The Boondock Saints aka Ashwini Kumarargal

Two brothers - fraternal twins - deeply religious become accidental heroes when they kill a mafia muscle. They see it as their true calling and work their way up the mafia food chain. An FBI agent is on their case from the beginning and becomes their number one fan. At some stage they start targeting all of society's filth and are joined in their efforts by a friend/comic relief and a senior vigilante. The story culminates in a truly escapist ending where they do away with the mafia chief in a courthouse and escape into notoriety with the FBI agent's help. They can be in any town and cleanse that town of evil.

The film looks brilliant whenever Willem Dafoe is in the scene. It slides into mediocrity otherwise. The ending is way too predictable for the build-up it has going towards it.

This is another film idea for the story starved Kollywood junta.

I present Ashwini Kumarargal - brothers out to heal the society. This is my kollywoodization of 'The Boondock Saints'. It has been a while since we saw one of those vigilante movies made popular by S.A.Chandrasekharan and his kin in the 80s. It is time for one of those heroine-less scripts to grace our cinema halls - all action - no nonsense. An item number is acceptable and in fact welcome. Maybe the brains behind Captain Prabhakaran and Pulan Visaranai can do this one. The only problem being the open invitation for Captain Vijaykanth to become part of the movie. This in turn means that Captain will have to do the role of Willem Dafoe - the FBI/CBI agent who goes after the vigilantes. Well, all this is nice but Willem Dafore doesn't play just any FBI agent. He plays a flamboyant openly gay FBI agent and also cross-dresses at one stage. Can Captain pull this off? Will we survive to review the movie if that happens. What am I doing here? I just suggested that Vijaykanth play a gay character. Thappu Thappu. Maybe we should rope in a lady to play this role albeit a straight lady super cop. I am spinning the roulette wheel here... and it stops with Tabu. Unless Vijayashanthi is planning a comeback. Bharath, Arya, Prasanna, Jeeva, Jayam Ravi... pick any two - they can be the chief protagonists with a equally young comedian sidekick. What say?

If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?

In the business world, the unanimous answer seems to be 'yes'. I came across this instance of plagiarism through itwofs.com. This is the bizarre case of blogger inji pennu vs. the portal kerals.com. It starts off as a 'simple' case of publishing unauthorized content and a complaint towards that but takes a nasty turn with a thamizhan against malayali angle thrown in for good measure. I went through most of the long post and was left flabbergasted at the chronology of events. This is truly bizarre.

The original post (albeit a lengthy one) can be found at

http://myinjimanga.blogspot.com/2008/06/stealing-threat-cyber-stalking-abuse.html

Hinduism hits late night television in the US

Political satirist, Colbert in his trademark style helps highlight the universal acceptance that is in this religion's core. No guilt. No sin. Just be who you are. Listening to Steven Carrel, whose roots are similar to Colbert's and in fact they are ex-colleagues from the Daily Show, their brand of humor was made to clear to me. These fake journalists portray themselves as jerks so that people will listen to the more saner person in the interview. Mainstream audience might be prejudiced to begin with against the people being interviewed. So, while Colbert makes silly comments and jokes around, the interviewee can get away with putting across his or her point to the audience. Not a bad strategy.

Thanks to helloji.wordpress.com for the original post to this video.

Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight

In one of his early movies, Vivek keeps repeating "Enna oru sindhanai!". One such sindhanai is "Accident aanaa Ambulance varum, Ambulance-ukke accident aana? Enna oru sindhanai!" Here, a brain expert suffers from a brain stroke and has an esoteric experience observing the way her brain is shutting off different functions one by one. Having recovered, twelve years hence, Dr. Taylor narrates her now famous stroke of insight.

Remembering Kalpana Chawla

Memoria

• Asteroid 51826 Kalpanachawla, one of seven citations named after the Columbia's crew^[18]
• On February 5 2003, India's Prime Minister announced that the meteorological series of satellites, "METSAT", will be renamed as "KALPANA". The first satellite of the series, "METSAT-1", launched by India on September 12 2002 will be now known as "KALPANA-1". "KALPANA-2" is expected to be launched by 2007.^[19]
• 74th Street in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City has been renamed 74th Street Kalpana Chawla Way in her honor.
• The University of Texas at Arlington (where Chawla obtained a Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering in 1984) opened a dormitory named in her honor, Kalpana Chawla Hall, in 2004.^[20]
• Kalpana Chawla Award award was instituted by the government of Karnataka in 2004 for young women scientists^[21]
• The girls hostel at Punjab Engineering College, is named after Kalpana Chawla. In addition, an award of INR twenty five thousand, a medal, and a certificate is instituted for the best student in Aeronautical engineering department^[22]
• NASA has dedicated a super computer to Kalpana.^[23]
• One of Florida Institute of Technology's student apartment complexes, Columbia Village Suites, has halls named after each of the astronauts, including Chawla.
• NASA Mars Exploration Rover mission has named seven peaks in a chain of hills, named the Columbia Hills, after each of the seven astronauts lost in the Columbia shuttle disaster, including Chawla hill after Kalpana Chawla.
• Steve Morse from the band Deep Purple created a song called "Contact Lost" in memory of the Columbia tragedy along with her interest in the band. The song can be found on the album, "Bananas".^[24]
• Kalpana Chawla has inspired several young Indians aspiring to be astronauts. ^[25]
• Her brother, Sanjay Chawla, remarked "To me, my sister is not dead. She is immortal. Isn't that what a star is? She is a permanent star in the sky. She will always be up there where she belongs."^[26]

 

Source: Answers.com