yehi hai right choice baby, aha!!!!(that sounds pretty corny na?)

hey blog!i must say it's been so long that i logged on and wrote something, almost forgot that u existed...
well the reason being that it has been an eventful 2 weeks n have been sooo busy,i ended up neglecting u!!!

well, first my sister is down from the USA with my little nephew, who by the way is one little cutie(the cutest of cuties),sticks to me like glue and screaming 'chickamma, chikamma' all the time(believe me when i say that i absolutely do not mind it at all:),actually makes me super happy),he is also a non stop talking machine and an entertainer!Especially these days, whenever i feel like humming a song, it is always 5 little monkeys, or baba black sheep or 1 2 buckle my shoe,i feel like i am relearning (rather learning if u ask people at home;))all these rhymes...but it is so much fun!

and the second is that my life seems to have taken a right turn(i say right cos i pray it is the right decision; and then my friend will say "man, u r such a cynic,pessimist")but actually, i think i made a gud choice....am getting married, entering into the world of 'for better or for worse'.never thought there would be so much fear related anxiety with all the excitement of having found the right person, making such a huge decision which we have to live with for the rest of our (his and mine) lives.and now i have to start dealing with the fact that i am going to leave all the people i have known here, have shared sooo much with, family, friends, this city which i totally love, basically it's overwhelming. if i sit to think of the enormity of the whole thing i just migt have a nervous breakdown!!!!!so don't think...
the best path then will be to go with the flow, don't delve too deep into thinking about it and i shall be fine...those were the very brave words spoken by S on the 7 nov, 2006...that may just be what my epitaph will read....;)
ooh and i forgot to mention the other events that happened in the past few very eventful weeks, one, i was ill on the day i got engaged (fever,cold and a hangover) and then the post engagement famous Madras eye or keeping with times the Chennai eye!!a first time for me, and god!is it painful or what...not to be cursed even on your worst enemy.....

ugh......

am so bored:(have so much to do,but not doing a thing.
all my collegues are on leave or are out travelling.ugh...it's so boring.and hence ended up doing useless research on my fair lady on imdb(totally love the site,especially when playing poster quiz:) {which i am proud to say i haven't played all day} hurraaaah....[hopefully getting rid of addiction to ultimate poster quiz]).love my fair lady almost as much as sound of music(which just so happens to be one of my all time fav movies:)).ok S u r so bored that u r just blabbering....better u continue to peel the nail polish off ur finger nails(which u r already doing interspersed with mini writing bouts).
oops just realised that the obelix picture i have pinned (which a dear friend drew for me{btw i cant draw to save my life[and always feel bad abt it]})at my work station has gotten covered by the evil computer that was shifted!i have to move the pic now.i am totally crazy abt asterix and obelix,especially all the characters' names.getafix,vitalstatistix,geriatrix ,and the best is the village fishmonger's wife is bacteria and his name is-unhygienix:)simply the best...all the female names end with 'a' and the male names with 'ix'.
the comic was created by by René Goscinny (stories) and Albert Uderzo (illustrations). did u know that in the comic asterix and obelix share a birthday!!!oh i just remembered fulliautomatix,cacofonix and ofcourse dogmatix...the roman's names all end with 'us'.
well thats all i can remember abt the comic for now,more abt it later.
yipeee it's almost 5:30,time to go home and hit the gym......

I am a good girl,I am :)

I just totally love this dialogue:)..and every time i watch 'My Fair Lady' i can laugh at this particular dialogue for like hours.it's definately the best in the movie!
and the way it is delivered by Audrey Hepburn.no one can do it like her.like they say,she was the best.always wondered how she din't come to win an oscar for her role in the movie.
FYI,Elizabeth Taylor desperately wanted to play the role of Eliza Dolittle,but couldn't sing well and thus the role went to Audrey Hepburn.Also,Rex Harrison did not want to play Prof Higgins but was forced into the movie and it won him the oscar for the Best actor.the movie also won best film that year.it is truly a classic.
Trivia for
My Fair Lady(thanks to IMDb)
Audrey Hepburn's singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon, despite Hepburn's lengthy preparation for the role.


Jeremy Brett's singing was dubbed by Bill Shirley, despite the fact that his singing was actually remarkably good.


James Cagney was originally offered the role of Alfred Doolittle. When he pulled out at the last minute, it went to the man who played it on Broadway, Stanley Holloway. Cary Grant, Noel Coward, Michael Redgrave and George Sanders were all considered for the role of Higgins before Rex Harrison was finally chosen to reprise his Broadway role.


Rex Harrison wanted Julie Andrews for the role of Eliza, since they had played together in the Broadway version.


Stanley Holloway originated the role of Alfie Dolittle on Broadway, but it was thought that a better known actor would be more suited for the film version.


Because of the way Rex Harrison sang/talked his musical numbers, they were unable to prerecord them and have him lip-sync, so a wireless microphone (one of the first ever developed) was rigged up and hidden under his tie. However, this meant that his mouth and words were completely in sync and everyone else's looked off, since they were lip-syncing (when everyone is lip-syncing, it's not that noticeable). The studio thought that this was too obvious so they altered Harrison's soundtrack, lengthening and shortening notes in various places so that his synchronicity is slightly off like all the other actors.


Gladys Cooper, who plays Mrs. Higgins (Henry Higgins' mother) in this film, played the same role in the 1963 Hallmark Hall of Fame television production Pygmalion (1963) (TV), the play on which this film is based.


Julie Andrews was the first choice for the role of Eliza Doolittle, but Warner Brothers, which had paid $5.5 million for the rights to the Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe musical, didn't want to risk a stage actress in the central role of a $17-million film, despite lobbying from Lerner himself. It is also reported that Jack L. Warner didn't think Andrews would be photogenic enough. He invited her to do a screen test, but she refused, so he forgot about her altogether.


Although her singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon, Audrey Hepburn's singing does actually appear in the form of the first verse of "Just You Wait, Henry Higgins". However, when the song heads into the soprano range (76 seconds in), Nixon takes over vocals. Hepburn sings the last 30 seconds of the song as well as the brief reprise. She also sings the sing-talking parts for "The Rain in Spain". Overall, as Hepburn reportedly said, about 90% of her singing was dubbed. That was far more than what she expected, as she was initially promised that most of her vocals would be used. According to Nixon, Hepburn was upset that she could not play the role vocally, and always blamed herself for that.


According to actress Nancy Olson, who was married to lyricist Alan Jay Lerner at the time he was writing the musical, Lerner and Frederick Loewe had the most trouble writing the final song for Henry Higgins. The two writers had based the whole concept of the musical around the notion that Higgins was far too intellectual a character to emotionally sing outright, but should speak his songs on pitch, more as an expression of ideas. However, both composer and lyricist knew that Higgins would need a love song towards the end of the story when Eliza has abandoned him. This presented an obvious problem: how to write an emotional song for an emotionless character. Lerner suffered bouts of insomnia trying to write the lyrics. One night, Olson claims, she brought him a cup of tea to soothe his nerves. As she entered his study, Lerner thanked her and said "I guess I've grown accustomed to you...I've grown accustomed to your face." According to Olson, his eyes suddenly lit up, and she sat down and watched him write the entire song in one sitting, based on the idea that although Higgins couldn't "love" Eliza in the traditional sense, he would surely notice the value she represented as part of his life.


Musical theater writers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II had attempted to adapt George Bernard Shaw's "Pigmaylion" as a musical long before Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, but had abandoned the project as unadaptable. Rogers and Hammerstien felt that Shaw's style of writing intellectual dialog and the emotionless character of Henry Higgins did not lend themselves to a musical. Lerner and Lowe overcame these problems by leaving Shaw's duologue largely intact, and working under the notion that Higgins must be played by a great actor, not a great singer. Thus, the wrote the role especially for Rex Harrison, and adopted the idea that Higgins should not sing outright, but talk on pitch, less an expression of emotions than ideas.


When asked why he turned down the role of Henry Higgins, Cary Grant remarked that his original manner of speaking was much closer to Eliza Doolittle.


According to one of Rex Harrison's biographers, Alexander Walker, the song "I've grown accustomed to her face" held special memories for the actor, as during the original Broadway run he used to sing the song to his third wife Kay Kendall, who would stand in the wings watching his performance. Harrison later admitted that when he sang the song in the film he was thinking all the time about Kendall, who had died a few years before from leukemia.


During the parts of "Wouldn't It be Loverly" featuring Audrey Hepburn's own singing voice, her lip-syncing does not match her own singing as well as it does Marni Nixon's singing, even though Hepburn filmed the scene with her own track.


Warner Bros. won the bidding war for the film rights in 1962 with an offer of $5.5 million and nearly half the profits above $20 million.


Amusement park trams were rented to carry ballroom scene extras across the studio lot, in order to prevent their makeup and costumes from getting dirty or damaged.


Audrey Hepburn announced the assassination of Pres. John F. Kennedy to the devastated cast and crew immediately after filming the number "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" on the Covent Garden set on 22 November 1963.


27A Wimpole Street in London (Higgins' address) does not exist (there is a 27 Wimpole Street).


The role of Eliza Doolittle was originally played on Broadway by Julie Andrews. However, she was denied the role because the film's producers didn't think she was "known" enough as a film actress. Many felt that this snub as well as Audrey Hepburn's singing being dubbed led to Hepburn's not being nominated for the Best Actress Oscar nomination.


Cary Grant told Jack L. Warner that not only would he not play Henry Higgins, but if Rex Harrison was not cast in the role, he wouldn't even go see the picture.


When Eliza Dolittle demands to see what Henry Higgins has been writing about her, in the beginning of the film, he shows her his notebook, which she cannot read. The notation in the notebook is "Visible Speech", a phonetic notation invented by Alexander Melville Bell (father of Alexander Graham Bell) and extended and used heavily by Henry Sweet, a real-life phonetician and apparently the basis of the Henry Higgins character.


Audrey Hepburn herself revealed years later that had she turned down the role of Eliza, the next actress to be offered it would not have been Julie Andrews but Elizabeth Taylor, who wanted it desperately.


Apparently, Shirley Jones was one of the actresses to whom Jack L. Warner planned to offer the role of Eliza Doolittle if Audrey Hepburn (his first choice) turned it down.


Veteran actor Henry Daniell, who is unbilled as The Ambassador, died of a heart attack on 31 October 1963 just hours after completing the dress ball sequences.


About twenty minutes before the end of the film, Colonel Pickering offers to go off and find the missing Eliza. He exits the library set - and is never seen in the movie again!


The 1994 restoration by Robert A. Harris used a variety of methods to return the film to its original condition. The opening credits were digitally re-created using pieces of surviving frames. A few shots were digitally restored by scanning the 65mm negative or separation masters and output back to VistaVision (and enlarged back to 65mm). Some shots were simply re-composited via separation masters. Despite this, most of the film was able to be restored directly from the camera negative. For the sound, only the six-track magnetic print master (used to add sound to 70mm prints) survived. This was digitally restored and used to create a new six-track mix (faithful to the original version), as well as new Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 mixes for modern sound systems.


Despite intensive vocal training during pre-production, and constant practicing until her final re-recording during the post-production, Audrey Hepburn was never able to sing "Without You" properly. That song is far beyond her vocal range. However, it is widely agreed that her renditions of "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" and "Show Me" were good enough to be left undubbed.


In the scene where Eliza is practicing her "H's", she sits down in front of a spinning mirror attached to a flame. Every time she says her "H's" correctly, the flame jumps. If you look closely at the paper she is holding in her hand when it catches fire, you will see handwritten upon it the dialog that she and Professor Higgins have been saying previous to this. "Of course, you can't expect her to get it right the first time," is the first line written on the paper.


Average Shot Length = 10 seconds


The original choice to direct the film was Vincente Minnelli but when his salary demands were too high, the job went to George Cukor.


Connie Stevens, then a Warners contract player, campaigned for the role of Eliza Doolittle.


In the scene where Henry Higgins knocks a record player that is playing a recording of vowel sounds, the voice on the record is that of Dr. Peter Ladefoged, a linguist who worked as a consultant on the film.



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Friends through the years....

found this nice article during my having no work at work time of surfing....it rings true and strikes a cord somewhere within,ENJOY....

Friends Through the Years...
As we have grown and changed, so have our ideas on friendship.
In kindergarten your idea of a good friend was the person who let you have the red crayon when all that was left was the ugly black one.
In first grade your idea of a good friend was the person who went to the bathroom with you and held your hand as you walked through the scary halls.
In second grade your idea of a good friend was the person who helped you stand up to the class bully.
In third grade your idea of a good friend was the person who shared their lunch with you when you forgot yours on the bus.
In fourth grade your idea of a good friend was the person who was willing to switch square dancing partners in gym so you wouldn't have to be stuck do-si-do-ing with nasty Nicky or smelly Susan.
In fifth grade your idea of a friend was the person who saved a seat in the back of the bus for you.
In sixth grade your idea of a friend was the person who went up to Nick or Susan, your new crush, and asked them to dance with you, so that if they said no you wouldn't have to be embarrassed.
In seventh grade your idea of a friend was the person who let you copy the social studies homework from the night before that you had forgotten about.
In eighth grade your idea of a good friend was the person who helped you pack up your stuffed animals and old baseball cards so that your room would be a "high schooler's" room, but didn't laugh at you when you finished and broke out in tears.
In ninth grade your idea of a good friend was the person who went with you to that "cool" party thrown by a senior so you wouldn't wind up being the only freshman there.
In tenth grade your idea of a good friend was the person who changed their schedule so you would have someone to sit with at lunch.
In eleventh grade your idea of a good friend was the person who gave you rides in their new car, convinced your parents that you shouldn't be grounded, consoled you when you broke up with Nick or Susan, and found you a date to the prom.
In twelfth grade your idea of a good friend was the person who helped you pick out a college, assured you that you would get into that college, and helped you deal with your parents who were having a hard time adjusting to the idea of letting you go.
At graduation your idea of a good friend was the person who was crying on the inside, but managed the biggest smile one could give as they congratulated you.
The summer after twelfth grade your idea of a good friend was the person who helped you clean up the bottles from that party, helped you sneak out of the house when you just couldn't deal with your parents, assured you that now that you and Nick or you and Susan were back together, you could make it through anything, helped you pack up for college and just silently hugged you as you looked through blurry eyes at 18 years of memories you were leaving behind, and finally on those last days of childhood, went out of their way to come over and send you off with a hug, a lot of memories, reassurance that you would make it in college as well as you had these past 18 year, and, most importantly, sent you off to college knowing you were loved.
Now, your idea of a good friend is still the person who gives you the better of the two choices, holds your hand when you are scared, helps you fight off those who try to take advantage of you, thinks of you at times when you are not there, reminds you of what you have forgotten, helps you put the past behind you, but understands when you need to hold on to it a little longer, stays with you so that you have confidence, goes out of their way to make time for you, helps you clear up your mistakes, helps you deal with pressure from others, smiles for you when they are sad, helps you become a better person, and, most importantly, loves you.
Yes, whether I've known you since kindergarten or just met you a couple of months ago, you truly are my idea of a good friend.

celebs!can't get enough of them....

on my way to work this morning,feeling loads of tuesday blues,after a nice long weekend of festivities n eating n sleeping,suddenly am woken out of my day dreaming(if i dint have to go to work thoughts).all of a sudden the music in the cab is switched off and every other sleepy head(though no one will appreciate me for calling them that) is looking out of d window,wondering what d hoopla is about,i look out too.
i was glad when i looked out though,for driving the car next to ours was anil kumble!!!imagine our surprise...
and then this afternoon i saw prakash padukone!!still as good looking as ever.that was a double today!!!!yippee
all said and done,i get such a thrill when i see some famous person.i mean it's fun!!!!
can't wait to go home and tell my mom :)