Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Ah

Decided to blog some words because I have been vlogging too much lately. Will tone it down... or not... donno... dead tired and shit sleepy... will probably write a poem... piuty blogger does not automatically format my returns, so will use the forward slash... here goes... call it... poem written during mentally torturing myself into staying awake: get into my sleepy head/and shake it up a bit/or let me write instead/with my torpid wit. I know not what I will write/In this half-awake state/I wonder what I'll dream tonight/And I can hardly wait. And now I shall suggest/That I let this poem be/I think I shall go and rest/For my dreams are awaiting me.

Shit Happens


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A docu-drama of three terrible stories... subtitled version coming up, this is in Hindi. No hindi option in the languages drop down menu, so am selecting english. There might be an odd english word here and there.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Blair Witch Project


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A friend, Aashray, and I were curious about night vision...

Monday, July 24, 2006

Adivasis through time


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This is a part of a film made on the fly and spontaneously by Ashray, a friend, and me. Experimented with various ways to videoblog, and this is the best way out. Second video post so far. The film was edited in moviemaker for two simple reasons 1) extreme control over filesize (this one too, like the previous one is less than a megabyte, easy download, the compromise on video quality does not really matter) and 2) have to slip in a title at the start, so there is a nice effect in moviemaker's title creator. Shame they don't have pverlay options.

20 seconds


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Oh a better way to do the same thing as the previous post, which did not work, btw. Hope this does. Cheers.

This video was originally shared on blip.tv by anorion with a No license (All rights reserved) license.

Sunday, July 23, 2006

20 seconds

An attempt at videoblogging... if this works, then this starts off... loads of footage to videoblog... nice comeback after the long sabbatical according to me. Anyway, this was a remake of another flick I made, only better, for the Wilson BMM festival, Polaris. Cheers.



Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Terribly long movie, but very entertaining. I have grown up reading stories of Phantom's ancestors bashing up Pirates, Treasure Isand, or detailed accounts of Blackbeard or Francis Drake or of Davey Jone's Locker... and therefore it was to use a weird word, a treat to watch the film. Three things stood out in the movie... the spontaneous humour... like the other emotions and humour were blended so well that it was almost like real life, but this was done better in the first film... then the fight sequences, especially the tavern scene with the trippy music, and the three way face off between the Commadore, Jack Sparrow and Will Turner, where each is fighting the other two, choreographed amazingly, especially the wheel sequence, and finally the cinematography. Cannot be praised enough. There were one off aerial shots that threw you off, and extremely difficult zoomed in shots of simultaneous events happening far away from each other, and the best of the lot being the camera turning with the giant wheel during the final face off.
The shortcomings are the story, which, even across three hours is not clear enough... has to be watched a second time around, and the legend of Davey Jones is not explained properly, so people not in the know will wonder what is going on, and finally, they should have either used skeletons (probably housing sea life) instead of sea life crossbreed like creatures for Davey's crew or given an explanation for their weird appearence.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

yesterday

So we had amongst the three of us, only 3 bottles of Bacardi Breezer, and a long long night ahead of us. Quick drinks later, we were playing badminton on the terrace, when the cock went into the row house to the right. I decided to scale the 8 foot wall, jump over from one point, and come out by climbing onto the boundry from a staircase that went to the terrace. Part one of the plan was executed to perfection. Things went funny in part II. I believed a little too much in the physics in cartoons, and thought that it would be allright to catch the leaf of a coconut tree (its apparently NOT a branch) and let myself down easy. The branch was in my hand, and it was at least twelve feet long. Dutish and I dragged it all the way to his terrace, and put it in the other neighbours house, who would have undoubtedly woken up to be preplexed by the extreme winds the night before... wondering how a leaf flew OVER one house and ended up in his balcony.

Then we played monopoly all night, and I missed college, and I have no clue why I am blogging this.

Monday, July 17, 2006

Mercy

At leisure

I murder my lines

with pleasure

That effort undermines.



Nothing's obscure

In the words that you read.

just to be sure

Its vital that you heed



This command.

Join a critical clique

And understand

That YOU are MY freak.

Sunday, July 16, 2006

I donno

Not blogged in a long time. Donno what to blog about. Orientation day after tomorrow. Everything haywire.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Mumbai serial blasts

I wonder how many people went "oh no not again"... relatives called up home to ask if everyone were ok... and I replied that since the blasts were on the western line, there was nothing to fear. My mother works on the central line, and my father is in Kuwait. My mother, however, heard the Matunga blast ("I thought my eardrums explded") while waiting for a train in the central matunga station.


The biggest hassle right now is that the phone lines are jammed. the count went up from 10 bodies to 30 to 60 to 100 in a span of half an hour. Even the count of the number of bombings went from five to four (a brief period of time when the Khar and Bandra bombings were thought to be the same) and then seven.


Made a short film on a rocket today... like its a paper rocket. Pretty funny really.

Monday, July 10, 2006

I got the flush

Nothing goes with Vodka like football and friends. People got together to watch the game, and it was a room full of France supporters with a grand total of TWO rooting for Italy. Ah well. Even the Italians agreed that the game would have been different if Zidane would have stayed... I think it was a brilliant thing for him to leave... because if Italy would have stayed and France would have lost, it would have been a sad way to go. Zidane, instead, managed to get a red card on his last match, which is the world cup finals, AND steal all the glory from the Italy win by making everyone talk about the spectacular way in which he earned the card rather than the Italy win.



But a better game was being played in the house, and among other things, I got my head flushed down a toilet! Felt like shit.







Thursday, July 06, 2006

Photoshopping

France won :(

Used to think it was stupid to be a fan... to let your state of mind depend on people miles away running around a green field fooling around with a ball, and sometimes there being no goals involved at all... so never really watched a match or followed the world cup... till today. A few days ago, a guy I hardly ever speak to suddenly caught my arm on the road and simply asked "France or Brazil?" and I had no clue what to say, so I replied with a Brazil, only because I vaguely remembered them having something like a ball on their flag. His friends started laughing at him, and he looked extremely disappointed.



THe next thing I see on TV? Brazil fans crying, and French guys tearing off a reporter wearing a Brazil tee and replacing it with the French flag. I was not yet hooked, but the entire fever was getting to me. People were talking football everywhere, and the final blow was the monsoon rains - in particular a train from VT to Thane, via Currey Road, where the water was apparently high enough to damage the engines of the train - thus making it stop for unreasonably long amounts of time. Imagine being in a place crowded with football enthusiast...




And everyone was talking about the match today. So I posed, and posed like hell. I scrapped abrupt "Portugal or France" questions to random people on Orkut, asked who people were supporting over the phone, and even took the the pains to place bets with random people. He was of the opinion France would win, so I thought what the heck, I'll support Portugal.




Then I sat through the match, without getting even a little sleepy, and I understood why people get as crazy as they do. When the game went into overtime, I was holding my breath everytime the Portugal players took the ball close to the net, and was heavily dissed by the failurs. Will leave the rest of the match to the experts, but for me it was an expirience, because the first real match I sit through managed to get to me... watching all of it must be good entertainment.




France for Finals.


Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Tragedy, sex and superman

The reception from the audience was SAD. The theatre was almost empty, and those who occupied the seats had all caught Krrish… SO, all the comments from the backseats were centered around the possibility that Superman was totally inspired from Krrish… can’t believe they even got this insane idea, but they did. And even those self-proclaimed film critics were analyzing it like they were watching a Warhol flick (they wish!) and were laughing at all the iris bullet deflection by calling it worse than all the Mithun Chakobarty character’s normal human good guy abilities.



Not that the movie was great or anything… the FX was totally realistic, but nothing path breaking like the first flick. There were no signature SFX, but what was done was done pretty damn good.



The story goes something like this: Superman returns after a five year space journey to his home planet, to find things changed. His love has not lost interest, but has turned bitter and has moved on, engaged to a guy and won a Pulitzer for writing an article on why the world does not need superman. Superman and Kent get back to their world, Kent in the midst of Daily Planet, and Superman in the midst of bank robbers, rampaging cars and falling planes – no one notices the fact that they came back at the same time though. Lex Luthor, meanwhile, steals Superman technology from the temple of solitude and plans to sink America and make a crystal continent with superior technology and real estate to sell the world…



Superman, more than anything, looks lost for some reason… no conviction at all, and he hardly ever speaks. The nice sequences are when Superman gets bashed up by the baddies… because they own bits of his home planet that he is allergic to, and then gets rescued by Lois, and her son… and when the audience finds out that Lois’ kid is Superman’s too, and he kills ONE baddie with a piano (particular surge of Krrish jokes from the audience) and whenever Lex Luthor is on screen. He steals the show. They should make an anti-hero spinoff on him. He is a fucking cool baddie. There is a terribly long ending sequence, where Superman apparently dies. I have no clue what they would get out of claiming Jesus to be an alien though.



And I don’t agree to the whole “switch off your mobile phones in theatres” thing. When the movie got boring, these came to the rescue in the most wonderful ways. For example, Just when Lois came to visit the “dead” superman in the hospital, someone’s mobile screamed a ringtone of the “Tukhe dekha to yeh jaana sanam…” The audience freaked out.



And for the pleasure of those "ctitcs"


Sunday, July 02, 2006

ummm

Displaying your picture on your messenger window, blog/orkut profile/ message board signatures, or anywhere on the net your mug is required, you might want to represent more of your personality, or it might get boring after a while, especially if you are Mallika Sherawat. A good idea would be to edit your photos, and creative tutorials to help you out are available on the web. Here is a sampling of photoshop tutorials. Experiment and have fun, but don't try to use the modified photos for passports/college ids etc.



There were pics to accompany the links... all mods of a Mallika Sherawat image, but its too tedious to upload all of them so...



Aged Photo



Colored Sketch



Cute Alien



Fashion Magazine Photo




Gradient Overlay




Grudge Photo Effect




Neonglow




Pencil Drawing




Warhol effect (pop art)




Zombie Girl

The Athawle Issue

A comment I recieved on a previous post, from an insider telling the real story behind the whole Wilson College/ NSUI thing:



the REAL FACT LIES HERE:



Mr.Athavale confiscated her phone for using it on the campus.And he came by an objectionable cip on her phone. He then counselled her on the matter and asked to pay the fine. The girl freaked out and made an isntant spooof story on what happened to save the wrath from her parents. She contacted the students council who contacted the NSUI and they decided to stage this drama now during admissions(so that it hits the college hard).




THE COLLEGE STUDENTS DID NOT BLACKEN HIS FACE. THE NSUI GOONS DID. WE MARCHED TO THE POLICE STATION WITH OUR PROFESSORS DEMANDING AN EXPLANATION TO ALL OF THIS. THERE WERE OVER 300-400 STUDENTS THERE.




Now another girl has told the ( see now its not the police but) THE NSUI that she too is a victim of molestation.




------------------------------
Bottom line is - A VERY LARGE NO OF STUDENTS (lets say all of them except shriya and the latest complainant) believe and trust that their proffesor is innocent.




I do too because he has caught my friends and myself for lack of attendance and he hasnt behaved like this to any of the girls.

The worst Superman Issue you will ever see:

Saturday, July 01, 2006

.,...,..,...,.

Come admission time and people with political leverage start pressurizing institutions in weird ways. Yesterday afternoon, on a return trip from my college, a senior gets a call, informing him of a scandal in Wilson college. Apparently what happened was that a science prof tried to have sex with a JC student, and the oter students took him out after garlanding him with slippers, blackned his face, and paraded him around the streets. I was wondering what the hell was going on in the city... Early this morning, a friend and I read the story from a newspaper borrowed from the chai wallah. The "facts" reported in the newspaper were as follows:



1) Last august, the girl in question was picked up by Prof. Vilas Athawle because of misbehavior

2) He took her to a staff room ALONE and talked about sex, apparently trying to convince her that such a relationship was OK in a broad minded society

3) He confiscated her phone and harassed her in various different ways after she escaped from the staff room

4) Her father wrote a letter to the National Students Union of India (NSUI), members of which took the particular action




Later in the evening, the "facts" in another newspaper were:



1) Last august, the girl in question was picked up by Prof. Vilas Athawle, because of misbehavior

2) He took her to the Zoology lab, WITH her mom, and had an overtly intimate conversation

3) The vice principle of the college, a MR. Parkar, confiscated her cell, Athavle apparently paid the fine to recover it

4) Her mother wrote the letter to the NSUI.




Also, the letter in question written by a parent of dubious genders, is published in both the newspapers, and has major changes. The inconsistencies in both the stories have convinced me that the allegations are fabricated. More so because, in my childhood a very responsible and honorable Principle, with a slightly unorthodox style of working was sent away over days because of pressure from parents and some teachers. I remember him investing personally into the school's various functions, handing over relatively large sums of money to little children just to make them responsible, and basically encouraging a very different kind of schooling. Was kicked out overnight. Name was Fulcao. What I think happened was that a girl with failing academic standards and losing focus on her studies was simply forced to leave the college, and the parents are seeking revenge using the NSUI, who in turn are using this incident as leverage to push in their students into the college. All such incidents have the same format, the slightest excuse is used to allege molestation, and the whole incident reeks of the usual political uselessness.



The princi of Fatima High School, Father Phillil Gonsalves is personally known to my family, and he too is facing such allegations. He is a gem of a person and the last person to be involved in something like this. Its just sad that such people have to face such atrocities. The church requested him to leave Mumbai for his own security, for some time, and this was interpreted as banishment by people. Apparently, this man REPEATEDLY molested the girl, who was, btw, refused admission in the school. There is a strong protest by both parents and teachers against these allegations and the church request.

More midnight photoshopgiri

Photoshop makes insomnia pleasurable... you get to fool around with pics like hell... the idea was given by a friend to make Shivaji roam around with a lightsabre. Now this will all seam nice and easy, till you realise that Shivaji had a curved sword! Came across this photo of a statue of Shivaji that I had taken long ago... the statue can be spotted next to Talao Pali at Thane:







Now the thing to do was... make the statue come to life. Unfortunately, one of the legs was hidden, so had to duplicate one of the others. The rest was simple, except for the background, which is a slightly modified pic I took at Mahabaleshwar, next to Pratapgarh, one of Shivaji's forts I think. The rest was simple really, playing around with the hue/saturation settings of selected areas, giving them a different color... so that was about enough to make the statue come to life, but its a little cartoonish.