Dasavatharam Stunts by Andy Dixon – New info

Nothing substantial have come out till now about the action sequences in ‘Dasavatharam’.

But don’t think that Kamal Hassan is not going to give competition to all those young fiery heroes for making sure that it’s his dream project that gets the best ever name tag in all the ingredients of entertainment including the action sequences.

When the movie itself cruises towards its end through thrilling action scenes, then we can think how much importance must have been given to those frames.

So we can understand what the reason is for Andy Dixon being chosen by Kamal Haasan to head the action unit of the film to be a necessity rather than be a luxury.

This famous action choreographer’s work profile boasts of films like Miami Vice, Transporter 2, Ace Ventura-Pet Detective etc.

Andy Dixon is considered as an expert in car chase sequences and making rigs for action scenes involving big risks. Rigs which are designed as per the requirements of each film are equipments used to execute high-risk action sequences to maximum perfection without causing damage to men or equipments.

The action guru also has a completely equipped team of experts to carry out the responsibility smoothly. The ten member action team includes a specialist in wire fights, a Parkour jump expert, race drivers, stuntmen and stunt women.

A jaw dropping car chase scene forms part of the climax of ‘Dasavatharam’. The sequences have been executed by a group of race drivers who have performed in the highly popular AXN Serial “Extreme Stunts”. Grady Bishop who is dare devil driver from Florida, U.S is the captain of the high risk drivers gang.

‘Dasavatharam’ also offers some thing for the lovers of martial arts fighting scenes. Hai-Kido which is a Japanese martial art will be part of the action works in the film. For choreographing these shots Sonny Loke Chuan Sun who is a master of Hai-Kido was brought all the way from Japan to USA.

“The end sequence of ‘Dasavatharam’ would be remembered for long time for its great actions and rigs”.

This is what Andy Dixon has to say about the climax part of the film. If such an experienced person says this with so much surety, the wait till June 12 to experience this action scene in ‘Dasavatharam’ is worth.

Source IndiaGltiz

Captcha and Rapid Share .. Funny Ones !!!

Now this is wht i was referring to here an here are pics tht i took from net tht prove my misery

The day i lost my Gnome and got it back !!

yeah u heard it right . i did lose my gnome in my fedora 8 tht had been running for the past four or five months  in my laptop(Phoenix).It all started when amarok did not start properly and i decided to bring amarok back to life no matter what it takes . I first re installed amarok from my repo , but still it showed the same behavior. Now i  thought may be my alsa mixer(Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) is not properly working so i tried to remove alsa and thats exactly where i initiated the whole process of losing GNOME. The alsa packages tht i had marked for removal had lots of packages from GNOME , KDE and others( in fact all the packages) dependent on it. And without noticing wht i am actually removing , i clicked the ok button to proceed on with the alsa removal  and it happily removed everything from my comp and i found my comp being reduced to a black screen with a terminal prompt on it . Did i deserve all these for removing a single package. In fact yes. This is how Linux works . It has lots of packages dependent on others tht if it misses the dependency , it removes the other pacjkages which infact become a sort of garbage without th dependencies.

And now i was like i am no where on this earth , pushed to the extent of being without linux in the Theoretical CS lab. And then i took a break and came back and took backup of important  data using the command mode and thought about the different optins that i had.

1.Go back to windows temporarily abandoning Linux ( I was really feeling bad whn i thought one simple package removal can take me to this extent)

2.Install Ubuntu which i dont like as i liked Fedora

3.Install Fedora 9 for which i had no repos.

I could clearly convince myself tht all these were not going to match the performance and graphics of my current Fedora 8 which i had customized so much.

So this is hw i gt back my gnome . I mounted my hard disk ,which had the repos, manually frm command mode and took back up of everything.

Next i did a yum -y groupinstall “GNOME Desktop Environment” and yipee my gnome got installed back in fifteen minutes nw i reinstalled all the apps and stuff and in one hour time i was like from deathbed to my paradise . Ofcourse i named my comp Phoenix and it has resurrected my pleasure from  ashes.

So i am now more confident of things in GNOME and in this course of time i actually realized the full potential of Linux – The Terminal . Thats the back bone tht supports everything and as long as it stays in my comp  i can do anything and evrything with it.

So coming back to the amarok thing tht had initially caused all these problem , i came to knw tht if i had cleared my cache from home directory it would have solved the problem . But i wud have missed the fun and thrill  i have experienced. And i almost wasted half of my day at Theoretical CS lab getting all this back to work . I had to wirte back python scripts for Screenlets tht i found were buggy . And in al it was a Lot of Fun ;);)

More Pics of Dasa

These Pics were taken during the start of Dasavatharam .. enjoy..

George Bush and Jackie Chan to watch Dasavatharam

Since Kamal is appearing as George Bush in one of the roles in Dasavatharam , the producers have planned to screen the movie with subtitles to The american President and one more print with subtitles will be sent for screening to Jackie Chan… Thats great News… and with a June 6 release , the fever is high and up..

source local newspaper and behindwoods

Introduction and Analysis of a Simple Combinatorial Take-Away Game

I have been reading on game theory and thought of posting some introduction so tht more ppl can start on these topics.

Combinatorial games are two-player games with an outcome (ie it cannot end in a draw) and the players move alternatively from one position to other position depending on their move and finally reach a terminal position. When a player reaches the terminal position, the winner is decided based on the type of game play.

There are two types of game plays – normal play and the misre play .In a normal play , the one who moves the game to the terminal position is the winner and in a misre play , the one who moves the game to the terminal position is a loser.And if the rules of the game are same for both the players , then its a impartial game and when the rules are different for the two players , then its a partizan game.An comman example of partizan game is a game of chess.

Take Away Game :
A take away game is a impartial combinatorial game where there is a single pile with n chips and players remove a certain number of chips from the pile depending on the rules of the game.Let us for the ease of analysis consider a normal play where the one who takes the game to the terminal position wins the game.

Consider a pile of n chips and say the rules of the game are given

* N={0,1,2,3,..,n} be the positions that the game can be and a 0 signifies a terminal position and a n signifies a starting position
* S={1,3,4} be the possible set of moves
* A player can take away ‘x’ chips from the current pile where x € {S}.

Say we need to analyse the game given n and S .By analysis what we mean is given n and S and assuming optimal play, who wins the game.To analyse the game we define two positions namely N position where the Next player to play wins and P position where the Previous player to have played wins.So a game ideally starts with either a P or a N position but always ends in a P position.

So we arrive at the following rules which can be recursively used to define the P and N positions.

1.All terminal positions are P positions in a normal play.
2.From an P position, any move takes us to a position.
3.From a N position, we can reach a P position in atleast one possible way so that we emerge the final winner.

If the game starts with P position , the second player to play wins beacause, from P position the game can move to only to N position and the Second player wins by taking the game again to a P position according to the Rule 3 stated above(this is called playing optimally).
If the game starts with a N position , the current player wins the game by taking the game always to a P position.

So Let S be {1,3,4} for our analysis.
We use the following Algorithm to classify the P and N positions of {0,1,2,… n}.

Step 1: Label every terminal position as a P-position.
Step 2: Label every position that can reach a labelled P-position in one move as an N-position.
Step 3: Find those positions whose only moves are to labelled N-positions; label such positions as P-positions.
Step 4: If no new P-positions were found in step 3, stop; otherwise return to step 2

So we begin by adding ‘0′ to P position and let set P={0} denote the currently recognised P positions .By using Step 1, { 1,3,4} are decided to be N positions and analysing the next number in the close proximity , we take ‘2′.
‘2′ has only one transition and its to a N position so 2 gets added to P and 1,3,4 gets added to N in this iteration. Now moving to the next iteration, 5(2+3) and 6(2+4) are N postions and analysing for 7, we have the possible transitions as 6,4,3 which are all N positions and hence 7 gets added to P
hence at the end of second iteration, P={0,2,7} and N={1,3,4,5,6} . On continuing further, we get the following
P={0,2,7,9,14,16,21,23….} and N={1,3,4,5,6,8,10,11,12,13,15,17,18,19,20….}
So genaralising all positions which leave a remainder of 0 or 2 on dividing by 7 are P positions and others are N positions.
So say we have 21 chips then we are asked to comment on the winner assuming the optimal game play, we can conclude from the above derivations that 21 is a P position so the second player can win if he plays optimally . Say i start with 21 , the possible moves are 20,18,17 which are all N positions . Say we move to one of these
17 can move to 16,14,13 (14,16 are both P position)
18 can move to 17,15,14 (14 is a P position)
20 can move to 19,17,16 ( 16 is a P position)
for all the above cases , we observe that there is a possible transition that the second player can make such tht the game proceeds to a P position and the cycle continues and finally the second player comes to a N position which could be either 1,3,4 so tht the second player makes a suitable move and moves to 0 winning the game. If the Second player at any stage makes a un-optimal move , the game goes temporarily out of his control and he may or may-not win the game.

Another Example from SPOJ :

Let us analyze this Problem from SPOJ NGM which can atually be found here.

The problem states that a number n is taken and the player take turns and subtract the number by any one of its non zero digits.And the one who makes this number ‘0′ wins the game .The two players are Nikofir andTrofim. This problem helps us understand the above disucssed concepts.

Analysis :

We start by adding 0 to P and 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 all lead to 0 directly hence are added to N . Now we analyze 10 which goes to 9 alone which is a N position and gets added to P . So at end of one iteration,

P={0,10) N=(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9} .

Next the following numbers {11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19 }all have one possible move to {0,10} so they belog to N and the next P number is 20 proceeding we fins tht P is a set of multiples of 10

P={ x| x is a multiple of 10}

N={x | x is not a multiple of 10}

So given number which is not a multiple of 10 it is in N position and the player who plays first always wins ie Nikofir wins always .

If the given number is a multiple of 10 , then its in P position and Trofirm wins.

Stress on Optimal Play :
Why do we need to analyse an optimal play? The need for all this analysis is to make the computer make the best move at the current position so that it poses a challenge to the player who plays and if the player gets lucky, he can take advantage of these analysis to make a winning move.

The problem can be made more complex by imposing more constraints and by adding more piles. When the piles are added , it becomes a Simple Nim game which can be found here

Any suggestions or comments kindly leave comments below

The making of the 10 A

i read the following from here

Sify.com published a write-up on Dasavathaaram, which seemed to have been written by Kamal himself. It talks about make-up, screenplay, music, etc. Excerpts:

We started with just 25 days for the first schedule of the film, which had no shooting, no acting. It was just for the make-up tests. 25 days in the US. 20 days, 12 hours a day, and then 5 days of taking photographs. When we came back with the photographs, people believed more in Dasavatharam, including the producer, the director and myself. Till date nobody outside of the unit has seen any of these photographs.

Synthetic bio-weapons, research and analysis wing, Kulothunga II’s distaste for Vedanta and the Chaos theory!

Yes. Said in one sentence the above sounds pedantic and pompous. But embedded into a screenplay it makes for a racy read.

…about the chaos theory and how we are all connected as a world. None of your acts or mine will go without an effect.

It’s like as if one act, collides with another. It’s almost like particle physics if you look at it. One object crashing onto another producing something else which could tell the story of how all things came to be.

I think, basically I am a cinema fan. And I have given you what I would like to see as a sensible cinema fan. So, I think your intelligence will not be insulted, your time will not be wasted, and you will really enjoy this film. And why you should watch the film, because we worked so hard for you, that’s one good reason why.

KS Ravikumar reveals some details in an interview to The New Indian Express.

The movie is complete but for the frames of the tsunami, which are being done in Hong Kong. “But the music that was out a week ago is doing very good. My pick is Ulaga Naayagane”, Ravikumar reveals.

“But for Kamal Haasan, the hardest role, I think, would be the role of Fletcher that he plays in the movie. Shooting the grandmother role and the tall man’s role was most challenging for me”, he adds.

“If I do movies as big as this, I can only do four Dasavathaarams for the rest of my life”, he jokingly states. And not all producers would be open to doing big budget movies as this”, he reasons.

Here’s a short interview of Kamal in The Times of India. Highlights:

I used to spend five hours only in makeup. What was interesting is that I have started respecting women more after that.

I know Dasavatharam is going to be a hit. I can’t say how big. I know I sound pompous by saying that, but we have got a U certificate for the film, which will be enjoyed by all age groups.

I feel film promotion has become extremely important and I don’t think it’s new. That has always been the trend. The loudest seller in a bazaar attracts attention. I have always felt that the loudest crying child gets the milk.

Let’s look at another article in The Times of India. It mentions that Kamal has won 175 awards till date! Here’s a quote:

The actor, who is a fan of Marlon Brando and Peter Sellers, says the strength of his performances lies in his ability to do his job “very honestly”. “I’m a true Gandhian in that respect; I believe that if you are honest to whatever you do, name, fame and accolades will automatically find you,” he says seriously.

Ravivarman, the cinematographer, too had things to say to The Hindu.

“List 10 of the best action films of Hollywood, and ‘Dasavathaaram’ would easily match them in quality,” says Ravivarman.

“I don’t think I can work on such a mammoth project again. I could go into depression or have my pressure levels touch dangerous levels,” laughs Ravivarman.

There was this car chase which included a helicopter, with Kamal Haasan at the helm of the sequence. It was shot at night in Florida. “Ideally, the entire city ought to have been lighted up for it. But as it couldn’t be done, I went ahead with the available lighting. It was all dark when I looked through the lens. But experience told me we would get the required effect. They were anxious moments, because if the effort had gone awry re-shooting the portion would have been impossible,” recalls Ravi.

Ripley’s Beleive it or not – The ten faces

u got to trust this piece of photo.. because it comes  in the last one second of the trailer…

now comes the question how many can u recognise

Four words on Wht Vijay has been doing all these days as an actor..

“Ctrl +c” “Ctrl+v”

ie copy + paste

couldnt tell in a much more compact way….

well i put a challenge to computer geeks to explain the shortest notation of wht vijay is doing..

SRK’s short words for Kamal

I read this in some forum and thought it wud be nice if i shared it with u ppl. especially kamal fans

“I walk down the road and people want to kiss me. I’d never do all that to anyone. Not Mr. Bachchan or Mr. Rajnikant. The exception is Kamal. I asked him if I could touch him when I first met him. He has an amazing sense of using space. When he plays an old man his gait and the way he stands is enough to convey his age. He doesn’t need make-up. I find him greater than Dustin Hoffman and De Niro put together, I know Kamal can make you cry with a look in his eyes. I know his pauses. He has an amazing sense of timing that he knows the audience likes. He’s a technician par excellence. That kind of knowledge and control every actor should strive to get.”

ques to srk… “why did u do heyram?”

” because i want to do films with people who care about good cinema and no one cares about good cinema in the world more than kamal haasan”

Proud of these words…