Raja's read only memories

A trigger-happy imbecile opened fire indiscriminately inside an American movie hall during the screening of the movie The Dark Knight Rises , killing at least a dozen viewers and injuring many more. This directs the spotlight on an age-old conundrum related to cinema: should violence ever be part of it? For the motion What we see is what we get Nothing makes a case for the exclusion of violence from cinema better than the acronym in computer terminology WYSIWIG (what you see is what you get). This statement is not without its empirical evidence. That visual stimulus, in concordance with its other forms, can make a lasting impact on the sub-conscious, the portion of our mind that functions even when we are physically inactive (Think the Pavlov’s dog experiment), has been well documented. Depending on the information that we feed our brains, our thinking processes can undergo irreversible deformations. Feed violence and you would, in all likelihood, receive the same. Let us take t...

                 Movie Name: Billa-2 (A)    Language: Tamil Cast: Ajith Kumar, Vidyut Jamval, Parvathy Omanakuttan, Brunah Abdullah Director: Chakri Toleti      Pros: Ajith's stellar performance; fast-paced narration; mind-blowing stunts and a gripping climax Cons: Originality takes a hit — stay away if you are awash with the gangster flicks of Hollywood, notably Martin Scorsese flicks or Coppola’s The Godfather ; mind-numbing violence Imagine, if you can, a home-grown don who answers to David Billa (known in Bollywood as Don), who, during a police encounter gets gunned down; the police get hold of his doppelganger, make him infiltrate his gang, and after a cat-and mouse game spanning locales in Malaysia, bring them to justice. Imagine, if you still can, the focus shifting to Billa’s chronology; his rise to the top of the food chain, a la ...

Worldspace Radio's abrupt termination of services left behind a void in music aficionados. However, Carnatic classical music listeners may have reason for cheer as the RJs of its Carnatic music channel team up again - this time for an online avatar El Classico : The RJs of RadioWeb Carnatic               by Rajagopalan Venkataraman Bangalore: Commonality of interests was what R Mahadevan, radio jockey and former director of Shruti, the Carnatic music channel on Worldspace Satellite Radio, and A S Krishnan, former employee at Wipro Technologies, discovered when they met on a social networking website one-and-half years ago - a passion for Carnatic music. Now directors and co-founders of RadioWeb Carnatic, an online Carnatic music radio channel that has been running for a few weeks now, the duo was driven by the desire to create a user-friendly website. Work on the site started about nine mont...