be disappointed.

A memorable experience

I just came home after witnessing an event which I will remember for a long long time. It's AR Rahman's Show here in hollywood. I grew up listening to the tunes of Illyaraja and Rahman and off late I am not in a good touch with the happenings in Indian cinema. But AR Rahman draws a special attention. I have not been a hard core fan of Rahman but without making any conscious effort, its his and only his music that fills my play list.

Did I enjoy the show ?? Hell yes I did but with a few considerations here and there. I had that hair raising experience after seeing THE MAN in flesh and blood which I never expected that I could feel. Anyway as I said I have a few things on my mind which has bothered me throughout the show and here they are:

1) Rahman did not speak for more than a minute during the entire show. As he made his appearance he went straight to his keyboard and started humming "Dilse" and I thought may be that’s his way of starting the show and may be he would greet us after the song. But that did not happen and near the end of the show there was not even a proper goodbye. I did not wish or hope for a full blown speech but at least a minute's greeting for the people who have come all the way from hundreds of miles would have made me happy. The only words that came from his mouth at the end were "Thank you". Yes, those were the only words.

Speaking frankly, by the time I reached home and thought about this I formed a convincing explanation for all this. May be that’s his nature and may be we should not expect him to wear a false mask for us. Its much better being himself rather than pretending being nice to make us happy. May be he is very happy to see all this crowd and may be he doesn't know how to express it.

2) Well coming to the second reason, Rahman never sings or lets his singers sing in telugu on his shows !!!!! I cannot find a possible convincing explanation for it.
Yes, I don't know if he does that intentionally or he just fails to notice that his music has more fans (and does much more business) in telugu than in tamil. I don't know.
Rahman worked as a keyboard player for "Koti" ( a successful music director in telugu) before starting his career and that makes me feel he does know the language. Then why Mr Rahman, what's wrong with us ???

3) Coming to the actual show and the music, I expected "Chaiyya Chaiyya" to rock the stadium but surprisingly it was way worse than the semi-finals on the "Indian Idol 2". "Rang de basanti" was sung by an american with horrible pronunciations but still it was good.

Enough about my complaints. May be I am giving the impression that the show was not worth it. No way, It is AR RAHMAN up there and catching a glimpse of him itself is worth buying the ticket. Though I get a little bit disappointed about his aversion to telugu, I admire his love and respect for his mother tongue. His rendition of "Humma Humma" in tamil would be the second best song in the show. My pick for the best song will be "Vandemaataram" which made me very emotional and to my surprise even a bit patriotic for a moment there.

Celebration of mediocirty

http://indiafm.com/news/2006/07/13/7436/index.html

I just read this on india fm and I have to say that this foolishness cannot be expressed in words. How in the world can a movie which is nothing but a collection of all the cliches that you could imagine be an academic subject. May be this should be an academic subject because it's the closest one which has all the ingredients of a classic bollywood' s trash.

It just breaks my heart to see this movie succeed. May god save Indian cinema.

A genuine horror

“Three extremes” like our Varma’s anthology of horrors (Darna mana hai) is collection of short films; actually it’s three of them. But unlike any American or desi horror we got used to see, this movie does not rely on shocks or in the supernatural. Remember the nightmares that all of us have once in a while in which we want to get out of and once we wake up we are so glad that it is all a dream?? Well, this movie produces almost the same effect.

The movie is as they say “different from the usual” but it is not different just for the sake of it. But I should warn you that it’s highly possible that you might throw up or end up having nightmares for weeks after watching the first story.
This movie makes its mark in my list of best horrors of all time. Of course after “The Exorcist” and “The Shining”.

Finally got my adsense

After months of deliberation I finally placed these google ads on my blog.
I would be more than happy if I can make a buck in a month with the help of it.

Wierd and beautiful

I did not understand what this movie was all about but I can say without a doubt there is something in this movie which connects us with some remote and weird feelings that everyone of us feels at some points in our lives. The surprising factor for me was that the movie was written and directed by the leading lady in the movie, Miranda July. There is something that is mystic, strange and amazing about this woman which made me crazy enough to spend a few hours on googling about her.

Read Roger Ebert’s review on this movie if the movie sounds any interesting to you at:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050623/REVIEWS/50524002/1023

Miranda July’s blog can be reached at the following link.
http://meandyou.typepad.com/

P.S:

Thanks to twisted_dna for mentioning this.
The name of the movie is "Me and you and everyone we know".

As cliched as it can get

I was surprised after watching the trailer of "Krish" while I went to see Rang de Basanti. It was really as they say "no less than a hollywood movie". There were no indications of a routine Rakesh Roshan movie in that trailer and I immediatly made a decision to watch this movie on the very first day of its release and I kept my promise.

"Krish" religiously follows all the cliches of bollywood: a caring and possesive grandmother, an irritating and slapstick comedian, a evil villian, misunderstandings, kidnaps, hero and his girl dancing at the sky scrapers at foreign locales for no apparent reason, a hard working good friend of our hero whose mission is to earn money for his sister's operation who finally dies in the hands of the evil villian so that he can generate sympathy and a chance for our hero to resuce his sister and so..on... the list is endless. Every single moment and every single dialogue of the movie was downright predicatable and the only interesting special-effects were marred by the loud music of Rajesh Roshan.

I am fine with the regular bollywood cliches as long as they work. Rakesh Roshan followed almost all the above cliches in KNPH but somehow he managed to tell the story in a coherent way. "Krish" not only lacks coherence but it takes its audience for granted and tells the story in the same old fashion that we have been used to for the past god knows how many years and wants us to think that we are watching it for the first time.

One of the hilarious scenes in the movie (which was not meant to be hilarous):
Priyanka passes out after seeing Hrithik who she thinks is a ghost and wakes up in the midst of her all her friends who are gaping at her and lets out one of the most predicatable cliched dialogues "Main kaha hoon....."

What was more painful and yet funny than the movie was the review from Taran Adarsh:
http://indiafm.com/movies/review/12415/index.html
Please do not read the review until you watch the movie beacause you wouldn't know how funny that review really is.

Inspirational Movies

I just happened to see this list of 100 most inspirational movies selected by AFI at rogerebert.com. I am not sure if this is a sorted list or not but the moment I saw " It's a wonderful life" right at the top of the list, I was thrilled. It was the same movie I was hoping to see on the top after reading the title of the article. I copied the list to a spreadsheet at once and counted the number of movies that I saw among them. It was 37......hmmmm.. (not too bad for someone who started watching american movies just a couple of years ago).

The complete list can be found at
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060616/COMMENTARY/60616003

P.S.
I don't know how a movie like "Casablanca" could be "inspiring" but never mind. I wouldn't mind placing "Casablanca" in the top 5 of any given genre of film making.

My regular playlist

I have been feeling very lonely every once in a while these days and I am glad that I have enough work at my office to keep me busy. It has become a sort of routine for me to have 4 or 5 beers on every friday night and every time I get drunk as Iam now, I dont feel half asleep as most people think but I see things more clearly. This reminds me of what Ayn rand mentions in her "Atlas Shrugged" about the moment of clarity when one gets drunk. Anyway, the point is that every time that I am in this mood, I yearn to listen to some good music....and I have to confess that I dont have a great ear for either classic indian music or rocking westerns..

My playlist consists of some 20-30 odd songs and in the past one year I did not add or delete even 5 songs out of this. Though I have a very good collection of telugu, hindi and western music I tend to listen to the same old playlist over and over again. Seems like I kind of built up a relation with each of these songs and can't pull myself away from them..and I love the way each song drags me into its mood .... anyway.. Iam listing a few of them here:

1) "I Swear" from All-4-one
2) "Unchained melody" from Righteous brothers
3) "Are you ready for love" from Elton John
4) "La Isla Bonita" , Madonna
5) "Grease is the word" from the movie Grease
6) "In da Club" , 50 Cent
7) "Beat it", Michael Jackson
8) "Unbreak my heart", toni braxton
9) "Where the green grass grows", tim mcgraw
10) "Run to you", bryan adams

....... and a few more...

I listen to my telugu playlist (again not more than 2o odd songs which I hear over & over again) when I am more sober...

Nostalgia

Once in a while on a calm and pleasant night I have this feeling which is both comforting and painful. Comforting in the sense that I underwent those pleasant experiences and met some good people in my life and painful because those moments are now history and no matter what, I cannot get them back.

Today is one of those nights. My evening started as per my normal routine : Came back from work, spent a little time on orkut.com reading the scrapbooks of other people and then browsing through the tv channels ,cooking, eating , talking on the phone etc.. and getting back to bed. But for some reason I couldn't sleep and even today I postponed my plan to call my best friend back in India. I have been making and breaking this promise to myself for quite some time now and I was just wondering the reason for my behaviour. May be I was postponing this because I dont want to make that call and the excuse that Iam busy is just a cover up. And why would I not want to call my once best friend?? and this has setup up a train of thoughts into my memory lane and made me feel nostalgic..

Really, it is quite surprising and shocking what a few years could do to one's life. I dont know how to carry out a 10 minute conversation with the people whom I spent few of my most memorable moments in the past. I am not even sure If I have to work on this and try to maintain my relationships with my friends or just let my life go on and let things happen.

Present india

Guys who are bored visiting normal blogs which picturise the normal day to day activities in one's bored life, visit this link for a difference.
http://presentindia.blogspot.com/
I am sure this guy must have faced a lot of painful issues with women in his life but god save me, his blog occured to me as funny, ridiculous and stupid but it sure has got lot of posts which I would send to my dear friends to share a laugh.
There was this one post on how girls rag which was the funniest for me. Why dont I meet such girls ???
http://presentindia.blogspot.com/2006/06/how-girls-rag.html
I would love to read a similar blog from women's perspective tooo.. please send me the link if you know any.

A good remake

I know its a stupid movie but a good stupid movie which does not take itself seriously. I also know that there is no real reason for remaking this movie but to exploit the 6.6.06 date factor and a good chance of minting money from the teenagers. But here I am at the movie theatre on the very first day of its release. I was intially hesitant of watching this movie when I first saw the trailer back in 2005. I thought it was one of those stupid sequels like the one for the Exorcist. But recently I happened to see another trailer of the movie which revealed to me that it was just a re-make.
Omen is one of those rare horror movies which have a proper story line and as well as some good scares. This movie was good in the sense that it faithfully followed the original and didn't try to screw up with over the top graphics and visuals. One or two scenes in the movie were totally useless (the usual ones in which in a character is in a bizzare incident and we later know that it was just a dream) and it was clear that they were aiming those scenes at those high-school kids who it seemed really enjoyed and for my embarassment they even applauded. The women who played Damien's caretaker's role ( the one who played Rosemary's role in "Rosemary's baby, a great horror by the way) was awesome and Damien himself was not that great and when he gives that omnious look all the time he was more of cute and less scary.
I had some shocking experiences lately at the movie theatres when I witnessed people gave a standing ovation to the movies like "Davinci code" and "United 93". I can understand and would second their response to "United 93" but a standing ovation to "Da vinci code" was ridiculous. With "The Omen", I was praying that they would not do to this and thank god my prayers were answered.

Finally, the bad guy wins

Match point is completely different from what I saw from Woody Allen till date. But no matter how different a movie could be in terms of execution, this movie's ending would be a total shock. Please do not read further if you didnt watch this movie and are planning to watch it sometime.
I was engrossed in the movie but I was a bit sad as I was one hundred percent sure that there was no way this movie could end on a happy note. By "happy note" I mean through the perspective of the movie's protagonist.

I dont know if it happens only with a few people like me or everybody else, but after a certain point in the movie we become the protagonist and no matter what his intentions and actions are we wish that he would come out of the danger unscathed. What this guy does in this movie was definetly unethical, immoral and selfish. But inspite of all his criminal actions, I was constantly hoping that he would not get screwed. Well, I didn't find a movie which was so big hearted that it would forgive such a person... well , this movie does...

Woody had always a knack for the irony.. and I think he is at his best in this one. The only difference is that woody normally used comedy as a cover for his irony but in this one it is crime.

Windows maps

After exploring the google maps for the first time, I felt like there was no room left for anybody to beat them !!! But windows live proved me wrong... I don't remember how I landed up on this site but it was indeed an amazing experience. The maps were not that great but they have this feature called "bird's eye" which beats google flat...
I just typed in my work place's address and when I go to the bird's eye this is what I find. The above scaled version doesn't do justice to the actual picture that this site provided.

This is the link
http://local.live.com/

Essentials for a hollywood movie buff

I always wanted to share this list with someone who loves movies as much as I do. Out of the numerous sites dedicated to movies that I visit regularly, I finalized these:

1) www.rogerebert.com : Roger ebert is the only person who has ever won a Pultizer prize for writing movie reviews. I didn't knew this when I started reading his reviews but of 15 or so critic reviews that yahoo movies usually posts, I found his insights to be very clear. I read his review for every movie I see ( & wouldn't see) and most of the times his reviews are very convincing. If you have time to read books on movies, then dont miss Roger ebert's "Great Movies" and " I hated, hated , hated, hated this movie". His writings are so clear and so impartial that I hardly disagreed with his review in the course of last 4 years since I started visiting this site. I love to read his reviews for the bad ones, especially the ones with zero star ratings, they are so funny. Apart from the reviews, the "Answer-man" section where he responds to the visitors questions is informative and insightful. The "Movie glossary" section is hilarious and the "Great movies" section is the best.

2) www.rottentomatoes.com : For some unexplainable reasons I dont like imdb.com which is considered as the bible for movie buffs. imdb provides a chance for every movie buff to express his/her opinion and rates a movie based on the average of users rating. But rotten tomatoes does much better job in my opinion. You have all the reviews of the nation's top 150 or so critics, and the average of their ratings is given as a percentage. A movie with 60% or more rating is FRESH or else is ROTTEN.
Apart from the rating, you will have the info about the movie, pics, trailers and all the other usual stuff. The best part is the tomato picker where you can search for movies with a certain percentage of rating belonging to particular genre.

3) www.filmsite.org : As Roger ebert calls it, the site is a labor of love for movies. There is no other site on the web which would provide such a detail explanation on a shot to shot analysis for some great movies. On the whole, this site has the shot to shot analysis for 300 odd movies. But if you just want to know more about the great movies, this is the place to look for.

4) www.boxofficemojo.com : Not a great site in terms of content but very informative on the dollar figures. If you wish to broaden ur knowledge on the highest grossers of all time, movies with highest openings, movies with highest ROI etc.. this is your destination.

Much better than the book

I might be one of those very very few people who loved this movie and absolutely hated the book. Usually, I second with those people who argue that a movie can never completely capture the style and feel of a book. But with Danbrown's Da vinci code there is neither style nor any feel.
I thought only Sidney sheldon was the writer who inspite of writing stupid and inane books got away with fame and recognition. But Dan brown is not even half as good as him.

I had no problems with the historical research of Mr.Brown but his storystelling was plainly bad. But I waited for this movie for so long as I wanted to see how a good director like Ron howard would handle such an inane script and he does not disappoint.

Born into brothels

I saw this movie a while ago and was completely moved. I made a promise to myself that I would definetly contribute my share in helping those kids and but as usually I forgot about it after a while. But luckily I saved this link in my bookmarks and somehow found this today.

This movie is about the kids in calucutta who were born in the family of brothels. Zana briski, a U.S citizen once on her trip to India to shoot some pictures came across these kids and their families and finally convinced some people and made her experience into this wonderful documentary. After watching this movie I felt very ashamed of our filmmakers and I am sure anybody else would feel the same way.

You can contribute to this organization by buying either the DVD or the book containing the pictures taken by these kids.

The link is here
http://kids-with-cameras.org/home/

Telugu lyrics & hard to find songs

For telugu music lovers out there and also for the tamil illayaraja fans who didnt get a chance to listen to his melodious compositions in telugu, visit this link
www.telugubiz.net
Users can provide the input for this site by writing the lyrics for the songs they remember...

First post.....

I recently launched my first website richapallod.com & this is my first attempt at blogging...let's see how it goes