grindhouse

clipped from www.2theadvocate.com There are correlations between the two films. Both have roots in Texas. Both seem to like profanity. Marley Shelton plays the role of Dr. Dakota Black before and after the intermission. Michael Parks reprises the role of Earl McGraw from "Kill Bill" and shows up in both features, including one scene in "Death Proof" that is eerily similar to his assessment of the massacre that put The Bride in a coma in Tarantino's previous film series. Then there are the babysitter twins, wielding guns in one and going out for drinks for the other. Rose McGowan has a role in each movie, though they are different, and so does Tarantino himself.

lazy afternoon

lazy afternoon, originally uploaded by sumandatta.

Re:plagiarism

I never knew anyone but I read my blog...so was amazed to get a anon comment on the plagiarism post... In all probability it's Samit Basu (coz I left a comment on this at his blog)...Check out the comment..."troll"..."magical powers"..hmm..sounds like our fantasy author(or at least a dedicated fan)...

well I got some thngs to say abt the comment...but before everythng, I should say I was very inspired by the duck when his simoqin came out...I read it...liked it...felt inspired abt a bong stepping boldly into english fantasy fiction...
which is why it hurts me more to see his name on a plagiarised comic idea...a victim of commercializtion?

To Anonymous:
man i dont need to read the comic('end of story'), or hav magical powers, they r shouting abt it here...http://www.virgincomics.com/endofstory.html

"someone is killing old mostly forgotten stories" it says...

and read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haroun_and_the_Sea_of_Stories(and do read the book 'haroun and sea of stories' too ...its wonderful)

"However, the evil Khattam-Shud (whose name means "The End", "completely finished") is attempting to poison the sea of stories"

Man how blatant can it be!!
In fact in the Rushdie book it mentions the villain's name as 'Khattam-Shud' because When ending a story, rather than using the traditional, "The End," Rashid simply says, "Khattam-Shud." whts tht?? END OF STORY!!!

DUDE u gotta be blind to not get this!

and i hav no grudges against this guy...I actually hav his simoqin prophecies and i quite liked it...which is why it pains me more...

man, u say "there are many books out there about stories dying"...c'mon gimme one damn example !

btw i aint a 'blogger' in the strict sense of the term. I had to say sthg when i saw this plagiarism, so I left a comment on Samit Basu's blog (and it wont appear obviously coz its all moderated)...so I put up a post here...

Thnx anon for reading...dunno if u will be back to see my answer...or care to...i dont care either...

plagirised duck (of destiny?)

To samit basu (duck of destiny)
dude ur "end of story" is so ripped off rushdie's 'haroun and the sea of stories'...i mean yeah there r animals and panchatantra stuff in it but who r we kidding?

the basic premise of 'killing stories' is so lifted off rushdie!

and here i was thinking indian comics had come of age! leaves me bitter...

testing from flock

the flock web browser looks real cool

Blogged with Flock

sumandatta

sumandatta,
originally uploaded by sumandatta.

generated using http://metaatem.net/words/

totally cool man!

sinagpore - statues

52,
originally uploaded by sumandatta.

Stamford Raffles statue

singapore - the city

21,
originally uploaded by sumandatta.

reflections on a building

the weekend

saturday:
woke up early morning to catch the 10 o'clock half-price :-) show of
taxi no. 9-2-11. good enuf movie...only tht i missed out on some parts
due to my cell...calls from a friend and then from my parents...thts why
i hate cellphones !
grabbed some lunch after the movie and did some browsing on the net from a cyber cafe till evening...then off to Park Street , the Oxford book shop there was holding a mega-sale...bought all of sidney sheldon (his 'the other side of me' is gr8!), a tale of two cities,jeffrey archer's collection of shorts and a better photography magazine...back to home and browsing- the books this time :-)

sunday:
met up wid my parents and together off for a trip to 'belur math'. awesome place.
never seen a place of worship so clean. the architecture is elegant, a eclectic mix of victorian and indian...the prayer hall is gr8 too...found people lost in thought, some doin sketches, some writing up stuff...

lunch time and we joined around 600 more people in a community lunch of delicious khichri and dum aloo, arranged by the 'math' sanyasis...you could see the hooghly river flow by the math and savour the cool breeze even in the hot sun...
of course the high point of the trip was a visit to he ramakrishna musuem there...stuffed with artifacts used by ramakrishna(hindu philosopher,devotee of kali,worshipped by ppl now...a VERY interesting person) and his disciple vivekananda(he deserves a full blog and more...). for ppl like us who grew up listening to their stories/legends, it's really exciting to really see their handwritten notes, pillows,hand fans,coats etc. used by them! i jumped around the place like a kid :-)

can't get u pics coz photography is not allowed...but visit this link if u will:
http://www.sriramakrishna.org/belur/gallery/tour.htm

then a boat ride across the river to the dakshineshwar temple...it's a typical place of worship, teeming wid ppl (especially coz of shiv ratri), beggars (found a notice instructing not to give to beggars!..first time seen sthg like tht outside a temple for temples hav always been beggars' bread and butter)...the temple complex is huge with 108 (oversrowded)shiv temples surrounding the (overcrowded)temple at the centre...add to tht the scorching courtyard on which u hav to walk barefoot to go from one temple to another...its the kinda experience which u hope remains only once in a lifetime :-)

neways after tht anticlimax, it was back to home and sleep...

karna wallpaper

download the pic below as wallpaper

k3small

k3small,
originally uploaded by sumandatta.

karna poster:
have build the face 3d model...plz comment.

also the catchline was supposed to be:
'from the greatest story ever told comes the tale of a man in search of his destiny'

but just noticed yesterday tht the new bengali movie 'faltu' has the same phrase: in search of his destiny'.
so..hav to modify.
suggestions are welcome...

no more picture time till i learn the trade...

...i feel so belittled for posting those silly pics,
especially after coming across this guy's("JourneyToNoWhere"
) pics...they
r way too cool...just look at his vibrant colors!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/journeytonowhere/

its picture time!- my home

its picture time!- puri

some snaps wid my modest HP digicam:

down & out in kolkata...

...stayin in a PG where they dont allow my PC...sharing a room with a guy who has memorized every piece of dialogue that BigB has ever uttered in his movies and some more...eating lots of potatoes(of course bengali cuisine is incmplete without them) and getting fatter...no friends(all gone abroad)...no cyber cafe within a ten mile radius of my residence!...no net in office..no work either!...resorting to playin minesweeper everyday...totally cutoff from the online world...havnt checked my mails..blogs...in almost a month it seems!...karna shelved till i get a decent place to stay with my PC...can it get worse???

Plz click on the pic for a bigger/clearer image:


hastinapur... kingdom of the kurus fallen into darkness due to an inept, blind(to his subjects?) king... soon to be purged by the greatest war of all times...

on my desktop this July
sumandatta

head first

well yes...for the karna project i needed to model a generic human head first and so i dove headfirst into it and hours of googling thru millions of tutorials and some more time on blender, results in my first head!

well as u can see, the character is quite humanlike. i am still in a dilemma whether i should go with such a character or make it more of a dineyish cartoon. The problem with a humanlike face/body is that animation will fall apart as it wont be believable; while with a cartoon u can take some laws into ur own hands which makes it better for me. With cartoons u also get the classic animated movie touch.

However, the problem with a toonish character is its design- i hav to do all the character sketches, create recognizable features tht wud stand apart and such things...while for humanlike models its easier as u can try cloning real actors from photographs (i used those of my favourite actor!..though it didnt turn out anythng like him...thankfully :-) )

decisions ... decisions ... well we'll see.

here r the pics. the blue and yellow one is the original render from blender. The rest hav been touched in gimp to add rain(it's an important element in the movie) and hues. Here again i hav to choose the hue to use for the movie- green(The Matrix), blue(LOTR) or slate.

plz do help me out wid ur comments.

sob! sob!

:-( someone's beating me to it!

"The Mahabharata. Hindu mythology's greatest epic might just become Bollywood's biggest ever cinematic venture. The magic of this powerful epic is currently being recreated by producer Bobby Bedi into a trilogy with a budget of Rs 300 crore."

http://www.magicsw.com/mahabharata/preview/family.htm

with tht in, who will watch my poor cartoon show?????

"While Rani will play Draupadi, Shah Rukh and Aamir will play Karan and Arjun, but I can't reveal who's who. I hope to make a historic movie series in the manner of The Lord Of The Rings"

the greats shahrukh/aamir as karna!!!! and my 2 bit 3d model :-(

sob...i hav lost all heart....

weeks 2 & 3

hmm...week 2 was spent just like tht. just kept thinking abt the enormity of this project and remained paralyzed. got a boost over the weekend(week 2) and wrote up a rudimentary scene breakdown of the movie. It came to around 16 major scenes...taking up almost an hour and a half of screentime. Considering as little as a month( i m a NEWBIE @ all this and havnt got much of a talent for sketching either...(so why am i doin this? well..i hav the same question of me...) ) on each scene, that's a year and a half! Dropped down again :-(

week 3...some work on modelling in blender3d from tutorials. Some pen sketches. Awful stuff! (my friends who saw it praised it as being abstract art! and it is supposed to be the basis for my entire earthy movie!.....can't get more ironical than tht.)

PS: and b4 u praise me for my "abstract" art, well thts a warrior with a shield and weapon standing, and there's a man on a chariot (with horses?), and a king on a throne wid curtains behind him. go figure!

week 1 - update

ok.spent the weekend watching DVDs- the LOTR trilogy, Alexander, Troy and Tarzan(the Disney animation version), supplemented with The Scorpion King on television. Hope this gives me material enough to help visualize the legend of Karna(of mahabharata).

As for the story, been listenin in on it from childhood-from mom and grandma, through Amar Chitra Katha comics and of course the telly mega-serial. But all of them lack the visual detail - mostly coz starngely enuf there hasn't been any fan-fiction/art for this great Indian epic (unlike Tolkien's LOTR for which Jackson got a lot of help from supplementary art). So this is one thing i have to do from scratch- quite a mammoth task for a first time project...still lets see.

As for the feel of the film, I want the "painted" 3D modelled effect as in "Prince Of Egypt". Actually I want it to look a whole lot like POE. My Karna would physically resemble a mix of Disney's Tarzan and Dreamworks' young Moses(POE). Considering that POE was a Dreamworks SFX extravaganza, this seems a daunting task on my Desktop PC!

And since my trusted wallet is empty, I would do all this with opensource downloaded software on a 512MB, Intel PentiumP4 2.4GHz...or so I hope :-) (refer Charlies Angel Drew Barrymore's quote starting "And since my trusted lighter...")


so wht next? A trailer. Yep tht wud give me a feel of the rudimentary elements in the movie and also provide me with some enthusiasm (besides having sthg to show u folks ( though I doubt anyone is reading in on this(not tht it matters) ) ).

a new start?

ok.i admit.my blog didnt take off as planned.after languishing for so long, i think its time for a revival of these pages.
and tht calls for direction.
so here's wht i'll put up on these pages. i'll put up all the effort thts goin in to makin my animated film on the life of Karna (from Mahabharata, the great Indian epic).
this follow up will hopefully help me keep focussed (i m notorious for abadoning my projects!).

so lets kick off without much ado. - The Karna Project!

here's a render of a poster/title screen i've made:

first cut

first cut,
originally uploaded by sumandatta.

my first shot at greatness!

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

BLACK vs. SWADES

hi
i could hav made a good presentable article on this but am in no mood to write: so here's it in bits and pieces gleaned from the web. make whatever u will of it:

SWADES/BLACK: story idea

first things first. by now it seems pretty evident that Swades is based on a Kannada novel/movie. Yet the director(?) makes no mention of this ever!
(http://thatskannada.indiainfo.com/category/response/letters2.html - search for 'swades' in the page)

bhansali however proudly proclaims that his movie IS based on hellen keller's life! (http://movies.dcealumni.com/archives/is-black-based-on-helen-keller-life/)

read these:

Hello all,

Swades is a remake of Kannada movie Chigurida Kanasu. This must be an eye-opener for those who criticize Kannada movies. Returning to roots is the idea of Shivaram Karanth, which he has depicted in his other novels like "Marali Mannige", "Bettada Jeeva".

It is surprising that how Ashutosh can produce a similar story by himself in first shot unless he is capable of more than jnaana peeta award - Nobel prize.

It is very ironical that some self-esteemless Kannadigas who feel Kannada movies are of inferior standard, will see such remake movies and feel enlightened.

Those who haven't seen good movies like Chigurida Kanasu have no right to comment on Kannada films.

Also, it is very interesting to note that "Lagaan" had traces of another Kannada film "Hagaluvesha" directed by Baraguru ramachandrappa which was made 2 years earlier than Lagaan.

Swades from Chigurida kanasu - ondu KaLLatanada kathe.

How an internationally acclaimed "academy award nominated" director lifts ideas/themes even sequences from a Jnanpeeth award winning legendary writer K Shivaram karanth's novel chigurida kanasu that was made into a Kannada movie 2 years back

Writing credits nalli "K Shivarama Karantha" ra hesarilla.. no acknowledgement, thanks whatso-ever to the original kannada movie crew...how on earth can ashutosh take story/screenplay credits when K Shivaramkaranth and nagabharana deserve it.. but no media cares a damn for it...

the whole idea of Returning to the roots..the key role of Kaveriamma.. (chigurida kanasu nalli exact similar role by hero's ajji).

3 songs and their situations aaha enidenidenu (Shivarajkumar/Udit narayan) exploring his country-side singing/dancing.. yun hi chala chal raahi (Shahrukh khan/udit narayan again) exploring the same country side singing and dancing. Bandhuve O bandhuve.. yaavudo ee seLetha.. (Dr. raj calls the hero to trace his roots)Yo jo des hai tera (AR Rahman calls the hero in swades to trace his native) hero singing/dancing "aa aa ee u uu ooo kaliyONa" with kids trying to bring them to school with the heroine who is a teacher in chigurida kanasu. ditto ditto ditto in swades.. swalpa change irli anta "yeh taara woh taara" antidaane..

And above all the whole idea of the hydroelectric project/turbines to bring electricity to the village.. situations straight lifted from chigurida kanasu.. ..

BIG english papers that go about criticizing every kannada movie.. when its the other way round enenu care maadolla..

- Chandrasekaran Kalyanaraman,
'Veda Nilaya', #57, ITI Layout, Vidyapeeta,
Banashankari III Stage, Bangalore-560085.
*
Sir,

The new hindi film SWADES is based on our kannada film "CHIGURIDA KANASU" , in the film they didn't mention thanks to our jnanapeetha writer K Shivarama Karantha... THIS IS not fare... we shoould protest against it.
Y the kannada film directors and producers are not opposing this i'm not understanding...

This has to be opposed in press meeting.. I hope after seeing this , they will do that if they are real kannadigas...

cheer

- Shekhar
(http://thatskannada.indiainfo.com/category/response/letters2.html)

**********************************

moving on from the aesthetics to hard core box office collections!

SWADES:
(from planetbollywood.com)

Seven weeks total (calculated):All India 17.00 cr - 17.10 cr
Eight weeks total (calculated): All India 17.25 cr - 17.35 cr

Verdict :- The 20 to 22 crore ´Swades´ With more than 9 crores from overseas plus the total from India , ´Swades´ is a hit in Mysore circuit , above average in Bombay , Nizam and overall a good average in India is crawling to a higher status in some other circuits too .

50 days total: 27 cr

BLACK:
(from planetbollywood.com)
Two weeks total (calculated) : All India 12.35cr - 12.55 cr


Verdict :- Though the verdict is obvious and clear in many circuits for the 20 to 21 crore ´Black´ , the fact is that the movie was undersold in many territories , based on its business prospects and once we get those prices confirmed , we will give our final verdict .
Sanjay Leela Bhansali´s Amitabh-Rani starrer ´Black´is rock steady in the metros and ´A´ centres , as a comparision of the first and second collections will show . In the smaller centres the collections are again steady though on the lower side . The movie is also faring well in US and UK .

15 days total: 12 cr (excluding overseas)

According to International Business Overview Standard,
Black domestic stood at Rs 15.83 crore
overseas collections were at Rs 3.08 crore

15 days total: 18 cr

BLACK's sure to bowl over SWADES collections and rightly so!

***********************

And finally, if i may say so, at the 2005 Oscar awards, BLACK is IN! - BIG time!

read these reviews too:
http://www.nrilinks.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/BW1173.asp

interior design

http://www.i-d-d.com/interior_designer_marketing.htm
http://www.i-d-d.com/interior_designers_directory/Massachusetts_interior_designers_decorators.htm
http://www.adriennechinn.co.uk/offshoots/sovarticle01.htm

ok! so i am back.

now it isnt even two weeks gone by since i realized i didnt hav the patience to blog (well as the term goes...its a web "log" and its supposed to be "regular"...); and still, hell-bent on finding a way still to leave my words on the net, i came out wid an ingenious (at least it seemed so at tht point) solution...i collected round me a group of "us" who wont blog away by themselves unless goaded on by someone and decided to start a weekly webzine...tht way each having a deadline of a week simply HAD to deliver!

so u see it was all very well till the contributors started complaining there weren't enuf readers for the webzine...and so to motivate them (and myself of course) i decided to go around promoting the webzine ...

and after a whole week's research on webzine promotion i find all of "them" marketing gurus advising ppl to use BLOGS to promote their site and build a community around it!

so...back to square one!...seems there's no way but to blog on!

btw...check out our modest webzine VIBE at http://www.vibeindia.co.nr

get ready friends!

something BIG is coming ur way....
VIBEindia
Can u feel it???

of a minute and less ...

... and i hav my OWN "CHRONICLEs of nArNiA" NOW ... of mythical creatures - the FRND, the GRL, the Rue-ME and of course ME ...

just a wee bit of patience my friendz ... we'll get to know them soon...