I’ve never walked out of a movie hall after a Spielberg flick like this, so untouched. Coming from H.G.Wells novel of the same name, War of the Worlds fails to impress because of it’s loose knitted screenplay and the influence of numerous movies that have stemmed over the years on alien attack. Considered to be the Mother of Alien Attack fiction, this HG Wells book is best read with its context in place than to be seen. Spielberg fails to impress, leaving a die-hard fan think, whether summer blockbusters are made just for seizing the box-office.

We have this husky voice-over of Morgan Freeman, quoting first few lines from the book and after that the camera briefly pans over the post-9/11 skyline hinting us on the social/political metaphors, the movie is set to deliver. When the aliens [not essentially our favored Martians] attack through the tripods [not IPODs], buried under the earth’s crust some million years back, the day on earth is July 4th. As the world slowly succumbs to the alien invasion, a father tries to save his kids from the terror and in the process fights for the survival of human race. All this and more masterfully told by Spielberg from one man’s point of view, just as the original story of HG Wells.

Instead of the thrilling dialogues and clichéd super-hero characters of the Independence Day types, War of the Worlds feature a rather unassuming divorced dad who runs from/after the alien creatures to save his kids. In the process of saving his family, he emerges as an unsung hero by making on-the-fly moral decisions, at times of catastrophe. Ever alien attack movie, including this, doesn’t even outline the reason for their attack, leaving the audience to ponder. As the dock worker, Ray Ferrier [Tom Cruise] tries to ‘baby sit’ his teenage kids over the weekend, he has the slightest clue of what terror is. Even as he looks up to the sky, he is puzzled by the weird movement of leaves moving to the eye of a storm. When he witnesses, the tripods plunging from the earth and breaking buildings with a practiced ease, he knows his kids are in danger. And as the tripods send rays of light to just evaporate people, leaving their clothes flying in air, he knows they are under attack.

With the grey dust on his coats and panic stricken people running on streets, Spielberg subtly reminds of the 9/11 attacks and the makes a statement on how men on earth, wage wars-of-survival at times like these. There are no worlds involved here. Just a single family’s witnessing of the Armageddon and its aftermath is misnamed as War of the Worlds. We see the blood sucking tripods and the creepy creatures called aliens walking into a house to inspect it and how a young girl kid watches it with open jaws. This long sequence has Spielberg’s brilliance except that I wished he never showed the aliens on screen like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 - A Space Odyssey. The family also gets into trouble because an unruly mob attacks them. This is one silent yet powerful sequence displaying the mental attitude of a panic-driven mob.

While there are sensational episodes all over, the movie as a whole fails to impress. The sweet ending framed for the summer blockbuster is a true let down. While I was largely excited by major part of the movie, it fails to deliver in the end. It’s an intelligent move for Spielberg to stick with one man’s point of view in the movie and that by itself should be able to grip the audience. It’s the screenplay that doesn’t allow the audience to cuddle up with the movie. It’s detached at various fronts, especially due to the characterization of Tom Cruise. Also logical errors prevent from getting related to the story.

Tom Cruise is missing while Dakota Fanning as his daughter is impressive. But the impressive of all is the Justin Chatwin as Robbie, a teenaged rebellious son of Tom Cruise. Not to forget the impressive short note of Tim Robbins as the man with the gun. The special effects are as brilliant as any other Spielberg flick and one reason why the movie has to be watched in a big screen. Vivid images of the dead bodies seeping through water, a speeding-burning train, blood sucking of the tripods and ofcouse the human sucked by laser with their clothes flying on air, show the doomsday without any pretensions. John Williams scores the music just like every other Spielberg film and this one has some extraordinary BGMs with a classical tone. This movie is one good example of what digital film-making is capable of. Yet another long timer with Spielberg, Janusz Kaminski’s cinematography scintillates just like Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan.

Though the movie is set to be a summer blockbuster and money spinner at box-office, this isn’t the best of Spielberg. While I am sure, I could identify Spielberg in his next coming films, hugely missing him in this one, will be a long-running nightmare for me. Again, I’ve never walked out of a movie hall after a Spielberg flick like this, so untouched.

kaadhal yaanai varugiraan remo….

I ain’t sure if this is the coolest looking mobile in town, but its the most profitable to own. Amazon allows me to buy this Samsung E315 for $100, with a T-Mobile connection and gives back $200. So I get the phone for no cost and also get an extra $100. Cool. I would probably buy few books and DVDs for that extra money that would come to me through mail after 3-4 months. BTW, I have no idea what I would do the with T-Mobile’s 1000 minutes/month plan with unlimited minutes on weeknights/weekends.

This Samsung E315 has a VGA camera and video recorder with 15 second clips. Also allows me to take profile shots of myself. I was looking out for Nokia 6620 and just because T-Mobile doesn’t offer that in my zipcode, I had to settle with this. On the merry-go-round of my mobile shopping, I bumped upon a common truth, myself. In Asia/India, we have more advanced phones than what’s offered here in US of A.

Now, you guys don’t bounce those comments on the latest cell phones and make me feel more envious !!

Sachein was horrendous. When the movie was announced, from the posters, I sensed that it was a going to be a 3 hour long advertisement like Minsara Kanavu. It ended up just as expected and was also hugely non-interesting. Yet another good example of how a movie can bore you to the core because of bad/no screenplay.

With the screenplay nearly non-existing and the ghost of ‘Khushi’ wavering around, one couldn’t expect much than this. Though the characters talk naturally like the college crowd, it’s the characterisation and the predictable story that’s irritating. The movie seems better as it nears the end, or probably I felt happy as it was about to end. Why whould someone want to direct his debut movie which is a out-right rehash of a earlier movie done by the same star ? That just says how the producer and the director ‘believes’ a tamil movie fan. Forget Johan, the debutant director doing the mistake. Imagine Vijay himself, who wants to do Kushi again. Clearly shows how Vijay cares-a-damn about his audience and his belief that his fan following would make this movie a super-hit.

While Vijay, like other characters in movie, starts artificially, he goes on to carry the light-weight movie upon him to the end. Vijay has a long way to go in acquiring dialogue delivery skills. As he starts to talk at the camera after every 5 minutes, it seems like a movie shot strictly for his fans. I couldn’t believe Harini can act so bad. While she did a good debut in Boys, she is intolerable with her performance. Her inspirations drawn from the well-performed Jyothika hasn’t helped at all. Bipasha Basu could very well stay polluting the bollywood with her vamp looks. The bloated Vadivelu with his paunch and overdone powder makeup, seems out-of-place.

In a movie, where everthing except photography[Jeeva] is overdone, the smoke machine operator walks away with the credit for the ‘best overdone component’ of the movie. As every single character walks into/out-of a room/scene, the smoke seems to follow them sacredly. This starts to irritate right from the first shot when Vijay walks into the airport. With two ghanna songs asking to tap foot, I’m still googling for the BGMs.

Though it was partly my mistake to expect Johan to perform like his father, Mahendran, his story/screenplay has been the biggest villain. Lastly, if only Vijay wants to take over kollywood by talking to the camera and by rehashing his older flicks with newer heroines, he is having a bad dream.

P.S : Johan has a long way to go before he could be compared on the sames lines as his dad. Being an avid Mahendran fan, I only hope Johan ‘delivers’ a good show, next time.

I’ve been lazy, not offlate, for quite sometime. From Shalini’s new kid to Anand’s Silicon India Interview to Srikanth’s Curry Rock[i know you are in India, Sriks], there are a bunch of friends with special occasions and 10 digit numbers that I need to dial-in to get in touch with. That’s my only job this week other than the 8 movies that have arrived from the library today.

Well, yeah!!…there is car search, bellevue strawberry festival, shopping uppu/pulli/perungayam at mayuri, hair cut, guests for lunch on saturday and ofcourse the favorite blogging. All this in less than 48 hrs from now. Gotta go….

From a big Chee!!….. for Boys to a whooping 48/100 for Anniyan from Vikatan thatha, this could be one of the reasons why Shankar was burning his midnight oil for over a year. He should be a happy man now not mention the large integers being added to his fortune.

I haven’t seen Anniyan yet. May not see it until the DVD is out because all the tickets are sold out in Seattle. If only they add one more extra show for movie buffs like me, I can witness Shankar’s grandeur presentation on-screen.

… men get tired of everything, of heaven no less than of hell; and that all history is nothing but a record of the oscillations of the world between these two extremes. An epoch is but a swing of the pendulum; and each generation thinks the world is progressing because it is always moving. But when you are as old as I am; when you have a thousand times wearied of heaven, like myself and the Commander, and a thousand times wearied of hell, as you are wearied now, you will no longer imagine that every swing from heaven to hell is an emancipation, every swing from hell to heaven an evolution. Where you now see reform, progress, fulfilment of upward tendency, continual ascent by Man on the stepping stones of his dead selves to higher things, you will see nothing but an infinite comedy of illusion. You will discover the profound truth of the saying of my friend Koheleth, that there is nothing new under the sun.

- by Geroge Bernard Shaw in one of the best books ever written, Man and Superman. I only wish we had a dozen of GB Shaw’s alive to set the world on a wisdom quest. Though quoted by The Devil in the play, this single quote can balance you from overdosing your ego, whenever you feel accomplished. Adangumaa Kannu !!

When Tamil Nadu government, served an order to cancel the entrance examinations for Medical/Engineering collge seats, I thought of it as a welcoming move. It was certainly one. The idea of taking the entrance exams out, was to help the rural students to be on par with the urban lot who have abundant oppurtunities of getting trained for entrance examinations. This certainly gives an upper hand for the city folks over the rural dudes. The number of Agarwal’s and Subramaniam’s are more in urban areas to teach entrance exams syllabus for a hefty sum of money. So you see this line of TVS scooties and BSA SLRs being parked in KK Nagar even from 4 am in the morning while the rural folks are still busy milking their cows.

But we have to admit, when there are different standards of education system like the CBSE, Matric and State Board in India, it’s tough to decide the right candidates for Medical/Engg colleges without having a common examination. The entrance examination which was in effect was doing this balancing very effectively. However it had these pitfalls of not enough entrance exam training centers for the rural students. What’s welcoming out of this whole hungama, is that the high court, apart from dismissing the govt’s order, has sent out a positive note to come up with a ‘third formula’ of cleansing these differences in education system/entrance examinations which would be help the ovehaul the system in the long run. Atleast, it made me believe that we have a few ‘Rules Ramanujams’, alive and kicking.

TN govt walks away with the cake for bringing this debate to life, High Court gets a applause for streamlining the debate and at the end, I only wish the winners are the students. Not trying to be cliched here but I still strongly believe in the system of government and law in country while I hate censors for films. Kind of double standards but then isn’t this a paradoxical world ?

Ev Head’s new venture on podcasting, Odeo has been on the talk over the blogosohere for sometime now. Curious to see what EV is onto this time and also try my hand on podcasting, I had signed up for their beta version earlier when it was first announced.

Today I recieved the Google type invite for Odeo. When you sign in, you need to download a synchronizer with which you can subscribe to podcasts or create your own. While I subscriebd to some podcasts, I’m contemplating to create a podcast. Probably I will and will also be the only one listening to it. If you are the unlucky joe, you might get to listen my podcast where I drool over the Sonia Agarwal or go gaga over Spielberg’s latest addiction to pre-visualization.

From Odeo’s create podcast page -

Odeo Studio - A browser-based tool that makes it easy to record and publish audio. With the Studio, and a cheap microphone (or even the one built into your laptop), you have everything you need.

Phone Posting - If you can leave a voicemail, you’ll be able to podcast, with Odeo’s phone-posting service-a quick and easy way to put your voice on the web (and in people’s ears).

Feed Creation and Hosting - If you already have audio, and you just want to get it into podcasting form, Odeo provides the turnkey way to do that. Just upload your MP3s, and you’re done.

There is nothing called as free lunch. Odeo too has it’s pricing plans to be able to do podcasts which I thought would be a free service. The price plans aren’t announced yet but sooner the craze catches up, the faster they would release their prices.

Neverthless, the first impression on Odeo is ‘Exciting’. Way to go EV and team !!

For starters - Podcasting is for radio what Blogging was for print media. It’s the name of technology by which you, as an individual, can create radio shows and air them through internet. Now, it won’t be exactly sent through air, but will be dumped into your domain server as an mp3/wma file. Your audience, if you get some, will download these mp3 files or podcasts into their IPOD/mp3 player and listen to it on the go. Podcasts can be like radio shows or comentaries with/without music as the background. Imagine instead of reading through a review of Star Wars, you will actually hear your favorite podcaster talking through it. This adds just another human dimension to it and you don’t need to actually read through the review, like audiobooks. It has it’s own pros/cons and the good news is that, many are still figuring out this animal.

That’s my definition, more on Podcasting in Wikipedia.

Is this another case of scoop-or-spoof like the Mani Ratnam one, which came about few months back ? The fans are equipped with Photoshops and other titles to make dream posters of their superheroes. And we have the vast internet and silly blogs like this to make them popular !!

Thanks to Karthi for forwadding this. Am not sure of the source though.

P.S - Shouldn’t it be ‘Naan, Kadavul’ like Raa Ki Rangarajan’s novel Naan, Krishnadevarayan and Robert Graves book I,Claudius [someone mentioned these during the book tag meme].