History, Jodha Akbar & Movie Scripts

Given my penchant for historical movies, I couldnt miss Jodha-Akbar for too long..Finally saw that last weekend @ INOX . I'm not going to write a big review about that..There are plenty of funny reviews available on net like this one :-) ..

The movie is actually pretty average...like a semi-documentary.. The songs were good..especially I liked the 'Khwaja mere Kwaja...' one very much..And yeah, Aiswarya Rai still looks too good in some sequences :-) ..The camera work in battle sequences left a lot to be desired..Nothing much exceptional there..The last fight was a badly imitated one from Troy ( Hector - Achilles ) ..

An interesting thing which caught my attention in this movie is how the prince/princess type people get privacy.. Usually they'll be surrounded by many servants ..and when the possibility of romance comes, they just have to shout "Ekaant" .. Thats an interesting way :-)
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This is movie which has raked up many protests in Rajasthan because some believe 'Jodha' is the name of Akbar's mother, not wife.. Infact many historical movies released in India have been dogged by such controversies. Even if their arguments are true, this is actually a very silly controversy..The fact that Akbar had a Rajput wife has been documented beyond doubt, only her name is uncertain..If I remember the old Mughal-E-Aazam correctly, it shows Akbar's wife as a Rajput princess.

This took my thoughts to a malayalam movie - 'Oru Vadakkan Veeragadha' , by MT Vasudevan Nair. One of the most critically acclaimed , yet very much popular movie in Malayalam movie history.. This is a movie in which MT showed a Villain in folklore history in a positive light.. Infact, the impact of the movie has been such that if you quiz an average Keralite about this folklore story, he's quite likely to tell MT's version. The story runs from the anti-hero's ( played by Mammootty ) perspective and it gives various explanations to all the wrong deeds that the he's accused off in the folklore story... That is actually historical fiction at its best. And it created no controversy !!! ..

I'm just wondering , are there any good English movies in which this kind of "anti-hero in real life to hero in reel life" transformations have been attempted ?
The scale of historical fiction that I'm looking for is something akin to what would happen if someone portrays the 'Jackal' in the 'Day of the Jackal' as a hero..

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Off track Request :- Please help this mallu {fraud} to break his bachelor life by finding the girl he has mentioned :-)
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Numbers...More Numbers

There is a trivial part in 'A Beautiful Mind', the Oscar winning movie in which Russel Crowe plays the brilliant , but Schizophrenic mathematician John Nash...

The FBI/Pentagon intercepts some transmission containing lots of numbers, thrown over a large piece of paper/screen..Nobody is able to make out any sense out of it..They call John Nash..this guy stares at that for hours altogether..And finally shouts "Get me a map".. He then proceeds to interpret the numbers in the transmission as latitudes and longitudes of various places..

Now I didnt invent / discover anything like that...But in today's CorpFin class, my state was almost like those clueless FBI officials.. An excel spreadsheet with numbers and formula being displayed on the screen..prof making some calculations.. inflation, NPV, discount rate, IRR .. numbers throughout that excel .. 1.3231, 23.2435 , 343.211 , 1.321 ...... It made some sense to some people.. But it reaffirmed one of those old inferences that I made about myself.. I'm not good for Finance... I love maths , but not this type of number crunching.. Gimme geometry/trigonometry , I'll do..but not this type of raw number crunching..But unfortunately no one has discovered much applications for geometry in management i think.

On a different note, I've just started reading George Soros' 'The Crisis of Global Capitalism' ..I'd recommend it to anyone having even a fleeting interest in Economics

Ajith

For NITC Alumni,

NITC/CREC Alumni , Please check

http://nit-calicut.blogspot.com/2008/03/important-studentnitc-needs-assistance.html

Thanks,
Ajith

A Sense Of Loss !!!!

I get nostalgic frequently.. Some people say it is a sign of aging :-).. Last time when I visited NITC, this feeling was at its peak.. Now, the spark is something totally different..Called up home yesterday..Amma told me that our ancestral home ( 'tharavadu' - in malayalam ) is going to be demolished and built again.. That is about 50+ years old and the building is literally crumbling..75 % of the area inside the home gets drenched during rainy season as the old roofing is slowly giving up to its 'wear-and-tear'.. And it is literally not possible to stay there during monsoon time.. And if it stays like this for 3 more seasons , it may collapse itself.. So , definitely from a logical perspective it makes sense to pull it down and build it again...

But even after all logical explanations, I dont know how to express the kind of emptiness that I feel when I hear that it is being demolished.. This place used to be the gathering point of a very large family...During my schooling , I used to frequent to this place on every vacation...Cousins and relatives spread throughout India, and some abroad used to come to this home during their vacations.... It used to be a sort of magnet if I can term it that way.. That place wont be the same again... Today I tried explaining the reasons to a cousin.. Though she expressed the very same kind of emptiness, I sort of tried to put up a logical perspective...I'd say, after a long time, I tried not to be true to myself in a conversation for some reason or other..

Whatever..

Change...The constant denominator of Life ..Sigh!!!
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It takes some courage to smile after tragedies..And people who do that are
really great.. A great tribute to a mother from a daughter .
I somehow admire this character.
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Ajith