The world according to Bollywood

Singh joined Facebook

(The "is" part in the title makes me write a Facebook style story of the movie.)

Happy Singh chases wild goose.
Happy Singh is sad that village head's family is in trouble.
Happy Singh is traveling to Australia.
Happy Singh missed flight.
Happy Singh updates relationship to "It's complicated" with Katrina Kaif.
Happy Singh added King as friend
Happy Singh added Kiron Kher as mom-like-figure.
Happy Singh has updated first name to Singh
Singh is Kinng
Katrina Kaif updates relationship to "committed" with Mr. D
Happy is Happy with friends (X, Y, Z and A)
X, Y, Z and A have left the group - "Underworld Mafia".
X, Y, Z and A have changed their profile pictures.
Happy Singh and Katrina Kaif are now married.
Happy Singh posted a new message in the group: "Sikh Community".

Wall-E, a top earth class delight

Here comes yet another lovingly made movie from Pixar. 

Remember the first time how you felt touching Apple's smooth, shiny-white magsafe power adapter with cute little ears to wind up the cord when not in use? That is pretty much the tactile equivalent of how you feel when you watch the movie. 

The movie is so lovingly made that most frames are better than the gorgeous mac screen savers (on apple displays) ever made and so lovingly told that the boxy-masculine-rusty-power-toolsy guy Wall-E is nothing but adorable. His binocular shaped eye-cameras are shiny, expressive and filled with life.

Wall-E is a waste compactor machine-bot left behind alone on the planet by earth-fleeing humans who couldn't stand their own pollution resulting from centuries of unabashed buying and wasteful consumption at large. It is 700 years since humans have left the planet and in the meanwhile the bot develops a personality. It is more of a 'He' now than 'it'.

He has a set routine. He goes for work, looks for any interesting items in trash (spork, rubrik's cubes, tonnes of cigarette lighters, christmas lights, 5G iPods - no leaks there. Still a 5G iPod in 2708 AD !), and keeps compacting trash for the rest of the time. The movie is endlessly inventive and speculative here in verbal-silence while at the same time speaking volumes on the worst of American foods: twinkies which have infinite shelf life. 

Breaking his routine, comes another bot from the stars, Eva. She is more like the tall-sleek-ipod-nano + Angelina Jolie from Mr. & Mrs. Smith and may be that graceful dancer, Martha Graham. Our man falls in love with the lady as Louis Armstrong's voice sores high in the background, making the junkyard feel like Central Park during fall.

While, I'll let you discover the rest of the movie for yourself, I do want to talk about end credits. The end credits of the movie retrace robot-assisted human history starting from hieroglyphics to Van Gogh and beyond with such elegance and sheer beauty that I would pay my $8.25 (yes! a matinee show on a weekday) just for that.  

The end credits start with computer animation, scale down to hand-drawn-computer-enhanced graphics and finally reduce to 8-bit graphics from the days of pre-historic Atari video games. It is almost like, the animation-geekier you are, the longer you are gonna stay and watch all of the end credits and the hence the treat.

I know for sure I am gonna stay till the very end, when I watch it for the second time too. And like David Edelstein on NPR said, "I envy your first-time watching of the movie".

If Jeevi reviewed Sankarabharanam ...

Story: Shankara Shastri (JV Somayujulu) is a principled chap who teaches and sings classical music. He is rich and famous. Ratnaprabha (Manju Bhargavi) is a daughter of a clever prostitute. She wants to learn music from Shankara Shastri encourages her to learn music. But for that, people get angry. Popularity of classical music is decreasing and Shankara Shastri looses his money. Ratnaprabha has a son, Tulasi. Tulasi is learning music from Shankara Shastri. In the end of the movie, Shankara Shastri dies while giving a concert. Ratnaprabha also dies. Tulasi becomes the next singer.

Performances: Somayajulu is exceptionally good. He has good make up for the role. He embodies the essence of traditional musician and appeared very believable and natural. Manju Bhargavi displayed good histrionics. Her dances are average too. Allu Ramalingayya and Chandramohan are adequate and have small roles. They give a decent comedy track for the movie.

Technical Departments:

Story - Screenplay - Direction: The story is not strong. It is weak. It not very strong. It is only a little weak. But on the whole, it is average. Screenplay is not very noticeable. It could have been better with flash backs.

There is a strong stamp of Vishwanath in the movie. Direction of a film is bit slow. There is no compactness in the film as director has taken his own time to establish characters. However, there are some situations in the film that should be appreciated.

Music: Music is good but it is all old and classical. No fast beats in the movie. This makes it a bit boring. Balu is singing good and it is difficult to tell it is Balu singing. On the whole, music is average. People will go out for cigarette drinking.

Analysis:

Strengths: Low budget movie, some nice situations, decent comedy track
Weaknesses: No established actors, old music, slow direction, complex dialogues in telugu, below 3 hrs.

(written by Kesava Mallela, spoofing Jeevi of idlebrain.com)

Dasavatharam - A Review

If Kamal Hassan made Matrix, he would play ALL the characters in the movie, adding another layer of confusion to the trilogy.

If Kamal Hassan did Eyes Wide Shut, it would be a self-sexual orgy set to Vedic chants.

If Kamal Hassan is in news business, it would be news by him, about him, on him, in him, over him, under him and nothing but him. Weather man played by Kamal would report about Kamal's body temperature and moisture.

If Kamal Hassan was on Chak De, he would play the Indian and Australian flags along with all the characters on the Indian hockey team and the coach of Australian team.

If Kamal Hassan is into full-time animation he would play all the 101 Dalmatians + mom + dad. The devil lady too. Also, Stuart, the dad. Stuart, the kid and Stuart, the rat. Also, all those giant tortoises on the Great barrier reef water way and the me-me pelican birds on Sydney harbor. and finally, those inanimate spices on counters and shelves in the French kitchen and may be the swap lands in the Ogre land, just not to sound exclusively elitist.

If Steven Spielberg made Schindler's List with Kamal Hassan, it would be about an army of Kamals destroying all Kamal movies, while another Kamal curating a list of all Kamal movies that are destroyed and there after restore them back to Kamal movies. Hence, Kamal's list.

If Kamal Hassan is on Dasavatharam, well, he would never be on it. Because, it has another nut case called Kamal Hassan and also because it has just the right number of Kamal Hassans on it, not one less or one more.

Rating: Plutoid / 5 stars

Amateur Anthro Flood Gates Opened

Stuff Educated Black People Like

Stuff Asian People Like

Stuff Desis/Brown People Like

Stuff Iranians Like

Stuff Black People Love

and of course the one that started it all: Stuff White People Like

Om Deepika Om

I am sure you have either read a ton of reviews already or listened to people drone about it. I am not sure how much I can add to the existing mass of 'literature' out there. But never the less, at the risk of being redundant, I'm gonna throw in my two cents (err...let's pick rising pence instead).

All the nice things: It's nice to see irreverence to historical cliches in a movie tradition where parody usually means wars between fans. Nice to see actors willing to parody themselves indicating a high level of self-confidence and identity. Nice to see a montage of all those new media. Nice to see Bollywood throw parodical light at themselves although it seems like one giant self-congratulatory, self-reveling party. etc. etc. and all other good things you have listened about the movie in spite of the movie driving itself speedily into a huge-bollywood-cliche-spiral by mocking one in the first place.

Its a Bollywood movie after all, and it remains loyal to all the elements that make one: Changes genre gears every 10 mins, songs for no particular reason which are totally incoherent and anachronistic to the genre of the storyline, fortune-cookie-ish punchlines like 'Dil se Maango, Mil Jaayega; Film Abhi Baaki Hai' and of course all that super-star smugness.

I would have loved to see more out-and-out mockery than frequent shifting gears. The movie should have hung on to MORE cliches and made buffoonery by using elements like "Making Sandy realize that she was Shanti", "Maang Bhari Sindhur and Chutki Sindhur scenes sponsored by Maybelline Cosmetics", "SRK watching a DVD of Karz and realizing his past life (instead of frequent fire nightmares)". That's something for MTV short film, I guess, if only it had the equal audience, budgets and access to star cast.

Indian Case Law: Online and Access

Case law of Supreme Court of India is online here: http://www.supremecourtcaselaw.com/latest.asp There seems to be a significant difference in tone between case law here and in India. While the tone here is more of reasoning with the reader (with some intense persuasive language), the Indian case law sounds more binary in its judgment (instead of painting the spectrum of possibilities). Well, I draw these conclusions from one single abstract I just read (a dispute of inheritance of pooja rights; funny!, esp. when the supreme court has pretty far-reaching disputes to settle). Got to read more to make a generalization. :D

A quick scroll down the page had caught me by pleasant surprise, the Supreme Court is addressing wide range of issues from FIR to Food Corporation of India to fines for late payment of electricity bills to stamp duties.

I understand they are of binding nature by the lower courts and lower courts probably reflect one some of the earlier cases while making new judgments, but what is astounding is the language barrier having law in English alone creates. As a result of this most people have little understand of whats going on, even though most of these resources are in public domain.

Even the privileged section of the society, which can read and write English, has almost never been schooled about the kind of the cases and judgments the courts deal with. I am not saying every citizen has to be a paralegal, if not lawyer, but the basic functioning of legal system and civil liberties are an integral part of high school education which is largely absent from Indian high school system. Most discourse in schools is around term of a Supreme court justice and who appoints him with very little functional knowledge. A recent NYT article talked about changing history text books in India and how it might usher new levels of public discourse. My joy knew no bounds ! Thats the way a country becomes a better democracy and steers its own fate. There is a good reason why most freedom fighters in Indian Independence movement were all lawyers.

60 years of Independence

Congratulations Sub continent ! Here are a few interesting essays on this eve:

What makes India's Democracy Special :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6943598.stm

Unlikely heroes: Judiciary and the Election Commission of India:
http://www.hindu.com/af/india60/stories/2007081550120400.htm

Canadian Outlook on 60th anniversary:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/india/binks-india60.html

Britain's Lament on losing the action to US:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/india/article2141186.ece

How Pakistanis see India:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2148170,00.html

Why is India doing so much better than Pakistan?
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2861707.ece

William Dalrymple "State of the Union" styled essay on Pakistan:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2148164,00.html

NPR's review of a new book called "Indian Summer" on the dramatic unfolding (including Nehru-Edwina affair) of 1947:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12445972

How Nusrat's music unified two cultures:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12801007

Chak De - worth your time and money

Unlike Politics, sports give you a license to be irrational and support your team to the core. It's perfectly acceptable if you hate the opposing team and bully them with platitudes. As a supporter, you can be blind to the opposing team's strengths and weaknesses and cheer your team for all its fallibility. In a tradition (by that i mean, Bollywood) where its acceptable to paint the Goras of Lagaan as darkest devils possible or even all Pakistanis under terrorist masks, Chak De picks on an introspective note. It correctly identifies many of the problems associated with Indian team playing psychic. It starts with problems related to identity, multi-culturality and multi-linguality, continues with star-performer-takes-all mentality to basics of team playing before even starting to play any hockey. It then takes on more complicated issues of gender, equality and self-respect and does a fairly good job at dissecting them. The tone however remains observational/by-stander instead of getting preachy.

Shahrukh Khan, for the most part, remains the coach and not the Badshaah of sugar spilled Bollywood. Thankfully, little back stories for all characters, even Shahrukh Khan. No lady-love dying, taking death bed promises from him, no Ki-Ki-Kiran business (you know, how those line of stories can spiral). Cinematography is top notch with some professional sports cameramen expertise. Music is fairly good. Some of the dialogues are very well written with pages of unspoken footnotes. Casting is not bad, but could have been better. Overall, the movie respects your time and money.

Recommended.

Pilani, Goa or Hyderabad?

Birla Institute of Technology and Science, one of India's premier technical universities is adding new campuses. They have three campuses in India now: Pilani, Goa and Hyderabad.

Here's a question: If you had to put your money on one of these campuses, which one would it be? I would definitely go with Hyderabad. The city has a vast establishment of premier central government research establishments like Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT), Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), Nuclear Fuel Complex (NFC), National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) etc etc. It is surprising there is no IIT (yet) in Hyderabad to leverage the enormous research potential of the city.

BITS should the seize the moment to collaborate and build effective research programs in such disciplines which have been fairly unconventional for India's academic establishment.

Which campus should students go for? To answer this question it helps to understand Pilani's geography. Pilani is well isolated from urban civilization with nearest cities Delhi and Jaipur at a distance of 200kms, making it an Archipelago. Generations of Pilani-BITSians pass on their wisdom of entertaining themselves to the younger ones making Pilani a unique cultural experience. But this has come at a cost. An arduous and bumpy road trip is not very appealing to collaborators, researchers, recruiters etc etc. Hyderabad's location advantage scores heavily over Pilani's geographical isolation. Hyderabad campus can turn out to be very competitive with Pilani campus over the years. What about Goa ? Well, a party school with a beach in 10 blocks? India's hard-working and aspiring students may pass on that.

Supermarket 2.0

Cal Vs. Stanford search results on NPR

Sari catching sensor??

Ford has Ikon designed especially for India. It enables passengers to sit in the back seat with a turban, the doors are made to prevent saris catching, and it copes well with flooded streets and high temperatures: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/07/business_ford_india/html/7.stm

Copes well with flooded streets? So now we don't have to care if oceans rise due to global warming. :D

France on Times Topics

NY Times World section has "France" into Times Topics section. It is of course because of French Presidential elections. It will probably be off the list once they are done with the elections. Its surprising Times doesn't have "Turkey" on the list. Its also kind of sad that 3/6 are 'problem' states.

Want more in Google's more links?

Here's a useful greasemonkey script that does that: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/6664

Job Tips and Five Years

I was watching Indian Television last week and was pleasantly surprised at some of the programming. It was a show about job talk. The show was on a Telugu channel, but the programming was almost entirely in Indian English. The host talked about many useful "tips" to make oneself employable by an employer. My initial reaction to the tips approach was..."she must be kidding me." But I soon realized that its going to have a tremendous impact on students just entering colleges and thats how I try to contain my surprise at the fact that things are going to be vastly different in a matter of five years.

No one deserves a tragedy

Nikki Giovanni's Convocation address:

We are Virginia Tech.

We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.

We are Virginia Tech.

On a different note, the gunman was initially identified as "foreign", then "Asian", then "South Korean" (who could barely speak English??!!!). Washington Post identified him as a "Fairfax man" in a couple of posts. The majority of press now just says "the gunman". KQED's Pacific time has an interesting story on the reactions when he was pronounced "Asian".

Scattered pearls on a DC metro

A concert violinist and a modern maestro, Joshua Bell, received the Avery Fisher prize this week in New York. Washington Post conducted this little experiment of making him play in a Washington DC metro station during rush hour for loose change like a street performer. Mr. Bell played greatest pieces created by mankind like Johann Sebastian Bach's "Chaconne" and Franz Schubert's "Ave Maria" for about 50 mins.

Guess what!! Just seven ppl stop to listen and appreciate the music and only ONE person recognizes that it is Mr. Joshua Bell. Fascinating story!!

Original story by post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html?hpid=topnews
NPR interview with Mr. Bell: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9521098

I vividly remember one such embarrassment. When Violin Maestro TN Krishnan came to Pilani in 1999, there was expected to be a crowd. But there were around 20 people and barely occupied the first row in the huge auditorium. For the Immanuel Kants of the group, here an pseudo-epistemological question, which is more embarrassing?

But I am sure the Bell story would have taken a different turn if he played on a Saturday afternoon in Union Square, NY or SF.

Splitter Hack

Splitter Hack
Originally uploaded by kaysov.

Each one of us had windows startup music blare in public places at least once or twice. Here's a little hack to avoid it. Just keep the headphone jack splitter always plugged in.