The Devil’s Workshop

Taare Zameen Par: Review

2008-01-05T22:52:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-17T06:05:00.000-08:00

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

"Broken" by Motherjane: Lyrics

2007-09-10T05:01:00.001-07:00

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

2007-09-02T05:40:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-20T23:34:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-08-08T00:31:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-18T01:25:00.000-07:00

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...

Big B: Review

2007-04-21T21:43:00.001-07:00

Rating: 4.5/5

Did you watch Randaam Bhaavam?
Did you watch Stop Violence?

If you did like the STYLE & REALISTIC TREATMENT of both these movies, then Big B is for you. I never thought I would ever get to watch such a stylish movie in Malayalam, for the coming 5 years, at least. When people like Gautham Menon, Mani Rathnam, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra and Farhan Akhtar set to make movies that bore the signature of fine craftsmanship, for the Tamil & and Hindi film industries, I was a little concerned with the future of the Malayalam movie field – that we might fall behind as out-fashioned while the others were racing fast toward technical perfection that is on par with Hollywood movies. Yes, we have Shaji Kailas; but this talented director has got a bad habit of spoiling his own movies by making his hero appear like a superman or semi-god; a little less heroism, and Shaji’s movies would be perfect – but it seems that this guy will never get rid of it. Poor chap.

But now, I do not care much about what Gautham Menon or Farhan Akhtar is doing; for, newcomer director Amal Neerad has proved that the Malayalam movie industry is still, by far, the Big Brother to all other Indian languages.

I want to tell you one thing in the beginning itself – the story of the movie is, kind-of-a-little, weak (that is where the -0.5 star came in!) and very very unfortunately, this movie is a scene-by-scene remake of the 2005 Hollywood movie Four Brothers (which, for the record, is the adaptation of the 1965 Hollywood movie The Sons of Katie Elder), save for some very minute changes here and there; however, this one has such a host of other splendours, that you will not actually mind it. Trust me.

The movie is the story of four brothers, all of whom are adopted children of veteran social worker Ms. Mary John Kurishinkal. In an unfortunate incident, Ms. Mary is murdered brutally and the four sets out in pursuit of the invisible killer.

Pasupathy is a very good actor, but he is left without much to do in this movie in the role of ACP Balaji. Manoj K. Jayan, as Eddy, is cool. Both Bala (Murugan) and Sumit Naval (Bijo) are also cool. All the characters, even those not-so-important, are well-etched. The way the director had paid proper attention to even the minutest details is worth mentioning. For example, in the scene preceding Ms. Mary’s murder, which takes place at a night, she tells a child to come to her home in the next morning; and during the sequence where Ms. Mary’s dead body is being brought to her home (in the next morning), the child is there in the frame. Another example: a dog is seen barking at Bilal and his brothers when they reach Sub-Inspector George’s house to interrogate him; and when they leave after finishing their job, you can still hear the dog barking.

Another scene, I think worth mentioning, is the one in which the four brothers go to Dr. Venu’s house to question him. Bilal is holding him by his neck while they ask him questions, but when the doctor’s daughter comes in to get shocked seeing this, he releases Venu. That adds both to the depth of Bilal’s character and to the realistic nature of the movie.

Watch out for that blast scene when a piece from the exploding car comes flying and Bilal bends to avoid it; have you ever seen such a shot in a Hindi/Tamil movie? (Hollywood is another thing; I already told you that the movie is a remake.) In addition, the music and background scoring by Alphons Joseph is simply excellent. The extremely slow motion filming, compared with an appropriate slow background score, of the burning car playing a somersault reminded me of M:I-2. only one song in the movie seems a little out-of-place, but I must say that the director had taken care to make it go smoothly blended with the course of the screenplay.

One more bite before we wind up: I had noticed that, in almost all Malayalam movies, a lawyer is always pictured as a man who always wears a black suit and gown (no matter whether it is at the court, his office, or even a wedding – this is the official uniform of a lawyer in a typical Malayalam movie!), is always surrounded by a number of apprentices, and sits in a well-furnished office with its shelves holding volumes of large law books. However, take the scene in which the four goes to visit the lawyer – here the old legal baron is wearing a casual dress, is sitting in a rather dull office room at his home. In addition, note his style of acting while remembering to hand them the birth certificates – so natural, that it will force us to admit the distinction of this director.

And the viewer’s response? Let me tell you this: even through the slow closing sequences of the movie (kind-of-an-epilogue, which follows the climax), nobody rose from their seats until the titles began to scroll. Typically, the Malayalee viewers do not bother to wait that much, no matter how good the movie is. Do I need to say anything more? Go, watch and enjoy the movie. Hats off, Amal Neerad. Excellent work. However, please remember that expect a lot more from you THAN A MERE REMAKE.

"The Hindu" Stealing Puzzles From Net

2007-04-18T05:40:00.000-07:00

Most of the questions that appear in The Hindu newspaper's daily crosswords can be found at http://www.crossword-crazy.co.uk/puzzles/cincinnus-crosswords.

Sheer coincidence, don't you think?

Haiku: Love

2007-04-09T11:05:00.000-07:00

He who won, had her
For the moment;
And he who lost - forever.

Don: The Chase Begins Again - Mistakes In The Movie

2007-03-31T04:10:00.000-07:00

1) How did Don kill Kamini, while his gun was not loaded?

2) Why did not the police team run downstairs while Don was trying to get away with Kamini? (They should have been there before D'Silva, who had to stay back to help Don open the lift, right? And if he was Vardhan, why did he try to save Kamini, instead of killing Don, which was his actual purpose all the time?) And was the police team foolish enough to have not left anybody on the ground level?
And why did not they surround the hotel with enough people, when they were going to arrest such a dangerous criminal like Don?
And most importantly, WHY, WHY, WHY THE HELL DIDN'T the police team or Mr. D'Silva use the second lift? Oh yeah - it was engaged. As usual in Bollywood. What a silly question.

3) While the police knew the exact date when Don was going to India, why did not they try to capture him at the airport itself?

4) Why the hell did Don inform D'Silva about his gang's secret meeting? Was he planning to take over the gang by betraying Singhania? If so, the point should have been made clear elsewhere in the movie; otherwise, the most logical thing that follows is that Don was a real idiot to have staked vital information in the hands of his worst enemy!

5) Was the police really that dumb to believe that D'Silva was killed in the blast? (The autopsy would have proven that his body was not among those found from the vehicle, right?)

6) The parachute is on the long-haired guy's back when he is trying to shoot Don; but when he falls through the emergency exit, it is on his chest.

7) If the disc was empty from the beginning itself (as Don reveals later in the movie), WHY THE HELL WAS HE AFTER THE DISC??? An empty DVD will not hold good as an argument for Vijay's innocence, right? Then why? While Don had successfully evaded from the hands of the police by jumping from the plane, then what was his purpose in going through all the hustle to save an EMPTY disc? Man, this single question is eating my brains up right to this moment. Anybody there? (Later in the movie, Don tells Jasjit that the disc and Jasjit's statement are his way out of jail; that means, Don was thinking that Jasjit's statement that he took the disc from D'Silva would convince the court that he was D'Silva's informer, even though the disc was blank; but how could he ever imagine that he CAN find the person who took the disc, and if he EVER did, that guy WILL give a statement in the court in favour of him? And later, when he actually got the disc and his witness, why did he change his plans and slyly made his exit, instead of trying to prove in the court that he is Vijay?)
AND THERE IS MORE:
Khureshi (to Jasjit): "Mubarak ho Jasjit; Is disc par jo information hai, kisi lottery se kam nahin!"
Why would Jasjit, a computer expert himself, have to seek Khureshi's help to find out what the content of the disk was?
And later...
Don (to Anita): "Woh nakli hai; Us mein kabhi kuch tha hi nahin!"
Give me A BREAK!

8) What was Jasjit doing on the bridge between the buildings? He could have easily walked by the side of the dome in the centre; but instead, he opted to walk along the edge, through the other side of the parapet - when there was no need of taking such a risk at all. And why did it take so much time for Vardhan's guys to get to the base floor of the next building? Ah, yet another foolish question. As it goes without saying, "the police are always late (in Bollywood)". Here the principle was applied to the bad guys.
Now that is what I call different.

9) Khureshi DIDN'T know where Jasjit has gone; Later, Don is seen walking along the street, looking at the building where Jasjit is kept captured. How did Don come to know that Jasjit was there? And if the disc (EMPTY, of course) was that much important to him, then why did he follow Dipu and Jasjit, instead of going into the building to see Jasjit? (Remember that Don did not know Jasjit.)

10) Vardhan could have shot Don before bending down to take the disc. Once again, as usual, Villains do not use a major part of their brains...

Stumble It!

2007-01-30T03:34:00.000-08:00

Interview With Padmapriya

2006-12-31T02:37:00.001-08:00

At 12’O clock, 31^st December 2006, on Kairali TV. First, a word about interviews – I don’t watch interviews. Especially the ones with movie stars. However, what caught my attention in this one – with a Bangalore-brought-up girl who difficultly (not deliberately, for God’s sake, I think) speaks Malayalam – was her opinion about Feminism. In response to a question by the interviewer, she said if women choose to leave their jobs in order to take better care of their families, there’s nothing wrong with it as long as they do it on their own will; and that she feels that ‘it’s a great feeling’. Then he asked her something with regard to Feminism and her reply was to the effect that ‘I was a feminist; but now I am not’.

Now that was something seemingly difficult to stomach for the interviewer. Ah, BUJIs of Kerala. Their brains are still in the ’80s. he pushed her for an explanation, and she clearly expounded her points of view, in English and coarse Malayalam. Intelligent thoughts. Cool attitude. She’s a girl with brains. Though so far I did not like her as an actress, now I admire her as a woman of intelligence. Then the interviewer asked her what else would she like to be called, if her name was not Padmapriya. She said that she loves her name (and told a lengthy story about how her mother eagerly wished for a girl child, and made an vow to the Thirupathi Venkateshwara that she would name her daughter ‘Padma’ yet she still wanted to call her Priya and eventually came up with an even bargain) and that she would not change it for the sake of her career. However, the jackass stuck on to his question. Blah. Where is the remote?

Die, Saddam, Die!

2006-12-30T20:37:00.000-08:00

30^th December 2006. With two more days to go for the New Year, the former president of Iraq, Mr. Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was executed in the early morning. And all the newspapers, all the news TV channels in Kerala went on a buzz after it. Indiavision even hosted a 3-hours long phone-in program for its viewers, 99% (save the 1% for that part of the show which I missed) of the callers to which were of the opinion that it was brutal injustice done to Saddam and that he was a brave martyr of the fight against American fascism. The host, Mr. Nikesh Kumar was overwhelming as usual with his words of glory to Saddam… And the whole stuff was, in short, sort of nothing less than a Thrissur Pooram.

The question I want to ask is - why all this excitement? Al major political parties had called upon for Harthal in the afternoon! For a cruel dictator and imperialist, whom all of us hated to the core for until a decade or so ago – while the Gulf War was going on. Who was Saddam? The cold-blooded murderer of more than 10,000 of Kurds, who were, by hell’s grace, his own countrymen. Yes, I agree with the fact that the punishment to him was not given by someone who has the right to judge; if Saddam Hussein was the devil’s child, George Bush is no one less than his father. However, this – all this commotion, all this uproar – is certainly unnecessary and extremely over-emotional. It’s true that Saddam was an enemy of America – the same world bully whom we all hate – but does that make him our friend? Yes, it is a shameful fact that what all we want are heroes, not facts; Saddam was glorified as a courageous martyr, and all the cruelties that he had done in his past life were forgotten, only because of the reason that it was the White House’s decision to hang him. And eyeing the Islamic community in Kerala, which viewed the war upon Iraq by America as the Yankee’s crusade against Islam, as a potential vote-bank and as a readership/viewership pool, both the political parties and the sensation-hungry media burst in.

Not to blame Indiavision, which is an Islamic TV channel; not to blame the political parties, who just need to please the minority, even at the cost of causing great inconvenience to the public; blame us, only us, who are so foolishly sentimental enough to see Saddam Hussein as a hero, conveniently forgetting the fact that he was no one less than a second Hitler; who are naïve enough to get carried away by all the media buzz and all the party buzz trying to convince us that Saddam was not a cruel killer, but was a brave fighter against the Yankee Big Brother attitude (believe me, I heard Dr. Sebastian Paul comparing him with Jesus Christ! I wished I were deaf!), and exploit our weaker emotions; blame us, who just can’t differentiate between what is martyrdom and what is the meaning of the bible phrase “for all who draw the sword will perish by the sword”.