Today's find - Orbox

Shamelessly ripped off from the Wired Table of Malcontents, here's Orbox. A charmingly simple way to spend your free time. All you need to do is press one of the cursor keys to set the box shooting in that direction - until it hits a barrier, and stops. The idea is to iteratively approach the red square. If it's too much, there's a walkthrough as well.

powered by performancing firefox

Hindi ripoffs

My first 18 years of life - until before I left home for Kharagpur - were spent watching less than 18 films in all, or at least the ones I can remember. Most of that was because of the complete isolation of Dhanbad from the rest of the VCR-totting, movie-rental-strewn world. I caught up with the times a bit at KGP, with the weekly screenings at the Technology Film Society. The real speed-up happened only in the last few years since I've joined Netflix - about 1200 movies in just short of 4 years.
Now that Soma likes a lot of Hindi movies, it's often that I see a movie halfway through, and realize it's a copy - clone, derived, or influenced - from another movie that I've already seen, most often in English. So here's a chart of all the ones that I have mapped, with some help from the comments to this post, and lots of help from this page on Bollywood.com.

Hindi Movie	Original Movie
Main Aisa Hi Hoon (2005)	I Am Sam (2001)
Koi Mil Gaya (2003)	E.T. (1982)
Bluff Master (2005)	The Game (1997)
Fanaa (2006)	Eye of the Needle (1981)
Kaante (2002)	Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Chocolate (2005)	The Usual Suspects (1995)
Jism (2003)	Body Heat (1981)
Bachke Rehna Re Baba (2005)	Heartbreakers (2001)
Bunti Aur Babli (2005)*	Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Kya Kool Hai Hum (2005)	The Monster ()
Ghulam (1998)	On The Waterfront (1954)
Aitbaar ()	Fear ()
Sholay (1975)*	The Seven Samurai (1954)
Ek Ajnabee (2005)	Man on Fire (2004)
Kabhi Alvidaa Na Kehna (2006)*	Closer (2004)
Masoom (1983)*	Man, Woman and Child (1983)
Phir Hera Phiri (2006)	Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)
Pyaar Ka Saaya (1991)	Ghost (1990)
Strangers (2007)	Strangers on a train (1951)

* May not be a frame-by-frame ripoff, but inspired by.