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May 30, 2007 @ 11:33 pm by Samir Bharadwaj
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The first Pirates of the Caribbean movie,
The Curse of the Black Pearl
, was a masterpiece in every way possible. There is little wonder as to why it became such a smash box-office hit, because it had everything going for it. Not only was it extremely watchable and entertaining, but it was very impressive on many other levels. No doubt, Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow brought in a whole new level of character dynamic into the dying pirate genre, but over all what set that movie apart was its extremely etched characters. Every one who ever said a line on screen had a very clear and well defined persona that came through strongly in the dialogue and the plot, and that endeared them to the viewing audience. Then of course there were all the regular technical accomplishments of lighting and cinematography, sound and special effects. Everything meshed into a very cohesive whole which dropped the viewer into a rich and well developed world that didn’t seem transitory.
I’m sure you’ve gathered by now that I loved the first Pirates movie. Unfortunately the sequel, Dead Man’s Chest, while impressive on a technical level, disappointed me in many ways. So, it was with more than a modest sense of trepidation that I stepped into a cinema to watch Pirates of the Caribbean 3 – At World’s End.
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May 28, 2007 @ 11:36 pm by Samir Bharadwaj
I occasionally flirt with the idea of being more organised. Don’t get me wrong, I am more organised than most people. The photograph above is of my todo lists and notes which regulate my day-to-day activities. That’s the way it’s been for a few years now and that is the only way I can maintain my sanity considering my do-it-all persuasion. But, there is always more that can be done. I’ve never gotten into the strict calendar scheduling and note-taking habit. When I started this blog, I thought maybe a bit of more structured scheduling of posts to be written and tasks to be done on the administrative end might do me some good. So I set off down the internet stream in search of the right calendaring software.
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May 27, 2007 @ 5:42 pm by Samir Bharadwaj
Since I started actively maintaining the current avatar of this blog less than a month ago, I’ve been looking into blog carnivals and submitting some of my posts for inclusion into a few appropriate ones.
Scott Nehring runs the Carnival of Cinema over at his blog Nehring the Edge. Every Friday he links to a wide range of interesting posts and articles relating to the world of cinema — everything from movie reviews to film production tips. Scott has included two of my posts in his weekly listing. My comparative review of Babel and Guru was linked in last week’s carnival #31, and my review of Hot Fuzz was linked in this week’s carnival #32.
If you’re a film buff of any sort,
Nehring the Edge makes for very interesting reading. It includes not only the carnival listings but also Scott’s own extensive set of movie reviews. Grab your popcorn and
pay him a visit.
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May 26, 2007 @ 3:33 am by Samir Bharadwaj
I’m not part of the ardent business book devouring audience. I am not one of those who have a well arranged shelf of all the latest tomes featuring grinning gurus spouting the latest business wisdom. But I do read business books occasionally when the mood strikes, because when you come down to it I’m simply interested in everything out there.
I was a bit surprised when I came across
Good Business in the bargain bin of a local book shop. While I hadn’t read
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s previous famous work
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, I had heard of it and read a basic synopsis at some point. I found his ideas to be quite intriguing. He seemed to be one of those thinkers trying to blur the boundaries between disciplines, which I like, so when I came across
Good Business I picked it up.
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May 22, 2007 @ 11:59 pm by Samir Bharadwaj
What makes a good action movie?
The simplest answer is great action.
So, what makes a great action movie?
I would have to say great action embedded in a great movie.
It is precisely for that elusive quality that Hot Fuzz is in my mind the best action movie ever. There, I’ve said it and I’m not taking it back.
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May 20, 2007 @ 11:30 pm by Samir Bharadwaj
What is the second most disabling problem bloggers face after not knowing what to write?
To paraphrase a million different wise individuals throughout the ages: it’s not what you say but how you say it. And that is exactly my problem, because while others are struggling with doubts and complete melt downs over what to write next, my “block” is wanting to get every entry to be “just right”. Yes ladies and gentlemen, I am talking about that forever elusive goal of human civilisation: the perfect blog post!
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May 16, 2007 @ 11:56 pm by Samir Bharadwaj
The rule of the masses, what we like to affectionately call “democracy”, has been on my mind a lot lately, especially since I commented on Darren Rowse’s post about a new service called Linebuzz. Democracy is all about the effects of, and the interaction within, vast communities of people. You can’t really understand the effect that large groups of people have on the world, until you understand what affects these large groups of people. Since the advent of mass media, vast swathes of the population have been touched by world events and important turning points in world history and human endeavour. It is said most people who were alive and sober in the 60’s have a clear memory of what they were doing when they first heard the news of Neil Armstrong taking his one small step on the powdery lunar surface. So, I think it very appropriate to start this post with a simple question: what were you doing during the great Digg user riot of 2007?
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May 12, 2007 @ 10:49 pm by Samir Bharadwaj
A few days ago I finally received some copies of a quarterly print newsletter I work on with Vishal. I’ve been working on this regularly for over two years now. For most of that time I worked on it with Anjali. In fact we came up with it together from scratch when a local engineering contracting company in Dubai wanted a complete makeover of their in-house newsletter. During that time I had very little to do with design and production, which was handled by Anjali using the standard Photoshop + Illustrator + InDesign setup. At the end of last year she moved home-base so I took over the mantle of getting this done every three months with Vishal’s help. The first major stumbling block was that I didn’t currently own Photoshop or Illustrator or InDesign, and I hadn’t owned or used them in a long time. Since the last few years had been almost completely devoid of large scale print projects for me, I had never felt the need. I had moved on to open source software.
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May 10, 2007 @ 11:41 pm by Samir Bharadwaj
It’s great when technology in a field advances to a state where the field suddenly opens up to the masses in a way that was never possible before. You could say things like YouTube have done that for the world of video, but long before that development, photography was brought into the mainstream in a whole new way with the popularisation of the digital cameras. Sure the film camera was very popular before then, but there was the developing and the waiting, all of which went out the window with digital. Now you didn’t need to think too much before taking a photo because you weren’t wasting precious film. And that is the crux of the matter. You know what the best thing is about digital photography? Anyone can now take photographs. You know the worst thing about digital photography? Anyone can now take photographs.
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May 8, 2007 @ 3:10 pm by Samir Bharadwaj
I saw Spiderman 3 two days ago and just didn’t feel like writing about it. Sure, I could have gone into the post-mortem of every little piece in it that worked and didn’t work, but I realised that none of that would go far enough into explaining why I found it disappointing. In a seemingly un-connected event, today I came across a mention of this Slashdot piece about Blender on Blendernation [later I also saw a related thread on Blenderartists]. Lo and behold there was a large number of people doing post-mortems of every little piece of both Blender and the Slashdot piece, that either worked or didn’t work for them. Just as I was about to dismiss the whole thing and put it off to sour grapes on one hand and over zealous teenagers on the other, I realised there was a connection I was missing. While everyone was tearing everything apart and analysing every word, sentence and minor feature, we were all forgetting to ask the most important question: How entertaining is your 3D software?
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May 4, 2007 @ 11:59 pm by Samir Bharadwaj
For the past few months, this blog has resided on the private confines of my ancient laptop during my trip to India, and later on my desktop at home. I was getting all the old blog posts working, and most importantly getting all the functionality of this new site working to my satisfaction.
When I started this resurrection in January, the plan was to get this site up and running with a ready-made blog template, and then gradually work on the final and finished custom layout. Then I thought back to the last time I had had a similar plan, and I realised that that version of my site had been online for years without me ever getting to that much planned “new look”. Not wanting for this version to suffer a similar fate, I decided that this time I would wait till I finished the site to my satisfaction (almost) before I released it online. Then I set off on the layout work.
It would have taken its time anyway, but it was certainly not meant to take months. Other things grabbed my attention along the way. There was freelance work to be done, and other distractions that kept me away from this, but I never stopped sketching and making notes about all the strange and wonderful elements and features I wanted to implement. And now after a lot of work, trial-and-error and serendipitous chances it is finally ready, or at least ready enough to make public. However, I don’t think a site like this is ever done. It is more of an ongoing evolution.
The main focus of this new site is the blog and the idea of a constantly updated stream of content. The old site was really a temporary static measure that continued untouched for too long, and I have kept that part of it untouched on the Works page. That page has not been updated not for a lack of new material to include. Quite the contrary. There is so much new and old work that I would want to include in any comprehensive treatment of my work, that the simple straight-forward portfolio page simply doesn’t suffice anymore. That will require a re-thinking, a new flexible system, and possibly a whole new site to meet my long term needs. That and other ideas I will work on as time goes by and you can remain updated on my progress by keeping track of this blog.
So welcome, look around, please leave your comments and enjoy your stay on this little corner of the Wild Wild Web.
Now the real work begins.
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