Last few weeks films viewed:

(Out of 5 stars)
Batman begins (****)Best popcorn movie of this year.
Usual suspects (****) Good thriller.

I will write my take later. Too busy enjoying my vacation with kids.

Last weekend movies

Saw (2004)

It is quiet perfect thriller. (Sometimes disturbing too.)
Movie start with two men in old, abandoned, large bath room with their legs tied with a dead man in between. A note in their pocket says that you have kill the other person. It was a game played by a serial killer. Movie ends with who survived in that game.
Direction & script is very fast paced and hold you in your seat for whole two hours.
Very gripping screenplay. I watched many thrillers (silence of lambs, seven, bone collector etc) but this movie ending was awesome & stunning & twisting one.
Only negative point in this movie is, director did not explain why serial killer is doing all this. Seven, Bone collector etc shows their characters differently.
Movie ended in such a ways that there another part in is on the way.
It is very low budget movies & a big hit.
A worth watching for thriller fans.

I watched another awesome movie “Leon The professional” movie too.
I will add review later.

Chanakya (Indian politician, strategist and writer, 350 BC-275 BC) quotes

I always admire Chanakya's work.

{Right from 12 years old. Very important person in Indian history. I forgot almost all the history but not his name & his work.}


Few of his quotes


1) The biggest guru-mantra is: Never share your secrets with anybody. It will definitely destroy you.

2) There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth.

3) A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and honest people are screwed first.

4) Before you start some work, always ask yourself three questions - Why am I doing it, What the results might be and Will I be successful. Only when you think deeply and find satisfactory answers to these questions, go ahead.

5) As soon as the fear approaches near, attack and destroy it.

6) The world's biggest power is the youth and beauty of a woman.

7) Once you start a working on something, don't be afraid of failure and don't abandon it. People who work sincerely are the happiest.

8) A man is great by deeds, not by birth.

9) Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five/ten years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grown up children are your best friends.

10) Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.

11) Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.

12) Even if a snake is not poisonous, it should pretend to be venomous."

I will add more later.

My take on movie "Crash" (2004)

Tag line: You think you know who you are.

Movie start with cars crash on LA suburbs.
Immediately movie goes back to last 24 hours of
people who met this crash and lives.
Movie got very smart & intelligent script showcases not only characters,
but real representation of real people.

Shot in the background of LA
(Where you will see white, black, Asian, spanic and French etc)
live together & their personalities and racist feeling w.r.t others & on the system.

Again movie has everything.
Right & brilliant script, good casting & apt locations & good photography etc.

Very worth watching. Dont miss it.

My failed DVD recorder hacking story

During black Friday, I purchased Liteon DVD recorder.
It is working well. Easy to setup & records favorite TV shows.
But my main objective to buy this recorder is to make a copy of costly DVDs.
My little Dhanvi sometimes handles DVDs badly. Sometime he is very quiet nice.
For his age, he is doing great in handling DVDs. He select his own title from the collection & plays. We have to see what he is doing. He is quiet perfect on this.

Idea is to backup my own DVDs. So I searched net for any hacks.
I found following discussion forum for this.

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=124298&page=3&pp=25

I tried it yesterday. But my hack attempt failed.
It is not working on my model Liteon LVW-1001HC1.
What a bad-luck. What a sad ending.

Wow. "Family Guy, Vol. 2: Season 3" Boxed DVD set for $10. Hurry

Ordered "Family Guy, Vol. 2: Season 3" boxed DVD set today from www.fye.com.
Check deal of the day section.
It is very good deal. ($30-$20 rebate.)
But for $10 you really can't go wrong.
Quiet neatly produced series. Sit, relax & enjoy.

Careful with blockbuster online rentals.

Couple of days back, on their website, I searched for movie “LEON”
and search resulted in many matches.
(Basically I saw picture of the DVD cover and read Leon: the professional etc.)
I selected one & added to my queue.
Yesterday I received movie from them & played DVD around 10PM.
Guess what happened. This is a bonus disk.
Contains some experts from stars, director, some other movie previews etc.
Not the movie, not even deleted scenes from the movie.
I am very disappointed.
Later checked blockbuster website.
It was mentioned that in title that it was Bonus disk only.
I am really surprised that people do rent “Just Bonus Disk?”
My wife scolded me. Don’t you read the complete title properly?

I said why somebody rents Bonus disk for movie price?
It is a supplementary DVD right?

My theory was, if you go to shop & buy the DVD movie you will get movie + bonus disks as a package. So if I am renting, I must receive the whole package.
But my theory was dead wrong with this.

This is first time I am renting DVD movies online, so be careful with the titles.
Blockbuster ships “Bonus” disk as movie for $.
Clever business or I am not knowledgeable to understand things properly?

So next time, if you rent movie, make sure you are ordering correct one.
Else you will end up with bonus DVD.
A crazy online DVD rental experience. What about you?

Hurray. Ordered "Die Hard" Boxed DVD set.

Ordered "Die Hard" boxed DVD set today during lunch time.
It is very good deal. ($30-$20 rebate.)
I am not fan of pure action movies or popcorn movies or Bruce.
But for $10 this is worth set to own.
Waiting and searching for good deal on Night Shyamalan DVD package deal.

Bad Weather & Dull weekend

Weather is too cold (upper 10’s F). This is my 5Th year in MN. But this is one of the worst December months. Single digits are common in Jan but not before new year eve. Want to go to shopping to Bestbuy but decided not to. Looking for good External hard drive & Laptop internal DVD recorder.
Did not do much except playing with kids.
Saketh started sitting on his own & he is trying to standup on his own.
Just playing with kids for the whole day & reading the pioneer press news paper.

Click following link too see MN Weather.
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/13332539.htm
Minnesotans awoke Monday to the state's first hard cold snap of the winter, with below-zero temperatures in many parts of the state.............

Interesting Upcoming Movies

Went to Barnes and Nobel Friday night story time with family
Dhanvi & mama went to story time,
I am with saketh reading few magazines.

Seems to be the following forth-coming movie is very interesting.

King Kong from Lord of rings director, Naomi Watts (Ring fame Rachel) etc.
Production pictures are looking very good.
Click link http://www.kingkongmovie.com/ see to more details.

Just released

Syrian
Syrian script written by Traffic movie writer.
(Traffic is one of my favorite movie. )

Friday night movie Heavenly Creatures(1994)

I don’t know why this movie in my watch list. (May be Oscar nominated)
It is story about two close girl friends story.
The friendship so close is that, when their parents try to separate them,
they plans and kills one of their mother.
It is based on a true story happened in 1950's.
Again movie has great casting, locations, photography etc.

Don't rent it.
Safely you can borrow from your public library and watch it.
It is 100% for Drama lovers.

Recent photo with saketh

Dhanvi in Halloween Dress.

My younger son "Saketh" photo

Bedtime Story "Bad Lion" for Dhanvi

This is one of the bed time stories for my elder son Dhanvi.
This is my childhood text book story. Converted slightly for young boy’s purpose.
There is one big forest & one big bad lion. It is bad because it kills all animals. Since it is strong animal, no animal can fight with him. So all animals decide & go to him & say, lion don’t kill all of them. We will make turns & per day one animal will come to your home & u can eat. No more hunting for you. Bad lion accept it. Because it don’t have to run & fight with others. So per agreement, animal makes turns.

At first “A” like alligator, “B” like bear etc…. (I will try go with alphabet sequence. For most of the alphabets, he will say the animals.) When finally it is rabbits turn. Rabbitt is small animal but it is clever animal. So rabbit thinks, thinks and finally goes to bad lion home very late.

Bad lion is very hungry and angrily says why you are so late?

Then rabbit says “I saw another lion on the ways. It took lot of time to escape from that one”
Then lion says ‘Another lion in this forest? I am the king” Show me where it is?
Then rabbit takes him to one old well & says “it is in that well”
Bad lion climbs the well wall & sees inside.
I will ask Dhanvi what bad lion will see? He say a loud, its image.
Now story continues as
“Bad lion is strong but not clear” So it think that is another lion inside well.
So it says “I am the king of the forest. So surrender me else I will kill you”
But the same words comes back.
So angrily bad lion jumps in to well & what happens to bad lion?”
Dhanvi says “bad lion chachipoyiii." (Telugu word for "killed")
I will ask him why? He says “bad lion don’t know swimming” &

he continues " But I am learning. Now I am at ell stage."

(He remembers his swimming level.)
Normally I will stress him about “alphabets and animals” You have to be clever like rabbit. Think, think etc. Later swimming stuff. It is fun.
Slowly we move to another story.

My take on Ring Two (2005) movie

I liked Ring 1 a lot. But in part 1 raises more questions than answers.
In particular girl (samara story) the video tape origination and Why now suddenly she started killing? Part 1 did not answer those questions. I watched second part with some hope on some of these questions.

Now coming to second part review , Rachel & her boy moves from Seattle to Oregon & she get job in local new paper. Hoping that they will have better life. In the next scene, again young couple watching TV, video tape & death. (Very much similar to part 1.) Next scene onwards, director shows samara alive in the new place too. Later some of Rachel’s actions make her anger too. Now samara enters in to her son’s body. (These sequences of shots are good.) Now Rachel thinks that better to end samara before it is too late. She goes to original places and investigates Samara story. i.e. where she came from. (Story revolves around before samara adoption ) & movie ends with killingor stoping of samara.
A last major dialog was I am not your fucking mummy.

Part 2 address some of questions but again raises more questions, if samara is looking for Mummy and her love. I think the step mom have already provided that stuff. (In part1, they show stopmom tries a lot for a baby then finally, she adopts samara.) Again why suddenly Samara starts her evil acts? What prompted those? Part2 shows that a video tape spreads around the country and everyone makes a copy? If so, no investigation by any?
Samara original mom dialog “listen to baby”. She says, she tried to kill samara because she asked her to do. But they show samara as infant. Samara mom dairy content is confusing.
Like this many are unanswered.

Now coming to movie, there is not much plot and not much shock like part1. Nearly five & six shots are worth scaring. Actors did good job. In particular Rachel role is too good. Other casting, locations, photography etc are good & apt. Again do not except too much in part2.

At the end, I felt it is different way of story telling with lot of questions & answers left for viewer’s imagination.