Apocalypto Movie Review

Though the cast are all relatively foreign, the movie captured my attention right from the start. The depiction of Mayan civilization was noteworthy, their costumes, weapons and various rituals were portrayed really well. The story is about a young mayan tribal escaping from the captivity to rescue his wife and kid. They are a peaceful hunting tribe living in a relative isolation who are one day ransacked by a group of outlaws . As captives the surviving members are taken to a nearby Mayan settlement who are far more culturally and technically advanced. Upon arriving women are sold into slavery and men are offered as sacrifices to sun god. Scenes of human sacrifices are really raw and not for the faint hearted, the second half of the story is action packed with his escape and chase scenes in deep jungles of Mexico. Watch the "making of movie" included in DVD extras to better appreciate how the movie was made. As a whole I was impressed with the movie, it gave a good glimpse of Mayan life.

Movie trailer:
http://www.apple.com/trailers/touchstone/apocalypto/

Additional reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/Gibsons-Apocalypto-Widescreen-Rudy-Youngblood/dp/B000NOKFHQ/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-6134136-4746462?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1185661509&sr=1-1

Since the film is in some native Mayan language it does carry English sub-titles. Mel Gibson did a good job in directing this film, I need to check out his previous movie "The passion of Christ"

Movie Recommendations

When we think of watching a movie the common problem is lacking a good recommendation, at some point or the other we come across good recommendations but the problem is we loose track of it. No one person can possibly know the list of all decent movies out there but when done collectively and shared by everyone the list can become quite useful. Using Google shared documents I have put up a spreadsheet as a starter with 100 or so movies I could recollect, people can view/edit this one copy from anywhere. Here is the view link

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pZSDmgcA5zHkQef07YSZEfw

For edit privileges I need to add you to the list, the ones with the gmail account in my mailing list I will try to add them to the contributors list. Contributors can further pass on the privileges to others. The document structure is rather rudimentary if anyone wishes to enhance it feel free to do so.

Micheal Moore's Sicko

If you want to know the true state of health care in US I would recommend you to watch this movie. Though not a mainstream entertainment, its quite informative on the state of affairs of the greedy health insurance industry. The take on socialism is often received negatively in this country, but the movie portraits that there are cases where in socialistic approach benefits over capitalistic model as in the current US insurance model. Universal health care in Canada, france and Britain are far more superior and within reach of everyone than the hyper expensive US insurance model.

Though a affordable health care in US is a distant dream, the rise of medical tourism in countries like India and China can be turnout to be viable alternative for big ticket Medicare.

Too see more reviews here is the link:
http://www.amazon.com/Sicko/dp/B00005JPHT/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-6134136-4746462?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1185255856&sr=1-1

Social Operating System

With the recent growth in social networking sites like orkut, you tube, facebook, linkedin, skype etc we can see each bringing forth a unique value like social connectivity in Orkut, video publishing in you tube, voice communication in Skype etc. Though each social site offers a unique service we can see islands of disconnected services what would be great is a seamless integration of these serivces akin a ideal mashup. Though few social sites have started offering data services through which mashing is possible but still we are nowhere close to the ideal mashup. Nova Spivack a pre eminent thinker sheds light on how this trend is taking place also brings forth an idea of Social operating system, here is the link

http://novaspivack.typepad.com/nova_spivacks_weblog/2007/07/the-rise-of-the.html

What technology offers

Kevin Kelly in his talk at TED talks about how technology is evolving and ponders the question "what does technology want". Here is a excerpt what technology offers us:

Differences
Diversity
Options
Choices
Opportunities
Possibilities
Freedom

Just like any organism evolves over time even technology is evolving towards taking a life of its own. Here is the complete talk

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/19