Top Movies

I just saw 100 movies out of the IMDB top 250.

You can find the movies I have seen on this link.

Here are the 5 movies I like the most, and The Shawshank Redemption, is not there on the list.

The movies are in no particular order.

Inglourious Basterds

I am a big fan of Quentin Tarantino, though I did not like the Kill Bill series. He according me is one of the best directors. It was a toss between Pulp Fiction and this movie for me, but I select this movie as I really like the Nazi-WWII theme. The best part of this movie were the charterers- the movie had very strong characters and each got their own space in the movie as it was well split into parts. The characters of Landa and Soshana were the best, but every other character was important and had its place in the storyline. The actors were brilliant too. I wanted this movie to win the Oscars in 2010, but sadly Hurt Locker won (I still do not know why).

Unforgiven

Another favorite director of mine is Clint Eastwood. Though I have not seen Million Dollar Baby yet, I have seen most the movies he has directed. I also think Invictus should be on the top 250 and could have been a better Oscar choice than Hurt Locker. The two of the best Clint Eastwood movies according to me are Unforgiven and Gran Torino, both the movies have Eastwood as the lead actor and director. Both the movies have Clint Eastwood as an old hero, who has take up arms for different causes. Gran Torino is set in modern times where as Unforgiven is based in the wild wild west, and it is the wild wild west where Clint Eastwood comes to his own. His portrayal of William Munny the old alcoholic outlaw who agrees for a last job to make some money, is outstanding. The films lead role is of a broken down guilty ex-outlaw and who does not portray the razzle and dazzle of the old western movies, well until the climax scene. I am a big fan of Eastwood’s. The wide range of movies he has made amazes me.

City of God

This Brazilian movie is in Portuguese , still it is one of my all time favorites. It is a movie about a locality (a slum) in Rio De Janerio. The story follows the life of a few kids who grow up differently, and the movie is seen through the eyes of one of the kids. The characters come alive in this movie, the climax is perhaps the best. It is one of the few movies in which everything in a scence , the streets, the chicken, the beach have significance and are beautifully depicted in a fast moving way. A must watch for sure.

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

Guy Ritchie Jason Statham- I am a fan. And perhaps their best movie too. I like all these English – Scottish – Irish movies in which people have beautiful accents. This movie is really fast paced, a good thrilling story line and an awesome lot of stereotypical characters e.g. The Russian and The Jew. I choose this movie above Snatch perhaps because I saw this one first. but both these movies are equally good and have this different kind of way to tell an insignificant story. An awesome entertainer.

Sin City

Frank Mullers Sin city, again the intertwined parts, awesome camera work. Black white scene with highlights in color, lipstick dress blood etc. Amazing and again a must watch.

Two other great movies would be In Bruges and Into the Wild which I did not write about.

The IMDB top 250 list is a very good guide to watch good movies. But there are a few movies which should not be on the list according to me

They are The Big Lebowski , Apocalypse Now, 2001 a Space Odyssey , Some Like it hot, and all the Indiana Jones movies.

Inglourious Basterds

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My Top Bollywood Movies of 2009

Just reading Rajeev Masands top 5 movies of 2009 made me write my own list. Here goes my list in order.

1) Dev D

Anurag Kashyaps rendition of Devdas proclaims the maturity of Indian cinema. It also reflects the maturity levels of Indian audience where the Hero always keeps rolling a joint or snorting cocaine. The movies main strengths were great performances from its lead actors and dialogues which were very much similar to those used in daily life. The music in itself was a great hit. I believe one of the greatest Hindi movies,

2) 3 Idiots

Though the topic could have been dealt with maturity the director chose not to and he achieved a great film according to his strong points. The aim was to make an entertainer and an entertainer this movie is. The performance was great by all three actors although the roles were not demanding like Dev D. It is the dialogues where this film scores and the dialogues are funny witty and mainly non slapstick. It is one of the rare non govinda genre comedy movie. Based on 5 point some one , this movie does not aim to carry any social message and is an all and all out entertainer.

3) Gulaal

Again a gem from Anurag Kashyap, the strength of this movie are its characters, the performance might not do justice for such great characters. The dialogues are crisp and inspiring. The character of Bana and Ranasa are greatly delineated. Another gripping aspect of this film is the way the songs are a part of the story line. The lyrics are great and the music is good. Piyush Mishra has added another dimension to this movie with Songs like “aarambh” and “Yaar Maula”. The intensity of each scene makes this film stand out.

4) Kaminey

Kaaminey is a very well shot movie with good camera work and a gripping screen play. The actors are mediocre and the roles were easy too. It was just a mixture of story line and shooting which made this movie a hit. If not for Vishal Bharadwaj there are very few directors who could have made Kaminey into what it is. Vishal Bhardwaj has carved good side roles like Bhope Bhau and the Bengalis who look believable and do much more than just augment the lead actors. The side roles have an impact on the story line. The music is apt and supports the movie well.

5) Paa

The movie is great just because of amazing direction by Balki. The story line had loopholes but Amitabh Bacchans acting does not let you notice it much. Vidya Balan comes out as an actress and not as a navel showing dancing lass (aka Katrina). Abhishek Bacchan did a very average job. The songs were very well shot and the director captures the intensity of the scenes by altering the location from greens to grey rooms. The music from illayraja is refreshingly different from the techno heavy music of these days. The music supports the movie very well. Balki and Amithabh Bachan share a very good chemistry also visible in Cheeni Kum.

The movies which missed out on this list but deserve a mention are Delhi 6, Whats your Rashee. I did not like Wake Up Sid, and did not watch De Dan Dhana Dhan. Kurban was good but did not have any thing extra and was run of the mill.

Smart TV

Imagine a television which suggests what you can watch, instead of you browsing through channels.

The basic concept each user has a profile on a tv, or on a smart box (tata sky etc but they are really not smart). Each program has certain tags associated with it. As a user watches a program, the tags associated with him will be stored in some sort of database for the user. Over time this will provide a data set of what the user likes to watch at what time, and the smart box can suggest what to watch at that current time of the day.

The catch the content provider should also provide tags or metadata about the show or the system should be able to access some portal over the internet to get the tags. But plugging in internet to the system is unwanted, so all the content providers and cable connection operators should come up with an open standard, TVXml, so that the user has the option of installing third party applications. Also the device should have enough memory and processing, right now the set top boxes are embedded devices, but perform the above said functions they need some Flash memory as well, to store user data.

I do not know how feasible this is but I would definitely like this feature.

A Conversation to remember

A couple of days ago I met a Sri Lankan man at the bus stand as it is my habit nowadays to speak to all people who look Indian. We got a bit chatty and we had a lively discussion, and the conversation quickly veered towards LTTE and Sri Lanka. This man a Tamil himself, he told me that his grandfather was a Chettiar from Tamil Nadu who had moved down to Sri Lanka to set up a business, surprised me by stating that he did not sympathize with the LTTE one bit. As the conversation began to get more and more intense he said that LTTE kidnapped kids and brainwashed them and trained them to wage the Elam’s war. It hit me that this was no different than Taliban or any other Muslim military outfit. He explained that the situation was grim back in Ceylon ( interestingly he reffered Sri Lanka as Ceylon always) and the LTTE used to kill people even Tamils who did not see eye to eye with their cause. He said that his family moved out of Sri Lanka in the 70s to Canada and Germany.

At this juncture I asked him what about Prabhakaran, he plainly said Prabhakaran has escaped with his close group of supporters and claims by the Lankan Army reports are nothing but propaganda. I pushed him a bit more on how can he be confident on the fact that Prabhakaran is alive, and he gave me a quick grin and said that he knew a lot of people in Lanka and no one believes he is dead, well I was surprised that Vellupillai Prabhakaran had such an indefatigable image in the minds of the people.

I asked him does he not sympathize with the Tamilians of Sri Lanka, and he said that the Tamils were big headed people (he himself was a tamil), who do not respect the other people. He gave me an example saying that in the small Sri Lankan community in Berlin, Tamils never spoke to any Non Tamils whereas the  Singhalese (the other ethnic group of Sri Lanka) people spoke to everyone and were very accommodating. He himself while growing up in Sri Lanka had a lot of Singhalese friends and not many Tamil friends.

As the conversation headed towards India, and I explained to him saying that India is growing economy and a very vibrant place ( I have got used to doing this as the Europeans have a portrait of India as a very poor third world country where millions starve without food). He just slashed me down by saying in India the things are fast and fun, in the west (he referred to Europe) the things are slow but effective.

Our conversation got more and more lively but I had to get down at my bus stop and wished him good bye may be for ever, as I do not have his name or contact.

I was delighted to know a lot about my neighboring country what the people think there, how they feel about India. I got to know that you get a better picture of the nation by speaking to some one from there than from some news articles. I was surprised to meet a Sri Lankan who did not sympathize with the LTTE, who did not like the attitude of the Tamils, who thought Prabhakaran was a terrorist and is still alive.

I guess this is a post for me to remember this conversation.

An intelligent human body

I was wondering weather the human body uses any sort of feed back mechanism. To be precise does the involuntary part of the body get feedback from the voluntary part. The Medulla Oblongata controls the involuntary actions of the body, but does it take any feedback from the voluntary parts of the brain?

For an example, you know you are eating a lot of meat, that will require larger amount of gastric juices to be produced or in a higher concentration. Instead of the digestive system analyzing the food and adjusting the amount of gastric juices, as our senses tell the brain that a lot of meat is being eaten, it can direct the digestive system to be ready with the required amount of gastric juice. Likewise when some one is running, the lungs can increase oxygen intake beforehand rather than wait for physical feedback.

All I want to know is does this happen or it does not? If it does not then may be scientists involved in cloning can design bodies like that. I know designing bodies is a scary thought but still. Ah that might involve writing feedback algorithms.

Anyways just a thought.

Emotion graphs

Emotion graphs is a concept which me and some of my classmates came up with the concept of Emotion graphs.

It basically characterizes almost all kind off personalities but this blog is specific to some of my friends.

Vyas Graph

These kind of graphs are generally associated with lot of normal people. They are generally happy and get worried sometimes over certain matters but generally they are of the happy go lucky kind. BK and Nishkarsh also fall under this same category.

Amit Abbi Graph

As you can see from the graph Amit Abbi is the stingiest person when it comes to expressing emotions. Only a small flutter in the emotion graph shows some expression of feelings. Compare it with the previous graph and see the difference in the amount of emotions expressed.

 

Sheki Graphs

It is again rare characteristic. These kind of people are generally depressed and have a default emotion level below 0-emotion level. These kind of people generally get excited a lot. But the excitement dies down soon when there is a realization that the external stimuli is not a part of you or your surroundings.

Bala Graphs

This is a beauty. Bala has a unique character and always thinks in a dimension different from conventional school of thought. He always has to think of a different unthought-of  aspect of the topic in  discussion and express his views vehemently and for this he has been called a ‘Cock’ many a times.

See this graph to understand more:

BD graph

He basically does not care what is happening around him but when there is a discussion he copies the emotions of the guy next to him and starts saying “ya ya ya “.

 

Thank MS Paint for creating these images (could not think of any other simple software)

del.icio.us Tags: nitk,graphs,college

More graphs yet to come.

This blog is being written using Windews live writer.

Grapes to Wine

To satisfy my wanderlust I recently traveled to Nashik Shirdi and some nearby places. Of these I was smitten over by Nashik the grape city of India. It looked calm peaceful and slow triggering a mental slideshow of my memories from Mysore.

Going through Wikipedia article on Nashik I found out that Nashik (or Naseek as spelt during the Raj) was in fact a place from Indian mythology with mentions in Ramayana.  It was mentioned in Ain e akbari as ‘Gulchanabad’. It is situated right at the edge of the Deccan.

Traveling from Mumbai on NH3 my first stop was the village of Trimbak housing one of the 12 Jyothirlingas Trimbakeshwar. I could not exactly extract the story of the origin of the Lingam but according to the locals it was a ‘swayambhu’  (self originating) lingam. The queue for darshan was long painful and I could only manage a glance of the lingam and could not observe the features of the lingam. It is said that there are 3 finger like expansions which refer to the ultimate Hindu troika the trimurthi (Vishnu, Brahma and Shiva)¹.  Water from the Godaviri which originates in the nearby Brahmagiri hill falls on the lingam continuously and due to the lingam has started to erode. What fascinated me the most was the Temple outside the lingam which is said to be built in a composite Malwa and Manu schools of architecture. It was commissioned by Peshwa Nanasaheb. The temple built in black granite looks stupendous but what caught my eye was the simple design of the gopuram which is an exquisitely displays the use of symmetry. Apart from the religious significance of the place, the temple housed the world famous Nassak diamond² which was later acquired by the British after the third Anglo Maratha war. I could not take a photograph as in all Indian temples photography was banned. Outside the temple was one feature found outside all Indian temples the market, buslting bubbling and consisting of an ecosystem of its own. This is one feature I have observed across several temples across India. The shops are run by the same family from generations. They have their houses attached to the shop in the temple vicinity, children calling rival shopkeepers ‘chacha’ a common sense of unity and bonding running through the shops with their common motive to make most money of the outsider tourists. A shopkeeper told me that the source of the Godavari is on a nearby hill, this I thought would be a nice little trekking spot perhaps to be savored with friends on some other day.

A picture of the temple taken from far :

The market or bazaar:

My next stop was the caves Pandav-Leni caves,  a group of around twenty four 1200-year-old Hinayana Buddhist³ caves, with no as such reference to the Pandavas. I suspect a local myth might have originated linking this place to the Pandavas but unfortunately no one could clear my doubts on this fact. The caves are on top of a hillock, a climb of 20 minutes. Amongst the caves are some chaitras,viharas and a few statues of Buddha.

Buddha at Pandavleni

Remembering those statues I wonder how this wonderful religion which preached tolerance and peace, which originated in India was wiped out completely from India. I am also awed by the patience of the artists who cut the rocks here day in day out to give them such beautiful forms.

Buddha at Pandavleni

My next stop was Panchavati. There we hired a guide Mr Deepak who though seemed knowledgeable about the place but spoke in a irritating accent of Hindi which guides generally tend to do. Panchavati actually is the ghat area around Nashik on the banks of Godavari. I reached the place at the most splendous of times just when the sun was about to set.

I found out that this place was one of the important sites in the Ramayana. It was on the banks of the Godavari that Laxman cut the nose of Soorpanaka and threw on the other side of the river and hence the other side was called Nashik derived from the Sanskrit term for nose ‘Nashika‘⁴. On this side were many temples dedicated to Lord Rama. This is the place where the Nashik Kumbha Mela takes place once in 12 years. One temple called the ‘Gore Ram‘ (white Rama ) temple had a peculiar story attached to it. The guide told that the temple was built by the Peshwa, but instead of using Cement or lime he used a combination of ‘Chuna‘ and ‘Malai‘.  Chuna is a paste applied on the Paan in India and Malai is the cream accumulated on milk. But for me there was no way to verify this fact. I was intrigued by the thought that group after group Mr Deepak must have told the same story and has anyone tried to verify his claim and was there a way to find it out but he did not leave me much time to think. We rushed to the next temple where according to the guide the famous Laxman Rekha was drawn by Laxman and was the spot of Sita’s abduction by Ravana. The guide said that as the line was drawn using fire it does not exist today.

Well next we saw the five trees or ‘Panch Vat‘ (vat is hindi for tree) which give the place the name Panchavati. According to Mr Guide as one tree grows old a new tree grows at its place as a result there are 5 trees in the area.

Here are a few pics of the place:

The gaht at Panchavati

One of the Vats at Panchavati:

One of the 5 vats at Panchavati

Time prevented me from exploring this city even more. But I have been captivated enough by it to repay a visit when time permits and to explore the city even more.

The title Grapes to wine is a reference to the way the city has modernized itself. It was called the grape city of India as it is famous for grape production. But now a few vineyards have propped up around making it the Wine city of India.

I could not take photographs at a lot of places as Photography is banned inside temples.

Check out the flicker album related to this post at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shekispeaks/sets/72157611827525932/

Notes:

1.  The extraordinary feature of the Jyotirlinga located here is its three faces embodying Lord Brahma, Lord Vishnu and Lord Rudra. To read about the story of origin of the Trimabkeshwar temple go to:

http://www.nashik.com/travel/trimbakeshwar.html

2.  The Nassak Diamond is one of the worlds top 30 diamond.Currently owned by Edward J. Hand, a then 48-year old trucking firm executive from Greenwich, Connecticut. It is said to be the finest diamond outside the Crown jewels. This diamond was housed at the Trimbakeshwara temple and was given to the British after the Third Anglo Maratha war.

3. Hinayana and Mahayana were the two sects of Buddhism. Hinayana reflected on the teachings of the Buddha of self control, ahimsa and toleration where as Mahayana sect depicted Buddha as a mythological figure with powers and represented him as a destroyer of evil. Unfortunately the Mahayana sect spread through out East asia and currentl prelevant sect of Buddhism.As f0r Hinayana faded away may be due to the rigorous requirements of Hinayana.

4.If you want to read the Ramayana then RK Narayans Gods Demons and Others is the best book to start with.