"Bagheera" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15380608) was interesting up to a point. The start was good, and the evolution of the character was engaging. But then there is a point towards the end (the last 15 - 20 minutes or so) where it felt as if the writer went into auto-pilot mode. Everything just felt kind of forced. It didn't resonate as much and it felt just so rushed and kind of by-the-numbers and ended rather unsatisfactorily in a bloody mess.

#Movies #Kannada #Sandalwood

I started out thinking that "Brother" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23549436) was going to turn out to be like other Jayam Ravi movies from the recent past. And it looked that way for the first half hour or so. But then things got better 🙂

Maybe it's just the subject matter — about somebody who's constantly asked to live the way others do and to look away from what is right. Somebody who's asked to conform just because "this is how things are". And he doesn't. He never conforms. And I liked that.

Being told that people who don't follow the rules or don't do their jobs is because they know better, being told that the "system" works differently and that you'll only know if you are in the "system" — this kind of stupid attitudes (and platitudes) that are present in society and the sheer absurdity of it all resonated with me.

Then came the melodrama as usual. Most of the people in the movie don't seem to care about what is right and what is wrong. It's all about how people perceive you. They will take abuse from somebody to get a job done, but will also blame people who don't take the abuse from others. So all sorts of foolishness and hypocrisy where right does not matter and all that matters is that you conform and do what everybody else does.

And the emotional manipulation. Oh, the emotional manipulation that everybody seems to indulge in as part of daily life. I won't even go into the painful school skit that no school would have allowed.

At this point, there's a subtle (or very obvious, depending on your point of view) track change — instead of the movie being about Jayam Ravi fighting the whole world and how they think/behave, it becomes about Rao Ramesh's character and overcoming his ego. One thing I'll say though — Rao Ramesh is well suited for this kind of role, and he excels at it. Speaking of roles, I really loved Saranya's role in this movie too 🙂

But overall, this change in tracks was too jarring for me and the movie just feels as if it's directionless. They try to salvage this a bit at the very end but I'm not sure if it works or not.

#Movies #Tamil #Kollywood #ReverseDirection

I've been looking forward to "Devara" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11821912) but it turned out to be a huge disappointment overall. The movie is alright if you turn your brain off but it's nothing spectacular.

First of all, talk about jumping the shark 😛 You'll understand what I mean if you watch the movie. They've literally gone back to the origin of that phrase.

Then there's the big plot twist — it's evident where it was headed from the moment it was introduced and I mostly watched the movie to see if I was proven right. And I was.

Then there's Janhvi Kapoor's character — the most poorly-written love interest that you could probably find anywhere. I think they were looking for humour with her but it just felt stupid, and silly.

And don't get me started on the "All Hail" a la Vijay's movies .... It just felt so very overdone.

#Movies #Telugu #Tollywood #OverHyped #JumpingTheShark

@davemark Well, it gets even more complicated when you take into non-vanilla Masto/Fedi installs since you can have whatever character limits you want 😛

My instance, for example, has an 8,000 character limit. And I've seen others with even higher character limits.

Time to rebuild my follower base from Twitter on Mastodon!

I’m Vidar, founder of Street Art Utopia, curating the most inspiring street art from around the world.

Every new follower who comments here will receive a high-quality street art photo as a thank-you reply! Feel free to request a specific theme for your photo!

Editing a book on iOS development (using UIKit) at the moment — 1100+ pages. But for some reason, it has made me think about writing a book on #Flutter development 😛

Should I do it? I don't know ... But thinking about it.

#Writing #Programming #Books

@RaePatterson Reminds me of something which happened years ago to me 🙂

Was living in the US at the time and I had this co-worker who is Indian. She had this big bucket of red chillie paste or something that she couldn't use because it was too spicy for her (or at least, that's what I rememember). I loved the stuff because it hit the spot (I'm from Sri Lanka BTW). So she gave the chillie paste to me and I think I had it with food for like a month.

She was really surprised that I liked it so much 🙂But of course, that was yeara ago. Now I've toned things down a bit in terms of spice intake.

Hey friends, if you see this, could you introduce me to someone worth following on this app?

After fifteen years on that other app, it feels daunting to start again from scratch.

In Telugu cinema, Suhas seems to be so good at picking roles that are not run-of-the mill. I first noticed him in "Writer Padmabushan" which I absolutely loved. Since then, I've watched any movie that has Suhas in it. None of them have had the overly macho, beat-everyone-up-without-raising-a-sweat type of characters. Instead, they generally are different shades of the everyday-man.

"Janaka Aithe Ganaka" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32843331) is another Suhas starrer that I absolutely loved from the beginning. There's so much humour and sentiment in the movie. The family dynamics, the relationship between Suhas' character and his wife, and his friendship with Vennela Kishore — it all worked so well to make this an interesting movie.

Then came the core of the story. That too worked for me in terms of Suhas questioning the system. There were a few melodramatic moments which had me rolling my eyes, but overall the story worked for me.

And the ending? Priceless!!

#Movies #Indian #Telugu #Comedy

@davemark Nope, not just you 🙂

But I think there's a growing segment of people to whom this probably appeals. I don't agree with it and I think they are in for a rude surprise when the "intelligence" fails the spectacularly, but I also don't think they'll be swayed by any arguments.

I'm seeing at least some developers who trust implicitly in ChatGPT. Had an incident yesterday where somebody breezily told me that they fed a problem I'd been struggling with for days had an answer and that ChatGPT gave it to them. It was totally wrong and didn't even cover the scenario I was talking about 😛

But this is the world we live in now, I guess?

Haven't done much painting recently. Without too much warning, I find myself in the middle of editing the third edition of a massive 1000+ page book that I last edited 3 years or so ago. Plus, we've had to move suddenly too.

So I'm writing (or at least editing) but probably won't get back to the painting and writing till next year. I guess that's how it goes sometimes?

#Writing #Painting #Life #Busy

I'm thrilled to announce that the audiobook version of "Honest, the Martian Ate Your Dog" is now available on Audible 🙂

https://www.audible.com/pd/B0DL7S8Q24/?source_code=AUDFPWS0223189MWT-BK-ACX0-418986&ref=acx_bty_BK_ACX0_418986_rh_us

If you want to listen to a sample, you can do so on the Audible site.

#Audibook #Writing #Bookstodon #Fedibooks #SciFi #Humour
Audiobook cover for "Honest, th…

Up at 4am after the time change because I'm too stressed out to sleep.

Please please send work my way. I'm super talented and experienced in Python, data, and ML. I'm talking decades. It makes zero sense that my family and I should be on the verge of going hungry. I guess I just don't have the magical keyword combination to get the LLMs to pick up my resume. This is the dystopian future we were warned about. I'm certain of it.

#GetFediBHired
#MachineLearning
#Python
#DataScience

@davemark For general search/discovery, besides the hashtags, what you might want to try are groups:

https://a.gup.pe/

I found out about them some time back and bookmarked for looking into later but haven't actually used them 🙂

@davemark If you'd like to try a book by me, then there's the following 🙂

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099FPBP98

It's humorous science fiction — so lots of wordplay and cheeky references. Might or (might not) be your cup of tea/coffee 😛 People who read it have had kind things to say but I have no idea if it's good or not.

I'd heard good things about "Lubber Pandhu" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27007466) but since it's a cricket movie, I wasn't sure if it was going to be just a sports movie or something else. The beginning seemed to indicate that it was going to be more than "just" a sports movie 🙂

One thing I loved about the movie was the little bits of old Tamil songs that they play every often through the movie. The selections were super!

And the other thing was the humour running through the movie — not the usual slapstick comedy track which doesn't always work, but genuine moments of humour.

And the slow build up to the confrontation between the two players is really enjoyable. On one hand, you keep waiting for the confrontation, and on the other, you keep watching it build up and laugh at the little tiny events that are made so huge due to ego conflicts.

Once things erupt, the tug-of-war between ego and love is just so very beautifully depicted. The whole experience is so totally engrossing. Basically, I feel that the movie played on so many levels and it was excellent in all those levels.

With this movie and with "Meiyazhagan" it almost feels as if we are back to the heyday of Tamil movies when they actually were worth watching and were all not about shedding blood by the buckets and beating up baddies. Will the trend continue? I'd be be interested to see how this goes ...

"Black" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33298502) is interesting both in terms of being a Tamil science fiction movie and because this is probably the first one where the time travel logic actually worked 😛 There have been multiple others with time travel/time loop stories in Tamil, Telugu etc. but most of them didn't get the time travel logic right. But "Black" succeeded there and the overall story is interesting.

What I have a problem with is that the characters, as is usual in time travel movies, are idiots. They keep taking actions that move the story forward and creates conflict instead of just not doing something which they can see will cause the future that they've seen. But then again, I guess that's a fault with most time-travel movies in one way or anotehr?

#Movies #Tamil #Black #TimeTravel #ScienceFiction

@aerobender You're welcome 🙂 I haven't been very happy with Tamil movies recently because most seemed to be just hyper-violent revenge/justice dramas ....

But this was such a refreshing change. It was just one person's journey and Aravind Swamy is so brilliant in the main character. I can't say enough about his performance.

I've also heard good things about "Lubber Pandhu" and it's in my to-watch list, but I haven't watched it yet and so don't know if it stands up to the hype or not 🙂

"Meiyazhagan" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26758372) is a beautiful movie.

It starts out with so much sadness — the achingly beautiful song which accompanies the protagonist as he leaves his hometown, the little touches like the lights being turned off in the house, the protagonist picking up a leaf as a momento — these and so many other little touches contribute to the beauty of the opening.

I've lost the feeling of sadness you feel on moving house. We've moved around so much that it has become commonplace to me. But this movie brought back that feeling in spades. It was nostalgic, and a little sad.

Then there's the relationship between the protagonist and his wife. It feels so true. So close to life. I just enjoyed the conversations between them so much.

Add to that the greenery of the village, so different from all the recent movies about city life. It almost feels like a different time, a different place. So familiar, and yet not something that I can find today.

The whole movie has so many little touches which make it flow so beautifully and stirs up sentiment.

Maybe you have to be a certain age to enjoy this movie. I don't know. But I certainly did enjoy it.

#Movies #Tamil #Sentimental #Memories

I call this one "Not Just Another Brick in the Wall" ... Or maybe you'll call it a "square peg in a round hole" — even though there are no holes or pegs in view 😛

I was trying to get the idea of non-conformance to the status quo in while also getting some more practice on light and shading. Done using Adobe Fresco on an iPad.

#Painting #DigitalArt #DigitalPainting #AdobeFresco
A digital painting of a brick w…