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The French film was subtitled in English as “The Kid with a bike”. The story is about a 12 year old boy (Cycil) who is abandoned by his father to foster home. The boy is hell-bent on tracing his father and his bike that went with this father. While forcing his way to his old apartment, Cycil happens to bump into a stranger – the local hair dresser (Samantha) .Samantha buys Cycil’s bike back from a person to whom Cycil’s father had sold it before he left the area. Samantha then takes Cycil into her home in weekends and a bond of affection develops between them. They trace Cycil’s dad who categorically says he doesn’t Cycil back. In the meanwhile Cycil falls into bad company with neighbourhood anti-law elements & commits a theft. Cycil realizes his mistake, turns calm and the movie ends with all going well.
The cycle (bike) is the only possession Cycil has, it gives him comfort and he holds on to it with his life. It comes throughout the movie, hence the title for the movie.
The movie has few characters but all of them have done their part naturally and convincingly, you are literally transported to the small town where Cycil lives. No vulgarity or exaggerations. A must see movie of 2011.
There is something about period TV shows that interests me. The one I am hooked to recently is “Downton Abbey”. This is a British TV Drama whose story starts around 1912 in a village near York, Britain, with the fiancée to the elder daughter of the house and legal heir being dead in Titanic shipwreck. The story revolves around the family of Earl and Countess of Grantham, and follows the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family. What makes the story more interesting is the focus on what happens in the servants quarters of Downton Abbey. The lifestyle of the owners of the house and the people who work for them can’t be more different but the show brings it all together in a common storyline. Every character seems to be given equal importance with no protagonist as such but still makes it easier to feel for the characters. What I feel is the success to the show is the selection of the casts – they are perfect and appear to be made for the characters they play. Great work by the Director in the casting and the actors.
Season 1 was all about the love life of the daughters of Lord Grantham & life in Downton Abbey, Season 2 was all about the World War 1 and its effects on every day life in Britain. Though it was dramatized for TV still you could get a feel of how life was during the Great War, the sacrifices people made for their country. Season 2 ended with story as on New Year 1920, War was behind, the puzzle on who will be the suitor to Elder daughter getting resolved – all this increasing the expectation on what’s coming next. I can’t wait for the upcoming Season 3 around September 2012.
I am not aware why this award winning show is not shown in any of the channels in India. Doesn’t Indian audience enjoy this genre like the American and British?. I bought the series from iTunes, for Season 1 the SD version. I liked so much the series that paid more and got the HD version for Season 2. I can’t believe the clarity of the screens in HD it was awesome.
In this month (April 2012) issue of Think Aloud magazine published by Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) my article has been published. This issue is a Mobile VAS in India, and my article is titled “Aam Aadmi’s Aspirational needs are the new growth engine”. I have talked about how Indian Mobile Industry is in a cusp of change and it is time they got to move from offerings basics to start addressing consumers’ aspirational needs.
In the article I had outlined various offerings that can increase nearly double the revenue to over Rs. 55,000 crore by FY ‘15. The listings are in FIFO (First In, First Out) order as I thought them and they are presented as ideas. I have not delved on the past and how things are broken, but rather on the solutions and the opportunities they present. Read it and post your comments.
You can view the article from here or download as a PDF from here.
Few days back I watched in one of the movie channels, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This 1989 movie has all the big names in the industry, Steven Spielberg as the Director, Harrison Ford as the protagonist and the legendary “James Bond” Sean Connery. The action movie of those days was fun to watch. The story was all about the search into the Holy Grail taking into Nazi’s Germany and many places over middle-east.
It was nice to see Airships (Zeppelin) as a mode of transport, I never knew that Airships were used big time in 1930s by Germany and even for trans-Atlantic flights. Somehow I thought Airships were more demo vehicles and before they became mainstream the Hindenburg disaster happened.
The special effects in the movie like the hidden bridge and the tank looked funny now but according to Wikipedia took look of effort in those days without much Computer Graphics. Kudos to them.
The first time I saw Titanic was in Feb ‘98 at London, U.K. during my first abroad trip. I didn’t know anything about the movie and little about the original tragedy, so when my friend in London invited me to the movie with his family, I had little expectation but I was excited in being to a theatre outside India. Needless to say the movie took my breath, it was brilliant and kept me thinking for many days. After which I have watched and enjoyed the other two movies of James Cameron – Abyss (which actually was a predecessor to Titanic movie) and Avatar 3D.
15 years after that I went to see the movie again this Friday. This time at INOX, Chennai and with my 8 year old son – who knew more about RMS Titanic & the movie than me. He was super excited to be there and enjoyed the movie thoroughly. The original movie in 2D itself with its sets and interior were awesome, now being converted by Computer Graphics to 3D made it better. Unlike Avatar “3D” which was shot in 3D, Titanic 3D being a converted from 2D the effects were subtle, but the story and music compensated for all that.
A nice entrepreneur idea by the producers (James Cameron & 20th Century Fox) of the movie to re-release it this year commemorating the century of the original tragedy and to have no one complaining that they are exploiting a tragedy.
This is the final post in my mini series on visit to Tanjore – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 & Part 4.
After our visits to must go places in Tanjore – the Palace and Museum the next day after the wedding we went to another popular destination which is the PunnaiNallur Mariamman temple which is 5Kms from Tanjore. It is always crowded, we could get darshan in about 1 hour or so.
Just like in every other temple in India you have shops selling everything for Pooja (Coconuts, Flowers, Turmeric, Kumkum, BeetleNuts, Banana), Pictures of the main deity, cool drinks and biscuits.
Our final destination was to shopping area in Tanjore around Anna Salai.
The below photos were taken near shops in Burma Bazaar, near Abraham Pandither Road & Jupiter theatre in Thanjavur.
When we went there was a book fair happening in the historic Sri Besant Lodge in Tanjore.
This is the fourth part in my series on my visit to Tanjore in January 2012 – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. I am writing about my visit to the historic Tanjore Big Temple – Brihadisvara Temple. This is a living temple with poojas being offered daily for last thousand years.
We went to the temple in the evening few hours before sunset and could get some lovely photos taken.
In the evening sunset light the 216 feet tall tower was so beautiful and breath-taking.
We went inside and had a good darshan at the main sanctum-Santorum (no photos allowed there). The below lingam is one of the many in the complex.
You will find many old scriptures in Tamil all around the temple complex
Finally by the time we came out it was night time and there was buzzing activity in the night bazaar setup opposite the temple complex.
You can see the entire set of photographs I took of Big Temple here (these were taken before my Photography training, so many will not make the cut for clean pro version)
This is sequel to my visit to Thanjavur Palace.
Inside the Tanjore palace apart from the main Art Musuem you can see few other places of interest. There is Saraswathi Mahal Library, Serfoji’s Memorial Hall Musuem, Mahratta Dharbar Hall & Royal Museum. Each of these are maintained by different parties – ASI / Tamil Nadu Government, The Descendants of Serfoji and so you need to buy over half-a-dozen tickets. Each of these tickets costs between Re.1 to Re.20, if they combine it and make it a single entry it will make it easy for tourists.
Saraswathi Mahal Library is one of the main attractions here. The Library contains books collected from the period of Nayaks in 1535 A.D. and enhanced during King Serfoji II during 1798 A.D. The books collection exceeds over 60,000 and many rare European language books are present here. I found it interesting to find on display pages from a book titled Chinese prisoner tortures – unbelievable and inhuman.
The next stop was the Royal Museum which houses some utensils, elephant bells, turbans (head gear) and weapons used in the olden days.
The next was Serfoji’s Memorial Hall Musuem. The path to the place is poorly maintained, vegetation’s grown all around threatening the survival of the palace.
Inside the museum there is not much of interest in display, other than old furniture’s, coins and daily use items.
There was a sign saying path to secret passage subway, we walked down few steps and found the place to be not lit at all with all kinds of sounds coming from beneath. Not wishing to go further and encounter bats or rats we retraced our path back.
The last stop was the Mahratta Dharbar Hall (assembly hall). I couldn’t help comparing with the Dharbar Hall I have seen in Mysore Palace or Jaipur palace – both being maintained in fine condition compared to this.
Overall the trip to Tanjore palace was interesting and useful to get a feel of history in this part of my India. You can see the full set of photographs I took from here.
This is follow-up to my earlier post – Part 1.
On the first day of our visit to Tanjore after morning breakfast we went to Thanjavur Palace. It was good we had over half-a-day to spend in the palace visit, for you to appreciate the artefacts and history you need to go around without rush. And for us taking photographs took quite a bit of time as well.
After you enter the main courtyard of the palace which is now an Art Musuem maintained by Archaeological society of India you are welcomed by hundreds of statues and sculptures which were unearthed by researches over the centuries in this part of Tamil Nadu. Most of them had names plates for you to understand but there was no guide or information to explain more about the palace and the displayed artefacts.
Just like in Chennai’s Egmore Museum I saw many fine bronze statues of Nataraja and other gods in display at the museum here.
There were many winding steps you can take to climb the tower to the top (about six levels I think)
And from the top you get wonderful view of the surroundings and city, you can see the Big Temple as well:
There were many boards warning not to damage or write on walls of the tower insides, but few seem to care about it. I felt pain seeing many scribbling’s all across the walls of what is a national historic treasure. It is believed that growth in Literacy and Economy will make a population and culture respect and protect its history but that seems to be not true in India. We seem to have a blatant disregard in preserving.
See the sorry state of maintenance of the walls and structures (see in the right of the picture below) in many places around the palace.
At the first level they have kept a display of skeleton of a 92 feet Whale that washed ashore near tranquebar in 1955. It is displayed in poor condition. Other than occupying an empty hall it doesn’t fit into the theme of the other displays and the place.
You can see all the photos I took from here and here is a blog post by Richard Clarke who has posted some fine photographs of Thanjavur Palace.
This January (2012) for a co-workers wedding I visited Thanjavur (Tanjore) along with my good friend E.Ravi. We travelled from Chennai to Thanjavur by Rock Fort Express night train leaving Chennai Egmore at 22:30 and reaching Thanjavur the next day morning around 6:30.
Since we had booked for this nearly 70 days back we could get berths in First AC, which was comfortable with wide berths and clean toilets – there were indicators in the coupe for occupancy of toilets (seen below).
The coupe even had a sign listing of items and services provided in First AC Coaches (seen below).
It is always fun to get down when the train does an unscheduled stop for few minutes in some tiny railway station or fields, like this one in Alakkudi.
I even got a chance to take this photograph during the Alakkudi stop in front of a rice field (Thanjavur is called the Rice granary of Tamil Nadu).
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