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June 20, 2005

HondaToyotaToyotaHondaHondaToyotaToyotaHonda

I’m car shopping busily and it sucks big time. I have no idea why desis push other desis, infact torture them until they accept, to only buy Honda or Toyota.

For the money that I’m investing, to get a ‘dubba’ 95′ Honda with manual windows and coffee stained back seats, I can get a slick 2001 Dodge Neon or a ultra equipped 2000 Mercury Mystique clad in leather seats and 4 disc changer attcahed to 6 Bose speakers. I know that these cars might lose their values soon but why should I end up rotating the windows when I have a choice to click a button to make them go up/down.

Oh !! yeah, I love Honda Civic and that’s like the ideal middleclass vehicle. It’s like buying a Kinetic Honda or Hero Honda Splendour back in India. As days go by, I’m petrified to even look at other cars also. It’s like wearing a blind-fold from the minute and finding my way through fellow dudes.

Seattle’s used car market is huge and costly too. Unlike the lazy/pleasant lifestlye, the car market is busy. The cars come and go in no time. So the minute you narrow down on the car and try visiting the car on the weekend, there are couple of others who want to test ride the car there and you end getting fed up by competition and come back after eating masala dosa in Redmond’s Namaste.

Back to the honda syndrome, the minute I start describing the nice Mustang, I got to see/ride, my friends would go busy saying,”Thuddu waste da. Onnu Honda/Toyota vaangu, illaena kamunu engakuda bus’la vaa”. To run from them, can someone help me with escape velocity ?
June 20, 2005

Desis on the (rock &) roll

[Pic – NY Times/MTV Desi]

When MTV Desi starts airing Indian music for desis[second-generation immigrants from the Indian subcontinent as described by NY Times], we can believe music of Rahman and his types, will get a wide opening to the mainstream music in America. The musical boulevards of LA will await them to come over and render soul searching, foot tapping, IPODish numbers only to get the American musical industry, another addition to their genre list, Indie music.

While I’m positive about the music from peninsula will have a positive honeymoon with the american youth for the first few days, it remains to be seen, that some of our manufactured filthy music and annoyingly explicit copycat versions of ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ and ballards of Richard Marx, don’t get aired through MTV Desi. It’s time to spice-up the music album scenes in India. The hindi pop has already come of age and hence MTV wants to get them aired across America. I am personally not a great fan of Indie Pop because I think there is enough trash alongwith some good ones.

The media in US is already mis-understanding any product as a bollywood piece, Tamil will have very less role to play in this hungama. The Tamil pop music has already died with Suresh Peters’ last album, it’s time Yuvan and his teammates rise up to occasion and start delivering tamil music albums. I would be more than happy if Suresh Peters would come back. Even if we have some good albums in Tamil coming out because of this move from MTV Desi broadcast, tamil music lovers will be happy to resurrect a bygone genre.

More on MTV Desi in NYTimes article, I Want My Hyphenated-Identity MTV [need userid/pass]. Link Via Tilotamma.
June 19, 2005

Identifying yourself with films !! – Spielberg

[Pic – News Week]

Question – It’s been 30 years since “Jaws.” You’ve achieved every measure of success. What keeps driving you to make movies?

Spielberg – I’ve often asked myself that question, and my answer comes back the same way every time: I love it. Being a moviemaker means you get to live many, many lifetimes. It’s the same reason audiences go to movies, I think. When my daughter Sasha was 5 years old, we would be watching something on TV and she’d point to a character on screen and say, “Daddy, that’s me.” Ten minutes later a new character would come on screen and she’d say, “No, Daddy. That’s me.” Throughout the movie she would pick different people to become. I think that’s what we all do. We just don’t say it as sweetly.

Seems like a Deja vu. I’ve posted Steve’s view of filmmaking, before. This time its reasoning out the filmwatching experience in the interview to Newsweek.

This is Steven Spielberg‘s honeymoon with the media. Just when his movie’s post-production is all done and he is waiting for the verdict, he loves to talk to the media. A little hype, for his latest film, may be behind these interviews but what comes out are some amazing quotable quotes.
June 19, 2005

Redefining houseful !!

Nope this is not about Parthiban’s Houseful. That was a gem. Outlook’s note on how multiplexes are re-defining the meaning of houseful, in this not-so-interesting article, is interesting.

Strangely, alongwith the outsourcing stuff, we are also inheriting the Hollywood’s way of movies in India. Bollywood with it’s wider audience, is obviously the first market to catch the trend of opening weekend box-office. The article lists numbers that clearly show how producers/directors are more interested to grab the eyeballs during the opening weekend rather than relying on repeat audience or deferred success.

The other pleasant/unpleasant is the audience segmentation. It’s a long awaited wish to have more movies made specifically for genres. For years, Indian cinema has been a one-stop-shop for all types of entertainment. It had a family drama, a steamy romance, a touching sentiment and moving saga. But as the example on the article quotes Kya Kool Hain Hum, a supposedly mega-hit of the year, wasn’t an all-in-one fare. It was targeted the youth and despite being a super-hit, the movie only reached it’s targeted audience. Such segmentation is certainly a welcoming move but it’s harmful too. Too many movies for the urban youth will just endup as a saturated market, after a year. Just like what happened during the late 90’s in kollywood. With Agathiyan’s Kaathal Kottai, innumerable movies of were produced as variances of the movie only to tire the audience after a year.

From the article, Housefull! (But… Kitne Aadmi Thhe?)

In a nutshell, there are far more avenues to catch a film and that has led to a concomitant reduction in crowds at any one theatre. The same number of people can now view a film in a week as would have earlier in a month. No wonder, most films are making money in the very first week itself, at times just the first weekend is enough to recover the cost of a film. “What a film makes in 15 days today is as good as what it used to make in 15 weeks earlier. The duration of the a film’s run may have declined but the collections have risen,” claims Mehta.
June 19, 2005

Blogs made a headstart over

Blogs made a headstart over main stream media because of the personal voice they had in every single blogpost. In the process of getting wider audience and millions jumping into the blogging badnwagon, if they end up being badly written, poorly gestated trashes of email driven culture, someone has to take note of such blogs and vrooooomm !!

– Thumbi, the MP(D) of lazygeek

HondaToyotaToyotaHondaHondaToyotaToyotaHonda

Desis on the (rock &) roll

Identifying yourself with films !! – Spielberg

Redefining houseful !!

Blogs made a headstart over