Kuruvi is an absolute disappointment from director Tharani. Not much can be expected from a Vijay movie but Tharani has so far dished out movies that were fast paced with a racy screenplay and some good songs thrown in. Kuruvi fails in every aspect and even worse, Vijay mimics some dance steps that Simbu (Silamabarasan) would do. Cant get any worse, eh?

As for the story, there is none. Vetrivel (Vijay) plays a kuruvi (guy who smuggles stuff across borders). He has to rescue his father from the clutches of an evil man (played by Suman, what a let down) who has enslaved him. There are 5 songs, numerous fight scenes and oh, I forgot to mention, Trisha (who has one of the most dumbest roles). Well, most of the roles reserved for actresses in Tamil cinema fall into this category. So, Trisha can be excused.

Vidyasagar has confused loud beats for music. You can hardly spot the difference between the songs as they all sound the same. Expected more from Vidyasagar.

Lead actors are supposed to be the mainstay in a review. But Ashish Vidyarthi (plays a local goonda) and Vivek make the movie little bearable. Vivek is absent in the second half and the movie plods along from one fight to another. There is zero creativity in any of the scenes and as soon as the movie starts, you can predict the ending. That's not how a movie is supposed to be.

Vijay has been unapologetic about the kind of movies he makes. And power to him. But movies like Kuruvi just make the movie watching experience akin to torture. The argument is that his movies are escapist and cater to the masses. As I was watching the movie, I was plotting my own escape from the theater.

If you were wondering as to where you can get hold of pictures from Indian Premier League, all you need to do is visit the site (http://www.cricket.com/). The pictures (in resized format) can be viewed for free but if you need to use them, it's just a small matter of forking out $199 per picture (yes, that's correct). No wonder the website paid nearly $50 million to BCCI for the rights to the pictures and other web related content. Thankfully, they do have an option for bulk buying at a reduced price but I am not really sure if the price would differ by a lot. May be, the high price being quoted for each picture is keeping sites like Cricinfo away from making these pictures available to their readers.

I visited the Cosmeston Medieval Village today and was pleasantly surprised to enjoy a day long list of activities. I recorded a portion of the one-to-one combat scene and have uploaded it at youtube. It's available below.

Cosmeston Medieval Village is a "living history" village near Lavernock in the Vale of Glamorgan not far from Penarth and Cardiff in south Wales. Based upon remains discovered during a 1980s archaeological dig in the grounds of Cosmeston Park, it is a re-creation of 14th century peasant life.

The reconstructed village regularly plays host to groups of reenactors, who camp in authentic tents around the outskirts of the village, and perform displays of historical combat for the public.

Technicians involved in various aspects of the making of Dasavatharam speak out here.

Copyright: Rediff.com

Does anyone know when the movie Dasavatharam starring Kamalhassan is releasing? Please let me know. Thank you.

Here is a slightly longer and a better quality trailer of Dasavatharam. Enjoy and do leave comments.

A recent article on the BBC website highlighted how easy it is to gain access to personal data of registered members on Facebook. While many people including me are happy to add 3rd party applications, we are ignoring the perils resulting from such an action. In the article quoted earlier, a developer was hired by BBC to develop an application which would snoop around for personal data of members who add that application to their list. While I am not very concerned about privacy issues, there are many people out there who would be appalled by the fact that obtaining personal data could be that easy. Also, it seems that such applications could access personal data of friends of the user who added the application. Hence, it's plain and easy to see how vast amount of personal information can be easily mined even though only few users would be actively using such applications. While Facebook does warn users about adding 3rd party applications, it's easy for users to overlook such warnings. These applications could be hosted on any server (not necessarily belonging to Facebook) and it's easy to think of a scenario how the information obtained could be easily misused. I guess Facebook needs to enforce stricter control regarding deployment of such applications and also needs to make sure that such applications do not violate user confidentiality.