I think Google Reader is probably on its way of becoming the killer app of Web 2.0 and its is becoming evident. Even the whole issue of GReader’s sharing open-up just shows that people depend on the feed reader from google so much that it has become an indispensable part of their online life.

Each subscriber to Google Reader has a unique public page to share the stuff that they consider share-worthy. That URL was made up of a long long yucky integer[0270205865921283184]. To spice it up, I forwarded a domain, lazybyte.com, to my google reader shared page. I’m not sure if anyone would be interested to see what I’m sharing but its more of a trial exercise.

As it easy to share stuff that you read on Google Reader, its easy for junk to get accumulated on such shared pages but I’m trying to be as diligent as possible. It should be an eclectic collection of blogposts from various sites. And truly, the best thing about lazy byte is that , I don’t own or create any of the posts on this page. Isn’t that a relief ?

Written by a friend’s dad, GC Sarma, these are nuggets of wisdom for the contemporary, information overloaded society.

Pixar’s next production, wall-e, seems exciting. Wall-E is a story of a robot. Written and Directed by Andrew Stanton, the director of Finding Nemo, Wall-E’s trailer is just so nice that it reminds me of Spielberg’s ET. Finding Nemo is my most favorite among Pixar’s flicks.

Pixar owns this site, Buy n Large, a fake site about a robot manufacturing company, possibly the one that creates Wall-E robot.

Summer of 2008 has an interesting line-up of movies at hollywood and Wall-E should be one among the toppers.

Even after KSR failed to capture the magic of Rahman in Godfather aka Varalaru, Rahman plays his keyboard, once more for him.

This one also has Ajith starring in 4 roles. We had enough of Ajith in Varalaru with pathetic dialogue delivery and awfully bad characterization. I wish this one proves to be better than the previous attempt.

P.S – And as you read in the comments, this movie is a hoax and this post, inane !!

Original script wins. Pollathavan too. Except for a bad unrelated title(just to get some more rajinikanth fans to watch it) and some teeny weeny issues in screenplay, Pollathavan is one of the best scripts of the year. Like Gilli, it had a simple so-called-knot and no big missions to complete. Hence the screenplay moves seamlessly. Hats off to Vetrimaran(whoever he is), the director of this film.

The movie makes me believe that first-person narration is the most easy way to grip audience. Kakka Kakka proved it for the first time. And even more, Vetri Maran plays with two first person narratives in this flick. The narration juggles between protagonist and the villain, again seamlessly, in a interesting fashion. Loved every bit of it.

Unassuming cast, actual shooting spots (no sets), down-to-earth slang in dialogues, a well made climax stunt(after a long long time in tamil cinema) are the biggest strengths. Dhanush does a cake-walk. Except for some cliched expressions, Dhanush does a Kathal Konden again.

One of the best films of this year, don’t afford to miss it. Good luck to Vetrimaran !!

Vasant’s latest movie, Satham Podathey was exceptionally bad. Though it had its moments, on a whole it was a huge letdown.

Nitin Sathya did much better in Chennai 600028. Prithiviraj is soon going to be dubbed as the hero for ‘feel good’ movies. Good luck !!

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Jodi No. 1 – Season 2 was dramatic. Simbhu probably got more air-time than anyone in the show. He also added a piece of marketing for his upcoming movie, Kalai. Proved again to be an immatured teenager by cracking constant jokes on the compere. Rumor has it that Divyadarshini is reported to have nightmares about Simbu.

Vijay TV doesn’t sport commercials during these shows. Donno how Rupert Murdoch can run a successful-yet-loss-making unit for so long. With such an elastic budget, they can also afford to throw the entire videos of these shows on You Tube or on Vijay TV itself.

But they have to be appreciated for improving the standard of television shows. And that’s one reason I think, marketers should start advertising on Vijay TV.

On the other hand, Sun TV’s Mastana Mastana was awful. Bad Direction.

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The December ’07 Marghazhi Music Festival is on. As usual, I’m missing it. But just look at this long list of performances by artiste.

Sudha Raghunathan and Sanjay Subramaniam top the numbers of performances with 14 prime-time performances. Nithyashreem, Bombay Jayshree, Unikrishnan, Sikkil Gurucharan, Neyveli Santhanagopalan, O. S. Thiagarajan, Malladi Brothers and others follow with atleast a dozen performances. Imagine the case of attending these artists’ last show for the season. Should be a rough one.

I envy the ones who get to watch a Sanjay Subramaniam show and eat onion rava during the break.

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Ananda Vikatan stopped Sujatha’s hugely popular Katrathum Petrathum, few months back.

Very recently, he started a new section on Kungumam called Sujatha Pathilgal. And it’s a pity that Kungumam still scans its weekly issues for their online presence.

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If we are repeating the same joke of sending Indian movies for Oscar, let’s just send, Chennai 600028 and get over with it. Atleast we can inform the academy that this an romantic/sports genre movie.

Someone needs to tell our Oscar Recommendation Academy not to send some weirdo flicks.

After a long frustating decade of Tamil on the internet, mainstream magazines are starting to use to Unicode fonts instead of propietary fonts. And that’s a great news.

Ananda Vikatan, probably the number 1 magazine of tamil media is now completely on unicode. All you need is a computer with IE/Firefox/Safari installed to read Vikatan. With this change, Vikatan also cleans the clutter of it’s site and sports a cleaner design.

The in-direct benefit for bloggers is that they can now quote(note the point, just quote and not completely copy) vikatan articles on their blogs without having to transform the vikatan font to unicode.

Ofcourse, you need to be a paid user to read the content on vikatan.com but if you are a NRT(yeah NR Tamilian), you should think about paying them $14/year as subscription. But if you are one of those lazybums who wouldn’t want to read tamil, watch tamil videos on kumudam.com.

P.S – This week’s vikatan rumors that Ajit is being approached for Shankar’s Robo. One more reason, to buy Vikatan subscription if you can’t wait until the new is this week or probably the next.

Happened between two of my friends, over the weekend. I was a silent spectator and hence no comments.

Dude 1: (sipping his negramodelo beer) Machan, I know it isn’t simple as it sounds but I don’t think there is god.
Dude 2: Really…screw yourself. There is.
Dude 1: There what, God ?
Dude 2: Yes. Haven’t you felt him when you wrote those exam numbers in oil, behind anjaneyar sannidhi. Nee pinna eppidi 10th pass pannina da, loosu ?
Dude 1: Hee Hee…that was a time, machan. Ok da..prove me and I will accept.
Dude 2: (moving his emptied beer bottle towards my doubting friend and pointing to it) This is god, machan.
Dude 1: (LOLing) Kamedy !! Thats an empty glass bottle with a piece of lime left on the long neck.
Dude 2: Hmm…so you don’t believe it. Is that because you already know how god looks like ? I tell you this god. Why would you not believe it ?
Dude 1: Huh !! Guys get him another beer.
Dude 2: (looking at him deeply) Sir, I asked you a simple question, do you know how Gee-Ohh-Dee looks like. Why don’t you believe this brownish bottle as god.
Dude 1: (heatedly) No. I don’t know.
Dude 2: Then you have to believe me da.
Dude 1: God cannot be like this.
Dude 2: Why do you presume ? So you have already imagined how he looks like but you wouldn’t accept that he is there ?
Dude 1: I think this is illogical conversation.
Dude 2: Really, I don’t think so. I just showed you the almighty God, my friend. I just gave you the biggest spiritual truth.
Dude 1: I don’t believe it.
Dude 2: I don’t care. But question yourself again. Or prove me that this is not god ?
Dude 1: What ? Huh…Why don’t we talk again about how you proposed to Preetha in 9th standard.

I realized only then, half of that authentic mexican restaurant has been staring at our table.

From wikipedia –

A montage sequence is a technique in film editing in which a series of short shots is edited into a sequence to condense narrative. It is usually used to advance the story as a whole (often to suggest the passage of time), rather than to create symbolic meaning as it does in Soviet montage theory. In many cases, a song plays in the background to enhance the mood or reinforce the message being conveyed.

I guess this part of the Wiki entry was written by an Indian – a song plays in the background to enhance the mood or reinforce the message being conveyed. That’s typical bollywood style stuff.

And we have all seen montages before we even realized it as one. An easy example of montage would be Rajinikanth’s transformation from the milkman to a Five Star Hotel owner in Annamalai.

I’ve always loved montages. I don’t know why but I just love them. I even think, in slight extreme that an entire film could be made effectively just through montages. Akira Kurosawa is known for making montages into popular art.

Yesterday, while traveling through the Seattle Tunnel, I was thinking of making a montage of the entire tunnel route. I don’t even have a camera to start with and that’s a different topic. But it led me to think of montages in Tamil cinema. When thinking about montages in kollywood that were made to the level of world cinema, only two of them struck me instantly. And that’s because they were elegantly made. Both of them cannot be called montages theoretically as they don’t help move the plot too much.

The first one is truly world class. Appu Kamal trying to hang himself and Sri Vidya, his mother talking to him at a circus tent. The camera pans across the room and cuts frequently and disolves into close-ups and long shots. It may not be as vivid as I say here but it was a great one.

The second was a shorter one in Priyadarshan’s Snehithiye. I vaguely remember the context but on a dramatic scene, the shot collapses to a different scene where the girl recalls cycling with Jothinka on a lush green park.

Both these scenes had great BGM and was strikingly well made. Mudhal Mariyadhai had some nice montages but can’t recollect any particular one. Should anyone re-collect other nice montages in Tamil cinema, there is a comment box right below.

It’s been raining the whole of the weekend. Was tied to the home, being lazy and watching television for a good portion of this long weekend. Something that I did after a long time.

Its a very bad movie season at Hollywood and Kollywood. Recently I moved to the sitcoms. Completed the third season of Desperate Housewives. Currently watching the first season of NBC’s hit show, Heroes. Also started to watch Friends from it’s first season. I completed a round last year. This is a second trip to the Friend’s galaxy.

By the way, unlike many of the fans, Ross Geller and Phoebe Buffay are my faves.

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Director Vasanth has a cool interview on kumudam.com alongwith Nitin Sathya, the villain of his latest movie, Satham Podathey. Vasanth is one of favorite directors of Kollywood. However, I have to say that he wasn’t so careful on choosing his film subjects. Probably Nerukku Nerr was a start to that carelessness. His next film Rhythm had a great subject but also had a pretty uninspiring script. Hey Nee Romba Azhaga Irukka was a classy film with a great script. I don’t think anyone even cared to watch the film.

Vasanth’s uniqueness is to allow his characters speak their natural language and be themselves. Having introduced some of the movers and shakers of kollywood from Simran to Jyothika to Surya, Vasanth still has very low profile. And that’s probably why he is a misfit to Kollywood.

Am still waiting to watch Satham Podathey hoping its probably one of the better films of what can be called as a continuing diastorous year for kollywood.

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Being on the subject of this year’s best films of kollywood, my list is currently restricted to two films – Chennai 600 028 and ‘Muthazhagu’ fame Paruthi Veeran.

Kamal’s Dasavatharam has all qualities to join the list. Probably Tamil M.A too. I watched the trailer of this Jeeva starrer Tamil M.A and I am already wanting to watch the film.

This year’s biggest let down was undoubtedly, you know what :)

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Watched Sivaji over the weekend for the second time. No word on how the movie fared the second time around.

But here is something that Shankar should do before he starts to make the next hype at the bollywood level, watch just two movies.

a) Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto
b) The Lives Of Others

These are certainly not the only best movies now. But this is what the contemporary cinema has to offer. And creators should atleast watch these movies before they start yapping about their so called tight-scripts.

playing level 2(yeah, still in level 2) of Halo 3. But enjoying the Bungie‘s latest offering.

Who ? What ? When ?

Congrats Susi !!

Pun intended.

New York Times announced yesterday that they are opening up the entire site and will stop charging for premium content/archives.

What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYtimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to gain access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.

“What wasn’t anticipated was the explosion in how much of our traffic would be generated by Google, by Yahoo and some others,” Ms. Schiller said.

Heavy rings hold cigarettes
Up to lips that time forgets
While the hollywood sun sets
Behind your back

And cant the band play on
Just listen, they play my song
Ash to ash
Dust to dust
Fade to black

Fortune, fame
Mirror vain
Gone insane…
But the memory……remains

Nananananana nananada nananananana nanananadana
Nananananana nananada nananananana nanananadana

15/09/2007 Special Programmes

06.30am – 07.00am – Sudha Raghunathan
07.30am – 08.00am – News
08.00am – 08.30am – Interview With Actor Kamalhassan
08.30am – 09.00am – Interview With Maestro Ilayaraja
09.00am – 09.30am – Interview With Director K.Shankar
09.30am – 10.30am – Leoni Pattimandram
10.30am – 01.00pm – Pokkiri Movie 100Th Day Function
01.00pm – 01.30pm – News
01.30pm – 04.30pm – Block Buster Movie “Mozhi”
04.30pm – 05.00pm – Ungal Choice (Dial In) Jeyam Ravi
05.00pm – 05.30pm – Interview With Comedian Vadivel
05.30pm – 07:30pm – Super Hit Movie “Imsai Arasan 23Rd Pulikesi”
07.30pm – 08.00pm – News
08.00pm – 08.30pm – Interview With Actor Surya
08.30pm – 09.00pm – Pudhu Padangal – New Movies Review
09.00pm – 09.30pm – Interview With Actor Vivek
09.30pm – 10.30pm – Mannada Mayilada
10.30pm – 11.00pm – Interview With Director / Actor Cheran
11.00pm – 11.30pm – Magic Show

16/09/2007 Special Programmes

06.30am – 07.00am – Nityashree
07.30am – 08.00am – News
08.00am – 08.30am – Interview With Actress Asin
08.30am – 09.00am – Interview With Actor Vishal
09.00am – 09.30am – Interview With Actress Sneha
09.30am – 10.00am – Interview With Actor Arjun
10.00am – 10.30am – Interview With Actress Sandhya
10.30pm – 11.00pm – Interview With Actor Bharath
11.00am – 11.30am – Logic Illai Magic
11.30pm – Block Buster Movie “Ayudha Ezuthu”
01.00pm – 01.30pm – News
03.00pm – 04.30pm – Chandramuki 100Th Day Function
04.30pm – 07.30pm – Movie “Periyar”
07.30pm – 08.00pm – News
08.00pm – 08.30pm – Mannada Mayilada – Curtain Raiser
08.30pm – 09.30pm – Ellamae Siripputhan
09.30pm – 10.30pm – Comedy Skit By Yuhi Sethu
10.30pm – 11.00pm – Interview With Actor Madhavan.

Keerthi forwardded me this proposed opening schedule of Kalaignar TV. While this is not the finalised schedule for the opening weekend, the who’s who of kollywood can be spotted already and I am skeptical if there will be any entertainment left for the coming days/weeks.

By the way(everyone writes BTW these days so this is just for a change), Kalaignar.tv, KalaignarTV.com, KalaignarTV.in and KalaignarTV.co.in are all already booked by cybersquatters. They are the most obvious names for the Kalaignar TV domain and I dont think the management is making attempts to book them.

Also Raj TV has no news about Kalaignar TV on their site. Makes me think if the media houses in Tamil Nadu are just too engrossed in entertaining people that they forget a huge business market exists for them outside of the country.