Friday, May 26, 2017

Kittens and puppies are so lovely - with them you escape this artificial world and get close to pure nature for some time [COMPACTIDEA]

Recently saw a newborn kitten. Such innocence. Such a small, innocent baby. No bad feelings in him. Pure innocence. No jealousy or greed or other nasty things. Only softness and tenderness. You can escape the same old daily routine for some time by playing with or by simply watching newborn kittens or puppies. No more phone calls, material dispatch, machine breakdowns, payments, crowded roads, horns, polluted air, hot weather, data backups, disk shredding, door locking and so on. Nothing. Pure nature. Pure peace.


Some a-holes keep calling you even when you're on another call and they know this [COMPACTIDEA]

You're talking to someone on your phone, and a 'call-in-call' comes from someone else. So far everything is normal. This third fellow cuts his call but then calls you again, fully aware that you're talking to someone on another call [he can obviously hear 'call waiting' tone on his phone]. Then he calls you yet again. And again. And again. He calls so many times that he disturbs and irritates you, and makes you feel that it might/must be something urgent. You're forced to stop your ongoing phone call and call this third person, and it turns out that this wasn't about something urgent, but was a normal, routine call. You grumble and ask yourself, what's the problem in this fellow's life that he wants you to disconnect your ongoing call and attend to him first. Such an asshole. And there are many such shitpots around. I get calls from some such buttholes every few days.

Thursday, May 18, 2017

Baahubali 2: The Conclusion is so good, yet there are some flaws [COMPACTIDEA]

  • The background score during some key scenes was far more inspiring in the first part than in The Conclusion. Thoroughly missed, as it would've made several scenes in the second part more touching.
  • Last scene felt dragged. Fight wasn't as impressive as the fight in the first part. This was overloaded with special effects, and the overload showed. Overload itself wouldn't have been bad had the effects seemed real. At several moments the special effects just seem artificial/fake. Further, there were several unnecessary slow-motion scenes which felt bad rather than good. Overall, the fight failed to create goosebumps. The excessive use of VFX in this last fight shows the filkmaker's intention of making this scene the grand conclusion, but it doesn't live up to the mark.
    • More generally and simplistically speaking [though simplistic distillations can't properly capture the fine nuances], while the second half of the first part was better, it was the first half of the second part that was better.
  • The voice [in Hindi] given to Mahendra Baahubali is significantly worse compared to the excellent, authoritative voice [in Hindi] given to Amarendra Baahubali. Mahendra Baahubali, thus, fails to inspire whenever he speaks. The difference is clear and it shows.
  • Mahendra Baahubali's haircut is shorter compared to the long and flowing hair of Amarendra Baahubali. Moustache and beard too are different. The net effect is that Mahendra looks childish while Amarendra looks like an invincible king. The difference, once again, is clear. Looks, after all, can make a very significant difference in how we perceive someone/something.
  • It's [quite] hard to be believe and somewhat frustrating to watch Sivagami take bad and hasty decision after decision. One can't stop asking oneself if this is the same Sivagami who had announced [in the first part] that Amarendra Baahubali would be the new king, despite he not having killed [technically] the leader of the enemy? Her string of bad decisions and bad actions lead to the eventual death/killing of Amarendra Baahubali and other chaos.
  • While Avantika/Avanthika had a meaningful role in the first part, and she did contribute meaningfully to the movie, she had a laughable "role", if any, in the second part. Which is a shame.
Amarendra



Mahendra