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1-By Laksh, ET, Movies

Insights from Virgil Tibbs in ‘In the Heat of the Night’

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Insights from Virgil Tibbs

In the 1967 film “In the Heat of the Night,” Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier), a black police detective from Philadelphia, finds himself visiting a small southern town where he is initially suspected of murder. The film explores the ways in which Tibbs navigates the racial tension in the town and how he ultimately gains the respect of the local police chief, Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger).

One of the key themes in the movie is the importance of understanding and respecting different perspectives and cultures. Tibbs faces discrimination and racism from the local police force and community, but he remains calm and professional in the face of their hostility. One powerful dialogue in the movie is when Tibbs is taken into custody and questioned by the local police, he says “I’m a police officer, just like you. I carry a badge.” This statement shows how Tibbs asserts his professional identity, despite the discrimination he faces.

Another important theme in the movie is effective leadership in the face of adversity. Gillespie initially has prejudices against Tibbs, but over the course of the film, he recognizes Tibbs’ professional abilities and starts to see him as a valuable member of his team. One dialogue that illustrates this is when Gillespie says “You’re a good man, Tibbs.” This statement shows how Gillespie recognizes Tibbs’ professional capabilities, and how he has grown to respect him as a colleague.

Overall, “In the Heat of the Night” is a powerful and well directed film (By Norman Jewison) that teaches important lessons about cultural understanding and respect, effective leadership, and how to navigate in the face of adversity. Through the characters of Tibbs and Gillespie, the movie shows how individuals can overcome their prejudices and work together to achieve a common goal.

(This article was mostly written by ChatGPT (95%), with a few prompts and revisions.)

Etc.

You loved ChatGPT. Wait until you see its rivals.

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One of these alternatives is Jurassic-1. Numbering some 178 billion parameters in its largest form, the LLM is the brainchild of AI21 Labs, a research start-up-turned-product and platform manager founded in 2017 with the goal of creating models specialising in language generation and comprehension. “We didn’t want to play a pure research game like DeepMind,” says Ori Goshen, AI21 Lab’s chief executive (though it, too, is flirting with the idea of its own superpowered chatbot.) “We admire DeepMind, we think they’re great. But we also wanted to bring real commercial value from the get-go.”

That same instinct is present at Cohere, another AI start-up based out of Toronto. Its latest model, explains its chief operating officer Martin Kon, powers classification, semantic search and content moderation across 160 languages. “That might not be exciting to consumers who enjoy generating poems about their cats or images of dogs in sushi houses, but we feel it’s certainly incredibly exciting to CEOs and executives of companies, organisations, and governments of all sizes everywhere in the world,” he says. 

Full article here–>

1-By Laksh, Books, ET, Movies, Music

Kishore Kumar The Ultimate Biography

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If Doordarshan was part of your growing years, most likely you were hooked on the weekly twice telecast program, Chitrahaar—a garland of songs–selected from old and new Hindi movies. This program introduced us to the singer-actor-performer Kishore Kumarji , and we never got bored with fun songs like ‘Eena meena Deeka’. Therefore, for a while, we associated his name with these kinds of songs only.  The repertoire of songs began to grow substantially, when a cousin of mine, who was a diehard fan of Kishoreji exposed me to a variety of songs. He was well informed and had this knack of giving a background story for most of the songs, and that made me remember these even better. Kishore Kumar the ultimate biography for most parts does something similar, tying in Kishoreji’s movies and songs with interesting anecdotes and real life incidents. It is a voluminous effort on the life of Kishore Kumarji and his journey from Khandwa to Bombay. It covers almost all the influential people in his life.

One cannot but appreciate the authors’ efforts that spread over a decade in bringing out the book. They have done a commendable job in fleshing out several unheard facts about Kishoreji.  Being very knowledgeable about classical music, they throw light on how certain songs were composed and how Kishoreji did an excellent job in delivering them. This even dispels the wrong notions about Kishore’s lack of command over classical music.

Here are a few excerpts:

Page:448
“Typical propaganda making rounds then was Kishore Kumar classical jane na (Kishore Kumar does not know classical), as if knowledge of classical music was the yardstick of a singer’s capability. People voicing this had little idea that Kishore’s fans included classical maestros such as Bhimsen Joshi, A.T. Kannan, Kumar Gandharva and Ajoy Chakrabarty”

Page: 387

“Film-makers were ready to spend rather, splurge. And it was not restricted to Bombay In 1972, composers Rajan-Nagendra travelled from Bangalore and signed Kishore for seven thousand rupees for a song, “Adonat andu from Kulla Agent 000 (1972) remains one of the costliest of its time.”

Page: 344

 “On the day of the recording, I (Manna dey) was stumped by the proceedings. I was singing from the angle of a singer while Kishore had captured the spirit of the situation. From the heart, he changed the entire complexion of the song. I have thus no hesitation in admitting his genius.”

Page: 314

“At the end of the day, one would have to keep guessing what suited Kishore more–singing or composing. It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that ‘Door Gagan Ki Chhaon Mein’ was Kishore’s first step towards musical greatness.”

The only thing I felt missing in the book is a separate chapter on Amitabh Bachchanji and several chartbusters Kishoreji had rendered for him. It would have been a valuable addition.

Other than this, the book is a complete package that covers every aspect of the maverick genius and serves as an excellent reference of his songs through a song-index at the end.