Love...Then..& Now..

Didn't realise it had been a really long time i wrote something other than Java code...like, kind of, i was in a techie reality show ' I am a developer, get me out of here'!...

anyways, the point of writing this piece is my recent viewing of 'Love Aaj Kal'.

A new drama-romantic-comedy by 'Socha Na Cha' - Imtiaz - 'Jab We Met' - Ali.

An above average movie which is on its way to be the first true blockbuster (in my opinion) of 2009.

The movie starts with a breakup followed by a party to celebrate the breakup (both in london) followed by a link up (their meet in delhi) followed by a party (new year party near Qutub Minar) immediately followed by a break up at the same party followed again by a linkup at her marriage in Delhi followed again by the breakup (for an year, he's in San Francisco and she in Delhi) and FINALLY to be linked up at DELHI....bloody hell!

Rest of the things like Rishi Kapoor's 70's flashback story (good) and songs (Pritam's best) happen in between the above sentence.

Now, don't come to the conclusion that the movie is bad just by judging my above statement. It's okay. Just that it missed the so-called 'The' factor from it's screenplay.

The cast and the crew are just fine. Only one thing captivated me. Brazil babe, Giselle Monteiro playing Rishi's 70's Harleen. Exactly 2 lines to deliver, not a rocket science to master. But, but her innocently beautiful eyes mouthed like a thousand words and you just have to do ONLY one thing. Shut up and Stare!

Kudos to Ali for the street-dialogues which actually helped the film thru this break up/link up marathon. The movie's heart lies at the right place...just that it's blood circulation (meaning screenplay) which intermittently breaks and links (meaning editing) really get on your nerves giving an ache.

Watchable.

Rating: 3/5

Blessing IN Disguise

Obama's recent announcement on slashing H1-B visas is truely a blessing in disguise for India. I know, there would be many people who would be disappointed by the news. You can't help it as America, in Obama's words, 'need to protect Americans'.

This is truely a great opportunity for India to shed her 'Back Office of the World' image and come on her own terms and emerge as a Great Innovation Country as she was once known for. 

Come on, We are the inventors of the fundamental Mathematical magic number, ZERO. And so many other miracles, like, Ayurveda, rockets, etc. Can't we, atleast realise our true potential in this hour of global crisis and bring the glorius epoch back?

Due to the announcement, more skilled professionals may comeback and help in India's growth. Instead of frowning over, we should grab this opportunity and make the full use of it. Ofcourse, without proper infrastructure and other facilities in place, we can't move ahead. This is where the government's role comes into  picture. It should provide adequate financial support for the upcoming Indian-Global companies which focus not only on IT but in all areas backed by sufficient R & D and help ensure, essential skilled man power is in place. The government should give equal impetus to all fields of Arts, Science and Commerce. And ofcourse Sports, the most neglected field.

With the recent news of more than 1000 Engg colleges being opened, it looks like, the govt. is focussing too much Engineering. I hope it gives equal importance to all other fields  as well. The country, with youth comprising of more than 60% of its population, this is the golden chance for a solid nation building activity in all areas.

 Even though the country is going thru a turbulent period including our neighbourhood in every direction we look, I truely believe that, this is our sure shot moment to emerge as a True SuperPower. And to add 'gulaal' to this, we have the elections in place. Thence, this is really really THE sure shotgun, bull's eye opportunity to tranform India. As they say, 'When the going gets tough, the tough gets going', THIS IS IT!

P.S: Thanks to Gulaal's inspiring soundtrack, for the 'gulaal' comment above in particular and missing-office-cab in general for the topic! And yes, most importantly to the load shedding, without which I would have invaribly spent my time in front of the idiot box. Now, this is really 'blessing in disguise' in true sense! :) 

Delhi Silly

Delhi seems to be flavour of this quarter. First, the distintive Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye (OLLO) then the best-adapted Dev D (DD) and now, Delhi - 6 (D6).

D6 and OLLO belong to 'no-story' genre. The narrative play the role of both the story and screenplay. Now, there are many such movies though, 'Alaipayuthe (Saathiya)' , if i may consider to belong to this genre, really worked for me.

It has one of the mammoth star casts where each one of them if streched like a K serial could have a story of its own.  And such is their performance, that you won't question if there's any story or not. Honestly, you shouldn't. 

What should really matter is the narrative or the going-ons. An ABCD, Bachchan Jr, 'accidentally' arrives India, D6 to be precise to 'drop off' the-one-waiting-to-return-to-soil, Waheeda Rehman.

The hero gets hooked to the chaos and confusion of the place and slowly and steadily starts to like the place. 

Now, I would neither be writing too much into the 'story' nor the supporting cast as they are just  two many. But, trust me, each one of them is just superb! My pick would be Vijay Raaz, Deepak Dobriyal and Divya Dutta.

And of course, Masakali - representing both the dove and the heroine, Sonam. She is just spontaneous and awesomely natural though i wished she have had a meaty role.

The hero, Abhishek, gives yet another understated performance (previous one being in Dostana, difference being, here he's liked). His 'accented' dialogue delivery gets a bit on ur nerves yet somewhat likeable is the fact that he provides the podium for the narration in the form of voice-over.   

Even, Big B's presence at the end doesn't add anything special to the already-preachy second half.

The Monkey Man and Ram Leela episodes are stretched a bit more than required. The mirror-holding concept (to symbolize to 'look within' and remove evil) works initially though after a certain point, people really start looking into the mirror to check if they actually dozed off or not!

D6 is as honest  as Rang De Basanti but tends to get a bit preachy and after some time, the whole thing looks silly.

That said, it really boasts of some brilliant technical work in terms of Cinematography, Background score and songs, editing, and art direction. Chandni Chowk really comes alive in Samir Chanda's art work. 

Rakeysh is let down by his own script this time though the film has a good soul and honest intentions. Watchable once.    

Rating: 2.5/5

   

 

V-A-C-A-B

After much deliberation and dereliction for months, our group decided to go on a trip.Finally!! Though the destination was undecided, I was happy that we, atleast made up our mind to visit some godamnit place! And what a place(s) it was!

Fantastic Four of us, Ajay, Sriharsha, Suresh and of course, myself hired a qualis on friday night to Athirampally Falls via Valparai. Left Bengaluru around 2300 hrs.

Without any more e-motions attached, lemme blog.

Pollachi: The first place we stopped for bath and breakfast. Found a decent hotel (Hotel Sakthi) in the town and finished all morning activities and let for Valparai. There are beautiful places around Pollachi but we had a tight schedule to follow which we don't often follow @ work! :)

Aliyar Dam/Reservoir: 20kms for Pollachi and on the foothills of Anamalai mountain range which leads all the way to Valparai. Beautiful one (pictured above), though while reading blogs on Valparai, i didn't know why so. Reason: It's a lovers' spot. I could find more no. of couples than the trees to shade them! Anyways, is still a good place! :)

Monkey Falls: The first place on the ghat is the Monkey Falls. Small and beautiful falls. Part of Roja's 'Dil Hai Chota sa' song was filmed here which we remembered when we saw the place! (pictured above..that's Suresh, Ajay and Harsha...hehehe)

The ghat houses 40 hair-pin bends which provides luxurious view of the Aliyar Dam (one at 9th bend is a good one, pictured above) and the lush green forest. Almost the entire strip has good asphalted road, another plus point.

Valparai - The town full of tea and coffee plantations is truely a traveller's delight. We reached the place around 2pm. You won't find a single hill/mountain range in and around the town without a tea or a coffee plantation. I loved the sight immensely though for somebody it might be a bane especially if green's not one of his/her fav colors! Anyways, all 4 of us liked and loved the place.

Although, it was a pain for the 3 others when i had to halt the vehicle every 500 mts to capture in the digicam. Like, taking a mental picture (Sitcom, Friends's one of the episodes featuring Alec Baldwin's famous lines) of this wonderful view. But when you are in such a great place and have an insatiable thirst for snapping every thing that's looks awesome who wouldn't go zany over it? (pictured)

Reached the hotel (Hotel Green Hill) which we had it booked from our Pollachi hotel. Room was good, priced at Rs.900/night for a couple.Refreshing ourselves, we set out for in and outs of the town.

We have had thought of visiting temples and churches amidst the estates, but had to shelve the plan excusing ourselves blatantly that since God's omnipotent and omnipresent. Actually, we were running out of time.

picture: Our evening tea.

Our hotel receptionist/owner gave us 3 routes to visit places. We selected one which had a dam (Nirar Dam), a falls (Chinnakallar Falls) and a river (sorry, forgot the name). Since it was already 4.45pm and dam would close by 5pm, we zeroed-in on the falls.

Nirar Dam: Nice route. 20 kms from the town. Nirar damn (pictured) is on the way. The dam is more of a reservoir than the damn dam! :) From the dam, the falls is 1 km further plus 200mts walk. Loud Tamil music greet you at the falls, a ploy to ward-off the wandering elephants. If you are a Tamil music fan, there's a nice podium to dance as well. The place has a school and a post office which actually amused and pleased me. Good that education is reaching far and wide.

Chinnakallar Falls:Now the falls (pictured), in technical terms, is not a falls at all. Its just a stream of water flowing from a slightly elevated rock. Nonetheless, it's good for some recreational activities like...u can fill in your choice! :).

We couldn't stay long enough to enjoy as it was getting dark and the water was getting cold. Moreover, it's frequented by neighbourhood elephants.

Came back to the town, strolled the streets, ate local delicacies, packed some tea,spices to take back home. Slept early.

Got up at 6.30 am next day to foto the tea gardens (pictured).

Now, being a hill station, here i was expecting a very cold morning. but to my surprise, it wasn't. Benguluru was much colder when I reached next day!

Anyways, snapped some pics, eat some freshly prepared and tasty masala vadas, got ready for our next and final destination. Athirampally Falls (AF).

My first thought while driving towards AF was 'Awesome route; Awful road'! It's a 60kms stretch to AF from Valparai via Sholayar dam. We could only see Tata board in all the tea/coffee gardens right till Kerala and this spans several hills! Really, it's a small wonder how they must have planted a whole mountain range with tea and coffee samplings!!!

One of the many Tea gardens. Or should i say, advertising Sony shot from a Canon! :)

Sholayar Dam: 30 Kms from Valparai. On the way to AF. Some sites claimed it to be Asia's 2nd longest and deepest dam (pictured). I could certainly not find if it's deepest or not but definitely not the longest. But, yes, a beautiful dam surrounded by forests and tea gardens.  As you can see, some work is going on at the place.

Picture: Dam Site.
Without much delay, we set out for AF.

The dense forest, monitored jointly by Kerala & TN, is home to a large amount of flora and fauna. Good that we didn't find much of fauna except for this snake (pictured) else i wouldn't be writing this blog. Would I?!

The best thing after crossing over to Kerala is the Mobile Network. I could get excellent reception near a picturesque Dam (pictured). Good roads are another plus point.So, an excuse to snap some more pics and irritate the group!

Finally, reached AF around 2pm. Had some 'parotta' and went to see our Final Destination: The Athirampally Falls.

The Final Falls: When I first saw this falls in Dil Se's 'Jiya Jale' song, i thought it to be some remote place in the middle of jungle which is largely inaccesible. And still it was the same thought.

But one glimpse of this place changed all these. We had to park our vehicle 200 mts away from the Entry gate (Timings: 8am-6pm) and when we went near the falls, we could see, hundreds already in action (pictured), only posing for camera though and nothing otherwise!. I have seen this falls in innumerable films ever since. Barricades are in place which act as a deterrent to go near the falls with a guard in place to avoid any illegal entry. However, i captured this pic below, in one of those activities. Couldn't resist the view!

Just trekked down to the bottom of the falls (200 mts) and clicked as many snaps as possible. As usual as it sounds, the falls is just awesome. Thanks to the dam authorities, as it was Sunday, they had open the gates for us to catch such an incredible view. The top of the falls (pictured) though crowded, wasn't much fun.

Spent some time, clicked Sunset snap and left for Bangalore via Palakkad (stopover @ Palghat for some lite dinner), Coimbatore.

And as far as our fun quotient goes, we had Suresh with logical and irrational questions and Harsha with more answers literally playing 'kaun banega bakwaspati'. Ajay and myself were intermittently listening to them! :)

P.S. : VACAB stands for the places listed above! :)

The 44th!

First things first. It is an awesome and inspiring inaugural speech! 'Is' because, it's still ringing in my ear! And my first viewing of an Oath administered to the ministers and presidents, ever. This National Event, both in US of A and Rest of the World, India included, as it's being shown Live on all prominent Indian news channels, the first for them as they haven't beamed any of Indian Oath taking ceremony (!), is truely one of its kind. Guess other 'popular' leaders would follow suit elsewhere!

If, for America and World's sake, Obama is as honest in his intentions and clear and truthful in his thoughts and deeds as his speech, i am sure, his name would be remembered for generations to come and his place reserved in the pages of World History!

Mr. Barrack Hussein Obama, the 44th President of United States of America, Best of Luck!

Delhi 6 - Music Review

Delhi 6 is Rakesh Omprakash Mehra's 3rd flick after Aks and RDB. Like his other two, this one's rocking too and how! Let's wait and see how the movie matches this colossal score!

Aarti (Tumre Bhavan Mein) and Arziyan

Great way to start the album with offerings to Almighty.Both are awesome numbers sung by (Rekha Bharadwaj and et. al) & (Javed Ali and Kailash Kher) respectively.

Bhor Bhaye

I think this is ARR's first full fledged Hindustani classical number. This should definitely be liked by old and new alike interested in Classical numbers. For ordinary ears, it's soothing though.

Genda Phool

Rekha Bharadwaj is one of my fav singers ever since i heard Omkara's Namak number. She has that kind of a voice which can ease a stressful mind instantly. This is one of my fav numbers from the soundtrack. I know ARR believes in the oxymoron 'less is more' phrase in turns of his music but now he's started with short numbers as well (This song is just 2.5 mins long). The last number in this 'genre' is Yuvvraaj's 'Manmohini'. Although other tracks in this pack are not that long except for Arziyan, this particular number kept wanting me for more! This is already my ring tone!! hehe..

Dil Gira Dafatan

Nice slow number.I love first 5 sec of this track which reminds me of the latin-american style of music. Ash King's voice has a soothing effect backed nicely by Chinmayee. The background orchestra is too good. This should take some hearings to be likened by one and all. And to know that he doesn't know a word in Hindi and has sung this, makes me like it more!

Delhi 6

Title track. A rap/hip-hop/lazy number with great vocals by Blaaze, Benny, Vivenne, et.al. A Uber cool one! Instantly likeable.

Noor

A less than a minute soothing philosophical phrasing by Amitabh Bachchan. Nice one.

Hey Kaala Bandar

A Fast and Fun song with some of course funny lyrics. Prasoon gets a chance to display his wild side in this one.

Rehna Tu

Old habits die hard. Yes, ARR has it. He always keeps some of the best tracks to himself. And does complete justice to them! You should like this. One of the trend setting numbers.

and My favourite Masakali

The First-Best song of 2009. Absolutely a show stopper number sung brilliantly by Mohit Chauhan. Perky lyrics in sync with music. ARR seems to make full utilization of the Accordion he bought in Hong Kong, right from Aye Hairate (guru) and then followed it up by Zindagi (Yuvvraaj). The way Mohit plays with the words, 'Tamanna', 'Manmaani' just shows his versatality and his ease with words. For me,this is Mohit's Best song.

This is a wholesome entertainment album with a song for everybody spanning almost all genres. Being it classical, hip hop, rap, instant-likeables, slow ones, you name it, you got it. It's all right here!

Go ahead and take yours! Great way to start 2009. An absolute must have!

Reviews

Happen to see quite a bit of movies recently. Their reviews, though in brief.
In Bruges
Most recently watched movie. It refreshed my Bruges memory. This 'Venice of North' is a small but lively city. And so is the movie. This Irish comedy-drama-thriller is a delight to watch especially Colin and Gleeson's awesome chemistry. Debut movie by a theatre writer (sorry, forgot his name!). Lots of F words. Infact, loads! ;)The best part about this movie is that, though the story is seen-before types, the screenplay keeps us guessing for the next moves of the characters.
Colin's win at Golden Globes'09 as Best Actor-Comic/Musical is well-deserved.

Burn After Reading
Completely eerie, out-of-the-box comic movie involving Brad Pitt, George Clooney, et.al written by awesome-duo Cohen Brothers. Fun to watch.

Ghajini
Only reason to watch this is the climax which was publicised to differ with the 'original-inspired' Tamil version.Good timepass though.

The Lives of Others
Superb German movie. Watch to understand something about privacy in East Germany.An Oscar winner. Rightly though!

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
One more great movie. Ben (Brad)'s born 80 year old (physically) and starts growing backwards and dies young. Brad Pitt's best act till date. And yes, great music. And rightly nominated everywhere.

Slumdog Millionaire
No words on this movie! Not coz i don't wanna say anything but coz so many things are already being praised for and criticised against this movie. Rightly won Golden Globe. Anxiously waiting for THE most awaited moment. The Oscars.