“It Could Happen to You” – Watch it

A lazy hot sunday afternoon spent watching this fabulous movie, It Could Happen to You. We have ‘Tata Sky’ at home so there is this handy little option which gives you a snippet of the movie. I have seen this movie before but I didn’t remember the name, but after reading the snippet, I remembered and made the good call to watch it.

I wont spill the beans but its a movie about a Cop which promises a waitress to split his lottery ticket fortune in lieu of the tip. As luck would have it, he wins the lotto and a cool 4 million USD. The man keeps the promise (A promise is a promise), his wife doesn’t like it and so on. Its not a court-room drama, its neither a emotional essay or a moral lesson movie. Its a very simple and easy watch movie, with brilliant acting by Nicholas Cage and Bridget Fonda.

If you have watched this movie and liked it then comment, we share something in common , if you dont like it then too comment :) , for all the good reasons. And if you watch this based on my recommendation and then like/hate it, then comment for sure :)

‘Bachna Ae Haseeno’ – Quick Review and my gripes

I was at Fun cinemas, Pitampura, Delhi, the other evening, watching the new block buster ‘Bachna Ae Haseeno’. We were there in a group of 6 since we got some free tickets for the show, so owing to large group, overall mood was peppy and there were reasons to be busy other then just watching the movie. Fun Cinemas, Pitampura is not in the best of locations with a ad-hoc parking and a foul-smelly auditorium.

Bachna is a movie around a ‘killer’ (why he was termed Killer and how he miserably failed there, later) who has two affairs and he dumps the two girls. When the 3rd girl tells him that she doesn’t want to marry him because she doesn’t , then his past haunts him, he goes back , finds those two girls who are now shattered to death and are living a recluse to bit**y life, says sorry, peps their life up, comes back and gets happily united ever with the 3rd one.

Ranbeer Kapoor plays the killer and Minissha Lamba, Bipasha Basu and Deepika Padukone (is the surname something to do with a shuttle cork, kone) are the three Haseenas. There is a friend of the Hero, played very well by Nitin (I guess I am having the right name) , son of legendary Paintal. Except Puneet Issar who plays Mahi’s (Lamba) dad and Kunal Kohli (brilliant as a surd) who plays Mahi’s hubby, there is no one else.

The story starts with Switzerland (Minisha episode) where she misses her train and then she and Raj Sharma (Ranbeer) drive to Zurich on a scooter. She falls in love, he falls in loves (pretends) and just after a lapse of 24 odd hours when she realizes that he has been kidding, she is devastated.

I have two problems at this point. First Ranbeer didn’t do a single trick to be the ‘Killer’ so as a story writer, add more meat and juice to his character, work hard, think of twists and work on this character to really make him look like a ‘killer’. My 2nd probelm is that Mahi (Ms Lamba) who is already engaged , she finds this junkie and likes him, they kiss couple of times, there are no intimate moments, and there is no time which really nourishes this love, it was a one-night-stand with no protection (since there was no need of one, since it never happened). Why this minor interaction leaves her into a lady who disbelieves love, goes into a semi-recluse and what not is hard to understand. Do you really think that such a mild and minor encounter would make someone into like this. C’mon. Director was more busy with shooting exotic locales, designer dresses that noone really cared a shit for character-establishment.

So that was Swiss. Then comes Mumbai. Ranbeer now works for Microsoft , earns well, has his own small apartment, finds the hot Bipashu as his neighbour. They get close. Again reels were spent showing the glamorous Basu then ‘killer’ Raj, they get into a live-in relationship. Later Raj has to leave for Syndey for some long term work and he is not ready for marriage, so on the d-day when they were to assemble at the courts, he plays truant. Basu is devastated. This devastation was better managed then the earlier one since they were together for a long time but all the while no time was spent to even shoot a single sequence where their relationship was explained.

Anyway, then comes Deepika. Deepika Padukone is a Icchadhaari specie. She is first seen as a cabbie, then she is also from B School , later she is seen as a super-mark. Love happens, she quits, Raj remembers what he has done in the past.

So far the movie is about promiscuity, skin, exotic locations, more skin, bright and happy faces, good cars, more exotic locations (Rome - Italy n all that). After this you get some sanity and content in the movie. He comes back , says sorry which has been managed so well. For the first time, it appears that someone is thinking, there is some real story.

It finishes pretty abruptly, Raj comes back to Sydney, his friend shows him a new car which they never drive (why the hell was that scene), comes back home, meets Kone, they get together.

Ok. so that about ‘Bachna’. Dont spend too much money to see this movie, if you want to see Swiss, Cote d Azure, Sydney and some of other good beaches then watch it.

‘Adopt’ – You never know who you will bring home

There are hazaar brilliant ads but occasionally you hit into something which you really like. While I dont hate the ones which try to play around your emotions (by showing a impoverished child for example) but they dont sort of click.

I just found this in my mail box and I tremendously liked it. It gives such a big + spin to Adoption without adding any angle of charity to it. Brilliant. I dont know who conceived this but if you know then let me know. Great work.

Title: Encourage Adoption
Headline: Adopt. You never know who you’ll bring home

How to insert Photos in WordPress 2.5

I have this travel website which is powered by WordPress 2.5 and occasionally I get queries around adding a picture to a post. So I thought that I would write a small primer which may be helpful for a wider community.

1. Collect all your photos in one single folder on your local machine. This would save you time when you are uploading since you wont have to pick and choose. So if you have shot 80 photos (just 80) on your last trek, and if you want to share 10 (just 10) then identify these 10 photos and copy them in some temporary folder. Remember to copy these 10 files, and dont move them. Always keep your originals safe.

2. Once done, re-size them using some Image Editor program. Usually pictures shot from a digital camera are pretty heavy, large in size. The actual size depends upon the site design. For Ghumakkar, 500 pixels BY 350 pixels look good. This would help to have your story come up quickly. In general choose something like 1024 X 768.

2.1 In Windows XP and Windows Vista, select all these photos, do a right click of mouse and choose ‘E-mail’. You would get an option to resize. Choose 1024 X 768. After a while you would notice that all the pictures have been attached to an e-mail message. Select all of them, Right click, copy, paste in the original folder.

I am attaching the screen shots for Vista. On XP, it would be similar though it might look a little different.

Select all the pictures. Right Click and choose e-mail

Choose a lower size like 1024 X 768

Attaching to an E-mail

I use Microsoft Outlook for e-mails. So here’s how it looks.

2.2 Download a free s/w like Google Picasa or Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition and use it to resize.
Google Picasa - Click here
Adobe S/w - Click here

Even if you dont do this step, you would still be able to move ahead, its just that it would make the page heavy and readers of your story would need to wait a little extra time to view all the pictures.

3. Now lets come back to ‘Compose’ window under ‘Write’. click the ‘Add Photo’ icon which is just after ‘Add Media’ in the top icon-toolbar.

Click this button.

You would get a new window. Click ‘Choose Files to upload’. Select all the files in the folder where you have copied all the pictures in step1. The window would look like this

Now you are done with uploading all the files.

If you would notice then there are three options on the top in the above window, viz.
1. Choose Files
2. Gallery
3. Media Library

First is for adding more files. 2nd is for accessing the files associated with current post and library is for all the files which you have uploaded so far.

Now go to ‘Gallery’ and then click ‘Show’ against the file which you want to insert.

Add a relevant caption , notes. Choose a size. For Ghumakkar I would recommend that you choose ‘Full Size’. Word Press Administrator can control this size. And you are done.

There is another good feature in WP which is about ‘Inserting a Gallery’ and I would briefly talk about that later but as of now, we are done as far as inserting a picture is concerned.

Let me know if this write-up is missing or confusing or could benefit from some more clarity. I would act on that and would try to improve it. Of course, if its works for you then leave a happy comment. So enjoy and happy photo-showing at your next WP Post.

A good website for Kids, for Internet enabled parents

It all started with Google Image Search. It was so easy for me to tell my 3 year old about any animal, any bird, any plant, in fact almost any thing by doing a image search at Google Image Search. As with many things, fad ended after a while. From Google Image Search, we moved to youtube.com since we can pull any music video on demand. My home wireless is good enough to let us watch a song video with not too many buffering-buffering distractions. This carried on for some time and like many things, it also stopped happening. Though we still use youtube, to show her, her own videos and to show her videos to other people.

While all this was happening, we also happened to browse through some of the other sites which plays kids’ jingles and poems and have lots of lessons around primary English, Alphabets, Counting etc. Most of these were forgotten as quickly as we have learned about them.

So amid all this, my wife hit on to a site which we have been using till now. I realized this today morning that I have probably been here for last 1 year, I think more. And my 3 year old, loves it. So I thought that it makes sense to share the link with fellow internet-enabled young parents.

This site is called ‘Starfall’ and is at www.starfall.com. The home page is not really new-age design but very clear and not cluttered with million things. When you choose any lesson, you are taken to a small Adobe Flash based program which is interactive and is much more richer (music, sound, videos, animation etc). I am mostly on Mozilla but I would think that this would work on IE and Safari, on the assumption that Flash programs are pretty much browser agnostic.

I really like the ‘Alphabet’ section since all the 26 letters are shows in big sizes and when one chooses one of them, you see pictures and sounds of animals/object with that letter. There are also some interesting exercises like ‘Make the Match’.

I guess, I would close here. If you do go there and like it then let me know, write a small comment.