The Fray- You found me

This is a really amazing song that I relate to for some reason. I first heard this song with a LOST music video. But I downloaded it and heard it by itself.. over and over again. The lyrics are something I would like to say to somebody. And thought it would make a perfect blog entry. I would also like to quote a dialogue I heard from a television show.. "Some people hide because they just want someone to care enough to look for them."

The music video is on youtube, but cannot be embedded because it's disabled. so go here to watch it.

I found god
On the corner of first and Amistad
Where the west was all but won
All alone, smoking his last cigarette
I Said where you been, he said ask anything
Where were you?
When everything was falling apart
All my days were spent by the telephone
It never rang
And all I needed was a call
That never came
To the corner of first and Amistad

Lost and insecure
You found me, you found me
Lying on the floor
Surrounded, surrounded
Why’d you have to wait?
Where were you? Where were you?
Just a little late
You found me, you found me

In the end everyone ends up alone
Losing her, the only one who’s ever known
Who I am, who I’m not, who I want to be
No way to know how long she will be next to me

Lost and insecure
You found me, you found me
Lying on the floor
Surrounded, surrounded
Why’d you have to wait?
Where were you, where were you?
Just a little late
You found me, you found me

Early morning, City breaks
I’ve been calling for years and years and years and years
And you never left me no messages
You never send me no letters
You got some kind of nerve, taking all I want

Lost and insecure
You found me, you found me
Lying on the floor
Where were you where were you

Lost and insecure
You found me, you found me
Lying on the floor
Surrounded, surrounded
Why’d you have to wait?
Where were you, where were you?
Just a little late
You found me, you found me
Why’d you have to wait?
To find me, to find me

George Bush Attacked In Iraq: By A Journalist's Shoes

oh, so funny!

Some people Clearly have trouble understanding wall-E

The following is a comment meant for Aayush's blog post. He said Wall-E was a pretty disappointing movie and I was outraged. I typed out this whole thing without even blinking an eye(Figuratively speaking). But his annoying comments form wouldn't let me publish it because now for about 6 times, it think that the word verification I typed is incorrect. So I say 'fuck you image verification.' I have my own place to voice my opinion and I will publish it there.

Dear Friend Aayush,

I don't know whether I should laugh and snicker or blow up with rage! I mean, I would love to say 'I told you so' about pixar not being the best at making animated movies but this is definitely one of their better movies. (Cars was one of their less than stellar movies.)

Let's see the 'other aspects' you mentioned.
The story: A completely new and original plot. Unlike the obviously cliché'd Cars story. (Actually I read the story pretty closely resembles Doc Hollywood) How do you not appreciate the creativity and imagination that went into conceiving a plot about how the human race ended up in space and a ROBOT of all things comes to the rescue while fighting another robot/computer?

Characters: Wall-E himself is one of the best characters ever conceived. He is not shallow and one dimensional. He has a very enchanting personality. And other characters also come into their own as the movie progresses. Have you seen the short Burn-E? Even that robot has a personality, he feels disappointment, shame, failure,motivation... I could go on.

Acting: are you blind? Wall-E's performance is the best ever, bar none. R2D2, ET, and numerous other robots and alien characters that I can't even name right now.

Dialogue: sure it didn't have much literal dialogues but the sounds the machines make, convey their emotions. Think back to the old charlie chaplin movies and try telling me movies have to have dialogues to be entertaining.

Agreed Ratatouille had the best 'character animation' in any movie to date. But this movie had a different set of physics to play with.. Humans were fat and jelataneous in this movie and the rest were robots who were not meant to be very elaborate machines, just functional. Similarly, the universe of cars was very different. you can't compare them to each other.

Hate me

I have to block out thoughts of you so I don't lose my head
They crawl in like a cockroach leaving babies in my bed
Dropping little reels of tape to remind me that I'm alone
Playing movies in my head that make a porno feel like home
There's a burning in my pride, a nervous bleeding in my brain
An ounce of peace is all I want for you. will you never call again?
And will you never say that you love me just to put it in my face?
And will you never try to reach me? it is I that wanted space

Hate me today
Hate me tomorrow
Hate me so you can finally see what's good for you

I'm sober now for 3 whole months it's one accomplishment that you helped me with
The one thing that always tore us apart is the one thing I won't touch again
In my sick way I want to thank you for holding my head up late at night
While I was busy waging wars on myself, you were trying to stop the fight
You never doubted my warped opinions on things like suicidal hate
You made me compliment myself when it was way too hard to take
So I'll drive so f***ing far away that I never cross your mind
And do whatever it takes in your heart to leave me behind

Hate me today
Hate me tomorrow
Hate me for all the things I didn't do for you

Hate me in ways
Yeah ways hard to swallow
Hate me so you can finally see what's good for you

And with a sad heart I say bye to you and wave
Kicking shadows on the street for every mistake that I had made
And like a baby boy I never was a man
Until I saw your blue eyes cry and I held your face in my hand
And then I fell down yelling "Make it go away!"
Just make a smile come back and shine just like it used to be
And then she whispered "How can you do this to me?"

Hate me today
Hate me tomorrow
Hate me for all the things I didn't do for you

Hate me in ways
Yeah ways hard to swallow
Hate me so you can finally see what's good for you

Gnarles Barkley - Crazy

This is just an amazing video to a very cool song. And as suju pointed out, this reminds us of the pictue of black and white paint I took back in pune.

High angle shots in cartoons

Hi, I was gonna do a high angle shot panel in my storyboard for animation portfolio. And so I set out to start looking for reference. But, unfortunately, I couldn't find any. So if any of you know a tv show or a movie in which at some particular scene, high angle shot is used, or maybe even bird's eye view for a character, let me know. I will update this blog entry as I find more reference for this too.

Even wikipedia would be a good place to add a list of movies that use high angle shots. I got this idea because someone's already doing this in the low-angle wiki.

Here is one drawing I did a long time ago while traveling on the go train.

Lookin down by ~yashrg on deviantART

Police Brutality is not any better in the west than it is in India.

This cop is abusing a 14 year old boy. The kid is just being defensive because he is scared and the cop manhandles him and pushes him to the ground. This is SO wrong! I'm glad he was suspended, but not as happy as I would have been if he was fired!

the stick is always right eh?

When we were beginning to learn to do longer poses and measure our drawings, at the workshop, we were told to ALWAYS USE THE STICK. Measuring was a pain in the ass for me so I would avoid it. And everyone would go, the stick is always right.

well, slowly i grew more comfortable with using it. But it wasn't all hearts and roses. I was still ending up with longer legs and wide torsos. And everyone would always give me shit about it. I'd just accept that maybe I didn't measure it right. But today, I could finally prove my point. As I was drawing our model natalie, sonya came up to me, and told me the legs are too long. I said, well, I've measured the start and end of the thighs against the height of the torso and it's right. She took the stick, measured it herself and just kept telling me it should be shorter. But when I insisted on her to observe properly, she came to the conclusion that it was the head that was screwed up.

later, when gerard was looking at it, even he said the leg was too long.. And sonya started saying in a very sarcastic voice, so the stick was right, and sonya was wrong eh? I said, well yeah, the stick is always right.. It was all over a weird perspective or seating position.. Pissed me off so much.. anyways.. Gotta get back to drawing.

Funny video from America's funniest video

http://abc.go.com/primetime/afv/index?

this is from ABC's website. apparently you can't directly link to the video or embed it. so go search for what does mom and grandma do. ;)

101 Dalmatians

I am not sure if the name of the movie was spelled that way...with an 'a' instead of 'o' in dalmations, but the spell checker says dalmatians is the right spelling. Anyways, you can all go ahead and say 'God! yash, you are so stupid.' So as soon as you're done with it, lets move on. Yesterday, as I was working on my room drawing, Mickey was watching like parts and clips from old disney classics. Animated movies like The great mouse detective and 101 Dalmatians. I was pretty intrigued and very distracted... but I think it was a good thing.

Because in the night, after I had done dinner and was too lazy to draw, we decided to watch a movie, and I suggested lets continue watching that movie. And I was so impressed that I decided to blog my thoughts about it. Plus, its a nice change from blogging about Taare zameen par. But before I get going about the animated 101 dalmatians, I'd like to tell you about a funny incident that happened a few years go when the live action 101 dalmatians movie was released. I was in seoni, during the summer vacations and we decided to get a movie to watch. I think it was me and harsh who went, and got 101 dalmations. When we got back home, we told nikita we were gonna watch 101 dalmatians and asked her to call ruchi didi while we set up the video cd player and stuff downstairs.

She went and told ruchi didi but when they came downstairs, ruchi didi looked really confused. She asked me 'what movie did you get?' I looked at her confused and said '101 dalmatians, you know, like the breed of dog...' She laughed and said "Nikita told me you guys got 101 dimensions. And I was not really sure what its about.. Because I started thinking dimensions like 2D or 3D? But there are only 3 dimensions.. what does the title mean? maybe dimensions like measurements?" And even I started laughing... much to the embarassment of nikita. I'm pretty sure that now she can look back and laugh at it.. like I can laugh at 'kisne roba mera tobat'

The animated feature was much different than the live action movie. I really liked how the dog refers to the human as his pet. Which I think is pretty appropriate. I bet this point has been made a lot of times... Humans picking up the dog's business, humans feeding the dogs, washing them, grooming them... doesn't sound like we're the masters... LOL. Anyways... I really liked the seargent and captain and kernel characters too. The scene where the puppies are walking over ice, is pure genius! The way they are slipping and skidding on the ice is so natural and believable. Plus, all the puppies have a different action. It doesn't look like they cut corners and repeated the same action or animation at places. They look SO SUPER CUTE! I wish I could pull off something like that someday.

I know a couple friends who haven't seen it, and because mickey gave me the movie, I can show it to them too. Everyone must watch it! Oh! And before I close, I'd like to say I did look into the spelling of dalmatians, and the correct spelling IS the one with 'a'. That's because the breed of dog is believed to have originated in 'Dalmatia' in the 18th century. Hmm... I'd never even heard of a country by that name... 

Upbeat music playlist

I tend to get very sleepy and drowsy as I am working in the late hours of the night. I don't like to go downstairs and make myself a cup of coffee, because, I don't particularly like hot coffee... not unless I'm really cold. And I'm really spoilt when it comes to cold coffee.... hehe. Love that Iced cap from timmys or any cold coffee from cafe coffee day. So I decide to use upbeat music to keep me alert!

But sorting through my vast library of songs and picking out the few lively songs will take a really long time. So I decided to try out some automatic BPM calculation softwares. First was Beatunes, which I've already posted about, over here. In a nutshell, that software is bull. So I decided to try out Tangerine! Tangerine! is meant to assist you make playlists for your workouts and stuff... It looks really really slick. And I used Tangerine! to compare Beatunes performance, and declared that Beatunes had a lot of flaws. Well, turns out, Tangerine! has a bunch of flaws too!

Today, I analyzed my music library and noticed that the upbeat song 'fast and furious tokyo drift' was given BPM of only 63! WHAT!??? That puts it behind the nice mellow slow song 'Suno Na' from Jhankaar beats. My hopes of getting a nice upbeat playlist were shattered, AGAIN! I went online, and certain websites list the tempo of Tokyo drift song to be 129 which would definitely be more accurate. So I am going to be manually entering the BPM for a bunch of tracks, despite having used Tangerine! Fix this stupid software you guys!

solomon island story is fake?

After that awful movie review to close the last year, I am really happy that this year is starting off with a movie such as Taare Zameen Par. I actually watched it before 31st, but this is what's going to impact the rest of my year. The movies that are gonna come next are gonna be invariably compared to this one. And the opinion of that movie is gonna be affected by the same thing. 

This movie is brilliant in every way! Remember I was pissed about the child actor performance in the last movie? In this one, within 10 minutes of the movie, I was like "give this kid every friggin award in the world!" Darsheel kinda looks like my cousin sagar... ahem... yeah, I had to mention that. His is the part that could make or break the movie. And for that, i must congratulate the person in charge of the casting. But I can't say I'm equally happy about his brother. LOL. I started hating his guts the moment he comes in the house saying "sab subjects mein FIRST MOM!.." ("I'm first in every subject! mom!") Or maybe its just my eternal hatred for geeks! Or bullys... the kid who gets into a fight with Ishaan.. He keeps repeating the same thing... Ah! who cares. he was there for hardly a minute. 

I could really relate to the story and the character. Infact, I couldn't have stopped laughing if my dad accidentally hit mom while threatening me. That scene was Hilarious! The immediate laugh was perfectly timed. But wait, there's a moment... if you have the movie, watch the scene before he swings... The mom looks at his hand for a split second with a scared look. Hilarious I say! I used to just sit with my glass of milk for really really long and just not drink it. I would be getting ready for school, put on one sock, and just forget everything and sit with the other in my hand until mom prompts "Kiska intezaar kar raha hai? Kya soch raha hai? Moja pehnu ke nahi pehnu?"(What are you contemplating? 'whether to wear the sock or not' ? ) I was always and I stress ALWAYS, looking outside the classroom. LOL...Doing animal noises... ahem.. lets not get into how bad a student I really was.

The special effects meant to show the things he imagines like in the song Lage raho and Bheja Kum are really amazing. Even the animation in the title and when he's doing the math test are really well done. I wasn't really expecting to see those things in the movie. They were a pleasant surprise. The alphabet spider that he smashes leaves behind white goo like a real one would. The animation is very lively and expressive. Which is also because of the awesome voiceover by Darsheel. 

The teachers are really well portrayed. They are very believable. Infact, so believable, that I could even name what film teachers look like which real teacher I've had. The habits, the traits of the teachers' personalities are not just stereotypical, but real. Even the parents, and their mentality of saying whatever the teachers say too far is sadly, true. If only parents would not start yelling "so you're saying my child is a RETARD!" at every little thing, the situation would be much better off....for everyone. Even my dad would threaten me that he'd send me to a boarding school if I didn't study/behave.... Oh! there I go again, comparing myself to the movie... I think that's because a big part of the movie plays on making you feel the kid's plight, making you feel as if you're in his place, see the things going on from his perspective... And it wouldn't have been this way had it not been for the amazing direction.

One thing that bugged me was the story of solomon islands. I paused the movie where he mentioned that, and went googling for that. I tried every possible search term. Even researched over dyslexia. But nothing! Its not so much that they lied in the movie... Its that if someone were to tell me something like that, I would not immediately believe it or even consider his point.. I would ask for proof that this thing is real. I would not fall for it like Ishaan's dad did. But I say, it is possible that the trees die out from the 'bad sound/noise'. (The movie mentions that to clear a land for farming, the tribals would just gather around a tree/forest and curse it, say bad demeaning words to it and eventually, the tree would wither away) I had learned in moral science (those not familiar with the indian education system will find this weird) class that, plants that are exposed to sweet music grow better than the plants that are kept in silence. I even remember that little illustration in the book of a flower gyrating to music playing on a walkman... So I guess the opposite would work too...

The other problem I had with the movie was I wished it didn't end. I wanted it to go on and on. I was enjoying it SO much that I didn't want to go back to my boring lonely pathetic life. But there are many other real reasons to keep the movie going.... We didn't really see Ishaan's progress in tests, exams, and his graduation from being a sad loner to a friendly outgoing kid. I didn't think Amir Khan got enough credit for what he did. There could have been more instances of the dad or mom talking to Amir khan, and...I don't know... talk about dyslexia or something... like say... Ishaan's progress! I wonder what kind of parents are they who never come up to check on the condition of their kid throughout the semester.. only come at the end! Plus, the movie wasn't 3 hour long.. which usually is the length of hindi movies.... hehe..

Anyways, I feel everyone should watch this movie. If you can't understand hindi, get it with SUBTITLES! Don't get a dubbed version. Because the original voice and the emotion in the voice is really crucial, and the dubbed voice may not be able to carry that across. On a lighter note, I feel that now on, every kid will start trying to take advantage of this knowledge of a 'learning disability'... Kids will just start saying "teacher the words are dancing" or start writing invertes S and expect to be let go. Yeah.. kinda like that episode of south park... LOL. Anyways. Have a positive outlook and always look up in the new year!