Sivaji - a Pure Entertainer

Yea...yea.... i finally saw the movie after a delay of 7 Days :) and i did not buy the tickets in black. And i saw the movie in Chennai ...yada...yada... In Chennai!!! @ Six Degrees (Sathyam Cine Complex). Again - no black! My cousin was surfing on the Net and he was trying his luck @ thecinema and he got 7 tickets for our entire family. I guess it was 2 days of special shows @ the theatre. It was my first movie @ Six Degrees, though i have seen numerous others in Sathyam.

The Movie
What shall i say !!! Its Shankar(with Thota Tharini)-Rajni-Vivek-Suman -- an amazing sundae(also 'Sunday' ) :)

Shankar - a director with his unique style ( he doesnt mind spending crores in movies produced by others and turning them into hits, though spends the least in his productions but still the movie is a hit )

Thota Tharini - the art director with grand style.

Rajini - no words can explain this 'phenomenon' (thalaivar style beatmudiyadu kanna - means, no one can beat Rajini's style )

Vivek - in the movie , he equals Rajni with amazing one liners and punch dialogues

Suman - whoa!!! He beats hands down even Rajni in certain scenes.

A full 3 hour masala entertainer.
Must see for every soul.
Pathetic songs(except for the 'ballelaika' song).
Amazing sets and backgrounds.
Rajni's Style and panache :)
Probably Asin could have replaced Shreya.



Also, it was Vijay's birthday and the theatre near my residence was screening 'Pokkiri' - wanted to see this, but preferred to sleep and eat Amma's food instead :)

Image Searches

Being an ardent fan of Google(its philosophy-technology-products) sometimes does stimulate you search for some other product that tries to beat it. I did not expect M$ to even come close to Google ; for its the sheer simplicity of the latter coupled with amazing performance and features that has pushed itself to greater heights and better customer experience.

I was playing around with the Image searches being offered by Google and M$(Live) and i was surprised by the results and the performance/features of the Image Search Engines.To my limited knowledge , neither of the Image Search Engines support "Content Based" Searches and its mostly "Context Based" based searches (sic! wherez the intelligence!!).

I found that M$ Image Search experience to be highly satisfying when compared to that of Google's. The images are displayed in a neater format (without any verbiage) and when the mouse hovers on the images, the properties associated with the image is displayed. There is a sleek slider on the right-hand top that controls the number images and their size that is displayed in the page region.



Features in other Image Search engines :

AltaVista : Has an LoV(Drop down) at the top of the page wherein you can specify whether one wants B/W images or Color - this is really interesting!

Pixsy : really slow!! But has some dimensional refinements - on Content Type , Categories,Sources. But instead of showing all along the left hand side, i would allow the user to save the options in his/her preferences and hence allowing more space for the images to be displayed.

For a complete list of other Image Search engines - visit this

Buried

No one's dead... no cremations.. no rites... no tears...no sad faces...

One of the best works in contemporary photography i have ever seen till date with a superb technique - kudos to Stephen Gill for his work titled Buried. Alec Soth talks about this work in detail and also explores some other techniques and works.

It feels amazing to see some 'nice pictures' at the end of the day :)

[
Movies seen over the past 36hrs :
1) Scent of a Woman (third time) - i simply cannot avoid this movie ;)
2) Papillon
3) Miller's Crossing
]

Hotel Rwanda

Thats not Hotel California... neither it is Hotel Leela Palace... nor Hotel Saravana Bhawan :)

"Hotel Rwanda" - a movie released in 2004 depicting the state of a person called Paul Rusesabagina(A Hotel Manager) and how his association with his family, his Hotel ( Hotel Milles Collines) , his neighbours and his country is affected due to the civil war.

I got a chance to see and appreciate this beautiful movie yesterday and was overwhelmed by direction and the screenplay. Don Cheadle, playing the role of Paul is at his best.I was disheartened to see that this movie hasn't won any Oscars :( As of now this movie tops my favourites and i would highly recommend this movie to any person who is interested in quality direction and an equally good performance by the actors and the actresses.

The scene in which Paul gets down from his car and find himself in the middle of the dead bodies and his reactions while wearing the tie in the subsequent scenes is truly amazing.

Other movies watched over the weekend include (sorted by 'interestingness'):
1) The Eagle has landed
2) The Bridge at Remagen
3) The Dirty Dozen
4) Pork Chop Hill

Google StreetView

Being a street-photographer is very challenging and interesting. Clicking the different moods of people and mundane things though may sound very boring but is one of the toughest things to click without disturbing the subjects.

Last week Google launched a new product called 'StreetView' - a mindblowing product/service. It basically gives you the street view of all the things happening around(though not a live service)- and wait its not just 2Dimentionsal ... it gives a 360 degree view of what all is present in the street.

Apparently the technology behind this is patented by Immersive Media. The pictures that one sees are not Live , but we can expect the cameras to be installed as various prominent positions in various street intersections and give us some really interesting views [no need of hidden cameras??? ;) ]

Youtubing some of the videos is simply amazing - i no longer want to use the word 'perspective' as the user can see 'EVERYTHING' in here ;)