A glass of steaming milky syrupy tea is best served cut. One by two or two by three, it embodies the spirit of sharing and camaraderie (and more significantly a resource crunch). Come, have a sip.
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.
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.
I was afraid, very afraid. Given the abusive reviews that friends and colleagues who had watched the movie, I couldn't muster up enough courage venture into the theatre to watch Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag. I was waiting for the movie to release. After the awesome tribute to Godfather in Sarkar, I believed that Ramu would go a few steps higher with his remake of the 1975 blockbuster. But then this tribute to Sholay won't feature well on RGV's CV.
Disillusioned, I resorted to watching another remake of the Sholay (there have been many) on DVD. This one didn't have any naming woes and was titled, quite appropriately, Duplicate Sholay. There are duplicates all around and as a bonus you also have duplicates of Mithun Chakraborty, Sanjay Dutt and Sunny Deol. There are some other twists and turns which were absent in the asli Sholay. Needless to say, that you needn't watch this movie (I watched it in fast forward). But for those who had the misfortune of having to sit through RGV Ki Aag, please watch and let me know of the comparative rating. Maybe the producers of Duplicate Sholay might just re-release the movie and earn better returns than Ramu did.
For the impatient souls, here are some select shots from Kanti Shah's Duplicate Sholay (2002):
Ever since I got my new mobile phone I found a new way to keep myself entertained on the long journey to and from work - by watching movies. Though the idea of watching a 70mm film with Dolby and the works on a tiny 320x240 pixel screen may not appeal to all, I've found it to be worthwhile pastime.
But the problem was to find the right format to play on the cell. I had downloaded a few clips from the Internet, while a few played fine, the others didn't. Though the manual says that the mobile (LG KG300 Dynamite) supports MP4 and 3GP playback, not all videos in that format are necessarily playable. Higher-end mobiles face fewer of these problems as they support a much wider range.
After some permutations and combinations and thanks to the super software called Super (Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer), I could convert some DVDs which would play on my tiny screen. Though the web is full of 3GP conversion software, nothing worked, while Super did a decent job for free.
Since my needs were limited to my phone model, I didn't try what was best for other phones. Though I played one of the movies on my colleague's Motorockr and it played fine (and now she wants some movies of her choice converted). The only hitch is that the best resolution that Super provides for the combination of codecs which play fine on my mobile is 176x144, therefore the videos pixelate a little while playing on a 320x240 screen, but not to a very noticeable extent (you might overcome that I bit by increasing the video bit rate). Since the audio is encoded in AMR Narrow-Band the quality is not very high and is mono. But on the positive side, a standard two-and-a-half hour long Hindi movie will fit into 150mb. Though files in RealMedia are known to be even smaller, but pity my phone doesn't support that.
The codec combination that I used to convert my videos on Super (playable on LG KG300 and other phones) was:
Output container: 3gp (Nokia/NEC/Siemens) Video codec: H.263 Audio codec: AMR Narrow-band
Other details can be found in the screenshot below:
Ideally I would've liked to know of the ideal conversion settings for the MP4 format, but still haven't been able to figure that out. If I do, you'll find that posted here.
If anyone knows of a better software or of a better way if going about doing it, please do let me know.
You might not always have DVDs or VCDs around to convert and feed your mobile phone with. But there are plenty of places online from where you can find good quality videos to download from. One of the sources that I particularly like (for the quality combined with compactness) is Stage6.DivX.com. Though DivX allows downloads from their site, but it is through the DivX player. There's no explicit direct download link.
I hunted around a little and found a shortcut to directly download DivX videos (many others would've also discovered that). Here's a 'How to Download Videos from Divx/Stage6':
1. Go to stage6.divx.com 2. Identify the video that you want to download 3. Right click on the thumbnail and 'Copy Link Location' (on Firefox) or 'Copy Shortcut' (Internet Explorer), alternatively you can left click on the thumbnail and copy the URL from the address bar 4. The URL would be something like: http://stage6.divx.com/The-Last-Stop/video/1361844/My-Favorite-Brunette 5. Copy the numerical id of the video. In our example it is 1361844 5. Insert the id into this URL (replacing the asterisks): http://video.stage6.com/*/*.divx 6. Your final URL now becomes (as per our example): http://video.stage6.com/1361844/1361844.divx 7. To download the file (in DivX format) you can paste the URL into the browser address bar and press enter or let your download manager take care of the downloading.
Occasionally there are errors while downloading multiple files simultaneously from the site, therefore it is preferable to download one at a time. To play the videos you can play it on the DivX player or the very utilitarian VLC media player (which plays multiple formats which most other popular media players don't).
Else, you can convert the downloaded videos on to your preferred format using Super (with many options) or Audio/Video To Exe (very handy and lightweight but minus the customisation options of Super). It is preferable to keep both the free media converters on your PC as often what one cannot do, the other performs seamlessly.
If your movie is split over multiple files, it is preferable that you merge them into a single file before going for the conversion process, so that you enjoy uninterrupted viewing pleasure. 123 Audio Video Merger is a nice and easy freeware utility to care of the video merging process. But it might have some issues while merging multiple vob files.
I'll try to upload more movies which are now in the public domain (I like to play it safe) in mobile compatable formats under a newly created category on this blog - Movies for Mobiles.
Having stayed in the heart of India, Madhya Pradesh, for over two years (been visiting right form my childhood) and travelling quite extensively all over the state, I find this wonderful advertisement for tourism in MP all the more appealing.
So far have been to Jabalpur, Bilaspur (then MP), Bhopal, Indore, Ratlam, Sehore, Bhimbetka, Maihar, Bhojpur, Pachmarhi, Sanchi and of course, Khajuraho (twice over). Enjoy the multi-splendours of Madhya Pradesh in this bioscope of an ad.
Behta paani jhilmil dekho Dharmon ki mehfil dekho Hindustan ka dil dekho… Ta thaiya taa…
(Come prepared Madhya Pradesh The heart of Incredible !ndia)
Speaking of bioscopes, there is a documentary on The Bioscopewallah by Prashant Kadam. I've heard a lot about the film but haven't watched it yet.
Update:(June 28, 2007) The popularity of the aforementioned TVC has led to a print campaign which essentially showcases the ingredients of the TVC in a comic strip format (with a few additional places added): [Click on images for a larger view]
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 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.
