I had the pleasure of watching 'The Illusionist' recently. I must say, it was one of the finest movies that I have ever seen. However, this post isn't about the Illusionist, rather about one of the things shown in the movie. In the early stages of the movie, one morning, the protagonist walks into a restaurant to meet his agent/manager after a particularly sellout show the previous night. When the Illusionist sits down at the table, he is asked by his manager, "STRUDEL ? they are very good".


I must admit, this is the first time I've heard of the strudel. For some reason, long after the movie had passed, the strudel became stuck in my mind. So I browsed the internet for some information about it, this is what the Wikipedia had:

"A strudel is a type of sweet layered pastry that became well known and gained popularity in the Habsburg Empire.

The word itself derives from the German word Strudel, which literally means "eddy" or "whirlpool".[1] It is most often associated with Austrian cuisine, but is also a traditional pastry in the whole area formerly belonging to the Austro-Hungarian empire (for example, in Hungary it is known as Rétes, in Slovenia as štrudelj, in Czech Republic as štrúdl, in Romania as ştrudel and Slovakia as štrúdľa or závin).

The best-known kinds are Apfelstrudel (German for strudel with apple) and Topfenstrudel (with sweet Topfen cheese, a soft quark cheese)."

Now, Rekha's mom and I have a pact between us. Whenever I come across a new dish, especially one which isn't familiar in our part of the world, especially with her, I research it and turn over all the information, photos, including the recipe to her. For my efforts, she'll make the said dish promptly and give me the first taste before anyone else has a go at it. A nice arrangement, don't you think? Well, Rekha doesn't think so. Hmph! Party pooper, I know why she isn't happy about me hobnobbing with her mother - Mostly, she doesn't get the first taste, that's why.

Rekha's Mom is very good at sweets, desserts and baking, especially cakes and pastries. I know, cos' I'm living proof of her skill in turning out fantastically delicious treats from her commercial-sized kitchen oven. Rekha is actually considering breaking off our friendship because I am getting too fat eating her mother's cooking. Goddamn beautiful skinny girls and their diets, let me have my pastry!

I gave the woman a recipe for the classic Apple Strudel, inspired by Ms.Paula Deen, from the Food Network website. The recipe is detailed, yet ridiculously easy to follow and churn out golden glazed Apple Strudels.

Continue reading the full recipe for Apple Strudel at the DeliciouslyD blog...

Genre : Drama, Mystery, Romance, Thriller
Director : Neil Burger
Music : Philip Glass
Cast : Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, Jessica Biel, Rufus Sewell
Release Date : September 1, 2006
Run Time : 110 min

Storyline:
A young boy in Vienna who is obsessed with learning the art of magic falls in love with a girl who belongs to Austrian royalty. Although the parents forbid them to see each other, they cannot be split apart. Until one day they were found together and separated, causing the boy to leave. He travels the world to learn all that he can of the magic arts. The boy comes back to Vienna, 15 years later, and becomes famous as Eisenhiem the Illusionist. During one of his shows, he meets up with Sophie, his childhood love, who is now the Duchess Sophie, engaged to the Crown prince of Austria, Leopold. When Sophie tells him that her engagement to the prince is not of her choice, and that she still loves him, Eisenheim plots to be with her, even daring to take on the power of the Crown.

The Point is...
A wonderfully acted, nicely polished piece of entertainment, but not made with the passion and drama it deserves. It's hard to say exactly whats missing - the performances are very good, especially Edward Norton is amazing, as well as Giamatti. With an outstanding score by Philip Glass, it is entertaining in an old-fashioned, mystery type of way, and it's beautifully shot. This film will not make cinematic history, win an academy award or even be lauded by the critics, but when compared to the majority of films out there right now, it stands out as good solid entertainment. It does what Hollywood does best, taking you away from all the tiresome simplifications of complex everyday worldly issues and letting you escape, enjoy yourself for an hour and fifty minutes.

Read the full review of 'The Illusionist' at the Popcorn & Cola blog...

Genre : Action, Thriller, Romance.....I don't know, I'm really confused
Director : A.Rajasekar
Music : Harris Jeyaraj (unbelievably bad score)
Cast : Vishal Reddy, Kota Srinivasa Rao, Upendra, Nayantara(why she is in this movie, i'll never understand) and many insignificant characters played by Sudha Chandran, Senthil, Bhramhanandam etc


Storyline
A honest cop who has a bad habit of spewing idiotic dialogues and being accompanied by cheesy 'heroic' background score, has to capture an assassin who keeps killing a line-up of chief minister hopefuls one by one. Along the way, he also has to battle and mouth more dialogues against corrupt politicians, while trying to look clever in his attempts to do so. In the midst of all that, the hero also finds time to strike up a romance with a heroine with whom he has absolutely no chemistry, sing and dance like a fucking idiot in a line-up of crap songs and also do a supposedly comedic scene lifted straight from an earlier super hit Tamil film.

The Point is
Absolute waste of Rs.150 and three hours of my life. If you must watch this piece of crap, download it from the internet.

If you still dare, read the full review of 'Satyam' at the 'Popcorn & Cola' blog...

yours truly, RA

Rekha just came back from Hyderabad, after being gone for a very long 2 week vacation. I was very happy to see her yesterday at her house, I had been waiting for her return, no, scratch that! I had been lusting for her return. No, not because she is absolutely fucking beautiful, that she is, I tell you. I believe that she can make even God follow her around like a lovesick puppy. By all that is holy, that woman shouldn't be allowed to show her face in public: her beauty is a menace to society. Whew! I've gotten far off the point already, haven't I ?

For the first time in my life, I was not interested in a woman, supernatural beauty or otherwise. I was in desire for what she brought back from Hyderabad. Two weeks ago, when she left for her vacation, she promised me that she would bring a big batch of Pootharekulu for me. You see, her grandma, who is something of a cooking legend in her vast-enough-to-fill-a-small-country family, makes some of the best Pootharekulu in the world. And I'm not exaggerating this time.

Continue reading more about Pootharekulu and the full recipe for it at the DeliciouslyD blog...

yours truly, RA

I have been writing my novel for a loooong time now, since the past 4 years. And I'm still on the second chapter. Don't get me wrong though, I was almost in the final quarter of the novel before I decided that the whole story was crap and tore the damn thing up. It wasn't anything new, or i the least bit interesting. I am re-writing the whole book now, with a completely new snappy storyline.

I keep looking at photos - of celebrities, movie stars, sports personalities, and also normal, everyday people like me and you. It has become somewhat of an obsession - Why? No, I'm not a voyeur. Because I eventually take inspiration for the physical characteristics of my Novel's characters from the people in those photos. That said, I was looking for such an inspiration for one of my principal characters when I came across this:

All rights for the above photos belong to Ms.Sharanya Rao.
You can view Ms.Sharanya Rao's photography on her flickr photostream,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/enamor/

I couldn't believe it, this woman was perfect for my character, Ramya. In fact, the woman in the above photos is a better fit than I ever imagined. Ramya, the character in question is a headstrong, confident woman in the murky waters of Indian Politics, yet a relative newcomer. She has a very innocent face and demeanor, but possesses a razor sharp, cunning mind and isn't averse to use people and situations to her advantage in whatever way she sees fit. And yeah, she has a not-so-pleasant past (this makes a character much more interesting, don't you think? Ah! the things you can subject the character to...).

yours truly, RA

Real love, real affection.


Touching Story - The best home videos are here

This ad is beautiful , I loved it. Really powerful and touching.

Why does this Advert reach out ?
1. Simple concept
2. Play on strong human emotions
3. Haunting background score
4. Features actors resembling normal people in everyday life

There are many more reasons for the success of this advert, but I am only able to think of the above at short notice. I really am glad that the people behind this advert did not use a "Celebrity" or a "Glamorous" model to preach about the Awareness of Cancer. There are one too many public service advertisements where celebrities strut around on TV blabbering about the awareness of the subject in question. In these times where anyone who is deemed a celebrity has been overexposed in the media, the power of celebritydom has lost its ability to capture attention.

The above advertisement for Cancer awareness uses the common man concept and the innocence of childhood, ably bolstered by a haunting background score, to put together a really fantastic story, which will tug at your heartstrings. The Indian Admakers can take an inspiration or two from Adverts like this. Instead of just propping up whatever celebrity they can afford and make them mouth a few lines, they ought to back their creative departments and tell them to show some....uh...creativity.

yours truly, RA

With all the destruction that religion directly or indirectly causes, any sane person with a shred of common sense would think that it is better for the whole world really, to keep their religious beliefs and convictions, however stupid they may be, confined to their private lives. A living, breathing human with at least some common sense would know that religion, whatever it may be, does nothing to add value to the betterment of human lives, and all it does is give a mighty great million and one reasons for ignorant, amoral, hate monging, opportunistic fuckers to destroy things and get their 15 minutes on national television. And the fucking man in the prissy embroidered white robe, the ridiculous pointy hat and staff* is included in this too.

To add to this cesspool of regressive, disgusting, rotting pool of worms comes a blatantly concocted 'modern' religion - Scientology. This is a religion, not recognized of course, whose 'creator', L.Ron.Hubbard, the immensely criticized Science Fiction writer, famously stated -

"Writing a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, he would start his own religion".

This is the only thing he ever said that makes any kind of sense. I suppose every religion on earth started out this way, as a way for opportunists to make money.

Religion itself is all a bunch of lies and beliefs that do not practically matter in the real world. But this Scientology crap is really out there, and on top of it they've got celebrities like John Travolta, Tom Cruise and Family and more to endorse it as a legitimate, reasonable religion. I mean, come on.... how fucking stoned out of your mind do you have to be to actually believe in this pack of bullshit ? How retarded do you have to be ?

Freedom of religion, yes, even believing in something as retarded as religion, is all well and good, but Scientology is actually taking it too far. You know, Douglas Adams in his best selling sci-fi comedy series, "The Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy" actually is a lot more believable than fucking Scientology.

This clip from one of the episodes of Boston Legal, the award winning Legal Comedy/Drama series on ABC, debunks scientology for the farce that it is. And it does it in its own style, freaking hilarious.



(Clip is from Boston Legal Season 3 Episode 5 - Whose God is it anyway?)
* If you've still not got it, its the pope.

Now, this is what I would call an opening sequence, absolutely incredible. Video game makers have made the trailer and the always craved opening sequence something of an art form. I tell ya, they keep getting better and better, while the ones who are supposed to excel in this, Hollywood, have completely lost the plot. If Hollywood cannot hold audience attention for a trailer spanning a couple of minutes, what hope is there for the movie? Seems the movie industry can take a few cues from the gaming industry.

Well, this trailer from Blizzard's Starcraft 2 (official cinematic trailer) is one of the best I've seen, yet, except for the fucking idiotic cigar smoking bit even with the helmet locked on towards the end.

Being a person possessing a mind of somewhat creative bent, notwithstanding the fact that I work in the wonderful world of Branding, I am quite peeved at myself that I didn't think of this much earlier. Last Friday, during the course of browsing the web for some creative inspiration, I came across this cracker of a post from Jane on her blog 'dearjanesample'.

Jane had this 'obvious but never realized' idea to keep track of all the brands she interacts with on a typical Friday. It is one of these ideas that every modern blogger stumbles upon and is really mad at themselves for not coming up with this on their own. In fact, this method is quite interesting to take note of all the brands you encounter on a daily basis. It is in fact, quite astonishing to see how many brands we use in the course of a typical day.

The toothbrush you use? Google? Your breakfast? The cigarettes you smoke? Your soap? Try to think of all the brands you encounter everyday. Your computer brand is quite obvious, but do not be surprised to see a staggering number of logos surrounding you that you aren't necessarily are aware of. As a matter of rule, we do tend to take a lot of things for granted when they are so deeply rooted into our subconscious.

Creating a list of logos I interacted with in a timeline was quite eye-opening since I now see what brands obviously get a lot of attention (meaning - A load of cash into their bank accounts) and it was really surprising to realize how many brands I didn’t think about at all!

This 'list' would serve as a visual representation of your typical day in 'Brand Terms'. In branding and advertising parlance, its called a Brand Timeline Portrait. I chose Saturday, the following day of reading Jane's post, and as I was creating the list it became pretty clear to me that this thing was going to take quite a bit of time (its a very long, long list of logos). But it also served as a reaffirmation of my personality traits as it does reveal a lot about me.....

A Day in Brands - My Brand Timeline Portrait
(click on the images for a larger view)














I think we can have some fun with this, I urge everyone who reads this post to draw up their OWN DAY IN BRANDS. It’s fun and who knows what will turn up?

So if you have your own blog, post your Brand Timeline Portrait and just make a link back to my story.