Grand Scale Entertainment!

Movie: Enthiran/ Robot

Director: Shankar

Producer: Sun Pictures

Music: AR Rahman

Cast: Rajinikanth, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Danny, Santhanam, Karunas

Don’t know what I found more exciting about Robot/ Enthiran ; Rajinikanth, His Fans or The Robot, but I sure went for the movie with my mind in a whirl and expectations upto my nose! Rajini absolutely thrilled me, his fans not as much (they did not behave as crazy as I hoped!) and the Robot a crazy change in Indian cinema quite well executed by Shankar!

Courtesy: http://www.directorshankaronline.com/

The story revolves around Vaseegaran (Rajinikanth) a computer scientist who creates a near-perfect robot, Chitty, that can help the country either in defense or development. Aishwarya Rai Bachan plays his…err… their love interest! The storyline is basically sparse. It brings to life Shankar’s ultimate fantasy, A robot that develops feelings and is able to fall in love, with the same woman as his creator, the scientist. Unfortunately it also feels jealous, angry, and revengeful! The story is interspersed with many songs, not always a welcome break! But the choreography for all songs are excellently done making them quite a delight to the eye.

Courtesy: http://www.directorshankaronline.com/

Performances wise, Rajini as the villain is a feast for sore eyes; one completely forgets Rajini the superstar and is  enthralled by the enigmatic villain he plays! Santhanam does not get to shine in his comedy role much and Aishwarya plays the pretty woman, a perfect doll who desires for a little more attention from her love but ends up getting a lot more than she bargained for!

Courtesy: http://www.directorshankaronline.com/

The first half of the movie is completely absorbing, Rajini not just plays a one man army in the movie, but also proves to be the one man army for the film. He is perfect as the eccentric scientist, the comic Chitty and the scary revengeful robot in the latter part. Cinematography by Ratnavel is excellent, some scenes such as the fight scene in the train are absolutely thrilling. Latter scenes of the Villian Robots and their fight sequences through formations of the Snake, Ball etc show technical excellence. The songs especially have stunning visuals and shot in exotic locations prove to be very entertaining.

The outfits for all characters have been well chosen,  Aish looks like a super-glam doll in most songs, while Rajini and Chitty with the help of Bhanu’s make-up look young and handsome!

Special mention needs to be given to A R Rahman’s music, it is bold, it is edgy, sharp and completely machine, the music manages to breathe final life into the Robot character making it menacingly believable. Rahman has proved he can get even more adventurous and delightfully unpredictable with this sound track.

The movie sets hearts thumping towards the start, but does lose pace in-between, mainly because the thin storyline is stretched beyond time capacities. However the fight scene towards the end makes well worth the wait. As a film it has broken records in terms of budget, revenue, visual extravaganza and technical excellence as well as fresh thought. But more ground breaking than that is Rajini’s youthful and power-packed performance that leaves you with the urge to pop vitamins and hit the gym!

Watch it, the Robot visits India, and it cannot be more charismatic than this!

Endhiran Technical Promo

Enthiran Kadhal Anukkal Teaser

Endhiran-The Robot Irumbile Oru Idhaiyam Trailer

News flash on TV, Radio, Online and Print: Lady Gaga shocks yet again on the MTV Music award ceremony with her ‘eccentric’ style of fashion. It made me wonder being a PR, Media Relations person, Is all publicity good publicity?

Those seven days that followed the event, media across the globe reported her infamous outfit- the meat dress. Well for those interested the dress is not designed to ‘look’ like meat, in fact it is real meat- beef to be precise cut in an un-lady like but creative manner to cover her front and bare her back (side!), well what more she even had a head-piece made out of it. And how do I sitting in a normal sub-urban home (without TV) know all this? Well it is the power of media!

Photo Courtesy: Daily Stab

She got her gig, but right or wrong!? Who is to say, well if the public reaction is anything to go by I would say it was quite acidic! The twitter had one precious tweet on how we all done meat cause we are made of it so Gaga did not do something so mind shattering! I hate to think what she must be plotting next to ensure the rest of us can absolutely not have part of!

The publicity did have an angle of pacifier to it, well why else would she say the dress was dedicated to bringing down ill-treatment of animals. I will not become vegetarian because her dress made me sad about killing animals, but because it grossed me out so much that when I see meat, I think Gaga and want to Gag!

A recent article on Gaga being the inspiration for Halloween horror made me smile. It is quite perfect, Halloween was never this scary!!!

Every wanted to upload your own videos but dint have the proper setup for it? Well worry not. With the advancement of Web3.0 and websites like Blip.Tv our problems solved easily.

What is Blip.tv?

It is a free video sharing service just like youtube. It used flash player to play your videos. It is highly customizable and has in build playlist too. It is very helpful to upload a list of your portfolios. They call these episodes, so you have can have your regular TV. I have done it in my website.

How is it better?

It doesn’t allow other videos to interfere with your video. This online video player only plays the videos uploaded by you and doesn’t have distractions like related videos. So people never navigate from your videos. You can allow ads on your online videos if you decide to make some bucks out of it.

3 video upload options?

Yes, it allows you to upload video through its own webpage. The second method is to use their desktop javascript application through which you can upload them. The third method is more interesting. Directly upload your videos to their FTP server and later login to the website to give addition details. This is very helpful when you are uploading a number of videos together.

Easy sharing?

Blip.tv automatically connects with twitter, facebook, delicious, youtube, flicker and vimeo. So you just upload your online video here and instantly you have a large viewers ready.

Value added service?

You get a personalized flash video player that plays only your video which looks pretty slick I must say. On the right you have playlist of all your video which you can again arrange. Just embed this player into your website and are ready to stream your videos. No bandwidth cost or no complex scripting.

I have a screencast on the same video flash player here at Wiki Milan. Please do visit.

Also please comment on this article to let me know what you think of the site and my article as well.

Avatar is celebration of the visual possibilities of cinema. Cameron and Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital have changed the way movies are made. The film is a visual delight.

Watch the video of Stereoscopic 3D camera used in the movie: Click here

Coming to the story, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is an ex-marine who is offered an amazing opportunity after his twin brother dies; to participate in the Avatar program. The program is setup by humans on the distant world of Pandora as it has an abundance of precious minerals on its land. Since humans can’t breathe Pandora’s atmosphere, the company has created Avatars, in which human pilots use their consciousness to remotely-control a genetically engineered body that is a hybrid of Na’vi and human DNA. Jake becomes one such Avatar…human’s weapon to make force Na’vi to evacuate their planet.

The central section of the movie, as jake becomes a warrior and falls in love with Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), is sheer magic. Cameron takes you on the back of the banshees, past “floating” mountains and cascading waterfalls. As Neytiri takes jake under her wing to teach him how to live in the forest, speak the language and honor the traditions of nature, he starts getting emotionally attached to Pandora and there begins the conflict.

Avatar Movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/

Avatar begins well, keeps you engaged in between and then picks up on its pace towards the climax. The battle for Pandora occupies much of the final third of the film. The planet’s animal life -the creatures of the ground and air- give battle along with the Na’vi. a 30-minute action sequence in the film’s final act that is quite literally awesome. After writing this story many years ago, he discovered that the technology he needed to make it happen did not exist. So, he went out and created it in collaboration with the best effects minds in the business. This is motion capture brought to a new high where every detail of the actors’ performances gets preserved in the final CG character as they appear on the screen. Yes, those eyes are no longer dead holes but big and expressive, almost dominating the wide and long alien faces. The quality of the Na’vi is so detailed and natural. The level of detail in the Na’vis’ skin is astounding. 75 % of this movie is all-CG, with CG characters in a CG universe-not a mix of miniature models and live action. This is as animated as a Pixar movie but utterly photo-real.

Through the eyes of Jake we’re introduced to the planet’s boundless, breathtaking collection of natural and unnatural wonders. At night, the plants have a phosphorescent glow. When the Na’vi treads through it, the ground lights up beneath their feet. A world that is rich with color and wonder, enhanced by a depth of detail. A world that’s never seen before. A computer-generated world that is photo real.

James Cameron: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000116/

Smartly, Cameron does not overplay his 3-D hand for stick-in-the-eye stunts. Within minutes, the extra dimension feels like a part of the viewing experience. For the most part Avatar’s proprietary 3-D cameras simply enrich the depth of field.

James Cameron didn’t just imagine the planet Pandora, he created an immensely detailed alien world. Avatar sets 3-D cinema on a profound path that might just change the movie-going experience for decades to come.

The Upside:

A spectacular visual experience unlike anything you’ve seen before.

The Downside:

The story isn’t entirely new, We’ve seen the concept ‘avatar’(surrogate) in films like surrogates, matrix …

We would like to know your comments about the film. Please comment below.

FLABELL – one of my favorite sites has been long doing some great flash components. What’s good is that their components are very clean and ready to use with just a few tweaks to suit your site. Recently they have released a very good flash component ‘Dynamic Flash Video Gallery’. It has all the function that you would expect in a flash player. The video player supports H264 files, as well as RTMP and can play mov, mp4, flv files. Continue Reading

Our world gets destroyed often in Hollywood movies either through alien attacks or through natural disasters. Some might even find it tiring, seeing the same kind of destruction, again and again. But director Roland Emmerich makes sure that he doesn’t bore anyone by showing the cliché and also makes sure that he destroys everything. When i say everything, its literally EVERYTHING. The film is 2012 and the theme is end of world (again).

Its a default storyline for a disaster movie. Some scientists foresee the danger, they warn Uncle Sam. They start preparing themselves for the nightmare, by building huge Noah arch ships (near china!?!?!?) with the 1 billion money collected each from the billionaires around the world. The worst part here is, they are doing it secretly. Enter our Hero, a divorcee, father of 2 kids (obviously a boy and a gal and u r right, the boy hates him and the gal loves him) failed writer, now working as a limousine driver to a billionaire and as usual, the expected danger propounds itself and slowly, every part of the world starts experiencing catastrophe in different scales. Sensing the danger beforehand/on time and Still in love with his family, our hero tries to save them along with his wife’s boy friend, (a skilled player in flight simulator). His journey to the rescue forms the rest of the story.

2012:  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1190080/

With a wafer thin storyline and a predictable screenplay, one might not have proceeded with a project. But the visual effects by Uncharted Territory, Digital Domain, Double Negative, Scanline, Sony Pictures Imageworks and other petty companies make it up and hooks us to the screen for the whole 160mins. This is where Emmerich suceeds again, after his previous disaster movie, The Day after Tomorrow, and the last 10,000 BC (a movie disaster). He again proves that he is the master of destruction and can destroy anything and everything he wish.

Roland Emmerich : http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000386/

The cast does their job perfectly, with a minimal room for performance. But the A list of actors like John Cusack, Thandie Newton and Danny Glover compensate for the weak script and saves the film. Woody Harrelson in an eccentric cameo role is adequate. But who cares about the cast, its the havoc that takes the center stage. Be it the eruption of super volcanoes or California Submerging in to water or Tsunami in Himalayas, everything looks almost picture perfect. We might not witness the apocalypse, but we can just get an idea about it after seeing this movie. But make sure you are seeing it in a good movie screen and also make sure that kids below 12 are not with you. Go for it. Its a pure popcorn fun (movie).

Check out the making of 2012 here:

The Huge Tidal Waves

Destruction of LA

Particle Effect

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G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is directed by Stephen Sommers and that is enough to raise expectations. Continue Reading