Michael Caine on being an actor

Lovely quote by Sir Michael Caine (read here)

"I became a movie actor. The difference between a movie star and a movie actor is that a movie star looks at a script and says how can I change this to suit me and a movie actor says how can I change me to suit this."

A quizzing use case for Google Wave?

Got on to the surf board and lined up at the edge of the ocean, but not quite sure what to do - seems like a common Google Wave experience for people I know. Perhaps there's one thing we could do - remote quizzing.

It's never been easy to do a live/interactive quiz for people scattered across various locations. Setting up tele-conferences is not an option, which left conferencing on IM, never a stable and pleasant experience. Wave could well be the answer.

With a group of well-behaved participants (how hard will that be to find at a quiz :-)), a moderator should be able to conduct a quiz with people taking turns to answer. Media files can easily be shared, whether on Wave or elsewhere. Wave seems a natural environment to collaborate like this.

An interview in 'The Hindu' with Rekha Bhardwaj

Cross-posted on the Vishal blog

The amazingly talented Rekha Bhardwaj, who recently performed (riffed?) in the Rajasthan International Folk Festival, speaks of her singing, Vishal Bhardwaj's direction, singing "Namak", and how Vishal romanticises the fact that he took up music just to woo her in college. The full interview here.

An extract, in which she talks about singing "Namak" (from Omkara):

You know, I was not expected to sing the song. Vishal has this habit of singing his every composition to me. When ‘Namak’ was being composed he sang the first couple of lines to me. As always I insisted on some corrections and gave it a more folksy touch. As I sang to him, he said you are the right choice for the song. I agreed, but during the recording I realised what I had got into, because the antaras were too naughty for my comfort. Then Gulzar sahib came to my rescue, and I somehow sailed through.