E@zyVG’s Vichar::World Connected

Jodhaa Akbar (Hindi: जोधा-अकबर, Urdu: جودھا اکبر) is a 16th century love story of a Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great and a Rajput (Hindu) princess Jodhaa. It is about a great Emperor who is tolerant towards a religion and culture which is not just alien to him, but is also the religion of the land he rules. Of course, how much of this is actually true is anybody’s guess. Apparently, the director of the movie, Ashutosh Gowarikar (the same director who made the Oscar nominated Lagaan) has admitted that 70 percent of the movie is fiction, which means it is very loosely based on history. What seems to be true is that Akbar married a Rajput princess… beyond that historians don’t seem to agree on anything much. They don’t even agree that it was princess Jodha who married Akbar. However what is true is that Akbar the Great had a tolerant attitude towards religion and encouraged religious debate. This has been well documented.

In any case, the love story doesn’t ring true, not if one thinks of it in a historical perspective. Akbar married a Rajput princess to form a political alliance, and therefore one wonders whether there was true love between the two. There probably wasn’t, knowing he had more than 300 other wives - it is believed though that more than one of these wives was Hindu. Interestingly, Akbar’s son Jehangir, who succeeded him, was the son of a Hindu mother, and while some say it was Jodha Bai, some say it was another Hindu princess.

The movie itself is amazing in scope…and manages to switch between the battlefield and court politics to the love scenes very smoothly. It casts thousands of characters…soldiers and ordinary people…and everyone in authentic costumes. The battlefield scenes, with elephants and costumes are impressive, although I wish they had been less gory.

This movie is a must-see, not because it is great cinema, but because it’s good, path breaking Indian cinema. I really enjoy watching historical films, even if they are mostly fiction based. We don’t get too many many good historical films. The other Indian-made historical epic I have liked was Mangal Pandey and it was excellent. This film falls somewhere in between, as Ashoka was mostly not enjoyable.

Historical films are important…they bring our past to life, and Jodha Akbar has done it with panache and style. True, the film could have done with tighter editing, and some more believability…but the music was also good. And I am not sure why all the fuss about this movie that went down in India, especially with initially release of the movie being banned by the States of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Uttarakhand (by the time you read this maybe the ban will be lifted) … they have to understand that this is movie only, and no is not being preached as a true part of Indian history.

The movie was around 3 hours and 20 minutes long and I enjoyed most of it.

All we hear round the clock is how motion picture industry keeps on complaining about the piracy hurting their revenues. Now look at the latest figures from Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA):

The confusing part is the link in the “Latest News” section of MPAA that claims an all-time high in domestic and global box office sales. The global market grew 4.9% to $26.6 billion, claims the MPAA, and the U.S. domestic market grew roughly 5.4%, passing the $9.6 billion mark.

It is surprising to see the MPAA claim that the motion picture industry is taking a beating from piracy when their own data shows that the market is producing better than before. This is not to say, however, that piracy doesn’t have an effect on the film industry.

So please stop complaining as you yourself just proved that even though the film industry is taking some large hits from piracy, the industry is still raking in quite a sum of cash. And btw, with getting rid of DRM agenda I am quite sure that there is even more money to be made.

Based on the true story of how Charlie Wilson, an alcoholic womanizer and Texas congressman, persuaded the CIA to train and arm resistance fighters in Afghanistan to fend off the Soviet Union. With the help of rogue CIA agent, Gust Avrakotos, the two men supplied money, training and a team of military experts that turned the ill-equipped Afghan freedom-fighters into a force that brought the Red Army to a stalemate and set the stage for conflicts in the Middle East that still rage to this day.

Despite the victory, Avrakotos warns that unless there is a serious effort to help Afghanistan rebuild back into a stable society, there could be dire and unpredictable repercussions for both that nation and the U.S. Unfortunately, Wilson finds exceptionally little enthusiasm in the government for even the modest measures he proposes to heed this warning. As usual, things are left as it is after Soviet withdrawal. The implied warning involves both the rise of the extremist Taliban regime and probably even the September 11th terrorist attacks.

A train’s about to leave. Rushing to a compartment, a desperate man hands a shrivelled orange to his mother. She asks lovingly, “Where..where did you get it?” as if she had been handed manna from heaven. And then the man tells his saintly father, “You are what you are because of her..and her alone.”

“To people he was a father, To his son he was a father he never had” - a perplexing statement isnt it? Well, the whole world is aware of Mahatma Gandhi’s struggle in the freedom of India. Millions of Indians saw a ‘Father’ figure in him, and for these he was ‘bapu’. But how many are aware of his personal sacrifices? How many are aware of the bitter relationship that he shared with his son?

Gandhi My Father, the most captivating and revolutionary film ever to emerge from India, telling the untold story of Gandhi’s tragic relationship with his eldest son.

Released on 3rd August 2007, Gandhi My Father is a powerful study of the nature and sufferings of the patriarchal relationship between one of the world’s most loved figures - ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi - and his misfortunate eldest son Harilal. The film delves into a territory that has never before been visited by film, and will spark debate by bringing to light an unknown facet of the personal history of a man who transformed the soul of a nation, but who could not save the soul of his own son.

Based on his thought-provoking play, Mahatma v/s Gandhi, veteran thespian of Indian theatre and cinema Feroz Khan has combined his unparalleled talents as a writer and director with the production skills of fellow industry stalwart Anil Kapoor, to create the most affecting film of modern times.

Although inspired by the philosophies and teachings of one of the greatest men of the modern world, the groundbreaking Gandhi My Father is far from a biopic account or portrayal of Gandhi’s struggle towards India’s independence. Delving deep into the personal tragedy that Gandhi kept secret from the world, Feroz Khan’s filmic tour de force focuses on the doomed relationship between a father respected by an entire nation, but rebuked by a son who was disowned, and whose bitter end was the result of years of abject alcoholism.

Definitely a must watch … despite it being an average movie and some shortcomings.

Militainment Inc. is a nine part documentary, written, produced, and narrated by Roger Stahl, assistant professor at the University of Georgia. The documentary shows how the Pentagon and the entertainment industries became partners in militarizing TV, games, sports and more.

“The film asks: How has war taken its place as an entertainment spectacle? and What does this mean for the ability of our democracy to consider this most destructive of human activities?”

It’s an informative and interesting documentary, worth the watch. The film is available on BitTorrent for free.

Download Militainment Inc. (621 MB)

Official website, with direct download.

And once again continuing on the past topics of piracy, with another documentary that you should watch ……….

Good Copy Bad Copy is a great documentary discussing the current state of copyright, piracy and free culture.The film is directed by Andreas Johnsen, Ralf Christensen and Henrik Moltke, and aired on Danish television a few days ago.

Several people are interviewed in the documentary including Lawrence Lessig from Creative Commons, Tiamo and Anakata from The Pirate Bay, mashup artist Danger Mouse, a Russian street pirate, and many others.

Even MPAA CEO Dan Glickman makes an appearance, he briefly comments on their involvement with the raid on The Pirate Bay last year. Glickman also says that he knows that the MPAA will never stop piracy, but that they are trying to make it as difficult and tedious as possible.

A .torrent can be downloaded over at The Pirate Bay, for free of course. (~700 MB)

Continuing the topic from my previous post ……..

It is doubtful that the term “intellectual property” is still applicable to the majority of the Hollywood productions, especially the intellectual part. So, is piracy still intellectual property theft if the property is not a product of the intellect? Great cartoon by Clay Bennett:

On Piracy - documentary movie produced by Julien McArdle, a 21 year old independent film-maker from Canada. He started interviewing people about their views on piracy and digital rights in November 2005. The resulting documentary is now available on DVD, and can be downloaded for free.

McArdle wanted to take an in-depth look at piracy today, and how it will evolve. “despite all the media frenzy on the piracy crackdowns, there’s been very little attention to the topic itself. At the very best, news reporters regurgitated the contents of an industry press release. There was nothing of substance, which is where this documentary fits in: we wanted to cover the issue in-depth,” we read on the documentary website.

McArdle interviewed several people including: a member of a scene release group, Susan Harper from Microsoft Canada, Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, Graham Henderson from the CRIA, and many others.

Shooting this documentary made McArdle realize that the piracy issue is not as black and white as many people believe. “This is such an incredibly complicated issue, and the scope of it goes really beyond pinning the blame on just one thing or whatnot”, he said, in an interview.

The official documentary website is over here.

So, how can you protect yourself from this “pact of evil”?

1. First of all — ignore the hardware and software using DRM techniques to restrict the rights of the user. Do not purchase music, movies and other content secured by DRM mechanisms. Instead, use alternative services recommended by the Defective By Design campaign — these are the tools and services DRM-free.
2. Secondly — talk, talk and once again, talk — make your family, friends, co-workers aware of the dangers connected with the use of DRM in the products. This is the best way to educate people what DRM really is and why they should care. Nobody wants to be restricted. When people become aware of the restrictions, they will not buy the products that restrict them. Simple enough

OK, and what if we have already legally purchased some content (like multimedia or text document) secured by some kind of DRM? Do not worry. Most of them has been broken a long time ago. For example, in order to play an CSS-encrypted DVD under GNU/Linux, you can use almost any player like VLC, MPlayer or Xine with libdvdcss2 enabled (this is a non-licenced library used to decrypt DVDs encrypted with CSS). If you posses music in AAC format (e.g. purchased at iTunes), you can easily convert them to a friendly format using JHymn without losing quality. The story repeats with each and every new introduced DRM technology, like encrypted PDFs, Windows Media, or recently HD-DVD (see the muslix64 post on BackupDVD) and BluRay.

Breaking the DRM restrictions is hard but always possible, due to the fact that all DRM mechanisms need to use symmetric encryption in order to work. This kind of encryption requires the keys to be hidden either in the hardware or software — in both ways it’s possible to access them by the hacker, analyze and find the way to decrypt the data streams. If you are interested in the details of DRM hacking, read the lecture of Cory Doctorow for Microsoft Research about the nonsense of DRM.

Is it legal? ………………….. >the right question is< ………………………. DO I CARE!

Filmed over three tumultuous years in India, Pakistan, Japan and the USA following nuclear tests in the Indian sub-continent War and Peace is a documentary journey of peace activism in the face of global militarism and war.

WAR & PEACE / JANG AUR AMAN slips seamlessly from a description of home made jingoism to focus on how an aggressive United States has become a role model, its doctrine of “Might is Right” only too well-absorbed by aspiring elites of the developing world. As we enter the 21st century, war has become perennial, enemies are re-invented and economies are inextricably tied to the production and sale of weapons. In the moral wastelands of the world memories of Gandhi seem like a mirage that never was, created by our thirst for peace and our very distance from it.

AWARDS:
* Grand Prize, Earth Vision International Film Festival, Tokyo, 2002
* International Critics’ Award (FIPRESCI), Sydney Film Festival, 2002
* Best Film/Video, Mumbai International Film Festival, 2002
* International Jury Prize, Mumbai International Film Festival, 2002
* Gold Award, Indian Documentary Producers’ Association, 2002
* Best Documentary, International Video Festival, Kerala, 2003
* Best Documentary, Karachi International Film Festival, 2003
* Silver Dhow, Zanzibar International Film Festival, 2003
* Best Non-Fiction, National Film Awards, India, 2004

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