War of the worlds
Review by Gorkha
The story is adapted from a book. H.G. Wells wrote ages ago. When it was adapted for radio there was mass panic as people who heard the broadcast thought that it was all happening in reality. Some will love the movie and some will hate it as they find too many things missing that were in the book.
The plot:
It's a battle story beginning with a broken-family. Cruise plays Ray who has put a lot of distance between his family and himself. His recently upper-class ex-wife Mary Ann (Miranda Otto) drops off their children at Ray's messy house in New Jersey. Everything is fine in a dysfunctional sort of way until suddenly the world becomes a much meaner place to live in. It starts off with ominous storm clouds and lightning strikes. Sure, nothing unusual about that except that a space vessel also appears along with lots of towering 
tripods emerging from the ground shooting all kinds of projectiles at the people.
What ensues is one horrific chase to the next. Ray is on the run, pulling along little daughter Rachel (Dakota Fanning), and rebellious son Robbie (Justin Chatwin). Throughout people are running literally losing their heads. The place is filled with fleeing citizens and outmatched military. As the tripods march buildings and cars are fried, ferries upended, cities set aflame and helpless people blasted or scooped from the ground like wriggling prey.
Among this madcap rush is a madcap loner character named Ogilvy (Tim Robbins) who is all out for his own survival. The core element of the movie is its focus on the family and how it finds its way home.
Verdict:
It's a technological marvel of a movie by Steven Spielberg. Some will grumble that it isn't as much like the original and is designed more for box office earnings than anything else. So who says that has to be a bad thing? The movie is packed to the brim with astounding effects and near-non-stop action and suspense. It's all nicely balanced with painful undercurrents of social collapse.
Tom Cruise does a great job playing the common-man hero is vulnerable for his family. He's a father who has avoided responsibilities and now, agonizingly, has to make up for it real fast. The prodigious Dakota Fanning playing his daughter is as usual a mind boggling performer.
"War of the Worlds" is technically remarkable whether it is the amazing cinematography, production design or the super special effects (including some top-of-the-line death rays).
The movie is different from the original in the sense that it focuses on Cruises character and his concern for his family. It disregards the parody of contemporary media and politics that was done for the radio version by Orson Welles.
Weirdly it also omits from the early part of the movie the two things that we can't seem to be without nowadays -- the cell phone and round-the-clock TV and radio news? We see just one lone TV crew wandering like scavengers. It's probably more to emphasise Rays isolation.
"War of the Worlds" is a big-bucks project that follows surefire formulas aided with Cruises popularity. Some may dismiss the movie for that but it is still a brilliant movie. As a horror-adventure science fiction spectacular, it delivers the goods. The movie works best as a classic Spielberg scare-chase -- like "Duel," "Jaws" or "Jurassic Park." And that alone should tell you how good it is.
Celebrity review
Katie Holmes
Born two months premature at four pounds, Katherine Noelle Holmes made her first appearance on December 18, 1978, in Toledo, Ohio. Her parents, Martin and Kathleen, say that her strong-willed personality is probably from being born premature. Being the youngest in the Holmes clan, completing the family of three other sisters and one brother, Katie was always the baby. As a teenager, she began attending modeling school. When she was sixteen, her teacher invited her to go to a modeling competition with other girls from her class. She competed in the International Modeling and Talent Association by singing, dancing, and reciting a monologue from To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). By the end of that time in New York, Katie won many awards. But she said she didn't want to model because it wasn't challenging enough. So when she was seventeen, Katie went to Los Angeles to audition for movies. Luckily, on her second audition, she was cast in the movie, The Ice Storm (1997), directed by Ang Lee. Katie's character was Libbets Casey, a rich New Yorker, who is pursued by two of the main characters. It was a small part, but it marked the beginning of her professional acting career.
After the excitement of her first movie, Katie began sending in audition tapes for pilot shows. After Kevin Williamson received her audition tape for his new show, "Dawson's Creek" (1998), the producers wanted her to come to Hollywood right away and read live for them. But because they wanted her to come on the opening night for Damn Yankees, a school production that she was doing at that time, Katie had to tell them she couldn't make it because she did not want to let her friends down. Fortunately, the show's producers wanted her so much for that role, they rescheduled her callback and the result was she got the part as Joey Potter.
During her first year with "Dawson's Creek" (1998), Katie was able to do two movies, Disturbing Behavior (1998) and Go (1999), and, for the former, she won Best Breakthrough Female Performance in the 1999 MTV Movie Awards. The following year, she starred next to Michael Douglas in Wonder Boys (2000), playing Hannah Green, a published author and a boarder at her teacher's (Douglas) house.
Her first leading role came in 2002, with Abandon (2002). She played a college student named Katie Burke, who is haunted by the mysterious disappearance of her boyfriend who vanished two years prior.
With "Dawson's Creek" (1998) coming to a close after six years in May of 2003, it was a bittersweet thing for all the cast. Accustomed to being in North Carolina filming ten months out of a year, the cast members now had the opportunity to make more movies. Katie demonstrated this in October, when she had two new movies, Pieces of April (2003) and The Singing Detective (2003), coming out in that month alone. She also gets to lip-sing and dance in The Singing Detective. Her 2004 movie schedule included the upcoming romantic movie First Daughter (2004), in which she plays the President's daughter, Samantha, who wants to go to college without any Secret Service tagging along. The latest role that Katie 
has played is that of Rachel Dawes, a childhood sweetheart and love interest to Batman/Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins (2005), which hit theatres last month.
As of now, Katie has just accepted a marriage proposal from Tom Cruise at the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Did you know?
· Katie graduated from Notre Dame Academy, an all-girls Roman Catholic school in Toledo, Ohio.
· Deferred attending Columbia University twice, but finally took a single photography class in the summer of 2000.
· She was lined up to have a 3 episode guest spot on "Friends" (1994) but had to pull out due to scheduling conflicts
· The first movie she ever saw was E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982).
· Her favorite movie is My Best Friend's Wedding (1997).
· Shares a birthday with Brad Pitt, Casper Van Dien, Christina Aguilera, DMX and legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg.
Personal Quote
"I think every little girl dreams about her wedding. I used to think I was going to marry Tom Cruise."
Sites Unseen
The links are available at [niloywrites.blogspot.com] for your convenience.
The Guardian's contest of rewriting bits of HBP
[doiop.com/guardian]
In the HBP, a very important character dies. Now I won't be telling you who that character is… although most of you would have finished the book already. For those who have read the book, check out this site for some good laughs.
The Guardian ran a cool contest recently in which you'd have to rewrite the death as another writer. How would Dickens deal with such a tragedy? How would it be described as a 17th century echo poem? The entries turned out to be awesome! Make sure you read the entries "Japanese style", "Enid Blyton", "The Sun". I definitely recommend all the author's versions too, but you'd need to know the authors to get the jokes.
Mugglenet.com and The-Leaky-Cauldron.org
Interviews JK Rowling
[doiop.com/JKpart1]
After each book release people from the media interviews JKR, but this time, she arranged interviews proper fans too. These interesting interviews mainly offer bits of facts and such and you might just want to check them out. But do so after you've read the HBP as spoilers are plentiful. At one point she agrees to write a book only on Dumbledore. Interesting.
The second and third parts of the interview: [doiop.com/JKpart2] and [doiop.com/JKpart3]
Short Film "MORE"
[doiop.com/more]
This beautiful short film was nominated for an Academy Award, so you know that it has to be good. It's quite tough to describe this film, so I won't be trying… but it's worth downloading and watching. 9 MB.
Google Moon
[moon.google.com]
Because Google Earth was SO last week! When you visit this, make sure you zoom to the highest level.
Daily Deviation from DevianArt.com
[dd.deviantart.com]
DeviantArt is a wonderful place to browse through some fantastic art. But last time I checked, it had 13,892,615 pieces of artwork. With so much to view, it's easy to get lost. The Daily Deviation section becomes useful here. It's a section where
DOOM movie won't suck?
[doiop.com/DOOMsucks]
The San Diego Comic-Con sounded like it was quite a blast. Among some of the game-related things that happened at the convention, some of the cast of the upcoming Doom movie were on-hand to defend, I mean answer questions about the upcoming film.
Gamecloud has an excellent write-up from the event. The feeling most seem to have coming away from the Q&A is that the movie won't suck after all. Of course that is the point of events like this, but since they did show bits of the film I'm hoping there's some truth to the rumors of non-sucktitude.
The movie will now take place on Mars instead of some unheard of planet, there will be at least one scene filmed in first-person shooter mode. I still think this will be yet another crap-fest, but I am now open to being completely wrong.
Alien Food Symbols
[doiop.com/AlienSymbols]
Those little gibberish symbols you find on stuff? Not gibberish alien markers so our planet will be easier to use once the invasion really picks up steam. Website Stuff explores these signs all throughout our consumer universe. We always thought that being convinced our coffee was watching us was just nature's way of telling us that we needed some very hard drugs. Turns out we've been taking those very hard drugs for no good reason.
A nice little game
[doiop.com/pya]
This is a nice little game in which one guy will try to catch your cursor. Don't let him!
GTA San Andreas: Music Extractor
[doiop.com/SAmusic]
The Grand Theft Auto series, arguably the best ever, certainly boasts having the best soundtracks. This nifty little tool (only 49 kb) will extract the soundtrack of the San Andreas to a commonly playable format (OGG, Winamp can play it). (When the page loads, scroll down and click on FREE. You'll get the download link in the next page.)
I Hate Sweetie
[doiop.com/sweetie]
A quick CGI toon, which serves as an ad for some cell phone something or other. Quality artwork, and a fine example of the proper principles of life. By this time you really should have started typing the link anyway.
[niloy.me@gmail.com]
By Niloy
[niloy.me@gmail.com]
