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Knight & Day.. and other things..

2012-02-02T14:56:00.001+05:30

Ah well, I saw Knight and Day, the Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz starrer sometime back, on one of the TV channels.. the movie is a breeze.. hilarious and you actually like cruise in it.. the last movie I liked Cruise in was Last Samurai, where he actually had a decent role to play.. In Knight & Day he is kinda spoofing his MI roles of a super spy.. the movie is quite whacky and quite entertaining, though I think critical reviews were that it wasnt the best of movies.. there was enough action, cameron diaz and well, more action and people getting blown up.. some random plot of a self sustaining eternal battery provided the wire frame for this..

In other things, the Indian cricket team spectacularly combusted in Australia, completing the second 0-4 whitewash of the last 12 months. And unlike in England, where there was atleast the Wall, here the Wall well had a hole the size which even the dike saving boy from Holland couldnt plug. 6 clean bowleds in 8 innings - the Wall is crumbling. the Sehwag was grumbling after getting out without even getting starts. His equivalent in Australia, David Warner, atleast fizzed in one innings and we didnt get any from Sehwag, other than a few loose mouthed statements about how we beat the Aussies 2-0 at home. SRT seems to be digging himself deeper in the search for a century of centuries and his closest competitor got a career revival with 2 double hundreds against us.. and the pup became a dog and f&*%ked the shit out of us with a triple.. Our only bright spot was the maturing of Virat Kohli, who looks set to take over the no. 5 spot from VVS, while Rohit Sharma's star rose because he didnt play, as did Cheteshwar Pujara's. The bright spot for us was the fact that England were being made to look like an amateur school side by pakistan, the fact that none of the English players seemed to know how to play spin, seemed quite funny indeed. Lets hope the Pakis do a clean sweep, atleast, it will keep those insufferable commentary from the Eng/Aus commentary about how sub continent sides cant win outside of home, it looks like neither can England :).

Rajasthan played like the Chanderpaul of Ranji Trophy to pile up 604 from 240 odd overs and bore the shit out of TN, who then lost the match on first innings lead. heheh!

Ah welll.. kolaveri di.

2011-12-07T16:24:00.001+05:30

The song is certainly a earworm, as our the other songs sung by Dhanush in the movie Mayakkam Enna - listen to them, they are in my view better than kolaveri in its youtube viral form. Was debating on what I should write about - the second rung of heroines in the mid 50s bollywood (an interesting collection of actresses), the Indian cricket team or the whole kolaveri di thingummy jig. And it was an interesting debate indeed in my head on what I should write about for the 3.5 people that follow my blog. As Dhanush says, ok mama, tune change-a.

What a match - that got played out in Wankhede a few days back - 17 wickets over close to 90 overs - 290 odd runs scored for it. From being a batsman paradise, it swung the other way to be a bowler's wicket in the last day. But I digress, the debate in my head was on what to write about. Given the plethora of topics available, I took the management presentation approach - a bullet point for each issue..

1. Kolaveri Di - well, the song has certainly taken a life of its own.. and yes, Mr Akhtar, the lyrics are bit rubbish, the meesic is synthetic and Dhanush not a good singer, but hey, wtf, a few million people disagree with you.. anyways, i dont know if i will ever watch the movie or not, but i certainly have to agree that Dhanush seems to be maturing as an actor - his earlier movies mainly for his brother had him as a borderline emaciated psycho, then he became the stick action figure in a few movies, but he seems to be growing a bit more in the recent movies.. Lets see what comes of him.

2. Dhanush the singer - kolaveri di is imho the worst of the three songs that he has sung so far - the two in mayakkam enna are far better rendered, and he has a lot more to do with his voice in those. and if selvaraghavan and he have written the lyrics for that song, we may soon have the brotherly equivalent of TR soon.. ;)

3. the Indian Test Cricket team - continues to amaze with its capability to deliver under home conditions, the windies arent the force that they were, but India did make things look very easy in the first two matches. the third match which was going to be a boring draw, became a entertaining, rivetting actioner thanks to the batsmen from both sides.. a draw with equal scores is not something you scoff at.

4. The Indian ODI team - seems to have a India A capable of beating most sides on its own.

5. the fastbowling new pair - from the threesome consisting of Yadav, Aaron and Mithun seems to be good to start with, but are suffering seriously from lack of direction in the death. A few matches with Zaheer Khan should possibly help them out better.

6. Cricket in general - the SA- Aus test series, the India- Windies series, the Pak- SL series, all got off to close matches and entertainment. Good to see that.

7. Indian politics - seems to be competing with the sensex in setting new lows.. K Si- bal is the latest in the set of great ones to emanate from the system.. more like LK Bal though..

kewl..

hmmm..

2011-10-31T11:42:00.001+05:30

in the times of bad blood between participating sides - here is a good one from Mike Brearly on Dennis Lillee - the last line is a killer.. http://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/lillee-was-the-best-bowler-i-played-against-20111027-1mm7c.html

Old Hindi Movies..

2011-09-30T12:25:00.001+05:30

Hmm, some of these movies made in the 60s and 70s are seriously outrageous. The other day I saw this move called Ek Paheli - starring a slightly chubby Feroz Khan (in his pre pseud avatar), but still exuding a raw sex appeal which made him the in thing a few years later and a Tanuja, who well looked a hell a lot pretty and can be compared to current day Kat Kaif as an example, has the acting capabilities of a door though. So the movie has this seriously whacked out premise on which it is based. Feroz Khan comes back to India after his dad dies and he buys this piano from an old artifacts shop. The day it is installed he meets this damned pretty girl with a superb voice and penchant for singing ghostly and haunting numbers (the cover song goes "Main Ek Paheli Hoon, Barson Se Akeli Hoon, Mujhe Jaane Wala Koi Nahin, Pehchannewala Koi Nahin, sung suitably hauntingly by Suman Kalyanpur). The girl, Maria (played by Tanuja), with perfectly coiffed hair, stylish western wear (she goes most of the movie in suitably modest frocks of a catholic descent) and well accessorised (nice leather handbag, high heeled shoes, etc), tells Feroz Khan that he can play the piano but all hell will break loose if anyone else. Someone else does and dies promptly. The girl has this nasty habit of appearing and disappearing without anyone realising wtf is going on. Feroz Khan is prime suspect for the killing, but there is a suitably villainous looking Madan Puri lurking around in the background, wearing the most hilarious goggles, with Helen (very young looking, the movie was made in 1971, other than Madan Puri who probably along with AK Hangal was born looking like he was 60 years old, in AKH's case 80, everyone else is very young and innocent) as his conniving mistress/girlfriend. In any case, the thingy goes around and around, has a couple of more haunting songs (again sung by Suman Kalyanpur, who should based on this record established a monopoly on haunting melodies, which alas wasn't the case, Lata and Asha both did their share of haunting melodies) and a convoluted lot later, established that Madan Puri was the villain and that Maria was a long dead girl, who damned drunk dad sold her blessed and much loved piano for drink and hence had committed the sui-cide. And Feroz Khan goes searching for her and then trips and falls from a height and dies and is united with Maria in death. Completely mind fugged me. I was stunned. Not since Sixth Sense had I been delivered this stunning a revelation at the end of a movie. Istunning - MNS presumably got his inspiration from this movie. Movie is very average, the haunting songs haunt appropriately - Feroz Khan hadn't yet become the smouldering hero that he became later, Tanuja was not yet the pretty, smiling, perky girl that she did to perfection in other movies, Madan Puri was well Madan Puri and Sanjeev Kumar apparently also lurked around in this movie, though I couldn't find him. Hear the songs, try to avoid watching the movies, tho' Zee History or whatever that channel is called shows it fairly regularly. Funky movie though.

So having heard Ek Paheli, I had to go and listen to all the other haunting melodies and that leads onto the haunting melodies countdown:

1. In tenth place comes another song from Ek Paheli - goes Ek Boond Aansoo. Sung while Tanuja bangs the piano and the money shot of the movie unfurls a bare chested Feroz Khan gets up showing a hairy chest which would put Anil Kapoor to shame. In any case, he gets a shirt on and goes to find out who the hell is making all the noise.
2. In ninth place we would have the song from Who Kaun Thi - with the ubiquitous Sadhana in white to provide the backdrop - sung by Lata one of
the many haunting melodies she does. Naine Barse Rim Jhim Rim Jhim. Haunts the shit out of you and Manoj Kumar along the way.
3. In eighth place we have the title number of Ek Paheli - picturised on a picture perfect Tanuja, there is no correlation between her actions on
the screen and the song - making it one of most amazing bits of direction since Asit Sen decided to show only the back of Dharmendra in Tum Pukar Lo
4. In seventh place, I would plonk in that song only - Tum Pukar Lo - not haunting in a ghostly way, but the song has a melancholic tinge, even
though Dharmendra seems to be in the best of spirits. And Waheeda Rehman is Waheeda Rehman, the most elegant of actresses.
5. In sixth place, would come in another Waheeda Rehman number, again not haunting in a ghostly manner, but a number which will make you lose sleep - Geeta Dutt though this time around. Waqt ne Kiya Kya Haseen Sitam from Kaagaz Ke Phool. Amazing is all I can say.
6. In fifth place, comes back Lata with a number which is reasonably morbid and melancholy, and haunting in an unghostly fashion - Aurat Ne Janam Diya Mardon Ko from Sadhna. Picturised on a very young looking Vyjayanthimala Bali, this song haunts you as much for Vyjayanthimala as
Lata's voice as the lyrics. Stunning.
7. In fourth place, we have from Mera Saaya, Tu Jaahan Jaahan Chalega.
8. In third place we would have the song from the movie which started airplane disaster movies - Gumnaam - Again we have Lata at her high octave
haunting best, singing Gumnaam Hai Koi while the survivors of an airplane crash led by Manoj "Mr Bharat" Kumar search for shelter in a forest.
9. In second place, haunting for the man, the times, the lyrics and the music - no ghosts though is Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaaye from Pyaasa. The melancholic lyrics are further sent into depression by a perfect rendition by Mohd Rafi at his depressing best, music by SDB just adds to it. The
lyrics by Sahir Ludhianvi tear the inner being apart.
10. In first place, in yet another song from Pyaasa - Jinhe Naaz Hai Hind Par - take all that is there in the above song and multiply it a couple of times and add Waheeda Rehman to the mix. Deadly deadly - can bring down the spirits far more than any black day at the stock markets.

So there, that is my top ten.

General Odds and Ends..

2011-09-14T11:00:00.001+05:30

Kewl, general odds and ends - been a while since I updated this blog - since then a lot has happened. To start with:

1. India lost, hang on, got whitewashed rather unceremoniously in the test series against England, in the process losing the poisoned chalice of
no. 1 to England and moving to a more appropriate no. 3 in the test rankings. Based on current form, expect more sliding than rising from the men in blue.
2. Anna Thousand has taken the world, okay, atleast the English press reading public by storm. Whether the Jan Lokpal is a well thought out
exercise or whether I believe that holding a democratically elected government to cheap ransom through blackmail is wrong, the fact is that it has brought to the fore the fight against corruption. Or as I should put it, corruption which is not answerable is bad, as they say in a red land to our east, be corrupt but also friggin' do your job.
3. Yeddy has finally been uprooted - well, almost, instead of wife, he has a pliant man who I frankly don't remember the name off as the CM of
Karnataka.
4. And the Karnataka Film Producers Association has been at its lucid best - depending on rumours from gossip mags to crucify a girl, for no fault
of hers other than to having had her name associated with a wife beating, domestic violence prone Kannada film star. Duh! Almost there with Man-mohan Singham.. if you see what I mean. Or Baba Dramadev. Ah ok, atleast some sane people in the industry, the rajkumar brothers have condemned the ban.

Anyways, so much for the general news. Onto more interesting and potentially entertaining stuff. The last couple of weeks have been hectic, though I have been filling the ipad up with books and music and the likes. The erudite friend introduced me to the Patrick O' Brian novels - them of Aubrey and
Maturin of the Master and Commander - Far Side of the World fame. Interesting little series. Also started Terry Prachett, who is well funny, in a good kind of way. Sean Bean and his antics on HBO have kind of made me revisit the Song of Ice and Fire series, still find it depressing, still find it confusing the hell out of me, but the writing is very very good. So may revisit them, as I have it on the Ipad. Which now doubles up as my book reader and Walkman rolled into one.

One book or series which I did start, but I don't think I will last out is Alex Rutherford's Empire of the Moghul, read the first book, which is a fairly drab and dreary rendition of the life, times and death of Babur, the First amongst Equals, the founder of the Mughal dynasty in India. It, honestly, reads a bit like a stern Hindu editorial on how China is way better than India, and not like a racy action-romance novel, which is what I thought the Mughal dynasty was all about. Sterile, almost devoid any emotion, it strips Babur's life into a series of dreary episodes, even a passage which involves polo with severed Chakrak heads has been delivered with the coldness and sangfroid of the famed English butler. The writing lacks in passion, is unable to hold the reader, though simply written, the prose is lifeless and fails to move the reader. As I mentioned to a friend, my history books had more verve and excitement in them about the various battles and fights that the Mughals had. The climactic battle with Ibrahim Lodi, which resulted in the founding of the dynasty, is dealt with all the passion of a coded message from a battalion commander to his regimental HO saying all is well. In short, was quite disappointed. William Dalrymple while depressing in parts, has done a way better job with his books of the period. And I understand, again from the literate friend, that Abraham Eraly has done a good job of it. I would prefer those to Alex Rutherford.

Moving onto music, the last couple of weeks again have been spent listening to one ditty - a Kishore kumar number from the movie Paraya Dhan which goes Dil hai mera dil and so on. Picturised on a clean shaven, but fully haired Rakesh Roshan and a rather young and pretty looking Hema Malini in attire which she wouldn't have probably worn in later days. The song is all about how a great voice with lyrics can be set on the most absurd looking combination and still make it as a hit - well Hema Malini looks good, but R Roshan, is well, R Roshan.

Movies - say the last airbender - m night shyamalan's latest attempt at recreating the sixth sense magic - sadly the story though interesting is let
down by stilted acting, direction and in general a weak screenplay. The only interesting character is Cliff Curtis as the Fire King, but then Cliff Curtis manages to look interesting as that weird Colombian drug lord/terrorist in collateral damage, so we shd discount that. In general, a sad movie, not worthy of creating a franchise which is where MNS was headed towards. Talking of acronyms, M Night Shyamalan becomes MNS, which is in turn that superior political body of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena.. Duh! Who could have thunk that. In any case, the LAB in the hands of a Nolan could be
a worthwhile thinking drama or in the hands of a tarantino, a exciting homage-revenge drama, in the hands of MNS it turns out to be a heavy, drab
and lifeless piece of tripe. Unfortunately, as the boy (who resembles the seal pup) had potential in indulging in self indulgent nudge nudge wink
action the way Uma Thurman did in Kill Bill. Anyways, that is another story.. happened by the climax of Chandni Choke to China and was once again
reduced to wondering how Gordon Liu could go from Pai Mei to getting beaten up by Akshay Kumar. Disgraceful..

Seeing yet another old Rakesh Roshan song - Koi Roko Na Deewane Ko from Priyatama, one wonders if his hair was painted on :-).

ahem.. the no. 1 kirkut side in the world..

2011-08-01T14:05:00.001+05:30

..Has averaged a measly 280 in the last 8 completed innings (from Jan - Jul 2011, including the first innings of the ongoing Trent Bridge match)

..Has a highest completed score of 364 in an innings (ie where they were all out).

..Have an highest individual score of 146 (by SRT against South Africa in the first innings of the Cape Town test)

..With 4 centuries and 16 fifties

..with the highest aggregate score by a batsman being 543 (by Rahul Dravid) with 3 hundreds and 1 fifty

..with Dravid, Laxman and SRT accounting for 45.6% of the total runs scored by the team.

..across 6 tests, 11 innings (of which 8 were completed all out)

..against opposition consisting of the South Africa (2 innings), West Indies (6 innings), England (3 innings)

..at an run rate of 3.05 RPO

and all that while, England, the purported no. 3 side..

..has declared its innings with a total of over 300, 4 times (in 9 innings, not counting the current test in Trent Bridge)

..has a highest score of 644 (Against Australia in Sydney)

..at a run rate of 3.78 RPO

..with 12 centuries and 18 fifties (in 6 tests, and 9 innings)

..with the highest individual batsman aggregating 681 runs..

..with 63% of the runs scored coming from 4 batsman (bell, cook, pietersen and prior)

..averaging 450 for any completed innings

..and the 221 in the first innings in Trent Bridge being the first time this year that England have been bowled out for less than 450 (their previous lowest was 486)

The question then to ask is - who is the best test side in the world. I will do the bowling analysis in a bit - but based on batting alone, comparing between England and India, I doubt if anyone will call India the best Test side in the world today..

RED

2011-07-05T12:33:00.001+05:30

Retired, extremely dangerous. Is what it stands for. Could also mean Retired, Extremely Durable, as almost all the actors in this movie are. Starring Bruce Willis is a role which requires him to have that constipated look of anger which has been a constant in his face since Die Hard I and which with that smirk which is used when he converts normal automobiles into surface to air missiles, is all the acting that he does. Good thing then that the people around him are having a ball of a time and hamming away to glory. Starting of course, with Morgan Freeman, then we have John Malkovich, Helen Miller and Brian Cox. Mary Louise Parker and Karl Urban are the rather clueless young peoples in this mix. This is to aging actors what From Paris with love was to john travolta (kewl, travolta in fact maybe same vintage as most of the actors here).

The oldies which include Mirren, Malkovich, Freeman, Cox and Willis are all out of have fun, it is full of these throwaway dialogues and set pieces which make such movies tick. Mirren especially seems to be having a ton of fun.. while Malkovich, is positively zany.. Freeman has this tired look about him, which seems to say, hmm, why am i doing this movie, ah, the money i presume.. Cox is good fun as Ivan the Russian spy, who has a thing for Mirren's character (who is English and MI6). Anyways, the story is some nonsense, which sets up the reason to send well armed, Swat teams after Willis and gang and provides them with a reason to blow up and shoot up a lot of people which armament enough to arm a small country. All fun then. Willis does do a couple of his usual antics, including a money shot which has him step out of a spinning police car to shoot a tonne of bullets into Karl Urban's car's windshield. Malkovich goes head to head with a woman firing a bazooka with a pistol, looked to me like a Desert Eagle (i could be wrong), and winning the round. All hell breaks loose as usual and the villain is a rather wimpy looking Richard Dreyfuss, who plays a bad ass defence contractor (according to avclub, he is a stand in for the obligatory Dick Cheney villainous character). Anyways, all's fun and the movie ends with Willis and Malkovich in a field with the Moldovan army after them. Anyways, nice movie to watch, if you want to just park your brains outside and not worry about anything else. Watch for the cast and nothing else - they are the thing that makes this movie work. and seeing them you know that they are having a ton of fun.

ponytail stories..

2011-06-22T22:26:00.001+05:30

aha.. so somebody with dum in bum has finally latched onto ponytail baba.. and the man truly hates google by the looks of it.. http://www.thesundayindian.com/en/story/internet-hooliganism/15161/

Hmm, coming from someone who filed a case in Silchar, Assam against a company based in Delhi, it is a bit rich aint it..

Source Code..

2011-05-16T17:43:00.001+05:30

Kewl, the missus and I got the chance to see Source Code a few days back. In the theatre, without the seal pup and the brat, it was blissful. No running out of the theatre every 15 minutes with a screaming brat (the seal pup), big, spacious lazyboys to sit on and snooze if the movie was too boring. Which it wasn't. The opening sequence was one of those scenes which you remember, cutting from a commuter train running to aerial shots of a large city. With music rising in a crescendo. Made you sit up. The movie opens with Jake Gyllenhal, waking up with a start, he is in a train, in obvious confusion. A lady helps him, he searches around and then 8 mins later, the train blows up. And he is in a capsule – man, is he getting screwed. He doesn't know where he is. Gyllenhal is good, looking lost – the problem with him in Prince of Persia – Sands of Time is that his lost look didn't help. Here he fits in ejjactly – the man for the role. Couldn't have done better. His annoyance at not knowing what happened mirrors yours – you are hooked for the moment atleast. Then after a few thingies, they send him back. Now comes the interesting part, which is why the movie is referred to as a mix of Groundhog Day with Murder on the Orient – it is a whodunit on the train, and Capt Colter Stevens (Jake G) lives that 8 mins again and again and again. Well, atleast there are 5 or 6 different versions of the 8 mins, all of which ratchet the tension. Till the midway point you are hooked, keenly following the movie as it unravels – between Jake G, Michelle Monaghan (the nice lady on the train, who ends up liking who Jake is), Vera Farmiga all give the movie the necessary edge – Farmiga is excellent as Capt Goodwin, the controller of Jake G's character. The story as it unfolds is that there has been a bomb on the commuter train, Jake G is in the Source Code, he is SC-1 – Source Code allows you to connect to past, not to change the past but change the future, the philosophy and the logic was usual Hollywood big movie and had enough neurons and electromagnetic waves and stuff thrown in to make sound real enough. In any case, Jake G is told to find the bomber as he has a larger bomb which can cause more damage and this is the Groundhog Day part of it – Jake G can only have those 8 mins.

And that is where the movie starts to unravel slowly – they don't know how to end it. I mean the situation demanded at the very least a Chuck Norris, if not that, a Jack Baeur or Rajni, all they had was poor Jake G. So they made it finish in the most unrealistic manner. I mean we are suckers, we will believe the gobbleddy-gook about the electromagnetism of the brain and all that crap, but hey, you cant possibly convince me that someone invented time travel and multi universe thingy in the same movie, I mean that's like two movies J. Anyways, what till around the 75% point was a good engrossing movie, starts to come off after that. The direction and the editing is good, Jake G and Michelle M on the train are good and Vera Farmiga off the train and controlling Jake G pulls of a very plausible performance as someone under significant pressure. There is this self important doctor dude, who kinda invents source code, who is a wee bit irritating, but that is his character, so lets go with it. With a small cast, limited locations (the train, the base, the capsule and the CCR station is all that we have), and a tight story and screenplay, the movie plays out plausibly and interestingly, till somewhere someone realised that the playing time had exceeded 90 mins and we need to like close the movie and we rush into a haphazard, not thought out ending, which so sucks from a movie of this intelligence. Again, after Yudham Sei, another movie, from a different land, but one with as interesting a premise which screws up in the need to provide closure to the movie, in a manner which is not befitting the movie. But nevertheless, the movie is intelligent for a summer blockbuster and is well crafted and made, the repeated train sequences don't feel like a drag, there is character definition of the characters on the train in a 8 min period that they are all there. And that adds up – anyways, I liked the movie, the missus also approved, so well, atleast I didn't get the look I got after Kingdom of Heaven. So I guess it should score an A on my scale (it did get a B from avclub, which means it is fairly decent).

Got a new laptop – so hopefully will update this blog more often for the 3.5 readers I have.

Ah erp..

2011-05-04T15:04:00.001+05:30

Hmm, been the thoughtful few days.. a good friend of mine passed away in a swimming accident and it has suddenly brought the very bad reality that lurks behind the veneer of calm that we have for our lives. As they say, these things aint supposed to be happening to us - it happens to them and them a lot, but never to us.. But death that cruel feller, depending on your religious denomination, is a grim reaper or is a slightly chubby guy with a gigantic moustache riding a beast with two horns and carrying a mace, whatever, seems to have this habit of lurking beneath quietly and makes his appearance rather too suddenly in our lives.. We read the newspapers about death - but that is death as it happens to them not to us - the loss of a loved one, a friend, a close relative, family, makes it here and now, we got to face the fact that we do not usually need to, that we are very very mortal and this is to have our mortality thrust upon us.

Leads to how to lead life - as a now and present form, or a form which looks at the future which we may never get to enjoy. I would think that our life is an endless cycle to look at the future, with the passing of each generation is the coming through of the next generation. Life in its simplest, exists for the future - the single celled amoeba, at some level, exists so it can split and become two - the future. We, humans, worry the most about what happens when there isnt a future, when the generation becomes the last generation - most of our popular hollywood disaster movies, focus on how civilisation as we know it can be exterminated or ended, with no future. That seems to be the universal fear.

I am rambling now - with no thought on how this post will go forward. I can do the usual and crack a couple of nasty ones for the general public, but hey this is an introspective piece written exclusively for venting some of the anger and fear that I feel right now (yup, both of them conflicting emotions at the same time - anger that a friend has been taken away at the prime of his life and fear that the same could happen to me or to someone close). This makes one cherish what one has all the more - the good things in life, the happiness, the joy and whatever else. Life too often is spent worrying too much - and I think I should spend more time enjoying life as opposed to worrying about it.

From Paris with Love..

2011-04-28T17:55:00.001+05:30

There is, I am sure, a club for actors who are capable of acting in complete bilge and being able to give command, scenery chewing performances. This club, IMHO, includes in increasing order of capabilities based on recent movies would Brendon Fraser, Nicholas Cage, John Travolta and Liam Neeson. there are scenery chewing schmuk performances from people like Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, but because these guys are so good, even the schmuk that they doing becomes cult classics.. not so with the others - for every National Treasure there is a Wicker Lane, for every Broken Arrow there is a Wild Hogs and for very Journey to the Center of the Earth there is a George of the Jungle.. Well, only Neeson seems to be of the order of someone capable of matching the pacinos and de niros.. anyways, that is moi opinion.

Anyways, the reason I am here is I saw From Paris with Love, with a brain dead plot whose only role was to allow John Travolta to get into the movie.. The first we see of Johnnie boy is his bald head as he sits in the French customs arguing with the customs officer over his energy drink.. and then we are hooked. For a movie with a title which looks like it should be made into a soppy romance featuring, well, just about any of those teeny bopper taht populate them (for want of a better example the vampire bugger from twilight).. instead in the first 15 minutes it runs up a body count which makes Taken look like a disney movie in comparison. All that was missing was a counter (like in Hotshots II) but hey, there were people shooting at John Travolta and his companion (a very dim looking John Rys Meyers), and getting killed by just about anything that comes there way, including two who are killed because they were beating up the Meyers guy.

Anyways, the plot has holes through which Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune could have slid through together with room maybe for Mars, but that is just a device to get Charlie Wax do his thung.. So Charlie boy (that is Travolta's character in the movie) is a CIA hitman, assasin, trouble shooter, pakistani hit squad eliminator, whatever they call him.. he descends to Paris for a day, spent with his low level CIA footman, Meyers, who through some convoluted logic has been spied on by his girlfriend, who also happens to be a terrorist, a damned pretty one though. Kewl, people keep get shot up, even Meyers takes a bullet. But hey he also plonks the girlfriend in the middle of the forehead, pretty nifty shooting for someone who has only even changed number plates and picked people up from the airport. Anyways, Wax and Reese (that is Meyers character's name) clean up roughly 50 odd people in the time together - through a mix of bullets, vest bombs and even one with a bazooka. Very nice. MIndless action, tons of gore, no logic whatsoever and what could have been mindblowing dumb, with say someone like Dolph Lundgren in it, becomes camp classic with Travolta in it. The man just makes the movie work - he is noisy, rumbuctious, action oriented, very mysterious, and in all ways, scenery chewing. I loved the movie - watch it. Its worth the moozah.

Also glimpsed at a hindi dubbed gult movie starring the Ravi Teja, the man also produced a scenery chewer in this movies - I mean it was Chulbul Pandey level scenery chewing.. interesting, but that will be another post.

In related news, we figured out that this is what makes venugopal rao, aka Volcano Venu tick :)

Yudham Sei

2011-03-28T11:54:00.001+05:30

Mysskin in Tamil Cinema was always different - i havent seen his Chithithram Pesudhadhi or Anjathey or Nandhalala.. But I did see Yudham Sei. I think I will go back and see one of his other movies definitely. Mysskin is well, a different director but he does seem to have his eye on the masses. Yudham Sei is well cut and well made. yes there are a few plot holes here and there, but in all, he has built a story and movie which makes you want to watch it till the end. What starts of looking like an innocuous set of gangland killings morphs into a complicated game of cat and mouse between three parties - the cops, the villains and the revenge seekers (the rightful ones).

The movie opens rather morosely - rain, lots of it, a window being closed, an auto stuck on the road, someone repairing it. A girl walks out into the rain, stops and asks if the auto will go, she steps forward, notices something, comes back.. asks the auto driver something.. then she moves away, the sound of a cellphone being dialled on speed mode, then someone comes out of the auto driver's seat and then runs after the girl.. cut. to today.. fireworks, pan, zoom into a box kept on a car.. cut again, the car and the box surrounded by police and newspeople.. the movie is extremely well cut and edited, snazzy almost. The story is rather simple, a story of some morbidity, with lots of violence and revenge as the motive. Mysskin has taken a fairly simple revenge storyline, one which we would see pretty much in most tamil movies (especially of the potboiler variety) and has made a decentish attempt at a police procedural. The violence is pretty gratuitous, but given the story content, Mysskin's handling has been very circumspect - we have seen worse rape sequences in tamil movies and Mysskin's depiction of the fairly horrific events is subdued and doesnt aim to titillate. The other violence includes torture sequences, which are well, a bit too graphic - a guy being drilled with a hand drill, a guy's hands being sawed off with an electric saw, kewl, enough corn syrup must have been used.

The cast is good - Cheran in a very different role from his normal, as a CB-CID officer, brings to his role a certain moroseness, hard edgedness, that you wouldnt expect from Cheran. That he is depressed because his sister has been missing for a few months, makes it easier for Cheran to play the role in his usual depressing manner, but thanks to the storyline he does more than just that. There is a pretty nifty action sequence where Cheran takes out some 8 goons with nothing but a penknife in his hand and it looked reasonably believable too. The others in the cast from the two who play Cheran's assistants to Jayaprakash, YG Mahendra and Lakshmi in roles which are to say the least scary are all above par. The ending becomes a bit neat and the police procedural part of it falls away in the second half to be replaced by a convenient ending from a Tamil cinema perspective, making one wonder whether Mysskin couldnt or wouldnt back his cast in providing the kind of crime thriller like say a Silence of the Lambs. the need to explain and the breaking of the fourth wall in a scene where Jayaprakash is directly talking to the audience, add a bit of drama into something which was compelling till then. The item number, the only song in the movie, also distracts a bit, but hey, what is a Mysskin movie without one song of a pretty woman cavorting with a bunch of men (all his other movies had this too).

Overall, the movie is quite good - an above average attempt by a filmmaker who is known for his different handling of standard stories. I enjoyed the movie, though it was apparent when YG Mahendra's character and family are introduced as to who the killers are. A bit more tightness on the storyline, would have resulted in an extremely good police procedural, one that I would have ranked along with A Wednesday as a movie which goes beyond standard Tamil/Hindi needs. But a good movie, catch it, but be warned that it isnt for the weak hearted or for those that dont like gore.

Authors who I like..

2010-12-21T07:46:00.001+05:30

Lists, yet another of them lists, I have decided I shall record for posterity or till such till blogger/Google run out of server space and delete this blog a list of all my favourites. Kind of being the online bore J, but hey everyone does lists. Come on, it is going to be end of the year, so TOI and India Today will come out with their respective ultra fat editions of top things which happened in the year and the such. Presumably, the top slot will go for either the fight between Munni and Sheila or AbiAsh episode on Koffee with Karan (you shd check the Ranbir Kapoor- Imran Khan episode, I wouldn’t mind confessing to seeing that episode) or something equally inane. But then both these journalistic mastheads are run for the page 3 and glitterati than the man who seeks serious journalism or news distribution. If you seek that, the blogosphere is better – GreatBong’s foreign policy analysis is way better than anything published by the mainstream media, as an example. In any case, I digress, I started this post with the express purpose of posting another list. So this time around, the list is of my favourite authors or authors I love. There may be a surprise here for people who do read the blog – I am known to have very eccentric (I would like to use the word eclectic, but then I am sure quite a few of my friends would object) taste in books. So here we go:

1. Alistair Maclean – now i confess, I love Almacs as I call them. An Almac hero can do all of things that Rajni can do, but without his left hand and with only one leg functioning and a head wound. But then to Rajni’s defence he never gets into the tight spot of losing functioning limbs in the first place. Coming back to Almac, plots are invariably simple, the couple of times he tried to get anything more than a clothesline for all the action, it petered out – a few of books are crap, most are unputdownable, most have logical and logistical issues. But the best of the lot are like watching a good bollywood action – loads of action, hard men, pretty women and the best dialogues this side of anywhere. The dialogues define laconic and well, for all the bluster about the lack of a storyline, the characters are reasonably well developed and there usually aren’t too many of them to start with. Invariably set in places where the hero has to do phenomenally heroic thingies to get to victory – Smith in Where Eagles Dare has to dispose off two men on a wilding swinging cable car, Revson in The Golden Gate has to eliminate a lot of heavily armed men with nothing more than a safety pin, the bosun McKinnon in San Andreas rams a submarine with a hospital ship, First Officer Carter in Golden Rendezvous has to deal with a nearly broken leg and shipful of bloodthirsty pirates, etc etc. What I love about this man’s writing is that it is simple, easy and quick to read and is tons of fun. You should try it out – I choose an Almac everytime i need to have fun when I read.

2. J R R Tolkien – Simply put the man is a legend. The LOTR is the only English language epic, which in itself is an achievement. It of course, doesn’t have anything of the complexity of even Ramayana, forget the Mahabharata. But that a man could imagine such a detailed universe and populate it with well thought out and developed characters, is amazing. Yes, some people call it a front of Catholicism, some call the man bigoted as he has no important women characters nor does he have any black good guys nor does the east mean good, but hey everyone has some negatives. The LOTR is a brilliant book – the Silmarillion is weighty in places, but readable; the Hobbit is fun. And the detailing is amazing and the writing is again easy and simple and beautiful, almost lyrical prose. Love the man’s works.

3. Frederick Forsyth – well, the byword for action novels, though his standards have lately been flagging. His Day of the Jackal probably would have been banned in UK for telling all and sundry how best to get a new UK passport in any name in the 1960s. Detail, detail and more detail is the man’s credo – amazing writing, brilliant setpieces and the storyline is invariably something special – the earlier books were all masterpieces in my opinion – the best of the lot being a tossup between Day of the Jackal (his most well known work) and the Odessa File (for bringing an amazing amount of detail into something not exactly common place). His other old books – Devil’s Alternative, Fourth Protocol, the Shepherd, all great novels. The more recent ones have been a bit lacking – Fist of God was too Tom Clancyish, the Deceiver, the Negotiator and the Icon all lacking a centrepiece of relevance, the last two works - the Afghan and the Cobra – both seriously flawed. The master is losing his touch. But as a collection beats anything that you can get from comparable authors.

4. Henning Mankell – wonder how these Scandanavian countries with their supposedly high incomes, high levels of prosperity and well being produce some of the most conflicted writers – Stieg Larsson of the Millenium series is one, Henning Mankell is another. Best known for his Kurt Wallander novels, Mankell has also written a set of other fairly serious and thought provoking pieces of literature which mainly focus on the increasing complexity and violence in the normal Scandanavian (read Swedish) world. The wallander books are what he is known best for and they are amongst the top three of police procedurals that I have read – only Colin Dexter (Inspector Morse) and Ian Rankin (DI John Rebus) have managed to evoke the day to day nature of the life of a policeman. There are others notably PD James (Adam Dagleish) and others who are readable, but for the day to day boredom of police thwork and the 1% inspiration which cracks the case to shine through it takes these three. Kind of like a CSI in reverse – CSI is all about high points in a case, have you ever come across a CSI episode where every minute is not filled with some CSI or the other finding something about the case. Wallander books focus more on what goes on in Wallander’s life – his complicated married or divorced life, his relationship with his dad, his relationship with his daughter, etc. And each book is a microcosm of what Sweden is – emphasising key issues confronting not just the country but the police force too.

5. Colin Dexter – see above. All of that applies to Inspector Morse and moreover he is an alcoholic and known to be a born philanderer, with a fling with a woman in pretty much every story. But then he is again the archetypical small town policeman, here Oxford, and hence, more high profile than say Wallander is. And the same slowness, allowing the atmosphere build up is there. Morse though focuses more on the day to day functioning of Morse as a detective and less as a human being and hence, there isn’t so much of philosophical rambling as is there in Wallander books. But then the way the crime is solved is again a set of missteps and the classical Holmesian mould, Morse has his sidekick Sergeant Lewis performing the role of a Dr Watson. But Morse is still at best a modern day retelling of Sherlock Holmes.

6. Ian Rankin – John Rebus is definitely the most conflicted of the detectives we are talking about here – Rankin starts out good in the initial few books, but the last few were more soap operas concerned more with Rebus’ fight with the bureaucracy than really solving crimed. DS Siobhan (pronounced I think Sh-ia-awn or something like that) is his faithful sidekick. But Rebus is a mix of Morse and Wallander. I dropped off on this after a while – did read Rankin’s non Rebus book – the Watchmen – though and thought that it was good.

7. Satyajit Ray – a friend called his Feluda mysteries childish – but Ray as opposed to the gloom in his best known Apu Trilogy, shines bright in the Feluda mysteries in the process creating India’s own Sherlock Holmes. More active and agile than Byomkesh Bakshi, portrayed in the movies by the dashing Soumitra Chatterjee, this is the man every kid in Bengal i think aspired to be in the 60s and 70s. Brilliantly and simply written (i have read the translations by Gopa Majumdar,and they evoke Ray’s simple prose the best) – it is indeed the best Indian fiction has to offer.

8. Amitav Ghosh – there are Indian writers and Indian writers and then there is Amitav Ghosh. The man is an institution, atleast to me, every single one of his books has moved me from Calcutta Chromosome to In an Antique Land to Shadow Lines to Glass Palace to Hungry Tide. Simple evocative prose is the name of the game, none of the lumbering big word filled Rushdian prose. None of the puton attitude of Vikram Seth, simple, evocative prose. Very effective and very beautiful – lyrical to the best.

9. Gabriel Garcia Marquez – read the translations. Want to learn Spanish to read the originals – some day some day. I shall do it.. in a hundred years of solitude.

I stop this list at nine – there are others such as Upamanyu Chatterjee, whose English August is a riot, but whose other books leave a bad taste in the mouth; Umberto Eco – name of the rose and the focault’s pendulum are beautiful books, who I like, but these nine are the ones I turn to, when I need to read something good and great.

General Musings..

2010-11-17T20:25:00.001+05:30

Hmm, lots to write about and not much time to do it in.. so here goes..

Saw the movie “Machete” – a clearly crazy Robert Rodriguez venture as B Grade as Grindhouse was, especially Planet Terror was. This one again has all the A stars in it.. the hero though is eternal B Grade – Danny Trejo, doing what he does best, playing a rather grouchy looking Mexican ex-Federale on a rampage after being double crossed. The storyline is but a clotheshorse to hang all the action on. The man, though is luckier than most other heroes even in Rodriguez movies, as he gets to bed Michelle Rodrigues, Jessica Alba and Lindsay Lohan – as a friend put it, if Lohan was the worst of that trio, it must be some trio indeed. The cast is completed by Steven Seagal, looking fatter than ever as the main villain, Robert Deniro in one of those roles where you wonder whether he did for the money or that he owes Rodriguez something, Cheech Marin as a shotgun toting priest and Don Johnson playing against the rub as a rascist frontier vigilante. Awesome action, all snazzy and gory fights which you would be used to if you have been a follower of the Rodriguez- Tarantino range of movies, the funky editing and of course, the screenplay, which in the hands of someone else would have been reduced to cliché. Danny Trejo makes a very good Machete, as the role only demands that he look grouchy and grumpy and then chop up everyone who comes his way with the Machete. The women are all uniformly hot and seriously underclad, especially Lohan as it looks like Rodriguez did not have a wardrobe budget for her, that she spend 90% of the screen time without anything on. Alba and the other Rodrigues are clad but well, you know how that goes. DeNiro as the corrupt and rascist senator is well as slimy as we know he can be, Johnson is vile, Cheech Marin is Cheech Marin and Seagal well for once is not thumping everyone while not moving and looking like one of the fat hippos. And he may have actually acted a bit in this movie. In all, watch it if you like the Rodriguez version of movies, if you don’t avoid at all counts, this aint a classic.

Moving on, another movie which I saw parts of was Kick Ass – which is well part hilarious, part hideous – the former because of the funky action and dialogues. There is a scene where the main bodyguard of the villain enters the room where the villain and his son are cowering and says, everything is okay and then goes for the bazooka in the room. Especially since the person wrecking the place up is a 11 year old girl – named Hit Girl. Which brings us to the hideous part, while the role of a child assassin sounds good when you have it in Japanese Anime, translating it into live action is not well, what one can approve of. Nevertheless, the Hit Girl kicks royal ass of pretty much everyone in the movie, including the bazooka handling bodyguard. Nicholas Cage does one of his usual mind bending roles and makes it seem like he was born to do it and seriously at it too – the only equal I can see to him is Dr Rajendra Prasad in QGM. The kid (the girl) is very cute and from her antics very capable of eliminating roomfuls of well armed and very bad men. Other things in the movie, including the titular superhero Kick Ass as superfluous as story holders and nothing much more. The last scene promises a sequel, which hopefully will have a slightly older Hit Girl taking out people in innovative ways. Likeable movie, but only if you are willing to overlook the fact that a 11 year old kills more men than Liam Neeson did in all of Taken.

Moving over to books – read the Blaft Tamil Pulp Fiction Anthology Part II – unlike part I which had quite a few short stories and 1 or 2 novellas, this has only 7 stories but almost all of them are novella length. Interesting stuff, especially since if I knew how to read Tam it is unlikely that these would have formed any part of my reading material. L and Well translated, and with that bit of a typical Madras inglis twang in it, comes across very earnest and as you would expect the stories to have been written if the authors wrote them in English. The turn of the phrase may be compromised a bit in the translation – tamil after all is a fairly lyrical language, even at the pulp fiction level and it would be difficult for any translator to capture not just the essence of the words but also the lyricism. Atleast, one assumes (having not read the originals) that there wasn’t too much of the written beauty lost. An excellent read, especially if you a tam out of the tamland or you are a tam and don’t know enough tam to reach the originals (I am both).

Also started to read William Dalrymple’s Last Mughal – didn’t have the patience for it though. Dalrymple shows once again why he is amongst the best in the game – bringing into the English language a beauty that usually is difficult to get other than with poetry. He actually does manage to translate a couple of Urdu couplets and make them sound good in English (which I am sure takes some skill). But didn’t get past the first chapter – shall revisit it again when I have a wee bit more time to enjoy the writing.

Rereading John Keegan’s mega opus on the Second World War – alongwith Andrew Roberts “Storm of War” – this provides the most comprehensive written material on the WWII across all four theatres – Western Europe, Russia, Atlantic and Pacific. An extremely well written and researched book, it is the closest we have to a complete WWII history and factbook – atleast one that I know off. Have lost a copy of this book in the past and given that a rather erratic friend has asked for it, am worried that I will lose it again..

Moving from books to libraries – we have become members at Just Books – which is a pretty neat concept. Check it out if you are in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune or Bangalore. Dont think they are in Chennai yet. Good collection and new books, and well maintained too. Not too expensive – missus loves it, the brat and seal pup dig it, thats what counts.

A few books..

2010-10-11T18:51:00.001+05:30

The master is losing his touch - this time one talks about Frederick Forsyth and his latest book "The Cobra" - which sounds more like a mix of late season Tom Clancy (for mechanical superiority of American and English techno jazz), Jack Higgins (for the apparent indestructibility of the good guys) and Colin Forbes (for the extremely featherbrained plot). The new age Forsyth doesnt cut it - the loss of the Cold War seems to robbed the man of his mojo - of his post Cold War novels, only Deceiver and to a certain extent the Icon have a good well developed plotline and character development - Fist of God, Avenger, Negotiator, and the Afghan, all suffered to a certain extent from the Tom Clancyness of the apparent superiority of the American forces over what they had. And Mike Martin was the last character who you rooted for and that too in Fist of God. In Cobra, Colin Dexter makes a comeback, as does Paul Devearaux and it is a sadly developed piece by the master, none of the suspense, the intrigue of the earlier books, I mean forget Day of the Jackal, something like Dogs of War had things going for it. Anyways, the master has fallen, as is the case with another master, in this case, Zhang Yimou.

Also got introduced to ebooks from a few friends and read a few good ones - can Dresden - the Storm Front by Jim Butcher if you get it. Nice. Also read my first Rob Heinlein - the puppet masters, early 1950s science fiction rocked, I guess - there are an overt anti communist line, the slightly misogynist part of it is more subtle, as the heroine goes from being a super agent to a married woman, who says yes dear to the husband. Anyways, it was good and you could see it being inspiration to a lot of things.

Also have all the Alistair Macleans as ebooks - man, the guy could write. Most of his stories are implausible, but it is like watching a good Rajini movie, I mean, the story is atbest there as a structure to showcase the man and well, the same is with Alistair Maclean books from Major Smith and Schaffer in Where Eagles Dare, to Captain Mallory and Miller in Guns of Navarone to Michael Mitchell in Seawitch to Revson in Golden Gate to First Officer Carter in Golden Rendevous, the heroes are all boorish, but inexplicably sincere men, who are your archetypical dyed in white heroes. And they are capable of supreme acts of physical stuff - Smith pretty much kills three well trained operatives with one hand shattered in WED; Mallory is half dead by the time he gets around to planting the charges in Guns, Carter has a near broken thigh, Michael Mitchell has a broken hand in Seawitch but still get the better of all the villains. But what really makes the Macleans tick is the way they are written, with a smart aleck comment waiting in every other paragraph. I love macleans for the simple reason that when I am reading them, I enjoy myself. I dont seek a higher meaning in the writing than what there is and that makes it extremely good.

And yeah, apparently the Brandon Sanderson feller seems to be an improvement over the stuffy Robert Jordan methodology of writing in WOT. Not that it makes the series much better, but he certainly seems to be able to write a lot more fluidly than Jordan ever did. May even get around to reading the Gathering of the Storm - book 12 of the series or book 1 of the 12th book, whichever way you look at.

hmmm..

2010-08-28T13:43:00.001+05:30

National integration and secularism if any.. Swades has this.. in the song Pal Pal hai bhaari..

“Ho..raam hi toh karuna mein hai, shaanti mein raam hai

Raam hi hai ekta mein, pragati mein raam hai

Raam bas bhakton nahin shatru ke beech chintan hai

Dekh taj ke paap raavan, raam tere mann mein hai

Raam tere mann mein hai, raam mere mann mein hai -2

Raam toh ghar ghar mein har, raam har aangan mein hai

Mannse raavan jo nikaale, raam uske mann mein hai -2“

Lyrics by Javed Akhtar; Music by A R Rahman and picturised on Shahrukh Khan.. Hmm, i think numerous such situations abound.. Bollywood does contribute to integration you know, except we never seem to understand. J

More later.

Is Ponytail baba going to get it finally...

2010-08-27T17:16:00.001+05:30

http://getahead.rediff.com/report/2010/aug/26/career-trouble-brewing-for-indian-institute-of-management-and-planning-in-hyderabad.htm

hmmm, tres interesting.

General Musings..

2010-07-29T19:03:00.001+05:30

Random thoughts jotted down quickly..

- Why doesn’t India declare now and the two teams decide to split the 90 overs tomorrow into an impromptu one dayer which decides the winner. Well, i don’t think Dhoni has the dum in bum to do it and neither I guess does Sanga – if it backfires, you can imagine the fires they will face. But it will be an interesting riposte to the shenanigans at the F1 Grand Prix at Hockenheim.

- Talking of which, why cant Ferrari say that Teflonso is their numero uno and Massa can go fish. If they could do that through 10 odd years of Michael Schumacher, why cant they do it now?

- Bangalore traffic sucks even more when it rains. And the planning department has its brains in its arse. After 10 odd years of struggling to make it from Koramangala to Electronic City in any half way decent time, everyone heaves a sigh of relief when the Elevated Highway opened. Only for the halfassed bozos at the BBMP to start constructing a subway/flyover or whatever crap at Madiwala. So you get fucked any which way.

- No city in India is equipped to deal with rain – except maybe Bombay and that gets overwhelmed with the amount it gets. Bangalore drowns if the rainfall is more than few microns.

- Why cant anything get done on time in this bloody country?

- Back to sports, can spain do the unthinkable and win the Euro 2012 or will they fail to even qualify for it.

- Illayaraja rocks.. big time..

- ARR also rocks.. in general Tam music rocks..

- Why does Tata Photon claim to be broadband and delivery transfer rates which would make a good old fashioned dial up look fast.

- Havent India and Sri Lanka been like playing each other too often now? Should they like declare a truce for the next few years.

- Has England been nominated the new Pakistan atleast as far as cricket is concerned.

- How does Shakira shake her hips like that – most people i know will dislocate their hips if they try that movement. And wouldn’t she be better off being called Shake – ira.

- Saw A Wednesday the other day and was impressed by the whole concept – wish someone can actually do what is depicted in that movie, though I do doubt if it really can be done in real life.

- Question though is how Naseeruddin Shah’s character survived the sweltering Mumbai afternoon with no cover.

- IT as usual got the short shrift in the movie – with the “hacker” being used as whatever..

- And the music for Vinnaithandi Varuvaya is good – the little bit I have seen of the movie, makes me want to watch it, despite it having Simbu, the Little Superstar or whatever the f he calls himself.

- Turning 35 is not as depressing as I thought it would be – though 50% of your potential lifetime gone is a huge huge thingy and makes you think of stuff that you don’t want to think about. Like death.

- And airplanes, which seem to be falling out of the sky like flies. Gawd!!

- Bangalore today was shrouded in a mist, which made it look beautiful like some God sitting somewhere took a deep breath from his fag and released the smoke over the city. The rain I like, the traffic I don’t. What gets the goat is the stupidity of the bureaucracy and planning around here, which makes me look planned and organised.

- Shit happens, as they say, and when it happens, it does hit the fan usually. Then all in the room or the vicinity wish they weren’t there. Who likes getting covered with smelly poop.

- F1, football – my favourite sports both have seen unsporting action by players and both result in the question – how important is a win? Greed is good? To win is it all the one lives for?

Lies of Locke Lamora, the Pacific, et al..

2010-07-24T19:05:00.001+05:30

Kewl, for the pleasure of the 3 people who have me on their feedreader (one of whom is me, thereby leading to recursive loop which may make interesting film story material for Chris Nolan), another post from me. And this one is again about a book – recommended again by that friend of mine (who unlike the other friend of mine, is not prone to overspending on books). The book was The Lies of Locke Lamora” by Scott Lynch. Scott Lynch is much like the other Scott, Scott Adams of Dilbert fame, with a rather flippant attitude to both writing and creating events. To say that the book is colourful is an understatement, it is quite vivid in its descriptions, the best that I have come across so far from the newer generation of fantasy story writers, who all seem to have spent a lifetime writing banal screenplays or dialogues for George Lucas. The hero of this rather interesting story is Locke Lamora, or as he is also know the Thorn of Camorr, a Gentleman Bastard and leader or garrista as is known of the Gentlemen Bastards, numbering 5 (including Lamora) and originally 7 (including a rather interesting love interest of whom only glimpses are shown through the book). Written in a rather unconventional manner with the book’s present being interspersed to with interludes from the past which throw more light on the development of the various characters – mainly Lamora but with fairly interesting titbits on other main characters especially Jean Tannen, Lamora’s second in command.

The writing is strong and evocative – descriptive passages are very well written and are a joy to read, especially for someone who so recently suffered at the ponderous hands of Robert Jordan in WOT. While not exactly as beautiful as Tolkien (the Master), Lynch manages to capture a reader’s attention by excellent turns of phrase. The narrative is strong, doesn’t lag, doesn’t tend to get bogged down, even in the more depressing parts of the book, and has command over the reader. While I wouldn’t classify it as unputdownable, it is certainly an enjoyable read, with little fat which seems to populate WOT as an example. The writing also is clear in one other thing and that is in the swearing, this is the equivalent of a Quentin Tarantino movie with f and b words flying left, right and center. I, master of the swearword, did learn a couple of new phrases, including one which perfectly describes a fucked up situation – fuckery. And of course, the damnfuck, which well, I should have thought of a long time ago, but dint – to that I am eternally grateful to Lynch.

The book in my opinion is a must read for anyone who has an interest in fantasy and especially for those that swear by WOT – this is how a fantasy series can be made interesting. Interesting characters, excellent characterisation, strong and evocative writing and tight storyline. No meandering about with 90,000 characters and heavy insinuations of thingies, but straight from the hip. I eagerly await the sequels, which from the little teaser at the end of this book, seems to be even more interesting. Buy it, borrow it, or steal it, but definitely read it.

On another note, I have been an unabashed admirer of World War II books – though most I have read have focused on the European Theatre – very little I had come across in terms of the war in the Pacific. Storm of War rectified a bit of this with writing on a few of the key Pacific battles including the Battle of the Midway, but at a bookstore in the Dubai airport, I chanced upon The Pacific, written by Hugh Ambrose (son of Stephen Ambrose), which is almost a companion book to the HBO series (which i have mostly missed). The book is well written in the usual sparse and to the point Ambrose style, which the son has inherited from the Dad. The other book I got was on the Overlord by Max Hastings, which is a little pessimistic view of the D Day and subsequent battle of the Normandy. In Hasting’s opinion, the US and the British had little chance of beating the Germans without the overwhelming advantage on materiel, which is very contrary to what I have otherwise read about the Normandy battles – mainly Stephen Ambrose’s Victors and John Keegan’s book on the major battles in the European theatre. Interesting though, is the way Hasting emphasises that he wasn’t talking about the leading divisions in the war – such as the 82^nd and 101^st Airborne or the 1^st and 29^th Division or the 1^st or 6^th Airborne of the British. He does throw light on the weaker parts of the Armed Forces in play in Normandy – the 90^th Division, the bad or average US/British commanders and so on. Interesting reading, made me reassess what I have otherwise read and puts in perspective some of the comments in Band of Brothers – of how the soldiers in the Airborne volunteered so they were fighting alongside quality, motivated, volunteer soldiers as opposed to unmotivated, undertrained draftees. The interesting bit in Ambrose’s book is that America created the civilian army from scratch and there were significant parts of the Army which measured up to the regimental, supremely trained German Army. Which I guess was the miracle.

Tolkien, LOTR, a big ramble..

2010-06-17T20:59:00.001+05:30

J R R Tolkien, in my humble opinion (I insist on that as opposed to the abbreviation IMHO), is amongst the best English writers the world has seen. Indian fiction is replete with epics, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Mughal stories, are all there. English literature on the other hand struggles with anything that approaches epic levels – depending mostly on ancient Greek/Roman mythology to provide something of a basis of an epic. To imagine the wideness, the comprehensiveness and the characterisation of the various races in the Middle Earth was a redoubtable feat. Few others have matched Tolkien for the breadth of the canvas that he was painting – many have tried, most recently and with immense financial success has been J K Rowling with the Harry Potter series, other who have tried include GRR Martin with the Song of Fire and Ice series and Robert Jordan with the bloated Wheel of Time series. But none have matched the literary splendour of Tolkien – there are friends who would say that GRR Martin comes close, but while I liked his Fevre Dream, the Song of Fire and Ice is still open for debate for me. Tolkien’s writing has a lyrical beauty, which Rowling can only dream of hoping to achieve. The characterisation of the major characters in Lord of the Rings (LOTR) is deep and insightful – there is no attempt to deepen the suspense by veiled hints to darker, murkier or potentially sinister reasons for certain happenings, nor is there an attempt to shroud the basic premise of the story in meaningless lore – both of which are abundantly present in both Harry Potter and Wheel of Time.

LOTR also presents a case of pacing – the first 150 odd pages demand a lot of you – Tolkien content to describe the ways of the life in the Shire in great detail, to the point of making you want to abandon the book. But the pace picks up once Frodo and gang set out for Bree and thence to Rivendell – with tautly written action scenes (something Rowling needs to learn, her action scenes are second only to the romantic ones in being bad), coupled with a intense push on the story gets you hooked. Though there the usual digressions – notably Tom Bombadil, who some feel was amongst the most needless of characters in LOTR – the pace picks up through the rest of Book One. This culminates in the climactic fight with the Orcs on the banks of the Anduin. However, Tolkien does something which very few fantasy writers have attempted since – both Rowling and Jordan have succumbed to the urge to close the books out with climactic battle sequences, resulting in the loss of key cast members and a lengthy explanatory sequence on how the plot unfolded. Tolkien continues on – the first segment of the great chase by the three heroes of the LOTR is conducted in the last few pages of the Book One. The few pages which open the Book Two, are the reason why I believe it will be difficult to replace Tolkien as a master fantasy fiction writing – deftly moving the action, his descriptions, the dialogues between the characters, all ratchet up the tension – you feel like you are with Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli, feel their pain, feel their emotions. Extremely fine piece of writing.

Book Two really is the best book in the series, while it was the worst in the films- again let down by the cinematic urge to have a climactic battle – the battle of Helm’s Deep was manhandled into being a climactic battle of the good vs the evil than the way it is played out in the book – which is as a key battle, but not necessarily the last of the them. In fact, Gandalf in the book mentions that while they had won the battle there was a huge war to be fought still. The need to finish with the climax robbed the movie of the gravitas that the book had. In fact, if the movie had stuck to the book, we may have had a deeper movie too, instead of the movie which seemed neither here nor there – the link up between boromir’s death in book one and the finale sequences in return of the king. The other problem i have with the movies is that they reduce Frodo’s character from a complex and heroic figure to one of a tensed out and spaced out character. You seemed to be just too depressed by Elijah Wood’s blank stare in two towers and rotk. In the book, Frodo is a more active character and actively fights with not just the Ring, but with Sam and Gollum. The movie also focuses a hell a lot on making Aragorn a hero – not that he isn’t in the book, but in the book he is one of many heroes, while in the movie, he is the MAN.

But one thing i have to give the movie is the casting – which was brilliant – getting Aragorn to be played by a then 40 odd year old Viggio Morternsen was a masterstroke – he imbued the character with the dourness of Dunedain, the nonchalance of Strider and the charisma of King Elessar. Gandalf was another masterstroke with Ian McKellan being brilliant in the role of the wizard. Orlando Bloom had one of his better outings as Legolas, while John Rys Davies was perfect as Gimli. Andy Serkis probably did the best job of all – as Gollum. Liv Tyler, probably never looked more beautiful than in this movie as Arwen. Miranda Otto brought out some of the contrasting characterisations of Eowyn as a delicate woman in a one sided love with Aragorn and a woman of steel who can take on the Lord of Nazguls, the Witch King of Angmar. Bernard Hill was good as Theoden and Karl Urban more than adequate as Eomer. Of the four hobbits – the least irritating were Dominic Monaghan as Merry and Billy Boyd as Pippin, Sean Astin as Sam Gamgee was brilliant, while Elijah Wood suffered from the Wood Haunted Look for most of the three movies. Sauron’s Eye was well depicted, as was Treebeard. In all these made the movies a pleasure to watch despite the huge licenses taken with the story, especially in Two Towers. A good decision though was to leave out the Scouring of the Shire, which hung like a millstone at the end of the book. But the book still remains an amazing piece of work, along with all the lore and literature that JRR Tolkien has created around it.

As the chicks on flicks would say – See it and more importantly, read it, it is worth it.

Fevre Dream

2010-06-07T09:16:00.000+05:30

I was recommended this book by a friend with an introduction which said Bram Stoker meets Mark Twain. So my interest was piqued – I had tried the song of fire and ice series by GRR Martin and found it a bit tedious and complicated for my liking. The writing was way better than JK Rowling or Robert Jordan – Martin did have a way with words, but too many back stories, too many characters killed my enthusiasm for the series. So I went ahead and borrowed ‘Fevre Dream’ from said friend (who is kinda disgusted by the fact that I didn’t like Song of Fire and Ice). I read the book.

It is not a unputdownable adventure with the page turning pace of an action adventure. It had its moments of pace and action, but more often than not it was about setting the atmosphere. GRR Martin does a pretty good job of describing the steamboat era of the Mississippi, of New Orleans and St Loius and at times you wonder if it were a Mark Twain book that you were reading, with its wonderful description of the life on the river and steamboats. The vampire bit is written without any frills, in a matter of fact manner and described as it happens. The writing is simple, yet effective – a style similar to the style which makes it a pleasure to read books by Amitav Ghosh, Saki, Ruskin Bond, etc. I had been reading the book for over the last ten days, 15-20 pages at a time till the turning point in the book – it isn’t much of a spoiler but I wouldn’t want to delve into the book’s storyline, except to say that there is a point in the book where the pace quickens and the tenor moves into that of a chase, not a long one, but one which is intricate enough for you to want to turn the pages in the fashion of a racy adventure novel. The writing style remains the same, the capability to evoke an atmosphere even at the height of the chase is there. GRR Martin may not have the turn of the phrase that Twain had, but he is as effective in capturing that era. I liked the book – enough to want to give song of fire and ice a second chance. My recommendation – if you get this book, read it. And by the way, in the form of a spoiler – the recent movie The Daybreakers has a plot similar to that of this book. That I think should suffice, though to be honest I enjoyed it more as a 19^th century Southern US, river, steamboat book than as a vampire thriller. BTW the book also provides a reasonably strong scientific line through it, especially about vampirism. The second such thought process I have come across in recent times (the other was in The Strain).

Well, swinging from one fantasy author to another – Robert Jordan and the bloating series of Wheel of Time – I read the first book, the Eye of the World, was interested enough to try the second book, The Great Hunt, which made me realise that there is none amongst the recent imitations to take on the master of English Epics – JRR Tolkien. The Eye of the World was complicated enough, the Great Hunt was even more complicated – a friend of mine (not the one who recommended Fevre Dream, but a less erudite one) described this book as a long chase, well, the only chasing I did was of the sleep I got when I read this book. More than anything, Rand al’ Thor does not have or do anything which makes you want to root for him the way Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli did when they went chasing the Hobbits in Two Towers. Secondly, the writing is pedestrian – extremely banal and well, not very unlike the attempts of JK Rowling, though I would say Robert Jordan is an improvement of Rowling and way better than Christopher Paolini (of the Eragon series). In any case, my patience with the series has run out somewhere in the middle of the second book – I can understand nothing happening, if the writing were good enough to justify it – there are passages in LOTR which don’t go anywhere, but which you read because Tolkien has written it so well, but this series is bloated, what could have been covered in 1.5 books has been stretched at last count to 15 books and I cant event get past the second of those. So there – this is a series I would recommend, only if you are really keen on fantasy fiction and have the patience to deal with 15 odd books.

Prologue

2010-04-23T23:08:00.002+05:30

By all historical accounts, the Second World War was the last Great War
fought by mankind. Conflicts or war since then have been localized affairs
with limited involvement being the mantra - the terror of a nuclear
holocaust, kept most confrontations at a local or regional level. All
historical accounts are quite clear that Adolf Hitler's disastrous handling
of affairs since 1943 were critical to ensuring that the war ended when it
did and the way in which it did - most historical accounts rank this as a
critical reason, alongwith USA's entry into the war and following a Europe
first approach, for the way in which the war was fought and won by the
Allies.

The big what if, is what if Hitler did not take decisions the way he did,
especially in the Eastern Front, where he decimated a large proportion of
Germany's finest armies and had reacted to Operation Overlord in a more
aggressive manner, with lot more flexibility to his commanders, especially
Field Marshal Von Runstedt (as Commander in Chief Western Front) and Field
Marshal Erwin Rommel (as commander of Army Group B and the Atlantic Front)
to react to the Allied landings. The Allied invasion suffered from a huge
disadvantage, atleast on June 6, 1944, of being a tiny sliver of beach and a
more forceful reaction to the landings, could have potentially thrown the
invasion back into the Channel and the effect would have been that the
Allies could not have considered an invasion for atleast a couple of years.
This would have allowed Germany to focus on the Eastern Front and while that
war could never have been won - Russia was way too big for that, but it
could have resulted in a situation where the two dictators divided up Europe
and then strangled Britain collectively. While history tells us this is
fanciful, the fact is that a more capable supreme commander than Hitler or
for that matter, a Hitler guided by a committee of senior generals (much
like Stalin and his Stavka) could have potentially resulted in a very
different history today. And the fact is that had any of the numerable
assassination attempts on Hitler succeeded, the war would have lasted longer
and that public in America would have soon insisted on a Pacific first
approach, with the net result that Europe would have been divided between a
militarily led Germany and Russia.

This rather fanciful notion of mine was reinforced recently, when I read the
book "Storm of War" by Andrew Robert - which coupled with my reading of
books by Stephen Ambrose such as "Band of Brothers", "Citizen Soldiers" and
a couple of John Keegan's books, led me to think, about the great what if -
What if Hitler had died in the July 20 Bomb Plot of 1944 or earlier (preferably) and the control of
the government had moved to the hands of a set of generals of the caliber of
Von Kliest, Von Runstedt, Model, Guderian, Rommel, etc. It is fascinating to
see what could have been the impact on some of the critical battles fought
in those times - Operation Citadel, Operation Bagration, Operation Overlord
are some of the key ones. I am pulling on my reading of the various
historical accounts and am going to apply my rather limited army moves. A
lot of what I write here is conjecture based on the stuff that I think I
know, which may or may not be the case. But hey, it is my blog and I am its
biggest reader - so there.

I shall look at the impact of not having Hitler on broadly three major
battles of that time

Operation Citadel at Kursk - the largest tank battle ever which pitted the
German Panthers, Tigers and Mark IVs against the Russian T-34/76 and
T-34/85s. The battle which most historians say was not required or one which
came the risk of a potential staged retreat which could have a presaged
vicious counterattacks on the Russian cavalry. This battle decimated the
German Panzer armies to an extent from which they never recovered.

Operation Overlord - the biggest, most well written of them battles - the
Allied Landings on June 6, 1944 - the starting of the Western Front and one
by all accounts which covered the event, say cold have been demolished on
the beaches, if the Germans had reacted a wee bit quicker than waiting for
Herr Fuhrer to wake up from his slumbers.

Operation Barbarossa - the great attack of the Russia - and for many, the
beginning of the end of the Nazi rule - in July 1941, 2 months after it was
planned to begin, Barbarossa was begun - the rest as they say is history.
Though even that with better planning could have different.

Operation Bagration - the most decisive battles according to some
historians, this is the great Russian blitzkrieg which decimated Army Group
Centre, and split the German forces in Russia down the middle. And for many,
the final nail in the coffin.

There are others which I will add, as I think more - these four are pretty
representative of what could have been better with the Germans if General
Staff was better commanded and led. The Allies (US and UK) greatest victory
was the fact that there decision making was consultative and democratic,
while Hitler's to a large extent was his word against his generals and
though the man had an incredible intuition and memory, his inability to
harness the capabilities and optimally use those abilities of his General
Staff was finally his undoing. Stalin succeeded as he largely left his
meddling to the political side of things and rarely contradicted his
Generals on the actual fighting of the war - so a Zhukov, Konev,
Rossokovsky, all had more operational freedom than a Model, Manstein,
Paulus, Guderian, Boch or Von Runstedt and that impacted their ability to
run the German war machine as a cohesive unit.

the world according to the brat..

2010-03-13T16:13:00.001+05:30

The missus and I were playing with the brat and we kinda as him to complete a few popular sayings and what emerged gives us a small idea of what goes on in the mind of the brat.. here we go..

1. The pen is mightier than the… … sketch pen

2. Laugh and the world laughs with you and cry… … and run

3. Better late than… … a late Lateef

4. You can lead a horse to the water but… … it will drown

5. A bird in hand is… …. equal

6. Don’t change a horse’s… … food

7. Don’t bite the hand that… … belongs to you

8. A miss is as good as… … the mother

9. If you lie with the dogs… … they will bite you

10. You can teach an old dog… … to lie down

11. An idle mind is… … nothing

12. Where there is smoke… … you should put off the fire

13. A penny saved is… … you can buy something

14. Children should be seen and not… … not seen

15. You get out of something only what you… …get how hard to do

Tried running the same list past the seal pup, but then he was a bit busy holding the TV Remote and going “Dishum”, “Dishum” firing at us, so got nothing from him.. he is of course, quite famous for poking a finger at a fish in an aquarium and then squealing if the fish came towards him..

Sherlock Holmes - the Guy Ritchie version..

2010-03-10T23:08:00.000+05:30

Imagine, Snatch – with Robert Downey Jr as the Gypsy and Jude Law as Jason Statham’s character, without the machine guns, but with the same frenetic action and intrigue. That kinda sums up the experience. A typical Ritchie movie, with phenomenal action set pieces, set against great background – works excellently as that. But as a Sherlock Holmes movie, with the Holmesian deduction missing, it fails, quite miserably. I liked the movie – more because in general I end up liking Guy Ritchie movies (I watch Snatch, pretty much everytime it is on Zee Studio), but it didn’t work for me as a Sherlock Holmes movie. Sherlock Holmes for me will always remain Jeremy Brett, with his aquiline nose and deer stalker hat, with the pipe. Downey Jr, though an excellent actor (loved him in Ironman too), is well, too unorthodox to be Sherlock, he would have made a great Gypsy too. Jude Law as Watson was adequate, but again, left something to be desired – Watson was not a man of action, and if he was, he certainly wasn’t the way Jude Law has ended up portraying him.

Now moving on from the Sherlock Holmes hang up – if this movie had been titled as “the Ghost Prince of Buckingham” or some crap like that, and didn’t claim to be a rendition of Sir AC Doyle’s detective, I would have written a raving review about how great a movie it was. And it certainly was – had that bit of weirdness that seems to be populate Ritchie movies, the quicksilver tongue and dialogues, snappy editing, and well, action pieces to make action pieces look f-all. The movie worked for me as a great action movie – the plot though weak, was no more than the requisite to place the action pieces along. Robert Downey Jr, brings an energy into the proceedings, as a Sherlock he may not work, but as a weirdo, boy does he work. Jude Law is of course, equally impressive as the slightly more sane, but not all that sane, friend of “Sherlock”. Editing was splendorous, the cinematography adequate – and of course, we had to have the necessary bits of computer generated stuff, like the bridge over Thames, blah blah. The women were a bit of an intrusion – Irene Adler played by <> was well adequate, but more as an introducer of the Prof Moriarty than well, as a character of her own. To imagine that Sherlock had a love, is well, unforgivable, but well, he did have feelings for Irene Adler. The soon to be Mrs Watson, was well, emphatic, but otherwise did not have much to do other than trade words with Sherlock. The villain was a major letdown, not as supreme as some of the other Holmesian villains. The introduction of Moriarty was of course, an obvious lead to a sequel. Well, maybe a more traditional Holmes story will be nice.

The Holmes character has not been messed around with much – we had the Mandala of Sherlock Holmes, well, not a bad piece in itself, but trying to do too much and achieving too little. Whatever else ACD based his stories on there was a bit of logic in them – well, you have to be seriously astute to be like Holmes, but there could be guys like him around. In any case, Ritchie tries to get some of the traditional Holmesian phrases and comments in such as “the game is afoot” and so on and has tried to flesh out some of things that ACD mentions in the passing, like Holmes’ jujitsu abilities, his disguise abilities, etc. But Downey Jr I guess is the major reason it doesn’t work – he is not Holmes, just like Clooney could never be Batman. But overall, if you were willing to override your objection to this fact, it is pretty well made and good movie to catch. And I like it for one more reason and that is it introduced me to Celtic music – Rocky Road to Dublin by Luke Kelly of the Dubliners is now a favourite of mine.

In the passing, the Oscar ceremonies this year were a damp squib – caught a bit of the forced riffing that Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin were doing, and well, I certainly didn’t expect such a performance from the two – they can be witty when they want to be. I think Hugh Jackman was better and maybe they should go back to Billy Crystal.

My Name is....

2010-02-14T23:58:00.000+05:30

The series is something I thought of.. so brickbats and bouquets to me..

My Name is..

..Corn – A tragic drama about the travels of an American corn kernel from the Mid west to how it became steamed corn in a handcart in Bangalore suburbs.

..Kaun – The tragic narration of the sordid travails a movie by the name Kaun undergoes in the hands of a director, the censor board, shiv sena, MNS, etc etc.

..Con – well, that is kinda running in the theatres now, so we will skip this one..

..Yawn – see above one, based on initial reviews.

..Yuan – An adventure thriller on the movements of the Chinese currency in a fixed exchange rate regime. Includes swashbuckling scenes with Baaar-ack OooHBhima.

..Can – the tale of a tomato can which gets filled with tuna fish.

..Kahn – the life and times of the great German goalkeeper Oliver Kahn

..Kahn – starring Pat-trick Stew-ate taking on a mind reading alien.

Guy Ritchie, Sherlock Holmes et al

2010-02-08T17:25:00.001+05:30

There is something about Guy Ritchie – the guy make visceral movies, where more often than not, the movie is a collection of almost snapshot like frames which work the cleverness of the plot point. Notable in this is the whole end sequence of “Snatch” – an interesting movie about men, guns and well, violence. While it is purportedly the chasing of a diamond, it is more a showcase for violence, almost every character is shot at, most get beaten up pretty bad, there is a villain who says the best way to get rid of a body is to feed it to the pigs and so on and so forth. So when one hears that GR has made Sherlock Holmes, with the prodigal Robert Downing Jr as the master detective, one shudders to think of what might have been transformed in the eternal favourite. Based on the trailers, this seems to be an attempted Sherlock Holmes reboot much in the form of Casino Royale being a reboot of the James Bond series or Batman Begins being the resurrection of the Batman series from the nipple suits of Batman and Robin.

I accepted the reboots of the JB and the Batman series as necessary more because in the case of the former, the laconic and smart secret agent had somehow morphed into a light sweetheart from a romantic comedy with Pierce Brosnan, the reboot of the JB series provided a way to revise the way the character was portrayed and the new Bond was well, more inline with the conception of Ian Fleming, a Bond who gets beaten up quite regularly. Similarly, Batman Begins had to necessarily move away from the campy Batman of Batman and Robin and go back to the origins and revive Batman as the Dark Knight – of course, in both reboots, the key to success of the reboots was that there title character was played by a good actor, both series had a strong backing in the writing department and atleast one of them was helmed by a visionary director (Batman Begins). The sequels showed the class separation between Nolan and JB series directors – as Dark Knight scaled new heights (though that was largely on the back of Heath Ledger performance as Joker), while Quantam of Solace, while being a good, cool movie, didn’t really add to the Casino Royale Bond, though it did cement Daniel Craig’s positions as the second or the third best Bond ever (depending on whether you liked Roger Moore or not, Sir Sean Connery is without doubt the best ever). There has been enough in these to make you want to wait for the Batman III and next Bond movie. So I would consider these movies a success.

Now getting down to the point of the matter – did Sherlock Holmes need a reboot – the last TV series starring Jeremy Brett as the ace, has defined the public image of Sherlock Holmes and met a lot of factors that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had as characteristics of the man. Jeremy Brett was Sherlock Holmes to the generation that grew up watching him on Doordarshan and he was a good Holmes. He had the aquiline nose, the deer stalker hat, the keen eyes and the requisite profile. More importantly, he imbued his character with the ability to swing from laconic laziness to frenetic activity as did Conan Doyle in the books. Brett’s Holmes was someone who looked and felt like he had walked out of a Conan Doyle novel. No issues with the character. Now Conan Doyle had only indicated a few of Holmes’ other habits including his notorious habit of snorting cocaine, the women in his life, etc. Both he and Dr Watson were middle aged, with the good Dr having served in Afghanistan and India and one would presume that they were in their mid to late 30s when most of Conan Doyle’s stories are written. So the need for a character reboot is well moot.

Getting on with it, the second question is that if a reboot is indeed required, who would be the most ideal to play Sherlock Holmes – you were basically looking for a tall, gangling man capable of laconic laziness or frenetic activity or just doing nothing and who looked mid to late 30s, well, a weather beaten mid to late 30s. Actors like Liam Neeson come to mind – Robert Downing Jr, despite his stellar performance as Tony “Ironman” Stark is well, too stocky to make a good Holmes, atleast in moi opinion. And then we have Jude Law as Dr Watson – now the trailers seem to indicate that Jude Law may have made a decent Watson, except that he looked a few kgs and few waist inches short to make the Watson of my conception – Watson was always represented as well padded to the near skinniness of Holmes and Jude Law’s Watson seemed a wee too bit thin there. Again from what I see of the trailer, it has all the nuts and bolts of a traditional Guy Ritchie movie – well framed shots, snappy dialogues, convoluted plot points, eye popping action and well, since it is Holmes and kinda set in the mid 1800s you very well cant have Uzi machine guns and Desert Eagles floating around the screen, can we. But we do have a giant trying to break Holmes up with a monster of a hammer, a set up where Holmes, Watson and one of Holmes’ lady loves being nearly sliced by a cutting machine and so on and so forth. The trailers indicate that I would like this movie as a Guy Ritchie movie, but probably hate it as a Sherlock Holmes movie. So till I flout them laws and watch the movie, the judgment will be kept in abeyance.

PS: the seal pup no longer looks like one – he has stretched to 37 inches.. Duh! And the brat is now almost 4 ft in height. Mein Gott.

Band of Brothers and other things..

2010-01-11T00:16:00.002+05:30

I saw the teleseries on HBO a long time back and was amazed by it. The story of a company of paratroopers from the time they were created to the time of the Allied invasion of Europe to the end at Eagles Nest, this was a series which had as its canvas, not the broad brush of the Normandy landings as in Longest Day, nor did it have the narrow, perspective of a particular battle as in Bridge Too Far, but it followed this paratroop company, Easy Company, 2^nd Battalion, 506 Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101^st Airborne Division and more importantly a core set of individuals, in particular Major Richard Winters, who was the Company Commander for the longest period of time, and his group of NCOs. The book on which the teleseries was based, was written by Stephen Ambrose, who is a noted historian and whose books on Eisenhower provide a view to the ETO from the Supreme Commander viewpoint. He brings the book the historian’s factual approach to writing but has packed into the book sufficient drama, thrills and a clear narrative to engross a lay reader like me. It was fascinating to the follow the development of the each of the major players (and there are quite a few), especially that of Major Dick Winters, who comes across as an inspirational leader of men, that war often brings to the fore. While the backdrop of the war is constantly there, the book and series aren’t so much about the war, as about the people who fought the war. The citizen soldiers of America as Ambrose calls them, kids who grew up in a country in the midst of the depression, who were drafted into the regular army, but who volunteered for the Airborne and were trained to fight as soldiers between 1942 and 1944. The citizen soldiers proved to be better than the army of the Nazis is well documented, but how the citizen army approached the war, is what the book and series end up bringing out. The book starts with the training of the recruits to become paratroopers, leads on to their move to Britain, and thence onto the war – which is divided into a series of battles - starting with the landings, the Holland invasion, the Battle of the Bulge, when the 101^st Airborne was surrounded by the German Army at Bastogne and fought one of the turning point battles of the War. The detailing is quite amazing, especially since Ambrose had to work with the memories of those that went to the war and survived, limited documents especially of key battles and sequences. But as a good historian does, Ambrose has verified and cross verified everything he could and the book has been approved by the Easy Company men that played a part in bringing it out.

The thing that struck a chord was how the US Army, despite its chickenshit bungling, still brought together a committed, talented and motivated set of young men together, who were able to turn the tables on a better equipped and supplied Army. Since the book is at a tactical level, it allows one to understand how a rifle company of the US paratroops worked – the decision making abilities, the fighting capabilities (in which Hitler especially expected his Army to be way better), innovativeness in taking the attack to the enemy, etc. The book is a lovely read, I re read it quite a bit – the series is equally good, with a good cast and a capable production and direction team rendering justice to the content of the book. I would recommend this to anyone who like World War II based non fiction – it is an amazing piece of work.

The Strain..

2010-01-07T08:13:00.000+05:30

Picked up The Strain – a book by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan – yup the same man that made Blade II, the Hellboy movies and Pan Labyrinth. I haven’t seen the last one, but I enjoyed both Blade II and the Hellboy movies. Fast paced, action oriented, but without sacrificing character development and nuances – Blade II actually made you like Blade and you seemed to understand why he does what he does. The same with the Hellboy movies – between them Del Toro and Ron Perlman have made Hellboy a creation that is unmatched in the cinematic universe – the characterisation and the way it has been played by the actor have added strong layers to the character. Anyways, we are not here to discuss Hellboy that is another post, but we are here to discuss The Strain – the book. It came highly recommended from a friend, who despite dubious names like black_talon20002000 being associated with him, has a fairly decent taste in books. I bought it at Landmark in Bangalore for Rs 250 (this is to again drive the point to the friend who shelled out 5x that in Dubai, heh heh, I know he will read this post).

Well, the book grasps you by your balls (apologies to the feminine readers for this very masculine reference, but I needed some emphasis here) from page one and holds it there for long enough. Setup tautly the first 100 odd pages of the book leave you feeling bewildered, wondering what was going to happen next, and yes, it does put you off transatlantic journeys. Set in sometime after the 9/11 attacks, it leads up to a story of the V word – Vampires - a subject which from the treatment of Blade II if I recall is very close to Del Toro’s heart and Hogan and he bring a fanboy like fascination for these mythical creatures. As the first book in the trilogy it works, though after the striking begin, it soon settles down into the usual catch vampire, stick stake in heart, chop of the head with a silver sword or let sunlight fall on it. An attempt has been made to add science to the myth and though it works, it probably needs a lot more to go for it. In any case, the book has been written like a screenplay, so expect to see it hit the theatres soon and hopefully will be directed by Del Toro himself and not some Michael Bay type character, who will probably destroy the book. Based on what I have read, I will buy books two and three when they come out, in fact, I am waiting for them to come out. Think they are far superior to the Harry Putter and Dan Brown kind of crap we associate with best sellers – the book has been well written, well thought out, well edited and though disappointing in parts, will be considered an unputdownable by most people. I would recommend the book for your book shelves, especially if you are the types that likes vampire stories and action thrillers.

On a passing note, I happened rather unfortunately upon a movie by the name of “Border Hindustan Ka” starring the Faisal Khan (the Aamir Khan’s brother) – well, based on the little bit I saw of the movie, I wonder if they are brothers after all – faisal has none of the acting chops or otherwise of Aamir – I remember Mela, where all he had to do was grimly glare at a half dressed heroine most of the time, while Aamir Khan overacted and hammed his way through one of the worst roles he must have played and I thought he was okay. I now realize that all the hamming by Aamir was probably to deflect attention from the capabilities (or lack thereof) of his brother. I would have called him a male Katrina Kaif, except that is not even good looking, which redeems most of Kaif’s performances (this as per sources which track Bollywood a lot more closely than I do)

Quick Gun Murugan..

2009-12-01T23:16:00.001+05:30

Well, we revived our movie watching with QGM on tata showcase, have gone ahead and paid for 12 of them movies and whenever I get the smallest chance of a catching a good movie am latching on to it. This is movie number 2 in close to 7 months, that’s how pathetic the movie selections have been – well, I kinda missed Kaminey but the rest well, were avoidable. Anyways, QGM was on last weekend and the missus and I decided this would be a good time to (a) get one more movie of the damned showcase list and (b) possibly have some fun and joy with the vegetarian cowboy in action. Well, the decision proved to be a good one – the movie is certainly one of the better ones to come out in recent time. Shashanka Ghosh has had a lot of fun making that movie and I think, so did Dr Rajendra Prasad, Rambha and Nasser.

Kewl, much has been written about this movie, so going into the details would be unnecessary.. but a few points which I would love to highlight are:

1. The earth is my bed, the sky is my ceiling, the whole world is my native place and my name is murugan, quick gun murugan. Well, what a line.. that is too cool.

2. There are times when I wonder if Dr Rajendra Prasad wasn’t taking the whole thing a bit too seriously, like he actually believed that it was not a spoof. It does seem unlikely, but there are times when you get that feeling.

3. The stunts were extra cool – especially the coconut grove fight and of course, the shootout on a Mumbai traffic jam.

4. Rowdy MBA, Gunpowder Gang, Rice Plate Reddy, Mango Dolly – well, amazing names in a pretty decent movie.

5. The Anni who seems to be a fantastic mix of Nirupa Roy, the whiny woman who plays Visu’s wife in Samasaram adhu Minsaram and Rakhee from Karan Arjun – the epitome of the cinematic crybaby mom/anni/bhabhi.

6. Simple details like the bullet with the name.

7. The whole yamaloga sequence right now to the dance sequences rehearsals for the apsaras and of course, vinay as C Gupta.. quite cool.

Hmm, in all the movie I think was the right length – 90 odd minutes of fun.. any longer and you would have started to feel that it was stale dosa..

Nasser, Dr Rajendra Prasad were too cool as was the guy who was Rowdy MBA.. Rambha was pretty neat as Mango Dolly.. and the tam-mallu accented English was fun enough. Enough campy bloodshed to satisfy the gore seekers. In all the movie seemed to be wholesome like A1 top class dosa from amma’s hands..

While on movies, I saw another one – an old Arnie movie – Collateral Damage, which released in 2002 (after delaying a 2001 release thanks to 9/11). Has Arnie as a firefighter who loses his wife and child to a Colombian terrorist bomber. A plot with so many holes that even Arnie cant fill them, no punch dialogues for Arnie – there is a scene where he burns up the villain and villainess and he doesn’t even say you are toast or something equivalent.. I did get the feeling that the film makers weren’t clear on whether to make the Colombians victims of American hegemony or make a twist of the a woman bomber, so results in confused character developments.. though there is a nice twist in the tale, it is too late and the story of a new York firefighter single handedly taking on a Colombian rebel army was well, not exactly believable.. but there was 90 odd minutes of blowups and mayhems and that wasn’t too bad as long you didn’t ask too many questions. So Collateral Damage – watch it if there isn’t anything else running on the TV.

Liam Neeson and others like him..

2009-11-19T22:15:00.001+05:30

Kewl, been a while I guess. I missed me too. Have been neck deep in work and at home the brat and seal pup do their best to keep me occupied and I neglected the great god of self aggrandizement – the Blog. So to atone for my sins, I now will have to pray at this altar of the God – ie blogger – a wee bit longer I guess. In any case, the inspiration for this post comes from one of AV Club’s features – the Cult Canon series, which look at cult canons in great detail and the one article which attracted my attention was the one of Darkman. One of those tortured superhero movies or rather since it came out in 1990 and the closest to a tortured superhero you had till then was Christopher Reeve feeling deeply conflicted in his human avatar, the first of the tortured superhero movies. Made by Sam Raimi, who made the blockbusting, Toby Maguire- Kirsten Dunst making, Spidey 1 and 2 movies and the Evil Dead trilogy, it has a significantly tortured hero at its helm, both physically, figuratively and mentally. And that was played by this lanky, tall, weird looking and okay somewhat good looking bozo called Liam Neeson. Who I consider to be amongst the most underrated actors of all time – you see snippets of him and hanker for more – as the evil Ras Al Ghul in Batman Begins, as Godfrey of Ibelin in Kingdom of Heaven, as Rob Roy in Rob Roy, and so on and so forth. I have but seen a few of the man’s movies, but I consider him possibly the best to play roles which require strength without the muscles, or more importantly the world weary, but charismatic and well, capable guy. Few others I know of like that – Chow Yun Fat in his relaunched Crouching Tiger and Bulletproof Monk avatar, Jet Li in his Hero role, Ken Watanabe in Last Samurai and Batman Begins. Well, those are some of the names – it is rarely that you find such an actor in the Indian milieu – one who is capable of donning a commercial role, but making it his own – may Naseeruddin Shah, Anupam Kher and Om Puri will be there, but they are more the out and out character actors, who do commercial cinema for the roti, kapda and makaan reasons. Someone like a Jimmy Shergill maybe in the younger actors is possibly capable of mixing the sublime with the action – watch him in A Wednesday and Yahaan – in both movies, the role he plays is a man of action, but in both he shows his ability to humanize the role in a way where you can relate to him. A Bobby Deol in Tango Charlie was supposed to do the same – ie humanize a man in uniform, but he ended up either being a big, grinning buffoon or a action man with the stoic and stock looks.

Hmm, that was what I found interesting. Anyways, I need to restart a few of my lists. Will think of something useful.

What drew me to F1

2009-08-05T10:35:00.001+05:30

Ah on what drew me to F1 in the first place.. lets say it was circa 1999, autumn in India or rather as you would have it, the monsoons – it was raining and we were well, at home channel surfing – we being moi and moi flatmate (ie the person sharing the flat with me). It was a Sunday evening – around 600 PM I would guess, we chanced upon this strange sport we had heard about but never had seen – F1- in one of the channels, ESPN or Star Sports, I think it was the latter, the merger with ESPN was much later. We saw a red fire engine being driven maniacally by a returned from injury Schumacher, involved in some intricate on track and pit battles with the man in the silver car, Mika Hakkinen and as they say, the thunderbolt happened, and we were hooked. We, in this case, being me and my flatmate (just to reconfirm).

Alas, as life (the bitch) would have it, we no longer chanced upon F1 that year, and the Y2K dawned upon us, fresh from the worries of having the electronic infrastructure, we so take for granted these days, crashing and with it bringing the world as we knew it then to a halt. With the dawn of the new year, we had a fresh F1 year to follow – and that year, well, was a good year to be following F1. Especially if you happened to have taken in and fallen in love with that esoteric red fire engine driven by that fellow from Germany, who well seemed to make the car sing. And well, that year, I followed F1 (note the flatmate did not drop out, just that I moved cities and hence, he was no longer my flatmate) and I became hooked. Along the way, I also chanced upon a site by the name of PlanetF1.com, which had a forum or as it was in those days, a message board. I read the message board, realized that there was more to this sport than the few articles on F1 I had read in Reader’s Digest and in what little I had learned in the few months of following the sport. Reading the writings on the message board was all I did initially, I felt my knowledge of the sport was miniscule compared to some that were on the board (including a few who are on this list now) and well, I kept mum for a while. Then I read up on the sport – realized the M Schumacher was well, capable of invoking either virulent hatred or undying love, but occasionally, as with me a recognition that here was a driver in the mould of the great senna, a competitor who will push the limits, except that MS was doing it in an era which demanded gentlemanly conduct from the drivers. Opposing him that year was the gentlemanly of all drivers, MH, well, if I remember 2000 and 2001 favourably in my memories, it was not only because those two years were the most golden in my work life till date, but also because of the memories associated with F1 and football (that is another mail).

MS and MH dominated those discussions on the board those days – as to who was the better driver (MS in my opinion), who was the more gentlemanly (MH obviously) and who could win in a dog of a car, and who couldn’t. Of course, their teammates – the square jawed DC and the whiny RB, were well mostly dismissed offhand. And that increased my love for this sport even more – the fact of the matter is that in the last 15 years - I still believe that these two years threw up the most phenomenally F1 battle – between MS and MH and that is what finally drew me into following F1. The golden years of F1 were upon us then – we had two upstarts in Kimi R and Fernando A driving a sauber and a minardi respectively. Sauber was affectionately known as Papa Sauber in the media reports for his insistence on running a toddlers’ school in f1 with Kimi R and Nick H (wonder what they will have to say abt Toro Rosso’s Jamie A). those to me remain the golden years of F1. The sport was relatively clean – none of the cockups of today, none of the off track political battles – a cleaner and much more enjoyable sport.

And then it happened – F1 boomed in India and China – a dreary boring season in 2002 was followed by near disaster in 2003 and then 2004 happened and I was pretty much of F1 by then. 2004 and MS’ 5th title went by with little watching by me – the quality of racing seemed to have deteriorated as no one could compete with MS and the fire engines were like dominant. 2005 and 2006 offered the surprise of FA winning the WDC and Renault the WCC – the Ferrari faded, in 2007, even the entry of whizkid aka Lewis Hamilton did not do much to me in terms of watching the sport and 2008, despite LH winning the WDC was a washout. I think I have averaged a race in each of the past 5 years – which is quite bad for a F1 fan.

So that takes me through the F1 tale.

Ice Age 3 and other things..

2009-07-29T22:34:00.002+05:30

These guys at Blue Sky (as do Pixar - correction here you know) know a thing or two about making animated movies for the masses- well, I mean one which can be enjoyed by kids, semi kids, teens, adults et al. So it was that the lounger decided to visit the friendly neighbourhood multiplex after what seemed eons to see a movie – with the missus, brat and seal pup in attendance. The movie was Ice Age 3 – Dawn of the Dinosaurs and the reason was that brat had been a sweetheart and we decided to treat him to a movie over the weekend. So there we were at the multiplex, waiting for what seemed like ages to get into the auditorium – we went in armed with a large bag of popcorn, but nothing much else, but going by the general foodstuffs being carried by the other junta – it seemed quite normal to have atleast four large popcorns, two of those tortilla chippy thingies, a couple of large pepsis for, well, two people. So we stalked into the audi – the seal pup of course being carried by the lounger, the missus taking care of the brat – the work plan for the evening was for the brat to jump and down in his seat in excitement and scream delightedly and dementedly at everything, for the missus to cast an approving or disapproving eye and watch the brat’s antics, for the seal pup to squeal “Sccccaaared” in a high pitched seal wail every time a dino stalked the screen or every time he heard the dino sound and for the lounger to act as escape provider for the seal pup and do the weight training that he refuses to do otherwise. The lounger, in an moment of lucidness, had got the four of us seats which started from the aisle - which meant the lounger and seal pup were seated closest to the aisle, thereby enabling quick exits, while the brat and missus were in the inside two seats. From what I recall, the brat did not move an inch, other than to get some popcorn or French fries to shove into his mouth, the seal pup made up for all of it, squirming like a slippery eel for most of the time and making my as it is aching back, ache even more.

For those that were under the ocean and hence, didn’t have a chance to figure out what Ice Age is all about – it is about a herd consisting of two woolly mammoths (Manny and Ellie), one sabre toothed tiger (Diego), one sloth (Sid) and well, two chipmunky characters (Eddie and George). The first episode dealt with the core motley crew of Manny, Diego and Sid getting together to return a human baby to its herd in the midst of the onset of the Ice Age. Part II – Ice Age 2 – dealt with Manny finding himself a mate – Ellie and realizing that he wasn’t the last mammoth in the world. Part 3 starts with Manny and Ellie expecting their first baby – usual set up scenes of fancy baby play area, and soppy nervous new daddy moments happen. It also sets the background up for the movie – Manny in his urge to feel all new daddyish, lets loose on Sid and Diego. Sid slips down into some cave and comes across three huge eggs, which turn out to be eggs of a dinosaur – three aggro little dinos get out of these eggs and a few minutes are spent on the antics of these tiny, huge fellas. Of course, the fun cant last for long and there is a huge roar – which scared the living daylights out of all the characters in the movie and the seal pup and atleast three other kids in the movie hall. Lounger and seal pup did an extra fast exit – lounged suitably in the lounging area, bought some popcorn and French fries for the missus and the brat and when we entered back, a huge mama dino had whacked the three baby dinos and sid back into the netherworld where all the dinos had retreated to, post Ice Age and of course, our remaining friends enter the cave to get back Sid. The rest of the movie consists of the gang trying to avoid getting eaten by the vegetation or the resident baddie dino, Ruddy, with the help of one eyed weasel that they meet (I forget the name of the character, but it is a mix of the all the supporting hero commandos that have been around in the normal movies) – in any case, the weasel and the gang are more than a match for the baddie dino and bunch of critters who think that they can make a meal of a birthing Ellie. In any case, the movie takes the usual route making it a bit scenic with plenty of action and drama.

So now that the story is out of the way – what was good about the movie. Well, for starts, it works as a movie – I don’t like animated movies in general, and I liked it. The brat loved it, so did the missus and well, the seal pup loved all the non dino parts and even he stopped squirming in a chase sequence reminiscent of one of those fancy fighter chases from Star Wars or one of those numerous air happy movies. The story was not soppy – Ray Romano does a great job of voicing Manny, the central theme mammoth, around him the other actors (do we call them that in this) also do a pretty good job. And they do a good job of setting up each character – so you are not like lost wondering who the f is who. Animation is of course fantastic, these guys really know how to rock. Crisp editing, better than average storyline and screenplay make the movie complete. And you got to hand to these guys for making non soppy great sounding and great feeling animation movies. And as ever, casting does play a key role in these movies – the voice cast is quite fantastic.

That finishes the movie review bit of it – to update the happenings in the theatre – the seal pup and I made the dash to the exit only 3 times – the fellow walks these days, so I didn’t have to carry him for long, just enough to comfort him that the dino wasn’t out to eat him and then we were like fine. In any case, it was an evening show and by the time it ended, both the brat and the seal pup were like sleepy and missus and I were tired but happy. It was a good evening out.

Ah, been away a while..

2009-06-19T00:02:00.001+05:30

Attending to that mistress known as work, to the missus and kids, plus the brain was quite, let me put it this way, not excited by anything happening around me. I mean the usual stuff was happening, Taliban was whipping women, an overhyped Indian cricket team was losing games like it was going out of fashion, Pakistan Chief Dummy..er.. President was as usual making statements about going after the terrorists that his regime was propping up, and so on and so forth. And thence, there came this link in csm-fanaa’s blog about the great institute which is run by the pony tailed wonder. Now, apparently career360, which hopefully is a bigger fish than jammag have gone and done the thing, which makes all legal wannabes in the great institute salivate, ie question the credentials of the wondrous institute which takes on the “great” IIMs. Well, anyways, we know how the circus goes, there will be all hell breaking loose with “judicially notarised” notices being issued left, right and pony tail centre.. Wonder who will get the flak this time around.

Anyways, moving on to something a wee bit more intellectual and well, interesting, I have been reading the book “Fermat’s Last Theorem” by Simon Singh again. Now Simon spins a good tale about science in general – have reach his other book on cryptography, which is equally entertaining and well, accessible. So the whole hoohah is quite interesting and set me thinking about how I fared in mathematics. Now number theory wasn’t certainly my strong point, trigonometry to a certain extent I could get, geometry (simple form) I got, calculus, kewl, that was a friggin’ nightmare and well, algebra, set theory, and all those left me breathless not knowing what to do. Thankfully, there was chemistry to fall back on. Numbers do interest me, I can spend hours before the computer trying to balance the books of my client’s balance sheet or in analyzing and correlating data from different sources. Anyways, the interesting thingy about Andrew Wiles’ proof is that utilised good ol’ 20^th century methods which Fermat couldn’t possibly have discovered. So is there something there which will attract an amateur mathematician to have a go at. Well, I don’t know. But you know what I am trying to read Andrew Wiles’ paper on this – apparently only 10% of the mathematicians in the room when Wiles presented got the concept and it involves stuff about elliptical equations and modular forms and whatever not, sounds like trying to beat mah head with a red hot poker, but hey, I am a wee bit of a masochist.

The other bit of news these days – mainly being touted by the Great Masthead aka Times of India – is that MS Dhoni has become too big for his boots. Well, there you go – firstly, the GM goes ahead and creates a rumour which pisses not just Dhoni but also the team, distracts them from the work at hand, ie playing cricket. Now this guy, is like 28, now give him a friggin’ break - I would like to ask the friggin’ journos what they were doing when they were 28 and if they would be able to take on 10% of the pressure that Dhoni is taking right now. Well, he is probably the best captain that india has had in the recent past and well, though his luck seems to have deserted him recently, he is still a good strategist and tactician, so let’s just give him the time and be done with it. Well, losing to West Indies and England does hurt, but hey atleast they didn’t go out in the round one like Australia did. And their excuse was they didn’t have Hayden and Gilchrist, probably two batsmen who would and could have taken the game away from anyone against them.

So there, am sitting in the auto and listening to “Gungadin” by Jim Croce – go hear it and catch a swig in hell from Gungadin.. Over and out.

IPL 2.0 - the final analysis..

2009-05-30T11:43:00.001+05:30

Kewl, if one had said on April 18 that the finals would have been between Deccan Chargers and the Bangalore Royal Challengers – one would have been considered certifiably insane. In fact, though DC started the tournament as one of the most relaunched of teams, they then relapsed into the losing streak that so characterised IPL 1.0 for them. As for RCB, after the first match, they also seemed to have lapsed back into the same old test team ways. Delhi Daredevils were all conquering, Mumbai Indians seemed to be getting a bit confused, CSK and RR seemed to be the usual motley crew managed by great captains, KXIP were losing steam and KKR had completely lost the plot and it all seemed to indicate that yes, the semis will more or less be along the same lines as last year – ie DD vs RR and CSK vs KXIP. And then a great revival happened, RCB started winning matches and DC also managed to turn around and MI somewhere changed brains and support staff with KKR and they started losing from surefire winning positions and suddenly the semis looked a lot different. KKR staged a revival of sorts defeating CSK in the highest run chase of the tournament and then defeated RR and one started wondering what was happening. Then DD paid the price for keeping one of the most effective strike bowlers out of the attack on the grounds of lack of form and had to meet a marauding Adam Gilchrist, as Kumble showed in the finals, it takes the wiles of an ancient warrior to fell one of the most destructive opening bats ever and DD missed that plot point. Sometimes one wonders if Sehwag captains the same way he plays – with not much of an idea of what it takes. Anyways, for the second year in running, DD despite being a wonderfully balanced team crashed out in the semis. The other semis between CSK and RCB was expected to go the way of CSK and then that guy Manish Pandey and some resolute batting by the rest of RCB won the match for RCB. And voila, you had the surprise finals – the teams which finished rock bottom last year were the ones to clash for the honour of owning that monstrosity also known as the IPL trophy. Mallya uncle salivated and drooled at this – though his so called miracle man wasn’t the South African turned English willow wielder but a deadlier willowy steel framed character who looked as harmless as a rabbit but struck as vengefully and viciously as a rattler roused, one Anil Kumble. The final was nail biting – with RCB batsmen contriving to lose from a winning position. RP Singh looks like a deadly addition to the Indian new ball pair of Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma (though the two of them didn’t have the best of tournaments). If only Anil Kumble was in the striker’s position in the last over – Robin Uthappa for his purported opening batsman and rating as a destructive batsman was about as useful as my grandmom in that final over and one could sense the frustration in Kumble as he saw ball after ball wasted. If not anything as he showed in his bowling, he would have made an effort and that would have counted, but then that is more of an if situation than anything else. So DC won and I slept and based on news reports, I think that was a good decision to take – for the monstrosity of the closing ceremony was apparently as bad as the trophy. Anyways, in the propah blogger fashion, I have my review of all the eight teams and will start with the losers first..

Kolkata Knight Riders – the last games showed what could have been if not for the destructive influences within and without the dressing room. McCullum released from the burden of shouldering the debacle of the team performed to his usual capabilities, Brad Hodge stood up and got counted finally, the smaller Indian players pulled their weight, especially in the win against RR and somehow, the jokers of IPL 2.0 left the shores of SA with their heads held a little higher than it was a fortnight back. The KKR debacle also showed the importance of the captain in the T20 game as much as the performance by Warne, Dhoni and later Gilchrist and Kumble showed. I do wish for the sake of the franchise that the deadwood and destructive influences are removed and the team can return a stronger unit in the next version of this tournament. Rate them a 2/10 on performance, a 8/10 on entertainment value (mostly off the ground) and a 6/10 for attitude (especially towards the end). McCullum as a captain was endearing but weak, except in the end where he broke free and played his normal game, so the captain gets a rating of 1/10.

Mumbai Indians – Had the strongest opening bowling pair in Zaheer Khan and Lasith Malinga. The latter’s horizontal slinging action is as disconcerting to watch as I am sure it is to play - reminds me of Abdul Qadir’s contortions. The former was injured and the bowling lost a bit of its teeth. But what was a disappointment was the performance of two of the eternal batting greats – Jayasuriya and Tendulkar. Tendulkar’s captaincy bore the same uncertainty that his captaincy of India bore and I think it is best that SRT play under another captain than try and do be both the leader and the best batsman of the team. Shaun Pollock last year captained far better than SRT this year did with a weaker team. The batting was the weakness with the fragile middle order never being able to completely pull its weight, except maybe in the match against CSK where Abhishek Nayyar exploded in that Freddie Flintoff over. Rate them a 4/10 on performance, a 3/10 on entertainment value (nothing happening even off the pitch), 4/10 for attitude (a slight loser attitude if you know what I mean). SRT as a captain was not much of a success especially in the latter half of the tournament and I wouldn’t rate him more than 3/10 for that.

King XI Punjab – Well, I don’t know if they finished above RR, but they were the 3^rd worst team in my book. Yuvraj is again not cut out to be a captain – he seems on the ground to be a bit too impetuous. The team badly missed Shaun Marsh at the top of the order and Brett Lee in the bowling department. The defining moment in run up to the semis was when Murali was running webs around Yuvraj with him scratching a 8 of 18 balls, which defined how much of a stranglehold the spinners had on the man. A pretty anonymous performance – slipping from leading the pack for the semis behind DD to end up 5^th or 6^th on the final list. Rate them a 4/10 on performance, 5/10 on entertainment (mostly for Appam Chutiya :D and Preity Zinta), 4/10 for attitude. Yuvraj as a captain was average, I mean he did have a decent team, which he couldn’t get into the semis, so that is where the problem was – a 3/10 in my book.

Rajasthan Royals – Well, again a very motley crew – a scratchy Graeme Smith meant that Yusuf Pathan had to bear the cross of belting the ball across the ground – did get some support from Naman Ojha when he came out to play. Bowling other than Warne was scratchy, though Munaf did try hard. But as usual a very average team punched well above its weight, wonder what Shane Warne does with his team. The Kamran Khan super over was defining – on the one side, the most explosive West Indian batsman in recent times, on the other side a new bowler bowling with the pressure on his and he comes out tops. Compare that with the world’s supposedly wiliest spin bowler, bowling to an average journeyman but very effective blaster and guess who won. Amazing, this guy Warne, am sure he would have made the RR team walk on water with his motivational talk. In the end missed the explosive power that Watson, Smith and Asnodkar provided last year – Watson wasn’t there, Smith was a shadow of his normal self and SA pitches proved to be a bit difficult for Asnodkar. The bowling was disciplined, though it missed the wicket taking abilities of Sohail Tanvir. But Warne and team pretty much dragged themselves to a stage where they were challenging for the semis till atleast the last match. They did have the highest and lowest scores in the tournament and so were quite erratic. Would rate their performance a 5/10 (mainly due to the lack of consistency); a 7/10 on entertainment (Y Pathan in full flow is brutal) and 8/10 for attitude. As a captain Warne did everything expected of him (after IPL 1.0 especially) and that would rate a 8/10.

Chennai Super Kings – the team which had the orange cap holder, lost out because of its sloppy fielding and ineffective bowling. In the semis, I for the first time since I started tracking MS Dhoni (about a year and a half back) noticed tension and stress on his face. He looked a bit lost on how to contain the RCB batsmen who were running away with the match. But till then, the erraticness was mainly due to the bowling and fielding, which were never consistent. Hayden was in full form and so was Raina as they plundered runs at will. The others, Dhoni excluded, were a bit rusty, but it didn’t finally matter much. Murali’s bowling was divine, the way he ran circles around KXIP had to be seen to be believed and man was he something in a T20 match. Rate their performance as a 6/10 (mainly because they lifted their performance when it mattered, except of course in the semis), 7/10 on entertainment (Hayden in full flow is entertaining, as is a smiling assassin Murali in full form), a 6/10 on attitude (fielding left a lot to be desired). As a captain, Dhoni was great, but not as effective as he was last year, but amongst the best nevertheless and gets a 7/10 from me.

Delhi Daredevils – the most amazingly well balanced team, let go of Shikhar Dewan who went on to have an anonymous season in Mumbai Indians, but the top order misfired seriously with both Sehwag and Gambhir looking woefully out of form. Thankfully they have AB De Villiers, Dilshan Tilekaratne as he does occasionally when he bats. Not much of imagination at work, not much of thought, a weaker team would have caved in a long time back but the team was filled with performers and that is what drove them to the semis, but then when they had to lift their game for that one match, they were rendered incapable as they did not have a captain who led from the front. The remaining three did. My rating of them was a 7/10 on performance (you couldn’t fault them much there), 6/10 on entertainment, 6/10 on attitude. On the captaincy front, Sehwag was a failure, and would rate only a 4/10 in my book, he had probably the best team in the tournament and couldn’t get them to the finals and well, leaving out McGrath and claiming that was on account of form, especially when you and your pal are still in the team while scratching around, doesn’t cut much ice.

Royal Challengers Bangalore – well, as the tournament started, they began well, taking apart RR in the first match for the lowest total in IPL 2.0. And the promptly lost the plot – the expensive buy of KP scratching around both as a batsman and as a captain for a while, RCB were well, anonymous. The performers then were the two test bats – Rahul Dravid and Jacques Kallis, the latter had a much better tournament this year than he did last year and well, Dravid showed that it is good to have a wall in the team especially on SA pitches. But the real turnaround happened after KP left and the reins of the team were given to the man – well, you can say a lot of things about Kumble but one thing you cant say about him is that he will not fight – the only one of the Indian bowlers in the nineties who had the whim and vigour to give it as good as he got (in action not words) and who hated to be hit for a six. The man brought in a quiet determination into the team and well, all of the sudden the test team and jokers of the year 2008 were touted as one of the stronger teams – leading the team to 5 straight wins to get them to semis and then bowling tightly around the CSK batsmen, not allowing them to get away with the match, and restricting them to a total which his team could chase. The finals was the revelation – as Kumble brought himself on in the first over and took the wicket of Adam Gilchrist and then Symonds, and kept DC in check especially when they threatened to run away with the match. The man was everywhere.. He deserved to win purely for this, though I don’t think the team did.. Manish Pandey proved to be the discovery of this season, lets hope he does as well in the next one. And the test team of 08 has morphed into the erratic but supremely confident team of 09. Rating on performance would be 7/10, entertainment was 6/10 and attitude was a 7/10. Kumble for his masterful leadership gets a 8/10 – I think only Warne would appreciate what Kumble achieved.

Deccan Chargers – the losers of 08, the team filled with superstars who misfired at every instance, led by a reticent and unsure VVS, morphed into a team which was disciplined, which knew its strengths, which no longer had to depend only on Rohit Sharma to deliver the goods. Gilchrist performed excellently in all his three roles – as captain he motivated his team as could be seen in the finals, as a wicketkeeper he was one of the more effective ones in the tournament, but it was as an opening batsman that he put his stamp on the tournament. The semis - the calculated assault on Nannes and later Sehwag meant that there was no way the team was going to be pressured into a loss. Gibbs was again a revelation – playing well against character – though he had most number of ducks, he also was one of the steadiest bats when DC found themselves in trouble as in the finals- ever watchful. The Symonds without the hair played like he had a point to prove, though with his stalking act on Manish Pandey, showed that old habits do die hard. I don’t know if this was the best team to win the tournament, but they were the most disciplined in playing to their strengths and to that extent deserved their victory. RP Singh was excellent with the ball as was Pragyan Ojha. My rating of the team would be a 7/10 on performance, 7/10 on entertainment and 8/10 on attitude, KKR doesn’t need to look further than DC on how to revive a dead duck team. Gilchrist led as a fine captain, would rate 7/10 in my book.

Overall, T20 did capture the imagination of the crowds – IPL 2.0 was a more balanced match up between the batting and the bowling, and to that extent was a bit less adrenaline driven than IPL 2.0 – may not have been too exciting for the ordinary crowd. But the stand out performances for me were by bowlers – Murali in the CSK-KXIP match, Kumble in the CSK-RCB semis and then in the finals, RP Singh pretty much through the tournament. The batsmen broke free and there were quite a few 25+ run overs but there was never the obscene subjugation of the bowler as in IPL 1.0. The bowlers had a fair chance and the good ones amongst them took them. And it also disproved the great Bhookha Naan’s theory of multiple captains – the teams that did well (except maybe DD), were led by very strong individuals who could carry the team with them and who had the cricketing nous to do the tactical changes on the ground which kept the pressure up on the other team. I expect that T20 will take a lot away from the ODI, but will find it difficult to take away from the Test – the T20 is a skirmish, the ODI a battle, but the test is a war, which tests not just the immediate performance of a team but how it lasts through 5 days, and how the forces are marshaled over that period – the T20 will find it difficult to compete with that. And the captain rules.

Songs I like..(3)

2009-05-11T23:04:00.002+05:30

Well, swinging to other side of the vindhyas for this one – leaving behind hindi songs, I move over to tamil songs for now..Tamil songs have gone through phases – phases where they were crap to phases where they were divine to phases where they are so-so.. As a comparison to hindi songs, which had the golden period in the 50s, 60s and 70s, the Tamil film music has had patches.. the old songs were definitely good – TMS, PB Sreenivos, and before that with Thyagaraja Bhagavathar et al. But I think tamil music in general is defined by two phenomena – two music directors who have no parallel in bollywood – two of the most fantastic creators of pieces of music which are just divine – they have had their off days, but chances are if either of them is scoring the music for your movie, you will probably make your money just on the music album. Yup, we are taking about Illayaraja and A R Rahman, one a seasoned campaigner of many years, the other a young upstart who is now an international phenomenon (thanks to slumdoggie doo). Most of my favourites over the past 20 years have been scored by either one of them, and even the ones which are earlier are scored by Illayaraja more often than not. We have the occasional other songs which I like more for the lyrics than the music, but there, these two dominate my likes of tamil music. So there, we get on with the list – it will be a lot longer as I will try and cram as many songs as possible into this list.. Amongst singers, well, other than the eternal SPB, there are very few in the new singers that I can recognize, of course, the ghastly songs by udit Narayan are of course recognizable – ghastly because the man cannot get his pronunciation right and hence, kills the songs he sings, even the good ones.. like the ones in run, instead of Kaadhal pisaase, you will have kadal pisssase.. making it very funny for a tam listener.. anyways, on with the list now:

Where do I start, the oldest ones first or the new ones first – will talk of the new ones first because they are fresher in the mind – So we start with the newest first..

1. Amma un pillai; Pichaipathiram; Om Sivahom – From the critically acclaimed “Naan Kadavul” by Bala, music by Illayaraja. Very good songs, of course, that they have some lyrical focus helps. Haven’t seen the movie yet but looks like something I should catch when I get the chance.

2. Venmegam penn aga uruvaginal – Well, a song from the movie Yaaradi Nee Mohini, I liked it because after a long time there was a tamil song which had the Mukesh like pathos in it. Well, it piqued moi interest enough to get some googling done – it is picturised on Dhanush and Nayanthara (who is surprisingly fully clad – initial days I guess prior to her record breaking, in terms of sq cm of cloth used days of Billa et al). Well, I still don’t know who wrote the lyrics or who set music to the damned song, but it is a constant listen on my list.

3. Gnabagam Varude, Ovavaru Pookalume, et al – from the ground breaking Cheran movie – Autograph – most of these songs are based on strong situations. Gnabagam Varude especially tugs at the heart strings appropriately and well, Ovavaru Pookalume had the double advantage of being a great song and being picturised on Sneha (who is one of the few tam actresses who can carry of a heavy song and is a good actress to boot). Well written numbers, with good music, has a nice 60s feel to it, which of course, makes it even better.

4. Nadhiye Nadhiye from Rythmn – As a movie I think Rythmn failed quite miserably, but it had the most sparkling set of songs based on the powers – earth, fire, water, air – the water song is what I like the most – has a very good set of lyrics.

5. Kanmani Anbodu Kadhalan Naan from Guna – A weird movie, but with this song it reaches some major philosophical levels. Kamal as the mentally unstable Guna and ____ as his muse, Abhirami lead onto a very beautiful song. Ilayaraja is good, the lyrics are beautiful too.

6. Ninaithellam Nadanvittal from Nenjil Oor Alayam – Sung by PBS and well, a pathos filled number – Muthuraman is the heart patient husband of Devika (methinks) and Kalyan Kumar is the pathos stricken doctor who also happens to be ex flame of Devika. So we have all sorts of permutations and combinations and situations and dip dip dip on who will croak in the end (had it been me, it would have been Devika, with Muthuraman and Kalyan Kumar holding hands and walking into the sunset Brokeback style. Anyways, the song is picturised on Muthuraman with a morose and angst stricken Kalyan Kumar playing a stellar role in the song.

7. Ava Enna Enna from Varanam Aayiram - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xVnk2U2fZY – this song from Gautham Menon’s pathbreaking movie is quite great. Happened by it on the music channels and was hooked immediately – that a gaana paatu can be used to convey anguish beat me and of course, the song picturisation is great with Surya showing that he can dance when he wants to.. the thing I liked about this movie is that quite a bit of storytelling has been in the songs.. two other songs from the movie which I liked were Anal Mele Panithuli picturised on Surya and Divya Spandana and Mundinam Parthene picturised on Surya and Simran. Nice songs you should catch them.

8. Oh Butterfly from Meera – a song which is quite inane but lovely.. and ode from a lovestricken Vikram (voiced by SPB) to a Aiswarya (voiced by Asha Bhonsle, very clipped accent and yeah, the tamil can improve, not as bad as Udit Narayan but well, bad enough), the music is from the maestro and of course that makes up for a lot. I loved this song the first time I heard it and well, I have managed to hunt it down recently again.

9. Lesa Parukkuthu from Vennila Kabadi Kuzhu – the new age cinema of tamland has some very good practitioners of music which reminds one of the Maestro’s days – in this case, I again caught the song because it was running on a music channel and well, sounded sufficiently 80ish for me to catch it.. It is picturised on a rather pretty looking Saranya Mohan – also has a guy whose name I will have to dig out from wikipedia :D :P.. Nice lilt to the music and good lyrics too..

10. Kangal Irandal from Subramaniapuram – A wow song from this movie – heard great reviews of this movie, but the song is lovely as it shows the love blossoming between the hero and heroine (whose names have to be googled by me). A nice Illayarajaish feel to the music – though I am quite sure he didn’t do the music for this movie.

11. Thoza Thoza from Pandavar Bhoomi – don’t exactly remember the movie, though this song sticks more because of the lyrics which reminds me of the fraandship that you collect in orkut.. Anyways, the premise of the song is that a girl and boy can be friends without necessarily being in love, but of course, as the pom in Maine Pyaar Kiya will testify, ek jawaan ladki aur ek jawaan ladka kabhi dost nahin reh sakte hain..

12. Oh Maname Oh Maname from Ullam Ketukeme – I saw this movie on a bus from Tiruchi to Bangalore in 2005. And this song stuck with me as it plays out with the parting of friends after they passed out from college. That always strikes a chord with me.. the parting of friends is always a difficult subject and this song brings out that feeling.

So these are twelve tamil songs.. I do have a few more favourites – the list doesn’t feature any of the songs from Roja, Gentleman, Agni Natchathiram and a few other movies – will have to put out another post for that. Till then adios and muchos gracios.

IPL 2.0

2009-05-07T23:23:00.001+05:30

Kewl, like IPO 1.0 the IPL 2.0 has a garish trophy which looks like the
country represented there should be suing the creators for defamation.
Anyways, having been pulled in by the rather mesmeric performance of two of
the best captains in the last version, this version got some viewing from
me. That it is being held in South Africa, after the Indian Govt rather
rightly (though much to Mr L Modi's chagrin, who couldn't understand how his
beloved tournament could be 2nd to anything else, incl the country's general
elections) refused to guarantee security for the tournament, is one of the
dampeners. But the second thing that has been there, is that the overhype
seems to be slowly killing the golden goose. I started this out as a post in
which I could rank the teams based on performance, kinda like a halftime
assessment. But then the points table of table, shows that there is really
not much to separate the teams - except maybe Delhi, who are leading with a
game in hand and KKR, who are well, the definite wooden spooners with 3
points from 9 games. The others are all so closely stacked that it will be
down to one on one performances - like yesterday where a Rohit Sharma driven
Hyderabad managed to undo Mumbai Indians. It is now that you will see the
men being separated from the boys and my bets are on the men who
outperformed last year - Shane Warne and MS Dhoni - the former a skilled
veteran, the latter one of the most lucky and talismanic captains of India.
It is going to be tough battle - Hayden, Dhoni are striking form at the
right time for Chennai, while Smith coming back to form in the KXIP bashing
is ominous for the other teams.

So I am wondering if I should give in to the urge and convert this post into
a KKR takeoff - but that seems to be the case everywhere. The urge remains
high, as in recent times the only thing that could have competed with the
KKR shenanigans for craziness and humour content was Dubya and he is no
longer there, replaced by that serious fella Obama. Now what do we do for
humour then, we need to turn to people like Buchanan, SRK and others from
KKR. So let me give into the urge and convert this post into a KKR bash (as
they say this would be called behti ganga mein haath dhona).

Kolkata Knight Riders or as they are now known Knight Riders, are currently
wishing that the dark of the night would take them over and hide them from
view. Owned by the biggest star ever to come out of Bollywood (okay one of
the biggest ever), SRK, the team was supposed to be full of josh and well,
high octane levels. Last year in the first match, Brendon McCullum treated
the Bangalore Test team bowlers like they were gully cricketers racking up
158 of 73 balls in the process hitting a humungous number of sixes, which he
has so far failed to replicate in any other form of the game in any other
conditions. KKR as they were then known had a fairly average run finishing
6th of 8 teams but still distinctly better than the Bangalore test team and
the Dukkan Dischargers. Mallya uncle frothed and fumed and changed the
captain, the CEO and bought Kevin Pietersen at an obscene price and then
brought in Robin Uthappa to spice up the middle order. Dukkan changed
captains, making Gilchrist the captain and demoting their local icon, VVS
Laxman, rather quietly. The point to be noted is that there were two India
Fab four in these teams - both removed as captains and replaced by others,
but there was no hoopla, no one trying to justify the decision, or claiming
that it was some strategic benefit. In one case (BRC), it was a temper
tantrum from the owner, but RD was too much of a gentleman to create a noise
out of it, in the other case, VVS was just eased out. But lets look at the
way in which Buchanan and co have gone about easing Dada out - firstly, you
had this rather odd announcement at a press conference that there would be
multiple captains and then, there was much media toing and froing about who
was the captain or who wasn't and then there you were, handing out the cap
to the most malleable guy in the team. McCullum, I think, was in the wrong
place at the wrong time - nothing wrong with him as a cricketer, but I
guess, he is considered by people to be malleable enough to obey the coach's
orders.

Prem Panicker in a recent blogpost on his rediff blog, said that the players
are to blame for not being able to get their act right. The way I view it is
as follows: let's say you have a rifleman platoon - that is 10-12 guys under
the command of a lieutenant - the Lt is the boss, he is the one that is
followed. Now let's assume that there is a major who runs the battalion, who
interferes with the running of the platoon (now the battalion commander is
two levels removed from the platoon leader) and screws around with the
leadership role of the platoon leader by bringing in two more officers of
the same rank into the squad. The squad is not sure who to turn to - there
is not one but multiple commands within the squad and that results in the
operative efficiency of the squad breaking down. Pretty much the same thing
has happened to KKR - no one is sure thanks to Buchanan's shenanigans as to
who is the man in the middle who is in control of the situation. McCullum
neither has the authority nor the respect of his men and what more with the
stupid theory of multiple captains, the coach and the owners have tried to
reduce the importance and the influence that the captain has on the rest of
team. Unlike tennis, unlike football, unlike ice hockey, it is not the
strategist sitting in the backroom who is going to win you your game, but
the tactical commander who is out there in the middle, who can get it
straight. Cricket is a tactical game, it is like a battle that a squad of
riflemen will fight - whether a t20 match, a ODI or a Test - it is minute by
minute tactics which will determine how your team does - Formations don't
matter - theoretical strategies don't matter much - the men in the middle
have to believe in their leader. Which is why cricket teams are never known
by the coaches and the managers but by the captain who leads them.

There has been a serious lack of application by the KKR team and their
support staff in getting things straight. Now as this guy fakeiplblogger
puts - the fact that there are more officials now than players is shocking.
What is the whole idea of selecting a big fat bunch of people just to send
them back home. And again some of the selections have baffled - how do akash
chopra and sanjay bangar classify as t20 players. It is not that KKR don't
have big names - they have Gayle, one of the most explosive batsmen in
recent times, McCullum, about whom not much needs to be said, Ganguly again,
someone about whom not much needs to be said. They have one half of the best
fast bowling attack in the world currently (Ishant Sharma), they have the
world's foxiest spinner, Ajantha Mendis. The real surprise is amongst all
this, the man who seems to have performed reasonably is a dodgy austrailian
by the name of brad hodge and a south African keeper by the name of Morne
Wyk.

It all again boils down to the captaincy issue and that is where if you look
at it - all the other 7 teams have a clear idea of who the captain is and
that person has led by ability (Warne, Gilchrist, Dhoni, Tendulkar) or by
example (Kumble, Sehwag, Yuvraj). Where KKR has lost it is the fact their
captain has neither had the ability nor has been the example for the others
to follow and for that the blame vests not on McCullum but Buchanan and SRK.
In all, it looks so sad to see what is definitely a team with talent lose
the plot so completely. Even the Dukkan Chargers of last year weren't this
bad.

Dhoni and Warne still remain the inspirational captains that they were last
year - though Dhoni has a bit of edge vis-à-vis Warne in terms of ability of
the team - but both have performed really well and I would be betting on
them to make it to the semis and maybe even the finals. Delhi Daredevils
look ominously in form - gambhir has gotten his act right with the last
match against KKR but what is really scary is the fact that their bowling
has been great and McGrath has not played yet. KXIP and MI look a bit edgy
to me - there is more than an even chance that they might not make the
semis. The Deccan Chargers have been the change of the season - a few more
performances like the one yesterday and you are looking at another semi
finalist. My lineup for the semis is CSK vs DC and RR vs DD - resulting in a
repeat of last year's finals.

Why I did not vote..

2009-05-06T09:36:00.001+05:30

Ah, the internet is awash with renditions by people as to why they voted and didn’t vote, so I thought I might as well add to the bedlam and provide my four readers with an insight into the dangerous mind of a cynical Indian. Kewl, in the days gone by, in a vague remembrance of a civics class somewhere (IITM, I think, yes it was, in my second semester there, in an effort to gain some good grades and to chill with one of the good profs in IITM, I had taken that course – that is another post), I was told that all Indians who were not infants, mentally unstable, or absentee were allowed to vote. The textbook definition of infant being less than 21 years old – resulted in much laughing in the class and later, when I reproduced that line faithfully in an exam. I am not an infant (if you thought I was a British teenage dad, hell, no, I aint), I am not mentally unstable (atleast certified by such an institute), I certainly was not absent. So why the fuck didn’t I vote.

Let’s see, firstly I need this piece of parchment (okay not exactly parchment but some piece of plastic) called the voter id, which certifies that I am a citizen of India residing in the ward xyz of the holy motherfucked city of Bengalurru and who has the right to cast his vote and choose as his local representative from Bangalore North (or is it North West, god knows) the honest and criminally clear Shri ABC of the Congress (I), Shri DEF of BJP or Shri IJK Gowda of JD(U). Now I don’t have this piece of plastic – yes there are well intentioned organisations like Tata Tea and their Jaago Re campaign who could have got me this piece of plastic. So hypothetically (I am good engineer) assuming that I had this piece of plastic, would I proceed to the second base, ie would I have hauled by not so insignificant rear end out of house, hunted for the polling booth and then cast my valuable vote in favour of one of the aforementioned individuals. Lets proceed to the next issue..

Finding the godforsaken polling booth, well, it aint like this, I am a citizen of India and I haven’t voted, so can I go vote for the party of my choice at any polling booth – no, nein, nada, nahin, I have to go to local polling booth where my name will be checked against a list of voters (presumably to ensure that I am not masquerading as myself) and if my name is on that list, then I will be allowed to cast my valuable vote. Now I have two problems, (a) why the fuck cant I just vote anywhere, apparently there is a law against that, (b) whats this whole fucking thing with the voters list, I mean I have the id card, don’t I? Okay, so these aren’t insurmountable problems, one can find out where the fucking polling booth is and yes, one can fight an war of attrition against the local bureaucracy and get one’s name included in the voter’s list. So would I have still voted – lets proceed to the third base (now how many bases are there in baseball, eight?)

Let’s take a break and summarise – hypothetical situation, I have the voter id, have managed to identify the polling booth and my name is on the voters list. What next. I stroll into the area in the polling booth (I live in a nice non violent residential area, chances of a booth capturing mission to be underway when I do stroll into the booth is unlikely), I am confronted with having to make a choice. If I recall, the characters I could have voted for hypothetically were C K Jaffer Sharief (Indian National Congress), D B Chandre Gowda (BJP), Surendra Babu (JD(S)), M Tippuvardhan (Bharatiya Praja Paksha), Zafer Mohiuddin (Independent) and V Prasanna Kumar (Independent). None of them the loved ones of the middle class intelligentsia that I am. So what could have motivated me to step out and add to the dismal voter counts. A larger interest in the country’s governance. Over the past few years, I have noticed that irrespective of the condition of the country’s governance, I seemed to be getting better – in all the conclusion I reached was that the country’s governance in the current model of democracy that we have affects my life rather minimally – now if we did have a dic(k)tatorship as our neighbouring country once did, I might worry a bit more about my suffrage rights – right now, to exercise my suffrage will probably increase my sufferage is my conclusion. That in short is the reason why I did not vote. The fact remains that voting for anyone in the gathering of august individuals who were to represent me would have done zot all to my life and again driven by the rather selfish motivation which drives most middle class people, I decided that to vote was not going to result in any serious advantage or disadvantage to me and hence, I did not vote.

That the country doesn’t make it easy for me to exercise my vote is another reason – but that is more of an excuse than a reason.

The Departed

2009-04-21T22:09:00.004+05:30

Ah, I caught another movie – surprise surprise, again a legal one, this time on HBO.. which was screening The Departed on Sun evening.. The missus and I had gotten back after a tiring day out with the brat and seal pup and we were unable to entertain the two anymore and we decided to watch the movie as it happened to be screening on HBO..

First things first, one of things I think about Martin Scorcese is that he got the cast straight – I mean, the cast reads as follows – Jack Nicholson (villain), Matt Damon (two faced evil doing double crossing cop), Leonardo Dicaprio (clean, with bad family background, mole in the villains gang cop), Alec Baldwin (as career cop who is Damon’s slightly blind boss), Martin Sheen (good cop who is the nice mentor to Dicaprio), Mark Wahlberg (weird hairstlyed assistant to good cop Sheen who is also a good cop). So those were the key characters – there is of the obligatory woman in the picture which is otherwise very male centric in Vera Farmiga as the love interest mixed with both Damon and Dicaprio. So those were the actors and well, with that cast even Waterworld will start looking better. To this mix, Martin Scorcese adds a tight story (picked from the HK superhit Infernal Affairs), even tighter screenplay with some very deft editing and some subdued background music and what do you have a blockbuster movie.

The movie parallels the rise of Colin Sullivan (Damon) who is Frank Costello’s (Nicholson) spy in the state police Special Investigative Unit (SIU) with that of Billy Costigan Jr (Dicaprio) who is Queenan (Sheen) and Dignam (Wahlberg) spy in the Costello camp. Colin Sullivan has been chosen by Costello at a young age to join the police force and through his hard work and natural abilities rises quickly to become Staff Sergeant responsible for the SIU. A series of mishaps lead both parties to believe that they have a spy in their ranks – in an ultimate irony, Sullivan has to track himself down, while he tries hard to track down Costigan and through a series of incidents the two end of up dead. So that was briefly the story line.

The performances are amazing – Nicholson is slimy evil oozing and dominating pretty much every frame that he is in, Matt Damon with his rather innocent and at the same time indifferent looks plays the part of the bad cop quite well, Dicaprio is a revelation in his portrayal of a painfully conflicted Costigan (reminds you of Christian Bale in Batman Begins), Sheen as Queenan is adequate in a role which expects him to look rational and well, fatherly and Wahlberg as Dignam was also a revelation – never expected woodface wahlberg to be able to act, but Scorcese does get a performance out of him. The script is tight and has good set of dialogues thrown in. In short, an enjoyable movie, with a simple story made into a greater allegory towards the inherent two facedness of our lives with great performances from the cast. As is the case with movies which have a dark side to them, the woman is the weak link, though provides some insight into the workings of both the Damon and Dicaprio characters. Would recommend it anytime.

Ah, the joys of daddyhood or around the world in 80 clicks..

2009-04-21T22:09:00.003+05:30

Okay, this is the fault of kbpm blame her for it.. Anyways, she has gone and tagged me on the joys of being a dad to ^2 boys – so I gotta go and give five reasons for being happy about being daddy for the 2 – ie seal pup and the brat.. Okay, here goes:

Reason number 5 – the joys of walking into the house at 7 PM and watching the two – ie the brat and the seal pup go crazy with the excitement of seeing their dad – man, I love it. Everytime they go out (during the vacations, as the missus cant possibly stand the choice of being in Bangalore alone with the two while I slave at work), going back home is like a drudgery. Most days these days, they are asleep by the time I get in, but still in the mornings they are quite excited to see me. So there.

Reason number 4 – have you every had a 2 foot tall assistant who did your every bidding, especially when you come back home and there is this seal pup who dutifully walks up to me, holds out his hand and says “Shocks” (for moi socks), which he then 9 out of 10 times dutifully deposits in the washing machine.. Now beat that – he is for the record 1.6 years old.. Duh!

Reason number 3 – their smiles – both the pup and the brat have really beautiful smiles – and when they smile, well, dada’s heart is all molten like butter.. And well, you gotta see it to believe it.

Reason number 2 – they are the fun kids to be with and low maintenance – in that an hour of running around, screaming at the top of their voices is like entertainment for them.. and well, for the seal pup atleast, jumping up and down on my chest is fun enough.. I love it that they love my singing (I don’t love my singing, the missus agrees) and well, they are prompt in falling asleep when I sing to them (even I am, when I sing all of us sleep, much to the dismay of the missus).

Reason number 1 – the mother of the two brats I have – well, the lady who makes most of the things that these two brats do possible – she is the only reason that the brats are with me (of course, the only reason they are here is also because she agreed to carry them around for like the 9 months required :D :P).. and well, she is the one who trains them to be the sweetie pies that they are, keeps me updated on the latest tricks they are upto, translates the seal pup lingo to English, etc etc.. Being dad wouldn’t be half as fun without her.

So on this note, I have think up of someone who is not in this country and who also runs a blog and who I know and who has kids – man, I doubt if I know so many people.. anyways, the passing on of the tag will have to wait, while I figure things out..

Dark Knight

2009-04-08T00:04:00.001+05:30

I saw Dark Knight over the weekend– no, not my usual lawbreaking, DVD pirate style, but actually legally paid for it on TataSky Showcase or whatever it is. I did catch a few reels of it on a flight sometime back. The movie retains the dark edginess to the Batman character that was introduced in Batman Begins – not as tightly wound up as Begins, but it begins to flesh out the inherent confusion in Bruce Wayne’s mind about being Batman. And begins to redefine the way Batman is viewed – even the early day Michael Keaton Batman or the Val Kilmer Batman, though dark were not as tortured as the Christian Bale- Christopher Nolan Batman. And in a huge move away from the usual campy villains and usual multiplicity of villains, we have one BIG villain – the Joker (or as the seal pup refers to him as the Koker :D :P) and Heath Ledger in a posthumous Oscar winning performance embodies the crazy lunacy of the character – every scene that Ledger is in, drips with outright villainy – right from the starting bank robbery piece to the final scenes – a bravado performance matching the vast canvas that the director has used. In fact, the Batman seems to the only unidimensional character in the movie, in that he is as what we expect him to become – more and more tortured, dark and with the weight of having to be the One – as a parallel, part of the problem is that Christian Bale brings with the character the same intensity we expect from him, but a bit like Elijah Wood’s Frodo Baggins in the LOTR movies, I ended up feeling that the actor became too intensely involved in trying to show the inherent contradictions in the character’s heart and forgot to have fun – which Ledger has oodles of by the way. An amazingly terrifying performance by the actor and one, which I doubt he would have matched if he had lived.

Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine are appropriate and propah as Lucius Fox, now the head of Wayne Enterprises and Alfred, the mentor-butler. Maggie Gyllenhal as Rachel Dawes is a significant improvement over Katie Holmes, though the character I think is something which should have been left out completely. Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent was again a revelation – my exposure to this man has primarily been a few scenes I caught of No Reservations and his role as Erin Bronkovich’s biker boyfriend in that movie and the man is completely believable as the slightly off the edge Dent, nicely encompassing the inner conflict between the good and bad in him. Gary Oldman is his usual self as Lieutenant and then Commissioner Gordon. I would agree with most other reviewers that the movie belongs to the Joker – he makes the movie work with his maniacally energy, his edgy violence and of course, the innate ability to terrify.

Christopher and Jonathan Nolan’s story is adequate and well, the CGI is good. The direction, photography and editing are great as with Batman Begins – the fights are still weird, though not as weird as in Batman Begins. The face off between Batman and Joker is brought out quite well and well, the two facedness of Harvey Dent is also quite well brought out. In all, the movie wins critically and from a timepass angle – a long movie yes, but one that doesn’t make you feel the time. Finally, the Batman series has found its home and the Dark Knight returns home – hope that we get some more from Nolan, Bale and Co. A reinterpretation by this lot of the Batman’s battles with the Riddler, Mr Freeze and Penguin sound quite exciting. And I do hope if they do go in for a Robin in the third movie – they get someone better than Chris O Donnell. And yeah, can they remove that growl from the Batman’s voice – very very irritating and distracting.

A movie I would recommend quite strongly for watching. A four star in my book.

PS: the Koker and the TV static are pretty much the only things that seem to scare the living daylights out of the seal pup :D :P

SL Cricket, Pakistan and terrorism..

2009-03-04T22:40:00.000+05:30

The ugly head of terrorism rears again, in the most unexpected of places, though in hindsight, this was an incident waiting to happen – much like the Mumbai attacks. The new age terrorist is advanced and works with the ethic of a finely tuned commando organization with good planning, good espionage and well, excellent implementation skills. The actions of the Mumbai attackers and now the Lahore attackers, bear the hallmark of extensive training along the lines of the commando regiment. It is truly frightening, but it also calls to question the kind of military support the terrorist organizations are now getting. It is extremely unlikely that a bunch of mullahs sitting in the Swat valley can prime a bunch of young men in such city fighting tactics. It calls for a more refined military expertise, which I guess the Pakistani army and the ISI are capable of providing. The training that these set of attackers seem to have gotten in not comparable to what the 1993 Mumbai blast perpetrators got. The scale of the training I think was very different and the whole damned thing is now very very scary.

That the SL cricketers survived I guess is due to the quick thinking of the bus driver, their own luck and of course, as Mahela Jayawardene put their own experience being in a terror torn country where there are instinctive reactions built into you to respond to gunshots and blasts. One of the reasons why CST suffered so much is because not many people ducked or lay down on the floor when the firing began. I certainly wouldn’t, I doubt if I would be able to distinguish a gunshot from a backfire. One of the reasons why I am scared shitless these days. The world as we know is becoming a more dangerous place to live in – I mean you never which brainwashed maniac is waiting with an AK 47 for you in which part of the world.

Amongst the more hilarious reactions from Pakistan, was Hamid Gul, ex chief of the ISI, blaming the Indian spy organization, Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) for the attack. I am amazed that such a remark could emanate from this gentleman who would definitely have a big hand in the cultivation of the terror organizations which attacked Mumbai. I do wish that the RAW had the spine and capability of retaliating with like to like attacks, but unfortunately knowing our pussyfooting politicians, it is unlikely that that organization would be capable of mounting such attacks and even if it did, it would be difficult to imagine the attack being targeted at the SL team, especially since SL and India enjoy fairly decent relationships (not withstanding Vaiko and Kalaignar) and I think, a more suitable target would have been the ISI itself. Anyways, any arguments to the effect that RAW would have done this to prove that Pakistan is unsafe are like bullshit, cos we aren’t the ones that kinda signed off one whole section of our country to a bunch of religious maniacs with AK 47s. Duh!

Of course, Shashank Manohar, the BCCI chairman would have been a relieved man, and well, for once the Indian state seems to have gotten its act straight in not allowing the Indian team to tour Pakistan. I now strongly doubt if any international team would be willing to tour Pakistan and hence, cricket in Pakistan may start declining. That would be unfortunate. Along with India and SL, Pakistan added that necessary uncertainty and manic genius to the game. Pakistan playing a match was like Russian roulette, you never knew when they would implode, alternatively, you were never sure when they would explode either. For most of the nineties with Akram and Waqar Younis operating in tandem, Pakistan terrorized a generation of batsmen. And with characters like Mohammed Yunus, Inzy, Afridi, Malik, Miandad, etc, they also had the batting firepower to well, be world beaters. The Indian team has stabilized very well these days and the Twenty20 loss to NZ seems to have been a couple of days off at the office for the boys, what with the plastering that NZ got in the first ODI. SL have also become a fairly stable team under Atapattu and then Jayawardene. So it was left to Pak to carry the flame of the uncertain manic genius, which they did for a while. Well, now it looks like it will be a while before we see the Pak team in action in Pakistan.

Hope that the SL cricketers and the umpire who was seriously injured recover and can get on with life. Unfortunate incident and really friggin’ scary. It definitely is.

got tagged on this

2009-03-03T22:24:00.000+05:30

The topic is 25 things people may or may not know about me.. And I got tagged by my good friend Devan on Facebook for this.. So here we go.s

1. I have had one accident, which I kept hidden from family for nearly 3 years. My mum didn’t know till 5-6 years later – she nearly killed me for it.

2. I cry, a lot, yes, I know, I am a wuss.

3. I love reading and music, but don’t have time for either these days.

4. I am a football and F1 fan and have favourite teams in both – Manchester United, Real Madrid and Barcelona in football and Ferrari and Mclaren in F1

5. One of my ambitions was to be a writer as in an author. Looks like that will have to wait.

6. I wanted to retire at 30, now the deadline is 40.

7. A favorite theory of mine has to do with death and rebirth at the age of 24. Why 24, don’t ask me.

8. Though an investment banker, my first love in finance still remain risk management and analytics.

9. I had never travelled alone till I was 21 and then I have travelled alone a lot.

10. I am scared of flying – though not one of those paranoid types, I do hate landing and taking off.

11. I eat a lot, used to be known as the “hunger itself” amongst a set of friends.

12. If I remove my spectacles, I might be classified as legally blind.

13. The phrase “My wife and kids” describes my life pretty well.

14. I am yet to get a driving license despite having enrolled for it atleast 4 times.

15. I remain a teetotaler despite having associated with people who can be classified as alcoholics.

16. Not many know that for a guy who cant speak good hindi, I can sing urdu songs.

17. Chemistry used to be a subject that I was good at.

18. I have fear of heights.

19. Despite being 6’3”, I was a rotten basketballer and volleyballer.

20. I spent my 22^nd birthday in the Kharagpur station waiting for a train to Calcutta.

21. I am afraid of dogs – though the missus and the kids love them.

22. I don’t know how to swim.

23. I studied in the same school for 14 years.

24. I did not move out of Madras (Chennai) till I got to my post graduation.

25. I make pretty good scrambled eggs.

Songs I like..(2)

2009-02-12T22:48:00.001+05:30

Ah well, so in the last post we had finished with Mukesh, the great one, in this post I shall dwell upon his contemporary and one of his main competitors – Mohd Rafi. Rafi was a classical musician, with a voice which can best be described as mellifluous – a very soothing voice, but his vocal range was phenomenal giving him the ability to sing a variety of songs. Though most of his famous songs were mostly loverboy songs, he has also sung deeply depressing and sad numbers such as some of the songs in Pyaasa. His repertoire meant that he has sung more songs that Mukesh and though I do love Mukesh, it also means that Mohd Rafi outnumbers Mukesh in my collection (the tape one atleast) – the song count in the WMP is 41 (an update, the mukesh number is 58). Now getting down into my favourites:

1. Jinhe Naaz Hai Hind Par – a deeply depressing number from Pyaasa – Sahir Ludhianvi lyrics are given the deep pathos by the voice of Rafi and that serves to accentuate the utter despondency of the protagonist, who is well, in the typical Guru Dutt fashion was wallowing in misery and was generally the abusing the world in general. I still don’t understand half the friggin’ lyrics which are in pure Urdu, but well, the song kinda is one of those that grabs you by your throat and makes you feel generally depressed.

2. Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaaye – well, the counterpart to the above mentioned song, this one too has lyrics by Sahir Ludhianvi, who seems to have plumbed the depths of depression for this movie. As a song, this one also makes you wonder about the world in general, and picturised in the inimitable Guru Dutt fashion, it sets the tone for how a world weary, depressed hero should behave and sing. An eternal favourite of mine.

3. Sar Jo Chakraye – Again from Pyaasa, in case you are wondering, I love all the songs in Pyaasa and especially this lot, you will see some more in the misc list where the Hemant Kumar numbers of the movie get listed. This song brings to fore the range of Mohd Rafi – you wouldn’t believe it is the same singer singing the three songs listed here. A happy go lucky number picturised on the evergreen Johnny Walker, it is probably one of the few light hearted numbers in an otherwise very heavy movie. Hear it, hum it and well, you can never forget it.

4. Teri Galiyon Mein Rakhenge Kadam – don’t have the slightest of clues of which movie this song is from – but a wonderful song. The prelude to the song makes me want to imagine this song being sung by a young “Satyakam” Dharmendra to an equally young and vibrant Hema Malini but it is eminently likely that it had some other pairing which wouldn’t have struck me. Rafi’s voice once again spans the entire range – a beautiful number. Must do more research to find out which movie it is from.

5. Abhi Na Jaao – Well, sweet song – have no clue on who the actor and actress it was picturised on, but once again the imagination runs riot and thinks about a dapper Jeetendra in white shoes with a flirty Mumtaz in a tight salwar kameez. But likely to some other pair – I am very bad at this you know. Like the song, - it is one of the lighter numbers I have on my laptop and hence, I like it.. Though I must say I heard it first sung a friend at a potential farewell for a colleague. So there.

That closes out the Rafi numbers that I like – again this is my personal preference list and hence, may not include a whole hoard of good rafi songs which I like but not as much as these songs. The next list will be Kishore Kumar and that is a list which might be longer. But till then, adios and muchos gracias.

Songs I like..(1)

2009-02-05T23:20:00.001+05:30

Ah, another list.. this time of songs I like – currently going through a massive tam tam phase in mujik.. So as usual there will be three or maybe even four lists this time around.. In the last 17 years since I started owning a collection of my own music tapes/CDs, my tastes have swung from new hindi (tohfa, mawali, hero varieties) to old hindi (the eternal mukesh, Kishore kumar, mohd rafi, talat mehmood) to Hindustani classical and western classical to rock n roll to semi hard metal to pop to new tamil to old tamil to god knows what. The one area where I didn’t last for long has been carnatic music – was too tone deaf for that. Anyways, here are the four lists that I will make – Western (this is a motley mix of rock n roll, jazz, blues, everything), new hindi (classified as anything after 1980), old hindi (anything before 1980) and tamil songs (a motley mix again here). Where possible I will reference film, music director, but most of the times will be able to nail the singer (most of the times atleast with old hindi). And it aint a ranking, it is just a list of moi favorites, if ever the brat and seal pup decide to wander here in the times to come, they will atleast know what their dad liked to hear. So there, the list begins in earnest now. (Also a relief that I don’t have to post on depressing Rama Sene variety of news, though as usual I do have a massive opinion there).

Start with what is my easiest list to make – the old hindi one. Here I can have 6 sublists – the fav mukesh, mohd rafi, Kishore kumar, geeta dutt, lata/asha and misc (consisting of talat mahmood, manna dey, Hemant kumar and others). Will mostly consist of the rona dona variety of songs, will of course, try to be selective there. Sometime in the future, will try and embed youtube links to these songs. Start with my favourite singer of all time – Mukesh.

Mukesh Songs I like: In general, Mukesh with his nasal and unclassical way of rendering music tended to specialize in the sad lost lover kind of songs. Also his songs used to have heavy duty lyrics – usually with a slightly psychotic twang to them. My song list library in WMP has 37 songs by Mukesh, I am sure I have heard a lot more of them than this, but from this 37, I will draw out 5 that I like the most and why I like them.

1. Tum Agar Mujhko Na – Well, I certainly don’t know which movie, which actor or even which music director. But believe this is one of the most psychotic numbers I have heard – right there with “Run for your life” by the Beatles (try the Rubber Soul album for this number). The song goes – Tum agar mujhko na chaho tho koi baat nahi, par tum kisi aur ko chahoge tho mushkil hogi. Well, why do I like it, it has this nice psychotic twang to it. I like it pretty much only for that first line.

2. Jo Tumko Ho Pasand – Ah for a change I know the actor, the actress on which this song is picturised and the movie in which this song is there. The second of Rajesh Khanna’s innumerable cancer patient roles in a good movie, Safar, this song is well, again a wee bit psychotic – has a very jealous hubby played with much elan and jealousy by a very young and dashing looking Feroze Khan, whose wife is Sharmila Tagore, who in the movie is in addition to being a doctor, a good friend of our dear cancer patient, Rajesh Khanna. FK’s character sings this is a honeymoon ode to ST’s character and has some natty picturisation in hills, fast cars, etc. But in all it is a quite catchy number and of course, very poignant as FK’s character then commits suicide thinking that ST is in love with cancer man RK. But a good hear and Mukesh’s nasal twang suit FK to the T.

3. Chal Ri Sajhni – Again, surprisingly again a song for which I know the actors and the movie – Bambai Ka Babu is the movie, and the actor on whom this song is picturised is the dashing and dapper Dev Anand, who as it goes has the reason to feel down and depressed, as in the movie the lady he loves (played by a bewitching and beautiful Suchitra Sen, the latter day Sens, lose in front of their grandmom) also happens to be the sister of the man he is masquerading as. Now if that confused you, the entire movie is about that. Beautiful song, which a rather morose DA sings as SS sets out with her baraat to get married to someone else. And to top it, DA is at his dashingly villainous best in this movie. The song itself is quite good – Mukesh’s vocals conveying the depths of depression that DA is plunging. A very very nice song and one that I loved in the period of my life when I was plunging the depths of lost love (that is a story that the brat and seal pup will hear much later).

4. Koi Jab Tumhara Hriday Tode – well, what now a hattrick – I know the actor, actress it is picturised on and the movie in which the song comes in. It has Manoj “Mr Bharat” Kumar sings this ode to the western baaad girl Saira Banu, who in the western avatar wears a blonde wig and dresses whose hem line ends somewhere a couple of inches after SB’s hip ends. So MK is singing this ode to her about how his house will be available when some nasty western goon breaks her heart (and in a very subtle undertone her virginity) and abandons her. Well, Mukesh’s vocal suit MK to the tee and the song itself is quite a good number – the lyrics actually are quite good and convey the good samaritaness of MK. Love this number because well, it tugs at your heart strings and makes you feel a bit mushy mushy (nah, not that paki feller).

5. Zuban per dard bhari dastaan – well, we revert to normal with this song. Don’t have a clue about anything about this song other than that Mukesh sung it and well, it is certainly amongst the saddest numbers I have heard. Lyrically a very heavy song, it has Mukesh doing the heavy duty lifting of depressing the depression out of you. I like this song very much because it is one song which picks me up – I plumb the depths of depression listening to this song and there is only one way – up- from there.

A certain erstwhile baseball hated and then later weaved hair man who sings with a nasal twang, which gives one the feeling of being in the same room as someone farting, thinks that he is comparable to Mukesh, well, he is mistaken – he doesn’t come even close to the feelings that Mukesh could evoke with his singing. Mukesh’s nasal twang and unorthodox way of singing contributed quite a bit to adding to the pathos in the situation which is what a lot of his numbers demanded.

NDTV, Barkha and freedom of speech..

2009-01-31T22:43:00.001+05:30

Aha, there we go again, legal notices fly thick and fast as NDTV and the world famous, reporter par excellence, Ms Barkha Dutt, have apparently sent a legal notice to a blogger based in Netherlands called Chetan Kunte (ckunte.wordpress.com), who has in his blog put down a very legally correct sounding apology. Well, one expected this of the manazement guru but from the so called leader of the freedom of speech was well, to be honest, not expected. Ckunte was the only blogger or for that matter commentator to comment on the media excesses during the Mumbai attacks – there were numerous, including myself, who had referenced Ms Dutt based on what one saw on the TV. To be honest, with Ms Dutt shouting herself hoarse during those sixty hours, one could atleast heave a sigh of relief that the cacophony was reduced for the next few days.

Now there was a famous person, who once said, that opinions are like arseholes everyone has one. So would it be right to have a negative opinion about someone or something, I mean people make a livelihood out of opinions – reviewers, journalists, even Ms Dutt herself. I managed to read the google cache of what ckunte had written, nothing as far as I could see, which was well factual in nature. Of course, very vehemently negative opinion about Ms Dutt and NDTV in general but well, nothing I could see in the post which counted as libel. Zee koschin then why do our so called defenders of freedom of speech get well, worked up, at the prospect of some criticism from a blogger. A few people provided some answers – the fact that the blog was quoted in The Hindu (who apparently don’t seem to co-respondents to this libel action), in the NDTV site itself (heh heh, that is a laugh) was probably irked them. How could the MSM which considers the bloggers to be unregulated scum be quoting negative opinions about the high priestess of freedom of speech. Well, I guess that is what did it- now, for a legal disclaimer, this is an opinion which I am entitled to have and not a fact – in fact, I cannot state this as a fact, I can only hypothesize, theorise, conjecture, would be inadmissible as evidence in a court of law, I can also call it hearsay, but I think it would get too diluted with that.

Anyways, this adds to the list of the high and mighty who are so friggin’ insecure about themselves. In my opinion, given the huge negativism around the whole role of the media during the Mumbai attacks, the prudent way out for NDTV and Ms Dutt would have been to keep quiet about the whole thingy, instead of getting all het up about it. Anyways, now they have been classed into the same league as the manazement guru and well, one would think that someone in NDTV might have to grow a ponytail (hehheh, imagine P Roy with a ponytail, har har).

Kewl, I shall have to state that the intention of this post is not to offend anyone of any caste, creed, religion, gender, subcaste, but is to present my OPINION on this matter. Now I know that approx 2.5 people read this blog, am hoping for a lawsuit you know :D :P.. (all one can do I guess).

Next post will be less controversial and will stick to the tried and tested terrain of film reviews/kirkut/daddyhood.

Cricket..

2009-01-13T11:02:00.001+05:30

And the 5 day test in particular, especially the ones that are played these days, seem to be attracting a lot of attention. Finally, the great Australian team which used to steamroll its opposition, so much so that between 2000 and 2008 they had lost 3 test series in all and between 1992 and 2008 they hadn’t lost a series at home at all, is suddenly being beaten by one and all. Okay, New Zealand, Bangladesh, west Indies and Zimbabwe have a lot of work to do – but I think the English, Pakistanis and the Sri Lankans have a very good chance of doing it. India and South Africa have already done it and well, I think will again do it in the next couple of years as Australia rebuild. Exciting times ahead for the people that like 5 day tests. I for one, don’t like 5 day tests, but the recent contests have piqued my interest. When in the space of 3 months, the Aussies are beaten 0-2 by an Indian team in India (okay that is expected) and then are beaten 2-0 by South Africa in Australia (now that is unexpected aint it). And in the last month and a half, 2 of the top five scores ever to be scored by a chasing team in the fourth innings is recorded. And both innings were similar – a blistering start by an opener (Sehwag for India and Graeme Smith for SA), remarkable poise by the middle order (Tendulkar, VVS and Yuvraj for India; AB De Villiers, Amla and Duminy for SA), and voila a target of 387 and then a target of 414 has been chased successfully on day five of the test. Much has been said about the fact that had McGrath and Warne been around, SA wouldn’t have been able to win but I do think that this SA team would have given even the great Aussie team of the early 2000s a run for its money. Similarly the Indian team under Dhoni. Methinks, it finally boils down to leadership – Dhoni and Smith – have provided their teams with a good deal of leading from the front. As Shane Warne proved in the IPL, a good captain and coach combination can extract the best from a team. It remains to be seen if Dhoni builds up on the start, the same with Smith and of course, you would be keen to see if Ponting can live up to the history of Waugh, Taylor and Border. 2009 promises to be an interesting year – I as usual will be following it keenly from the armchair with my armchair opinions based on the measly idea I have of cricket. Interesting times, they are.. and one hopes, I actually manage to watch a test one of these days.

More on cricket in the coming days, as I realized that with cricinfo statsguru, you can produce any kind of analysis that you want. Very very interesting for someone like me who likes to doodle around with data and an excel sheet. So there folks, watch this space.

Timepass - Hindi list

2008-12-27T23:21:00.001+05:30

Don’t as a rule watch too many hindi movies, though some have caught my fancy.. The length of the movies makes it impossible for me to stand watching a movie end to end – the last hindi movie I watched end to end I think was more than a few years back – so I don’t really know how I will be justified in my selections. But there have been movies which have led to that unique phenomenon of being able to sit for 2 odd hours without feeling the time pass.. So the movies in no particular order or ranking are:

1. Sarfarosh – John Mathew Mathan’s take on the Pak sponsored terrorist activity made ACP Rathod a name to reckon with in Indian filmdom. A tight taut script and storyline, with crisp editing and a good lead cast made this a movie to watch. Of course, it was the first movie also to refer to our friends across the border by name as sponsoring terrorism. But a myriad of characters, mostly well etched, Bala Thakur, Sultan, Veeran, Mirchi Seth and of course, in his first positive role at that time as Inspector Salim was Mukesh Rishi. Good movie, with a message, but good tight direction made sure the movie was a success.

2. 16^th December – you had Mani Shankar try and do a John Mathan, not very successfully with 16 December – which had starring roles for pretty much the entire modeling community. We had Danny D as the super India spy (alas an intellectual variety of spying as opposed to the great Sunny Deal’s Hero) with assistants as Milind Sonam, Dippannita Sharma, Aditi Govitrikar and other leading modeling luminaries. It also had sushant singh in the first of his many snarling roles – though he is snarling good man in this. Gulshan Grover is the carlos like villain and of course, there is an irritating boy who reprises the role of jeff goldblum from independence day – ie using some random progam (it is only called program) he hacks into bank accounts, hacks into the nuclear missiles password program, etc etc. One wonders if india’s security were dependent on a 12 year old’s computer skills what would happen to us.. Anyways, was a very nice timepassy movie – don’t just try to use your brains. Though the filmmakers tried very hard to use it too :D :P..

3. Andaz Apna Apna – a movie like this comes once in a while. The older Khans – Aamir and Salman – are cracking as a duo that is wooing a girl who they think is the heir to multi-billion dollars. Add to the kitsch a dad, a twin brother for the dad, a gang leader called gogo (played by the “oo-aa” Shakti Kapoor) and a ajit jr villain side kick and you have a movie which is rip roaring from start to finish. A comedy which nearly reaches the Jane Bhi Do Yaaron levels of satirical comedy and the MMKR (Michael Madana Kama Rajan) levels of slapstick comedy. Yeah, the women ruin it a bit – raveena tandon and the pre raja hindustani karisma kapoor are no match to their male counterparts and even their rather inconsequential roles prove to be the drag in the movie. One wishes there was a urvashi equivalent in hindi movies.

4. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai – Yup, I admit it, I confess, me self acclaimed romantic movie non watcher – I have never seen DDLJ or HAHK – saw this movie and more still liked it. Yup, I saw it cover to cover, end to end, from the starting irritating piece of Kajol – SRK basket ball playing to the last senti scene setting up I thought KKHH II. Well, to give Karan Johar credit, he did manage to get some charm in it, which I think was sadly missing (atleast for me) in his later pieces. SRK was not yet the irritating piece of shit that he has become in most roles which require him to be romantic, Kajol, well, Kajol is Kajol, you end up liking her. So there. This movie also makes it to the list.

5. Sarkar – Okay, I forwarded through all the pieces involving Katrina Kaif and her love story with Aby Baby, but hey I watched most of the movie. Loved it, thought it nearly took RGV back to his Shiva (the old Nagarjuna starrer) days. Well, all I would say is that he took a good piece and ruined it with the Sarkar Raj (which also I watched, if not fast forwarded on a flight). Sarkar is probably the only decent RGV piece to come out in the last few years. And if you don’t mind the gore, it is a lovely timepass piece though. Does get a bit bogged in the middle with all that lovey dovey scenes with AB jr and Kaif, but once that is done and over with, the pace picks up and even though it reminds you of Godfather, it is good. You do like AB Sr in this role.

6. Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron – Saw this years back – the ultimate in satirical comedy with oodles of slapstick in between. The movie is worth it just for the Mahabharata scene alone. The entire cast is just too good to be true. Brilliant Brilliant timepass. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should immediately.

7. Golmaal – the original Amol Palekar- Utpal Dutta starrer and not the latter day hash starring ajay devgun et al. A lovely story based on the tale of a moustache – was too good to be true. Utpal Dutta and Amol Palekar were brilliant as the leads. Should watch the tamil version starring Rajnikanth and Thengai Srinivasan in Amol Palekar’s and Utpal Dutta’s roles. Lovely movie too. And utter timepass.

8. Josh – Yeah yeah, I saw that too – though you cant say SRK and Aishwarya Rai could even be twins. Also starred the wimpy chandrachud singh as the love interest of Aishwarya. Don’t remember much of the movie – though I do remember enough to say that it was timepass enough. Between SRK’s mannerism and Aish’s looks you could well while away a couple of hours without any problems.

9. Sehar – Didn’t watch this one fully – watch this to see Arshad Warsi excel in a serious role. A well thought out movie – gives a good idea of the UP Railway based mafia and the attempts of the Allahabad police led by warsi’s character to break the mafia. Stars Sushant singh in one more of his snarling roles – this one of a ruthless mafia don and also has pankaj kapur as a telecom engineering professor who works with the police in tracking and tapping the mobile calls of the Mafioso. Good movie. And timepass too – caught the movie somewhere at the 45 min mark and was able to watch it through and through.

10. Mohra – another ultimate timepass movie – with Akhay Kumar, Sunil Shetty (now of course he is Suneil Shetty), Raveena Tandon and Naseerudin Shah (in one of his many campy villain roles, I guess he did it to finance his next art movie :D :P). Time pass action thriller – not much to write home about – but timepass it was.

So there – promised a list and though I had to dig hard on this list – as I said I don’t watch too many hindi movies and not many of those that I have seen have stuck to the head. So there..

Antulay, Arundhati Roy and other luminaries..

2008-12-26T11:59:00.001+05:30

It has been an exciting few days – if you are the types that loves to watch votebank politics and the craving for attention by so called intellectuals. We have in the red corner folks, oh, okay, make that the green corner, the one and only, the inimitable, the upholder of truth and justice, the man who walked the talk, the minister with an undefined portfolio (wtf is ministry of minority affairs), the one time extortionist, the now contortionist (with the truth that is), the one who read csm (@csm-fanaa.blogspot.com), the great Shree A R Antulay. In the red corner, yes, this one is quite red, the great, the booker prize winner, the darling of the chatterati, the insufferable, the erudite, the player of words, the intellectual angst consolidator, the great Arundhati Roy.

The two notables have been yapping about the Mumbai incident – one (the eminent minister) sees a saffron plot in the killing of the ATS chief (despite of course, a confession by the said killer), the other believes that the carnage visited upon Mumbai (and Kashmir and other areas) is nothing but karmic retribution for the sins committed by the Indian state. How we suffer such fools, I do not know, but I do know if the said people were in any of our neighbouring countries, they would be (a) very dead, (b) in a gulag in outer Mongolia or (c) both (ie, very dead in a gulag in outer Mongolia). The fact that they aren’t is because this great country called India, has a democracy, which amongst other things confers upon us the right to speech (not as defined by the Dubya US), which says that any tom, dick or harry (not baweja) can speak about anything and get away with it. Of course, it cannot be about our epics or our gods, or our religion – that would get a lot of ants up the pants of people that you may not like to turn up at your doorstep.

So what do we have here – a congress cabinet minister who according to latest reports was purportedly asking who ordered the ATS chief to go to Cama hospital. Well as far as I know, last heard there was a congress government in Maharashtra with a Congress CM – now as far as I can recall the CM presumably can order the ATS chief anywhere – but our dear friend, the minister was of course, keen to link up to the fact that ATS chief was spearheading the Malegaon incident and hence, potentially a saffron plot to eliminate the ATS chief and not as confessed by a Pakisatani terrorist, a premeditated act of terrorism. Well, to answer the honourable minister’s question, nobody I think orders senior police officers in such emergency situations – the top men take their own calls and move where they feel they are needed. And as far as I recall, the incident started at CST and then moved to Cama hospital and at the time the officers were killed the situation at the other three spots was just developing – they just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. What definitely is not coincidence is the fact that three senior officers were in the same jeep at the same time, which I guess any operating protocol should not allow for and secondly, the fact that the ATS chief was wearing his bulletproof jacket at the time of the attack and still died of chest wounds should point the finger towards an understanding of how our police forces had such bad equipment. Instead, in a blatant attempt at votebank politics, we have our eminent minister yapping about a plot to eliminate the ATS chief for the Malegaon incident – now the Malegaon incident is hyped up because it is one instance of Hindutva terrorism as opposed to the run of the mill numerous Islamic fundamentalist terrorism and hence, caught the fancy of our yap-a-minute news media. He ignores the confession of the terrorist caught, is happy to play into our dear neighbour’s hands by proclaiming that part of the Mumbai attack was atleast internal to India – and what more every friggin’ day he is in the front page issuing clarifications, sitting and claiming that he is the biggest patriot because the Cong (I) came into being at his house and so on. My dear minister, patriotism is something your ilk will not recognize if you came face to face with it – patriotism is when you respond to a call of help the country, with insufficient equipment, inefficient support systems, and still be defending the nation. Patriotism is not about loyalty to the Gandhi family – can the Cong atleast now kick this fuckup out of the cabinet and not worry about the minority vote, especially when there is a distinct risk that the majority might vote against you.

Coming to our other notable, Ms Arundhati Roy, the one with the ability with the pen – for once she got back as good as she gave from a serving member of the police force. It is Ms Roy’s fervent belief that any and all crimes committed against the Indian state is on account of the many crimes committed by the Indian state. That is, as an example, the Mumbai attacks by a Pakistan based, Afghan/Punjabi populated and Arab funded group is on account of the atrocities committed by the Indian Army and the state in Kashmir and have nothing to do with trying to destabilize India as a country. Read this http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20081222&fname=ARoy+%28F%29&sid=1&pn=1. I mean is she for real – agreed the chatterati came out howling because it was the Taj and the Oberoi that were targeted and pray tell why it was these places that were targeted – in my opinion, the attack had only one reason – attack India’s foremost city, its financial capital at its heart – the financial district and at a place where the topmost and bottommost in the pyramids of this city meet – so the targets were CST, the Taj and the Oberoi – the former to attack the operational part of the city, the latter to attack the top echelons of the country – imagine if the board of Unilever had been wiped out by the attack – do you think that wouldn’t have affected the country’s economy? To link this to what is happening in Kashmir is being trite – the brains behind the operation have a strategic aim which is not Kashmir, that just provides them with the footsoldiers and the cannon fodder – to the individual terrorist what happened in Kashmir might be a reason, but to the terrorist at the top it is nothing but a tool, a way to convince the individual that what he is doing is right. And removing Kashmir will not take away the cause, if it is not Kashmir, it will be something else, so come Ms Roy, identify what your problem area is – shooting barbs at the Indian state and the army right now may not be the best thing to do.

Kewl, such is the world – anyways, in moi general opinion – had either of these two luminaries been on the other side of the border – they would have lost their lives for their statements – but here, one is a cabinet minister and the other is a well regarded intellectual who will probably get an award or two for her statements. Duh! And we wonder why we never succeed.

About Mumbai..

2008-11-28T00:36:00.001+05:30

Wonder when the phrase the “ispirit of Mumbai” will come out in one of the n TV news channels currently covering the Mumbai siege. Or should we call it war, a war on humanity – for what is this war being waged – is it for holy land, or holy grail or simply because some frustrated mullah sitting somewhere is instigating this in the name of religion. One doesn’t even know why these guys have killed 101 people (at last count) and injured over 340 people (again at last count). All we seem to know is that some unknown entity called the Deccan Mujahideen has claimed responsibility. Are these the same guys who were Indian Mujahideen which claimed responsibility for a few of the blasts that have occurred in the past few years or are they the LET or are they Al-Q or are they SIMI. We don’t know – atleast the press has no clue (which in my humble opinion is a good idea, the less these boogers know the better the police and the authorities can do their work).

The Scenario:

So what do we have as the scenario – we have x terrorists who seem to have come into Mumbai by boat in the middle of the night, armed to their teeth with Heckler & Koch HP5/AK47/56/Uzi machine guns (pick your choice depending on source), grenades, RDX. They have entered into some places in and around south Mumbai – these include the Taj Mahal Hotel, the Oberoi and Trident Hotels, the Nariman House, the Cama Hospital, the CST, the Marine Drive, Metro theatre, Café Leopold and fired indiscriminately with the intention to kill or maim people. When challenged by policemen, the terrorists have run or have been killed. In this, there developed four hotspots – Taj at Apollo Bunder, Oberoi/Trident Hotel at Nariman Point, Nariman House and Cama Hospital where hostage like situations developed.

At Cama Hospital sometime during the night, the terrorists were forced to flee and the hospital was freed.

At the Taj a fire started in the old wing and spread to the new wing – scores of people were stuck including head honchos of some leading companies in India – when last heard the security forces had managed to clear atleast 4 floors of the six in the old wing and freed most of the guests (according to one report, all guests have been freed with only the terrorists in the building right now).

At Oberoi/Trident, a similar situation developed with hostages being sought (preferably british or American according to reports).

At Nariman House, jewish residents have potentially been taken as hostages.

So this where we are – have put down my views on the happening below broadly in three categories – the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

The Good – the Indian security forces:

The reaction of the security forces has been exemplary – despite the complete surprise this attack took the forces by, within a few hours of the first incident, we have had the situation reduced and focused to three locations through some smart police work, good movement by the armed forces and some efficient security work. The action in the first few hours did claim the lives of some of the top brass of the ATS, senior police officials in the region and specialists – but the damage control had begun quickly and effectively, ensuring that most of the terrorists were localized into a few locations. This deserves a good round of applause – the much maligned police force fought back with the limited arms that they had and called in the armed forces once they realized that they were up against a more sophisticated foe – this needs to be applauded again, no bureaucratic bullshit about trying to prove or delay things here, the army, the marine commandos, the NSG all have been called in. The men and women who made that decision need to be applauded. Immediate and immensely powerful reaction – the Indian security forces got their act together and localized the damage – imagine a delay in which more the 2 terrorists escaped into the city – imagine the mayhem it could have been Kandahar ten times over. In all, the men in uniform have once again proved how effective they are despite the shortcomings in their equipment, the political leadership and the general apathy with which the common man treats them. A huge salute to these men and women in the security forces and a prayer to all those that lost their lives in this war so far. While some may say that we should have dealt with it better – given the circumstances the security forces are doing a splendid job. And a special round of applause to the Bombay Fire Service and Hospitals too.

The Bad – the Intelligence and Our Political Leadership:

That a mission this big was launched and implemented without the intelligence forces have even the smallest clue about it. Claims and counterclaims may flow about how certain people warned and did not warn. But the basic issue has been the same – there was zero intelligence on this. Coupled with the fact that if this had been a bunch of enemy commandos who came in this way, we probably could have bid good bye to a large part of Mumbai. That was bad.

Also bad has been the fact that our esteemed high command – the PM and the HM have done jack all – other than of course vehemently condemn the attack and warm the perpetrators that stern action would be taken against them. Bollocks any action would be taken against them – our collective political leadership has the balls of a mule (ie none). Very smart I can hear some of you say, but I cant imagine an attack like this on US soil now – imagine the repercussions (obama or no obama) – iran can bid good bye to being a country (or for that matter being on the map) – but we will have our top leaders shake their heads like the headmaster would at an errant pupil and claim that stern action would be taken. That in my book is bad – I don’t believe for a minute that our intelligence, armed and police forces don’t know who are the people behind these attacks – we lack the political willpower to go for the balls and eradicate this in a manner which the US or Israel would.

The Ugly – Our media and the fact that this happened:

Does our media have any brains or is the incessant need to sensationalise driven all common sense out of these idiots. Can you imagine live images of the police and armed forces lines being telecast on news channels which any self respecting hotel would have on its TVs and of course, on websites. It was disgusting – they got people trapped inside to talk about what was happening, what was the idea let the terrorists know that there are people in the hotel left who they could take as hostages. And of course, repeating the same shit again and again and again and being in general panicky and haphazard about thingies. Our journalists – especially the ones on TV look like they are only keen for the TRPs and not in reporting the news as it is – an ideal situation would be for only press conferences by the security forces to be telecast live, nothing else – come on don’t be a bunch of dickheads and keep discussing which route the security forces will take to attack the terrorists, I mean what are you trying to do – ensure that our security forces get knocked off even before they started?? That was disgusting – and of course, the increased emphasis on the need to show carnage and gore –showing people who have been shot don’t make for good reporting. If anything else, am more than supportive of any government move to kick all these tv channels out and replace them with DD News. Duh!

The fact that 10-15 young men have entered India’s financial capital, amongst the more well policed and defended areas in the city and held two of the city’s landmarks as hostage for close to 24 hours. That is really ugly and scary – this new aspect of terrorism in India – so far the Indian terrorist was either a fanatic intent on blowing himself to kingdom come with a load of innocents or a coward who planted his bombs and ran. But this new face of terrorism is scary – here are a bunch of guys who are willing to take the risk to face the security forces of a country and are willing to hold hostages and more importantly, who can, given our political classes famously incoherent and incompetent approach to negotiations and hostage release, cause immense damage to the country. Today a Mumbai, tomorrow any other city. Makes you think you are in Beirut or someplace like that.

The Really Scary thing:

We don’t know why this is happening or who is doing it – by we, I mean the general public – am sure despite all public appearances of being an incredibly dumb organization, our intelligence bureau has more information on this and hopefully will do something about it (like eradicate it).

The Sad Part:

That 101 innocent people are dead and god knows what.

The Really Frustrating Thing:

The fact that some mullah (or could equally be some pandit or priest) somewhere can brainwash and put fire in the belly of 10-15 men to go kill in the name of religion. Is that what religion is for – to kill others? The ability of people to utilize the urge for revenge to attain personal goals. See or read Black Friday to understand this – understand that Khuda Ke Liye is another such good movie. Today’s attack will be forgotten by all as were the numerous other attacks before this one but we are increasingly becoming a world which is willing to kill at the drop of the hat and for the stupidest reasons. And the blame for that is with us all.. What we can do – I really don’t know.

Legal Disclaimer: All views expressed in the above post are mine and mine alone and this post does not claim to be well informed or a report on the status of the described event. These are opinions expressed based on publicly available reports and I am not a expert on any of the above matters.

Timepass movies..

2008-11-13T09:34:00.001+05:30

What is a timepass movie – a movie which makes time pass, that is, a movie which does not require the viewer to indulge in mental gymnastics and think about the plot, the storyline, the pathos, the irony, the acting abilities, the performance, etc. Most blockbusters are timepass movies – they may be good movies in a critical sense of the word, but the viewing public sees them as good timepass. In the line of actors who excelled in timepass movies is the inestimable Brendan Fraser, along with such lights such as Harrison Ford, Bruce Willis, Arnie, Nicholas Cage, etc. All or some of them have been in critically acclaimed roles, though one cannot pin that charge on either Fraser or Arnie S. So I have compiled here a list of ten movies which I consider to be the ultimate timepass movies (English only, will do a separate Hindi and Tamil list later). In no particular order of importance, the ten movies and why I think they are the best timepass movies I have seen are:

1. Die Hard – got good critical acclaim with reviewers like Roger Ebert digging the movie, Bruce Willis became John Mclane with this movie and to this day and Die Hard IV, he is John Mclane. A fantastic action movie, what I would consider the epitome of a timepass movie, one doesn’t have the time to breathe or take a pee break, the action is relentless and keeps moving. And surprise surprise, has a good cast which acts well and a storyline which actually is reasonable. Loved this one and still love the way Mclane blows them all away.

2. Eraser – a great great timepass movie. Arnie is at his laconic best in this – he had evolved as an actor and realized his one liners probably killed better than them rail guns that keeps this movie’s plot ticking. Fantastic action, great Arnie lines such as shooting a humungous alligator and saying “You are luggage”. Moved fast and easy and is a good timepass watch any day of the week.

3. National Treasure – This is Nicholas Cage goofiness all through, plot holes so huge that the empire state building can fall through it notwithstanding. All it demands is a mind that doesn’t want to think and which is willing to take in the goofiness of the Cage. I doubt if anyone else other than Nicholas Cage could have played this role with such energy and enthusiasm. He is Benjamin Franklin Gates, lunatic archaeologist and adventurer. One that I can sit through anyday again.

4. Indiana Jones – Raiders of the Lost Ark – Brilliant movie. Brilliant movie. Loved it. Still love it and Harrison Ford is Indiana Jones, no matter how many skulls they knock down with. This movie was too good to be true and is one again where the critics and the general junta sat and loved every minute of it. This one is up in my list.

5. The Mummy – Brendan Fraser is the man for this lunatic adventure. Slightly lost the plot with Mummy returns and lost it even more with the Dragon Emperor, but man the first movie in the series rocks. Fraser and Weisz pair up as one of those celluloid couples that are brilliant – the plot holes again notwithstanding, this movie delivers as they say paisa vasool. Good movie to catch if that’s all the TV is showing.

6. Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Fraser again in a movie with plot holes so huge that the earth could fall through with space for the moon and mars but then a timepass movie at its best. Not the best of animation or storylines or screenplay. But it has Fraser play one of his really goofy roles again and well, there is a good looking chick if that interests you. Anyways, better than some of the crap that TV shows most of the days.

7. Terminator II – not one, because that had well, a bit too much of back story thrown in, but II, where Arnie rules supreme. And yes, he will be back in TIII. And what a movie it is. Logic be tossed, it is an action every minute movie which is well worth the money spent on it. Timepass to the core and again one of the them movies which you can watch endlessly.

8. Matrix – Not the II which is more remembered for Monica Bellucci’s cleavage than story. The first in the series, mindblowing logic and well, great acting by Keanu Reeves, he does know how to keep his face immobile. Brilliant starting piece screwed up later by the sequels which kinda lost the plot, but were reasonable timepassers in their own way.

9. Batman Begins – actually, I shd have put down the George Clooney starrer as the timepass movie, but that was really horrible even to be a good timepass movie. Begins did it, story wise a very good movie, but in terms of timepass there with the best. Though critically acclaimed, Chris Nolan’s Batman Begins with Christian Bale as Batman did move at a decent pace and did with good acting by most of the cast. And yes it was good timepass.

10. Broken Arrow – ah that movie which actually starred Christian Slater as a hero, with the man John Travolta as the villain. When have u seen such a lightweight hero against such a heavyweight villain. You will have search hard to get this. But this was actually again a fast paced timepass movie, where one needs to park one’s brain along with the car at the parking lot before watching the movie. But hey before you know it 1.5 hours are gone and that is what a timepass movie is supposed to do. Make time pass.

This list is just ten movies which methinks are good timepass – there are others, some critically acclaimed, some not so critically acclaimed. Is total recall more timepass than these movies. Is fifth element more timepass. Is robin hood – prince of thieves more timepass. Well, all are.. but the above ten were particularly good timepass in the sense that when you are channel surfing and you come across some of these movies, you pause a minute to see whats on and though you know every scene in the movie byheart, you wait a minute and watch whats going on. These movies rock.

The Hindi list is up next..

Flash Fiction

2008-08-23T10:09:00.000+05:30

It was dark. He moved in warily, something made him stumble. He crouched and felt around with his fingers – his fingers found something smooth. He pulled out a matchbox and lit a stick. It was a CD, the kind used 500 years back when things were more advanced than now. He pushed into one of the many pockets that his jacket had and lifted the lit matchstick. He saw that he was in a room which seemed to be a lab or control room of some kind, all sorts of equipment around the place. He saw that there were light switches to the side. He switched the lights on – he now saw that it was the command post of one of the outposts that there were 500 years back, the kind that he had read about in the history books. He saw a player – wondered if it would work, switched it on and found that it did – he inserted the disk and pressed play. A ghostly image – a hologram based on technology now unknown – stepped out and started to say "Captain’s Journal, Earth Date September 10, 3059, we are running out fuel and food. This might be my last entry as I alongwith First Officer Riker wait for the end." The image flickered and died down. Then it restarted, a different image and it said; "First Officer’s Journal, Earth Date September 19, 3059, Captain Pickard died yesterday. I don’t think I have much time left either. They have run us over, those…nooo, aarrrggghhhh!!!!" The image flickered and died down. There was just silence. He smiled. His ancestors had certainly done well - in exterminating those interfering humans. He turned as he heard his name being called. It was Bones calling to him – "Spock, where are you?" He left the control room and went out. The lights continued to burn bright over the remains of the four humans there.

the brat and the seal pup

2008-08-14T10:03:00.001+05:30

The brat and the seal pup are the apples of the missus’ and my eyes. Zem two brats, well, there are those days when we feel like, ahem, taking them to the north pole and leaving them there. but there are also the days when well, we are glad that we have them two and not another them two. Kewl, firstly the physical descriptions – the brat, the elder one, all of to be four years old, and now standing at over 45-46 inches, with the mischievous looks of an idle imp, the guy is boundless energy and damned cute too, long legged right now and will probably be the epitome of that saying “tall, dark and handsome” in some fifteen years and will presumably be breaking many a girl’s heart (he already does) and presumably will also set loose the arms wielding dads of said girls on me, but that is another story. Him of the long legs, impish looks and the bratty innocence of a three year old – he looks big for a four year old. Okay, now onto the seal pup, so named, because I have a photo of him doing the Tom Cruise from Mission Impossible (the arms and legs akimbo spread out position), except for the fact that his third chin and the belly are touching the ground and a friend said he looked like a seal pup, which he come to think of it he does. We have other names we call him namely, le termite and Commander Worf (this is a star trek connection*), but seal pup is what he has now become famous as. So the seal pup is going to turn a year old, he has them triple chins, okay, before the missus slaughters me, he has now two chins, is crawling like it is going out of fashion and like dad believes in shoving anything and everything that comes his way into his mouth, he is also quite vocal exhibiting a range from the squirrel squeal to the seal bark to the deep throated whale calling, he has them all in his repertoire. He is also a mischievous imp, though a wee bit lesser than the big bro, but that is because he cant yet walk – we expect him to also be the kinds that will break girls’ hearts, though right now he is more the cho chweet kinds. He also has two teeth, on the lower jaw, which gives him a rather beautiful and beatific smile, which he turns on the minute he sees me, ie the official carrier (to be fair the mum does a lot more of the carrying as I abscond during the day purportedly working), which melts me stone heart and makes me do the mishtake of carrying him, which is a mishtake ‘cos as I have described in an earlier post, carrying him is the equivalent of carrying a squirming, squealing 10 kg dumbbell without the obvious weight training benefits. Kewl, so much for the physical descriptions – onto their antics.

The brat has been known to do all or some of the below either independently or simultaneously, and with the apparently calculated intent of driving his mum and moi up the wall – pee on the bathroom steps, scribble with ball point pens on the wall paper, scribble with crayons on newly painted walls, refuse to write his alphabets, toss his toys around rather carelessly and/or refuse to sleep at a reasonable hour. Now one may argue that these are normal things that a boy that age is expected to do, but zen the question that missus and I have to deal with all the time is how often is normal and how often is plain unreasonable, we have know him to do all of these in one afternoon repeatedly despite threats, bribes and blackmail and the occasional smack. As regards the seal pup, his antics as of date concern the following – putting anything and everything into his mouth and then trying to crawl away at top speed when either of us try to intervene, demanding to be carried all the time, and whining at the top of his voice when caught in a position from which he cant extricate himself (which is most of the time). Dat was the deal with the bad things – now the good things about them- Food, they eat anything and everything given to them, they positive love veggies, the brat is known to eat carrots, cauliflower, potatoes, tomatoes, a variety of other food ranging from noodles to pasta to rice to chappatis. The seal pup of course loves his milk and now that he can hold his feeding bottle it is even more entertaining for him – the other thing he loves is any food we eat, so last week saw him taste lemon rasam (which had quite a few chillies in it), idlis, chappatis, curd rice and the likes and he does cerelac varieties too. The second good thing about them is that they don’t need much to be entertained – the brat is quite happy running and screaming around the place, even if it is a bit trying on the nerves, the seal pup well needs to only be carried most of the time, but is also most times content to sit by himself and play. They are also very, very unfussy about clothes – as opposed to say the monster that kbpm has, these two never demand colour coordinated clothes (looks like my genes did have an impact too). So there we have the brat and seal pup described in rather great detail – having dredged the depths of the blogosphere, I can probably claim to be the only daddy blog around :D :P.. But then when you do have kids like the brat and the seal pup you do like to write about them. Makes more interesting matter to write about than say the pony tailed shamster running the greatest ~~con job~~ university in India

fatherhood and the travails..

2008-08-12T11:43:00.000+05:30

kewl, not too many fathers around blogging about their varied experience in taking care of the progeny - probably because most indian fathers wouldnt know where to start if they have to take care of a kid, most believe food, tv and a slap occassionally is sufficient to keep a kid occupied.. atleast i used to, till i got moi duo of brats.. then i realised that there was this whole industry behind raising them kids..

firstly, there is the dirty laundry - makes ye wonder doesnt it, on how a brat which weighs all of 3 kilos and kinda fits into your forearm, and drinks all of 125 ml of milk somehow manages to convert all that into 3 litres of pee across 5 nappies and 4 dumps of differing consistency, colour and quantity in 4 other nappies.. all of which get to be washed by yerself or missus when we gets the time.. we did this a long while with the elder one, with the younger one, we decided it was better to boost P&G's bottomline rather screw our backs and hence, he is swaddled in pampers most of the time..

Second, you have the night feeds - horrifying time, the younger brat was a completely undisciplined fellow prone to waking up every three hours to get some milk into that adipose loaded body of his.. now he used to get on my nerves as it was my honour and duty to take over night feeds from missus.. i have fed him occassionally through whichever orifice presented itself (such as the nasal or the aural cavities), or on occassion have managed to feed the pillow, but looking at the feller, i guess i must have gotten something right with them night feeds.. anyways, thankfully for us, both outgrew the night feeds and took to sleeping between 10PM and 5 AM..

Third, you have the night sleeping - the second one is right now approx 1.5 ft tall and he requires a full half of a king plus size bed.. I am 6'3" and weigh 90 odd kgs, i gets one fourth of the aforementioned bed to rest myself on..

Fourth, the carrying - the dad is the official carrier when available and he carries whatever requires carrying the baby, the groceries, the whatever - in our present case, it is mostly the second brat - who looks, weighs and feels approximately like a 10 kg dumbbell.. okay he squirms and has a very cute smile, but that still doesnt take the weight away.. occassionally saddled with the carrying of the elder one.. i can feel a few assorted discs in the back threatening to slip, but I am surviving.. same with the missus, who has a more difficult thing to do - ie manage both the brats during the day..

Will continue this in another post later.. for now these are the first views of a dad on daddyhood.. heheh..

These thinggies

2008-07-29T10:27:00.001+05:30

These thinggies that scare the living daylights out of me..

1. The fact that some random ass will blow up people for the sake of some random being who he considers to be the Supreme Being.. We might end up with a Chuthlu devotee being the next to blow people up.

2. The fact that I live in Bangalore and don’t know which random ass who doesn’t know driving but still drives a Tata Sumo at speeds approaching speed of sound will decide one fine day that someone has lived too long in this earth and will do his damnedest to drive said person into a wall (a physical, not a metaphorical one)..

3. The fact that I run Microsoft Windows XP and that the great evil one (ie MS) will stop support and force me to use that memory sucker called Vista.

4. The fact that I am Dad to two sons – and hence, a few years in the future can imagine all sorts of nonsense such as arms wielding goonda dads of my sons’ girlfriends chasing me in the alleys of Bangalore. And the fact that in case of such a chase, I will last all of 10 metres (I aint like KBPM who I think now can run from Kashmir to Kanyakumari without stopping)

5. The fact that I might accidentally see Mission Istaanbul or Kaaaaaaahhhaaaaannnnniiiiii MMaaahhhaabhaaarratttt Kiiiii or worse still Chitti or whatever is the latest soap starring Radhika

6. The fact that someone from Kazakhstan actually forged and used my ICICI Bank credit card – makes me wonder what these guys are upto in Russia

7. The fact that Mayawati might become the PM even for a few hours – Imagine how many ~~Ambedkar~~Mayawati statues that would mean. Give me Laloo anyday.

8.      The fact that given the price of oil, my car might never be driven
9.      The fact that I might stumble upon a movie starring an ancient Sathyaraj as a college student
10.     The fact that young men die fighting old men’s wars.
11.     The fact that religion no longer commands the respect from me that you would have thought it should. Refer point 1 for this.

12. The fact that after life is just that – after life.
13. The fact that while airline travel might be statistically safe, the fact remains that most plane crashes see no survivors, while most car crashes see a few survivors and the fact that the conditional probability of surviving an air crash approaches zero.

14. The fact that this life is all too short for me to be sitting and worrying about things like the above.

There got it off the chest..

FW: Rating & Slating BIAL - Part II

2008-07-27T23:07:00.001+05:30

Ah, the much delayed part II to the rating and slating of BIAL.

I stopped Part I at entry – checkin. Going further.

The terminal – Checkin – Security

Sad, very sad, this part of the terminal, to be very honest, it is no better than HAL. While they do seem to have a lot more scanners at work, the time taken to get through security has in my opinion atleast not reduced significantly. Part of the problem seems to be same as that in HAL, the fact that you have all of two entry points into the security check area where there is a security guard checking your boarding pass and if you have a tag on. Think they should cut the guard out.

Rating – 4/10

The terminal – Departure lounge

Really sad. Very badly designed – not sufficient sitting space for the passengers the early morning rush hour time, the place resembles a bus station. There are less than forty seats per boarding gate and assuming just 10 flights scheduled to depart in the next hour, you would be looking at seating ~1000 passengers. Don’t think the place has that much space. Badly designed shops – don’t attract me towards them. Lounges are missing, toilets are very difficult to find. And then there of course the fact that despite this being a new terminal and having 5 more aerobridges than HAL, you invariably are being carted in a bus on a guided tour of the tarmac half the time.

Rating – 4/10

The terminal – take off/landing queues

This seems to be the same as in HAL. Not much of a difference I could see there. Not much of delaying on account of queuing for take off or landing.

Rating – 5/10

Overall, I would rate the BIAL as a 5/10 – very average for an international terminal being built by a consortium consisting of some of the leading players in airports and infrastructure. I would definitely continue to support the move to keep HAL open especially for short haul flights.

I loved this site...

2008-07-07T16:58:00.001+05:30

http://www.flyyoufools.com

Hugely entertaining site.. check it out!! very very funny..

BIAL - Rating and Slating - Part I

2008-07-07T09:22:00.000+05:30

Kewl, I have been a major cribber about the BIAL. Having used the damned thing for a few times now, I think I am qualified now to pass judgement on it.

The commute – Not as bad as I thought it would be, though it is still hugely longer in the early hours than it was to the old airport. It took me ~45 min to cover the distance from my house to the airport and I purportedly live close to the airport (Malleshwaram). The drive is comfortable, again at the early hours - I have had to use the airport only early in the morning, so I cant comment about the peak hour traffic, which can be a nightmare in Bangalore. The approach roads are good, the trumpet flyover actually works. In all I would rate this a 7/10 – partly I guess the much maligned BBMP’s work and partly the BIAL’s work. Having to commute to work through what is the main approach from the city to the airport, I can say that this would reduce significantly if I have to commute from inside the city to the airport, given that I leave in the northwestern edge of the city, the commute isn’t that bad for me.

Rating – 7/10

The connectivity – The HAL airport was connected by auto and cab and I think towards the end the BMTC started the Vayu Vajra (Volvo) service from there too. Getting a cab at the airport is not difficult though it is kinda on the expensive side at Rs 15 per km for the ordinary traveller – still cheaper I think than the obscene rates the KSTDC pre paid cabs used to charge at HAL. The other problem I have is the cab is advertised as A/c and the drivers do their damnedest at not having to switch on the A/c or have it right at the minimum – which does result in a steamy ride from the airport to your destination. I have not used the Vayu Vajra services, but from people who have used it, I hear that it is a fairly good service and economical too. I think I should try it out one of these days – it does stop near a bus stand near my place. In all on the connectivity I would rate the place 7/10 – only because it does not allow for autos and the Vayu Vajra is probably the only service for the real benefiters of the low cost airlines – these are the people that can’t afford to pay 1000 bucks to get to the airport.

Rating – 7/10

The terminal : Entry to Checkin – From the outside the approaches are neat and clean and wide – after the chaos at HAL it does feel good to be disembarking within 2 mins of reaching the airport and more importantly not having ungainly traffic jams at the entrance. The multiple entry doors also make life a lot easier and the fact that you don’t have to get your check in bags scanned makes life a lot easier. The checkin counters are well laid out, though nowhere close to the number that you have say in the Mumbai airport – the last time I flew I had to stand in a mile long KF queue, which seemed to be there only because they had 4 flights in half an hour and 3 counters to process close to 600 passengers (or guests as they call them) in. A few more counters per airline I think will help a lot more. There does seem to be tonnes of space which is just that space – where you could put up a couple of more checkin counters and space utilisation is not as good as you would expect in an international terminal. I rate this segment 6/10 – only because the outside compensates a bit for the disappointment that you face inside.

Rating – 6/10

Part II will be out in a few days – just need some time to do it.

IIPM - UGC row..

2008-06-24T09:49:00.003+05:30

Finally somewhere something has clicked and the great management guru (pronounced as manazement guru) has been declared fake.. hang on.. it is just that the UGC has decided to include the very great IIPM in the list of fake univs.. i think that is a great injustice to all the fake univs around the place, after all not all of them claim to be better than the IIMs and to offer an international degree recognised by IMI, Belgium.. kewl, as per the learned counsel that IIPM employs, they are not fake but are unrecognised, apparently because to get recognised by the UGC you would need to disclose your financials, plus if i remember right, to offer graduate and post graduate degree programs you cannot be a company, i dont know what the IIPM's legal status is, but i would bet that it is not a trust or a society.. Anyways, the Delhi HC has apparently asked UGC and IIPM to resolve the matter of court, I am sure the judge was giggling away to glory when he said that :D :P.. because one thing IIPM is not known for is amicable settlement of anything.. remember rashmi bansal and gaurav.. here are a couple of links.. http://www.thehindu.com/2008/06/24/stories/2008062453370400.htm and a link to the post from the hilltop baba which started me out on this..

On IPL..

2008-06-07T10:32:00.000+05:30

When it started, I dismissed it as an overhyped, showpot event – more driven by my dislike for Lalit Modi than because it was a travesty on the game. The first few matches were ignored – the pasting that the Bangalore Royally Challenged had from the Kolkata Knight Riders was cursorily dismissed and the other matches were also ignored. But then as time passed, one kept hearing about how good a certain leggie and a certain wicketkeeper were in marshalling their rather inadequate (as popular opinion had it) squads – the interest levels increased in me – I was wondering, i kept looking at the statistics, I actually watched a match or two. For me, the driving force behind me actually following the IPL were the two captains of the finalists – Warne and Dhoni – one an experienced leggie, probably (again by popular opinion) the best captain that Australia never had and the other the most inspirational captain that an Indian team has had in quite a while. Two contrasting styles of play, two contrasting approaches to the thing at hand, but yeah, one commonality and that was that we believe in our boys (to use the famous Azharuddin word). Where other greats failed – notably Dravid for BRC and Tendulkar for MI – these two succeeded. If at the start of the IPL someone had said that the finals would be between RR and CSK – the world would have laughed at them and said that with the batting firepower than HDC has and the mix that DD and KXP had, who were these two teams. In all, the finals was a game between the two captains and in ended even, neither one triumphing over the other, the smallest of the mistakes (sending kapugedera ahead of badrinath) might have ruined it – but a stunning game nevertheless – the cricketing equivalent if you would have it of a 5 setter between Federer and Rafa on clay court or between McEnroe and Connors – where things went to the end..

Anyways, it was a successful tournament i guess for LM and SP – but i don’t know if the second edition will get any more support from me – cricket never excited me, there was too much of technique in it to excite me.

As things go, everyone and his uncle and dog have a list of best of and worst of IPL – so i join the gang and have my own sweet list.. the disclaimer here being that I barely watched any matches other than a couple where the Dukkan Dischargers were beaten and the finals..

The old stale line up of doing things is now done here – though I am thinking off something different for later:

1. Team of the tournament – Rajasthan Royals – Warne and team creamed just about any and every team that came their way (except maybe KXP with Marsh and Yuvraj going nuts) – not a single team was able to beat them twice – and also made CSK their bunny by beating them thrice. Runner up – CSK – who made KXP their bunnies, also for the way Dhoni marshalled his resources after the big bangers left.

2. Captain of the Tournament – Jointly to the captains of the finalists – Warne and Dhoni – the former for taking a team full of unknowns and making world beaters out of the them and the latter for just being a great captain.

3. Match of the Tournament – quite a few contenders for this – but i think I can chose the last three games – the semis and the finals – for the way these games were played. A clinical, if clean demolition of the losing semi finalists by the winners and the final which was quite nail biting.

4. Players of the tournament – I would go for Marsh and Tanvir – both of whom revealed quite a bit to the world in general and their respective cricket boards in particular.

And leading on the duds:

1. Worst team – a tie between BRC and the HDC – both of whom had big names and bigger purses and still couldn’t make it count. HDC were horrendous as their bowlers could barely defend any target and BRC were sad because their batsmen could barely set any targets.

2. Worst captain – Without a doubt, Harbhajan – MI started winning once Pollock took over the captaincy.

3. Worst player – for non cricketing reasons – Harbhajan. For cricketing reasons – Afridi and Gibbs.

4. Worst non cricketer – Mallya uncle for basically behaving like my son does when things don’t go his way.

And that cover the this little piece on the IPL.

tag one

2008-06-05T17:02:00.003+05:30

So kenny has gone ahead and tagged everyone that reads her blog on the following tags.. given that i am one of the unfortunate readers there and given that no one ever tags me, forget tag, even reads my blog, i thought i will use this as a god sent opportunity to just inflict this upon myself (heh heh, i am father to two boys, so I yam masochistic)..

tag one:

Procedure:The following is apparently a list of books, "most of them sitting unread in people's bookshelves to make them look smarter". The rules are: bold the ones that you have read, underline the ones you have read in school, italicize the ones you have started but didn't finish.
One doubt. School = high school and earlier, or in the American sense, college? We will assume former. (Says Ludwig, and so do I)

I have quite a few books on my shelf which i havent managed to finish - though i doubt if there are many of those in this list.. anyways, here goes the game..

1. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
2. Anna Karenina
3. Crime and Punishment (started it but halfway through started to search for an axe to kill at old woman with, so I stopped it there, too psychotic).
4. Catch-22
5. One Hundred Years of Solitude (I think!)
6. Wuthering Heights
7. The Silmarillion
8. Life of Pi: a novel
9. The Name of the Rose
10. Don Quixote
11. Moby Dick
12. Ulysses
13. Madame Bovary
14. The Odyssey
15. Pride and Prejudice
16. Jane Eyre
17. The Tale of Two Cities
18. The Brothers Karamazov
19. Guns, Germs and Steel
20. War and Peace
21. Vanity Fair
22. The Time Traveler's Wife
23. The Iliad
24. Emma
25. The Blind Assasin
26. The Kite Runner
27. Mrs. Dalloway
28. Great Expectations
29. American Gods
30. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
31. Atlas Shrugged
32. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
33. Memoirs of a Geisha
34. Middlesex
35. Quicksilver
36. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
37. The Canterbury Tales
38. The Historian: A Novel
39. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
40. Love in the Time of Cholera
41. Brave New World
42. The Fountainhead (have not read this, but am unable to format this)
43. Foucault's Pendulum
44. Middlemarch
45. Frankenstein
46. The Count of Monte Cristo
47. Dracula
48. A Clockwork Orange
49. Anansi Boys
50. The Once and Future King
51. The Grapes of Wrath
52. The Poisonwood Bible
53. 1984
54. Angels and Demons
55. Inferno
56. The Satanic Verses
57. Sense and Sensibility
58. The Picture of Dorian Gray
59. Mansfield Park
60. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
61. To the Lighthouse
62. Tess of the D'Urbervilles
63. Oliver Twist
64. Gulliver's Travels
65. Les Miserables
66. The Correction
67. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
68. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
69. Dune
70. The Prince
71. The Sound and the Fury
72. Angela's Ashes: A Memoir
73. The God of Small Things
74. A People's History of the United States: 1492-present
75. Cryptonomicon
76. Neverwhere
77. A Confederacy of Dunces
78. A Short History of Nearly Everything
79. Dubliners
80. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
81. Beloved
82. Slaughter House- five
83. The Scarlett Letter
84. Eats Shoots and Leaves
85. The Mists of Avalon
86. Oryx and Crake8
87. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
88. Cloud Atlas
89. The Confusion
90. Lolita
91. Persuasion
92. Northanger Abbey
93. The Catcher in the Rye
94. On the Road
95. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
96. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
97. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Enquiry into Values
98. The Aeneid
99. Watership Down
100. Gravity's Rainbow
101. The Hobbit
102. In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences
103. White Teeth
104. Treasure Island
105. David Copperfield
106. The Three Musketeers

well, thats that.. the other tag requires for a book with > 123 pages to be lying around the place and I dont have such a book with me.. will be on it tomorrow..

and I tag the guthikonda at raindrops

today's what trolled in rediff..

2008-05-22T12:29:00.002+05:30

check the comments out.. http://www.rediff.com/movies/2008/may/21sonal.htm

i love the first comment - she must have provoked him - wow - i dont think this fup shd be allowed anywhere close to a woman..

BIAL and other rants..

2008-05-22T12:27:00.000+05:30

Or as I would like to call it, Bail, by the government to the shareholders or co promoters of this venture. The issues I have with the airport have nothing to do with the distance to the airport, etc etc, those were bad planning issues. The main issue I have with the BIAL and the other airport privatisations is User Development Fee (UDF) – a monopoly situation exists for these airports – there is no competition in a 150 km radius, which means a passenger has to use the airport whether or not the airport is efficient, effective, or plain good. A situation which exists in most airports in India today – but nowhere do you have a domestic passenger have to pay as much as Rs 675 or close to 20% of the total fare for a short haul passenger – a BLR-MAA flight costs around Rs 2.5-3K even in a KF or Jet – why would someone want to pay 675 bucks extra – that is more than the Shatabdhi cost of a ticket and given the rather convenient locations of the station in both Bangalore and Chennai it will make more sense to do morning evenings with the shatabdhi than go through this whole nonsense of flying from BIAL and fork out Rs 675. I think it is unfair on the travelling passengers and I believe we will see a significant reduction in the passenger volumes on the short haul flights. Atleast I will not fly unless there is no alternative or there is an urgency especially if I have to go to Chennai or adjoining places – the trains and buses seem far more comfortable and convenient, not to mention cheaper.

About the road connectivity the less said the better, Bangalore could have planned life a lot better if there was a wee bit more focus on the town planning aspect – of course, that is a bit too much to expect from the Dharam Singh led Cong and papa G led JDU combine and even more so for the ill fated HDK JDU- Yeddy BJP combine. To know that rail connectivity could be established far more economically than the overexpensive Metro link and not implement it is criminal, to know even two years back that the airport would be ready by 2008 and not have started work on the roads is even more criminal. And most criminal is the BBMP coming out with those fancy plans of putting up underpasses in three days and not have them ready for 30 days.. in all the urban planning department of Bangalore needs a solid thwack on their head.

Nothing Frivolous. Only Serious: cricket.com - Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

2008-04-22T16:05:00.000+05:30

Nothing Frivolous. Only Serious: cricket.com - Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

read this.. and now you know why i dont watch ipl..

today's exotic trolls in rediff

2008-04-22T15:50:00.002+05:30

My my my.. this rediff is some place - the kind of trolls it attracts are like phenomenal.. check the comments in this article on jothikumaran's bribery deal (will have a separate post on that later).. http://www.rediff.com/sports/2008/apr/22hock.htm.. where do these clowns troll in from.. or is it that there is someone in rediff who does this as a job to keep making it look like there is commenting action on their articles.. heheh..

here we go again..(3)

2008-04-08T14:07:00.002+05:30

Today's rediff has provided a rich haul of events..

1. BCCI, the leading newspapers, the leading cricket websites (their words, not mine) - rediff.com and cricinfo.com and the news agencies and the saga of the IPL photos. Me thinks the BCCI needs to check itself into a nice neat room in NIMHANS (thats the local Bangalore mental shop) and get some serious mental eval done for themselves. I mean, can you imagine the gall, here is a stupid kirkuting adventure called IPL, which has been massively overadvertised, imagine a boycott by all news agencies (the power of the media), not to mention the online media and TV, imagine what would happen then.. these fellows need to understand there is a give and take - i dont suppose we will all die if there were no news on the TOI abt the IPL, i think the TOI can find enough scantily clad women/models to compensate for the lack of IPL news. the only mags which may get affected are the serious cricket based mags, but then they also have enough other action from around the world. As usual, the BCCI is short sighted and chopping its own feet off, for the IPL to succeed and have anywhere close to the power that an EPL or a La Liga has would be ensure that press are allowed as much access to the matches as possible.. and here these coots are trying to curtail access (presumably to ensure that the unnamed American company to whom they have sold the website rights, can make some money)..

2. KRV and KSH - thats Karnataka Rakshana Vedike and Karnataka Sahithya Parishath - have both demanded that the superistar apologise for his comments against Karnataka.. the super-is-star, i am sure is now repenting that he opened his mouth at all, as opposed to his more diplomatic counterpart, K Hassan. Anyways, we have the KRV and KSH as usual claiming to be to sole and authoritative representatives of the Kannadigas (whats with this whole thinggy of being the sole and authoritative representative) and jumping up and down and doing things like stopping screening of tamil movies, banning rajni movies (like he will be bankrupted if his movies dont run in Karnataka), banning him from entering Karnataka (now this is something i would like them to try - remember Rajni was a man who at one time brought a government down to dust with just his words). Not that i am supporting the man, but hell, he is a private person entitled to his opinion and who ejjactly are these clowns demanding an apology for expressing his opinions. Yai am just thankful that this blog is not too well read :D :P..

here we go again.. (2)

2008-04-08T12:44:00.002+05:30

aha, the Universal Society of Hindus - that esteemed organisation headed by Ranjan Zed (what a name, what a name!), has protested against the latest Mike Meyers movie - the Love Guru - which apparently has been using the word Guru rather loosely and has offended the sentiments of the third largest religion in the world, the sole and authoritative representative of whom is the Universal Society of Hindus, led by aforementioned Mr Zed (why not Mr Why). Said Mr Zed, to esteemed online epitome of journalism, rediff.com:"From the information available about the movie, it appears to be lampooning Hinduism and Hindus and using Hindu terms frivolously," says Zed, right. "Guru is a highly revered spiritual teacher/master/preceptor in Hinduism who helps remove the ignorance of the seeker and who leads one from darkness to light. The guru-sishya (teacher-disciple) relationship lies at the heart of traditional Hinduism. Guru is often associated with the divine. Guru imparts spiritual knowledge completely free from selfish motives." (link to article : http://www.rediff.com/movies/2008/apr/07ajp.htm). Now a question for Mr Zed, the sole and authoritative representative of the religion known as Hinduism, presumably he will take offense to the fact that there are management gurus - most notably one Mr Arindam Chaudhury, claims to be a Guru - i suggest Mr Zed expend some energy towards acting and protesting agains our dear friend referring himself to as guru of any form or fashion, then there are assorted cricket and sports gurus, not to mention the political gurus (of the Chandraswami variety), we also have some of the more (s)exciting gurus, whose sole claim to fame is their other activities in life, while presumably imparting knowledge of the divine. Now I am a hindu (not a particularly orthodox or god fearing one, but one that thinks he is a decent hindu). As far as i know, Hinduism is the only religion which happily poked fun at its gods (think of some of the stories of Indra's escapades, can you imagine something similar happening in Christianity or Islam) and then we have these Universal Society varieties (not to mention our home grown VHP, Bajrang Dal varieties) which tarnish the name of the religion.. As Dr Deepak Chopra (i think i like this guy, i may not like his fundas or gyan, but he has good attitude) says, is our religion so weak that we cannot take a few comic turns and jibes.. duh!

here we go again..

2008-04-02T10:16:00.002+05:30

Ah, the wonderful news of cauvery has hit bungledurru again - in the midst of much required need for infrastructure, we have a bunch of idiots protesting some weird decision of TN - the usual suspects have all lined up, the KRV, assorted Kannada protectionists and they have done the usual - banned tamil channels and movies from running in the city.. Sometimes i wonder why we need an external enemy to take us apart, given the number of enemies we seem to have internally.. there is our dear friend, Raj Tacks and his uncle Bal Tacks, with their oust the north indians campaign in mumbai, there are our KRV and assorted friends in bungledurru with their oust Tamils move, not to mention, the dark glass wearing Kalaignar with his oust anything and everything that is not Tam in TN.. whats with this friggin' xenophobia - arent we all indians, how can we sit and crib abt being maltreated or being treated badly in other countries, when within one's own country you dont get respect.. Duh! and we wonder why we dont ever grow..
Now there isnt a single rally to protest the fact that there is a international airport on one end of the city with most of the commuting population in the other end, with no sign of any improved infrastructure to take care of the chaos, but there are rallies and protests against some random move of the TN state government which may or may not actually affect the water consumption in this state - do any of the clowns participating in these protests actually know what they are protesting against? duh!

today's what trolled in at rediff..

2008-04-01T09:45:00.001+05:30

an article on superman.. check the erudite comments on ntr and rajkumar.. http://www.rediff.com/movies/2008/mar/31look.htm
where does rediff find these clowns..

Michael Clayton and National Treasure II

2008-02-29T14:55:00.000+05:30

George Clooney has developed into a real good actor – one who has an ability to underplay his role, look the part be it that of a conman in the ocean movies, a slightly hassled but supportive editor in “good night, good luck” – the only role which i thought was beyond him, though he did try gamely, was the batman in batman and robin, but then i blame that on a disastrous casting decision than on him.. from playing the slightly complicated but flirty doc in ER to playing Michael Clayton, in his latest, he has come a long way – in a career now filled with gems, I believe, Michael Clayton is the crowning jewel. Who is Michael Clayton, asks Karen Crowder, the chief counsel of U/North, Kenneth, Lederer and Bach’s, main client, one who Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson) has spent his lifetime and a million billable hours defending.. and that is a question that I was forced to ask, as I watched Clooney become Clayton.. is he a fixer, a miracle worker, a father, a brother, a good friend, a good man, a bent one, a bad one or as he calls himself, a janitor? In terms of a character, Tony Gilroy (writer of the Bourne movies) has written a brilliantly layered character – but it would have been nothing without someone like a Clooney to give it the depth and the angst, which you sense not through over the top performances but subtle shifts in those sparkling eyes, in slight twitches or tightening of the lips, in a hint here, a hint there. Clooney’s best performance is what all have to say – and I would agree. He is brilliant and he is Michael Clayton – a movie which made me forgo sleep on an overnight flight and made me watch..

Clooney is Michael Clayton, a fixer for his firm, a miracle worker if his colleagues are to be believed, he is the man everyone turns to when any of the firm’s clients are in trouble, hit and runs, marital discord, shoplifting, etc etc, he has the ability to fix them all – but he is more than that, he is a father to a precocious young son, a brother to a troubled younger brother, a friend to Arthur in his hour of need and above all he is a good man.. The story is simple, yet the way it is executed makes you go edge of the seat mostly, the direction is superb, with the story layering in, though you could almost guess each move.. and the casting directors need a round of applause for the superb cast – Clooney as Clayton, Sydney Pollack as his boss and head of the firm, Marty Bach; Tilda Swinton as Karen Crowder; Tom Wilkinson as Arthur Edens. Each character a study in itself. The movie is itself layered, U/North is an unseen villain, no sign of the over the top villainy.. the only unbelievable portion seemed to be hiring of the ruthless killers, but then i live in a country where a whistle blower was shot dead and hence, think it not implausible that to save 3 B USD a corporate honcho would not use henchmen to take care of a prickly thing.. The last ten minutes of the movie are what blow you – that is what you shd watch this movie for..

Moving from Michael Clayton, onto a movie which is chalk to clayton’s cheese.. National Treasure II – Book of Secrets.. Nick Cage, that oh so wonderful explorer, Benjamin Franklin Gates is back on his lunatic adventures – this time chasing a hidden gold city.. from a piece of his great grandfather’s diary – expect the usual lunacy, here he kidnaps the President, walks into the Oval office, walks into the Buckingham palace, flies model choppers near the Eiffel tower, flies to any and every other country at the drop of the hat, and generally goes on about doing his Indiana Jones in the 21^st century imitation.. Now Nick cage is a good goofy guy in this role, he plays it with the kind of school boy enthusiasm and the irreverence that the role demands.. Jon Voight, Helen Mirren and Diane Kruger complete the lot.. the one that sticks out like a sore thumb is Ed Harris is a loser of a role – one cannot understand the need for him in this whole thingy and his logic for doing what he is doing is even weirder.. A good fun movie to watch, just park your brains out and don’t for heaven’s sake think abt the logic in this movie.. Not as much fun as NT 1 but definitely better than some of the other so called adventure movies out there.. Have fun with it..

My new shoes..

2008-02-28T15:40:00.001+05:30

Bought a pair of new shoes – the old hush puppies I had, suffered much under me (what with bearing my weight and my phenomenal negligence at maintaining shoes).. they gave up the ghost is a rather weird fashion, their soles broke.. am I the Devil, if I can cause shoes to lose their soles.. Anyways, coming back to our story, I bought myself a pair of new oxfords, sleek ones, looks very shiny and bright.. have been wearing them for all of yesterday (okay most of) and all of today. The shoe bite is painful, the shoes are making a rather determined effort to separate my great toes from me, and I am kind of attached to those two toes, they are after all the only great toes that I have with me as of now.. and would hate to lose them, unless someone out there wants to give me some replacements.. thought this would make an interesting post, rereading it realise that it isn’t a great post.. so will bid adios and slink away into my lair to wait and watch..

aha.. this man is the sudanese ambassador..

2007-12-13T14:07:00.000+05:30

Omer Mohammed Ahmed Siddig is his name.. please note the second moniker.. said moniker is the name of a prophet.. i demand that this man be beheaded for this sacrilege..

Curse of the Golden Flower and Apocalypto..

2007-11-28T22:21:00.000+05:30

Or as the title should have otherwise read "Gong Li's Cleavage in Golden Attire with a Still Chow Yun Fat".. the master seems to be losing his art.. or so it seems.. Zhang Yimou's latest offering is so very different from his past offerings that one wonders what is it that he is upto.. reunited with his one time wife (i think) and muse, Gong Li, much was expected of the master.. but a visually stunning movie has nothing much else to offer.. Palace intrigue, intriguing bosoms, bosom buddies, buddies lost and lost wives.. and the tale goes on.. The Curse of the Golden Flower is focused on just the happenings in the royal family of China at the time of the Chrysanthemum Festival - the king, the second wife and three sons - two step and one own are the characters are play.. It took me a while to figure things out.. the usual Yimou requirements - fantastic colours, phenomenally choreographed fight sequences, good, tight cinematography and editing were all on show.. the one thing that seemed missing was a heart - the story and the whys and wherefores - in the Hero, you cared for the characters be it Nameless, the King, Flying Snow, Broken Sword - you worried about them, you wondered what was the story, you were interested in the movie.. In Curse, frankly you give a damn - it is all very pretty, but no one cares if the Queen (Gong Li) has to drink a medicine which the King (Chow Yun Fat) has made for her and which contains a poisonous black fungus which is slowly making her lose her mind.. we dont care about Jie the second son or for that matter the first son and his antics with the doctor's daughter or for the fact that there is an incestuous relationship with his step mother.. the evil seeps is depicted by the youngest killing the eldest and laying claim to the throne.. but for what? One is at a loss.. One doesnt know if the master has lost his art..

House of Flying Daggers had a few open ends, but one cared a bit for the characters and one could understand what was happening.. here one is at a loss. Watch it if you are a Yimou fan, avoid if it is your first Yimou movie and avoid if you are a Chow Yun Fat fan.. CYF's stillness in Crouching Tiger, denoted a weary old warrior giving up his war, here his stillness is to try and exude a mysteriousness which fails - you either use CYF as a breathless tool of action (his earlier movies notably "A Better Tomorrow") or you use him as a weary old man trying to get away from what he does best ("Crouching Tiger") - to use him as a immobile king and hope that his aura would work is defeating its purpose.. Gong Li looks beautiful, if a bit tired, more in character than CYF was.. the others seem adequate.. by the looks of the costume design medieval China shared it costume design with medieval Europe - all cleavage for the women and chunky, clunky armour for the men.. Not the best from the master.

Moving on to another director, one more known for his lunatic fringe actions than acting skill, mel gibson and his offering in mayan or whatever is the language - Apocalypto - gory beyond hope, grimy beyond even more hope and as cliched as a manmohan desai 70s thriller.. the story of a young tribesman whose tribe is captured by the evil Mayans hunting for human sacrifice, it showcases the skills of the said tribesman in killing his chasers with a variety of methods ranging from leading a chasing jaguar onto one of them, to using bees, to using the age old method of luring an enemy into the trap.. the emotional content to the story is provided by the said tribesman pregnant wife and kid hiding in a well, which is filling with water as it rains.. It is Sly Stallone Rambo meet Mayans.. except their aint any machine guns out here.. Story is loony enough and has been panned by many including for historical inconsistencies.. such as showing the Spanish arriving at the end of the movie.. but at the heart of this movie is a Manmohan Desai meet Rambo story - which while not very intellectual is atleast entertaining, especially for gore fest maniacs like me.. It satisfied the need for a thrill a minute, was worth the first watch.. but not more than that.. not recommended for the faint hearted..

Will fill in more on the reviews in the next few days - havent watched too many movies.. Live Free or Die Hard was one that I had caught a few months back.. but lets see if i remember the plotlines or holes in that one.. One thing is for certain, no one can play John Maclane like Bruce Willis can.. another of the CYF mould, with a significant expertise in playing weary old men trying not to do what they end up doing.. watch hostage to see BW in another one of these type of roles..

Another day, Another Post

2007-11-28T22:19:00.000+05:30

Been a while since i visited yon pages, a lot indeed has happened in the interim period.. For one, Mushy Mushy is no longer Chief of Armed Forces of Pakistan, he is now civvy, good lord, can you believe it.. and the man that Mushy replaced has jetted into the land to lay claim on the throne.. a triad of wolves trying to act noble - each one has independently looted the country before and will probably continue to loot it again and again.. Is it true that the world is coming to an end, that the end of an era is signified by the weak, bigoted, cheap, unqualified leadership.. the last of Mughals, Bahadur Shah Zafar was the weakest of the Mughal monarchs - the leaders of the world's biggest are probably the weakest right now - Dubya in the US, Gordon Brown in UK, Manmohan Singh in India (heh heh, thats a laugh).. just the other day, another of the world order changed with John Howard being thrown out as the Oz president.. As a friend of mine mentioned, the war mongering quartet of George W Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard and Jose Maria Arnaz of Spain are all out or on their way out - the last two thrown out by their public in elections, of the first two, Dubya has but a few more months left, while Tony B has left.. And the only things that remains to be asked is "Where have all the flowers gone?"- as the song goes.. Is it sign of things to come that whilst the vietnam war consumed most of America, even though they were winning - remeber the Tet Offensive - the Iraqi war where it is apparent that the US is crumbling, becoming caught in a quagmire from which one cannot even extricate oneself safely - will this be the American Afghanistan?

Closer home, we have the elite papa-son combine, the Jaadu (S) - marshalled by the sleepy Papa G, the party has created one of the worst political disasters of recent history - time and votes will tell is Papa G and HDK will reap as they sow or if the blind voting classes will vote them back into power.. time and maybe MP Prakash.. It has also been the demise of a favourite blog of mine - The Bangalore Torpedo (see my blogroll for the link) - where nothing exists, where once existed a charming sarcasm, a wit that could lead one to believe yes there were others.. the Torpedo couldnt withstand the overwhelming disgust of being in the same city as the hallowed duo - papa G and HDK that he/she decided it was enough and enough to pull the plug..

In land of Bongs, another massacre, masterminded by the CPI(M), purportedly for revenge, aided and abetted by the State, and while Nandigram bled, BuddhaD was in a world of his own.. Bengal, finds another bloodshed to mark its annals with - one which was so raw and savage that one shuddered at the thought that this is world into which the children are brought into.. ?

Sitting in rickshaw on the way home from work - home where two brats and a wife wait for me.. where if i had had the misfortune of being born in a different part of India in a different caste, I would be sitting or rather huddling in my hovel of a house with my wife and kids, shuddering at the prospect of being dragged out and hacked by other humans, just for the crime of being a different caste.. What is caste, may one ask, what is religion, may one also ask and why is it that I shd be known as a Tamil Hindu Brahmin Indian before being known as a Human Being.. are we all so different? Dont we aspire for the same things - dont we all deserve the dignity to be treated as human.. Such thoughts surge through me on this rather cold and wintry day in Bangalore.. The roads are jammed as usual, the auto i am in is probably running a hot meter, or maybe I am lucky, I might have got one of the honest ones.. Who knows, does anyone care.. "where have all the flowers gone" is what runs in my mind..

This post is much more morbid to me that I had intended it to be.. but the question that one seeks to ask and one seeks an answer for is - is this life worth living? what for and why? On that note I shall stop before this morbidity spreads and attacks me.. Bah!

Mahabharata - Chapter III - Bhishma

2007-10-30T11:53:00.000+05:30

Author's note: The last chapter ended with Ganga invoking her pre nup agreement and leaving Shantanu when he questions her actions. The story now moves forward now.

PM: Hmm, So Y, whats next. Okay, we now know that Ganga ditched Shantanu and made her move with her eighth kid. What happens next.

Y: Ganga and the kid vanished for a period of 15 years. Shantanu kept himself occupied walloping assorted kingdoms and conquering various other states. In all, a lot of fighting and generally acting like he was the Dubya of that era. But his outward aggression concealed immense sadness at the prospect that he will die issueless and his succession would become an issue.

Ar chuckles at this. D glares at him.

Ar (picking up the thread): No matter what his ministers did, which was quite a bit from what I hear, Shantanu refused to budge from his lost love for Ganga. He behaved highly monogamistically and basically refused to be like me and moi friend, Krishna, ie lay every piece of..

Y (turning pink): Shut up, Ar! Anyways, Shantanu pined away at his loss and he was prone to taking these long, lonely walks along the wilderness on the banks of Ganga, moping about and depressing the vegetation.

B (Looking up and yelping): Yes, yes, I remember this part now. Didn’t someone grab him, poison him and dunk him the Ganga.

Ar: B, don’t confuse events which involved you with history.. Continuing on, he was prone to these long walks by the banks of the Ganga, depressing as they were to the vegetation, it did help him feel better. Probably helped him forget all those nights he had..

Y: Shut up Ar. On one of those walks down the banks of the Ganga, he came across a handsome young boy practising archery. He was stunned not only by the beauty of the boy but also by his skill at archery. The boy was making Shantanu, himself a great archer, feel like a novice with his shooting antics. Stunned, Shantanu, made an approach to boy to find out more about him.

Ar: And lo behold, out of the waters of Ganga, emerged Ganga.. Not nude this time around..

Y (Glaring at Ar): Ganga, came of the waters, and told Shantanu, "My dear Shantanu, this boy that you see is the son of yours that I took away when I left you. He is named Devavrata and shall become famous by another name. Take him back to your kingdom.."

Ar (smiling): She also said, "I don’t want to see either of you coots again, I have had enough with you humans."

It was then that Krishna made an entrance. He took the scene in, with Ar and Y sitting near PM and the rest of the Pandavas spread around the room. He smiled what the advertisers would call a "Colgate Smile" - he looked like the male equivalent of Madhuri Dixit with that smile.

K: Aha, I see that the clan is upto something as usual. Whats happening now? Are you plotting another war behind my back?

Ar: Na, K, we were just telling this PM our lifestory, sad as it maybe, to make into a blockbuster biography. You must have heard of this man, he is quite cool.

K: Oh, hiya there, PM, miss ye my mon, where hast thou been. The girls loved your take on me and so now you are onto these guys, eh. Their life story is a lot more sordid than mine.. (Pointing to Dr) Especially hers, think, she is married to this lot.

PM (looking a bit sheepish): Hi K, I should have called you when I got this contract, but I thought you would know anyways.

Y (looking a bit impatient): Now, now, can we get back to discussing Shantanu and our great grand uncle.

K: Oh, Bhishma uncle, well, he was some man. From what I hear even Shantanu was some man.

Ar: K, will you also contribute, Y and I have been doing all the talking, B and Tw are about as helpful as a bunch of Kauravas facing B and Dr is sulking. We need some help.

K: Yup man, cool, I will add to the collected wishdom of this. Can I have something to drink, preferably some madira or something like that, it is hot day and my throat feels parched.

Y claps his hands, an orderly appears, is instructed to bring liquid nourishments to all and with that the orderly vanishes to execute the order.

And thus chapter III comes to an end. More so because this author is suffering from acute writerblockitis and lifeiskillingmeitis. The M'rata is suspended for now and shall resume once the author is well again.

WTF moment of the day..

2007-10-16T17:13:00.000+05:30

courtesy rediff..

http://www.rediff.com/movies/2007/oct/15msg.htm

In my opinion, he looks like a ghoul.. bah!

NYT ad on Sonia Gandhi

2007-10-09T17:36:00.000+05:30

Aha, we have muchos fun - i see that a bunch of raving lunatics have questioned Sonia G's credentials to talking abt Father G at the UN - in a nice big ad in none less than the Noo York Times. Man, dat is something. Anyways, i guess Madam G didnt have too much rights to go and speak at the UN Gen Assembly on the International Day of Naan Violence (ie no violence against maida based indian bread or if you are tam, my violence). Given her background she could have held forth on violins. In all, the esteemed UN has behaved like the sycophantic, family name driven INC (I), also known as the Cong (I), party with the greased palms, etc etc, by calling Madam G to talk. Obviously this is going to piss off a bunch of half assed lunatics that our great country possesses in abundance, and the great thing is a part of of pissed off half assed lunatics has gone ahead and given Madam G much more publicity by hanging this f-all ad out in the NYT. And now to add more masala to this shit - some other half assed lunatics are now demanding that NYT apologise for this ad. Wow, what a great country we live in.

the things that rediff trolls in..

2007-10-09T13:15:00.000+05:30

I wonder, where rediff manages to get these following cretins. A reasonably good article on a supposedly good movie and an interview with the director and look that the trolls in the comments section - do these characters actually exist. Check it out! at your leisure in a rediff website close to you (http://www.rediff.com/movies/2007/oct/08ram.htm can provide a good starter for you).

I always wondered how the comments section in rediff managed to pull in the worst of the trolls.. well, i guess you have to have the skill to do it.. heh heh.

thats the rant for this week.

The Hero - Review

2007-08-27T17:55:00.000+05:30

I watched The Hero again - not the ubercool, Indian spy story starring Sunny "the Growl" Deol, but the one which starred Jet Li, Tony Leung, Maggie Chen, Donnie Yen, Chen Dao and Zhang Zi Yi.. It was the first of the Zhang Yimou movies that I have seen. Anyways, coming back to the movie - it is a cult movie. One I fell in love with from the minute I started seeing it, with its brilliant play on colours - as all Zhang Yimou movies, this one is brilliantly colourful, the story - seemingly told in rashomon form from different perspectives, and finally, the action and the actors - all brilliant. Jet Li is adequate as Nameless, the hero of the story.. But the ones I feel that steal his thunder are the other three main characters - Chen Dao as Emperor Qin, Maggie Chen as Flying Snow and Tony Leung as Broken Sword. Brilliantly cinematographed and shot, edited in my opinion atleast precisely and well written - the movie plays out like a dream. Particularly impressive are the dreamy fight sequences - filled with action, yet shot with beauty, quite unlike the fisticuffial nature of the fights in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. A moody movie too - with a thought behind what the movie is about - what I liked most was the fact this movie moved quite unlike an action movie and yet was gripping.

This movie does transcend the martial arts gender - if CTHD explored relationships and talked about the hardships of being a martial arts warrior - this one holds forth more on relationships than just the need to fight. The movie, like the Emperor explains in the end, is more about the abstract than the obvious, more about the intangible than the tangible. In scenes, such as where Nameless claims to be able to find the true art of Broken Sword's swordmanship from his calligraphy, come the allegorical plays. The message which Broken Sword and Nameless by extension carries is that of "All under heaven", which talks of the Emperor's ability to unify all - telling lines such as "19 ways to write sword" - the King says when I finish the war, I will ensure that there is a common script - and it does - China today may have a multitude of dialects, but the script is largely uniform.

There is an episodical nature to the film - the first third consists of Nameless recounting his adventures to the King of how he managed to kill Sky, Broken Sword and Flying Snow.. The second third is of the King's version of the stories - which has more to do with his understanding of the assassins involved and finally, what may or may not appear as the truth, that which Nameless recounts as the story which is the truth. The brilliance of the story line is that at no point can the viewer not agree with the way things are playing out. In all very well made.

In my opinion, Yimou lost it a bit in House of Flying Daggers, which while a good movie, does not have the poetic, almost lyrical movement of this movie and yeah, the action is far superior in this movie :D :P.. Havent yet seen curse of the golden flower, but from what I have seen, it has more to do with Gong Li's cleavage than this kind of a movie.

Ocean's Thirteen

2007-08-13T10:09:00.000+05:30

Well, the Ocean's series of the exploits of Danny Ocean and his merry band of men and women has always been a bit hard on plausibility. Thirteen takes it into serious science fiction territory or maybe it was just that the pirated DVD I watched wasn't good enough. In any case, as is usual in a Danny Ocean story, he and his merry band of men (I used that before) are out to steal a few billions or gazillions from the villain, who in this case happens to be Willy Banks (Al Pacino). Wont say that Al P is a miscast for this role, but yeah he doesn't sound as wicked as Andy Garcia did as the villain in the other two movies. This one too is shot in the snap frame mode that Steve Soderberg seems to specialise in - each frame in the movie can literally be framed - the focus is very clearly on how clever Danny O and his men are.. In this case Rusty (Brad Pitt, who seems to have taken the role for his) and Linus (Matt Damon, playing an enthu puppy type of character). His role is quite central to the movie, in that the only woman in the movie gets involved with him, but that's for later. So to outline the plot, which is bare and kept to minimum just in case it interfered with the showcasing of how clever the movie otherwise was - Banks has conned Reuben of his share of a mega casino that the two are putting together and this makes Reuben have a stroke or whatever and he is bed ridden. So Danny O and his men decide to take revenge on Wee Willie - no no, not by cutting out his winkie, but by ensuring his casino crashes, that his five diamonds are stolen and that he is struck of the book of the fabulous casinos of the world. So there, then we cut into the planning stage, which unless you have tremendous concentration is likely to baffle you as it involves some or all of the following:

(a) Use of the chunnel drilling machine to create a localised earthquake
(b) Use of a gold samsung mobile to bring down the security system used by the casino
(c) Strikes and likes in a mexican dice making factory which is infiltrated to load the dice
(d) some fancy footwork in the elevator shafts to check if an entry into the security room exists
(e) some more fancy stuff, not limited to hacking into the FBI database and modifying records

As I said before, each scene stands out and says "hey look how clever Steve S and team are to have actually thought of such fancy stuff". The photography is good, the editing is good too, what is not is the fact that there is no attempt at a semblance of a plot or semblance of practicality. How the chunnel drilling machine can be smuggled into the vicinity of the casino without Banks knowing about it is not explained. Danny O and his team seem to have the run on Wee Willie's enterprise, surprising again. As a heist movie, it fails, as a thriller, it fails, as a time pass movie, it fails. In all, there are bits such as when Willie Bank and Danny O meet up and Willie threaten Danny with a lot of stuff, and Danny says "I know all the guys you could send after me and they all like me more than you." But such things are few and far between and instead we have a movie which while it is more understandable that the second one, is still flopping around in comparison to the very first Danny Ocean movie. George Clooney waltzes through the movie as Danny O, Brad Pitt as Rusty is good, Matt Damon brings out the fresh puppy enthusiasm of Linus, the rest all fit in.. A movie so crowded with stars that none seems to stand out. I think I would watch Ocean's Eleven again and hope that if there is a Ocean's Fourteen they do try and make some sense out of the damn thing.