Rangi Tharanga

I had heard a great deal about this movie called Rangi Tharanga and when Sandhya told me that the director Anup Bhandari was her classmate once upon a time, I definitely wanted to see the movie. In general I would Google the movie before hand and would have had an idea about the plot but this time around I made an exception to the rule and went to the theater blank slate.

So, what is the movie about? 

• A horror, romantic, suspense thriller with slight amount of action
• A movie that throws curve ball after curve ball towards the audience
• A movie that keeps you on the edge of the seat from start to end (no, not like Bourne series) 
• A movie that re-defines suspense thrillers
• A movie with some wonderful songs
• A movie which doesn’t add songs for no reason
• A movie that has the fewest technical and logical flaws
• A movie that has the best cinematography along with best story and best direction
• A movie with the original story, last one with this level of intensity was Kahani in hindi
• A movie that for the first time ever in my life-time in Austin had 4 shows in a theater and almost all shows were packed
• A movie that had a good blend of old and new talents
• A movie that had brand new artists who performed like veterans
• A movie that is definitely not a family (I wouldn’t recommend for kids) entertainer
• A movie that in my ratings would be a PG-13    

Great job Anup Bhandari, hope to see more work like this in the future.

If you haven’t seen it and there is a chance to see in a theater do it, its worth the money and time. 

iOS 7 first impressions

Over the weekend I updated my Iphone 4s to iOS 7 and here is my take on it

• I think the colors and hues are done to impress teenage girls. The more neutral look that the previous OS used to have is gone. At the first look I hated it but now its been a few days and I am getting used to it.
• The control center is pretty nice and slickly done, The OS now has a built in app to enable the flash led and use it as a flash light. Finally I could get rid of the ad driven app that I was using to do the same.
• The notes app used to have a selection of fonts and now we have to be satisfied with only default no choices.
• The camera app is re done nicely, it has a ton of live filters built in.
• Safari web browser is also redone, I like that it has the options on screen to make browsing private. I must warn you it will take a few minutes of getting used to as the default mode is full screen.
• The timer, safari apps are aiming for a 3D feel. 
• Finally any icon can be moved anywhere and can be grouped with any other one, for ex: in ios6 I couldn’t move the passbook or Newsstand from the main screen and keep them with other unused apps.
• The introduction of itunes radio is cool but I think it has a long way to catch up with apps like Pandora. At the first launch the radio had trouble finding my Wifi.
• The weather app has onscreen animations like the Android OS
• The maps on Apple still have long long way to go, on 1 instance it couldn’t find a location I was looking for while Google maps had no trouble finding the place on the second instance the app was predicting my arrival time ~20mins later than my GPS and Google maps. The error is not a big deal if it were for a 3-4 hr journey but in my case it was little over an hour long journey. 
• The battery drain is slightly faster with iOS7 than with the previous version, not a big deal and not a big concern.
• The background app killing reminds me of the old Palm OS and Android (instead of holding down on the app till we get a red bar at the end like we did in the previous OS, now just flick them up)
• The i-message interface also reminds me of Android. I hope the i-messaging works better with this OS as I had a lot of trouble using the i-message  in iOS 6 and had switched over to Google voice and whatsapp.
• Sorry no SWYPE keyboard yet.

On the whole the OS seems to be doing a catching up with Android, not too happy about that.

D-Day Hindi Movie

Spoiler Alert: I may have disclosed part or parts of the plot of the movie. 

Last night me and Sandhya managed to catch the movie D-Day, an extremely well done Hindi fictional movie on nabbing Mr.D from Pakistan and bringing him to India. So far I have seen quite a few so called thriller movies in Hindi some original and some pirated either from Hollywood or from other languages in India itself, this sits almost at the top.

To be fair, In the past Bollywood has taken up good story lines and manage to goof it up pretty badly, few movies at top of my head are Zameen which was based on Indian airlines flight hijack to Afghanistan and the movie Qayamat which is supposedly a rip off of Rock and many more like that if I think hard. Both the movies made me twitch and turn in my seat, I couldn’t take them for more than 15 mins.   

Watching the movie it appeared that Rishi Kapoor has thoroughly enjoyed playing the role of the gangster. The roles of vulnerable Wali Khan played by Irfaan Khan is very well portrayed. Of course Arjun Rampal as the silent assassin is also well played. Sad that Huma Quareshi and Shruti Hassan does not have much role to play. I must appreciate the casting director for doing such an excellent job. Most movies will either have a good first half or good second half but this movie will keep you at the edge of the seat till the very end. 

The thing that stood out for me in the movie is its boldness in terms of its dialogues. I felt the story line stayed pretty close to reality, the cat and mouse game is very well shown. Of course there is a love angle also which is some what short and does not hamper the narration.

I am not saying it is a perfect movie as I was able to find quite a few loop holes that I failed to explain to myself. One will fail to understand how the character of Irfaan Khan sitting in Pakistan is openly communicating using an old Nokia phone with his handler who is the head of R&AW sitting in India. One would expect needs to be a highly secure line. 

But if you are in for a good thriller and a Hindi movie, then I would definitely recommend D-Day.

As I said before, it is a fiction and one of those things that we Indians keep thinking to ourselves “if only it can happen like this”.

Naanu nanna kanasu

Naanu nanna kanasu (translated Me and my dream) a movie in Kannada by Prakash Rai. I had avoided the movie till last week when my wife forced me to watch the movie with her. I believed I had good reasons to avoid for I believed that the movie is a depressing and sad movie. Boy! was I totally wrong, and I am thankful to Sandhya for making me watch it.

The story is simple and I can positively say it is the story  of every parent. It is the life story of a girl from her birth till the day she gets married, told from the point of view of her loving, caring and devoted father. What captures the attention is the narration and the acting by the lead stars. One can relate to a lot of events described in the movie.  It has its tender moments and laughing scenes but doesn’t have much of forced comedy. Couple of scenes are worth mentioning, the scene of parents preparing for an interview to get their kid to the school and the way dad reacts when he finds out that mom knew about daughter’s love matter before him.

If I remember right, it has couple of songs which were ok, not worth mentioning, but at the same time weren’t bad enough that I couldn’t sit through. I was so sold on the depressing story line of the movie that through out the movie I was waiting for the mother to die, thankfully nobody died in the movie.  In the end it turned out to be a comedy than a depressing and sad movie. 

As with any movie, this has its sets of exaggerations, specially the story line of the son-in-law or the altruistic nature of the girl or the way that the family friends doesn’t age at all. Most of it can be ignored for the movie is really well done.

Definitely worth a watch once. If interested one can see it legally on YouTube. Sorry guys, no subtitles.

One word of caution, the movie as expected is dominated by Prakash Rai and there is not a single scene without him.

A year with Iphone

About a year ago when I decided to upgrade to a smart phone, I wanted to get a cool Android phone. But thanks to AT&T the only good smart phone they had in their line up at that time was the Iphone4.

After a year of usage, I am pretty impressed with the Iphone4 and now I am almost a fan of Apple and iOS.

My usage model of the phone is pretty limited, I use it mostly like a phone to make and receive phone calls. There are only couple of smart features on the phone that I use very regularly, One is the calendar and the other is the Notes. I do check my Gmail once in a while on the phone but rarely reply to emails from the phone. Once in a while I use the GPS. To give an example of how less I use the phone for the web related things, I have never exceeded the 100MB data plan that AT&T offers. 

Initially when I got it, it felt a bit big in my hand but over time I got used to it. The phone is snappy and the touch screen is really touch sensitive. The glass front and back of the phone are magnets for finger prints, I suggest getting a protective coating done (most malls have one or two shops to do this). The GPS is fast loading (even without the cell signal). The notes are easy to type into and the calendar feature is easy to work with. Of the limited apps I have installed (Flickr, Google, Google places and so on) most everything load real fast.

The 720p resolution video camera is really good and I have managed to capture some of the once in a life time moments of my daughter with this. That said, I am not really impressed by the still picture performance of the camera. The images look great on the phone but once loaded on to big screen it appears a grainy. I wonder if it has to do with the HDR function of the iOS.

The other feature I really cherish in this phone is the Ipod feature. I use it so much that I have rarely turned on the radio in the car. The sound quality from the phone is not the best but good enough for my purposes.  

One thing I do not like is the fact that Apple does not provide an easy way to turn on the flash led to be used as a flash light. I had to download an app for that, even though the app itself is free, it keep loading ads.  

The battery life is pretty good, without loading a single YouTube video I manage to get 4 to 5 days of battery life but watching videos from the web really drain out the battery. I do keep the wi-fi on all the time, but the GPS function I have enabled only on for a few applications.

I noticed a few things that Apple has done to optimize battery life. The first and very obvious one for me was that the mail checking frequency set to default once a day (I have changed it to manual). The other thing is, the phone doesn’t keep searching for wi-fi round the clock but only looks for it only once when it wakes up from sleep and doesn’t bother after that. I am sure the GPS is kept off unless an application demands it.  I am not sure if the phone goes into different states of sleep to save power, for sometimes I need to press the top button and not the bottom home button to wake up the phone.

I paid $199 to get this phone and surprisingly Apple has reduced the price to $99. At that price I think it is definitely worth considering. Now looking forward to iOS 5.