Continuing on with the theme of Indian remakes, “Coming to America” (1988) is an interesting one since I’ve seen at least three sub-continental remakes of the movie — two Indian and one Pakistani 🙂

I’m fairly certain that there are many more movies which lifted elements from the film, but I’m talking of the ones that I distinctly remember from back then as being fairly close to the plot of “Coming to America”.

I don’t recall the name of the Pakistani movie any longer (I think I saw it in ’92 or ’93) but I do remember the Hindi and Tamil versions fairly well.

The Hindi version is “Dil Hi To Hai” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106724) — it had Jackie Shroff and Divya Bharti and I loved at least some of the songs in the movie, if I recall.

You can find “Dil Hi To Hai” on YouTube here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFPV6SdKjIw

Then, on the Tamil side, you had “My Dear Marthandan” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0254593), which starred Prabhu and Kushboo and was trying to cash in on (probably) the Prabhu/Kushboo pairing which was very hot at that time.

“My Dear Marthandan” is on YouTube here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8Pqq_dtsMA

It’s been around 30 years since I’ve seen either movie, I think. I’d love to watch them both again and see if they still hold up or not …

#Movies #Indian #Hindi #Tamil #Remakes #Bollywood #Kollywood

Today I discovered something interesting — YouTube has fairly good versions of Hindi movies from back in the 80s and 90s!

Well, I think I actually discovered this yesterday when I found “Betaab” but I didn’t actually realize this till today when I searched for “EK Ladka Ek Ladki” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0291883)

Back in the 90s, Hindi movies blatantly copied Hollywood movies (with no attribution or permission, mind you) and made their own versions. “Ek Ladka Ek Ladki” is one such movie which copies Kurt Russel & Goldie Hawn’s “Overboard” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093693).

This movie is probably responsible for getting me into Hindi movies again and for learning Hindi just so I could watch the movies 🙂

I generally never watch a movie twice (with a few exceptions) but I think I must have watched this one at least 5 times …

Oh yeah, it’s on YouTube here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSdQeh3WnkU

The last time I looked for “Ek Ladka Ek Ladki” on YouTube, the only copy I could find was a really dark and hard to watch version. So this version is certainly a find for me 🙂

This gives me an idea! Maybe I should look for other movies from the 90s that copied Hollywood movies and post about them every once in a while?

I generally love the Bollywood version to the Hollywood version of these “re-makes”. So it might be interesting to introduce more people to these versions …

#Movies #Bollywood #Hindi #Remakes #MovieHistory

Yesterday I talked of masala westerns and how I remembered Sunny Deol (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0219971) in a masala western but couldn’t remember the movie.

I thought it might have been “Joshilaay” based on a Google search but it just didn’t seem like the right movie. I even did a quick scan through a YouTube copy of the movie (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFuy-yr0E3I) and it still didn’t seem right — the look and the feel was off.

I’d had a vague recollection that Amrita Singh (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0802080) might have been in the movie I was thinking of as well, but had originally dismissed as my memory acting up.

Today I did a search for movies with Sunny Deol and Amrita Singh and found what I think is the right one — “Betaab” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0254179).

This is from way back in ’83 but YouTube has the movie (https://www.youtube.com) and the first few minutes seem to indicate that this might be the right movie 🙂

The grasslands, the log cabin, Sunny Deol putting his boots and chaps on and getting his saddle, it all points to a masala western and I think this might be the right one!

Guess I’ll be watching “Betaab” again soon?

#Movies #Bollywood #Hindi #MasalaWestern #Memories

Seeing Sunny Deol in "Chup" reminded me of the one other movie in which he was memorable to me, but I couldn’t remember the name of the movie 😛

It was a masala western.

In case you’re wondering, a masala western is an Indian movie which deals with “cowboy”/western themes, similar to Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns. Sometimes, it’s just the theme of the movie without visible “cowboy” elements, but sometimes a movie will have people riding horses, in full cowboy getup etc. I used to love these 🙂

I just learnt today (or maybe I knew this but forgot) that they are also called “curry cowboy” movies, but somehow that feels pejorative to me 😛 So I’ll stick to masala westerns, thank you very much.

Anyway, I believe the Sunny Deol movie in question was “Joshilaay” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089382) but I can’t be sure since the synopsis on IMDB doesn’t trigger any memories and I have no recollection that Anil Kapoor was in the movie I was thinking of.

All I remember is a single scene where Sunny Deol rides up on a horse in jeans, (chequered?) shrit, and maybe even a hat. And that’s all I remember now ...

But now I’d like to see another masala western … I guess it’s a dying (or dead?) breed these days?

#Movies #Bollywood #MasalaWestern #SunnyDeol

So … “Chup” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15654262) was great more than halfway through. But as they said, or as I might paraphrase, it turned out to be a movie of two halves.

The ending was horrible, not to say stupid. The investigator who was so “smart” at the beginning couldn’t see what was going on right in front of his eyes.

And then he does even more stupid things that I won’t go into. (If you want to know what they are, watch the movie 😛)

So a good movie with a good set up, but let down by some of the ending. Ah well, such is life … and movies.

#Movies #Hindi #SecondThoughts #Bollywood

It's so much fun to see Sunny Deol and Pooja Bhatt in "Chup" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15654262) …

It’s been ages since I’ve seen either of them in a movie and it’s such a trip down memory lane to see them acting again. I think the last time I saw Pooja Bhatt in a movie might have been ’98 or so and I don’t even remember when I saw Sunny Deol last, but it must have been in the early 2000’s?

The way Pooja is introduced, she says to Sunny Deol’s character, “Why are you calling me after so many years?” and I had to wonder if that was intentional, or if it accidentally mirrored how I felt about seeing them both in the movie 🙂

And Sunny introducing Pooja’s character as a member of the “Psychopath Society” — priceless. Or maybe it’s just one of those things where it makes sense only to me? 😛

#Movies #History #Bollywood #Memories

What can I say about "Chup” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15654262)?

Actually, it feels as if I can write reams and reams about the movie. In fact, I think I’ll probably end up doing at least 2 -3 posts tangentially related to the movie …

But as for the movie itself, I’m only halfway through and I’m in love with it 🙂

It’s a movie about cinema, about critics, about people, about society.

Sure, it’s also about a psychopath and about some gruesome murders, but most of that seems far removed from the rest of the movie most of the time.

Most of the movie seems perfect so far to me and the characters just sing! Well, except for one. The one misstep I felt so far was a minor character who seemed way too stupid — mostly to show how clever another character was. And that just seemed forced.

But other than that, totally loving the movie!

#Hindi #Bollywood #Movies #MiniReview #Thriller #Psychopath #SerialKiller

“Por Thozhil" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27542289) is one of the better Tamil forensic murder mysteries. Unlike what’s usual for the genre, the stupid/impossible stuff is kept to a minimum and the story actually depends on investigation and deduction rather than sheer, dumb luck.

Except for the violence and the gory murder scenes, I really enjoyed the movie.

#Tamil #MiniReview #Movie #Mystery #Suspense

“Heart of Stone” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13603966) attempts to tell a good story, but is hampered by really sloppy writing …

It’s about an “intelligence” agency which shows no intelligence at all. The whole story hangs upon agents making really stupid decisions and not seeing what is obviously right there …

Some of the storyline just makes me so angry at the stupidity of people and their reliance on “systems” that I was tempted to stop watching it several times.

Yeah, it’s that good 😛

#MiniReview #English #Netflix #Movie

The second part of Karl Guttag’s (now three part — it was originally a two-parter) series of posts on whether Apple VisionPro makes a good monitor replacement is now out:

https://kguttag.com/2023/08/09/apple-vision-pro-part-5b-more-on-monitor-replacement-is-ridiculous/

What I find interesting in reading the comments to the previous post is that there appear to be people who’ll come up with “magical” excuses for Apple when confronted with a logic-based analysis 😛

So, you say that based on current hardware and extrapolation the AVP would not display text legibly enough to be read easily by all?

Fine, I’ll counter by saying that Apple actually isn’t looking at monitor replacement at all but had to mention it just to keep people happy till they reveal their magical plans for how the AVP is to be actually used.

Or, I’ll talk about how Apple didn’t really mention that the AVP was to be a monitor replacement and so you shouldn’t talk about monitor replacement. Nevermind that some people might want to use the AVP as a monitor replacement whether Apple specifically said so or not ...

I really find this “defending” Apple thing (whether it is required or not) rather tiresome, especially when it seems a knee-jerk reaction to a perceived slight to the glory of Apple.

Other people can have different opinions. Not everybody has to like what Apple does. And you certainly can be critical of Apple while still liking/using their products. All of these things can be true at the same time.

I wish some people (or all people) understood this 🙂

#Apple #VisionPro #Analysis #Opinions #Reflections

I'm not sure where this thought came from — I think it was to do with the lengths people would go to be “accepted”.

Heels.

Do women actually like/love them? They (especially the very tall ones) seem very painful to me since they contort your feet. Plus, there’s the whole balancing act of staying on top of them.

(Ah, this reminds me where this started — it was when we watched “Fatafati” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27443234) a few days ago. Great movie, BTW.)

So again, do women really like wearing heels? And if yes, why? Can somebody (a woman and not a man theorising) please explain to me?

#Heels #Women #Fashion #TheLenghtsWeGoTo #TheHeightsWeAspireTo

Hi, I am currently looking for a new role as an iOS Developer. I would really appreciate your support in finding a new opportunity.

I have over 1.5 years of experience in developing iOS applications for world-class clients such as Paramount and NewsON. I have used Swift, UIKit, and SwiftUI to develop apps. I am enthusiastic about creating user-friendly and engaging apps that meet the expectations of clients and users.I am open to both remote and onsite positions, preferably in the Toronto area.

There are certain image generation tasks that I cannot try out without installing Sonoma — for example, use the SDXL model natively via CoreML in a Swift app, at least as far as I’m aware. (Though I must confess that I didn’t look into this too deeply …)

So I’ve been wondering about installing the Sonoma beta. But since this would be on my regular production machine (and I do development for regular work), I wasn’t really keen on the possible downtime should something go wrong or some major app I relied on didn’t work correctly on the Sonoma beta.

Beta 5 was the target that I’d set for myself. By beta 5, we should be close enough to release, and hopefully fairly stable, that I should be OK was my thinking.

And beta 5 is here now …

But I’m not sure I want to switch. Just too much going on at the moment …

So I guess I’ll keep dithering? 😛

#Apple #macOS #Sonoma #Beta

Karl Guttag had a series of articles on the Apple Vision Pro soon after it was announced, and I read them with interest since Karl goes into the hardware/technical side of things when most other people simply “Ooh” and “Aah” about the “shiny” 😛

Then there was nothing from Karl for about a month, even though Karl had promised more articles with further thoughts.

Finally, there’s a new article — part one of two — which discusses something that I’ve been very keen on — monitor replacement.

https://kguttag.com/2023/08/05/apple-vision-pro-part-5a-why-monitor-replacement-is-ridiculous/

Monitor replacement has been my goal with AR/VR from the outset. I’ve tried most of the available software solutions, but have yet to find one that really works for me.

Immersed (https://www.immersed.com/) on Quest 2 is probably the one which comes closest, in software terms, to what I wanted. And I know that Renji Bijoy and his team do use Immersed to do work on a day-to-day basis. Unfortunately, my old eyes still have issues doing work for a full day using Immersed and Quest 2 😕

To be clear, this is not an issue with Immersed. It’s just that the current hardware does not have the display resolution to display text in a way that isn’t jarring, at least for my own use.

So I was pinning my hopes on Vision Pro, but Karl seems to think that this will be just that — a hope, and not something which will turn out to be reality.

I’ll still wait to try it out myself, but at this point, I’m thinking “Maybe the next version?”

#Apple #VisionPro #MonitorReplacement #Hardware #Analysis #AR #VR

I've been testing between the latest version of InvokeAI (https://github.com/invoke-ai/InvokeAI) and ComfyUI (https://github.com/comfyanonymous/ComfyUI) and interestingly, it appears that ComfyUI is not as hard on the system as InvokeAI.

I tried the same model, LoRA, prompt, and batch size, and while the machine stayed totally fine during the ComfyUI generation (even after multiple batches), with InvokeAI, my MBP fan started going after just one set of images.

I do realize that InvokeAI is in a state of flux as they move to version 3.0, but the difference in usability is great enough that I think I’ll stick with ComfyUI for the time being …

#ImageGeneration #Python #macOS #ComfyUI #InvokeAI

If you get a chance to watch “The Collective” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23556408) save yourself some grief and give it a miss.

This was like people acting at being actors — it was horrible 😛 They mostly pose. They’d attack an enemy and then pose, then attack, and then pose. As if the heroic posing was mandatory.

And don’t get me started on the stupidity of supposed “professionals” …


#Movie #English #MiniReview #Horrible

*Ring* - it's the doorbell.

The bell rings twice more before I even get to the door.

I open the door and there’s somebody standing in the doorway of our neighbour’s apartment. The angle is such that I can’t tell if they actually have the door open and are inside the apartment or are just standing in the doorway.

I look at them inquiringly.

“Can I have your WiFi password?” they say, holding up their phone.

I’m like, “What?”

“Your WiFi password. I just want to make a call,” they say as if this was the most normal thing.

“I don’t want to give you my password,” I say and close the door.

That really was the whole interaction. I’m just flabbergasted by the whole thing still. Did they really think that I’d simply hand over access to my WiFi to somebody I didn’t know? (I don’t know my neighbours and they’ve never spoken to me before …)

Do they understand the security implications of the whole thing? Or was it an emergency (like trying to make a call without anybody else knowing for some reason)? If it was an emergency, why didn’t they tell me so?

I don’t know … But I’m still wondering …

#People #Interactions #Security #WiFi #Neighbours

I've been seeing some stuff on Reddit about how difficult it is to work with ComfyUI (https://github.com/comfyanonymous/ComfyUI) and how it doesn’t work for a bunch of people ...

So I thought it must be even harder to get it working under macOS …

But about 10 minutes of work is all I needed to install it, run it, and get my first image generated. So not sure what the issue is, but it does look as if it works fine out of the box?

#ComfyUI #Python #ImageGeneration #StableDiffusion #maCOS #Ventura

#AmazingWorld
#Edinburgh
#Scotland
Author: hiddenscotland (on IG)

#AmazingUkraine
#Carpathian
https://sl8.online/post/2QMvaA2zemxOcg3XNp0VZQUtx5l