Posts tagged frustration

my problem with hindi movies today

Feb 16th

There have been any number of reviews about the latest from the Bollywood stable (My Name is Khan) – ranging from vitriolic to sarcastic/mocking to adulatory.

I could write reams, spew abuse galore, and point out in how many different ways the movie gets it wrong… but I won’t. That’s too easy. Plus, people have already done a pretty good job of that. Quite simply, MNIK suffers from the problem that Hindi cinema has been suffering from for a long time. No, not the fact that SRK is in it, or that KJo is directing it… it simply takes itself too seriously.

You can make movies that are obviously escapist, sheer fantasy – and I’m willing to accept it. For example (just off the top of my head), Krrish and Om Shanti Om get this formula close to right. Then you have the movies that are more realistic (and ergo, more intelligent) – for e.g. Luck By Chance, Dev D. Then of course, the “off-beat” - Kaminey, Rocket Singh – they take advantage of it being “cinema”, but don’t push the envelope to the extent that you cannot accept what is going on. Penultimately, the completely unwatchable - Yuvvraaj, Love Story 2050. Finally, the awesome - Gunda. Obviously, you can choose to segregate movies differently, but this kind of classification can work for most movies in most languages.

Why all this background? Movies that belong to one class, but slowly devolve into a second class end up being neither here nor there. And lead to vitriol galore.

I went into 3 Idiots expecting an intelligent comedy. Within about 5 minutes, I settled back into “escapist comedy” mode. It’s not meant to be taken seriously. It’s sheer fun (note here that I think that people who thought 3 Idiots was “silly” were committing the other cardinal mistake: they were taking the movie too seriously). Ishqiya lived up to my expectations of intelligence. Chance Pe Dance lived up to my expectations to being nearly unwatchable. MNIK starts with merely wanting to be intelligent, then flip-flops between fantasy and unwatchable… resulting in something you eventually await the end of.

Read On… »

The premise starts out simply enough. A certain amount of realism is injected (not a lot, but a certain amount anyway). Soon enough though, things start to crash and burn as KJo starts to struggle to continue {acting/directing/writing} intelligently. He starts pandering to cliches galore. But powerful acting from that Tanay kid redeems some of it. Some silly explanations are given (which have been pointed out elsewhere) – to keep the story moving. The movie is sagging but expected chemistry between SRK and Kajol makes the cheesy romance work, but just barely. Sequences start appearing unwittingly funny as the movie traipses along (losing its plot) – quite simply the sequences are there for no reason at all. Back to getting things vaguely on track as pathos is injected for different reasons (9/11, death etc.). Until this point, I was willing to concede a vague amount of credit – and would have just talked about how KJo could have snipped a bit here and there and come up with a much better movie. Not hugely more watchable, but better.

However, MNIK then drags for another unforgivable 45 minutes which ensure that no sane person can really watch this movie and come out liking it. Or any of its very loudly advertised messages.

Back to my point. Making Hindi movies intelligent may not be the best thing – a large majority may end up never really watching it (case in point, Luck By Chance). But when you have a real box office draw in your movie, I thin KJo could have risked making it more intelligent: SRK’s draw would have overcome. Making a silly Hindi movie and then justifying it as “Hindi movies, ergo they can be stupid” is unforgivable.

Finally, the second biggest problem with this particular movie, and Hindi cinema today in general. SRK. The man gets on your nerves within 60 minutes of the movie. Why? He’s been on screen non-stop for 55 goddamn minutes. Continues to be so for the next 85 minutes (even Kamal Haasan has to wear different get-ups to justify such screen time). In the process, his performance goes from being barely interesting to highly irritating (never better illustrated than by the Mrs initially righteously justifying to me why his Aspergers’ must go undiagnosed for so long… and finally getting to the point where she gleefully applauded the fact that he might die near the end of the movie). He gets to pander to his Superman complex – he goes from being unable to verbalize anything properly to saving a goddamn town while being interviewed on national television (hey, if Aamir can deliver a baby in a storm.. SRK can..). In his big sentimental speech, he doesn’t even do a Hindi voice-over for a speech that should obviously have been given in English (SRK re-dub SRK? Are you crazy?) Hell, he even has Barack come back to meet him personally.

Hindi movie-makers really need to decide what they want to do with their movies – and stick to a single plan. You can’t really do everything in every single movie. SRK really needs to find himself some new directors. All the ones he works with (Chopra, Johar, Farah) currently seem to want him to do one ridiculous ham-heavy impersonation in the name of acting – and seem happy to call it “amazing”.

I really need to stop analyzing everything I watch so much. It’s not worth the effort. Oh well.

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frustration, in the movies, reviews, views

adobe SUCKS

Sep 12th

Posted by SEV in staying.aside

16 comments

Step 1: Get notified that Adobe Flash Player must be updated on PC to overcome (one if its many) significant security flaws.

Step 2: Be shown page to download and install latest version of Flash player on computer.

Step 3: Click ‘Allow’ in Firefox.

Step 4: Sudden pop-up of ‘Adobe Download Manager’, which distinctly shows that Mc-fuckin’-Afee fuckin’ virus scan is installing for no apparent reason.

Step 5: Open Firefox to see getPlusPlus something installed as a (1) plug-in, (2) extension. Yes. Both.

Step 5.5: Find link on update page that shows that McAfee is installed by default now. NO mention of fuckin’ getPlusPlus BTW.

Step 6: Curse and wonder why Adobe Flash is used by the planet at all while uninstalling all the crapware because of upgrading Adobe fuckin’ Flash fuckin’ Player. adobesucks

Step 6.5: Find entry for Adobe Download Manager (aka getPlusPlus) in ‘Add/Remove Programs’. So that I can easily install Flash. Fuckin’ Flash. A <1MB download.

Yes, Adobe fuckin’ sucks.

Don’t even get me started on Adobe fuckin’ Reader. That’s just bloated crapware – way too many ‘fucks’ needed.

Update: Thanks to Wraith, there are links to get the damn thing without cursing.

Update 2: Thanks to baddra, a solution to never use Flash again (at least on YT) as well.

frustration, techie

repititive post #6875764

Aug 29th

Posted by SEV in staying.aside

2 comments

No matter how many times I say it, it bears repeating: Moving SUCKS. Yes, all caps.

The only cool thing so far is that I’m driving a 10′ UHAUL truck. Heh.

frustration, updates

movie-shoovie etcetera

Aug 2nd

Posted by SEV in staying.general

9 comments

The ‘etcetera’ above is simply to assure myself that I’m not JUST writing about movies. Here’s the non-movie part of this review: The missus is in a foul mood for various reasons (most of them to do with me)… waitaminnit.. am I actually setting an apology up on this blog?

No. I’m not absolutely useless. Yet anyway.

I am continuing my vein of trying to talk about my missus more, and it sorta serves as an addendum to the last post.

When my teachers learnt of my engagement, a very interesting tangent from wanting to meet her was about what a good boy I had been in school (I think it had something to do with her finding out what kind of a terror I was in school). In short, I was apparently the model student in school, which bore repeating more than a few times. Always so well-behaved, never missing a day of classes, so polite. Such a pleasure to have.
Now, why is this relevant?
I’m guessing she’ll figure that out.

Now for the former part of the title.

Post ‘Fargo’ (today) and ‘No Country for Old Men’ (a while ago), I’ve come to realize when the Coen brothers make a non-black-comedy movie, it goes completely over my head. Like, really really over my head. I stand at 6 feet-something; the level of the movie probably starts at roughly 20,000 feet. On the other hand: ‘The Big Lebowski’, ‘Intolerable Cruelty’, ‘Burn After Reading’, ‘Raising Arizona’ (vague memories of the last anyway) – each one amazingly enjoyable, the dialogues immensely quotable, and I’m all ROTFLMAO (now I wish I had the Y! smiley which could actually do that). I have to be more careful about which ones I watch. There are only so many open-ended, vaguely drifting movies that I can watch – all of which exist in the IMDB 250 and for some reason are ALL insanely “critically acclaimed”. What exactly are “critics” seeing in these movies that I can’t even fathom? And I know I enjoy weird critically acclaimed movies to some extent (e.g. Raging Bull, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Citizen Kane, Taxi Driver)

‘Love Aaj Kal’. Ah well. Given that it is the director of ‘Socha Na Tha’ and ‘Jab We Met’.. the movie is not excruciating. Unlike ‘Luck’.. but more on that later. Back to LAK. Which sounds a lot like ‘Luck’. Hm. That movie is getting to me. The #1 moral of LAK is that breaking up with Deepika is the best thing that can happen to you: you get to make out/talk to her more, while at the same time getting it on with a variety of other women. The #1 conclusion of LAK is that Deepika has literally a-two-expression repertoire: smiling and not. The #1 irritation about LAK is Saif’s old-new act of a 40 year old pretending to be a metro-sexually active 30 year old. The #1 highlight of LAK is the last scene, which cut cruelly short while raising the question: why exactly is Rishi Kapoor so morose throughout the damn film? The #1 frustration of LAK is that the entire movie would have been so much better unmade had Saif just asked Rishi to mind his business and stop frustrating him about a plastic-faced bimbette. Who had probably been penciled in for both love stories, until the director came to an important realization. His movie would never be made if he were to commit suicide over the frustration of watching Deepika do nothing and call it acting for the entirety of the whole damn movie, rather than just half of it.

Lets move on to Prabhuji’s latest: ‘Luck’. GB said it all in his review. I must point out that the director had the right idea in ensuring his hero and heroine were right at the point of impact of the explosion during the climax. Might have helped had they both died, and ensured that (1) the director never makes such movies (unlucky and all that), (2) the two never make movies again (being dead and all that). And then of course, the process of elimination is simplistic. Stage 1: 6 desi+9 non-desi, eliminate 6 non-desi. Stage 2: Eliminate 2 non-desi. Stage 3: Eliminate 1 non-desi. Stage 4: Eliminate viewer (who has likely killed himself when the genius strategy of selection of Hindi speakers hits home).

And yes, I’m working on that weekly post. Seriously. Really seriously.

frustration, in the movies

why you should never buy an HP laptop of any kind ever

Jul 10th

Posted by SEV in staying.shitty

16 comments

Once upon a time I bought a laptop.

[I know that start is not as great as 'Many many years ago, on a galaxy far far away..' but you can pretend those words appear on the line above if they mean that much to you.]

Anyway. A laptop. An HP dv2500t. Yes, the very same laptop that died on me a few days after my warranty expired.

We are getting ahead of ourselves. Let us return to the beginning of time when the laptop landed in my hands a second time. Yes, I know it is counter-intuitive to think of a ‘beginning of time’ and a ’second time’ simultaneously, but still. In short, HP screwed up the order the first time it shipped to me. So begins the tale of them screwing up. With a screw up.

Flashback to last year. A year of heating problems and over-heating…and my graphics card is shot. I am in the middle of a conference. I need it fixed ASAP. HP charges me $300 (which I now realize I could have invested in a nice efficient little netbook), and ships it back to me pretty quickly. Everything seems fine. A month later, the edge of the panel facing me comes loose from its fastening. Repeat call to HP. They blame it on me. I think it may be possible. I don’t want to spend on it. I live with it. Over-heating still exists. Oh well. Jinxed laptop and all that.

On this trip to India, I find another good laptop engineer. Who is cheap. Amazing how everything in the US costs 10 times as much compared to India. Said engineer tries his best to open the laptop, because I think a cleaning of my laptop is overdue due to the overheating problem yada yada yada. Eventually he decides to try it in his lab. Back at the lab, and an hour later, I get a call.

[E] “Boss, they’ve applied super-glue.”

[Me] “What? HP Support? No..no..not possible. International organization, quality standards, etc etc.”

[E] “Boss, these panels are welded shut to the base. Super-glue. I’ve put in a solvent. Its coming unstuck. I’m telling you. Super-glue.”

[Me] “Ok.. great.. whatever. Open it up, clean and get it back to me. I’ll take care of it.”

So, let me get this straight. HP did not respond to my complaints (apparently, “high-end graphics cards can get pretty hot, sir”) when I said my laptop was over-heating until… my warranty expired and my video card blew. Then they replaced the entire fucking motherboard (‘coz of their god-awesome architecture), couldn’t fix the panels back on correctly, and so used SUPERGLUE to fix it? (My engineer managed to do it just fine without superglue, btw). When it went back to overheating and the panel came loose.. somehow I am to blame. Now, why did the panel really come loose? Well, sometimes superglue doesn’t hold everything in place. Why does it still overheat? Lets see:

One tiny laptop fan.
One Core 2 Due CPU.
One NVidia 8400M GS graphics card.
One tiny fuckin’ air vent on one corner.

Putting (2) & (3) results in a crapload of heat. Adding (1) to the mix means very little is being cooled down. Adding (4) to the mix means the heat goes nowhere. Bravo for neglecting every single rule about computer architecture and heat dissipation, HP. Now for the rhetoric. Why does HP suck so? Don’t get me started.

Never buy an HP laptop ever again. That’s what I tell everyone. Even the random guy in the store who I see taking a slight interest in HP products. Every salesman I meet at an electronics store in any country. Please don’t buy HP. For the love of manufacturers that make products that actually work.

Please.

Sample crappy HP laptops: Link 1.Link 2

Update (11 Dec 2009): The damn thing has pretty much died. Information gleaned from various sources tells me (1) this nVidia chipset sucks ass, (2) HP does not know shit about heat design for high-end laptops. Having ripped mine apart, I can tell you that the GPU has some kind of rubber between it and the heatsink – instead of thermal paste. I’m just shocked it didn’t die on me earlier. Since this post is hit up a lot:

Service manual: http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01035657.pdf
Disassembly: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=228268. Please note additional inputs from here as well. I will try to post an even more ‘for dummies’ version based on the notebookreview link (hey, I’m a dummy, I mucked up so many times on this thing too).
Complaints, solutions, complaints: Link 1 (to be contd.)

I will attempt to find out more about the copper-mod, and see what I can do. Keep updating as and when I know more.

frustration, laptop, techie