Archive for review

Chetan Bhagat’s ‘2 States ,The Story of My Marriage’-A Review

{ October 13, 2009 @ 7:03 am } · { QTB, book review, ramblings, review }
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Chetan Bhagat’s latest offering exactly takes off where he last left with 3 Mistakes of My Life.By now you as a reader would have settled into a familiar rhythm with this fellow. From the mandatory number in his title to his sense of humor you must have seen it all.But the reason why he clicks is also the reason why rom coms are a hit-its fun. His latest book is perhaps the best one after that much promising debut. Its tailor made for a movie and I want to see one by Imtiaz Ali.The story is about cross cultural differences and their significance in a love marriage.His sense of humor is at its easiest best.By now we know his books are always semi autobiographical and Hari,Shyam,Krish are all same at some level. He takes on the vibrant Punjabi culture and the more conservative tamil counterpart with a perfect sense of familiarity and alieness combined. His mockery as he says in the prologue is laced with liberal doses of affection.
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So if you are a tam bram or a punjabi you would all the more enjoy this book if you have the ability to laugh at your own community Some of his one liners are just on the dot like the one where he says there is absolutely no love left between a couple by the time you convince both the families for an amicable marriage.Another one where he says what a marble is to a Punjabi is the same as a foreign degree to a Tamil.Or his poking fun at the quiet tamil households and fat punjabi aunties is equally fun.
He gets most of his facts right from the various tamil ceremonies involved to the lifestyle of the people. Thus he notes all that would be familiar to the people from the community-the idlis in the morning,quiet lunches,carnatic music,hindu,even Bay Area in US,obsession with IITs and IIMs and so on. The only place where he slips is when he confuses a nakshatram or a star with a jaatakam and the name manjunath is hardly a common tamil iyer name more likely to be a kandu one.

When you read a bhagat you read it because its entertaining not for literary value, so grab a hot mug of coffee,recline on a sofa or bean bag comfortably ,put on some good music and munch along a bag of chips as ypu read his latest book. Its fun,light hearted and entertaining!

Luck by Chance-A Review

{ February 2, 2009 @ 1:22 pm } · { movies, review }
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5904_luckbychanceeVery few hindi movies leave me with a sense of satisfaction of having seen something nice and special.LBC is one of them because it never ventures over the top.The story subtly unravels ,never once forcing itself and Zoya delivers a better take on bollywood than Bhandarkar did.The reason I say that is because Page 3 force feeds you,LBC lets you discover on your own.The movie is languid in its pace and the story requires that partly.
The movie has well fleshed out,all too familiar characters.Dimple Kapadia’s role of a diva mom living herself again through her daughter,Isha-the daughter who is spoilt but yet retains an innocence in her,Rishi Kapoor-the over the hill producer searching for that hit again and lastly Juhi Chawla the sweet trophy wife who states facts with such naivety are all very endearing.
Zoya like her brother did in DCH has an ability to create humor in an understated manner that you hardly notice that it hits you.Like the one where we are told why becoming a hollywood hero is easier than a bollywood one,or the one where Nina,kapadia’s onscreen avatar in anger tells that the name bollywood is denigrading or even the one where Anurag kashyap states that he ripped a hollywood movie to write it as the director wanted.The entire sequence of lucky 5 for Rishi Kapoor is perhaps the most overstated of the humor.The rest leave an impresion.
The cameos are cleverly interwoven with each star sportingly playing themselves.Thus Aamir comes as the one always wanting another shot,Kareena as the tongue in cheek heroine,Abhishek as the one who loyally conveys the presence of his dad in some way everytime,Rani as the sugary sweet and ever so diplomatic star,SRK as the larger than life star willing to pout advice and finally that brings us to the one not playing himself in a way ,Hrithik Roshan.Hrithik as Zaffar Khan is very good with a sincierity that shows.He plays the great star trapped in his own image mocking SRK when he says he works for Zaffar.the part where he conveys he no longer wants to work for his mentor is very well shot and so is the scene where he shows and then subdues a sense of insecurity.
lbc1-300x199Farhan like the movie is charming in an understated way.He holds the script well and never once lets the audience sympathy slip from him.He looks cuter and fitter and one wishes to see more of him.Konkana is good as usual but she is so very getting type cast in woman of multiple layer kind of roles that one wishes to see her in lighter roles.
Zoya impresses and seems equally good and perhaps better than her brother as a director.The art direction is average though.Luck by Chance succeeds in the irony it portrays and yet never makes you feel disgusted or depressed with any aspect of the industry shown.Its one of the good hindi movies I have seen in a long time.

What’s the fuss about the Slumdog?

{ January 30, 2009 @ 4:54 pm } · { movies, review }
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bildeIts been a while since I blogged.I have been busy in final year decadence with trips and treats and general fooling around. I have in the meanwhile been on a trip to Coorg , co founded a company called TLS,thought a fair bit about pot girls and hot girls, given identity and standing to sheikhu(he now tells me he is much better off than he was and when I last saw him was playing around in roller skates) and spent a day or two mourning the ingnonimous exit of Djokovic from the Australian Open.

There has been much lashing against Slumdog Millionaire in India. It started of course with Mr.Bacchan Sr himself .Many Indians have termed the movie an outrage on Indian sensibility,derogatory and even gone to the extent of advocating a boycott.The latter was done in quite a fashion by Mr.Arindham Choudhary in the Hindu occupying a quarter of his full page length add on ‘Dare to think beyond the IIMs!’

On a more serios note I think we are blowing a mountain out of a mole hill for no good reason.Status messages,blogs ad much more have derided the movie forbeing anti-indian. When I watched the movie I simply loved it.So vibrantly shot that it leaves you in awe for a while.I let out a gasp when Jamaal was asked the third Musketeer and did not forward the Jai Ho song.In short i thought here was an honesty about the film, a genuine attempt to portray the triumph of an under dog.slumdog_film_0126

People have accused the film of portraying an India of slums, riots, poverty, crime and insincierity.The truth is the majority of the country falls into that category.In fact i think what is more denigrading to the sense is the highly sanitised super rich families shown in Karan Johar’s movies. That slumdog in a sense refers not only to Jamaal but to India itself is true but the fact remains that the movie asks a genuinely puzzling question-’ how does India survive and thrive despite the problems?’ its indeed a matter of wonder that how a nation burdened with illiteracy,corruption,sectraian politics,terrorism has managed to survive an economic onslaught that has withered super powers like America.The answer the movie tries to give is that India survives not despite these problems but along with these short comings. The indomitable Indian spirit draws strength from the hardships faced.In a large sense its true and that is our strength and our weakness.

What puzzles me is the intolerance shown.There is a stereo typing of India to cater to the western audiences but this movie is not alone in that crime.Curious Case of Benjamin Button ,Outsourced and a host of others are partner to it.Its similar to the portrayal of Westerners as promiscous and untrustworthy in Indian movies.That the story is based in the slums necessitates the struggle for survival shown. I do not see any degrading aspect of portrayal in slumdog as compared to the one in Salaam Bombay of the same Mumbai slums. Slumdog Millionaire is an unabashed drama with its heart in the right place.It narrates a telling tale of survival in an indomitable city.If its crime is that it exaggerates Indian poverty then a greater crime in that regard is committed by our English media .If the problem is that it glorifies poverty then our Hindi movies have long committed that sin. We do not complain against derision of gay couples in Dostana, we swallow an assault on our sensibility by a string of Bollywood films but have suddenly woken up to claim that Indian pride rests on boycotting this movie.

The movie is brilliantly shot and enacted and to all of Mr.Bacchan’s claims of equally good Bollywood films i beg to differ.You can count those in your finger tips and regional cinema is often far more superior to the films churned out in Bombay.Its indeed a moment of pride that Rehman has been nominated to the Oscars for these awards do far better justice to excellence in movies than our very own national and film fare awards.

A day in the life of a blogger-con&porn and a bit more.

{ December 20, 2008 @ 1:27 pm } · { PSBB, QTB, book review, musings, on and off, ramblings, review, the dividing line }
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Yesterday was one of those days when you had a lot to tell but was lazy enough  not to do so.Apart from the fact that i came down with a bad cold and sore throat  and my laptop is teetering over the edge with a con virus , it was a pretty uneventful day. The virus in my laptop is a porn watcher’s delight. It made me give 2 significant frustrated outbursts.One was about how i dont even watch porn and yet the virus , ppl found that funny. So funny that every person who has so far promised to set my laptop right has laughed at me, my comp or in the case of shiny ended up watching movies on it.This led to the other outburst- more a cry that went ‘ i dont want windows’…you see with Windows its like the ants in the basement story. There are ants all over the place in the room next to yours. yet you believe it wont be your room next.It takes a good few bites to realize and go and get a lakshman rekha.This moral holds ofcourse for the average laptotting ,non-open crazy ,non-geeky,non-Gates basher whose ultimete utilisation of the comp is watching movies,like me.

Then there was this speech in the afternoon organized by SPICMACAY. I dont even remember the guy’s name. He was ok, conservative,praising the media and believing in Utopian ideals .The worst part was that heair  gave the sppech in Kannada. Now thats discriminatory in a national institute of technology.

Back in school i used to have this wonderful long discussions on a lot of topics. We fought, badgered but always discussed. It mattered to argue whether reservations are right or not,about dvaita and advaita, open relationships,whats diff btw american girls and indian ones,that Scarlett O Haara was perfectly justifiable or the run of the mill Tamilnadu politics. It did nothing but to increase phone bills, reduce the concentration in class hours and lead to small phases of ‘i wont talk with you’.

It also strengthened bonds of friendship,made you understand people better,helped you to while your time in sanskrit classes and most importantly it molded me into a debator and a pretty successful one at that till i crash landed at NITK.The prob was a large number of ppl i met as a naive first year did not take such discussions in the right sense.  They called it giving fundae and still do .The thing with such discussions is that they are meant ultimately to be taken in the right sense,its not about who is better its about what you think. Of course opinions vary for some wierd reason and you need to live by that.

Lastly I read IWoz and realsized that Wozniac belongs to a rare breed of ppl.If its indeed the triumph of the nerds then its the triumph of this guy more than the other for Gates is like a poisonous ivy in your backyard and a shrewd bussisnessman(at some level they mean the same
) and Jobs ofcourse is this rockstar cum politician cum visionary cum streetfighter all rolled into one. My god there is no geekiness in him, he is the larger than life CEO whose charm is at best irresistible.As for Michael Dell,packard and others we will leave it for another day.

P.S: the answer to that question abt the girls is .. mind you i quote,” To an American girl its important that you always have a boyfriend and to an Indian girl its important that you ever had one”. I dont own anypart of that statement its been copyrighted elsewhere.

As for the guys by mutual consent we came to conclude not much of a difference . afterall after a certain drop it does not matter if its left or right.

Dasavatharam-A Review

{ June 19, 2008 @ 4:57 pm } · { QTB, on and off, review }
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Its a bit late but nevertheless its here.This monday last, I saw Dasavatharam in Kaveri theatre in Bangalore. I dont generally watch movies in non- multiplexes for obvious reasons. But this one had to be an exception for two reasons:

1. the cost of a multiplex ticket

2. the lack of availability of tickets

This one is afterall one of the most hyped movies to be released in a while . so did i like it?Yes.did it live up to the hype? yes. did it live up to your expectation? yes and no.Here’s why.

Kamal is brilliant. His dedication,persevarance,dilligence and acting skills are worth admiring.As an actor he is a spectacular success. No one in Indian cinema could have carried off ten diffrenet roles as charismatically as kamal has.Rangaraja Nambi, the first character is perhaps the best from Kamal in a while. He breathes soul and life into that character. Its well shot,enacted superbly and quite evidently meticulously researched.This is probably the most memorable role from Kamal since Kameshwaran of MMKR.He is also brilliant as the telugu RAW official, though after a while the effect wears out.Govindaraja Naicker has shades of Madan in it, maybe because the characters themselves are similar.As Christian Fletcher the villain, he makes you wonder why he doesnot do negative roles often.He is again above the cut. The only blemish being Khalifulla Khan, though the make up is praise worthy, Kamal falls flat. As Avatar Singh he is predictable and as Krishnaveni he again shows his class.

The movie is a thorough entertainer, its technically of a different contour than recent Indian movies.In fact   most times it reminds you of Hollywood movies. Action sequences are well shot, songs are decent, background score keeps the adrenaline pumping and the graphics is superlative.Asin as Andal is highly irritating in fact if at all there is a villain in the movie, it is this role of hers.This movie must be watched because its not often that you get to see such superbly shot movies, this one is on a different level and yes, Kamal Hasan is the USP .Is it better than Shivaji definitely yes. The only major blemish being this movie doesnt have the kind of story that Kamal’s movies generally have. This one is meant to be an entertainer and its one of the best in recent times.This is one also comes with a heavy dosage of atheism as expected. Watch it in the big screen you wont be disapponted.And yes, a multiplex is better.

Chetan Bhagat’s Three Mistakes of my Life-A review

{ May 26, 2008 @ 5:42 am } · { review }
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Over the past few years I have mostly read  indian authors and rarely any fiction.The notable exceptions being The Brave New World and Les Miserables.I remember  reviewing Five Point Someone by Bhagat in my Professional Communication class in first year .The only reason I  chose that topic being, to play to the gallery.After all some fifty odd guys who either loved or loathed that book were in front of me. That speech needless to say was a  success.I liked that novel ,large parts of it was fun and you could relate to it at some level or the other.His latest one,TM om L is not much of a change from the first book.I found it a better read than the second but not as decent as the first.

His books are a bit cheesy what i would call the coffee table types.They are sort of the literary equivalent of sitcoms.Immensely popular but no value as an art form. They always follow a similar plot, the characters are essentially the same across the three books. In Vidya’s pink bedsheets you can see Neha’s pink T-Shirts, in Govind you get Hari and Shyam.Ryan becomes Vrom(?) and then a bit of him is still left in Ishaan.And thats what irritates you a lot.You expect a writer to grow and his characters to mature  at some time or the other.

Bhagat is best when he confines himself to describing life in campuses,friendships and blundering young romantics.The problem starts when he tries his hand at others such as earthquakes,communalism  or Indian youth.He tries to pack in so much in the last novel that it left me wondering how come he didnt include the floods/droughts that ravaged gujarat.

Chetan Bhagat’s greatest strength lies in his ability to write believable and casually funny campus stories and it would be great if he sticks to it. If you read his first two, read the latest it won’t disappoint much.