*Best album - (solo) - Arnob (Chaina Bhabish) and Jewel (X Factor).
Arnab's debut album journeyed us into his creative world of melody. The music, the vocal improvisation all takes one in to a maze of thought process with simple sober music expressed in a very sophisticated manner. This psychedelic flavoured compilation comprising depth in vocal line and music with lot of contemporary influenced beats, electronic effects and urgent lyrics making the album extremely intriguing and atmospheric.
Jewel's X Factor was the first ever instrumental compilation in the country. Receiving brilliant comments from fans and critics, the compilation featured technically brilliant guitaring with neo classical influence on the already creative tracks.
Many said the compilation was a perfect example of excellent guitar shredding. The instrumentals were well-composed tracks ornamented in to what can be called as thematic compositions.
*Best mixer-Buno, Duray, Jewel and Arnob.
All these four mixers had their share of fame for some brilliant mixing and thus bringing awesome production of albums like Chaina Bhabish, X Factor and Lokayot.
*Best newcomer (Band) - Nemesis
Around July 2005, Nemesis released their long anticipated first album Onneshon - the Search. The musicians truly searched for eternal music of great vocals and bass line, mesmerizing guitar works, extremely tight drumming and delivered one of the best compilations of that year.
*Best album-Arnob.
Undoubtedly, this has been the best audio album from critics point of view as the musician all by himself composed, sang and wrote lyrics and mixed most of the songs.
*Best album (based on album sales)-Moina Go by Habib, Raaga, Fuad's Re Evolution, Bappa Mazumder feat. Sandipan's Shona Bondhu and Hyder Husyn's Faishha Gechi
The huge sales of these albums were amazing as they catered different genre of music blending with evocative lyrics to their respective admirers and created a whole new fan base.
*Best lyrics- Chaina Bhabish album featured some of the greatest contemporary lyrics of this period. They spoke of issues like love, frustration, emotional outbreak, urgent situations, pain and despair, which touched nearly all the situations someone can experience in a daily life.
*Best production-Arnob's Chaina Bhabish, Onadorer Shontan(Cryptic Fate)
The sound production for Chaina Bhabish album and Cryptic Fate's song Onadorer Shontan in the mixed album Agontuk-3 were brilliant. By far, their sound was mixed and mastered so creatively that the sound of Bangladesh was taken to an International level of acceptance.
*Most creative album cover and sleeve design-Arnob and Icons
Most musicians and music listeners echoed this common notion. The album cover design of Arnob and Icons not only showed maturity but also has taken a leap further in producing thematic views of songs in the country.
*Best musical program on TV-Closeup 1, Rocklink
Catering to two different types of music listeners, these two programs expressed the importance and flamboyant effect of songs in a Bangladeshi's life featuring stars like Nolok, Rajib, Beauty, Sonia and others in the making.
*Best music vdo-Arbovirus's Artonaad by Firefly
The very first music video to grab mass audiences' attention by surprise. Starting from graphics quality up to theme, in one word most music enthusiasts described it as BRILLIANT!
*Best musical event/concert-Closeup1, Ampfest
Both these musical events were most successful. They charged the audience with great tunes and lyrics in their mind and rock in their heart.
*Best musical website promoting Bangladeshi music-amaderGaan.com
With the heaviest turnout of mainstream and underground musicians, this web portal has become the most successful hub of all contemporary and aged music of Bangladesh.
Sites Unseen
Gaming: a glimpse to our future
For April 1 this year, Joystiq brought out an elegantly written futuristic look into the gaming scene. It's so beautiful it'll bring tears of joy to every self-respecting gamer out there. You'll have to know about the recent bits and happenings about gaming to get all the jokes, though. http://doiop.com/JoyFuture
“Dude, Here's My Book”
Read this article from the New York Times on some new truly amazing online writers who've recently published very popular books. These writers a bit too explicit to be featured here on Rising Stars but that doesn't mean you should miss out. Read the article. Then check out Maddox at TheBestPageInTheUniverse.net and Tucker Max at TuckerMax.com. All these writers deserve every bit of recognition they're getting and more. http://doiop.com/NYtimes
Damn Interesting
This blog has been hot on the trail of the wonders of nature, the inner workings of your grey matter, and the troubled history of beards ever since it started. Drop in on any day and glimpse the gravity-powered future of aviation; or say hello to that little fellow who recently rejoined the animal kingdom, the rat squirrel.
Each post has an easy, often whimsical, and offers a few related links. Though much of what you'll find here is newsy, the writers say their main goal is not to play like a traditional newspaper, but "to collect and dispense damn interesting facts and ideas, whether they appeared in the past, present, or the (anticipated) future." And at that, they do a damn good job.
Www.damninteresting.com
The Most Popular Person on Flickr
Flickr is the world's most popular photo-sharing site. And that's actually an understatement. Flickr is so popular, has so many extremely talented photographers connected all over the world, that it's absolutely amazing. But I'm not going to introduce you to the site today; I assume you should know about it already. Today, I bring you Flickr's most popular photographer. Rebekka is from Iceland and she takes some incredible photos and uses all sorts of different techniques from double exposure to long exposures, and they all seem to be work beautifully. She gets like a hundred comments in every one of her photos, which is a lot by Flickr's standards. And her photos have been viewed a million times in Flickr alone! Check them out. flickr.com/photos/rebba
Great News Network
A very refreshing news website where all that is posted is good news. Technological, environmental, social, and medical news plus much more. www.greatnewsnetwork.org
Internet Movie Cars Database
With so many cars appearing in so many movies, it would be insane for one site to chronicle them all. Well, behold the craziest damn site on the Web. It's a work in progress (and always will be), but it's already a gear-head's dream and a movie buff's paradise. Visitors can select any type of car, be it Dodge, Porsche, or Bentley, and voilàmovies and screen shots galore. www.imcdb.org
50 sad chairs
This interesting little gallery over at keaggy.com called '50 sad chairs'. And that's right, the gallery features 50 really sad chairs. Nice photos. keaggy.com/chairs/sad
Give Bob a dollar
GiveBobaDollar.com is a site which is all about donating a buck to a guy called - yeah, you guessed it - Bob. He'll then blog about what he spends all his donations on. So far he has bought a fire detector and a new lock for his bike. Do you find the idea to be funny? He calls it “a social experiment in human generosity,” and has been given $ 170 so far. Some people have way too much free time.
MyDeathSpace.com
Users from the widely popular site MySpace.com who are dead. It's actually quite creepy. Just reading their profiles, and matching it to their death. Kinda wakes you up a bit. MyDeathSpace.com
Bunnyocalypse
For these brave, sugary little rabbits, the apocalypse has arrived. Witness some of these long-eared confections making the ultimate sacrifice against skewers, coffee grinders, egg slicers, and blow dryers. The faint of heart should avert their eyes. This doomsday scenario will continue for as long as their bunny supply lasts. www.hanttula.com/exhibits/bunnies
BDcomics
Although this bit can be looked down upon as a bit of shameless self-promotion, BDcomics.net now has such a huge collection of amazing comics, I couldn't help it. If you're into comics you really should check it out.
That's all for this week. You can get the links mentioned here at SitesUnseen. Wordpress.com. Mail in your comments, suggestions and the occasional spam to niloy.me@gmail.com
Inside Man
By Gokhra
It's a Spike Lee movie. If you are a fan you are inexorably drawn to it wondering what the heck is he going to show this time? If you're not a fan you still wonder the same. Does he go off the deep end? Does he go all psycho crazy?
Does he end up putting your mind in a blender and flushing out the contents? Surprisingly this time he opted for a purely commercial route and the results are interesting.
Inside Man is a bank-robbery thriller starting Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, Chiwetel Ejiofor (who? What? Huh?), Willem Dafoe and Christopher Plummer. This is probably Lee's most purely enjoyable movie with a tightly scripted, um, script.
The basic story is your basic heist with police showing up for no reason but to apparently make the movie stretch another 80 minutes. But what's great about this is that there's scores of grit and comedy. No, not your slapstick Steve Martin type but much more on a human level.
That's not saying Steve Martin isn't funny, the guy is too much so. Our story here deals with varied New York stereotypical personalities, cold, hard ruthless.
The man of the hour and leading the gang is Dalton Russell played by Owen with his usual growling insinuation. The first scene starts with him staring into the camera and bragging how great a heist he has planned. Now that's modesty! Part of the ingenuity includes forcing the hostages (dozens of them) to strip to their undies and put on dark, hooded coveralls that match the robbers'.
The real man of the hour (and a half) is Detective Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington) who is in hot water over a missing $180,000 or so. But he and his partner, Bill Mitchell (Ejiofor), are given the Wall Street robbery to investigate anyway.
In typical Spike Lee style just when you are about to expect something to happen something does but in quite the opposite direction. With tension boiling in the bank the scene shifts completely to a posh apartment, where Madeline White (Foster) is about to get a call from the bank's stern owner (Plummer). He'd like her to fetch something "secret" from his safe deposit box.
Foster looks great dressed in revealing business suits and exuding wealth and a little bit of underhandedness.
And there you have the three main characters with their three main plot lines and you are left wondering 'hey, this is not a bank robbery' just like they say in the trailers. The plot twists and turns and twists more than a crocodile having grabbed a nice juicy goat for lunch. The plot is admittedly bizarre but that's not all. The Inside Man is a personality-driven flick focusing more on the characters than expensive explosions.
It's even got its socio-political moments highlighting the popular western culture of getting the Arabs. One of the bank's hostages is a Sikh called Vikram whom the robbers release early with a message tied around his neck. The cops think he is an Arab and give him a beating in respect.
They take away his turban. Later on when Frazier and Mitchell interrogate him at a diner, Vikram refuses to discuss anything unless his turban is returned. And then he blasts them for the harassment.
This is a big Hollywood movie with star power paving the way to possible box office greatness. The acting is top notch with everyone gigvng their most energetic performances.
As for Spike Lee he has managed to be commercial without selling out as an also-ran producing movies blandly following formulaic procedures. He has managed to stick to art in his own slapdash manner. It's a suave movie, fun and in the end hugely entertaining. It's a superbly crafted movie.
