Movie Review: Little Miss Sunshine

Although the movie released in Indian theaters just a week back, it was available on the internet for a long time. It got great reviews at IMDb and a few Oscar nominations as well(finally received 2 Oscars). I liked the storyline and decided to download it. My friend who I share my movies with had already downloaded it and deleted it before sharing it with me. His excuse:"There is nothing in the movie, Bekaar hai". But after reading a rave review(a four-star rating) for the movie from Hindustan Times's Vinayak Chakrovarty(I trust his reviews, simple and unbiased), I finally put it on download. And now after watching it, I can surely say that it really deserves the appreciation it has received. Below is a very well-written plot outline proudly copied by me from IMDb.

Olive is a little girl with a dream: winning the Little Miss Sunshine contest. Her family wants her dream to come true, but they are so burdened with their own quirks, neuroses, and problems that they can barely make it through a day without some disaster befalling them. Olive's father Richard is a flop as a motivational speaker, and is barely on speaking terms with her mother. Olive's uncle Frank, a renowned Proust scholar, has attempted suicide following an unsuccessful romance with a male graduate student. Her brother Dwayne, a fanatical follower of Nietzsche, has taken a vow of silence, which allows him to escape somewhat from the family whose very presence torments him. And Olive's grandfather is a ne'er-do-well with a drug habit, but at least he enthusiastically coaches Olive in her contest talent routine. Circumstances conspire to put the entire family on the road together with the goal of getting Olive to the Little Miss Sunshine contest in far off California.

Its not like the regular Hollywood nobrainer comedy. It is more of a dark comedy with some amazing road movie situations. The movie has no big stars but the casting is perfect, really everyone is nothing short of excellent in the movie. It has been made on budget smaller even than the Bollywood movies produced these days.

My two cents: You shouldn't miss it unless you are not much of a fan of dark humor. It is still running in theaters in India.

Hurray! My first pay

I have been waiting for this for a long time and finally it arrived just before the midsems. Yes, I have received the first installment of my pay, a rocking Rs 6239.01 and there is more to come. As I don't have a scanner with me, I will have to leave you with a mobile phone camera snap of the cheque.

(Click on it to see the enlarged view)

I am still not sure what to do with all this money, I am thinking of saving it to buy a Nintendo Wii. Don't forget to bomb me with ideas for spending this cash.

White is the new Black

You people must have noticed the blog's new white clean look. Other than the white template, I have made some other minor changes to the blog like a neat recent readers section powered by MyBlogLog and a silver NavBar at the top. I have also switched my blogs's feed back from Feedburner to the Blogger default.

Tell me how did you like(or dislike) the new appearance of Third Wind. To me it looks much better now, the black had started hurting my eyes.

I am still experimenting with my blog's look so if you know of a cool blogger template website, just drop me a word about it.

Internet Safety Tips

This is for all those orkut(or maybe hi5 or any other social network for that matter) addict guys looking to find the woman of their dreams by just sitting on that comfy chair in front of their computer. Wake up guys!

These friends are not going to jump out of your computer screen when you need them. Go out and make some REAL friends.

For guys vulnerable to this, my advice is please stop using that crappy IE6, upgrade to a safer browser.

I am back!

Finally my mid-semester exams are over, so here I am writing my first post in almost a month. Midesms were different this time from the previous three semesters, and that is because I studied too hard for them this time. I hope the results are different too this time around.

On the blog front, expect to see a lot of action on the blog in the coming few days. I will be coming up with something different now, there has been too much of my college life crap. So watch out!