Ek Deewana Tha – Teaser

Contrary to popular belief (well, not really that popular considering it was only me) this is NOT the Part 2 or sequel of the Urmila Matondkar – Saif Ali Khan starrer Ek Hasina Thi!

Ek Deewana Tha is actually the Hindi remake of the Tamil film Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa which had Simbu and Trisha in the lead roles. It was also simultaneously made in Telugu as Ye Maaya Chesave with Naga Chaitanya and Samantha innit. Though both movies became hits, their standout point was A.R. Rahman’s music – songs & tunes are the same in both versions. The Hindi version is directed by the same director – Gautham Menon and has Pratiek Babbar and Brit gal (A Miss Liverpool!) Amy Jackson & is said to have two completely new songs.

Though I’ve never been a fan of Telugu movies of this type, YMC registered a seismic presence around me coz of the incessant chatter about how good it was, how good the music was, how gorgeous Samantha was blah blah blah…couple of my friends were so hooked to the music, they had it as their ringtones as well as caller tunes! This post is dedicated to them…

Music Review – Blue

This was one album every Bollywood music buff was eagerly awaiting for (well, this and Radio). Its the OST of the upcoming movie Blue, with music by none other than the Oscar-winning maestro – A.R.Rahman. In his own words, “…is my first film after the Oscars. So expectations are scary”. Well, expectations are always high when it comes to Rahman’s music…aren’t they?

The soundtrack of Blue kicks off with the foot-tapping and soon-to-be-on-everyone’s-lips Chiggy Wiggy, marking the Bollywood debut of Kylie Minogue. The song is quite good in Kylie’s hands vocals but gets kinda mediocre with Sonu Nigam’s entrance. The Anglo-Punjabi beats and lyrics in the song don’t quite gel and the fun goes off once Kylie is relegated to the background by Sonu…and probably Akshay as well. I wish filmmakers would stop pushing his ‘khiladi’ image in every nook and cranny of the movie! Aaj dil gustaakh hai has already become a favourite. Its strummy beats and the vocals of Sukhwinder Singh and Shreya Ghosal give it an instant lift. I presume it will be picturized on Sanjay Dutt (dunno why…Sukhwinder’s vocals never seem to suit him!)

Fiqrana is a travelogue-esque song and the healthy smattering of Urdu words make one seem like its penned by Gulzar saab. Vijay Prakash does a swell job with the vocals and Shreya Ghosal ably supports him. The catchy background hook and the stop-n’-go rendition of some of the lines stand out in this one. Could’ve done done away with the electronic modulation of the voice though. Hope they won’t ruin it by picturising it on Zayed Khan! Bhoola tujhe is the lone solo track in the album and a pretty slow one at that. Dunno why but it reminded me of (shudderrr…) Yuvvraaj! Probably the orchestra/opera esque setting of the song. Rashid Ali croons it with his usual mellifluousness but won’t be a repeat track for me. Shreya and Sonu team up for the seductive-sounding Rehnuma with Sonu sounding pretty nasal at times and deep at others, and Shreya trying hard to sound like Sunidhi! The beats and slow rendition  make me think it will be played out as a background track…maybe as some dangerous shenanigans are played out underwater.

‘09 European Grand Prix – Saturday Qualifying – Lewis Hamilton puts McLaren on Pole

McLaren announced their revival in style as they locked out the front row of the grid for the European Grand Prix at the street circuit of Valencia. It was Lewis Hamilton on Pole position with teammate Heikki Kovalainen on P2. The Brawn of Rubens Barrichello is on P3 with teammate Jenson Button on P4. Sebastian Vettel, Kimi Raikkonen, Nico Rosberg, Fernando Alonso, Mark Webber and Robert Kubica complete the top ten. In a slightly less-than-hectic Qualifying session, the true race pace of McLaren was showcased as early as the first session itself as neither the Brawns nor the Red Bulls could challenge them. Lewis was atop the timesheets for most of the first session and also for most of the second. In both sessions, he was pipped by the Brawns – first by Jenson in Q1 and then by Rubens in Q2 but when it mattered, the Brawns just could not better the McLaren’s times.

Q1 started with long time practice driver for Ferrari, Luca Badoer being amongst the first ones to go round the street circuit at Valencia but his time was not fast enough and he steadily dropped down the charts. Most of the drivers posted their times in the high 1 Min 40s bracket and Heikki Kovalainen was the first one to dip into the 1 Min 39s timeframe which was bettered by Kimi Raikkonen and then by Sebastian Vettel and also by Nico Rosberg. Subsequently Lewis Hamilton clocked the fastest time but was immediately eclipsed by Rubens Barrichello but Lewis again clawed back to P1 but not for long as Jenson Button went quicker still. The ones to drop out of Q1 were Giancarlo Fisichella, Kazuki Nakajima, Jarno Trulli, Jaime Alguersuari & Luca Badoer. Yep, a Ferrari at the back of the grid!

New WordPress Smileys Vs. Older Ones

As mentioned in an earlier post, WordPress has changed their Smiley set. And there has been widespread criticism across the blogosphere, in some of the comments here, comments on other blogs and even on the WordPress Forums. I too was one of the early critics but it really doesn’t matter that much, does it?  Smileys are often used in informal and personal blogposts and the so-called “geeks” rarely use them.

I myself have used them on some of the posts, but the usage here pales in comparison to that on the discussion boards I frequent. Almost all of my posts are laden with these yellow characters and the one forum where I’m Admin, I constantly scour for new ones and update the database!

But there’s some good news for those who hate the newer crop of the yellow people on WordPress. Word on the Forums is that the WP team is discussing changing them and is even looking out for a smiley set that is GPL v2 compliant. So if you know of such a set (or have designed something like that), do drop in a word to WP Support.

Meanwhile, the below table shows the older WP smileys vis-a-vis the newer ones and the text required to generate’em on your posts (just remove the spaces).

‘09 German Grand Prix – Saturday Qualifying – Mark Webber on Pole Position

The vrooming sounds of F1 Cars are back…and so am I!

Red Bull’s Mark Webber will start the European Grand Prix from Pole Position as he will attempt to pick up his first Grand Prix win of his career. In an exhilarating Qualifying Session, the last few laps were all it mattered as Webber grabbed pole position and saw the other drivers couldn’t match it. The Brawns were right behind with Rubens Barrichello on P2 & championship leader Jenson Button on P3. The second Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel will start fourth followed by Lewis Hamilton, Heikki Kovalainen, (surprise surprise!) Adrian Sutil, Felipe Massa, Kimi Raikkonen & Nelson Piquet.

Q1 was a disaster for the drivers who chose to go out late onto the track as a slight drizzle started the end of the session and that mean everyone was going slower! By that time, Red Bull had already set the fastest time, with Mark Webber topping the timesheets. The surprise was Lewis Hamilton, who was 4th fastest. The ones to drop out were Robert Kubica, Sebastian Buemi, Giancarlo Fisichella, Timo Glock & Sebastian Bourdais.

Google Squared – Searches in Grids

Seems Google is taking the fight to Bing! Or maybe not! Given that this was announced more than a month ago…

Google’s new new search ‘tool’ (or call it toy) – Google Squared went live in the Google Labs yesterday and at first sight, seems a nifty way to categorize information. To quote their own help pages:

Google Squared is a search tool that helps you quickly build a collection of facts from the Web for any topic you specify.

• Facts about your topic are organized as a table of items and attributes.
• Customize these Squares to see just the items and attributes you’re interested in.
• See the websites that served as sources for the information in your Square.
• Save and share Squares with others.

So what they do is restructure the search results into neat little grids or squares, each with its own category & label. And the user can add/remove the necessary rows and columns and when they do so, Google automatically gets that information (if available) and populates the squares. One can add as many items or columns in one’s search and what’s more, can also save them for future reference. But of course, the information should be available on the web for Google to retrieve in the first place.

To illustrate that, I’ve saved myself a neat square for Hyderabad. Go to Google Squared and type in Hyderabad. The areas by popularity (or search results) will be listed out as items, with few attributes as columns. I chose to add items that included areas/places of my interest and also changed the columns to show the attributes that I needed and voila! Again, information I desired, but was not available on the www (like population or nearest chemist, for example) will not show up in the grids. Check out the image after the jump…

UCL Final’s just a few moments away…

It just doesn’t get any bigger than this! Two of Europe’s greatest football clubs take centrestage in one of Europe’s greatest city of Rome in what is being labelled as the greatest football match! Okay…enough of greatness…

But the winner is destined for Greatness, that’s for sure. Manchester United can win their second successive UCL trophy and their fourth overall – earning them the right to retain it. Barcelona are looking for their third UCL trophy and are aiming to become the first Spanish team to complete the treble of the La Liga, Copa del Rey and Champions Cup.

I’m looking forward to what promises to be an exciting football match. I want Manchester United to win but one can never discount Barcelona! Bring.It.On!

My Prediction: 2-1 to Barcelona

When will we get to see Angels & Demons?

May 1st has come and gone. The same can’t be said of the first summer blockbuster movie from Hollywood – X-Men Origins: Wolverine – which hasn’t found a release in India, as yet! With the Bollywood releases all held up due to the stand-off between the producers and the exhibitors, and Tollywood not yet coming out of the rut of crappy movies, movie-goers had only Hollywood releases to look forward to. Of course, movies such as The International and Milk found their way into the theatres but not into the must-watch lists of the audience!

I’m hoping against hope that the one movie I’m most looking forward to, will find a favourable release cometh the 15th of May. No prizes for guessing which one it is – Angels & Demons. Ron Howard’s adaptation of the Dan Brown novel by the same name, starring Tom Hanks, Ewan MacGregor & Ayelet Zurer. I’ve had the novel sitting on my shelf, unread, unseen and forgotten all this while. I only remembered it when I happened to catch the trailer of the movie some days back on the telly. Even then I didn’t pick it up to read coz I knew the movie would come out soon…so why bother with the book