I created Minimal Posters for the Thriller/Drama series Dexter. Since Season 7 is still on air, I have created 6 posters, each for each season. I hope those who have seen it will like these and those who haven’t can relate to these when they happen to watch!
I was alone in the apartment with nothing to do. So I watched ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ in the afternoon yesterday. The movie is good and gets you thinking. Later in the night (very late, at around 1200 midnight), I thought of watching Nolan’s Insomnia, there by completing all of his finally (ESOTSM is not his BTW) in the living room. The movie again, though not as grueling for mind as the other movies of his, but indeed thought provoking. I had switched off the lights to get a better viewing experience as well. In the middle of the movie, I heard a small thudd outside the door. I ignored it once but when I heard it again, I went outside to find no one. Thinking that it might be just wind blowing across, I continued with the movie.
The movie ended up at around 2:00 AM. I shut the laptop off and I switched the lights on. As soon as I entered my room, I find a dark brownish cat sitting on one side of the bed. As it happens, when you switch the light on after spending some good time in darkness, eyes take a while to adjust to the brightness so I was caught startled. I mean, if you don’t have a pet, who expects a cat sitting on your bed at 2.00 AM in the night. Like myself, the cat too got surprised and jumped off to run away. It went into the living room and jumped out of the window which was, say 20%, opened and ran away. It was not scary but laughable. I cleaned up the bed to check if it had not done some shit and made my Saturday Caturday! It hadn’t.
So I slipped into the blanket (Bangalore is a hill-less-hill-station, remember?) which felt unusually warm on right bottom side (and it was not warm as in Wet warm) and tried to sleep which I could only after an hour later. The mind itself keeps imagining things, no?
Now whenever I will enter my room, I will check once if there is a cat or not. It could be there, it could not be there.
–—
Update: 28 November 2012
Found the cat alive, sitting on a bundle of newspaper at 3.30 AM making scratching noises in the apartment (again). Thrilled.
Ya ya all of you already have DSLRs and I am the last one to buy one, it is OK. I was as excited to finally own it like I was happy while riding the bicycle without side wheels for the first time alone. So here are the unboxing pictures.
Also, Happy Birthday to me!
Few promises:
I won’t click:
Black & White pictures of old wrinkled faces.
Self-Picture looking into the viewfinder standing in front of the mirror.
Islamabad: As a spontaneous reaction to the 31st May’s Bharat-Bandh in the friendly neighborhood country India because of the Petrol Price hike, Pakistan has decided to call a Nation-wide Open on 1st June in their country. They have decided to keep open all the roads, cinema theaters, schools & colleges, restaurants, shops, hospitals, Courts and their Senate and National Assembly which usually are closed owing to the threats from local nuisance creating groups. Also, the government institutions are generally shut down because of the callous and laid back attitude of the people working in these places as they don’t know who is in charge, the government or the army, rightly so, they shouldn’t be blamed. All the mentioned places and institutions will resume their services at wee hours of the morning and continue to remain open till the late hours of 1st June 2012. The local police authorities (heh) have cascaded this information among all the facets of the society, both terrorists and non-so-harmful-civilian population of the state.
A majority of the civilian population has welcomed this gesture by the government because they are happy that for the first time Government has decided to open and work. Prof. Qureshi, a well-known name in Pakistan’s Political Studies forum, and a regular in Times Now show with Arnab Goswami, from Lahore had this to say, “These Indians are always up to something notorious. Creating all possible measures to make Pakistan look like a minion. Which we are not. Yes. So this move by the government to open up against Bandh in India is a great way to show to the US that we want development here! They might give us some economic aid as a result. Nowadays, khafa khafa se sarkaar nazar aate hain. Hilary came to Asia but didn’t announce anything good for us. Tcha!”. Hina Rabbani Khar has decided to do a road show in Karachi to attract camera persons from media from all over the world and especially from India to let know that Pakistan can do whatever Indian can in a better manner and with a pinch of glamour too. But certain eminent personalities in the society are afraid that Indian Government might use up this working opportunity to create some mischievousness again. Mrs. Fatima Rehman, a women’s rights social activist said that “This useless Government always wants to compete with India. What is the need? They make missiles, we will make 2 missiles. They make Agni, we will make HATF, Arrey WTF, what was the need of this Open-Day? We are trying to be peaceful since some days now and now when everything will open, people will come out on the roads, some body mua from RAW will again disrupt the peaceful country of ours. We are happy this way!”.
Ex-Pakistani Cricketer, now a British citizen was also wary of this Open day concept. He has rather suggested to counter India by creating a Cricket league of their (Pakistan he said to clarify) own and try to attract the sponsors. He said that whatever he is saying, it is because of the fact that he considers himself a brand ambassador of Pakistan in the UK. He said that he is getting lot of moolah by playing in IPL as an export from England but he feels that Pakistan can compete with India by creating a League where no Indian Cricketer is allowed to play. Though he suggests that Pakistan should not be showing too much arrogance and should allow Ravi Shastri as a Commentator and Mohinder Amarnath as a bowling coach because IPL also allowed Rameez Raja and Wasim Bhai there. Imran Khan has appreciated the ex-Pakistani and now a British citizen (like most of the Pakistani cricketers).
The terrorists clan of Pakistan has welcomed this decision and have issued a fatwa to not to kill anyone just like that, only if needed. They want to show that Pakistan can do a better job in Kashmir so they have planned to show off their strength by spilling petrol on the roads of POK, which they call Azad Kashmir, because petrol is just around Rs. 60 there in Pakistan.
(Disclaimer: It’s only a rumour that Pakistan is trying to stage a Pakistan Khulla. Their actual motive is to make India buy fuels from them and topple the Indian economy face first)
Since the day I’ve became famous (heh, I’ve still got a bit of humor left in me) and was adjudged a movie buff, I’ve come across plenty of people/bloggers who kind of consider themselves as movie reviewers. Not that this is a new practice or path breaking stuff, people used to share their takes on the movies they watched earlier too, peacefully. I also shared my expert opinion about Tashan once and how much I enjoyed it but everyone is a reviewer now. Whenever a new movie, music album, TV show or even a trailer hits the web/TV, they come out and start pimping their expert reviews about the subject with the word go. This pimping continues every <insert your desperation limit> minutes on Twitter and other social media platforms till <insert your tolerance limit> until you click to read the review finally. And I have a problem with all that jazz.
Firstly, anything which is shoved up your face that read my review on this and that, becomes a turn off. But since we are on Twitter so I should better stay away from this practice.
Secondly, I firmly believe that nobody has any right to hold back anyone from sharing their opinion. Everyone is entitled to say what they feel where ever they want, whenever they want, how many times they want. My problem is just that while they are sharing their opinions, they forget that it is ‘their’ opinion and ‘their’ opinion only. I look for certain words and phrases in their blog posts which range from: in my opinion, i feel, i think, it looked like to me, my point of view is that, my conclusion, etc. And I found none. Nobody owns any copyright (heh) or any qualification to become a reviewer but point to note that it is you who is giving your opinion about a certain thing. What you have concluded cannot be the final judgement. Look around, the movies you had written off, say Housefull 2, to be a circus of non sense scenes and full of idiots, has earned more than what you could ever dream of. (I have not watched that movie and have no intention to watch crap) In a country of ours where opinions are so much divided that people can fight even over anything, even the way one glanced the other, how can you be so sure that your take will be even given any respect. You talk about technical details? Take a look at your own blog Sir/Madam and the aesthetics of the space from where you are announcing that the movie is a unedited series of ham videos not even worth of being shown in Bangladesh’s Funniest Videos but the movie ends up being a hit and the normal people actually enjoying it whole heartedly? What sense do you make out it?
Like they say, the best way to become famous now is to hit below the belt and when the person cries out in pain, take pics of him and put it on 9gag. Similarly, to become a critic, blast the movie off. Don’t become a constructive reviewer, no no no no no, how will you be famous then, just make fun of it, that is the right way, no? The most hilarious thing is the stars or thumbs up these reviewers give. This movie had bad direction, lets cut 1.523454 stars out of 5, this actor had slept with the producer’s wife, lets add 0.69 stars to it. This movie had brilliant music but all inspired from Asian and Arabic music, lets cut the stars from the rating by 2 bilangs.
Try doing something creative and let others judge you. Then review whatever you can.
That is my opinion. And i don’t expect you to follow it. But you should.
Bangalore: The Garden City or the City of Bangalore (Bengaluru) has known to be a harbinger in many aspects as far India is concerned. While people in rest of India were still looking up in the sky in order to irrigate their crops with rain water, people in Bangalore were thinking ways of loosening up the pockets of people in USA who were looking for cheap labor, thus making itself the Silicon Valley of India. Bangalore became the first city in India to get electricity. It was the first City to get an Internet Service Provider and similarly, it has been the first to achieve things, other cities could only dream of achieving.
Silkboard, as rendered from a commuter's dream while sleeping on the traffic signal.
While Bangalore was still in its nappy as in infancy, after the British had left, it gradually became Pensioner’s Paradise. Army Personnel and other retired people got shifted to Bangalore because of its delightful climate and peaceful environment. The city boasted of many gardens from which it bears the nickname ‘The Garden City’. This concept of making the city Garden-like, though, had some ill-effects which could have not been thought by the people then. As garden has narrow walkways, the architects of the city thought of playing a practical joke with the future residents of the city by making the main roads and streets as narrow as possible. Their vision of future Bangalore was as narrow as the possible and so they kept up with the legacy of being the first city to make narrow roads with heaviest traffic.
In a recent study, it was found that the traffic running on the roads of Bangalore is so slow because of pathetic traffic condition that even atomic clocks are finding it difficult to measure the speed. Chief Assistant of Bangalore Development Authority’s youngest son’s Girlfriend who also happens to be a team member of the research organization Search for Lethargic Objects WorldWide or S.L.O.W. told us that they came up with the speeds of lowest objects on this planet and surprisingly they found that Bangalore traffic is slower than the slowest of the slowest things possible. While it takes 1 minute for a snail to travel 1 cm, it takes hours for a vehicle to even shake a bit to be measured. Turtle, Sloth all travel faster than the Bangalore Traffic. In some weird cases it was observed that it might take more than to deliver a baby from conception than crossing an important junction of the city called as ‘Silk Board’. Of course we are talking about the gestation period of Eastern quoll of Australia and not humans. Though she added that it might be unjust to compare living entities with the speed of traffic. So, she showed the stats and figures that proved that even the Indian Postal Service can be called lightening fast when compared to BT. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the former Prime Minister of the country, was known to complete his speech in lesser time as compared to time taken to cross Brigade Road on a vehicle.
Another series of experiments like time taken for ketchup to drip completely from a bottle was compared with the time taken to cross the Marathalli bridge, the time taken to login to Airtel’s Website was compared with the time taken to cross the Graphite India red light signal in Whitefield, the duration of an Ashutosh Govarikar movie was compared to the time taken in turning towards NGV from Forum Mall in Kormangala showed the same story that everything other than the traffic moved faster.
Initially, the study suggested that there are only pockets of city where the air is thicker as compared to the rest of the city. Thus, the viscosity of the air makes travel difficult. But then it was soon realized when the device used to measure viscosity viscometers didn’t reach at all the places because of the traffic itself and they had to be returned back. They were on rent, for your information. The traffic police was not shy in poking fun at the fate of the people who travel on Bangalore roads by creating an outrageous upper limit of 60 KMPH for all vehicles. Demonstrations were held at Freedom Park against this inhumane sarcasm on the part of the traffic police. Though the demonstrations were not attended by much as they were stranded and stuck at traffic lights at various parts of the city so they were called off soon. To add to the fun, the BDA decided to start as many as 6 flyovers, underpasses on Outer Ring Road where there is basically no need but since they had extra money so no one complained.
To help the commuters from this draconian task of travelling on the roads, Namma Metro was devised and after spending millions of Rupees, the services finally started between places where there was no need of metro.
Finally, the research came to a conclusion that Bangalore can be a perfect spot for testing the Einstein Theory of Time Dilation as people travelling in other cities as compared to those who were on the roads of Bangalore tend to age quicker. Therefore, once again, living up with the tradition, Bangalore has been named as the first slow-motion city of India.