movie soundtracks ...

as i write this, i am listening to itzhak perlman play some movie classics in cinema serenade. it was a delight listening to perlman's violin performing some of the great movie soundtracks of all time - and i started thinking about my favorites (movie themes, soundtracks, musicals) ........ here are a few of them, in no particular order:

Dr. Zhivago - Lara's theme rocks!

Chariots of Fire - the soundtrack is excellent but vangelis' main theme steals the show

Cinema Paradiso - the main theme is intoxicating - keeps playing again and again in your mind ...

The adventures of Robin Hood (1938) - starring Eroll Flynn and Olivia de Haviland - Erich Korngold's score is phenomenal - it was one of the first movies made in glorious technicolor - and the technical excellence of the movie is phenomenal, considering it was made 66 years ago. do watch "the making of" on the special edition DVD

Star Wars - all episodes have a good score (by john williams i think) - and ofcourse the theme is now legendary ...

Jurassic Park - i love the theme, but my personal favorite is journey to the island

Dil Chahta Hai - this sticks out like a sore thumb in this list - but personally i thought the background score by shankar, loy and ehsaan was very cool ...

Monsoon Wedding - my personal favorite was "love and marigolds" featuring vijay raaz as parbatlal kanhaiyaalal dube

Gandhi - composed by Ravi Shankar, the music was great - one of my favorites is discovery of india, featuring ravi shankar himself on the sitar ...

All James Bond themes

Last of the Mohicans - starring Daniel Day Lewis and Madeleine Stowe - the movie was quite ordinary, but the score was awesome

Apocalypse Now - Die Walküre, Ride of the Valkyries

Schindler's List

Titanic

Amadeus - ofcourse, nothing but the best of Mozart here

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - Yo-Yo Ma on the cello is awesome - that chinese pop track sucks!!!

an unsung hero is The truth about Charlie

The Thomas Crown Affair - the new one, starring Pierce Brosnan

Musicals: THe sound of music, My Fair Lady, The Lion King, Mary Poppins - all of them favorites since childhood ...

this list is ofcourse not exhaustive .... watever i could remember right now ... :) - feel free to comment on your own favorites/likes/dislikes ...

[09/01/04] - ADDITIONS TO THE ABOVE LIST:
2001 A Space Odyssey - the title track Also Sprach Zarathustra and Johann Strauss' masterpiece The Blue Danube (used in tons of movies, Arnold's True Lies, for example) - are excellent.

Oliver Stone's Platoon - Adagio For Strings ...

Stallone's Rocky - the theme has a cult following b y now ....

Top Gun - decent score - but an awesome collection of songs .... the Righteous Brothers' You've lost that lovin' feeling at the end credits fits perfectly in the movie ... actually most of the songs just fit in perfectly. im sure this is one soundtrack everyone must have :)

primetime is back ....

primetime deion sanders will be back this season ... at age 37 - playing for the baltimore ravens ...certainly lost something since his glory days, but they say he is still in awesome physical shape. lets see if he can give some primetime performances through this season ...

he last played in the NFL in 2000.

Here is a forwarded email i got:

A few days ago, a person near Kollam (Kerala) was recharging his cellphone at home. Just at that time a call came and he attended to that call with the instrument still connected to the mains. After a few seconds electricity flowed into the cellphone unrestrained and the young man was thrown to the ground with a heavy thud. His parents rushed to the room only to find him unconscious, with weak heartbeats and burnt fingers. He was rushed to the nearby hospital, but was pronounced dead on arrival.

Cellphone is a very useful modern invention. However, we must be aware that it can also be an instrument of death. NEVER use the cellphone while it is hooked to the mains!


and accompanied by this picture ... what does one say to that ....

the last of the games ...

the olympics concluded today in fine fashion - leaving the world applauding how good and well conducted the games were ... and also leaving the host nation with a huge bill of more than 10 billion dollars - and surely deeper in debt ... begging the question: WAS ALL THAT WORTH IT? i thought the host nation was supposed to make a lot of money off the games - hence the great struggle to "get the games". is it worth paying 10 billion dollars for bragging rights and stadia and facilities which perhaps might not be looked at after these games?

the closing ceremony was very good ... but IMO, the chinese stole the show - the "welcome to beijing" by the sweet little chinese girl on the lantern was just too cool .... NBC continued to harass with several commercial breaks that seemed quite inopportune ...

earlier in the day, the drama in the marathon was just too much - with the deranged dood coming and shoving pack leader vanderlie lima off the road .. he recovered to secure bronze ... the incident probably didnt change the inevitable ... but the IOC gave lima a special award during the medal ceremony before the closing ceremony. and the indian women disappointed in the 4x400 relay, finishing behind all but greece (who had a messed up baton exchange) ... but as always, we will find contentment in the fact that it was an achievement just to be there ...

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and on a totally different note, matt leinart and usc showed why they are ranked #1, holding off a spirited VaTech challenge ..... with or without mike williams, they will be team to beat .....

College football is back ...

The season opens tonight with Virginia Tech playing USC (ESPN tonight) - i expect USC to blow out VaTech.

on a totally different note:

Last night - ESPN had a behind the scenes look at the making of Sportscenter - it was a pretty cool show ... they were showing the making of the show on ESPN - including the studio/location going-ons, while the actual show was coming on ESPN2. i thought it was a pretty cool thing ... so many pieces have to fall in place for the show to be broadcast. But I love Sportscenter ... they were describing that it is a show produced in several languages in several countries bla bla ... they actually showed a shot of a Sportscenter version with the name of the show written in Hindi!! So do they have a hindi version in india these days?? now, that would be something to watch out for on the next trip back home:)

and in the olympics - the dream known as the dream team is finally over ... the USA lost to Manu Ginobli and the Argentinians. Argentina won the soccer gold, and Marion Jones' comes back empty handed.

I also saw the 4X400 womens' relay heat - the indian quartet of Rajwinder Kaur, K M Beenamol, Chitra K Soman and anchor Manjit Kaur gave a spirited performance, breaking the national record to qualify for the finals. After a poor third leg, Manjit Kaur had a very good run in the final 400m to pull up from 5th to 3rd and ensure automatic qualification. Anju George broke the national record in the long jump too, but could not manage more than 6th place in the finals - and yet it was an impressive performance. Heroes are there to find ... except that now, the bar of winning a medal has been removed ...

Harsha Bhogle on Hayden's comments ...

Earlier in the week, Matthew Hayden commented that the Aussies are able to play for the team, while the players from the sub-continent often get caught up with achieving personal milestones. Here is a response from Harsha Bhogle posted on a BBC Sport bulletin board (actually, i would like to make a clarification here: i could not find any page/column where Harsha made these comments - someone has posted it, quoting Harsha)

It would be tempting, and egotistical, to ignore Mathew Hayden’s remark about players from the sub-continent being selfish. You could call it gamesmanship, and there will be a substantial element of that, but if it hurts there is probably some truth to it.

If he had said all Indian batsmen are bandits, we wouldn’t have read it a second time, we would have called it whimsical, even wild, it wouldn’t have hurt. This one does, and so it merits examination. Sometimes it helps to look beyond initial feelings of outrage!

It is my hypothesis that in over-populated, and therefore insecure, countries the self will always dominate. Feelings of comradeship, of surrendering the self to the wider cause, can only arise in either a highly spiritual phase or where the performer has ascended to a level of personal calm about his achievements.

Where you are in a mob, and we are in a mob, self-preservation will always prevail; whether it is catching a bus, or getting out of a movie hall or getting admission to a professional college.

So too with Indian cricket, where unless you are selfish you cannot make a mark. We have 27 first-class teams and it is impossible for anyone to monitor individual players. At one level lower, it is even worse. Young players learn very quickly that it is their score, and not the manner in which it was scored, or indeed the situation that warranted it, that counts more than anything else.

A 17-year-old is bound to feel tempted to stay 66 not out even if his team loses the match than try to blast a quick 35 which won’t look as impressive when the selectors compare scores. If there were fewer players to look at, a selector could make his own assessment but with the numbers in India that is often impossible. That is why I would go so far as to say that unless you are selfish you have no chance of making it in Indian cricket.

And it is not easy to change, leopards in every profession are stuck with their spots. Actors from folk theatre will remain loud even in serious cinema, batsmen growing up on bouncy tracks will instinctively play the horizontal bat shots, people from gloomy lands will look unhappy even in bright sunshine. Players from our part of the world cannot suddenly become team players when they have survived by protecting their interests fiercely. In times of crisis, you go back to your instincts.

When a team is performing, and therefore settled, and where individuals are secure, they can rise above the self and play for the cause. Indeed, playing for the cause then becomes a greater virtue and we have seen that aspect too in Indian cricket. In Australia they learn that early because there are fewer people playing the game; the difference between being in a side and not being in it is not nearly as pronounced as it is in India.

If Australia had 500 million people, let alone a billion, they would play like a nation of 500 million, they would guard the self before aspiring to enrich the team.

The way out is to have fewer teams playing at the highest level. Apart from intensifying competition, it means only the best can play and with that comfort behind them players can get noticed for putting the team first. 27 first class teams is a recipe for selfishness and poor quality. If we can still put out a fairly good international team, imagine what you could do with only 15 teams. Concentrated solutions are always more potent than diluted ones.

As a result we tend to applaud individual efforts even if the team has collectively been let down. The batting average is a batsman’s badge of honour, the number of centuries his entry to the hall of fame. Even his advertising contracts have bonuses linked to the number of runs he has scored, not whether his team wins.

We dance alone, not in an ensemble, we pray alone, not in a community. We cannot suddenly expect young, insecure sportsmen to become team players when most of us aren’t.

Small, focussed groups can be different if they breathe a different air. In India’s cricket team there are many who are willing to go beyond the self. Now it needs to become addictive, it needs to spread to selectors and administrators. October might be a good time to prove to Matthew Hayden that it can happen."

In spite of the outrage, I think few would disagree with the fact that this players often are "selfish" - especially those from India and Pakistan. Yet, I am not sure that this is as commonplace as its being made out to be ... and too much is being made out of it. And yet, I would be glad to see Team India make Hayden eat his words.

today ....

Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, better known to the world as Mother Teresa, was born in Uskub (now in the Republic of Macedonia), on this day in 1910. She lived in India from the late 1920s till her death on September 5, 1997. Beatified by Pope John Paul II, she was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1979, and received considerable international praise and recognition for her work in Calcutta (though unfortunately, the city is now almost permanently identified with being filled with the poor, the needy and downtrodden ....), as well as considerable criticism for her stand on family planning, abortion, the role of the Missionaries of Charity w.r.t. furthering of the Christian faith as well as the use of donations and funds for purposes other than charity.

heroes ...

the olympics really is the time for the real heroics to come out ... the athletes seem to step it up a notch ... i have been watching the olympics on tv, and seeing how proud the athletes feel when their national anthem is played out, and their country's flag raised. i dream often of listening to jana gana mana while the indian tricolor is raised. alas, such opportunities are only in dreams - and i missed the flag raising at rathore's silver medal presentation. hockey has been a disappointment, and lea-hesh lost a heartbreaker.

but on the whole, its been exciting to watch, inspite of NBC's coverage. and at times, if there isn't enough technical merit, its compensated by high drama. this is certainly true of the tennis competition, especially on the men's side. i have been watching plenty of olympic tennis over the weekend - and there certainly were some heroes ... coming into this weekend, chile was a country that had never ever won an olympic gold. after some unbelievable heroics by two men - fernando gonzales and nicolas massu, they now have two gold medals and a bronze in these games. both of them spent about 7 hours each on court on a single day, and showed an indomitable never say die attitude, and won, inspite of being down facing matchpoints.

gonzales beat taylor dent in the bronze medal singles game - a match that went 16-14 in the final set, and lasted more than 3.5 hours. withing two hours, gonzales was back on court, teaming with massu against germans schuettler and kiefer for the doubles final. they were down four matchpoints in the 4th set tie-break, but showed some amazing guts to come back from the dead, and win 6-4 in the fifth, giving chile their first gold medal ever. the match finished in the wee hours of sunday morning. massu was back on sunday evening for the singles gold medal game against a fresh mardy fish. another drama filled match, massu showed cramps, nearly gave up with exhaustion, and frustrated mardy fish into smashing a racket before winning a five setter for another gold in a 4 hour classic.
it was a phenomenal performance, and even the american commentator (jim courier) acknowledged it to be the most amazing physical effort by a tennis player - ranking above pete sampras's epic 3 day marathon to win the davis cup for the USA in moscow.

to put massu's effort in perspective, he has played 11 matches in the past 8 days - gruelling mentally exhausting encounters. and has been on court for about 25 hours. that level of effort is unbelievable. i myself play a lot of tennis, and i cannot even imagine the exhaustion accompanying that kind of effort - not to mention the physical abuse on the legs by playing on hard courts. the guy had not won a hard court match this year coming to the olympics, never won a major competition, and walked away with the biggest prize of them all, from a field that included federer and roddick. i think that his and gonzales' effort was nothing short of heroic ... as boris becker said : the fifth set in a major competition is all about heart and ceases to be about tennis - and these two chileans, spurred on by a faithful chilean fan contingent certainly showed loads of heart ... and it was quite amazing watching them get their gold ... and seeing the delight as their flags went up ... and their national anthem played ...

again, all i could think of was ... what a proud moment it would have been to see leander and mahesh there, watching the tricolor listening to jana gana mana .... with no one else likely to bring in a medal, perhaps it will have to wait till beijing ... but then heroes come out of nowhere, perhaps there is an indian athlete who might just fulfil the aspirations of a billion people before the flame is extinguished in athens ...

taking the law in your hands ... is it ok?

sounds like a cliched dialogue from a hindi movie, doesn't it? kaanoon ko apane haath me.n mat lo blah blah blah ...

but something lke that happened in nagpur last weekend, when an undertrial (a notorious character charged with 20+ counts of extortion, murder etc.) was lynched to death by a mob comprising mostly of women, while in police custody, and inside a courthouse complex ... i heard the story earlier today eve1ning on NPR's all things considered (click here to hear the story) - it turns out that it was a premeditated attack on the goon ... the 5 women arrested were let out on bail today.

its true that these folks were quite disillusioned with the justice system and the courts and police .... but it still is murder to just lynch someone in a premeditated attack. i know the obvious reaction - its easy for me to say all this ... i totally agree, but that does that justify killing that thug? if everyone started doing this, it would be anarchy pretty soon ... wonder what others think about this ....

back ... in olympic style

i'm back - after an extended hiatus ... been busy lately, and then took a weekend off to cool off on the white sand beaches of the Florida panhandle, enjoying the Gulf shore, while Hurricane Charley ravaged the Florida mainland. thankfully, there was not a cloud in sight or a drop of rain on the gulf coast.

in the meantime, the olympics are on in full swing, some incredible performances so far - thorpe winning the 200 freestyle, ahead of van den hoogenband (who won the 100 freestyle) and phelps (who won the 200 IM). the US mens' team won a superb race to win the 800m freestyle relay. and yesterday, the american women's relay team smashed the oldest standing record in swimming (800m relay) by more than 2 seconds. a record that has stood for more than 15 years, blown to smithereens just like that .....

one important reason for these achienvement is new and improved swimsuits that are more than just a necessary. they are designed to aid the swimmer in ways that his body alone cannot provide for. drag reduction, and streamliining are more important than ever before, in today;s ultra competitive swimming events. progress in swimsuit design has been achieved through the use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for minimizing drag. Speedo has showcased the latest FASTSKIN FSII suits that mimic the tiny toothlike scales in shark skin, called dermal denticles, that are slanted toward the tail of the shark and help force water flow around its body, thus reducing friction[Courtesy: Christian Science Monitor]. CFD simulations were used to test the suit's drag reduction capabilities. the suits compress the body, and are so tight, that it takes about 10 minutes just to get into one of them. the sport's governing body has ruled that these long-john bodysuits are still aceprable accessories. a prominent example of these new body suits is the 6'5" aussie giant with size-17 shoes: ian thorpe.

with these advances in swimwear, track and field is not far behind ... with new body suits designed for increased support, ventilation, freedom of movement, and muscle control and guidance. other sports such as rowing are not behind. adidas is also added the clima-cool technology to take the summer heat in greece, and nike's dri-fit technology for removing moisture faster. technology certainly seems to be propeling these athletes to better world records and more frequently at that .....

and in the mean time, major rajyavardhan rathore has won a silver medal .. india's first of the games, while paes and bhupathi just went out in the semifinals - hopefully, they will atleast be able to get a bronze ....

i will signoff for today with this quote about the olympic spirit from melville dmello's book about the olympics:

when one great scorer comes ... to write against your name
he writes not whether you won or lost, but how you played the game ....

Dutch IPO

Google's IPO has been announced and may happen as soon as a couple of weeks from now. the use of the "Dutch auction" by Google has been talked about a lot .... i went searching for what exactly it means (see i dont bid on ebay, where i hear its a routine thing).

here are couple of couple of useful links that explain the process in a simple way:
bill mann at fool.com - this may perhaps need free registration at fool.com
WR Hambrecht + Co has a slide show on the open IPO

check today's fool.com edition for the oops in the google IPO.

ported at last .....

finally got rid of the sidey sprintpcs service - they have horrible coverage in my neck of the woods ... and got what i waited for so long as well - number porting, so the number stays the same - its a pleasant feeling, not having to email out your a number to all the contacts .......

59 ....

thats how many years its been since the first atom bomb Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima ... and then three days later, Fat Man appeared in Nagasaki - thankfully, there has been nothing since ... touch wood! the early part of this century was supposed to be the golden age of physics - an era that can only perhaps be beaten by the days of Galileo and Newton in terms of the breakthroughs achieved about our understanding of this world - the so called Sturm und Drang period of quantum mechanics .....

the discovery and development of quantum mechanics as a key to the working of the world has been one of the greatest achievements of man, hopefully it wont be one of the most regrettable.

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on a brigher note, Manindra Agrawal and two of his students at IIT Kanpur, Neeraj Kayal and Nitin Saxena, put forth their new method of determining whether a number is prime or not. here is a link to their original paper that came out two years ago today ...

Blogger/w.Bloggar Problems

when i try to modify the my blogger template using Bloggar - i get this error. is anyone else also facing the same problem?



this is the following message if i clickd "ok" to the previous one ... i am then forced to log in directly to blogger.com

The Blue Moon was not blue ... unless you consider this next one ...:)

[the images are blurred because i did not have access to a tripod, nor did i have access to a camera where i could set longer exposures ... ]