Gawde's Gamut

2011

2012-01-14T23:41:00.004+05:30

2011 has been a wonderful year. I got out of my comfort zone(Bangalore) and moved to Delhi. A move that most people said was not a smart one :)

We've had an awesome time at Delhi and learnt so much by living in a new place. Travel always broadens your mind and we've had a fantastic year of travel too!

We visited: Kabini - Orange County, Andaman, Pandavapura, Mysore, Srirangapatna, Manipal, Kerala - Allepey, Kochi and Kumarakom, Amritsar, Mussoorie, Brazil (Sao Paulo, Rio Di Janeiro, Porto Alegre), Bombay, Rishikesh and Pushkar.

2012 has already started off on a very promising note and seems set to be awesome too!

Oh yes!

2011-12-25T15:26:00.003+05:30

A new blog template. I never changed it since the beginning of time and was adamant that white font against black is the most awesome combo ever.
But it was part laziness, part resistance to change. All that is in the past now. Here's a splash of yellow!

The movie experience

2011-12-24T11:17:00.005+05:30

I miss the day's of the single screen theatres where the viewing public would make sure you know that you are at the movies, with their catcalls and whistles!
Each impressive dialogue would be whistled at. Every actor entry would be cheered, with the exception of Tushar Kapoor, whose entry would bring in a hushed silence.
Rumours are, that the latest Vidya Balan movie was titled 'The Picture' until they cast Tushar Kapoor. But let's not get into that since this post is not about him.

My favourite theatre was 'Urvashi' which was very close to where I lived. It had a 50rupee balcony seat and an awesome Dolby surround sound.
Bangalore was also well known for the 'Majestic' area, which along with its - then- state of the art bus station was also named after the most popular theatre - Majestic. I think KG road alone boasted of over 20 theatres at a point!

The MG road area had a few very popular movie screens - Rex, Symphony, Plaza, Bluemoon. Some of them still haven't lost their 'charm', I remember Plaza still had ceiling fans and windows until a 3-4 years ago when it was shutdown.

Then came PVR - with its multiplexes. The ticket cost shot up, the screens got smaller and the experience more diluted. The multiplex movie audience now was more like the cricket crowd watching England play New Zealand at Lord's.
Also ordinary movies(Bodyguard, Ready) started getting called 'big hits' simply because of their collections (not surprising when some tickets are priced at 450bucks!). Sad.

But it the multiplex does have its benefits - If you feel like watching a movie but don't know what movie. The multiplex is perfect.
Certain movies got made, targeted right at the multiplex audience - 'Pappu can't dance saala' to cite the most recent example was awesome!

So all in all I still go watch loads of movies, but miss the whistles and the energy at times.

Rafting in Rishikesh

2011-12-04T10:31:00.016+05:30

The trip to Rishikesh was planned for a big group. For once, we had no planning to do and all I needed to do was pay-up when asked to.
Suited me fine. I dislike planning trips with/for large groups....'I would like a single bedroom with double bedsheets', 'I would like a double bedroom with Single bedsheets', 'Why aren't we going on a safari? I want to see tiger.' etc etc

Though the initial plan was to drive down in our cars, it thankfully changed to getting ourselves a mini-bus, that fit about 12 of us. The people with the families got there in their own cars/taxis.

We left Delhi at 4am and The ride took about 7 hours, mostly because the road after a point goes through some small towns and villages which slows down the pace. Our driver, a chap called 'Vishnu', had decided that our adventure trip starts as soon as we sit in the bus. The driving was atrocious and filled with some narrow escapes. There was this once where he decided to over take a slow moving truck at the last minute from the left only to realise there was a slower moving bullock cart on its left blocking the entire highway. Our man then went off the highway into the dirt to overtake the bullock cart from its left, all while maintaining the same speed.

Anyway we reached Rishikesh, via the holy city of Haridwar and Rajaji national park around 11:30am. The plan was to go white water rafting the same day, but we were told that the water gets really cold as late afternoon approaches and the best option would be to raft the next day.

So we started getting acclimatised to the conditions, by taking a dip in the lovely stream right behind our resort. The most soothing experience after a long bus ride :)

Followed it up with some good lunch and then headed out on a mini-trek to a waterfall nearby. The waterfall was beautiful, there was no one around and we decided to take a quick dip. The water turned out to be freezing, but got us rid of all tiredness.

Headed back to the highway to get some kadak chai and fan. Well, a 'fan' is like an outer layer of the cream roll, without the cream. Quite tasty when had with tea, bland otherwise.

On the way back to the camp, we went by the river side, walking on the white sand and taking some time out to sit on the rocks and listen to the river and the odd group of rafters going on their merry way.

Back to the camp and a few games of mafia, followed by some delicious dinner by the bonfire. We ran out of firewood around 1:30am so had to head back into our bamboo 'cottages', away from the chilly night.

The next day dawned bright and cold, and off we went accomplish the main order of business of our trip - River rafting in the Ganges.

We were picked up the rafting guys at the iconic Laxman jhula and headed out to the starting point of our 26km rafting route - Marine drive

All set with our protective equipment, we headed out in a couple of rafts straight to the rapids. The water was cold and the rapids were fantastic! Our raft almost flipped over in one of the rapids and we were allowed to voluntarily jump out of the raft in one of the rapids.
The water was freezing and our hands numb with all the rowing but we had a blast!

The high-point was the cliff jump right into the Ganges. The height of 25 feet, did not seem like a big deal until we stood on the edge of the rock looking down at the river. I just followed the idea of just jumping without thinking and it worked very well!

By the time we were done with the rafting it was evening and the light was fading. So most of the day had gone in getting to the rafting place and the rafting itself. Overall it was a fantastic experience and a highly recommended one. Let me know if you need details!

RA One

2011-11-13T12:46:00.003+05:30

So here was a movie that I was expecting quite a bit from. It sucked.
What ra? What a bore you are ra..
Okay it was much better than Bodyguard or some of the other movies that have been called 'hits' in recent times, but still lacked the making of a blockbuster. Its been a long time since I have truly been wowed by a Hindi movie (Dev D being the last that had me go 'woooow') and I think I have a longer wait (don-2 maybe?).

Back to RA One. I liked the stunts and the special effects, though many of them were very 90's. I love the songs especially the take on one of my favourite 'Stand by me'. The first half was watchable, sitting through the second made you realise that, there was not much of a script remaining to be played out.

I thought the script had a lot of scope but it was a big let down due to a few fatal flaws.

A super villain character needs to follow a few rules. Without these he/she is not a super villain. RA One failed on almost all these rules, especially the goal. A Super Villain needs a goal, an overpowering desire to achieve something that if achieved, will result in decimating at least half the world's population. RA One wanted to kill a kid :-|
That's it. That was his only goal and he fails.
To top it the kid was annoying, forget Ra One, I wanted to kill the silly twat. His claim to fame was bullying an overweight kid ins school and acting like an arrogant SOB. I was hoping it would be killed off quite quickly, but nope, the whole movie revolved around the kid.

The only running gag throughout the movie was SRK's crotch. Almost every other scene had the hero holding on to his crotch, or thrusting it towards an unsuspecting neighbour in the guise of 'Power yoga'. Crotch jokes were only funny back in...well they have never been funny. Except the one time when the baby in 'Baby's day out' lights the main thug's crotch on fire and it needs to be stamped out.

The other entertaining aspect of the movie was its references to other movies. One could sit and make a list of what scenes have been inspired by what movies, here are ones I found:
The very obvious H.A.R.T - Ironman
The Funeral scene - Everyone in black, slow-motion rain drops and a coffin being carried in slow motion with a song playing in the background: 'Watchmen', Zack Snyder.
RA one in level 1 as a the Chinese looking chap - Costume inspired by Neo from 'The Matrix'
RA one chasing the car that had the annoying kid, RA one forming again from the road: 'Terminator 2' - Judgement Day
The climatic fight - 'Sucker Punch', Zack Snyder.

So the only thing I have to say is - Its better than Bodyguard.

In flight entertainment.

2011-11-11T00:37:00.005+05:30

I've found an excuse for my lack of posting on my blog in recent times. Its the new blogger interface, all white and clean, or so they think. Thoughts don't flow in such spaces. So I've changed back to the old interface and lo behold I am furiously hacking away at the latest post. This one.

My previous post on Brasil has been criticized (and rightly so) and I am being prompted to write a better one about Brasil. But maybe some other time. This one is about movies that I got to watch on the flight to and fro from Brasil.

It was a 15 hour single haul flight from Dubai to São Paulo(and back), which meant good opportunity to watch some of the movies that the Emirates entertainment system(I.C.E) had to offer. Here are a few:

Hanna

Ok. So I am not a fan of Kill Bill. I think its pretty lame, with the exceptions of a few scenes. So when I watched Hanna, I was taken aback by its awesomeness. Here was a movie that Kill Bill should have been but wasn't.
Hanna a young girl, is trained by her dad(Eric Bana), to be a killer. It's her only chance to survive her nemesis - Cate Blanchett.
Why Hanna and her dad are being hunted down is part of the story and I shall not give it away. Just rest assured that the action sequences are awesome. The sound track is brilliant and this is a MUST WATCH.

The Guard
I watched this one for one reason only. Brendan Gleeson. Gleeson has never disappointed and my reasoning turned out to be perfectly logical.
This is one good movie. Directed by Jonathan McDonagh (brother of Martin McDonagh of 'In Bruges' fame), this movie has Gleeson playing the title role, that of a cop. A middle aged, slightly corrupt and seemingly lonely cop.
This dark comedy, follows a tip-off to the police department about a drug heist about to happen in their sleepy Irish village.
The dialogues, the direction and the soundtrack are all top-notch. Please watch this!

Sucker Punch
Sucker punch is Zack Snyder meets Charlies Angels meets Pan's labyrinth. I was very sceptical about this movie, until I watched it. It follows 4 girls trying to escape out of a mental asylum(or is it a whore house?). There is a decentish script and some suspense with the twist in the end, but I won't give it away. The soundtrack, oh the soundtrack is just mind-blowing. The girls are pretty too, but they are very soon overshadowed by the soundtrack. Very watchable.

The Trotsky
Canadian movie about a young guy who thinks he is the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky and that his life must follow the same suit. Hilarity ensues. A good watchable movie.

There are loads of other movies that I did manage to watch, but am not bothered to write much about:
Cypher: Action/Thriller. Average
The Fountain: Fantasy/Drama. Bad
The Dilemma: Confused Genre. Bad
Fast Five: Action. Bad
Midnight in Paris: Comedy/Fantasy. Very Very Good.
Kill the Irishman: Action/Biopic. Very Good.
Last Night: Romance. Alright.
Submarine: Romance/Coming of Age. Average.
Ironclad: Action. Average

So I made it to Brazil...

2011-10-25T03:09:00.000+05:30

Not the best time of the year to be out of India and away from loved ones, but well such is life. I am here for 4 weeks, 2 of these are behind me and 2 more to go. Feels like a long time away, but I have quite enjoyed the work.
Brazil in itself I haven't had a chance to explore as much. I am based out of São Paulo, which is one of the largest cities in the world.
It comes with concrete skyscrapers and horrifying traffic with an added bonus of a smelly drain (it used to be a river) running right through the middle of one of the arterial roads.

However, there are a lot of good food options and the walls are covered with some really really awesome graffiti.
Due to the traffic and the amount of filthy rich people, we get to see a lot of helicopters whizzing about, ferrying corporate honchos to and from their offices.

So unfortunately São Paulo is not the best place to get a taste of Brazil. Though we did get to eat some pastels(a local delicacy) at a street food fair behind the client office.

Did get to do a trip to Rio over a rainy weekend and managed to attend the TW away day at Bento Gonçalves (a place famous for its wine). But more on that later.

9 things I learnt from watching 'Bodyguard'

2011-09-09T15:51:00.002+05:30

9. Salman Khan pe ek ehsaan karna, ki uspe koi bhi ehsaan mat karna (Do Salman a favour, that don't do him any favour).
If I would have known this simple fact before buying those movie tickets, I would have not bought those movie tickets.

8. Bodyguard Lovely Singh will follow you everywhere. Even into the ladies restroom.

7. When Lovely Singh fights in mid-air. It is always in slow-motion

6. Lovely Singh keeps his phone in Vibrator mode in the back pocket of his trousers. Thus deriving pleasure and laughter.

5. Lovely Singh will fall in love with any anonymous caller after 7 calls

4. Lovely Singh will hug the heroine only when he wants to grab hold of the Villain's hand as it is trying to stab her in the back

3. Never refer to your behind as bum in front of the ladies.

2. Lovely Singh will catch any pieces of chalk thrown at you by your professor in class.

1. Lovely Singh can get you to wet your pants just by staring at you.

Short-films of note

2011-08-29T13:16:00.004+05:30

So here are a few short films that I recommend, mind you they are not necessarily in my all time list of best short-films, however they are ones that I have watched more recently and have left an impression.

So in no particular order...

1. Asai (Wishes) - Language: Tamil

Why should I watch it? Its wonderfully directed and is bitter-sweet. Brilliant. Easily the best in this list.

2. Get Out - Language: French

Why should I watch it? For the animation and the twist in the end. You would never expect it coming!

3. Do I - Language: English

do I? from Vikram Ahuja on Vimeo.

Why should I watch it? A great thriller. Vikram Ahuja, a friend of mine made this movie in a very limited time with a very tight budget. Hearing him talk through the script and then getting to see the final version was awesome! you can read more about this here

4. Blank Spaces - Language: English

Why should I watch it? A feel good movie. I loved the way its made and the idea!

5. Six Shooter - Language: English

Why should I watch it? Its directed by Martin McDonagh and stars Brendon Gleeson. reason enough. If names don't ring a bell then you haven't watched 'In Bruges' yet and you should watch that one first!
warning: this is not an easy watch and is quite eccentric, though I liked it quite a bit. The Irish accent and everything :)

Loads of movies on the list...

2011-08-26T18:03:00.007+05:30

Its just been too long since I last wrote a review post and there have been so many movies during that period that now it would be just too difficult to write out a review. If you are super interested in any of the ones I have categorised below, then I may just write a specific review on demand :)

MOVIES THAT BLEW MY MIND - It would be a crime to miss these

The Godfather
Che Part 1
Master and Commander: Far side of the world (easily one that I would slot in my all time favourites)
The Kings Speech
Cashback (There is just something about this movie that I can't place.)
Scott Pilgrim Versus the World
Following

GREAT MOVIES - You have to watch them

Wild Target (Loooove Emily Blunt and Bill Nighy in this one)
Walk the line
Social Network
Adventureland
Almost Famous
Little Manhattan
An affair to remember
The Boondock Saints
The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec
Four Rooms
Heist
Bitter Moon
Thirteen - Disturbing, but highly recommended
Where the money is
The town
A beautiful Mind
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Zombieland
X-Men: First Class
The Fall
Limitless
Unkown
Rounders
Cemetery Junction
Kung Fu Panda 2
Moon
Source Code
The Exam (Just about made it here, for an interesting plot)

AVERAGE MOVIES - WON'T MISS MUCH IF YOU DON'T WATCH 'EM

Rope (What! you're calling an Alfred Hitchcock movie "average"? Yes.)
Perfume- Story of a murderer
Scent of a woman
Machete
RED
Perriers Bounty
Book of Eli
The Matador
Nick and Norah's infinite playlist
FAQ about time travel
London Boulevard
Chloe
Rango
Pirates of the Caribbean: On stranger tides
Middlemen
The Eagle
Thor

MOVIES THAT SUCKED MORE THAN A BLACK-HOLE - If you are in a mood for some self-inflicted punishment

Crank - High Voltage
Interview with a vampire
Dear John
The killer inside me
Fraility
The Ninth gate
Swimming pool (The French one...)
The Adjustment Bureau
Sweet November
Love and other drugs
Harry Potter and the deathly hallows -2
The hangover II
Men who stare at goats
Donnie Darko
The Alphabet Killer

Oh and if you're reading this on Facebook.. I just import my posts from my blog at http://apoorvgawde.blogspot.com/

What I've been reading...

2011-08-03T22:19:00.004+05:30

Well, settling into a new apartment means living for a few days without some companions such as internet and the television. I write this blog with some borrowed wi-fi from a neighbour. The connection is not generally good from our room, but standing near the kitchen window allows some browsing. Today, however, the wi-fi network seems to be working from the room and hence the post.
Anyway, the lack of internet has allowed me to catch up on some reading. I used to be a voracious reader back in school and college, running at the rate of sometimes a book a day during vacations.

I still remember being re-introduced to Wodehouse in college and reading the books all over again. Picking up a book in the morning and getting done by evening, when the fragrance of incense used to fill up the house. I still associate that particular fragrance with the World of Wodehouse. Have no clue what the brand of incense stick was and the day I find it, will be a happy one.

So I've been reading. I left a Kingsley Amis book halfway, to pick up a collection of short stories, edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio, its imaginatively named "Stories". Decentish collection of stories and I got through that one quite quickly.
Followed it up with 'Demon Lover' by Lawrence Sanders, I was piqued by the name and thought it was good to catch-up on some sleazy reading, turned out that the story is a drama about a Hollywood movie studio and its supervisor (the protagonist), set in 1927, right at the cusp of sound being introduced in movies. Not a bad read though.
I just finshed a very interesting book called 'Don't ask any old bloke for directions' by P.G. Tenzing. This one's about an IAS officer, leaving his job and heading out on a road trip alone, around India. Its an easy read and not too heavy. The chap writes about people he met on the trip and his experience in general. Highly recommended.

During all of this, I started off on 'Bone' a brilliant graphic novel series by Jeff Smith. Please please read this one.

Now I have a choice of reading, ' The Banker' by Dick Francis (who writes thrillers set in the world of horse racing) or 'An April Shroud' by Reginald Hill (whose police detective duo of 'Dalziel and Pascoe' come second only to inspector Morse) or 'Whit' by Iain Banks.

I think I am going to go with continuing to read the currently ignored Kingsley Amis' 'You can't do both'.

Early adopters get to shout: 'The emperor's not wearing clothes!'

2011-07-26T11:26:00.007+05:30

I love early adopters! They help save my time and energy. Google+ has arrived with the same fake 'invitation' business that makes you feel like you are amongst the privileged few to have access to some path-breaking technology. We think of ourselves as 'visionaries' and 'early adopters'. Just a more marketing friendly name for Guinea Pigs. This seemingly irrational behaviour of standing in long queues to buy a product that will not only halve in price in a couple of months, but also have significantly fewer defects (à la iphone), apparently has a reasons.
Studies show that people do this because of what it conveys about them to others. Not sure why studies were required to figure this out, but there you have it.
But again, I am not complaining too much, since these people saved me from the likes of Google Wave. I am just quietly smiling :P
The one place I am an early adopter in, are the movies. I love to watch most movies before somebody else spoils it for me with a review. But there are some movies where I do wait for a review.
Other than this, I am happy for someone else to see the proverbial emperor in the nude and tell me about it, so that I can give the spectacle a miss.

First movie in Delhi and a review of 'Zindagi na milegi dobara'

2011-07-17T00:40:00.004+05:30

We headed out to Movietime in Westgate mall, in the Rajouri Garden area. Quite easily accessible via the Delhi Metro.
Now, the first thing you will notice in malls in Delhi are kids bouncing about on bungee trampolines. Most kids are expressionless during the whole experience. I am guessing this is because it must be a weekly routine for them. Parents take them to the mall and then trampoline time for 10-15 minutes. Must happen every Saturday/Sunday, experimenting with gravity must only be so much exciting.

Any which ways, the mall we did reach and due to it being super crowded the harried looking attendants let us into the hall with us just showing the sms we'd received when we booked tickets online.

So here's what I thought about the movie...

Firstly some sweeping generalisations and gyan:
Our parents' generation was one where the middle class folks had one aim: a good job and a simple, happy family life. So most movies were about bad people trying to take this simple life away from the protagonists.
Our generation seems to have more disposable income at hand and almost all of us want to break the shackles of our seemingly boring lives and get rid of the daily monotony, by traveling the world (a lot of which we have seen and read about from a mouse's length away via the internet).
'Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara' is aimed at just that. Three friends enter a pact. They will do a trip where each one will choose an adventure sport -which will be revealed to the other two only at the last possible minute- and they will have to partake in the adventures that follow.
Kabir(Abhay Deol) proposes to his girlfriend (Kalki), leading to the trip materialising, in the form of a bachelor party trip to Spain. Imran(Farhan Akhtar) a seemingly happy go lucky chap "with sad eyes" and the Workaholic, serious, running behind money, London based financial broker, Arjun (Hrithik Roshan) complete the triad.

Most road movies have a script where the protagonist have some challenge to face and end with the protagonists getting to know more about themselves than they knew before. This one follows the same rules and does quite a good job of it.

Farhan Akhtar gets most of the good lines, Abhay Deol underplays his role and Hrithik fits right into the character of a serious guy who wants to make as much money as possible before he retires at 40.

Kalki has a bit part really and is average. Katrina adds a bit of freshness to the film, but then this film is not about romance and love. There is a bit of that too, but this is a film about travel and broadening your horizons. So if you love to travel, then this is a movie for you.

Will you identify with the characters à la 'Dil chahata hai?' possibly not, for the whole set-up does not seem very real.
Will you enjoy the movie? Yes you will. But be aware that there are some parts where the movie just drags along at a slow pace.

But overall, this is a movie worth the watch, who knows you may just head out for the trip that you've been postponing all this while :)

Delhi-Gurgaon: Week 1

2011-06-24T22:22:00.003+05:30

This is how I am set-up. I live in the Southern(South-Western?) edge of Delhi and I work in the Northern Edge of Gurgaon.
I am beginning to suspect I have a challenge on my hands in terms of conquering this city. My conquest of most cities begins with long walks and usage of the public transport.
Gurgaon does not have any public transport worth mentioning and the current weather means that long walks are close to impossible.
Delhi does seem to have decent amount of Public Transport, and I have the weekend to try most of it out. What little I have seen of Delhi is very impressive in the daytime and a little dark and depressing at nights (Though I confess I have only been in one of the not so 'happening' areas of Delhi).
I feel like the long days (there is light till almost 7:30pm) are wasted since one can't do much when the sun is up, unless it involves an activity in a heavily air-conditioned area.

But all is not lost, the weather will soon change, and hopefully I will get my car here soon enough, removing my current dependency on any other modes of transport and opening up more avenues to explore.
Also, the office is just fantastic! There seems to be scope for getting it to just the same energy levels that the Bangalore office had when it was newish, There is some way to go though.

Of course the icing on the cake is that there are a whole lot of weekend getaways to experience. Soon Soon.

Top 5 music moments in films by Quentin Tarantino

2011-06-06T23:12:00.005+05:30

As far as I am concerned, the sound track of a Quentin Tarantino movie is always its best part, here are my favourite moments of music, in ascending order of awesomeness.

5. Never can tell - Chuck Berry
Movie: Pulp Fiction

Scene: Wallace order's his henchman Vicent Vega (John Travolta) to take his (Wallace's) wife (Uma Thurman) out to dinner.

4. Woohoo - 5.6.7.8's (Japanese Girl Band)
Movie: Kill Bill Vol.1

note: The video is a montage, could not find the original

Scene: The bride comes to confront the crazy 88 (and Gogo) and the girl band is playing at the restaurant. What better music than some Japanese teen pop song to precede a carnage.

3. A little bitty tear - Burl Ives
Movie: True Romance

Did not find the video from the movie, so you will have to do with the song :)

Scene: Dennis Hopper finishes work for the day (he works as a security guard) and heads home with his dog, this song plays out in his car (maybe on the radio). Brilliant. I loved the movie mostly because of its sound track.

2. Hold tight- Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich
Movie: Death Proof

Scene: The crash scene. The girls are in a car and have asked the radio jockey to play this song, the song plays, the crescendo builds up while the stuntman drives his car head on into theirs. Just the perfect song.

1. Two Hearts - Chris Isaak
Movie: True Romance

Scene: This plays during the closing credits of the movie. Its awesome!

Review - Shor in the city

2011-05-01T12:54:00.003+05:30

This started as a Facebook status update, but then I realised that I had so much to write about it that it might as well be a post on my much ignored blog.
So here goes - The promising trailers followed by some strong recommendations from friends, meant that 'Shor in the city' had to be watched.

The movie has 3 parallel story-lines whose characters briefly interact across story-lines. There is Tushar, Nikhil Dwivedi and Pitobash Tripathy who are generally engaged in activities that just lie on the other side of the law. The newly married Tushar has a printing press that makes illegal copies of books and sells them on traffic signals.
Then, there is Senthil Ram Moorthy who has just come back from the US and is in the process of setting up a small business in India until he starts getting harassed by the local mafia. Preeti Desai plays his love interest.
Finally there is Sandeep Kishan, a budding cricketer, who has 2 problems - trying to get selected into the Mumbai team, but needing money to grease the palms of some unsavoury selectors to do so and to win the hand of his girlfriend (played by Girija Oak) whose parents are pressurizing her into an arranged marriage.

The movie promises a lot and delivers some. Firstly, the movie fails due to some horrible casting - Tushaar 'Wooden' Kapoor cannot express, Senthil 'Oily' Ram moorthy is an idiot and Preeti 'Plastic' Desai needs only 3 scenes to let us know that she sucks.
Secondly, the editing is bad. Directors Raj-Krishna better look up some Chris Nolan movies to learn how to tell 3 parallel stories and knit them together.
The pacing is slow, despite having a decent plot, the movie seems to take ages to move forward and I for one never got the underlying philosophy of the movie (if there was one).

However, the movie does have its plus points -
Some characters are brilliant: Radhika Apte (playing Tushar's newly wed wife), Pitobash Tripathy (plays Tushar's friend) and the menacing local mafia who harass Senthil ram moorthy. The music is great (especially 'Saibo').
Dialogues are well written and most importantly the movie makes a decent attempt to follow in the footsteps of some brilliant new age Hindi cinema (Ishqiya, Peepli live, LSD, Dev D, Manorama six feet under, Ek chalis ki last local).

So the movie is definitely watchable, but don't go in expecting a lot.

The response

2011-04-07T22:37:00.005+05:30

I received a sms which I will find very hard to forget, it read:

"Superman ud raha hai
Batman dushmano se lad raha hai
Spiderman diwaron pe chad raha hai
aur doberman sms padh raha hai"

Now, the dilemma was around how to respond to such wonderfully expressed sentiments. I could respond with another joke ("an old woman died in her childhood" types), but I always feel obliged to be appreciative of the sms sender's humour (or his makers in this case).

Now this brings me to another set of choices, which always confuse me:

LOL/ROFL - It apparently seems to suggest that I am doubling over with laughter, when in reality I am just typing 3 letters with a poker face. So it feels a little patronizing

VERSUS

Haha - everybody likes a good onomatopoeia, give that one knows what it is (no, it is not a medical procedure). But how many haha's ?
'haha', seems short, almost sounds like a sarcastic laugh, but 'hahaha', seems like a laugh that starts promisingly but ends suddenly, again indicating sarcasm. hahahaha, or anything longer makes me feel like I am beginning to sounds like an idiot.

For the life of me, I haven't yet cracked yet what the apt response needs to be - I normally tend to alternate between the two responses, but wish there was a better way of expressing mirth via sms.

The complexity of ordering food

2011-04-02T12:40:00.006+05:30

If I come to think of it, ordering food in a restaurant always involves some complex maneuver's. Firstly you need to tackle the group you are with - At times everyone wants to order, shouting out orders and interspersing it with conversations with each other. This always gets me annoyed. Then there are times when no-one wants to order and everyone goes "Anything's okay".
Over that I am always suspicious of the guy taking the order, I am always certain that he's never got it down correctly! So I am restless until the food arrives.
But in all this, the most complex food order has to be ordering for 'Lime Soda'. Unless people on the table have known each other for year's, ordering lime soda is tough.
Here is how the order goes:
Someone - One 'Lime Soda- sweet' please
someone else - one more 'Lime soda - salt' please
me - 'Lime soda -sweet and salt', please
another person - yeah sweet for me too
last person - lime soda
bah!
Ordering lime soda is always messy

Some cricket...

2011-01-26T18:56:00.003+05:30

When in school and college, we had all the time in the world to play cricket, the biggest issue used to be -
1. Risk of losing the cricket ball or damaging the bat as we would rarely afford to keep buying a bat or a tennis/cricket ball.
2. Lugging the cricket bat on a crowded bus all the way to the ground and back.

Nowadays, we can buy an entire cricket kit without worrying about cost and the kit sits in the car which forms our modern transport, but, the biggest issue is finding time to play cricket :)

However, today we did manage to find some time. The same gang from school/college gathered together (well, at least 4 of us did) at about 7:30 am, however we realised there was just no place to be found to play cricket. Most grounds were occupied by school kids for Republic Day (which was quite cool).
It took us close to 2 hours to find a place where we could play. This place turned out to be 7 kms away from our planned ground.
For Raj this ground was 40kms away from his home, for Dilip and Naveen it was about 25kms away!

Anyway, we finally did get to play cricket and just like we have been promising each other since school, we said "Guys, we should continue playing cricket and playing it a little more regularly "

While we may not find the time to get together to play cricket as regularly as we used to, its good to see that we are still willing to travel long distances and take a few hardships to play a game of cricket . Just like the old times :D

Three from the road

2011-01-22T19:08:00.001+05:30

Okay, so in last class we learnt how to cross the road. In this class we shall learn what to watch out for when driving.

1. The airplane landing gear

Modus Operandi:

This is frequently observed in non-geared two wheelers. At the first sign of traffic, the rider (most probably a saree clad lady), will put out both legs from the scooter in mid-air in anticipation of stopping; Just like the aircraft landing gear that comes out right before landing.
But this person will rarely stop and most probably will continue cruising down the middle of the road with their legs out and at the slowest possible speed that will still allow forward movement.

Why they are bad:
The more hilarious they look the more dangerous they are. Just like circus clowns brrrrr.

How to overcome them:
Overtake them from a careful distance at the first opportunity. Unless you want to loiter behind them clicking pictures to show your friends

2. The case of the invisible bus-stop

Sounds like a story from the memoirs of Sherlock Holmes eh?

Modus Operandi:
A bus-stops is supposedly meant to be a pre-determined location by the side of a road which will allow passengers to alight and hop onto buses conveniently, while allowing other traffic to pass by smoothly. Well or so the grand plan was. Only, someone forgot to tell the bus drivers this.
Resulting in chaos every time you happen to trail behind a bus. The bus at times decides to stop right in the middle of the road without any warning, most of the times parallel to the bus stand, but some way away from it, thereby stalling all traffic and if you are driving for the first time, it will give you an opportunity to crash into the bus.

That is not all, it may happen that a convoy of buses have stopped by the road and one of them suddenly decides to pull out of the convoy - again without any warning - at an akward angle.

Why they are bad:
The bus, by design, is a large vehicle. Due to this property that it possesses, any trailing vehicle has no means to see what lies ahead of the bus. Therefore your driving solely depends on staring at the tail lights of the bus. Any sudden moves by the bus can cause havoc!

How to overcome them:
Memorise the bustops on your regularly taken routes, the bus stopping pattern must become a part of your muscle memory.
Once this is the case, then you can use the bus stopping pattern to your advantage. laugh at the stalled traffic as you whizz by!

3. Maruti Ritz

Alright time for what may seem to some like a sweeping generalisation, but rest assured it isn't.

If you ever see a Maruti Ritz in front of you, then be aware that you are in for a torrid 5-10 minutes. God forbid you should have one in front of you on a highway, then you can happily shift to 2nd gear and enjoy the scenery.
The car itself looks like it has recently acquainted its rear with a truck's front, and this could be a reason for its weird behaviour.

For those of you who own and drive a Ritz and who at this moment may have certaing negative feelings creeping in your mind about me, I have just one thing to say: Get a new car and go get a driving instructor!

Tagged: 11 of my favourite romantic songs

2011-01-19T23:38:00.003+05:30

Okay Amu has tagged me and I need to come with a list of 11 of my favourite romantic songs.

1. Choo kar mere mann ko - Yaarana (Kishore Kumar)
Why:
Tu jo kahe jeeva bhar,
tere liye main gaaun
geet tere bolo par
likhta chala jaa un

2. Pal pal dil ke paas -Blackmail (Kishore Kumar)
Why:
har raat khwabon mein
tera aachal leheraye
har raat yaadon ki
baarat le aaye

3. Phoolon ke rang se - Prem Pujari (Kishore Kumar)
Why:
Saason ki sargam, dhadkan ki veena
Sapno ki gitanjali tu
Mann ki gali mein, meheke jo har dam
aisi juhi ki kali tu...

4. Dooba Dooba - Silk Route, Mohit Chauhan
Why:
Koyi jaane na, pehchane na
Yeh hua kaise
Tum aagaye, khwabon mein aise

5. Chandan sa badan - Sarawasti Chandra (Mukesh)
Why:
ye kaam kamaan bhawe teree
palako ke kinaare kajaraare
maathepar sindooree suraj
hothhon pe dahakate angaare
saayaa bhee jo teraa pad jaaye
aabaad ho dil kaa wiraanaa

6. Sab ka katega - Bodhi Tree :P
Why:
Teri yaadon mein kal ki raina bitayi thhi
Meri aankhon mein phir se aas bhar aayi thhi
Shaakhon se phool toote, raahon mein jiske
Dil dooba, numm hua pyaar mein uske...

7. Sabse peeche hum khade - Mohit Chauhan
Why:
zamane ki baaton mein uljho na
hai yeh aasan jaan na
khud se agar tum jo puccho
hain hum tumhare ki nahi

8. Aap par arz hai - Lucky Ali
Why:
Aap par arz hai,
laakhon karodo arabo salaam
Aap na hote toh yeh dil
Jaane kisko deta salaam

9. Bade acche lagte hai - Balika Badhu (Amit Kumar)
Why:
Tum in sabko, chhod ke kaise
kal, subaha jaaogi
mere saath, inhe bhi toh tum
yaad bahut aaogi

10. Chal chale - Woh Lamhe (James)
Why:
Na jaha bheed ho, na jahan bhar ke log
na sheher mein basey, laahkon logon ka shor
chand lamhe tu inse mujhe duur kar
chal chale apne ghar, humsafar

11. Humsafar - Mohit Chauhan
Why:
Sur se saji, geeton si teri yaad
Tum bin sanam, bhaaye na koyi baat
Kaise kaho, akele chalun aaj
Aao sanam, Soone hai dil ke saaz

Feel free to pick this tag :)

Entertainment in 2010

2010-12-28T11:05:00.004+05:30

So here are the top movies of 2010 in no particular order other than the one in which I recall them:

How to train your dragon - For its interesting plot and great animation!

Inception - For its originality

Kick-Ass - For its awesomeness

Band Baaja Baraat - For its fresh look at the Indian Wedding Business

Ishqiya - For bringing Guy Ritchie like movie making to Hindi Cinema

Peepli Live - For its satire

Social Network - For its being well made.

The A-team - For its action with humour (Expedables sucked big time btw)

Machete - For its over the top action

Dabanng - For its over the top action and for getting the real Salman Khan back

LSD- For being scary and funny in parts

Megamind- For its funny script

Wild Target - For Bill Nighy

Avataar - For taking movie making to the next level

More Movies

2010-12-23T22:17:00.003+05:30

Leap Year

Romance about an Irish myth about a girl being able to propose to a boy during a leap year, so off goes the heroine to propose to the boy she loves, only to fall head over heels in love with a charming Irish inn keeper.

Average watch.

A Prophet

Brilliant French movie about life in the prison, that grows on you. An illiterate young guy, who also happens to be the protagonist is jailed and has a tough time, until he helps murder a rival. The most powerful gang in the jail begins to tolerate him, little knowing that he will turn out to be the smartest gangster the jail has seen. This movie follows the rise (or fall) of the protagonist, from a confused crook to a big time gangster.
Some brilliant cinematic moments. Fantastic movie!

The Wolfman

Great actors but disappointing movie. Benico del Toro and Anthony Hopkins star in this Victorian era thriller about a village haunted by a werewolf. There are a few thrills and chills, but overall makes for a tepid fare.
Give it a miss.

Pandorum

I am not a big fan of the sci-fi genre, but I watched this movie for one reason - Ben Foster and I was not disappointed. One of the actors whom I rate very high, thanks to "3:10 to Yuma", Ben Foster lives up to expectations.
Mankind has decided to send out a ship just as earth is about to be destroyes, and the ships crew wakes us from hibernation many years after Earth is destroyed. However they soon realise that most of the crew is missing and that the ship has been taken over by a race of mutant cannibalistic "humans" trying to hunt the remaining crew. A good fast paced action thriller with a twist at the end. I liked it quite a bit :)

An Education

Young school girl from a middle class, boring English family falls in love with a wealthy playboy and gets an education she wont forget. Well made. But nothing to write home about.

Many more movie to still be reviewed, I am lagging way behind :(

12 Angry men
Wild Target
Walk the line
Rope
Crank - High Voltage
Interview with a vampire
Perfume- Story of a murderer
Scent of a woman
Dear John
Social Network
The killer inside me
Adventureland
Cemetery Junction
Machete
Almost Famous

Naming the TV serials

2010-11-19T13:48:00.003+05:30

Very rarely do I watch TV nowadays, except when there is a match on that I want to watch. Though I must confess that a very average series called "Lie to me" has caught my attention and I have watched a few episodes on TV last week (10pm Starworld , if you were wondering). Also the one episode of 'Modern family' seemed quite funny (11pm, Starworld, if your curiosity was piqued).

But what caught my attention was an advertisement I saw for a TV series on Sony, called
"TERA MUJHSE HAI...pehle ka nata koi" and the voice over says it in the same way, A loud and confident- "Tera mujhse hai" followed by 'pehle ka nata koi' in a meek voice as if she were ashamed to admit it.

The dearth of creativity when it comes to naming TV series strikes me. So much so that they have taken up old Hindi songs and that too ones that don't really fit!

I fear that soon they will have exhausted all the movie songs till the 80's and then move to songs from the more recent one's. So don't be taken aback if you see a serial named
"SEXY SEXY SEXY...mujhe log boley".

This leads me to wonder if there is an occupation that I have discovered here - "Chief namer of serials" or something along those lines.

Movies to tick off my list

2010-10-23T12:35:00.005+05:30

I love lists. I keep a notebook at work and make lists of to-do items and when I am done I neatly highlight them with a...err highlighter.

The list of movies watched though has been long growing and here is my chance to catch up on the list...

Inception
Enough has been written about this movie and I loved it too. No, it did not have the same impact that 'The Matrix' had on me. But nevertheless it is a fantastic movie. Just complex enough for people to talk about it and but not so complex as to not being entertaining.
As far as Christopher Nolan movies go I would not rate it as his best work, I am hoping the best is yet to come :)

The man from earth

This movie is what science fiction should be :D Fantastic and mind blowing. I loved every bit of the movie including the ending. There are no special effects here, nor are there aliens, time travel or spacecrafts. There are a group of people talking in a room and that's it.
Take my word for it, this is a brilliant movie, I would rate it amongst the best in genre. Do not miss it.

Insomnia

This beauty of this movie is in the atmosphere it builds. Much like Nolan's previous work - Memento, this movie puts you in the head of the protagonist played by Al PAcino.

Two homicide detectives from the big city land up in a small town in Alaska to solve the murder of a teen. The sun never sets in the town and leaves Al pacino sleepless, nevertheless he almost does get hold of the murderer but ends up accidentally shooting his own partner during a stake out, but blames the killing on the murderer they were chasing.
The murder has witnessed the crime and now blackmails the detective who ridden with guilt can get no sleep whatsoever in a town where it doesn't get dark for months.

With a brilliant supporting cast of Hilary Swank and Robin Williams, this is a Chris Nolan master class.
It is, mind you, a remake of a norwegian movie, but that takes nothing away from the genius that is Chris Nolan.

Despicable Me

I had been waiting for ages for this one and when I did watch it, I was not disappointed at all. The 'hero' of the movie is a super villain Gru, whose life long dream is to steal the moon.
But for this he needs the super shrink ray that is guarded by his arch-rival and seems unobtainable until Gru realises that his rival has a weakness for cookies, sold by 3 little girls from the orphanage. Gru adopts the 3 girls in order to get to the ray gun, but realises there is more to life than just the moon.
The best part of the movie are the minions who help Gru with all his 'nefarious' activities, adding a lot of hilarity to the proceedings.
Immensely watchable.

Layer Cake

I am not a big fan of Daniel Craig as I think he is the sole reason for destroying the entire James Bond series.
But here he does a decentish job as a rich and suave cocaine dealer who gets into trouble on the eve of his retirement, as his boss gives him a couple of difficult assignments.
Given that this movie is from the same producers who gave us 'Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' and 'Snatch', one would rather expect what follows.
This movie does not disappoint and even the ending is a little unexpected.

Edge of Darkness

Edge of darkness, as the name suggests is a dark movie, with revenge being its main theme. Mel Gibson, plays a cop who sees his daughter killed on his doorstep. He thinks that one of his enemies accidentally shot his daughter when trying to kill him, but soon realises that this is not the case, as he uncovers a few things that he did not know about his daughter which made her some enemies in high-places.
Mel Gibson in true Mel Gibson style wants revenge and revenge he does get.

A fast paced movie, that pulls punches at every twist and turn. Mel Gibson excels in the role.
Reminded me of another brilliant revenge flick of his, called 'Payback', which has been one of my most favourite movies.
A good watch, but not a feel-good watch.
Harry Brown

Another revenge flick, but this time with a difference. Micheal Caine plays a tired, retired ex special forces man, who day in and day out sees the senseless violence meted out my young gangs in his neighbourhood, but turns a blind eye to it. After his wife dies, the only thing left for Micheal CAine is his friend with who he plays chess in the local pub.
However when the gang of youth ruthlessly murder the old man, Micheal Caine has had enough and now wants revenge.
Brilliant movie, especially when it makes you wait and wait for Micheal CAaine to get angry You just want him to get out and kick ass and that he does!
Be warned that this is again not a feel good movie, but a fantastic one!

Blue Powder

The only good thing about this movie is Jessica Biel and the amount of Jessica Biel on display. You see, she plays a stripper.
Even the awesome Jessica biel is reduced to nothingness in this senseless movie about 4 strangers. The story aimlessly tries to get a common thread between the strangers, but fails miserably
I hated it.

A history of violence

Viggo Mortensen is as impressive as always. He plays a simple family man running a cafe in a small peaceful town.
But his world is shattered when he becomes the local hero after killing two psychotic criminals trying to rob him. He soon gets into the limelight and gets noticed by some underworld elements who seem to know him from the past.
Awesome movie that starts slow, but soon breaks into a super duper action flick as we see a mild family guy turn into a menacing individual.
Liked it a lot.

The Vampire's assistant

Any movie that has Salma Hayek with a beard can be safely deemed as a weird movie and this one is no different.
The movie starts off promisingly, as a a couple of teenage boys, go visit a freak show in town, only for one of them to be turned into a vampire.
But there the coolness ends and the movie gets quite boring and drab. Don't really watch this one unless you want to Salma Hayek with facial hair. brrrrr

Leap Year
A Prophet
The Wolfman
Pandorum
An Education
12 Angry men
Wild Target
Walk the line
Rope
Crank - High Voltage
Interview with a vampire
Perfume- Story of a murderer

Saturday :)

2010-09-25T14:00:00.002+05:30

There were plans of a road trip to Hogenekal today, but we canceled due to the rains last night. But that leaves me with a nice and lazy Saturday.

I have already achieved waking up at noon on Saturday and today I want to - discover some new Jack Johnson songs, watch "12 angry men", go to Blossoms and buy an Iain Banks book, figure out the song that is in my head for the past 2 days, but that I have been unable to find out so far :(

Some movies pending a review...

2010-08-28T12:29:00.004+05:30

Shutter Island

Brilliantly made movie! Though one can see the twist coming from a mile away. The cinematography and the direction make this movie a great watch. Oh and if you are lucky enough to not see the twist coming, then I suspect it will be a shocker!

The Escapist

I got this movie thinking of it as an out and out action movie, because I did not read the summary. It turned out to be a prison break drama/thriller. Nevertheless, I liked it quite a bit. The ending is a little unexpected and it adds the icing.
Very watchable.

Give em hell Malone

Now I picked this movie because again judging from the cover it seemed like a modern film noir and I looooove film noir (Watch 'brick' its brilliant). It turned out to be absolutely horrible. What were they thinking? Thomas Jane is an idiot.

Green Zone

I thought it was okay. I guess it may have to do with a bad quality print or it may just be that I do not like war/political "thrillers". It was a bore.
Now this is not too difficult to guess. Look at the poster that I flicked from some website and the unimaginativeness of it all -If such a word exists- should be evident.

Shutter

Oh I like Korean movies, In that... a horror flick that came highly recommended was a must watch.
Boy is a pro photographer, one day when driving back from a party, boy and girl hit a girl and weird things begin to happen.
It will not disappoint you. A decent horror movie throughout with a super duper ending. Watch watch. But make sure you watch the original, not some crap Hollywood remake.

KickAss

What-e-movie. It starts off almost like a teen movie. A young nerdy guy dresses up as a superhero and tries to kick butt, we think we know where this is going and suddenly the movie gets to be full of blood, gore and violence.
The characters are all caricatures but the violence is seriously gory. Fantastic movie!

Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Super psychedellic movie. Well known as Heath Ledger's last film.
Doctor Parnassus has a traveling road show, with a mirror that can lead into an imaginary world. The doctor however had struck a deal with the devil and the devil is here to reclaim his part of the deal, i.e the doc's young daughter.
Jude law and more importantly Johnny Depp fill in for Heath Ledger. I liked the movie but beware that it is a little weird.

Butterfly on a wheel aka Shattered

We are introduced to a happy family, Mother(Maria Bello), Father(Gerard Butler) and child. Things all go wrong when the parents are car-jacked and held hostage by a psychotic guy(Pierce Brosnan, in what seems like an uncharacteristic role), whose motives are not very clear.
The movie has its share of thrills and spills, but has too many twists and turns in the ending, to make it all seem very unbelievable. Abbas-Mastan may as well remake this movie.

The A-Team

Based on a TV series this out an out action movie is awesome! I loved all the characters (I am a huge fan of Liam Neeson) and there was a plot albeit a little convoluted. I have not followed the TV series too much, but if the movie is anything to go by, the TV series must've been awesome!
Must watch!

The Expendables

The Expendables pales in comparison to the awesomeness that is the A-team. Its like an ode to yesteryear action heroes. The Line-up has a tired looking Sylvester Stallone, a menacing Dolph Lundgren, The boring Jet li and Jason Statham. The only scene that had some element of awesomeness was the one featuring Jason Statham kicking ass on a basket ball court all 'Transporter' style.
Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis show their faces for 2 minutes and Mickey Rourke keeps painting and Tattooing Sly. (I think we see a little too much of Mr. Rourke nowadays after "The Wrestler").
The villains have Steve Austin and the movie has almost zero plot. Annoyed with this movie.

Other movies that will come up in the next review post:
Inception
The man from earth
Insomnia
Despicable Me
Layer Cake
Edge of Darkness
Harry Brown
Blue Powder
A history of violence

Road Crossing for dummies

2010-08-16T21:51:00.012+05:30

So I have started driving a lot more regularly than I used to, and other than the auto's/two wheelers that try and squeeze into every nook and cranny available on the road, the other feature of Bangalore roads are the people crossing them.

I have managed to identify a few popular techniques of road crossing.

1. The Test match opening batsman

People who follow this technique of road crossing are super cautious and have a "great temperament".
Just like Sunny Gavaskar, who would wait for ages for a bad delivery off which he could score a single, these people will wait for almost ever, before they feel it is safe to scurry across the road.
They are especially irritating when you want to cross the road and they are "the lead" . They never make use of those promising gaps in traffic!

note: "The lead" - in road crossing jargon means to be the one closest to the approaching traffic. Though this person may change frequently, especially if you are standing in the middle of chickpet or K.R.market. The lead is responsible for crossing the road first, the rest just follow cue.

2. The "Kaho na pyar hai" dance step.

Now this a step that has been popular on Indian roads for ages . Much before Hrithik displayed it in the title song of the hit movie Kaho na pyar hai.

The step comprises of 2 movements: one step forward and one step backward, alternate this with flailing arms and you will have mastered this technique.
This is the best technique for people with commitment issues- step into the traffic and suddenly go back onto the pavement, repeat step till you finally want to commit to getting to the other side of the road.
If you are driving, you need to be able to ascertain when the person will come forward and when he/she will go back. You will be able to identify this technique only with experience of driving on Indian roads.

This step is demonstrated by Hrithik in this video watch closely from 1:21 to 1:25 of the video

3. The Matrix

This technique is fast gaining popularity thanks to the incessant flow of traffic. To master this technique - think Neo stopping bullets in the Matrix.

This is the simplest of techniques. Do not look left or right, put out your hand at the approaching traffic and walk across the road. The traffic will stop and give you way.
Note - you will have to have an expression of disdain and 'I don't give a damn' on your face. The traffic will NOT stop if you look like a cornered rabbit.

This can only be executed if you are super confident of the driving abilities of all the other Bangaloreans and have calculated the probabilities of brake failure on an average day.

As with all things 'Matrix', I cannot tell you more about what the technique is. You have to see it for yourself.

4. Flash

This technique is as old as the dinosaurs. Look left and right. If you notice the tiniest of gaps in the flow of traffic, put your head down and run at top speed across the road. Keep eyes closed till you think you have reached the other side.

5. Equated Installments

This just like the EMI concept, this is based on the divide and conquer principle. Don't wait for the traffic flow to dry out. Just cross the road a few feet at a time.
If its a 30 feet wide road, cross 10 feet first, thus making yourself an island as the traffic goes past you. Wait for the remaining traffic to slow down or take pity on you and then cross the remaining section.
This requires good agility as there arise a need to be able to duck out of the way of a speeding motorbike that is overtaking a slow moving bus from the wrong side and trying to occupy the same space of the road that you are standing on (or were standing on a fraction of a second before you ducked out of its way).

6. The parasites

Now this is the recommended technique for beginners and amateurs. Just stand on the pavement looking busy staring at the sky or at something across the road. Wait for an expert to arrive at the scene (This will be the person who will immediately take "the lead"). The expert will use one or more of the above mentioned techniques and you can just tag along.

See you on the other side of the road!

Of strange weekends...

2010-08-01T20:09:00.004+05:30

So the past 3 weekends haven't been great - I had to work one Saturday thanks to the bandh. Spent the other weekend in Gurgaon. Was super ill and on top of it subjected to Akshay Kumar's "khatta meetha" the weekend before this.

That Saturday in particular was weird. We were returning from a nice evening of talking movies with friends at "Infinitea", and as we were hurtling down Bellary road, we saw a couple of guys lying on the middle of the road. The other vehicles were giving these guys a miss, but we decided to stop and see what was up.

As I got down from the car, I realised that I was the first one at an accident scene! There was blood all around and one guy did not seem to have made it. The other guy ,when I held is hand , stirred and opened his eyes, luckily 2 other guys came to help me and we managed to call the ambulance.
I was a little skeptical about the ambulance arriving quickly, so I ran to the nearby Baptist hospital to get an ambulance, meanwhile though the emergency ambulance we had called arrived.

By now loads of vehicles had stopped and the people in them were gawking at the accident and its victims, thus causing a jam and not letting the ambulance get to the accident! Some frantic shouting and hand waving ensued and we cleared the road for the Ambulance.

One thing that got me furious is the fact that people refuse to stop and help out victims of an accident, because they do not want to get involved and get into "trouble" with the cops. I have no clue how long those guys were lying there with vehicles passing by before we got to them!
The same people have a morbid fascination with accidents though. They have no qualms in stopping their vehicles and staring at an accident, at the cost of not letting an ambulance get through.

The one positive I saw in the entire incident was the prompt response of the ambulance. Please keep in mind that if you were to come upon such a situation, call the emergency number 108 immediately. They are very good!

Some spring cleaning

2010-07-11T14:05:00.000+05:30

There is scurried activity at home, as Mummy and Amu go about preparing to host a dinner for some friends later today.
I, however have not been part of any scurried activity. I have spent most of the morning lazing around reading the Sunday morning newspaper at leisure, lying down staring at the ceiling and watching highlights of a cricket match on TV (I have no idea why sports channels show highlights of such inconsequential matches - NZ scored 163 and SA chase it down for the loss of 6 wkts in 43 overs).

This time though, nobody asked me to do any chores and this induced some guilt which led me to the long pending task of cleaning up the book shelf.

The return on investment of time spent is this -
1) I get to show that I have done some work
2) I get to pick out books to give my friend, who is collecting books for kids at her school in Kashmir

As I was lining up books by authors and height order I came across some really old Archie, Flintstones, 'Diamond Comics' comic books, along with the usual fare of Gokulam, Chandamama, Thak Thak and Champak's.
Lovely to see these after so many years.

I also came across the wonderfully written 'Original Script' of our away day play "Chronicles of the Dark Knightie" :P which was a joy to see and read through, though I still know it by heart.

Despite having loads of books, I only came up with a handful of books that I thought I could give away. So there goes the false notion I had, that I was one of those for whom letting go was super easy. Siiiigh.

However, if you can get your hands on any books that you think will be a good read for school kids, then get in touch with me now!

Till then I am going back to my lazing about *grin*.

Loads of movies

2010-07-05T19:06:00.008+05:30

Well, I have close to 19 movies that I remember having watched... here they are

Alex is a pediatrician, who is on holiday with his wife, out having a leisurely swim in the lake, when his wife is murdered and he is knocked out cold. Alex is the prime suspect but has his name cleared. 8 years later, he gets an email from his murdered wife and from there begins a taut thriller, as Alex tries to uncover the mystery of his wife's disappearance, chased by a group of assassins and the cops, but with help from a Mafia type friend who is indebted to Alex for saving his son's life, Alex goes about finding his wife.
Good movie, the plot is a little over the top, but good in the thrills and car chases department. Oh did I mention it was a French film? You shall need subtitles.

Super film. To me this was like watching a modern film-noir. A child is missing, and a detective couple are hired by the child's aunt to trace her back. A couple of cop's lend a hand, but the couple must solve the crime themselves.
Like in most suspense thrillers, nothing is what it seems to be and there are loads of unexpected twists till the last minute.
It 's got Ben Affleck's little brother Casey Affleck (whiny accent annoys for a bit, but othewise he does a great job) and Michelle Monoghan (who looks like Liv Tyler) in the lead, with Morgan Freeman playing top cop.
Wonderful watch. But be aware it may leave a you a tad bit depressed. (wow ,I got to use one of my favourite phrases: "a tad bit").

Iron Man 1 was fantastic, Robert Downey Jr. made the role and the suit his own and was brilliant.
Iron Man 2 is also nice, though not as nice as the first one, for a couple of reasons:

1. The villain is not menacing at all. In all the confusion of what they want to do with Whiplash, they forgot to develop his character.Also, Mickey Rourke does not seem to have gotten out of his Wrestler Character, so half the time he walks about looking forlorn. The only saving grace is the Monaco Grand PRix scene, which was fantastic!

2. Iron man is a DJ and dancing. Well to me that was super un-cool. I know they wanted to show his as a troubled alcoholic, but errr there are more subtle ways of showing this than making him a DJ in his own party.

Other than that, it was all good. We got to see Thor's hammer as well (ahem, that sounds weird)

Confessions of a dangerous mind

You will know Sam Rockwell from Iron Man 2 where he plays Tony Stark's not so glamorous business rival.
Here he plays Chuck Barris, a game show host and creator, who is also an assassin on the CIA's payroll. The story is based on the memoirs of Chuck Barris, who claimed to be a CIA hitman in real life, though whether it was a fantasy he played out or whether it was true is debatable.
Its a great watch, especially, with Julia Roberts, playing a fellow CIA assassin. Super movie.

Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler), has his home broken into, his wife and child raped and murdered in front of his eyes by a psychotic thief and his aide. The aide gets death penalty, but the guy who commits the crime is let off after a few years in jail. Jaime Foxx plays the attorney who convinces Clyde that the best the law could do has been done.
But soon everyone associated with the case start dying horrible deaths. Clyde apparently works for a clandestine govt agency and now wants revenge. He tortures and kills the guy who murdered his family (which is gruesome but super awesome as well) and goes after everyone else associated with the case. Jaime Foxx must now try and save the innocent people who are being targeted by the erstwhile "Law abiding citizen".
The revenge bit is great, the manner in which he goes about killing is also good, but again the plot is a bit unbelievable.
Decentish watch.

Kevin Costner plays Lt. Cmdr. Tom Farrell and Gene Hackman plays the US Defence secretary, David Brice. Tom works for David Brice and both are in love with the same woman.
The lady in question is in love with the dashing commander whom she meets at a party, but is stuck being the mistress of the Defence Secretary. Brice does not know that the man who is wooing his mistress away from him is Tom Farell. In a fit of rage, he accidentally kills his mistress and tries to mislead everyone into a hunt for a mole in his department who he says was the mysterious boyfriend of the lady who was killed.

He hands the case to Tom Farell, who knows the truth (since he himself is the mysterious boyfriend) and must now get the Defence Secretary to pay for his crime.

Good thriller, with a super unexpected twist in the end.

Ryan Reynolds stars in this movie that deals with his character's daughter trying to identify how he met her mother and who her mother is. In a bedtime story he makes up the names of the 3 women he dated and was in love with, and lets the daughter guess who her mother is.
Average movie. No wow effect.

Horrible movie. Nagesh Kukunoor is an idiot.

I loved this movie! It pans out like a Hindi movie and is very well made and directed. Nit surprising for a Woody Allen movie.
The plot is pretty straigh-forward. The hero is a middle class, ex-professional tennis player who is ambitious but wants to earn it all on his own, without help from anyone. He takes up coaching and meets a rich young guy whom he soon befriends.
At a party at their country house he meets the guy's sister and who takes a liking to him, and they fall for each other. He also meets a beautiful lady(Scarlett Johansson) who he falls heads over heels in love with, but she turns out to be the rich dudes fiance.
Having married the rich girl and having landed a plush corporate job (thanks to his father-in-law), but still madly in love with Scarlett Johansson. Our hero is in a dilemma. And so it heads to an awesome last 30 minutes.

Watch it.

The rest are in a different post :D

A good weekend takes all of 5 days to come by

2010-07-05T12:28:00.003+05:30

Thursday is the day I hate the most in a week, because I have already slogged out for 3 days and its still not Friday.
The weekends, to state the obvious, are a joy :) I haven't been out traveling a lot ,unlike the last few years when I was out every other weekend, but there is seemingly enough to do.

This weekend was super. Friday we discovered 'Couch' on M.G. Road. The match was a good watch (Brazil lost), but playing dumb charades in the crowded pub was even better :P

Saturday was time for getting our Karaoke set out to Apsara and Yogesh's place and belting out Hindi songs :D, followed by watching Germany thump Argentina, siiiigh. To round off the evening we watched 'The Others', one of the movies I rate quite high in the horror movie genre.

Sunday was supposed to be Tree Planting day, but just could not wake up to head out and plant saplings early. Nevertheless, Fava at UB city in the evening, The Oval bar at Mantri in the night and 'The A-team' with the boys to close out a good Sunday.

Okay! Till the next weekend then!

As I read this post I realise it would have been best if I had started with "Dear diary...". But well what the heck, a post is a post.

Lists of 10

2010-06-09T22:04:00.008+05:30

Most over-rated !

I am going to ruffle a few feathers...

10. Harry Potter

9. Loots Bosman - South African Cricketer.

8. Golf

7. "Franny and Zooey" and "The Alchemist"

6. Indian authors who write in English (With the exception of Ray of 'Feluda' fame)

5. Chaats in Kolkata (though the sweets and the non-veggie stuff is superb!)

4. Micro-blogging

3. USA

2. Twilight - the movie/book series

1. Wayne Rooney

Most under-rated !
(I could only think of 5 :P )

10. Malgoa mangoes. As good as Hapus, if not better :)

9. Terry Pratchett - I know loads of people love his writing, but not enough.

8. Samurai Jack

7. Nikola Tesla

6. "Swades" - The movie

5. Mohit Chauhan - Especially his music with 'Silk Route'

The review post

2010-05-02T12:16:00.008+05:30

Its been a few long, tiring weeks at work, so much so that I am struggling to finish off the book I am reading. This also means that there have been fewer movies watched between my last review post and this.

The wife has asked me to blog about other things, but I cannot resist a few reviews.

Before we move on, I seem to have caused distress from some of my posts earlier. If you are one who has felt offended by what I have been writing, then I guess you will just have to live with it :)

Here come the movies

Where the wild things are

This is a movie about a lonely kid, who runs away from home and seemingly lands up on a fantasy island, where there are wild creatures whom he befriends and who make him their 'king'.
Each creature really is a person that the kid knows in real life and the creature takes their characteristic.
So what we have is a kid building a world from the figment of his imagination. Not a bad idea, its from a book after all. However the kid they have cast in the main role is psychotic. So I intensely disliked him, which meant that I did not think too highly of the movie either.
It could have been that I was drawing parallels with the brilliant Pan's Labyrinth(Which has a very similar plot).
Watchable, if you don't hate the kid, like I did. But please watch Pan's Labyrinth instead, its definitely a much better movie.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

A fantastic stop animation movie, with George Clooney as the thieving Mr. Fox who has mended his ways to lead a quiet family life, or has he ? :)
Brilliant soundtrack and some really fun characters, as Mr. Fox decides to raid the farms of 3 dangerous farmers, who in turn decide they want vengeance!
Please watch.

Half Past Dead

What do you get when you mix Steven Seagal with a movie with a tagline that goes 'The good, the bad and the deadly' ?
A crappy 'action' movie that generally makes no sense.
That's all I have to say about this movie. Don't judge me for watching this movie. It was coming on TV at the same time as I was looking at the TV screen.

Manhattan Murder Mystery

A superb Wooddy Allen movie, about a couple who seem to be undergoing a mid-life crisis, thanks to a routine life and boredom, just as they are drifting apart, they encounter what seems to be a murder of a neighbour and off they go to solve the mystery, this is set in Manhattan and hence the title.
Very well made movie and Diane Keaton and Woody Allen get together with their weirdly wonderful chemistry.

Date Night

Very similar to Manhattan Murder Mystery in terms of the plot. A couple leading a content but boring life, decide that they need to get some excitement back into their life by going out on date to a posh new restaurant in the city. Having taken somebody else's seating reservations, they get into trouble with the mob and bad cops, who mistake them to be a couple on the run, who have stolen some mobsters flash drive.
Steve Carell does a good job as usual in this mildly entertaining fare which is great Saturday afternoon/evening watch.

Shattered

A man and his wife have an accident, the man loses his memory, but things do not seem to be what they are as he struggles to get back to his old life. A web of deception and deceit (I love this phrase) seem to cover his new life.
I must mention this movie for one scene which most of us would inadvertently have watched time and again.
Which is the accident. This clip of a car breaking through a wall on a dark winding road and crashing into the hillside with glass shattering, was used by most Hindi mystery/detective serials of the late 90's!

Taken

Brilliant fast paced action movie about an ex-spy rescuing his daughter who has been kidnapped in Europe by sex-slave traders.
Awesome action sequences and Liam Neeson make this movie a must watch!

Wanted

Pathetic and Unwanted.

How to train your dragon

Easily the best animated movie in a long long time! Dragons are the most hated creatures in Berk, village of viking warriors, where the kids are trained to fight and kill dragons. Hiccup the main protagonist is a contradiction of sorts to his father who is the village leader. However Hiccup does manage to trap the most fearsome dragon of all 'Night Fury', but ends up befriending the dragon, to soon realise that these beasts are misunderstood by humans.
Wathing it in 3-D was a great experience in itself. Fantastic animation and pretty good story line makes this one of my favourite animation movie.
"This is Berk. It snows nine months out of the year, and hails the other three. What little food grows here is tough and tasteless. The people that grow here, even more so. The only upsides are the pets. While other places have ponies, or parrots... we have dragons. "
- Hiccup

The other man

Liam Neeson plays a quiet unassuming family man, who is tortured by a conversation he had with his wife before she left, where she tells him that if she fell in love with another man she would just go away. He soon discovers pictures of his wife's lover (Antonio Banderas) on her laptop and the rest of the movie is about finding out who the man is. Both Liam Neeson and Antonio Banderas have likeable characters and it is a decent movie with a nice little twist in the end :)

The great Indian MRF blimp

2010-04-22T22:38:00.010+05:30

Oh GOD! I had never ever seen a blimp in my life! That too one from MRF...oooh wow.

Ever since I managed to get through kindergarten, I have been tortured by these questions day in and day out - What is this MRF? What do they do? How many brand ambassadors do they have? What is this pace academy they have founded? Who will be the first one to get the blimp to India? Does MRF really stand for Madras Rubber Factory? Why is MRF so great?

Now, thanks to the IPL, all the questions I have ever had about MRF have been answered and many more have been pre-empted.
The commentators are like an endless ocean of knowledge when it comes to factoids about the blimp. They can tell you who owns MRF, how many times that person eats curd rice in a day, what brand of dhoti he wears etc etc

Other than the annoying bits where they show the ongoing match every now and then, the IPL and the MRF blimp is a joy to watch.

The charming Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, seems to love the MRF blimp so much that I suspect that once the IPL gets over, he is going to take the blimp home and introduce it to his parents. Danny Morrison also seems to suddenly get excited when they show the blimp, but then Danny Morrison has the ability to get excited even if they show Mukesh Ambani on screen, so one cannot read much into his display of emotions.

Anyway here is Siva taking his blimp for a walk on a pristine caribbean beach.

I leave you with the very eloquent -

What you gon' do with all that junk?
All that junk inside your trunk?
I'ma get, get, get, get, you drunk,
Get you love drunk off my blimp
My blimp, my blimp, my blimp, my blimp, my blimp,
My blimp, my blimp, my blimp, my lovely little blimp (Check it out)

Ads people play...

2010-04-04T14:29:00.004+05:30

Gone are those days when there would be brand new ad's on showcase only during the world cup. I still remember the Coca-cola ad during the 1996 World Cup, the kids playing cricket surrounded by red chillies left out to dry and by the Taj. That was one ad that got me craving to go play cricket.

There is almost no ad now that makes me want to buy anything.

Now with the IPL season there is a PL everywhere. There are cricket centric ads all around! HBO Premier League, Pix Premier League, the pathetic set of 'AX effect on the cricket field' ads, Oongli cricket, the irritating "Vidya Calling" ad with Sehwag and Gambhir which plays right in the middle of an over. So on and on.

The next set of ads are about summer and AC's and refrigerators. They basically tell us that the entire family is sitting around the product and living their lives around it or, if the ad has Ajay devgan and Kajol in it, then treating the product like their own family member, because oh its made their boring aimless lives so much better.Bah.

Even the zoozoo ads are an overkill. Not to mention Ranbir Kapoor in a sleeveless fake leather jacket taking on Sanjay Dutt - who looks as if he has been dressed in discarded motorcycle parts - for a bottle of Pepsi.

The number of different cell phone brands in the market have given rise to the a larger number of crappy ads. siiigh.

Gimme better ads!

p.s: Thanks to Rajiv for helping me find the link to the Coke ad

Rain and nostalgia

2010-04-03T12:11:00.002+05:30

The second most favourite topic of the season is the weather in Bangalore. So when I grab lunch and happen to sit at a table with someone I don't know too well, then invariably the conversation starts with the heat in the city.

The city was in for a pleasant surprise last week, when it rained some.

Any Banglorean knows that when the mercury rises above a certain level leading to discomfiture, then it rains, and cools the temperatures and tempers down. However, this has not been the case for quite some time now.

I was getting back home in an Auto and it began to drizzle without much warning.

With the smell of earth in first rains, came a wave of nostalgia. Of a city that Bangalore used to be. Of walking back from school after a game of cricket in the rain. Of watching the rain outside the window while studying for my 12th standard exams. Of drinking the strongest filter coffee ever, in a restaurant called Pushpavan right opposite Urvashi Theatre. Of being obssessed with Wodehouse and Conan Doyle. Of the inevitable candle lit dinners thanks to the power cut's.

As the cool breeze blew, into my face, I was transported for a while into Bangalore of the 1990's. Unfortunately the only thing constant from then and now is the power cut.

But one thing is certain, the rain does make everything a little nicer, especially memories :)

Movie Shoovie

2010-03-28T22:12:00.002+05:30

Well, the latest from the movie theatre is that I went to watch a night show last Sunday with a group of friends and had to get out within the first 5 minutes, because I fell super ill. It was not the movie, it was the err... "food" I had before the movie.

But anyway here are some movies that I did manage to watch -

The 40 year old virgin

I have long avoided/missed/ignored this one but finally decided to watch it. It was as one would expect it to be. Comic in some parts and boringly American in others. Watchable because Steve Carell does a good job :)

Up in the air

This one stars George Clooney and his backpack. Its about a guy who specialises in traveling to different parts of the country, laying off people on behalf of their employers and in getting laid with a random woman he meets.
His aim is to be able to live without any emotional baggage and to earn a million flying miles.

He achieves the latter but fails to do much about the former. Decent, but overrated.

Agora

Extremely slow paced and depressing movie about the advent of Christianity in Roman Egypt, and the seemingly correlated decline of freedom of speech/thought and the destruction of the great library of Alexandria.
This one is a biopic of Hypatia, one of the greatest female philosophers of all time, or so the movie leads us to believe.

Here is what wiki thinks of her. Rachel Weiz plays Hypatia and does a fabulous job!

Hypatia is a woman who is oblivious to all advances made at her by admiring men and the religious politics being played around her. Her only interest lies in deciphering ,why the planets move in such an odd manner, could it be that the Earth is after all not the centre around which everything revolves?

This is again a movie that is watchable, but only if you are in a certain frame of mind to take the death and destruction.

Space Jam

Staring Bugs Bunny, the rest of the Looney Tunes gang and a lost looking Magic Jordan. Okay as a kids movie. But I was not too impressed.

Shoot the piano player

Picked this one up because the cover looked good and the movie summary sounded interesting. But it turned out to be a highly overrated, weird black and white 1960's French movie.
Something about a Piano player in a small bar who has a troubled past, and gets into deeper trouble when his brother lands up at the bar chased by a couple of goons.

Supposedly a thriller, but it was quite weird for my liking.

Hero

So here is this not so nice guy, played by Dustin Hoffman who reluctantly saves 54 people, including an award winning telivision journalist (Geena Davis), from a plane crash. But the credit and a million dollars go to a homeless Vietnam war veteran, played by Andy Garcia thanks to a case of mistaken identity.

Now, the homeless guy is a gem of a person who believes about giving back to society, but is guilt ridden about having lied to get the money. Our hero is trying to save himself from going into jail and spend time with his son.

I quite liked this movie, it is a sweet well made movie with the message that there is a hero in everyone of us.

That's all folks!

At the match

2010-03-19T00:13:00.003+05:30

If we had any doubts about whether watching a match at the stadium was "Worth it", they were all dispelled the moment we set foot in 'Stand B' of the Chinnaswamy stadium for the IPL match between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Kings XI Punjab.

I confess that a few things worked to our benefit, such as:

1. Watching the match with a large gang of friends - after all, who else would let you - and eventually join you - lead a chant that goes "Bangalore, Bangalore, Bangalore" ? :P

2. The team we supported (RCB) thulped the opposition (Kings XI Punjab) - They chased down a massive 203 against all odds.

3. Watching Sreesanth getting walloped - the clown was as entertaining as ever. As the RCB innings began, and the batsman was taking guard, this idiot was behind the batsman taking strike, measuring his run up for the next over. Of course as soon as he got ball in his hands, it flew all around the park.

4. There were a handful of Punjab team supporters, who were jumping about and dancing in that weird Bhangra style that these people dance in, for the entire duration of the Punjab innings, but they disappeared from the stadium after watching the first dozen sixers of the RCB innings.

At this point I must tell you how disappointed I am with the Punjabi dance style that they demonstrated for 105 minutes of the Punjab innings.

When Yuvraj singh pulled out his hanky to blow his nose, they would stand on the chairs and start the weird dance.
When Bisla, hit a mistimed pull that got him a single, they would get onto the chairs and do the same dance.
When someone said "Daler Mehendi", they got up onto the chairs and did the same routine.

Basically every 30 seconds same dance steps, each group of fans, same dance step.

Bah!

Anyway. Match worth every rupee. Go watch.

'Road Movie'

2010-03-06T20:45:00.004+05:30

Abhay Deol is back! I have enjoyed each and every movie of his, and was waiting for this movie with bated breath for months.

Finally it was released yesterday, and with 3 other hardcore Abhay Deol fans (Including Amu ofcourse), I went to watch it.

I should begin by saying that the movie is a joint effort of Dev Benegal and Abhay Deol.
By 'joint effort', I mean they must've been smoking a joint of something really weird, all through the making of this one :P

Okay, enough cheesy one liners, back to the movie.

The movie like most other road movies, has the protagonist - in this case Abhay Deol - embark on a journey, that leaves him wiser in the end.

The hero has the opportunity to inherit his dad's medium sized, hair oil business. Not surprisingly, seemingly sick of it all, he decides to help an acquaintance deliver his old, beaten up looking truck, to a museum in a place called 'Samundarabad'.

Thus begins the road trip from Jaisalmer to Samundarabad, all the way across the desert.

The hero meets 3 main characters along the way, each having their own goals:

A boy who he meets at a small dhaba - He just wants to leave the Dhaba job and go to the next town

A mechanic (Satish Kaushik) who helps him repair the truck - he wants to visit a mela that supposedly happens in the middle of the desert

A Rajasthani village belle (the Heroine) - who is roaming about in search of water.

The boy has all the good lines, next is Satish Kaushik. Abhay Deol himself is somehow relegated to the sidelines in this one and the girl is forgettable.

Add to the mix, a bad cop (who forces the group to discover that the truck they are delivering is actually a mobile movie 'theatre'), a gang of water dacoits led by Yashpal Sharma (They rob and hoard water and sell it to the villagers), and you have 'Road Movie'.

The visuals are stunning, the camera captures the desert beautifully. The kid has a fantastic role with some wonderful dialogues, but that's about it.

The search for water seems to be the primary motif in the movie.

The movie itself is monotonous and painfully slow. There is very little background score, which makes the movie more painful to watch. The plot moves along lethargically, just like a weary traveler in the desert.

The lack of music is a crime.

This movie had immense potential, but unfortunately all of it remains untapped.

More reviews I say...

2010-02-27T19:50:00.005+05:30

Wow, I looked at the movies I have watched between my last review post and this one, and I realise it is a long long list, almost as long as MNIK. But enough of beating up MNIK, let me get on with the other movies...

Brothers Bloom

A story about a trio (the brothers Bloom and a chinese chick), who go around conning people, one of their victims include Rachel Weisz who plays a super rich, talented but bored and lonely young lady, who wants some excitement in life. Decent watch, but Adrien Brody would not have been in my cast as a conman, maybe they got him for cheap.

The Golden Compass
Average. Yes, its a Philip Pullman book adaptation, yes its uber cool to watch a polar bear fight in an armour, and its super to have Nicole Kidman in a negative role. But, the movie still does not make an impression.

Outsourced

Decent movie, but the lead heroine reminded me of a frog. She was pretty in her own way though.

21 grams
Very average Sean Penn movie about a guy who gets a heart transplant and falls in love with the donor's widow. Un necessarily made complex by mixing up scenes ala Memento, but this one fails miserably. 21 grams, is how much an average heart weighs.

Sherlock Holmes

What-e-beauty! Guy Ritchie and Robert Downey Jr. take a bow. A fantastic take on my favourite detective :) The ending was a little anti-climatic for me, but over all I loved it!

The Machinist

Fantastic movie! The atmosphere that the director whips up is amazing. Its almost like you are in the character's head and you can see and feel what a weird world he lives in. Add to it a dollop of suspense and we have a weirdly wonderful movie :)

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Its got the enigmatic looking (to my eyes) Mila Kunis (Who you may also recognise from 'Family Guy' - where she voices Meg), the very funny Russel Brand and the guy who I only recognise as 'Marshal' from the 'How I met your mother' series.

The guy I recognise as 'Marshal', drops his towel 10 mins into the movie, for an unxpected dose of full frontal nudity, and that sets the tone for this movie about a music composer who is ditched by his girlfriend (Sarah Marshall), and runs away to Hawaii alone to forget it all, only to run into his ex-girlfriend and her rockstar new boy friend (Russel Brand). There are funny parts to the movie but then its spoilt with some unncessarily explicit 'comedy'. Average.

I am legend
Will Smith, his dog and some vampire like dudes/dudettes, not a bad movie. Some of the sequences were really good. In fact as I write this, I think I quite liked the movie.

Stranger than fiction

Fantastic premise, the narrator narrates, and the main character can hear her! So out he goes on a mission to find out who is narrating every part of his life. On the way he finds love in the form of ugly (to my eyes) Maggie Gyllenhaal. He must stop the narrator from ending his story with his death etc etc

Nice idea for a movie and quite well made. I liked it in a way, except that this one contained all the women I hate, such as Emma 'annoyingly boring' Thompson, Maggie 'ugly' Gyllenhaal and Queen 'loud' Latifah

Original Sin
Angelina Jolie sizzles in this thriller whose twists and turns you can see a mile away. But watchable.

Hollywoodland
Ayyoo very very boring movie, supposedly about the death of some Superman of television or something. Boring only.

Duplicity

Okay, now I am going to say something controversial. I think Clive Owen sucks! He is extremely dumb in his choice of movies.
Given his looks and decentish acting skills, he should have been the Sean Connery of our times, but he delivers one pathetic movie after another. 'Shoot em up', 'The International', 'Duplicity', as far as I am concerned he made even 'Inside man' boring.

He and Julia 'can't act' Roberts, dole up a 'romantic' thriller about two corporate spies who try to double cross their companies or something or the other. The script is extremely complex (since it goes back and forth in time) and full of loop holes, in fact I suspect Abbas Mustan of 'Race' famemay have ghost written it.

Go watch it and tell me if you agree.

Lars and the real girl

Ryan Gosling's character buys one of those dolls, falls in love with it and takes it around almost the entire length of the movie acting like she is a real person. The entire town plays along with him. Once the novelty of the character falling in love with a doll wears off, this becomes a long and boring movie. Ryan Gosling is a fantastic actor but don't bother watching this.

Hurt Locker

Fantastic movie, despite being given an almost documentary like treatment, this movie loses none of its thrill. You shew your nails every time a bomb is found and has to be taken care of, you follow a bomb squad in Iraq as they work on the edge of death day in and day out.

Brilliant, this one is a must watch.

World's fastest Indian

Anthony Hopkins as Burt Monroe once again kicks ass in this story inspired by a true incident. The 'Indian' referred to is a motor cycle. The mission is to break the land speed record.
What makes this movie a great watch, is the road trip Burt Monroe takes from New Zealand to the US of A, with his old, home tweaked bike in tow, to try and break the land speed record.

Do not miss this one!

Roger Dodger
An average movie. The story follows a smooth talking dude who has been dumped by his lover who is also his boss. Enter his 16 year old nephew, who wants to spend an evening with his uncle and learn how to charm women.
Its an okayish movie. But not really one I would recommend.

Sunshine

Last evening we came back at 1:30am and decided we wanted more out of a Friday evening and hence sat down to watch 'Sunshine', this Ralph Fiennes epic about a family, follows Ralp Fiennes in 3 characters - The Grandfather - A Judge, the father - an Olympic fencing champion and the Son - The narrator and a police inspector who has watched his father being beaten and tortured to death in a Nazi labour camp and now wants his revenge against the fascists.

This movie is as much about the family as it is about Hungary all the way from 1890's to the 1950's. We finished watching this at 4:30 am, but found the movie very engrossing.

I admire Ralph Fiennes and that maybe one reason for me having liked this movie, but this one is highly recommended.

Whew! What a long post this has been.

Review - My name is Khan

2010-02-27T13:33:00.003+05:30

My name is Khan a.k.a My name is Khan and I am not a terrorist a.k.a My name is Khan and I am not selling Reebok shoes and so on and so forth.

So children its time for our lessons again, what did we learn from My name is Khan?

Learning #1: Kajol screech freeze tiger blood - old Jungle saying

Learning #2: Now we know without a doubt, what the 'epiglottis' is, where it is situated and what it does. Of course Achmed the dead terrorist taught us this trick a lot better! (I looove Jeff Dunham)

Learning #3: Rizwan Khan and his son have same shoe size.

Learning #4: Obama has undergone plastic surgery and looks completely different now. Maybe it was the Nobel peace prize.

Learning #5: Rizwan Khan with Asperger's has better dance moves than Sanjay Dutt in Daud. (if you don't believe me ask Rohini Sharma or Chaman)

Sanjay Dutt, shows his dance moves and more.

Learning #6: Karan Johar is an idiot

Learning #7: Kajol screech freeze tiger blood - old Jungle saying. Oh, did I already mention that? Sorry I am a little disoriented, my ears are still ringing from all the screeching.

Ok, however there were some bits that I liked about the movie, these were :

1. Sonya Jehan,
2. The cinematography and the fresh locations.

I would like to say, My name is Gawde and I am not very particular about my second name being pronounced from the epiglottis.

My top 5 Sitcom characters

2010-01-16T20:15:00.004+05:30

1. Barney Stinson - How I met your mother

His awesomeness is unparalleled !

2. Keshav Kulkarni - Shriman Shrimati

Tuesday used to be my favourite day, thanks to this show!

3. Stewie Griffin - Family Guy

Here is Stewie doing the robot dance.

4. Edmund Blackadder - Blackadder

Rowan Atkinson as the devious Blackadder. Hilarious

5. Crayon Shin-chan - Shinchan

Cult classic Japanese anime.

Population

2010-01-10T13:54:00.003+05:30

There is too much population I say. Too much!

Yesterday, we had tickets to Avtaar for the 6 pm show, we reached the road where the theatre is located at about 5:55pm, from then on it was one long wait in a queue to get parking.

By the time we got to park the car, it was 6:45 pm! 45 minutes for a distance of about 200 metres. This was , mind you, at fame lido, a multiplex with quite a bit of parking space (but all taken!).

Today, we got up early and went off to play badminton. But when we reached we saw that the two courts were full of people. Each of them (with the exception of the gang from my office), was fat (in a pot-bellied way), sweating and weirdly middle aged.

They were playing quite well mind you, but even I may get to that level of expertise soon, if only they give us some space and time on the court.

We left in frustration, because I did not see the point of having to wait 1 hour to play for 15 minutes that too with some pot bellied dude heaving and panting on the other side of the court.

But my point is, we are bursting at the seams (much like the badminton playing uncles). Too much population.

Avtaar

2010-01-09T22:59:00.004+05:30

When I was 11 years old and I walked into a theatre to watch the Jurassic Park, I had no clue then that movie making was about to be taken to a new level. I still remember catching my breath when the first Brontosaurus comes live on the screen.

'Avtaar' has had a similar effect on me. James Cameroon takes us on a wonderful trip to 'Pandora', which is so exotic and beautiful that one completely forgets to make a connection that the plot is a parallel of sorts to that of 'District 9', has bits of 'Matrix' and influences from quite a few other movies.

However, I do not complain. This is a movie that will take movie making to a completely new level.

Mr. Cameroon, I thank you for the visual treat that is 'Avtaar'.

Quite a few of you asked me to review and I know you were expecting a scathing, sarcastic review from me.
Well, that is not to be.
Maybe there will be one if I make the mistake of watching a Salman Khan movie again. :)

2010 is here baby!

2010-01-01T13:02:00.005+05:30

2010 seems to be the sought after year by many. I guess its something to do with the completeness of the number involved. Who doesn't like rounded figures eh ?

For years now, people have planned loads of things for 2010. The term 'Vision 2010' seems to have caught the fancy of many a corporate board and they have gone on to make great plans for the coming 2010.

Anyway its here already!

It will be interesting to see what excuses people come up with for not having executed these plans :D . That was the cynic in me.

Now for the optimist.

2009, like the past 27 years I have witnessed on this planet, was full of awesomeness. It was filled with loads of travel, good books, lovely movies and lots of laughter.

I am quite sure that the coming year will also bring with it the unknowns make life such a thrilling ride.

Life follows a normal distribution (some good , some bad, but mostly average), I am going to try and make the averages into the 'goods' and the 'goods' into the 'greats'! and that, is my new year's resolution.

I leave you all with a wish (which also conveniently doubles up as a curse) -

"MAY WE ALL LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES".

Movies

2009-12-25T00:41:00.004+05:30

Well, I seem to be blogging only about movie reviews, so much so that the title of the post will soon become redundant and I will not have to find new ways of saying "Here is a post about the movies I have watched" because every other post will be just that.

But I do have an excuse, for this non-imaginative post this time, which is:

I have been on a plane(s) flying over 32000 kms this month (Four 10 hour flights in 6 weekends), which means all I have done is

1. Get on the plane
2. Watch movies
3. Get off the plane
4. Go to work
5. Get on the plane
6. Watch movies
7. Get off the plane

This above sequence repeated twice :(

Anyway enough of that. Here are the movies.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

This movie holds the record for being the one and only Johnny Depp movie that I have disliked. Enough said.

The Informers

I know you have never heard of this one, and its a good thing if that is so. If you want to change that look up this movie here
I had no clue what this movie was about when I began to watch it, and after I was done watching it, I still have no clue.
It seems to be about this bunch of people from LA who sleep around with each other and one of them gets aids. That's it. movie over.

Pathetic.

Hot Fuzz

This was brilliant. Simon Pegg does a super job. The humour is awesome and I loved this movie. A breath of fresh air after watching a string of bad movies.

Naked Kitchen

(don't worry even I can't read Korean)

I was in a mood to experiment and switched to the World Movies section and stumbled upon this Korean movie. This is movie about a chef, his wife and a young chap who comes along to help the chef set-up his restaurant which ends up in a love triangle.
Though the movie started off quite nicely, it ended up in a tangled mess which was sad to see. So much scope and so little done.

Running Turtle

Another Korean movie, this one I absolutely loved.

A super plot: A cop who does not earn much, is cheated out of his illegally earned money by a criminal on the run. Time for vendetta, only the criminal is more than a match for our cop and outwits him most times. Cop loses his job and now its personal. He has to catch the criminal and get back his lost job and face.

This movie is 2 parts comedy, 1 part action, 1 part thriller and highly recommended!

500 days of summer

"This is not a love story, this is a story about love" proclaims the tagline, and so it is.

This movie follows the love and the life of the Tom and Summer, 500 days of it, in no chronological order.

It is a good watch, but it did not wow me.

Adam

Another romantic movie, this one I liked a lot for some reason. The story line follows a young man who seems strange at first in the way he behaves with the lovely new girl in his apartment complex who seems to be very interested in him. But this is soon explained. The guy has Asperger's Syndrome.

But don't worry, this is not a movie about the condition, its a sweet simple movie about love and loss.

Watch it.

District 9

Let me confess, I am not a big fan of science fiction (as you may have guessed from my post about StarTrek). This movie however, is something else. It shatters all my notions about sci-fi movies by being so different.
Yes there is a space ship and yes aliens have landed on Earth. But hold on. America is nowhere mentioned, the crash landing is in Johannesburg, and the aliens the lives of inter-galactic refugees.

There is racism (a reference to the Apartheid) and though they have been living here for years in slum-like conditions and they are about to be evicted to the outskirts, away from humans to live like outcasts.
The man who is responsible for evicting them, soon starts mutating into one of them in a freak accident and soon starts to see things from their point of view (literally).

This is a movie where the aliens are the protagonists and the humans the evil antagonists. You root for the aliens to win.

must must must must watch!

50 dead men walking

Super movie about the IRA and conflict in Ireland, based on a true story of a double agent who infiltrated the IRA and helped save 50 lives (hence the title), only to lose his.

Nicely made.

Aliens in the attic

A movie for children about an Alien invasion by pint sized aliens wrecking havoc in the attic of a holiday home.

The Great Buck Howard

John Malkovich is the Great Buck Howard, Toms Hanks' son, yes his SON. plays the law school grad who would rather be a Magicians assistant.

This is a bitter sweet story about a Magician who is past his "Great" days and is left travelling the country to perform in lesser known towns, but is still hoping to make a comeback.

Quite an enjoyable movie but a little bit depressing.

City Island

This is supposedly a comedy about a family living in 'city island'. But this movie is so warped that I think its a tragedy that it is referred to as a comedy.

I have no clue what Andy Garcia was doing in this disaster.

State of play

A journalist (Russel Crowe) finds his friend (A successful US Senator, played by Ben Affleck) implicated in a scandal, the so called suicide of his aide who was also his lover.

But things are not what they seem like and Crowe and rookie journalist (Rachel McAdams) begin to investigate the web of lies and deceit that lies behind the death of the Congress mans mistress.

A decent thriller, that I enjoyed watching

Revolutionary Road

Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet star in this pathetic excuse for a movie. This one is real bad.

The only thing I found interestig was, how perfectly the melancholy of living in the US is depicted here. Brrr reminds me of the 9 weeks that I had to live in USA.

Project 'Whal-e' :P

2009-11-07T20:56:00.004+05:30

One more door to be painted, this time on the inside of the bathroom door

Phase1: Decide how we want the door to look...

It's the bathroom, hence one should have something that goes with the mood, and what better than a whale frolicking in the bathtub ? :P

So, we have penciled in the Whale (Whal-E) and its bath-tub equipped with a bar of soap :)

Phase2: The paint job

Colouring this in should be simpler than the 'peeping girl' drawing on the outside of the door, I mean how multi-coloured can a whale get eh?

So its blue for the whale and white for the bathtub and maybe a bit of pink for the soap

We have started off and here is the first shot (we are letting the paint dry before continuing on)

Watch this space for updates :)

More movies :)

2009-11-01T13:53:00.004+05:30

Well I have watched loads of movies between my last big review and now. I shall try and recall them all, but am sure to miss quite a few. Here goes

Well easily one of the best animation movies in a looooong time :)

we watched this on a whim, when late into the evening, someone said hey lets go watch a movie and given a choice between 'Wanted' and 'Up' I chose to buy tickets for UP.

Brilliantly made, with a story line that is touching and funny at the same time.

MUST WATCH!

Inglourious Basterds

Well, I loved a couple of characters (The brilliant Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans Landa) and loads of awesome scenes that only Tarantino can churn up, but the shoddy editing and some very very bad casting decisions (read the extremely idiotic Eli Roth as 'Bear Jew' and Diane Kruger as some actress) made this movie an average experience for me.

Caramel

A lovely Lebanese movie that will be enjoyed more by the fairer sex since they can relate to it better, I could go on to call it a Lebanese chick-flick, and am not ashamed to admit that I quite liked it too.
A simple story line, wonderful direction and a good cast gives us an interesting insight into a slice of Lebanese life :)

note: The shapely lady in the poster is the the main character as well as the director of the movie

Cellular

A good taut thriller written to be the exact opposite of 'Phonebooth' (The protagonist in Cellular has to keep running to save an abducted family who is in serious danger of getting wiped out.)

Well made. A good movie to watch on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

The International

Clive Owens and Naomi Watts star in this 'thriller' of err international proportions. Except for one good gun fight sequence, this movie - about a bank that is buying huge amounts of Chinese made weapons to supply them to encourage conflict in third world countries so that their debt increases - is boring.
Either that or banks dealing with weapons don't interest me.
If people tell you that this is a good movie, I can assure you that more times than not they just want to show-off that their understanding of international finance and politics is what made the movie interesting to them. But let me tell you that this is a BORING movie, avoid it, unless of course you have had too much excitement in your life and are looking for some boredom.

Bore yaaaawn boooore. I am sure by now you get the point.

The boat that rocked

From the makers of 'Four wedding and a funeral', 'Notting Hill' and 'Love Actually' (all movies that I loved!) comes 'The boat that rocked'.

The year is 1966, BBC plays only 45 minutes of music in a day. Rock n roll is considered to be a bad influence and obviously is craved for by the majority of the British population.
So here come the Pirate radio stations that broadcast music 24 hours a day 365 days a year from ships stationed in the North Sea!

This story - based on a string of real life events - is about one such radio station(headed by the awesome Bill Nighy) airing banned music from aboard 'Radio Rock', and its DJ's. It is also a coming of age story of a young chap who is sent by his mother to mend his ways (or so he thinks) to the worst place one can be to mend their ways - Radio Rock!

This is a movie about music, purely about music and a little bit of love and a little bit of friendship.

Quite nicely made, I liked it, but I shall not recommend it to you unless you loooove music and a little bit of experimental movie making :)

The Mummy - Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

I think next the makers will come up with 'The Mummy - Tomb of the Drag queen' or 'The Mummy - how to make your girlfriend a mummy' ahem, anyway here is the review...

After a superbly made 'The Mummy', which started off the whole series, it is sad to see this franchise going down so quickly and so badly.

This pathetically made excuse for a movie was watched by me due to lack of anything better to watch on tv.

Prof. Rick Donnel's son, Alex is now a grown up lad, in fact he is now older than his dad or at least looks like it, has a girlfriend who is immortal and be-friends a group of Yeti's.

No kidding! There is one scene where surrounded by the evil villain's soldiers, she runs up a mountain side and calls 'yeti yeti' and lo behold they come running to beat the soldiers up!

Jet Li is the Chinese mummy/emperor who has little or nothing to do, except get his ass kicked when Brendon Fraser tells him 'Enough of your magic and tricks, fight like a man!'

Pathetic and disgusting.

Six Shooter

I have been a huuuge fan of Martin Mcdonagh ever since I watched the awesome 'In Bruges'.

This 27 minute short film is typical Martin Mcdonagh.

This dark dark comedy (if you can call it that) is about a train ride that has a group of passengers who have all had a death in the family.

There is Brendon Gleeson who has had his wife die that very morning, there is this couple whose baby had a cot death the previous day and then there is this weird and almost psychopathic young guy who cannot stop talking, who has his mother who died the previous day!

Apart from anecdotes about exploding cows, ugly babies and shouting at sheep this movie showcases how different people deal with death.

Well made but only for those of you who appreciate dark humour (I obviously liked it :P).

Craaazzzyy

2009-10-24T23:32:00.002+05:30

Well, nothing's changed. Well one thing has ! I have got crazier.

Here is some crazy stuff done more recently.

1. Gate crashed a wedding, so that we could all go to the loo. Ended up taking some pictures with the guests :D

2. Fainted at the dentist's clinic, when she told me what exactly she was going to do to my poor tooth.

3. Watched 'Main aur Mrs Khanna'.

Gangtok ahoy

2009-10-17T10:23:00.008+05:30

Here is a low down on our Sikkim trip!

To get to Sikkim the first thing you need to do is get to either New Jaipalguri (NJP) or Baghdogra, since this is the nearest rail and airport to Sikkim

The quickest and the most expensive way - Bangalore to Kolkata to Bagdoghra by flight and Bagdoghra to Gangtok by Helicopter.

How we got there: Bangalore to Kolkata by flight 2.5 hrs, Kolkata to NJP by Darjeeling Express 8 hrs.

Having reached NJP quite early in the morning, we took a shared taxi ride to Baghdogra which is about 10-12kms away, our plan was to take the helicopter to Gangtok (2200 rs per person, flying time 40 mins), but at the airport we soon realised that the 5 seater helicopter was already booked.

So we had to hire a taxi to take us to Gangtok. 3 hour ride.

Things to be aware of when travelling to Sikkim

1. Make sure you have a hotel pre-booked (or at least expecting you)

A quick search on the net will tell you that Sonam Delek is the hotel with the best view in Gangtok, and that is absolutely correct, priced at 2200 per night the deluxe rooms are comfortable, clean and have a loveliest of views from the balcony. We stayed here

2. Make sure you have at least 5 days in Sikkim

Traveling around Sikkim is tiring, because the roads are all ghat roads, hence even small distances like 120kms take about 5-6 hrs of travel. Make sure you have sufficient rest before and after each excursion out of Gangtok.

3. If you suffer from motion sickness carry the necessary medicine along

I suffer from motion sickness, so we did carry along my medicine, but surprisingly despite all the travel on topsy-turvy roads I did not fall ill. whew!

4. Carry a Photo ID and passport size pictures

This is necessary to get a permit when going to places close to the Chinese border eg. Yumthang, Zero Point, Nathula Pass

5. Get acclimatised to the altitude before traveling further

Stay in Gangtok for a day at least, make sure you get used to the altitude and the thinner air.

6. Visit the tourist information centre

Its on M.G. Marg the main market area in Gangtok, they will not help you book travel, but they will definitely help you plan your travel.

What we did ?

1. Gangtok sight-seeing

The first day we spent in and around Gangtok. Hired a taxi (1800rs), to take us around. The popular trip is what is called a 10point tour, but we thought it a waste of time, so we picked and chose what we wanted to see. Rumtek Monastery, Limdung Monasatery, A couple of water falls and the very impressive views from Ganesh Tok and Hanuman Tok !

2. Yumthang Valley & Zero Point

Yumthang is an overnight stay kind of trip . Hire a taxi, leave early in the morning, the drive itself takes 6 hours but on the way there are stops at all the super waterfalls and for lunch!

Reach a lovely village called Lachung by dusk, overnight stay and the next morning head out to Yumthang, for a little more money (1600rs in our case) the driver will take you to zero point which is roads end! :) and not to be missed!

Zero Point

Yumthang valley's claim to fame is that it is covered in flowers in spring, but when we went it was just a beautiful view.

Yumthang Valley

You will reach Gangtok by 7pm.

note: Book this trip as soon as you reach Gangtok, with a travel agent.

3. Nathula Pass, Tsongo Lake, Baba Harbhajan Mandir

This is a nice day trip. nathula takes about 3 hrs from Gangtok, though it is just 50 kms away. The best point about Nathula is that you get to meet (see), the Chinese soldiers, who are a barb wire away. You can see them posing for snaps with some tourists, or having a word with our Indian soldiers.

en-route to Nathula

An Indian and a Chinese soldier at the border

Baba Harbhajan Mandir is the next stop, this is a nice especially because of the myth and the legend surrounding the young sikh soldier in whose memory the temple is built. Read more about him here

Harbhajan Mandir

On the way down is Tsongo lake, this 1 kilometre wide lake completely freezes over in the winter, but was a pretty sight when we visited it. If you so wish you can get an overpriced yak ride around the lake.

Tsongo Lake

note: Book this trip as soon as you reach Gangtok, with a travel agent.

Overall, this trip proved to be an expensive but nevertheless a very memorable one! We brought away, some lovely pictures, souveneirs and some very special memories of the mountains:)

10 things I learnt from 'Inglourious Basterds'

2009-10-09T00:19:00.003+05:30

#1 - Speling.

#2 - If you are shot in the leg, you can still attend a movie premier, the very next day! oh remember to limp a little.

#3 - The much feared Nazi killer, the 'Bear Jew' looks more like a high school bully and has the acting talents of a wooden plank.

#4 - If you are a world renowned director, you can afford to do a super bad job of editing and nobody will notice

#5 - Hitler was really a comedian who provided some good laughs

#6 - If you are planning to take off your uniform, then Brad Pitt will tattoo your forehead

#7 - Chistopher Waltz (aka Col. Hans Landa) ROCKS!

#8 - The father of a new born baby always has a sub-machine gun handy, just in case.

#9 - Germans looooove '20 questions'

#10 - A few great individual scenes stiched badly together do not make a good movie, no matter what everybody thinks.

Review - 9

2009-09-17T20:31:00.002+05:30

Right, so I had no clue what I was being dragged to, but I tagged along to watch 9.

Firstly, the animation is brilliant! But what is the movie about?

Without giving too much away: This is a movie set in a post apocalyptic world. The Machines have risen and mankind to the last human apparently been wiped out, but hope survives!

How you may ask, well hope survives in the form of 9 'sack' things, that have feelings and can walk, talk, dance and fight.

Then there is this round object where the latest of sack people inserts into a machine and wakes it up and all hell breaks loose.
They tighten things up and the movie ends.

So this is a thriller, that is definitely not for kids, but then it is not aimed at the adults completely either. The entire movie has a melancholy atmosphere and ends in a weird way, which is at least consistent with the feel of the whole movie. So well.

I am not waiting for 10, 11 or 12.

The Travel Update :)

2009-09-01T16:23:00.004+05:30

Here is the list and how I fared against it!

(18th and 19th July) - Pondicherry

Status: Done!
Highlight: Hiring a fishing boat to take us out into the sea

(25th and 26th July) - London

Status: Done!

Highlight: Having a bumbling idiot sitting next to me. First he dropped a heavy bag, as he was trying to place it in the overhead compartment that almost fell on my head, second he elbowed me as he was trying to open a packet of peanuts and last he dropped the contents of an entire glass of Rum and Coke! over me.

(31st July) - Back to Bangalore

Status: Done!

Highlight: Alvin and the Chipmunks on the flight.

Weekend of 8th Aug - Calcutta!

Status: Done!

Highlight: Shopping for the most beautiful sarees ever! and Road side food :D

Weekend of 15th August - Definite trip with friends - place not planned

Status: Not Done :(

Highlight: Getting a much needed breather from weekend travel

Weekend of 23rd August - Sawantwadi, native place for Ganpati festival :)

Status: Done!

Highlight: Ganpati !! :D

Weekend of 30th August - Goa !

Status: Done!

Highlight: Performing the play "Chronicles of the Dark Nightie" and the "TW alphabet song"

London Walk

2009-07-31T13:38:00.003+05:30

On my previous visits to this city, I have either been staying very close to the workplace or too far off, in the former case, it normally turns out to be a 2-5 min walk and in the latter there is no alternative but to take a tube ride to office. This time around however, I am staying about 3 kms away from office :) This means a perfect distance for a lovely walk to and from office!

When I got in all jet lagged on Sunday evening, I asked the chap at the reception how far it was to the place where my office was located, "its a 20-25 minute walk sir!" he said. I made a quick mental calculation, this guy says 25minutes that means at my walking pace I should be in office in 10-15 minutes, or so I thought.

Turns out, back in Bangalore I may be quicker than most when it comes to walking, but here I am just about average speed. Everybody is rushing along at a very brisk pace, which is extremely refreshing to see. :)

Walking quickly or not, the walk still gives me more than enough time to take in the sights and sounds of good old London.

The route I take on the walk itself is quite special.

(view enroute my walk)

I start from my service apartments (Bermondsey Street in East London), walk through a park that has tennis courts on my way to the Tower Bridge road. Once on Tower Bridge Road, its a walk straight past the very modern looking Mayor's office on the banks of Thames, over Tower Bridge itself, all the way across the Thames.
The river itself is a joy to see despite its brown muddy looking waters, there is always the large group of tourists taking pictures and pointing out to HMS Belfast (the WW || battleship that is moored on the Thames, now a floating museum) to one another.

On crossing the Tower Bridge one comes right at the popular and infamous Tower of London (Where the Kohinoor resides), from there on its a walk towards a more modern tower, namely the Gherkin - London's phallic symbol.

A 5 minute walk from the Tower of London is my workplace. It takes me about 25 minutes to walk the distance, just like the man at the reception told me :)

On the tube

2009-07-29T02:34:00.003+05:30

London is super cosmopolitan, made more apparentto me by my tube ride yesterday to Oxford Street (a very popular shopping area, much like the Brigade and M.G. Road back in B'lore :) ) and back.

The guy sitting across me was reading a novel in Chinese, I guessed so b'cos it had a picture of Mao on the cover, the guy sitting to my right was reading a book in a language I could not begin to guess; I tried peeping in and reading it, thought it could have been German, but it may have been in Flemish for all I know.
A couple of girls standing by the doorway were definitely Sri-lankan. There was an Italian looking guy on one of the seats, there was an Ethiopian chap as well. All in all I could not find a single Englishman in the crowded coach!

Until a father and son walked in arguing about probability, "If you knew there was a low probability of getting caught, but the severity of punishment if caught is harsh, would you still commit the crime" argued the father... the son continued arguing for or against the topic, but i paid no further atttention. These guys were definitely British.

All in all, my almost voyeuristic trip proved to me just how cosmopolitan this place is!

Of course there is a lesson in there somewhere and that lesson is: I should take something to read on the tube next time, lest I make a habit of peeping into other people's books or eavesdropping on random conversations :)

Loads of travel coming up!

2009-07-24T01:11:00.002+05:30

Here is a list

Last weekend (18th and 19th July) - Pondicherry

This weekend (25th and 26th July) - London

Next weekend (31st July) - Back to Bangalore

Weekend of 8th Aug - Calcutta!

Weekend of 15th August - Definite trip with friends - place not planned

Weekend of 23rd August - Sawantwadi, native place for Ganpati festival :)

Weekend of 30th August - Goa !

Whew!... How does that sound for travel?

X-men Origins -Wolverine

2009-06-28T12:06:00.004+05:30

Right, so due to public demand , here is my review of the latest in X-men :)

The story-line is as follows:

Boy realises that he has a problem of err bones growing from the vicinity of his knuckles, when he kills the man who shot his dad. But wait, the man he kills is his real dad, and his mom hates him for it (I think b'cos she did not get to kiss her lover goodbye before he got killed, but we shall never know).

IMHO, this kind of confusing trauma should be enough to turn a normal boy into a mutant.

So boy and his new found elder brother run away. Of course his elder brother is also a dude who has this issue of nails growing instantly, and he can leap around like a Labrador after chewy soft toy.

Now boy and elder brother cannot grow old and have the tendency to heal quickly, but they do grow up to become Hugh Jackman and Liev Schrieber, but mysteriously stop aging after that.

They fight in all wars possible, become part of a rouge mutant mercenary group led by Colonel Stryker.

Then Wolverine, as the boy is now called, gets his bones metal plated and gets to run around naked, before getting his hands on a jacket and a bike. Then he zooms around like nobody's business, and fights some crazy mutant and his brother who has turned evil towards the end of the movie.

Ok story over.

It is sad to see that after movies like Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and Iron Man. Hollywood still writes scripts like StarTrek and Wolverine.

So much scope for characterization (especially with a complex superhero like Wolverine), and all wasted away.

I shall definitely rate Wolverine higher (rated 6/10) than StarTrek(1/10).

Anyway, despite this movie, Wolverine does remain one of favourite superheroes :D

Trek - Mulayangiri

2009-06-21T11:49:00.003+05:30

Mulayangiri is supposedly the tallest peak between the Western Ghats and the Himalayas, it is also the tallest peak in Karnataka. The trek up to the summit begins at a place called "Sarpadari" that is 15kms away from Chikmagalur (the famous coffee plantation town of Karnataka).

We started off on Friday night around 11ish and reached Chikmagalur at some 5am on Saturday, since it was foggy and dark, we decided to freshen up and start the trek only once the day brightened a bit.

The journey from Chikmagalur to Sarpadari began refreshingly, with all of us sitting on the rooftop of the "Tempo Traveler". We reached the place and started the trek close to 6am on Saturday.

The trek in itself is very easy, there is a simple trail that you follow all the way up to the summit. It takes about 2 hours and you are right at the top!

However the weather was fantastic (at least for me), it was wet, foggy and lovely. We were basically trekking in the clouds.

The temple poojari at the summit provided us with breakfast of steaming hot lemon rice and hot black coffee which was one of the high-points of the trek :P.

And it was cold, brrrr. After a leisurely breakfast we headed down hill. The trek was prettier now and though I tried my best to make things interesting by moving away from the trail. The rest of the gang wanted to stick to the old beaten path (Which I thought was the safer but boring option).

I did have my way eventually though when I convinced 3 others who were with me to take an alternate route to the destination, this alternate route led us to a dead end of sorts with a vertical 14 foot drop to the tarmac :D

We eventually found another way down, that was relatively errr less vertical in nature, the other 3 had their great falls and I was fortunate to make a safe landing *grin*.

We decided not to continue on further, because the majority of us were wet and miserable.
Instead, we headed to Chikmagalur, where we freshened up and spent the night at a wonderful wonderful coffee estate right up in the hills :D.

The next morning (Sunday), we trekked through the coffee estate itself, followed by a few games of cricket at the most wonderful location ever!
By the foot of cloud covered hills, right in the middle of the coffee plantation.

On our way back to Bangalore, we stopped for a bit at the temple at Belur, which I personally think contains the best architecture and carving on the whole planet!

here are some pictures

10 things I learnt from watching StarTrek, the movie...

2009-06-15T17:07:00.005+05:30

#1: You can do anything you want. anything, given that after you do it, you must say out aloud and in suprise "Wow, that's the first time I have done <enter what you have just acheived>"

eg: If you have just teleported a goat, a zebra and a water buffalo onto your spaceship from 3 different places at the same time, then all you need to do is say, "Wow, this is the first time I have teleported a goat, a zebra and a water buffalo onto my spaceship from 3 different places at the same time"

#2: Scotty can beam anybody/anything up to anywhere/anytime.

#3: If you want to name something, do not bother with scientific jargon, just keep it simple and call it what it looks like. eg: If it is red in colour and its is some kind of matter, then just go ahead and call it "Red Matter"

#4: It takes a drop of red matter to convert a planet into a black hole and destroy all its inhabitants, but make sure to use about 40 gallons of it in order to destroy an enemy space ship that is 1/900th the size of the planet. Oh! but wait, just 40 gallons will not destroy the ship, you may need to fire at the ship for about 10 minutes before the ship is destroyed.

#5: The Starship enterprise fleet has only a couple of senior members, the captain and someone named spock, everybody else is just a cadet. So if the Captain is indisposed the cadets can play musical chairs to choose a captain. Make sure you practise.

#6: Lets see, the enemy ship though 50 times bigger that your ship will only contain about 5-6 crew members, so all you need to do is ask Scotty to beam you to the enemy ship (see point #2), and shoot up most of the people there. Make sure you leave a couple of them alive in order to have a more fitting climax involving gallons of red matter and a black hole.

oh before I forget, your relatively smaller ship will have, around 20 members just in the 10X20 feet control room. you ship will have hundreds of crew members.

#7: If you are named Kirk, you will be made captain in about 3 years after having a bar room brawl, you need not possess any skills other than having the ability to be in the right place at the right time and a thorough knowledge of musical chairs (refer to #5). Ability to "emotionally compromise" a colleague and cheat in your exams is an added advantage.

#8: Everyone speaks the same dialect of the same language (read. "English"), irrespective of what planet or or universe you come from.

#9: If you have pointy ears and a tendency to be "emotionally compromised", then you are most definitely from the planet Vulcan. You may have a mother who is an Earthling, this may mean that the Vulcan society looks down upon you and consider you weaker. however your mother will most definitely be one among the Vulcan Elders and not shunned as you are.

#10: If there is anything that has a higher gravitational pull than a Black Hole, then it is the latest "Star Trek" movie. This is because nothing SUCKS more than Star Trek.

Note: I have not even written about the more obvious things such as, how the villans are such wimps who do nothing but put a rhino beetle into the captain's mouth as a means of torture.

Movie review time...

2009-05-25T18:41:00.003+05:30

Ok so here are some more movies that have been watched

P.S: I love you

Sugary/nostalgia evoking romance with Gerard Butler in the lead, the premise of the movie is interesting enough to make one continue watching it :)

Boy loves girl, boy dies, girl (who also happens to be boy's wife) cannot get over his death until she starts receiving letters and gifts from him, that he had written before he died and planned it such that she would receive them after his death. The letters help her get over him :)

I found it a decent watch

Madagascar 2 : Escape to Africa

Not as good as part 1, but I found King Julian hilarious again! :D especially the scene where he plays agony aunt to Melman the giraffe :)

The bicycle thief

Lovely Italian movie about a father who loses his only source of income - his bicycle, the entire movie follows father and son, try and seek out the bicycle thief. This movie is as good as they come! must watch.

Pride and prejudice

Decentish, Keira Knightley does a good job in this remake of a classic, pity then that there is no Colin Firth to play Mr. Darcy...

Boy in striped pyjamas

Take one ounce of Pan's labyrinth, tone it down a bit, mellow down the drama, set it up in Nazi Germany as opposed to Civil War torn South America and you have a boy all dressed up in striped pyjamas.

This tells a story of a boy, who happens to be the son of a Nazi officer who is assigned to manage a death camp, Auschwitz. The boy of course knows nothing about death camps, but hates moving away from all his friends in Berlin, to a lonely country side, this remains so until he meets a boy in striped pyajamas (the clothes given to the jews languishing in the death camp).

This chance meeting across barbed wires, soon blossoms into a friendship with tragic consequences.

Watch this movie for a comparison study made between the life of the son of a successful Nazi officer versus that of the son of a Jew.
Well made, but mind you this is no "Pan's Labyrinth" it is very similar yet very different.

Deception

How can you take Hugh Jackman and Ewan Mc Gregor and end up making a pathetic movie? Watch this one to find out...

Felon

A man accidentally kills an intruder in his house, and unfortunately ends up in jail for 3 years. This movie follows the protagonist in jail and how he is labeled a felon and ends up having to survive one of the most toughest sentences. Quite well made, a modern take on "Shawshank redemption" if I may dare say so.

Vicki Cristina Barcelona

oo la la! most beautiful are the women and most beautiful is Spain! Penelope Cruz excels in this movie, Javier Bardem is awesome! watch watch watch now!

Shadow of a doubt

This is Alfred Hitchcock's personal favourite :) I quite like it too. A typical American family has a visitor, the charasmatic uncle Charlie, and suddenly everyone is happy... but is Uncle Charlie really all that he seems to be?

Nicely made movie.

Irma La douce

This Romantic comedy features Jack Lemmon as the bumbling cop who is thrown out of his job and Shirley Maclain as "Lady of the night", Lemmon takes up residence with Shirley and falls in love, only to realise that her profession does not let him have her all to himself.

He hits on a plan to get her to be his, and hilarity ensues. A good classic!

The rains are here...

2009-05-21T22:14:00.003+05:30

Its been raining every other day, the heavenly summer evenings have given way to evening showers. Now this is wonderful if one is sitting indoors, gawking at the rain thundering against the windows. The traffic suddenly disappears and the rain brings down visibility to about 20 feet.

Rains do sometimes bring along unscheduled power cuts, but these can be turned to one's advantage, like on Sunday when the power failed followed by the generator, it was carrom time for the family, with each member holding a torch and planning out the shot's :P

But most painful are the roads, that always seem to be under repair right when the rains arrive, or it could be that they are constantly under "repair" all through the year but I notice them only during the rains.

But all said and done, I think I do like the rainy Bangalore, at least it adds more joy to life to be able to sit in the balcony sipping tea and eating hot bhajis :)

It's been a while...

2009-05-16T20:09:00.005+05:30

...since I last blogged, a lot has transpired since :)

The IPL has been dominating TRP ratings, viewed by one and all. The Fake IPL player has been providing juicy tidbits of the going ons behind the scene, the IPL trophy looks as ugly as ever, the commentary team collectively has got dumber ("what a beautiful IPL trophy this is...", "South Africans love the IPL, they have come in droves to watch the match...", "You've been left out of the playing eleven, how happy do you feel right now?"),the going has been decentish for the team I support (Royal Challengers Bangalore) and in related news, the zoozoos have finally attacked!

On the personal front, I have had yet another trip to Mahabalipuram with wifey and a couple of friends (and our faithful Karaoke machine) which went well (especially the karaoke and the monopoly part). The door painting project was completed quite a while ago, here is a picture of how it looks now *grin*.

Also, my batting form has returned (with an offside six!) and the bowling form is doing well :D. We have finished watching all 4 seasons of "How I met your mother" (I watch it just for Neil Patrick Harris' "Barney Stinson"). I have finished reading the wonderful wonderful "Ode to Kirihito" by Osamu Tezuka and am currently reading "The man who kept secrets" (Peter Lawford's Biography) and "Road to dusty death" by Alistair Maclean.

I am hoping to blog more frequently and am hoping that it will be "Legen - wait for it - dary" !

The Top 5 Graphic novels/comics I have ever read

2009-04-10T21:50:00.008+05:30

Here is a list of my all time favourite graphic novels in the order of Best First :)

Batman: year one - Frank Miller

I know, there are hundreds of Batman comics out there, but trust me, if you want to get to the crux of Batman, then this is the book you need to read!
This flawless piece of art was the inspiration for 'Batman Begins', this book is as much about Commissioner Gordon as it is about Bruce Wayne's foray into the night dressed up as a bat! The art and the colouring is of the classic style of comics, very unlike the graphic complex comics that we see today, the artwork is simple yet compelling, the story is wonderful and this one is a must read!

Buddha - Osamu Tezuka

Osamu Tezuka is definitely the GOD of comics/manga/ everything.
This was his last epic, and what an epic this is :) As the name suggests the set of 8 books, tell us the story of Buddha, from his birth to his Moksha. Tezuka introduces some ficitonal characters to add comic relief and move the story along.
This piece of work narrowly misses being my most favourite, and that because I LOVE Batman and am biased :)

This book intorduced me to Tezuka and his art and since then I have been hooked!

Sandman - Neil Gaiman

I am a big fan of Neil Gaiman's writing, American Gods, Neverwhere etc but Sandman his graphic novel about the Lord of dreams a.k.a Morpheus is unparralled.
There has been no protagonist darker that the lord of dreams, the Sandman pack consisting of over 200 books is a long read, but each subset can be read on its own, though it interwines with the others. I have the entire collection in .cbr format, and its a great read!

I wonder how Gaiman could dream up of something like this :P

Sin City - Frank Miller

Unconventional artwork(to my untrained eye), fast paced story telling, with the central theme being vengeance, it cannot get better. Add Frank Miller to the equation and you get a dynamite of a Graphic novel.
Awesome!

Ode to Kirihito - Osamu Tezuka

This is an 800 odd page epic, I am reading it as I compose this post. It cost around 1200 bucks and I was in two minds, I had never heard a lot of it before, and did not know if this was worth the investment. I however knew that this was an Osamu Tezuka book and my mind was made up. Amu and I spent hours in Landmark before deciding to buy this though :)

It has been a great buy, Tezuka does not dissapoint in this medical thriller about a disease that turns its victims into dog like beings before taking their lives, and how Kirihito, a young doctor decides to get to the bottom of the cause for the disease only to succumb to it while doing his research in a remote eerie village that seems to be the source of the disease.

He does however manage to figure out what causes the disease, but a plot by some authorities and a set of unfortunate circumstances ensures that he travels far and wide, getting kidnapped to be displayed in a freak show, getting beaten up mercilessly by villagers, hunted by his foes and aided by some strange allies he makes in his journey.

I am reading it and I am loving it. Tezuka is GOD :)

Other books that are wonderful:

300 - Frank Miller
Made popular by the movie, but a classic book in itself!

KnightFall/Broken Bat
Bane breaks Batman's back (Check out the alliteration :P)

Fables- Bill
Read a post regarding this I made 4 years ago :)

Lucifer
Oh yes, Lucifer the fallen one makes an awesome hero, a worthy protagonist, as he embarks on a set of adventures with oodles of style and charisma.

Books that I have not yet read but have the potential to be good:

- Bone by Jeff Smith
- Y, the Last man

Book(s) that I have read but find over rated!

- Watchmen by Alan Moore (Though Rorsharch is one of my favorite characters)

Hmmm seems like my blog just reviews movies....siggggh

2009-04-02T21:45:00.004+05:30

Watchmen

Now I consider the Alan Moore's cult classic graphic novel an effort that is just above average, except for the Rorschach character who is exceptional, I would state the same about the movie. Watch it for Rorschach if nothing else, but beware, this one is a 3 hour long movie that takes some watching, it stays quite loyal to the original graphic novel, but then by now, Zack Snyder must be pretty used to taking comic books and making them into movies :)
You won't recognise even a single actor, unless you are a huuuge movie buff, but that one must say is one of the positives from this movie.

'Who watches the Watchmen' should one ask? heh.

The Wrestler

A wonderfully made movie, one you would enjoy if you like drama. I am not a huge fan of Mickey Rourke, but like in 'Angel Heart' before, he impresses again here as an aging professional wrestler who struggles with the 'real' life outside the ring.
Unfortunately, another performance by Marisa Tomei, where she has to strip (professionally for this character she plays), I bemoan the loss of a great actress such as her.

The Reader

Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes do a great job in this movie, I quite enjoyed it and thought it had parts that impressed and some that were average. But watchable nevertheless.
p.s: I read Chekov's "Lady with the dog" but was not impressed.

Lives of Others

Another movie depcting life in Germany, East Germany of the 1980's this time and this one is a German movie.
We follow the lives of 3 characters, A Dramatist, his girlfriend who is an actress and a Secret Service surveillance officer who is given the job spying on them. Mostly we get to know the characters from the point of view of the Secret Service officer and just like him we get drawn to their lives and the movie that is slow to begin with grips us suddenly, as we begin to relate to the principal characters, including the lonely SS officer who from being a staunch socialist soon starts to draw inspiration and changes, after following the lives of the very people he is spying on

A brilliant movie, one that I rate very highly.

Vertigo

Alfred Hitchcock present's Kim Novak and James Stewart in Vertigo!
Brilliantly made movie, a true classic. Must Watch!

An Englishman who went up a hill but came down a mountain

Hugh Grant plays a cartographer, who along with his senior visits a small Welsh village, to chart the height of a local hill. This is 1917, the World War is on and the quaint village and its people take offence to their mountain being called a hill!
They reckon it is over a 1000 feet high and must be called a mountain but the Catographer measures its height as being 986 feet, 14 feet short of a mountain.

Romance and hilarity ensue in this wonderful plot, as the villagers ensure that the hill becomes a mountain.

Nice movie!

Movies...

2009-03-08T23:15:00.003+05:30

Armageddon- Decentish movie with all the expected thrills and chills

Zodiac - Average, thriller about a real life serial killer

The renaissance man - Hmm, Danny De Vito plays a English 'professor' trying to teach a bunch of dumb army cadets, not very impressive

Hannibal Rising - badly done prologue about Hannibal the Cannibal

Music and Lyrics - sweet and sugary romance, I like Hugh Grant so did not mind this a lot

Analyse This - BAD BAD BAD yuck puke

December Boys - A coming of age movie about 4 orphans who hope to get adopted one summer vacation. I quite liked this.

City of Angels - Nicholas Cage hams his way through an otherwise decent plot :)

Valkyrie - Loved this movie, despite watching it in a London Movie hall (Watching a movie in a theatre in London is one of the worst movie experiences one can have)

RockNRolla - Guy Ritchie, decent, not as good as his previous ones, but not the worst either.

How to lose friends and alienate people - This comedy could definitely have been better made.

Three to Tango - hmmm, not too nice.

Constant Gardner - Slow, but I really like Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Wiez so well I liked it quite a bit

Conspiracy Theory - Pathetic!

Big Lebowski - Overrated, emperor you are making a habit of roaming about naked

Ronin - Another overrated movie, this action thriller did NOT thrill me one bit.

Curious Case of Benjamin Button - See Post below

Road to Ladakh - Irrfan Khan and Koel Purie star in this short film about 'love', this 50 minute movie leaves a lot to be desired.

Meet the Fockers - As one would expect it to be.

To catch a thief - Cary Grant and the very beautiful Grace Kelly star in this Alfred Hitchcok classic! Fantastic!

Old Boy - Fantastic! Brilliant and a definite must watch if you like action and don't mind a bit of weirdness (Eating of live octopodes for example) in return for truck loads of style !
This was remade into 'Zinda' in Hindi, but the plot was defintiely changed a lot.

The Curious yaaaawn case of yaawn Benjamin Button

2009-03-08T23:05:00.004+05:30

Well, I had heard so much about this movie, about how awesome this was and how its brilliance outshone the sun etc etc

Well Sorry Emperor, but you are err naked !

Well I found the movie bad in almost all the criteria by which I judge the movies I watch. This was like watching Forrest Gump in reverse, the plot had one idea, a guy lives his life backwards and that's it!

There was no development of character, there was absolutely no substance, it was almost as if the makers had bet on how good Brad Pitt looks riding a bike with the wind blowing in his face or how pretty the full moon looks!

When it comes to movies I have quite a bit of patience, but the last time I was so bored in a theatre was when I watched Salaam Namaste by mistake!

Cate Blanchett I hated, there was almost no romance between Brad Pitts character and Cate's character.

The lamest scene was where Benjamin describes how the heroine would have missed being hit by a car if even one thing had changed. Man!

The only good parts were the CGI, the costumes and to some extent the cinematography

I have this director marked, I am not going to waste anymore time of my life on his movies.

The enigma that is Nicholas Cage

2009-03-03T23:49:00.007+05:30

On a long flight back home I happened to watch 'City of angels', A nice plot for a romantic movie :) but what struck me was the enigmatic Mr. Cage, now here is an actor who has movies of various genre under his belt, and yet has managed to get through them all with the same expression on his face.

Now that is enigmatic.
How Nicholas Cage can romance Meg Ryan (City of Angels), Run about on 'The Rock', sit around with a group of convicts (Con-air) , Try and ferret out a snuff film maker (8mm), hot-wire cars with Angelina Jolie (Gone in 60 seconds), Sell ammo (Lord of war) all with the same look on his face !

People may describe this expression as 'wooden' or 'stonefaced', but to me this more of a 'I-swallowed-a-stress-ball-this-morning-and-it-is-stuck' kind of expression

I know you think I am exaggerating, hell! When I started off this post I thought I would exaggerate a lot of stuff in this post, but after some rigourous research around Cage and his movies, I can assure you none of what is out here is an exaggeration.

Here is some proof:

Consider

Exhibit A: Cage in "Lord of war"

It is quite obvious that during the filming of this scene, cage has zonked out, and this very moment (where his character is supposed to be trying to sell arms and weapons of mass destruction), the expression on Cage's face seems to suggest he is thinking of whether he has fed his pet panda this morning.

Exhibit B: Con-Air

From his expression I do not know whether he is checking out a chick on the beach or whether he is trying to solve the problem of rounding up escapee convicts (well if you are still wondering, its supposed to be the latter)

Exhibit C: Leaving Las Vegas

While Elizabeth Shue seems to be quite happy 'Leaving Las Vegas', our pal has managed to get his brilliant expression on the movie poster!!

Exhibit D.1 and D.2: Gone in 60 seconds

We can see only half his face in both the captures, but given previous evidence I am quite sure that, front on, the expression on his face has not changed.
The first picture is where they are hotwiring a car and the second is an intense romantic moment between the protagonist and the leading lady, one would never have guessed.

Exhibit E: City of Angels

Our man has fallen in love with Meg Ryan, or at least that is what his expression in this scene is supposed to indicate, but it remains "I-swallowed-a-stress-ball-this-morning-and-it-is-stuck"

I rest my case

p.s: Despite all this I thought, he was pretty much at his best in 8mm and his worst in City of Angels and Ghost Rider

Mission: Paint the door - Episode 1

2009-03-01T12:04:00.005+05:30

Amu and I have decided to paint a door in our room, we mulled on this decision for a couple of weeks and yesterday got down to actually starting off on the project.

Phase1: Decide how we want the door to look...
The door is a long and narrow canvas, hence deciding what to paint on it was a little confusing. Should we draw a giraffe? A trapeze artist? or some colourful blotches and call it art (ala M.F. Hussain), we just could not decide, Hussain seemed to be the easiest way forward. :P

But finally in a moment of epiphany, we decided we wanted to have a door painted on our door with a little girl and her cat peeping from behind it. :D

Phase2: Some initial sketch work...

We started sketching the door at 11pm last night, and surprisingly it came out quite well :)
Got dad (who is a professional artisit), to look at it and he said it was quite nice :D

Yet to come: buying paints and starting the paint job...

A unique team bonding exercise

2009-02-28T16:52:00.005+05:30

Arrright! What better way to have a fun team outing than to gather together and go plant trees?

About 10 of us headed to J.P Nagar 7th Phase, to plant trees with the help of the Treesforfree.org who "plant trees for free to heal the earth." :D

It was a wonderful experience! We got to the site where the planting was planned and the volunteers from TreesForFree were already there with the saplings and neatly dug holes that would be the future homes for these saplings.

We had around 21 saplings to plant and as we got on with the dusty, tiring but fulfilling work of doing so a couple of residents from the locality came over to help us out water the saplings and plant them.

The best part of this for me was to see 2 kids, come with little pails of water to water the saplings :) They did this off their own accord!

This is how the TreesFor Free works:

- You get in touch with them and they will tell you the location where the trees are to be planted
- They choose these location only after enquiring whether the locals would support planting of trees and would water them for the next few months
- Pay 100 rupees per sapling and go plant a tree!

I have had lots of team outings with great food, wine and dance, but none has been as satisfying as the one today!

Thanks to Sripad and Anand Vishwanath for organising this.

I would highly recommend this to all those of you who care about your environment, here is a chance to do something simple but useful!

Here are some pictures

Luka planting the first one

A kid who came to help us water the saplings

The whole gang

Dev D

2009-02-15T13:05:00.006+05:30

This movie deserves its own separate review :D

Abhay Deol and Anurag Kashyap's take on Devdas works wonders.

If Dilip Kumar's Devdas was classical music this is the rock version, both great in their own ways, the acting is fantastic. Abhay Deol as usual impresses with his attitude and ability to carry a movie off single handed, though this time he is supported by some brilliant acting by Kalki(Chanda) and Mahi Gill (Paro).

This is Devdas on dope, vodka and ecstasy. The story line remains more or less the same but at the same time it is different in its treatment and in how each character handles the situation.

The music is great! especially the 'Patiala Ke Presleys' and Paradesi.

Anurag Kashyap, the director, excels ! Hoping for more such movies from him ('Gulaal' looks promising!)

If this movie was batting it would hit a sixer of each delivery!

A must watch!

White London

2009-02-04T02:04:00.003+05:30

I read in a newspaper that it had not snowed this much in 18 years and it was the first time that anyone can remember that all the buses were taken off the road...

I thought it was beautiful :)

Here are some pictures

From the window:)

The window again

Gherkin

Portobello Road

2009-02-01T06:25:00.009+05:30

Getting hung up all day on smiles
Walking down portobello road for miles
Greeting strangers in indian boots,
Yellow ties and old brown suits
Growing old is my only danger

Cuckoo clocks, and plastic socks
Lampshades of old antique leather
Nothing looks weird, not even a beard
Or the boots made out of feathers

- Cat Stevens

I love open markets, and when in London I make sure to visit the many many open markets that are here.

Camden and Greenwich have been my favourite so far, but today I happened to visit the very famous Portobello road market :)

Its a fantastic place. From what I had heard of it, I was expecting it to be great, yet, I was not prepared for what I found there. 2-3 miles of open market, selling anything and everything under the sun.

Just the most fantastic of books, maps, gas masks from the II WW, food, London souvenirs, binoculars, telescopes, old cameras, masks, miniature musical instruments, scarves, cricket bats signed by Len Hutton, old style footballs, boxing gloves...

Phew! the list is never ending.

The market itself is right in Notting Hill (yes, same place as the movie), The best thing I liked about this place was this store that sold metal plates of old advertisements, street signs etc

Portobello road, as I saw it, was divided into 3 sections, the fashion market, where clothes and accessories were being sold, the antiques market, where all kinds of antiques were on offer and the food market, where one could buy fruits or fresh bread, hot dogs, sausages, corn pasties or the good 'ol hot chocolate.

Here are some pictures that I managed to get :)

Typical London Street Sign

Quaint buildings

Just before it got crowded

err the crowd pours in...

Boxing equipment for sale !

Jugs, Mugs, Pots and Pans

Satchels, Uniforms and Gas Masks!

I got a beautiful bus from this store, last piece they had :)

Yes you did! Scrabble tiles painted on a wall :)

The store I liked best !! brilliant

That's all folks!

p.s: Its going to snow tomorrow apparently *rubs hands in anticipation*

Spells of gray

2009-01-29T05:51:00.002+05:30

Ah this is how I have always imagined London to be. Dark Cold and Wet :) I like 'Dark Cold and Wet' even if it means heading to work in 1 degree Celsius and constant rain!

The best part I like about gloomy weather is the fact that colours become so vibrant, every now and then amongst the people scurrying about in their black or charcoal gray business suits/raincoats, one sees a lady in a red overcoat or a guy with a bright green scarf, and these colours take a life of their own against the dark gray skies.

Wish I could take a picture to express better what I am trying to help visualise in words, who knows I just might!

Play it again sam!

2009-01-18T13:51:00.004+05:30

On Christmas day, I watched Evam's staging of the Oscar Wilde play "The importance of being earnest".
Now this play has a plot right out of a Wodehousian novel, full of romance, confused identities and witty one liners, great scope for a wonderful play.

But Evam's take on this play was a huge disappointment :(

I expect much more from a well known (and IMHO over rated) company such as Evam, the acting was quite decent, but the overall set up was bad.

The stage hands took an eternity to set the stage between scenes, one could see them fumbling with torches in their hands on a dark stage to place a table and a couple of chairs that were the only things gracing an otherwise empty stage.

The backdrops were just about ok and the over all look and feel was very amateurish. I know this is not the 'Mosuetrap', 'The Phantom of the Opera' or "The lion king' but one does expect something better from a professional theatre group.

siigghhhh

Wordling

2009-01-12T20:59:00.003+05:30

This is how the keywords on my blog look on WORDLE, go try!

More Movieees!

2009-01-10T13:47:00.000+05:30

Slumdog Millionaire

A great plot and a decently executed movie :) Loved the freshness that this brings through. I loved how the story darts back and forth,to fit in together quite nicely. The characterisation is great as well, we find ourselves rooting for Jamal Malik, the protagonist, from the first story itself.

What I did not like (read, HATED) was this scene:

Jamal the kid is playing a tourist guide to a couple of firangs, and his 'friends' rob and vandalise the American's taxi, as the taxi driver comes back and beats Jamal up, Jamal says "You want to see the REAL India, this is the real India!"
and hte American saves the boy from the beating hands him a 100 Dollar note and says "and this is the real America son" Yuck! Pathetic!

Other than that I had not many issues with the movie, though I think Danny Boyle is just a below average director.

Cinema Paradiso

Wonderful! watching this movie had been long pending, it was worth the wait :) I loved the movie. I am sure I am one of the very few who has NOT watched it yet, but if you have not done so either, watch it today!!

other movies that I watched and a one word/phrase review for each (because I do not have the patience today to write about them) follow,

Transporter 3 - I could have done without watching it

Ghajini - one of the worst movies of the year. Don't want to waste time reviewing it

Before the devil knows you are dead - Drams, okayish.

Butterfly effect - Psychological Thriller, alright.

Oye Lucky Lucky Oye - My respect for Abhay Deol, grows in leaps and bounds, nice movie!

Wings of the dove - Romance, Indian style set in Victorian(?) England. Not too good

American Gangster - ok

Exorcism of Emily Rose - umm hmm

Rear Window - Wonderful classic :)

Charlie and the chocolate factory - Johnny Depp! like it!

The Kingdom - decent thriler/action movie about terrorism

Tropic Thunder - Pathetic!

Angel Heart - Mickey Rourke take a bow :) I like the movie!

Celebrating New Year's - the monopoly way

2009-01-01T13:35:00.006+05:30

Here is wishing all you people a fantastic year ahead! I typically enjoy celebrating new year at home, with the inner circle :)

Not for me the garish, loud and crowded parties/bashes to usher in a new year. This year was no different, the inner circle was home and after quiet dinner and exchanging gifts, we got down to unraveling the mysteries of the Transformer we bought(read previous post... droool). Having figured that out, we decided to try our hands at monopoly, and what a game that turned out to be.

We had planned to play for a couple of hours and call it quits, but once we got hooked, we just went on and on... first time I have played a board game all through the night!

here are the highlights of our game

- Dilip got to go to Jail a record 6 times

- Raj ended up paying rent or picking up chance/community cards that made him have to shell out loads of money either to the bank or the other players eg. " You are celebrating becoming the chairman of an Electric company, pay 50$ to all players" rotfl

- I managed to play a decent game (for once!), and reaped quite a few benefits of most investments I had made

- Amu ended up being the only person to have built a house on one of her properties and eventually won the game when we decided to call it quits at 6:30 am in the morning.

Fantastic way to spend New Year's eve!

Transformer!

2009-01-01T13:27:00.006+05:30

Amu and I, gifted ourselves a wonderful wonderful transformer for New Years- Autobot Blades!

This voyager class transformer, has a wonderful colour scheme and a level 3 conversion (from Robot to Helicopter and back).

As you can see from the picture, he looks fantastic in robot mode and better in helicopter mode :D

This is a great buy ! We love it and converting it is a joy !

More Emperor's clothes...

2008-12-25T10:27:00.003+05:30

There will be blood.... (*puke*)

This movie is supposed to be one of the best movies made in 2008 :|

Sorry, but as far as I am concerned, this is just an average movie. Daniel Day Lewis does a good job, but other than that err whats the excitement about?

Avergae acting by the others, baaaad editing and a lame ending.

bah! just another naked emperor prancing about !

What I did not know till recently...

2008-12-17T22:16:00.003+05:30

Wow, sometimes the things you do NOT know surprise you, they sure surprise me :)

for example of the top of my head here is a list of stuff that I discovered recently...

Brazil is bigger in size than India

Well, I knew Brazil was big, but I did not know it was as big as 8,514,877 sq. miles to India's 3,287,263 sq. miles! Its more than twice the size of India!
A lot of it is rain forest apparently

Its a myth that Eskimos have a lot of words for 'snow'

I had always believed the popular 'did you know..." that Eskimos had hundreds of words for 'snow' but I read this somewhere while trawling the world wide web, (Unrelated trivia: If you notice, there are more syllables in WWW than in World Wide Web!)

ahem... his is all I could think of, off the top of my head, but I assure you the list shall increase

My favourite word...

2008-12-17T22:02:00.005+05:30

Yes, I am sure we have been here before, I love talking about my favourite word!

it's ASSORTED.

Why?
Because, it feels nice to say it! go ahead, give it a try, and it brings up pictures of assorted biscuits, assorted breads and assorted chocolates in my head.

I have even uploaded this as my favourite word on this site, if you have a favourite word, go ahead put it up there.

Movies!

2008-11-23T12:05:00.006+05:30

Pan's Labyrinth

Oh lovely lovely lovely, this movie is a definite must watch!
The cinematography, the music, the interlacing between real-life and fantasy, Pan, the fairies, the rebels, the sadist captain and most of all the pale-man sequence. watch it I say!

Quantum of solace

Well, have we not seen it all in the Bourne series? yes we have.
Mr. Bond we don't watch you for rooftop chase scenes, Bourne does that better. We don't watch you for the 'I shall have my revenge' bit, Maximus Decimus Meridius does that better, why. closer home, Monty does it better (the older version of Monty that is).
We watch you for the gadgets, for the martinis, for the fast cars, for the femme fatale's and for such things that make you stand out.

But well, I guess since you are being potrayed by a caveman(read Daniel Craig), we cannot expect much can we now?

Burn after reading

The Coen brothers are well known for their movie making style, they acheive the same with this. John Malkovich carries the movie with some wonderful acting as usual.
Other than the ending that like all Coen Movie's seemed quite abrupt, this mental storyline about crazy people doing crazy stuff is quite good. A decent weekend watch.

Free Jimmy

This animated movie aimed at a very adult audience, left a bad after taste. A dark 'comedy' about a group of animal activists who have a mission to free Jimmy a battered and bruised circus elephant, forms one of the plots of this story. The bad animation and not so great plot lets us down.

Atonement

Awesome! This Romance/drama is a wonderful movie. Kiera Knightley does a great job. Slow moving but with some of the best cinematography I have seen, as the viewer is taken from the green calm English countryside to London in time of war to the Warzone itself. Watch this!

Kung Fu Panda

"Legend tells of a legendary warrior whose kung fu skills were the stuff of legend. ", this and many more hilarious one liners make up this great movie about a fat panda Po(Jack Black), who gets a chance to live his dream of becoming the greates Kung Fu warrior,
after accidently becoming the Chosen one to fight Tai Lung an evil snow leopard who threatens the peace in the valley.
Along with the Furious Five: Viper(Lucy Liu), Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Monkey (Jackie Chan).
Po gains skill and wisdom under his master Shifu(Dustin Hoffman), who is err a red panda.

Great movie!
"It is said that his enemies would go blind from over-exposure to pure awesomeness! "

Diwali

2008-11-01T14:16:00.004+05:30

This Diwali was brilliant :D

- A rangoli from home :)

Lovely Lanka

2008-11-01T13:16:00.003+05:30

Back from Lanka... It is so like India that for some bits we never realised we were in a foreign land :)

Some highlights of the trip?

- The randomness of the trip, we just booked return tickets and left for Lanka, with no clue what we planned to do!

- The amazing wild life on display ! we saw, A peacock and a peahen, a giant squirrel, swam with huge green turtles and beautiful tiger fish in the ocean, watched a huge monitor lizard stroll by the swimming pool, small water snakes

- Hunnas Falls hotel in Kandy, do NOT miss that place when in Kandy, thanks to Mihiri for suggesting we stay there :D

Here are some pictures

A wonderful singer...

2008-09-24T21:39:00.005+05:30

Mohit Chauhan is a wonderful singer. This is one singer who does not have to scream at the top of his lungs to display his 'vocal range', à la KK or Atif Aslam (who, I admit do have their good songs).

Obviously it was the wonderful 'Dooba Dooba' by Silk Route, which introduced me to Mr. Chauhan's fantastic voice. Though 'Silk Route' was disbanded, it is lucky that Mohit Chauhan got an opportunity to showcase his voice in the movies.
From the popular hits like 'Tum se hi' (Jab we met) to the lesser known(but equally good) 'Guncha' (Main meri Patni aur woh) or 'Sabse Peeche Hum Khade', each song stands out for its soothing quality and excellent vocals.

Here are a few, must listen to, songs to get one started on Mohit Chauhan's music and his mesmerising voice

Ek Meetha Marz dene - Welcome to Sajjanpur
Guncha - a Ghazal from Main meri Patni aur woh
Boondein - Silk Route Boondein
Humsafar - Silk Route Boondein
Ankhon hi Ankhon mein - EMI
Kuchh Khas - Fashion
Is this love - Kismat Konnection

Songs in the head

2008-09-21T11:19:00.001+05:30

- Sitaram Sitaram - Welcome to Sajjanpur
- Ek Meetha Marz dene - Welcome to Sajjanpur
(This movie seems like a good one. Will watch)
- Aye Malik tere bande hum - Do Ankhein Bara Haath
- Tere Sawalon ke - Manorama Six Feet Under

Review time

2008-09-20T23:10:00.004+05:30

Yes Yes a few more movies watched...

A Few Good Men

"Did you order the code red!!?"... A great courtroom drama with some hard-hitting dialogues.

Hell Boy II - The Golden Army

Disappointing. The dialogues lack punch, just when one thought that super hero movies had figured out the importance of giving depth to a character...Hell Boy proves it all wrong. If i had never seen a movie with special FX and CGI before, this would have been a brilliant movie, but well I have seen movies with wonderful CGI, hence I now expect more than just CGI to make me go wow!.
The movie is just one BIG anti-climax as far as I am concerned.

The Royal Tannenbaums

erm, interesting star-studded movie about a dysfunctional family. decentish!

Whitnail and I

A movie about two struggling actors, who decide to take a break from their unemployment and go to the Countryside for a 'holiday' with some funny results. A bitter sweet comedy with some wonderful script

Detroit Rock City

Great movie! I wonder why this is not as popular as the cult classic "Napolean Dynamite", The plot follows 4 friends whose main aim in life is to watch the KISS concert. Some hilarious stuff ensues in this very attempt!
I am no big KISS fan, but still enjoyed the movie, if you like the Band and their music, you will love this movie!

Amelie

Wonderful, if you have not watched it yet, then please do watch it now!

Die Hard 4.0: Live free or die hard
Not much I can write about this movie, it faithfully follows the (now) aging cop in his endless adventures. John Mclane seems very much to be a NYPD version of Sindbad the sailor in the sense that adventure, action and danger always seems to follow him around

Whirlwind trip!

2008-09-09T22:43:00.004+05:30

Goa and Gokarna packed in a weekend !

We managed to visit two places in two days and yet managed to relax and enjoy the break. :)

How we did it -

Friday night: Train to Hubli
Saturday Morning: Taxi to Palolem beach - Goa
Sunday Morning: Taxi to Om Beach- Gokarna
Sunday Evening: Taxi back to Hubli
Sunday night: Train back to Bangalore :)

Super eh?

here are some pictures

Addendum: Life in the fast lane...

2008-09-09T22:29:00.004+05:30

The next day after the post, a colleague struck up a conversation with me over lunch about my rant.

He was critical of the fact that I am errr critical.

I believe what he said was "Its very easy to criticise people, right Mr. Gawde?".

Well, absolutely. When I enquired why I wrong in my criticism,
Pat came the answer "A lot of my relatives live there"

Well ALL my relatives live there, a wonderful set of people, who I love to meet. But that fact would not change my opinion of the city.

I must add that it is also very easy to praise people, and here is some praise for Chennai

I do not know a soul in Chennai. In no way am I connected to the city, and neither do I speak the language.

But every time I have visited the place, I am amazed by how nice and polite everyone there is. Everybody is willing to help you out irrespective of whether you know the language or not

Simi says
"Hey, Mumbayya ANTAGONIST!
Each to his own opinion, right?
Through out the cycle of two seasons of terrible rains that I was in Bombay... except for one time when I got pushed off in a halting train (solely cos I really didnt know the trick!), Bombay's been such a cool city to me.

Its vibrant and rich with experiences stemming out of daily life esp the local trains which I refer to as 'Theatre in Motion'.

Tryst has it bad for you, with Bombay!"

Glad you had a good experience, I have known the city since I was a child, it definitely has changed as far as I am concerned :) and I wonder why there needs to be a 'Trick' to get off a train!

That's all folks!

Life in the 'FAST' lane...

2008-08-30T18:28:00.008+05:30

It is ironic that the city I was born in, the city where I have most of my near and dear ones, is the city I HATE so much.
I speak of Bombay.

When I was younger, I would think of Bombay as an exciting energetic place where summer vacations were spent.

Over the last couple of times I have visited Bombay, I have learnt that the excitement and energy is nothing but senseless activity in a soulless city.

I have seen cousins and nephews being sucked into the mechanical lives that Bombay offers and many a childhood lost to endless hours of tuition and exams attempting to be ahead in some stupid race that everyone in the place seems to be a part of.

On one visit to Bombay, the girl and I were in a crowded marketplace, where we had to stop to let a middle aged lady pass, she was carrying the months groceries and I thought she had the right of passage.
But no, some uncultured (but cultured looking) piece of toxic waste who was standing behind me, said, "keep moving, this is Bombay, you cant stop here staring at people pass by..."
my responses along the lines of "I may look like a super hero but flying is not one of my super powers..." did not go down well with the chap, and he went away grumbling.

So I decided to follow him, and when as expected, he got stuck in the crowd at the next junction, I let rain the same dialogues that he had given me.
This definitely did not go down well with him, so in some wonderful Bombay Hindi, he abused me and my family .
The soul of Bombay, described in a simple anecdote.

This time when I went there, A guy pushed me right down the steps of a railway station in his hurry to catch some train. I thought the poor chap must be in a real hurry to have pushed me like that, but no! he landed up in the same compartment as I :) which meant that after all that, he had missed his train, tch tch so much for expertise in catching trains.

When I tried to get off the train, the oncoming crowd, did not let me do so and down I was again on the floor!
The guy who pushed me this time was nice enough to say "hey you were trying to get off eh?, don't worry you can get off at next station".
This definitely evoked laughter from me :)

I hate generalisations, but I tried very hard to find something nice to say about the place but the people I met seem to have all been contaminated by the city.

This place of sweat and grime evokes disgust and nothing else as far as I am concerned

reminds me of lines from Bhupen Hazarika's wonderfuly sung 'Ganga behti ho kyon'

"Vyakti rahe vyakti kendrit sakal samaj vyaktitva rahit nishpran
samaj ko chodti na kyun? 
Itihas ki pukar kare hunkar O Ganga ki dhar nirbal jan ko sabal 
sangrami samagro gami banati nahi ho kyun? "

A thing of beauty...

2008-08-30T18:22:00.002+05:30

Reads: Kshama Beauty Parlour

Kids...

2008-08-16T20:34:00.005+05:30

1
A friend and I were out in Shenandoah, and as we were walking down a narrow path to go look and clap at a 'waterfall' , we saw this little firang kid (must have been like a 1.5 feet), who was laboriously climbing up with his mom in tow.
When he saw us, he stopped, looked at us and asked me. "Excuse me sir, would you tell me how far it is to the top?" in full Brit accent
First I was surprised that he could even talk, second he was so damn polite despite the fact that he was super tired.
I smiled and told him that it was not too far away, to which he was all politeness again "thank you sir"

If he was wearing a hat I am sure he would have tipped it at me. hehe

2
More recently, I had stopped by at a bakery, and saw a very little girl come to the farther end of the counter, begging for food/money.

Just as I was trying to figure out what I could buy her and was about to approach her, A little boy, of about 10, dressed in an old pair of trousers and a torn shirt, came to the bakery and was trying to get the attendants attention,

I noticed he had a 5 rupee coin in his hand, and seemed like it was the only money he had on him.

When the Baker asked him what he wanted, he asked him what he could get for 5 bucks, so the guy pointed out some chocolates and some other bakery products.

Interestingly enough, the boy instead of buying a chocolate (as I had thought he would) asked for a couple of 'Jam Buns'.

He handed over the money to the bakery attendant, went straight to the little beggar girl, gave her the food, patted her on the head and walked away!

wow!
My turn to tip my hat :)

cinemaaaah...

2008-08-16T13:01:00.007+05:30

Flushed Away

This animated movie from the makers of 'Wallace and Gromit' and 'Chicken Run', is a joy to watch.
Roddy St. James(Hugh Jackman) is a pampered pet rat, living in a posh cage in London, until one day he gets flushed down the toilet into London Below, a city of sewer rats.
Where he meets the pretty Rita (Kate Winslet) who owns a boat :)
Put in an evil toad boss and Le Frog(Jean Reno) as his french assassin along with a handful of singing slugs (do not miss the slugs' rendition of 'Lonely')

Wonderful Wonderful piece of animation. Do not miss!

Thank you for smoking

Aaron Eckhart plays Nick Naylor in this comedy about a fast talking chief spokesman for the Tobacco industry, we follow his life as he smooth talks his way through everything and at the same time aspires to be a role model to his son.
Nice movie

Dr. Strangelove or: how I learned to stopped worrying and love the bomb

Peter Sellers in 3 roles :)
This is a movie that has gone down in history as a cult classic. A satire about the cold war and nuclear warfare, this movie was released at the peak of the cold war.
The satirical nature of the movie make for some laughs, but this is NOT exactly a comedy.

Its a decent movie, with some wonderful scenes, especially the one where Strangelove(Sellers) in the American war room, fighting with his hand that has a mind of its own and goes on giving heil Hitler salutes lol
or the straight faced US president (Sellers again) "you cannot fight here, this is the War Room!"

Not a movie I liked too much, but well its got Seller's :)

Turner and Hooch

Tom hanks is Turner and a dog is Hooch as they partner to solve a crime :) feel good movie. Better if you like dogs :)

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

This movie is everything you would expect it to be, crass humour, Neil Patrick Harris and some love sprinkled in.
What got ot me was the extra dose of American Patriotism.
not so nice

Picked a Tag...

2008-08-12T20:41:00.007+05:30

1) Look at the list and mark in orange those you have read.

2) Italicize those you intend to read.

3) Mark in a bright green, the books you really love

4) Reprint this list in your own blog.

----------

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible/ The Bhagavad Gita As It Is

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma - Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnights Children – Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte's Web - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

movies I watched..

2008-08-10T20:37:00.002+05:30

In Bruges
Colin Farrel, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph fiennes.
Fantastic movie. This is a movie that you will either love or you will hate. I loved it to the core. Each character is well etched and the story well told.
MUST WATCH !

Dark Knight
Heath Ledger Rocks!
Finally Christopher Nolan has managed to get batman the cult status it deserves. A big Batman fan, I hated all previous movies, until Batman Began :)
obvious must watch.

The Bank Job
Jason Statham
A true story. This fast paced thriller about a bank robbery is a good weekend watch :)

Wall-E
Decent animation movie, I am not a big Sci-fi fan but still enjoyed this movie, just felt it was a little over rated on IMDB though.

3:10 to Yuma
Christian Bale and Russel Crowe in this western is about a poor cattle herder(Bale) who has lost his leg in the civil war and is struggling to save his land & cattle from a local landlord.
With a point to prove about his abilities to his son, he gets his opportunity to do so, by escorting the wild west's most wanted outlaw (Russel Crowe in an interesting casting) to a train (the 3:10 to Yuma).
I liked this movie :) Good characterisation and great action.
Watch out for some wonderful acting by Ben Foster and some more great casting in form of Gretchen Mol (siiigghhhh) as Bale's wife.

Smart People
umm well this movie has got Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker (who I think looks like a horse, an ugly one at that) and Ellen Page (Who I do not like either), so not a movie I liked too much :)

Sleuth
Micheal Caine and Jude Law, are the only actors in this movie about a novelist(Caine) and his wife's lover(Law). Who play mind games with each other.
The movie started pretty well, but somewhere in the middle it turned into a boring horrible act.

Oxford Murders
Elijah Wood plays a student to John Hurt as they set about solving a series of murders in oxford.
The only thing I liked about it other than the fact that it was picturised in Oxford (one of my favourite towns), was the hot Leonar Waltin.
A senseless movie.

macbook

2008-08-10T19:24:00.005+05:30

Gone is the Dell 505, replaced by a white, sleek, MacBook. It looks beautiful and it has pretty good usability as well.
The first thing to learn is, the command button is the Ctrl button :)

What I like
- The way it looks
- Its dock and the genie effects
- Its webcam
- The search - 'spotlight', it returns results in a jiffy and is wonderful to use, no more navigating through directories :)
- Its lovely keyboard

What I dislike

- Itunes
I hate Itunes, easily in my top 5 worst software on the planet . The thing has no winamp.

- ~~MusicIndiaOnline does not play on mac (real player and Windows Media Player)~~

- In Windows one could move up and down a sentence, word by word. All one had to do was hold ctrl and use the left/right arrow keys, Mac will only let you traverse sentences, character by painful character

- No auto restore from the trashcan, if you delete something by mistake, you will need to drag and drop it back in its correct folder to restore it :(

- I am yet to install photoshop etc but I have a feeling I will hate the fonts :|

To London To London...

2008-08-06T23:21:00.005+05:30

London is the same, nothing seems to have changed.

What did I do there?

1) Did my favourite London walk :)

Begin :
British Museum --> Totenham Court road --> Leicester Square --> Piccadily Circus --> Trafalgar Square --> Big Ben --> Cross the Thames on the bridge by Westminister --> By the Aquarium, London eye, Waterloo Station --> Up the Millennium Bridge (staring straight at St Paul's Cathedral) back across the Thames --> and walk by the London Bridge --> all the way to the tower of London and the Tower bridge --> Back to the Hotel in the Tube: End

Last visit I had done part of this alone and gotten horribly lost (!) for about 2 hours.

This time I knew my way around quite well and I had a friend along, it took us 5 hours :) with breaks for Hot Chocolate, some shopping in the open markets by the Thames and a nice lunch at an Indian(!) restaurant.

2) Shopped in Camden :) :)

Here are some pictures

Trafalgar Square : National Art Gallery

Trafalgar Square: Nelson's column

Thames: London Eye

Big Ben

There are some pictures of the night walk we did :) will post them later!

5 movies with a twist

2008-07-13T14:05:00.003+05:30

There are some movies that are 'slice of life' and others that make you sit up and stare at the screen in amazement here is a list of the latter, movies that have a twist at the end that one never expected:)
again, in no particular order the five movies at the top of my mind are...

Charade

This classic stays imprinted in my mind because I watched it when I was a kid and it stil made me go wooow!

Memento

The editing the fast paced narration and the thing about this movie is, it ties everything together in the end and then gives it a vicious twist! lovely !

The usual suspects

Kevin Spacey, brilliant

The Others

One of my all time favourite horror movies. what a turn this one takes!

SAW

If one thought the movie was edge of the seat, the twist was definitely unexpected!

papercraft

2008-07-13T13:22:00.003+05:30

Here is something I made today :)

All I did was

1. Visited PaperCraft
2. Downloaded the templates
3. Took a print out
and
4. Created the bird with scissors and glue