I am in a good mood these days because my Sims are in a good mood. I love that game(The only game I like other than NFSU(More on NFSU later)). Maybe still inside me is a little girl who likes to play with dolls in a doll house. And which little girl wouldn’t like dolls that are intelligent, smart, have a multi-faceted personality, get hungry, have a social life, like taking a bath, make their bed after they wake up, watch TV, check their e-mails, pay their bills, cook spaghetti and meat balls and <sniggers> take care of their bladder.The game play is amazingly life like (Except at a few points like when they pull a book out of nowhere when asked to read in the bed) and is challenging as hëll. It isn’t easy to keep your Sim happy and cheerful all the time and take care of their tough often contradicting aspirations.For example a beautiful Sim that I’ve named Arwen has an alarming ambition of going out with three guys at once <Tries and fails to keep a straight face>. They lead complex lives like we do (Although I have never met anybody who’d like to complicate life by going out with three people at one time) and that is exactly what makes the game so riveting.But there is something that the game has managed to teach me (Not referring to the lesson of not going out with three guys at a time)
I was playing with this character of a young girl.As it came about she started having(or rather I made her have)a romantic relationship with a guy in her neighborhood.They romanced each other,did all the things young couples do(Not all the way though ;)) and I was generally having a good time during their whirlwind courtship.Then the guy proposed to my character and since I was curious to see which level they take their relationship to I made my character accept.So the guy’s character also moved into my control now as in I now had to take care of his happiness too.All hëll broke lose.It was hard enough time taking care of that one character now I had to keep another character happy too.My characters grew miserable.I couldn’t take care of both their needs simultaneously.They cribbed all the time,fought with each other and finally I grew so tired that I quit playing the game.Then I realized maybe marriage is a bit like this…just the thing is that there is no restart or quit button when you can’t take the responsibility anymore.
Uma’s Brainwaves Revisited #2
Posted by Uma Damle | Filed under Blogging, General, Headshot, I think therefore I watch, It's My Life, School Life
Prolouge:Written in the days I cared about things like class Xth Board marks..
Mona Lisa Smile
To try and not think about the result of my exams I have gone on a movie-watching spree.Some one line reviews.
Harry Potter GOF: Slightly less unbearable than the previous movies.
Robots:A delightful, very well made, light hearted movie with serious undertones (which I’d like to explain some day)
Spirited Away:Mediocre plot but amazing graphics
Erin Brokovich:A strong story about a strong woman.Amazing acting by Julia Roberts.
Rang De Basanti:Stunning choreography,awesome music,great acting,realistic touching plot sans any melodrama,this movie deserves a separate post.
I have taken to going on long lonely walks in the JNU campus to take my mind off distressing stuff.It’s beautiful especially when it rains and everything in sight is green,yellow and orange and the peacocks come out and dance.The view from Parthsarthy point,the highest altitude point in JNU campus inspires me to poetry.The students are a lucky lot to study in a campus so gorgeous
OK I think I will finish this post now and go back to chewing my nails and thinking about the results.
Bluegenemaid
PS: I think you all must have realized by now that this post had nothing to do with Mona Lisa or her smile.I figured some title was better than no title.
Soft Drink Ad Wars again!
Posted by Prashanth | Filed under Commercial Clips, I think therefore I watch
Remember I had criticized Pepsi’s Youngistan Ad campaign a while ago? Looks like people at PepsiCo. India have read that post and are improvising better on the word Youngistan and giving out better ads which still don’t say anything Pepsi’s refreshing taste or feel!
And after getting themselves embarrassed by Coca-Cola with the spoof made by Sprite, PepsiCo. did have its ego suffering inside a deep coal(read Coke :D) mine. They had to prey on someone, someone week enough to just bring back that lost pride… Well, Thums Up, with those wild parkour and really dumb car drive ads that too featuring Akshay Kumar (Hindi) and Mahesh babu (Telugu) dose promote its beverage with some passion. So there you have it, Pepsi had found its bakra (Read: Hindi for a goat about to be slaughtered!) in Thums Up and the whole soft drink war has become a lot more entertaining.
Have a look at the ad as well as the original ad that was spoofed below…
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E30ZoWHPJw]
Expect more spoofs like these coming up in the near future. Looks like I do have a reason to watch TV these days, eh? 
One line (A bit more than that actually…) Movie Reviews
Posted by Uma Damle | Filed under Headshot, I think therefore I watch, Review rats
OK This was something I’d wanted to do for a long time:Review all the movies I’d seen since the end of my exams on the blog.But if I decided to write full length reviews for each movie , movies would become a lost art studied in history classes by the time I am finished(Considering the (in)frequency of my posts). Following are some short and sweet/bitter/sour(Changes with each movie) reviews of some of the movies I plan to write about here. The rest will (most (im)probably) come later in between posts about other stuff.
Across the Universe: The most I can say about this movie is its not too crappy. I think its the genre of the movie (Musical) that bothers me. I love music and movies both but not when they are served in the same plate. Prefer to keep them separate. Loved the music and the way they have touched up all the old Beatles songs, especially Hey Jude and I wanna hold your hand (A chick’s version, this one. Can’t stop singing it).Actually the only reason I had for watching this movie was Jim Sturgess..Sigh…He gives the phrase “Chocolate good looks” a whole new meaning ;-p. Can’t wait to see him in 21, especially because he plays an MIT brainiac in that.
Sleepless in Seattle:A nice story. Good acting. Very witty dialogues. This one is an all out girls movie that manages to be romantic without being cheesy, which is a very rare achievement. Also worth mentioning is Meg Ryan’s work in the movie. Boy is she magical in there.Her expressions, dialog delivery, timing, her movement, just the way she looks at the camera casts a spell on the viewers. This is her movie by and far although Tom Hanks was also very good.Another genre that I don’t watch very often but this one was nice.
Guru: This one sprang up a surprise. I was expecting it to be just another sappy Bollywood love story in guise of movie about a business tycoon’s life. I couldn’t have been more wrong. It turned out to be a very power packed political drama with no-nonsense performances by all the lead performers (Except Vidya Balan who was her usual over-sweetened self) Especially Madhavan who was simply awesome in his role of the honest yet street-smart journalist and Aishwarya Rai who once again proved(after Raincoat) that she was a director’s canvas and with powerful, well-written roles she can actually deliver a sterling performance. A.R Rehman’s music had the aroma of fresh earth and needless to say is at its usual best. Rajiv Menon’s cinematography and camera work captured the earthen beauty of a village in Gujarat and the claustrophobic Mumbai chawls with equal elan making it one of the few movies that are portrayed in a realistic, unadorned style yet aren’t ugly or unaesthetic. Minus a few unnecessary and irksome song and dance rituals, this could have been a classic.
Hairspray: Three words. Don’t Watch it.
Wild Hogs: I know this post is posted under the category I think therefore I watch but I’d call watching this movie a temporary lapse of thinking power on my part and making it, unability to think on the director’s part.Watch it if you want to shed some tears for the out-of-work John Travolta(To think that the Pulp Fiction star to be reduced to this…).
Atonement:I expected this one to be good and saved it for the day my exams ended.It wasn’t really.The story is only pseudo serious and sorta confused.Nothing remarkable about the acting with Keira Knightley appearing bored and repeating her Lizzie Bennet act from Pride and Prejudice verbatim.The end was a surprising and touching one and the music impressive with prominent use of a typewriter as a musical instrument!Boo hoo…I want a typewriter :-p
The Following:Ah now we come to the good ones.This was Christopher Nolan’s first movie and is very short(69 minutes),shot in student-style and black and white.That does NOT mean that it was a shoddy,unprofessional movie.In fact it is WAY more professional than any Hollywood megabudget movie I might have seen.Shot in classic taut Nolan style, the movie moves in a non-chronological order (a la Memento and Prestige) and leaves you with a lot of stray pieces of puzzle as it progresses but like any other Nolan movie it all magically fits in the last five minutes as all the loose ends are wrapped and the entire picture becomes clear finally.A fabulous example of film noir. Nolan is simply an incomparable and brilliant story teller. You’ll miss out on a lot if you don’t watch this one. I am part of Nolan’s fan “following” now :).
The Ring:Calling this one a horror flick (A genre which IMO is just repackaged soft pørn) would be an insult. For one it actually has a coherent,intriguing story line that does not move in a retard-predictable style. Secondly the scares and thrills aren’t of the barely-dressed-babes-seeing-a-bloody-oozing-face-in-the-mirror sort. The movie terrorizes you from within by its cinematography, the situations, the sound (or rather the lack of it) and its movement. Its a powerful movie with a surprising and powerful ending. The only worth watching horror movie I’ve seen apart from Sixth Sense. Also check out the character of Samara (the little girl) in the movie. F.E.A.R ripped its Alma straight out from here.
Memento: What do I say… this movie is the work of a pure genius(Christopher Nolan strikes again). The story is about a man (Guy Pearce) seeking revenge for his dead wife. Sounds simple enough, right? Now sample this:The man suffers from short term memory loss and since his wife’s death is incapable of making new memories. He has to constantly make notes of his progress on his quest in forms of tattoos on his body. Now if that’s not compelling enough listen to this:The movie puts you in the shoes of the protagonist which means you see the movie in sections of fifteen minutes….moving backwards. The movie begins towards the end of the story and ends towards its beginning. Sounds like fun? Believe me, the movie was frustrating as hëll. You had to remember what had happened in the beginning of section 41 to understand what happens at the end of section 42. To top it all half the movie is shot in color and half the movie in black and white.While the color bits progress in reverse order, the black and white bits are moving in the correct order. (Lather rinse and repeat to understand whatever I said in the last para ;-p) But the final 10 chilling minutes bring it all together in a knock-out ending where you finally understand,at the end(Err…was it the end or the beginning?) of a one and half hour long movie, what the hëll was going on through out.
Need I say more?
<flotsam>What is the probability of a person stating a fact and it being completely true ? A statement can only have One completely true version while there can be infinitely many false versions of the same statement. So I’d say the probability of a person stating a completely true fact is 1/(∞ +1) </flotsam>
Bluegenemaid.
