While watching a special report on the South Indian cinema in CNN IBN recently, an interesting quote by former underworld don, currently an editor and a film maker Agni Shridhar caught my attention. When the talk was about the type of movies and it’s categorization, instead of the stale terms like art, commercial, parallel etc, Agni Shridhar says, "For me, there are only two types of cinema. One which makes you remember things and the other which makes you forget things"
Now, that’s a very very interesting and profound saying. I leave that to you for your understanding...
Well, for those who already know this, this could be a 'duh' post. But for those who did not, the creativity behind the Big 10 bus logo will surely amaze you.
I think Big 10 buses which ply between some important city locations were introduced in late 2008 or early 2009. I wonder how come I never got the amazing creativity behind their logo design, until my friend Hemanth told this recently. It is quite common that every one reads Big 10 in English fonts, but to get amazed tilt your head to the left and read it again...
Don't you see the letter B as 'bi' in Kannada and the letters I and G when combined as ardhaakshara 'ga' in Kannada..? Isn't that awesome..? We all must have seen some amazing logos of international brands with calligraphic designs and negative spaces, but to combine two different languages and making such a logo of this kind is really laudable. Dig Design Studio has designed it. Hats off to those guys.
Watched Pantha, a Kannada play in Ranga Shankara yesterday. The play is an adaptation of Anton Chekov’s short story named ‘The Bet’. The play is directed by Prof Sudhindra Sharma, belongs to the genre of narrative theatre and CheSwa [Chennabasava Swamy Hiremath] alone plays the roles of narrator, lawyer and the banker.
It all starts as a serious conversation between the intellectuals at a dinner party, the topic of conversation being the best between death sentence and life sentence. This turns int to The Bet between a young Lawyer and a rich Banker, with the former agreeing to lock him self up in a room for 15 years to prove his argument right and Banker agreeing to pay Rs. 2 crores if the Lawyer succeeds to do so. One of the terms of the bet would be that, Lawyer could request for any number of books of his interest to the Banker and the Banker would provide them on time. With Lawyer reading lots and lots of books during his self imposed imprisonment, the subject of the play ultimately transcends into money vs knowledge. Watch the play to know who or rather what wins at the end.
Both Prof Sudhindra Sharma and CheSwa are talented actors and well known to people who watch Kannada TV serials regularly. CheSwa plays the role of Dheeraj in the serial, Muttina Torana. I have seen monologues before. It is really a tough job for a single actor to entertain the audience for the entire duration of the play. This one being a narrative theatre play, CheSwa did a good job of switching the roles and enacting all of them convincingly. In few places I felt he was loud in his gestures, but I think it must have been intentionally done to add the visual impact. But when it comes to the climax of the play, where CheSwa delivers a really lengthy dialogues of the Lawyer, comparing money and knowledge, I wasn’t into the play at that point of time. Some thing in the play had let my attention go. So I did not have the impact of the play at the end. Last but not the least; I must say the lighting was just superb on stage. Try it, it wont disappoint you..
Being a fitness conscious person, I have been jogging for quite a few years now, though not regularly on a daily basis. But, distance running is a bug that has bitten me off late. Believe me, distance running is one of the best stress busters! What actually started as a stress buster for me has now become a passion. Sankey being my favorite spot in my neighborhood, I started distance running around Sankey few weeks ago. I usually run there in the late evenings after returning from my office. I cycle to Sankey and run till the Sankey gate closes at 8PM. Quite a few times, I have even ran from my home near Malleshwaram Rly station to Sankey and then after I have finished few rounds around Sankey too. Distance running you see.. ;)
The last Sunday evening I achieved my first ever 10K mark [6 rounds around Sankey] in 52:57 mins. That's certainly not a bad clocking for a starter of distance running. Hoping to better the record both in terms of time and distance some time soon. btw, thanks to RunKeeper for a detailed activity planner.
My dear friend Jagadish who has also been a guest blogger of my blog in the past, who comments on my blog by names Deva and Anonymous is bitten by philately off late. Or should I say, his craze for it has grown exponentially in the past few months [Jagadish, correct me if I am wrong]. Every time, I chat with him, he proudly passes on the URL of the stamps he has recentlybought online. He also shares the collections of other passionate philatelists. One such is a dude named Karthikeyan from Chennai who has some amazing collection of some rare stamps, which he has shared here. Though I still have preserved few stamps that I had collected during my school days, I can not call myself a philatelist when compared to Jagadish and people like Karthikeyan who are more serious and are passionate about this hobby.
Every time I see a collection of stamps, what interests me is the theme of the stamp, rare shapes of it and most of all, the geographic details of the unheard of countries they belong to. I can boast of identifying many such remote islands and countries on the world map now because of this quest of mine. One such island is privately owned island called Sanda Island with a total area of 0.58 square miles (!!), situated at the south of Scotland. Below are the stamps of that island owned by Karthikeyan.
Surprised to see the pics of Gandhiji and paaduke [wooden slippers] on it..!? Though I could not find any information on why Sanda Island is having stamps of our dear Baapu and paaduke, but what blew my mind is that Sanda Island's population is 1!! I mean a single bloody person is living on that island. This sole resident being the European tycoon named Michi Meier who bought this island very recently on 30th March 2010. It seems that the previous owner of the island Dick Gannon, 59, was owning this island for past 20 years! It is also reported that Michi Meier wants to use this island as his bolthole and may not encourage tourism unlike the previous owner Dick Gannon. Read the complete story here. Now you might wonder why some one would release stamps for this one manned island? Find the answer in Wiki here.
This is the first time I am mentioning Himesh's name in my blog! Let me confess, I have liked his music in movies like Tere Naam, Humraaz, Run, Namastey London, Kyon Ki.., Aksar, Aashiq Banaya Aapne etc etc until he went overboard with his nasal singing and forayed into acting. Albeit the whole world hates him, but there is some thing about his music and singing that is extremely inflicting and deeply penetrative. Or should I say, once you hear his music, you can't get rid off it however hard you try. You try harder and harder to forget that one song and those catchy repetitive words, but the song is going to loop infinitely in your mind for days together. The tune displaces your favourite and often hummable song without your knowledge and the song spills out from your mouth involuntarily! Then you suddenly become conscious about if any one around heard you humming Himesh's latest tune. A recent article in Sunday supplement of Deccan Herald rated Himesh's tunes as one of the top guilty pleasures of Indians!!
Remember the title track of the disastrous movie 'Shakalaka Boom Boom'? Yes, I confess again, that irritating tune had run in infinite loop in my mind for days together. Now is the turn of the tune, 'Rabba luck barsa..' from his yet to be released movie 'Kajra Re'. Watch the video and start singing 'rabba luck barsa... rabba luck luck luck.. rabba luck barsa' :)
This is my first Telugu film reco for you guys. I was prejudiced that Telugu films are only about mass masala run of the mill movies, but I was wrong. I saw 'Ye maya chesave', the Telugu version of VinnaithaandiVaruvaayaa. Let me confess that I can understand Telugu in bits and pieces only; I was able to get the complete meaning of the dialogues only when the main characters uttered some lines in English. Forget that, I don't even know exactly does the title mean! I just know, it means some thing similar to 'fascinate me' or some thing of that sort. But there was some thing magical about this movie which surely mesmerized me. Just finished watching it and cudnt resist myself from writing this post.
I wanted to watch this movie badly after reading the review by Hemanthhere. A simple 'yes-no-yes' love story is made extremely believable and adorable by GautamMenon. Hemanth had said, Naga Chaitanya is unlike the other Telugu star sons who are miles ahead when it comes to the screen presence, dancing, stunts and other heroic mannerisms. I totally agree with that. This guy worked for me in this movie, because he does not look like a star! He is 'the perfect' boy next door. He is not great when it comes to acting, but a good director like GautamMenon can brush his weaker virtues under the carpet. I mean I cudnt think of any hero who could do the role of boy next door so convincingly. Portraying Karthik who is 22 year old mechanical engineer and an aspiring film director - he is not the bravest character who can do any thing for his love, at the same time we get to see his foolhardy traits play peekaboo throughout the movie. He hides inside his house when heroine's parents come to his parents smelling some fishy things happening between Karthik and their daughter. He sheepishly and helplessly sits in the church when his love is about to get married to another guy. He looks coward in those moments. At the same time, this guy follows the heroine all the way till Alleppey just to say sorry! He is even capable of hitting heroine's brother when you least expect him to do it. Though he is just 1 film old and not a gifted actor, but Naga Chaitanya pulls it off!
Coming to Samantha playing Jessie in the movie, she seems to be better equipped with acting abilities than Naga Chaitanya. Samantha looks pleasant on screen and ravishingly beautiful when she is saree clad! How can a guy's heart not skip a beat when she wears all those green and orange sarees. Samantha is made to speak in husky voice in the entire movie (not sure if her voice is dubbed by some one). The way she checks if any known person is checking them out when she is talking to Karthik or the way she pulls back strands of her hair behind her ear lobe, I simply loved it. I was smitten by this lady! Just not the screen 'pleasance', her character is also carefully etched by Mr Menon. Her reaction to Karthik when he proposes her, her mood swings, her tantrums over his profession is all made to look so natural.
Camera work by ManojParamahamsa is awesome. The best scene for me is when Jessie calls off the relationship with Karthik in the night near the compound of their house - the light and the shade playing on the faces of Jessie and Karthik and the hand held camera zooming in and out slowly during their entire conversation is amazing. Add some classic background score bits in this scene by ARR - this is my favorite scene in the movie. Talking about the music, few weeks back I had argued with a colleague that ARR's music is not so great in this movie. I eat my words now after watching this movie. I know ARR's music is slow poison, but this is one of the movies where I have liked music more after watching the movie. The frequent bits of violin and guitar being played in the background in many scenes is so apt, just adds to the mood of the scene. I do not remember any recent Indian movie, where the background music is used so effectively. Kudos to Menon for perceiving this and kudos to ARR for proving his brilliance yet again.
This movie is a refreshing tale about first love... Dont miss it.
PS: Now having seen this Telugu version, I am curious about how Simbu and Trisha would have played these roles in Tamil version. I also want to watch it for the sad ending in Tamil version of the movie.
