And The OSCAR Goes To...

No film ran away with the night, however, as Hollywood -- home to the 80th Annual Academy Awards on Sunday Feb 24, gave a bruised movie industry a chance to refocus its ever-inward gaze on laurels instead of labor strife.

"No Country For Old Men" won the Oscar for best film and its makers, brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, were named best directors on Sunday, giving the bleak crime drama four of the world's top movie awards.

Members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored a wide range of movies, actors and actresses from several countries.

Britain's Daniel Day-Lewis won the Oscar for best actor as a sadistic oil prospector in the early 20th century whose rise to wealth and power comes at a deep cost to his soul.






France's Marion Cotillard was named best actress, Britain's Tilda Swinton took supporting actress and Spain's Javier Bardem won supporting actor. Cotillard earned her Academy Award portraying singer Edith Piaf in "La Vie en Rose" and became the first French actress to win the Oscar in that category since 1960.

"I'm speechless now," Cotillard said on stage, visibly surprised and overjoyed. "Thank you life, thank you love. It is true there (are) some angels in this city." Swinton won supporting actress playing an ethically challenged corporate lawyer in the thriller "Michael Clayton" and Bardem was given his award for portraying a sadistic killer in "No Country For Old Men."

The fourth Oscar for "No Country For Old Men" also went to the Coen brothers for best adapted screenplay by basing their movie on the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name.

To read more about the events of this prestigious night, just visit www.oscar.com

Japan Launches Communications Satellite 'KIZUNA', Designed to Enable Super High-Speed Data Transmission

Granted, most of us here in India would turn our noses up at receiving in-home broadband via satellite -- after all, Cable and Broadband seem to be treating most of us quite alright. However, Japan is hoping to provide access to more regions in Asia-Pacific with its recently launched Kizuna. The experimental satellite is not yet intended for commercial use, but if all goes well, it will enable data transmissions of up to "1.2 gigabytes per second", at a low cost across Japan and 19 other locales in Southeast Asia. (Oh! Pleeeease let that also include India)

Unfortunately, we've no idea when it will escape the bondage of testing and actually be put to good use. Until such time we shall continue to communicate, the primitive way :_(

One Step For Man, One Giant Search For GOOGLE!

First it conquered cyberspace. Now, Google is setting its sights on outer space. Leave it to innovators to push the envelope… all the way to the MOON!

The company on Thursday announced the first 10 teams of competitors in its $30 million contest to send a spacecraft back to the moon to gain greater insights into the solar system and to find new sources of clean energy.

The Google Lunar X-Prize contest requires each team -- largely composed of scientists and business people -- to build a robotic craft that can roam across the moon's surface, beam video, images and data back to Earth and even tap into natural resources.

Google isn't paying the costs for the teams to develop the rockets; it's simply holding out the carrot of a top prize of $20 million to the team that builds a vessel that can land on the moon and accomplish its mission. Each team has to raise the money to construct a spacecraft on its own.

The contest, announced last fall, is being co-sponsored by the X Prize Foundation, a nonprofit organization that administers competitions to spur the development of technologies that aspire to solve dire problems around the world.

Google's contest might get a spacecraft on the moon before the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration does. The company said it will award a cash prize of $20 million by the end of 2012 to the contestant that lands a privately funded craft on the moon, roams the lunar surface for at least 50 meters (164 feet) and transmits a specified set of images and data back to Earth. By contrast, NASA has a deadline of 2020 to get another craft to the moon.

In addition to the first-place prize, Google will award $5 million to a runner-up. The company also plans to dole out another $5 million in "bonus prizes," likely spread among several entrants.

If my memory serves me correctly, the last spacecraft to land on the Moon was NASA's Apollo 12 mission, nearly 40 years ago. It's now time to re-create that historic moment.

The interest in space travel is back and in my opinion it is in the right hands. Big budgets that governments bring to the table are sometimes necessary to create technology and perform research. Now the ball is in the hands of the entrepreneurs and they have all the data and technology they need.

Science has had a bad marketing campaign and this is the perfect way to reignite the fire and wonder that we once held for man’s final frontier. This is an exciting time in our history and I simply can’t wait to see what happens next. I’m on the edge of my seat and I hope you’re with me !?!

Gmail goes Multi-Lingual

As of Feb 13 2008, the Gmail team has begun rolling out a new version of Gmail that will now be available in 37 languages (& to think I was considered cool coz I could speak 4 languages). This version, available for IE7 and Firefox 2, has an entirely new code base, which allows the team to add new features more rapidly and share components with other Google applications (you will notice that they use the same rich text editor as Groups and Page Creator, and the contact manager can be seen in several Google apps). So if you were using English, you can now change your default language from the Settings menu to take advantage of a bunch of features that have recently launched in the preferred language, including:

* Colored labels
* Group chat
* Rich emoticons
* A new contact manager with a three-pane layout
* A number of smaller features, such as new shortcut keys and the ability to bookmark individual emails with your browser

One tiny side effect of this change is that it may disrupt some third-party Gmail extensions -- unsupported scripts that directly modify Gmail's code. If you don't use them, you don't need to worry about this.

Few of us will still have to wait in queue as the newest version of Gmail is not yet available for Croatian, Icelandic, Hebrew or Arabic, but you can continue using the older version in these languages. The newest version also is not yet available for Google Apps for your domain.

Hurry up Gmail !@#$

Jodha Akbar: Looming Controversy?

Quite contrary to my statement about the movie in my earlier blog, Jodha Akbar has made it to the headlines, but for all the wrong reasons.

Jodha Akbar, Ashutosh Gowariker’s latest directorial venture, released on 15th February 2008. Since the past couple of months, we have been hearing a controversy that the historical facts depicted in the movie are not correct. The film, starring Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, is said to be full of historical inaccuracies. Noted historians have claimed that the whole base of the movie, of the relationship between Jodha and Akbar, is completely faulty and incorrect. The Rajput groups of India are arguing that the name Jodha has been the name of wife of Jehangir who was son of Akbar (Jehangir was also called Salim).The Rajput Sabha chief has filed a case against the director of movie Jodha Akbar, Ashutosh Gowarikar, over presenting historical events in a twisted way.

They have cited books to point out that Jodha Bai was not the wife of Akbar, rather she was his daughter-in-law. In other words, Jodha Bai was the wife of Jehangir, aka Salim. Incensed by the distortion of the facts, the Rajput community of Rajasthan has threatened to not only boycott Jodha Akbar, but also stall its release in the state. As per the historical evidences, it was Jehangir who was married to the House of Jodhpur. The princess he thus married later came to be known as Jodhabai.

The Real Story
Historians claim that Akbar did forge an alliance with the Rajput family, when he married the daughter of Raja Bharmal of Amber. However, there is no evidence to suggest that she was called Jodhabai. Rather, she was later titled ‘Maryam Rahmani’ or ‘Mother of Rulers of the Universe’. Infact, Gowariker has himself claimed that there is some confusion regarding the name of the Rajput wife of Akbar. Nonetheless, he claims to have taken permission from the Royal Family of Jaipur to use the name Jodha Bai.

The Bottom Line (coz the Great One said so)
In the end, there is still no respite from the controversy into which Jodha Akbar has been drawn. If one goes strictly by the history books and evidences, the Rajput community seems to right in creating a fuss. The problem is that the issue has been raised too late. Had it been raised while the film was still being made, it would have made much more sense. Whether Jodha Akbar makes it to the box office or not and if it does, whether people accept it or not, is a question that only time can answer.

Shades of "ARMAGEDDON"

Every night I watch a movie on dvd before hitting the bed. That way I have something to discuss with my buddies at work the next day. Last night, I was running through my ol' dvd collection (considering the fact that I was done watching all the new ones... damn! that reminds me, I need to hit the dvd store this weekend) wondering which one do I watch on Valentine's eve & finally decided on Armageddon. And call it coincidence or divine intervention - the fact that I wake up next morning to read the papers & imagine my plight when I happened to come across this article.

"Pentagon is planning to shoot down a broken spy satellite expected to hit the Earth in early March"

U.S. officials said Thursday that the option preferred by the Bush administration will be to fire a missile from a U.S. Navy cruiser, and shoot down the satellite before it enters Earth's atmosphere. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the options will not be publicly discussed until a later Pentagon briefing. The costs involved in this operation range could be anywhere between $40 - $60 million. The missile itself cost $10 million. The disabled satellite is expected to hit the Earth the first week of March. Officials said the Navy would likely shoot it down before then, using a special missile modified for the task. Other details about the missile and the targeting were not immediately available. But the decision involves several U.S. agencies, including the National Security Agency, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department. Shooting down a satellite is particularly sensitive because of the controversy surrounding China's anti-satellite test last year, when Beijing shot down one of its defunct weather satellites, drawing immediate criticism from the United States and other countries.

A key concern at that time was the debris created by the Chinese satellite's destruction -- and that will also be a focus now, as the United States determines exactly when and under what circumstances to shoot down its errant satellite. The military will have to choose a time and a location that will avoid to the greatest degree any damage to other satellites in the sky. Also, there is the possibility that large pieces could remain, and either stay in orbit where they can collide with other satellites or possibly fall to Earth. It is not known where the satellite will hit. But officials familiar with the situation say about half of the 5,000-pound spacecraft is expected to survive its blazing descent through the atmosphere and will scatter debris -- some of it potentially hazardous -- over several hundred miles. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. The satellite is outfitted with thrusters -- small engines used to position it in space. They contain the toxic rocket fuel hydrazine, which can cause harm to anyone who comes into contact with it.
Russia, in the meanwhile, claim that this is just a ploy for US to test their missile.

Bruce Willis, on the other hand, I heard has temporarily disconnected his cell phone service ;-)

JODHAA AKBAR: India's door to Hollywood

I always wonder... why can't we have more such films that showcase the Indian culture. After all, we are a culturally rich country with a legacy to be proud of. Instead all our Bollywood directors can ever think of is - boy meets girl, falls in love, sing a song or two & then the climax is the face off with the bad guyz who's brain cells only pale in comparison to that of the director.

As I was saying...
providing a window to the effervescent and rich tradition of culture of a country can best be done by the medium of cinema, as it is the walking and talking exposition of the vibrancy that a country has. China has been able to do this through multitude of films being made on a large scale by turning out one leaf of history or the other and using the grandeur of cinema to tell the world about the mystique called China. It was done by four films, which told the world what China was all about and the films that achieved the same include CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON, HOUSEOF FLYING DRAGONS, HERO and THE PROMISE. These four films became epochal, as they were able to attain a synergy by choosing the aesthetics of Hollywood and combining it with Chinese culture, tradition and heritage.

For India also this epochal moment seems to have arrived with the release of JODHAA AKBAR.

It is the sheer grandeur of the film and the choice of the subject that provides the confidence that the film would be able to make a definite mark at the international level. This would also pave the way for more historical films emanating from the drawing board of the Hindi film industry to tell to the world the richness of culture that India possess.

The portents are auspicious as UTV, which is the producer of the film, has as its CEO Ronnie Screwvala who has already been featured on the cover of the Newsweek as being one of the stars from the sub-continent who would be going to change the course of world cinema. JODHAA AKBAR may just do the same.

The confidence arises from the grandeur of the scale on which the film has been mounted. It has one of the most recognizable faces at the international level in the form of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Hrithik Roshan.

It is the sheer grandeur of the historical films, which make them a hit among the audience, as the grandeur is able to hark back the audience to the memories of the past. It has been done successfully in various Hollywood films, and has rekindled the interest in history after the films were received. The most recent example is that of THE GLADIATOR. Number of Shakespearean plays could become successful and get new converts only on account of various screen adaptations from time to time. In India also the same interest in Bhagat Singh was evinced after two films in succession based on the life of Bhagat Singh were released.

Another positive feature in case of JODHAA AKBAR is about the choice of character which is one of the least controversial characters in the history and which has had fan following across all generations, caste and creed. Being a popular character, there is very miniscule chance of it being associated with any controversy.

It is owing to the way JODHAA AKBAR has shaped up that more and more filmmakers in India are turning their focus to history to pick out characters and give them a new lease of life through celluloid drama.

With 1000s of movies being produced every year, only few of them manage to truly captivate the audience be it for its sheer ingenuity or in this case reliving the history of our country.

Happy Chinese New year folks!!

This is the year of the rat...like me..so i hope its gonna be my year...God that was so lame...start over? Never mind..

Also, Google has a great new logo for the Chinese New Year ( Rat Year ). We have a logo with rats and a chinse symbol ( Wu Zi ). Yes, starting today, 7 February 2008 we are in the Rat Year, 2008. See the Google Logo below! It’s nice!!

if you wanna see it here's the URL: www.google.cn