Monday, February 23, 2009

And who won the best supporting actor?


A typical night at the living room, watching TV with my roommates. The red carpet starts on E!, we keep passing comments that include frequent clarifications for one of my roomies ("this is Hugh Jackman, he is the guy who comes in X-men - the mutant movie, with the blades coming out of his hands", or "we saw her in the Devil Wears Prada, remember? No she is not nominated for that movie, her name is Anne Hathaway", and "that is not Shekar Kapoor. What? Shekar who? Never mind.")

The sound in room is at "loud-enough-to-hear-from-outside-the-house" level which occasionally gets bumped to "loud-enough-to-hear-from-street-end" level whenever I get hyper excited (i.e. when it is one of the 9 Slumdog categories). And I get 7 phone calls after Rahman's win and after the Best Director and Best Film awards are announced; I have to leave the room each time to take the call so as to not annoy my roommates anymore than I already have although I knew I was drowning the TV with my conversation and that they had to make up with closed captions.

Finally, the show is over, we all say enough awesomes, comment again on Anil Kapoor's "I-am-on-TV" act, and everyone heads off to their rooms and I switch back to E! for the post-Oscar party bits. My other roommate who has been in the room right from the red carpet ceremony asks me: "So, who won the best picture?"

My eyes are pop out while I reply "Slumdog" and without missing a beat he goes "Oh. What about the best actor and actress?" The conversation continues and I fill him in on the 8 wins of Slumdog, that Penelope Cruz and Heath Ledger won the supporting acting chops. Finally he tell me out of the blue "You should watch Naan Kadavul. It is an interesting movie."

I know that he was on his computer with headphones on. Still, I am not sure why but it definitely felt like Wall E had won the background score and Button the best picture. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.
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And the Oscar goes to...


I am extremely glad that the Oscars didn't throw any surprises this year. What a win for Slumdog! 8 of the possible 9 wins and especially winning the best picture without any acting nominations is a real feat. The movie may be overrated and may be not entirely worthy of the best picture crown but when Chicago and Crash have won in the recent past, Slumdog is definitely not the odd man out. And it completely deserved the wins for the background score, editing and direction and always was a damn good choice for the adapted screenplay, sound mixing and cinematography categories. Bravo Slumdog!

The most deserving winner of the night, for me, was probably A. R. Rahman- the man who deserves much more recognizion and respect than what has come his way. "Jai Ho" may have fetched him an oscar but it obviously is an award for every single one of his songs. What better way to celebrate than go "Masakali Masakali.."!
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Saturday, February 21, 2009

Survivor Tocantins


My pre-season picks are not necessarily those with the best chances of winning, but who I would like to root for from the very beginning. Usually it is the "geeky" asian guy / girl from the predictable set of cast members. I think Survivor is a full-on social game and it is very interesting to watch a un-social person adjust and do well in the game. A very good example would be Kenny from last season (Gabon) who started off as a clueless kid and went on to become the godfather only to fall prey to the full-on drama of Sugar. Yul from Cook Islands would be another fine example for the same. I was very surprised to not see the token asian guy/gal in the cast this season. I had to finally settle with Stephen who seems to doing pretty well, two episodes in.

My second pick was a tough choice between Sydney and Erinn. Both of them belong to the typical "dumb-blond" category which is always a big disadvantage in the initial periods but can be used to their advantage if they are smart. I finally settled for Erinn which seems like not -a-bad choice considering the first 2 episodes. Sydney seems to be in it for the long haul as well considering she is almost missing in action almost entirely from the episodes.

I haven't had any of my picks win so far, may be this season will be different.
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Sunday, February 08, 2009

And the Aish stack


I am still playing with searchme.com 's stacks. Here is another one with some great Aishwarya Rai videos.


SearchmeView in searchme: full | lite

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Stack-ing Rahman


searchme.com 's stacks are really useful, especially the video stacks that can be used to create a video playlist of your favorites from youtube. If only they will index more sites and fix some of the bugs.

See the stacks in action with some A R Rahman songs:


SearchmeView in searchme: full | lite


See here to learn to create stacks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45dhE3zr0-8
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Sunday, February 01, 2009

God it’s killing me


It is sad that the Aussie Open timings don't work for you if you are in EST. I woke up at 5AM to catch the match, missed the first set completely and slept through part of the fourth and fifth sets. But the presentation was more entertaining than the match itself.

@Roger: In case you forgot, you ARE #2. And, that's not bad at all. But if you keep crying like this, no one will be intimidated by you. Not even Roddick.

Picture taken from:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/sports/tennis/02tennis.html?hp

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