Krishna Srinivasan’s Blog

A Karnataka House panel has slammed L&T, Siemens and Unique Zurich Airport for shoddy work at the Bangalore International Airport and recommended black listing them for a minimum period of five years.

A joint House panel of the Karnataka Assembly recommended appropriate action against those, including Infosys mentor NR Narayana Murthy, involved in decision making.

The panel report, tabled in the Assembly on Monday, cited “poor quality” of workmanship, trading of shares for profit without showing an “iota of concern” for general public, entrusting all airport works among private players in Bengaluru International Airport Limited (BIAL).

The report noted that one of the promoters of the BIAL, Unique Zurich Airport, Switzerland, made a huge profit by selling its 12 per cent (worth Rs 46.15 crore at the time of its investment 4 years ago) in the project for Rs 484.6 crore.Read More>>

AR Rahman won the CNN-IBN Indian of the Year 2009 award. Rahman, while accepting the award from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at a glittering ceremony in New Delhi on Monday night, said he wants his music to lesson the divide among the people.

“It is a triumph for music. I hope it inspires more people and lessens the divide,” said the Oscar winning music maestro.

When asked what was it about his music that wowed the world Rahman said, “I don’t know. I think the philosophy of music playing larger role, being selective and blessings of God.”

Singh described Rahman’s music as inspirational saying when he heard his songs in the White House, he had a sense of joy and achievement.

“AR Rahman’s music is inspirational. It has a universal appeal. When I heard Rahman in the White House, you cannot imagine the sense of joy and achievement,” Singh said. Read More>>

1. Global undo/”trash” feature, which means that if you accidentally delete a post or comment you can bring it back from the grave (i.e., the Trash). This also eliminates those annoying “are you sure” messages we used to have on every delete.
2. Built-in image editor allows you to crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale your images to show them who’s boss. This is the first wave of our many planned media-handling improvements.
3. Batch plugin update and compatibility checking, which means you can update 10 plugins at once, versus having to do multiple clicks for each one, and we’re using the new compatibility data from the plugins directory to give you a better idea of whether your plugins are compatible with new releases of WordPress. This should take the fear and hassle out of upgrading.
4. Easier video embeds that allow you to just paste a URL on its own line and have it magically turn it into the proper embed code, with Oembed support for YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv (and more in the next release).

2.9 provides the smoothest ride yet because of a number of improvements under the hood and more subtle improvements you’ll begin to appreciate once you’ve been around the block a few times. Here’s just a sampling:

• We now have rel=canonical support for better SEO.
• There is automatic database optimization support, which you can enable in your wp-config.php file by adding define('WP_ALLOW_REPAIR', true);.
• Themes can register “post thumbnails” which allow them to attach an image to the post, especially useful for magazine-style themes.
• A new commentmeta table that allows arbitrary key/value pairs to be attached to comments, just like posts, so you can now expand greatly what you can do in the comment framework.
• Custom post types have been upgraded with better API support so you can juggle more types than just post, page, and attachment. (More of this planned for 3.0.)
• You can set custom theme directories, so a plugin can register a theme to be bundled with it or you can have multiple shared theme directories on your server.
• We’ve upgraded TinyMCE WYSIWYG editing and Simplepie.
• Sidebars can now have descriptions so it’s more obvious what and where they do what they do.
• Specify category templates not just by ID, like before, but by slug, which will make it easier for theme developers to do custom things with categories — like post types!
• Registration and profiles are now extensible to allow you to collect things more easily, like a user’s Twitter account or any other fields you can imagine.
• The XML-RPC API has been extended to allow changing the user registration option. We fixed some Atom API attachment issues.
• Create custom galleries with the new include and exclude attributes that allow you to pull attachments from any post, not just the current one.
• When you’re editing files in the theme and plugin editors it remembers your location and takes you back to that line after you save. (Thank goodness!!!)
• The Press This bookmarklet has been improved and is faster than ever; give it a try for on-the-fly blogging from wherever you are on the internet.
• Custom taxonomies are now included in the WXR export file and imported correctly.
• Better hooks and filters for excerpts, smilies, HTTP requests, user profiles, author links, taxonomies, SSL support, tag clouds, query_posts and WP_Query

Aayirathil Oruvan (Tamil: ஆயிரத்தில் ஒருவன், English: One Man in a Thousand) is a forthcoming 2010 adventure Tamil–language film directed by Selvaraghavan, who with the project, directs his fifth feature film. The film stars Karthi Sivakumar, Reema Sen and Andrea Jeremiah in the lead roles with Parthiban playing a pivotal role.

The film languished in development hell due to slow progress of the shoot and the extensive pre and post-production works, evading release dates ranging one year. Shooting began in July 2007, and took place in various locations: Chalakudy, Kerala; Jaisalmer, Rajasthan; and other regions throughout India with a record number of extras. The film, which has music composed by G. V. Prakash Kumar and photography directed by Ramji, will release on January 15, 2010 coinciding with the festival of Thai Pongal.

Udhayanidhi Stalin did a small role in his recent production ‘Aadhavan’ directed by K S Ravikumar. Now it looks like the producer will be seen a bit more in the next project of K S Ravikumar.

As we had earlier K S Ravikumar is gonna direct a film with Kamal in the lead under the banner of Udhayanidhi Stalin’s Red Giant Movies. And in this project Udhayanidhi will be doing a supporting role that travels along with Kamal throughout the film, say sources.

We heard that the director has made it a point that the script is done in such a way to insert Udhayanidhi everywhere. Sources further added that it was the young producer’s dream to make a movie with Kamal in the lead and it is coming true now.

This untitled flick is said to be a comedy entertainer and talks are on to rope in Tamannah opposite our Ulaganayagan.

Nearly after seven years, Ram Gopal Verma’s touted project ‘Rakta Charitra’ said to bring the ace filmmaker and Vivek Oberoi together.

The night before the first day of shoot said to have given Vivek anxiety and the actor said to have lost sleep thinking about the next day. He tried to relax himself by watching a movie and listening to music. However, when Vivek came on the sets in the morning he felt it to be strangely familiar. “It was like I was back on the sets of Company. I was really emotional the first day,” recalled Vivek. To the actor, it was like an end of seven years of exile.

The shooting that day involved a sequence which the actor stated as one of the most difficult scenes of his career. “But the minute I did it, Ramu said, ‘I lived with the character for two years and you walk in and do one scene, like you’ve known the character for years’. That felt great!” revealed the actor who was quite elated to hear such compliment from his mentor.

Just to make you all remember, Suriya is roped in for this project to do the role of Suri, Paritala Ravi’s right hand.

Note: The following review originally ran on SciFi Squad, and is being reprinted tonight on Cinematical ahead of the film’s theatrical release tomorrow.

The buzz and buzzkill leading up to Avatar, it turns out, found inadequate purchase now that the world has finally glimpsed the fabled film. The echo chamber of hype that believed it would drastically alter the landscape of filmmaking forever, the virulent, vitriolic cries of Dances with Smurfs, the total indifference…all misplaced.

You are not prepared for Avatar. Roll your eyes at that; laugh it off, you’ve heard that pitch before. It’s not hyperbole, though, it’s bald truth. Whether it’s your most anticipated movie of the year or your least, it is not precisely what you think it is. How could it be? Avatar is a motion picture precedent, after all. It’s fair to say that the core conflict is less than revolutionary and that parts of the narrative are broad, but those ills are scarcely symptomatic of James Cameron’s ultimate goal. It’s not about challenging the formula of Group X oppresses Group Y, who then fight back. Nor is it about only showcasing the bleeding edge technology that Cameron and company have invented and licensed over the last decade. Avatar is about transporting a viewer to the awe-inspiring alien world of Pandora and integrating them into its fantastic way of life for 150 minutes. That’s the bullseye Cameron is aiming for, and that is the bullseye he obliterates.

Avatar has no peers when it comes to world building on the big screen. Every detail of Pandora is astoundingly organic, as if Cameron stumbled upon a lush, jungle moon orbiting a gas giant with wildly unique indigenous species and decided to beam down a camera crew. Your brain will want to tell you that every bit of bio-luminescent moss, every drifting leaf, every flying banshee, and every Na’vi was created on a bank of hard drives in a studio, but that’s only initial skepticism. Life on Pandora is so divergent from Earth that by the time you’ve acclimated to Cameron’s dream world, you’ll no longer be scouring the motion capture work for digital imperfections. You’ll be wholly immersed in the adventure of a one Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic Marine hired by a corporation mining a rare mineral on Pandora to partake in their Avatar program.

Among other things, Pandora is home to the Na’vi, a sentient species of 10 foot tall blue hominids who happen to call a site that sits atop an untapped vein of said rare mineral home. The idea is that Jake will join a team of altruistic researchers who plan to link consciousness with genetically engineered Na’vi bodies (the titular avatars) in an attempt to convince the natives that they need to relocate their home. Before going off to live among the locals, however, the corporation’s scheming security honcho, Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang), makes a deal with Jake: discretely relay any crucial details that will help undermine the Na’vi should an assault be necessary and he’ll get the company to pay for the spinal surgery that will make Jake walk again. As one can guess, things don’t go as planned, and Jake soon begins to fall in love with his new found life on Pandora.

Cynics will cite that removing the science fiction elements from Avatar leaves behind a warmed over, anti-imperialism storyline, but even with heroic diatribes against ‘people who think they can take whatever they want’, such reductions are missing the (lush) forest for the (enormous) trees. And while the idea of joining forces with a species that lives harmoniously with the land they worship may appear to boast an overtly topical agenda given the current pro-environment fervor that has spread across our own planet, it’s hard to believe either issue rested atop Cameron’s to-do list. The clear intent here is to tell the story of a man without a station in life who seizes the opportunity to make something of his crippled existence in an extraordinary, beautiful new world, screws it up, and then tries to redeem himself.

Any narrative missteps lay not in the simplistic framework, rather within broad-appeal techniques like exposition voice overs that come by way of a video log Jake is told to update in order to maintain mental acuity. Cameron spends enough time showing and not telling that these fluke moments of non-revelation (targeted, no doubt, to the few in the audience who can’t suss out what’s going on) interrupt the visual poetry of his storytelling. And the same goes for a few jarring bits of uninspired dialogue that, unfortunately, survived into the vernacular of 150 years from now. The script for Avatar has been kicking around Cameron’s desk for at least 15 years, but that’s no excuse for the future to have lame lines like “I knew I had to take it to the next level” and scientists that call people “numb-nuts”.

While those minor complaints may pinch when they pop up, they subside quite quickly, and Cameron returns to introducing a stunning universe of ecology on a scale the likes of which cinema knew not. The obvious expectation for Avatar was that it would raise the always-on-the-way-up special effects bar, but to say that Cameron merely raises the bar would be an understatement. He and his effects team have eliminated the familiar benchmark entirely. Such a comment is not meant to undermine past technical accomplishments, however. Davy Jones’ tentacled face in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, Gollum in Lord of the Rings, the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park; all are magnificent special effects centerpieces in the service of equally magnificent stories. The difference with Avatar is that there is no singular centerpiece.

There’s a line in the film in which the corporate overseer (Giovanni Ribisi) bemoans how spiritual the Na’vi are by exclaiming it’s impossible to throw a stick on Pandora and not hit something the natives hold sacred; a sentiment applicable to all of the visuals on screen. No individual element appears to have received the brunt of the budget, which is no doubt why Avatar has notoriously been lauded as the most expensive film ever made. Instead, every pixel looks as though it received the same amount of love as the one next to it, no matter if that pixel is part of an insect or a Na’vi warrior’s loin cloth. It’s not photorealistic, mind you, yet neither is it supposed to be. Persistent is the watchword here.

The motion capture utilized is the most emotive the medium has known to date, but all the production wizardry would be for naught without worthy source performances. Sam Worthington aptly conveys the wounded psyche of a soldier whose only commodity is his failing body, but its Stephen Lang and Zoe Saldana that steal the show. Lang’s delivery of the ultimate military badass is striking enough to dominate every scene he’s in, inspiring a not entirely secret wish that the character get an origin film of his own. Serving as a perfect foil to Lang’s black-hearted-demeanor is Saldana’s Neytiri, a character wrought with sufficient emotion to make one question whether she was indeed a complete CGI creation.

As far as the 3D is concerned, I remain indifferent. On the one hand, Cameron’s color palette wonderfully compensates against the traditional tendency of 3D glasses to dull a film’s cosmetics, but on the other hand the added depth reveals nothing beyond what’s already present without the added eye wear.

It’s misleading to say that the arrival of Avatar has changed cinema forever, yet in a number of ways it has set such alterations in motion. It’s hard to imagine any studio jumping the gun to throw the same payload Cameron required from Fox to set his precedent to another filmmaker, so in that regard movies at large remain unaffected for the near future. However, its myriad of accomplishments will inevitably serve as an agent of change down the line. Avatar is primed to leave a huge dent in the notions that motion capture films equate to soulless, dead-eyed characters, that sci-fi films must consist of pop music soundtracks and giant, clashing robots to have broad appeal, and that big screen fantasy lands have to be anchored in familiar, Earth-like places to yield heartfelt audience investment.

On a more personal level, Avatar is also the first film to inspire me to even consider writing the phrase “If you see only one movie this year…” with a serious face, but even that accolade seems lacking. What Cameron has meticulously engineered is such a breath of new, cinematic air that there should be no nebulous “If you see” possibility. Simply see it.

Vijay’s fate continues – What does this mean? It’s so simple; ‘Vettaikaran’ in no way differs from his previous films that were dissatisfying for the universal audiences. Vijay follows the same pattern of superman act of jumping from loftiest water falls with just a wound on his knee, yelling with punch dialogues and flying reverse sans gravity effects in stunt sequences.

The day Vijay stops working on these elements, he’s sure to make it big and gain yet more masses towards him. It’s worth mentioning that Vijay had whole lot of female fans, but with most of his recent films merely bounded to violence and punch dialogues, he’s loosing away the attention.

‘Vettaikaran’ has a right mix of Dharani’s ‘Dhill’ (mentor of Babu Sivan), ‘Tirupatchi’ and ‘Bhagavathy’.

The film is about Ravi (Vijay) in Tuticorin, whose only aim is to become a cop just like an IPS officer Rajendran. After passing his 12th std examination after 4 attempts, Ravi heads for Chennai with a big dream of completing his graduation and becoming a cop. He comes across his cherubic girl Susheela (Anushka) and falls in love at first sight with her.

After joining a college in Chennai, Ravi hires an auto from his girl classmate’s father (Manickam Vinayagam) for bread and butter. When things are well and fine, Ravi feels so disappointed as he isn’t able to meet his role model Devraj IPS as his house is always locked. His neighbors reveal that he has fled to Delhi on some mission and will return merely after 6 months, which is not true.

Meanwhile, he comes in for a hand-in-hand combat with a local goon Chella, who handles illegal businesses of his don father Vedanayagam (Salim Ghosh).

What follows next is a series of more clichéd storyline that can be doubtlessly predicted.

As usual Vijay dances well, utters dialogues that favors his fans and ‘Thai Kulam’. But in the second half, he starts beating the same bush of high-pitched punch dialogues. Though they aren’t more in number, the stunt sequences will really annoy you after a certain extent. Anushka, the red-hot girly makes you forget her ‘Arundhathi’ image as she gets into extreme glamour. Of course, she will leave a big lump in your throats out on erotic blast. Salim Ghosh does justice to his role, but is found repeating the same act again and again. Satyan is okay and Shayaji Shinde as a bad-turned-good cop has done a good job. The person taking on the role of Devraj IPS is great though he reminds off Nasser’s similar role in ‘Dhill’.

There are whole lots of absurdities so blatant and Babu Sivan should’ve strictly paid attention to these aspects that would have made the film finer. The second half is too lengthy with already seen ingredients of Vijay Vs Aashish Vidyarthi in ‘Bhagavathy’ and Vijay Vs rowdies in ‘Tirupatchi’. It would’ve been better if Vijay had foreshortened the stunt parts in second half. For God’s sake, he can stop conveying social messages… We’re curiously waiting for some of his best entertainers like ‘Badri’, ‘Youth’ and ‘Ghilli’.

After a long time, almost all the songs in Vijay’s film impress the audiences. Especially, he has completely changed his dancing style from his previous films.

Cinematography isn’t impressive and editing is mediocre.

On whole, Sun Pictures’ vivid promotions may turn this average film into a top-drawer, since it’s far better than some of the previous films that were released by the same production house this year.

Bottom – Line: Vijay’s fate continues

James Cameron’s Avatar is already getting rave reviews in the West. This magnum opus will be the first ever 3D Hollywood film to be released in Tamil. Earlier the 3D Hollywood films ‘Ice Age 3’ was dubbed only in Hindi.

However, after looking at the growing response to dubbed Hollywood films, Fox Star Studios India is releasing the 3D version of ‘Avatar’ in Tamil. Fox Star Studios India is releasing the film in around 700 prints in English, Hindi, Tamil & Telugu, which is by far one of the biggest releases for a Hollywood film in India.

The company will be screening the film with more than 100 prints (English & Tamil together) beating the record of ‘2012’ which was released in less than 100 prints in the same market.

Mr Swaroop Reddy, Director of Sathyam Cinema  who is distributing ‘Avatar’ in Tamil Nadu says, “Avatar is undoubtedly the most awaited movie of the decade and we at Sathyam Cinemas are all quite pleased about it; especially since we’re releasing it in digital 3D too. The audiences here are eager to watch James Cameron’s latest spectacle after ‘Titanic’ and we’re expecting nothing short of a phenomenal response at the cinemas.”

Let’s experience the world of Avatar!