Was the Death Star attack an inside job?

An excellent analysis on the famed Death Star attack. Asks a lot of uncomfortable questions.

Shower vs Shower

Compare and weep:

Second RIP entry for the day

And now Raghuvaran is dead. Not that I was a big fan, but still. He was good in Shiva, Anjali and Daivathinte Vikruthikal, from the movies I've seen.

RIP Clarke

He's on his way to Rendezvous with Rama, probably.

His three laws:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.


2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.


3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

I hope the David Fincher - Morgan Freeman film gets made.

Nice line

Homage without innovation isn’t homage, it’s karaoke.

From Matt Zoller Seitz's review of Doomsday.

No more Mr Nice LJ

Great. For the first time, I'm unhappy with LJ. Not the site per se, but the management behind it. Take a look at this news post which sneaked in something totally under the radar. I had read it yesterday, dismissed it as another one of those crappy pat-ourselves-on-the-back announcements which don't mean anything much, but are harmless. Turns out a lot of LJers read it the same way, till this one comment. All hell broke loose after that, and I'm glad it did.

Check out 's view on this (thanks, ). was quick to respond to the user community with another post, making their position clear.

I have two problems with this. One is of course the fact that it is no longer possible for a new user to have a basic, ad-free account. The second is the sneaky, underhanded way this was announced to the LJ community:

Other changes you may have noticed are the logged-out homepage and registration process for new users. We streamlined and simplified things so that now it’s faster and easier than ever to create a LiveJournal account.

Right.

I had converted to a paid account a couple of months back. Not because I wanted the features offered, but I thought it was time I gave something back to LJ. This is my 7th year running on LiveJournal and I've benefited tremendously. Made some great friends, learnt a lot of interesting stuff, recruited some amazing people and frankly, had something to look forward to when I logged into my computer every day.

None of that changes, of course. But I'm no longer as big a fan of LJ as I was earlier. And I don't think LJ gives a damn.

Tropic Thunder

The pic below is from Ben Stiller's upcoming film, Tropic Thunder. The plot, sounding quite similar to ¡Three Amigos!, deals with a group of actors who are forced to become the soldiers they are portraying. Hopefully, it should be as funny as Stiller's last movie as a director, Zoolander.

Anyway. Guess the man in the circle.

Avial

Heard of the Mallu rock band Avial? Their album came out recently, it's available on Musicyogi. Highly recommended.

This is probably their best song, the one that got them noticed:

My vote

Can't think of a better President, really.

Courtesy Smoke Signals.

No Country For Old Men

Loved the movie, need to watch it again.


I didn't find the much talked about ending ambiguous. There wasn't any ambiguity, there really wasn't anything to misunderstand. The ending was just way different from traditional movie climaxes, especially when you've been led to believe you were watching a convetional albeit very well made thriller.

Yeah, right. The Coens and conventional.

The first reaction me and my wife had was quite similar to this. You can find a more serious discussion here, if you have watched the film and want to know more.

I'm happy No Country.. won Best Picture. Very un-Academy like, I'd say.