Random Ramblings

Recently during a random TV channel browsing session I came across a show in NDTV dedicated to movie GUNDA, a B-Grade masterpiece which has gained a stature of gigantic proportions.Many of us might not haver heard of the movie, but of the rest I assume most of them might have seen the movie, and a substantial proportion would have enjoyed it!! It is a kind of movie that fits into the definition of a cult classic!! The Orkut community of the IMDB 8.7/10 rated Gunda has thousands of fans, most of them can be classified under category of 'die-hard fans'. This movie has got a huge viewer base in engineering collecges and B-schools, and there are people whio consider your life as futile and worthless if you haven't seen this epic masterpiece. And there are considerable chances that the movie might make to the list of 50 all time greats, if there are enough votes keeping its ratings at the same level!! This Kanti Shah directed movie has the one and only Mithunda (fondly called as

http://www.rediff.com/movies/2008/may/27khan.htm Above is the link of an interview of Mansoor Khan - The man behind movies like Qayamat se Qayamat Tak and Jo Jeeta Wahi sikandar. His life went in following sequence - Son of a successful film producer --> IITian (... and dropped out) --> Went to USA for further studies (... and dropped out) --> Made few successful movies --> Settled as a farmer at Coonoor, far from the maddening crowd, to appear only once in a blue moon There is nothing special about this interview, but it is about a person who did the thing best seen in proverbs, philosophical monologues and books like The Alchemist - " Follow your heart", something which very few of us end up doing! Prima facie, it may look like fickle mindedness and a person being uncertain about things ... but ultimately he is in the exclusive club of ones who followed their heart!

Everyone has some idiosyncrasies when it comes to watching a movie. I tried to list some of mine in this post -- Some random movie watching habits, that belong exclusively to me (Idea for this write up has been blatantly stolen from other blogs!) --> There are few movies I get extremely excited about (e.g. TZP, Jodha Akbar, RDB), and there have been few I have always been excited about ever since I saw them ... and people have been bored of hearing me recommend that movie to others (e.g. TZP, RDB, The Truman show, Forrest Gump, ... even Aaap ka surror!) While watching movies (esp. angrezi ones!) on my lappy, I often use Wikipedia and IMDB as reference (esp. to know where the story is headed for) ... Even with such references, I could understand only half the movie Memento! I love reading movie reviews. Few of the ones I follow are Taran Adarsh ke crappy reviews, Rajeev Masand (who is somewhat reliable) ... and few reviews occasionally in TOI, HT, Rediff, and other random websites.

Is there a fixed pattern of thinking one ought to follow? Is there a 'one size fits all' solution or a standard prescription for getting best out of any child? How good is it to just focus on faults of someone (especially children) and overlook the talent and good qualities he has? Are there just a few things that become indicator of your worth or how good you are? Is it always about comparison with what others are? Is it appropriate to suppress what a child actually is, in order to make him what you think he should be ? Isn't every kid special ? The movie Taare Zameen Par (TZP) provides food for thought for above questions and many more. Story of a dyslexic 8 year kid who is helped ... rather inspired by a teacher to bring the best in him. But it is not just about dyslexia. It is also about our attitude towards children. The movie blends realistic and touching treatment with creative elements in showing some elements during songs! The performances are awesome ... in fact a

"The movie is like a wine. With passing time it just gets better and better ..." - NR on DCH Braving the examinations, I watched Dil Chahta hai for the n th time yesterday, after a long gap of maybe more than an year. The movie is awesome. I won't get into review and all that stuff, as enough has been said and written, and everything would sound so cliched. The movie has everything in place - solid performances, script,witty dialogues, characterizations, freshness, music, wonderful direction etc. etc. But I think the best part is that you can identify with all the 3 friends - Akash, Sameer and Sid. [OK ... I take back the generalization, but it is extremely true with me, and maybe with most of us!] There are moments when I feel like one of them, and the very next moment I feel like other. These 'feelings' are no way exhaustive, but it becomes so easy to identify with at least one of them at some point or the other! And yeah ... It has one of my favorite one li

This is a case study in how to make a presentation or a project report in a B school. This is a study of how to copy-paste from various sources (at the same time acknowledging it) and presenting a complete package with some excellent glossy packaging! For example, the movie - Om Shanti Om had the basic template from the movie Karz. The main attraction was inspired from John Jhonny Janardan’s title track. There were generous doses of movies like Madhumati and Karan Arjun. Some traces of Maine Pyaar Kiya, some Rajnikanth movies, some Jeetendra movies, many 70s ki movies, many actors ka style and lives etc. etc. were present. Thrown in was some amount of nostalgia in order to emotionally connect with the audience. Some quotes were from various sources (The one mentioned 3-4 times was from “The Alchemist” –“ When you want something, the whole Universe conspires to help you realize your desire”!) And then all the ingredients need to be mixed in right proportion so as not to have an

(Seems that this is becoming a movie review blog! But I couldn't resist posting about this!) ____ I saw Dead Poet's society(DPS) recently for the second time. First time I saw it, I loved it. Second time I saw it, I loved it more! One of the Bollywood movie Mohabbatein has its plot loosely inspired from it, although DPS is based upon topic of free will while the desi version is mostly a love story, with elements of free will, discipline, tradition etc. strewn in. DPS is about an unorthodox professor John Keating (played by Robin Williams) in a prep school, who arouses student's love in poetry, seize the day (carpe diem) and follow their heart. As expected the school authorities and few parents don't like it. Its last 10 minutes are excellent, probably one of my favorites! As one of the move tag lines puts it - " He was their inspiration. He made their lives extraordinary." Few random observations and many random thoughts - We often get so deep into things like

Good Will Hunting (GWH) One of the movies is saw today ... It was a repeat telecast. First time I watched it, I thought I missed some of the subtle aspects of the movie. An it was definitely worth it! Earlier, I found it good, but now it is among my favorites it seems! In a nutshell it is about a young mathematical genius Will Hunting (Matt Damon), who works as a janitor in MIT, but is fighting with demons of his past and fears to open up with people, spending his talent and energy uselessly. It is also about a psychologist (Robin Williams), who helps Will to cope with it, to follow what he want and all that. Strangely, Robin Williams somehow reminded me of his role in Dead Poet's society, which was completely different! Apart from the script, performances few things, rather ideas stand out in the movie! Few thoughts apart from usual channelizing your energy, looking deep within yourself kind of stuff - One is that based upon a person's talent, often others set criteria abou

1 holiday, 6 movies! 8 movies in a span of last 32 hours! Huh … That was too much … A mixture of good cinema and utter crap … of hardcore realism to escapism … of typical and offbeat … of some popular to some watched by a handful … a mixture of many differents actually! Just writing a purposeless random review of all of these – 1. 1. City of god – Excellent! Brazilian movie, at best understood with help of subtitles and visuals. An excellent depiction of a Brazilian slum, where kids having guns is not an uncommon site; where crime is a way of life. 2. 2. Love actually – Beautiful! A mushy love story … rather many mushy love stories …Karan Johar types, if some parallel has to be drawn to our desi phillum industry … with everyone from a school kid to Britain’s prime minister is falling in love. A good watch nevertheless! 3. 3. Jhom Barabar Jhoom – Crap Only good things are nice songs … but not that interesting with random jhoom baraabar

This is just a random take on some of the Bollywood movies. Have tried to represent on a graph, with two axes. This classification is quite intuitive and may at times seem devoid of logic. It is inspired by techniques of perceptual mapping in marketing research and somewhat from strategic mapping. But this is about my take on it, with minuscule impurity of the world view. Also, a classification doesn't automatically label a movie being good or bad. This is done with no particular end in mind. It was just a random time waste ka idea while watching a movie and surfing the internet in parallel (Please click on the pic to see it clearly) My personal favorites are available in my profile though !

Love him or hate him. You just can’t ignore him. That has been the case of our music director turned singer turned pop-star turned actor Himesh Reshammiya. So, when his debut movie Aap ka Surroor (based upon one of his music albums with same name) released, it was bound to be in the news. Last Friday a group of nearly 15-20 people, including me went to catch this magnum opus . The promos offered an ample scope for masala in the movie, and that was the main reason for going to see it, rather than catching some good cinema! We all decided to wear caps to PVR, but only a handful followed the dress code. My cap coupled with unshaven looks made me appear like a true Himesh fan, and I felt proud of it, especially when I was about to watch a probably classic! The entry of the hero with a song As-salaam-walaikum generated a tremendous applause. He sang each and every song in the movie, apart from chanting Gayatri mantra and Dard e Dil from Karz . Nearly every dialogue he said generated t

Yet another weekend comes Yet another weekend is about to be squandered doing nothing ... But this time, I managed to watch a movie, the much awaited 'da vinci code'. Was quite disappointed when the controversies surrounding it managed to postpone the release of the movie by about a week. But this weekend, I managed to watch it - adding to the list of very few Hollywood movies I have seen. Having read the book, I was more excited to see the movie, and with Tom Hanks, The excitement was even more. So there I was, seated at a not-so-good-yet-expensive multiplex. I am making an assumption that most of the people who are watching the movie would have read the book. I may be wrong. Maybe, many of us old be tempted to believe the 'facts(???)' stated in the movie(in fact the book), we usually love what is spicy, especially if it is said with such conviction as in the book, where the demarcation between the 'fact' and 'fiction' are not exactly distinguishable. D