Away

Been away for a very long while. My creative juices (if I ever had any) seemed to have dried up. All I do is sit and think that I should do something. 

Well, I am reading , at least for the sake of reading. I am not buying books any longer. I rent them out from the library and keep it with me for weeks and sometimes months. Few I read, and few I return when I have lost the interest to open and read it after seeing the book lying around for such long.

My reading count has been very low over the past few years. Well anyways, the last I have read is In the Country of Deceit by Shashi Deshpande. Would write a review soon, if I remember! :-)

The next one in que is Complete/Convenient by Ketan Bhagat. Seems to be a rather long one. Let's see if I make it.

Adobe Captivate - Aligning Mouse Settings

Having joined my new firm, there has been a lot of self learning and investigations I initiated. Unlike in the established firms, where we are given product training, hands on sessions for tools, or at the least there are people around to ask when in doubt, here I was on my own for most of the documentation related stuff. Selecting the tools, exploring the features, lots of trials and errors, creating templates, and so on. Since then, Google has become my greatest and ever dependent friend. But there were some things I could not figure out from the forums and I thought it would help if I have those documented for future references. So, here goes the one I figured today.

Adobe Captivate

I am creating a Product feature video that involves a lot of mouse clicks. Once I created all the call outs and settings for the project, I realized that my mouse display was not uniform across the slides. There were over 70 slides and I did not want to change the setting for each slide manually. I browsed, but could not find the solution. Finally, I figured out that it was right in front of my eyes all the while, but a little obscure.

1. In the Properties pane, set the required properties for the mouse on one slide.
   Example



2. Click and select Apply to all items of this type.

If you want to set the same mouse pointer for all slides in the Project, on a slide where the required pointer is set, right-click on the pointer and select Use the current mouse pointer for all slides.

There, done!

I Read These...

...books over the last two months -

• Riot - Shashi Tharoor
• One Amazing Thing - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
• Jack and the Beanstalk, Board Book of Fruits, Veg, and Foods :-)
• The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai

Read half of Desirable Daughters by Bharati Mukherjee.

And now reading An Equal Music by Vikram Seth (read it during my college days, reading it once again :-))

Books

I have finally started finding some time for reading again nowadays. My daughter has achieved few little milestones and loves playing and takes a nap for 2 hours. Some days she goes to bed a little early at night and some times loves to play by self. Well, I have started taking advantage of these precious little moments. I started with few Reader's Digests and newspapers. When I understood that I could make it, I took a library membership. Yes! :-)

There is a JustBooks outlet on my way home, right on the main road and it couldn't be easier. So I am back to reading and already finished two. My pace is still slow but I am contended. :-)

Back??

Well, I have been away for a long long while. My life has changed. My interests have changed. And everything around me has changed. Though I love the changes, there still is a part in me which yearns for the good, old days. Days when I could just lie in bed the whole day flipping pages of a book, when I could just sit and watch beautiful movies one after the other without any interruptions, and could even just spend hours gazing at the sky. 

Will those days ever come back? Probably not!

A vacation for me

Wondering why I am not posting anything for the past one month here? Well, it is a long time since I watched a good movie completely. I did go out to watch a few Malayalam films but they did not seem that interesting to be written about.

Have you see The Holiday? The cast includes Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz. I had seen it almost 2.5 to 3 years ago. Recently it came on television and I was watching it. This is one of those movies I love to watch at any given point of time. It is just so lovely and refreshing. I love both the houses in the movies, the characters and to top it all the background scores. It is soooooo amazing. I do really want to write a review for it, but probably I am not in the mood to do so :-) But yes, definitely I will try to write one.

So if you haven't watched it yet, go for it!

Kahaani

Year: 2012
Genre: Thriller
Direction: Sujoy Ghosh
Cast: Vidya Balan, Parambrata Chatterjee, and Nawazuddin Siddiqui
Rating: Excellent

Kahaani is a thriller movie. The plot revolves around a pregnant lady (Vidya Balan), who comes from US to Kolkata in search of her husband, who she believes has gone missing while on an assignment. She lodges a complaint with the local police and seeing that police is of no help, starts the search by herself. Seeing her determination a police inspector joins her with the search. Further we see how both of them together unfold mysteries and are able to create links of why her husband went missing and what his connection with a poison-gas attack in a Kolkata metro was. They slowly identify people behind the crime and are able to infiltrate to obtain more data. The final scene is the best as this is where the story turns around and audience is thrilled. The twist is a totally unexpected one. While watching you keep developing many possibilities of what could have become of her husband. But the twist seemed too fresh and exciting. Though the final scene has been compared with some foreign movies, it seemed to fit the plot well and is very fresh.

This thriller is one of the best ones I have seen in Bollywood yet. The film makind techniques used also are nice. The colors have been kept natural. The makeup is minimalist. There is no feeling of any created sets in the movie. Everything seems to be shot in natural locations among the unaware crowd.

Almost from the beginning of the movie, one gets a feeling of being involved in the movie and being at the places shown. As the plot gets serious, we also get curious of the mystery.

Vidya Balan's performance is highly commendable. She has portrayed the character with ease and naturally. Her body language is also one thing to be appreciated. Vidya has taken extreme care of her walking, facial expressions, and other movements to make the character realistic.

A must watch!

Black Swan

Year: 2010

Genre: Psychological Thriller

Direction: Darren Aronofsky

Cast: Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis

Rating: Good

Black Swan is the story of a ballet dancer with a dance troupe performing the 'Black Swan' for the opening season. All through her career she had been an extra. But now that the lead dancer has been removed, she has chances of becoming the new Swan Queen. To be the Swan Queen, she has to dance as both the White and Black Swans with ease. The White Swan comes to her naturally. Black Swan seems to be a bit of trouble as she is a perfectionist and is scared to let loose of herself to become the Black Swan.

All through the movie we see how earnestly she tries to become the Swan Queen, the hardships, revelations, a very dominating mother, hallucinations, and how finally she transforms into the Black Swan on stage.

Portman has done a truely wonderful job. I have no idea of how ballet is and haven't observed one before. But her moves seem perfect and like those of a seasoned dancer.

The movie is shot almost in shades of white, grey, and black. These shades seemed to portray the moods and sadness of Portman's character effectively.

There are some scenes where I had to literally close my eyes fearing what would happen next. One of those is where she pulls out the loose skin from the back of her finger nail. Another one was when she goes to meet the old Swan Queen in hospital. Even the scenes where she quickly nips off her nails with scissors seemed scary to me :-D

All said, I liked the movie. Though there are no bright colors, romance, or action to keep you entertained, the dance sequences, and story does keep you glued on. A good watch.

The Descendants

Year:2011

Genre: Drama

Director: Alexander Payne

Cast: George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, and Amara Miller

Rating: Excellent

The movie revolves around George Clooney (Matt) who is a busy lawyer and is always away from family on work. Though he is the sole trustee of a trust which owns 25,000 acres of pristine land handed over from the ancestors over generations, he believes in living on his own earned money.

Matt's wife, Elizabeth, meets with an accident and enters a comma. Matt has to come down to take care of his wife. The doctors let him know that the comma is permanent and his wife is not going to make it again. He starts taking care of his daughters, Alex and Scottie, 17 and 10 years each. He has no idea of how to handle their unruly and spoilt behaviour. Most of the times, he is very uncomfortable being with the girls. Gradually he starts understanding them and the girls also get used to him.

As the movie moves on we see how the girls become closer to their dad, how they cope with the loss of their mother, and what decision Matt takes regarding the sale of the land he owns.

Though having complexities in itself as an emotional story, the cast seemed wonderful. Everything just fell in place. The actors just have to be praised again and again for portraying the emotions so well. There were some very touchy scenes in the movie - when Matt says final farewell to his wife, the reaction on Scottie's face when the tragic news of her Mom is broken to her, the shot where Alex cried under the water, and so goes on the list.

I would say that I actually loved the movie for the correct proportion of emotions than the story. Not a pinch is more. You just look at their faces and understand what is it that they are going through.

A wonderful movie!

Dirty Dancing

Year:1987

Genre: Romantic

Director: Emile Ardonlino

Cast: Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey

Rating: Very Good

The main plot of the movie is the romance between the lead characters, Baby and Johnny. Baby and her family arrive at a resort for their vacation. There she gets acquainted with the staff and gets an opportunity to watch 'dirty dancing'. She is a thrilled by the moves and the dances. Johnny is the lead dancer in the entertainment group at the resort. When his dance partner is not able to participate in an Annual Dance show where they dance every year, Baby becomes his dance partner.

Johnny trains Baby, from a person who can make moves to a good dancer. They practice the Mambo and the portrayal of how Baby learns the moves are quite nice. Though they even practice the 'lifts', they don't do it at the show as Baby gets nervous. Later they fall in love and the rest of the movie shows how her father does not like the relation and how he finally agrees to it. The last dance sequence in the movie was awesome and so was the 'lift' scene.

A sweet little story that keeps lingering on even after you watch movie.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Swedish)

Year: 2009 (Swedish)

Genre: Crime and Thriller

Direction: Niels Arden Oplev

Cast: Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace

Rating: Very Good

A carefully scripted movie with a good plot. It revolves around the investigation of a 40 year old missing case of a girl, Harriet. A journalist, a professional hacker, and an old powerful family, to which Harriet belonged, are the central characters. The main plot is how the lead cast resolves the mystery and identifies the person guilty of many murders which led to the disappearance of the girl.

There is a sub plot to the movie - the life of the hacker, Lisbeth. There are a lot of incidents in the movie, which portray the crimes against women, be it 40 years back or even now. Though some scenes may be mentally disturbing, the script seems to have handled it well by making it look authentic than exaggeration.

The colour tones are also neutral. A majority of the scenes are in shades of black, white, and grey, and suits the mood of the film. The movie does show many helpless girls becoming victims to crimes but Lisbeth is shown as an example of one who is a victim to a crime and yet is able to handle the situation wisely. And she even takes her revenge on him. Though Mikael does the investigation from the beginning, Lisbeth seems to crack the clues, do the background research, and is portrayed as the bolder character.

Premonition

Year: 2007

Genre: Drama, Suspense

Director: Mennan Yapo

Cast: Sandra Bullock and Julian McMahon

Rating: Okay

The plot opens with Linda (Sandra) waking up a morning and doing her daily chores like sending kids to school, jogging, cleaning, and so on while her husband, Jim, is away on a business trip. Suddenly a police officer arrives and informs her that her husband died in a car accident on the Highway. Devastated, she calls her friend and mom. Her mom arrives to stay with her and the day ends when her mom goes off to sleep in the guest room and Linda fall asleep on the couch, holding her wedding photo to her chest.

Next morning when she wakes up, she is in her bedroom and in different clothes. Her mom is not there in the guest room and Jim is alive and in the kitchen, watching television. Here starts the confusion. Though Linda tries to believe that what she saw was a dream, she knows that there is something more to it. Things start becoming worse when she again wakes up the next day. Her house is full of mourning friends and family and the funeral of Jim is set to take place. Now she knows that something is really wrong and she tries to find out what is happening.

Her days are not going in the order it should be and are jumbled up. She gets to know of her husband's death even before he is dead, and many more events. The first two days make it seem a bit confusing. But later you get the flow and understand the plot as she tries to relate and understand the events in her life.

The movie has a Prologue and Epilogue. It ends on a positive and hopeful note.

The Town

Year: 2010

Genre: Crime

Direction: Ben Affleck

Cast: Ben Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jeremy Renner.

Rating: Okay

The Town is a crime movie and the plot is based on a novel Prince of Thieves.

The movie opens with a bank robbery operated by Ben, Jeremy, and two more friends. Rebecca, who is the Bank Manager, is taken hostage and later freed. The story moves on to show the lives of these gangsters and the crimes they get involved in. Ben and Rebecca start a relationship and Rebecca is not aware of Ben's background. Rest is a cliche story - cops are involved, Rebecca comes to know of Ben's activities and breaks off the relationship with him, like all good gangsters there is bad crime lord governing them, and so on. Finally in one of the police operations, three of the gang members are killed. Ben escapes and kills the crime lord. He buries the looted money at a place where Rebecca is sure to find it and leaves her a note. The note is a hopeful one that they meet. She donates the money to the local ice hockey rink in Ben's mother's memory. The final shot shows Ben somewhere in Florida, looking over the waters from a small house.

Nothing seemed great about the movie and the story seemed to be a usual one. It seemed very much predictable. Just seemed like the old wine still in an old bottle itself.

Dragonfly

Year: 2002

Genre: Drama

Direction: Tom Shadyac

Cast : Kevin Costner, Susanna Thompson, and Kathy Bates

Rating: Good

The movie is about a doctor, who loses his wife, who was seven months pregnant - also a doctor, to a tragic accident, and is grieving the loss. He later sees signs of his wife trying to contact him through her patients who experience near-death situations. All the patients, draw wiggly crosses and ask him to go to the end of the rainbow. He initially has no clue of where is it that they are asking him to go. He tries to focus on other things but these signs follow him even at home like his pet parrot behaving oddly, he seeing a glimpse of his wife out of the window, and a dragonfly paperweight falling by itself onto the floor.

The story moves on while he finally seems to understand where he is supposed to go. He goes to the village where his wife was serving before the accident took place and is finally led by the villagers to a hut. A woman leads him into the hut saying that though they were not able to save her body, they saved her soul. In the hut, he finds, in a basket, a beautiful baby girl, his daughter, which was what his wife was trying to inform him about. His wife had given birth to the premature kid before her death. Similar to his wife's birthmark, the baby also has a dragonfly mark close to her ankle.

The movie, though not that great, has some beautiful shots, and some emotional scenes. The background score also seemed a little different and interesting.

Halfway through, I realized that this was the film based on which the Hindi movie Saaya was made.

The Time Traveler's Wife

Year: 2009

Genre: Romance and Fantasy

Direction: Robert Schwentke

Cast: Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams

Rating: Very Good

The movie is based on a novel of the same title. It deals around the love story of Henry, who has the ability to travel across time - to his future as well as past, and his wife, Clare.

It shows how Henry time travels to meet the little Clare as a kid, knowing that she would be his wife, travels to the past to meet his mom, and even to different places.

Henry, though has this special power is not always too happy as he cannot control the urge to travel and hence sometimes is away for hours and days altogether. This creates tensions in his family life. Slowly Clare learns to adjust as the wife of a time traveler. Amidst all the tensions, not being together during Christmas, losing two kids before they are born, they still share a very special bond.

Another interesting part of the story is that Henry travels to the future to meet his child and also gets to know when he is to die. But he is not capable of changing anything that is supposed to happen. Henry's daughter, Alba, also has the ability to time travel but is different from Henry as she can control the urge to time travel just by singing. The future Alba, at times comes to meet the younger Alba to the present and tell her things about the future.

The ending of the movie is filled with a lot of emotions and ends on a positive note which makes it even more pleasant.

The Lake House

Year: 2006

Genre: Romance and Fantasy

Direction: Alejandro Agresti

Cast: Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves

Rating: Excellent

The Lake House is a romantic movie and has a little complicated or rather unusual plot. It centers around two people who live two years apart from each other, falling in love.

Kate moves out of a lake house and leaves a letter for the next tenant to forward her mails to her new address. Alex receives the letter but is surprised as to his knowledge the house was vacant for several years. Kate mentions about paw prints leading to the house which was already there when she moved in, while, to Alex's surprise, there are no paw prints when he moves in and happens while he is staying there. Later, Kate tells him that she is in 2006 and Alex in 2004. The mailbox in front of the house is where they drop letters for each other. A lot of events happen further which makes them develop feelings for each other though they have not yet spoken or seen each. Things go further and Alex sees Kate in his present, which is actually the past for Kate.

Furthur, the movie reveals more interesting incidents which keep connecting them in the past and future. The movie is very romantic and keeps you completely hooked. Most of the elements in the movie are also very beautiful and romantic, like the maple tree, the house, mailbox, and so on.

The ending kind of seemed a bit confusing and complex. Reason - they finally meet at the same time frame. But I really loved the movie. Hope you also do.

Memories

The further behind I leave you,

You return with more vigour.

Though I never want you to return,

You keep haunting.

And when you decide to stop haunting,

I come behind, begging,

To haunt me,

So that,

I never forget you!

Its Twilight Now

Yeah, it is the Twilight mania for me now. I can't put down the book without wanting to take it up and start reading again. I don't want to go to sleep, instead lie down and read and read and read. I just want to finish of my cooking and other chores so that I can just indulge in the pleasure of reading. Its real fun now. Seems like I have got back that pace of reading I used to have back in my college days. And as the thickness of the pages on the left hand side, while reading, increases, I am more motivated to keep reading.

I plan to write a review about the series. I have already completed the first two of the series - Twilight and New Moon. Started on with Eclipse. It is a pretty thick book and the last one - Breaking Dawn is even thicker.

Okay no more time to write. Need to catch up with my reading now.

Sometimes....

... it is so lovely to sit all alone,

When it is raining heavily,

Watching the drops falling one after the other,

Shedding a tear or two thinking of the past,

But still with a smile on your lips!

Manikyakallu

Year: 2011

Genre: Drama

Direction: M Mohanan

Cast: Prithviraj and Samvrutha Sunil

Rating: Good

Watched the movie this Friday. I felt that it was worth a watch. Unlike other movies released recently, it was not with high hopes or expectations that I went to watch this movie. But indeed, the movie is a worth watch. When compared to the recent disastrous movies, Manikyakallu is conventional malayalam movie with a decent star cast, story, and a message.

The story is a usual one and we are sure to have watched stories similar to this in the past. Though it was more like the old wine in a new bottle, the new bottle was really good. Prithviraj seemed a normal human being and far better than what he portrayed in Urumi. All the characters, did commendable jobs, in the small roles offered. Samvritha had a new look and mannerisms, which she did with extreme effortlessness. Nedumudi, Jagathy, Salim Kumar, Indrans, and the entire cast was good. I would say that the cast itself seemed like a reason for a good watch. The children who played the student cast also were too good. It never seemed as though they were enacting, but just seemed like normal school students. There were no unwanted romantic scenes, supernatural stunt sequences, or exotic locations. Everything seemed perfect and just what a normal Malayalam audience can relate to.

The camera work also was commendable. The beauty of the locations stood out in many of the scenes. The characters also fit in place with the locations. The songs may not linger on after you leave the theater, but were apt for the situation.

All in all, a good movie and a perfect one for a thought.