it's a rap, again

i've already commented(ok it's not a comment, but a rather long post) on the influx of hip hop sounds into tamil film music before. i thought it was an innovative thing and lately it seems like yuvan shankar raja has taken it upon himself to feature at least one such song in his albums. here is someone who is trying to shake things up a little bit by adding a new element to the rather stable tfm compound. i liked his version of aasai nooru vagai in kurumbu and boom boom from Raam. Thee pidikka from Arindhum Ariyamalum was one suweet remix. then in kanda naal mudhal there was one line that caught my attention. it goes "i've got the magic stick, i'm the love doctor" . wait a second, doesn't someone else this side of the atlantic (or pacific, actually the world) also own a magic stick. Indeed. Not only does Curtis James Jackson III aka 50 cent aka fiddy own a magic stick, last i heard he also owned a candy shop which has the exact line. then i listened to Vallavan today which has a remix of "kaathal vandiruchu" from Kalyanaraman. again i liked the remix but are the mangled lyrics from 'In da club' really needed in the first few minutes (kudos for slipping in the four letter word in though..must be a first in tamil film music history). i kind of understand the urge to be a rebel and move away from the mainstream and to create new things. but sampling lyrics is not the way to go. that way i think blaaze's lyrics are much better. they are much more relevant to the song and because of that they don't stick out like a sore thumb despite being in a different language.

The blogger formerly known as aNTi says that he is planning a hip-hop album sometime. hope it's more original or one day the G-unit is going to send down a couple of hummers to chennai to investigate and i don't think they'll be there to "party like its your love day" (whatever that is )"

snippet

i found it..the short film that was in thewebsite that i would not pay to watch. thanks to some nice beings that mirrored the website the short film is here :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-5cJse8_Zk
(thanks to patrykrebisz)

a bit about the movie: it is composed of individual snaps from a digital camera. i've seen a similar ad (for playstation i think) and have no idea which one came first. so i am not commenting on the novelty. unusual way to make a movie but the only anomaly (according to me)was that it had a rather normal background score. should it not have been composed of individual snippets of sound corresponding to each snap?? why didn't capturing sound bytes take off like capturing image bytes ? maybe it is cos writing captures the sound like a picture captures the image. somehow the analogy does not gel.

guess who's back?

pretty much the only difference was that the red in the cape was a little darker. bryan singer tries to walk the thin line between retaining the image of superman as portrayed by Reeve and trying to do something new and radical (and fun) with this amazing toy he has been handed. he just about manages to balance while leaning heavily towards the past serving up a version of superman which looks slightly better but retains the same core.

i don't know any more about superman than most people. i have watched the previous ones but don't remember much except for the one with the solar powered creature in IV(i know, worst superman ever. that being uses its nails to infect superman like some cat). i do remember some scenes with the clumsy, bumbling Reeve and the slightly hysterical lois lane(imdb tells me it was played by Margot Kidder). Bryan Singer in his role as guardian of the superhero temple probably told Brandon Routh to study tapes of Reeve and imitate him as best as he can. Kate Bosworth does look quite beautiful but i missed the wide eyed, surprised expression that Margot Kidder showed when meeting superman. kate makes that fantastic flight over the city seem like a bus ride. i guess it's cos lois has had a ride on superman before. the best character of course is lex luthor. kevin spacey brings extra wit and beautiful sarcasm to a character you know is a little crazy. other than that it is much of the same old, same old. there is a evil masterplan, it involves kryptonite and superman going down before coming back up.

the special effects i guess are really advanced and it was probably really hard work to make superman fly but i doubt that the older audience noticed anything different. it's come to the point where the effect really has to be something special for me to notice it. bryan remembers to showcase each one of superman's abilities just in case the younger crowd have not been taught enough by their parents. watching it in imax 3d however was a slightly different experience. i really liked the sound effects but was not too impressed with the 3d aspect. it maybe because there was no flying ice cream as in "my dear kuttichathan". the only other thing that bothered me was that metropolis seems stuck in the past. apart from the nifty product placements ( samsung, nikon and audi) there is nothing modern about metropolis. i am not a couture expert either but why is everyone dressed up like its the 80s. i bet that there was not a single pair of jeans in the entire movie and any superman worth his salt would've noticed the young lady he rescues from a runaway car is wearing an outfit that would be a better fit at the ascot or kentucky derby than an american city's downtown.

i saw this cool video on the net that showed how they reused marlon brando's face from the first movie. bryan could've as well done the same with the rest of the movie. he returns the toy to the showcase in the same pristine condition it was in before he took it out.

the random post i've been trying to avoid all these days

i don't claim to be a techie sort of a person..i am not. i like gadgets and technology and on the rare saturday get rather stale ideas about how the virtual life imitates the real one. i tried accessing a website featured on boing boing and it turned out that site host had suspended that account. most tech enthusiasts would of course be familiar with slashdotting and that is precisely what had happened. apart from sympathizing with that poor slashdotted soul, my point ( and there is one somewhere in this post) is that this is really similar to any free event. the moment you say its free and interesting the only ones who really get to see it are the early birds.the rest just lose out like i did. some nice being may have a video camera and record that event and put in on the web for others to watch it (that this may also get slashdotted is an offshoot i wont traverse). but what is the equivalent on the web. some may try to mirror the site on their own servers but how many have the patience to do that. i still think that the number of people online is quite small. what if the number of people online doubles overnight? contrast that with a ticketed event where you actually pay for and get a nice seat and are assured of watching the whole thing without hunting for it on the net.

that begets the question : should the net really be free?

(the actual question is : was that link something i'd pay to see. the answer is no :) )