Slumdog Millionaire

Twitterverse had been buzzing about this movie for a few weeks now. And I couldn't hold myself any longer. When I realized that I won't be able to download a good print of the movie off the internet anytime soon, I decided to look up which theaters it was playing in. I asked (who else?) Doni to go with me, and he (reluctantly) agreed even though He'd rather go watch Valkyrie.

I am going to describe and rave about the movie extensively here,(if you want the plot, go to IMDB) and I might unwittingly post some spoilers. So people who haven't seen the movie, proceed with caution. I will, however, try to color the spoilers blue so that it blends in with the background.

Let's first talk about the crew. There are very few Indian people involved in the making of this movie apart from the cast. Actually even the Actor who Plays 18 year old Jamal, Dev Patel, isn't Indian. He's from U.K. His parents were born in Kenya (Thanks @kg86 ) The Director of the movie is Danny Boyle (British) and Co-Director in India was Loveleen Tandan (Indian). None of the producers are Indian, Not Screenplay, not cinematography(which was beautiful, BTW) Production Design, set decoration, costume design, Makeup, sound department, Visual effects... The list goes on.. without Indian names. Still, the movie feels very Indian, and true to reality. I can't think of any other movie which has portrayed India without any embellishment making it more glamorous or more gritty than it actually is.

The movie starts off with amazing editing cutting from the shots of Jamal Malik sitting on the set of KBC and being interrogated/tortured by the police. One can easily assume the KBC part is the flashback and police torture is the present. On KBC, Anil Kapoor makes fun of Jamal's profession, a call center assistant. Calls him a Chai walla. I don't think either of the hosts(SRK or Big B) of the Indian version of Who wants to be a Millionaire would do such a thing and have the audience laughing at the contestant's expense. (That was for "Kamzor Kadi Kaun"). Something that one might find a little awkward in the beginning is hearing the actors speak 'hinglish'. Dev Patel's accent is not very Indian, (because he's british and he doesn't speak hindi) like the other Indian actors. Which can be explained by the plot(He worked at a call center and probably picked it up there.)

The police wants to know how he got all the answers right on KBC. How did he cheat. Did he have a wire? did someone give him all the answers? Jamal stays calm and composed despite the torture, and tells the cops he just knew all the answers. Then we go into the flashback of his life, which the movie is really about. The scene of the kids playing cricket at the airport immediately brought a smile to my face. Everything was shot/portrayed so 'honestly'.. the cops coming to shoo them away, all the kids running for their lives through the slum 'gully's and rooftops. The background music that is playing during this song is amazing. I got home and immediately downloaded the soundtrack of the movie. I marvel the way they shot the chases so smoothly through the slums. And after all that, it was all really beautiful too.

All the scenes in even the dirtiest, grittiest places, the mumbai slums, red light area, shores of the Yamuna river in Agra etc. are so beautifully composed, that you are in awe of them at all times. The events in his life are the key to the answers to the questions on the show. But the first question, anybody could answer. And has a very perky light hearted story attached to it. Of how he got Amitabh Bacchan's autograph. The second one however, turns the movie right around, and you get to see the dark side of life. As his mother is killed by a mob of hindus in the communal riots.

Some things, having lived in India, and watching the news everyday, hearing the grown-ups talk, one just gets to know about the life of these kids in the slums and on the streets.. so when I saw a van with 'orphanage' written on it, I could predict where the movie was going. But I hope for people who didn't know this dark underbelly of Mumbai, this was a pretty involving twisted plot. I was really glad that Salim does the right thing and they make a run for it, to escape the people from the orphanage who were making them beg for money.

And the rollercoaster ride continues, the movie takes an upbeat pace again. With M.I.A. song 'Paper Planes' playing while the kids earn money hawking stuff in the trains, travelling on the train tops, between two compartments, etc. The scene where they try to steal passenger's food is hilarious yet scary. Then they are in Agra, posing as tourist guides. Again, I believe people who don't know the history of Taj Mahal missed out on a few laugh out loud moments as Jamal screws up and tells the foreign tourists fake stories about Taj Mahal and everything related to it. You don't feel anything's wrong even when the kids are shown stealing money, or back in mumbai now, working at a hotel, re-sealing mineral water bottles..

At one point, I actually felt that the life of these kids is SO BADASS! I wished I had a childhood like that. Because even though they did get into a little bit of trouble, they always came around. They drink, they walk into a red light area, they rescue their old friend Latika... but here comes the disturbing part again.. Elder brother Salim is carrying a gun. And he shoots the orphanage owner! Then meets up with the gangster/don of their slum. I guess we all knew the big brother was the type.

Here on, the movie doesn't hit you in the face as much.. Because no more slum shots, Jamal is working in a call center, his brother is a rich gangster, And Latika lives in a nice house with the Gangster of the slum(I can't remember his name) He goes to meet her, and sees her condition, here is when the movie takes a little romantic turn. Jamal finally tells Latika he loves her. The scenes in VT again bring back the little hustle and bustle and life of mumbai back into the film.

We also see in the later half how the host himself gives Jamal an answer, but his guts tell him to not to listen to the host. And he answers the question correctly. That's what drives Anil kapoor to turn him in to the cops. The news channels are buzzing about this. And all of India is shown glued to their tv sets.. I remember it really used to be like that back when KBC first came on air. Because the biggest prize in 'Kaun Banega Cororepati' is the highest prize in the world in terms of standard of living. The difference from living in a slum to winning 2 crore rupees, is unfathomable!

Okay, enough disclosing the plot of the movie. I will just say, that in the end, there's finally a bollywood style song and dance sequence with the credits. Done very 70's bollywood movie style. I stayed and watched that even though I had to pee really bad. Final verdict, ***** 5 stars! Awesome movie! I love how the slums are portrayed as a very energetic, lively place instead of how people would generally look at it with pity and sorrow.

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!

I am SO going to regret these two hours of my life!

Today, I downloaded and started to watch 'my friend Ganesh' the movie. 3 minutes into it, I realized I couldn't sit through it! I knew I was gonna regret the next two hours of my life I was to spend watching this dumb Indian live action-animated indian movie. I don't think anyone over the age of 6 years could enjoy this movie. ok, at least humor me here. I remember when I was 7, I was in he 2nd grade and wasn't entertained by such mediocrity. But if today's kids in school are into this, I really doubt India's future. LOL ok, ok, just kidding...

I did spot the imac computer in their home ;) nice! Ok, back to the topic - the movie! The moment she entered, I knew the 'gangu tai' character was gonna be a very silly, slapstick one. And how dumb do the parents have to be to send their kid to the school with the gawar 'bai'! The stupid sequence in the kid's school was SO lame! I would rather watch tom and jerry or looney toones. Also, out of almost a billion people, they couldn't find ONE other decent actor? Wait... do they even need to act? Kids tease other kids naturally right? I guess I'm just pissed that harry potter guys have the best child actors, but we don't. Anyone else WITH me here?

The advisor who comes into his office with the proposal, WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH HIS ACCENT? I've been in mumbai, and I NEVER met anyone who speaks like that! Now, the story -  When I saw it was raining, I figured  story would go something like the kids get trapped in traffic due to the heavy rain, like the flash flood that happened in mumbai a couple years go. And then it would be his journey back home filled with adventures and trials and tribulations, and he makes new friends (including ganesh) and end of story! I would have LOVED THAT! because its more fast paced, more EXCITING, and would obviously make more sense than him going out and putting a rat in a bucket! with water!....Ok, even if he makes little holes for the water to get out, the mouse is TRAPPED!

Now lets get to the animation part. And that's about all I want to deal with. You know... there's only so much beating one little movie can take. haha...Now, in the title sequence itself, Ganesh stood out as the worst animated character! maybe even worst drawn... But the mouse was REALLY good. probably because they've had a lot of reference mouse animation to look at in the past. haha! The lipsync is SUPER AWFUL! I'd say tenali raman, a TV show had better lipsync than this. But because obviously, it was dubbed into multiple languages, your milage may vary depending on which version you saw. Ok, forget the dialogs... even the loud evil laugh wasn't very convincing. Not talking about exaggerating it to very cartoony levels for a human character, but I know humans can have more powerful laugh than what was in the movie. I just think the animators got LAZY!

So just 40 minutes into the movie, I say I can't take it anymore. utter rubbish! TRASH!

Surf's up review

I believe I'm taking a big risk by posting this review here, as my art of cinema teacher is strictly against plagiarism and if she ends up searching my submission on the internet, and finding this, I'm gona have to explain to her that the blog is mine in the first place. LOL. But, it was just such a great movie, that I can't help myself. So here goes!

The CG animated movie surf's up, is a mocumentary. Probably the first ever animated one. The film crew follows the journey of Shiverpool resident penguin Cody maverick(voiced by Shia Lebouf...hope I spelled it right) from his home, to the town of pen-gu and through the 'Big Z memorial surfing contest'. They take interviews with other people like his mother and his brother, some elders of shiverpool, kids on the beach and so on. And as obvious, the camera crew follows all the other characters involved capturing all kinds of antics.

The Movie starts off with a old film footage(obviously staged... need I remind you this is a FAKE documentary?) of the surfing legend, big Z(voiced by Jeff bridges) during his heydays.

damn! this post has been in the drafts for so long.. I don't even remember the art of cinema class.. and I am not in a mood to finish the article off now.. still, I'm just gonna publish it.

RTFS adventure game review

My friend recently released his flash made game, rayman the fan series adventure. He emailed me the swf file, as I'm on a mac and can't use exe files.. but for you on pc, here is the download link. Now I was gonna email him back with what I thought were the plus and minus points of the game, when I thought I could act all professional and do an unofficial official review kinda thing on my blog. Okay, so without trying to sound any more fancy, here goes.

The game starts with a silhouette of rayman on the screen, and even though its just black, you can clearly tell that he's running. That, though it has nothing to do with the game, I just wanted to point out because its good understanding of drawing as an animator. I've always read in books and heard big people in the animation biz talk about having your pose work as a black spot on a white background. Abhinav has put even more really good artwork and character designs into the game. Now, I've never played any original rayman games, so I don't know what is originally made up by my friend here, but it all works. Great!

The gameplay has a few glitches or just minor nuances if you may, which I have pointed out to him, and expect him to try and clean up. But the game is tough when its supposed to be and pretty easy at times. Like the boss fights were kinda tough for me to get through. But again, I am a lousy gamer. My reflexes are as slow as a snail. So don't take my word for it, or atleast take it with a grain of salt. Try out the game for yourself here.

The game music varies nicely, as the mood changes. It wasn't very irritating or disruptive like it gets in certain games, I mean, I could sit through it all without muting my laptop. And I was typing an email between conversations. Sound effects too, are done nicely, I specially liked the part where the frog character pokes rayman to grab his attention to something. But there are still no voices, and The title clearly states that this is the text version. But we all hope the voices will be recorded soon and the game relaunched. come on! download it already!

Shrek 3 was a gut buster!

I was planning to go see it on Monday, but I was talking to mickey on friday and he said he's going to Toronto tomorrow and will go see Shrek 3, so I shamelessly tagged myself along. We had lunch, then were window shopping around the scotiabank theater for a while, and got back to the cineplex at around 3:10 to be able to grab good seats before they were all taken. Then we waited. The movie didn't start until 20 minutes after it was supposed to!

Spoiler alert.

I don't think I need to go through the whole story, as you might already have heard that elsewhere. What I would like to get u excited about is probably something u didn't foresee. You all know that scene from the trailers where shrek gets puked upon by a creature in a pram... That pram has an ogre baby. Yeah! That was the potential spoiler. Fiona tels shrek that she's pregnant and that he's about to become a father. And as you'd expect, shrek is not ready. yeah yeah, the typical concern, whether I will be a good father for my children or not... but in his case, its different because he's an ogre. He is worried his kids will be ashamed of calling an ogre their father. I really felt for that poor guy in the particular sequence where he's talking to donkey about it.

Oh, almost forgot, before this talk, there is a nightmare sequence which involves hundreds and thousands of little ogre babies just gushing into his house. It starts off with the one in the pram. And lemme tell you, he's really CUTE. they did a really nice job on the character design and modeling. Then there are 3..5..8...15... and so on. They are destroying the house, getting themselves into trouble and all that. Kinda reminds me of the tom and jerry episode where tom is baby sitting a baby. LOL. Then the number just 'explodes'! They are coming in from the windows, the door, chimney(huh?) etc. I wonder how much computing was required for rendering that crowd of detailed babies. Great job there!

Then the puss and donkey being changed into each other is just a gimmick and lends itself to a few gags in the movie, but it doesn't have any solid purpose like donkey turning into a steed in the second movie. But it can easily be ignored. The rest of the movie is really funny. I was laughing from the first scene to the last dance sequence. Even the death of the frog kind sequence was comic! Other sequences that I really liked include the fateful events that happen on th day shrek and Fiona are filling in for the kind and queen. Some of them you've seen on the tv, but there is a big shot that they are keeping reserved for the movie only. so don't miss it, GO WATCH IT!

Hoodwinked

Before you go on & read my post I want to direct you to this blog It's a review of Disney's meet the Robinsons I would totally love to know what you thought of it. I was just shocked to know that there are people like him who could hate Disney animation so much. I being the animation aspirant that I am, thought I could never hate any animation that is, until I saw hoodwinked. I had heard about how bad this movie is from some people before, but was doubtful about whether I would end up thinking the same way too. But I recently discovered, how sub standard the movie really is. The animation and rendering is so 'low budget'. I was told that its an indian production but I believe Mickey meant that some parts of its work were outsourced to India. The story is nothing like an Indian could ever come up with. But well, at some points I did feel like the movie was a bollywood production!

The little red riding hood character was very poorly done. I can't imagine what the makers had in mind for her... She acts like a teenager but she doesn't look like a teenager at all. And the scenes between her and her grandmom were plain pain in the ass. They tried to have the emotional aspect to it that many Disney movies have but it just wasn't done good enough so it ended up being plain sloppy. Then the song sequences. Even they were just as irritating as bollywood song and dance sequences. I wished they had just kept away from all that. In comparison to that, the other part of the movie was way better.

The best character was the goat who could change horns. Nice, perky, awesome design and thought. I also liked the song he sings. If at all, you end up with a copy of the movie, just watch it for the goat part. He's awesome! the rest, was plain boring... come to think of it, the goat part was the thing that made me not HATE the movie. Hate is too harsh a word. I just didn't like the rest of the movie is enough.

Thoughts about TMNT

I watched the movie in famous players Mississauga the day before yesterday and I thought it was pretty cool! Even though its a studio which I had never heard of before, that's nothing to fret about. The guys at IMAGI studios have done a damn good job! The environment looks very real in places and parts. I'd say even better than 300! The turtles are so detailed, especially during the fight sequence between...(oh I guess I shouldn't mention that...it'll be a spoiler..well, there are more to come in the latter part of the post so I wouldn't recommend reading it unless you hve seen the movie or are prepared to know the story beforehand) So, that brings me to the fight sequences.. so amazingly done. The action really makes your adrenaline pump hard. I was at the edge of my seat when the turtles were kicking butt! Oh, not only the turtles, the human characters April and KC too were amazing. I liked the ninja female... HOT! hehe...

Oh well, the story? I couldn't exactly get the part in the beginning where they are explaining that the general opened a portal to another dimension and thus 13 monsters were released into this world. Also, his brothers were turned into stone and he was immortalized. (spoiler alert!)He lived on through the ages and is now preparing to capture the 13 monsters and send them back to the other dimension, break the curse and finally, DIE! so you might want to know that before you enter he theaters or else you could be scratching your head halfway through the movie too. Well, I only have one thing to point out, if the monsters had been plaguing the world since 3000 years, why didn't we ever see them before? But I'm ok living with that since it was such a rocking movie.

Oh ya, that reminds me, the music is amazing too. I'll be getting the soundtrack soon. I'll leave ya with this teaser trailer. A better trailer is at the TMNT website TMNT.warnerbros.com have fun!

300 Accoding to yash

I just don't know where to begin. There are just so many people voicing their opinions about the movie and so many different opinions on it that its not easy to be original. I am trying to think what are people who are reading this, trying to get from this.. But me being an aspiring animator and also knowing a lot about sfx, I am basically gonna be looking at the technical/visual aspects. Also, the thing that I heard last night in the 4th year animation studio is gonna help me guide myself through this.

So, lets begin. I will start with what's most obvious first. The film employs a lot of use of the particle system. With the start of the movie, you see extravagant and totally 'out there' depiction of snowfall. Its moving even when the rest of the frame is still. Nothing could make it look more fake. No hint of any attempt at simulating it to look natural. The film makers wanted it that way. Maybe to keep it easy for the sfx team. Yes, there are a lot of cutting corners. And by the way, whatever I just said about snow, also goes for the fire thingys. the little sparks.. I am not exactly sure if that's the accurate word for it. Flares? fiery specks? Oh well, never mind.

Next thing I'm gonna talk about is in the movie logo too, perhaps you have noticed it. (if you're not colour blind that is!) I'm talking about the blood splatter! There's just so much splatter when they're in combat, cutting people's limbs and heads but I didn't see that much blood actually flowing or accumulated anywhere. When you say bloodbath, you expect to see people covered with blood but that was hardly the case. People with arrows through their bodies or stuff are totally clean and the wounds surprisingly don't seem to be bleeding at all! In almost every scene, the backdrop or the ground is totally clear of any blood. What the heck?!!!

I suppose there's just one more thing to say, The backgrounds. In certain scenes, they actually had depth to them and had depth and were awesome! But in other places, there just didn't seem to be any connection of the background to the actors and people. One case in point, a scene where the kind is giving a speech...(yeah right that's so exact!) oh, well, I don't remember what he's saying in that particlar scene, but the camera pans with him and one part is a blue stone wall and the other, you see the orange sky. THAT particular sky looked as it it was painted and put back there. There was no suggestion by means of the lighting on the king or the army there that said that they're in the same place. Now if you get what I mean and agree, well and good. If you don't, I don't give a damn so don't comment.

Open season Review

Thanks tracey for showing interest in the movie review, but unfortunately, when I visited the multiplex, I found out they had stopped screening the ant bully. But they were showing "Open season" instead. Now I had seen the promo and was equally excited about this movie too. so me and my friend decided to go watch that.

The movie start was very unusual. Unusual in a funny way. The bear(Boog voiced by Martin Lawrence) is shown as a jolly happy go lucky guy living out his life in the city with the park ranger (Beth voiced by Debra Messing) who has domesticated him since the time he was a little cub. But he runs into a deer (Elliot voiced by Ashton Kutcher) and helps him escape from the mullet-sporting hunter (Shaw voiced by Gary Sinise) And thats where it all goes haywire.

Elliot turns up at boog`s house and persuades him into going outside. They go and wreck a store that night and Boog gets busted leading people to believe that he`s gone wild. That belief is further confirmed when at his show, Elliot turns up and as he tries to get rid of Elliot, The crowd sees a totally different thing happening through the curtain. This misunderstanding leads Beth to be compelled to leave Boog in the forest again.

The story takes various twists and turns from there which are best enjoyed first hand. Thats why I wont be mentioning that here. The movie really gets captivating here onwards. All the voices are very well done. The animation is top noch, specially Boog`s fur. Some animals are rather cartoony, like the duck for instance, but is totally enjoyable for all age groups. A must watch movie which I`d recommend to every animation fan and others. GO WATCH IT!

Tata Sky review

The reason I didnt update my blog yesterday is because I was at my cousin tina`s house watching vh1/cartoon network/nick/hbo all day long. The morning was pretty bad and mom REALLY pissed me off by her yelling. Because this time, it was pointless! So, in order to have my revenge, I got out of the house around afternoon without even asking for mom`s permission.

The television watching experience was awesome! I had not seen tv for such a long time at a strech since dunno how many weeks. Because today, I had access to those channels that werent even available to me in pune. Namely vh1. Plus, the possibility of watching all the cartoons in their un- dubbed original english language was totally cool! I always hated dubbed shows and movies...their lips are totally out of sync and the impact then is just not the same. I was watching the movie LOTR the return of the king on HBO late at night in amaingly clear picture. I`ve never seen such clear transmission. It was like watching it from a dvd!

Besides these, there are about 100 other channels, (many of which are regional language cannels) Thats almost all the available channels in india today except for a few out of which only zoom is the one that comes to my mind right now. But zooms already available on dish tv dth network, and hopefully it`ll be on tata sky too. And then there are extras like the movie on demand channel and the sport channel which allows you to view sport coverage from camera of your choice. I admit its a cool feature and tata sky`s heavily advertising it too.

Now the installation costs only 4k and rent per month is 200 rupees so its definately worth a buy!And another set top box and 100 rupees as rent is the expense for adding it to another television in your house. I`m gonna try and pester dad into getting this for our home too. But before I exit, I must mention that installing it will require new cabling in your house because it cant use the older style cable system. so be ready to knock down your wires or just be wary of tripping on that exposed cable.. but look at the brighter side, you have more place to hang your clothes to dry now!