Ra·One : A Review

All right, so I went to watch Ra·One yesterday, I had been looking forward to watching this film for a long time now.


Introduction

In case you have no clue what Ra·One is, let me give you a heads up. It is a science fiction superhero film starring Shahrukh Khan (SRK), released in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and German.


In the first scene, a new technological innovation is described which serves as the base of the film. Then you are introduced to Shekhar Subramaniam (SRK). He is a brilliant Game Developer who acts more like Mr. Bean. The character being a South Indian, his references to the Madrasi Cliché, won't seem to get well received in the South. Shekhar lives in London, with his wife and son, who is embarrassed of sorts because of his dad trying to be cool, but messes things up.


Characters


So Shekhar develops a game with the ultimate super villain - Ra-One. It stands for 'Random Access - Version 1.0'. Now can some one tell me how that makes any sense? RaOne is the ultimate super villain that Shekar comes up to please his son who thinks villains are cool and heroes are boring. The hero in the game is G-One which means life and he is modeled after SRK, albeit a cooler looking version. Reminds you of 'Rab ne bana di Jodi'. 

Not intending to give out any spoilers in case you haven't seen the film, I will say what I thought of the game film.


I have already given my verdict on the characters played by SRK. They are the usual play of duality that you see as in Fight Club or The Mask. G-One acts more like a human, which I like compared to other films with robots where you can hear metallic sounds when the walk and move in a constrained way.


Kareena as Sonia, wife of Shekhar does exactly what she has been asked to do, although you do wonder if she is limited by her character in the script. Armaan Verma as Pratheek, Shekhar's son also does well, his role being similar to the young John Connor from Terminator 2.


But Arjun Rampal as Ra-One beats everyone else by a mile. He comes in, does his job, no nonsense, no compromise. A great villainous performance.


Special Effects


Firstly it has the best Visual Effects and CGI I have seen in an Indian film, Yes Enthiran was good, but in my opinion, Ra-One has done a little better in this department. The detail in which the effects have come out is pretty good. The fight scenes have come out really well and the action scenes are on par with International movies. 


That said the 3D didn't add anything special, it's just another thing of producers jumping on the 3D bandwagon, plus the film was shot in 2D and converted to 3D. Apart from the title scenes and a few others it seemed as the 3D was non existent.



Final Word


The first half didn't seem like a lag, but the second half I wondered was too long. I am not sure how well received Shekhar's character will be, may be its a trick to make you like G-One more. And the plot of the movie is such that I don't think it will cater to the wide audience, but to younger viewers. My grand parents and all question me for spending time on my computer playing games.


But anyways, see the film for the Visual Effects, editing and the Sound effects. So I would suggest that you watch it for the Special Effects and not for the story. You can try it once. It's kind of fun to go with your friends, young nephews, nieces or children.


A 3.5 out of 5. 

Opera 10 alpha

   Opera has just come out with the alpha release to Opera 10 web browser, just a week after launching Opera Mini 4.2.

Check it out from here : http://www.opera.com/browser/next/

The New features are :

• Updated engine : Opera Presto 2.2 is the newest rendering engine for the Opera browser. It provides significant improvements in speed, performance and security.
• 30% Faster on the real Web : The optimized Opera Presto 2.2 engine performs much faster on resource intensive pages such as Gmail and Facebook.
• Great-looking standards : With an Acid3 100/100 score, Web Fonts support, RGBA/HSLA color and SVG improvements, Opera 10 alpha is ready for the next generation of Web applications. 

Check the acid3 tests from here.

The other features are :

• Inline spell-check : Opera 10 alpha underlines any misspelled words so you can express yourself without reservation.
• Auto-update : Opera 10 alpha makes it easier than ever to stay up to date with the latest version.
• Web Fonts and SVG : Typography on the Web will never look the same. With the Opera Presto 2.2 engine, Web Fonts can be used -including SVG font files.
• Opacity through RGBA and HSLA : Transparency is the new black. In Opera Presto 2.2 it is easier to make page elements transparent, with the addition of an alpha transparency argument to the RGB and HSL color models.
• Opera Dragonfly evolved : Opera Dragonfly is now even better for debugging Web sites and allows the editing of the DOM and inspection of  HTTP headers.

Opera 10 final is expected to arrive in the first half of 2009.

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Microsoft .net gets new logo

    Microsoft has made a change to the logo for .net . The new one features a blue ribbon like design which looks way better than the old one which was just a .net written in a way that the lettrings were connected and some colors lying here and there. This logo shown above seems to denote an N.

    The new logo looks simply stunning, guess it was released with the Microsoft .net Framework 3.5...

Gmail is themed!!!

    Hey i just logged into my Gmail account and learnt that they have introduced a variety of themes for the Gmail interface. Guess its another development from the Google Labs... Theres currently about 24 different themes including the Clasic theme.

    Themes can be accessed from the Themes tab in the Settings page. This seems a welcome move by the Gmail theme as already Firefox and plugins were able to theme Gmail for ages now. Its like about time the Gmail team did something about it.

    I didint try all the themes, but just looked through a handful before choosing the "Shiny" theme for a few days .........

Adobe Fireworks CS 4 Review

As a long time user and fan of Macromedia Fireworks, it was heart shattering when Adobe took over Macromedia. And Fireworks was not given much importance in the CS3 Suite. Not so much stuff new in that except the installer was like 500mb and except from some minor changes not worth it. So I wondered if its future was doomed and overshadowed by the likes of Photoshop and Illustrator. Recently I got hold of the Fireworks CS4 demo and simply fell in love after using it. I will just note down the important features I like and those that enhance usability of this marvelous software.

The reason I loved FW so much is its inherent simplicity in using and the great features and flexibility it provides for a “Web Designer” and small time “Graphics Designer” like me. Photoshop is the best software for Photo editing and major graphics works, but almost awful when it comes to neat web designing from my point of view.

Fireworks CS4 has had a great deal of overhauling done to sharpen up the usability. A major point of notice is the welcome change in the Interface. More workspace can be coughed out and we can customize and save the layout. The right side panels are very flexible in that they have a minimum mode showing only the icons or an expanded with the description of the panel as well. They have taken out the title bar altogether. The menu bar is at the very top with a lot of useful items shown as small icons below it, including the new, save, open, undo, redo, cut, copy, paste, group, ungroup, join , arrange items, align items and rotate. These can be easily accessed now. Earlier either we had to use the menu system or learn complex shortcuts.

Another welcome improvement is the smart guides, which were already available in Flash 8 for aligning items on the stage.

A Take Screenshot command enables to take a screen shot which is a pretty useful feature. The attributes like custom styles applied to an object can be copied and applied on another object by using the “Paste attributes” option. Really neat stuff.

Projects can be prototyped easily by either using the “Demo Current Document”, in which a simple slideshow of the completed document can be shared and gathered feedback on. The other option is the capability to directly export in PDF from within fireworks. This can also be used for sharing the design with clients or colleagues and get back feedbacks. The export PDF option has a number of options. You can even export with password protection.

A host of vector drawing functionalities have been added in Fireworks CS4. Type rendering engine has undergone considerable improvements. Along with the 9 slice scaling tool, there are a lot of useful commands added in the command menu. Support for Adobe AIR and the ability to create flash based slide shows from within Fireworks are handy.

Overall I have to say I am impressed. There are a lot of options for a Web Designer and the development phase can be speeded up. The use of rapid prototyping in case of a web site or an AIR application can cut development times by a large amount. So we clearly have Fireworks in the right path. It should definitely be in the arsenal of a serious web developer.