Should have known better.

Race is this really slick, polished film shot entirely in South Africa, its the kind of film Feroz Khan used to make just not as good. The story is a convoluted mix of Very Bad Things, The Heist & Goodbye Lover. There is a twist a minute and you dont know who is doing who and why, however everything unfolds pretty much in chronological order and the surprises come in your face without any build up.

The film opens and there is no real establishment of who, what, where, why instead you get thrown into things with a crash and things go from there. Sort of reminds me of Lawrence of Arabia but thats where the similarity ends. The Mustan brothers, even the both of them are not a patch on David Lean.

Anyway, the film isnt all that bad, its reasonably well shot, slightly stylish and Anil Kapoor is sort of funny and the free tickets make it barely tolerable. My problem is just with the number of cinematic mistakes the opening has a bunch of helicopter shots supposedly following a blue car but sometimes its just random aerials, then a shaky zoom in. Amateurish. Later in a supposedly major stunt the camera keeps losing focus and the editing is choppy.

Overall, despite the slickness, there are plenty of portions which are sloppy. Could have very easily been a much much better film, with just a little bit more finesse and effort.

But then, that is our bane….

Avoid, unless desperate

EDIT

SPOILER ALERT

I didnt want to do this but i couldnt stop myself. So here goes

- The plot revolves around $100million double indemnity insurance scam. Saif is killed by Akshaye Khanna for the money and then gives a cut as a bribe to Anil Kapoor (25mil)

- The funny thing here is that Akshaye ends up getting killed in an accident while racing with Saif so Saif goes on to collect $100million.

- Of course it seems the retards forgo tthat they have a dead man collecting another dead mans insurance but since one of them is alive they get only ONE payout.

- Compared to the above this one is just a minor league error. Saif collects 200million but Akshaye already gave Anil Kapoor 25 million so he is left with only 175mil.

But hey its cool. Sort of reminded my why i dont go watch most of the hindi pot boilers. Its not that they cant, its just that they dont care.

Goa, the very mention springs images of beaches, beer, babes and bongs. Of late it seems that rape and murder is almost as popular an activity in the region.

Personally i never got the attraction of Goa, for me the beach has always been South Beach, Miami but the attraction is not hard to see. Goa has beaches, miles of it, cheap housing, cheap food and cheap booze. This serves to attract a wide range of people - students holiday, junkies looking for a cheap score and retirees, ex army folk from Israel. It is one of the few truly international/cosmopolitan cities in India due to its tourist make up.

Add to this a lax administration at the best of times (the entire civil administration is only out to make a buck shaking down people) and you have the easy availability of drugs and contraband. Then you have people trying to take control (Russians)

the Bohemian make up of Goa is at stake. The hippy mindset is beginning to blow up in peoples face, take a jaunt down to Curlys in Anjuna its like Amsterdam, you can get pills, bongs are passed around in the open, the falafal platter is 200 bucks you will start to see what the attraction is.

So what is the big deal? This has been going on for a while, the trance, the pills, the sex, so whats the fuss all about? The fuss is that crime is becoming a big part of this little state. People are being murdered and the drug use is getting out of hand. The hippies forget that everyone is not a hippie, free love, peace and all that bullshit. Plenty of people are there just to make a buck or take advantage of the situation.

Add to this the overtly aggressive and repressed Indian male and his propensity to consider all foreign women as easily available and you will see a pattern emerging which will end with acts like those forced upon Scarlett this past fortnight. The authorities need to wake up, to the threat this sort of situation holds for the entire tourism Industry.

The hippies need to wake the fuck up as well and figure out that they need to be safe first and then enjoy life and all the jazz. Ridiculous shit like sex for rent and sex for food is not the way to go through life. It will almost always end up blowing up in your face. I have seen so many women walk around unaided at 4am that its a sheer surprise you dont hear of more women being attacked.

Overall, i think Goa is dying, a day will come when the shit will hit the fan, people will be kicked out and then the locals will be left holding the shit bucket. One they helped fill.

I didnt put rape in there because thats more like our second favorite sport and not a past time.

This is what kids do when they are out and drunk? Parents defending their children, blind to the obvious truth. Of course your kid didnt do it, so there were phantom hands grabbing at those poor women? Then to actually blame a woman for consuming a drink and kissing her husband? That makes her a whore and an acceptable target?

Seriously, what the fuck is this? Bihar?

Anyone goes around doing anything they feel like with women and we all seem to be ok with it, otherwise how do you explain the level to which things have come. I think people really need to wake up and start thinking about the kind of legacy they are going to leave their kids. I know what you are thinking, i am not like this, i dont do any of this stuff. You dont have to but the moment you sit around and let others get away with it. You let them win.

Me. I just know, that if any of this stuff happens to me or mine, there will be blood. Nuff Said.

Now.

Cricket.

That gentleman’s game, controlled by the talentless, played by the greedy watched by the jingoistic idiots. I watched the match it was atrocious, the ICC was rightly forced to think about their process and umpiring controls. However, i am appalled by the way the Harbhajan-Symonds situations has been handled by the Aussies and by the Indians.

Seriously, Symonds really had to go out and goad Harbhajan into saying something, was it Monkey? we don’t know that, might just have been an attempt at a mindf**k but to go crying to the umpire and their collective mother the match refree, just goes to show how strong and dignified the Bhajan Bunny Senor Ponting really is. What a load of crap, i have heard worse things on the stump mic and i dont recall any complaints. I think the Aussies got rattled. Now they have all opened themselves to taunts, so they should ask for empty stadiums because they wont live this down in a hurry.

Now, the Indians (my favorite team) wow, what a load of bullshit. Did the comment monkey, if said meant anything other than being a racist taunt towards the obvious mixed parentage of Symonds. It was a disgusting comment, especially since we Indians have a propensity to analyze and elaborate on anyones color, skin, caste and religion.

How many times have we not called all south Indians a Madrasi, i still hear in movies and general parlance calling a white person a firang (what is that term if not a call on color) dont we call people Bhangees as a derogatory term? Wasn’t Symonds taunted as a monkey in Delhi? Dont we call African or African Americans Negroes, Kallus, Kalias, Niggers? Is this really news to us?

I think all the money we are making seems to have gone to our head. Doing well is one thing but to forget that we were once the targets of this very same racism ought to ensure we never put it forth to anyone. I would say we are being persecuted even now (Malaysia, Middle East) for being poor and Indian.

However we continue to use these terms every day and we use them offensively. We are a hollow, shallow, regressive bunch of hypocrites and to defend that with the obvious, one dimensional, our heroes are simply GREAT and GOD LIKE jingoistic patriotism has been and always will be our downfall.

We are sheep, led by incompetent but greedy wolves to whatever end suites them the most (read politicians)

You know what happens to sheep?

They get slaughtered.

The Plot : Will Smith stars as a army/scientist (i think) who is part of a team trying to cure cancer with a virus. Unfortunately shit gets f***** up and the virus ends up turning most of the people into zombires (my original term, i claim dibs on it) who need to feed on people. The virus is airborne and 1% of the worlds population is immune, out of which Will is one of them. However since all the dudes in the world have turned into these zombires they go out and feed on the rest of the folk that are left. Also, Will Smith is trying to find a cure by conducting experiments regularly.

Review : Ok, now the film is very well shot, New York never looked bleaker or this empty, the FX are very well done and in most cases seamless (i wish someone had spent more time developing the script a little more) you see Will doing his daily routine and get a thorough sense of his isolation, these aspects are well developed. Half baked flashbacks that tell you what but they do not flesh out the zombires, their changes or evolution etc. It does sort of hint at their ability to think but too many things left unexplained which in my book for a film like this is bad writing.

Some survivors show up, god is brought into the mix and then the film lends itself to a helluva cheesy and cop out ending. What a friggin rip off.

Overall, Will Smith is great as the scientist, except for the one scene where he pretend loses his mind, well acted but totally bullshit and derivative in the worst way.

What i know is that the film was greenlit without a script, just Will Smith and boom you have $150 million i reckon. Does not bode well. I do know that the script languished around for years with Arnie and Sly up for the role.

Anyway, go for it, watch some good acting, some tense moments but in the end it was quite underwhelming…

Just been on a trip to the capital, New Delhi. A city that is seven cities within its walls and has a 1000 years of history behind it. The images it conjures up are of the Red Fort, Jama Masjid, you look around and you can see it all. In reality the history stays by the wayside, its a new world out there and its a pity its gun toting, prime minister knowing, machismo oozing, whiskey drinking, rapist citizens don’t deserve any of it.

The local government has actually addressed issues like traffic, transportation, congestion and infrastructure. They have the new metro, everyone i met insisted i should go down just to have a look (it really is something if the best feature of your city is 20 feet underground)

Its, shiny, its new and there were no paan stains anywhere, so i was pretty impressed, even more so since it took only about seven years to go from concept to completion.

There is a nice highway going around the city you get on it and get anywhere you need to. Traffic of course exists, its also quite dense but in theory i could drive from my house (Cumballa Hill) to the airport in Santa Cruz in 70 mins in peak hour traffic, the same distance in Delhi in peak hour traffic is about 40 mins.

We had lunch at Connaught Place which is a huge crescent shaped area, full of shops and restaurants, attracts a huge number of people, we got there around 2pm and parked literally outside the restaurant. You can pick any part of the crescent, there is an arrangement for parking there.

Major chunks of development are happening in places like NOIDA and Gurgaon both on opposite ends to each other. One has a bulk of the IT & Services businesses the other the bulk of the malls and call centers. Overall the burgeoning pressure is taken off the city and into these spaces where a great number of people enter and exit.

Other than that Delhi is also a great place to shop. It is a city of malls, everyone seems to have constructed one, you cant take a right turn without ending up inside one whether you like it or not. I don’t think i have ever been to a city which has two huge malls opposite from each other (nodia) let alone the 4 in a row in Gurgaon. Someone should have discussed planning issues with them but hey who cares, they probably got a discount on bricks.

The shops are great, the stock is great, everything they have is a lot of times not available in Bombay, some shops don’t even have a Bombay presence, probably due to realty being prohibitive and mall space being limited (some of the ventures coming up at Lower Parel might change that)

What i want to know is

where the f**k is my shiny new metro?

why does it take me almost twice as long to travel distances in peak traffic hours

why is all the friggin development only in city limits.

why do i have to worry about parking before i go out ?

why don’t get the coolest shit in shops ?

why in gods green earth am i paying 5 rupees a liter more than a Delhizen and still getting nothing in return?

Is anyone in the mantralaya listening? or are all the monkeys out looking for treats?

Delhi does have its own problems, namely crime, its fricking unsafe as hell. Women especially need to be careful ALL THE TIME. There is power and water issues (but they are actually being addressed)

Fortunately, all the meals i had there were substandard, it seems all they can do well is Dal Makhani and Paneer. The rest is Latin to em. Good, eating out will be my revenge.

If you get suckered into watching this movie like i did, dont worry by the end of the film your mind will be numb enough that it wont matter whats going on in there. It randomly begins and randomly ends. most of the film is the same old tripe bout boy loves girl, girl waits for another man. Stuff like this can get on your nerves and it does too.

it is a shoddy, contrived script but nothing worse than what we see everyday. However what makes the whole thing much worse is that Sanjay Bhansali has a reputation for being a quality film maker but he is just a hack pretending to be good. I think he got a hold of Moulin Rouge, gave it to his art director and basically had her rip off the entire look, feel and texture of that world. Its a very Moulin Rouge meets Venice meets Herat/Samarkand look to it, quite elaborately schizophrenic. Also, girl running, camera following gets old after about the fifth time.

Nothing about the film seems original, not the script, not the world, not the reactions not the scenes some lifted from Shakespeare in Love i might add. Also one would appreciate the ridiculousness of one of the songs which as Ranbir dancing with prostitutes passing them a football , it is apparently some sort of attempt at solving their problems and letting them forget their sadness for a moment (i think Ranbir should take this act to Fallujah or Kabul)

Maybe he could have cut out a few songs and focused on creating a better tie up of the all players and create a more interesting drama around it.

Ranbir Kapoor is all right, he can act when he feels like it. Sonam Kapoor is allright as well. Salman Khan looks like a human bomb (yes its a very politically incorrect, racial profiling, right wing comment, so sue me) who goes away as randomly as he showed up. Rani Mukherji sort of shows up, talks to try and tie some threads (nice try but no cigar)

I cant f******g believe someone at Sony actually financed this crap when they could have spent the same amount of money to create what is surely a blockbuster Om Shanti Om. As lame as it will probably be, it will be a great deal less pretentious and more successful. No wonder Sony is in the bloody red. They come to Bollywood and get talked into this… it seems the lunatics have taken over the asylum.

I would much rather sit through a tooth extraction.

For the past week I have had to drive long distances (read to the burbs) and back, as is inevitable for someone with a mind like mine, you find yourself distracted by the pretty lady crossing the street, the hoarding selling real estate and well just about anything.

The result is i end up hitting or being hit by someone or the other.Last week an auto rickshaw (god i hope they all burn) rear ended me while making a lane change a small scratch. There was so much traffic, i couldn’t even get out and tell him what i would like him to do with his mother. Similar thing happened a few months ago, this guy just rubbed across my door, and there was absolutely no space on any side to get out and do anything about it. So he continued to apologize while i swore him out until we went on our way.

Last night, i was trying to stare down an idiot who had parked his car in the middle of the road, i saw a gap from the corner of my eye and you guessed it Bang! Bang! into a cab, nice and hard. The cab driver came out, surveyed the damage(Which was minimal) and got on with it.

It seems traffic and schedules are so crazy people dont even have the time to get out and seriously go head to head with others. Not that i am complaining. If this was in New Delhi, id have probably been sodomized, shot and then cooked in a tandoor by now.

As a young boy my father would take us on vacations,interesting ones, all over the country. We would see the sights, take in the airs, experience the life. However one peculiar thing about my family vacations, my dad would always leave something out, Delhi without the Qutub Minar, Nainital without Corbett, Rajasthan without Jodhpur & Jaisalmer. To this day i don’t know why.
I have spent the last 5 years, since i returned to India, righting these wrongs. Qutub has been done. This past week it was Jodhpur & Jaisalmer.

Jodhpur
Jodhpur is a small town, with a lot of history, like most places in India, no one cares bout this history unless they make a living from it. The town itself has precious little to offer in terms of a genuine experience. If you like buildings and forts, you will want to visit once. Other than that, culturally, gastronomically and socially the place is pretty much bankrupt. You will be surprised to find that most places serve a mixture of punjabi + south indian food. Rajasthani is something you have to go looking for. Overall you need a weekend and you can “do” Jodhpur.

A visit to jodhpur tour is centered around Mehrangarh fort. Probably, the cleanest, largest, most well maintained historical structure in the country (i reckon because the government has nothing to do with it). The fort was built mostly between 1500-1650s, entry cost is 20 rupees, 50 rupees for a camera pass and 100 for a guide. Not a rip off at all and absolutely worth it.

You have spectacular views of the NOT so blue city from its ramparts. The houses were supposed to denote Brahmins, not so much anymore though.

the palace itself isn’t very grand but the overall architecture is highly sophisticated with a mixture of very different styles of work however the overall effect is seamless.

As is true for most forts in India there is always a moti masjid or mahal (mahal in this case) and a sheesh mahal (glass palace)

The fort also contains exhibits of arms(like Emperor Akbars sword), arts and artefact’s which makes the visit all the more interesting.

Umedh Bhavan is one of the largest private residences in Asia. A sheer monster even for a country known for its excesses.347 rooms took a near 20 years to construct & cost of nearly a Crore (back between 1925-1943). Mindless excess? Not really, it was built as a drought relief project, and employed 6000 people of all kind, laborers, artists.The structure is divided into three sections a small museum, a 60 room hotel and a private residence. Plenty of very interesting art on the walls, some fascinating murals you can stare at for a day.

That is pretty much it. If you are the likes of people who get taken in by Lonely planet etc, you would like to visit the Sardar (clock tower) market for its bangles and riff raff.

Our Hotel

Instead of staying in a not so great property in Jodhpur we chose a hertiage hotel in the village of Luni 35 kms away. It is really in what i would call bumblef**k, a village in and of the boonies. the hotel though was fantastic.

A heritage hotel built in a fort. Fort Chanwa is not only one of the best hotels i have ever been to, they also offered stupendously attentive, friendly and warm service. A testament to Rajasthani hospitality.

The food was also amazing, absolutely some of the best i have ever had. The chef would make anything on order, regardless of the menu. Some fantastic Khichadi, Dal Baati, Paneer Masala, Dal Makhani. the food alone was worth the stay. Evil Stuff.

A nice little pool to chill by. As disappointing as the trip was, the hotel and service made up for it by leaps and bounds.
Next Stop Jaisalmer. Be prepared to have your romantic desert notions shattered.

I remember walking into the Great Court of the British Museum and being mesmerized by the structure. A fascinating piece of design, all encompassing, covered yet with a sense of space, weirdly it gave me a sense that i was free, of what? don’t know, maybe mediocrity in design?

The Potsdamer Platz in Berlin is another visual experience that dazzles the senses. Renzo Piano’s effort to restore the heart of the metropolis to its glory days is without parallel. New York City and its magnificently iconic buildings 40 Wall Street, Flatiron building, Chrysler Building. The rejuvenated Times Square is crassly commercial but definitely iconic.

Structures such as these not only give the city its identity but endow on the viewer a sense of possibility, that we can actually create things of beauty from nothingness by sheer force of will, brute strength, tempered with extraordinary vision and design.

So imagine my shock when i sat idling at Worli Naka and spent my time staring at possibly the ugliest building in this city. A giant cluster f**k of neo-classical, gothic and baroque architecture. We all know who the architect is, don’t we.

It got me thinking as to how many truly attractive or iconic buildings does this city really have? Discounting the pre independence buildings there are very few modern structures that actually standout and have a personality.

The last three decades of frenzied buildings the imagery is much the same. Lately its the all glass and concrete look, which while attractive, is just lost in the myriad of similar looking buildings everywhere (just a drive around BKC will give you a sense of a glitch in the matrix)

Bombay has so much construction going on its crazy, however no one is striving to build something beautiful. The buildings are cosmetically pretty but there is no soul. Its just a case of generic looking buildings offering a generic living experience. Bloody Boring.

Buildings with Soul
Charles Correa designed Kanchen Junga at Pedder Road
Prithvi (an old residence) at Altamount Road
Sterling Apartments at Pedder Road
The Taj Wellington & Mews at Cuffe Parade.
Imperial Towers, Tardeo (looks like something straight out of Fritz Langs 1929 classic Metropolis

What is with BO and us? Is it like a national competition with each trying to do the other in the odour stakes? I know this is a tropical country and we are hot blooded people but Christ! have a little mercy on your fellow man.

I walk into my bathroom on a lazy Sunday afternoon for a relaxing shower and find its been desecrated by the chap who washes the bathroom. I mean it was almost as bad as the Seinfeld episode with the Valet, the BO & the BMW.

Since then i remember an incident from Freshman year, i and this other kid from Bombay were on the same floor. He was quite a lad, he took no showers to my 2, did laundry once a month to my once a week. Quite a filthy lill chap (cept he was not so little) I then realized a score of other kids from all over the country (not all but enough) seemed to follow a similar regimen which amounted to ominous odours.

Since then i have come to the conclusion that we as a nation are not aware of the desperate need for deo-education, a class which should be made mandatory in all schools(preferably right after the class on sex education)