More Emperor's clothes...

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...

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...

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!

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

This Diwali was brilliant :D


- A rangoli from home :)

Lovely Lanka

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...

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

- 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

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!

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...

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...

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...

Reads: Kshama Beauty Parlour

Kids...

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...

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...

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..

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

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...

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

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!