Movie Mush: Ko (Go for Ko!)

Cinematographer turned Director K.V. Anand is back after a two year gap with 'Ko' starring Jeeva, Ajmal and Piyaa and how! Only if you check your watch do you realise that the movie's length is almost 3 hours.

Racy screenplay and an interesting twist in the second half are what that makes you sit through the entire length of the movie without ever getting bored. Jeeva is a young photographer of a tamil daily who takes high risks to cover his stories. Piyaa and yesteryear actress Radha's daughter both have a crush on him. (Sometimes I wish I can be a tamil hero so that all girls have a crush on me too!).

K.V.Anand's 'Ayan' was a runaway hit because of its smart screenplay and direction. This movie is equally as interesting and the twist smartly hidden by effectively using Kotta Srinivasa Rao and Prakash Raj. Not to forget, the song sequences are breathtakingly beautiful.

But the movie is not without its minuses. How come some one who has his feet directly over a 'kanni vedi' survive it and the guy who is a few feet away get killed? Guess you can't have everything perfect in a movie.

Anyways I give Ko 7/10.

Go for Ko!

My Final Year Project - Part 4: Project Implementation

As a continuation of my earlier posts, in this part, I would like to explain how the project was implemented and what are the test results. Our project drives on the basic ideas of:

• ·  Voluntary blood donation is the safest way of donating blood.
• · Blood collection is the most challenging part among the duties of a blood bank.
• · With the immense human resources available in our country, the gap between demand and supply of blood can be bridged easily.
• ·  The main reason why blood collection is low is because of the inability of the blood banks to maintain contact with one-time users due to a variety of reasons.
• · Websites are an easy and cost efficient way for a blood bank to keep in touch with the young, literate, potential donors.
• ·  Because a major percentage of the voluntary blood donors belong to the 18-40 age category, using social networking plug-ins enhances the reach of our website.
• ·  By collaborating with blood banks, their bulletins and details of their upcoming camps can be posted in the websites, enabling interested users to go and donate at any time that they are free.

Hence, our idea is to create a social networking site and add Facebook connect features to it and promote it among youngsters to join. The main aim of our project is to prove that social networking can be used for a good cause. We launched our site on the 18th of March. By the 25th of March, there were a 104 users. More than a 100 users had joined in the span of a week. With proper advertisements and Facebook shares and invites, our site could grow at a tremendous pace.

Movie Mush: The Adjustment Bureau

I'm a fan of Matt Damon and the trailer seemed promising, so I watched "The Adjustment Bureau" with expectations. Maybe I shouldn't have!

The storyline is simple: The affair between a politician, David Norris (Matt Damon) and a ballerina, Elise Sellas, (played by the beautiful Emily Blunt) is affected by mysterious forces keeping the lovers apart. The mysterious forces here are the Adjustment Bureau, who are people who control the way the world functions.

Now what do these hat-cladding people from the Adjustment Bureau do? They can stop time, decide who meets whom and what happens everyday. In short, they are eerily similar to the guys from the 1998 movie 'Dark City' except that those hat-cladding people were bad and these, are good. The story may sound almost cliched to people who have watched movies such as The Marix series and 'The Dark City'.

But the writers do try to explain how the members of the Bureau alter only significant events and let other events to the human free-will. And the movie does have its moments, such as those when the scene in which the purpose of the existence of the Adjustment Bureau is explained and especially during the climax, when David tries to fool the bureau and elope with Elise.

Matt Damon puts in a solid performance as a young politician with high aspirations and Emily Blunt matches her role to a T. They share a good chemistry and the romantic scenes are well acted. But the use of hats and turning the door knobs clockwise to use the Bureau's path is almost fairy tale stuff and makes you snigger, almost.

The movie has an interesting start, picks up speed on the way but the end is soft. As an audience, you were just expecting something more. But ah, that doesn't happen. The climax is a little abrupt and is not explained convincingly. Overall, it is worth a watch, but only just.

I'd give it 6/10.