World of Warcraft

As a month of my WOW (World of Warcraft) subscription comes to an end , I hate to say that I am hooked. For the longest time I resisted the urge to try out this MMORPG, mostly because I did not want to outgrow the World of Warcraft as I have seen in the Warcraft game series. WOW, the game asked for a switch to RPG from pure strategy genre. I play RPG games, actually I play them more than strategy games these days, but this was a switch I did not want to do. In reality it is not so much of an RPG, that is my opinion though. Neverthless it is a good game.

It gives you opportunities to plays with the other online gamers, which in my experience adds a different dimension to the whole gaming experience altogether. It is hard to get a good group of strangers to play with, but when that happens it is magical. This one time I ended up with a group of 3 people in an in-game instance (instance is an area in the game created fresh for a group and only that group gets to control what happens in the instance ). It was a balanced group (Warrior, Hunter, Druid and Mage) and we were killing bad guys and so on. Soon the mage had to leave and then we were forced to ask ourselves whether we could continue the instance as you needed a pool of abilities to fight the evil guys in any instance and we thought we were woefully short after the fourth member left. Neverthless we decided to carry on and what followed was surreal . Three of us almost acted together like a complete being, one co ordinating with the other with out any communication. In the end what we thought was impossible seemed pretty straight forward. As we came to the end of the instance we were left wondering how we managed to complete it.

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World of Warcraft
Wikipedia on MMORPG

Kajra re

First time I heard this song from Bunty and Babli, I got up and danced. Thats what this song does to you. I checked out this song after hearing about Shankar Mahadevan being nominated for an award for this song. I keep listening to it time and again and end up dancing to it most of the times. I like it for its Indianness, the quawalli and the seetis. It is refershing to know this earthy track ruled the charts for a long time and went on to get awards. Alisha has got a beautiful voice and she knows how to mould it as the song requires. Sometimes I wonder why she does not sing often for films. It has been remixed by many to create different twists to the original score.

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Music review of Bunty and Babli
Listen to Kajra re
Listen to Jumbalika

Aye aye sir

Those words brought warm smiles once upon a time. They meant that I now could create elven destroyers and that was good. I am talking here about a game called Warcraft 2 , the tide of darkness, one of the best strategy games for a long time. This was the first computer game that captured my interest and I have spent many a weekend repulsing orcish raids and devising new ways to use death knights back in my school days. I still remember copying the game in to 20 floppy disks after zipping it and splitting it and praying all the floppies survive the 200 kilometer trip home on bumpy roads with out getting bad sectors.

I recently bought Warcraft 3 and got this as a freebie and was thrilled. For some reason the game was not as tough as I remembered it to be. I remember spending many many hours trying to get past the first level in the expansion pack. This time around I finished it in one sitting. Did I get better at playing computer games? Whatever the case be I did not feel the same charm anymore, I had seen a whole slew of games over the years. But I spent couple of days playing it and reliving some good old memories.

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Warcraft at gamespot.com
Warcraft 2 sounds
Warcraft lore

Satya

As I casually browsed my music collection to listen to something as I went through the mundane stuff that needs to get done, on a Sunday before the week starts after the whole of Saturday was wasted, I chanced upon Satya. I listen to music in different languages and being South Indian that means I might be listening to the soundtrack of the same movie in three different languages, usually Tamil, Telugu and Hindi as many popular movies in these languages get dubbed into the other two. I had downloaded the some of the songs from Satya's Telugu version recently and I started to listen to that and then moved on to the Hindi soundtrack. I have always liked Satya's Hindi soundtrack, even though the tunes are the same. It has a great soundtrack from the moody "badalon se" to the peppy "sapno mein", from the slow "geela geela pani" to the ultimate gangster song "goli maro". The soundtrack perfectly gels with the movie and songs never stand out of the narrative like usual bollywood movie songs.

Last but not least, who can forget the movie. It is one of the best movies made on Mumbai underworld. The thing that I remember most about the movie is the shocking scene where Bhiku Matre gets killed. Manoj Bajpai went places in Bollywood after his superb performance in Satya as Bhiku Matre. I had watched him before in the Doordarshan soap "Swabhimaan" and was pretty sure he was destined for better things. This film revealed another side of Urmila, at least to me. She plays a simple middle class girl aspiring for a better life. Then there is JD (Satya), who pulls of an amazing performance as an intelligent, fearless strategist. The movie has a host of other actors who played their parts to perfection. It is an intelligent movie and does not take sides. It reveals the other side of gangsters, Bhiku Matre's scenes with his family are a perfrect example.

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Listen to the Hindi soundtrack of Satya
An exhaustive review of Satya

Luka chuppi

My wanderings on the internet lead me to some news on Rang de Basanti. After reading some reviews, I became curious about the soundtrack as I had heard the sound track sometime back ater knowing that it had music by AR Rehman and don't remember being interested in it. Just for kicks I listened again this Sunday and I ended up downloading and listening to "Luka chuppi" , actually many times over. The guitar piece in the beginning sounded very familiar, I could not recollect where I heard it before. It is a beautiful song. Towards the end tabla joins in with other instruments and it takes the song to another level. ARR sounds magnificient in the song.

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Listen to songs from Rang de Basanti here
Download Luka Chuppi from here
A technical review of the soundtrack

Two great movies - Munich & Alfie

I had a good time this weekend watching two great movies - Munich and Alfie. Both of them were moving in different ways. I do not remember seeing murders on film that are as gruesome as shown in Munich. It is bit lengthy by hollywood standards but I never realised the passage of time as it kept me engrossed. I have not seen anyone play a hurt human as Eric Bana in Munich. The way his face changes through the movie is an interesting study in emotions. Critics seem to have a mixed opinion on Munich unlike Alfie where the opinion seems to be of disappointment. I have not seen the one with Michael Caine, so in a way I had no prejudice. I think that this is the best movie Jude Law has done. He seems to come push it up a notch with each new role he gets. Jude Law just oozes charm in this one.

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Alfie on rottentomatoes.com
Munich on Yahoo Movies

Lost love

Its been a long time since I blogged, I claim the usual excuse - I was busy. The last time around I wanted to write something about songs on lost love. They tend to be, in my opinion, bittersweet, like the taste of blood. Here are some of the memorable ones that come to my mind.

• Todh diya from Kasak
• En Kadhale from Duet
• Tadap tadap from Hum dil de chuke sanam

I will end by quoting Samuel Butler - It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.

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Lyrics of En Kadhale
Lyrics of Tadap tadap