Movie Review: The Man from Earth

Usually I don’t write movie reviews. I write only if they influence me somehow. And that is precisely one of the reason I want to write about this movie. I am almost sure that most of you haven’t heard even the name of this movie. Even I didn’t. I don’t know why I wanted to watch the movie, may be the imdb rating, its 8.2. And recently I got lucky to get a copy of this movie from one of my friends. Yesterday I thought about watching the movie.

Its not a flashy movie, I mean with all the new photographic equipments and all. It looks just like a documentary, so at first I was confused whether I want to continue with it. Then again, it’s had a duration of only 1hr 30mins (approx:). So I decided to go on with it. Also, its not an action or romance or horror or anything like that. But it’s a drama/thriller I would say.

The whole movie is just some people talking about an idea (if I may call it so). I am not sure how to explain it fully. You have to watch the movie. Let me give you an example, just think about the movie matrix (one of my all time favorites), without all the fancy stuff, just the part where Morpheus explaining to Neo what the matrix is, that it is just a computer generated world to keep the humans as slaves. And think about the whole movie as a discussion about that concept. And basically that’s it. A concept which you are not familiar, or another angle or a completely original idea (original to me) with which you are viewing the things as you know it. It will be amazing how everything you know, or you think you knew will change when we apply a completely new theory to it. When you come to know things which you thought are basis of the existence of something, turn out to be something else, what would you feel?

I believe I have said enough to ignite the curiosity in you. Now you just watch it.

[Spoilers Ahead]

Are you very sure that you want to read what the movie is about? I think you should watch it. Taking a decision on whether to write about the movie here was difficult for me and later I decided to give a warning and write about it.

Alright, here it is, just think, that if there was a man, a Cro-Magnon (pre-historic human being) who had the gift of not aging, who is living at the present. Not a re-incarnation. Just he was born in the prehistoric ages, he aged till may be some 30 years, and then never aged and he lived through all the history, watching all the milestones in the history. Some one who actually lived at the times of Egyptian Pharaohs, the time of Moses, who happened to meet Buddha, and who is actually a very prominent figure in the history (that is suspense, you have to watch the movie to know who it is), who holds some 15-20 graduate degrees in almost all the sciences and arts, who had all the time in the world to do whatever he wanted to do. Imagine how much knowledge he had over all these ages. Imagine all the dangers he had to survive to be in the present. Amazing concept isn’t it?

Once again, whatever I have written here is my own opinion. You can agree or disagree with it.

The Story of a Young Man

I am going to write a story I know for some time. Remember the rules of a story “No Questions!”. Once up on a time, there lived a boy. He loved his parents very much and they were his world. They were friends. He respected his teachers and loved his friends and no one had a bad comment about him. He excelled in his studies too. Everyone treated him with respect.

He grew up and became a handsome young man. After his studies he got a well paid job in a far away city. He was lucky that he got a job he always wanted. He loved his job. He dedicated his life for the job except for the time he spent for his parents. He always tried to keep in touch with his parents, visit them at least once in 2 months or so. He was happy, doing what he likes to do. He believed there is nothing more to this world that makes his life more perfect.

On one such day, after work, while he was walking to his apartment that he saw her. The first thing that he noticed was her smile. Something specific about it, it struck him. The next day, he left office at the same time and saw her again. That day, he told his friends about her. One of his friends knew her. He filled him up with the details. She was from the neighboring country working in a flower shop next to the young man’s office.

The next day, he went there, bought some flowers and put them at his desk. It was then that she noticed him. She noticed a glare in his eyes. A special ‘something’ that she had never seen in any where else. Slowly it began. He became a regular customer of that shop. They became friends and gradually they fell in love. Day by day, it became sure to him that she is the one person to be in his life, the one who will make his life complete.

No one knew about their relationship. He wanted his parents to be the first to know about her. He wanted to surprise them. He flew home. He was very excited about telling this to his parents. He came home, told everything. He expected them to be happy for him. Instead he saw them crying for the first time in his life. They couldn’t accept it. He never thought that petty things like, language, color or religion to be a reason.

Soon the sadness turned in to anger. His parents began trying their best to make him decide against her. He was broke. He flew back to his work. She was waiting for him in the airport. Seeing her smile, he felt relaxed. He couldn’t tell her what happened. He had promised her that he will come back to take her back to his home place.

He lied to her. He told that his parents agreed. He lost focus in everything, even his work. The only place he found solace was with her. There he was just that energetic young man. She didn’t suspect anything. Soon she moved in with him.

In the mean time, his parents were busy looking for a match for him. They somehow wanted him to forget that girl. They called him more often, he didn’t talk much, but he was cautious not to hurt them. His parents didn’t tell him about their plans for him. For them, he will agree anything they say and they believed its their duty to take a decision for his good future.

Months passed by, she had a baby girl, he was happy, now he thought he has enough courage to tell his parents about everything and he was sure that they will agree to this relation and will accept her as their daughter. He flew home again.

He reached home to see all the decorations in front of his house. His parents were surprised and at the same time, happy to see him. They were about to call him to come home for his marriage.

Everything was set in place. Everyone was invited. There were only 2 more days left for the marriage. He tried to tell his parents what he came for. No one listened to him. He begged his parents for a private talk. They agreed, he told this marriage will never happen no matter what, he still love the other girl. His parents showed him a bottle of poison and told him, he can choose between them and the girl.

He didn’t know what to do. The whole night he stayed awake. His tension soon turned in to revenge. He agreed for the marriage. He acted cool and happy. He had a plan in his mind. The marriage happened. The couple flew back the day of the marriage itself. He rented a new house.

The next day he went for work. He came back home late. Everyday this happened. The bride became extremely sad. But nothing changed. The girl whom he loved didn’t know about this either. He managed to convince everyone that he is busy with his work.

The bride soon became suspicious. She found out about the girl soon. She was broke. She called her folks. They became angry. They came to the city where he worked, brought them both back his house. They talked, the bride wanted divorce, he was only happy to agree to that. His parents became angry, they contacted the girl, told her about his marriage and cursed her. She was broke. She refused to see him afterwards.

He lost everything. He lost his love, his child, his parents. He hated his home place, the city he worked and even his work. Everyone hated him, his friends, colleagues, even strangers who heard this story. One day he fled. No one knows where he is now.

The Socrates Triple Filter Test!

One of my friends send me the following as an e-mail forward. I feel its something which is to be shared with others.

---

In ancient Greece, Socrates was reputed to hold knowledge in high esteem.
One day an acquaintance met the great philosopher and said, "Do you know what I just heard about your friend?"
”Hold on a minute," Socrates replied. "Before telling me anything, I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the Triple Filter Test."
”Triple filter?"
”That's right," Socrates continued. "Before you talk to me about my friend, it might be a good idea to take a moment and filter what you're going to say. That's why I call it the triple filter test.”
”The first filter is TRUTH. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?"
”No," the man said, "actually I just heard about it and..."
’All right," said Socrates. "So you don't really know if it's true or not. Now let's try the second filter, the filter of GOODNESS. Is what you are about to tell me about my friend something good?"
”No, on the contrary..."
”So," Socrates continued, "you want to tell me something bad about him, but you're not certain it's true. You may still pass the test though, because there's one filter left: the filter of USEFULNESS. Is what you want to tell me about my friend going to be useful to me?"
”No, not really."
”Well," concluded Socrates, "if what you want to tell me is neither true nor good nor even useful, why tell it to me at all?"

---

Nice story uh! In our day to day lives, we all are interested in 'gossips' [including me], but this story might be helpful in understanding what we gain from those 'special sessions'.
- Manu

Blogged with the Flock Browser

A Complete Browser : Flock

I've always been a fan of Internet Explorer. I recently [about 6months back] started to use Mozilla Firefox. I cannot state an exact reason why I switched to Firefox. Some pages were not properly working in IE, so I thought I will try Firefox, and thats about it. Even after I switched to Firefox, there are some times when I preferred IE itself. Even with all those cool Firefox addons, I never felt I won't survive without Firefox.

Two weeks before I read about a new browser - Flock : The Social Browser [thats what the splash screen says]. The author mentioned both cons and pros, but in the end, he stated that, now its difficult for him to live without the cool features of Flock. Thats when I thought I will also give it a try. What more to say, within days, I became a fan of Flock. I don't think I can describe all the cool features of Flock here. Let me first say, its really one of the coolest [web-related] thing I've ever seen. The main thing I liked about it is, its built using Firefox code itself. So we will inherit all the things we liked about Firefox [including security feautres] plus the Flock specific features. I had customized Firefox in my way, and I was doubtful whether the change is worth. But its more than worth, I would say.

For explaining the features, I am attaching some screenshots here, out of which one shows this blog in the Blog editor...




From the first impression, it looks so flashy, right? The effective browsing area is less though, when we use all the features, but there is option to turn them off.

In the first image you can see the original Firefox features like tabbed browsing, the same Find tool bar etc. The Foxy Tunes [lower right - music] and the PicLens [top right] are 2 addons worth mentioning here. They are originally for Firefox and I wanted to blog about them separately. The third screen is of the PicLens. It shows all the images on a web page. It is really cool for Flickr users, google image searches etc. Foxy Tunes lets you control your music player from browser.

Now to the Flock specific features. You can stay connected to almost all the 'famous' social networking sites, photo sharing site, mail accounts etc. You can see the accounts bar, where I have logged in to my gmail, yahoo, flickr, youtube, blogger, picasa and del.is.ious accounts. Then, there is a media bar on the top of the browser. In the first screen, I have chosen flickr stream based on interestingness. You can select the stream based on ratings, key words etc and it supports you tube, photo bucket etc too. There is an integrated Blog editor and Photo Uploader.

In the button bar, there are buttons to display RSS feeds, Favorites, People, Web Mail accounts, Blog Editor, Photo Uploader, Web Clipboard etc on the left panel. In the second screen you can see the integrated Blog editor, friends list on the left panel, the Fast Dial - A Firefox addon [you can call it - visual book marks] etc

Even if I wrote lot of good things, there is still space for improvement. There is no support for Orkut, which is the social networking site I prefer. There is no support of Picasa stream in the Media Bar. The integrated blog editor is almost pathetic. You cannot format the text alignment [can see in this blog - no alignment and also the buttons for alignment are missing]. Then, adding an image to the blog, its difficult. I had to use the blogger editor to add the screenshots in this blog.

So thats the cons and pros which I think are worth mentioning [which I use frequently]. Over all I give this web product 9/10 score. Now its all up to you to test it. Good Luck!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

I Say No to Videos on Flickr

I am a huge fan of flickr [the photo sharing site] and photography is a part of my life. I like to keep a vivid memory of everything that happens around me and that’s how my craze for photography began I think and it dated back to my college days. But at that time, I only had a conventional camera, which uses films. You have to buy the films, take the photos and develop it which is a costly process. There was no place for errors. So my interests stayed only in moments with my friends and relatives. Even then, I have around 12-15 albums with all the memories of my college days.

Then came the digital revolution, everything was digitized. (ofcourse digital cameras existed long back also, but I couldn’t afford it) Then I saved for a digital camera and I searched for it for long time and acquired my Canon Digital IXUS 800IS, the first camera of Canon in the IXUS series with IS feature in it. Its been almost 2 years since I had it, and what more to say, I have taken more than 15000 photos in it. Now you know what I am talking about. I am looking forward for the day I will acquire an SLR.

I got the freedom to do all the experiments I want to do with a photography, I began taking pictures of everything of interest to me. I always loved the details of our nature. The beauty of leaves, the mighty clouds, the colourful sunsets, the intensity of flowers, everything was small wonders to me. And thus I got involved in photography and what do people say about happiness, it will grow when you share. I wanted to share my experience and satisfaction with others and that’s when I heard about flickr. First I thought flickr as a bit complicated, but slowly I saw the potential flickr offered. The flickr community! Also the flexibility of flickr, the things you can do with your photographs. They were not just photos anymore; I felt more than that, much more. You could share it with millions of people, you can place your photos in the world map, you can write comments, you can classify and categorize, and many more things. I became and admirer of flickr very fast. The quality with which they provide us with their services, it was superb.

But now, I have some disagreement with what they are doing now. They have added the video sharing feature in flickr. An ordinary person might wonder what I am complaining about. I have to be happy with it, ‘cos I have more features. But ask a true ‘flickerian’, you’ll know. There are groups which say, ‘We say NO to videos on flickr’ and ‘No videos on flickr’ and many administrators of groups are banning users from adding videos to their group. I feel I also have to do something about it.

Here it is… My protest to videos on flickr!

They are changing the true vision of flickr (the way I see it), by adding videos. May be people say I am afraid of change. But for sure Yahoo could have started another service like flickr video or yahoo video. But the chances of something like that to gain momentum in a short while, [competing with YouTube] are very small as compared to adding the feature to already existing, widely established, flickr. I can give you an example. What will you feel if the favorite flavor of icecream, is modified for better results by changing or adding another ingredient to it? [I know it’s a terrible example, but that’s all I could come up with when I tried to convert my feelings to words] I hope something will be done about it.