Cloverfield's Monster Movie!

I get bored. I watch YouTube. and this is the stuff I come across...

Can Dialectics Break Bricks?

Hilarious! Hahaha...



“Imagine a kung fu flick in which the martial artists spout Situationist aphorisms about conquering alienation while decadent bureaucrats ply the ironies of a stalled revolution. This is what you’ll encounter in René Viénet’s’s outrageous refashioning of a Chinese fisticuff film. An influential Situationist, Viénet’s stripped the soundtrack from a run-of-the-mill Hong Kong export and lathered on his own devastating dialogue. . . . A brilliant, acerbic and riotous critique of the failure of socialism in which the martial artists counter ideological blows with theoretical thrusts from Debord, Reich and others. . . . Viénet’s’s target is also the mechanism of cinema and how it serves ideology.”

Mumbai After The Bombings

Saw this today morning when I woke up.... my POD airing on Current TV. Nothing much to say though...

The Camel Fair

Two years ago, when I reached Pushkar, Rajasthan on the first day of the Camel Fair, I was stunned by its grandeur and beauty. What also surprised me was the fact that there were barely any Indian tourists. Of course, everyone from the neighboring towns in Rajasthan was there, including the pilgrims who had come to visit the only Brahma temple in the world.

The small quiet town had literally transformed itself into one giant… eh… fair… with about 50000 camels, equal number of horses and ten times more people. It was also a perfect opportunity for photographers, filmmakers and journalists, with all the Rajasthani colors and flavors, and the full moon night when the pilgrims take bath in the holy lake.

This year, the dates are from Nov 2nd-6th, and I am planning a second trip. It’s hard not to, if I am in the country. Drop a word if you are reading this, and plan to be there. We could sit and chat by in the havelis and down a glass of bhang lassi one of the nights. ;)

Last time, I created several video blogs to give an idea of the atmosphere. One of them won the leaderboard in Current TV recently. You will find more in my video blog.

Machinima! Machinima!

Till now relatively unknown, Machinima films have been coming to fore for the last few months, specially after the sudden mushroom cloud of online video sites started spreading in the blogosphere. From the (semi) official website,

"As you probably learned before, machinima is filmmaking in a virtual environment. To clear things up, let's talk a bit more in detail about how machinima movies can actually be produced and what ways there are to do machinima.
Generally speaking, there a two main ways to produce a machinima movie:

Live Action Machinima

The action takes place in a networked computer game, mainly using a FPS game. Every player controls a virtual character via mouse and keyboard commands.
Each actor uses a headset with a microphone to perform dialogue, if there is any. Though, sometimes the dialogue is added later in "Postproduction".
One of the players is serving as the cameraman/-woman. His/her point of view is recorded to tape (or harddisk) and represents the "film-footage".
Most of the time, the settings and characters are taken from the game that's being used for filming.

This way of making machinima is easy to learn and feels close to "real-life" filmmaking. It has room for spontaneity and improvisation and adds that human touch to the behaviour of your actors."


A highly recommended one is Red Vs. Blue series, which is a must watch. I have been trying to figure out if I could create Machinima films using my Mac laptop, but am yet to find the right gaming engine for it. One day...