Bumba Da, or Prosenjit, which is how he is known to the masses, has proved once again that he and Bengali cinema is not finished yet. Atleast that is what his performance in Autograph, his latest Bengali movie, seems to tell you.
Everything about this movie is perfect, well almost. The imperfections only seems to make it all the more perfect. From the direction to the starcast, from the storyline to the screenplay, from the songs to the acting, everything made the movie worth watching in a multiplex. And as Prosenjit has correctly pointed out in the movie, he is still a crowd puller simply with his acting unlike any Kumars and Jeets.
The cinmetography is simply breathtaking, especially when Prosenjit is seen sitting near the banks of Ganges and in the backdrop we can see the Thakur Bhasahan. Everyone has given a 100% to this movie which is what makes it an apt tribute to Satyajit Ray and is masterpiece "Nayak".
And the more I say about the performance of Prosenjit the less it is. It is a relief to see him as Tarun Chatterjee, which is the real name for Uttam Kumar who was the protagonist for the movie "Nayak", seeing that he has done justice to the character. He has made it a point once again that he is the deserving successor to Uttam Kumar, the legend of Bengali cinema.
If you want to watch good Bengali movie, go for Autograph. As for me, next stop Moner Manush.
Do you know what MikroMikko is? Surprise! Nokia, which is one of the world's leading mobile phone manufacturer, used to produce computers by that name. MikroMikko 3, manufactured in 1987 by Nokia, was a state-of-the-art MS-DOS machine with 1MB of RAM and 20MB drive. It's been about 25 years since Nokia's made a computer bigger than an N900, but it's back in the game with its first netbook, the Booklet 3G. So how is the Nokia Booklet 3G?
Let's first look at the chassis, which is carved from a single piece of aircraft-grade aluminum. On top of the aluminum lid is a high-gloss plastic cover (available in white, black, and blue) which unfortunately gets covered in fingerprints. Probably that is the reason Nokia included a soft cloth in the box. Although the aluminum makes the Nokia Booklet 3G heavier at 2.8 pounds, it's still comfortable to hold and carry in one hand.
The Booklet has three USB ports, an HDMI port, a headphone jack, and SD and SIM card slots, but there's no VGA or Ethernet ports. So in case of a weak 3G connection and an absence of a WiFi network you would really face a challange. Although you can obviously buy a USB Ethernet adapter, but after spending $599.00 why go through that pain!
The Booklet has an attractive 10.1-inch edge-to-edge glass display. While a smaller bezel could have sufficed, the 1280 x 720 screen is high quality and much roomier than the usual 1024 x 600 netbook resolution. The LED-backlit display are easier on the eyes and the 720p video clips looks vivid and crisp.
The Nokia Booklet 3G uses the lower-power Intel Atom Z530 instead of the usual N270 or N280 to increase the battery life. But that makes it very sluggish in performance. Running Firefox and Word simultaneously is fine, but adding another application like Seesmic Desktop causes things to drag. Moreover, you would often get a "not responding" message while trying your hands on something like streaming a movie on Hulu while running Tweetdeck, AT&T's connection manager and Microsoft Word. And the 4,200rpm, 120GB hard drive that's slower and smaller than the 5,200rpm units in most other netbooks adds to it's woes. And so does the Windows 7 and F-Secure security suite.
The battery life is good though, which can run for about 8 hours at 75 percent brightness to browse the web and edit documents. Nokia also bundles the Ovi Suite for synchronizing the Nokia phone and its Social Hub software, which is useful for centralizing your social networks (Twitter, Facebook) to one desktop application. It also lets you easily send text messages from your SIM. You can find detailed specifications here.
In a nutshell, things would look fabulous with the Nokia Booklet 3G until then time you start working on it. Once you do, you would simply wonder whether it's really worth the $599.00 price tag.
Paa, one of the most hyped movie of the year. But honestly, it didn’t quite live upto its expectations. I found a lot missing in the movie, rather everything was missing in the movie, except for Amitabh Bachchan.
Paa is about a love-child Auro who is suffering from a very rare genetic disease which causes in an accelerated ageing. So even though Auro is only 12 years old, his body is that of a man of 80 with all it’s geriatric complications.
The first thing that came in my mind while watching the movie was that they could have done away without Amitabh's makeup. It actually came in the way of displaying Amitabh’s facial expressions, and thus he ended up looking dumb in certain scenes. Next comes screenplay, lot of things were not portrayed properly in the movie. For example, where was the pain of Bidya Balan after she was asked to abort her child by Abhishek Bachchan! She just sobbed once in front of her Mum and that’s it, that was it?! Where was the pain depicted by her when she learned of the disease her child was suffering from? Where was the pain of a single mother?
Moreover, after seeing the entire movie I didn’t realize much about suffering of Auro because of his disease. Okay, I understand that he fainted a couple of times and had to be hospitalized, but is that it! I have seen children suffering from heart blockages more than that. Did he never felt heartbroken that he could not participate in the merriments of the rest of his schoolmates?
The chemistry between Abhishek and Bidya Balan didn’t work out at all. I felt Bidya Balan was pretty stiff as if she was facing the camera for the first time! It simply makes me wonder why did Amitabh praised her so much before the release of Paa.
Paresh Rawal as Abhishek’s on-screen father was a waste. I felt he was put there as a comic relief when his character could have been more powerful. Iliyaraja as the music director was a massive failure, his songs were simply average and the movie would have been way better without them.
I think R. Balki was confused, he was confused about what he wanted to do with the movie. He was confused whether he wanted to make a Amitabh Bachchan starrer, a commercial movie or a succesful flick. Although the movie was not entirely an waste of your money, yet I would suggest you to go for it only if you don't have another option.
Planning to buy a laptop? Have you tried the Sony Vaio VGN-P15G/R. It's the best, irrespective of whether you want to work with it or flaunt it.
Featuring an Intel Atom Z530 Processor (1.60GHz with HT support) with 533MHz Buss Speed and a 512 MB Cache, this baby is a lean mean machine. Although the fixed 2GB DDR2 SDRAM is quite a put-off, but you would loose little productivity for that. It comes with the 32-bit Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 preinstalled. For graphics, the Intel Graphics Media Accelarator 500 works just fine.
Now comes the tricky part, networking capabilities. The Sony Vaio VGN-P15G/R features Integrated Wireless LAN IEEE 802.11 LAN and Bluetooth standard Ver. 2.1+EDR, which is more than you can bargain for in a laptop.
The bundled VGP-BPS15/B,/S Lithium-ion battery lasts upto 3 hours, although you can opt for the VGP-BPL15/B,/S Lithium-ion battery which has a battery life of 6 hours. The Sony Vaio VGN-P15G/R comes with a pair of Noise Cancelling headphone (MDR-NC021LP/BM2) so that you can enjoy your tune on the go.
It has a lustrous Garnet Red color that sends a message of passion and inspiration. So compact and lightweight, yet it offers a wide 8.0 (20.3 cm) wide LCD screen and full-size isolation keyboard for comfortable operation.
And the best part is the Sony Vaio VGN-P15G/R fits perfectly in your pocket, be it's size or your budget.
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A few days back Runa tagged me. The rules are that I need to mention the top five books I read in January with a short review along with a word of recommendation for each and/or any one of them for her to read. So here it goes.
The Call of Cthulhu and The Dunwich Horror
I am writing about these 2 books at the same place as both of them belong to a similar category and was written by the master of horror, H. P. Lovecraft.
Being a horror fiction fan, I am always in search of stories/novels that would make my bones chill. As most of you would know by now that I am a fan of Stephen King. But at the same time, I must say that I am quite awed by Lovecraftian horror. Although there are no comparisons between them.
In the first book, The Call of Cthulhu, this very same Lovecraftian horror has taken a new dimension altogether. It's one of his best known short stories, written in the Summer of '26 and later published in Weired Tales, February '28. This story is 3 stories linked together. It begins thus, "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents".
The second story, The Dunwich Horror, is another short story published in Weired Tales, and a core story of the Cthulhu Mythos. It takes place in Dunwich, a fictional town in Massachusetts.
I would recommend both these stories if only one likes horror fiction, or would like to spend some sleepless nights. You would find both of these books here :
"...the Lot's knowledge of the country's torment was academic. Time went on a different schedule there. Nothing too nasty could happen in such a nice little town. Not there."Every town has a memory, so did Salem's Lot. So when Ben Mears returned home to Salem's Lot, Cumberland County, Maine, he found what he had least expected. Ben found darkness, because the town knew about darkness. It knew about the darkness that comes on the land when rotation hides the land from the sun, and about the darkness of the human soul.
- Salem's Lot, Stephen King
I know Rochak since my days in EXL when we were working together in the DELL Desktop Support Team as Technical Support Specialists. His is a rags to the riches story. It’s unbelievable how a guy, who used to wash clothes is now the CEO of his own company, DMW Technologies. Not that he used to be a laundry boy, he used to wash his own clothes, all I meant was he was and is a hard working gy, what did you think! Jokes apart, he was always a very helpful tech nerd both inside and outside office. A few days back when I was reading an article that he had put up on his blog, I thought about writing a review of his blog. Would be a nice surprise for him after all the help that he did through all these years of friendship. His blog is called Unexpectedly Exciting. Let us first consider the designing aspect of his blog. Being a developer himself, he has successfully given his blog a Web2.0 look using Wordpress 2.7 as his blogging software. White background, a search box at the top right, easy navigation, easy subscription options, integration of Flickr and the abundant use of Javascript to show the recent posts, recent comment et al has given the blog a unique and uncluttered look. Being the helpful tech nerd he is, and to grow his network, he has used Hab.la to be in touch with his readers and prospective clients. The only minor glitch in his blog is the ad near the top banner which has not been aligned properly.
Now let’s come to the content. He writes on myriad topics which includes politics, to humor, blogging, technology and at times about his pind. And thinking about his off-shore visitors, he has installed a translation widget.
Try out his blog sometime, he has lot’s of classes going on on Web2.0. He also has a number of online tutorials on PHP. I am sure you would find his blog as interesting as he himself is. If you found this review a good read then consider subscribing to my RSS feed to keep yourself updated. And I also do paid reviews, so if you would like me to review your blog/site on The Chronicles of R, feel free to get in touch with me. You would find my contact details on the Contacts page.
Although this movie is titled The Dark Knight, I would not dare to say that it could as well have been titled Why So Serious? Because believe it or not, this movie is all about the madness named Heath Ledger who played The Joker. Set in the offset of Gotham and partly in Hong Kong, this is a chronicle of the darkness that reigns the heart of a human being.
This movie shows how thin the line between good and evil is where the once most honorable Harvey Dent, played by Aaron Eckhart, does not take a minute to join hands with The Joker when his love interest dies in the hands of The Joker. And then there is The Joker himself. This is supposed to be Heath Ledger's finest performance before he died. And although it never got an Oscar, mostly because the Oscar committee does not have any affinities towards presenting posthumous awards, that too for the Best Actor category, yet nearly all of us expected to see him get the Oscar. He portrayed the role of The Joker brilliantly and is more than a worthy successor for Jack Nicholson. Heath had outperformed Jack Nicholson. He had stayed in a hotel room for more than a month just to get a feel of the character. The Joker is a madness, pure chaos, pure anarchy, who does not stop for anything. At one point of time in the movie, The Joker tells him that the two of them are destined to fight forever, and how Batman really IS incorruptible. The Joker reveals to him, however, that his real plan was to engineer the fall of Gotham's White Knight, Harvey Dent, since that would introduce much more chaos when a good man like Dent is shown descending into chaos and evil.
No doubt about it that The Joker is the deserving nemesis of the Batman. But now it would be difficult to find someone, anyone, who would outperform Heath Ledger. After all it was a Heath Ledger movie all way through. And maybe when the Directors and Producers of the next Batman movie would be sitting, thinking who might be able to to be a worthy successor of The Joker as played by Heath Ledger, The Joker would come and stand in front of them. Then he would say, "Why so serious?".
The story revolves around an impecunious young couple from a small town in India who are madly in love with eachother, move to the big city. The man works hard on a novel while caring only about his endless desire for his beautiful wife. In time they leave the city and moves to an old house in the Himalayas. While renovating their new home the husband discovers a chest full of diaries maintained by the previous owner of the house. In those diaries he slowly uncovers a dark secret, a forbidden secret.
It a nice buy and is worth every penny And once you start reading it, it's pretty difficult to put it down. It is published by Picador India and the cover price is Rs325. Now while I was at the bookstore I also found another book of interest. 
For the time being I am busy reading these two books while at times reading a few short stories of Lovecraft, you can get those from the Gutenberg Project of Australia if you love to read an ebook. Else you can gift yourself a collection of books and novels by the master of horror.
