Srini Raghvan, one of the organisers of Silk Screen Festival informs about Asian American Film Festival (called Silk Screen) happening in Pittsburg, two weeks from now. He also adds, celebrating diversity and multi-cultural appreciation through film, the festival will be a week-long event that will showcase over 30 films, filmmakers and actors with origins in India, Japan, China etc. A variety of special events are being planned including a gala Opening Night reception, workshops and panel discussions with prominent Asian filmmakers, actors and producers.

Looking at the film listing, desi film buffs have something interesting to watch. If you are in and around Pittsburg, do take a spin.

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50 - 50 chances here. Pretty easy sometimes but if you haven't seen this carefully when you watched the movie this could be pretty tough. I know this kinda becomes like Google-Da Vinci code contest but play along and let's see where it takes us.

For starters, guess the movie and the sequence. There is a clue available in every(well, mostly) kollywood car quiz. This is important - If you are planning to guess the answer, don't open the comments box and spoil the fun yourself. Once you have guessed go straight ahead and comment it. After all some wrong answers are more fun than the correct ones.

Past Cars - 1, 2 & 3.

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[Click to enlarge]

This is my most favorite photograph of Writer Sujatha. This picture originally appeared on one of his books, Puthiya Pakkangal published by Kumari Pathippagam. I actually re-shot this from the book using a digicam.

Puthiya Pakkangal was published in '93. So this must have been clicked atleast 15-16 years back when Sujatha was still sporting a moustache and picking up grey hairs. Though he wasn't exactly from the middle class even then, this picture somehow profiles a middle-aged, middle class Indian with sharp features. The striped shirt adding to the middle class working man's look.

Simply curious to know if he was actually posing for the flick. Or it could be clicked while he was still thinking how to complete next week's thodarkathai. Photographer isn't credited in the book but he surely did a good job with this photograph. I wish this will be used as the official photograph.

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This one should be pretty easy. Still let's go with it. Guess the movie and the sequence.

Past Cars - 1 & 2.

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Sudish has the uncut version of his interview with Gautam Menon. Gautam Menon talks abuot Vettaiyadu Vilaiyadu, his next flick Silandhi and ofcourse the Kamal.

Something that he said in the interiview intrigues me. Gautam says that he has lost weight recently. Many others including Yuhi Sethu, Ramesh Arvind, KS Ravikumar, Kiran and so on have lost weight while working with Kamal Hassan. Yuhi actually said that it was because Kamal literally forced him to have some healthy food during the shoot of Panchathanthiram that brought down his weight down. Or is it because he is such a tough task master that people are losing weight nervously. I know i'm joking here but that was quite an observation. Agree ?

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Was classy, slick and well executed. Intriguing [sometimes confusing] at the start, it goes on to become a fantastic message movie, something that one wouldn't expect from the Fernando Meirelles, the director of City of God[COG].

If this were to be a blurb on a poster, it would read, John le Carré's Tour-de-force. A perfect thriller told as docu-drama that unfolds completely only as you move to the second half of the movie. Just like City of God, it has super slick editing, great camerawork and interesting screenplay.

With those blue eyes and a verisimilitude visage, Ralph Fiennes cakewalks through the movie. The mummy girl, Rachel actually won an Oscarfor the best supporting actress despite her so-so performance.

Will be a very surprising movie if you haven't been seen the director's previous flick, COG. With the COG baggage, this movie stands good but certainly not as good as COG.

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Though being a silly romantic pot-boiler, Hitch was funny. Give it to Will Smith for making it an enjoyable fare and ofcourse Kevin James[who looks very much like Mr.Incredible] who managed to evoke some laughter. The screenplay couldn't sustain the interest it generated in the first few scenes.

The end seemed to drag like a yash johar flick. And yeah, I have to say I don't think I like Eva Mendes. Netflix it if you are bored on those action films. If only you could wait, some bollywood flick plagiarising the storyline, will be in the making.

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The blog was the perfect bluff for a self-conscious writer like me who yearned for the spotlight and then squinted in its glare.

Blogging had been the ideal run-up to a novel, but it had also become a major distraction. I would sit down to start on my novel only to come up with five different blog entries. I thought of them as a little something-something to whet the palatebecause it was easier, more immediately satisfying, because I could write it, and post it, and people would say nice things about it, and I could go to bed feeling satisfied.

Practically every blogger I know has taken their site down at some point-for personal reasons, for business reasons, for boredom reasons. It's no different from the way we have to turn off our cell phones or stop checking e-mail so that we can actually focus on something.

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This is a similar kollywood car quiz just like the previous one. No changes are made to the image. It's just how the image appears on-screen and that is a clue.

Guess the movie and the sequence.

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Had been to the Seattle Tulip Show[Skagit Valley Festival] on a rainy day, two weeks ago. The muted climate proved worthwhile for photographs, even with a pathetic sony camera. Here are some of them.

Click images to enlarge.

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The sun has just come out for the spring. Gas prices per gallon has just touched $3 in Seattle. If you are planning for a roadtrip, subscribe to the cable, stock tortillas to munch and stay home. Its going to be a pricey summer.

And then there is this site called Gas Buddy to locate cheap gas stations across the nation. Gas-Buddy seems almost like an oxymoron, at this moment.

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Another day of breakthrough for the Business Intelligence community. Cognos, the top notch BI vendor, will release its latest version Cognos 8 BI powered with Google's One Box search. This combined effort would ease the process of delivering answers to on commonly asked business metrics.

What could have been reached only by creating a simple list report or by a complex multi-dimensional cube can now be googled. I mean 'Googled'. What a 'wow' factor is ? Imagine if you are the CFO of an enterprise and you would want the average sales of a particular region compared to the last few years. In the present world, a BI developer would essentially create a report/graph and deploy it over the web. The CFO would have to login into the intranet, run that report and wait for the results to come back. Now all that he would do is to type in the search box is Avg Sales - Seattle compare 2002-2005(or something like that). The result would pop up with a google speed. What would rest on the BI developer would be create the report and create appropriate meta tags to reach to this metric. It would create a world of googleable metrics.

I'm excited more than Cognos itself for such a thought hasn't flashed before. Even if it was flashed it wasn't implemented. It looking forward to work on Cognos geared with Google. This would certainly change the way how enterprises look at BI solutions. And that is a great step towards warehousing the world.

P.S - On a seperate note, Why Microsoft and Oracle want to be your one-stop shop for BI. Also, an interesting interview with Sohaib Abbasi, CEO Informatica.

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There was an interesting discussion[uid/pass] between Jason Calacanis of Weblogs Inc and Alan Meckler of Jupiter Media on today's WSJ.

While Jason was quoting some amazing stats on how people can make money through blogging, Alan was shooting back with some nice theory. I tend to agree with Alan for the most part. Here is what he had to say -

Take MySpace -- I read yesterday in the N.Y. Times that they have 50 million in the community. Every member can launch a blog with little or no difficulty. Blog growth is and will be huge. But again, while a very select few of the blogs will make significant money, most will never be worth anything because their information is worthless and therefore they will garner few monthly page views.

Blogs are fun for someone who wants a pulpit and does not care about making money. Blogs are really the "diaries" of yesteryear. Social historians of the future will have a field day mining blogs for nuggets of the mores of present day civilization. But in terms of making money from blogs, I doubt they will be anything more than an interesting subset of Internet ad revenue.

P.S. Interesting to note that my spell checker does not recognize "blog."

Blogs are really diaries or microcosms of what is happening in millions of ways in daily life -- ranging from special interests to business specialties to whatever. Obviously there is money to be made with blogs, but very, very few will bring in more than a few hundred dollars per year.

I'm shouting here, I agree. I agree.

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Hot Machi Hot. Yet another Tamil group blog on Election '06. Mikeset Munusaamy leads the sarcastic lot. Funny.

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I think we are on the threshold of development. Today, a lot more films are made for an international audience. Technology will play a big role with the growth of the digital medium. Filmmaking will become a lot more personal. It will become like writing. Anybody will be able to make a film - Mani Ratnam

From here.

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the movie and the sequence. Just tweaked the pic a little bit to distract you.

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NBC's Deal or No Deal is probably the most exciting game show ever. It's a no-brainer. No questions to answer, no images to identify and no flash answers. No buzzers too. Well, not exactly. There is a buzzer, the deal or no deal buzzer.

All you have to do is randomly select one out of the 26 cases and open the others to walk away with million dollars. This game show is driving america crazy. And it truly is. The biggest reason for this craziness is the simple rules-of-the-game, like sudoku[complete a board and you go crazy over it]. And ofcourse, the vivacious host. Howie Mandel. Out television hosts can learn how to host a game show effectively from Howie. A huge plus for the show.

This super famous show has a detailed wikipedia page. This is how they explain the game,

Deal or No Deal is a television game show format owned by Dutch-based production company Endemol, known for creating such shows as Big Brother. The basic format of Deal or No Deal consists of a number of cases (usually 26) each containing a different amount of money. Not knowing the sum of money in each case, the contestant picks one case which potentially contains the contestant's prize. They then open the remaining cases, one by one, revealing the money they contained. At predetermined intervals the contestant receives an offer from the bank (run by "The Banker") to purchase the originally chosen case from the contestant, the offer being based on the potential value of the contestant's case. The contestant must then decide whether to take the deal from the bank, or to continue opening briefcases. If they decide not to take the deal and reveal low values then the next bank offer is likely to be higher (as the contestant's case is proven not to contain these low values). Alternatively they risk revealing higher values, lowering future offers from the bank.

The Indian version, Deal Ya No Deal is up on Sony Entertainment. Good they didn't plagiarize this.

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From Pudhupettai, Kokki Kumaru is now online.

Expect some bad graphics which requires you to use the knife, at places. Yeah, that's a clue.

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[Image & Text Source - Kumudam]

How much ever we know about our favorite author, we are never contented with the available information. We always would like to know that extra personal story or scoop of him/her. His favorite books, favorite authors, his childhood, his inspirations and the origin of the creativity that amazes us through his writings. More and more. That's one I reason, I'm very excited, writing this post.

This fortnight's Kumudam Snehidhi has a special interview with Sujatha . Not Mr. Sujatha Rangarajan but the actual Sujatha in his name, his wife. After reading it, one couldn't avoid a feeling that they just had a direct one-on-one chat with Lady Sujatha. She seems to be extremely modest and out-spoken. Who else other than his wife can talk more of this super star of Tamil book industry. Having been around him for 43 years, lady Sujatha lists the best and not-so-best Rangarajan with atmost ease. Though she talks about how he spends money lavishly on books, she saves the best of him to the end of the interview.

Reading the interview was a revelation for me. Truly. Not just because Sujatha is one of my favorite but it subtly shows a peak into a writer's life. I for once thought it was only Charles Dickens who wrote and wrote and wrote spoiling his health and burning midnight oil. Though I'm not comparing Sujatha to Dickens[else the puritans would jump on me fiercely], Sujatha has unconsciously sacrificed a good amount of his life for writing. As lady sujatha says that he was so immersed in his own world of books that they weren't even intimate during the early stages of their mariage life. And after moving to BEL in Bangalore, Sujatha became so busy in his writing world that he wasn't able to spend time with his boys during their childhood.

On the flip side, she calls him a genius for the kind of self-taught he is. Especially in music. She says that Sujatha could play guitar and many musical instruments so well without having taken training for them.

Do take time to read this rather lengthy and interesting interview. You would need a UID/Pass to read Kumudam and its free on registration.

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Looking at the growth of Vikatan.com, 'leading' Tamil weekly Kumudam is also getting a new look. And look whom they hired to do that. Rabi Bernard. Rabi known for his talk show, Naerukku Naerr [the Mudhalvan style] during the yester years of Sun TV, is currently with Jaya TV as a talk show host.

In any case, the deal with Kumudam.com is that, the site will perform like an infotainment site going forward. Instead of being just an online version of Kumudam, the site is expected to have videos, interviews, new clips and so on. And Rabi will be responsible for the packaging the content.

I was always wondering why Kumudam, which was competing with Vikatan offline, never sought to build up it's site to match Vikatan. Now they are planning to overtake Vikatan with this. Competition is fun, for the consumers. Enjoy.

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[Source - Vikatan]

Lingusamy talks to Vikatan on his new venture Bheema, starring Vikram, Trisha. Add Nana Patekar for the spice. Vikatan's article also has a nice picture of Vikram with a gun, sitting on a wall.

Glance the picture above, once more. A tough bike, a tougher guy and a sweet chick. Do you smell something ? Yeah, underworld. Lingusamy says Bheema is based on the Chennai underworld. With AM Ratnam as producer and a technical crew which includes Harris Jayaraj and Rd Rajasekar, Bheema would be a typical lingusamy entertainer.

BTW, do you also see what I see ? Vikram and Trisha as Kamal and Amala.

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With just 100 days of blogging[via], Guy Kawasaki could grasp and convey the I and the My feeling so well. Much much better than what was written here.

In his blogpost that celebrates the completion of 100 blogging days, Kawasaki shares his experience -

2. The more a blogger uses the pronoun “I,” the less he has to say. Many bloggers apparently believe that people not only give a shiitake about everything they say, but that these people are hanging on to every word.

And more -

9 a. I don't get this “exchanging links” thing. IMHO, you should link to a blog if you believe it's good for your readership. The other blogger should link to back your blog if she believes it's good for her readership. In a perfect world, linking is about quality, not reciprocation, with all due respect to Dr. Cialdini. :-)

Are u still thinking, who's Kawasaki ? Go figure.

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Google Calendar was just released[via]. There is no official blogpost from Google on this.

Per Google style, it is still in beta. First impression, very cool. From the UI it seems that going forward, it will be tightly integrated with Gmail.

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Anand Alagappan's short film No Exit is a well made short-film that just walks us through a phone call. It comically captures the credit card service and how one is put through the hardship. Just like how one suffers to cancel the internet service. Anand's movie shot to fame when it was officially selected for 8 film festivals including the one where it was nominated alongwith Mani Ratnam's Kannathil Muthamittal.

Though I was aware of this short film through the Hindu article, it's only when Anand mailed me with the video link, I was able to watch it.

Anand is planning to his next short film this July. And he is on look-out for the cast. If you are interested or if you want to recommend someone, mail Anand at colorsmovie[at]gmail[dot]com. He is looking for the following cast in NY/NJ or Chicago area.

1. Indian Mom [Lates 40's]
2. Indian Dad [Late 40's]
3. Indian Aunt [Late 40's]
4. 15 Indian people for a scene [any age range]
5. Assistant director / Production Assistants

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If you are a blogger, chances of being affected by IOS is one hundred percent. Information Overload Syndrome. I intended to write this as a comical post but didn't want to miss the message(thoda hero!!).

One of the prime reason, to apply brakes to this blog was that I found myself unable to sustain interest in reading a full news article. Inadvertently I was just skimming through the news sources. Astuteness was missing. Usually link bloggers who write several posts linking to various blogs/ news during a single day have written in the past about having time only to skim through news sources. Though this blog isn't a link blog, over the last few years of blogging regularly, I found myself doing this skim stuff.

Bloglines is a necessary devil. The more blogs I subscribed via bloglines, the more time I spent trying to catch up with the un-read stuff. The big pile of unread posts, started to bother me. It's just me. Some of them really have time to read all the blogs. With the assortment of interests that I have, I had to divide time between all of them.

I'm slowing down. Clearing things up. My online reading list has been trimmed to the most important news/blog sources that keep me abreast of happenings. Offline, I've cancelled all the 32 books on queue at the public library. I'm now set out to read the absolutely necessary stuff. And read it with the same interest as before. Currently, I only have April Reader's Digest and a shortstory collection[Story-wallah]. The other things are deferred until I finish these.

Ofcourse this post is highly personal that I needn't have posted it here. I could have saved some information overload on you. Since this addresses one lazy man's struggle of keeping up with information overload, thought someone else might also say, Aamaam paa Aamaam. If you find yourself nodding to that statement, just get the hell out of here and read a rajeshkumar novel.

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[Source - Vikatan]

Only time has to say if there is a histoical value for this picture.

Recently vikatan did a nice job of bringing Vijay and Vikram together, for an interview. Having studied in Loyola, both bragged and bragged about it. Would have been more fun if they only pulled in Vijay's class collegemate at Loyola, Surya.

How I wish they did a Kamal - Rajini interview like this, some 20 years back. By now, that interview would have become a kodambakkam treasure. There must be one. Just that we don't have our hands on it.

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[Source - Hindu]

Writer Indra Parthasarathy's radio interview to Stanford 90.1 FM radio show, It's Different, is available here[Part 1 and 2]. Via RKK.

I wish the interview was Tamil but this is certainly a rare interview. The interviewer has very important questions for I.Pa on his fiction and plays. I.Pa is very spontaneous and spirited as usual. BTW, I.Pa is here in Bay area for a drama workshop. He is also staging a play for Bay Area Tamil Mandram, Ramanuja.

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Google's new enhanced Firefox Toolbar which was released yesterday has this amazing Safe Browsing feature that alarms you when you step into an unsafe webpage. So if you are using this feature, which is enabled by default, you probably should read more.

To enable this Safe Browsing feature, all the URLs you visit is sent to Google to match with the blacklist it maintains. This is not an issue at all. Don't blow your heat here. If you don't want Uncle Google to keep a watch on the URLs you visit, disable this option and peace will be established. Just in case you are fine, just like me, here's another catch which I found while reading the Google Toolbar Privacy Policy. Interesting -

Your copy of Google Toolbar includes a unique application number. When you install Google Toolbar, this number and a message indicating whether the installation succeeded are sent back to Google. Also, when Google Toolbar automatically checks to see if a new version is available, the current version number and the unique application number are sent to Google. The unique application number is required for Google Toolbar to work and cannot be disabled.

Google can now uniquely identify you and your browser with this. Coupled with the Safe Browsing feature, you could be telling Google the URLs you visit at any given point in time alongwith your IP and stuff. Ofcourse any ISP already knows all this. But if you are a stickler for privacy, you might want to be aware of this.

What google should be doing here is to download the blacklisted URLs explicitly into the desktop alongwith the toolbar. So it can avoid recieving every URL to check with the blacklist. Any updates to blacklist can be updated on the client's machines automatically. I'm surprised that Google didn't think about this possibility at all. With this app rolled out, Google is all set to enter the similar wave of privacy issues which led to initial discontinuing Google Web Accelerator. Google Luck Google.

P.S - I'm planning to digg this post to see if there is any 'digg effect' at all. Digged.

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I subscribe to Jaya TV via Num TV to watch just three or four programs. Kollywood court is one of the them. Others include Kushboo's Jackpot[despite the boring questions], Thaenkinnam[cable version of Aakashavani's vintage song request show] and the in-frequent kutcheri shows.

Kollywood Court is a gem. It's a talk show with a different format. This is one of the very few shows where we meet the famous-but-not-to-be-seen personalities of kollywood. Check out this list of people who came over as a guest to this show, in the last few weeks. Film News Anandan, Randor Guy, Theodre Bhaskaran, M Prabhu [cinematographer of Mahanadhi] and so on.

This week they had invited Chithiram Pesuthadi director Mysskin. I have to say he made logical arguments and actually made some sense. I'm hoping he would show the same sensibility in his next movies.

P.S - For two consecutive days, Kolangal mega serial made millions of houses, smell like a graveyard. Couldn't stand an inch of it.

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Through books. Not bucks.

Josh Kaufman's The Personal MBA. Neat Stuff. Via Seth ji.

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The conduct of election rules 1961: 49 O: Elector not deciding to vote :If an elector after his electoral number has been duly entered in the register of voters Form-17 A and has put his signature or thumb impression thereon as required under sub-rule (1) of rule 49 L decided not to record his vote , a remark to this effect shall be made against the said entry in Form 17 A, by the presiding officer and the signature or thumb impression of the elector shall be obtained against such remark.

Gnani says, Vote for 'O' in the elections. Chief Electoral Officer Naresh Gupta explains how, from Hindu column, You can decide not to vote.

Idly Vadai Blog has the full scoop on Elections 2006. Also noticed that there is a group blog by tamil bloggers, Therthal 2006 and an election blog in english, Arasiyal Talk.

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Remember Vineeth in Gentleman, here's Sharath.

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Google becomes 'maama' with Google Romance. Fun awaits.

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