ArunRocks

Unfortunately, there is no way to escape the tremendous hype surrounding the latest Batman film ‘The Dark Knight’. It spoils a viewer’s experience by raising the expectations to an unrealistic level. Unbelievably, just after I saw the film yesterday, I realized that even the hype couldn’t prepare me for such a fantastic experience. Christopher Nolan’s creation not only appeals to the average film goer but also to the critics establishing a new benchmark against which comic book films will be judged against. In fact, the term ‘comic book movie’ will no longer be understood as a euphemism for ‘bunch of crap appealing to the comic book fans’ anymore.

This multi-climatic, multi-layered, and multi-thematic film is an excellent cinematisation of an epic struggle between good and evil. Through excellent dialogues and almost heart stopping action sequences, the story unfolds rapidly and constantly keeps you guessing. While most action films try hard to come up with one clever climatic arc, Nolan’s Joker gives the audience a maddening parade of climatic moments one after another.

Joker - Best Villain Ever

The biggest highlight of ‘Dark Knight’ is undoubtedly the character of Joker. Though many phsychotic characters have appeared in Hollywood, Heath Ledger’s Joker is path-breaking in many ways:

• He is an absolute. There is a no background story. He himself gives multiple interpretation of his disfigurement. No attempt is made to humanise or even demystify the character.
• His disfigurement makes him a freak, which he further relishes and emphasizes with make-up. His unkempt and battered appearance is hardly scary, but add the body language and intonations of a psychopath and the result is disturbingly real.
• He is arguably not an evil character simply because he has no moral compass. He master-minds situations which involve dire outcomes yet leaves the details to chance. He, in his own words, is Chaos. He proves that sanity or civility is based on the illusion of order that humans have created. The absence of order brings out the latent insanity in everyone. It is in this chaos that Joker thrives.

As Joker aptly tells Batman in a memorable scene - What would I do without you? You complete me.

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Note this currently works only if you have Firefox installed

The Hindu is is one of the newspapers I have great respect for. I am allergetic to fresh newsprint, so I have no choice but to read their online edition even if I have subscribed to the print edition. But their website badly needs a redesign. However, in this Web2.0 era you are not at the mercy of the site admins to do something about it. You can improve your browsing experience in 2 steps:

1. Point your firefox to the Greasemonkey add-on page and install the add-on. Now restart Firefox before you go to step 2. Don’t worry all your open tabs will be restored.

2. Go to the Hindu Printer Redirect Script and click on the Install this Script button

Voila, start browsing Hindu, for example this page and enjoy the difference!

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Sometimes the biggest reason people choose Linux is that they can choose to change Linux they way they want. However, majority of the people believe that no matter how much you change/customize Linux it will never match the eye candy of other desktop OSes. Frankly I never thought that the font rendering in Ubuntu can match that of OSX or even Windows.

Until I came across this tip in Ubuntu Forums. I would say this is the single biggest improvement in the appearance of Ubuntu desktop. By just one command, you can improve the font rendering of virtually every application on Linux. Check out the following screenshot after implementing this tip:

The command is simply:

sudo ln -sf /etc/fonts/conf.avail/10-autohint.conf /etc/fonts/conf.d/

Thanks to this tip I am still ogling at my Linux desktop

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Please note that all the jokes below are in Malayalam. Salim Kumar is a Malayalam film comedian who often pairs with Dileep with a knack for witty one-liners. These jokes are mostly from the Salim kumar communities in Orkut. Many thanks to all Salim kumar fans

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Thilakkam
onnam class muthal kanjavu valichirunenkil
chalpalannu ippo english parayamayirunnu…

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madhya tiruvathankorile oru rajavu .peru sasi

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KalayanaRaman
Trying to break the coconut besides the lady and the lady falls to the pool of water and SK says
‘Yenta oru shabdham ketathu???’
‘Thenga odachappo oru piece vellathil poyathaanu’

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“njan advocate Mukundan Vakkeel. da coat-e”

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Thilakkam
Salim Kumar: njangalkku aliyanum aliyanum koody kurachu talks nadathanundu………..cashine kurichulla talks …Casual talks…….

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Chadikaatha chandhu
“Im Micheal Elias ,JAckson Elias,Vikram Elias”

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Thenkashipattanam
salimkumar to dilip:
nammal kaanaan pokunnath devootiyeyalle allathe mammotiyeyallalo.

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Salim Kumar is reading the classifieds section in the newspaper…”Varanmaare aavashyamundu……………………AASHWAASAM KANDAAL MAATHRAM PRATHIBHALAM. Eh?? Ithu veraiy parasyamaanallaiy…oh..thetti vaayichu”

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“Iyaal enthu pani aado e kaanickkunne…Thanne kondu njan thottallo..I ALL SO FAILED OF YOU.”

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nee sahakarikukayanengil ee kalavara namukoru maniyarayakkam…

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VAYARINTE VALATHU BHAGATHU KARUTHA MARUGULLA STHREE AANO EE KUTTYUDE MUMMY…..

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Pulival kalyanam
Nammal Nalu perallathe moonnamathoral ethu ariyarythu. Nee vichal aval erangi varumo?.

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dileep: entha ithu???
Read the rest of this entry »

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