Kurbaan:Dissection

One of the most awaited movies of the season,not just because of the lead couple or the banner producing this or the print promotion or the humungous scale of publicity with Saifeena on almost every television channel you switch to but also because it makes an attempt to touch upon the lesser discussed subject of Islam and terrorism.
The story starts off really well without wasting much time on the courtship of Ehsaan (Saif) and Avantika (Kareena) , professors at a college in Delhi.After convincing the girl's father Ehsaan and his girl move to the United States.Avantika was teaching in the US prior to her stint in India and had to return to her college,Ehsaan also follows her in the hope of finding a new job there.After some house hunting they finally move to an Indian suburb.It is there that Avantika discovers to her horror that her husband Ehsaan is part of an Islamic terrorist sleeper cell.She gets the help of a journalist Riyaz(Vivek) whose girlfriend Rihanna(Dia) is killed in a flight accident,by a suicide bombing attack,which was apparently planned by Ehsaan's group.Riyaz,with an aim to investigate this situation himself,infiltrates into this group and tips off the FBI on the day when they were planning to bomb all the major subways.

The Let Downs:
A major let down of the movie would be the amateurish way in which this subject is handled,showing fundamentalist terrorist sleeper cells as nothing more than the real life versions of kids' spy games.Especially the scenes in which Ehsaan invites Riyaz for dinner and there Bhaijaan(Om Puri) throws a spot offer to come and join their team,believing in whatever story Riyaz cooks up,without even bothering to run a background check on him, makes you laugh at how ignorant the director is about the way these people operate.You don't need to be a secret agent to know all these,switch to any news channel and they'd tell you better.Not just this but the whole planning and execution of terrorist attack scenes were ineptly shot.
The love scenes between Avantika and Ehsaan were aesthetically dealt with but the director could not resist treading the clichéd bollywood path wherein one of the characters is seduced to get important leads and information.
Or scenes where the audience is told that the FBI has clear pictures of Ehsaan yet he roams free on the streets on NY and worse yet teaches Islamic influence on the west at a university.
FBI is shown as nothing more than a weak police department who still rely on the age old method of spot and shoot to catch dreaded terrorists; or goes by the information some caller gives them over phone,without identifying himself.The FBI was portrayed as nothing more than how Indian police was shown in old bollywood flicks.The person who played the cop would do good in a b-grade Indian movie.Per se all these scenes made a mockery of the anti terrorist cells world over.
The movie could have also avoided the blood and gore,especially in the scene in which Avantika had to pull out a bullet and stitch Ehsaan's famous bullet wound.

The Highs:
The movie had its moments.Both Kareena, and Saif pulled it off really well.We have seen Saif grow as an actor and he plays the role of a cold Islamic fundamentalist who falls in love with a girl whom he just wants to use as a tool,extremely well.
The classroom discussion between Riyaz and other students over the image that the west has of Islam and the few dialogues between Kulbhushan Karbanda's character and Riyaz over the Iraq issue or even the dialogues between Aapa(Kirron Kher) and Avantika were well written and extremely thought provoking.
Kareena looked her gorgeous self and has orchestrated the role of a woman torn between love and betrayal brilliantly.
Even the steamy scenes between Kareena and Saif, that have been blown out of proportion and demurred by some fringe group, have nothing to cringe about,they have been done pretty beautifully.
But it is the weak characterization,incoherent storyline and poor direction that are the real terrorists in Kurbaan and start to painfully pall the audience towards the end and also make movies like New York seem like Sholay.
Nonetheless it was a decent attempt at projecting the voice of Islam and moderate fundamentalism in a religion and taking a neutral stance.
I would give it a 2/5

Masters (?) of Business Administration

November is coming and the MBA fever is catching up.Every year lakhs of students in India plan their future on something they are not even half sure of.The whole MBA thing looks so amusing that I couldn't resist but blog about it.I am sure all of you would be nodding your heads in disapproval at the end this.

I have been looking(read observing)at this India-goes-MBA crowd for some years now and have broadly divided them into five categories.

Why do you want to do an MBA?

First response: It is cool!

A good majority.

Let us accept that the glitz and glam factor attracts us much like a cotton candy attracting a five year old.We see and hear so much about how they party,how the booze flows from the fountains at their colleges,about how much the girls like young MBA graduates; that it is hard to ignore that twang in the tummy whenever someone says the word M-B-A!But as far as my knowledge goes(which I am sure is tad bit better than that of a freshly passed out college graduate) the gloss would at the max last only as long as your farewell party.And would still be an understatement if I am to explain how ephemeral all this is.

Next Response: The pay is high .

This would come a close second.

This,I bet you will discover as soon as you enter the college, would be the silliest reason ever.No one cares about how much you get or worse yet,chooses a job based on the weight of the pay packet.

Response #3: Everyone else is doing,why should I be left out?!

Honest and sick.

What are you going to plan and what are you going to manage if you are not sure what you want to do with your own future?End of discussion!

Response #4 :Nothing else to do.

Again honest but this time,the limpest of all the reasons.

commune d'intervention:I have always dreamt of it and have wanted to do an MBA for quite sometime now.

Dicey!

Ask yourself,why an MBA?If you get

a clear answer,prepare well for the exams.

But I don't see more than some one or two percent in the last category.Result we have thousands of unfit MBAs passing out of the factories-in-India.

Then there are some others like:

I have two options MS or an MBA.

This is the confused category,precisely they know nothing about either fields and are heavily misinformed.Coaching institutes cash in on this ignorance of the crowd to introduce packages such as GRE+CAT and GRE+GMAT for people from this category.They should sit and think what they want rather than which is better.

All said and done I still cannot comprehend the heated discussions before an exam and this applies to our approach to all the exams in India.If there are two or more CAT aspirants,try eavesdropping and you will hear things that start at what the scores are like,but then head to dumb-er topics.

The TV channels also do their bit,inviting center directors and other students.All this is pretty usual and might sound innocuous to everyone.But then there is the crowd which makes heroes out of the people who have made it to any of the top colleges and also assume that those who haven't are mere losers.At times I feel like tie-gag-ing these guys up and then screaming out loud that what a person chooses to do with his life is his personal and we should respect him for that.I know scores of my friends who are doing fantastically well in their area of core competence,I can talk about only the engineering fields,simply because I have been in that field and have closely been and worked with them.

Having said that I still feel that those beautiful people who choose to work for an NGO or dedicate their lives for what they love,not worrying a bit about how much money they are going to make are the real managers.Time and again I have been with people for whom money is everything in life,and no I am not talking contra-socialism here,I know what is the significance of money but do not quite understand the need for the abundance of it.

I have always maintained that Manage-men-t is for people who can Manage-Me(self) and then Manage-Men(people around).Joining the MBA forums,'Bell the Cat Community' on Orkut,posting your scores on PG and TG,attending seminars,building your profile,solving tonnes of problems,indoctrinating people on why one should do MBA or even cracking the exam does not make a manager out of you.Come on guys,get a life!

Kaminey-Dissection

Cast:

Shahid Kapoor as Charlie/Guddu
Priyaka Chopra as Sweety
Amol Gupte as Sunil Shekhar Bhope (Bhope Bhau)

Director:Vishal Bhardwaj

'Kaminey' quite a wierd name for a movie you might say, you scroll down and see 'Vishal Bhardwaj' and silently agree that he might have had something different in store again.Such is the trust he has earned among movie-lovers and hasn't he lived up to it again!This time around he brings to us the early ninetees Tarantino style of movie making,with a perfect mix of dark humour,violence with a pinch of romance to give us this beautiful drama in shades of red and gray.Kaminey as the name suggests is about how selfish people get when it comes to their dreams,love,career and all.

The movie opens to Shahid giving us, in lisp, his take on life."pai'f'e kamane ke bas do raaste hote hai:ek 'F'ortcut aur ek chota 'F'ortcut".This is the street smart Charlie,who makes money hedging bets at racecourse.He dreams of being rich and marring a beautiful rich girl.So,he takes the shortcut('F'ortcut as Charlie would say) and bets one lakh rupees on a horse,but eventually it turns out that the race was fixed and he loses all his money.Sore at this he and his coke-addicted friend Mikhail trace the jockey and finally trace down the henchman,Francis, primarily responsible for this.But as fate would have it there is a drug-deal going on in the adjoint apartment of the hotel and while running away from the hotel Charlie hijacks the jeep of the corrupt Anti Narcotics officers Lele and Lobo,who wanted to sell the prize off to the stylish smuggler Tashi.The jeep had coke worth 10Cr(in a guitar case!).

The other track of the story is of Charlie's twin brother Guddu,who ironically also has a speech impediment too.Guddu works for an NGO that educates people against AIDS and he stammers while talking.His girlfriend is Sweety,played by Priyanka Chopra who delivers some top of the line acting.She is the sister of a wannabe gangster-politician Bhope Bhau(Amol Gupte).Bhope is a politician who wants to draw some political milege on the Maharastra-is-meant-for-only-marathis concept and obviuosly is furiated when he realises that his own sister is marrying a 'North-Indian'.

The story is about how the twins who chose separate paths cross each others ways and eventually realise their dreams.

Kaminey is beautifully crafted with an unpredictable screenplay that will keep you glued to the seats.The climax is the winner where you can hear loud cheers from the audience,for every new twist that comes around.Everything about Kaminey is right,be it the casting,acting,writing even technical aspects like sound and editing were fabulously done.

The songs were already a hit and they never for once disturb the story telling.Fatak,the first song of the movie metaphorically explains about AIDS and its prevention techniques,which will remain one of my personal favorites.Even the title track Kaminey.It talks about how kamini(if I can use that word) are the aspirations inside a man and how they take control of your life if not checked.

All in all Vishal Bhardwaj delivers a fantastic package and lived up to the high standards he has set for himself.

Verdict: 4.5/5

P.S.This might the the first time when I did not have a 'Rip Masand' section,that is because for the first time ever I agree to whatever he said.

Magadheera

The Disclaimer:

Ohk this would not be called a review because to me it is more of a BTMWA(Boy! the movie was auh-sum!)Many might find my opinion a bit biased!And this also happens to be the first telugu movie I felt like writing about,also because the number of telugu movies that feature in my annual movie calender would be less than five!



The opening scene was so superbly crafted that it swept me off!The movie streched a bit in the beginning but picked up as it went along till the interval so much so that those ten minutes seemed like ages to me.Kajal looked fantabulously gorgeous.

Revenge and reincarnation are the leitmotifs of this movie.It is about this intrepid security chief Kalabhairava who loves a Princess, Mitra Vinda,the Princess loves him aswell but there is a villian RanaDev Billa who is defeated by Bhairava in a contest and is banned from the kingdom.He proves to be a renegade and joins hands with an invader Sher Khan and conspires against the kingdom.What follows is an intense battle between KalaBhairava and the opposition army.Kalabhairava is shown scything through their forces and the invader is so overwhelmed by this act of his that he offers Bhairava his friendship.But fate had a different story for the lovers.The recidivistic Billa in a fit of rage tries to kill Mitra and injures her fatally.The Princess lies at the corner of the hill,breathing her last.She asks Bhairava to confess to his love for her atleast at this last moment.KalaBhairava is also fatally wounded,he tears apart his armour and falls on his knees to tell Mitra Vinda how much he loves her,but she's already dead by then.The scene in which his hand falls on the ground close to her and precisely then Mitra slips into the deep canyon is fantastically done.



Highlights:

* 'Magadheera' was released in 48 theatres and six multiplexes in Hyderabad on 31st July, with a staggering 241 shows everyday. Yes, 241 !! The number was mind-boggling, even if you factor that this is Telugu cinema's costliest film and stars Chiranjeevi's son, Ram Charan.
* The battle between KalaBhairava and the opposition's army.
* The Sound and SFX were clean
* Kajal looked stunning like a princess.
* The new villian did a good job.
* Casting:for once a telugu flick did not rely on the regular actors,the story demanded new faces;any regular characters would never have given you the feel it does now.

Letdowns:

* The movie resorted to some usual cliches but that is acceptable given the fact that it is a regional movie and is meant also for the masses,front-row-ers,people in small towns and cities.The producer has to get this money back.And,looks like it did the same ; it reportedly grossed close to 20Cr INR in the first week.Ghajini and now Magadheera, looks like whatever Allu Aravind is touching is turning into gold.
* Charan has to polish his acting even more.He looks pretty cold at times.More so for the family he hails from.
* I personally feel Charan's hair could have been styled better.Something to suit his jawline and complexion.
* The song which was supoosed to be the biggest crowd puller proved to score tad lesser than others.It was poorly mixed.But,it was compensated for by the dance.

Verdict:

4.5/5

A must watch,in a good theatre.Can be watched with the family,kids will like it even more.U/A might have been for the fight sequences which were violent in parts



* Current Mood: blank
* Current Music: Pehli baar

Love Aaj Kal-Dissection

LAK is about Jai(Saif) who is like any other guy you meet,chilled out, anti-commitment,you IM him Love and he would reply with a suprised smiley.Jai ,as in any other lovestory, meets a girl Meera.Meera Pundit(Deepika) is again the usual girl who her own set of ideals and is pretty cool about this love stuff herself.The story is about how these people who seem all so 'practical' fall for each other.All along Imtiaz tried explaining the audience that no matter how casual you are about relationships and people,there would be this one person you would fall in love with.This one person understands you and knows you inside out and is your 'soulmate'.
Imtiaz starts with his trademark guy meets gal,they are not quite keen(read sure) about each other but eventually destiny has it that they meet.'Socha na tha' started similar;but again it doesnot leave you with a deja vu as many critics put it; neither do I see the director being overtly cautious.It is plain his-own-style.Romance, we understand is his forte,his real test now would be coming out of his comfort mush zone.
Story:
The story quite interestingly starts with the lead pair calling their relationship quits!Talking always about being 'practical' and how long distance relationships don't take off;given the fact that Meera had to fly to India for work.Both wanted to grow professionally and so they part ways but they decide on not to sob their way out of this but celebrate with a party,a 'break-up party'.It was at the end of this party that Veer Singh(Rishi Kapoor),a cafe owner bumps into him,telling Jai how he resembled him in is youth.
Veer Singh had dated a beautiful young punjabi girl Harleen(Giselle Montero) who lived in Delhi,when he was young(played by Saif with a turban).Harleen and family relocated to Calcutta,but Veer Singh is so smitten by this girl that he travels to Calcutta just to catch a glimpse of her.The next time they meet is at a wedding in Delhi,when she tells Veer that she is getting engaged the day after and has no say in this.He eventually wins her home,despite opposition from her family.
Screenplay and good slick Editing are the stars of the film.The movie darts smoothly between Veer Singh's past and Jai's present drawing parallels between eveverything in their lives.
Saif plays Jai,he has done similar roles in Salaam Namaste and Hum Tum before, so pulls it off pretty effortlessly.This might go down as one of the better performances by Deepika,who I felt showed us that she too can act, for the first time esp. the last scene where she proved that she can cry.She has miles to go in terms of acting still and is wooden at times,particularly. the dance sequences.Deepika again has usually been potrayed in roles like these,which are by and large similar to how she is in real life aswell.Her character and 'practical' approach to life remind you of Bachna Ae Haseeno.
Rip Masand:
"The screenplay, for one, is far from foolproof."
I feel it was one of the best narrations of 2009.For example,one of the last scenes in which the love-lost Jai finally goes to Meera.The shots move quickly between Veer Singh going to get Harleen and Jai going to Meera's house.The parallelism has been smoothly crafted.

"The incident that drives Jai to realise where his heart lies is ridiculous"
It is funny how Masand expects everything to be senselessly scientic.This is how life is and this also precisely the charater that Jai and Meera play.They have no idea that he/she is the one for each other.And that is also what Meera tells Rahul Khanna,"Jai does not know this yet.And if he does anytime,he will come back to me". The one good thing that I observed in this is how she doesnot forecast that Jai 'will be back' .Quite unlike "Woh zaroor ayega,mera dil kehta hai"or "Agar mera pyaar sachcha hai toh woh zaroor ayega" cliches.

"The young Veer and Harleen track is wrapped up with a convenient culmination that isn't even dramatic enough to justify how much time has been spent establishing these characters."
What more does anyone want?Any more frames into their story and people might have started getting bored,given the fact that Veer is not the lead protagonist.

" Deepika Padukone lacks the maturity or the skill to make up for the lapses in the writing and to construct a credible character out of Meera. "
I could not figure out any lapses as such but Deepika did a commendable job as discussed before.

Verdict:
The film is a fitting next to the director's previous "Socha Na Tha" and "Jab We Met" and if we talk about the storyline and the depth,I personally found it to be tad better than JWM.You can watch it anytime with anyone.

I'd give it a 4 out of 5.

RSS - Dissection

I have been using RSS for quite some time now.I have closely monitored it for a few years and still don't see many people using it.It is indeed Really Simple and even people like my mom can use it.So,I thought to burst the myth and tell people without using much of jargon and terminology about what RSS actually is and what the orange icon on your browser is.

RSS,as the name suggests is a way to syndicate data for webservices.It is a group of feed formats used to publish works e.g. blogs news items,etc.It allows information to be published once and viewed in different programs.A user has to just subscribe to the feed,by visisting the feed's URI or the simplest aproach would be clicking on the RSS icon on their browser and voila!your subscription has been initiated,you donot have to visit the page often,fear missing the latest updates and stuff,just RSS.And yeah!Feeds can be read using feed-readers (such as feedburner or bloglines etc.) or an aggregator which can be a web/windows(desktop)/mobile based.So,it has something for everyone,the Publisher and the end user.

History:

If we trace the history a bit RSS started as RDF Site Summary(RSS) introduced by Ramanathan Guha for Netscape(RSS 0.9),later renamed as Rich Site Summary(RSS) and this incorporated Winer's scriptingNews syndication Format(RSS 0.9.1). Netscape gave up on this and later a team called the RSS-Dev Group developed a newer version of RSS,without much changes. In the version released in 2000 Winer made an attempt to include audio file syndication on feeds,which I feel gave birth to podcasting.RSS 2.0 was released in the later part of 2002,RSS 2.0 removed the type attribute. RSS logo was initially used by Mozilla Firefox and later incorporated by other softwares and browsers and the orange square with white radio waves the industry standard for RSS and Atom feeds.

Downfalls:

RSS does not allow any well-formed XML markup in it’s content. This is very bad when it comes to using RSS-syndicated content elsewhere. In fact, it only supports plain text or escaped HTML which, without getting into the technical issues surrounding that, simply means it’s very difficult to work with.
RSS Example:

--HTML tags cannot be included-------------

How is RSS different from ATOM?

I personally feel that both are same and work the same but for the fact that metadata is not that comprehensive in 2.0.Atom is a relatively recent spec and is much more robust and feature-rich than RSS. A feed consists of some metadata about the feed, followed by one (or naturally more) entries. The metadata chunk in ATOM contains, happily, all of the data we found missing from the default RSS 2.0 feeds. The id element provides the "where," giving the feed's URI. The title provides a "what," giving the title of the feed.Author says "who" created the feed, and link provides the "how"--giving a link to an HTML version of the resource the feed represents.And my favorite - Atom feeds provide an “updated” field which means that any feeds that are modified have a timestamp associated with them. And if we sample a section of an Atom feed,it can also contain elements detailing categories, intellectual property rights, contributors' details, a feed's logo, and more.All these are quite important from a publisher's perspective. A cool feature of Atom has to do with autodiscovery. Most of the time, if you point your browser to a feed-enabled website, autodiscovery kicks in and the browser alerts you in its own unique way to the presence of a feed. The same thing happens when you point a feed reader to a feed-enabled website as opposed to the specific feed itself. While feed autodiscovery has been around for a long time, Atom feeds actually contain a self pointer autodiscovery URL which is highly unique from RSS itself. RSS is not the be all and end all of blogging. It is certainly possible to blog without using RSS either to collect your content or to publish it to the masses. However, the sheer benefit in terms of traffic opportunity and exposure should be enough for any blogger to add a new dimension to his blog.·

Current Mood: calm ·

Current Music:Mad

Union Budget-Dissection-Beyond Numbers

Yesterday when the FM read out the budget there were many in the market who cheered and there were others who felt it was damp.Let us dig deeper into this.

The Numbers:

To start with 6.8% of Fiscal Deficit (on GDP) is not a very good news but the FM said that it would be partly compensated for by borrowing from the market and the remaining by printing notes.

What is it,apart from numbers?

It was a purely scheme-oriented budget rather than a growth-oriented budget as some pointed out, as the govt's major concentrated was on funding its flagship schemes rather than introducing any fresh ventures as it promised before coming into power.NREG got a whooping 144% fillip,Bharat Nirman was also taken care of well(with a 45% boost).IITs and NITs got 2113Cr and Rs450 for starting new IITs and NITs,apart from other plans such as, starting new branches for the Muslim University etc ,for the educational system.Increasing the relaxation band for Education Loan came as a pleasant surprise,would be of great help to the weaker sections,which was probably,some speculate,Rahul Gandhi's suggestion.What I loved the most was the concept of upgrading the polytechnics,under the skills-development initaitive.per se Education was handled intelligently and initiatives such as these would take us a long way.

For the Corporate:

Now,if we dive in deeper,Fringe Benefit Tax has been relaxed.Great News,eh?Only if you are an employer.It's just that the FM removed the FBT thorn from the corporate and thrusted it in the side of the employee,as ET put it.There would be absolutely no difference for the government which earns around 8k INR from this.Relaxation of this(introduced by Mr.Chidambaram and is termed as "nuissance tax" by many)also reduces the paperwork for the corporate(esp.IT).Now ,it is the employee who pays out(indirectly) for beneits like,prizes,gifts,concessional travel and stay and scores of other benefits for which the employer used to pay the tax previously.But increase of MAT from 10 to 15% might prick the corporate sector real hard,but if we look at it this way,that the credit period has only increased(7 to 10 yrs),so,even if you pay heavy taxes this year you reap the dividends later.

A brick here,a stone there

While increase of savings on personal income tax as exemption,from 1.5lakhs last yr to 1.6lakhs for men and 1.9lakhs for women,might not affect many lives,hiking it by 15K for senior citizens might sure help.Wiping out the surcharge completely might also fatten a few wallets,esp. those earning more than 10lakhs p.a.

Farmer perks are ,as was expected, good.All in all it was just the aam aadmi ka budget,which might not have pleased the corporate sector guys much,but what anyone would appreciate is the fact that taxes were not increased,they were just rationalised and also the FM has promised to introduce a new Direct Tax Code in the next 45 days,which many feel might put an extra burden on the fiscal deficit,which I presume they are planning to cover using the rationalisation receipts,disinvestment and the 3G auction coming up.Identifying sustainance of the GDP at 9% as the immediate challenge is also laudable,given the fact that this will act as the economic surplus that aould be needed to improve our standards of living,esp the bourgeoisie.

No Board Exams:Dissection

No Board Exams!I personally feel that it is both good and bad news.Good because there will not be any pressure on the students to perform well in that one exam and as anyone would feel, the year in which students write their boards goes waste,even the schools are not willing to experiment on the tenth class students,their learning goes for a toss.Students are forced to attend tutions,concentrate on their syllabus alone,play less,study more.Peer pressure hits the red mark,not to mention the pressure put in by the family friends,neighbors n relatives.Everyone wants you to score an above 90 min.But,after all these years I still don't get the significance of the tenth boards,I scored well,topped school,all it earned me was a total fee relief in my +2,nothing much, noone even asked me how much I scored,ever!Unlike many colleges in the NCR,students in the southern part of India are more keen on pursuing Engg courses.So, to gain admission into a college we have to clear one Engg. Entrance test,apart from JEE,to get into a local college.So boards or no boards,it hardly matters.And as Mr.Sibal put it,class tenth is way to early in a student's life to choose a career.We started an NGO that deals specifically in this,we offer career counselling to kids of class IX and above on the career options they have,but our major challege is telling a kid from class IX,govt. school, what architchture is or what an aircraft maintainance engineer does.An exam on the lines of SAT,would be the best option.Board exams is an archaic means of teasting a student's calibre.It is just one exam,how can you judge whether a student is good enough based on that?It crushes the child psychologically,if he scores less.But,on the other side of it,we might be ignoring the average performer.There is still lots to think and do!Any changein the Higher Education policy,no matter how small, will touch every touch evey student,parent and family!

current mood: anxious
current music: rockstar