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!

After the disaster that was Dasavatharam, I couldn’t bring myself to watch another freakin’ huge movie. An English movie was the obvious choice and one that I wanted to see on opening day was The Incredible Hulk. The initial Hulk movie was not as good as i expected it to be…there was too much talking and very less smashing!Marvel(Owners of the franchise) started producing their movie while paramount only distributed them.They set out to make two movies,Iron Man and the Hulk.They chose to remake Hulk because the first movie did not turn out the way they want and retook the movie rights.They made good casting coupes with this movie..namely casting Edward Norton(Brilliant!!)as the Hulk.I don’t need to bring up how good an actor he is in multiple roles(Fight Club,enough said!!)Plus with the build up for the Avengers Movie set in motion through Iron Man,Hulk needed to prove itself and prove it did.

The problem with the previous hulk was considering its length the appearance of the Hulk was very minimal.For a 2 hr movie,The Hulk appeared for like 30-45mins.That is simply not excusable.Also changes in the script meant it was far less similar to that of the comic book. Instead of delving into the origin story,this movie gets straight away into Bruce Banner on the run from the US Military. Instead of a separate flashback to reveal the origin, the director does it in flashes(Also its much closer to the origin story from the comic).The Hulk appears within the first 1/2 hour from the start. Its good to see Tim Roth back(after Reservoir Dogs) and he plays his part as Soldier/Abomination. When I saw the Hulk and the Abomination clash in the trailers i thought it was going to be cheesy like the other action movies but it ended up not sucking.it was pretty good and i enjoyed it more than i though i would!Louis Leterrier(the Director) shows the pain Bruce goes through while transforming into the Hulk which also gets the viewer more involved. The pace of the movie remains fairly constant and doesn’t drag at any point. Liv Tyler plays her part as Bruce’s love interest Betty Ross and William Hurt does an ok job as the General Ross. In addition to playing the lead, Edward Norton actually re-wrote the screenplay along with Zak Penn although he goes uncredited. Edward Norton as Bruce Banner fits the role fine(Eric Bana would have also been fine, Edward was casted as Eric Bana didn’t want to reprise his role as the Hulk). The CGI comes as a breath of fresh air after Dasavatharam. This still could have been improved and hopefully they do so for the Avengers movie.
Overall, to summarize…this is what the first hulk should have been-Perfect Runtime(1 hr 54 mins) More Hulk Appearances (Nearly half the movie) Staying close to the comic book (The Abomination, origin story) Good CGI (Could have been better but take what we get).

There are lots of clues/hints in the movie for a lot of past/future movies. During the starting credits, don’t miss out on Nick Fury’s name showing up in a report, the original hulk(from the TV Series) plays a small part as the cop who gets bribed with the Pizza, Mr Green(or Mr.Blue??) is the villain in the next Hulk movie(there’s sure to be one, maybe after the avengers)The Leader. Tony Stark(Iron Man) cameo at the end of the movie(the part which i loved the most) pitching an idea of a team to the General Roth, Hulk/Bruce/Ed Norton exclaiming HULK SMASH!! during the climax action sequence.

Now i just can’t wait for rest of Marvel’s movies.The first Avenger: Captain America is already in pre-production(I think),Thor Movie also has been green flagged and the culmination of all,The Avengers is set for a  2011 release date. Can i just freeze myself until all these movies are out??

Dasavatharam means 10 Avatars.In this movie,it means 10(actually 7) times the torture of a Kamal Movie(Not all,just the ones which he conceptualises). Directed by KS Ravikumar,Story-Screenplay-Dialogues by Kamalhassan this movie tops it off with Kamal in 10 different roles.This movie already has fanboys foaming at their mouths.But Kamal(being who he is) had to screw it up with his all-knowing knowledge of cinema!

I mean..c’mon these were the guys who did Avvai Shanmugi(Mrs.Doubtfire),Thenali & Panchathanthiram for cryin’ out loud.Ask anyone to watch Panchathanthiram and they will enjoy it everytime they see it.Now that’s a benchmark for dialogue delivery and the comedy timing.There is one glaring mistake which they failed to notice..the film’s Length!!There are some subtle social messages in the film but people will get it if they can sit and watch the whole 3 hr 15 mins movie!FREAKIN’ 3 hr 15 min movie…in this Day and Age.Anything crossing 2:30 min mark and you’ve lost 75% of your audience.

There are 3 roles in the movie which fit him to a T and are very well done(Balram Naidu,Vincent & The Priest).Other than that..nothing else,pfft the story is something which i’m yet to understand,Acting wise the spotlight is on him most of the time,Asin can’t stop yapping about the idol(If i had a gun,There would be nothing left to shoot had i shot her everytime she kept yappin’)and god knows why Mallika Shera(what???) is in the movie.I don’t know what’s the big deal was with the Tsunami scene.The CGI was ok(can’t say brilliant)by our standards but bad compared to some of those in the cheaper hollywood movies(I’m comparing this with hollywood movies because this is what Kamal set out to make..a movie which can compare with Hollywood)

And this movie was criticised by a section of people for abusing god.Believe me..once you see the movie,i don’t want to get into the details but,seriously ,WTF! I appreciate his effort of doing 10 different roles but when seen on the screen 7 of 10 are not even believable and when 7 of the 10 roles don’t appeal then i don’t think the story surrounding them will appeal either.Its a known fact that an over-hyped tamil movie of Kamal’s is bound to fail,Unfortunately Dasavatharam doesn’t make the cut This is just my view.
Feel any different??Fire away in the comments!

I’m getting back to my book Watchmen(atleast something’s interesting in life!)

PS:Had you followed me on my twitter feed,you would have known well by the interval time that the movie was crap!

EDIT:Looks like rediff loved the movie but comments say otherwise. Sify however is much close to what i feel about the movie

EDIT 1:Made some minor revisions

EDIT 2:I totally agree with this guy!

EDIT 3:Whoa..this post is getting loads of traffic.Also corrected some typos!

EDIT 4:Posted some Dasavatharam Trivia here

As expected,Apple launched the 2nd Generation iPhone with 3G & GPS.That’s about the only major improvements over the previous phone.C’mon,this is the second version of a best-selling phone!They could have atleast upgraded the camera to include a flash or MMS or Copy/Paste…naada,None of these were even mentioned.Nonetheless,the 3G version was what i was expecting and the 3G version is what was launched.THe App Store looks appealing and the games…umm,i’ll wait for some videos and then decide on them.The price drop was expected one and $199 is gonna make this one of the must have devices of this year!

A couple of months down the line ,Apple is gonna launch a newer version of the iphone with a better camera,better storage and all the above functionalities and they are gonna cleanout our wallets!
Why god why!!!I’m in two minds whether to buy the new iPhone,coz’ at £199 everyone and their mother is gonna buy one and it won’t be special anymore!Now would be a good time to buy the 1st Generation iPhone.Cheaper prices,they would become unique is some time and a lot easier to jailbreak!

Wow..its been almost two months since i updated the blog.A lot of things happened in the past two months..Work,My Birthday,Cornwall,New DSLR and booze cruises;not necessarily in the same order.As i said in my previous post,when bharat left for his vacation there was a shitload of work that was to be done.Concentrating on work i didn’t get to concentrate on my games(until recently) so that was out the window.I did get my New DSLR,a Canon EOS 450D.Gotta say,quite an investment.Amazing pictures with the Kit lens and i also bought a 50mm f/1.8 for its sharp pictures.Keep a lookout on my flickr account for frequent updates.With the arrival of the camera,i carry it with me every friday & am unable to sit at home during the weekend.The sunset and sunrise looks amazing(which it never did before).

For the 2nd May long weekend we visited Cornwall(I was oncall for the first one)Though the weather was quite not what we expected we did enjoy it very well.Took loads of pics and uploaded the best to flickr,gotta upload the rest to Picasa,just don’t get the time.The weekend after the long weekend was my birthday.It was a quite affair…a few friends,a couple of cakes and a sore butt!
Bharat had come back by this time so work pressure was off me for some time.It has been quite hectic thought ever since.Got enough time to play Audiosurf in bursts,i just love that game!Can’t wait to go back home and play it on the 24″ screen.I’ve been planning for a vacation similar to last year(Beginning to end of November).June started of fine with the bonus and the salary hike.I’m now a Software Enginner..thank you very much!

web 2.0-I’ve been active on twitter and Pownce. Digg has Engadget has been a regular affair.I’ve been playing around with Safari on my work laptop and gotta say I’m pretty impressed with Apple’s work.There is the zero day vulnerability but that won’t work unless you have IE7 and my work laptop still has IE6 which i rarely use.Waiting for Mozilla Firefox 3,i’m currently on RC2 and its freakin awesome!Registered for the world record and waiting for it. A couple of extensions i’d like to mention Piclens and Twitterbar.Piclens gives a totally different visualizations for Flickr and Youtube and its totally amazing.Twitterbar makes it much easier to post to twitter right from firefox without opening up a separete app.

Gadgets-My O2 contract has run out and i haven’t renewd it this time coz’ i wanted the iphone.The 3G iphone is releasing tomorrow so,i’ll be keeping a close watch on the Apple Store to buy one as soon as it shows up.I’m jumping on the iphone bandwagon not because i’m an Apple Fanboy(which i’m not)i liked the 1G iphone’s interface and the onlky thing stopping me was the 3G connectivity.The N95 is still my all purpose phone.I’m sure apple is gonna miss out on some feature which is pretty much given on the other phones.Everyone is still waiting for Nokia’s answer to the iphone which i’m sorry to say cannot beat it in anywhich way!

In the recently concluded Computex,there have been a landslide of mini-notebook announcements.A few which have caught my eye are the MSI Wind & Dell mini-Inspiron.Will be keeping an eye out for those and possibly purchase one if its at a good price.

Movies-Its a great summer for movies and it started off with a band with Iron Man.Watched it on premiere day and loved it.So much that i watched it again for the ending scene after the credits(Avengers setup)Indiana Jones came out a few weekends later.It was the most awaited summer movie of this year and i watched it again on premiere day.I’ll still hold to my initial impressions Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the lost ark is the best movie of the series. A few more movies i’ve lined up to see
The Incredible Hulk
The Dark Knight
Wall-e
Wanted(Comic Book adaptation)
Hellboy 2
Pineapple Express
Tropic Thunder
A couple of movie i’d like to catch up on are Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Speed Racer.The former is quite a good comedy from the Judd Apatow stable and the latter is a adaptation of the anime series of the same name.I used to follow it when i was a kid and really want to see how it turned out in the big screen version.

Its been a long blog post.Gotta sleep;really wish it wasn’t Monday tomorrow!
Until next time..

On the Hood

Originally uploaded by Ravi Shanker Seethapathy

Massa won again in Turkey!Raikkonen finished 3rd.

Man,What a week.Got back from a scorching Egypt to a cold and windy Bristol,work is crazy!Most of us have uploaded our Egypt photos(Links & Slide show at the end of the post)My best has gone to flickr while the others are in Picasa.Daylight savings has kicked in this week so now i get one hour less to sleep :’(

Games,well didn’t get a chance to play for the past few weeks.I was still stuck battling the Gun ships in HL2 and Audiosurf was turning out to be real fun.I bought Prey of Steam(Yeah,I know i promised myself that i won’t buy anything unless i finish my existing set but when you get it for £2 why would you wanna pass?).
I’m on-call for the rest of the week,so nothing planned for the weeks ahead.Work is gonna get a hella lot more tougher since my colleague Bharat is going on vacation.

Egypt

*Fascinating*

Originally uploaded by Ravi Shanker Seethapathy

My Best photo yet!!