Awesome


found on acutelyobtuse.blogspot.com

Bollywood gets its Oscar finally

Saw Rang De Basanti (RDB) once more. I am pretty much convinced that if RDB cannot win best foreign movie award at Oscars no other bollywood film will ever do that. Here are the reasons I could think of why RDB may not win this award:

1. Judges' unfamiliarity with Hindi and Punjabi. We all know translations are not good enough. Emotions can never be expressed with same intensity in a different language.

2. Judges' lack of knowledge of Indian revolution for Independence. Judges need to understand following metaphors :
a. similarity between state of affairs during British raj and current state of corruption in Indian polity.
b. similarity between what General Dyre did and what corrupt defence minister did in RDB.
c. similarity between the agitated feeling of Bhagat singh and co. towards British Raj and current college going crowd towards politicians & bearacracy.

3. Entire movie is set in Indian setting which is immensely different from western settings. It is easier for judges to understand european, french, german, spanish even mid-eastern settings because of similarity of culture. But who will tell them the importance of a Dhaba and taste of lassi in Indian culture.

4. Song and dance in bollywood has been ridiculed by westerners. Beauty of RDB's music is evident from the fact that its title song is one of best punjabi songs among all punjabi pop, folk, country music AND it has been produced by a south Indian - A R Rehman. If judge's fail to understand how each song in the film suits and fits the theme their taste lacks some global-taste-buds.

I feel if RDB fails to win Oscar, bollywood should stop chasing that dream because none of the above four factors are controlled by people making films in Bollywood.

Dude rrrrocks

"The media criticism has been hot over here [in England] ... that surprises me. But life goes on; nobody died. It is not one of those issues that requires mourning. I have been absolutely stunned by the support I have had."

Umpire Darrell Hair reflects on the last two days

courtesy Cricinfo.com

Exotica

That is _exotic_

Blogs blogs and blogs. Time for some traditional style reading.
To kill a mocking bird.

Btw I have removed some stale and old links on the left bar and replaced them with more useful ones.

Will google.cn ban New Scientist

mother of all presentation tips

Banning exercise must be a difficult one. offensive material can always be put in more euphemistic manner. Seems like Google will have to get deep into natural language processing to provide neat services in China.

21 grams : the movie

How many lives do we live?
How many times do we die?
They say we all lose 21 grams... at the exact moment of our death. Everyone.
And how much fits into 21 grams?
How much is lost?
When do we lose 21 grams?
How much goes with them?
How much is gained? Twenty-one grams.
The weight of a stack of five nickels.
The weight of a hummingbird.
A chocolate bar.
How much did 21 grams weigh?

Welcome to the Machine

I have successfully completed two months with my new laptop Inspiron 6000. Journey so far has been smooth and exciting. As pointed out by many reviews its a gem of a machine if you donot care about moving it too often on your shoulders.

positives :

* I can play heavy duty, high-end graphics games. I played Need for Speed for 2-3 hours continuosly without any hiccups. Machine runs smooth without getting overheated. Of cource ATI graphics card gotta be of some use.

* I run Apache + php + mysql + drupal to maintain a blog server. As expected there is no traffic on my web server and hence everything runs smooth.

* watching DVDs on this machine is fun. Extra media buttons on the front panel is great convinience.

* quality of in-built speaker is very impressive.

negatives :

* I was shocked to know that this machine doesnot have an in-built microphone. I had to add a microphone to complete my recording-station.

* Weight at 3+ kgs is little too much. But one should not complain since Inspiron 6000 is meant for low mobility usage.