Items of Interest – 18-Mar-12 to 1-Apr-12

Posted on 2-Apr-12 by Karthik Abhiram

I didn’t have an Items of Interest post last week as I’d been a bit busy with work and other stuff. So this is a double-sized issue again. As usual, I’ll cover interesting links and events and then go on to the collection of tweets over the last few days.

Pecha Kucha Night Hyderabad Vol 8

For a while now, I have been talking about Pecha Kucha Night Hyderabad on my blog here (this post) and also on Facebook and Twitter. Well, Volume 8 of this event happened yesterday (31-Mar-12) and my brother Varun was one of the presenters. His presentation was called “Know Tools, Create Better” and was about how software tools have aided his creative process.

Varun’s presentation was the first of the evening, and it was very well delivered. He’d done his homework well – and that was apparent as he was presenting. There were 7 other speakers at this volume and the event’s MC was Varun Todi (who was one of the presenters in the previous volume). I was there to cheer my brother, and also took a whole bunch of photos as usual.

Karthik’s Coverage of PKN Hyd Vol 8 [Facebook Album – 60 Images]

You can click the above link to view the album of my photos on Facebook. This time I carried along my flash and used all my lenses, so there’s more variety in these photos compared to what I’d done at the previous volumes. My mom and dad also had come for the event, as did a considerably big bunch of friends. Very nice evening I’d say.

Like last time, the talks were all filmed. So those of you who missed some of the presentations can see them when the videos are uploaded to YouTube.

This is the latest video that the team uploaded on the PKNHyd YouTube Channel: Behind the Scenes. This is a sort of “trailer” for PKN Hyd Vol 8. It’s pretty nice, more so since I appear twice in the video!

A couple of other interesting things about this edition of Pecha Kucha –

All hail Open Source! The computer that was hooked up to the projector was running openSUSE 12.1 and presentation slideshows were run on libreoffice-impress.
The speakers’ presentations (PPT files) were converted into MOV videos, so as to preserve the timing of 20 seconds per slide exactly.

Some Glimpses of Hyderabad

Last Saturday I had to go to office to conduct some interviews. I thought I’d use the opportunity to take some photos – so I took my camera along with me. I took a bunch of photos on the commute to and back from office.

This is the album on Facebook – Long Weekend gets a bit Shorter. Only 7 photos but I think they’re interesting.

Above is one of the photos from the set. In this, you can see the poster for the movie 3, starring Dhanush and Shruti Haasan. This is the movie featuring the song “Why this Kolaveri Di?” and it was released here in Hyderabad on Friday (30-Mar-12) both in Tamil and Telugu.

Galactica’s Season 2 Premiere

My cousin’s blog Galactica resumed publication of posts on March 27 (he calls it a “Season 2” Premiere). A couple of days before, I made this as a promo –

I had taken a print of one of the posters he made, held it up and asked my brother to take this photo. There’s a bunch of movie reviews you can read.

The budget of the movie was $300 million. For that they might have actually flown the actors to Barsoom.

The above quote is from his review for John Carter. Other notable reviews: Nicolas Refn’s Drive, Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, Kahaani (features my Vidya Balan drawing), The Artist, Scorsese’s Hugo (which I am yet to see).

He also did one Observer-related post, which Fringe fans should see.

Two Movies – “Agent Vinod” and “Dookudu”

I watched both Agent Vinod and Dookudu in the recent past. The former was seen on opening day in the theatre, whereas the latter was on DVD. I posted a bunch of tweets about them, thought I would summarise them here.

Agent Vinod from director Sriram Raghavan intended to be a globetrotting spy/adventure thriller. I thought it was well shot (the director of photography is C. K. Muraleedharan, who shot the director’s earlier Johnny Gaddaar) and stylish. However, I wasn’t as entertained by it as I’d hoped – the movie was disappointing not because it was incompetent, but I think they tried cramming too much stuff in. The plot was needlessly dragged out (it’s essentially a lot of people following what seems to be a MacGuffin initially, and then the movie turns into a more conventional action-thriller) and I felt they set scenes in various locations (Latvia, Somalia, Russia, etc) just because they had the budget for it. Sometimes felt like 2 movies put together. There was one ‘long take’ sequence which was very nicely done, shaky cam in some action scenes was distracting. If it was trimmed down and if the central character was more interesting, it could have actually become a nice franchise. But I’d say it was an interesting letdown. 6/10

That’s the censorship certificate for the movie. I posted one for Businessman earlier – and like that one, I found the description funny – “Deleted lovemaking sound in the background (replaced with other sound)”.

Dookudu was a huge hit for its star Mahesh Babu, and is a movie that combines action, sentimental drama and comedy all in one package. If you know what you are getting into, and don’t expect anything even remotely resembling reality, you will have a lot of fun with this movie. Somehow, despite being almost 3 hours long, the movie worked, I thought it was very entertaining. The character of “Cool Babu” was… cool, and there were some great one-liners and very funny lines in the movie (“no one can scratch me”). One rooftop fight sequence in the movie was filmed opposite Inorbit mall, near Durgam Cheruvu. 7/10

Two Songs, and a trailer for a Trailer

Apparently, the Indian release of Joss Whedon’s The Avengers is going to have a Hindi song, performed by the band Agnee. This is called “Hello Andheron” and it’s pretty nice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sobFsj0at0I

I have been following Matthew Inman’s site The Oatmeal for quite a while now. The latest entry there is a sing-along video for a song called “The Motherfucking Pterodactyl”, presented by him and Sarah Donner. There’s more info on this page (you can download the MP3 too).

In a short while, the trailer for the upcoming Total Recall, starring Colin Farrell and directed by Len Wiseman would come online. A couple of days back though, we had the below trailer for the trailer –

Links

I was reading about a “Split Focus Diopter” on this Wikipedia article. This allows one to have a shot with both an area in the foreground as well as one in the background in focus. I’d heard about this in John Carpenter’s audio commentary for his The Thing (1982). It’s used in Brian DePalma’s Blow Out, and in The Divide from Xavier Gens. I think some episodes of the TV show Sherlock also use this.
Ryan Brenizer’s Review of the Canon 5D Mark III – A Nikon user’s review of Canon’s new camera.
Interview with the DP of “Like Crazy” – Like Crazy is a movie that was shot on a Canon EOS 7D, there’s an insightful audio interview with the cinematographer of that movie, on lessons learnt in shooting a movie with a DSLR.
Film vs. Digital – Interesting article.
In this image, someone has worked out the entire plot of Prometheus from the trailers released so far. I seriously hope this won’t be all there is to the movie!
I found this image pretty funny.
A wonderful piece of digital art – Andrew Scott as Moriarity from Sherlock by harbek on deviantART.
April Fool’s Jokes – Gmail Tap, Google Chrome Multitask Mode, The Criterion Collection releasing Kindergarten Cop on DVD/Bluray (did the guys at Fake Criterions know about this?).
Randomly visited PlanetQuake after a long time, and came across this link to a very unique looking Quake III Arena Deathmatch Map – Lun3DM5, a Doom-inspired one – Lun3DM3, and this presentation linked from PlanetDoom.

Sickipediabot Tweets

A collection of tweets from @sickipediabot –

April Fool’s Day: The day every newspaper tries to fool readers by sneaking in at least one properly researched, factually correct story.
If I had to describe my mathematical ability in just one word, it would be “fucking awful.”
What a wonderful feeling it is waking up next to a beautiful woman. Oh well, back home to the wife then.
“Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Don’t fuck around, Buzz. Who the hell do you think it is?” “Sorry, Neil.”
I’ve just had a new car horn fitted. It replicates the sound of a gunshot. You should see how fast the fuckers move out the way now.
I committed the perfect crime. I put a mime in an airtight glass box. Nobody suspected a thing.
To cut a long story short, use fewer words.
My grandad asked me what I wanted for my birthday so I told him a ship in a bottle… Shame his hearing is getting bad
I think it would be fantastic to actually see a great white shark before I die. Just not RIGHT before.
My girlfriend just said, “You’re far too vague.” I said, “Well it’s a lot better than being that other thing.”

Collection of Tweets

And finally, we arrive at the collection of tweets over the last couple of weeks.

Tweets 1-Apr-12:

RT @r_nikki #AprilFool :Go into a public toilet cubicle. Melt dark chocolate in your hand. Extend same hand to next cubicle & ask for tissues
RT @AapChutiyeHain waiting for a text from someone you love must feel like the wait for the reply to a leave request email on a sunday evening.
RT @anujgurwara So our financial year begins on #FoolsDay. Think about all the politicians and their scams and it makes so much sense. @roshanabbas
RT @justkalpana First 20 Facebook employees and where they are now http://www.businessinsider.com/facebooks-first-20-employees-where-are-they-now-2012-2 (via a friend on Facebook)
RT @funnyhumour As I sat down next to a bloke he gave me a realy strange look. typical I thought.D bus is empty,yet I still end up sitting next to a nutcase
RT @edgarwright This tweet is not real. April Fools.
RT @zombeaner Who decided that Shriya Saran should be an actress? Can I slap that person?
RT @ManMadeMoon Going to see The Raid tonight. Never been so excited about the prospect of having my arse kicked before!
RT @ManMadeMoon Really enjoyed The Raid. Some bloody marvellous death-dealing!
RT @zombeaner Where is the Funny Names blog when you need it? #DicksonPoon http://pic.twitter.com/RZDnGfGi
@zombeaner Hahaha! Reminds me of the character “Poon Dong” from Crank 2 🙂

Tweets 31-Mar-12:

RT @AdorianDeck KNIFE TO MEET YOU, SIR! http://bit.ly/H72LqS
RT @RGVzoomin “@karthikfou: we in AP have earth hour everyday. Daily 3hrs..”
Charging my camera in preparation for @pknhyd Vol 8! My brother’s presentation is first, so I’ll be there early.
@PrashantKV My brother & I will probably reach by 6 – 6:30 PM types.
Leaving now for @pknhyd Vol 8! All the best Varun for your presentation!
RT @pknhyd Ppl have started coming in already!! 🙂
RT @pknhyd Technical team ready with everything! Lights, camera and sound ready! 🙂 #pknhyd http://pic.twitter.com/d8vYUY7a
Pecha Kucha Night Hyderabad Vol 8 – Great show and I loved Varun’s presentation – very nicely done!
RT @PrashantKV And it all went well! #pknhyd @pknhyd
RT @RGVzoomin On the ocassion of save earth campaign I put all the lights on even the ones I normally don’t put on just to be different
Very well said! RT @vemana Fuck up as much as you want. Its all fun and learning as long as you are alive and kicking
RT @rob_sheridan Holy hell, @trent_reznor was right, The Raid is an INSANE action movie. Like a martial arts Die Hard on steroids. Nicely done @ghuwevans!
Reviews http://bit.ly/HuQQSP
@rajith_23 Khnrrrr
#NowWatching Dario Argento’s “Tenebre” (1982) (Uncut Version)

Tweets 30-Mar-12:

RT @Laugh_Riot How do you get four old ladies to say the F word? Have the fifth one say…. BINGO! RT @Yaminikunjur
RT @Laugh_Riot What’s the best thing about turning 65?No more calls from insurance salesmen.RT @Yaminikunjur
RT @Laugh_Riot An Empty Web Browsing History Is A Sure Sign 0f Guilt..RT @Chhupa_Rustam
RT @kunaldgp: @karthik82 check out this one. Even more hilarious. http://itsasmallweb.wordpress.com/2011/04/18/1-1-ways-to-visualize-lyrics/
Day 60 #Gym
RT @ID_AA_Carmack I’m going to turn on every damn light in protest of Earth Hour. Lighting the darkness is fundamental to humanity’s climb.
RT @ajith27 Today’s edition of the Mint is brought to you by Trollo- the mint with the a**ehole #AakarPatel
RT @mihirfadnavis “Critics are C.h.u.t.i.y.a.s, I’m a R.E.S.P.E.C.T.E.D filmmaker” – Sajid Khan http://bit.ly/H2vCet . I look fwd to reviewing your film, sir.
RT @zombeaner THE RAID inspired numerous “Oh, FUCK”s at the midnight show I attended. Job: Done.
RT @kunaldgp Misheard lyrics from popular songs http://itsasmallweb.wordpress.com/2012/03/29/a-girl-with-colitis-goes-by/ #music
RT @pkedrosky Those were the days when you could travel from Okinawa to Tokyo with a Hattori Hanzō sword as carry-on.
Nice! RT @m_shinoda OK, it’s time. You guys have been so patient, and you deserve a SNEAK PEEK at our new video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ5LpwO-An4&feature=endscreen&NR=1
@m_shinoda Great to see you and Chester trying something different with the vocals here. Can’t wait to hear the full track.
RT @Galactica_gk One year ago, this awesome thing happened: http://timehop.com/m/R4pX
RT @kevinshahinian Great tutorial RT @vincentlaforet: Get your GREEN SCREEN skills on w/ Epic & 5DMKII – free 34 min tutorial http://bit.ly/HnzNCF
RT @zombeaner WATCH THIS & HAVE YOUR MIND BLOWN!! RT @twitchfilm First Trailer For Akshay Kumar’s ROWDY RATHORE Blows The Roof Off! http://bit.ly/H1J5WK
RT @mihirfadnavis Goddamn it. Watched ‘London Paris NY’ last night. MY FACE NOW SPORTS RED BLISTERS THANKS TO ALL THE FACEPALMS.
RT @zombeaner This crazy ass nutball of a movie is now on DVD. Ghost (Hindi): http://bit.ly/HvVFZr via @AddThis
RT @the_moonface I need to invest in whatever company prints those little “Made In China” stickers.
Teach Teach Baby http://bit.ly/GZQ6nA

Tweets 29-Mar-12:

A Catastrophe http://bit.ly/GY9hgi
Successfully managed to break the capo I had for my guitar! Now must buy a new one.
Acoustic Chords for Linkin Park’s “Numb” – http://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/l/linkin_park/numb_acoustic_crd.htm – Em, C, G, D with capo on 2
RT @omgthatspunny Those who jump off a bridge in Paris are in Seine. #punny
RT @thevirdas Some day…hopefully soon. A whole day will go by, where no one tweets me asking if I actually drink orange juice, and on that day..I shall.
Awesome 🙂 RT @achettup @psam WHERE DO YOU BUY YOUR RAHUL DRAVID MEMORABILIA FROM??? WALLMART

Tweets 28-Mar-12:

Can’t wait! RT @m_shinoda First single from new Linkin Park album: “Burn It Down” Coming April 16. #LinkinPark2012 http://viddy.it/HhMIYf
RT @funnyoneliners My neighbor’s dog is so popular that every time he barks, the neighborhood dogs RT him. RT @Thedudish
RT @m_shinoda Who wants some official news on the new single? Stay tuned TOMORROW. #LinkinPark2012
RT @Oatmeal Been catching up on the latest episodes of “People standing outside a farmhouse and arguing”– er, I mean Walking Dead. LITTLE TYPO
#307843 http://bit.ly/GY92El
#307813 http://bit.ly/Hf0daX
I totally tweeted this 1 year ago TH @karthik82 “Manos: The Hands of… http://timehop.com/m/fJFi
From Twitch: DESPITE THE GODS Goes Behind The Scenes Of Jennifer Lynch’s HISSS Debacle: http://twitchfilm.com/news/2012/03/despite-the-gods-goes-behind-the-scenes-of-jennifer-lynchs-hisss-debacle.php
RT @OMGwhatateen Friend: “What are you watching” Me: “Snakes on a plane” Friend: “What’s it about?” Me: “Horses….horses on a boat”
RT @josephradhik Ok byeee tweeple! #tweetslikeaceleb
RT @omgthatspunny If you don’t pay your exorcist, you get repossessed. #punny
Xavier Gens’ “The Divide”. Really want to see it!
The “Don 2” DVD that I ordered from @Flipkart was delivered today.
Don 2 is a 2-disc DVD. Disc 2 has a 40 min making of feature. Other than that there are songs and Talaash trailer, which Disc 1 has already.
Censor certificate on the DVD says “Don 2 with Additional Scene”. Wikipedia lists the runtime as 146 min, and the DVD is 148 min.
I’ll have to watch the “Don 2” DVD to identify the additional scene that’s been included. Will report back once I do.

Tweets 27-Mar-12:

RT @IMDb Happy Birthday, Quentin Tarantino! What’s your favorite Tarantino film? http://imdb.to/GWNHb6 #itstheonethatsaysbadmotherfer
RT @Aashu_Salotra Fool you once, Shame on me; Fool you twice, @AapChutiyeHain
A GUIDE TO PRONOUNCING ACTORS’ NAMES http://bit.ly/GSTijo
I totally tweeted this 1 year ago TH @karthik82 “I’d hate to run up … http://timehop.com/m/bWHA
Reservoir Dogs is awesome as it always has been… give Tarantino his standing ovation!
RT @27bslash6 “They have an army of lawyers & you don’t even own a suit. Just change it to a cat or something. Everyone likes cats.” http://bit.ly/GRkb7D
Inspired by @Galactica_gk I am #NowWatching “Reservoir Dogs”. Awesome movie no matter how many times you see it…

Tweets 26-Mar-12:

RT @edgarwright My friend Brandon is stuck. Can you help? http://www.brandongenerator.com/ Please RT.
RT @trent_reznor If you’re in the mood for an ACTION film, immediately go see The Raid: Redemption. God DAMN.
Fringe S04E12 had a creepy setup, 13 was good, 14 was great… starting 15 now. @Galactica_gk tells me that it’s even more awesome…

Tweets 25-Mar-12:

RT @Galactica_gk Reservoir Dogs is the first masterpiece by Quentin Tarantino. Also has an awesome background score. Loved the song- ‘Stuck in the middle’
RT @Galactica_gk Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, here I am, Stuck in the middle with you -from Reservoir Dogs..
Yesterday caught up with “The Walking Dead”, today it’s “Fringe”. Now on S04E12, will see till S04E15 today.
RT @vemana Indian translation of “Mad Men returns(airs) tonight! ” is “Mad Men will be available on torrents tomorrow morning” 🙂
RT @Veronica OK, that was pretty good. RT @kenyatta: What do they call The Hunger Games in France? Battle Royale with Cheese. #PulpFiction
“Shiitake Happens” – from Fringe S04E11 🙂
RT @This_Is_Hari Agar aap @tatadocomo par vishwas karte hain.. toh kasam USB driver ki – @AapChutiyeHain
I totally tweeted this 1 year ago TH @karthik82 Our old French text … http://timehop.com/m/BgVg
Done with “The Walking Dead”, few more months to go for S03 to begin. Should be awesome, and the prison arc begins.
RT @IIFAUpdates Hitman responsible for death of J Bachchan evaluated as schizophrenic; cannot credibly be traced back to A Bachchan
If you ask me, TV Release Groups did the right thing by switching to the x264 codec for encoding their rips. Quality is superior to Xvid.
I liked South Park S16E02, much better than the first episode of the season. #NowWatching The Walking Dead S02E11

Tweets 24-Mar-12:

RT @Galactica_gk #Drive is a lovely movie with awesome background score.
RT @JonMwords Please keep tweeting the stats from your runs and workouts. I enjoy learning about new and interesting apps to mute and block forever.
RT @headius I learned today that @flipkart, the “Amazon of India”, is MRI+Rails frontend with JRuby+Padrino for the backend. #awesome #rubyconfindia
RT @DanaDanger HTTP response codes for dummies. 50x: we fucked up. 40x: you fucked up. 30x: ask that dude over there. 20x: cool.
RT @IIFAUpdates BREAKING: Private Investigator hired by J Bachchan earlier this month to follow husband A Bachchan killed by sniper in gorilla costume
RT @IIFAUpdates: @ankash1009 Sorry about this, this is just for a committee for Model UN at our university – we didn’t mean to have you killed or anything
RT @omgthatspunny A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: ‘Keep off the Grass.’ #punny
Btw: the last tweet about “Slumdog” director Anurag Kashyap being killed was retweeted by @ankash1009 himself 🙂 now following @IIFAUpdates
RT @IIFAUpdates BREAKING: “Slumdog Mil.” director Anurag Kashyap killed! Deep connection between Bollywood/mafia puts all in danger.
RT @omgthatspunny How do you get holy water? Boil the hell out of it. #punny

Tweets 23-Mar-12:

RT @Galactica_gk Agent Vinod is one of the worst Hindi movies ever made!! It’s the interval. :((
RT @poonamkhatri: @PunsNProses If he’s a washer, he’d be called Detergent Vinod.
RT @PunsNProses If he is in a hurry, he’ll be called Urgent Vinod. #Sorry
RT @Galactica_gk Going for 2 movies back2back: The Hunger games at 5:50 (Finally) and Agent Vinod at 9:45.
RT @josephradhik Photo tip: Stop looking at EXIF Info. It teaches almost nothing but lusting after more gear or making excuses for why you can’t take a shot.
RT @Nokia_Connects 12MP video power – the Nokia N8 http://nokia.ly/GNirQJ ^TH
Catching up on “The Walking Dead”, watched S02E08 and S02E09 yesterday. 4 episodes left to watch for me.
I totally tweeted this 1 year ago TH @karthik82 RT @krishashok: #Fac… http://timehop.com/m/8Ip9
RT @thehorrorchick Out tomorrow- This may be my first 5-star review ever! Raid: Redemption, The (2012) http://bit.ly/yQv7kG @TheRaidUS

Tweets 22-Mar-12:

The Pirate Bay Attacks Censorship With Low Orbit Server Drones http://bit.ly/FPkSlE
Michael Bay responds to fans about the TMNT movie’s alien origin http://bit.ly/GJj4f4
I plan to buy this. RT @rj_white The new Aziz Ansari special. RT @scharpling: Oh, and buy it at http://is.gd/OTjFej. Five bucks.
The Canon EOS 5D Mark III is launched in India. Price is 2.5 lacs INR for body plus 24-105 lens.
RT @funnyoneliners Somewhere, a smart Laser eye surgeon has an office full of brochures that are all slightly out of focus RT @funnyhumour
RT @supaarwoman Chalo yaar sab log ek ek DSLR kharid lo aur apna Photography page banalo facebook pe.
Brilliant stuff! RT @BoingBoing @MouthTapedShut Sony pirates itself with “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” disc http://dlvr.it/1LTczl
RT @TheBookofBatman Every house is built by someone, but the Batman is the builder of the Batcave. (Pennyworth 3:4)

Tweets 21-Mar-12:

DSLR Basics: Stops and Metering http://bit.ly/GFpBWI (by PhotoExtremist)
RT @bobbyllew Top notch Ted Talk on Piracy Maths. Very funny. http://youtu.be/GZadCj8O1-0
RT @rj_white Wild Orkut #socialmovies
The Facebook of Eli #socialmovies
RT @funnyoneliners 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective People 1. Twitter 2. Twitter 3.Twitter 4. Twitter 5. Twitter 6. Twitter 7. Twitter RT @marebytes

Tweets 20-Mar-12:

RT @GDBALA 10 Things to Leave Off Your Résumé http://tinyurl.com/7pl7ccu
RT @m_shinoda #HappyBDayChesterBennington
Day 55 #Gym
RT @josephradhik RT @mehrzee: RT @tyrantasorus: Whats common between tight jeans and cheap hotels? No ballroom. @mehrzee
RT @reiinamoto The genius of Saul Bass. Proves adding shadow and 3D to a logo ALWAYS makes it worse. http://goo.gl/pSdoD
RT @rj_white From James Ellroy’s recent television program: Johnny Stompanato, Lana Turner and a guy on his cell phone in a mirror. http://is.gd/Xg4xaC
RT @RGVzoomin You can be on the right track nd still get hit by a train!
RT @omgthatspunny What does a mermaid wear to math class? An Algae-bra! #punny

Tweets 19-Mar-12:

RT @omgthatspunny What did the buffalo say to his son when he left for college? Bison #punny
RT @rj_white Yesterday, I walked past someone explaining the phrase “Epic fail” to a child who had asked about why it was on the person’s Smurfs t-shirt.
RT @thedavesherrill I’ve noticed girls like to wear shirts that say “I Love Nerds” but never want to hear all 45 ways I would have improved the Watchmen movie.
RT @simonpegg Paul was NOT the third film in the so called ‘Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy’. World’s End will be the final part.

Tweets 18-Mar-12:

RT @planet5D #cinema5D Zeiss 15mm T2.8 – an impressive new lens, but it ’s unaffordable #HDSLRnews http://t.co/oPsiWpig
RT @clientsfh “I understand that you don’t work on weekends, but I have a very special circumstance. I spoke with my…” http://t.co/kwRaAcZc
RT @ilovetypography My next tweet will be profoundly typographic.
RT @ilovetypography The secret to RTs: ‘cats’, ‘sex’, & ‘free fonts’ — working on a free font called Sex Cat.
RT @planet5D #planet5D The Canon EOS 5D Mark II mates with a 93 year old view camera #HDSLRnews http://t.co/zPjOELHt
RT @funnyoneliners Looking up “obsolescence” in the Encyclopedia Britannica. RT @davio1962
RT @ravi_mohan A journey of a thousand miles starts with an Amazon order.
RT @PrashantKV The best part of what I do, is what I do!
RT @funnyoneliners The Cop: “How do you explain all the cannabis in your loft?” The Suspect: “Someone must have planted it there.”
RT @predominant “My mom called it Mozzarella Firefox”

And that wraps up this update for now, see you next time.

Items of Interest – 4-Mar-12 to 18-Mar-12

Posted on 18-Mar-12 by Karthik Abhiram

I couldn’t post an “Items of Interest” update last week since the Kahaani and John Carter posts took quite a bit of time to write (and besides, it took me time to get comfortable with the drawing tablet to make that picture of Vidya Balan). So this time you have a double-sized issue.

Before I get to the tweets and other links of interest, allow me to write about two awesome things that were recently unveiled.

Prometheus Trailers

This morning, the full trailer for Prometheus went online, in HD. Take 2 and a half minutes to watch this –

Incredible, right? The video page also includes the plot synopsis –

In the distant future, two superpowers control Earth and fight each other for all the solar system’s natural resources. When one side dispatches a team to a distant planet to terraform it for human colonization, the team discovers an indigenous race of bio-mechanoid killers.

Ridley Scott, director of ‘Alien’ and ‘Blade Runner,’ returns to the genre he helped define. With PROMETHEUS, he creates a groundbreaking mythology, in which a team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a thrilling journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.

Somehow, I think I preferred knowing less about the movie, this explanation of the story somewhat demystifies Prometheus for me. Nonetheless, it’s still a terrific trailer and I can’t wait to see the movie this June, in IMAX 3D. I just hope our censor board guys won’t cut anything from the movie.

There was another trailer that preceded this, which came online yesterday. This post on FirstShowing has it. It’s also great and has some footage which isn’t in this complete trailer. A friend of mine aptly described this as “one big ‘Holy Shit’ moment that is 1:30 long”.

The Raid: Redemption Soundtrack

In my earlier post about the movie The Raid: Redemption, I mentioned that the American release of the movie features a music score by Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park and Joseph Trapanese. At TheRaidSoundtrack.com, one can pre-order the soundtrack album, and one can also listen to five tracks from the album.

The music in the above video is the opening bit from the track “Razors.Out”, which is also the music used in the Red-Band trailer of the movie. The track is by Shinoda with vocals by Chino Moreno. You can listen to it here (that’s a SoundCloud link, you can listen to the other tracks from the sampler too. The track “Drug Lab” is the one used in the most recent official US Trailer).

From the top to the end
You’ve got your razors out
To the end, til you stop
You cut the frames apart

Here are the lyrics to “Razors.Out” (perhaps not 100% accurate).

Two Facebook Statuses

This one from Kartheek P S K –

That sudden sense of kinship I felt when my phone rang to the tune of Hans Zimmer’s “Discombobulate” from Sherlock Holmes in a bus, and ONE person somewhere amidst the crowds snaps around with a glimmer in his eyes… One of Life’s moments… 🙂

and this one, from Vinit R –

…so Hades comes to Zeus and says “Yo bro. Im gonna tell u a joke thts gonna get u KRAKEN”

I liked both, so thought of sharing them.

B&W Shooting Challenge

I was reading an article on Ken Rockwell’s site, called Making Great Photos in Crappy Locations – where he talks about locking yourself up in a bathroom (a literally ‘crappy’ location? Heh heh) and taking pictures –

Many photo classes have an assignment to lock yourself in your bathroom and shoot a whole roll of film. Your first reaction is “this is stupid.” Then things start dawning on you as you start seeing details. Eventually you make so many photos you wish you got to use more film.

That inspired me to try taking some photos under self-imposed constraints. No, I didn’t go into a bathroom, and I didn’t lock myself in – but I took some pictures in my room only, and decided that I’d only use my 50mm f1.8 lens. Till now, I really hadn’t used the “Monochrome” picture style on my camera, so I thought it’d be interesting to strip away colour and then shoot.

I ended up with some pretty interesting photos. Not too dramatic, but not too bad all the same. You can check out the album on Facebook (10 photos).

One of those photos has me holding up two pens, one labelled “Black” and the other labelled “Red”. I tried being clever there, though I’m not sure it comes across effectively!

The above image is one of the discarded photos that I didn’t upload on the ‘official’ set. (sort of like a “deleted scene” on a DVD). Again, this is me trying to be clever. The “on” light on my laptop is green, but you can’t see it since the photo is not in colour! Wow, how dramatic!

Other Links to See

This is a nice blog post about “Less is More”, from Mike Shinoda. He also writes at the end about a kind of extreme example of “Less is More”, with this piece of art.
I’d posted two nice music tracks from Final Doom: Evilution on Facebook – Legion of the Lost and Death’s Bells. I remembered these tracks from my Doom mapping days, so posted them. One of my favourite pieces of music by TeamTNT is the theme from “Bloodlands” – which I couldn’t find on YouTube. You can listen to it on this page (I know, embedded MIDI music is so 1990s, but still).
Interesting article in last week’s Economic Times about Nikon vs Canon and how they’re competing in India.
Wilbur Sargunaraj shows us How to use an Eastern Latrine. Very funny stuff.
Kung Fu Balayya – also very funny video.
Sungha Jung performs Canon Rock – Great Stuff! I guess this is his first electric guitar video.
A friend told me about this song called “Looking Glass” by the band All Hail the Silence. An interesting thing is that you can get this song for free, by tweeting or posting on Facebook about it! Here is the ‘Tweet for a Track’ Page for it. It’s an 8 MB MP3, and a very retro / 80s style piece. As my friend said, it wouldn’t have been out of place in Nicolas Refn’s Drive.
In my review of The Artist, I had commented about the typography in the movie, and I mentioned that someone like Mark Simonson would be able to do a proper analysis of that. Well, a few days later, Mark Simonson did do a post on it from a typography perspective. A very interesting read.
Vincent LaForet’s post about Setting up your Canon HD DSLR for filming video. Unlike the more advanced Canon EOS DSLRs like the 7D and 5D Mark II, my EOS 550D doesn’t allow me to set ISOs like 160, 320, etc. Does anyone know if that’s possible, or do I just go with ISO 200, 400, and so on?

Edible Actors

Sometime back on Twitter, #edibleactors was trending. I found it very funny, so here are some of the names of actors that sound like food items –

Antara Thali, Bruce Chilies, Jackie Chana Masala, Prawn Connery, Cheese Witherspoon, Curry-shma Kapoor, Imran Naan, Milkshake Bachchan, Anuttapam Kher, Curryna Kapoor, Sean Bean, Al Cappuccino, Aamir Corn, Christian Bhel, Rajma Kapoor, Benedict Cucumberbatch, Daniel Breadcliffe, Salmon Khan, Katrina Cafe, Bread Pitt

None of them are my own – they’re the property of whoever tweeted them.

Now, onto the collection of tweets from the past two weeks. I am not re-posting tweets about stuff that I already linked above.

Tweets 18-Mar-12:

RT @mihirfadnavis Just watched ‘Beyond the Black Rainbow’ – a moody ultra trippy film that grabs you by the head & SKULL FUCKS YOU INTO SUBMISSION. Brilliant!
Used Kdenlive to edit a video yesterday. Just trimming and colour correction done but it’s the first video I edited on Linux.
Kdenlive has presets to export video for YouTube at 1080p, 720p, 480p etc. That’s pretty cool. I must try with a bigger project soon.
RT @GDBALA 7 Words That Only Bad Movies Have in Their Titles http://zite.to/wLxiN2
RT @funnyhumour Want an anagram of “Rodeo incidents”? Consider it done.
I totally tweeted this 1 year ago TH @karthik82 ‘Dongala Mutha’ – A … http://timehop.com/m/sK3k
I totally tweeted this 1 year ago TH @karthik82 Going to watch RGV’s… http://timehop.com/m/RS7b
RT @funnyoneliners Being sick can really affect your grades in school. The kid my son cheats off of was out all last week. RT @technopriest5
RT @omgthatspunny Wanna hear a joke about pizza? Nevermind.. its cheesy #punny
RT @timcarvell “One question about your film in which two dozen children murder one another: Do any of them use the F-word? No? Here’s your PG-13, then.”
RT @kruttikaS I draw and I feel okay.
Nagesh Kukunoor’s Hyderabad Blues 1 (http://www.youtube.com/movie/hyderabad-blues) and 2 (http://www.youtube.com/movie/hyderabad-blues-2) are both available on YouTube.
I don’t know whether those videos would be viewable outside of India or not, but sharing them anyway.
RT @Canon_Camera Canon celebrates 25 years of photographic expertise http://ow.ly/9Aycq
Ebook? 🙂 RT @justkalpana note to self: do it right now! “@NiceHappened: Switch off your screens and switch on a book. Do it.”
RT @NiceHappened Shaun Of The Dead. RT @mojorojo: What do you think is the most criminally under-watched film ever?
RT @sickipediabot My friend suggested I should prepare for the brutal lighting storms we’ve been forecast. So I’ve changed my name to “Twice.”

Tweets 17-Mar-12:

@Galactica_gk You asked today why I wasn’t watching Hugo, it’s because I was working on a drawing. Posting it now, I think you’ll like it.
Just got my Vedam DVD that I ordered from @Flipkart.
Finished reading all of “Y: The Last Man”. It was a good series.

Tweets 16-Mar-12:

RT @kruttikaS Brilliant illustration! Sarah and the Seed, a comic by @hey_ryan_a (Ryan Andrews) http://shar.es/pfTHv
RT @Kahaanithefilm Kahaani smashes another record! It’s #12 on IMDB’s Top Rated “Thriller” Titles and going higher!! Thank you ALL! http://fb.me/XxttTuDR
RT @vemana If you are too daft to learn, no amount of ‘experience’ will help you.
RT @FarOutAkhtar Read today: those who are capable of admitting they made a mistake are the ones capable of growth.
RT @sunielwadhwa: @ankash1009 Yes Sir first releasing Mumbai Cutting Then Paanch will keep you posted 🙂
RT @ravsriram Gonna start with #micro this weekend.will b 15th #michaelcrichton #book I ll read.
RT @FarOutAkhtar Baby Falak. RIP. We should all be ashamed to be part of a society in which violence like this is no longer uncommon.
RT @RGVzoomin Today is the 1st day of shooting of the most important film of my career `The attacks of 26/11 `
RT @Kahaanithefilm Hot Running Water =
RT @josephradhik My new weapon of choice. Nex-5N + Voigtlander 35/1.4 Leica M mount. Joy. http://pic.twitter.com/J4AYQS3m
Seeds of Truth http://bit.ly/xXceDc

Tweets 15-Mar-12:

RT @vemana When you are driving on the highway with the sun in your rear view mirror, you are literally leaving the day behind. Quite picturesquely too
RT @krishashok If one is a developer, Stackoverflow is pretty much philosopher, friend, guide, techsupport and a shoulder to cry on
RT @atulkasbekar A chubby colleague of mine insists she’s been doing her ‘GM’ diet for yrs to no avail. Since her GM is ‘Ghee Maida’ its no surprise 😉
RT @MillaJovovich thank you @chrissbrenner 4 this pic me w wearing @LOrealparisusa “telescopic” mascara! my lashes r SICK, right ladies? http://pic.twitter.com/k1i3kAJT
RT @omgthatspunny To write with a broken pencil is pointless. #punny
RT @Canon_Camera How to photograph flowers http://ow.ly/9Ay0M
“Y: The Last Man” – 46/60 done.

Tweets 14-Mar-12:

I’ve pre-ordered the “Don 2” DVD from @Flipkart. A tweet from @FarOutAkhtar indicated that it would be an extended version.
Just bought “Vedam – Movie – DVD” from @flipkart http://bit.ly/w4snim
Here you go – “Vedam” DVD on Flipkart for Rs 155. http://www.flipkart.com/vedam-movie/p/itmd6zcvbkkze7y4 I will go home and place an order.
RT @Galactica_gk Must Read!! Why Hugo wont be released in India Mumbai Mirror http://www.mumbaimirror.com/index.aspx?page=article&sectid=172&contentid=201203142012031403250134047fab3e4
Vedam (2010) appears to be out on DVD/Bluray! Time to buy it, will search on Flipkart & order, if not available will go to a store and buy.
RT @Galactica_gk 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993 751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679821480 Happy Pi Day!!
RT @designersays Have any of you ever gone to the bathroom to do a no. 2 and forgot to bring your phone? I know, boring right?
The Nokia N8 has a close-up mode while recording video – had I known this earlier, my drawing videos would have had better focus!
Lesson learnt – know your tools.
RT @BrettSahuri: @edgarwright You’re a fucked up individual, that’s for sure.
Ram Gopal Varma and Puri Jagannadh are doing a remake of “Businessman” with Abhishek Bachchan. Make of that what you will…
RT @arocks Simple way to make a wireless presenter. Tape off the bottom of a wireless mouse. Works beautifully…
RT @RGVzoomin “@theMadhuShalini: Being selfish is gud..if u urself don’t think abt u urself, then who else will?”
RT @arocks Biggest irony of 2012: Twitter takes more time to load than Facebook
RT @RGVzoomin Finally its confirmed..Me nd puri jagan together are making the remake of the block buster telugu hit `Businessman’ with Abhishek bachchan
“Y: The Last Man” – 32/60 completed.
“Y: The Last Man” – finished reading 25/60 issues. This reminds me of when I was reading “Preacher” in 2005 or 2006.
I get broadband bill notifications to my email from Airtel, Reliance and Idea, though I use none of those services! I ignore those mails.
But I wonder whose bills I am getting 🙂
Reading “Y: The Last Man” by Brian K Vaughan and Pia Guerra. Finished 10 issues out of 60. It’s brilliant stuff so far.

Tweets 13-Mar-12:

RT @FakeCriterions ATTENTION – In April, we will be having anotherFake Criterions Double Fakeoutmonth. What is this? Movies… http://tmblr.co/Zyk–xHwb_OQ
RT @mihirfadnavis NEW POST ON THE BLOG: The 26 other Most Anticipated Films of 2012 – http://bit.ly/w8ecN4
RT @kgrz “sikta” ambigram http://flic.kr/p/bpQuWC
RT @kruttikaS My work got published in @CreativeGaga magazine! Check it out here tweeps! https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3160343242170&set=a.1367598064661.52326.1072957727&type=1&theater #illustration #design #india
RT @ActionChick Oh, yeah! RT @GiddyKipping You know you’re following the right kind of people when your timeline is filled with tweets about Zombies…
RT @Galactica_gk RT @funnyhumour The wife just asked, “What’s that pile of clothes doing on the kitchen floor?” I said, “It’s a dead Jedi.”
RT @AapChutiyeHain Aapchutiyehain presents Captain obvious – http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/bollywood/news-interviews/Im-actually-not-a-celebrity-Omi-Vaidya/articleshow/12232188.cms
What’s in a Name? http://bit.ly/A3wdHG

Tweets 12-Mar-12:

Head, Ribs and Hips part 1 http://bit.ly/zUg69S
Day 50 #Gym
RT @mihirfadnavis The most epically epic thing you’ll read today – Harry Potter vs LOTR: The Final Showdown http://bit.ly/zQNrGa
RT @sarcasticapple What do you get if you cross an octopus with a cow? A stern rebuke from the Research Ethics Committee and an immediate cessation of funding.
RT @mihirfadnavis In case your Monday isn’t fuckall enough, let me remind you that ‘Hugo’ isn’t releasing in India. Cheers.
RT @SrBachchan T 678 – Just finished watching ‘Kahani’ on UFO at home .. Simply superb ! Sujoy, what the heck were you doing making films like ‘Aladin’ !!?
A line of dialogue from a “John Carter” and “Total Recall” mashup would be: “Get your ass to Barsoom” 🙂 I’m going to use that quote soon.
Letters & Stone http://bit.ly/yZP3W9
RT @omgthatspunny I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me. #punny
Lee Bermejo – Before Watchmen http://bit.ly/wScBhv
One year ago, this awesome thing happened: http://timehop.com/m/tEIB
One year ago, this awesome thing happened: http://timehop.com/m/hjdG
Mosquitos to all out and good night.. @AapChutiyeHain

Tweets 11-Mar-12:

Just finished my first digital artwork. Will be posting it online soon. Done with Wacom Bamboo drawing tablet in the GIMP on Ubuntu 11.10.
RT @ankash1009 Vidya is slowly emerging to be atrue successor of Aamir.. a great career is defined by choices one makes &courage to see it through
My friend Raaj Kumar’s portrait of his mother – drawn in 2011 – http://bit.ly/xZycqu
Amble http://bit.ly/yq44Z7 (via FontSquirrel)
RT @josephradhik You have not experienced joy as a photog till you have used a 35/1.4 lens properly. 🙂 Love this focal length and dof combo.

Tweets 10-Mar-12:

Trouble on the Internet http://bit.ly/zGXwaz
RT @Galactica_gk The movie is just awesome. One of the best Hindi movies I’ve see. Awesome acting by Vidya Balan. 9/10. #KahaaniMovie2012
RT @io9 Legendary French artist Moebius, the man who made The Abyss, Alien, and Tron even weirder, is dead at 74 http://on.io9.com/1fc0
RT @planet5D #noFilmSchool: Canon 4K DSLR Announcement Possible at NAB 2012 #HDSLRnews http://bit.ly/xomn1d
Kahaani – Loved it! Intriguing mystery, very nicely made and acted. Ending was great. Read as less about it as you can before seeing it! 9/10
John Carter – Enjoyable movie, little slow in the beginning but I liked second half and ending. Visuals were great, 3D not essential. 7/10
RT @RaaVi #WebDesign | Here is why vim uses the hjkl keys as arrow keys: I was reading about vim the other day … http://bit.ly/zdgf2s via @DZone
RT @sandy_budhiraja “Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.”~Ralph Waldo Emerson #quote
RT @Nokia_Connects The Week in Pictures: 5 inspirational photos from around the world. http://nokia.ly/xH3lvk A new feature on Nokia Connects
Pickup Artist http://bit.ly/A8BQOz

Tweets 9-Mar-12:

RT @Oatmeal Did you hear about the restaurant on the moon? Great food, NO ATMOSPHERE! *ba-dum-kssh*
RT @DamienFahey I was blown away by how realistic the raindrops on the new iPad wallpaper looked until I realized they were actually a Chinese child’s tears
RT @Mr_A36 Mr.A36 is a sucker for typography. Lo♥es Sans-serif esp Helvetica & Myriad typeFaces 🙂
RT @gurpreet_bhatia #mycrazyobsession photography
RT @clientsfh “Please let me know if you do not receive this email.” http://tmblr.co/Zh3FZyHgH8vT
Watched “Critters 4” after many, many years. Nice movie. I used to like this series a lot during school days.

Tweets 8-Mar-12:

RT @fotoconcentrate Photography Is Magic. One word during a special shoot made it clear. Read more and find out why! http://bit.ly/xzy3FX #photography
RT @kalkikanmani Happy holi and happy women’s day. Ladies go out and paint the town red 🙂
RT @zombeaner Saw Hisss on DVD at Walmart. That is exactly where it belongs.
I totally tweeted this 1 year ago TH @Galactica_gk Martin Luther King: … http://timehop.com/m/mrHz
RT @planet5D #planet5D Questions answered for the Canon EOS 5D Mark III + HDMI video #HDSLRnews http://bit.ly/yOdE8A
RT @inflatemouse @oatmeal did your girlfriend make this? http://myfoodlooksfunny.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/funny-food-photos-rooster-sauce-on-everything.jpg
I totally tweeted this 1 year ago TH @karthik82 RT @gkavatar: Martin… http://timehop.com/m/Y4zP

Tweets 7-Mar-12:

RT @Nokia_Connects Nokia 808 PureView: your questions answered (part 2) – http://nokia.ly/zjTCMC
RT @Flipkart Some should answer this question on @Quora : http://www.quora.com/Are-we-missing-a-legal-MP3-download-website-in-India. Afterall, @Flipkart is headquartered in Quoramangala.
RT @DanielCamer “Tell me, I will forget; Show me, I may remember; but involve me and I will understand.” – Ancient Chinese… http://tmblr.co/ZFFgXxHbA4R2
RT @slashfilm Watch director @AndrewStanton’s TED Talk: ‘The Clues To A Great Story’ http://bit.ly/y2bAKn
It would be interesting to see the back of the Indian Censor Certificate for Piranha, detailed description of all the stuff they cut! 🙂
#NowWatching Piranha (2010) – including all the parts I missed when I saw in the theatre 🙂

Tweets 6-Mar-12:

Nokia 808 PureView: your questions answered – http://nokia.ly/xoaAdT
RT @firstshowing Got a second dose of The Raid, so damn good, so frickin’ badass. Gets your adrenaline pumping. Can’t keep recommending it enough!
Awesome!! RT @funnyoneliners I was playing my air guitar and accidentally woke up a mime. RT @luiki89
RT @MariaEolani Better a little fire to warm us, than a great one to burn us.
RT @justkalpana Death by PowerPoint
RT @rob_sheridan Download a PDF of JoyStix Magazine, April 1983 (they have some great tips for that new game Galaga): http://bit.ly/zwk1La -via @lostateminor
RT @designersays ME: You’re like a drug to me. FRIEND: You mean I’m addictive? ME: Please! I mean I can only take you in small doses.
NOT FOR THE FAINT HEARTED! RT @planet5D Fire and Brimstone – one guy’s reaction to the Canon EOS 5D Mark III http://bit.ly/xNm2pt
TV Release Groups Dump Xvid and Enrage the Internet http://bit.ly/xb3M8V
Outerra Engine Makes The Entire Earth Into An Open-World Game, Has A Free Tech Demo http://bit.ly/yirzd3

Tweets 5-Mar-12:

RT @IslamicThinking A friend cannot be considered a friend until he is tested in 3 occasions: in time of need, behind your back, & after your death. (Ali RA)
RT @funnyoneliners Dear Women, We’re not as dumb as you think we are. We’re dumber. Love, Men RT @yoyoha
RT @mihirfadnavis So tired. So much work. What to do ya. #MundaneTweetsFromHotChicks
Tumblr http://bit.ly/y7fFzY
RT @alecbaldwin I’m going to the gym. I’m gonna sit in the parking lot and read the Times. But at least I’m going.
Day 46 #Gym
RT @josephradhik The problem with being a photog in the social media age is appreciation comes very easily. Enough to get a false sense of superiority.
RT @schmmuck In case of earthquake : Please tweet!! DO NOT go to an open area. DO NOT help ur neighbours & coworkers. The internet needs to know FIRST!!
Lytro Light Field Camera: This Is What New Feels Like [Photography] http://bit.ly/A73CY4
London Super Comic Con http://bit.ly/zwxdFI

That stuff I said about the close-up mode on the Nokia N8 – I plan to write a separate post with example images.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Lisbeth’s T-Shirt Drawing

Posted on 17-Mar-12 by Karthik Abhiram

My first attempt at digital art (can be seen in this post) was pretty decent, I’d say, but there was a lot of scope for improvement. Based on a suggestion I got, I tried a different style for my second piece of digital art today.

This is a picture of Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander from the 2011 adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, directed by David Fincher. In the scene where Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) first meets Lisbeth and asks for her help, I loved the t-shirt that she was wearing. So, when looking at my images folder for something to draw, I picked this.

This time, I did three things differently from the earlier piece –

The earlier piece was done on The GIMP in Linux. This time, I did it in Windows, because I actually installed the drivers for the Wacom Bamboo drawing tablet. It makes a huge difference, since without the drivers, the tablet behaves like a mouse, so you don’t actually get the benefit of pressure sensitivity.
I drew this in Photoshop Elements, which I am more comfortable with using, than The GIMP.
Third, I used the reference image as a 70% opaque layer and kept turning it on and off, to draw more accurately. Some might consider this cheating, but then, I didn’t ‘trace’ it all the way through – I only used it in the beginning and later on was looking at the reference image in a different window. Anyway, that’s one of the advantages of doing things digitally, right?

You can click on the drawing to get a larger image (800 px wide). I took an image canvas of size 2000 x 3000 and worked on it.

John Carter 3D

Posted on 12-Mar-12 by Karthik Abhiram

John Carter is an adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars, from Disney Pictures and directed by Andrew Stanton.

I watched the movie in 3D on opening night here at Hyderabad. Having never read the source material, I initially wasn’t too keen on watching the movie. The trailers seemed interesting and I’d read that they’d spent $250 million on making this. But I was worried that it would be a bunch of effects that still managed to be boring.

On the other hand, I’d got some good feedback about the movie from friends, and probably the strongest selling point for me, was that it was directed by Andrew Stanton, a Pixar animation director (Wall-E) making a transition to live action. Another recent example of such a thing was Brad Bird (The Incredibles) who did Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, and I absolutely loved that movie. So, I went ahead and booked my ticket for the 11 PM show.

The movie opens with Edgar Rice Burroughs (Daryl Sabara – I’ll always remember him as Juni Cortez, one of the original Spy Kids) being called in by his uncle’s lawyer. His uncle – John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) – has mysteriously died, and has left some personal effects and instructions for Edgar. Among the items is Carter’s journal, which forms the narrative for the story.

Carter is a soldier with the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. A mysterious medallion transports him to a place called Barsoom – the planet we know as Mars. On Barsoom, due to lower gravity, Carter is sort of like a Superman (who can “leap tall buildings in a single bound”), and he is taken in by the Tharks (a four handed species indigenous to Barsoom).

There is a conflict between the societies of Helium and Zodanga, and the outcome would have implications for all of Barsoom. The titular Princess of Mars (actually Princess of Helium), Dejah Thoris (Lily Collins) is at the center of this conflict – due to diplomatic reasons, her father has promised her hand in marriage to the slimy Zodanga prince Sab Than (300‘s Dominic West – who seems to always play this type of slimy character!).

Once circumstances bring John Carter and Dejah Thoris together, the reluctant Civil War solider realises that he has an important role to play in Barsoom’s fate.

As you can probably make out, there is a lot of meat here (characters, story elements), which necessitates quite a bit of exposition. This made the first half a little sluggish for me but I guess the movie could not have done without that. It was at least more interesting to me than the Economics / Politics stuff in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (which frankly, totally disinterested me whenever that was up on screen).

As John Carter went on, I quite enjoyed it, and it built up to a very satisfying ending. The action scenes were nicely done. There is a tendency for movies to throw in a lot of effects into the mix but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee that the audience will be thrilled. This movie I think didn’t fall into that trap.

Imagination is certainly not in short supply here – while we tend to have a cold, jaded view of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs and the filmmakers have portrayed it as a rich human-like world. The visuals in the movie were great. The director of photography here is Dan Mindel, who also shot J J Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek. In fact, though I watched it in 3D, I felt the extra dimension didn’t actually add anything, the visuals would have worked well enough in 2D. The CGI is well done but at certain points of time, I felt the uncanny valley still was yet to be overcome.

Another J J Abrams / Star Trek ‘crewmember’ returning here is composer Michael Giacchino. The music was nice but not memorable (in my opinion) like Giacchino’s other works.

All said and done, I enjoyed John Carter, and especially by the end I think the movie did capture a sense of wonder. Only, as I mentioned in the beginning, I have no familiarity or affinity towards the source material, so this being my first exposure to this character, I liked the movie but wasn’t necessarily blown away by it.

Rating: 7/10

Additional Notes

When I think of Mars, the first movie that comes to mind is the awesome 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger classic Total Recall, directed by the crazy Dutchman Paul Verhoeven (RoboCop, Basic Instinct). So if there was ever a Total Recall / John Carter mashup, one line from that movie would probably be “Get your ass to Barsoom”!
Another thing that comes to mind when one mentions Mars is the classic game Doom. I wonder what the people of Barsoom would refer to their moons as (was it mentioned in John Carter? I may have missed it). We know the moons as Phobos and Deimos, and I know this because of Doom (I even released a Doom level called “The Other Side of Phobos“).
As far as I can make out, the font used in the posters for John Carter is Akzidenz-Grotesk. This was released in 1896, which is a few years after the events of this movie take place.
And finally, if you want to read the original Edgar Rice Burroughs novel A Princess of Mars, you can do so on Project Gutenberg.

Kahaani

Posted on 12-Mar-12 by Karthik Abhiram

Kahaani is a 2012 thriller from director Sujoy Ghosh. It was released in theatres on 9 March, and I watched it the next day.

If you are going to watch this movie, it’s better to go in knowing as little as possible about the story. Therefore, in my review I’m not going to reveal much more about the plot than what you can already gather from the movie’s trailer.

The movie opens with Vidya Bagchi (Vidya Balan), a pregnant woman, arriving in Kolkata during the Durga Puja festival. She has come here from London. Her taxi driver points out that most people head home, or go to a hotel, on arrival in a city. No one so far has ever asked him to drive them directly to a police station – which is what Vidya does.

Vidya is searching for her husband, Arnab Bagchi. Arnab had come to Kolkata from London on official business a few weeks before. But when all contact is lost with him suddenly, the worried Vidya comes to Kolkata herself to find him. A young police officer Satyoki a.k.a. Rana (Parambrata Chatterjee) helps her in her search for her husband – but it appears that the two are looking for a ghost – Arnab seems to have vanished off the face of the Earth. Just what is going on?

The movie sets up an intriguing mystery and doesn’t let go till the very end, constantly introducing plot turns and keeping the viewer engrossed. The execution is excellent – Vidya Balan carries the film brilliantly and her character is one of the most interesting protagonists I’ve ever seen in a movie. Think back – how many movies can you name which feature a pregnant woman as the heroine?

Not only her, the acting from the rest of the cast is also good. The characters are also interesting and the good guys are likeable. The movie is nicely shot and captures the feel of Kolkata (and of the Durga Puja) well, and when the ending comes and leaves you with your mouth open, you’ll realise that this is a lean and efficient thriller, with no unnecessary scenes. I really liked that the setting and Vidya Balan’s character were all actually integral to the story and not just gimmicks.

The movie features a nice rendition of the song “Ekla Cholo Re” with vocals by Amitabh Bachchan.

When I saw the trailer, I was reminded of Anurag Kashyap’s That Girl in Yellow Boots, since that movie also had a woman searching for someone in an alien city. Both movies seem to have been shot in a handheld, almost vérité style. But then, having watched the Kahaani, I can safely say that this is a totally different beast.

Overall, a very nicely done movie and a must-watch, in theatre.

Rating: 9/10

Further Notes

It’s not too often that you see a Chief Minister thanked in the opening credits of a movie, this one has it.
The movie has some relatively realistic depiction of using computers – unlike other movies where one might find some made-up OS, here it’s Windows XP that is shown, and certain other elements that don’t require you to suspend disbelief too far. Also, realistic use of actual Adobe Photoshop seen!
The photography for the publicity campaign is credited to fashion photographer Dabboo Ratnani.
As I’d mentioned in my review for Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu, the publicity campaign for this movie was handled by the agency Marching Ants. In this instance too, the art director is Raj Khatri who I am following on Facebook and on deviantART, and it was cool to see his name in Kahaani‘s end credits. (poster sample)

My first digital artwork – a drawing of Vidya Balan from this movie

When I installed Ubuntu (as I mentioned in an earlier post) on my computer, I noticed that the System Settings page mentioned configuration options for a Wacom Drawing Tablet. And I happen to own a Wacom Bamboo Fun graphics tablet, which was a gift that I’d never made use of till now.

So I thought I’d use this as an excuse to draw something based on this movie, and I did. Below is the result – perhaps not that great but I think it’s decent for a first attempt.

I did this one using the GIMP. And as is usual for me, I used a screenshot from the trailer as a reference image. Below is the way that I did it – had the reference screenshot open and then painted with the tablet on a blank file.

It was not that easy to do, I still need to get comfortable with drawing this way. The GIMP seemed to have limited options for altering the brush sensitivity etc (or maybe I didn’t explore enough). I will try installing the tablet on Windows and use it in Photoshop next. Digital art should be something interesting to try out!

Items of Interest – 27-Feb-12 to 4-Mar-12

Posted on 4-Mar-12 by Karthik Abhiram

As usual, here is a rundown of interesting things that happened in the past week. This week saw the announcement of two cameras, I shared TED talks from two speakers, and there were a couple of other items of interest. Here you go –

Announced: the Nokia 808 PureView

On 27-Feb-12 at Barcelona, Nokia announced their upcoming device – the Nokia 808 PureView. This to me is a camera which just happens to have a smartphone tacked on to it! The reason I say this, is that the PureView has a camera with a 41 megapixel sensor.

Yes, you read that correctly, 41 megapixels. Of course, just having a larger number of megapixels doesn’t necessarily mean you get a better picture, and the engineers at Nokia know this. So is this just marketing fluff or is there something actually remarkable about this?

I would go with the latter – the camera on this smartphone has a larger sensor than the one in the Nokia N8 (my current phone, and in terms of image quality from a smartphone camera, the N8 is by some accounts, the best). So, the detail it captures is indeed more than any smartphone camera around.

The sensor can capture 7728 x 5368 pixels of information. If you shoot a picture in 4:3 mode, then the image dimensions would be 7152 x 5368 (38 megapixels), and in 16:9 mode, you get a 7728 x 4354 (34 megapixels) image. Since the camera is capturing a lot of information, it would perform very well in low light, zooming would still produce very clear images, and when scaled down, the images would have excellent detail. The larger sensor would allow it to produce excellent video (1080p) too.

The phone runs the Nokia Belle OS (same as the N8) – since apparently, that can handle the hardware required to process this huge amount of image information.

The phone would be available towards the end of March and in India, it would cost around Rs 35,000. So far I have been very happy with my Nokia N8 and have not thought of upgrading my phone. But the Nokia 808 PureView is certainly tempting! I will definitely consider buying it.

When I told my friends this, some thought I would ditch my DSLR – I would never think of doing that, since a smartphone camera cannot replace a DSLR. But in my opinion, it’s great to have a good camera on your phone, since you’ll be carrying your phone almost everywhere, and in situations where you may not have a bigger camera with you (check this Facebook album for example – these photos were taken by me with my N8 at a get-together at office where I didn’t have my DSLR).

See the following links for more information –

Nokia Conversations Article
Nokia 808 PureView Whitepaper (593 KB PDF File) – I highly recommended you download this, if you want to understand this technology better.
Nokia 808 Test Shots (31 MB ZIP File) – Sample images! These are apparently unretouched images straight from the camera, shot at the huge 38 or 34 megapixel resolutions. There are only 3 images inside the ZIP, each being around 10 MB in size. They’re all shot in good light (apparently by a pro photographer). If you zoom in all the way, the quality is amazing. The detail is great and since the sensor size is larger, you can get a better shallow depth of field effect that you can get with the N8.
Gizmodo Article – If you don’t want to download the 31 MB archive, you can see smaller versions of the sample images on this article.

I would love to have a camera like this to complement my DSLR. You’ll notice, that I am only talking about the camera on this phone – a phone to me in most cases is a necessary evil. One can take for granted that the 808 would do nicely in allowing you to make calls and send messages. And the OS is no different from what I am using now – it’s only Facebook and Twitter that I access from my phone, and I sometimes view my Gmail on it. Otherwise I don’t use other apps. That’s why, if at all I am going to upgrade my phone, this is the one I would get.

Announced: the Canon EOS 5D Mark III

On 2-Mar-12, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its EOS system, Canon announced it’s upcoming DSLR – the Canon EOS 5D Mark III.

This is the successor to the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, which was introduced in 2008 and was considered a game-changing piece of equipment. The Mark II is used by professionals all around the world and it has been used to shoot movies (our own Ram Gopal Varma has made two movies with it – Dongala Mutha and Not a Love Story), music videos and TV shows.

The 5D Mark III is a 22 megapixel full-frame camera and like it’s predecessor, it can do 1080p video (perhaps in the future we will see a DSLR that can shoot 4K video). Because of its large sensor, the video is very film-like. There are improvements in the focusing system, and there are improvements in video (technology borrowed from the 1D X) that will aid pro cinematographers.

It’ll be available in April it seems, and will cost $3499 for the body only, and with the EF 24-105mm f4 L lens, it’ll cost $4299.

If I were to upgrade to a full-frame DSLR, this is the camera I’d like to own. So, as I said on Facebook, if someone would like to rob a bank and then buy me this camera, please let me know. I will give you my address. My birthday is on May 15. Just saying.

I wouldn’t mind if you get me a Nikon D800 either, but I can’t use my 50mm f1.8 II lens with that. So I’d stick with Canon!

Check out the following links for more info –

DPReview’s 9-Page Hands-on Preview – Detailed description of the features and comparison with peer cameras.
Ken Rockwell’s Review – He calls it like it is, so you can trust his opinion that the 5D Mark III is the best DSLR made by Canon.
Vincent LaForet’s Thoughts – LaForet was the one who shot “Reverie” (the first short to be filmed with a 5D Mark II) many years ago, and these are his views on the camera.
Jeff Ascough’s Review – Less technical and more on the features.
Two other links I came across through Twitter – Prolost “Why I bought a 5D Mark III” and DigitalFilm.tv’s article.

TED Talks of Note

There were a few TED Talks that I came across and shared this week. The first out of these is from the future – Peter Weyland’s TED Talk on “I will Change the World” from TED 2023.

Interesting, right? This is actually clever marketing for the upcoming Ridley Scott movie Prometheus, and features Guy Pearce playing the character Peter Weyland.

As much as Ridley Scott & Co. have been denying that Prometheus is a direct prequel to Alien, there is quite a bit of evidence to prove otherwise. The ‘evil corporation’ in the Alien movies is called Weyland-Yutani, and Peter Weyland is obviously linked to it.

This video was directed by Luke Scott (Ridley’s son) and written by Damon Lindelof (more info). It’s very well done, and one can make some interesting observations from this video –

At around 00:50, a tweet is visible –

Where’s Weyland going with this? Thought fire was for all mankind. He’s probably franchised using it now. #TED http://bit.ly/tgwQvj

Typing in the link will take you to the Prometheus Trailers page on Apple.com.

This tells us two things – one, that Twitter will still be around in 2023, and so will the URL shortener bit.ly. When I compile this list of tweets each week, I always think, what if either bit.ly or Twitter’s own URL shortener t.co cease to exist? A whole bunch of links would stop working (“as if a million voices were suddenly silenced”). Coincidentally, I mentioned this in just the previous “Items of Interest” post.

There is another tweet that you can see earlier on (at around 00:12) –

WOW! This is EPIC!! #TEDlongbeach2023 What has @weylandcorp got up their sleeves this time? The anticipation is killing me.

I had to download the 1080p clip to see this clearly. @weylandcorp on Twitter does not seem to be officially part of the marketing by Twentieth Century Fox for this movie though.

Later on in the video (at around 01:48) there’s another tweet that comes by, but it’s out of focus so I couldn’t make out what it says. Only a few words – “Killer #TED…”, “online collaboration” – are discernible.

Weyland mentions that we now have the ability to create cybernetic individuals who are completely indistinguishable from humans – that is a reference to Michael Fassbender’s character in the movie.

Also, in the Paul W S Anderson movie AVP: Alien vs Predator, Lance Henriksen played the character Charles Bishop Weyland. That movie was set in 2004, so Peter Weyland would be either the son or grandson of the other Weyland. That is, assuming that the Prometheus filmmakers are considering AVP as part of the continuity. They could just be ignoring that AVP ever happened, though.

As I was mentioning to my friend, that is probably a convenient thing for them to do. AVP wasn’t a bad movie in my opinion, but I think it would be better for everyone to ignore what happened in “Gunnison, Colorado” – I’m referring to the second AVP movie, Aliens vs Predator: Requiem which was thoroughly disappointing.

This is like saying that they made only one Matrix movie (as immortalised by this xkcd comic – “Too bad they never made any sequels”), that the Star Wars prequels didn’t exist, and that Indiana Jones was a trilogy (see some of the comments in this Slashdot article). So I’d say “it was interesting to see a crossover between the Alien and Predator franchise, I wonder if they’ll think of making a sequel to it sometime”. (TVTropes calls this Discontinuity)

Weyland mentions M-theory in his talk, which I did not know and looked up on Wikipedia. Apparently it’s a concept to describe what makes up our universe, I couldn’t understand it beyond that.

Another TED Talk you should check out, is the below one, by T Chendil Kumar (a.k.a. CK), given at TEDx Chennai in 2010. This is a talk called “Stand Up, Speak Up and Shut Up (The Art of using Humour in Presentations)” and is really insightful.

You can also watch these two other talks by him – Humour Workshop Dubai, TEDx Dubai “Unleash your Humour Quotient”.

Really brilliant stuff. How I came to share these talks is, CK conducts training sessions at our company. Several years ago I had the pleasure of attending two training sessions by him. Recently, he was in Hyderabad to conduct a program at my office, and I got to meet him. That’s when I came to know that he had spoken at TEDx. I looked up those talks on YouTube, and loved them, so shared them.

Other Links of Interest

Flipkart has launched Flyte – a digital store that offers MP3 downloads of music. It’s really a progressive move, you have a variety of music available at good quality and completely DRM-free. The prices are low too (each song costs around Rs 10).
Panjaa Working Stills – This is an album on Facebook, has around 100 “behind-the-scenes” photos from Panjaa.
If PHP Were British – Fun stuff.
The 84th Academy Awards – I wasn’t too interested in the Oscars this year, since none of the nominated movies really were that appealing to me (not my type). You can have a look at the list of nominees and winners though.

This image (not by me) was shared on Facebook –

I found it really funny – if anyone knows the source, please tell me.

And to conclude this post, here are the tweets from last week:

Tweets 4-Mar-12:

“Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this… http://t.co/4nI5qE5g
RT @omgthatspunny A polar bear, a giraffe and a penguin walk into a bar. The bartender says, “What is this? Some kind of joke?” #punny
RT @mihirfadnavis ‘ ? ‘ wastes lot of time setting up the chars, but the last 10 mins are ball-quivering scary. And surprisingly the acting is quite decent.
RT @chasejarvis What the hell is Sepia? photo knowledge 101 http://bit.ly/xMMV6R #ImpressYourFriends

Tweets 3-Mar-12:

Don 2 DVD is available for pre-order on @Flipkart for Rs 254. It’ll be available late March it seems. http://www.flipkart.com/don-2-movie…
RT @clientsfh Client: These colors don’t look right to me… Me: Really? We’re using colors from the logo. Client: Oh, okay…. http://tmblr.co/Zh3FZyHLvZVK

Tweets 1-Mar-12:

RT @chasejarvis How to become a pro photographer in 5 simple steps (seriously): http://t.co/sZhGtjko
First trailer for Piranha 3DD brings boobs, blood, and the Hoff http://t.co/qAPwPAiI
You Shall Not Piss! http://t.co/6ED43hcP
The end of an era, sort of: http://thepiratebay.se/blog/208 (TPB moves to magnet links exclusively)

Tweets 29-Feb-12:

Day 44 #Gym
RT @R_beccaBlair Whoa, whoa, whoa. February 29th? WTF is this, an alternate universe?
RT @torrentfreak The Pirate Bay, Now Without Torrents http://t.co/U71MUV30
Rage – Excellent action sequences, never boring and acting is good too. Highly Recommended! 8/10
There’s an action scene set in a mall near the end of “Rage” with a fight in a video store – it’s full of PM Ent videos & posters!
RT @GreatDismal I liked it better when I thought Kardashians were one of those prosthetic forehead races on Star Trek.
Man, they certainly don’t make them like they used to – Rage (1995) is a terrific action movie. Saw it many years back, great to see again.
RT @rajturl Feb 29
#NowWatching Rage (1995) starring Gary Daniels, a PM Entertainment Release

Tweets 28-Feb-12:

RT @urbandaily pocket pool – To stick your hand in your pocket and scratch your balls. – http://t.co/rfltPpeZ
RT @sickipediabot Following a sexist joke I made the other day the Feminist Society now has my address. Fortunately none of them can read a map.
Haha 🙂 RT @josephradhik RT @sickipediabot: I’m going to get an Oscar next year for my movie, The Fartist. It’s silent, but deadly.
RT @R_beccaBlair Not the best thing i’ve drawn, but it IS a sketch for #ASketchADay. Megan Fox doodle from Love The Way You Lie vid http://twitpic.com/8pn1r5
RT @mworch That took my brain 20 seconds to process. “@wkerslake: This picture makes my brain hurt: http://bit.ly/yaLBes”
So It Has Come To This http://t.co/X19yAl6G
RT @someecards Sweatshop translation error results in least motivational sports bag on earth. http://t.co/HZr3rffH
RT @clientsfh “When you make a logo, do you design it yourself or do you just find something from the internet that…” http://t.co/7L1sxjpQ
RT @justkalpana No amount of real scientific analysis can beat the drama one anecdotal evidence can create.
Best Picture Winner The Artist Sets New Oscar Records http://t.co/gcEWbPl0
Police Find Apple Branded Stoves In China http://t.co/0sHzPaxU

Tweets 27-Feb-12:

I Like http://t.co/oTlKFwXn
RT @louisck Starting production on Season 3 of LOUIE this week. Today, making music with @mattkilmer and the boys. tomorrow, filming.
RT @kunaldgp Ever wondered what’s inside the envelopes? http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/explainer/2012/02/what_s_inside_the_oscar_envelopes_.html #oscars

The Raid: Redemption

Posted on 27-Feb-12 by Karthik Abhiram

In the previous post, I mentioned that I did a new drawing. Well, this is it – it’s a drawing based on a movie called The Raid. You can click on any of the images in this post to see a larger version.

The Raid is an Indonesian martial arts / action movie, written and directed by Gareth Evans. It is about a SWAT Team that enters a building to capture a drug lord. But once inside, the team find themselves trapped – and the crime boss has given free reign to all the thugs and gangsters inside the building to kill the cops. The cops must fight to survive.

The movie stars Iko Uwais, the lead from Gareth Evans’ earlier film Merantau, and for the US release of the movie, it has a music score by Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park and Joe Trapanese.

Everything I have seen (trailers) and read about the movie indicate that it is going to be an amazing 100 minutes full of violent action and incredible fight choreography.

That is what inspired me to make a drawing of this movie. As with many of my other drawings, it is based on screenshots from the trailers. It was done in pencil on my A5-size sketchbook (pencil mostly, the blood splats were done with a red gel pen), scanned and then coloured in Photoshop Elements.

Below are a couple of “behind the scenes” images of the drawing. First is the original scan without the digital edits –

And here is a photo of the sketchbook along with the pencils and the pen used to draw it –

The drawing didn’t take me all that long to do – probably around 30-45 minutes to draw, and editing may be another half an hour.

Those of you who are following me on Facebook and Twitter would have seen me sharing links about this movie for the past two or three months.

It all started with this incredible (red-band US) trailer –

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWlmhMSnVdM

I was hooked the moment I saw this. Fast, furious violent action, awesome music track by Mike Shinoda and Joe Trapanese (I downloaded the clip from YouTube, converted it into an MP3 file and have it on my phone for listening whenever I want).

This is what led me to follow articles about it. Reviewers who have seen this movie screened at film festivals have written that it really does live up to the hype and that the action scenes are really as good as they seem to be, from the trailers.

A couple of days back, the US trailer showed up (the movie will be released on March 23 in the US, with the title of The Raid: Redemption). This one has some new footage and a different music track.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0hSL3a_kaw

There is also an Indonesian Trailer (which is basically the same as the US version, but with a different music score and a few extra seconds at the end).

Apparently, there is a sequel to The Raid being made, and that will be called Berandal (Indonesian word for thug). However, that will be released in the US as The Raid: Retaliation, and there will be a third film too in the future (what will that be called, I wonder – The Raid: Retribution?).

All this is well and good, but after seeing all this awesome stuff from the movie, I was wondering whether we in India will get to see it on a big screen. After all, the powers that be DID release the following films in theatres in India – Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, Josh Trank’s Chronicle, J J Abrams’ Super 8. But on the other hand, David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was denied a release due to censorship issues.

Martial arts / action movies shouldn’t be tough to sell in India, and The Raid does not seem to have nudity in it (which is a problem for our censors). Violence is OK – I remember that scenes of throat slashing were cut out from Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, but martial arts stuff should pass through I guess.

Rather than just take a guess, I tweeted Sony Classics about it –

@sonyclassics Any chance that we’ll get to see “The Raid” in India, in it’s uncut and subtitled version? Keeping my fingers crossed!

— Karthik Abhiram (@karthik82) February 24, 2012

One person retweeted this, mentioning Gareth Evans and Merantau Films as well –

Cc @ghuwevans @THERAIDMOVIE RT @karthik82: @sonyclassics Any chance that we’ll get to see “The (cont) tl.gd/g3b1h0

— Medy MA Yudhapradja (@medyudhapradja) February 24, 2012

And then imagine my surprise, when I actually got a reply on that tweet from Merantau Films –

Yes,hopefully ^^ @karthik82 Any chance that we’ll get to see #TheRaid in India?

— Merantau Films (@THERAIDMOVIE) February 24, 2012

That’s pretty awesome isn’t it? Another person on Twitter tells me about the Indian distributor for The Raid –

@karthik82 pls check @multivisionfilm I believe it’s India’s distributor for #theraid

— Muhammad Syukri (@mad_sioux) February 24, 2012

If they do in fact release the movie here, it’ll be great. I just hope they don’t make too many cuts, and that they don’t dub the voices in an Indianised English accent (like what has been done in the past for TV versions of Asian movies).

If the film doesn’t get released here then we have to purchase it on DVD – the Indonesian DVD it seems will have both the Mike Shinoda music score as well as the original music track from the Indonesian release.

There are a couple of articles I read yesterday about the title. First is an article from TwitchFilm, and the second is a post from the horse’s mouth – from Gareth Evans’ blog.

It seems that the title The Raid wasn’t available for them to use in the US, so that’s why they tacked on the Redemption at the end. I guess it makes sense also, since it’d set up a franchise nicely.

(The same could be said for the Vin Diesel movie Pitch Black – which was subsequently marketed as The Chronicles of Riddick: Pitch Black after the release of the sequel.)

As Evans says, perhaps it’s wise not to focus too much on the title, which would appear on screen for maybe five seconds, and better to enjoy the 100 minutes of ass-kicking in the rest of the film!

But the film, it is still the same film we screened at festivals and all I hope is that you all read whatever part of that 5 second titlecard you want to when it pops up on screen, forget the rest and enjoy seeing my good friends beat the shit out of each other for 100 mins.

Here’s the movie’s page on IMDb. The Indonesian title appears to be Serbuan Maut – I wonder what ‘maut’ means – does it mean ‘death’ as it does in Hindi?

So there you have it – I hope I will be posting a review of the movie on my blog at some point of time not too far in the future!

Items of Interest – 20-Feb-12 to 26-Feb-12

Posted on 27-Feb-12 by Karthik Abhiram

My brother visited Srisailam last weekend, and on that trip he shot footage using his phone (Android-based LG Optimus Black). He’s edited that into a nice video, which you can see here –

One of the absolute best articles I read this week was a feature on the opening sequence of David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, at the website Art of the Title (this is a site that features articles about title sequences from movies).

The title sequence for the movie was created by a firm called Blur Studio. The article (written by Lola Landekic) is a very detailed and insightful one, and has interviews with Tim Miller (from Blur), David Fincher and Neil Kellerhouse (who did the publicity designs for the movie).

During David’s visits to the studio we would brace for impact, because he has a reputation for being incredibly picky. The first time I met him, I asked one of his friends, ‘How picky is David?’ And he said, ‘You’ve heard of pixel fuckers? Well David breaks each pixel down to its separate RGB components and fucks them one at a time.’ So there was some fear every time we would send something in, but 99% of the time we were just told to keep going.

This is the article: http://www.artofthetitle.com/2012/02/21/the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo/ – highly, highly recommended reading.

Another insightful article / set of videos I saw this week was the Fstoppers 2011 BTS Contest Winners. Fstoppers is a site featuring behind-the-scenes videos and photography articles. That article features the best videos submitted to their site in 2011, as assessed by a panel of celebrity photo / videographers as judges. Watch all the videos in the post – very nice stuff.

I’ve been promising an article on Pecha Kucha Nights Hyderabad for a while now, but have not got around to writing it yet. Will do it soon and post it. In the mean time, they have announced that Pecha Kucha Night Hyderabad Vol 8 will be on March 31, 2012. You can ‘Like’ their Facebook page to be kept updated.

It has been a few years since I last used any distribution of Linux. Today, I installed Ubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot” on my computer, so that I could use the video editor Kdenlive.

I’ve had my HD Video-capable DSLR, the Canon EOS 550D for almost a year now, but I’ve not done anything significant with video so far. The reason being, Windows Movie Maker (which I use for editing video) doesn’t handle the 1080p clips generated by the camera well at all. Adobe Premiere Elements, which I have on my laptop, also doesn’t handle those clips. A full (and legal) version of Adobe Premiere Pro costs a lot of money.

So I was looking for a free / open source alternative and Kdenlive fit the bill. Since that runs on Linux, I had to get a Linux distribution running on my computer. I chose to install Ubuntu through Wubi so that I could have it done within Windows, and wouldn’t have to mess around with partitioning.

I had to go through some hoops for getting it to work properly though. If you install Kdenlive through the Ubuntu Software Center, it doesn’t work directly, and indicates that there’s a problem with the MLT framework (MLT SDL module not installled or something like that).

It turns out that one has to get the latest version of Kdenlive + dependent packages for this to work, and for that, the following commands must be entered in the terminal –

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sunab/kdenlive-svn
sudo apt-get update

If you install Kdenlive after doing this, you’ll be getting the most up-to-date packages, which should work. I tried just putting together two random clips and exporting as a H264 file, and it worked properly.

These forum posts/pages contain more info: 1, 2, 3.

Having gotten these things out of the way, here now is the collection of tweets from last week. I’ve split them up date-wise, for easy reading.

Tweets 26-Feb-12:

11 Weird and Wonderful Facts About the Oscars http://bit.ly/wi6rwg
Business Casualty http://bit.ly/wLCFMT
Comparing Today’s Computers To 1995’s http://bit.ly/zj7dyi
RT @zombeaner @twitchfilm Power Star Pawan Kalyan Is GABBAR SINGH http://t.co/DQKwQs2S
Ubuntu looks as good as ever 🙂 It’s been quite a few years since I last used Linux. Hoping that kdenlive will let me edit my DSLR footage..
I installed Ubuntu on my laptop (within Windows… thru wubi). Tweeting this from Firefox on Ubuntu. Downloading kdenlive.
The Artist – Liked it a lot, beautifully shot and very charming. Music, acting were great (by the dog too!). 8/10
RT @Galactica_gk The Woman In Black starring Daniel Radcliffe, starts slowly but builds up to a very awesome ending. A well made scary movie. 9/10

Tweets 25-Feb-12:

RT @purisubzi One guy in the bus is complaining to his friend. “Mera ek picture nikaal yaar Facebook se. Mummy dekhlengi toh bura ho jayega. Pleej yaar”
The Dictator, Admiral General Aladeen, responds to being banned from the Oscars! http://t.co/MJ6MxAy8
First set pictures from JJ Abrams’ Star Trek sequel http://t.co/ElnIil7u
Todd Farmer & Patrick Lussier’s Ghost Rider 2 pitch was “too violent?!” http://t.co/4frB1R4i
RT @delhibellyfilm Delhi Belly to be screened at Harvard. http://t.co/9JbULOBK
#307492 http://t.co/lhhxmCM7
RT @pajamajokes We live in a generation where Deleting the History is much more important than creating it.
RT @fstoppers Here are the Fstoppers winning videos: http://fstoppers.com/2011results @chasejarvis @vincentlaforet @scottkelby @stacypearsall
RT @arorakim Just read that Shiv Khera is scheduled to attend the Delhi book fair. Thought of @AapChutiyeHain.
RT @5tu How a classy camera company responds to thoughtful criticism: http://johnbrawley.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/5-things-i-hate-about-you/ (Read the comments) /via @Mitch_Gross @FB_ac
RT @designersays If you want to be a stalker, go to someone’s Facebook wall and click Like on one of their status updates from 3 years ago.
#NowWatching Ghost in the Shell
RT @clientsfh “Complementary colors… they just don’t go well together.” http://t.co/eqVffd3n

Tweets 24-Feb-12:

Gandalf teacher’s stamp is the classiest way to fail students and/or Balrogs [Lord Of The Rings] http://t.co/QRnuMnDc
I totally tweeted this 1 year ago TH @karthik82 RT @MTVIndia: “Be ca… http://t.co/qgvIvWLr
Okay, This New WRATH OF THE TITANS Trailer Is Awesome! http://t.co/SDkwg7wd
Hans Zimmer Talks ‘Dark Knight Rises’ Score, Secrecy and More http://t.co/U8eoRarr
The Best Holiday Party That Never Was [Photoshop] http://bit.ly/wzrAJY
“The Raid” is Rated R for strong, brutal bloody violence throughout, and language! Oh yes!

Tweets 23-Feb-12:

Failbook: The Pre-Natal Period http://t.co/Ua7ibBxE
(via INCIDENTAL COMICS: Draw Like You’ve Never Been… http://t.co/zBbIG4fY
Check out Dolph Lundgren’s action hero name in Battle Of The Damned http://t.co/tmHyqprf
RT @newfylover1 @deemj61 @Speedy0103 This too? (_E=3Dmc2_) Smart ass (_$_) Money out the ass (_?_) Dumb ass (_zzz_)Tired Ass (!)Tight Ass (_x_) Kiss my ass
RT @funnyoneliners Have you hugged an idiot today? Me either, come here! RT @newfylover1
RT @sarahw You know, the mock book cover on the website of JK Rowling’s agent could just stay put through publication. http://t.co/aJrBb5ru
RT @HaaaNaaahh RT @Laughbook: “Your phone’s ringing.” “Yeah, phones do that.”
RT @purisubzi Already 23rd. Already end of February. Tempus fucking fugit.
RT @rajturl utorrent is having a field day. Time rather. Like the millionth update in the last few days!
RT @mihirfadnavis Yes, guys, ‘Moneyball’ has been rated ‘A’ by our esteemed censor board. I think it’s only fair if we rate them ‘A’ as well. A for Assholes.
RT @ankash1009 Gangs of WasseyPur part 1 releases June 29th
Why Boosting Your Camera’s ISO Setting Can Make Your Photos Worse [Video] http://t.co/3XTOLY84
Saif Ali Khan’s Second AGENT VINOD Trailer Punches Evil In The Face! http://t.co/0vxk8iwX

Tweets 22-Feb-12:

Photographer refuses to reveal how she made her baby fly [Photography] http://t.co/UnkfcFWe
What’s going wrong with Blu-ray? http://t.co/vSZeCGjH
VLC 2.0 is great – one thing I’m really appreciating is the improved subtitle rendering… looks a lot more pleasing!
Was that a dream or a nightmare! RT @psam In my dream last night, I hit shift+delete on the entire ‘Downloads’ folder 🙂
Listen to two full albums of Daft Punk songs, remixed as Nintendo soundtracks [Daft Punk] http://t.co/BdGxKMGs
Bigger, Longer, Druggier And More Violent. It’s The Full Trailer For Norway’s FUCK UP. http://t.co/e2J0HYbf
Half-Life Barnacle Ceiling Lamp Really Wants to Kill You In Your Bedroom http://t.co/I2mBJryK
Japanese Haiku. Like Movie Poster Tagline. Only Much Longer. http://t.co/M0jH6zex
Write What You’re Interested In. And Do Your Research http://t.co/FtzCQxiD
(title unknown) http://t.co/ctu4Ih0t
Three Rules for an Intriguing Story http://t.co/0LFNWqHD
And http://t.co/jellW8jC
Star Trek, The Movies http://t.co/6IdgCzWI
The Scale of the Universe 2 Will Blow Your Mind Once Again [Video] http://t.co/c3Irrsun
Blame it on the British http://t.co/K2pv3UHs
This new trailer for Safe starring Jason Statham is just that http://t.co/6ha7VUlq
midmarauder: DRIVE IS OUT TODAY ON DVD !! WISH IT WAS A… http://t.co/Lv6koWJ8

The music in the trailer for Safe is “The Outsider” by A Perfect Circle. That song was used earlier in the trailer for Resident Evil: Afterlife, and the movie itself seems very familiar – as I mentioned on Facebook, didn’t we already see this as Mercury Rising? Also, the other trailer linked to here is that of a Norwegian movie, which I’m interested in seeing just because of the awesome title – Fuck Up.

Tweets 21-Feb-12:

Godzilla vs Hedorah [1971] An email submission from Ian Wells… http://t.co/1LAFnpZW
School of Fail: Advanced Metal Theory 102 http://t.co/OHR9VCNz
Monday Thru Friday: STAWP MAKING MINER GRAMATIKLE ERORS http://t.co/dhaNn7er
Lovely work from illustration student Maike Plenzke in Hamburg,… http://t.co/MBHvpguW
eBooks (by Nishant Choksi) http://t.co/LjrKFGfK
Corman’s World: Exploits Of A Hollywood Rebel review http://t.co/4AEv7pGb
Behold These Lovely HD Reconstructions Of STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE TV Spots!! http://t.co/CyV1yp8F
RT @RobertRdz Calling all filmmakers! EL REY wants you. Stay tuned… (This is gonna be fun)
The System 560: Types of Clients http://t.co/Mz3PMC90
The System 558: Carpe Gadget http://t.co/xxTGANFl
IMPAwards: New poster for Lockout http://bit.ly/ye01WF (Hi-res 1946 x 3000 version available)
Bollywood Does Boney M For AGENT VINOD’s “I’ll Do The Talking” http://t.co/5kjnLfxb
Wonderful stuff… RT @Oatmeal I tried to watch Game of Thrones and this is what happened http://bit.ly/yCuJRb
RT @rob_sheridan The most annoying thing about LinkedIn reminder emails is that they’re apparently not quite annoying enough for me to log in & disable them
Why People Don’t Live Past 114 http://t.co/QJYcEVOZ
Tetris In 140 Bytes http://t.co/iOnWI2z5
Remake of Drive director’s first film Pusher snags a stylish poster http://t.co/sy1cukg2

There’s going to be another remake of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher? I didn’t know that. There’s a Hindi remake which I’ve seen.

Tweets 20-Feb-12:

Top 50 modern day low budget movies http://t.co/fW51ugzW
RT @GDBALA This is the binary message we sent out to aliens 38 years ago http://t.co/tvqTeSgj
Thanks a lot! RT @kunaldgp Call it altruism. I’m promoting @karthik82 ‘s blog http://t.co/M4vfjZBG
Nice!! RT @This_Is_Hari RT @krtgrphr: RT @nayakgirin: One man’s meen is another man’s poisson

Well, I hope you found this stuff interesting. In the next post I will upload a drawing that I did today (what it is, I am keeping under wraps for now).

Interesting thought: Many of the links posted above are shortened versions of shortened URLs (Inception – shortening within shortening)! Twitter’s t.co shortener is wrapping bit.ly links in many instances. If either one of these goes down, it would be unfortunate.

The Artist

Posted on 26-Feb-12 by Karthik Abhiram

I watched the Oscar-nominated movie The Artist yesterday. This is a romantic drama presented in black & white, and as a (mostly) silent film. It is written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius and stars Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo.

It is Hollywood (or rather, Hollywoodland), 1927 – George Valentin (Dujardin) is the star of Kinograph Studios’ silent film productions. After a screening of one of Valentin’s films, the star is signing autographs and getting photographed by the press. A young woman, Peppy Miller (Bejo) bumps into him, and the star poses for a photo with her. This encounter inspires the girl to audition at Kinograph, and she is initially featured as a dancer in one of the films, but soon rises to become a star in her own right.

As years pass, sound films make their appearance, and Kinograph decides to stop production of silent films. They sign on Peppy Miller as their new ‘fresh face’. Valentin though does not believe that sound films have a future. Will his pride lead to his downfall?

It’s always interesting to see this type of “film about the film industry” (the most recent one I saw before this being The Dirty Picture) – a common thread running through them is that one can fall as quickly as one can rise, and that nothing is permanent.

The Artist is a wonderfully well-made movie – the photography, production design, costumes and music all serve to recreate the look and feel of a silent film brilliantly. You’ll notice that it is presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio as opposed to being in widescreen (check this Wikipedia article on the Academy Ratio). The acting is terrific by all, including by a dog who steals the show every time he is on screen! The movie is not 100% silent – as you will see, there are some very clever uses of sound and music.

Apart from the technical aspects, it’s a very charming movie, and if you are watching it, you should enjoy it on a big screen.

Rating: 8/10

Note: As far as I could tell, the typography in the movie is respectful to the period it is set in. Look at the title of the movie, for example. It looks like it really came from an old movie. This use of old-type fonts in a title sequence reminded me of Quentin Tarantino, who used a similar style in Kill Bill Vol 2, and oddly enough, Rob Zombie, whose The Haunted World of El Superbeasto had classic film-inspired titles.

Someone like Mark Simonson would have a field day analysing this movie from a “type” point of view (he’s written a number of very interesting articles on his site about uses of fonts in movies – which are accurate in some instances but not so much in others, like this example from Back to the Future Part III).

Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu

Posted on 26-Feb-12 by Karthik Abhiram

I don’t normally watch romantic comedies, but I saw Shakun Batra’s Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu on opening day (10-Feb-12) with two friends of mine at PVR Cinemas at Chandigarh. I’d started writing this review on the day I was travelling back from Chandigarh to Hyderabad, but didn’t get around to completing it.

The movie is still in theatres, so I am not too late in posting this, I guess! A few days later, and the movie will be out on DVD!

The movie stars Imran Khan as Rahul Kapoor, a 25 year old architect who lives in Las Vegas. His parents (played by Boman Irani and Ratna Pathak Shah) have planned every aspect of his life (career, relationships) – and he has never gone against their wishes. The movie’s plot is put into motion with Rahul losing his job. He starts attending therapy sessions, and at one of these visits, he meets Riana Braganza (Kareena Kapoor).

Riana works as a hair stylist, but she is also out of a job, and has just got out of a relationship. She mistakes Rahul for a stalker sent by her ex-boyfriend. When she realises that she was wrong, she tries to make it up to Rahul and they meet in the evening on Christmas Eve.

Riana is free in all the ways that Rahul is not – and she tries to get Rahul to unwind. As a result, they get totally wasted – and to their horror, realise the next morning that they’ve gotten married to each other at one of those wedding chapels where couples do foolish things like this without thinking.

They decide to get the marriage annulled – but it will take a few days for the paperwork to go through, and in that time, as you’d expect, the two become close to each other. I thought the movie handled the relationship between the two really well. Such movies probably have a tendency to turn into a sappy, sugary love story (then again, since I don’t watch many such movies, I can’t say this as a fact). This one didn’t, it was funny and sweet, and nicely acted. Being only 110 min long it doesn’t overstay its welcome and is easy to watch.

The movie’s songs are by Amit Trivedi and Amitabh Bhattacharya, and they’re good, as is the music score by Amit Trivedi. The movie looked very nice (director of photography is David MacDonald), it looked colourful without being garish and loud.

I had a lot of fun with it – while it’s not absolutely essential that it be watched on a big screen, you’ll be able to enjoy the cinematography and production design better that way. If you’ve not got the chance to see it in the theatre, you can catch it on DVD once it’s out.

Rating: 8/10

Camera Spotting:

Riana presents Rahul with a classic-looking camera in the movie. It looked like a Leica but since I don’t know about older cameras I couldn’t identify it exactly. The camera’s brand was not visible on screen.
Towards the end, Rahul appears to be using a DSLR. Again that appears on screen very briefly and it’s a wide shot so I couldn’t make out what type of camera it was. I’ll look again once the movie is on DVD.
The camera is probably a Canon EOS 5D Mark II. The reason I say this is, I checked out two videos on YouTube after my friend told me about them – apparently, during the filming of the movie, Imran Khan took candid photos of his co-star Kareena Kapoor and had an exhibition of them – Video 1, Video 2.

As evidenced by the red border on the strap, the lack of a popup flash on the camera, and the overall size of the camera, this is a 5D Mark II with an external battery grip. It’s probably the same camera that his character was using at the end of the movie.

The bright poster designs for the movie are done by the firm Marching Ants, and they were designed by Raj Khatri who also did the posters for The Dirty Picture, Players and the upcoming Agent Vinod and Kahaani. You can view his work on deviantART here and connect with him on Facebook here.

KARTHIK82.COM

Karthik Abhiram | Photographer, Artist and Instagrammer from Hyderabad, India

Category Archives: Movies