Friday 10 October, 2008

I'm Back (This time with movie review)

Hey guys, I'm back on demand... Some people started missing my presence in the net, so here I am. And I should say, this studying thing has been getting into my nerve.
***
And they finally got their way over with the Nuclear deal... God Bless America and God bless KFC for giving those nice fried chickens... I hope they make a deal to make them cheaper.
So I had a brilliant idea that I start reviewing movies hereafter. Lets start with Saroja.
***
SAROJA
Its absolutely natural to expect a funnier movie from Venkatprabhu after that laughter ride in Chennai 28 and Venkatprabhu tried to meet the expectations. But I feel he should have made a more serious effort, because such serious life threatening events happen to the protagonist(s) and they still can't stop cracking jokes. Saroja was definitely funny, but not as funny as his previous movie, probably because the movie has a very dark environment and the jokes just don't fit in.
You might have guessed the story yourself... Prakashraj's daughter Saroja is kidnapped and Jeyaram, the assistant Commissioner is trying to help him get the daughter back. The protagonists, SPB Charan, Shiva, Premji and the newbie Vaibhav are out to see a cricket match at Hyderabad. On their way to Hyderabad, they lost their way and stumble into the kidnapper's lair. The unlikely heroes try to escape and eventually save the day with slapstick jokes.
The factory environment chosen for the Kidnapper's lair is brilliant setting, and the cinematographer Sakthi Saravanan has showed off with his skills. Prakashraj shines in acting as a n uncaring father torubled with guilt for neglecting his daughter. Veteran Jeyaram seems as if he is reprising his treacherous role from Dhaam Dhoom. All lead characters have done justice to their roles, all of them except Vega who plays Saroja. She can do well in music videos but she definitely needs to go for acting school. And Nikitha will shine in the hall of fame for item girls.
Yuvan has done a great job in both background music as well as songs. The Verdict? If you want to have an entertaining 2 and a half hours, go to this movie. But pure cinema lovers can stay home and play chess. Saroja gives a feeling that you've already watched a similar english movie on HBO.
2.5 stars out of 5
***
If you want to see how a typical frustrated man looks like, watch Ratan Tata's face in the news. The guy was nearly driven insane by Mamata Banerjee's pointless political antics. Nano was scheduled to be released 9 months after its unveiling at the Delhi motor convention earlier this year... and they're behind schedule by 3 months with no factory to make cars. The factory was supposed to be built at singur but the land was required was in troubled waters, thanks to West Bengal's party politics. Now finally Tata walked out of West Bengal and the whole project is relocated to Gujarat and Narendra Modi's smug face can't supress the smile.
Nano will roll out at almost the same date as fixed before but volume needs may not be met. And until then I'll have to use Metropolitan Transport for going to college. And after the release, I'll still go in MTC buses, envying the Nano owners as they drive by.

Friday 7 March, 2008

Good bye Old guys....

Its been a long time since my last update, and a lot has happened. Really interesting crap.
To start with, Fidel Castro is finally stepping down after 8 months of his semi-retirement during which people had even speculated that he might have died and that the Cubans are keeping it a secret to maintain order in the country. But since he appeared on national TV to announce retirement the rumours have subsided and US of A has expressed its joy over the matter saying that its time Cubans have a democratic government. A democratic government is a very good thing, and everybody is with it, but curiously it seems that the US government worked towards establishment of a democratic government in Cuba ever since Castro came into power, in a rather questionable way - assassination of Castro.
Castro's personal guard has written a book about the assassination attempts on Castro called "638 Ways To Kill Castro". Oh, you got the number right, its 638(WHAT?!). I'll tell you how. American government always considered Castro to be an obnoxious little weed(thanks for the vocabulary update Hayden), they thought about killing him. So CIA got into work. This involves the usage of exploding sea shells, bacteria infected scuba diving suits, poisoned cigars(WTF!) and the list goes on. Like, how much more hatred can you show on the guy? Oh I forgot, two mafia style killing attempts. And Castro lives to tell the story. Don't think I'm bluffing, most of the CIA documents pertaining to these attempts have been declassified. So its true. US government does stink.
And not so surprisingly Cubans have unanimously voted Raoul Castro, Fidel's brother to lead the country now. Lets hope he could at least bring the country back to its feet. Good Bye Castro.
***
Next on the good bye list....... Sujatha. Great Writer. One of those very few writers who can write both about nuclear science and also write dialogues for movies. He didn't give up writing even in his last days. "Apollo Dhinangal", his last words, is available in this week's edition of Anandha Vikatan. Fans check it out. For starters, try reading Kattrathum Petrathum. You'll become his fan, athuku naan guarantee.
***
Earlier I said that US government stinks, but India seems to top it(yes, I agree, India tops in every list such as population, poverty, AIDS etc.), and its not because of a single person's effort, its a team effort. Main contributors - Communists. C'mon guys, America has uranium, we don't have uranium what do you do? Option (a) Draw up a treaty to get some of the Uranium from them and give some other stuff to them or Option (b)Tell Americans that they are bad, start protesting, and don't let anyone do anything.
Congress took option (a) while Communists took (b). And frankly its really stupid Commies, c'mon, Cold War is over man(thank goodness its over), get over it, past is past, Lets work towards some real development. Nuclear treaty - good; protests - bad. So Dr. Singh, make it snappy with the treaty please. And Karat, try to keep quiet from time to time. You talk too much.
***
And some how Indians managed to win the Tri-series by a narrow margin, and so, more reasons for Aussies to talk less.
That's it this time. I'll try to update more frequently. Thanks for reading and your comments are always welcome.
Ciao

Friday 22 February, 2008

IPL - India is not Poor, Losers??

India, rich, economically powerful, growing at a rapid pace(of course, pace slackened by stock market fiasco), et cetera.
But is Tamilnadu really poor or is it just the government funding that makes the Tourism Exhibition 2007 look so really lame? I mean like real lame. Same old empty stalls of various ministries exhibiting their facilities, which are not so many. Only crowded stalls in the whole of the exhibition was the aavin ice cream stall and the other is Temple Management Ministry(crude translation of Aranilaya thurai). The former is crowded due to obvious reasons and the latter made it obvious to me that most of the people are religious to the core, because they were so piously sanctimonius with statues of Gods of temples in various cities such as Madurai, Kanchi etc., even though it is perfectly visible that they are just cardboard models. And the highlight? CM's picture on the top of the stall. I think it was purposely put up there to mock theists by putting the picture of the hardcore atheist or to mock the honourable CM about his atheistic ideas. It just did not make any sense. And about other stalls, they were also equally ridiculous.

The king-size pappads and chilli bajjies were great. Other than that, it was just a lame attempt by the government to attract tourists, but miserably failing in it.
***
SRK's in it, Preity Zinta is in it, but its not another Karan Johar's flick. Then what else is it? IPL!!! BCCI's hurriedly announced competition to ICL has gathered much more momentum than ICL and business moguls including Vijay Mallya(who already owns an F1 team), Mukesh Ambani have bought teams of their respective hometowns. Not to mention SRK with Kolkata and Preity Zinta with Mohali. And N. Srinivasan( India Cements) with Chennai. And Chennai team has MS Dhoni!!! yay! 1,500,000 USD was, uh, bit too much.... not to mention 10 other players including Hayden, Muralidharan etc, summing to more than 5 million USD spent on buying cricketers. And suppose if Chennai wins the league title this year, the team gets the prize money of 3 million USD and so Srinivasan may lose a lot of money. But the biggest gainers are the players who are paid in an average 1 to 3 lakhs per ODI but will be paid in crores for 40 twenty twenty matches. But the biggest gainer is BCCI with 50 million USD from DLF title sponsorship, 700 million from franchisee auction and a whopping 1 billion USD from the sale of broadcast rights. And I suppose the biggest loser will be us with us watching these matches but not getting paid a penny. Maybe we should try gambling for a change?

***

This is strictly for Chennai residents. I received a white cover with red letters with warning : "DANGER 1100 volts!" a couple of days before. I opened it curiously and found a very artistically designed invite to our college day celebration(all those who don't know here I study, its Jail, aka Velammal Engineering College), whatever the hell a college day is supposed to be. It was called Elektra 2008, and promised high voltage evening with fun and frolic. It excited me so much that I had to get an idea of what it would be like so I asked a senior. He looked at me like I'm nuts and said, "Don't believe what the invitation says, and thats all I am allowed to say". Puzzled I waited for some more intimations. And I did recieve some. In a circular. Students should attend the celebrations only in blazer, attendance compulsory, no camera, no cell phone, no clapping, no shouting, no whistling and a whole lot of no's. CRAP. All those people, who are planning to attend the so called celebrations.... please reconsider.... this is suicide..... or should I call this electrocution?
Elektra 2008? Electrifying evening? Yeah.... electrify my a**!


Thats all this weekend. Be sure to comment on my scribbling.
Ciao.

P.S.: If you are still planning to come to the event, please bring ear plugs. For your own safety.

Saturday 9 February, 2008

Overrated Truths


After a pause I finally found some time to put up a post, and a lot has happened during the pause.
January 30 1948, Godse ended the life of the Mahatma in a way that Mahatma and his devoted followers detested, that is, through bullets. 60 years later last of his ashes(there are 2 other urns of ashes, but both buried in shrines. So I did not take them into account.) were immersed. If the Mahatma had been alive, personally, I think he would have died by all these false promises and political faux pas committed by the leaders of our nations, but essentially it would be a non violent death. I think he would have preferred the former way of death. In that respect, Godse really put the great man out of his misery.
I wonder why all his principles became so impractical in today, or is impracticality the excuse that we say to cover up our dishonesty? When we are children parents teach us to talk the truth always but they don't follow what they teach. Easier said than done, right?
Gandhi was always against discrimination, be it racial, or on any other grounds, he himself has been a victim on some point of time during his life. Dr. Ambedkar made it a law that no one should ever be discriminated by anyone. Raj Thackeray prefers to ignore the fact and glorifies his party members attacking North Indian taxi drivers working in Mumbai, since they are not Mumbaikars. I suppose he would be comfortable with people kicking a** of the so called Mumbaikars in other parts of the country.
But I am not interested in verifying this because I believe in non-violence. I mean, this really works.....Nelson Mandela and Suu Kyi have demonstrated this fact. So I can assume his ideas do work.
So, lets try to redo the expertiments with truth that Gandhi had done decades ago. If not us, who else will?

***

One of those eye catching news on the TV during the past week was the death of the Hollywood actor Heath Ledger. Ledger played the lead role in the Oscar Award winning Brokeback Mountain and had signed to play the menacing Joker in the upcoming Batman movie called The Dark Knight. But thats not what I am coming to, the news was that, some stupid church division called The Westboro Baptist Church decided to "picket" the actor's funeral. Cool isn't it? No, its not......actually picket literally means, to protest and the reason why they do this is because Heath Ledger played a gay cowboy in Brokeback Mountain. Stupid isn't it? I have never been against religion or religious people, but just hate people who use religion to spread hate. Check out the church's website at
http://www.godhatesfags.com/ and you will get an idea of what I am talking about. It'll make you think that these guys seriously need some counselling. Makes me want to talk about Raj Thackeray and his father, but I suppose it will bore you 'cause they do the samething all the time....

***

Finally Dr. Amit Kumar has been arrested, reportedly, while he was watching TV in a hotel in Kathmandu, Nepal. TV is a good way to get rid of all that stress, especially when police are chasing you for selling kidneys of unknowing patients. This guy made so much money through this highly fruitful business that his wife and kids are residing at Canada while he stays at the organ market aka India. People who want to make quick money by selling one of their kidneys can contact him, but I don't want to wake up from an operation theatre feeling a little underweight on one side of the body.



Thats it for this weekend. Post your comments about what I have scribbled above.
Ciao.

Sunday 27 January, 2008

Bonne Anniversaire!(to me)

It is traditional, from beginning of time, that on someone's birthday they recieve someting new, a gift. This time, the time when I legally become an adult, I decided to break the tradition, i decided to give the world a gift on my birthday. And that gift would be.... uh.... The Open Book.
Not very dandy, not so fancy, someone might say. But world is not always dandy or fancy, so I think its fair enough. The world is not singular, many billion people live in it, and few hundred people in my immediate surroundings aren't really interested in me, only a very few who really do care about me.
But I think those very few are not enough. I need more listeners when I speak. That's why I opened this blog. I want to share things that happen to me, things that affect me and people around me, things that I learn in everyday life. And, to learn from others. How am I going to do this? Just write a diary, open it, and leave it. Those who are interested will read it, may be even write something in it. Others might think its just another book. Thats for you to decide.
I will post as frequently as possible, and I would be glad if you write in your thoughts about the post.
The Open Book is for everyone to read, everyone to reflect upon, and for everyone to write.