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 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.
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!
Thanks to this neat application called Timehop, I’m reminded of tweets and Facebook updates that I posted a year ago.
On this day (6 March), one year ago, I completed and posted this drawing of mine – a stippled portrait of Natalie Portman.
I drew a rough sketch of her in pencil, and then placed dots all over the paper with a pen, and erased the pencil lines. No cheating, I really did make this with dots. You can watch the below “behind-the-scenes” video to see how this was made –
That drawing seems to be the one that got me the most likes and comments on Facebook. I’d also uploaded the image to deviantART, and that was my 100th deviation there. The inspiration for this picture came from a fellow deviant, Angelina Benedetti who is a big Natalie Portman fan.
The keen-eyed among you will notice that the image in this post is of better quality than the one I originally uploaded a year ago. That’s because, the original image was an edited photo taken with my Nokia N8 phone (I didn’t have my scanner at the time). The image in this post is an edited photo taken with my Canon EOS 550D camera. For some reason I never uploaded this improved image anywhere else, so thought I’d post it for the one-year anniversary!
The other drawing is this one, which I call Lord Sheldon –
This one was made later in March, but the quote in this image came from a conversation I had with my cousin in early March 2011.
When I ‘confessed’ to him that I’d watched an inferior quality print of a movie, he told me this. I loved the quote so much, that I’d posted it on Facebook, and later, when I did this drawing of Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory, I put this quote on it, and subsequently turned this into a t-shirt.
This stippled drawing was done at Lamakaan, during a sketching outing. I had my laptop with me and looked up a couple of reference images of Jim Parsons as Sheldon, and drew this. This time, no pencil was used, I directly placed the dots on the paper.
The hand image on Sheldon’s t-shirt is a reference to Fringe. The symbol is the glyph for “S” (“S” for Sheldon).
The next volume of Pecha Kucha Night Hyderabad – Volume 8 – is happening at Lamakaan, Banjara Hills on 31 March 2012. The event starts from 7 PM onwards.
When I tell people about this, they always ask me what this event is all about, and so I thought I would write a post about it.
“Pecha Kucha” is the Japanese term for “chit-chat”. A Pecha Kucha Night (PKN) is a gathering where a group of speakers talk about their work, hobby or passion, in a presentation format known as 20 x 20. This means that each speaker’s presentation must consist of 20 images or slides, each of them being shown for 20 seconds. Therefore, each presentation at a Pecha Kucha Night runs for approximately 7 minutes. (more info: Pecha Kucha Website, Pecha Kucha Article on Wikipedia)
The time limit avoids the “death by PowerPoint” effect – and since each presenter is speaking on something they are really passionate about, the talks are always interesting.
Pecha Kucha Nights happen all around the world. Hyderabad has played host to 7 successful volumes of PKN so far, all of them organised at Lamakaan, the open cultural space at Banjara Hills. (Google Maps page)
I was one of the speakers at Pecha Kucha Night Hyderabad Vol 6, and I attended Vol 7. Here are a few glimpses from those events. Since it’s my blog after all, I fully intend to use this opportunity to highlight my seven minutes of fame all over again!
Pecha Kucha Night Hyderabad Vol 6 – 5-Nov-11
PKN Hyderabad Vol 6 featured 9 speakers, talking about a variety of very interesting subjects. This was my first time at a PKN, and I had earlier expressed my interest to participate. As it turned out, mine was the first presentation that evening. I spoke about “My Movie Fan Artwork”. The organisers had two Canon EOS 5D Mark II cameras set up to film all the talks. Here is the official video of my presentation on YouTube –
I had my camera with me, and I took a bunch of photos at the event. Above is a picture featuring the other speakers at PKN Hyd Vol 6 (photos by me). These are the talks (all YouTube links) –
I had a wonderful time at the event – and I was totally hooked. Therefore, I eagerly awaited the announcement of the next volume.
Pecha Kucha Night Hyderabad Vol 7 – 4-Feb-12
Volume 7 was held last month, again at Lamakaan. I was present this time as an audience member, and an ‘unofficial official photographer’ (I took photos at the event and sent them to the organisers, who uploaded some of them on their album on Facebook, with due credit to me). Above is a look at the speakers who presented at this volume.
There were seven speakers (so the first image in the collage above is of Harish Krishnan, one of the organisers, introducing PKN Hyd Vol 7) and another interesting set of talks. Here are the YouTube links to the talks –
Here are a few more glimpses from the two events I attended so far –
One section of the audience at Vol 6. If you’re taking photos at this event, it’s in low light, so you’ll either need a flash or a good and fast lens. That’s the reason why I took many of my pics with my 50mm f1.8 II lens.
This is an interesting moment that I managed to capture at Vol 6. Anwar Ahmed is speaking, while Viswaprasad Raju draws a sketch of him! See the full size photo to see more detail.
The presenters at Vol 7 got a copy of Viswaprasad Raju’s Travel Sketches calendar.
Apart from the presenters at PKN Hyd, the MCs are also important contributors to the event. Srinidhi Dasaka was the MC for Vol 6, and Dixith PNP was the MC for Vol 7.
If you want to see still more photos, take a look at these two albums on Facebook (my photos) –
If you are interested in participating (either as a presenter, or as an MC), you can send the organisers an email to hydpkn@gmail.com, indicating what you would like to present on. They would then send you further details and a PPT template using which you can create your presentation.
If you’d just like to attend the event as an audience member, all you have to do is come over to Lamakaan – there is no entry fee. It’s advised that one arrives early, since the seating space is limited and these events tend to attract large attendance.
A few concluding notes
The Hyderabad Editions of Pecha Kucha Nights are organised by the people who run Hands Media and 17d North and a few other helping hands. These passionate people must be appreciated, since it’s not an easy task pulling off events like this when you have day jobs.
I didn’t know till I saw the 17d North website that this firm did the branding for the Rubaiyat and Nautanki Gali restaurants! If you’ve been to these places, you know how creative the ambience is. Also, I find the name of the firm interesting – it’s a reference to the latitude at which Hyderabad is located.
Finally, I have to mention and say thanks to Pratyusha J, since it was she who told me about Pecha Kucha to begin with, several months ago!
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).
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!
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.
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.
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.
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:
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
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
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”
I wanted to write something on 29-Feb, since that date doesn’t come along often. Initially was planning to do a drawing or post an update on Pecha Kucha, but couldn’t prepare the content in time. So, instead, I thought I’d post two photos of mine, which are from last year and hence have not seen the light of day on this blog.
This is a photo called Two Buddhas, which I took last year (May 2011 – initial attempts using my Canon EOS 550D). The reason I posted this, is that today, a friend of mine told me that he has created a group called “Laughing Buddha” on Facebook, in which he’ll post a photo of the Laughing Buddha every day. I sent him this pic today and he’s posted it on that group.
The second image is a photo I posted on Facebook sometime back (June 2011). This is a “behind-the-scenes” shot of my brother photographing old currency notes and a watch, which would later become this image.
I’d seen a quote about how cinematographers always take a lot of time to get lighting just right, and when I saw my brother doing the same when taking his photo, I reworded that quote and put it in this image.
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!
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.
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!
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.
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 –
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.
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
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 @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
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
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
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.
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).
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.
