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!

My N-gage buddy CJ has started his new blog ZOMGITSCJ(Leave it to him to come up with these names).

Welcome bro!!

Remember in my earlier review how i said I’ve yet to get around the story.Well,thanks to hawkeyeview and sify I’ve got a bit more clarity now but that still doesn’t take away the fact that the movie could have been much better

1. Asin plays 2 roles Kothai & later Andal ( both are names of the 12th azhwar called Andal who is Periya Azhwar’s daughter). The real Andal is an Azhwar who is perennialy religious and madly in love with Lord. Govinda. She dreams of marrying god and writes potery to that effect. Here the name of the ‘perumal’ and Scientist Kamal is ‘Govind’ and Asin loves both of them.
2. Connections to Vishnu Purana’s Dasavatharam Trivia: Boovarahan (Obvious: The Boar – Varaha Avatharam; his issue in the movie is digging the earth and sand), Balarama naidu (obvious), Govind/Krishnaveni-Patti can both be Krishna Avatharam – but lets assign avar Krishnaveni Patti as the Krishna avatharam (since Krishna is also a common name for a woman) and since Govind is Govind Ramaswamy and has a monkey called Hanu – he should be Rama avatharam. Kalif Ullah was the opposite of Vamana Avatharam (Tall vs Short). The Japanese Kamal had a name similar to Nrihasimha Avatharam (Narasomo or something). Since Ranagaraja Nambi drowned can we say there is a loose connection to Matsya (an avatharam where a fish warns the King of impending flood) or can we say he was Koorma avatharam because he lay in the bottom and churned the sea to create a tsunami? The word Fletcher means ‘arrows’ or the ‘maker of arrows’. Though Parasurama wielded an axe, I’ll generously call Christian Fletcher a modern Parasurama because he is angry and kills everyone in sight . Kalki has no/slender connections to Bush and Avtar Singh unless someone enlightens me (The best I can think of is Singh = singham and so Nrihasimha).
3. In this movie – Ramaswamy Naicker’s son Govind loves a girl called Andal – I thought this was a poor joke. Kamal even explained it twice just in case no one got it.
4. Purusha Sooktham can be heard in the background when Krishnaveni Patti throws the vial into Utsavar.
5. Govindaraja Perumal is the name of the moolavar that Kulothunga throws into the see.Scientist Kamal is called Govind.
6. Rangaraja Nambi’s first dialog is amusing – he jumps wierdly in the air and says “Adiyen Ramanuja Dasan’. The sub-plot here is that; Nambi assumes that the Chozhan (a childhood friend) is demanding that Nambi should reveal the whereabouts of Ramanuja. Kulothunga II even calls Nambi’s attention to the fate of Kurattalvan(who was blinded with a hot iron rod because did not reveal such information when asked). Napolean as the Chozhan speaks Chen-thamizh like Vadivelu – kolai pannifying ‘la’ and ‘zha’. Asin’s chen-thamizh is ridiculous.
7. Following 5 & 6 above ; The name of the person who has put the case against Dasavatharam in Supereme court is ‘Govinda Ramanuja Dasan’. Irony.
8. Sattrumurai’s “Pallandu” verse was briefly recited (using the wrong metre) in the song ‘Kallai Mattum Kandaal’

9.What is Chaos?
Basically a chaotic system is one wherein long term predictions are impossible. Like for example, if I push a car, I know that it is going to move and it will continue to do so if I go on pushing it on and on. However, in a chaotic system, this situation cannot be predicted over a long period of time. Weather, for example, is a chaotic system. No matter how good your instruments are, you simply cannot predict the weather with 100 per cent accuracy over a long term basis and forecast it.

10.What is the Butterfly Effect?
It is the most important component of a chaotic system. Basically, small perturbations results in amplifications which completely destroys the original nature of the system and makes prediction impossible. If a butterfly flaps its wings in Africa, it could result in a cyclone in USA.(Mark the word COULD.) A highly dumbed down explanation of the butterfly effect is in the film Anniyan, where Vikram’s sister dies because a liquor shop owner sells liquor on a dry day.

11.OK, how does Dasa incorporate it?
In essence, Dasa talks about eight characters who are inconsequential as such, but are integrated in a larger picture. Without Bush, the plane would have been called back. Without Shinghen, Govind would be dead. Without the tsunami, the world would have been destroyed. Even Krishnaveni (the old woman) plays a very important role. If she had not put the vial in the idol, maybe Govind would have recovered it then and there and a powerful weapon would have been unleashed. The very fact that it went into the idol meant that it was being accelerated to its destiny. Without Kaifulllah Khan, Govind would have never escaped… the list simply goes on.

12.OK, so does the film talk about theism or atheism?
Neither. It talks about how humans drive the destiny of the world.
The idol that is drowned in the sea along with Rangarajan in 12th century by Chozha king results in a fault being developed at the bottom of the ocean and creates tremors more than 800 years later. These tremors result in the Tsunami. This again is a classic case of Butterfly Effect wherein a seemingly inconsequential event (the drowning of the idol) saves everyone.

Looks like Kamal did do a lot of research before he started.That or Die-hard fans are reading waaaay too much into the story!