Taare Zameen Par: Review

Rating: 2/5

The story in two lines: A child has dyslexia. And nobody realises it, except our hero. That’s all what there is, and the director takes two and a half hours to tell it. If you are planning to watch this movie in theatre, then you better don’t forget the pillow. Aamir Khan’s directorial debut is utterly a waste of time. No, all of you who had already watched the movie and are falling out of words to praise it, just wait and think before you draw your guns and aim at my forehead. Let me start by asking you a question:

The child’s family, as is portrayed in the movie, belongs to the upper middle class. He attends one of the best schools in town also. His mother has dedicated herself to the nurturing of her children, even ditching a job that she had. His father is a businessman. Now you tell me – how come neither well-educated, caring parents (especially, the mother) nor well-qualified teachers recognise the child’s problem, while the symptoms were so obvious all the time? That might have happened a decade ago, but now – come on, this is the age of what is known as the “knowledge boom” and every other person can tell a dyslexic child apart, not to mention qualified primary school teachers, who are trained to identify the learning problems of young children. And how does the child make it to the third standard, anyway?

I wonder who the target audience of the movie is: is it for the elders, or the kids, or both? I don’t think I would have appreciated the movie even if I were a child; for, it has got everything that I felt, in my childhood, made watching those movies which were “made for the children” miserable: The movie is way too much focused on the central character, which gives it a feel of narrowness that can give you claustrophobia. It progresses through a series of song sequences, which are intended to reflect the child’s view of the world, but ends up contributing only to the horrible lag of the movie. I would recommend this movie for the “most elastic movie of the year” award, for, the director has been successful in stretching a story, which could have been told in just an hour, into more that two hours long. Now that’s craftsmanship. If you still cannot suppress your urge to watch the most talked-about movie of the season, then go ahead. There is a brute majority of people out there who would disagree with me.

Haiku: Relativity

In pursuit of ever-tantalising light
Matter loses its identity
Beyond the boundaries of time.

"Broken" by Motherjane: Lyrics

Motherjane is a Kochi based five piece progressive rock band which started in 1996. The band consists of Suraj (vocalist), Baiju (lead guitarist), John (drummer), Clyde (bass guitarist) and Deepu (rhythm guitarist). Motherjane is the only Indian rock band to have their music played in American, Japanese and Mexican radio stations and has a cult following all around India.

Till now, Motherjane has come up two original compilations, the first one being Insane biography which was released in 2002. The song Mindstreet was popular with rock lovers in the country as well as radio listeners world wide. Insane biography was awarded as the best Indian rock album in the year 2002. DNA networks rates Motherjane as one of the top 3 live bands in India. The newest album in the pipeline is Maktub, which is expected to be released by late 2007.

The song "Broken" is a pick from Maktub. It is an excellent one. To download the MP3s of Broken as well as all songs from Insane biography, visit http://www.adipolionline.com.

Website: http://www.motherjane.net

We’ve all been broken
Shattered, left mute with regrets unspoken
We’ve all loved and lost
Been forsaken, repented our deepest trust

We’ve all wondered why
Destiny picked us to cry
Why faith has to be tested,
And life doesn’t turn out the way intended

We’re mended. We’re mended to be broken
Yet human clay believes itself golden
Stunning in its courage to be happy
As wild elations tempered with black melancholy

Aag: Review

Rating: 2.5/5

After so much hype, Ram Gopal Varma’s Aag turned out a movie with not much to be said about it. Besides that the original script has been adapted for the present day and viewer's tastes and trends, there are no significant variations from Sholay in Ramu’s Aag. While Sushmita Sen and Ajay Devgan had performed well, Mohanlal, in spite of having a very important role and adequate footage in the movie, had not been given much opportunity to perform and hence we fail to get the full of his spontaneous style of acting, which the actor is acclaimed for. To speak of Amitabh Bachchan’s performance, it is excellent yet exhausting; after having watched all those movies, starting with Aks, which had Amitabh Bachchan playing a psycho-type character, Aag is enough to get one fed up with Bachchan’s these types of roles. All the other actors are just adequate, with Nisha Kothari being a little better in the role of the bold-yet-feminine auto-rickshaw-driver girl (who also happens to be a Rajnikanth-fan like me). I liked the scene in which Heero (Ajay Devgan) proposes to Ghungroo (Nisha Kothari), to which she responds by covering her eyes with one hand and saying “ILU, ILU, ILU”. Keeping with the routine of Ram Gopal Varma’s movies, this one also has a couple of songs in which the heroine – Nisha Kothari here (as there was no scope for Sushmita Sen, who plays a widow!) – appears in scanty costumes. Said that too, we can wrap up the entire thing and put a single label on it – a typical Ramu film. That's all.

Download Any Photo From Flickr

The idea of creating this script struck me when I came across a Firefox extension, Background Image Saver. In the extension's download page, the author had commented : "It does indeed not work on Flickr.com since they use a different approach (several DIVs) to prevent storing of their images... I might consider changes in a future version".

I visited Flickr, selected a non-downloadable photo, and searched the source code for the actual JPEG image. As I found that it was stored in a global JavaScript variable, I realised that it was a candy. A five minutes work, and the job was done.

To install this script, all you have to do is to right-click on this Download Photo From Flickr link and select "Add to favourites..." (Internet Explorer) or "Bookmark This Link..." (Firefox) from the pop-up menu (if Internet Explorer displays a warning dialogue box, just click "Yes"). The next time you come across a non-downloadable photo on Flickr, clicking on the favourite/bookmark you just added will redirect you to the actual JPEG image file.

Enjoy!

V-Dentata: Rapists Beware!

Sonette Ehlers, a South African researcher has come up with a new device that would literally bite the rapist back, while protecting the wearer. A female friend of mine was curious whether it would be available in India. However, they are not into production yet (as far as I know).

Website: http://www.rapestop.net

Sivaji: Review

Rating: 3/5

And so, the much-awaited blockbuster movie of the year is out of box. When three giants of the south Indian movie industry - Rajnikanth, Shankar and AVM - join hands together, it is obvious that the outcome will be a phenomenon. So what's there in it for a movie-lover like me, who has a liking for movies with style and class?

Unfortunately, not much. I had very high expectations from the Rajni-Shankar combo when I stepped into the cinema hall. But I had the impression that I would need to make up my mind to bear a certain amount of boredom in the movie, within the first five minutes itself - and it turned true as well; or, can anyone tell me what was the need for the Nayanthara-starrer song, (titled Balleilakka, which reminds you of the Andangakka song of Anniyan, Shankar's last movie) in the movie? The story - is nothing different from the usual Shankar theme, a one-man fight against the evils in the society. And the way he has stretched the course of events, in turning what would otherwise be a one-and-a-half hour long movie into a three-hours-and-twenty-minutes long roller-coaster ride is, in modest words, exhausting. Shankar has earlier directed Nayak and Boys, both of which were neatly paced movies. But Sivaji is far from that. In the first half of the movie, which is about an hour and forty minutes long, songs and comedy scenes use up more than an hour, leaving only scarce room for the progress of the story. Comedy in the movie is illogical, irrational, stupid and boring - most the time. Rajnikanth is, for sure, a superstar - but the train sequence is enough proof that he needs some improvement in his acting in comedy scenes. Shankar has also contributed to the dumbness of the scene, by over-dramatizing it.

Enough for the criticism, now let's talk about the spectacle. As I mentioned earlier, Sivaji is simply a phenomenon. Rajnikanth looks like a person in his twenties (I heard they had a make-up test done with Rajni, prior to the shoot) and has delivered a splendid performance, almost throughout the movie. And to talk about the rest of the spices there in the movie: mind-boggling action sequences, choreographed by Peter Hein; excellent music by A. R. Rahman; songs which are filmed poshly, at extravagant sets and world's most beautiful places; Vivek's hilarious comedy (he even gives a slight pinch at Rajni's way of delivering punch-lines at the drop of a hat in his earlier movies - who else dare say such a thing to Rajnikanth, the badshah of punch-lines?); excellent performances by Suman (as the villain of the movie) and Raghuvaran (in a guest appearance); extravagant computer graphics used in action and song sequences; superb visuals by national award winner K. V. Anand; and, of course, the unparalleled Rajni style. Here is a sample punch-line from the movie: "SWINE COME IN PACKS; A LION COMES ALONE!".

Although I give the movie only a 3 out of 5 stars rating, I recommend that you watch the movie if you are a person who likes either Shankar's or Rajni's movies. It has got everything that one would expect from the Rajni-Shankar-AVM trio. How I wish that the movie's romance track and the comedy scenes accompanied were a bit less boring...