James Cameron’s multi million dollar movie Avatar releases today,December 18th across the world in both 2D & 3D versions. I’ve just come home from watching the 3D version at Shankarnag’s Symphony on MG Road,B’lore.This has been one of his most expected movie for mainly two reasons..1)This was his 1st movie in a decade after the steamroller that was Titanic & 2)The movie was shot completely in digital 3D
Cameron came up with this story before Terminator 2 but shelved it due to the unavailability of technology! Boy I sure am happy that he made the movie now..This movie REDEFINES the meaning of the word EPIC!! The world that he has created..Pandora is just too alluring,the attention to detail down to the leaf of a plant,the fauna….Its..its just too difficult not to get pulled into that world!! The blue-skinned Na’vi with their long tails and big bulging eyes..I dunno,something about them i just can’t seem to look away from! The movie lasts nearly 3 hours but not to worry,the director has made sure you are glued to you seat assaulting you with a combination of some of THE BEST LOOKING IMAGERY & some great setpieces.
This brings us to the 3D..well,how is it?I’m glad to say that it never gets in the way but adds to the overall film.DON’T EVER MISS THIS FILM IN 3D!!If you ain’t seein’ this in 3D then you ain’t seen nothin yet!If you have the time &are not feared for your life then I’d gladly suggest making the trip to Prasad IMAX,Hyderabad to watch it in its full glory!
Acting wise Sam Worthington does his job as Jake Sulley and Zoe Saldana impresses as Neytri.Good to see Susan Sarandon back in a Cameron film..boy that was a long gap from Aliens!
The last time I reviewed a movie on my blog was after watching The Dark Knight..that movie ranks high on my list!With Avatar,James Cameron has achieved something extraordinary..This work of art will probably be talked about as a start to a revolution in film-making!Too bad we don’t have a lot of truck drivers with this big imaginations :((
Don’t wanna sound too dramatic or anything but with Avatar..this world is waking up to the dawn of a new era,an era where James Cameron will be annoited as GOD,maybe!
Went overboard?Sound like a fanboi don’t I..Well,Avatar deserves it!!

Finally, he’s back. On December 18, Avatar arrives in theaters. This time, Cameron, who turned 55 this year, didn’t need to build half an ocean liner on the Mexican coast as he did with Titanic, so why did it take one of the most powerful men in Hollywood so long to come out with a single film? In part, the answer is that it’s not easy to out-Lucas George Lucas. Cameron needed to invent a suite of moviemaking technologies, push theaters nationwide to retool, and imagine every detail of an alien world. But there’s more to it than that. To really understand why Avatar took so long to reach the screen, we need to look back at the making of Titanic.

Read more at Wired
James Cameron’s New 3-D Epic Could Change Film Forever

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I wrote up a huge blogpost on my iPhone about how I’m gonna start blogging and how things have changed but the stupid app crashed taking my post with it and I did’t have the time nor battery left to type it all again!So..I’m back,Yay:))

Say hello to the new HAWTNESS!!

Originally uploaded by Ravi Shanker Seethapathy

Well..What can i SAY??

So..

Originally uploaded by Ravi Shanker Seethapathy

Let me get this out first,I’m a die-hard Ferrari fan..not a Kimi Raikkonen or Felippe Massa Fan or fan but a Ferrari Fan.Michael Schumacher is the only person i consider to be a true world champion(Controversies aside..)and i refuse to support any driver now.I’ve been watching Formula One since…like forever and there’s something in that sport which captured my imagination and kept me glued to it(unlike cricket).
Today was the first ever night race for Formula One,The Singapore Grand Prix;the one that I’ve been waiting for this the whole year.Things couldn’t have been in a much better shape for Ferrari.Massa decimated Hamilton in qualifying by .664 of a second(It sounds quite small but in F1 terms that’s a pretty huge difference).Raikkonen qualified 3rd effectively sandwiching Hamilton.All they had to do was to hold Hamilton but things never go according to plan do they!!Alonso was looking good during qualifying & friday practice but unfortunately due to an fuel-flow problem he had to drop out of qualfying effectively standing 15th.
The race started,Massa pulled away from Hamilton(proving he’s on a lighter load than the others)Raikkonen(as he was heavier) failing to catch Hamilton fell behind.Roundabout Lap 15,Nelson Piquet(Renault) crashed into the barriers bringing out the Safety Car at a crucial point.Those who were travelling light were just about to make their pit stops couldn’t without incurring a penalty(New Rules..read it up).The critical cases like Rosberg,Kubica pitted so that they don’t lose out on the race like Barrichello did.This was when everything went hay-wire for Ferrari.All they had to do was a routine pit-stop,bring the guy in,change tyres,refuel and send them out.Now..the re-fuelling Rig,the one most problematic thing in a pit not only for Ferrari but for any pit crew and the driver too.
There was an incident…waaaaay back in Austria 2003 when Michael Schumacher came into pit and during the re-fueling part the rig caught fire.There were no injuries but the fire was not forgotten.There were cases where the re-fueling rig caught onto the tank and never came off.This caused a considerable loss of time in pit effectively losing grid positions and in certain cases..Race leads.This was exactly what happened today..Massa came in for a pit stop,tyres changed,re-fueling half way through and some A*hole gave the green signal to leave when the rig was still on the tank.This lead to a whole mess eventually leading Massa to lose the race and serve a Drive through penalty.Raikkonen also came into pit behind Massa and had to wait until Massa can leave and this also resulted in him losing valuble grid positions.Thankfully he did not have any issues with the Fuel Rig but this didn’t matter as he crashed into the barriers on Lap 57.Massa re-joined the race at the tail end of the grid and stayed there until the chequered flag.Alonso won the race starting from 15th on the grid(Hats off to him!)Hamilton finished second(thank god he didn’t win it)taking his lead over Massa to 7 points with 3 Races to go.
I heard on the news that Luca Di Montezemolo had a word with the team after the last few races asking them to work closer and harder to back Massa.He’s gonna have one helluva word tomorrow.

I’ve just reached home and i still can’t believe that I’ve just watched the best superhero no no,no no THE BEST MOVIE EVER! I’ve been waiting for the Dark Knight ever since Christopher Nolan blew me away with the first trailer. I’ve been trying really hard since July 18th to keep away from the spoilers and Wikipedia. There was a special screening at The Vue, Bristol @ 20:00 hrs and I booked tickets three weeks in advance (Yeah,that’s how bad I wanted to watch the movie) and thank god I did.They sold out a week in advance and boy was I happy!
I’m a great fan of Christopher Nolan’s work right from Memento till Batman Begins and I knew very well that he would do justice to this movie.Take it from me,Watch the movie in IMAX as a good 20 minutes of the movie is shot in the IMAX format and its too good to be missed.The first thing that me as well as everyone noticed was that the movie was long…2 and a half hours long but that doesn’t matter..There’s so much happening that you won’t notice time fly by.The story,well if you’ve watched the trailers you’d know it by now…Joker escaped Arkham Asylum at the end of the last movie and starts to wreak havoc on Gotham City. There’s a new DA is town Harvey Dent who is hell bent on bringing down organised crime in the city and then there’s Bruce Wayne who is torn between Batman and the billionaire who wants to lead a normal life.
There’s so many layers to the movie…Harvey Dent’s rise and fall,Bruce Wayne’s constant struggle, The Identity of the Joker..Wow,every aspect of the story was so perfectly handled with the awesome characterization and superb cinematography.

The characterization….I just don’t know where to start and where to end.I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again Christian Bale is the best batman ever(Of course, Michael Keaton was the best until then but Bale just blew him to bits ) His portrayal of Batman with that gut-wrenching voice is just what the doctor ordered!Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent is the real star of this movie..in fact,the movie is about how Harvey Dent goes from being the White Knight of Gotham City to Harvey “Two-Face” Dent.Maggie Gyllenhaal played the part of Rachel Dawes and as far as I’m concerned she played it better than Katie Holmes.Gary Oldman’s character Commissioner Gordon is a bit more fleshed out he played it out perfectly.
And that brings us to the Joker.Heath Ledger…man,oh man what a performance.There’s nothing I can say that hasn’t already been said about him. I initially thought giving him a posthumous Oscar was bit going over the top but now…He deserves it,hands down.He literally lives as the Joker (Not the campy Jack Nicholson version) the Psychopath who will stop at nothing to bring hell upon Gotham city. Had he been alive this would have been a career defining performance,now we’re left to wonder about the amazing talent we have lost.R.I.P Heath Ledger.

My thoughts on The Dark Knight..well,I’m yet to recover and I’m going to bed now thinking about all the other comic book adaptations yet to be released.Will they be able to achieve what this epic has done? Will they ever get the combination of story,characterization correct.I don’t know..I’m definitely watching this movie again,if possible on IMAX.

Here’s looking at you Watchmen!

EDIT:ooh,ooh I almost forgot ,the gadgets…there are plenty of them but nothing overboard. Keep a lookout for the Nokia phone in Lucius’s hands. Some sad news involving the tumblr but the resultant of that is just pretty effin’ awesome!You’re gonna love the batpod intro!

Its been a really long time since i watched two movies back to back.The last i remember was back in Bangalore on a Sunday with my good friend vinod when we had nothing to do.I think we saw Chronicles of Narnia and some movie in the morning!Before that it was back in college 1st year.
Me and a couple of guys here had planned to go out for my long pending birthday treat(Lunch & Movie) to Cardiff on a Saturday afternoon. When techies party on a Friday night it becomes a very difficult aside from a painful task of getting up early on a Saturday morning. Since most of them were sleeping and would be ready by afternoon we made some quick changes to our plans and decided to have lunch and watch a movie at the city centre. On looking up Indian restaurants in the Bristol City Centre, we zeroed in on Flavors (The fact is they were the only ones who were open for lunch upto 15:00hrs,everyone else closed at 14:00hrs). We called them up, booked an appointment and reached the place within 30 mins from Bradley Stoke. The restaurant was not that difficult to find as it was located on the main road, a few blocks away from the Hippodrome. After a parking hassle, we were shown to our seats, ordered a few drinks and straight away hit the buffet (Oh, i forgot,its £11 buffet all you can eat:) )Instead of delving into what we ate and what we did not,what we missed I’ll give you some quick impressions.

The place was good, the food was good since we didn’t expect anything (most of the supposedly Indian places around Bristol are not that great) They had a good menu from the starters to the main course and the desserts. One thing that we didn’t like was the drinks, the Long Island Ice Tea which i ordered was more of coke and it wasn’t quite what we expected.
Right,had a good lunch we hit up the Odeon for a movie(We were actually planning on Wall-e) We had overlooked that fact that the movie was not a simultaneous worldwide release and was releasing in the UK only on the 18th of July. We had Kung fu Panda as a backup movie in case we didn’t get tickets to wall-e and it was running at Odeon.We missed it by 20 mins and next show wasn’t until late in the evening. Everyone were pretty adament on catching a movie at my expense**whimper**so we caught a taxi and headed to the Vue. Santhosh had already reached there and confirmed that there was a show in the next 10mins.After a pretty long taxi ride we reached the theatre 5 mins before the start of show.

Right,Kung Fu panda…Well i wasn’t expecting a lot from this movie although it had a stellar lineup(Jack Black,Angelina Jolie,Seth Rogen,Dustin Hoffman,Lucy Liu, Jackie Chan and many more).RT had given it a 88% fresh rating so i didn’t expect it to be bad at all. It had a good story,great voice acting and animation.Jack Black is like the funniest of the lot ad literally has you in splits. I was expecting a few from Seth Rogen also but alas you cannot have everything. Jolie has done a great job on this one. Some of the scenes were reminiscent of the old Jackie Chan movies,like there’s this hilarious scene where Master Shifu(Dustin Hoffman) teaches Po(Jack Black) kung fu while eating (Chopsticks & dumplings)I don’t remember the exact name of the movie but i’ve seen a Jackie Chan movie where the exact same fight takes place with him and his master. There could be a Oscar Nomination waiting for this movie!

We came out and immediately,we purchased tickets for “Wanted” loosely based on the comic books starring Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy(The guy from Atonement)From the initial trailers we knew  it was gonna be an outright action movie but it actually had a pretty interesting story. The gun battles were awesome(although un-believable)dialogues were great.One minute you’re looking at Jolie and the next moment you’re looking at the number of tattoos she has on her body.There were soooo many that counting was not an option!The story was good,the action scenes were well orchestrated,acting was…ok.Now that i’ve seen the movie i really want to read the comic book.Its a known fact that in case of book-movie adaptations the books are always better(always).The first part of the movie is one which every software engineer can equate to.Annoying bosses, stress at work etc.The scene where he breaks free and smashes the keyboard on his friend’s face was pure awesomeness! The climax was just good especially the last lengthy dialogue culminating with the line

“What the &*%$ did you do today?”

I’m not even gonna try..I’m pretty sure this is going to be my next laptop!I blame voodoopc…not for making this unavailable in the UK but for creating this magnificent masterpiece and encouraging me to run my bank account to the ground.
I’m just soaking in my own drool!