mere funde

Category: Review

  • Parzania – A review

    It is such a shame that two movies based on the same similar events, Gujrat killings communal riots and the trauma that follows, at different times, get released together, just because of the ruling party. Parzania – made during the Congress rule got released immediately without Censor cuts while Black Friday, made at time a BJP led government ruled the country, will get released in a couple of weeks. Anyways, it is not a rant about that. After all hasn’t each government abused its power in such cases to impact the fortunes of the movies.

    Parznia is an exceptionally well made movie. Directed by little known Rahul Dholakia it explores the misfortune of a Gujrati Parsi family during the Gujrat riots. The movie stars Naseeruddin Shah as Cyrus, (the oh-so-beautiful eyes) Sarika as Shernaz, Corin Nemec as Allan, Parzan Dastur as Parzan and Pearl Barsiwala as Dilshad. The movie attempts to chronicle the pain, anguish and post-riot trauma faced by these people and many more.

    It is an extremely well paced movie and goes about the job of telling the story in a no-nonsense manner. The character development and build up is excellent. Halfway you are left ashamed at being part of a country where politicians can manipulate people to kill each other and they still get elected despite everyone knowing the truth. Maybe we guys deserve this. Maybe it is because we do not take active interest in what is happening around us.

    Nasseruddin Shah has only grown on me, be it Being Cyrus or Parzania. The one person I discovered in the movie is the still so gorgeous, natural and extremely talented Sarika. The place the part of Shernaz to perfection and with minimum fuss. Her last dialogue in the movie did leave most women in the theatre crying and even me moist eyed. She is very natural as an actress and plays her part with minimum fuss. Another highlight of the movie is how the entire thing is narrated through the character of Corin Nemec. He plays his part to perfection and one feels that he may have been under-utilised in the movie.

    The movie gets a rating of 4.5/5.0 from me. Go spend money on it rather than some dumb love stories.

    Cross posted on Desicritics.

    Update: I am sorry about the confusion regarding Black Friday. It is based on the Mumbai riots and not on Gujrat riots. Also, I am on the featured list on Desicritics 🙂

  • Blood Diamond: A review

    Almost a month back I had written about 5 movies I wanted to watch over the next few months. I have so far watched both the movies out of the five that have been released in India so far. Babel last week and Blood Diamond today. Babel was brilliant with one very memorable scene in a pub, but that is an old story now.

    Blood Diamond, however, is a different sort of a movie. A movie that shakes you to your core and at parts you definitely feel depressed. However, as the movie progresses a sense of something good coming out of the whole thing starts building up in you. The movie is based on illegal African diamond trade that was used to finance Civil Wars in Angola and Sierra Leone. The diamond trade caused so much killings and blood shed that these were actually called blood diamonds.

    The movie has so much blood shed that it is easy for everyone to digest it. You realise that such things did happen in the past and despite several UN resolutions things might not have totally stopped. There is a scene where Solomon (Djimon Honsou) says that he understands the greed of white men, but what he does not understand is how his own people can do all that to themselves. I think that he is bang on. The other scene is where Danny (Leonardo DiCaprio) tries to explain why he is what he is to Maddy (Jennifer Connelly).

    DiCaprio is absolutely brilliant and I think he has improved with leaps and bounds with each movie as an actor. If he was good in Departed, he is awesome here. Djimon also plays the part of Solomon Vandy to perfection. However, Jennifer is under utilised in the movie and her part under developed.

    All said and done Blood Diamond is a fabulous movie and highly recommended by me. The quote of the movie, and the only scene where you can manage a smile:

    I hope they do not find oil here. Things can get really bad then.

  • CSS: The Definitive Guide

    CSS is the de-facto standard of web styling and is used to enhance the presentation of markup languages. Web designers everywhere use it to improve accessibility and maintain consistency amongst pages.

    cssdefguide1.jpg

    CSS: The Definitive Guide – Eric A. Meyer is an excellent place to begin learning about CSS. All you require to have is a beginner’s knowledge of HTML and you are ready to go. Meyer is a well known web design consultant, author and an expert on CSS.

    Meyer starts from the basics of cascade and inheritance and drills into details of not only how but also why of almost all topics. You would find details of how and why even on oft ignored topics as font and colour units used. The reader is not bored with details of obsolete or proprietary CSS properties. Instead, Meyer focuses only on properties (CSS2 and standard CSS2.1) which are supported by most web browsers and are actually in use today.

    The related properties are grouped together into separate chapters and they are well organized. For example, the chapter on font properties is followed by one on text properties and one visual formatting by a chapter on padding and borders. This makes it easy for the reader to find what he is looking for.

    A couple of interesting chapters on UI styles and non-screen media complete an exhaustive and informative book. This is followed by an appendix of various CSS properties references that you will find yourself going back to again and again.

    The book lacks only two things. Colour pages and problem solving. The book tells you about floating and positioning but does not tell how to use it to create a two column layout. Nevertheless, it is a very informative and useful book. Though not “definitive” it is certainly a great book for anyone, right from experienced users to complete novices.

    Disclaimer: I was provided the book for review by O’Reilly Media.

  • Google Docs Rocks!

    Introduction

    First trial of the Google Docs . Seems to be working perfectly. Only if they allowed a document to be edited in the print layout format. That would allow more control over the formatting and see exactly what the final print would look like, right when you are working on the document.

    Points I like about it:

    1. Clean and neat interface, no cluttered tool bar
    2. Ability to export as PDF
    3. All MS Word short cuts work as they should
    4. Collaboration option
    5. Inserting comments, symbols and tables
    6. Of course, the Google tag 🙂

    Points I dislike about it:

    1. Cannot be used on a slow Internet connection (like the one I have at home)
    2. No print layout 🙁
    3. No options of inserting tables

    Overall I think that the product is a sure shot winner. I am very pleased with the final product. Google, keep rocking guys!! Oh, by the way, this post was composed directly from within Google Docs and from my home. One oddity however, when I posted it from Google Docs (Writely) it was posted on my blog with a time stamp of tomorrow (Jan 08) and after 4 hours of posting it.

  • History & Bullshit!!

    Had this mail converstation with my friends today. Read from the bottom upwards.

    Sudeep wrote:

    Hey Goyal, your thoughts remind me of this chapter we had in our hindi text books. Its written in Duryodhanas words and he narates his side of the story. He says exactly what you said here. He says to Arjun that I know that you would write the history that will be read by generations to come and you would surely glorify yourself.

    Very valid thought. If Duryodhana wrote history, whatever wrong he might have done, we wouldn’t have known about them. And even if he wrote about those deeds, he would have sugar-coated them enough.

    Misra wrote:

    I totally agree..

    An African proverb – “Till lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.”

    Goyal wrote:

    Sometimes I feel that history is bullshit. And then my mind wanders back to Star Wars. And how nothing is good or bad. It is just who has power who describes an action as good or bad.

    Imagine being a part of Germany, loaded with an illogical debt after the World War I and all your self respect being taken away. Your people dying because the nation doesn’t have money after paying a stupid fine. Would you note hate the entire Western World. I am not justifying the killing of Jews. Its just what is good and what is bad is judged by the perception of the person/race/state in power.

    Just imagine what history is to the children of Pakistan, to whom Indians might have been described as tyrants and oppressors. And glorification of Jinnah. Think how the Indian (Congressified) historians have almost forgotten all the contribution of people other than Gandhi/Nehru to Indian Independence, and how they have totally ignored the cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits.

    Sometimes I wonder what history would have said, if at all, about the termination of Jews, had Hitler not lost the war!!

    Misra wrote:

    Hey.. I just watched “The Downfall”.. they’ve released it in PVR.. it’s a German movie subtitled in English.. about the last days of Hitler.. basically the Apr-May 1945 period. The movie is awesome.. Goyal, you toh will love it. The guy who plays Hitler, abhi Oscar de do yaar usko.. some of the scenes and dialogues are really hard-hitting. And it kinda showed a more human side of things.. these Nazis.. they were totally, utterly crazy.. but they weren’t totally devil incarnates.. they too were parents, mothers, fathers.. and in the end, they too were just scared more than anything.. I’m not even trying to describe the scene where this woman kills her 6 children coz she doesn’t want them to grow up in a wold with “socialist nationalism”.. while the film didn’t mince words as it went about showing the crap that these guys dealt out and their incredibly horrifying beliefs.. it also gave a slightly balanced view on things.. and I liked that.. coz it just made it even sadder.

    The story was mostly told from the point of view of Hitler’s secretary.. The last lines of the movie are totally hard hitting..

    “All these horrors I’ve heard of during the Nurnberg process, these six million Jews, other thinking people or people of another race, who perished. That shocked me deeply. But I hadn’t made the connection with my past. I assured myself with the thought of not being personally guilty. And that I didn’t know anything about the enormous scale of it. But one day I walked by a memorial plate of Sophie Scholl in the Franz-Joseph-Strasse. I saw that she was about my age and she was executed in the same year I came to Hitler. And at that moment I actually realised that a young age isn’t an excuse. And that it might have been possible to get to know things.”

    Verdict: Must watch.