8 Khon...No Maaf :-|

After a good long hiatus on the cinema front, I did the brave thing by hitting satyam cinemas website and checking out what was on offer. After having read about Vishal Bharadwaj's latest flick and found decent positives on the review, I thought it was a good choice and the guy sitting to my left at this point, seconded that thought. So we ventured out. Ever since man evolved from the monkey, it has been well documented that human emotions are very highly altered by fellow human being's influences. Adding another vindication to that work of history, the third guy in the party at present said "Ok let's go". So it was down to choosing the fourth companion since the movie was decided.  "7 Khon Maaf" had become people's choice for the 10:15 PM night show. Like it happens in the 'Usual Suspects', we got our usual companion on the phone and confirmed her presence in the scheme of things.

So, It was me, Laurel and Hardy (using my mom's choice of names for the two guys I always roam about with, ever since I landed at Chennai from Hyd) and the fourth soul gearing up for it. As is often the case with my dad, I was sent out of home at sharp 9:15 PM, so as to "be on time" for the movie. For the uninitiated, my dad has this weird idea of packing off people well before time when it comes to going to the railway station/bus stand to catch a train/bus on a journey. He makes sure we reach the platform at Chennai Central at least a few seconds before the engine driver boards the engine at the shed. Sigh!. One gets the drift here, I suppose. It is such a pain for the victim in point to have to do that long, never ending wait at the end of such crises. So there I was at No.8 Thiru Vi Ka Road, Royapettah, a good 40 minutes before time.

Choosing the very usual way of killing one's time, I picked up my phone and rang up all those friends who I had to pick a good number of threads with, people who I missed to check upon for 2-3 years now, or people who had promised to call me but never did so in the recent weeks. So after all the deliberation, we enter "Seasons" to watch the advertisements that test our patience levels like  - Vicco Vajrathanthi (twice), Nathella Samptha Chetty (twice), some random Tamil Nadu police announcements etc. So having gone through a bad phase already, we garnered the interest to concentrate on the movie for the day. Scene 1 enter "Gun", enter "Blood", enter some arbit ghost in human form more on the lines of one of these.

No, do not misunderstand me here. None of these people have played any role in this movie. The make up of our beloved protagonist, madam Priyanka made the trick and delivered the look alike at this juncture. I then realized why the censor board was bent upon giving an 'A' rating for this movie. Not that the certificate is debatable per se, the movie has a good number of scenes worthy of an A rating. But, think of it folks, with people below the age of 18, there his very high probability that they might get scared and/or faint at the very introduction of the heroine. So put your hands together for the diligent censor board rating. Moving further on the review of the movie, which was the initial intention in this post, it moved at nautical speeds for the first one hour. It was like some recursive function that goes like, love, marriage, sex, murder, love again, marriage again, sex again, murder again...With that one line, i think i have done a wonderful precis on the review of the first half of the movie. For the benefit of readers, I did not choose to show the recursive pattern 3 times, to say that 3 iterations of it happened in the first half.

So there it was, Interval, and the message on the screen read "4 more to go". It would be gross injustice to Laurel , if I did not applaud his sense of humor at that very juncture. He contrived to do a rhyme there. "No more folks, shall we go?". I mean, see the "go" and "go". Though Laurel did not get any takers when he cracked that for the first time, in the hope of getting some admirers on this platform, I have posted it here. Laughers at this point, can go and laugh. After all it's interval.

So cutting the tangent, finishing the popcorn and emptying the coke tin, we come to the second half. I would get tomatoes, eggs and what not (those that should have been thrown at plenty towards Priyanka, if one has to be judicious) if I write that recursive function once again to describe the scenes from the second half. Same set of chores, mate. So we come to the climax where we are offered a slight twist. The recursion stopped. This time, our heroine decides to change the order of things. Murder loses its position at the last. She decides to marry someone who cannot be murdered. So as to avoid any spoilers at that juncture, I shall say "Oh Jesus Christ". For the over smart people who think even that was a spoiler, sorry people, you are too intelligent for that movie. Give it a miss.

So there were 7 folks in all. 7th being the one where I chose to leave the suspense as it was. And I would like to add that "murder" was definitely the order of the day, because, guys, the movie itself becomes the murderer in the end and stabs the viewer to make it 8 in all.

Disturbingly fast, bad screenplay, worst acting performances (barring Irfan Khan and Naseeruddin Shah of course)....useless in all. Is this to Vishal Bhardwaj, what Raavan is to Mani Ratnam????

That story was definitely better left in the form of the book from which it has been inspired.

Dear Mr Joseph Vijay! Sure-Ah???? Fail

In the year 1992, Joseph Vijay...aka Ilayathalapathi(Youth Commander) Vijay, debuted as a lead actor in the movie Naalaya Theerpu(Tomorrow's Judgement). Rightly so, because the verdict was decided by then. Flop! Utter Flop! After giving a load of poor grossers to his millions of fans, he rose to fame in an anomalous Ghilli. But, slowly afterward, populace from most parts of Tamil Nadu have started wondering if he has anything at all in the place that is by and large occupied by something called the Human Brain.

I took one of the worst decisions of my life insofar while I was at Mysore last weekend. No points for guessing. The decision was to watch the movie Sura, his 5oth movie. Any normal Homo Sapien with a steadyhead would not have taken such a decision after having witnessed a few other gems like Kuruvi, Villu etc. But my wiser insticts did not prevail and unfortunately I ended up sitting in the theatre amidst a few kaili (lungi) clad, inebriated youth of Mysore. To say that those 3 hours were worse compared to my grandma's stories about Mr Yamadharmaraja deep-frying sinners in his oil container, would be to grossly understate the affairs.

The movie in layman terms was a very "different" one. Now, that would come as a shocker to people who know of Vijay quite a bit. Here goes the explanation.

Things that were different in the movie: Director, Producer, Heroine, Cinematographer, Cameraman, Editor, Light Boy etc...

Things that were NOT different in the movie: Hero, Story, Screenplay, Plot.

The movie, in simple terms can be explained thus:

for (int i=0;i=3;i++)
{
songSequenceWithDance.display();
comedyScene.play();
matrixFight.execute();
}

I am banging my head on the wall next to me as i type this and wonder what couuld have been a better choice instead of those 3 hours. A few ideas that come to my mind are as follows:
1. Search Google for 5 easy ways to commit suicide.
2.Watch this video with the repeat mode on my media player-turned on.
3. Have 10 crows caw-ing in my ears for 6 hours together and try to pen down that melody in musical notes.
4. Watch Rakhi ka Swayamvar on TV
5. Even better, watch runaway hit soaps like Kolangal, Arasi, Selvi etc.
6.Keep trying the cliche "My Name is Khan and I am not a terrorist" till i master the Kkkhhaan from my epiglottus.

Any of the above mentioned activities would have been a better choice by any standards.

Verdict: Mr Joseph Vijay can be suspended for implementing a failing formula for about a decade now. He can also me remanded to 15 days of rigorous police custody on murder charges. Ivan padangala paathu paathu, 2 maadu sethu poirukku, naalu paeruku kannu nollaya poyirukku (After having watched his latest movies, 2 cows have died and 4 people have lost their eyesight).

Fail!! Colossal Flop!! Somebody please shoot him!!

Freakonomics: A Review

After a really really long time, I have tried my hands on yet another book review. Though I was slightly late in embarking upon this classic, now is not the bad time because the sequel: Super Freakonomics' is topping the charts at book stores.

Steven Levitt (a famous economist and a Harvard graduate) and Stephen Dubner (a New York journalist) have produced an impeccable work in Freakonomics. Using statistical data to reveal grotesque connections and heterodox behaviors is the basic concept behind the book by and large. Having said that, it is important to note that the book does not have any unifying theme. The authors have chosen to call this approach a treasure-hunt approach to the art of explaining the oblivious.

Is there an incentive for real estate agents to sell their own homes for more than they sell their clients' homes? How would parents react if child care centers started charging fees when they pick up their children after closing time after it had been previously free? Who is most likely to cheat when bagels are paid for on an honor system? Why do drug-dealers tend to live with their moms? What is common between school teachers and Sumo wrestlers? How did the police break into the Ku-Klux clan in 'reality'?Answers to all of these and much more is what is contained in the book. Those answers are simple but surprising. Behavioral economics is the name of the genre that includes this type of number based behavioral reasoning.

Though the book proclaims no unifying theme, to me personally, the unifying theme behind the book is obviously to make the reader find ways to asking questions. The revised edition of the book contains additional texts which are excerpts from the Freakonomics blog and columns. What I got out of the book is a new dimension to my thinking - an economic way of thinking. The Abhorring conventional wisdom was clearly an intention of the authors. Causes of problems that seem obvious usually, might not be the real causes more often than not. Hence, questioning everything is the right starting point to decode any conundrum.

Malcolm Gladwell's thoughts are very very closely aligned to the thought process behind this book. Super Freakonomics is slightly different from the prelude. The authors have taken a counter-intuitive approach to peep into the future.

Verdict: An excellent read. Should be read at one go. Will most likely entice the reader to buy the sequel and in some cases entice the reader to buy all of Malcolm Gladwell's in wholesale. (Last point was true in my case)

Happy Reading!!

2009- A Round Up

That's another fabulous year coming to an end. It has been a roller coaster ride for most of us with the world-wide recession, job turmoils, RIP MJ, Obamotopia, Tendulkar's 20, Woodsaga and a lot more. Some good and some bad. My year wasn't too different. The "one last time" visit to Pilani as a student was a wholesome experience. 15 days of ecstasy filled with assorted "highs". One last shot at The Age of Empires and Fifa, Movies, Sitcoms, Series and more. January and February went by looking forward to and reminiscing from the trip to Pilani respectively.

2009 was the year of Journalism with Digital media coming to the fore with all the might and power. One of those things what we could have done without was the hype that media created for Kareena's saree act or the Woods' bedroom act. Social networking took a new shape with the prominence of Facebook and Twitter. 09 was the year of linking and networking of course. Blogging became popular all the more and personally i was part of that Blogger revolution. The months of March and April indicated some respite after a dull ending to 2008 on the economic front.

I became a graduate in June and the eventual melancholy for missing college days ruled over me for about a month since then. First Job, Heavy work, Coding miseries, Corporate tamasha, Late nights, Team outings and other common buzzwords did buzz past me in the months of July and August. 2009 has been a 'year of reading' for me and I managed to cover a wide variety from Wodehouse, Orwell, Mohammed Hanif, Khaled Hosseini, Forsyth, Ken Follett to Gurcharan Das, Tharoor, Jhumpa and Naipaul. Later parts of the year witnessed a first order ruckus revolving around CAT and the mouse. A 'colossal failure' would more or less capture the essence of the CAT 09 saga. So after calling it 'RIP CAT09' after November, the footballing world caused surprises with the Big Four in England taking a beating. Now, the stage is set for a competitive season overall. An obsession for writing and journalism began to evolve and i started devoting a lot of time on political, economic and social writing in the month of December.

Overall, Not a great year. It did have the good's like the first job, great football, good movies and awesome books. The bad's were there too with RIP MJ, Religion and Politics, Dirty Media, Swayamvars, Hype on Climate change, Costly movies, Costly food, CAT meltdown and more......

Looking forward to a better year in 2010 with better health, better wealth and better knowledge. A Very Happy New Year to all !!

For a Change

The idea of writing a book review on the blog has always fascinated me and rightly so, I haven't hidden that little fantasy of mine for there have been quite a few of them in the past. There have been awfully long ones on History, Humor, Literature and what not.

S0, for a change, I have decided to cut the crap and write a few (really only a few) sensible lines on what i think of the two books i have read recently.

A Prefect's Uncle-P.G.Wodehouse

This was the Second book that came from this genius after an outstanding "The Pothunters".The school time story touching upon cricket, stolen money and an embarrassing uncle hits heights of humor many a time in the course of its hundred and fifty odd pages. This one is more of a progress since the first novel for him and the inimitable turn of phrases that he employs (the trademark Wodehouse perfections) are there in this book already.

The Small Bachelor-P.G.Wodehouse

Wodehouse captures an era that probably never was but many of us wish it had. He does one of his best jobs, capturing Twenties' New York at a roar in this neatly done up farce. Just like reading a screwball comedy, laughs come often and out loud! The Small Bachelor is not to be missed by any true aficionado of P.G. Wodehouse

Book Review: A Case of Exploding Mangoes

Fiction Based on Assassination is an interesting topic in the modern era which is pregnant with instances of terrorism and genocide. Mohammed Hanif's first book takes this subject and the novel is a plot about men plotting to murder other men. The timing with which the book has been published could not have been better for when it rolled out, General Musharraf was busy fighting Islamic Terrorism and NATO Forces were monotonously dealing with the mights of Taliban. Pakistan remains something of a mystery for most people in North America, occasionally gaining notoriety for acts of violence against women, political assassinations, and insinuations about its ties with the Taliban and the insurgency in Afghanistan. The author hails from Pakistan and in his first work has decided to touch upon the history of his own nation.

On 17 August 1988, a plane carrying General Zia ul-Haq, the military ruler of Pakistan since 1977 and America's staunchest ally in the first Afghan war, went down in flames, killing everybody on board. Zia was accompanied by some of his senior generals, the US ambassador to Pakistan and the head of the US military aid mission to Pakistan, all of whom died. There was no real investigation and no culprit was ever identified or, at any rate, announced. The novel gives an account of all the plotters who were involved in the mysterious death of the First Citizen of Pakistan (then). The style of writing forces one to brand this a "war novel" but the contents make it one with a mixture that includes Religion, Terrorism, Sex, Violence, Humor and Politics.

General Zia's death threat has been daunting since its outbreak about a year before the real demise. The protagonist, Colonel Shigri in this "so called fiction" is one of the plotters who works ardently to sketch a revenge against the Army General for the death of his father who used to serve the army too. The novel exposes a number of plain facts which are yet untold in the context of detentions and tortures suffered by victims jailed by men in uniform --be it any army in the world.

Apart from this revengeful plot by Ali Shigri, Pakistan's number Two, General Akhtar is trying his luck with another plot aiming at the same end result. The name of the book would go unjustified if i don't mention the plot by the "Secretary General of the Mango Farmers Association of Pakistan". The book unintentionally ends up explaining the birth of the modern terms-"jihad" and "mujahideen". In the end one goes back to square one for the climax keeps the reader at bay and the controversy behind the mysterious death of the General remains as it was.

If one doesn't mind sporadic attacks on religious sentiments, this book is a good one for the way things build up to the D-Day when General Zia boards the Pak One for the last time in his life. But given the fact that this book is a product homogeneously from Pakistan, the religious zeal in Hanif is understandable. Mockery on India, Indians, Indian Army, Indira Gandhi, Nehru, Hindus, Christians, Jews and what not is to be digested while one reads through this fabulous account of the Assassination of General Zia Ul Haq, the then President of Pakistan.

Book Review: The KiteRunner

Without revealing much of the story and its plot, what i have tried to do here is give an account of what the reader goes through in this stunning piece of work from Khaled Hosseini. It is a recommended read for all. In short, the novel gives a transparent, devastating and ruthless account of lives in Afghanistan during the Russian invasion. I was pretty much moved by the way the story shapes up to a fitting climax at the end.This post would be more of what one feels while traversing through the astounding waves of emotion and thought in this book, than being a book review.

I want to start with a few lines on the author. Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul where his father worked as a janitor for the Afghanistan Foreign Ministry. In 1970, Hosseini and his family moved to Tehran where his father worked for the Ambassador of Afghanistan. When Khaled Hosseini was a child, he read a great deal of Persian Poetry and many other translated works. Hosseini's memories of peaceful pre-Soviet era Afghanistan, as well as his personal experiences with the hazara tribes of Afghanistan led to the writing of his first novel, The Kite Runner.

The novel is a straight forward and an overly transparent account of Afghanistan during the Soviet Invasion. He takes us through the period that marked the fall of Monarchy in Afghanistan with the help of two characters Amir and Hassan. Amir is portrayed as a well off boy from the Pashtun Community (read superior community) who is brought up in the typical rich family arena. Hassan is from the Hazara tribe which forms a small minority of Sunni Muslims in Afghanistan. The characters of Amir's father and his Friend Rahim Khan are well sketched and respectable. The story narrates the life of the protagonist Amir right from his childhood days. Hosseini has drafted an excellent account of Amir's childhood days with Hassan. Hassan who is the son of Amir's father's servent Ali is the trump card in the pack. Hosseini has used this character to keep the readers' emotions at a high throughout the book.

Hassan is a successful "kite runner" for Amir, knowing where the kite will land without even watching it. One triumphant day, Amir wins the local tournament, and finally his father's praise. Hassan goes to run the last cut kite, a great trophy, for Amir saying "For you, a thousand times over." This part of the novel is where the reader is prone to get really fervent. Hassan's rape and further complications due to the village "Teen King" Assef moves one quite a bit. Amir who pays his price for socializing with a Hazara finally frames his friend and his family's exodus by planting a watch and some money under Hassan's mattress; he falsely confesses.

After the Russian invasion Amir and his dad flee to Peshawar and later to America. He marries an Afghan in the streets of Fremont, California, with who he falls in love. The second part of the novel takes you through Amir's return to Peshawar and then to Kabul to meet Rahim Khan where he learns about Hassan's death and a few other confessions that increase his desire to meet the lone survivor of the Hazara Family. His pursuit for Hassan's only son who is in Kabul is very well written and makes the reader involved. The last part of the novel gives many answers to the questions that Amir had had since childhood. The "All's well that ends well" climax gives a sigh of relief to the reader after going through tough emotions all through the novel.