THE RACONTEUR'S WORLD

PHOTOS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD - 2

2009-04-10T18:27:00.001-07:00

Here are the second set of those indelible revolutionary photographs. I might be unable to put forward much enough information on these photos but it surely goes without saying that they alone say a thousand words.......

World Press Photo of the Year: 1994 James Nachtwey, USA, Magnum Photos for Time. Rwanda, June 1994. Hutu man mutilated by the Hutu ‘Interahamwe’ militia, who suspected him of sympathizing with the Tutsi rebels. About the image Nachtwey says his specialty is dealing with ground level realities with a human dimension. He feels that people need photography to help them understand what’s going on in the world, and believes that pictures can have a great influence on shaping public opinion and mobilizing protest.

From 1936 to 1939 Robert Capa photographed the horrors the Spanish Civil War. In 1936, he became known across the globe for a photo he took on the Cordoba Front of a Loyalist Militiaman who had just been shot and was in the act of falling to his death. Because of his proximity to the victim and the timing of the capture, there was a long controversy about the authenticity of this photograph. Historians eventually succeeded in identifying the dead soldier as Federico Borrell García and proved it authentic. This is the best-known picture of the Spanish civil war.

Hector Pieterson (1964 – 16 June 1976) became the iconic image of the 1976 Soweto uprising in apartheid South Africa when a news photograph by Sam Nzima of the dying Hector being carried by a fellow student, was published around the world. He was killed at the age of 12 when the police opened fire on protesting students. For years, June 16 stood as a symbol of resistance to the brutality of the apartheid government. Today, it is known as National Youth Day — a day on which South Africans honour young people and bring attention to their needs..

World Press Photo of the Year: 2003 Jean-Marc Bouju, France, The Associated Press. An Najaf, Iraq, 31 March 2003. Iraqi man comforts his son at a holding center for prisoners of war. About the image Working quickly and discreetly, Bouju couldn’t help thinking about his own child, and how it would be if the roles were reversed. Trust me his plight can't be worst enough :(

It was the fourth school year since segregation had been outlawed by the Supreme Court. Things were not going well, and some southerners accused the national press of distorting matters. This picture, however, gave irrefutable testimony, as Elizabeth Eckford strides through a gantlet of white students, including Hazel Bryant (mouth open the widest), on her way to Little Rock’s Central High.

World Press Photo of the Year: 1957 Douglas Martin, USA, The Associated Press. Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, 4 September 1957. Dorothy Counts, one of the first black students to enter the newly desegregated Harry Harding High School. About the image Reporters and photographers bore witness and recorded the violence that erupted when Dorothy Counts showed up for her first day at an all-white school. People threw rocks and screamed “Go back where you came from”. They got their way - after a string of abuses, Dorothy’s family withdrew her from the school after only four days.

Puerto Cabello naval base, Venezuela, 4 June 1962. A soldier who has been mortally wounded by a sniper clings onto navy chaplain Luis Padillo. About the image Braving the streets amid sniper fire, to offer last rites to the dying, the priest encountered a wounded soldier, who pulled himself up by clinging to the priest’s cassock, as bullets chewed up the concrete around them. Rondón Lovera, who had to lie flat to avoid getting shot, later said that he was unsure how he managed to take this picture.

Picture from an Einsatzgruppen soldier’s personal album, labelled on the back as “Last Jew of Vinnitsa, it shows a member of Einsatzgruppe D is just about to shoot a Jewish man kneeling before a filled mass grave in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in 1941. All 28,000 Jews from Vinnitsa and its surrounding areas were massacred at the time. Now that would you call purification?????

Now this is a superb way to torture a defenceless and frail victim.I guess these merciless barbaric savages deserve a handful of kudos ( after all none got to curse them. Even if anybody does so, it won’t realy make a difference to them. At the time the public saw it, it made quite a buzz, people realized how wrong the war is. The picture shows American trooper dragging the body of a vietcong soldier with their tank (or APC more exactly). It seems they are enjoying the plight of the soldier :X

For years, Birmingham, Ala.(England), was considered “the South’s toughest city,” home to a large black population and a dominant class of whites that met in frequent, open hostility. Birmingham in 1963 had become the cause célèbre of the black civil rights movement as nonviolent demonstrators led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. repeatedly faced jail, dogs and high-velocity hoses in their tireless quest to topple segregation. This picture of people being pummeled by a liquid battering ram rallied support for the plight of the blacks.

The photograph that has become known as “Migrant Mother” is one of a series of photographs that Dorothea Lange made of Florence Owens Thompson and her children in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California. Lange was concluding a month’s trip photographing migratory farm labor around the state for what was then the Resettlement Administration. In 1960, Lange gave this account of the experience:

I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.

The ceremony begins on May 10, 1869, as an eastbound Central Pacific locomotive and a westbound Union Pacific locomotive meet in Promontory Point, Utah, marking the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. The men on the cowcatchers are ready to toast the driving of the golden spike. The work had been brutal. At one stage, efforts to tunnel through the marble spine of a Sierra Nevada mountain consumed an entire year, as only eight inches a day of progress was possible. So: a fabulous accomplishment. But this is also an early example of a photo op—the use of a picture as a means to an end. Folks back East could see, plain as day, that a train could take them all the way to California, where businessmen anxiously awaited their commerce.

When President Richard Nixon said he was sending troops to Cambodia, the nation’s colleges erupted in protest (1970). At Kent State some threw rocks. The Ohio National Guard, called in to quell the turmoil, suddenly turned and fired, killing four; two were simply walking to class. This photo captured a pivotal moment: American soldiers had just killed American kids. Student photographer John Filo won the Pulitzer; the event was also memorialized in a Neil Young song and a TV movie. The girl, Mary Ann Vecchio, turned out not to be a Kent State student, but a 14-year-old runaway. She was sent back to her family in Florida.

World Press Photo of the Year: 1976 Françoise Demulder, France, Gamma. Beirut, Lebanon, January 1976. Palestinian refugees in the district La Quarantaine. About the image She was the first woman to win the World Press Photo, and did so on the 20th anniversary of the award. Demulder stated at the time that she hated war, but felt compelled to document how it’s always the innocent who suffer, while the powerful get richer and richer.

The day was June 11, 1963,when Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk from Vietnam, burned himself to death at a busy intersection in downtown Saigon to bring attention to the repressive policies of the Catholic Diem regime that controlled the South Vietnamese government at the time. Buddhist monks asked the regime to lift its ban on flying the traditional Buddhist flag, to grant Buddhism the same rights as Catholicism, to stop detaining Buddhists and to give Buddhist monks and nuns the right to practice and spread their religion. While burning Thich Quang Duc never moved a muscle. Now what would you call this???? This is perhaps the best photograph to end this series. With this will continue the unfailing vivid fight of the rebels, deprived and demoralized mass................

I would like to thank all those people who were involved somehow or other in bringing up these photos amongst us. And if you like them please don't forget to make your comment. take care :)

PHOTOS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD - 1

2009-04-07T19:28:00.000-07:00

The armageddon( referring to my class 12 boards) is over and finally i am back to blogging........phew!!!!. This time i won't be presenting you with a quiz post. Instead i would like to share some world photographs ( might be famous or perhaps infamous but they surely have changed the world...) that really can sweep thoughts at once. i hope this will arouse people's compassion ( even if a bit) in this perturbed paradise. i guess some people are aware of this stuffs but most are not. so here they are......

This is perhaps the best one to flag off a miserable journey of unfailing fights and sufferings. Just have a look at the eyes of this Afghan girl, picture shot by National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry . Sharbat Gula was one of the students in an informal school within the refugee camp; McCurry, rarely given the opportunity to photograph Afghan women, seized the opportunity and captured her image. She was approximately 12 years old at the time. She made it on the cover of National Geographic next year, and her identity was discovered in 1992.

STARVING BOY AND MISSIONARY

A photo taken by Mike Wells from United Kingdom. It was taken in Karamoja district, Uganda, April 1980. The photo won the World Press Photo award for the same year.

Wells felt indignant that the same publication that sat on his picture for five months without publishing it, while people were dying, entered it into a competition. He was embarrassed to win as he never entered the competition himself, and was against winning prizes with pictures of people starving to death.

THE NAPALM GIRL
Kim Phúc was a resident in the village of Trang Bang, South Vietnam. On June 8, 1972, South Vietnamese planes, in coordination with the American military, dropped a napalm bomb on Trang Bang, which was under attack from and occupied by North Vietnamese forces. She joined a group of civilians and South Vietnamese soldiers fleeing from the Cao Dai Temple, located in the village along the road, to safe South Vietnamese positions. A South Vietnamese pilot mistook the group as a threat and diverted to attack it. Along with other villagers, two of Kim Phúc’s cousins were killed. Associated Press photographer Nick Út earned a Pulitzer Prize for the photograph. It was also the World Press Photo of the Year 1972. The image of her running naked amidst the chaotic background became one of the most remembered images of the Vietnam War. In an interview many years later, she remembers yelling “Nong qua, nong qua” (”too hot, too hot”) in the picture. After taking the photograph, Út promptly took Kim Phúc and the other children to a hospital in Saigon where it was determined that her burns were so severe that she would not survive. However, after a 14-month hospital stay and 17 surgical procedures, she returned home. Út continued to visit until he was evacuated during the fall of Saigon, three years after the picture was taken. Audio tapes of then-president Richard Nixon in conversation with his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, show that Nixon doubted the veracity of the photograph, musing whether it may have been “fixed.”[2] Following the release of this tape, Út commented: “Even though it has become one of the most memorable images of the twentieth century, President Nixon once doubted the authenticity of my photograph when he saw it in the papers on 12 June 1972…. The picture for me and unquestionably for many others could not have been more real. The photo was as authentic as the Vietnam war itself. The horror of the Vietnam war recorded by me did not have to be fixed. That terrified little girl is still alive today and has become an eloquent testimony to the authenticity of that photo. That moment thirty years ago will be one Kim Phúc and I will never forget. It has ultimately changed both our lives”

With North Vietnam’s Tet Offensive beginning, Nguyen Ngoc Loan, South Vietnam’s national police chief, was doing all he could to keep Viet Cong guerrillas from Saigon. As Loan executed a prisoner who was said to be a Viet Cong captain, AP photographer Eddie Adams opened the shutter. Adams won a Pulitzer Prize for a picture that, as much as any, turned public opinion against the war. Adams felt that many misinterpreted the scene, and when told in 1998 that the immigrant Loan had died of cancer at his home in Burke, Va., he said, “The guy was a hero. America should be crying. I just hate to see him go this way, without people knowing anything about him.”

A hunger strike by 3,000 students in Beijing had grown to a protest of more than a million as the injustices of a nation cried for reform. For seven weeks the people and the People’s Republic, in the person of soldiers dispatched by a riven Communist Party, warily eyed each other as the world waited. When this young man simply would not move, standing with his meager bags before a line of tanks, a hero was born. A second hero emerged as the tank driver refused to crush the man, and instead drove his killing machine around him. Soon this dream would end, and blood would fill Tiananmen. But this picture had shown a billion Chinese that there is hope.

When the Igbos of eastern Nigeria declared themselves independent in 1967, Nigeria blockaded their fledgling country-Biafra. In three years of war, more than one million people died, mainly of hunger. In famine, children who lack protein often get the disease kwashiorkor, which causes their muscles to waste away and their bellies to protrude. War photographer Don McCullin drew attention to the tragedy. "I was devastated by the sight of 900 children living in one camp in utter squalor at the point of death," he said. "I lost all interest in photographing soldiers in action." The world community intervened to help Biafra, and learned key lessons about dealing with massive hunger exacerbated by war-a problem that still defies simple solutions.

(left)Picture of segregated water fountains in North Carolina taken by Elliott Erwitt

The photo is the "Pulitzer Prize" winning photo taken in 1994 during the Sudan Famine.The picture depicts stricken child crawling towards an United Nations food camp, located a kilometer away.The vulture is waiting for the child to die so that it can eat him. This picture shocked the whole world. No one knows what happened to the child, including the photographer Kevin Carter who left the place as soon as the photograph was taken. Three months later he committed suicide due to depression. This one is my personal favourite [ if its really the appropiate term to use :( ]

The photo is part of The Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning entry (2000) showing how a Kosovar refugee Agim Shala , 2, is passed through a barbed wire fence into the hands of grandparents at a camp run by United Arab Emirates in Kukes, Albania. The members of the Shala family were reunited here after fleeing the conflict in Kosovo.

BURIAL OF AN UNKNOWN CHILD. this child has become the icon of the world's worst industrial disaster caused by the US multinational chemical company, Union Carbide.The Bhopal gas disaster was the worst industrial incident ever happened. The day this image was taken several thousand people have been killed the night before by the gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant. More than 100.000 people have been effected by the gas. Many of them still suffer from the results of the exposure. But that night 1984 was really just the beginning. Union Carbide, which is now part of DOW chemical, successfully refused to cleanup Bhopal since nearly 25 years. Remaining pesticides in the Union Carbide plant now poison the water in Bhopal. Hundrets of damaged children every year are the result. Neither Dow Chemical nor the Indian government see any reason to clean up Bhopal. This image is the most famous one in a series of image Raghu Rai shot over the years. It became the symbol of the Bhopal disaster and didn´t lose any of it´s emotional power over the years.

The eyes that you can't just deny. Omayra Sánchez was one of the 25,000 victims of the Nevado del Ruiz (Colombia) volcano which erupted on November 14, 1985. The 13-year old had been trapped in water and concrete for 3 days. The picture was taken shortly before she died and it caused controversy due to the photographer's work and the Colombian government's inaction in the midst of the tragedy, when it was published worldwide after the young girl's death.

Settler woman struggling with Israeli security officers at Amona outpost in the West Bank February 1, 2006. Oded Balilty of The Associated Press was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography in 207, "for his powerful photograph of a lone Jewish woman defying Israeli security forces as they remove illegal settlers in the West Bank."

Contrary to the constraints that were put upon the press in subsequent conflicts, and even to the embedded program used in the recent Iraqi war, correspondents and photographers in Vietnam could, as Walter Cronkite wrote in LIFE, “accompany troops to wherever they could hitch a ride, and there was no censorship . . . That system—or lack of one—kept the American public well informed of our soldiers’ problems, their setbacks and their heroism.” Reaching Out is a quintessential example of the powerful imagery that came out of Vietnam. “The color photographs of tormented Vietnamese villagers and wounded American conscripts that Larry Burrows took and LIFE published, starting in 1962, certainly fortified the outcry against the American presence in Vietnam,” Susan Sontag wrote in her essay “Looking at War,” in the December 9, 2002, New Yorker. “Burrows was the first important photographer to do a whole war in color—another gain in verisimilitude and shock.” Burrows was killed when the helicopter he was riding in was shot down over Laos in 1971.

When LIFE ran this stark, haunting photograph of a beach in Papua New Guinea on September 20, 1943, the magazine felt compelled to ask in an adjacent full-page editorial, “Why print this picture, anyway, of three American boys dead upon an alien shore?” Among the reasons: “words are never enough . . . words do not exist to make us see, or know, or feel what it is like, what actually happens.” But there was more to it than that; LIFE was actually publishing in concert with government wishes. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was convinced that Americans had grown too complacent about the war, so he lifted the ban on images depicting U.S. casualties. Strock’s picture and others that followed in LIFE and elsewhere had the desired effect. The public, shocked by combat’s grim realities, was instilled with yet greater resolve to win the war.

Buchenwald concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg (Etter Mountain) near Weimar, Thuringia, Germany (at the time, Nazi Germany), in July 1937, and one of the largest such camps on German soil. During an American bombing raid on 24 August 1944 that was directed at a nearby armament factory, several bombs, including incendiaries, also fell on the camp, resulting in heavy casualties amongst the inmates.

What Charles Dickens did with words for the underage toilers of London, Lewis Hine did with photographs for the youthful laborers in the United States. In 1908 the National Child Labor Committee was already campaigning to put the nation’s two million young workers back in school when the group hired Hine. The Wisconsin native traveled to half the states, capturing images of children working in mines, mills and on the streets. Here he has photographed “breaker boys,” whose job was to separate coal from slate, in South Pittston, Pa. Once again, pictures swayed the public in a way cold statistics had not, and the country enacted laws banning child labor.

On 15 August 1961 he found himself, aged 19, guarding the Berlin Wall, then in its third day of construction, at the corner of RuppinerstraÃŸe and BernauerstraÃŸe. At that stage of construction, the Berlin Wall was only a low barbed wire fence. As the people on the Western side shouted Komm rÃ¼ber! (”come over”), Schumann jumped the barbed wire and was driven away at high speeds by a waiting West Berlin police car. Photographer Peter Leibing captured a photograph of his escape on film and it became a well-known image of the Cold War.

I will be back with more such thought provoking pictures in my next post. till then take care :)

KUIZZICAL 1

2008-05-05T06:55:00.000-07:00

NEVER EVER BE A IDLE LIKE ME. BUT LEARN TO ENJOY YOUR LIFE.

ALWAYS WORK AND NO QUIZ MAKES BILL A DULL MAN.

TRY OUT THIS QUESTIONS.

1. "There are a pair of rabbits in a garden. Now,if they produce a pair of babies at the end of every month,and the babies reach adulthood in 2 months,how many pair of rabbits would be there in the garden at the end of a year?" A certain mathematician, to solve this problem, created something phenomenal (which was named after him) which is held in high regard in mathematics. What is it?

2. ( A good one) Waterborne, a film directed by Kanwal Rekhi's son Ben Rekhi and starring Shabana Azmi has to its credit one of the most unconventional firsts. What?

3. What was achieved in 1893 as a result of the suffragist movement in New Zealand?( easy one)

4. This term traces its origin to a opera by French composer Edmond Audran, who was a unknown entity till he churned this production out in 1880. The plotline revolves around a farmgirl who would bring good luck to whoever had posession of her, provided that she stayed a virgin. The term has become integral to sports and sporting events. what?

5. Which famous monument is located inside the worlds largest artificial forest?( no more clue)

6. ( football) This is about the Munich air disaster that killed 8 of Manchester United's full squad.( the so called Bushby Babes).they where returning after a European fixture. Give me the name of the club against which they had played right before the crash.

7. Many competitions are held for this sport. Some of which are Endurance, Fast Catch, Trick Catch, Aussie Round & Accuracy of Return. Name the sport..

8. (easy but good) It is called Bul-Bul in France, Lily-Trily in Denmark, and Hilarin-Lilarin in Finland. What is it called in English?

9.Douglas Kirkpatrick, of the US Air Force quipped, "____ _____ has overcome the acceleration of the earth's gravity by the use of muscle power in the vertical plane, thus producing a low altitude earth orbit". Who?( very easy)

10. (an etymology) This word was first used to describe compositions set to choir music of the church. It derives itself from the Greek 'antiphonos' meaning verse response. Later through latin it got to present situation. Which word?

11. Who were the signatories of the Treaty Of Park Avenue?what did it say?

12. Name the painting and the painter.
( a tough one)
A USELESS CLUE: HE IS MY ALL TIME FAVOURITE. ACTUALLY ONE CAN GUESS FROM THE TYPE OF PAINTING

SORRY FOR BEING LATE. BELOW ARE THE ANSWERS:

1. The Fibonacci Series
2. First film to premiere on Google Video
3. The Right To Vote.
4.. The opera was El Mascote, and the term is the Mascot
5. Christ the Redeemer. Its situated inside the Tijuca Forest National Park which incidentally is the world's largest urban forest.
6. Red Star Belgrade
7. Boomerang (Throwing)
8. Humpty Dumpty.
9. Michael Jordan
10. Anthem
11. Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. The treaty said that whenever asked who the best science-fiction writer was, Asimov would say Clarke, and Clarke would name Asimov. It happened in a taxi cab in Park Avenue that they hired jointly.
12. Salvador Dali’s VISION OF WAR.

Next set of quetions within a few days. Till then take care.

THE KITE RUNNER

2008-04-17T06:42:00.000-07:00

AS I HAVE TOLD EARLIER THAT I WON'T BE KEEPING THIS BLOG CONFINED TO QUIZZES ONLY AND INSTEAD CONCENTRATE ON IMPARTING KNOWLEDGE OF ALL KIND. IN THIS POST I WILL DISCUSS THE VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL 'THE KITE RUNNER'. ACTUALLY RECENTLY I WATCHED THE MOVIE ' THE KITE RUNNER' AND THE FILM REALLY MADE A HUGE IMPACT ON ME. I DIDN'T EVEN READ THE NOVEL BUT AM LOOKING FORWARD TO IT.

STARTING WITH THE NOVELIST

KHALED HOSSEINI

He is an American novelist and physician originally from Afghanistan. His 2003 debut novel, The Kite Runner, was a bestseller. His second, A Thousand Splendid Suns, was released on May 22, 2007.

Hosseini was born( 4^th March, 1965) in Kabul, where his father worked for the Afghanistan Foreign Ministry. In 1970, Hosseini and his family moved to Tehran, Iran, where his father worked for the Embassy of Afghanistan. In 1973, Hosseini's family returned to Kabul, and Hosseini's youngest brother was born in July of that year. Several months later, the former King of Afghanistan, Zahir Shah, was ousted from power in a bloodless coup that was orchestrated by Zahir's cousin, Daoud Khan.

In 1976, Hosseini's father obtained a job in Paris and moved the family there. They chose not to return to Afghanistan because communists had seized power through a bloody coup. Instead, in 1980 they sought political asylum in the United States and made their residence in San Jose, California.

Hosseini graduated from Independence High School in San Jose in 1984 and enrolled at Santa Clara University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in biology in 1988. The following year, he entered the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, where he earned his M.D. in 1993. He completed his residency in internal medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles in 1996. He practiced medicine until a year and a half after the release of The Kite Runner.

Hosseini is currently a Goodwill Envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). He lives in Northern California with his Persian-American wife, Roya, and their two children.

HIS NOVELS

The Kite Runner (ISBN 1-59448-000-1) is the story of a young boy, Amir, juggling to establish a closer rapport with his father and coping with memories of a haunting childhood event. The novel is set in Afghanistan, from the fall of the monarchy until the collapse of the Taliban regime, and in the San Francisco Bay Area. Its many themes include ethnic tensions between the Hazara and the Pashtun in Afghanistan, and the immigrantUnited States. The novel was the number three best seller for 2005 in the United States, according to Nielsen BookScan.^[4] The Kite Runner was also produced as an audiobook read by the author. The Kite Runner has been adapted into a film of the same name released in December, 2007. experiences of Amir and his father in the

Hosseini's second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns (ISBN 1-5944-895-0), the story of two native women of Afghanistan, Mariam and Laila, whose lives become entwined, was released by Riverhead Books on May 22, 2007, simultaneous with the Simon & Schuster audiobook.The book has received favorable prepublication reviews from KirkusPublishers Weekly, Library Journal Booklist, as well as reaching #2 on Amazon.com's bestseller list before its release. and Movie rights have been acquired by producer Scott Rudin and Columbia Pictures. Time magazine's Lev Grossman named it one of the Top 10 Fiction Books of 2007, ranking it at #3, and praising it as a "dense, rich, pressure-packed guide to enduring the unendurable."

THE FILM

The Kite Runner is a 2007 Academy Award-nominated film directed by Marc Forster based on the novel of the same name by Khaled Hosseini.

Though most of the film is set in Afghanistan, these parts were mostly shot in Kashgar, China, due to the dangers of filming in Afghanistan at the time.^[1] Much of the film's dialogue is in Dari Persian (with English subtitles) and English. The child actors are native speakers, but several adult actors had to learn Dari. Filming wrapped up on December 21, 2006, and the movie was expected to be released on November 2, 2007. However, after concern for the safety of the young actors in the film, its release date was pushed back six weeks to December 14, 2007. ^[2]HD DVD on March 25, 2008. The Kite Runner was released on both DVD and

The plot of the movie follows that of the novel. It tells the story of Amir, a well-to-do boy from the Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul, who is haunted by the guilt of betraying his childhood friend Hassan, the son of his father's Hazara servant. The story is set against a backdrop of tumultuous events, from the fall of the monarchy in Afghanistan through the Soviet invasion, the mass exodus of refugees to Pakistan and the United States, and the Taliban regime.

OVERVIEW

Director:

Marc Forster

Writers (WGA):

David Benioff (screenplay)
Khaled Hosseini (novel)

Release Date:

26 December 2007 (UK) more

Genre:

Drama more

Tagline:

There is a way to be good again.

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 3 wins & 9 nominations

Soundtrack:

Yadi Rozgari Shereem

CAST

Khalid Abdalla - Amir as adult
Zekeria Ebrahimi - Amir as a child
Ali Dinesh - Sohrab
Homayoun Ershadi - Baba
Atossa Leoni - Soraya
Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada - Hassan as a child
Nasser Memarzia - Zaman
Shaun Toub - Rahim Khan
Saïd Taghmaoui - Farid, the driver/guide
Henri Ramsey - family member (graduation)
Qadir Farookh - General Taheri
Sayed Jafar Masihullah Gharibzada - Omar (best competing kite flyer)

TRIVIA

· When Amir receives his degree from community college, the names of the graduates are names of crew members from San Francisco. Despite the fact that the official release date was pushed back, the movie was released to winners of the online Kite Runner Movie contest. Winners of this contest were able to watch a pre-screening of the movie, which took place in November 2007. In the same month, several hundred students from Independence High School in San Jose, where Khaled Hosseini graduated from, were given the privilege to watch a pre-screening as well. The man Amir excuses himself from at the end of the film when he sees the man selling kites is Khaled Hosseini, the writer of novel the film is based on.

· in many of the kite flying shots, the children were pulling balloons and the kites were added in post-production.

· Release prints were delivered to theaters with the fake title 'Playground Bully'.

· Cameo: [Khaled Hosseini] Doctor in the Park

Goofs : Factual errors: In the scene at the stadium just before the Talib official gives his speech there is a soccer game going on and most of the players are wearing shorts. The Taliban did not allow shorts or revealing clothes of any kind to be worn, even at an athletic event. They imprisoned and persecuted members of visiting Pakistani teams for wearing shorts

THE NOVEL

The Kite Runner is a novel by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini. Published in 2003, it is Hosseini's first novel

Characters

Amir — protagonist and narrator of the novel, said to be born in 1963, in Kabul, who begins as a well-to-do boy in monarchical Afghanistan and later migrates to America following the downfall of the monarchy. Amir is Hassan's half brother; however, Amir does not learn of their relationship until much later in his life. Hassan never learns of the relationship.
Hassan — a childhood friend of Amir, although Amir never explicitly admitted to this. Hassan is first thought to be the son of Ali (Baba's servant and inexplicit childhood friend) and Sanaubar; later in the story, Hassan is revealed to be the illegitimate son of Baba and Sanaubar. Hassan died without ever knowing about this fact.
Assef — a sadistic teenage (and later notorious pedophile) from Amir's neighborhood in Kabul, antagonist.. Assef is the son of a German mother and Afghan father. He is a Naziidol" Adolf Hitler to Amir for his thirteenth birthday. Many years later, he becomes a Talib-executioner and pedophile. Sohrab severely damages one of Assef's eyes during Assef's fight with Amir. sympathizer and a has hatred of Hazaras, giving a book about his "
Baba — The father of Amir and Hassan. He is said to be born in the year 1933 (when the Afghan king begins his 40-year reign). He is described as a big, strong, healthy looking man with wild brown hair and beard. Baba is depicted to be of about 1.96 meter (6'5") in height. He is a bit of a party-maker, and known for his strength. (He is said to have fought with a black bear and won the fight, in his younger years). During the book, Baba seems to be a bit disappointed in his son Amir, who he wishes to be as much as a man as he is (but his son only reads books and lets others fight off bullies for him). After leaving Afghanistan for America, he ages quickly and dies at fifty-three, in 1986, of cancer. He lives long enough, though, to see his son Amir marry a young Afghan woman called Soraya. Many people attend his funeral.
Ali — Baba's servant and inexplicit childhood friend. He is initially thought to be the father of Hassan. Before the events of the novel, he had been struck with polio, rendering his right leg useless. He is killed by a land mine.
Rahim Khan — Baba's business partner and best friend in Afghanistan, later he was the one who tells Amir about Hassan's actual father. Amir liked him as a child, and Rahim Khan is also the one who invited Amir back to Afghanistan to pick up Sohrab. Later in the story, Rahim Khan goes off alone leaving a letter to Amir telling him not to find him. He dies peacefully knowing he has successfully made Amir the man Baba wanted him to be.
Soraya — an Afghan woman living in Fremont, California. She marries Amir. Soraya wants to become a teacher. Before marrying Amir, she ran away with an Afghan boyfriend in Virginia, which according to Afghan tradition made her unsuitable for marriage, but because Amir also had his own regrets, loved and married her anyway.
Sohrab — son of Hassan, traumatized by Assef; Rahim Khan contacts Amir later in life in an attempt to get him to come back to Afghanistan to find Sohrab. In the end, he is adopted by Amir.
Sanaubar — Ali's wife who gives birth to Hassan as a result of an affair with Baba. She then leaves home to pursue the life of a gypsy. She later returns to Hassan in his adulthood, providing a grandmother figure for Sohrab.
Farid — bitter driver who is initially abrasive toward Amir but later befriends him. Farid's two daughters were killed by a land mine years back. Farid is Amir's means of transport, information, and knowledge of current Afghanistan when he returns.

RECEPTION : The novel was the third best seller for 2005 in the United States, according to Nielsen BookScan.^[2] It was also voted 2006's reading group book of the year. Hosseini's first novel headed a list of 60 titles submitted by entrants to the Penguin/Orange Reading Group prize.

So everybody first read this novel and also watch the movie. They are a must watch.

Please report me if there is any error in the informations.

SOURCES : wikipedia, imdb, etc.

No questions but some pure trivia this time

2008-04-08T08:48:00.000-07:00

The man's shirt has buttons on the right and a woman's shirt on the left. In olden days, women had servants to help them wear their shirts. So, to make it easy for a servant to button the shirt, the buttons for a woman's shirt were placed on the left i.e. to the right for the servant.

Winston Churchill was referring to golf when he said " It was an ineffectual attempt to direct an uncontrollable sphere into an inaccessible hole with instruments ill-adapted for the purpose"

Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein suffered a hemorrhage and died at the age of 50. An unconfirmed legend in history states that Russian scientists preserved his brain and it supposedly was much larger than a normal human brain, which the scientists took as a sign of genius.He is buried at Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow. He is one of my favourite director.

In preparation for an event for the great Pat Cash, a fourteen year-old player was arranged to play with him in a match. Cash was reluctant to play against such a unknown opponent, whom he believed to be a cakewalk and took this arranged match as an offence. In the end, he was surprised to find himself losing by a close margin.The 14 year old boy is none other than Rafael Nadal.

Poverty forced her to take up acting as a career at the age of 13! She acted in Pahili Manglagaur, a Marathi film by Master Vinayak Rao. She played the heroine's sister and about her acting experience she says "I hated putting make-up, I hated standing in the glare of lights. But I was the breadwinner of the family, and there was hardly any choice left. The day I went to work in Master Vinayak's film, there was nothing to eat in the house". She is Lata Mangeshkar.

Sir C. Aubrey Smith started this is 1946. He had become a major star in the US and wanted to start a cricket club. Notable ex players include PG Wodehouse, Boris Karloff, Sir Laurence Olivier, Cary Grant and even Ajay Jadeja. He started Hollywood cricket club.

England and Scotland play a lot of Rugby matches. However, when they play in the Six Nations, they also contest a particular trophy. The first match for this was played at Raeburn Place, Edinburgh, on 10 March 1879 and ended in a draw; Scotland scored a drop goal and England a goal. As of 2006, 113 matches for this have taken place. It is the Calcutta Cup( I would be helpful if someone tells me how the name came)

Spiral staircases in medieval castles are running clockwise. This is because all knights used to be right-handed. When the intruding army would climb the stairs they would not be able to use their right hand which was holding the sword because of the difficulties of climbing the stairs. Left-handed knights would have had no troubles, except left-handed people could never become knights because it was assumed that they were descendants of the devil.

The longest place name still in use is: Taumatawhakatangihangaoauauotameteat uripukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenua kitanatahu---- a New Zealand hill. (i bet you can't spell or pronounce the name at once)

Early politicians required feedback from the public to determine what was considered important to the people. Since there were no telephones, TV's or radios, the politicians sent their assistants to local taverns, pubs and bars who were told to "go sip some ale" and listen to people's conversations and political concerns. Many assistants were dispatched at different times. "You go sip here" and "You go sip there." The two words "go sip" were eventually combined when referring to the local opinion and thus, we have the term "gossip."

The original story from "Tales of 1001 Arabian Nights" begins, "Aladdin was a little Chinese boy."

What's your take on this type of post? i would like the visitors to commennt on this.

cryptic questions & answers

2008-04-02T22:28:00.000-07:00

THIS BLOG IS DEDICATED TO ALL THE PEOPLE WHO REALLY WANT TO MELIORATE THEIR KNOWLEDGE QUOTIENT AND OUT ON A JOURNEY FOR THE UNIVERSAL QUEST.

HERE ARE SOME CRYPTIC QUESTIONS( WITH ANSWERS) TO BEGIN MY QUIZ BLOG. HOPE EVERY BODY WILL LIKE IT.

1. (A QUESTION ON MY FAVOURITE PERSONALITY) RAVI SHANKAR, MAHABHARATA, A PASSAGE TO INDIA, THE ALIEN ARE SOME MENTIONED TOPICS ON WHICH THIS PROLIFIC DIRECTOR WANTED TO MAKE FILMS, BUT CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES FORCED HIM TO GO AGAINST HIS DESIRE AND THIS MOVIES REMAINED UNMADE. WHOM AM I TALKING ABOUT?

ANSWER: SATYAJIT RAY.

2.She is the unsung heroine of the Civil Rights Movement. She was also the first person ever to plead NOT GUILTY to a violation of the bus seating ordnance, which was one of the shameless things that White men impose on others, on the born supremacy of color. Who is this brave woman who defied the odds and stood her ground?

CLAUDETTE COLVIN ( AND NOT ROSA PARKS)

3.Who are jingjing and chacha in China?

Jingjing and Chacha are the cartoon mascots of the Internet Sueveillance division of the Chienese Police. Jingjing is the male and Chacha is the female internet police officers informing Chienese Internet users about what is legal and what is not.

4. This word is used as a time scale and comes from a part of the Alpines and is divided into 3 parts as Malm, Dogger and Lias. It was coined by a Frenchman named Alexandre Brongniart. What word associated with period films is this?

JURASSIC FROM THE JURA MOUNTAINS

5.(EASY ONE)This word comes from the Civil War prison system where a prisoner would be shot if he crossed a particular boundary. What word?

DEADLINE!

6. While issuing tickets as a B.E.S.T. bus conductor, Badruddin Jamalludin Kazi used to entertain passengers aboard with some antics. These antics caught the attention of actor and script-writer Balraj Sahni in 1950 while he was once traveling in a B.E.S.T. bus on which Badruddin, was working as a conductor. Sahni was penning at that time the script for the movie, Baazi (1951), and introduced Badruddin to Guru Dutt as a candidate for a role. Badruddin's screen test consisted of acting as a drunk, and he did it so well that Guru Dutt gave him the screen name, "X", after the famous Scotch whisky brand. (Interestingly, he was always a teetotaler.)Identify X.

JOHNNY WALKER.

7.In the 1870s, two inventors X and Y both independently designed devices that could transmit speech electrically. Both men rushed their respective designs to the patent office within hours of each other, Y patented his telephone first. X and Y entered into a famous legal battle over the invention of the telephone, which Y won. Identify X & Y?

In the 1870s, two inventors (X-Elisha Gray and Y-Alexander Graham Bell) both independently designed devices that could transmit speech electrically (the telephone). Both men rushed their respective designs to the patent office within hours of each other, Alexander Graham Bell patented his telephone first. Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell entered into a famous legal battle over the invention of the telephone, which Bell won.

9.Which Italian mathematician,better known for his EXTREMELY accurate future predictions, predicted his own death in 1576, right down to the exact hour,and when the time came, he was still healthy, so he committed suicide to prove himself right?
Geronimo Cardano

10. (ENDING WITH A QUOTATION )WHO SAID :"I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God."

Ans: Albert Einstein.

11. IDENTIFY THIS FAMOUS INDIAN STRUCTURE BUILT DURING THE TIME OF KING ASHOKA

SANCHI STUPA

ANOTHER SET OF QUESTION WILL BE POSTED HERE WITHIN A FEW DAYS.
THANK YOU.