Idle reflection - Mark Zuckerberg and Travis Kalanick

I was thinking how Travis Kalanick founded what is now (circa 2017) the most valuable startup in the world, but couldn't see fast enough that his personal sexist behavior would end up getting him chucked out of his life's work. Mark Zuckerberg on the other hand strikes me as a guy who has a superhuman capacity to see and ward off an oncoming crisis. (My understanding of him is based primarily on what I read in the news, and that wonderful movie "The Social Network". So my logic is dependent on the accuracy of the movie in capturing Mark's personality, even if not getting all the facts correct). In the movie Zuckerberg is so conscious of crises. When Eduardo Saverin cuts off the payment to the servers hosting Facebook, Zuckerberg goes ballistic (and perhaps that's when he decided to dump Saverin). And at the end when Sean Parker causes another crisis. The movie doesn't show how Zuckerberg resolves the crisis, but clearly he does, since FB is around and thriving. My sense is that its not just external crises. Internally too Zuckerberg is adept at reinventing himself. He started off with the bad-boy antics at Harvard and his early days in the Valley where he humiliates a VC egged on by Sean Parker. Today's he's a model corporate executive atleast to public knowledge. And its not just a facade.

Notes on "3 Idiots"

I saw it today, long after everyone else. (Impusively went to it Everest near our apartment ; was passing by at 9:20 pm and saw that they had a show at 9:30pm! I and Siddhu have been planning to go together sometime and he was genuinely shocked that I ditched him. I'll have to make it up).

Too long and loosely edited. Maybe I've just seen too many good movies but I get impatient easily at the movies.

Definitely didn't live up to the hype and good reviews. But was quite nice.

Stuck too much to stereotypes with Chatur Ramalingam and Suhas. Would have been interesting to make Chatur in particular much more serious and accomplished (that's what successful Indians in the US tend to be like) rather than an easy-to-dislike clown.

Nicely made its points about the education system including using old legends (urban or otherwise) like the NASA pen. We should have had this movie made 20 years ago, and maybe it would have saved me :-(. Delivery scene was far too contrived.

Scene where Farhan convinces his father was genuinely moving.

Gorgeous Ladakh scene at end. We don't need no Switzerland!

Would have made the movie lot more cool if they'd situated it in IIT like in the book. Campus they used looked very nice.

Kareena was weak in places and looked overawed at the star cast she was competing with.

Handling of Raju's parents was pretty good.

Song sequences were mostly a pain.

How do Aamir and Madhavan manage to look reasonably realistic as 20somethings ?!

After all the controversy with Chetan Bhagat ; I felt that while the movie was irrevocably situated in the ideas of the book, there was a huge amount of original stuff overall. Which doesn't say much I guess !

And they had some truly atrocious product placements. Shame on you Vidhu Vinod Chopra

More on movies

I am watching "Chak De! India" for the 2.5th time and I think it would qualify as Great. Its a straightforward but man, there are so many facets that are explored in it. Its funny as hell in places, I love the music and songs, it makes me feel patriotic (pretty hard to do) and teary-eyed (quite easy to do), it sets up lot of team dynamics (perhaps simplistic), it takes a shot (perhaps simplistic again) at understanding what it takes to make a world-class team, and it takes excellent potshots at the sporting establishment in India. A lot of the stuff is really intelligent and I think it could teach a lot of people how excellence or greatness happens. Oh and its a great cheerleader for empowering women.

I urge those of you who haven't seen it yet to see it.

I have this habit of picking up on particular strings of words that I feel really click and in this movie I really loved the title song. It has a strong rousing urgency, something we could do with as a nation if you ask me. "Do something, do something, enough of big talk!!" . (In Slumdog Millionaire I liked "D: It is written". See the movie again if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Slumdog Millionaire: The list of subtleties that you mentioned -- pretty cool and I bow to you. But using something like your Usual Suspects argument, cool though these tricks are, they don't really make for a great movie. A significant flaw in the movie is how flat the characters are -- even the main one. And in particular the girl is just a doll, a symbol - she is just tossed around by fate and nothing of her own motivations or feelings really comes through.
BTW -- all those people who felt offended that the movie emphasized poverty or something : kiss my ass. Go make your own movie glorifying Mukesh Ambani if that's what you want stupids.

Rohit -- "Forrest Gump" , interesting choice. I'm not sure. Make your case !

Arvind -- haven't watched your tubes properly yet. But look interesting.

On movies

On movies:

 Saw "Slumdog Millionaire" recently and rewatching bits of "Motorcycle Diaries" on TV right now. I'm again struck by a certain gap between movies -- there are a few that are excellently made and feel truthful, and then there are some more that are really rich and complex and have a depth to them that the other category does not have. Slumdog Millionaire falls into the first category for me, and therefore does not seem totally Oscar-worthy, though it might still be the best film this year. What are the deeper films ? Brokeback Mountain perhaps. Motorcycle Diaries also does not have that much depth I feel; though if took on the challenge of Che's later life it would probably get that depth. Woody Allen's movies are excellent examples of good movies of the shallower category, though at his best (Crimes and Misdemeanours, Annie Hall) they scrape into the Great category. Apollo 13 and Titanic and Usual Suspects took relatively mundane topics and elevated them to Great (or almost). The Matrix trilogy was completely inconsistent in quality but kind-of scrambled up there.

 What movies do you think are great ?

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 I'm twittering actively -- visit me there ! http://www.twitter.com/ahminotep . Twitter is remarkable in its potential to propagate information instantaneously.

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 Its occured to me subconsciously several times, and suddenly struck me forcefully -- its striking how close Riley's (the obnoxious kid on "Boondocks", might have got the name wrong) character is to Sukesh Patro's. Right now there's a thread going on about how the kid insists on being as slothful as humanly possible in front of the TV. Apologies to those to whom all this means nothing.

 

Movie on farm crisis in Vidharbha

I am so glad somebody did this :

 

http://www.indiatogether.org/2008/jun/rvw-agrarian.htm 

 

 

My brother-in-law works in film production, and I chanced upon a notebook that gives a little bit of idea of the mechanics of how films are made. Its mildly interesting and educative, check out the video below :

"Voices from the Waters"

The Second International Film Festival on Water.

Website: http://www.voicesfromthewaters.com

A tonne of films with a water theme -- probably the most extensive collection in the world of this sort. if anything the problem is finding what films you want to see in the bewildering range of films on offer. My suggestion: just pick a day and go.


There hasn't been enough publicity on this so please forward to more people.

Details at www.voicesfromthewaters.com

Tipu's prison for some of his English captives -- particularly aesthetic and minimalist design I thought




Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary


Close-up of a seed (pongamia/kanuga) germinating.




Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary



We saw "Kung Fu Panda" today, and "Dasavataram" sometime back. And we got the 3rd season of Lost so I'm pretty much current on it. So many reviews, so little time ..just one-liners then

Dasavatharam: Quite a remarkable film though remarkably flawed. The makeup for the different Kamal characters particularly the American ones is execrable. See it.

Kung Fu Panda: Completely fitting in with what I have found about all animation films of the past few years -- remarkable animation with a very thin story.



Lost: I was thinking : me and several of my friends / relatives have had hours and hours of excellent entertainment from serials like "Lost" with essentially 0 expenditure from my side and 0 gain for the makers of the serial. How might Lost reach out to people like me to get a little bit of money for their trouble ?


Last weekend we visited Mysore and some surrounding areas with Amar our friend from Pune. Highlight was the visit to the funny island of Seringapatam, where the Cauvery splits into two and creates an island, and to Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary. My first bird sanctuary visit, quite nice and would like to do more.

"I see the nuns are gay..."

Every now and then I bump into some major item of popular culture that 90% of Indians would have experienced 2 years back... sometime back it was Rang de Basanti, today it was Tunak Tunak Tun, a hit song by Daler Mehendi. According to Wikipedia its become an 'internet meme'. Dig out the Wiki article, its quite cool.
It may be contempt for the familiar, but I find this video light years more palatable than the average Telugu/Tamin movie dance sequence. On a separate note, I was wondering how our rich tradition of classical music and dance have not really survived in the 21st century. A counter-example is bhangra pop of the Daler Mehendi sort which is very popular inside and outside the country. Can someone extract some insight from this ?

Talking of bhangra, time to again push
http://www.salon.com/ent/audiofile/2006/08/02/bikram/index.html
Can someone pleeease hear this song and put in your comment. Its frustrating feeling that you have discovered something pretty cool and nobody else has anything to say about it.

The earlier Buffalax video continues to enthrall me (and several others it seems). Here are the updates:

The original video is here:



It has close to 7 million views and (hold your breath) 20,000 comments. And that doesn't include comments on sites referring to it, like yours truly's blog. The video was uploaded in August 2007 and its still getting comments today from wide eyed folks like me who are seeing it for the first time and getting completely bowled over. According to a newspaper article referenced in Wikipedia, its being called possibly the hottest Internet clip. Whoda thunk it -- a satire of a Tamil movie becoming the most viewed internet video. As one of the commenters says : "Due this video, my theory of Indian people trying to take over the earth has only grown stronger.. "
I checked out more buffalax videos, but nothing comes anywhere close to this one. Its one of those things where things just come together to take something out of the realm of the ordinary. The thing is not perfect -- at several places its pretty clear that the 'translation' is a complete fake. But when it works, it works gloriously. One good bit among many : at 2:55, the background music is given words and it works sooooo well.
Again, according to wikipedia, buffalax and 'benny lava' are now internet memes. Richly deserving.

Endnote:
Today at a KFC, we ordered "a Zing Kong box and a Zinger Chicken meal". The minor indignities ...