Sunny Deol drilled his name in Bollywood's action history when he uprooted a tube well with only his 2.5 kg arms, to ward off attacking Pakistanis, in the superhit Gadar: Ek Prem Katha. Now Sylvester 'Rambo' Stallone tries to do a Sunny in his first Bollywood flick Kambakkht Ishq.
This video is making quite a wave on the World Wide Web and some males (and a few females) wish they had been born a Hardee's Western Bacon Thickburger. First the ad, the gyan can come later.
Download video [00:01:01 FLV 1.20 MB]
Download hi-res video [00:01:01 AVI 4.36 MB]
Download for mobile [00:01:01 3GP 1.11 MB]
Created by the Los Angeles-based advertising agency, Mendelsohn|Zien, the ads are supposed to start running from March 30. And the ex-Mrs Rushdie was chosen because of what she wrote in her 2007 cookbook Tangy, Tart, Hot and Sweet (maybe also because of her speciality in what is described as 'food porn':I…started wolfing down bacon Western cheeseburgers after school at Carl's Jr. The sublimely pleasurable taste of bacon…was further enhanced by its mingling with the barbecue sauce, greedily licked off as it dripped down my teenage fingers.
A "tradition of pairing beautiful women with decadent burgers," that's how they describe it. In 2005 they had put together a raunchy ad for a burger, that didn't initially look like one for a burger (resembled a professionally made soft-porn trailer), with Paris Hilton (who else?).
Download video [00:01:00 FLV 1.36 MB]
Before lustily globbling up the burger Padma Lakshmi had, back in 2004, served herself as the 'Dish of the Day' [Text | Image] against which some people has raised objections that were later rejected by the Advertising Standards Authority.
When I joined my first job, here in Delhi, one of the landmarks that I initially noticed near my office was the ECE House at Kasturba Gandhi Marg. It instantly brought to mind that unforgettable jingle "Bhool na jana, ECE bulb lana. (Don't forget, get ECE blub).Gufi Kanwarjit Paintal, (best known for his role of Shakuni Shikhandi in Mahabharat, the TV series) is leaving for work and his wife in the ad reminds him to get an ECE bulb and on the way everyone - the maid, neighbours, bus passengers, Udipi restaurant owner, a Parsi bawa, dhobi, a Bengali lady - also do. Finally he manages to stammer "B..bb..bulb" to the shopkeeper.
Watch:
Download video [00:01:04 FLV 1.38 MB]
Download hi-res video [00:01:04 AVI 5.43 MB]
Download for mobile [00:01:04 3GP 1.19 MB]
This TVC had the multi-lingual flavour akin Mile Sur Mera Tumhara, with atleast five languages - Hindi, Marathi, Gujrati, Bhojpuri and Bengali - used (though this ad predates the much-loved national integration song by quite a few years).
The lines in Bengali "Bhoolbe naa, niye esho bulb, ECE bulb" sound extra sweet. And as a kid I relished the part where the bulb lights up in Paintal's hand.
Truck graffiti make long rides on the highway more interesting. Even the title of last year's hit Singh is Kinng (I didn't enjoy the movie much) was inspired by what Akshay Kumar saw on the back of a truck.
Noticed this a few days back on NH8. Pleased to see that trucks are also spreading messages against social evils.
Kanya bhrun hatya karaoge to dulhan kahan se laoge?
[If you get the female foetus killed, from where shall you get a bride (for your son)?]
Trucks travel across the country and truck art is an effective medium of communication.
The family planning slogan Hum do hamare do (We two, our two) was quite popular with the truckwallahs.
Even the corporates are using truck art as an advertising platform.
And someone read this on the back of a truck (bad spelling is good fun):
Put deeper at night.
Bored of being limited within the confines of my workplace or home (though I have Wi-Fi) and the uninspiring internet on my mobile phone, I wanted to break free. Therefore, after some thought (many people had advised me against the idea), I got myself a mobile internet connection - Idea NetSetter.
Idea had entered the data card market recently and has some lucrative tariff on offer. Since my mobile telephone connection is also from Idea, I preferred to stick to the same provider (other reasons are explained lower in the post).
What it promises:
Many readers would be aware of this, but evidently many others aren't. Therefore this post.
If you use your netbook/ultra-portable laptop only for surfing the internet and/or other less resource intensive functions and don't multi-task then you could give this a miss.
But if you, like me, try to extract the maximum of of the little thing (bachche ki jaan nahin le raha hoon), you might have experienced that the little machine often acts sluggish (expecially if you are using one with Windows XP or worse Vista) while running multiple applications simultaneously.
Not to worry, this 6-step (depending on your view settings) process might make things a little smoother. This is for netbookers who prefer performance over appearance.
Instructions for Windows XP only (don't have access to a Vista machine. All friends and colleagues have gone back to XP. But it should be similar)
If you are on Category view
1. Click on the Start menu button
2. Click on Control Panel
3. Click on the Performance and Maintainence link
4. Click on the Adjust visual effects link (under Pick a task)
5. Choose the Adjust for best performance radio button
6. Press OK
If you are on the Classic View
1. Click on the Start menu button
2. Click on the Control Panel on the menu
3. Click/double click on System
4. Click on the Advanced tab
5. Click on the Setting button under Performance
6. Choose the Adjust for best performance radio button
7. Press OK
What Windows does is that it compromises on the resources utilised to give you the looks and you back to what many of us refer to as the Windows 98 appearance, and therefore delivers a better performance with more juice left for the applications to swim in.
I have done it even for my relatively more powerful desktops (both at home and at work). And life with Windows is a little better.
I'm yet to watch the movie. Intend to do that over the weekend. There are too many things happening out here, for me to sit back and watch a film in leisure.
The concept is appealing, and the bits that I viewed, while converting it, displayed some decent work in animation. Simple can be a lot of fun.
Since in a welcome move the creator of the film Nina Paley has shared it under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License, I'm putting it up here and in different formats to suit different needs.
Watch Sita Sings the Blues:
Low resolution FLV for slower connections
Watch high resolution MP4 for faster connections
Watch high resolution AVI for faster connections
Download Sita Sings the Blues
Download video [01:17:59 FLV 117 MB]
Download hi-res video [01:17:59 MP4 353 MB]
Download hi-res video [01:17:59 AVI 355 MB]
Download for mobile [01:17:593GP 83 MB]
Alternatively you can download the files from Archive.org
Download [MP4 1.3 GB] Best Quality
Download [MP4 339 MB]
Download [OGV 337 MB]
About the film:
Sita is a Hindu goddess, the leading lady of India's epic the Ramayan and a dutiful wife who follows her husband Rama on a 14 year exile to a forest, only to be kidnapped by an evil king from Sri Lanka. Despite remaining faithful to her husband, Sita is put through many tests.
Nina (the filmmaker Nina Paley herself) is an artist who finds parallels in Sita's life when her husband - in India on a work project - decides to break up their marriage and dump her via email.
Three hilarious Indonesian shadow puppets with Indian accents - linking the popularity of the Ramayan from India all the way to the Far East - narrate both the ancient tragedy and modern comedy in this beautifully animated interpretation of the epic.
In her first feature length film, Paley juxtaposes multiple narrative and visual styles to create a highly entertaining yet moving vision of the Ramayan. Musical numbers choreographed to the 1920's jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw feature a cast of hundreds: flying monkeys, evil monsters, gods, goddesses, warriors, sages, and winged eyeballs.
A tale of truth, justice and a woman's cry for equal treatment. Sita Sings the Blues earns its tagline as "The Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told."
About the filmmaker:
Nina Paley (b. May 3, 1968, Champaign, Illinois, USA) is a longtime veteran of syndicated comic strips, creating Fluff (Universal Press Syndicate), The Hots (King Features), and her own alternative weekly Nina's Adventures. In 1998 she began making independent animated festival films, including the controversial yet popular environmental short, The Stork. In 2002 Nina followed her then-husband to Trivandrum, India, where she read her first Ramayan.
This inspired her first feature, Sita Sings the Blues, which she animated and produced single-handedly over the course of five years on a home computer.
Nina teaches at Parsons School of Design in Manhattan and is a 2006 Guggenheim Fellow.
A transcript for the film is available here.
Stills:
View large slideshow
The most popular posts on Cutting the Chai posted in February 2009:
1. The Best of AR Rahman Isspecial
2. Emosanal Attyachar 'X-Rated' Version
3. The Best Men's Magazines in India Isspecial
4. MTNL 3G Jadoo: Rs 75 for a YouTube video
5. Join the Pink Chaddi Campaign
This post is dedicated to all the Bullet wallahs out there (not necessarily members of the club) and one biker-blogger in particular.Download video [00:00:57 FLV 1.33 MB]
Download hi-res video [00:00:57 AVI 2.29 MB]
Download for mobile [00:00:57 3GP 1.21 MB]
Yeh Bullet meri jaan
Manzilon ka nishaan
Zindagi ek safar
Chalna shaam-o-sahar
Iski raftar ki
Baat hain aur hi
Lambi raahon pe
Ye kya gazab ki chale
Raaste taye kare
Faasle taye kare
Ye Bullet...
Enfield Bullet
Ghazab ki sawari.
This song is embedded into my mind right from childhood. The music has a distinct qawwali feel complete with the harmonium (though the instrument isn't desi and was actually banned by All India Radio for being inappropriate for Indian classicial music), tabla, claps and all.
If you ride a Bullet or are just a Bullet aficionado (like me), I suggest you set it as your ringtone. Here's the stuff
Download ringtone [MP3 901 KB 00:00:57 128kbps Stereo 44 kHz]
I've tons of Enfield Bullet ads on me. Have to take out some time to put them all together (I work hard for these posts).
