The century jinx!!!

It has been a crazy few weeks over the last month and it continues to be so...I really need a break, need to get outta town for a couple days atleast. The blog has not been updated for over a month now and I just noticed that my last post was the 99th! Almost like Sachin's century jinx I guess. Nevertheless, hurrah to the 100th post. Normal service will resume in a couple weeks time. Till then, so long!

Pics from Old City Continued....

A view from atop Charminar....the sheer number of autos here blew my mind away!

Pics from Old City!

The historic Charminar and Mecca Masjid in the Old City of Hyderabad!

Bucknor or Blunder!

My sincere and earnest request to all the dictionary makers out there...Please replace the word Blunder in all your dictionaries with the word Bucknor...not much of a difference but the meaning will be all the more clear, even for people who do not understand English at all!

And Mr. Mike Procter, did no one teach you how to count? When four out of six people say they have not heard anything racist (Ricky Ponting, Sachin Tendulkar and the Umpires), it means the majority...2 out of 6 does not mean majority...and u shud take a decision based on what the majority tells you. Of course if you believe that the two umpires who could not hear any of the edges that were heard by the grandmother living in the next lane could not hear this also, I wholeheartedly support you. You can now hang a board saying 'If someone is taking Aussie wickets too frequently, they deserve to be banned'.

And regards the series, I lost out on so much sleep waking up at 5am in the morning to savor what I thought would be a great game of cricket. Instead I got to see loads of human errors (most of which go against Indians) and an insult to our ancestors...If it is true that we did descend from the apes, calling Andrew Symonds a monkey is an insult to mankind and the monkeykind too!

Harsha Bhogle Rocks!

The joy of hearing about cricket from a former player is very different from hearing about it from a fan! And no one illustrates this better than Harsha Bhogle, our man for all seasons. Much has been written about his IIM background and all that but the thing I love most is that he enjoys his cricket. There is none of that hindsight wisdom that is always offered by the former greats sitting there. When he talks he talks about how well a shot is played and how sweet the sound of bat hitting ball was, there is not too much harping on how that is a copybook shot and how children wanting to become cricketers should see this shot and learn. In the last test at Melbourne, he said something about an Andrew Symonds pull shot that he repeated today for a VVS Laxman pull shot. Savor this....

"Just look at how he plays that pull shot, standing tall and swiveling away to glory, it is almost like he is dismissing the ball from his presence."

Just after lunch today, he opens the commentary for the third session saying "India are showing some fight today mainly due to the efforts of Vangivarapu Venkata Sai Laxman."

Just that small effort made to say the entire name, efforts of Laxman would never have sounded that effective!

Some more talking he did today about great players knowing when they have to do what...

"It is almost amazing how all the great players just seem to know what to do. Wasim Akram knew when the batsman was striding out confidently and when he was afraid. Sachin Tendulkar knows when the ball leaves the bowler's hand whether it is a four or a single. No effort required, they almost seem to know!"

That humility of accepting that he will probably never understand how they actually know. Other commentators would do their best to go on and explain how they know and all that, here it is his simple awe for the game!

Here is wishing that he continues this way and gives us many more quotable quotes...Let the passion for the game continue unabated Harsha bhai!

Happy New Year!

Here is wishing everyone a Funtastic New Year...May the New Year herald a period of new beginnings and great successes!!!

The DON of Tollywood? Hardly...

Saw the Nagarjuna starrer Don recently and was thoroughly disappointed...It was more of a Lawrence starrer than a Nag starrer....just imagine the Don's side kick singing..

ISKO PEHCHAAN LO YEH HAI DON!

That bad!

Tragedy!

Whoever said lightning never strikes twice is wrong. My laptop crashed again and this time it took with it 4 years worth pictures, music and documents. No backup, cause I always beleived that laptop crashes happen to others and not to us. Tooo late now and I'm sulking away to glory. Might be a while before I post again, so try not to miss me tooo much! (I know it sounds like boasting, but its atleast helping me feel slightly better for whatever that is worth!)

Belated Happy Birthday!

My blog finished an year on Nov 6th and I missed the birthday.

Belated Happy Birthday!

Tongue Firmly in Cheek!

Om Shanti Om rocks!

I realize that I need to finish gushing before I can write up about the movie - here goes. Hats off to Farah Khan for lighting up my Diwali with a pataka of a film, the explosion of which will resonate for a long time to come. Hats off to the King Khan for backing up Farah and fulfilling her every demand as a producer, the movie is as lavish as it can get. And I'm in love all over again...Deepika Padukone looked ethereal in the movie and I cant wait to see more of her. The music is fabulous, the songs are spectacularly mounted, the camera work is flawless, the sets are fantabulous, the dialogues are apt and the acting topnotch.

Alright, gushing apart and out of the way, Farah Khan, who showed us how all the cliches in Bollywood can be used to create an endearing effect, how the old movies can be revamped to brilliant effect, how the over the top scenes of yore can be used to evoke humor...quite a master of the spoof, she proved herself to be. With Om Shanti Om, she takes the spoof genre to an altogether different level, much higher than anyone can hope to take it in a long time to come and much better than anyone has done in the recent past. All the references to the movies and movie stars of the time when they grew up are so ingeniously thought of and so well executed, you find yourself laughing your guts out and wishing we could get to see some more of those old melodramas from the Manmohan Desai era. The entire film industry makes an appearance in the movie...half of them appear in the special number and the other half during the superbly conceptualized Filmfare Awards function. The awards nite is a riot and Akshay Kumar will walk away with all the plaudits for that one (and he should really ask Farah to make Return of the Khiladi with him). Abhishek Bachchan is there too and so are a lot of other people who show that Bollywood is beyond petty issues, evident in the way all of the stars sportingly spoof their own movies.

Standout sequences include all of Shahrukh's scenes as a junior artist (dacoit, Quick Gun Murugan etc), all of his scenes as a superstar (Apahich pyaar, Mohabbat Man), all of his dream scenes...King Khan had loads of fun while doing the movie and it shows. Deepika does not have much to do except look pretty and that she does to stunning effect, my jaw kept dropping so often, anymore and I would have moved around with an open mouth for the rest of my life. Kiron Kher is tailor made for the role she plays in the movie, the over the top, has been junior artiste who thinks she should have played Anarkali must have been written with her in mind. Shahrukh's line in the movie describes her the best when he calls her 'meri filmy maa'. Shreyas Talpade is good and Arjun Rampal rocks as Mukesh and later Mike!

All in all, King Khan will rule yet another Diwali. If it was Don last year, it is Om Shanti Om this year. With the kind of feedback Saawariya is getting, it is obvious that Shahrukh will not eat his words - "Diwali is all his".

PS: As KK says, don't be in any sort of hurry to see the movie, it is going to be around for ages, so catch it at leisure. And have to include one of his gems, according to him Deepika Padukone played a sensuous ghost (deyyanni chooste bhayam veyyadam maanesi mood ostondi raaaaaa - exact words).

Catching up!

I've managed to catch up with Johnny Gaddaar and Jab We Met this week. Both highly recommended.

After having read all the good stuff about Johnny, there was a lurking fear that I might be disappointed. But the fears were entirely unwarranted as the movie was all that I could hope for and slightly more. The movie starts off with the hero reading Erle Stanley Gardener and the heroine reading Guide (a pointer to his deceit and her adultery?) and moves along surefootedly in the very manner of a Gardener novel. The premise being simple, one of the best things Sriram Raghavan, the director, does is that he does not intend the movie to be a whodunit. It simply follows the travails of our Gaddaar once he goes through with his gaddaari. Each of the five gang members is given a distinct touch by which to remember it...Even the first to be bumped off, Shiva, has a south indian girlfriend, Vyjayanti, obviously south indian, who brings him 'lemon rice' when he is about to set out on a journey. Dharmendra turns in a likeable performance, Neil Mukesh is restraint personified, Vinay Pathak rocks, Zakir Hussain is snake like, slithery and full of venom, Asha Kalsekar is outstanding and the twist at the end catches you by surprise. All in all a good movie that probably fell flat due to its non-star cast. This one will surely enjoy a good run in the home video section.

Jab We Met is for people who like to go to the theatre and see how delightful a slice of life movie can be. RamGopal Verma, with all his underworld sagas, had almost convinced me that a real life movie means it has to be extremely dark and depressing. But here, with characters that do not talk in the "Mooh haath dholo betaa, gajra kaa halwa khilaadoongi language", the movie proves to be extremely refreshing. The other guy, for example is actually fedup with Kareena's constant chatter about 'ghar kaisaa hogaa, balcony kaisaa hogaa, parde kaise honge' etc instead of being enamored by all the sweet talk. And the movie really came down to Kareena...full of wide eyed innocence and non-stop 'I'm my favorite' chatter, she was a delight to watch. This delightful, gullible character so pulls you in that you feel bad when she becomes a sober person in the second half. You want to tell her that all that has happened to her was not because she was an idiot, it was because she chose the wrong idiot. This identification is what you take back home, because the characters stay long after the lights have come on and you go home. Dont be surprised if you find yourself full of hope when you step out of the theater, Imtiaz Ali's second feature can do that to you!

Been a While!

Yup, yup, I know I've been away for a while and the posts in the last few weeks have been more perfunctory than anything else, but I have been swamped with work like there is no tomorrow and the ride has been pretty rough. Things are pretty settled now, so thought I would pen down some thoughts...

No movie reviews as the last one I saw, Athidhi left me so disappointed that I did not have the courage to break the news to all the eager Mahesh fans. Read somewhere recently that the concept of the Hero (read DEMIGOD) beating N (N tends to infinity) number of goons to pulp not even suffering a scratch in the process persists only in Tamil and Telugu films these days and I'm compelled to agree...absolutely true, I must say! Also, when an actor has a hit film, it means people liked him in the role and does not mean that they want to see him again and again and again play similar roles. And Mahesh does not always have to be chased by the heroine, he does not always have to use swear words to appear cool, he does not always have to utter derogatory words to the vamp in item numbers, he does not always have to have an intense stare and a thousand other things...u get the drift! These things that he did worked in a couple of movies but that does not have to be the reason for you to hoist the same things onto us again and again!

Want to see JAB WE MET. Will most probably do it this weekend, God (and friends) willing.

One of my nieces was here last week. She had come down from the US...all of ten months, she was the cutest thing on Planet Earth. Took an instant fancy to me and I ended up carrying her around for three days. Had dimpled cheeks that would put Preity Zinta to shame! The pic at the top is of her.

And that is about it! Will try and get back to blogging regularly as soon as possible.

Happy Dussera!

Here is Wishing All of You A VERY HAPPY DUSSERA...
May Vijayadasami herald the beginning of a year full of victories for you and your family!

Come out into the open!

Another blast yesterday at Ludhiana...Hyd, Ajmer and now Ludhiana...all purposeless, all heinous and cowardly acts. Come out into the open, you cowards, lets see u show some courage for a change. I hate the fact that because of all this, our festivals are now celebrated under heavy security cover. Everyone views everyone else with suspicion. But as always, I'm sure we will bounce back and show these cowards that by doing these things, they are only losing whatever sympathy they had, if they had any in the first place!

When my lappie died on me!

My laptop suddenly decided to die on me last Tuesday. I shut it down, I go out, I come back, I try to turn it on (NO PUN INTENDED) and it decides it wont start. Cost me a healthy sum to get it back to shape. Would have thoughtlessly traded this for another one at another time in my life, when I was an employee. I have realized that one of the other sacrifices an entrepreneur has to make is that he will get his old laptop repaired and wait before he can get himself a new one!

PS: No, being an entrepreneur is not that bad!

Cuppa Joe!

Coffee Day...Sunday evening lazing around!

Go watch Happy Days!

Sekhar Kammula is a gutsy character. Due to some unavoidable circumstances (read Chiranjeevi's sons's movie release) he could not release his movie as planned in India. But he knew that the theatres in the US would not be able to afford a similar delay and went ahead and released his movie there. It required courage as any negative feedback from there would adversely affect the prospects of the movie here. It does seem like his confidence is paying off...Happy Days opened to a fab response abroad and the opening in India that I witnessed today was no less. Here is a director whose name is enough to pull the crowds enmasse to the theatres - a feat that a RamGopal Verma would have difficulty matching these days.

I saw Happy Days today, buoyed by all the expectations. One of my friends has acted in the movie - the curly haired Sravanthi was played by Sonia - an ex-colleague and a friend. Thanks to one of our mutual friends, we were able to get tickets to the first day first show. Firstly, the scene outside the theater was fantastic...you could only see youngsters - college goers mainly, today being a holiday, they made the most of it. Infact, I felt a little old standing there! The movie was great stuff from Sekhar once again. Agreed, the movie takes its own time to make its point, agreed the pace is still leisurely, nevertheless the young director makes sure that he packs in enough entertainment in the first half and some strong emotional punch in the second half. He takes some of the tricks too far, but he is not making a documentary afterall. The music seemed kinda slow when I heard it, but on the screen, the songs meshed beautifully with the theme, not speed breakers, but infact lovely additions that will stay with you for some time to come.

Then comes Sekhar's trump card, his cast. His decision to cast newcomers pays off spectacularly well. No one is a hero and you dont expect them to do anything great. This helps as almost all of them are in trouble constantly in the movie and they come out of it like we do, not like superheroes do. Tyson is an endearing character and his love story with Sravanthi is one of the best tracks. Even when it ends and Sravanthi is leaving his house, there is a fleeting shot wherein she notices that he has a load of chickens all of which look like the one she has. The Appu-Rajesh track was also endearing inspite of its many KKHH inspirations. The Sangeeta-Shankar track really came across as half baked, but after seeing so many multi-track movies fail so spectacularly this year, I thought it was better off this way. Trying to give equal importance to each track invariably ends up prolonging the runtime of the movie and this was really a track that was there to strengthen Tyson and Shankar's friendship, not to show us Shankar's love story. Chandu and Madhu, the main leads, per se were good (strictly good).

Simply put, the movie was slow paced, it had its share of cinematic liberties and it really had no strong storyline, but at the end of it all, if you come out of the theater with moist eyes and a smile on your lips, you have had your money's worth. That is what Happy Days does to you! Go watch it!

World Champions!

These were the scenes of jubilation in Hyderabad last night after India beat Pakistan in the T-20 finals...I have never seen so many Indian flags at one place (except if u count the number of small flags that we would have pinned to our shirts on Independence Day or some such occasion in school!). Was smiling for a very long time last night!

India - Pakistan - Bring it on!!!

"Glorified prostitution of the game" was just one of the many denouements I heard when the T-20 World Cup was about to begin. People said that the ICC was trying too hard to take the game to the US and this was purely a way to cater to the notoriously short attention spans of the Americans. And regarding the Indian team, it was supposedly a joke being played on the Indian populace...a team without any of the stalwarts full of green horns was never expected to win any matches at all.

Today, the final of the tournament is going to be played between two teams whose games put the legendary England - Australia rivalry to shame. The English - OZ rivalry has long been reduced to a joke thanks to Australia's domination - except for the Ashes series that England won a couple years ago, the other matches have been such non-contests that they are almost a yawn. India - Pakistan, on the other hand, is a rivalry that will never lose its sheen. Both teams are known for their legendary inconsistency, their eternal process of rebuilding, their internal squabbles due to which they never really reach their true potential. And the enmity between the countries (which is all hogwash going by the last time India went there) adds so much spice to the proceedings that the match becomes something much more than just a match. It is a fight to finish with the winner also winning the hearts of millions and the loser inviting the wrath of millions. That personal angle adds so much to this clash that today's match that it will set pulses racing and adrenaline throbbing through out the world.

That apart, this tournament has well and truly brought alive the age old adage that Cricket is the Great Leveller. The long drawn out and boring ICC WorldCup served to show that in the effort to spread the game far and wide, the ICC had brought in too many rookies and stretched the tournament to 51 games, even the most hardcore enthusiast of the game would lose interest over that long a period. T-20 on the other hand offers us a fresh perspective...the action is fast and furious, the game is over before an innings can end in a one day game. Inspite of the bowlers having a very important role to play and all that in the game,cricket, in the end is a batsman's game. Anyday, big powerful hitting, a century from their star player, this is what captures the imagination of the paying spectators. T-20 showcases some displays of unbridled aggression is the impression I was under, but the Indian team has shown over the course of the tournament that it is not all about brute force. The way India has worked to preserve wickets in the first 10-12 overs followed by some frenzied hitting in the final overs has proved to be its biggest advantage.

The margin of error in this format of game is extremely small, there is just not time for rebuilding. This is where India will have to score today...the smallest of errors - one big over, one dropped catch, one wicket thrown away to a moment of recklessness, any of these can prove fatal. So, Chak De! India, one more time. Just like the ad before the campaign went - WORLD CUP ABHI MANGTA HAI!!!

Om Shanti Om- Ajab Si ( exclusive song promo)

I'm waiting very very eagerly for this movie...Deepika Padukone's dimples are to die for and the song is oh-so-romantic!