I, along with my family am a huge movie buff. I watch at least 3-4 movies every week, out of which one is at the movie theater. Since the inception of Inox it is the only theater i have been to barring two occasions when i went to Metro & Sterling. Both which i found below par when compared to Inox.
However last week i had a problem with the food services where they served my dad a stale sandwich. He was unhappy about that and we wrote a complaint to Inox management yesterday. Since then i have received calls from the General Manager Mr.Bhatia, Regional Manager Mr.Basu.they spent a lot of time explaining the situation and what they had done to remedy it as well as how apologetic they were that such an incident happened.
They were very keen on retaining me as a customer and asked me to come down to the theater and give them a call. Funnily i ended up there last night itself yesterday and it was a pleasant experience to deal with Mr.Savio and others at the theater.
It was amazing to receive such a quick response to my email (within 3 hours) especially from the different levels of management. One person calling was plenty but three different managers in increasing level of importance, shows to me how seriously they took this.
Mistakes do happen, such is life and it is very easy to lose customers with a not caring approach. However the Inox management has taken in a very solid approach and they have a lifelong customer in me.
As an aside, i had a positive experience with Omega as well. I bought a watch from them in Feb with the advent of the monsoon i Ihad a few queries which i directed at Omega Switzerland.
I had emailed them and i guess they could have been handled over email. However the email contained my mobile number and i a gentleman from their customer service end called me to answer my query (regarding water proofing and monsoon)
Fantastic stuff, would be amazing if this country could see more such people pushing to satisfy their customer.
Now a friend is looking for his first real watch and we have zeroed in on another Omega.
“Soooooperstar”, “Mega star”, “Most popular Indian Star”, “Shehenshah of Indian Cinema”, “Highest paid star”, “Our own superman”… If you have been reading newspaper these days, you know who I am talking about. The one and only Rajnikath aka peoples’ beloved ‘Rajni’!!! No movie page is complete without description of his latest movie ‘Sivaji’; the budget, the location, costumes, different get-ups and the man himself. I don’t remember reading about so much fanfare for a movie recently. This man is worshiped by his fans! After reading about it for a month, I decided I should also watch it and see what it is all about. I don’t understand Tamil, neither I am fan of Rajini nor I have even seen any of his movies save ‘Chalbaaz’ where he plays very small role. But they say curiosity drives human beings and I am no different. Even theaters in Gurgaon and Mumbai are overflowing; it is obvious that I too get little bit of ‘RajniMania’ :).
Do you know that the tickets were being sold at the rate of Rs 1000, well into second week of opening? We never ventured near cinema hall till this week and were lucky enough to get tickets for Wednesday night. Though it was a weekday and late night show, there was huge rush. We were standing in the queue for half hour just to get in! The atmosphere was building up with people hooting and whistling, waiting for the previous show get over. The show started well behind schedule. Once they opened the door, we rushed fast to our seats and there was one more round of hooting and whistling. I can only imagine how the scene will be in small towns.
There is nothing great to talk about the movie. The movie minus Rajni will be just another masala movie; story, actors, cinematography etc are ok. But the man makes all the difference. He has awesome energy and all the “estyle” still there. The way he flips rupee coin, the way he shakes his hair, he eats menthos mint, the way he says ‘Cool!’ are great. The director couldn’t resist having one of his famous Goggle flipping scene. But I think they should not make him dance anymore. And yes, 10/10 to the makeup artist; Rajni looks just like he used to look 10-15 years ago. The layers of make up are pretty obvious but you won’t mind them. Watch out for the much talked about blond hairdo, what a style! He must have had at least 50 getups in the movie from blonde to complete bald head! And there are few scene where he enacts heroes of yesteryears. That’s cool too. There are fight scenes, in matrix style. I am sure fans will be thrilled to watch them.
There is the comedian Vivek, who makes you laugh just with his presence. There is the heroine alright but she is no more significant than songs. Guys were drooling on her. Ok, She looks good and dances well but acting is ok types. The voice over for her is bad. It was very obvious that she was using someone else’s voice. I liked Rajini’s parent’s characters. They are very cute people. When they discover that their son is after a girl, they won’t mind starting the marriage talk in the police station 
Do watch the movie for experience of RajniMania. Why do we need Superman, Batman, He Man when we have all of them rolled into one!!!
PS: The title is the song from movie which I liked a lot. It means ‘Sivaji is my life’. If you don’t know Rajni’s real name is also Sivaji and that’s what makes the movie more special or so I am told by my Tamil friends.
To be honest, I picked up the book at book store as it cover read ‘Pulitzer Prize Winner’. I had never heard of the author and vaguely remembered reading the book’s name somewhere. I never thought I would be finishing it in one go and end up recommending it to others. Books never get old to review, isn’t it ?
The book starts with general description of social life a 7 year old girl Jean Louis Finch aka “Scout”, describing her adventures in the neighborhood with her elder brother Jeremy Finch aka Jem and friend Dill. Their father Atticus Finch is lawyer in local court, soft spoken, true to his ethics. Though not like sporty like other fathers, he is very open to his children.
The name of book is used as metaphor for the theme of the book. The children’s father once tells them that it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird because it never does harm anyone. The book depicts their father’s battle against the system at that time to save a colored man accused of a crime he had never done. The story is set in mid 1930s, in an imaginary place called Maycomb in the American state of Albama. It was a when a man’s character was still judged on basis of color of his skin and some part of society was not considered as human beings. Atticus tries to put in a little bit from his side to change the situation without any open support from the so called sophisticated world.
The narration style of the author is very engaging. You do feel as if it were described by young girl of age 7-9. I started with the first page and couldn’t put down till the last page. The three main characters are very elaborately described and you get good picture of every personality. Innocently but acutely, the little girl talks about how hypocritical and unjustified the social structure was. After finishing, it makes me wonder… its been more than half a century since the book was written and the social situation is not much different. There are still fights going on all over the world based on cast, language, religion, color of skin; sickening things for a logical mind and there seems no end.
I did some searching around about the book and found out that this was the only book published by the author Harper Lee. There was also movie made with same name with Gregory Peck in the role of Atticus Finch. He won Academy Award for his performance and the character was voted as no. 1 Greatest Hero of American film by the American Film Institute. Read more about it here.
This book is sure worth a read. Now I wish I would get to see the movie soon :-).
I have done some voice-over work in the past. Nothing too strenuous or top-shelf, but it’s hard work.
You sit with the client, go over the materials and understand what they want to convey. You check things like names to make sure you are saying them correctly. You go over vocal styles, emotion, pitch… all the variables. Then you get into the booth and do take after take of the material just in case the client hears it later and decides to go in a different direction. It’s grueling and takes a lot of concentration.
So I wonder what in the name of professional television is going on over at Discovery Travel and Living. Who in hell is in charge of voice-overs for India, and why do they have seem to have NO GRASP of the material they are covering?
Why do I say this? It seems that every other promo or intro for a show that has been taped for India Discovery Travel and Living has a GLARING mispronunciation. And I do not mean the difference between British English and American English, which is simply a dialect difference. I mean just flat out crap, like:
1. There is a show called “Chic Eats”. The chic part should be pronounced like “sheek” not “chick”. But Nooooooo… there is it… “You’re watching Chick Eats”
To my thinking, then, I need to be either watching a baby chicken eating, or some hot young girl.
2. Recently they were promoing a new series. I forget the whole name. But it had the word tortilla in it. And the announcer said it like “tor-TILL-a” Come on people… it is a show about Latinos, so please… say it with me “tor-TEE-yah”
3. They screw names up like I cannot believe. Names of famous people. Anthony Bourdain. Heidi Klum. And they are running promos for these peoples’ shows! SAYING THEIR NAMES WRONG!
Now I can understand having a mess-up every now and again. But they use the same woman for all the promos, and she’s horrible. Where is the producer? Is the producer a total moron? Has no one checked the pronunciation of any of these words or names?!?!?!? Furthermore this woman has terribly effected speech. It is clear she went to some voice coach to sound less Indian and more… something. The result is that she just sounds weird. The stress is on all the wrong words in a sentence, and it sounds terribly unnatural for either British or American English. And Indian English, for that matter!
So at the end of the day I am left wondering…why not just get someone with an Indian accent? That way it’s not this ridiculous parody of another accent. And it’s a TV show in India, for God’s sake. What is so wrong with an Indian accent? I would rather listen to that than some fake euro accent any day.
And on that account, I notice more and more commercials doing the same.. employing people for voice-over work that have some strangely effected tone and accent that actually doesn’t fit anyone’s real speech patterns. It’s shameful.
Theatre :Oceans 13 at the newly renovated Sterling Cinema. Sterling was one of the best movie going experiences in the city until the Inox opened up at Nariman Point. The lobby of the theater has 6-8 fast food options from Wraps & Rolls to Subway, however you cant carry the food up from what i saw.
The film starts at 8pm and you are only allowed up after 8pm besides that the staff isnt the most polished or polite. The whole process of climbing up three wide was quite not what i expected. Later during the movie we were wondering what happens in case of a fire, with only one exit on either side of the auditorium. The screen itself was big but the seating was terrible. The seats were uncomfortable, and if one person sits the entire adjacent seats quake (The idiot family behind me that kept asking who was who and what was going on was later taken out and shot) Sterling in every which way isnt a patch on Inox and isnt worth the 120 bucks a pop. I would much rather pay my 220 at Inox any day.
The Movie - Oceans 11 was a good caper flick, the characters were funny the bad guy was a worthy adversary and the camaraderie of the characters bore the film through. Add to that some slick production values and witty dialog giving it some good box office performance as well as decent reviews ($450million worldwide) Oceans 12 on the other hand was again an interesting premise but it lost its way (box office $380million worldwide) Oceans 13 again goes back to its caper roots, making the heist look impossible but everyone having their part to play. In this film you have the other members of the 13 playing to more footage which is good. However the film is overall weaker in terms of the writing. The story is good, the setup is good, the execution is just not entertaining enough. The odds are just too easily overcome and it seems like Sodeberg had other things on his mind. The film is slightly entertaining with plenty of inside jokes.
Not the best of movies but not the weakest either. I wouldn’t recommend against it.
Love is big entertainment, as long as you are only a first-row spectator, or so they say. That is a fact, the romantic indulgences of one’s close friends does to tickle one into much laughter and amusement. It is hilarious to spot a friend practise his proposal speech, it is amusing to watch a friend hit hard as he realises the girl he has been getting all-heart-throb-by about is someone else’s long-time girlfriend. It is fun watching crushes getting crushed and entertaining and interesting to get friends to fall out of big-time infatuations. One can watch on with that half-smile as one’s best friend gets all sweaty and murmur-y and stammer-y trying to ask his object of interest out for coffee. Basically, romance is undiluted fun from the outskirts, isn’t it?
Well, it is, until one gets strangely involved. Oh no, no, am not going to talk about ‘developing feelings’ for the best friend’s love. This isn’t all that deep and messy, this is subtle and more uncomfortable. This is a situation many of us have been through, held our heads, clutched our hair and wondered how the hell did we get sucked into this, and why any of this should affect us. The situation am going to talk about is when one’s best friends start going around, and then, ouch(!), they break up. Disaster!
Disaster because you lose not one, but two of your best friends at the same time. Even if you don’t lose them as such, things start to get uncomfortable when the three of you have to get together for anything. All of a sudden you can only have one of the two at a time with you. Since this is such a filmy topic, lets use a filmy example, your two best friends, Rahul and Puja, who used to date, do not do so anymore. They had the regular break up thing. But, God knows how, you have managed to not only get into the equation, but also be affected strongly by this breakup.
No more coffee time ganging up with Rahul and Puja, no more trekking around with Rahul and Puja, no more dinners out with Rahul and Puja, no more movie outing, no more group-studies, no more assignment partners, no more hanging around, with Rahul and Puja breaking up. No more ganging up with Rahul to pull Puja’s legs, no more of those mock-girls-bashing-guys debates with Puja against Rahul, no more driveaways with the best friends, no more ice-cream outings with Rahul and Puja. Suddenly, its all over for you too. How sad!
What? Thats never happened to you? You mean you’ve never lost your social life all of a sudden, one fine day, when your best friends broke up? What do I say? You are lucky as hell! Because, what follows this is awfully painful for the close-range spectator. Suddenly you have to become aware of talking nice things or anything nice that has happened to Rahul, if you are with Puja. You have to nod your head, or atleast maintain stupid silence when Rahul goes on about what a bitch Puja has been. Puja might reveal ugly secrets about Rahul, which you never wanted to know ever. Rahul might sob on your shoulders, no matter how badly you hate being used as the shoulder to cry on, after a break up.
Sometimes its worse, Puja has not taken the break up so well, she goes into depression. She wants to be ‘left alone’. No she can’t even go out with you anymore, she can’t go even shopping with you anymore, somehow, you remind her of the days with Rahul. Gosh, you sigh, what a mess! Why must I lose Puja’s company, you wail. Rahul goes the ugly way too, he chooses to intentionally hang around with other babes before you, so that you can go convey the ‘moved on’ message to Puja. Ugly, ugly…
After having gone through trying situations like the one above, here’s a solution I have come up with, for my own self. So that I may avoid missing my best friends after they break up. And I thought I’d share it with you The moment two of my friends pair up these days, I quickly see to it that I work-out and develop a backup social life, or a back up group of buddies to hang around with. Simply because I donot want to be ‘left alone’ or ‘move on’ or get into messy situations with either of the two best friends breaking up!
PS: To my friends who are going around, do you see how much I need you guys to not be breaking up!?
The day finally arrived! After almost 2 months of frenzied publicity, Aerosmith descended upon Bangalore, a city known for its die hard rock fans. Thousands flocked to Palace Grounds, Bangalore to get a glimpse of their rock idols. Tickets were available right till the last minute and there were many who scrambled around the city to buy them. Getting inside the venue took well over an hour and half as can be expected in such concerts.
I don’t want to sound too dejected right off the bat about the Aerosmith concert but it was a wee bit disappointing. For someone who really wanted to hear their most popular songs like Crazy, Janie’s got a gun, Dude looks like a lady, I was extremely let down.
But not taking it all away from them, Aerosmith were all fired up with energy and attitude. Needless to say, Steven Tyler was all style and class, Joe Perry brilliant with the guitar, Tom Hamilton, Brad Whitford and Joey Kramer were all fabulous n finger lickin’ awesome like Steven Tyler showed the crowd with his popular dramatics! Rumours aside, their on-stage vibes were fantastic!
The show started off with Taste of India and the Indian tricolor displayed on the giant screens. The crowd went berserk, in eager anticipation of what was to follow. After each song, fans were hopeful of getting to hear the most favored hits of the group but to no avail. For the not-so-die hard fans, like me, who really have maybe 4-5 favourite Aerosmith tracks, the show didn’t offer too much. For the hard core fans the party was just getting started when sadly, Aerosmith decided to belt out their last song.
The group bowed off the stage after just an hour and half of performing and fans were left standing, staring at disbelief when they realized it wasn’t a break and that the show was truly over. It took a lot of ‘We want more’ chanting for Steven Tyler to get back on stage with the rest following slowly. We were promised 2 more songs but had to make do with only 1, which thankfully was ‘I don’t wanna miss a thing’ from the Armegeddon.
All in all, I can safely say that most of the crowd trudged out feeling a bit cheated. How often do you get a show with such a magnitude and with such a band like Aerosmith to perform here in India? Obviously you’d want to please the crowd. Sure the organizers can not really tell the artistes how to do their job but maybe a word or 2 on the preferences of the audience would have scored a few points.
So have you ever left feeling high and dry after a concert you’ve been eagerly waiting for?
This post is mostly triggered by Thinktank’s review of the book ‘Shantaram’, in fact more so by the crumbs that followed the post. The crumbs took a detour from what the book was all about, its interpretations and what one might like or dislike about it, towards a discussion on books and the movies that come out of them. Something like, Mira Nair’s ‘The Namesake’, the movie that followed Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel of the same name. Or perhaps ‘The Godfather’, the movie and book two-fold narration of the same story.
To start with, is it fair at all to compare a book and a movie that picks its storyline? They are both distinctly different media, seeking to tell the story in their own way. While the book tells you the story, letting you imagine the characters, their personalities and their looks the way you would imagine, from the language the author uses, and from the dialogue he lets them have, the movie is an altogether different experience. It begins by showing you the characters as the director intends them to be viewed by you. Not much to do for your imagination there. All you have to do is sit back and enjoy as the protagonists play out the story for you.
For a person who enjoys a story, and only the story part of the movie, watching the movie made after the book he has already read, would be boring. He’d know the twists and turns, he’d know the ending, he’d know the fall, he’d know the wolf in the sheep’s clothing, he’d know it all. For him, it is not the literature snob in him that stops him from enjoying the movie, no matter how well-made it is. Instead, it is the fact that he knows the story before-hand which kills the movie for him.
Speaking of literature snobs, there are a few amongst us, who are not the real literature snobs. They cannot enjoy a movie made after the book, because they donot want to! They have sweated it out reading the book, and they’d rather give themselves credit for all that hardwork. Than see how easy it’d've been to get at the storyline by simply watching the movie! He is going to tell you how superb the book was and the subtle things which the movie could never have conveyed and which he got an access to because he has read the book. We have all met such folks, haven’t we?
And then those, who really dig their books, for the language, for the music, for the visions it creates for them. They get into the shoes of the lead character as he goes about chasing his dreams. They live their life while reading the book, through the lead character, feeling sad when he does and happy only when the lead character does. Its a little more than just ‘the book having an effect on you’ thing. They’re way more passionately into the book than the book merely affecting them. It is certainly not strange then, that they donot enjoy science-fiction stories all that much, probably the disconnect science-ficiton has with real life?
Finally, the rest, who read books and watch the movies. They rave and rant, comparing, sadly so, the book and the movie. What the author projected and what the director misinterpreted or never portrayed well-enough. How the movie never got through the depth of the lead character, how the movie could never make you feel like crying the way the book did, or vice-versa! How the movie can never convey the thoughts, how the book cannot describe in words all the action or perhaps the magic the movie had which the lengthy book sucked away!
How does your story go? Are you among the happiest lot, who want to be served only in movies, who have neither the patience nor the inclination to read, who will never compare a book to its movie, simply because you’ve never read the book? Or are you among the helpless lot who end up catching the movie after the book, and will doubtless compare the two?
Here comes another movie on the supposedly controversial issue, romantic relationship between an old man and much younger woman… age difference of 30 years to be precise in this case. A topic assured to raise lot of eyebrows and upset lot lot of fundamentalists in our country. Looking at the topic you would say… oh Amitabh did a similar movie earlier, ‘Nishabd’ which has received lot of criticism. If you happen to have seen that movie, I would suggest you to not at all get prejudiced.
The movie handles the topic very tastefully without any melodramatic effects of typical Hindi cinema and that’s what makes it worth watching. It’s a love story of 64 year old chef, Buddh (Amitabh) owner of a famous Indian Restaurant in London and 34 year old tourist lady from India, Neena (Tabu). He is a man with temper and she is the lady with attitude, and both can manage and understand each other very well and it is almost love at first sight. They meet, fight, get attracted to each other and fall in love. They are so perfect to each other that the age difference is not a barrier till it comes to convincing her father for marriage. It doesn’t even matter to them that they don’t know each other’s name till their second or third date. There is nothing great to write about the story line, from the first scene you know what is going to happen in the end, pretty straightforward. But it’s the actors and direction makes the movie interesting to watch. All the songs play on background and used to take the story forward. The best feature of the movie is the dialogues, they are written very intelligently, effortlessly. This is one is my favorite “Mai jise chahati huu wo muzse umar me bahut bada hai, isame meri kya galati hai.”
Amitabh is aging like a wine. There is not a single moment where you can pinpoint and say he is not good. I would say his acting skills were wasted all these days in the angry young man image all these days. There is scene where he appears fully dressed, ready to meet his date in a white suit… the entry was such dramatic that the whole theatre went ‘WOOOOW!!!’ Tabu is equally great. She moves on the screen with great comfort and elegance. Her styling is just superb. I think it is a role specially written for her. Paresh Rawal is cool in his small role. I also liked Amitabh’s Mother’s character and their sweet little neighbor.
The only ‘Cheeni Kum’ in this otherwise sweet movie is last couple of scenes. They have tried to make it dramatic without any need or reason, I guess just too give it little Hindi film-ish feel. Overall a good movie, worth watching at least once.
Where do I begin?! This movie was not as riveting as it promised to be, even with the multiple top star cast. I really can not say whether it did justice to the actual happenings of the shootout back in 1991 but the screen play was pretty weak and the audience was quickly moved from one event to the other. I’m sure this was done to quicken the pace of the story but a few links were lost in the bargain. The performances were not as stellar as expected. The best performance was by Abhishek Bachchan, who in spite of having only a 2 minute cameo in the film, did a decent rendition of a cop. But there was no real connection of his guest appearance to the actual story. Suppose it was a strategy by the producers to rope in more audiences just to rake in the moolah. AB as usual was fantastic except that the audience can not really figure out what role he is playing when his scenes begin. Was he the commissioner, a judge or a lawyer? Sanjay Dutt and Sunil Shetty always give good performances so there was no disappointment there. Vivek Oberoi had a chance to redeem himself here and he didn’t do anything different from his acting in Company, which by far has been his best work. The rest of the cast (if you can even call them that) was a HUGE mistake, with Tusshar Kapoor and Dia Mirza leading the pack. Tusshar Kapoor is a complete rubber duck and blew it, BIG time, in what could have been a saving grace in his sister’s production. His being a gangster produced laughs in the movie hall. Dia Mirza as usual, sucked! She has the role of a news reporter played out all wrong. What was she thinking? Doesn’t she watch the news? I mean, there’s a multitude of news channels and no dearth of homework she could do just watching journalists on TV these days. She fails miserably to generate any appreciation for her performance. In fact, she is sickeningly annoying and pathetic when she attempts to throw coy glances at the cops.
The question raised from the movie is of serious debate. Were the methods used by the task force to snuff out antisocial elements justified as it compromised the lives of many innocent people living in the building? And should future confrontations be of similar nature? For one, I believe that terrorists such as these need to be treated in the same way that they treat their victims. They need to be tortured severely and then exterminated in the cruelest of ways. They recognize no rule or law of the land, haven’t a shred of sympathy in their random mass murders and are in control of other people’s lives as they please. They are trigger happy and victimize bystanders at the drop of a hat. In the process of capturing these elements, several lives are lost. One could argue that to save a million you sacrifice a hundred. But the turning point to that argument is, what if your loved one or someone you knew got caught in the cross fire? Would one still be saintly enough to accept that loss as… to gain something, you have to lose something? We still need to eliminate these kinds of criminals by giving them a dose of their own medicine but need to come up with something that will possibly reduce the amount of damage done to society.
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