Month: October 2011

Movie Review – Sahib Biwi aur Gangster (The Lord, The Wife and the Gangster)

This is the latest Bollywood smash, it is a inspired version of Sahib < Biwi < and Ghulam

It features a feudal lord, doing what gentlemen borne as gentlemen do, his bored schizophreniac wife, and the driver/gangster

There are lots of twists and turns, and it may be Bollywood’s steamiest romantic comedy/drama.

The songs are nice, the acting is superb by the cast of Randeep Hooda (D, Once upon a time in Mumbai), Mahi Gill and Jimmy Shergill.

Power packed and nice- but see it without your kids/family or you may end up blushing! Probably the closest to a noir sex comedy that I have seen in 3 decades of Bollywood watching!

 

Movie Review- Real Steel

Real Steel succeeds where Cowboys and Aliens failed. It manages to marry the odd couple-

robot movies with boxing movies, and the charming presence of Hugh Jackman, a new kid on the block,

and much better CGI than Transformers ensure this is a sweet family, buddy movie for a weekend.

It  may not rate very high on originality , as all sports movies do with the struggling underdog theme, the training, the Rocky deja Vu

—-but it does pack a very nice visual punch. See it to believe it, Robot boyz.  Real Steel is a real steal!

 

Comic material on Google Plus

 

Here is some more memorable stuff I saw on Google Plus these last couple of weeks-

  1. This is the truth       
  2. Politically Correct  Continue reading “Comic material on Google Plus”

Global Warfare on Google Plus

Global Warfare is one of the latest games on Google Plus. There are lots of similarities between this game and Evony at http://evony.com

Global Warfare is made by Kabam https://www.kabam.com/games/global-warfare which is making a total of 3 games for Google Plus (out of 18) and it has Google Ventures as a strategic investor as well (and a member on the board). Google is clearly wanting to bet on online gaming with its earlier strategic investment in Zynga as well. It also acquired http://www.labpixies.com/  (which makes the game Sudoko Puzzles and Flood It but it has more games in reserve as can be seen at https://market.android.com/search?q=labpixies, so clearly G+ is being selective on Games directory at https://plus.google.com/games/directory)

With these gaming companies and others like http://www.digitalchocolate.com/about/ and http://www.rovio.com/index.php?page=company and http://www.popcap.com/ – well they are all there on G+

is gaming the ace in hand in G+ plans for Facebook- time will tell.

Evony of course was a very good game, as it was also very similar (allegedly) to Civilization, and though its advertising campaign of semi clad characters draws flak, it got the worlds attention and recall. While Evony was situated in medieval world,  Global Warfare is a modern warfare equivalent.

Features in Global Warfare-

  • Alliances,
  • multiple player online gaming,
  • social sharing and rewards,
  • in game purchases,
  •  persistent world

Some drawbacks-

  • Slight clutter in gaming space (and lack of nice fonts!)
  • Lack of help forums (or easy availability)
  • Lack of in game search for searching or navigating alliances
Overall- a nice addition to the G+ family of games

 

Games on Google Plus get- Faster, Higher, Stronger

I am spending some time and some money on two games on Google Plus. One is Crime City at https://plus.google.com/games/865772480172 which I talk about in this post

http://www.decisionstats.com/google-plus-games-crime-city-or-fun-with-funzio-on-g/

and Global Warfare  https://plus.google.com/games/216622099218 (which is similar to Evony of the bad ads fame, and I will write on that in another post)

But the total number of games at Google Plus is increasingly and quietly getting better. It seems there is a distinct preference for existing blockbuster games , from both Zynga and non Zynga sources Even though Google is an investor in  Zynga, it clearly wants Google plus to avoid being so dependent on Zynga as Facebook clearly is. Continue reading “Games on Google Plus get- Faster, Higher, Stronger”

The all new Blogging in Blogger

I had given up on Blogspot ever having a makeover in favor of the nice themes at

wordpress, but man, the new CEO at google is really shaking some stuff here.

Check out the nice features for customizing the themes at Blogspot

Continue reading “The all new Blogging in Blogger”