This year, I’m going to try to watch all the short films nominated for Oscars. Some are available online for free (and legal), some are available for $1.99 on iTunes, and some seem to be missing completely from the Internet. Bad on those nominees—it would have been easy money and publicity. I haven’t seen them all, but I’ll update this as/when I do.
Animated Shorts:
Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death—I haven’t seen it yet, because it’s the longest (almost 30 minutes). But it’s Wallace and Gromit, so it’s most likely the best of the lot. They’ve already won three Oscars, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this was their fourth. Available on iTunes.
Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty—an old grandmother re-tells the story of Sleeping Beauty, from the perspective of the old fairy that nobody loves. This one starts out mildly depressing and ends up creepy. Available on YouTube.
Logorama—this one is really inventive, subversive. I’m not sure what the message is, but it’s something about corporate/consumer culture, I’m sure. Available on iTunes.
The Lady and the Reaper—an epic battle between a doctor and the grim reaper for the life of an old lady. It’s heartbreaking, but fast and funny. Available on iTunes.
French Roast—it’s quirky and fun story about a man in a French cafe who realizes he lost his wallet. I like the way the camera work is in two dimensions, but the animation is in three. Available on YouTube.
I’m not doing predictions for the Oscars, because that’s boring. Here are the awards that I would give out, based on the nominees. The ones in italics are the ones I’ve seen, bold is the one I want to win. As an over all philosophy, I want Inglourious Basterds to win as much as it can and I want Avatar to win some but not sweep the awards. Continue reading ‘The Oscars’ »
The biggest influences on my sense of humor are PG Wodehouse and Douglas Adams. But there were a few other things growing up that taught me new ways of being funny, one of which is the the Mad Tea Party from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The wordplay, logical deadlocks, literary nonsense and the frustration of always being just on the verge of understanding what they’re talking about. Continue reading ‘The Mad Tea Party’ »
So- we were watching Pyaar Impossible yesterday, which is a silly little movie starring [Priyanka, Uday] Chopra and directed by this guy.
I’m not going to tell you if you should watch it or not—figure that one out for yourself.
∞
The movie is laced with all kinds of geekery. Uday Chopra is ostensibly a geek—his room has pictures of Asimov, Star Wars posters (vote Grievous ‘08!) and a picture of Steve Jobs on his bedroom door.
His dad (Anupam Kher) had a picture of Bill Gates.
Also, he’s created a software called Unity that lets you run software from OS X, Windows, Android, Palm, Ubuntu, Symbian and other stuff on the same computer, with the flip of a keystroke, like VMWare on steroids. No, he doesn’t say all those names, but those are the icons I saw. Those, and one generic tux penguin.
∞
In the olden days, I would have sat watching the movie wondering who had all those ideas. Is Jugal a not-so-closeted geek? Uday Chopra? Some random writer in Bollywood?
@devanjedi The light saber was Uday’s idea – he’s the Star Wars fan -as for me – give me ‘Lord of the Rings’ anyday!
Another glourious day for the Internet!
∞
The only thing that bothered me about the geekery in the movie was that they kept using the phrase “program files” when they meant source code. As in, “I can’t give you the program files, but I can give you the executable”. Why trust the audience enough to use the word executable, but not to say source code?
Posted by Devanshu on March 4, 2010 at 10:31 am under Film. 6 Comments.
I went back to my college, for only the third time since leaving it more than five years ago.
It was the same. I parked where I always used to park, walked up the same steps, past the labs where I spent many nights working on code while listening to the White Album.
But it was different. People looked much younger than I recall.
∞
There’s another college, in another town, that I left almost nine years ago.
Often I think of the beautiful town
That is seated by the sea;
Often in thought go up and down
The pleasant streets of that dear old town,
And my youth comes back to me..”#
Though “beautiful” and “pleasant” are probably overstatements. I’ve been back there too, about three times since leaving it nine years ago.
Bottle Shock (2008) is a great little film, about Napa Valley in the ‘70s. It tells the story of a time before anyone took American wines seriously, when a little winery named Chateau Montelena competed in a blind taste test against the best of the French wines, with French judges, and won.
It’s “based on a true story”, but knows enough to tell the story as a small comedy of quirky characters and unassuming underdogs. It stars Bill Pullman as the owner of Montelena, Chris Pine as his son and Alan Rickman as the British wine snob who is organizing the competition. Freddy Rodriguez (El Wray of Planet Terror!) is understated, but good as Gustavo Bramila, who works for Montelena and has wine in “his blood”.
Posted by Devanshu on February 24, 2010 at 7:14 pm under Film. 2 Comments.
This is a seriously catchy song. I heard it once on the radio (thanks again, WERS!) and had to know what it was. As I described last week, the discovery loop is shortened immensely—you can go from hearing a snippet somewhere to finding out the name to listening on YouTube to downloading it within minutes.
So- the song is called Mad Tom of Bedlam, and it’s based on a 17th century song. The lyrics are pretty much unchanged, but the tune is something Billie Holiday would have knocked out of the park 70 years ago. It’s by Jolie Holland.
These words have been spinning in my head for weeks now:
It’s well that we sing bonney boys
Bonney mad boys
Bedlam boys are bonney
For they all go bare, and they live in the air
And they want no drink nor money
I am an AR Rahman collector. I have close to everything he’s done in Hindi, and a lot of the other stuff too. Yes, even Love Birds. And Lakeer- Forbidden Lines. And yes, even the Hindi dubbed version of Duet, known as Tu Hi Mera Dil. Such a thing exists.
But there are a lot of AR Rahman songs that even his (northern) fans have not heard. Some movies did not get released, some were never heard north of the Deccan plateau. So—here are my favorite 7 AR Rahman songs that many people (even among his fans) have not heard, or are unfairly ignored:
We watched Whip It a couple of weeks ago, and it was fun. It’s about a misfit teenager, played by Juno’s Ellen Page, who takes to the violent, extreme sport of Roller Derby. Much to the chagrin of her parents. It’s a quintessential sports movie, with the loser sports team coming from behind to win the great championship, and love, and acceptance. It’s everything that Eastwood’s Invictus wasn’t.
Yeah, I’m comparing a roller derby movie to Invictus, and I’m saying roller derby wins.
But the real feature of this movie is that it’s the directorial debut of Drew Barrymore. And she shows she’s got it where it counts. Every major character in this movie is female, and the point-of-view shows. It’s a movie by women about women, but it’s hard hitting and takes no prisoners. The reason it’s worth pointing this out is that this is extremely rare in Hollywood. This year we have two examples—Whip It and Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, which might clean up at the Oscars.
[P.S. Manohla Dargis at the New York Times did an extraordinary piece on the lack of women filmmakers in Hollywood.]
My name is Devanshu Mehta. This blog is a place for me to put all the things that I don't get paid to do. The blog is named after my favorite poem. (more)
Animated Shorts:
The movie is laced with all kinds of geekery. Uday Chopra is ostensibly a geek—his room has pictures of Asimov, Star Wars posters (
We watched 
