The Hurt Locker-Bringing the war home...

There are few movies that dare to explore war from close quarters, they either glorify it, deplore it, take sides or just pack a lot of ammunition and action into a package. But The Hurt Locker differs from the rest in this. Instead of zooming out of war and exploring the big picture, it wears a magnifying lens and goes deep, deep into the life of three soldiers who are three beautifully crafted characters. The story follows this a bomb squad through their last few weeks in deputation, their struggles, emotions, mutual trust or the lack of it, and above all, the inhuman, bloody and bizarre situations they find themselves in, day after day.

Brilliant performances from each member of the cast, especially the rash but lovable Jeremy Renner. The writer of the movie Mark Boal was a freelance writer who was embedded with a bomb squad in Iraq for a period of time (Source: Wikipedia) and it shows in the plain, hits-you-hard-in-the-face kind of realism throughout the movie.

After watching the movie, it is hard to wonder how soldiers survive in places like Iraq, and also makes one wonder if we can ever win this war!

Verdict: One for the DVD collection.

Not so lovely-The Lovely Bones

It is a tragedy to watch a story that could have made a phenomenal movie be dragged down to make an abysmal collage of what could only be described as a director's wild fantasies, seriously what was the guy smoking?!

The story is that of a teenage girl who is murdered by a pedophile neighbor and how post-death she watches over, and helps her father's efforts to get to the truth-or that is what it is supposed to be according to the trailers. I went in expecting to see a gripping drama of a father's struggle with a little bit of supernatural help. But what unfolds instead, is a story that drags on without direction, it is as if the director could not decide whether he wanted a murder mystery, or a family drama, or a kids fantasy movie, there is a little bit of everything, leaving one with a sense of lack of completion on any front.

Verdict: One to avoid.

Vista and Vostro-the love-hate story...

I have been forced out of the blogosphere for quite a while due to some issues in my laptop that ate away a major portion of my spring break :(. I love my laptop-I really really do and Vista Ultimate has definitely been one of the reasons for that. But of-late I am tired of searching for solutions to all the problems that have been cropping up over and over. I am going to record the best and worst of this Vista-Vostro combination and if any of you have something to add (esp. some solutions) please do so in the comments.

Awesome:

• Windows Media Center-watching movies has become a great new experience with Media Center (there are a few bugs though, like every resizing of the window freezes the player and confuses the hell out of it-maybe it was not designed for laptops and fast application switching).
• Windows Dreamscene: One sure-shot way to grab attention to your laptop is to have one of these moving wallpapers on the desktop-its unbeleivably beautiful-some videos are really soothing. (again some issues with Dreamscene crashing and stopping+making the overall system slow-still worth it for the experience).
• Games: I love the Chess and Hold'em Poker games on the Ultimate.
• Aero: Doing a Windows+Tab to switch Windows is a new paradigm and am addicted to it now-its super cool to watch the windows in 3D and choose.
• Organized: Its hard to explain this one, but somehow all the pieces of the UI and the file system are a lot better organized on Vista than any other-very intuitive and simple.

Bummers:

• My advice to all new users would be-DON'T do a clean install of Vista Ultimate on your own. I did that and the first screen that greeted me after the install was a blue-screen (crash), and to top it all, the blue screen would vanish in a split second and the machine will reboot and the system will dutifully ask-"Looks like last time Windows did not boot successfully. Do you want safe mode?" (well there was no last time that Windows booted successfully in the first place!!). And the same blue screen appears in safe mode too.
• After a lot of debugging I narrowed it down to one driver that seems to screw it up for Vista-RICOH. And since you never get to login to the system, you cannot upgrade it either.
• So I tried the next best option-reisntall the OS, and I did this 4 times each time trying a different combination-nothing worked.
• The only “solution” was to install Vista home and upgrade to Ultimate. Now its “better”
• And why only “better”-well the first reason I reinstalled the system was because ever since I upgraded Vista Home to Ultimate, Sleep function is totally screwed up. If you put the machine to sleep and wake it up a balloon that says “One of your USB devices malfunctioned” greets you (I don’t have any USB devices connected) and from then on none of the USB ports work.
• Another problem when this happens is the system cannot be shut down after the USB problem; it stands in the “Shutting Down” screen for at least 30 minutes AFAIK.
• Finally, the problem that really drove me mad was this-every now and then when the system goes to sleep, it will never wake up. All the blue lights for the CPU/Bluetooth/WIFI will be glowing bright and fine, but the screen just stays blank-never comes up no matter what key/button you press.
• Then there are minor irritants like, once your hard disk capacity goes below a certain level, hibernate function vanishes and there is no way you can turn it back on even if you free up a lot of space.
• IE crashes every now and then. I started using Firefox and the world’s been brighter since then. If you are really adventurous, try Firefox 3 Beta 4-its lightning fast, does not eat memory and has some very helpful new features.
• And today I installed Vista SP1 and the microphone drivers seem to have disappeared from the system-need to debug this tomorrow-still not sure if it’s a Vista problem.

“Every Child is Special”- And this movie is too…

The title claims "Taare Zameen Par-Every child is special" and the movie weaves a simple, but beautiful tale to convey that message. The plot is very simple-it's about a boy who suffers from dyslexia and his parents are unable to understand why their child is so slow compared to others in his class. The child's tribulations and that of the family are shown in a very down to earth simplistic style. However what makes TZP steal your heart instantly is the fact that in the first half of the movie, we just see the world from the child's eyes. The sequence where the kid walks on the streets seeing simple things from his different perspective (with a beautiful song running in the background) will probably go down as one of the all-time classic scenes of Hindi cinema! For me personally (as it must be for many of us who grew up in a typical middle-class schooling system), it was a walk down the memory lane in the first half. I have been guilty of putting my parents in the Principal's office a number of times; I have camped (alright…kneeled down) outside class on a number of occasions. I have even had to show my knuckles and get beaten…like a zillion times (yep, I was a big-time trouble makerJ). I have even been thoroughly petrified by the prospects of boarding school! I have been subjected to the typical comparisons to peers that teachers and others make. Maybe we need to re-think the way we have designed the Indian educational system-but that's a different blog post altogether.

The mother who tries desperately to balance her love for her child and her desire to do the right thing for him is depicted wonderfully; the impatient father who throws the weight of his aspirations on the child's head is another interesting character. Aamir Khan plays the role of a teacher who helps the child get through the problem-a mature performance as usual, though I felt his costume was very out of place for the theme of the movie and the school. Another aspect that I felt made the second half fall short was this teacher-student relationship-it could have been built into a profound relationship-but Aamir has decided (probably rightly so) to focus more on conveying a message to all parents (and maybe, in my mind I am comparing this with Amitabh-Rani relationship in BlackJ).

Aamir Khan has a class of his own when it comes to picking movies in which he plays the lead role and that elegance is still evident in his directorial debut. Great choice of characters-especially for the roles of Ishanth and his mother. Moreover Aamir never strays from the theme and still keeps it riveting for the viewer-another great director is born...we could expect some excellent movies from him in the future :).

The songs are very soothing; the background score blends very well with the scenes and takes the movie to a different level. Then the lyrics….expressing a child's thoughts without getting childish is not easy and if you want to know how it is done, listen to "Meri maa" from TZP-Wow! (For a simple English translation of this song click here).

If you love children you will just love the movie, and if you don't love them yet, you will start to, after watching this movie.

PS, there is a small documentary feature that plays alongside the end titles of the movie-do sit through it. One more reason why life is so beautifulJ.

The Toy House stole my heart!

It is difficult to watch a Telugu movie. Not because of the loud noise that is so characteristic of every song, not because of the songs with damsels in multi-colored apparels dancing around a rotund hero, not even because of the antics the hero attempts (supported by some really poor graphics)-but mainly because the characters in the movie are all so forgettable-noone quite sticks to you once you are out of the theater! Ofcourse I do not claim to be an expert in Telugu movies nor do I decree that every Telugu movie is of the same genre, lets say all Telugu movies that I have watched fell in this category-until this one!

I jumped at the chance to watch "Bommarillu" (approximately meaning Toy House or கொலு in Tamil) simply because I was tired and wanted to let my brain go numb for a while-what better recipe to do that than a Telugu movie! Boy was I mistaken! The movie held me in rapt attention right from the word Go. "Love makes life beautiful"-is the caption of the movie and the director, Genelia PrakashRaj and Sidharth really make the movie beautiful.

I will not reveal the story here-but it is about a boy who reels under his strict father and lives a double life, playing the obedient son at home and being ranting rebel outside. Enter Genelia, who wins him over with her innocence. and the same innocence is so repulsive to Sidharth's 'obedient' side. Who wins in the end and how is told in a very interesting sequence of events!

Genelia, fills the screen with her presence. That the director could have conceived such a character and brought her alive with Gene is so amazing. For the first time we really see what a talented actress she is. Picture of innocence, then a bundle of emotions (one scene where she breaks up with Sidharth, she dominates the audience totally!). Prakash Raj is setting new standards with every movie! Very few actors are endowed with such incredible natural reactions, you just love this fellow for the ease with which he plays the role! Sidharth too plays a very mature role and peaks in climax.

Now coming to the real reason for this post-Hasini (Genelia), WoW what a character! You really have to see her to beleive it. Such a bubbly charm, such a child-like innocence, such unbeleivable straight-forwardness! She is called "Bommarillu" in a song and this toy house really stole my heart!

Blogging from Office 2007!

I just stumbled upon this cool feature in Office 2007 Beta (a.k.a Office 12 Beta). When I was trying to create a new document it had the option of creating a new blog post. All you need to do is give your account details and register one time (it has options for Blogger, msn spaces and a few others). From the next time just open a blog document, type whatever you want to publish, click Publish and it is done for you. No more need to go to blogger.com login and go the create post (not to mention the pretty ordinary support for rich text editing) and then wait while it publishes the blog. This is cool!

MSN Search Rocks!

First time, ever since the day I saw the super-cool desktop of Windows XP, I have fallen in love all over again with a Microsoft product-MSN desktop search-I tried it twice before (Beta versions) and they sucked big time, slowing down my machine and every search taking longer than a manual search. But the latest version just rocks-I have indexed the whole of my hard disk (80 GB) and my email and still it is able to search stuff in seconds-almost akin to a web-search.
The link for downloading it is here. However remember that patience is a virtue, just hold on till it completes indexing your stuff before expecting results.

Bharat Hotel Mahabaleshwar- A bad experience

This piece is written purely with the intention of warning tourists going to Mahabaleshwar about the experiences of our group with one particular hotel called Bharat Hotel at Tapola Road. I have attached some pictures of the hotel as well. You can ignore this post until you plan to visit Mahabaleshwar.

First of all since we were 11 people travelling, these guys had initially promised us 6 rooms each with 2 people and then changed it to 3 rooms with 4 people in each at the same rate which perplexed us from the start. When we finally reached there they showed us one room with 11 cots-to say I was enraged would be euphemistic. Then finally they settled on 3 rooms but refused to alter the rates.

If there is one thing I really really hate about business establishements, it is apathy towards customer experience. When I told them that we are from 4 different software companies and we could give them good publicity among friends if they treated us well, the reply I got was this-"This hotel is there for the last 52 years Sir, we dont need any publicity". I didn't need much time to find out that they have been in existence for 52 years, for pretty much nothing seemed to have been altered in their rooms in those fifty-odd years.


The sole sources of light for the room were two weak bulbs, which looked like relics from stone age.



And the biggest shock was the state of the toilets, I dont want to go into the details here, for the sake of decency, but I would leave it with the observation that I have seen public latrines which are maintained better.


The chairs looked like they had been used as Pan spitting booths at one time and the the wood on the cot was peeling away.

They advertise about presence of "Indoor and Outdoor games"-I am not sure about the outdoor stuff, but the "indoor games" were a TT table and a pool table-one photo would describe their disgusting state more than I can in words.



I was seriously surprised and almost laughed out when the manager casually asked us on being informed of our decision to leave a day early-"Why sir, is anything wrong?"!!!

And for all this BS, we had to shell out Rs 660 per head per day (came to 7260 for 3 rooms one night stay). Luckily on taking a stroll around the city we landed in MTDC hotel, which was amazing. I had never expected such commitment and customer service at a government establishement. The very next day we shifted to this hotel and the cost for the next night stay was 2678 (243 per head) without food ofcourse, but the difference between the two was a whopping 357 per day and any one of us can vouch for the fact that the food at Bharat hotel was not worth more than 150 per day.

Black Magic....

Almost every time we watch a movie, there are a few things that linger on to the mind; a few scenes from movie, or a character, or just a place. And I have a habit of judging the quality of a movie by how long it is able to cling on to my senses.

Well here is one movie that might be able to create an impression for a lifetime. I am hearing the songs (actually the background music) of the movie right now and the scenes run through my eyes...the most visible form of magic for me I should say.

As all of you must be knowing by this time, this is a story of a blind and deaf (and hence dumb) girl and her tutor, played so effectively by a small girl first (I dont know her name anyone?) and then Rani Mukherji and the maestro Amitabh Bachan respectively. This would definitely go down as one of the best performances for both of them. As for the director, very frankly I for one, never expected a story like this from the creator of Devdas. The parallels in the two movies are the breathtaking settings. But thankfully the similarity stops there. The director found something better to fit into the grand settings:). Kudos to Sanjay Leela Bansali.

Some of my friends have been judging the movie by the number of times they cried...by that measure, yes..I did have teardrops in my eyes, but unlike other movies (and also unlike what I expected), these were for most parts, tears of joy..of optimism, of a feeling of a vicarious thrill for the girl on the screen. One heart rendering dialogue which I am still thinking about is this-"Mainae shayad Jindagi se kuch jyada hi maang liyaa thaa..."-which translates into-" I probably asked a bit too much out of life."- the misery of a girl not able to get things that others take for granted couldn't have been put in better words. In order not to spoil the experience for those who are yet to watch the movie I will stop here.

The best thing about the movie is the ringing optimism in it. If you are expecting a teary portrayal of the miseries of a girl with such disabilities, be warned....neither the director, nor the tutor is in a mood for that. There are beautiful jokes scattered here and there which make you smile without losing perspective of the bigger picture.

This movie deserves every accolade film industry can provide...but more importantly it deserves audience's support for producers to be able to do away with the "Murder"s and "Jism"s which have come to plague the Hindi film industry.

After you watch the movie do drop in your comments.

Why they call them classics....

It has been a while since I wrote anything....no reasons for that though I would have loved to claim that I have been busy:)...I guess I have just been plain lazy. So here goes a fitting compensation for the lost time....



I would have titled this "Inba Kana Onru Kandaen", but for my propensity to keep non-Tamil folks entertained as well. I had the opportunity of reading the novel "Gone With the Wind". For the facts-this is a novel written 1936 and is around 850 pages long. It describes the American Civil War of 1860s through the eyes of one character called Scarlett 'O Hara.



There were two factions in the Civil war one headed by Abraham Lincoln (called the Yankees) which was bent on freeing the slaves and the other were the Confederates (or Southerners) who were so imbibed in the system of slavery that they felt that their birthright was being threatened by the Yankees. Our Scarlett belongs to the confederates, who are very conventional people sticking to their "old" practises of men doing the "war-work" and women folk taking care of the family. And as one would expect our heroine is anything but conventional. She is a spoilt child who has never even tied the laces of her own dress (as there are black servants to do it) and she is pushed into a post-war world where she has to work on the farms doing double the men's work and saving every penny selfishly. The transformation is slow, but beautifully described as she receives each blow with amazing "gumption" which is a term the author uses to describe strength and instinct for survival and she undergoes physical and emotional changes.



Initially I was quite put-off by the huge size and the never-ending descriptions that the author employs for each scene. She would meticulously describe each and every detail, which I found at times to be even redundant. But after crossing 150-odd pages I realised the purpose and the genious behind this method of writing....pretty unconciously you stop reading the words and start seeing images. The picture built slowly and painfully over the pages sticks to your mind so well that you start living the life of Scarlett 'O Hara. Through those 800 pages I have loved her, admired her, despised her, pitied her and finally as I put the book down I could see her in my mind's eyes as if she were living next door to me.



There is one point in the book where a major character who has been pivotal to the story dies and to tell you the truth I could literally feel the grief for her. The images of that character and the consistency in her actions are so coherent that I am sure you would feel a tinge of grief at that point and I would really appreciate if someone who has read the book can echo their sentiments at that point to prove that I am not alone:)



Well, I "had to" read Da Vinci code given that it was the best-seller this year and you seem like an ignoramus at many places if you have not read it. But (no offense to hardcore Dan Browne fans) despite the story being so riveting and the information being so fascinating I should say I really couldn't get out of the Scarlett shell to appreciate anything that is fast paced and edge-of-the -seat stuff.



I am dying to watch the movie which grossed half-billion more than what Titanic grossed in adjusted dollars and is considered to be the greatest American movie ever produced. Lets see if this can dislodge Godfather from the top spot in my heart:).

Simple but effective

How many times have great philosophers and analysts emphasised the importance of KISS-Keep It Simple, Stupid (or Straightforward;). But the film industry never seems to be impressed. "What is a movie without a high-flying star, 6 songs and 10 fight sequences and 20 crying scenes?" they seem to ask!! Well for a change I saw a movie which was refreshingly different...Azhagiya Theeyae..



I love simplicity, especially in story-telling and this director seems to be an expert at maintaining both simplicity and the interest of the viewer throughout the movie. He relates the story through one of the characters involved in the story. This is about four friends who are following their dreams and the twist of fate that takes one of them through a journey of friendship, pain suffering and love, finally culminating in their success. The most appreciable aspect of the movie is the way in which each character's individuality is maintained till the very end.



"Love happens in a boom" is the theme of the hero-though I do not subscribe to his views, I am able to appreciate the manner in which it is portrayed. There are no gaudy songs with heroines competing to "open-up", there are no double-meaning dialogues, not even the vulgar cacophonous comedy that seems to have become an inevitable part of any Tamil movie. Instead we have a heroine who is just a next-door girl with a dream and the strength to see it through. There are many instances where subtle dialogues really make you smile, not the uproarious laughter, but the very personal satisfied smile just for yourself to cherish.



The hero Prasanna definitely deserves a mention for his cool acting and very effective dialogue deliveries and director Radhamohan is one more fellow to watch out for. If there are more movies like this one we are definitely going to be back on track for some happy, tension-free;) family outings at the theaters.