Nasty Little Thing Productions

Karthik82.com Reloaded

2007-02-23T23:08:00.000-08:00

Since August 2006, I have been making all my blog posts on my own website, Karthik82.com, so please go there for the blog, my artwork, movie reviews, Doom content, and lots more!

Shifted to WordPress

2006-04-19T21:29:00.000-07:00

Been having trouble publishing to my blog recently... so I've created an account at WordPress.com.

The new blog is at http://karthik82.wordpress.com.

V for Vendetta: Buying the book

2006-04-08T03:26:00.000-07:00

No, I haven't seen the movie yet, this post is about the book V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, which I finished reading today.

I wanted to read the book before seeing the movie, so last Wednesday, I went to Landmark at Spencer's Plaza with the intention of buying it (I had seen copies there a couple of months back). However, on that day, all copies of the book they had had been sold out, so they said they would get a copy for me in a few days' time. I told them that it was a bit difficult for me to come to Landmark as I live far away — so they offered to deliver the book home! I got my copy this morning, at around 8:30 AM. Must say it was really nice of them to deliver the book home!

The book is pretty expensive here — it costs Rs. 845 (one more in my collection of expensive comics — after Watchmen, Crisis on Infinite Earths and The Art of Hellboy). I finished reading the book in the morning, and it was a wonderful piece of work! I will write another post on this, but anyway, I know that re-reading the book will definitely be even more rewarding.

Needless to say, I'm very happy to have got the book! Looking forward to watching the movie now (I hear it's very good, though some articles say that the anarchist themes in the book have been diluted/simplified/misrepresented in the movie).

DOOM³

2006-04-04T08:02:00.000-07:00

I've been playing Doom³ recently. It is an awesome game. Of course, the older games still appeal to me more as they run better on my computer, and they present an altogether different experience to the player.

Anyway, Doom³ is far more horror-oriented than action — the cinematic quality of the graphics and the superb sound effects all combine to produce an unforgettable experience. Simply put, it's like being immersed in a horror movie, and the game has made me jump in fright on several occasions.

I'm reminded of what Trent Reznor said on the Doom III: The Legacy video a few years back — the game focuses on getting into your head and making it a scary place to be.

I'm still at an early stage in the game, so I don't know how things will be as it progresses. Hopefully the "monster suddenly appearing out of the dark"-type jump scares won't get too repetitive!

I also love the theme music for the game, by Tweaker.

SIDE NOTE: Speaking of Tweaker and Trent Reznor, over the last few months I've become quite a fan of Nine Inch Nails. Favourite songs: "Closer", "The Hand that Feeds", "Heresy", "Only", "Head Like a Hole".

Command Control Picture

2006-03-29T20:26:00.000-08:00

I had trouble publishing to the blog in the past few days, so I couldn't post this photo. The problem seems to be fixed now, so here is the pic (click for a larger image):

EDIT (8:50 PM): Perhaps a bit of explanation of the items in the picture will be good —
The various items shown in the picture (yes, including the table itself) have been purchased over the last 6 months or so.
The picture was taken with Sandip's camera.
Command Control is the name of Episode 1, Level 4 of Doom.
The two laminated photos are by my brother Varun. I actually bought them from him — that's how much I liked the pieces!
The RIPPLES award was for painting.
An earlier photo actually showed the table with a full mug of tea, but unfortunately the picture was not good (besides, I forgot to keep the USB drive there).
The Batman toy I bought, the Pokemon toy came free with a "Kiddy Meal" at Marrybrown Restaurant.
The desktop wallpaper on the computer today is not the Doom one — it is now a scene from a Hellblazer comic (issue #27 if I remember right — the story is "Hold Me" written by Neil Gaiman and drawn by Dave McKean).

John Constantine: Hellblazer

2006-03-17T19:33:00.000-08:00

Started reading John Constantine: HELLBLAZER. Read three issues so far, they were good. I like the atmosphere in the books and the dark humour.

I especially like the stylish writing by Jamie Delano.

Also read Warren Ellis's Orbiter. Good book.

Command Control

2006-03-17T19:29:00.000-08:00

I had taken a photo of my table at home with all the electronic equipment set up. This is called "E1M4: Command Control". Wanted to post it earlier, but there was some problem publishing to the blog so this didn't happen.

Will put it up next chance I get.

Watched Varun's latest video, Drive recently. Nice stuff!

I will be going to Hyderabad again on 23rd (the flight is at 5:45 AM!). Will be back in Chennai on 26th night.

SPACE The Final Frontier

2006-03-13T06:45:00.000-08:00

The "space" in the headline refers to computer-related storage space, which I managed to accumulate more of, over this weekend.

On Saturday, I went to Supreme Computers and bought the following items:

40 GB hard disk, with a case that allows me to connect it to my computer through a USB port.
128 MB USB drive for smaller transfers of data.

This is pretty cool stuff, and I've given Doom-inspired names to the hard disks (the one on my laptop is called Phobos Anomaly and the external one is Deimos Anomaly. The folder on Deimos Anomaly which I use for temporary stuff is called Containment Area.

Yesterday, Sandip and myself went around Ambattur OT and took several photos of the area on his digital camera. Also took a photo of my table with all the electronic equipment (I call this Command Control). I will post this next chance I get.

As for movies, I watched James (pretty good) and House of the Dead (OK) recently.

Looking forward to watching Varun's latest video. Planning to download it at the browsing centre tonight on my USB drive and watch it at home.

Empty Spencer's

2006-03-07T20:43:00.000-08:00

Kamal is in Chennai on official work for a few days, so on Sunday, he, Rama and myself met in Spencer's Plaza. We had dinner at The Noodle House there.

A couple of things distinguished this meeting from an ordinary one. First, there was the presence of a lot of electronic equipment — I brought along my laptop to show them Varun's Dark Machine video, and Rama brought along his digital camera.

It was around 10 PM by the time we finished dinner, so at that time Spencer's Plaza was practically deserted. So we took photos of ourselves in front of closed shops, in empty corridors, etc. Then transferred the photos to my computer before going back home.

First Post of 2006

2006-02-25T01:41:00.000-08:00

Well, am I still allowed to post in here?

I feel bad that I've left this blog neglected for such a long time. As I've mentioned before, as I don't have an internet connection at home, I'm not able to post regularly. "Then why don't you do it from office", you might ask. Somehow, it seems that when I enter office (at around 9:30 AM) I am entering into a different world, and my "real" and "normal" self only kicks in after leaving (around 8:30 PM). Also, things are mostly quite hectic so there is not much time for thinking and writing.

But that is probably a mental block, so maybe I should throw these thoughts out and just keep posting anyway. Here is a first step in that direction!

So what has been happening in the past few months (has it been that long already)?

iCALMS Training in Hyderabad: From Jan 23 to Feb 3, I got the chance to be at home, in Hyderabad. There is a new competency and learning management system called iCALMS that is being rolled out in TCS (it will be operational organisation-wide by March), and when it was rolled out in Chennai I was pretty interested in conducting training sessions on usage of this system. Therefore I was nominated to go to Hyderabad and assist in the rollout there. Besides the fact that I got to spend a lot of time at home, I really enjoyed conducting iCALMS sessions there.
Movies: Additions to my Movie collection have been numerous (various formats — VCD, DVD, etc.), and I got to see a lot of really good movies. One real standout movie out of the lot is Donnie Darko — I've watched the Theatrical as well as the Director's Cut, and read a couple of analyses of the movie, and it's a very fascinating film. Will write a review for it later. Other good movies watched recently include Mystic River (fantastic!!), Zinda (pretty good remake of Oldboy), Waking Life (interesting, philosophical movie), Office Space (good comedy), Night Watch (Nochnoi Dozor) (stylish, exciting, and fun Russian horror/fantasy/science fiction movie), Bubba Ho-Tep (great fun).
Doom-related: Not much happening on this front, though I enjoyed AgentSpork's Simplicity (played all maps on Skill 1, though I cheated with the boss maps) and Jan Van Der Veken's Classic Episode 2: The Singularity Complex and Congestion1024 (wiki). Editing-wise, I have been doing some random mapping, but nothing completed so far.
Drawing: Did a few drawings in notebook, etc. Maybe I will put these up sometime.
Comics: A few months ago I read the entire Preacher series by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. Awesome. Also a fan of Mike Mignola's Hellboy now, and I recently bought The Art of Hellboy for Rs. 1295.

That's all until the next update...

Holiday Greetings!

2005-12-26T02:00:00.000-08:00

Another trip to Hyderabad... I left Chennai on Friday morning and reached home that afternoon. After two days at home I am again heading back to Chennai.

My flight (Go Air) is delayed by 15 minutes, so I am here now in Hyderabad Airport, typing this. Also downloading updates for Norton Internet Security.

I got to see a few movies over the past few days: Dawn of the Dead (Unrated Director's Cut (very good), Linkin Park: Live in Texas (super), Cellular (also good) and Dus (average).

Planning to watch Requiem for a Dream and Land of the Dead soon.

Oh, and here's wishing everyone a very Happy Holiday Season.

Intermittence

2005-11-20T01:55:00.000-08:00

Thought I should post this to let people know that I am, in fact, alive.

I had a terrific 6 days in Hyderabad. The fact that it was Diwali on November 1 was incidental. What mattered was I got to spend time with my family, watch some movies (including the fantastic Saw II), play Doom and Quake 3 over a bluetooth network with Varun and in general, relax. Varun and myself deathmatched on his own creation, Short 'n Quick 2.

My laptop has 30 GB more data on it now!

The past few days have been more of the usual, punctuated by the fact that I won the first prize in a Painting Competition, organised as part of TCS' Ripples 2005. The prize was a Rs. 251 gift voucher at Odyssey, and these are the items I ended up buying:

Many Gotham Comics! So glad to see the newer batch of them after a very long time. The DC titles have the company's new logo on them too! Disappointed though that the latest Planetary issue isn't out yet.
Fanboy by Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragones (and a host of other comic book artists). This TPB collects issues 1-6 of the series. I read #1 and #2 last night, it's very good.
VCDs of The Last Boy Scout and Natural Born Killers.
A Justice League Unlimited action figure. I got the Batman one.

Movies watched recently (in no particular order):

Saw II (Fantastic! Better than the original!)
Equilibrium (very good)
Red Eye (exciting thriller)
Ghajini (expected a Memento ripoff but it wasn't, and I liked it)
Submerged (starring Steven Seagal, low-budget action directed by Anthony Hickox. It wasn't good)
Akira (superb SF anime)
Hellraiser: Hellworld (OK movie, part 7, Hellraiser: Deader was better)

I read Thomas Harris's Red Dragon also recently. It's a great book.

I've also been working on some Doom levels (small ones). Actually, if I put together the scraps of unfinished levels I have, I should be able to get a small 3-map or so episode done! When I went to Hyderabad this time I copied the levels of The Ninth Gate, including E4M8, which is the only map left to be done, and I plan to work on it in my free time.

I have bought lots of DVDs in the last couple of months. These are the ones which have sometimes 3, 4, or 5 movies on them. One of my favourite DVDs is the one with all four Alien movies on it!

I do realise this is a somewhat incoherent post. It'll have to do, as I'm sitting in a browsing centre. I wanted to get the MicroDVD player so that I can watch an AVI of Casshern with subtitles!

More later.

Posting from Chennai Airport

2005-10-31T15:34:00.000-08:00

OK, so it is now 5:05 AM and I am at Chennai airport. I left from Ambattur with Rajith at 3:30 AM. Rajith has boarded his flight to Mumbai.

My flight to Hyderabad only leaves at 6:50 AM, which means I have a good 45 minutes left before checking in. I expected that there would be internet access here, and it turns out I'm right. Downloaded Varun's "Blur" wallpaper, and reading The Arrow's review for Saw II.

I will be in Hyderabad for about a week. Returning to Chennai on 6th evening.

My new Compaq Presario

2005-09-21T07:08:00.000-07:00

I've just bought a HP Compaq Presario V2317AP notebook computer.

The shop here has a wireless Internet Connection set-up so this post is being made from my computer!!

More news later...

EDIT (23 Sep 2005 3:25 PM): This is what the machine looks like... it's very cute!

It's an awesome computer — 1.8 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 80 GB Hard disk, with a DVD Writer. I love the widescreen display it has! Was playing Doom and Quake 3 last night on it with earphones. It's a great experience! I'm also going to get a scanner and plan to get an Internet connection soon.

The Universe will Never be the Same!

2005-08-28T07:31:00.000-07:00

Worlds will Live. Worlds Will Die. And the Universe will Never be the Same Again...

I bought a copy of the DC Comics collected edition of Crisis on Infinite Earths yesterday at Landmark, Spencer's Plaza. At a cost of Rs. 1078.50, it's a very expensive book, but worth the buy. It's written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by George Pérez, with a fantastic cover by Alex Ross. I've read the first chapter so far, and it seems like an awesome book.

I also got myself a lot of other comics, including the Gotham Comics Super Special of JLA, featuring the story JLA: A League of One, luxuriously painted by Christopher Moeller. In all, I spent about Rs. 1400 on comics yesterday.

Also watched Madagascar and Stealth yesterday at Sathyam Cinemas. On 25th, I got to see 12 Angry Men in a PROPEL session at TCS SNR.

Disappeared off the Face of the Earth?

2005-08-24T00:36:00.000-07:00

A lot of people must be thinking that I've disappeared off the face of the earth, since I've not updated my blog in such a long time. Will try to update more often from now on (hopefully).

There's a lot of stuff that has happened in the past two months... a short summary follows:

I am working at the TCS Insurance Solutions Centre at Vadapalani, Chennai, and am in Deployment HR. My role is Associate Engagement.
My address in Chennai is F1, Asha Vignesh Apartments, New No. 415, MTH Road, Near Ambattur O.T., Ambattur, Chennai - 53.
My cell number is +91 98418 75682.
My first purchase with my first salary was a copy of Watchmen, and the second was a Batman Begins toy. These were bought from Landmark in Spencer's Plaza, Chennai.
Landmark has a big collection of imported comics, and though they're very expensive (Watchmen was Rs. 738.75), I'm planning to buy some from time to time. Next on the list is Crisis on Infinite Earths.
A couple of weeks after being posted in Chennai, Varun and my parents visited me here. After that, I got to go home twice — one during a recruitment drive, and the second on the extended weekend recently (August 15).
Movies watched recently (not many) include: Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Anniyan, Cybertracker 2, Batman Begins and The Devil's Rejects.

Today is the TCS ISC Town Hall (a big event for our centre, which we've been working on for quite some time now. Been staying back late in the office for the past few days. Hopefully I will get a bit more free time after this.

Since I don't have access to personal mails in the office, I have been very irregular in checking my Gmail account. I'm planning to get a laptop with Internet connection soon, which should simplify things.

More stuff later...

Posted at, and Posting From Chennai!

2005-06-11T21:32:00.000-07:00

After a fantastic experience at Pitstop (the Induction programme for the 92 people who have joined the HR/OD Group at TCS), I have been posted in Chennai. Myself and three others arrived in Chennai at around 11:30 PM on the 10th, and thanks to Paramesh we were able to reach our temporary accomodation arranged by TCS (in Sastri Nagar, Adyar).

We have to report to the TCS office in Jawaharlal Nehru Road on 13th morning. We will get to know the exact branch where we will be working from then, and we can look for a place to stay.

I am posting this from a browsing centre here... will write in detail later when I get settled down in Chennai.

P.S.: I had no Internet access when I was in Mumbai, so could not update or send emails.

Update the blog, I must

2005-05-23T13:23:00.000-07:00

I didn't post in the last few days as I was occupied with watching movies, or with the assignment given by TCS, or with meetings with friends. Anyway I thought I should post this because I am leaving to Mumbai on the 26th.

I will be in Mumbai for 17 days, attending the initial Induction programme of TCS, after which I will be informed about my final posting. I am not sure what internet facilities that will be available during those 17 days, so I may not be able to update regularly during that time.

Anyway, on to the movies I watched recently:

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (20 May): I got to see this in the theatre on the day it was released here (night show). While I love the classic Star Wars films (Episodes IV, V, VI), I thought the new prequels weren't as good. I particularly did not care for the economics/political background in Episodes I and II, and though they both had some great action and adventure scenes, they weren't as much fun for some reason. Not so in Sith. Obviously, this was the most important film in the prequel trilogy, and there was no doubt as to what would happen at the end, but it was a great experience to see how they tied up the story and linked the two trilogies together. The movie shows us how Chancellor Palpatine poisons Anakin Skywalker's mind, causing his transformation into Darth Vader. We also see how the evil Galactic Empire is born out of the old Republic. The movie is dramatic and action-packed, and is certainly the best of the prequel trilogy in my opinion. I must also make special mention of John Williams's superb music score for the movie, which seemed to really enhance certain scenes in terms of dramatic intensity. Apart from the expected references to the classic trilogy, I was overjoyed to see musical references to the other films in the series here as well (for example, "Duel of the Fates" referenced in a battle between Yoda and Darth Sidious, "Leia's Theme" playing as we see the infant Leia)! Bottom line, I loved the movie.
Naina (22 May): Watched this in Prasad's Multiplex (along with Rupak, Arun Gopal, Ramakrishna and Gaurav Sukhija — the historic meeting in Hyderabad that Rupak and me had planned finally came to pass!). I think this is the first time Bollywood is beating Hollywood to a remake of an Asian horror movie (this one is adapted from the Pang Brothers' The Eye, which I have not seen)! It is the story of a 20-something old woman, Naina (Urmila Matondkar) who was blinded as a child. She now undergoes a corneal transplant, after which her sight is gradually restored — the scary part is that she also starts seeing spirits, and has visions of people dying! A doctor, Sameer (Anuj Sawhney) helps her investigate. Technically, it's a very well made film — the "look" and the visual effects are on par with a Hollywood production. There's also one very well handled explosion scene. Still, I wouldn't call the movie a great one, though it was quite good! The movie did have a couple of gory parts, and some good scares. I don't know how much of the movie was lifted from The Eye. This is director Shripal Morakhia's first feature.
Night of the Living Dead (22 May): George A. Romero's 1968 horror classic has a group of people barricaded inside a house, while flesh-hungry zombies try to get in. While I didn't feel it was very scary, it was certainly very creepy and tense. The low-budget black and white look added to the atmosphere. I downloaded this from the Internet Archive (apparently, the movie passed into the public domain because of no notice of copyright on it!), I got the file that's about 600 MB in size.
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) (19 May): John Carpenter's original thriller about a street gang attacking a closed-down police precinct. I loved Carpenter's music score for it, and I liked the movie.
Eraserhead (18 May): I don't know whether this was a good or a bad movie. It's an unclassifiable movie about Henry (Jack Nance) who is informed that his girlfriend is pregnant. The child is born and turns out to be hideously mutated. Jack tries to care for it though. The movie contains bizarre imagery (which, with the combination of the sound and music used in the movie can make the viewer feel uneasy) and it's certainly the weirdest movie I've ever seen. The film itself is totally open to interpretation, as director David Lynch himself has left it up to the viewer to make sense of it.
The Machinist (17 May): A brilliant thriller from writer Scott Kosar and director Brad Anderson. Trevor Reznik (Christian Bale) works in an industrial plant. He hasn't slept in over a year, due to which he is frighteningly thin and pale, and gradually seems to be losing his mind. After an accident at the workplace, he thinks there is a conspiracy against him, which may or may not be true. Amazing, atmospheric movie, with an outstanding performance by Bale (who lost about a third of his body weight for this film!).

The first ten shorts in the Star Wars: Clone Wars animated series also, recently I watched. Very good, they were.

Heh... Yoda's odd sentence construction reaches its peak in Revenge of the Sith, with his line "Not, if anything to say about it, I have!"

Came across this interesting article on Hungarian Notation yesterday. And this article, which was linked from Wikipedia, is one of the most hilarious things I've ever read! Both of those articles might not make sense to you if you are not into programming though.

Happy Birthday to Me (May 15)

2005-05-16T02:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday (May 15) was my 23rd Birthday... thanks everyone who sent me mails, called up or posted scrapbook entries on orkut! I also noticed that the counter on my site's main page crossed 50,000 yesterday. Now that's only an indicative number (the counter would be incremented anytime the page is accessed, even by a search engine) but it feels good all the same. Thanks to everyone who visits the site!

In the evening yesterday, we (myself and family) went to see Indian Idol stars Rahul Vaidya and Prajakta Shukre perform live. The show was organised by Jain Social Group. It was a great show overall. We returned at around midnight, and after that I watched Blackadder: Back and Forth and later, True Romance for a second time.

Movies I've seen recently

2001: A Space Odyssey (10 May): Ever since Ganeshan gave me the book to read some years ago I've been wanting to see this. A mysterious object (similar to one that arrived on earth thousands of years ago at the dawn of man) is discovered on the moon, sending signals to somewhere beyond Jupiter. The crew of the ship Discovery undertake a voyage to investigate. Fantastic photography and visual effects. This is the second Stanley Kubrick movie I'm seeing (after The Shining some months ago), the next will be A Clockwork Orange, soon.
Cube Zero (11 May): Unlike Cube and Cube² which were entirely set inside a cube, this movie is set both inside and outside the structure. Once again, a group of people are trapped in a cube, but now we get to see a couple of employees of the creators of the cube, one of whom wants to rescue a woman who has been trapped in it. We find out a lot more about the cube, how it works, etc. but cleverly, not everything is answered. Very good movie.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (13 May): Yet another movie I've been waiting to see for a long time. Thoroughly enjoyed it. The opening, which has dolphins performing acrobatics with the song "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish" was awesome. The basic story from the book — Earthman Arthur Dent and his friend Ford Prefect hitch a ride on a Vogon spaceship just as the Earth is destroyed, and then go on to have an adventure in our very large and interesting galaxy — has been retained, as are a lot of the good parts from the book, though there have been many changes made to make the story work better as a movie. The movie is very fast paced and has very good effects.

I also watched Armageddon on TV on 13th. This is the second time I'm seeing this movie. I am well aware of the fact that there are people who hate this movie (and all Michael Bay movies in general), but I'm not one of them. I loved this movie.

Comics: Spider-Man India #1 and others

2005-05-12T13:48:00.000-07:00

There was a small problem with our computer so I couldn't update for the last couple of days. Anyway it's fixed now and things are back to normal.

Went to TCS Hyderabad today to collect a form regarding my medical check-up. It has been about a year since I was there last (I did my TAPMI summer project there).

On the way back, I bought another set of comics. These included Planetary #3 (story was OK, I didn't think it had the intrigue that the previous two issues had, but the art was very nice as usual), Tomb of Dracula #3, an issue of Spectacular and Ultimate Spider-Man, and a Superman issue with the concluding part of the "Birthright" storyline by Leinil Francis Yu (art) and Mark Waid (writer).

And I also got Spider-Man India #1.

The book is finally on the stands in India, and it's about time! I've been waiting for this book for many months, and I was puzzled that they'd release it in the US first (where it's already completed four issues, don't know how well it sold though) and not in India. Anyway, Issue #1 is on sale at Rs. 25 (hmmm... other titles of this size, like Spectacular Spider-Man for example, are Rs. 15... exploiting "just noticeable difference", eh?), and it includes a pull-out poster. I haven't pulled out the poster, and don't plan to — I am going to preserve my copy as it is!

Spider-Man India is illustrated by Jeevan J. Kang and Gotham Studios Asia, and written by Kang and Gotham Comics founders Sharad Devarajan and Suresh Seetharaman. They call this story a "transcreation" of the character to an Indian setting — therefore the character names have been Indianised, and other story changes have been made. I'd already seen a preview from The Economic Times of the story and it seemed really good. After reading #1 I can only say that it exceeded expectations.

Pavitr Prabhakar is a village boy who goes to the Heritage International School in Mumbai. His Uncle Bhim and Aunt Maya have realised that Pavitr deserves the best education, so they somehow try to give him that. Pavitr, though, hates the school because the other students (save Meera Jain) constantly ridicule his village-background. One day though, he is "visited" by a mystical sage in a dark alley, and given powers to fight evil. A parallel plot has the industrialist Nalin Oberoi obtaining a magical amulet, which transforms him into a Goblin-type demon.

The artwork in the book is terrific, on par with the other international Spider-Man titles. Artist Jeevan Kang has done a great job in rendering the action scenes and some of the more "mystical" scenes. I loved his use of tilted camera angles too. The writing in the issue is also good — I had my doubts on how the Indianisations would work, but they pulled it off very nicely. If this issue is anything to go by, further issues can only be great, and I'll definitely buy them.

Sadly though, I think only four issues have been created so far. And obviously, this is an origin story, with inspirations from several elements in the movies and other origin storylines (like in Brian Michael Bendis's Ultimate Spider-Man). I don't know whether we will get to see original stories and new villains/characters specific to this series. I certainly hope so (though that depends on how successful the book is), and I think the creators are definitely capable. Personally I'm getting somewhat tired of seeing the "With great power comes great responsibility" refrain!

Movies: Cube²: Hypercube

2005-05-08T10:32:00.000-07:00

I watched the original Cube on CD in December last year. Yesterday evening, STAR Movies showed Cube²: Hypercube, which I watched later in the night after videotaping.

The first film, which was a low-budget science-fiction effort from director Vincenzo Natali, had a group of six people finding themselves in a cubical-shaped room of 14x14x14ft. in size, with no idea of how or why they got there. Each room had six doors (one on each wall) that led to another similar cubical room. Some rooms contained traps that meant gruesome death for anyone who entered them, others were safe. Like rats in a maze, the people had to find the way out (if there was one) while avoiding the booby-trapped rooms. The movie had some very intriguing ideas and was very well-made, due to which it was well-appreciated. In addition to the basic idea of the cube, the movie also succeeded as it explored the characters well.

The sequel takes the whole idea further, in fact, one dimension further. In this movie, a group of people (more characters than in the first film) find themselves in a cubical-shaped room, but later on realise that they are actually inside a tesseract (or hypercube), a four-dimensional construct. They discover, to their horror, rooms with gravity working differently from adjacent rooms, rooms where time runs differently, even rooms where alternate realities exist. In fact, in the tesseract, rooms can "fold in" on others, and the whole structure seems to be somehow unstable. At least a few of the characters turn out to be associated with a weapons manufacturer called Izon (anagram of Zion, I don't know why they called it that), which might have actually built this hypercube.

The characters in this movie are again taken from the archetypes established in the first Cube — there's Simon Grady (Geraint Wyn Davies), the person who "loses it"; psychotherapist Kate (Kari Matchett); game designer Max (Matthew Ferguson); the blind Sasha (Grace Kung); the senile Mrs. Paley (Barbara Gordon); Jerry (Neil Crone), a more positive-minded person; and others. Once again, the paranoia escalates as the group tries to find a way out, and perhaps an answer to why they're in the structure.

Unfortunately, I didn't think the ending did the film justice. In the first film, there was the element of the characters gradually figuring out the way to exit the cube, whereas in Cube², since the structure is far more complex, that element wasn't there. So essentially the characters are just traversing the rooms randomly, hoping to find a way out. Some explanations are offered at the end, but I didn't find them entirely satisfactory.

Still, I appreciate the filmmakers because they tried to do something new with the concept instead of just extending the concept of the first movie. I don't know whether it was due to the acting or the writing, but I think I liked the characters in this movie better than those in the first one.

Cube² is directed by Andrzej Sekula, who previously photographed Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. He makes the whole film look like a big-budget production, giving the whole thing lots of style. I thought the film was visually brilliant, with some good digital effects. Unlike the first film, where the cube's rooms were lit in different colours, here all the rooms have bright white lighting. Gave a different atmosphere to the movie. The opening credits sequence was also very nice, and the movie kept me interested through its running time thanks to its interesting ideas. I also loved the music score by Norman Orenstein, it suited the science-fiction feel of the movie very well. The movie has a screenplay by Sean Hood (also story), Ernie Barbarash and Lauren McLaughlin. There was a third Cube film made in 2004, which was directed by Barbarash. It's called Cube Zero and I hope to see that sometime as well.

Movies: Jason X

2005-05-08T06:51:00.000-07:00

Last night on HBO at 9 PM, they showed Jason X, the tenth movie in the Friday the 13th series.

I'd read the script a few years ago, and got to watch the movie last night. It was an entertaining movie, though nothing special. The movie is an interesting attempt though, at making a Friday film in space.

The movie starts off in the future (I think 2008 or something) where after several attempts at executing the captured killer Jason Voorhees, it is finally decided to keep him in cryogenic suspension. The Project Head of this is Rowan (Lexa Doig), who is not too happy when some authorities show up to take away Jason's body, so that they can study him and discover the secret of his regenerative capability (or in other words, how he returns in each sequel despite being killed off in the previous movie). Jason, of course, manages to get loose, but Rowan draws him into the cryo-chamber and activates it — but not before he stabs her and releases the freeze gas all over. As a result, Rowan and Jason are frozen.

About 450 or so years later, a few people show up on the surface of Earth (which has become an uninhabitable wasteland) to salvage stuff, and they discover the two frozen bodies. They take them aboard their ship and reanimate Rowan, and keep Jason under observation. It's not too soon before he thaws and starts walking around the ship, killing anyone in his way.

I actually found this movie quite entertaining. It's apparent that the filmmakers aren't expecting the audience to take any of it seriously, and just have a good time with it. The action starts very quickly, and there are some creative kill scenes (best had to be the frozen-head thing). Some of the effects were good, others didn't look so good. A number of in-jokes are also to be found here. Overall a fun movie, though there were no scares at all.

Written by Todd Farmer, directed by James Isaac. Jason X was followed by Freddy vs. Jason, which I thought was better than this movie.

Movies: Oldboy

2005-05-08T05:59:00.000-07:00

I've been waiting to see the Korean movie Oldboy for a very long time and I finally got to do so. I must say, it's a very impressive movie and certainly not at all conventional.

The movie is about a man called Oh Daesu (Choi Min Sik) who is suddenly abducted without explanation, and imprisoned in a hotel room for fifteen years. Each day, his room is cleaned, he is given food, and each night, Valium gas is used to make him sleep. By the first year, he finds out that his wife has been murdered, and that he is the prime suspect. He has no idea what happened to his daughter. One day he finds out that the plate of food that comes into his room has three chopsticks instead of two — and he uses this extra chopstick to carve a hole in the wall.

One day, he is let loose by his mysterious abductor, and supplied with clothes, money, and a cellphone. Oh Daesu meets a woman named Mido (Kang Hye-Jeong) in a restaurant, and with the help of an old friend, he tries to find his abductor. Soon, it is revealed that Oh Daesu has only five days to find his abductor, and that all the torture he endured for fifteen years is only the beginning of what is planned for him. At any rate, Oh Daesu intends to exact revenge upon his abductor — to paraphrase what he says in the movie, he intends to kill the person responsible, but no one will ever be able to find the body because he is going to chew it all down.

The movie is certainly very different — I expected it to be a sort of mystery-driven revenge story, but it's more a drama than anything else. All characters in the movie are very well developed and the film contains some amazing acting. The last third of the movie (where the story is resolved) is quite tragic.

It should also be mentioned that the movie contains some violent scenes that could be considered disturbing, and some mature themes. I also loved the music score in the movie, it suited it very well. The movie is directed by Chanwook Park (who, according to what I read, is the director of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, another revenge-drama), and adapted from a Japanese manga.

More Tribbles!

2005-05-05T15:29:00.000-07:00

I got to watch the episode "More Tribbles, More Troubles" of the 1970s Star Trek Animated Series (produced by Filmation, who made the He-Man cartoons) today. Though the animation quality was not very good, the writing was fantastic, which made for a brilliant half hour's worth of entertainment.

It's actually a sequel to "The Trouble with Tribbles" (1967), an episode of the original Star Trek series (one of the funniest Trek episodes ever!), in which we are introduced to the tribbles, which are small furry little creatures. They're really cute, and some of them end up on the Enterprise after being bought from a trader. The problem is that they multiply rapidly, and soon the whole ship is overrun with the creatures.

In the animated episode, the Enterprise is transporting two ships containing a supply of foodgrain to Sherman's planet, when they come across a Klingon ship. The Klingons are firing on a small Federation shuttle, and Capt. Kirk tries to stop them. The Klingons, however, possess a weapon that can disable the critical defense systems of a starship, which they use on the Enterprise. But with a bit of quick maneuvering, Kirk manages to rescue the pilot of the shuttle from the Klingons (the weapon they use drains a lot of power, so they retreat in order to recharge it).

The pilot turns out to be Cyrano Jones, the trader that sold tribbles to the Enterprise crewmembers. And he's got more of them with him, only these he claims are safe, because they are genetically altered so as not to multiply fast. With the tribbles and the Klingons, Kirk seems to have his hands full, leading to several very funny scenes in the episode.

The story is wonderfully developed too, and it has some terrific dialogue. Consider this piece —

CAPT. KIRK (to Cyrano): You know the law about transporting animals proven harmful!
CYRANO: Captain! These are safe tribbles!
DR. MCCOY: There's no such thing as a safe tribble!
SPOCK: A "safe tribble" would be a contradiction of terms. Tribbles are well known for their proclivities in multiplication.
CYRANO: And they breed fast, too.

The episode is written by David Gerrold, who also wrote the original series episode. Wikipedia has articles on tribbles and on the original episode.

Movies: True Romance

2005-05-05T05:06:00.000-07:00

I watched True Romance last night. This 1993 movie has an amazing cast — Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Dennis Hopper, James Gandolfini, Val Kilmer, Christopher Walken, Tom Sizemore, Chris Penn, Brad Pitt, Bronson Pinchot, Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson, and others! It is written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Tony Scott.

The story goes like this — Clarence Worley (Slater) meets a girl called Alabama (Arquette) at a movie theatre during a Sonny Chiba triple feature, and finds out they have lots of common interests — kung fu movies, Elvis, comic books... They fall in love but then Alabama confesses that she's a callgirl (actually she's been that for only four days), but that she truly loves Clarence. The two get married, but Clarence decides that he has got to kill Alabama's pimp Drexl (Oldman). He does so, and leaves the place with a suitcase that he assumes is full of Alabama's stuff. As it turns out, it is actually full of cocaine, and pretty soon the couple are on the run from the mob and the cops, while attempting to sell off the drugs.

This is a romantic movie done Tarantino-style — it is absolutely crazy and has the expected strong violence and incessant profanity (IMDb trivia page says that there are 225 occurrences of the word f*ck and derivatives), but the characterisation is superb and I thought the romance between the two leads was very well developed. Ultimately, it's a very sweet movie, and has some outstanding performances. And since this is a Tarantino script, there are a huge number of memorable scenes and dialogues — "it's better to have a gun and not need it, than to need a gun and not have it", the cocaine-in-the-face scene (one of the funniest bits I've ever seen!), the opening "I'd f*ck Elvis" speech, and several others. At the end of it all I had a huge smile on my face, having thoroughly enjoyed the past two hours.

It's difficult to go wrong with a movie where one of the main characters works in a comic book store, and where characters are shown watching movies like A Better Tomorrow II! Even the not-so-popular action movie Freejack and the soap Santa Barbara make their appearances on TV screens within this movie.

As far as Tarantino films go, I still think that Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill are superior, though this movie is almost as good. Apparently it was director Tony Scott who decided to film the movie linearly, the script by Tarantino was not in chronological order.

Sin City and an Assignment?

2005-05-04T09:41:00.000-07:00

Got an email from TCS Pitstop today. We 86 people who are going for the training programme in Mumbai have been divided into groups, and each group has to make a presentation on Day 1. I am in Group 10 and our topic is related to Coaching and Mentoring. Emailing on this has started already. Seems like a nice group of people and I'm looking forward to meeting all of them in Mumbai.

I also got to see Sin City a couple of nights back! The movie was awesome. Often, when a movie is made based on a book/comic/videogame, one starts comparing it with the source, and most often one finds several differences. In most cases, you'll hear "the book was better" and in VERY rare cases, the movie betters the source.

No such difference for Sin City the movie — it's so closely adapted from the source books that I felt like I had re-read the books after watching the movie... And this is exactly the effect that director Robert Rodriguez wanted to achieve, he calls it a "translation" of the books into film! It's brilliantly done — you might have already seen several book-to-film comparisons of the movie, like this one from Film Rotation, but the attention to detail in the movie is stunning! For example, "Skinny little Nancy Callahan" at eleven years old looks JUST like she did in the books.

For the record, the movie is based on three of the Sin City stories by Frank Miller (four, if you count the three-page short story "The Customer is Always Right", which serves as the intro to the film) — The Hard Goodbye, which is about Marv (Mickey Rourke) trying to avenge the death of Goldie (Jaime King); The Big Fat Kill, in which Dwight (Clive Owen) must dispose of a bloody mess, failing which the delicate truce between the cops, the mob, and the hookers of Old Town might be in danger; and That Yellow Bastard, which has honest cop Hartigan (Bruce Willis) saving an eleven year old girl from child molestor/murderer, and finding that he has to save her again eight years later (the 19-year old Nancy Callahan is played by Jessica Alba).

I've written about these stories in detail earlier, and I thought they were all very good. Since the movie adapts the stories so closely, I like the movie just as much as the books. With a huge star cast, amazing visuals (the movie was shot with actors performing against a green screen, with all the backgrounds added in digitally during post-production) and nice music, this is certainly a must-see film.

Vivek Janardanan sent an email with an interesting link. This is the webpage of the Time Traveler Convention, which, if all goes well, should see people from various timelines in MIT on May 7.

Some pictures

2005-05-03T13:34:00.000-07:00

Some months back, TAPMI's Arts and Aesthetics Forum conducted a Short Story Writing Competition, and I won first prize — a neat sum of Rs. 600. I guess things got a bit too hectic towards the end, so they could not give me the money then. So they couriered the money to me and I got it yesterday. And today, I bought some comics. I'll write about those comics and other things later — in this post, you can see some photos related to my comics collection. Varun took the pictures.

My comics collection. Click the image to open a larger version in a new window (it's about 560 KB in size). Some things to note about this photo (we'll go column-wise):

The first column (one Superman and three Batman issues) is entirely stuff by Jim Lee. The Batman issues are from the famous "Hush" maxi-series (written by Jeph Loeb).
The first two parts from Tomb of Dracula, featuring Blade, and then a number of Batman issues.
Two Spectacular Spider-Man issues, featuring a Venom storyline and art by Humberto Ramos (I like his unique style). A number of other Spider-Man issues follow those, including the first movie's official comics adaptation.
Superman issues, including four issues from the "Birthright" series, written by Mark Waid, with art by Leinil Francis Yu (who also did those very nice covers).
A couple of Spider-Girl issues, House of Mystery, and some X-Men titles. The clearly visible one is a cover that I like — it is a little different in that the pencils have directly been coloured. A couple of Daredevil issues, one Elektra: The Hand (Elektra's not even in this thing).
Some Tarzan issues, which I don't normally buy. But there's one with a Dave Dorman cover, followed by one with a Tarzan vs. Predator story.
One issue of Astonishing X-Men written by Joss Whedon and illustrated by John Cassaday and Laura Martin.
The first two issues of Planetary by the above mentioned artists and writer Warren Ellis. The Indian version covers don't match the U.S. versions.
One Flash and some DC Comics Presents issues.
Frank Miller's awesome Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Book 2 and 4, followed by one issue of JLA with cover and interiors entirely painted by Alex Ross (I bought this issue just today).

I changed the picture on my Blogger Profile page. Now it is automatically resized for display on these pages, causing it to lose clarity. Here is the actual picture (it shows me with those Dark Knight Returns books):

And finally, this is a picture of me reading the above-mentioned JLA issue, admiring Alex Ross's art:

Movies: Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker (Uncut Version)

2005-05-02T05:19:00.000-07:00

Today afternoon I watched another animated Batman feature, this one called Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker. Batman Beyond (known to us in India as Batman of the Future) is a spinoff series from the animated Batman, and is set several years in the future, with Bruce Wayne an old man. The new Batman is Terry McGinnis — a teenager with a troubled past, taken in by Wayne as an assistant — who fights crime in a high-tech Batsuit, monitored and guided by Wayne from the Batcave. I got to see only a few episodes of this series on Cartoon Network, but I liked them. Content-wise, the series is apparently aimed at an older audience than the other Batman animated series, as it has harder violence and more mature themes. The music score (a harsh techno-rock combo) by Kristopher Carter went a long way in adding to the "edge" of the series, and suited it very well.

In this movie, a number of crimes are being committed by the Jokerz Gang. They are stealing high-tech equipment, and both McGinnis and Bruce Wayne are wondering what the Gang would do with such equipment. Meanwhile, Wayne decides to become the CEO of Wayne Industries, to the dismay of Jordan Price, who was next in line. At a social gathering to celebrate Wayne's return to the company, the Jokerz Gang attacks again, but everyone is shocked to see the Joker with them.

McGinnis learns that the Joker died several years ago. Even if the Joker was alive, he should be more than eighty years old. So who is this Joker? The answers may lie with Bruce Wayne, Barbara Gordon (who was once Batgirl, and currently Gotham City Police Commissioner) and Tim Drake (who was once Robin).

I liked this movie even more than Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. The futuristic setting, the action, the music, all come through very well in this mystery-thriller. The voice acting is very good, particularly Mark Hamill as the Joker. The screenplay is by Paul Dini, from a story by Dini, Glen Murakami and Bruce Timm. The movie is directed by Curt Geda.

I watched the uncut version of the film, which is rated PG-13 in the U.S. It is quite violent and a flashback sequence (showing what happened to the Joker all those years ago) is quite disturbing. I haven't seen the censored version.

Movies: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

2005-05-02T04:10:00.000-07:00

I watched Batman: Mask of the Phantasm last night. This is an animated film (from the makers of the Batman animated series), released to theatres in 1993. Owing to the fact that it didn't get the desired response, there weren't more animated Batman films released in theatres, though there were a number of them that went direct to video.

That's a pity, since Batman: Mask of the Phantasm is a very good film. For starters, it's very stylised — the setting looks like something from an old gangster film, yet with a modern touch. The character design of the Batman (same as in the animated series) is probably one of the best ever put on screen, with an impressive and dark black-and-grey costume (reminds me of the way Frank Miller drew the character in his The Dark Knight Returns series). The animated series stood out because it was designed not just for children — they were well written and had good characters and action sequences to be appreciated by older viewers as well (if not for the fact that most of Cartoon Network's programmes are dubbed in Hindi here, I might still be watching the series. The dubbing sort of takes away the impact of the series).

In the present movie, a mysterious figure starts picking off some of Gotham City's crime bosses one by one. Among the first to go are Charles "Chucky" Sol and "Buzz" Bronsky. Due to the fact that the mysterious figure is dressed in a cape, and because it is only glimpsed by the goons of the fallen gangsters, Batman gets implicated. The public fear that Batman might have finally snapped, and taken the law into his own hands. Batman/Bruce Wayne, meanwhile, is just as concerned about these crimes, and he is trying to find out who the mysterious killer is. Meanwhile, Andrea Beaumont shows up in Bruce Wayne's life again. Through flashbacks, we are shown that Andrea was the love of Bruce Wayne's life, and had she not left him mysteriously, he might have never taken the life of Batman, and might have settled down with her. The Joker also figures in the plot.

The movie kept me involved throughout, thanks to its interesting story and characters. The screenplay explored Bruce Wayne's early days as Batman (I haven't read Frank Miller's Batman: Year One series, but I think the movie would have drawn inspiration from there), and also developed the characters well. It also featured a number of exciting action sequences. The Joker here was certainly a scary villain, and the sequence in the Gotham Fair reminded me of similar scenes in the book Batman: The Killing Joke.

The movie's screenplay is credited to Alan Burnett (who wrote the story also), Paul Dini, Martin Pasko and Michael Reaves. It is directed by Eric Radomski and Bruce Timm. It also features a moody music score by Shirley Walker (same as in the animated series), and the voice acting (Kevin Conroy as Batman, Dana Delany as Andrea, Mark Hamill as the Joker, among others) is excellent. The bottom line is that it is really a very good movie, and very much worth watching.

Watchmen and H2G2 Book 4

2005-05-02T02:54:00.000-07:00

I finished reading the excellent Watchmen a couple of days back. It is written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons and John Higgins.

The story takes place in an alternate timeline in the U.S., where superheroes are a reality — costumed adventurers are portrayed as "real" people, who are just as flawed as any other person. In 1977, the Keene Act outlawed superhero activity except where sanctioned by the Government. Therefore, most superheroes retired — some just disappeared, while others went public and revealed their identities. The two still active in the present (1985) are The Comedian, who is sort of a government mercenary, and Dr. Manhattan, a true super-being, who is the U.S.'s primary defense against possible Soviet attacks.

When The Comedian a.k.a. Edward Blake is brutally murdered and thrown out of a building, the masked vigilante Rorschach suspects that someone intends to eliminate masked superheroes one by one. As he investigates, the world is moving towards WW3, as tensions between the U.S. and the Soviets escalate.

The story gives us an in-depth look at each character's (Rorschach, The Comedian, The Silk Spectre I and II, Nite Owl I and II, Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias) history, which allows us to understand each one of them and their motivations, and proceeds to a superb conclusion that wraps up all the subplots nicely.

Certainly one of the best books I've ever read, with amazing writing and artwork. The story is definitely for mature readers only as some parts are quite disturbing (I found Rorschach's history especially so). I found Doug Atkinson's Annotations and The Internet Companion to Watchmen very fascinating, though the amount of information on those two sites is so extensive that I have just gone through a part of it.

I also managed to read So Long and Thanks for All the Fish (the fourth book in Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "trilogy" of five).

Arthur Dent is back on Earth, pretty puzzled because the planet was supposed to have been destroyed a long time ago! Anyway, he meets this woman, Fenchurch, who had the answer to all the world's problems, but lost the answer somehow. Since both of them are not your typical humans (Fenny might hold the key to all of Earth's problems and Arthur has in the recent past been travelling all over space and time), they hit it off rather well, and go on to find the answer. Ford Prefect shows up multiple times in the book, but he doesn't actually do anything until the end of the story.

I loved the first two books (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and The Restaurant at the End of the Universe), while I had a sort of lukewarm response to the third, Life, the Universe and Everything. The fourth book I liked even less than the third — while it was by no means boring to read, I felt that much of it was just dragging along without having any major developments. For example, the relationship between Arthur and Fenchurch takes the major part of the book to develop, while the actual important bits happen towards the end, and they are also quite rushed. While the first two books had more subplots and interesting characters, this one doesn't (Zaphod Beeblebrox doesn't figure in the story at all), and as a result, I just didn't think it was as fun to read as the others were.

Anyway, I started reading the fifth book, Mostly Harmless also. It seems to be more interesting than the fourth.

Movies: Spider-Man 2

2005-04-29T12:53:00.000-07:00

I finally watched Spider-Man 2 on CD last night. I thought it was a very good movie!

I suppose everyone knows the story already, but let me just repeat it here: it's two years after the events of the first Spider-Man film, and Peter Parker's (Tobey Maguire) life is in a shambles thanks to his secret identity. His relationship with Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) is going from bad to worse, his grades are declining, and he's unable to pay the rent. Besides all that, there's the emotional baggage he's carrying, knowing that he was partly responsible for his Uncle Ben's death. Anyway, as things turn out, Peter meets Dr. Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina) for research work on a paper he's writing. The doctor is working on an experiment related to fusion, funded by Osborn Industries, which after the death of Norman Osborn is now run by son Harry (James Franco). Of course, things go wrong during a critical experiment, and the four mechanical arms that Dr. Otto used to handle the radioactive materials are now permanent parts of his nervous system. They're also interfaced with his brain, and he is convinced that he needs to try the experiment again, so he takes to stealing to support the research — as new super-criminal Doctor Octopus or Doc Ock. Spider-Man attempts to stop him, but certain events lead him to abandon his identity and go back to being just Peter Parker.

Will Spider-Man return to stop Doc Ock? How does Spider-Man/Peter Parker deal with his personal problems? All these things are very satisfyingly dealt with in the movie. Not only does it work as an action/adventure film (the train sequence is breathtaking), it also worked on an emotional level. I had a great time.

The movie is directed by Sam Raimi and scripted by Alvin Sargent (story by Alfred Gough & Miles Millar and Michael Chabon).

The scene where Doc Ock is hospitalised after the accident is very reminiscent of director Sam Raimi's Evil Dead II — not literally, rather, in the way it's filmed and edited. The beautiful paintings that you see during the opening credits (they basically summarise the first movie) were done by master artist Alex Ross. You can download those paintings from his site.

The only criticism I have about the movie is that I was never really convinced with the transition of Doc Ock from what seemed to be a very levelheaded scientist to a maniacal villain. He seemed like too reasonable a guy to do the things he did, regardless of whether the arms were "talking" to him or not!

I do hope the (inevitable?) sequel will have The Lizard or Venom as the main villain. Both are superb creations in the comics, and I really look forward to seeing them on screen. Every time Dr. Curt Connors (Dylan Baker) was on screen in this movie, I couldn't help thinking of what the film version of The Lizard would look like. It's probably foreshadowing the villain for the next movie, though I later learnt that there is a reference to "Eddie" (for Eddie Brock a.k.a. Venom) in the first film itself. I probably need to watch the first film again, to spot this reference (I didn't know about Venom when I watched the first movie) as well as to compare it with Spider-Man 2.

Oh, and I finished reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's an awesome book and I actually got more out of it now than when I read it originally! Now I suppose I'll have to read the second and third books again as well, since I read them quite a while ago. Or should I read the fourth and fifth books, since I have not read them at all!!

Anyway, while I make up my mind about that, I am currently on Part 4 (of 12) of DC Comics' 1986 Watchmen. My description for this amazing graphic novel by Alan Moore (writer), Dave Gibbons (artist) and John Higgins (colourist) would go something like this — a superbly written book with great depth, breadth and scope, wonderful characters, and enough subplots to choke any screenwriter attempting to make a movie out of it!

And that's after reading just two parts out of the total twelve. I'll write in detail about it later.

Three Things

2005-04-28T12:38:00.000-07:00

One. My training at TCS starts on May 27th in Mumbai. The venue is Hotel Sea Princess at Juhu. The training will go on for 17 days and at the end of that I will be told where my final posting would be. The coordinator for this Induction programme is Ms. Aswini Mano.

Two. I watched Van Helsing last night. I wouldn't say it is a great movie, but I certainly enjoyed watching it. The movie has lots of action and moves blindingly fast, but what I appreciated most were the very beautiful locations. I thought they really added atmosphere to the film. The visuals were great in some places but not so convincing in others (I am here specifically referring to the werewolf and the "Mr. Hyde" CGI).

Three. With an April 29th release date, initial reviews (from press screenings, etc.) of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are out. Of course, there are some critics who bashed the film, but overall, the reviews indicate that it is a well-made film. I look forward to seeing the movie. I read the first book in the series some four years ago so I started re-reading it today. Found a lot of new things to remember and quote!

Well the original title of this post no longer is true because I just thought of two more things to write about. I guess these things happen. Like one of those meaningless coincidences that Douglas Adams talks about in Hitchhiker's, my TCS training period is 17 days, and according to Aliens, if a team of Colonial Marines is overdue for 17 days, a rescue team will be sent.

Finally, JoBlo.com reported about the Saw 2 Poster today. It's a pretty great poster, cleverly carrying on the theme from the earlier film's posters. Saw 2 will be directed by Darren Bousman (apparently he is writing the script also, under supervision from the first film's creators).

Blade Runner Drawing (Completed)

2005-04-27T09:48:00.000-07:00

I finished the Blade Runner drawing I was working on. After scanning it I touched it up a bit in Photoshop (added text and a bit of faint colour).

Here is a small version of the picture. Click it to see a larger version of the drawing:

The drawing came out OK, I guess, but it's not my best. When it comes to art, our eyes are trained to accept accurate representations of reality. When a drawing has flaws, we immediately know that something is wrong, even though we may not be able to identify exactly what the flaws are.

I'm my own best critic, so I picked out the following flaws in the picture. Next time I'll try to do better —

Harrison Ford's (Deckard's) and Sean Young's (Rachael's) faces have come out OK. But Rutger Hauer's (Roy Batty's) face has not come out so well.
If I had a white pen, I could have experimented with adding some highlights to the image. As it is now, the text "Off World" on the blimp at the bottom left had to be done by drawing an outline and colouring around it.
I don't like the way the buildings, etc. seem to be sticking out of Roy's head! At the time, I actually couldn't figure out what to put in that blank space.
Rachael and Roy are both looking in the same direction. I should have drawn Rachael looking the other way.
The Chinese girl's face is actually on a large, building-size screen. That hasn't really come out well, and the perspective is not quite right in those elements of the image.

I think this is the first time I've analysed a drawing of mine closely. Perhaps if I do that to earlier drawings I'll find all sorts of flaws!

Thanks to Mansi for her comments on the work-in-progress image I posted.

A drawing I want to do in the future: something related to Sin City.

A couple of changes

2005-04-27T02:59:00.000-07:00

I changed a couple of things on this blog. The first thing you will notice is that the colour scheme is different — it is a customised version of Dave Shea's "Snapshot Sable" theme. I like blue better than the previous green colour.

I also updated my Blogger Profile. Favourite Books now includes Sin City: That Yellow Bastard, and the link for my personality type is changed. PersonalityPage.com has an easy-to-understand description of my personality type, ISTJ, and it fits me well.

Also added a link to a Creative Commons License at the end of the blog page.

Blade Runner Drawing (Work in Progress)

2005-04-25T15:30:00.000-07:00

I have been writing quite a bit about Blade Runner recently, and like I mentioned yesterday, I have by now downloaded several images from the movie. These include some very nice drawings and paintings of characters from the movie, and therefore I thought of trying my hand at that as well.

I am trying a couple of new things with this drawing. Firstly, I am consciously deciding on a layout. Also, I am consciously trying to highlight different elements of the drawing by contrasting lights and darks. Both these things are inspired by comics artist Jim Lee. Whether I mess things up or not, only time will tell, but it doesn't hurt trying.

Currently the drawing is about two-thirds complete. I thought of having the three main characters from the film in it — Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard, Sean Young as Rachael, and Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty. Depending on how these three faces turn out on the page, I'll add other details to complete the drawing. So far, two of the faces (Deckard's and Rachael's) are done.

At first, I thought I'd wait until I finished the drawing before writing about it. Adding another post here would mean that the post with my drawing of Varun would go off the main page! And I didn't want the blog page to only have text. However it's now already 3:40 AM and so I am going to continue the drawing only tomorrow — so I thought I'd post a Work-in-Progress picture anyway. Here it is:

Hopefully this won't turn out as one of those drawings I never finish. I'll post the completed picture once it's done. Comments on this are welcome.

There's also another thing I wanted to write about. Zee Studio (that movie channel formerly known as Zee Movie Zone and Zee MGM) is showing Kill Bill Vol. 1 on May 8th and Kill Bill Vol. 2 on May 15th (at 8 PM). Now May 15th is my birthday, and what better to watch on that day than a Quentin Tarantino movie?

Blade Runner Comic, AOD Alternate Ending

2005-04-24T15:54:00.000-07:00

Blade Runner is one of my all-time favourite science-fiction films. I was searching for images from the movie today, because I intend to do a drawing related to the movie sometime. I did manage to get several images, video clips and other stuff (a lot from this site), but one link caught my attention and I felt I just had to write about it.

This site called Bladezone has the 1982 Marvel Comics adaptation of the movie online. It can be viewed here.

The comic adaptation is written by Archie Goodwin, pencilled by Al Williamson and Carlos Garzon, inked by Williamson, Dan Green and Ralph Reese, and coloured by Marie Severin. I thought the comic was nicely done, capturing the feel of the movie well. There's especially a double-page spread showing the cityscape of Los Angeles, 2019 that's really nice. Of course, since the comic came out at the time of the movie's original release, it is quite in tone with the theatrical version of the film — there is no ambiguity in here as to whether Deckard is a replicant or a human.

The comic is 44 pages long, excluding the cover page, etc. It will take some time therefore to read it online, but if you have a decent internet connection you can manage it. I've downloaded all the pages.

This is just in! For a very long time now I've been trying to find a clip of the alternate ending to Army of Darkness. Finally, I found it at this page, and I just watched it. No matter how many times you read about something like this, it can't beat actually watching it, and it was great.

At the end of the theatrical release version, Ash (who has been fighting the "medieval dead" in the 13th century) is told that if he says the words "klaatu verada nikto", he would return to his own time, and the evil would be stopped. Of course, being the fool that he is, he doesn't say the words properly — and the evil follows him back to the present time. There's a terrific fight with a demon in S-Mart (the supermarket where Ash works), and the immortal concluding line "Hail to the King, Baby".

The original intended ending, though, goes like this — Ash is given a potion by the Wiseman, and told that each drop he drinks from it would allow him to sleep for a century. Ash goes to a cave and seals it, and then drinks the potion. Unfortunately, he drinks one drop too much (being the fool that he is, of course)! When he wakes up, he exits the cave, and to his shock, sees a desolate landscape with several wrecked earth monuments and a red sky — and realises that he is the only man left on the face of the earth! The movie ends with his cry of despair, "No!! I slept too long!!" This ending was deemed too dark for audiences, and it was changed before the film was released.

Movies, Censorship, New Comics

2005-04-23T16:00:00.000-07:00

I watched the original Jeepers Creepers about a year ago on TV, and now I got to see the sequel on STAR Movies. The two movies have an interesting concept — the Creeper is a creature that awakens once every 23 years, and it feeds on humans for 23 days before it goes to sleep again. It can smell fear in its victims, and chooses what parts to eat and "absorb" into its own body.

In the first movie, the Creeper menaced a brother and sister. The sequel is set a few days after the events in the first film, in fact, on Day 22 of the Creeper's feeding period (apparently, apart from setting the sequel 23 years in the future, which studios would not appreciate, this was the only route available to the filmmakers). A bus transporting a high-school basketball team breaks down on a deserted highway, and the Creeper is hungry for their flesh. Although the story and characters aren't really developed that much, the movie worked as it built suspense very well, and took full advantage of its setting (deserted road, near cornfields). It is written and directed by Victor Salva. Of course, this TV version (like most TV versions of horror movies) is censored for language and possibly some of the gore as well.

On a related note, STAR Movies recently showed Evil Dead II. I would like to warn people who are planning to watch it on this channel, that it is a HEAVILY CUT version. This, inspite of the fact that they have certified it as being suitable only for viewers of 18 and above.

A bit of history would make things clearer. From the time STAR Movies started operations, they have had this practice of classifying films as G, PG, 12, 15 or 18 (closely based on the BBFC's system). In early years (up to 1995 or so), these ratings had a purpose, and they fairly well suited the films they were attached to. After 1995/1996, the channel started showing censored versions of movies, so the ratings had no relevance. You never get to see anything rated '18' on this channel anymore.

Which is what annoyed me with their version of Evil Dead II. When they showed that '18' rating before the film, I almost expected them to show an uncut version — but what I got was a version that was so badly cut, that it would be even tamer than something rated '15'! The possessed Linda dance scene is totally missing, therefore, there is no headless-corpse-with-chainsaw scene in the cabin, the shot of Ash actually stabbing his possessed hand is cut, and it was somewhere here that I stopped watching the movie.

You would be better off if you watched the movie on some other channel, or rented a CD. Again, if you are lucky, the CD that you rent might contain an uncut version of the film — if you aren't so lucky and if it is an Indian 'Diskovery Video' version, then that is slightly cut as well.

Now to change topic, I got to read the complete The Dark Knight Returns today. I had read books 2 and 4 earlier, now I read the other two books. The story broadly covers the return of the Batman, ten years after his 'retirement'. As he's now 55 years old, he is no longer the fit crimefighting hero that he was earlier, and in fact he is portrayed as an obsessed, tormented, raging figure. Frank Miller's story covers various themes, such as how the Batman is now viewed as a genuine menace to Gotham City's public in general, the role of the media, etc. The books are pretty nightmarish in tone and I definitely think that they are suitable for mature readers only. In India though, publishers Gotham Comics are selling this four-part series as just another Batman story.

Yesterday, I searched for Spider-Man India on Google, and found the following reviews for the four-part series — this one from Spiderfan.org, and this. Apparently it came out long ago in the US, Marvel Comics is coming out with a collected edition also. The funny thing is that I never saw it in shops here. I tried getting the books in Manipal and in Hyderabad, to no avail. You'd think that the books would be aggressively marketed in India, but I unfortunately never got to see the books. Other titles published by Gotham Comics have advertisements asking you to order a Special Collector's Edition of Spider-Man India #1 for Rs. 195. Considering that regular Gotham Comics titles are sold at Rs. 15 and Rs. 25, I think that's a pretty high price for just one issue. Anyway, I hope I will get to read them sometime.

Of Noir and Crossovers

2005-04-22T16:03:00.000-07:00

I'd recently posted about two of the Sin City stories that I read — "The Big Fat Kill" and the excellent "That Yellow Bastard" — well, yesterday I read another one, called "The Hard Goodbye". These are the three stories that have been adapted into the movie.

"The Hard Goodbye" is about Marv, who spends a night with Goldie, only to find her dead when he wakes up. She was pretty much the best thing to happen to him, and he decides to find the people responsible for her murder and take revenge. While the story may sound simple, it has deep characterisation, and it kept me totally involved. Like the other work by Frank Miller that I've read so far, it is very emotional. I also love the black and white artwork in this story.

Recently, I've also read a number of crossovers, including the four-part Aliens vs. Predator vs. The Terminator series, Batman/Spawn, the three-part Batman vs. Predator series, and the four-part Superman vs. The Terminator series.

Out of these, Batman vs. Predator was pretty decent, with a Predator showing up in Gotham City and murdering gangsters. It all eventually leads to a showdown with the Batman himself. I thought the artwork was very good, and the series had its share of bloody and violent battles. If Predator 2, the movie, had taken place in Gotham City, it would have been similar to what this series depicted. Written by Dave Gibbons, with artwork by Andy (pencils) & Adam Kubert (inks, letters) and Sherilyn van Valkenburgh (colours).

I did not like Superman vs. The Terminator much. It had Sarah and John Connor in Metropolis, running from Terminators who want to eliminate John. Superman steps in and fights for humanity in 2000 A.D. as well as 2032 A.D. A lot of characters are introduced (Supergirl, Superboy, Lex Luthor, Cyborg, Steel and a Terminatrix), and personally I did not think the timelines were properly handled at all. Written by Alan Grant, art by Steve Pugh (pencils), Mike Perkins (inks) and David Stewart (colours), letters by Clem Robins.

Aliens vs. Predator vs. The Terminator picks up a short while after the storyline of the Alien: Resurrection movie. Annalee Call and a group of soldiers have got word that a space lab is conducting strange experiments involving the aliens, and therefore plan to stop them with Ellen Ripley's help. Once they get there, they stumble upon a plot to destroy humanity — apparently Skynet has embedded commands in dormant Terminators, who would resume their attack against humans when the time is right. And now they're building Alien-Terminator hybrids. It's up to Ripley to save the day. Somehow, the Predators have also tracked them down, and they're willing to assist Ripley in destroying the Alien-Terminator hybrids. I thought this series was OK, though, I didn't much like the interpretation of the Predator. They're shown simply as green-skinned humanoids, and all Predators look alike. And I also have a complaint about the Predators' ships being orange in colour. Other than these two complaints I liked the artwork. Written by Mark Schultz, artwork by Mel Rubi (pencils), Christopher Ivy (inks) and David Stewart (colours), letters by Pat Brousseau.

I also read the one-shot Batman: The Killing Joke, written by Alan Moore, and illustrated by Brian Bolland & John Higgins. This was an excellent book, with Batman tracking down the Joker, who has escaped from Arkham Asylum. The Joker's origins are also explored in parallel, and we see what a truly disturbed character he is. The artwork is very beautiful and detailed, and I think it's some of the best artwork I've seen in any comic. It wonderfully supports the character-driven story, and overall, it is a fantastic book.

Movies: Child's Play

2005-04-22T15:11:00.000-07:00

I watched Child's Play 2 last night, and it was great. Having watched the first movie for the second time a few days earlier, I had the added bonus of continuity in the story being preserved. It is also worth noting that I have now seen all five Child's Play movies.

The first film opens with serial killer Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif) being cornered by cop Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon) in a toystore. To cheat death, Ray transfers his soul into a Good Guy doll named Chucky (Ray is a practitioner of voodoo and other black magic). Later on, working mother Karen Barclay (Catherine Hicks) buys the same doll and gifts it to her son, six-year old Andy (Alex Vincent). And soon, people start getting killed. Andy is the only one Chucky has revealed his secret to (the fact that he is alive), so no one else believes him when he says that the doll was responsible for those killings. Chucky was apparently destroyed at the end of the first film.

Of course, the company that manufactures the dolls wants to know what went wrong with the Chucky doll, and at the beginning of Part 2, they put together the doll only to have it escape and resume its killing spree. With his mother in a mental institution, Andy is adopted by a caring couple, but it's not too long before Chucky comes after him. Chucky must transfer his soul into Andy's body, otherwise he will permanently be trapped in the doll's body. Andy once again tries to warn his new family — the couple, Phil (Gerrit Graham) and Joanne (Jenny Agutter) Simpson, and Kyle (Christine Elise), a young girl who has also been adopted — but people still find the concept of a killer doll hard to believe, until it's too late.

I found both these movies to be extremely entertaining. The effects that brought the Chucky doll to life were great and very convincing, Brad Dourif's voice work as Chucky is awesome. I also thought Alex Vincent's acting as Andy was excellent.

The series consists of Child's Play (directed by Tom Holland), Child's Play 2 (directed by the first movie's co-screenwriter John Lafia), Child's Play 3 (directed by Jack Bender), Bride of Chucky (directed by Ronny Yu), and the recent Seed of Chucky (directed by Don Mancini).

Don Mancini created the concept for the series, wrote all the five movies, and directed the last film. While the initial entries in the series were more traditional horror films, the recent ones have been more inclined towards dark comedy. The last two are the strongest entries in the series in my opinion, with a great amount of creativity on display.

According to this page on IMDb, the TV version of Child's Play 2 is an extended version, and this is the version that I saw.

Movies: Nemesis Game

2005-04-20T15:39:00.000-07:00

STAR Movies showed Child's Play 2 (it's the only one in the series I haven't seen yet) at 11 PM tonight and I recorded it to watch later. But then when I was about to sit down and watch that, I saw that the next movie on the channel was Nemesis Game. I was under the impression that it was one of the Nemesis movies of director Albert Pyun, but as it turned out it was something different.

The movie has an interesting concept — the Nemesis Game of the title involves the quest for the meaning of life. It's somewhat similar to the concept of Pi, where the protagonist is searching for an explanation to reality itself. The game in this case involves riddles. These riddles are found in subway stations and other gloomy places, spraypainted on walls. The player answers these riddles one after another, and upon solving the final riddle, the ultimate "Design" is revealed.

Sara Novak (Carly Pope) is a college student whose mother died in a car accident some time ago, and she is drawn into such a game. Vern (Adrian Paul) is a video store owner who also gets involved in the game, and soon it becomes apparent that the answer is definitely not pleasant. A parallel plot is that of Sara's father, a cop, who is investigating a woman named Emily Gray (Rena Owen) who has confessed to murder. Emily is someone who is aware of the Design, and apparently that has something to do with whatever crimes she committed.

Now the movie certainly did a good job of building suspense and raising lots of intriguing questions — namely what is the Design, and what happens when one answers the final riddle, how is the Design related to what Emily Gray did, who is behind these riddles, and so on. However, somewhere towards the end of the movie I started thinking "when are we going to get some explanations?" Not too long after that the movie ended, and the problem is that no explanations whatsoever were offered!

I understand that a proper explanation can't be given — after all, the movie is about the meaning of life itself, something which I am sure even the director/writer Jesse Warn knows — but the movie ended very abruptly, and no resolution was given. While an ambiguous ending, I realise, is probably the only way to go with such a story, I was atleast expecting answers to SOME of the questions that the movie raised. Leaving that aside, I think the movie was pretty nicely made, it certainly kept my interest (unfortunately that made the ending feel all the more like a cheat) and had a nice creepy atmosphere. I think it's worth a watch.

Hitchhiker's Trailer

2005-04-20T04:48:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in the last post, the second of the two movies I am really waiting to see is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

I had the opportunity to see the new trailer for the movie yesterday (it was actually released a while back but I only downloaded it yesterday — here is a direct link to the medium-res trailer, which is about 12 MB in size), and I must say it is one of the best trailers I have ever seen. It begins with a voice-over, introducing the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as a standard repository for all knowledge and wisdom in the universe. Then, as the Guide opens, the voice-over begins describing what the book has to say about movie trailers. While this is happening, footage from the movie is shown. Here is a transcript of the Guide's entry on trailers.

Movie trailers are designed to give you an idea of the film in question, in a very short space of time. Typically, they begin with the introduction of the main character, who will very shortly have something so utterly fantastic happen to him, that someone just HAD to make a movie about it. (Arthur Dent's character is shown and he is apparently not too happy about his house being demolished, and certainly shocked at seeing huge spaceships in the sky). Often, this section is preceded by the words 'In a world'... (the Earth is shown being destroyed by Vogon ships) ...but sometimes not.

Trailers also normally employ a deep voice (narrator's voice turns deep, like a typical movie trailer voice), that sounds like a seven-foot tall man who has been smoking cigarettes since childhood. (narrator clears throat)

The goal is to create a piece of advertising that's original and exciting, yet intelligent and provocative. In other words, lots of things blowing up... (explosions happen) ...occasionally interrupted by a girl in a bikini (girl in bikini shows up).

Generally trailers also feature heartless, evil villains, hideous creatures, dolphins, physical violence and of course, the promise of true love. And lastly, there is a final montage, often set to rock music... (you see a montage, set to rock music) ...that is designed simply to blow away whatever synapses you have left in your brain.

This culminates in a reveal of the main title, like so... (the movie's title appears on the screen, read out by a deep voice) ...followed by the release date (April 29, 2005) so that the audience might plan the next few months of their lives accordingly.

This was certainly a remarkably imaginative trailer! By the way, the end music is from Danny Elfman's score from Men in Black, which suits this trailer really well.

Oh, and the movie's official site — which, by the way, was launched 42 days before the movie's release date — is also very nicely done. Especially the 'Guide to the Guide', which even gives you a recipe for Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters.

There is no Justice without Sin

2005-04-20T03:23:00.000-07:00

The above quote is from the awesome Trailer 2 for Sin City, one of the two movies I am really waiting to see. The trailer can be viewed at the Sin City website. I read a few of Frank Miller's Sin City comics over the last few days. The movie is based on three of the stories, namely "Sin City (The Hard Goodbye)", "The Big Fat Kill" and "That Yellow Bastard". I have read the last two stories.

"The Big Fat Kill" opens with Shellie, who is in danger from the drunk Jackie Boy and gang. However, Dwight is in the room and he drives away Jackie Boy and gang, who make their way into Old Town. That's where the complications start. Old Town is a section of Sin City entirely run by the prostitutes there. The book describes them like so — "The ladies are the law here, beautiful and merciless. If you've got the cash and play by the rules, they'll make all your dreams come true. But if you cross them, you're a corpse.". Dwight apparently has a past with the ladies in Old Town, so he knows what can happen when a drunk gang shows up there — namely a total bloodbath — and thanks to the deadly assassin Miho, everyone is killed. But then something is discovered that might mean the end of the truce (between the ladies, the cops and the mob) in Old Town, and Dwight must now take steps to ensure this doesn't happen. An entertaining story, with some over-the-top violence, and one very bizarre/funny sequence (namely the talking head one).

While I liked the previous story, I absolutely loved the next story I read, "That Yellow Bastard". This is about a cop, John Hartigan, who is one of the few honest cops in Sin City, and has always stood by principles no matter what. With just one hour to go before retirement, he is informed about one loose end — a little girl, eleven-year old Nancy Callahan, is in grave danger of being raped and killed by Junior, the son of corrupt Senator Roark. So Hartigan saves her and puts Junior into a coma, but then he is imprisoned. The Senator threatens Hartigan that he will kill his family unless he confesses to having raped Nancy and shooting his son. Hartigan spends eight years in prison, receiving letters every week from Nancy, who owes her life to him. She writes to him under the name of "Cordelia", so that no one would be able to trace them back to her. But one day the letters stop coming, and Hartigan must save her again. "That Yellow Bastard" is one of the most involving stories I've ever read, and it was very dramatic. The relationship between Nancy Callahan and Hartigan reminded me of the Luc Besson film The Professional. The characters are very well written and the story overall is very emotional. There is some pretty disturbing stuff in the book, especially the confrontation of Hartigan and the Yellow Bastard, but it all establishes the atmosphere of Sin City very well.

Both these stories feature great artwork. The art is primarily in pure black and white (no tones), except for little bits of (yellow!) colour (to highlight certain parts of the art). The whole thing is of course a one-man job, being written, drawn and lettered by Frank Miller.

I can't wait to see how the books have been translated into the movie. Everything I've seen about the movie so far looks absolutely stunning.

It's an Arac Attack!

2005-04-15T12:08:00.000-07:00

Watched Eight Legged Freaks last night on HBO. It was a pretty awesome little movie, lots of fun. The story is pretty typical, a drum of some toxic waste falls into a river near the town of Prosperity, Arizona, and mutates spiders to giant size. Soon the arachnids terrorise the town, and it's up to Sheriff Sam Parker (Kari Wuhrer) and her family to lead the town to face the titular creatures. It's an old-fashioned monster movie, only done with modern (excellent) visual effects, which make the creatures very convincing on screen. I thought the humans in the movie (including David Arquette and Scarlett Johansson) gave very good performances as well, and I liked the way their characters were written. Directed by Ellory Elkayem, this movie also had a great rendition of "Itsy Bitsy Spider" by Joey DeLuxe during the end credits. The original title of this movie was Arac Attack, but according to a post on the IMDb Forums, it was changed to avoid confusion with "Iraq attack". I like the original title better then the final one.

I got the CD of Mindhunters a couple of days ago. This movie was also very good, it is directed by Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger and most recently Exorcist: The Beginning), and is about a group of FBI agents who find themselves on a remote island, undergoing a test that will qualify those successful to become profilers. However, once they arrive on the island, they start getting killed off one by one (the movie contains many nasty but well thought out murder sequences), and it becomes apparent that there is a killer in their midst, and it will take all of their profiling skills to find out who it is. Very tense movie, I especially loved the way Harlin set up each murder sequence (one scene in particular — the one with the "electrified" water — is so well filmed that I was practically holding my breath for the entire length of that sequence!) to have maximum effect, apparently he tweaked the editing of the film a lot to get the pacing just right. It shows.

Finally, I did watch Big Trouble in Little China as I mentioned, a few days ago. It has been a long time since I watched this cult film and it was a total blast this time around. It's a very entertaining film about pig trucker Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) getting involved with some nasty Chinese sorcery. He goes to the airport with his friend Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) in order to pick up Wang's girlfriend Miao Yin (Suzee Pai) — but the girl (and eventually his truck as well) gets kidnapped. Soon, it becomes apparent that Miao Yin was abducted by David Lo Pan (James Hong), who is a cursed centuries-old sorceror, who must marry a girl with green eyes to lift the curse and gain ultimate power. With a little assistance from local sorceror/tour bus driver Egg Shen (Victor Wong), nosey reporter Grace Law (Kim Cattrall) and a few friends, Jack and Wang set off on a rescue mission. Superb adventure/comedy movie from director John Carpenter that really lives up to it's title.

Some interesting links

2005-04-15T12:07:00.000-07:00

I came across these links recently and thought of sharing them:

Detective Comics #27 (published in May 1939) contains the first ever Batman story. Kit's Silver Age Comics has scans of this six page story, and a few other notable Batman stories, here.

Was browsing Jim Lee's blog today. We got a cable internet connection at home so I downloaded four videos of a sketch done by Lee, of the character Jenny Sparks. The DC Comics site has a page with the videos here, though I downloaded them from this page on The Anomaly.

It was awesome watching these videos, they show a true artist at work. I have a few issues of Jim Lee's Batman: Hush, and a Superman story he drew, and I like his artwork a lot.

Also came across this very negative review for the upcoming The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie. The link I have given is to the short spoiler-free review of the film, the site also has a longer review but I didn't read that as it contains spoilers.

The past few days I've been reading a lot of articles on Wikipedia on comics. Came across a LOT of very interesting information.

A new drawing... and my best one yet!

2005-04-15T11:12:00.000-07:00

The first time I attempted drawing a picture of Varun was some seven years ago. That attempt came out pretty well. A few days back though, Varun suggested that I do a caricature of him (after looking at the caricatures I did for Interface). So I did, and here is the result:

I consider this drawing the best I have done till date. Varun was very happy with it too...

A headline with a difference

2005-04-09T11:52:00.000-07:00

A lot of the previous posts have been about comics or movies. Well, this one is no different, but I just put a different headline for some variation.

I read the new comics I got and they were great. Planetary #2 was terrific as expected, with Snow, Wagner and The Drummer investigating monsters in Japan. Of course we all know which monsters writer Warren Ellis was referring to! Tomb of Dracula #2 had an all-out battle between vampires and vampire hunters, as the hunters prepare to ambush Dracula in his lair. Dracula is beginning his transformation into super-vampire, but for the four days during which that transformation takes place, he would be vulnerable to attack. But of course he is well aware of that fact! Astonishing X-Men #2 had beautiful artwork and an interesting storyline where one Dr. Kavita Rao has found a "cure" for mutation. Finally, Book 4 of Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns featured intense action and an even more intense storyline, with complete chaos in Gotham City. The issue features a violent and ugly battle between Batman and Superman towards the end.

Got the CD of Big Trouble in Little China. It has been a very long time since I've seen this movie. I am going to watch it now.

More comic goodness

2005-04-08T12:51:00.000-07:00

I got some great Gotham comics today. There's Warren Ellis/John Cassaday/Laura DePuy's Planetary #2, Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Night Returns Book 4 (I have Book 2), Tomb of Dracula #2 (I read #1 a couple of months ago. The story features Blade) and Astonishing X-Men #2. I read about this title just yesterday on the John Cassaday site, and I'm surprised they're publishing this in India. This comic is written by Buffy creator Joss Whedon and illustrated by Cassaday. Apparently it won several awards, and the art looks awesome.

I haven't read these yet, and am looking forward to doing so. I'll write an update once I read them.

I also watched The Grudge again today. It was not as scary as the first time for the obvious reason that I knew what was going to happen, and I was also not watching it alone. Varun liked the movie too.

Comics: Planetary

2005-04-07T15:34:00.000-07:00

While I was in Manipal, I used to always buy a bunch of Gotham comic books before leaving for any bus journey — the main reason being the fact that there was a newsstand nearby. Just before the Kodaikanal trip last month, I again bought a bunch of books (following tradition), among which one was Planetary Issue 1.

This was a title I had not heard of before, and I was a bit surprised that it was being published in India. Anyway I found the first issue very interesting. The book is written by Warren Ellis and is illustrated by John Cassaday, and is about the organisation Planetary, consisting of the hundred year old Elijah Snow, the millionaire Jakita Wagner and The Drummer, who can communicate with machines. The organisation is funded by the mysterious Fourth Man. In the first issue, the three unearth a quantum computer built by a secret society during WW2. A bit of searching informed me that this is actually a DC/Wildstorm Comics title (I downloaded the Preview issue from the site), and also turned up these very informative sites — the Planetary Comic Appreciation Page and Planetary. Also got a bunch of stuff related to the comic today, will go through it tomorrow.

The Gotham Comics site is outdated and doesn't seem to have any information on Planetary, but I am guessing it is a monthly title. Tomorrow I will try to see if issue #2 is out.

Movies and Comics

2005-04-07T01:58:00.001-07:00

Movies I've watched recently include:

Hellraiser: Hellseeker - watching it a second time, pretty good.
Modern Vampires - weird comedy/horror movie. I did not like it.
The Usual Suspects - I have seen this many times before, one of the best movies I've ever seen.
The Grudge - this I watched last night, and it was very scary. The movie's story isn't anything substantial. It's basically about a house where something terrible happened, due to which some spirits are around, and they proceed to curse everyone who enters the house. Starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and directed by Takashi Shimizu (who also made the Japanese original Ju-On: The Grudge). The movie kept the scares coming, and was very creepy indeed. Normally, I watch movies at night with all the lights off, and this time was no different. But twenty minutes into the movie, and some dim lights went on. Reminds me of the time I was watching The Evil Dead around seven years ago.

I finished pencilling and inking the first strip of my new comic Dark Tales 03: Steal. I have to colour it and letter it and then I will put it up somewhere.

Speaking of comics I was also reading some of my old ones yesterday. One that I would like to mention in particular is Star Trek #22 (DC Comics), from 1985. The story is called "Wolf on the Prowl", written by Tony Isabella, with art by Tom Sutton and Ricardo Villagran, colouring by Michelle Wolfman and lettering by Agustin Mas. The entity known as Redjac (known by many names throughout time and space, including Jack the Ripper on Earth) is causing murders on board the Enterprise, while Kirk and crew proceed to Enoch IV where they hope a final confrontation with the evil entity will take place. An clever continuation of the storyline of Episode 36 ("Wolf in the Fold", 1967) of the original TV series. Unfortunately though, the story in this book was continued in the next issue, which I don't have.

Over the last few days I finished reading all the Calvin and Hobbes strips that I have. All were great.

Movies and Books

2005-04-04T01:29:00.000-07:00

Last night I watched Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (for the second time) and the night before that, Cabin Fever.

Yesterday my father and myself went to YMCA hall where they had an exhibition/sale of old books. I got these three books: Star Jaws by Will Eisner, The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty and The Anatomy of Swearing by Ashley Montagu.

Varun has put up some of his new wallpapers on his blog.

Among other things, I downloaded Skulltag v0.96c yesterday. It took a long time but as this one is supposed to be much faster than the older version, I am hoping it will run smoothly on the older computer.

Sin City is currently #112 on the Internet Movie Database's Top 250 movies. The music in the trailer, by the way, is "Cells" by The Servant.

Movies: Identity

2005-04-02T11:53:00.000-08:00

I watched Identity for the second time today (on HBO at 9 PM). The movie is a well-constructed thriller that starts off more or less like a typical murder mystery — a group of strangers arrive at a motel on a dark, rainy and very stormy night under different circumstances, and then start getting killed off one by one — but by the end the movie changes into something else entirely. Obviously I wouldn't want to spoil the movie for people who have not seen it, so I'll just say that it's very good.

It is written by Michael Cooney, directed by James Mangold and stars John Cusack, Ray Liotta, Amanda Peet among others. It also has one of the coolest movie posters I have ever seen.

This evening I was reading some of the Andrew Loomis books I'd downloaded earlier. If there are two things I need to learn to make my drawings better, they are anatomy and perspective, and hopefully with some practice and these books, it'll happen. Also started doing some rough layouts for a new comic.

Varun has set up a blog here.

Movies: Seed of Chucky, Assault on Precinct 13

2005-04-01T13:34:00.000-08:00

I managed to get Seed of Chucky and Assault on Precinct 13 on CD yesterday. Now these are two movies I wanted to watch for a long time, but I was not able to do so in Manipal. Therefore I was quite pleased to get the CDs. I watched Seed of Chucky yesterday and Assault on Precinct 13 today.

I had positive expectations about both movies because of reviews that I'd read, and both films in fact met or exceeded my expectations!

Seed of Chucky is set in Hollywood, where a film is being made about Chucky and Tiffany, the infamous killer dolls from the previous movies. The previous movie ended with the titular offspring of the two dolls being born — this child is now six years old and is performing in a circus as a ventriloquist's dummy. When he sees TV reports about his "parents", he gets to Hollywood and inadvertently resurrects their souls into the puppets used in the film. Lots of chaos follows as Chucky and Tiffany continue their killing spree, though Tiffany wants to set a good example for their child. The dolls also plan to take over the bodies of Jennifer Tilly and Redman (playing themselves). The fifth in the Child's Play series in my opinion is even better than the previous Bride of Chucky, and is very creatively made. Writer-director Don Mancini puts in lots of clever dialogue, inventive doll mayhem and let's not forget, plenty of dark and dirty humour. Once again, Brad Dourif outdoes himself as the voice of Chucky, Tiffany is superbly voiced by Jennifer Tilly, and the doll effects are brilliantly realised. One of the best scenes in the movie is the one where Chucky drives Britney Spears' car off the road. The car explodes, and Chucky says "Oops, I did it again!"

Assault on Precinct 13 is a remake of the 1976 film by John Carpenter (which I haven't had the fortune to see). The present film stars Ethan Hawke as Sgt. Jake Roenick, one of three people in Police Precinct 13 on New Year's Eve. It's a dark and stormy night, and the precinct is going to be closed down. As luck would have it, a bus transporting criminals — including the gangster Marion Bishop (Laurence Fishburne) — is forced to stop at the precinct due to the weather. The criminals are brought inside the police station. Soon, the station is surrounded by masked people armed to the teeth. At first, the cops think that they're all Bishop's men wanting to break him out, but it turns out that they're dirty cops — led by Marcus Duvall (Gabriel Byrne) — who are afraid that their corrupt activities would be discovered. So they want Bishop and everyone else inside dead. What follows is an intense standoff between the two groups over the night. This remake is directed by Jean-Francois Richet and is a taut thriller. Apparently even John Carpenter liked the remake.

Oh and the April Fool's joke at JoBlo.com was great.

Movies: Heat

2005-03-30T13:34:00.000-08:00

All the packages I sent from Manipal arrived safely here today and I setup the computer I was using in Manipal again. There are now two computers at home and I am thinking of networking them.

I read more than a thousand Calvin & Hobbes strips today. I got a collection of these strips in PDF format (one file per year starting from 1985) from one of my friends at TAPMI. Read the 1985, 86, 87 and most of 88 strips today. Many of these I have read before, but they are awesome as always.

Finally finished watching Heat. I watched the second CD this afternoon, and the third CD just got over. The movie is about two men who are extremely good at what they do — Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) is a professional criminal, and Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) is a cop. Hanna only lives for who he's going after, and therefore his personal life is a mess. McCauley's policy is "never to get close to anything that he can't leave behind in thirty seconds when the heat's around the corner", however things change when he meets Eady (Amy Brenneman). The movie explores these two characters and their personal lives, carries on with a thrilling bank robbery sequence, and then leads to Hanna's pursuit of McCauley.

Aside from the fact that it has an awesome cast (including also, Val Kilmer, Natalie Portman, etc.), what made Heat a standout movie for me was writer/director Michael Mann's superb characterisations (an extraordinary scene is the one where De Niro and Pacino's characters meet over coffee). He goes into much detail on everything in the movie and though it's almost three hours long it was always interesting to watch. I also liked Elliot Goldenthal's music score, which was subtle and effective (bank robbery sequence is an example). Heat I would say is a must-watch movie.

Another very positive review of Sin City at Arrow in the Head. Looking forward to this!

Cold and Dark Script, The Hellbound Heart, Heat

2005-03-29T23:20:00.000-08:00

I read the script for Cold and Dark yesterday. This is a British horror/crime movie made by Sheer Films. I don't know whether I will ever get to see the actual film, so I read the screenplay, which can be downloaded on the site (along with the trailer and lots of other stuff — now this is what a film website should be like).

The script is by Joanne Reay (also producer of the movie), and the movie is directed by Andrew Goth. It is about a vice detective, John Dark (Luke Goss) who has a great amount of respect for his mentor, DCI Mortimer Shade (Kevin Howarth) (who as he says, taught him what being a good copper was all about). Dark and Shade are troubled when bad guys get away by exploiting legal loopholes, but there's nothing really they can do. However, when certain high-profile criminals start ending up dead, Dark realises that Shade has changed into something not entirely human. He has been taken over by a parasite called the Grail, that feeds off the blood of humans. An interesting story. The trailer has Linkin Park's "Numb" on the soundtrack.

I also read the Clive Barker book The Hellbound Heart yesterday evening. Barker himself wrote and directed Hellraiser, the film adaptation of this story. If you have seen the movie, the story here is quite similar — a young woman, Julia, discovers that her lover Frank has returned from the dead, and is existing in a skinless, semi-human state in one of the rooms in her house. Frank has spent quite some time in the realm of the Cenobites, who specialise in sensory experiences that this world simply cannot hope to offer. The gateway to their dimension can be opened by solving the Lemarchand Configuration, a puzzlebox. Like the film, this is not just a horror story but is a lot deeper and very fascinating.

Finally, I watched the first CD of Heat yesterday and it seems like an excellent film. It's a pretty long film though, and I have two more CDs to watch, before giving comments.

Movies: The Transporter

2005-03-28T23:26:00.000-08:00

I watched The Transporter last night on CD. The premise is interesting, Frank Martin (Jason Statham) is an ex-military man who now works as a transporter — he delivers sensitive packages for clients in his black BMW (apparently a one-of-a-kind model made for the movie). He plays his game by three rules — one, no changes in the deal; two, no names; and three, never open the package. As it happens, one of the packages he is hired to transport actually contains a young Chinese woman named Lai (Shu Qi). Martin opens the package thereby violating his own rules — and soon the people who hired him want him and Lai dead.

The movie is an entertaining action thriller, and has plenty of stylish action and martial arts sequences, and some well-filmed car chases. It is written by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, and is directed by HK action director Corey Yuen. The film credits Louis Leterrier as "Artistic Director" as well (first time I am seeing something like this in a movie). The music score is by Stanley Clarke, and it is the second score I am hearing from him after the excellent Passenger 57 music. It gives the movie a light-hearted and fast-paced tone and it was an unconventional kind of score.

Apparently there is a The Transporter 2 in the works, and it is set in America, as opposed to the first film which has some very nice French locations (the car chase that opens the film is set in Nice).

Back Home!

2005-03-27T23:00:00.001-08:00

My parents and Varun arrived in Manipal at around 4:30 PM on 25th March. They met many of my friends in the hostel on that day. Later on that night I finished my packing, and the next morning, I signed out of the hostel and sent some of my stuff through XPS. Collected my grade sheet for the Second Year as well. Then got ready for the Convocation ceremony.

The 19th Annual Convocation of the T.A. Pai Management Institute got over on 26th evening, and I was awarded the Post Graduate Diploma in Management. The function itself went off very well and everything got completed on time. Congratulations to Guruprasad Jambunathan for receiving several of the academic prizes for outstanding performance, and to Rajesh for receiving the AgrEvo Student of the Year Award. The Convocation Address was delivered by Mr. Vikram Mehta, Chairman of Shell India.

Update 2005 was also released at the Convocation ceremony, and it has come out really well. Returning editor Prof. R.C. Natarajan and the student editors put in a lot of work on it. The cover of this issue is by myself, and this is my second Update cover.

I was very happy that my parents and Varun could be present there. We met several faculty members, friends, and their family members after the convocation, and Varun took plenty of photos. I will be posting relevant ones at various places as time and Internet speed permit. Later on that night, I went to KMC Greens for one last gathering of the T-Flankies, a group I was part of, for the major portion of two years.

The next morning (27th) I left Manipal with my family. We left by cab to Mangalore airport, reached Bangalore airport by around 1:30 PM. The flight to Hyderabad left at around 4:30 PM, and I was back home by 7 PM yesterday. I think I finished reading all the comics that I bought recently.

Kamal had sent an email to our T-Flankies group about the consolidated rank list that was announced back at TAPMI. My consolidated rank for the two years is 16.

Later in the evening yesterday, I unpacked my CDs, and Varun and myself watched Constantine. Slept early (midnight) in the night as I was tired. Visited Rob Zombie's Blog just now.

Comics Gold Mine!

2005-03-24T22:06:00.000-08:00

I walked into this place called "Decks and Cards" (or something like that) yesterday — it is a small shop opposite TAPMI on the main road — because I was looking for one particular Gotham comics Super Special issue (Spider-Man/Venom). That was not available, however, I did walk away with 11 single issues plus one super special (Batman Super Special 06), at a total cost of Rs. 140, a very good deal indeed! These comics are old, but most are in very good condition. This guy is selling them at half-price, so those interested might want to check it out. Apparently he buys these issues from students in Manipal. They do not know what they are giving away, seriously!

Read the first review for Sin City at JoBlo.com yesterday. This looks like an awesome movie and I cannot wait to see it.

Last days at Manipal

2005-03-24T21:47:00.000-08:00

Varun and my parents are right now in the Bangalore airport, waiting for the flight to Mangalore, which has been delayed by a couple of hours. They'll reach Manipal therefore at around 4 PM I think.

We have a rehearsal for our convocation proceedings today at 3:45 PM. There's apparently another one tomorrow morning at 10 AM, although I think it is not really practical due to lack of time. The actual convocation will start tomorrow afternoon. I would leave Manipal with Varun and my parents on 27th morning, and if all goes well, we would reach Hyderabad the same evening.

I have sent whatever luggage I can from here to Hyderabad through XPS courier. Yesterday I finished my CD writing, clearing dues, etc. Now only final packing is to be done, and I also have to dismantle my computer.

TAPMI Class of 2003-05 Wallpaper

2005-03-23T22:46:00.000-08:00

Dear All,

We hope you enjoyed flipping through this year's issue of Interface.

We have attached the wallpaper made out of the Interface poster by our Chief Interface Caricaturist — Karthik.

We once again thank all the people who have been a part of making Interface as we see it today.

Regards,
The Corporate Communication Group
Taking TAPMI Places....

I sent CCG the wallpaper before leaving for Kodaikanal, and I was busy at the time with packing and other things. That's why I am posting the wallpaper only now.

Here is a scaled down version of the image. Click it to open the 1024x768 JPEG wallpaper in a new window. It's about 300 KB in size.

Some fun facts about the poster:

The size of the poster is approximately 22 inches wide by 17 inches high.
The number of caricatures on the poster is 131.
There were nine artists in total who worked on the caricatures. I did almost a fourth of the caricatures, numbering 32.
It took around 10 hours to assemble the poster.
The image sent to the printers was around 8400x6400 pixels in size.
The Photoshop file with all the layers is larger than 100 MB in size.

I have to figure out some way of putting up a larger version of the poster itself over here. I will probably make a JPG version of a 2000-pixel or so wide image.

The Kodaikanal CD (photos and videos from three cameras — Abdul's, Anirudh's and Rupak's) is a little more than 500 MB in size. I'll post a couple of pictures from these too, later.

Back from Kodaikanal

2005-03-23T19:45:00.000-08:00

I am now back in Manipal after the Kodaikanal trip of our T-Flankies. I've just been catching up with what has been going on in the past few days.

CCG emailed the official TAPMI Class of 2003-05 Wallpaper I sent them.
I got an email from Alexander Repko, informing me that a couple of my Doom levels were recently used for demo contests at Doom Power. Thanks Alexander, and thanks to the organisers of the contests and the players! Perhaps I will pay a visit to the Systems Lab today and download all this stuff. I thought I'd settled all the downloading and CD writing business earlier, but apparently it's not over just yet!
According to JoBlo.com, The Ring Two is a bad movie.
Director Paul Greengrass offered an insightful interview on his upcoming Watchmen adaptation. I am very eager to read the book. Judging by the interview, I guess the movie adaptation is in good hands.
Some interesting new levels in the latest edition of the Doomworld /newstuff Chronicles are also to be downloaded. I suppose that Systems Lab trip is inevitable.

Skulltag v0.96b

2005-03-18T21:55:00.000-08:00

I am downloading the freshly released Skulltag v0.96b. The bots are back!

Going to go to KC for breakfast now. By that time the download will be done. Then I have to pack stuff for our trip to Kodaikanal (that won't take long though), and then send one more package of stuff (books, papers, etc.) home.

I made three personalised wallpapers out of my Interface caricatures last night. Mailed them to the three people concerned — Krish, Shanbhag and Abdul. They liked them a lot.

On Kamal's and Rama's recommendation I watched Deewar (1975) last night. I liked it.

Hard-Boiled (DVD) and Interface Caricatures CD (Planned)

2005-03-17T14:14:00.000-08:00

I just finished watching a DVD version of Hard-Boiled. Abdul had rented a DVD with four Chow Yun-Fat films, and it was on this DVD that this film was present. Now when he told me about this DVD, I was very excited because I thought it contained four of Chow's Hong Kong movies, but when I found out what the films were, my excitement lowered. There was Bulletproof Monk, a movie that was amusing but nothing too great. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is not exactly my type of movie, I just didn't like it as much as everyone seems to. At least The Replacement Killers is a pretty decent action movie (imitation John Woo?), and as Chow's US debut it is certainly an important movie, but that doesn't mean it's up to the standards of some of the star's HK films. Now the fourth film made everything worthwhile — this is an actual John Woo-directed HK film — it's the amazing police thriller Hard-Boiled!

I first watched this movie in May 2002 on a videotape, but it was a totally different experience watching it on DVD. This was in Cantonese with English subtitles, and was actually the complete film (as opposed to a randomly cut 107 minute version)! I actually transferred the VOB files from Abdul's laptop (where the image was very much squished) to my hard disk to watch it (and this was achieved by writing spanned RAR files on 2 CDs + 65 MB).

Tomorrow I am planning to put together a CD with all the content related to the caricatures I did for the Interface poster. This includes the raw scans, the cut out individual caricatures, the Photoshop files for the poster, a JPG version, a wallpaper, a short video that Rupak recorded while I was drawing, and anything else that I can think of while actually compiling the CD. I'm sure this is going to take some time, but if I can I am also going to include notes on the caricatures that I did.

So I won't forget...

2005-03-17T06:36:00.000-08:00

A couple of things that will be expanded (probably) in later posts... I'm writing this now, so I won't forget to write later! It's sort of like a disambiguation page on Wikipedia!

I watched John Carpenter's The Thing last night (after probably nearly a year of having the CD with me). Very good movie, suspense filled, with some great (icky) effects, and a terrific John Carpenter-esque music score by Ennio Morricone!
A couple of days before that, I watched the very entertaining Torque. So what if it is #77 on the Internet Movie Database's Bottom 100 List? Those who gave it a low rating just "didn't get it".
Yesterday was my LAST class at TAPMI. With this all the loose ends have been nearly tied up, only the final report submission for the RBSC course remains.
At the valedictory function yesterday, TAPMI Systems Group was voted the Best Academic Forum of the Year (we're getting this honour the third year in a row!) and Corporate Communication Group was the Best Non-Academic Forum of the Year. Thanks to CCG for their appreciation of my work on the Interface caricatures poster.
Kuldeep has set up the official messageboard for our TAPMI Hostel Second Floor T-Flank at the Virtual T-Flank.

Can't believe there's only two days to go for our T-Flank's trip to Kodaikanal. After that there's only a few days to go for our Convocation. Time goes by so fast.

Interface and Update

2005-03-15T13:01:00.000-08:00

I have been eagerly awaiting the release of CCG's Interface for quite a while now. The wait came to an end today. At 12:45 PM, we had the valedictory function that concluded BrandScan 2004 (the biggest and best BrandScan in TAPMI's history yet) — and at the end of this function, the CCG members released Interface. We all got our copies in the evening.

As a souvenir for us to remember the two years spent at TAPMI, this year's Interface is, I must say, an extraordinary piece of work. I say this because I know the kind of constraints CCG was working under (budgetary, time), and at the end of it all, this magazine is something I will treasure.

This year's souvenir included a poster with caricatures of all 131 seniors. This is something that I was closely associated with — nine artists worked on the caricatures in total, and I did 32 caricatures apart from putting the whole poster together in Photoshop. It was a huge amount of work, and my computer also strained under the load of opening and working with Photoshop files over 100 MB in size. It was more than worth the effort though, as the poster has come out really well.

It's that time of the year when work starts on TAPMI Update, and returning editor Prof. R.C. Natarajan's office is the place where everything comes together. The junior members of CCG and other volunteers are working on the magazine along with Prof. RCN. As I mentioned before, I am a returning cover designer for the magazine, and today I completed the artwork for it, and also assembled the actual thing. Unlike last year's cover, which had greyscale pencil artwork, this time Prof. RCN wanted it to be in colour, therefore I did the drawings for it in colour pencils this time. I am quite happy with the concept I came up with and the artwork. We made some 4 or 5 variations of the cover design, and which one is finally used will be decided by Prof. RCN and other faculty members.

A couple of links

2005-03-13T15:09:00.000-08:00

I wrote my Advertising Management exam today and that is the LAST exam I will be writing in my entire Management course at TAPMI.

We had a great farewell party today from our juniors. I returned at around 1 AM to the hostel, and I spent quite a bit of time from then till now, finishing up the report for the Research Methodology in Behavioural Science course.

While doing that I came across this pretty interesting webcomic: OK/Cancel. Well, just wanted to post that. Going to sleep now.

Tha Book Review!!

2005-03-12T11:42:00.000-08:00

So I finished over half of the book The Marketing Imagination by Theodore Levitt. Now Vivek Janardanan and myself decided to split the task of reviewing the book, and initially we decided that I'd do chapters 1 thru 6 and he'd do the rest. I've written notes on the first six chapters, but seeing as how I've got this far, I thought I'd read the rest very quickly (not going to make notes on these though). It's like watching half of a movie — even if there isn't actually any suspense in it, I'd still want to sit through and finish it off. Otherwise it's as good as not having seen the film at all, and that doesn't make sense. So I've decided to spend the next 30-45 minutes or so reading this book — and I am going to complete it by then. After that I will start studying for Advertising Management end term.

Grand plans are often made, let's see if this one works out.

EDIT (2:15 AM): I finished the book. Took longer than 30-45 minutes, but I DID say "30-45 minutes or so", didn't I? Now I will go and read the Advertising Management slides for some time and then fall asleep.

Some loose ends...

2005-03-12T06:22:00.000-08:00

I had my CTPL (Competitiveness Through People) end term exam this morning. With this, I have just one more end term to go (Advertising Management, which is tomorrow), and one project submission (the day after). And a book review which is going drudgingly slow. These are a few loose ends that need to be tied up before completion of my TAPMI course. I also need to pack my books and other stuff and send it off home. After all this I also have some other things to do as I am a "returning cover designer/artist" for TAPMI Update.

We seniors have a farewell party tomorrow night. Next week at this time myself and a group of friends will begin our trip to Kodaikanal. We will return on 24th, and then the convocation's on 26th. My parents and Varun will be coming to Manipal for that. Apparently they booked the flight tickets today.

The Arts and Aesthetics Forum here is organising a movie screening. They asked for suggestions on award-winning movies to show. The first thing that came to my mind was Pulp Fiction, but I read the fine print on the email that said * the movie should not have any obscene content. Hmmm... never mind, I suggested that anyway. That, and The Usual Suspects.

In other news Arun Panicker started a blog today. The bots are going to return in the next version of Skulltag which will be released in a week's time. That, I am eagerly waiting for.

Doom stuff, Man on Fire

2005-03-09T06:57:00.000-08:00

"Here's the great thing about Doom... It's rated 'R', it's unapologetic, just like the video game..."

I was very relieved to see the above quote from Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in this interview about the upcoming Doom movie from Universal Pictures. JoBlo, Arrow and Doomworld reported the arrival of the first actual picture from the Doom movie, which I must say looks pretty good. Has a sort of Aliens-feel to it, in my opinion. The movie is going to be directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak (Romeo Must Die, Cradle 2 the Grave), and is written by Dave Callaham and Wesley Strick. The effects are by Stan Winston Studios. Well, I am optimistic about this movie and I hope it turns out to be a fun experience.

Oh and that Rock interview linked above also has some info on the Johnny Bravo movie, which he is starring in! I love the Bravo cartoons, but I'm not sure how a movie adaptation will turn out.

JoBlo also reported about the final poster for Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, which is also really good-looking. It is painted by Drew Struzan. I remember observing the name "drew" on all the Star Wars posters (subsequent to 1997), the Back to the Future posters, the Police Academy posters and several others, and I've always wondered who the person was. Now I know. BTW: I LOVE the artwork he has done.

I watched Man on Fire last night. A WARNING for those of you who are considering buying the VCD released by Excel Home Videos in India: this version REMOVES ALL ON-SCREEN TEXT from the movie — so there are no opening credits, and, get this — no subtitles! For a movie that has a lot of dialogue in Spanish, this means that a substantial part is missing from this version. Also, director Tony Scott uses on-screen text to emphasise dialogue, and that is also missing in this version. His BMW Films short Beat the Devil is an example of this technique in action, and I was eager to see it in Man on Fire. Sadly I was disappointed.

Anyway, I liked the movie, it was brilliantly acted, and I loved the relationship portrayed between the characters played by Denzel Washington and Dakota Fanning in the movie. Tony Scott gives this movie a very stylised (sometimes excessively so) look, utilising lots of camera tricks. Some might find this over-use of style annoying, but I kind of like it, and after viewing Beat the Devil some five times, it has grown on me.

BMW Films, ADMT and others

2005-03-06T14:32:00.000-08:00

I managed to download ALL EIGHT of the BMW Films yesterday, including the "Making of" video for the first season films. I will put together all these on CD tomorrow.

Time passes and my course at TAPMI gets closer and closer to completion. Our convocation is on the 26th of this month. Many of our courses are ending, with Advertising Management getting over today (great ad campaign presentations by all!).

I better sleep now.

EDIT (4:17 PM): I assembled the CD for the BMW Films this afternoon (around 1 PM). It has all eight films, the "Making of" video, four wallpapers and some webpages with info about the films. I've also thrown in the setup package for Windows Media Player 10 and Media Player Classic. A cool compilation if I do say so myself.

Oh, apparently a newer version of Media Player Classic (6.4.8.3) has been released. Downloading it now.

EDIT (7:49 PM): I watched all eight films this evening. They're great, all of them. I'll write short reviews for them soon.

Movies: Constantine

2005-03-06T12:28:00.000-08:00

So I finally watched Constantine last night, and I thought it was really good. I know not everyone sees it that way, people have said that they found it boring, or that it was a bit too "all-over-the-place". I have never read the DC/Vertigo comic Hellblazer that the movie is based on, but I had read about the books before watching the movie. And after reading a couple of reviews, I knew not to expect a conventional action-horror movie (which is what I was expecting when I saw the trailer a few months ago).

The movie has certain interesting concepts — heaven and hell are two sides basically trying to control humanity. However, angels and demons cannot cross into our plane. There are half-breeds (some angel, some demon) among us who try to influence us to go to one side or the other. Keanu Reeves is John Constantine, a guy who was born with a gift/curse — he could see these half-breeds as they were since he was a child. After dying he spent some time in hell and returned to our plane, where he now works as a investigator and exorcist. He is trying to buy his way into heaven as he knows that his soul is damned and that the devil wants him in hell.

Angela Dodson (Rachel Weisz) is a cop whose twin sister, Isabel, commits suicide. She asks Constantine for help in finding out exactly why her sister — a Catholic — would do something like that. A plot with demons attempting to cross over, the Spear of Destiny, and the Devil's son being born into the Earth follows, and it's quite an absorbing story.

I liked the way the filmmakers fleshed out Constantine's world. Of course, the character is also unique and played well by Keanu Reeves. Apparently in the comic books Constantine is blond haired and a Brit, something which was changed for the movie, though the essence of the character is retained (according to certain reviews that I've read). The story is more well-developed than one would expect, which I think is because the screenwriters had a sufficient amount of story elements to work with, given the comic books. However, I also thought that some of the characters (like Papa Midnite, Balthazar) were introduced without much of backstory. A bit more explanation would have made a more comprehensive film, but I guess it would have become very long then.

That aside, I liked the dark mood that the director (Francis Lawrence, who has done several music videos) brought to the film. It was stylish without being overly so, and the look suited the overall film very well. The visual effects were very good indeed. I also loved the music score (by Klaus Badelt and Brian Tyler) which was subtle and very effective at the same time.

I am going to watch it a second time because I'm sure that there are lots of little details that I'd have missed the first time around. Probably tomorrow.

BMW Films Update...

2005-03-04T03:38:00.000-08:00

Here is the status on my downloads of the BMW Films:

Hostage: DONE
Ticker: DONE
Beat the Devil: DONE
Powder Keg: DONE
Star: DONE
The Follow: IN PROGRESS
Chosen: IN QUEUE
Ambush: IN QUEUE

Kamal started a blog recently.

Movies: The Hire: Hostage

2005-03-02T23:32:00.000-08:00

Abhishek Shanbhag told me quite sometime back about BMWFilms, where a set of short films (made to promote BMW's Z4 Roadster) by acclaimed filmmakers like John Woo, Tony Scott, etc. were available. Apparently, the idea of promoting the car through these short action films originated from David Fincher.

A couple of days back, I was checking John Woo's filmography on the IMDb and was surprised to see an entry on it called The Hire: Hostage. When I looked at the details page for that film, I realised that it was one of the BMW films. A 66 MB download, I got the file yesterday after a couple of failed attempts, and watched it a few times.

All the short films in the The Hire series star Clive Owen as the Driver of the BMW. The John Woo short is about 9 minutes long, and has the Driver racing against time to rescue high-profile CEO Linda Delacroix (Kathryn Morris) who has been abducted by former employee Harry Baumgartner (Maury Chaykin), and is now in the trunk of a sinking car.

Hostage is a stylish movie that's compactly told, though I guess it would have been better had Woo got more time to show off his usual movie trickery. It's granted, though, that the point of the movie is to show off the car, and that it does very well.

I'm eager to see more of these, especially Tony Scott's Beat the Devil.

EDIT (3:18 PM): I am downloading Beat the Devil now, and plan to download Joe Carnahan's short Ticker after that. I want to get all eight films in the series, and put them together on one CD.

EDIT (5:27 PM): Yes! Beat the Devil finished downloading. Started downloading Ticker.

24 days to go...

2005-02-28T21:50:00.000-08:00

Our TAPMI Intranet Portal page today was updated with a nifty little "Countdown to Convocation" — it now says that there are a little more than 24 days and 12 hours to go for our Convocation on 26th March 2005.

I watched the Oscars yesterday in the morning (from around 6:45 AM till around 10:30 AM). And then from about 2 PM till 9 PM I was working on that "secret" Interface work. It is coming along really well. And then I read something for the IT Strategy exam today.

I seem to have done pretty well in the previous (5th) term of my TAPMI course. The Rank list was out yesterday and my rank is 13 (out of 131).

While at Little Chef yesterday, the guy from the VCD library nearby came and told me that he had got the CD of Constantine — it seems six copies had already been given out, and only one was remaining. So I rented that copy. I am yet to watch it, but I look forward to seeing this movie (though Mansi was saying yesterday that it was "VERY bad").

Blog changes, Oscars

2005-02-27T13:25:00.000-08:00

I spent some time now making a few changes to the template of this blog. Apart from the font change (Trebuchet MS as opposed to Arial), there are other minor changes like the use of small caps text for headings. I've also changed the title of the blog to Nasty Little Thing Productions. The name comes from a drawing I did in 2003, and I use the name for my drawings, and other creations nowadays.

In a few hours from now, the 77th Annual Academy Awards will be shown on TV and I am going to get up to watch it. I say "get up", because it's going to be shown live at around 6:30 AM India time, and I will be able to get only a little more than three hours of sleep. Anyway I don't have any classes tomorrow — there was an Employee Relations class scheduled in the afternoon, but that class already happened a couple of days back. However I will be very busy tomorrow with some important (and secret!) assistance work on Interface. There is also the End Term exam for IT Strategy Planning and Implementation on March 1st so perhaps I will also study for that!

Exorcist: The Beginning (Paul Schrader Cut) Trailer

2005-02-25T09:05:00.000-08:00

JoBlo.com reported that the trailer for the Paul Schrader version of Exorcist: The Beginning was available online. And seeing as how I've recently been downloading a number of trailers, I got this one as well.

For a little bit of background on this: it seems director Paul Schrader actually made a whole film out of Exorcist: The Beginning, after which the studio decided it wasn't scary enough. So then director Renny Harlin came on board and reshot most of the film — and that was the final version that was released in theatres.

Now apparently the studio might release the Paul Schrader version as well. The trailer contains footage from the original The Exorcist, and then a few (scary!!) clips from The Beginning. I hope I will get to see this version of the film. I watched the Renny Harlin version and I thought it was very good (I know many people thought it was bad, but I liked it), and I'm curious to see what this version will be like.

TAPMI Batch of 2003-05 Sweatshirt

2005-02-25T08:49:00.000-08:00

We got our personalised TAPMI Batch of 2003-05 Sweatshirts yesterday. They are very good sweatshirts indeed. Here is a picture that was taken this morning:

Left to right: Kuldeep Gaur (Kuldi), myself and my roommate Rupak Ranjan Das (RRD).

Sarah Michelle Gellar drawing

2005-02-24T01:58:00.000-08:00

Recently, for Advertising Management class, Prof. Malavika Harita told us to get a set of colours to use in creating some advertisement ideas. I bought a set of colour pencils because I wanted to try drawing with them.

I have practically never drawn with colour pencils before, so this was pretty interesting to try out. I decided to draw a picture of Sarah Michelle Gellar that I had on my computer. I did the drawing in my notebook as usual, though now I think it would have been better to do it on white paper, as the lines interfere with the drawing.

Anyway, this drawing came out quite well, though as with my earlier attempts at drawing Sarah Michelle Gellar, it doesn't exactly resemble her. Don't know why this is. The drawing also was a bit too wide, so after scanning I squished it a bit so that it looks better. This is the final image:

I should also note that I had a tough time scanning this drawing — due to the pressure of the colour pencils, the paper wasn't even, so in the scan imperfections in brightness show up. Those imperfections are still there in the final image, and so are the notebook lines that make their appearance.

Of course, I have also made a 1024x768 wallpaper out of this to use on my desktop. One of the advantages of doing these drawings is that you can have a very customised desktop background!

Oldboy and H2G2 Trailers

2005-02-23T11:42:00.000-08:00

It's not often that you see a movie trailer that's truly powerful. I happened to see one today and I must have watched it about fifteen times by now. I am talking about the trailer of Oldboy, which is available from Joblo.com from this page.

Oldboy, directed by Chan-Wook Park is a Korean revenge drama that recently made waves at Cannes. It is about a man who is imprisoned in a hotel room for fifteen years, and then let out. He finds his wife and child murdered, and himself as the prime suspect, and has five days to find who did it to him and take his revenge. Apparently, the guy behind the imprisonment also has bigger things in mind — the fifteen-year imprisonment is only the beginning of the torture planned for him.

Ever since I found out these plot details I have been very eager to see the film. It is getting released in the US in March, so hopefully it will make its way here also. Today, I downloaded and watched the trailer and I thought it was simply superb.

The trailer is powerful, emotional and beautifully put together. It shows glimpses of what seems to be a stylish, ultraviolent and very dramatic film. There is one particular shot in the trailer where you see a brick wall, with one brick missing — you see the imprisoned man's hand put outside through it to feel the rain outside. Pretty amazing stuff, really, and I thought the music in the trailer was fantastic as well. Like I mentioned I already watched it several times, and now I am downloading a larger resolution version to watch it even more times.

Oh I also downloaded the trailer of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the one I watched streamed earlier. This was great as well.

The Photos

2005-02-20T13:01:00.000-08:00

As promised, I am posting photos of the changes that happened to my face in the recent past! By now people have gotten used to the clean shaven look, and I should have my original beard back within a few days.

This is what I looked like on February 14:

And then, on February 17, the handlebar mustache:

And finally here is the clean shaven look:

Rupak (my roommate) was the first person to see my face like this, and he asked me "Is it you or a clone?" Some people told me they like my original look better, and others have said that the clean shaven look is actually better. Everyone agrees, though, that I look younger now. Anyway, I am going to go back to the original look as soon as the beard grows back.

I watched Macross Plus (Movie Edition) today and liked it. It was a very beautfiully made anime, and I really like "Myung's Song (Voices)" from the movie. The story as such involved elements of science fiction, drama, romance, and even action — it is set in the year 2040 on the Planet Eden. Isamu and Guld, are both fighter pilots, competing for their fighter crafts to be chosen for a defense project. The virtual singer, Sharon Apple is visiting Planet Eden, and with her comes her producer, Myung. Myung loved (and still loves) both Isamu and Guld, but their relationships broke up after an incident that happened seven years ago. There are further developments in the story but it is probably not a good idea to reveal everything here.

Some changes...

2005-02-18T09:43:00.000-08:00

Those who know me well have got very used to seeing me with a goatee... but now after six (?) years I decided that I would try something different! Of course I don't intend it to be permanent, and since now all the photographs I am supposed to take (Interface photo, etc.) have been taken, I have some time to experiment. So here are the changes that have taken place...

February 14 - I shaved off the bottom part of the beard, so there was a handlebar mustache plus a bit of hair in the centre.

February 16 - Handlebar mustache only.

February 17 - Clean shaven!

I love the astonished looks that people are giving me when they look at my face!

My roommate Rupak got a digital camera recently, and we've been making good use of it (650+ MB of photos and videos within a few days accumulated on my computer...). I will put up some of these photos soon.

Don't Panic!!

2005-02-18T09:37:00.000-08:00

The very first trailer (showing actual footage from the movie) for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy debuted on the Internet Movie Database and Amazon recently, and I watched it yesterday. It is absolutely awesome and looks even better than I thought it would be! There is a brief glimpse of the Vogon ships destroying Earth that looks absolutely stunning, not to mention the actors seem to perfectly suit the roles they are playing. There are even some extra bits in the trailer that are not in the book! Can't wait for the movie to be released (April 29, 2005).

I looked at the Sin City Official Site yesterday and it looks great as well. I just love the black and white/colour combination as well as the comic book like look of the whole thing.

I also finally watched Elektra — rather, I finished watching it last night. It wasn't a bad movie, but it wasn't a great one either. Maybe I need to watch it again (I watched one CD of it some days back and the second CD last night) to appreciate it properly.

There is also another movie that I am eager to see now, and that is Constantine, starring Keanu Reeves. I'd downloaded and seen the trailer a long time back, but I couldn't make sense of it at that time. I later read about the comic book it is based on (Hellblazer) and got interested in the storyline, and some of the reviews I've read for the movie indicate that it is good (and a proper R-rated movie instead of a toned down PG-13 film).

STAR Movies is showing Infernal Affairs tomorrow night and Infernal Affairs 2 the day after. It has been a very long time since I watched a movie on TV and I plan to watch both these.

I got the CDs of Gen-Y Cops and Macross Plus: Movie Edition today also. I have seen the former movie already (and the CD is entirely in Chinese, with no English subtitles... in fact, whatever English dialogue is actually present in the movie is also dubbed over!!) and the latter one I have heard of, as it has Shinichiro Watanabe as one of the directors, and he did a couple of episodes of The Animatrix. It would be the first well-known anime I'm seeing!

My Interface Photo

2005-02-11T05:31:00.000-08:00

Here is a small version of the photo of myself, Ramakrishna and Jayesh that will appear in Interface. I edited this one to remove the colour in the entire image except for us, and added the cool "dream sequence" effect to it.

Kaante and other movies

2005-02-10T01:52:00.000-08:00

I watched Kaante for the second time yesterday on CD (the first time was a couple of years ago). As is known, this movie is a liberal lift from The Usual Suspects and Reservoir Dogs, but it is stylishly done and is entertaining.

It is directed by Sanjay Gupta, who recently made Musafir. Comparing the two movies, I think the stylistic photographic tricks in Musafir were a bit more polished, whereas in Kaante they were a bit overused to the point that they became distracting. Being a bit critical, I would say that the entire movie seemed a bit "rough around the edges", and I have strong complaints about two aspects of the movie in particular:

Practising firing guns on a rooftop especially when you've just been released from prison seems like a foolish thing to do.

After robbing a bank, walking out of the door with guns in hand, and then REMOVING your ski masks, to smile at each other seems odd. Wouldn't it make more sense to do all that after having escaped in a getaway vehicle?

On the other hand, the movie did have some aspects that I appreciated, like the general slick look, and the emotional ending. I am not comparing it with the end of Reservoir Dogs, but taken independently, it did have an impact on me.

I recently saw an interesting fact about this movie quoted on the Internet Movie Database forums. One of the characters in the movie is named Detective McQuarrie, after Christopher McQuarrie, the writer of The Usual Suspects.

A couple of days before, I watched Blade Runner (the 1991 Director's Cut edition) for the third time. I love this movie and use a quote from it as my email signature (Roy Batty's emotional dialogue at the end). Speaking of Director's Cut editions of movies, I managed to watch the altered ending of The Butterfly Effect as well as an extra scene in the Director's Cut edition of that movie.

MIP Finished, Other Work

2005-02-10T01:46:00.000-08:00

Today I finished the formalities of my MIP as I submitted the Phase 2 and 3 reports with all the relevant forms.

I have been doing quite a bit of photo editing recently. Soon, the Corporate Communication Group at TAPMI will be putting out their magazine called Interface, which is a souvenir for us seniors, who will be passing out of the institute soon. CCG is currently in the process of compiling all the content for the magazine, which includes write-ups about the seniors, and photographs.

Guru, Rupak, Rex, Rama, Jayesh and myself went to a place (I don't actually know the name of the place!) about fifteen kilometres from Manipal to take our photos. We found a couple of great locations to take these snaps, and then I edited them in Photoshop. The photo with Guru, Rupak and Rex, has Rupak in colour, whereas the other two people are in black and white. The second photo (Rama, JD and myself) is entirely in black and white except for the people in it! I also added to both photos a glow that makes them look like something right out of a flashback or dream sequence scene in a soap opera. It's a nice effect that I have been calling the "dream sequence effect".

I have also been given an additional, shall we say, "assignment", for Interface. I cannot say what it is right now, but it involves drawing. Quite a lot of drawing I might add! That has kept me busy for a while now and there is still work to do. It is fun though and I am enjoying it.

Elektra Drawing

2005-02-02T05:34:00.000-08:00

Elektra, starring Jennifer Garner is one movie I want to see. I did this drawing on 24 January morning — started at around 2 AM I think, and finished it at 3:40 AM.

Now, the original drawing was done in my notebook, using a Cello Papersoft ballpoint pen. I'd seen the advertisements for this pen earlier on TV, and it turned out to be a good pen indeed! I bought the pen on 23rd night and decided to give it a "test drive", and this drawing was the result.

I spent about two hours now editing the scanned image in Adobe Photoshop. I first removed the notebook lines, then slightly colourised different portions of the image, mainly to highlight Elektra's red costume. You'll notice I also added a duplicate layer of the image to the left, and faded it, because that area was looking too empty.

As usual, the font used in the image was created by Nate Piekos of Blambot Fonts.

Enough rambling, here is the image:

You may consider this drawing an endorsement for Cello Papersoft pens. Of course, their gel ink pens are especially good for drawing!

As for the movie itself, I think the CD is currently available in Manipal. However, the movie has been getting some not-so-good reviews, and I read somewhere that Ms. Garner herself wasn't too happy with it. Anyway, I still want to see it.

Most Anxiously Awaited Movies of 2005

2005-02-01T00:07:00.000-08:00

The following are movies that I am really waiting to see:

Sin City (releasing April 2005)

This is director Robert Rodriguez's film version of Frank Miller's dark and ultraviolent graphic novel. The movie is being filmed using a "digital backlot" technique, which means that the actors are filmed against a blue or green screen and all the backgrounds are inserted digitally. I've seen some preliminary footage and the trailer of the movie and it looks awesome. Panels from the book have literally been translated to film! The movie has an impressive star cast as well, including Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Benicio Del Toro, Jessica Alba and Elijah Wood.

A Scanner Darkly (releasing September 2005)

Yet another film adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story (others include Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Scanners and Paycheck). This one stars Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr., and is directed by Richard Linklater. This again is a unique film, because the actors are being filmed in real life, and then the whole thing is being converted to animation, due to which it looks like a comic book come to life. I've seen some preliminary images from the movie and they look fantastic. Oh of course, the story is amazing as well — in the future, a drug called Substance D causes people to develop split personalities. Keanu Reeves plays a cop who is also addicted to the drug, and is trying to shut down the operations of a notorious drug dealer, which is an alternate personality of his!

The Devil's Rejects (releasing August 2005)

Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses was a disturbing movie, and this sequel looks great as well, as I could make out from the trailer. The movie seems to be bigger and more stylish than the original film. The trailer's music is simply terrifying. The official site is here.

Saw 2: Hacksaw (releasing October 2005)

Seeing as how I loved the tense, clever and disturbing horror-thriller Saw, I can't wait for the sequel. Of course work hasn't even been started on it yet, though it is apparently going to be written by Alex Garland, who wrote 28 Days Later.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (releasing May 2005)

Without a doubt the movie I am most anxiously awaiting! I am a huge fan of Douglas Adams' books and this movie looks like it will be awesome. Adams himself contributed to the screenplay of the movie before his demise (and introduced a new character, Humma Kavula), and Karey Kirkpatrick is the screenwriter who is bringing the book to the screen now. The movie is directed by Garth Jennings. I love the trailer, and I think the poster is simply superb as well. The pictures officially released so far also look great.

And today, I read a review of the rough cut of the movie here, at Freeze Dried Movies.

Recently released movies that I want to see include Assault on Precinct 13 (which I hear is really good), Seed of Chucky and Elektra.

Doom Review: Under Neith

2005-01-31T23:31:00.000-08:00

It has been quite a while since I've done a review for a Doom level. I played Under Neith a.k.a. Neith 2 a couple of days back in Hyderabad, and here is a review.

I played the original Neith about a year ago and was very impressed with that map, which was set on a UAC tech-base built on an imaginary moon! Apart from good level design, there were a couple of aspects which made it stand out for me. Firstly, the map somehow seemed to have an "organic" shape, with curves on the walls and rooms seeming to flow into one another, unlike your typical tech-base. The map also was extremely atmospheric, and good use was made of Nick Baker's "5th Episode" texture set.

I was therefore overjoyed when I saw that a sequel to Neith was in development. Nick Baker had also suggested an awesome name for it, "Under Neith" (since this level was to take place under the original tech-base)! I kept checking on the status of the map once in a while on WADs in Progress, but there was no news of its release. Well, imagine my surprise when it suddenly gets released one day.

I immediately downloaded it and played through it, and I have to say it's a great level! There's more of the same dank and dark atmosphere, more of the same unusual organic feel, and some cave-like areas as well. This time, you don't ever get to go to an open area, as it's all set underground. It is a pretty straightforward map in my opinion. It flows pretty smoothly (I was stuck in one place though, which I will talk about later...) leading to an exciting conclusion!

I played this on Ultra-violence skill and did not have any trouble completing the map. It is not too difficult, and there is adequate health and ammo, as long as you remember to use the berserk pack whenever you can. I remember when playing the first Neith, I was almost at the end and couldn't kill all the monsters as I'd wasted my ammo. I was careful this time.

I got stuck for some time in one particular place — this was in getting the blue key (screenshot above). I eventually looked in an editor to find out how to get those bars to raise. Other than that the level went by pretty quickly for me.

I noticed a couple of graphical glitches in the map. There is one area early on in the map with some shotgunners behind some bars (kind of like a jail-type thing). There is also a bright red section of wall here. I saw some HOM when standing behind the bars. I played it with ZDoom only, so I don't know whether the error appears in other ports. Of course this is not probably something you'll notice unless you're looking for errors!

Other than those minor complaints, I liked the map a lot, and I loved the atmosphere. If you liked Sarge's Waste Treatment Center 911 and the original Neith, then you know what I am talking about.

Under Neith contains textures by Nick Baker and some made by Sarge Baldy himself. There is a music replacement (the MIDI from E1M6 of the original Doom) that suits the map well. It runs on E1M2 and requires a limit-removing source port to play.

Relevant Links:

Doomworld /idgames page for Neith

Doomworld /idgames page for Neith 2

Back in Manipal

2005-01-31T22:25:00.000-08:00

I reached Manipal on 30th January after spending nearly 25 hours on various buses. Anyway the travel was worth it, because I got to spend a couple of days at home. I was also able to set up this blog, and watch a couple of good movies, and play a Doom map that I was awaiting for quite a while.

Those movies, by the way are The Butterfly Effect and The Ghost and the Darkness.

An interesting fact to note is that the version of The Butterfly Effect that I watched was the Theatrical Edition. The CD that some of my friends watched in Manipal happened to be the Director's Cut Edition, which has an alternate ending! I will try to track that down and watch it as well.
The Ghost and the Darkness is a simply amazing film. Thrilling adventure, great acting, great setting, and fantastic music score (Jerry Goldsmith).

The Doom map I played was Sarge Baldy's sequel to his earlier Neith, this one called very appropriately, Under Neith (the name was suggested by Nick Baker). I will post a review here soon.

The Timeline of Events

2005-01-28T01:08:00.000-08:00

Whew, it has been quite a while since I updated, and there have been some important developments.

Firstly, I now have a job! The Campus Placement Process at TAPMI began on 19 January, and it was pretty much all-out chaos on 18th and on that day. There were several companies on campus and students were running around here and there, attending pre-placement talks, giving interviews or taking part in group discussions. The Placement Committee had the task of coordinating all this chaos and they did a wonderful job.

Anyway, I was placed in Tata Consultancy Services in a HR post on January 19th. I was so happy about this, because I had only applied to a few companies — due to my interest in joining in a HR role in an IT company, and due to the fact that my profile didn't really match with what other companies were offering. On 19th morning I was waiting for TCS to arrive on campus, and they did at around 11:30 AM. They conducted a written test, and after that I had one level of interview with Mr. Chakravarthy, and then a telephonic interview with Capt. Girish, Head HR, Bangalore. After that Mr. Chakravarthy confirmed that "I was part of the TCS family"!

Here is an article that appeared in the Economic Times about our placements.

My location and exact role have not been confirmed yet. But I was told that my joining date would be about one month after completing my PGDM course at TAPMI.

The next few days went off without event at TAPMI, after which came the 23rd of January, when a particular course called Markstrat started. Now since I had not taken that course, I had one whole week without classes. So I finished my MIP Phase 2 and 3 reports, submitted them, and got permission to come home.

I started on 25th night from Manipal and reached Bangalore the next morning, only to find that there were no buses running to Hyderabad until that evening. My father therefore booked tickets on an Air Deccan flight to Hyderabad. I waited for about eight hours at Bangalore airport, and boarded the flight at around 5 PM. I reached Hyderabad about an hour and a half later.

So I am now at home, typing this. Sadly, this is a very short vacation — I have classes starting on 31st, so I have to leave Hyderabad tomorrow evening, and return to Manipal.

Movies: Musafir

2005-01-27T23:51:00.000-08:00

I watched Musafir on CD last night. It stars Sanjay Dutt, Anil Kapoor and Sameera Reddy, and is directed by Sanjay Gupta (Kaante). It was a pretty exciting action movie done with lots of style. There were many plot twists and turns and the movie kept me interested throughout. There was only one problem I had with the movie — at the end of it all, the story seemed pretty nonsensical.

Lucky (Anil Kapoor), a thief, wants to go off and live a happy life with his girlfriend after one last job. The job goes through and he brings back the loot to his temporary place, only to have it stolen by his girlfriend! To make matters worse, he discovers that the money actually belonged to Billa (Sanjay Dutt) a notorious drug lord. Billa tracks down Lucky and agress to spare his life, if Lucky'll go to Goa and do a drug deal for him. Things get complicated there, as Lucky gets the money, loses the money, meets up with Sam (Sameera Reddy) and her husband (Mahesh Manjrekar) who both involve him in murder plots.

Apparently the wife-husband double murder plot is lifted from U-Turn... I haven't seen that movie so I can't comment on this. Anyway I enjoyed the movie overall and would say it is worth watching for all the style that director Sanjay Gupta put in. Lots of great dialogue as well.

First Blogger Post

2005-01-27T23:12:00.000-08:00

There are two reasons why I have not updated the site for a long time. One being Placements happening at college — which I will talk about later — and two, the fact that my host has discontinued support for phpMyAdmin on the site.

Until a solution is found, I thought it was better to create a Blogger account and then use that for my news posts. Who knows, I might even use this permanently (after all, it's possible to add comments and stuff to posts...)!

That was an image there. I still have to figure out how to categorise posts (is that possible?)