Indians can live without food but take “controversy” off their dictionary, I bet they would choke in a day! 

It is amusing to see all these discussions on Slumdog Millionaire. It may or may not be a great movie. However the “controversy” part has suddenly become bigger than the movie itself. In fact it has now reached quite an unmanageable state with people losing their mind and becoming victims of unnecessary jingoism.

Here is a nice bit of tip for all those people. Movies are just that. Movies. They are not political statements. They don’t ascertain the supremacy of one race over another. They don’t change the world – for most parts that is. Sadly in India, they do seem to change the way we live!

Yes. Slumdog Millionaire shows the slums of India. Well, isn't that what the story is all about? When you are making a movie based on the life of a slum-dweller, do you keep the backdrop as the slums of Mumbai or the five star resorts of Rajasthan? The movie is based on a novel written by an Indian by the way– (Q & A, by Vikas Swarup) and this novel talks about the slums in even greater detail. The novel was released in 2006 if I remember correctly and I was one of those who bought the author-signed copies in Landmark, Chennai. I liked the novel but did not find it great.

Arguing that the movie would result in the West thinking about India as a land of slums is akin to Indians forming an opinion on the US based on what is shown in Basic Instinct or for that matter – Scary Movie!

Watch the movie for the entertainment it offers and no one can deny that Slumdog Millionaire is entertaining. It is racy; interesting; hard hitting and ends on a positive note. The movie is all about the rags to riches story of a Slumdog. Probably next time Danny Boyle makes a movie with an Indian backdrop, we can request him to talk about CityPigeons featuring our pigeon hole apartments facing the beach or the river.  (Or cats, horses, rhinos – whatever you want.) And we can all beat our chest saying “This is the real India.”

Or still better. Let us send “Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham” to the Oscars next time and shout from the rooftops, “Oh West, Oh West – form an opinion on India based on this movie. This is so much better than the slums you have seen earlier.”

 

 

Telugu Cinema: Arundhati - Review

I confess. I had no plans of watching a movie in the cramped two day trip to Nellore, my hometown. However when my cousin called me from London and told me about the rave reviews this movie had been getting, I decided to check it out. Another compelling reason was: The movie hall was just a block away from my house.

Saturday night show – no tickets. Sunday noon show – no tickets. Black market touched 3oo rupees (for a 50 rupee ticket). Finally, I managed to get into the matinee show. (Paid the face price!) I was all excited to see Anushka in what is reportedly her first performance oriented role.

Arundhati has a lot going for it. The producer M. S. Reddy is known to have lavish budgets for his movies. He is also a great CGI fan and churns out graphics stuff that is always of its time – at least in the Telugu industry. (Case in point: The “hand” in Ammoru and the wonderful depiction of Lord Shiva in Anji.)

The director, Kodi Ramakrishna, a known face in the fantasy/mythological circuit, is a veteran in dealing with such subjects. His movies are known for edge of the seat action sequences and of course plenty of divine intervention.

Arundhati has everything aforementioned and some more. In fact it is so extravagant that you feel suffocated at times. The story unfolds at breakneck speed and throws unmanageable events at you one after another. That lovely jaw of yours that is supposed to drop in awe at the sequences happening on the screen is not allowed to actually drop as another sequence starts right away. You gasp for breath and you stare at the screen disbelievingly. It takes a while to acclimatize to the high pressure screenplay of Arundhati.

Once you learn to handle it with the seatbelts fastened and oxygen mask kept ready, the movie takes you through a detailed and gory portrayal of a family haunted by the ubiquitous evil spirit. Only one person can stop the force. And you know who it is, even before the movie has actually hit the marquee.

Let us be very clear. This is not a movie for everyone. If you are faint hearted or under 18 years of age, stay clear of this movie. Please do not take your kids to the show. They cannot handle it. It is too violent, gory, bloody, sadistic for them. I pity the kids in the movie hall today. I can give it to you in writing that they would not be sleeping peacefully for the next one week. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are any long term psychological impact on these children.

That makes me wonder. Why do parents, who are otherwise very responsible and wish for the best for their kids, expose their little angels to movies such as Arundhati? The movie would earn an “R” rating in the US – Not even a 18.

Please do not take chances. Leave your kids with their grandparents if you are planning to watch this movie.

That said, there is not a single dull moment in this movie. The action starts the moment the censor certificate disappears. The songs do not stand out. You won’t even notice them. The director has ensured that the tempo doesn’t come down anywhere. The first half, the interval bang, the second half, the climax – such differentiation has no place in this movie. Every scene has all the elements to excite you and make you wait for the next scene. Only, before your wait starts, the next scene ends.

The story is pretty much predictable and the end is what you have foreseen in the beginning. There are some silly rituals and methods thanks to the creative liberty available in fantasy genre. The process of setting up the grand annihilation of the evil spirit starts to look very contrived after you leave the theatre and your dazed feeling begins to wear down. However when you are in the middle of the action, such thoughts don’t cross your mind and spoil your experience.

Anushka doesn’t disappoint. She proves that given a good role, she can come up a credible performance. Her dancing skills however are inadequate in the context of this story. The classical dance movements fall absolutely flat. A great classical dance performance helps in elevating the scene to the highest level. (For instance, Shobana’s stellar show in Mani Chitratazha – the original of Chandramukhi.) Discounting this minor hiccup, Anushka has risen to the occasion.

The rest of the cast is adequate. Another stand out performance is given by Shayaji Shinde – as a good hearted Phakir who helps Anushka in her battle with the evil spirit. The evil is efficiently personified by Sonu Sood. The role requires him to look menacing and – basically “evil”. He manages that commendably.

Fortunately, there is no comedy track diluting the experience. The CGI work is pretty good though not in the same league as Hollywood. Given the budget constraints we have in the regional cinema circuit in India, the graphics work is fantabulous. You are not going to see anything like this in the Telugu Cinema – for a long time to come.

Background score is very good. Koti has turned in a lovely score though the first song reminds you of “Amma Brahma demudo” song from Govinda Govinda.

I have a question though. If you have seen the movie, can you tell me who the husband of Arundhati (Jejamma) is?

Final Word: Strictly not for children and for people who cannot enjoy sadistic horror. For the rest, don’t miss the movie.

My verdict: 4 out of 5 (with some riders – discussed above)

 

Windows 7 Beta: First Impression

Windows 7 has been carrying positive reports ever since the limited Beta was provided to a few niche Technology bloggers. While the individual opinions do differ on the details, all these bloggers agree that Windows 7 is what Vista should have been.

It looks like Microsoft has finally got its act together. So when the Beta opened up for public download, I didn’t think twice before installing it on my laptop in dual boot mode so that I can get back to the XP installation anytime I want.

Installation:

Installation was a breeze. On my Core 2 Duo laptop with 1 GB RAM, it took about twenty minutes to install – with all the inputs required from the user taken in the first one minute. There are hardly three input screens. If you are installing it in dual boot mode, ensure you select the right partition here so that you don’t lose your existing setup. Then you simply sit back and relax. Windows 7 gets some brownie points here.

Look and Feel:

It resembles Vista in every possible way. In fact it feels like a lovely skin on the top of Vista. The task bar is a great surprise though and I love way the open windows are grouped in the task bar. When you hover your mouse on the task bar group, it shows all the open instances of that group. (See image below) Another set of brownie points into Windows 7 sack.

Here’s the best part of the UI redesign. After persisting with the same design for over a decade, Microsoft has finally revamped the UI of the following programs.

1. Calculator:

 

2. Paint:

However, notepad still remains the same. In fact, I wouldn’t want to add any frills to notepad because its USP is essentially its simplicity. So no complaints there. However, the GUI rework of Paint and Calculator is a nice gesture. They have the look and feel of a modern program now.

Usability/Options/Features:

When you install Windows 7 beta, you are given just the operating system. Yes, it is the “Ultimate” version of Windows 7 but still there is no office suite or internet tools such as an instant messenger or an email client. Another glaring omission is the Anti-virus software. When you boot into the system for the first time, the OS tells you that there is no anti virus software and provides you three options to choose from. None of these options are free. However you can download AVG anti virus software – the free version – from http://free.avg.com It works fine with Windows 7.

Here, let me take a small detour and talk a few lines about Windows Live. (You can download the latest version from Microsoft and it works fine on Vista too.)

The first thing you should be doing after installing the OS is to get the Windows Live suite of products installed. This provides you with a very useful set of applications such as the Live Writer for blogging, Live Photo Gallery, Live Mail and Messenger. I am typing this review in Live Writer. It can interact with any Blogger/WordPress/TypePad/LiveJournal based blogging platform.

Live Photo Gallery looks pretty much identical to what we have seen earlier. However one important addition is its ability to recognize the presence of human faces in a photo. When you open a photo in Live Photo Gallery, it identifies the faces in the photos and asks you to name them. Then you can search photos based on those names.

Getting back to Windows 7, working with network connections is now simpler than ever. Also there is a new option - “Adjust Commonly Used Mobility Settings”, which I found to be incredibly useful. It packs most of the adjustments we need to make – at one place.(Screenshot below)

The new Windows Media Center retains the same Vista interface with a couple of minor changes. For instance, you can now view the games installed on your PC from Media Center and play them. Solitaire has undergone a nice UI revamp and looks better now.

Windows Media Center of course runs on the top of Windows Media Player, which also has been tweaked a bit.

As you see, there is a preview option available for the songs. Also the interface is less cluttered and more user friendly.

Before I forget, let me talk about two new programs added to the standard repository of Windows. This blog post uses one of them quite extensively. It is called the Snipping Tool and it takes screenshots. You can take the entire screen or select a portion of it. This functionality, earlier provided in One Note 2007 – is pretty handy especially when you are writing reviews like this that require quite a few screenshots.

The other program is called “Sticky Notes”. It doesn’t need any explanation I guess. However it remains to be seen how many of us will actually use this when programs like EverNote are around.

There are hundreds of such minor tweaks and additions. The underlying principle governing these changes seems to be to provide an unmatched user experience.

The only issue that I have encountered so far is – Windows 7 failed to recognize the C drive of my XP partition. The other drives have been recognized and mounted automatically. The fix is simple though. You just have to fire up the Disk Management utility and assign a new drive letter to that volume.

The operating system, as said by Microsoft, works just fine on computers which do not have great specs. On my 1GB machine, the experience is very good. Sadly the same thing cannot be said about Vista.

Based on my first impression – a marathon run of about four hours on Windows 7, I give it a thumbs up – In fact two thumbs up. The beta is quite stable and is almost end user ready. Microsoft finally gets it right. I hope they ship this on time this year. It is expected to release during 2009 holiday season but already there are indicators that it might be delayed.

If you are still on XP and are contemplating a shift to Vista, hold on to XP for now. You may want to skip Vista altogether and go to Windows 7.

I will be talking about the individual features of Windows 7 in greater detail in the coming months. Hope you liked this teaser preview. Don’t forget to leave your comments.

Testing Live Writer Beta

I am just testing the new Windows Live Beta from a Windows 7 machine. This post will be removed immediately.

First Impressions on the Google Phone G1

Some of you are probably aware that I had ordered a G1 phone sometime back. The phone arrived in one piece in a large UPS box flummoxing my family members. When we opened the box however, we realized that 90% of the box was empty. The remaining 10% had the G1 – The Android Dev Phone.

Since I already have an iPhone 3G, the primary user of this phone would be my cousin. He didn’t have GPRS enabled on his Airtel SIM card and G1 wouldn’t boot until you supply your gmail id and log into it (Or you can create a new one.) Quite dumb I would say but it didn’t spoil the party because GPRS activation with Airtel took hardly 2 minutes. We were able to log into the phone to see our Email and Contacts already set up. It pulled the data from the Gmail server.

Before I forget…

1. Yes, you can forward messages.

2. Yes, you can send MMS.

3. Yes, there is Copy Paste.

All set for killing the iPhone? Read on… 

The surprising omission in G1 is the PC interface. The phone has no such interface. When we connect it to the PC, it shows up as a removable drive. How to install Applications? How to upgrade the firmware? Absolutely no clue out of the box. Yes, the phone has a lovely Google app preinstalled though and a search on Google solves most of these issues anyway. Maybe that is the idea!

My cousin had no clue how to transfer the contacts list from his MS Outlook to this phone. Finally he found a freeware application to upload those contacts to Gmail and then let G1 synch those contacts with the phone. Unconventional but it worked!

Following are my personal observations on the phone.

Touch Screen: If you are an iPhone user, you will instantly recognize the difference. It is not as responsive as the iPhone. You have to apply a little – a tad little – extra pressure and the response time is frustrating. You touch the screen and you wait for the phone to respond. If you are scrolling through a big list, you swipe your finger down and stare at the motionless screen. Then all of a sudden the scrolling starts.

Also the touch screen functionality is kind of limited compared to the iPhone. For instance, to zoom in or zoom out, with an iPhone you just have touch the screen with two fingers and spread them farther or nearer. The G1 has no such trick. It shows a Zoom In button and a Zoom Out button on the screen. You have to repeatedly touch those buttons to zoom.

Accelerometer: The phone boasts of an accelerometer but the native OS version that comes with the phone doesn’t support it. If I change the orientation of the phone, the display does not change. To get to the horizontal orientation, I have to slide open the keyboard. This is not a big issue because I am sure a firmware upgrade will fix it.

Keyboard: One of the pain points of an iPhone is that it has no physical keyboard and using an on-screen keyboard can get a little tricky. G1, on the other hand, has a nice keyboard that slides in and out smoothly. The layout is pretty much in line with the standard QWERTY computer keyboard. However, even if you want to type a single letter – you need to slide out the display and use the keyboard. There is no on-screen keyboard at all. This is a big problem because the sliding mechanism is prone to wear and tear. If you have to slide it out every time you type a message, I am not sure how long it will last. The build quality of the phone is excellent though. Again, a firmware upgrade can fix this issue by providing the on-screen keyboard as well.

Another pain area: There was no dictionary!

Camera: There is a 3.2 MP camera but the quality is so poor that my E61i with a 2MP camera outscores it completely. Also the camera has a dedicated button on the side of the phone unlike the iPhone where the “click” is also a touch. This button has to be pressed physically and most of the time it results in a shake. This can also be fixed by providing a touch interface.

Aesthetics: Contrary to the reports, I found the phone to be extremely pleasing on the eyes. It feels solid and the sliding mechanism is “cute” to quote my wife. I love dedicated Call and Call-End buttons. The track-ball is a nice addition. Battery life is not as good as the iPhone (which itself is quite poor!) but I expect a better performance when the next Android version rolls out.

Final Word: All these are my first impressions. The phone has a lot of promise and is let down only by the software that runs on it. I am sure, given “open” nature of the OS, the phone is bound to get better in no time and offer a great alternative to the iPhone. I am excited by this phone and I look forward to developing apps for it. All we need now is a proper Android Store and an easy interface to download apps from it – like the iPhone App Store.

Price: Including shipping and taxes: $571.

My rating: Thumbs Up. 3 out of 5. Not yet an iPhone killer though.