2007: The year that was

As I sit here waiting to ring in the New Year, I can’t help but look back on the year gone by and recollect all the experiences – good, bad, funny, sad, exhilarating. So let’s go back in time…exactly a year back!

I welcomed 2007 in one of the most perfect ways I could – my band Serenity rocked out a New Year’s party gig with an impressive setlist covering Gn’R, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, RHCP, Pink Floyd, Dismember among others.

- The first good news of the year came in the form of an opportunity to move back to the US for a job.

- Close on the heels of the good news followed a personal tragedy. Lost my grandma after a long illness. May her soul rest in peace.

Arrived in California in February and the year since then has been one interesting journey!

- Formed another band and for the first time, put down the bass guitar and took up full-time drumming duties.

- Got myself a pure white Pearl drumkit that recently has been christened “Bianca”.

- Went rock-climbing for the first time and absolutely loved it.

- Went for an alternative rock concert with a EL (this guy is quite a character!). After fighting through traffic and finding parking, I realized that I had left my tickets at home and had to drive back and fetch them. Luckily didn’t miss a lot.

- Got my first sportsbike, a gorgeous, 600cc Honda CBR F3 Smokin’ Joe’s limited edition.

- Met some really awesome riders and had a great time riding through the streets and mountains of Bay Area. The riding community is almost like my new family.

- 3 months and 2000 miles later, sold my bike for more than what I bought it for (I know…I should be working at the dealership!)

- Attended Ozzfest and saw Hatebreed, Lordi, Lamb of God and Ozzy Osbourne perform live!

- Saw Dream Theater perform live at Berkeley. Watching Mike Portnoy (drums) and John Myung (bass) was a dream come true.

- And to top it all, saw Rush perform live. For a drummer, there is no better experience than watching Neil Peart live in his elements.

- Met Oz and the PFC junta in OC and it was one hell of a party.

- Had an adventure on the freeway on my way back (read my older blog entry about the same)

- Met my childhood friend A and had an awesome time with his kids in OC.

- One of my closest friends PT came to the US for a month on a business trip. I went to Disneyland with her and though she didn’t particularly enjoy it, I had a total blast as I got to be a kid once again for a day. Yay!!

- Was treated to some delicious home-made desi food on a couple of weekends when my maushi (aunt) was in town visiting her son.

- Started working on an original Hindi rock band project with a guitarist friend. The project didn’t take off but I made a new friend nevertheless.

- Had the most boring, disconnected conversation of my life with a girl who got in touch with me through a matrimonial site.

- Made a trip to the Big Apple and spent a nice weekend with my wonderful sister K.

- One of my best friend J had an absolutely adorable baby boy. Eagerly waiting for her to return to the US.

- Learnt to swim! Now if only I could be a little more regular and go swimming often.

- Played my first gig as a drummer with my new band The Joy of ESX (NO, there are no typos!) covering songs by Gn’R, Metallica, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Poison, Dire Straits, etc.

- Met Nishikant Kamat (of Dombivali Fast fame) and Madhavan at the preview screening of Evano Oruvam, the Tamil remake of Dombivali Fast.

- Went to Austin, TX and celebrated my birthday with some good old friends. It was one of my best birthdays ever!

- Our lead guitarist V moved back to India and we are still struggling to find a suitable replacement.

- My colleague and friend KB had a beautiful baby girl. Poor guy keeps complaining about his loss of sleep.

- Saw Van Halen perform live after reuniting with David Lee Roth.

However, most of these experiences would not have been possible had I not met some interesting people along the way. Some I had known from before, some I met here, some came for a while and disappeared, some have stayed on for longer and some might stay all the way. So let me try and mention a few who made a difference….

My bandmates who are an absolutely crazy bunch and have been my Sunday entertainment. My friend KB who in ways unexplainable has somehow helped me out on different occassions. GB, a cool guy from work who has made the afternoon coffee-breaks interesting. DH, a Swedish colleague who helped me out a lot during my initial days at work. M from the local music store who has given me some absolutely killer deals on all my drumming gear. SJ, my guitarist friend with whom I had some fun times in the city. My goofy new friend AR with whom I have had some completely non-sensical conversations and some fun times hanging out. And as the year came to a close…met someone really wonderful (if you are reading this, you know who you are!) and the time (though very little) I spent with this person has been absolutely amazing!

Apart from these wonderful people, I would not be the sane (???) person I am without some people who hold a really special place in my life – my sister K, best friends J, N and AS (Mumbai), and some good old friends – SK, GP, RD, TO, AS (Reno).  I don’t get to meet them as often as I would like to, but I know they are always just a phone call away.

So thank you all for being a part of my life and making me feel special!

Wish you all a Very Happy and Wonderful 2008!

And I’ll leave with this quote by Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden: “Somedays you’re the pigeon, somedays you’re the statue…but if you can, you should only do the things you love”

What’s so civil about war anyway?

This time around I’m just going to let these lyrics do the talking…

“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.
Some men you just can’t reach…
So, you get what we had here last week,
which is the way he wants it!
Well, he gets it!
N’ I don’t like it any more than you men.”

Look at your young men fighting
Look at your women crying
Look at your young men dying
The way they’ve always done before

Look at the hate we’re breeding
Look at the fear we’re feeding
Look at the lives we’re leading
The way we’ve always done before

My hands are tied
The billions shift from side to side
And the wars go on with brainwashed pride
For the love of God and our human rights
And all these things are swept aside
By bloody hands time can’t deny
And are washed away by your genocide
And history hides the lies of our civil wars

D’you wear a black armband
When they shot the man
Who said “Peace could last forever”
And in my first memories
They shot Kennedy
I went numb when I learned to see
So I never fell for Vietnam
We got the wall of D.C. to remind us all
That you can’t trust freedom
When it’s not in your hands
When everybody’s fightin’
For their promised land

And
I don’t need your civil war
It feeds the rich while it buries the poor
Your power hungry sellin’ soldiers
In a human grocery store
Ain’t that fresh
I don’t need your civil war

Look at the shoes your filling
Look at the blood we’re spilling
Look at the world we’re killing
The way we’ve always done before
Look in the doubt we’ve wallowed
Look at the leaders we’ve followed
Look at the lies we’ve swallowed
And I don’t want to hear no more

My hands are tied
For all I’ve seen has changed my mind
But still the wars go on as the years go by
With no love of God or human rights
‘Cause all these dreams are swept aside
By bloody hands of the hypnotized
Who carry the cross of homicide
And history bears the scars of our civil wars

“We practice selective annihilation of mayors
And government officials
For example to create a vacuum
Then we fill that vacuum
As popular war advances
Peace is closer”

I don’t need your civil war
It feeds the rich while it buries the poor
Your power hungry sellin’ soldiers
In a human grocery store
Ain’t that fresh
And I don’t need your civil war
I don’t need your civil war
I don’t need your civil war
Your power hungry sellin’ soldiers
In a human grocery store
Ain’t that fresh
I don’t need your civil war
I don’t need one more war

I don’t need one more war
What’s so civil ’bout war anyway?

[Song: Civil Way by Guns N' Roses]

Weekend to Remember contd…

So after a lot of you asked me about the follow-up post for my “Weekend to Remember” post, I had to get off my lazy ass and finish what I started. So here it goes…

Me and S started off from OC and were about an hour and a half out on I-5, when suddenly the lights inside the car went out, the radio shut off and the car started to sputter. We pulled over on the shoulder on the left side and popped the hood to see if we could diagnose the problem and possibly fix it. But soon it became apparent that the problem was not a fix-it-and-go.

8:10pm 

We decide to do the next logical thing – call for roadside assistance. S could not get any signal on his phone, so we called from my phone.  This is where our problem started progressing from bad to worse.

For the first time in all these years of travelling, I forgot to carry my phone charger and my phone had probably 2/3rd of battery life left. We had another problem…we didn’t know our exact location on the freeway and could only give some approximate landmarks. We were told that the tow-truck was on it’s way.

8:30pm

Half an hour since we broke down and we were happy that help was on it’s way. We kept looking down the freeway for a tow-truck. Then I looked down at my watch…

9:05pm

No tow-truck yet…there was something definitely wrong. And just then the dreadful call came in – the truck driver had failed to find us and had returned to his base. I am pretty sure that the driver didn’t even bother to go search for us and gave up within a mile or two from the last landmark we had mentioned.

It had started to get a little cold and the noise of the cars whizzing past us and the worsening light wasn’t helping us at all.

9:40pm

We decide to call 911. Inspite of explaining to the emergency operator that I was running low on phone battery, the lady continued to go through her questionnaire and finally uttered the words which sounded like heaven – “The dispatch is on it’s way and should be there in 15-20min”…but what she followed that up with was ridiculous – “If no one arrives for 30min, please don’t keep waiting and call back right away”. Are you for real?? What part of “my phone is about to die any minute” didn’t you understand?

Through another stroke of brilliance, we decided to call up our friends in OC and gave them our approximate location and asked them to co-ordinate with the roadside assistance just in case my phone ran out of juice.

10:15pm

No cop car in sight. It’s the first time in my life that I have so eagerly awaited to see the flashing lights of a cop car pulling up behind our car. Our friends in OC tell us that roadside assistance has been instructed to keep travelling down the freeway till they locate us. YAY!!

I make another call to 911. They tell me that they have my previous call on record and that the dispatch is already on it’s way. I am not sure which way it was headed, it definitely wasn’t our way! By now we both are bored and frustrated. I start waving to all passing cars hoping that some driver would be a good samaritan and call 911 to inform them of our predicament (or inform that there are two lunatics waving on the side of the freeway!). But little had we expected that some driver would provide us with a moment of humor. Suddenly we see a BMW pull over to the side and start flashing it’s blinkers. We ran towards the car hoping to get some kind of assistance. What we find instead is a driver who is piss drunk and could barely understand what we were trying to tell him. We moved aside and set him off on his way with a “Thanks, but no thanks”!

11:10pm

A little over 3 hours since we pulled over, we see a tow-truck heading our way. We let out a scream of joy and run towards our angel in disguise (in mechanic’s overalls to be precise!). He suggests that we tow the car to a town about 10-12 miles away where they had a service station as well as hotels nearby to stay overnight. At that point, we were hungry, thirsty and completely drained of all energy and that suggestion was the best we could get. We squeeze into the cabin of the truck and were on our way.

11:45pm

The truck driver dropped off the car in front of a service station and we paid him and he was on his way. We walked to the gas station to ask the clerk for the opening time of the service station. The words that followed were like lightning crashing on our heads. The clerk said, “That service station has been out of business for at least 3 months”. I spotted the tow-truck waiting at the stoplight and I made a mad dash out to get hold of him. Just as I reached, the light turned green and the truck disappeared in front of my eyes. Our angel had just discarded his disguise and had become the devil!

Walked back to the gas station and met a guy having coffee. He happened to be a mechanic.

Was this going to be our stroke of luck? By this time I had stopped expecting for anything good to come out, so I just asked him to take a look at the car. He came over, told us it seemed like an alternator issue. He gave us a jump start using his truck, but it wasn’t of much help as the battery would not charge and he didn’t have his tools with him. We thanked him for helping nevertheless.

00:15am (next day)

Me and S walked towards a hotel and checked in. Dumped our bags in the room and we strolled out to get something to eat.

00:40am 

Seemed like our luck was changing as Denny’s actually served our order within 10min!!

1:30am 

Back in the room, I don’t even remember when I crashed on the bed and fell asleep…

7:00am

…S is shaking my hand to wake me up. Takes me a few moments to realize where I was and the entire ordeal of the previous night started to play again in my head. Took a quick shower, had a hot coffee and S called up a nearby garage who told us that they could fix the problem and have us on our way.

8:30am

We get the car towed to the garage and they tell us that they will need to order in an alternator to replace the old one. They said we should be on our way by noon. We head out to a nearby Starbuck’s while we leave the car behind for the garage to work on it. Sitting in that chair with a cappuccino in hand was probably the most relaxing moment I have had in years.

11:30am

The car is ready and raring to go. S pays the garage guys and we are on our way…

2008 Hayabusa – Return of the Falcon

So it seems that finally Suzuki redesigned the Hayabusa if ever so slightly. The new lines on the Busa seem more sharper and aggressive than it’s predecessors. Looks like Suzuki are on it’s way to snatch the top spot from the Kawasaki ZX-14. The specs as released on Bikeland.org indicate that the new Busa will be powered by a 1340cc engine.

And here’s a picture of the aquiline beauty

A Weekend to Remember

On an impulse, I decided to drive down to Orange County (OC) with a friend from PFC for the weekend. Was looking forward to a great time at the PFC Headquarters (Oz’s house) meeting fellow movie fanatics and possibly shooting a short film. Reached there way past midnight and but still received one of the warmest welcomes ever. Sat chatting about movies, music and all other random things over a nice chilled beer.

On Saturday, the PFC-USA gang decided to convert the HQ (the bathroom to be precise!) into a studio to shoot the ad for PFC.

As we wrapped up, I left the PFC HQ to meet my oldest buddy and his family. Had a blast with his kids. His son, who is the elder one, totally impressed me with his ability to identify different makes and models of cars, SUVs and minivans. Just to put things in perspective, he is not even 5 years old! However, it was his younger kid, his daughter who completely bowled me over. She had me totally wrapped around her finger by her charming sweetness. These girls sure learn their tricks at a young age (she is 3-4 months shy of her 2nd birthday)!

Sunday afternoon, I was back at the PFC HQ and the gang had started working on shooting the short film that was scripted by our friend Striker. I played my part in the shoot by holding up a green background for a scene depicting a news telecast and by throwing around some random, completely useless ideas! Hey, I tried! I don’t know anything about movie-making…LOL. But just watching the gang in action helped me learn a lot of things about the entire shooting process.

If only had I not have to go to work on Monday, I would have loved to stay over for some more time and have more fun. Thanks to all the PFC guys from OC for the wonderful weekend.

P.S. though the weekend took an ugly turn about an hour and a half after we left OC, will write about that in another post.

Passion For Cinema

For all you movie lovers, do visit this portal: http://passionforcinema.com

And for the fun what we are all about, check out our ad at the end of this post on the above portal: PFC commercial

Is it only about paying bills?

I was talking to a friend yesterday and reflecting on life and I realized that my life has become like my job. Yes, my life has become a program, just a couple of lines of code. Just like the code I write that does a couple of tasks over and over again, my life has become the same in the real world. I wake up, get ready, ride to work on the same route, sit in the same office, check mails, start writing some code and running tests to check it, go to the same crappy cafeteria and have the same crappy food, attend some meetings, write more code and run more tests, ride back home through the same traffic (believe me…at times I have seen the same cars at the same stop light!), workout, cook, watch some sitcom, sleep. And then the cycle repeats.

Is this what life is supposed to be? Live like a machine? A robot? A piece of code?

 And for what? So that you can pay your bills?

Whatever happened to your passions? What about the things that you loved to do? What about those activities that brought a smile to your face?

Our parents tricked us when they told us as kids that we could do whatever we want and enjoy life once we start earning. That’s so not true! We basically just end up doing what everyone else is doing. You get a job, your bank balance starts to look healthy. Soon enough you buy your own house, you get married, have kids and then tell them the same thing your parents told you. And that’s when it dawns on you that you never really enjoyed life and by then it’s too late. Life has slipped away and all you actually did in your life was pay bills!

I don’t want to let life pass me by while I was busy writing some code. No, I cannot just go all out to pursue my passions. I have to be practical, since paying bills is a harsh reality. But I’m not going to let that drive my life.

I am going to ride my sportsbike at every chance I get, even if it is only riding a few miles to and from work.

I am going to save up to go hit the tracks and improve my riding skills.

I am going to keep practicing and jamming to improve my drumming.

I am going to be more regular with my blog posts.

I am going to watch movies more often.

I am not going to work to pay my bills, but I am going to work to be able to pursue my passions!

BCS National Title Game: Gators are CHOMPions

It was the perfect end to a great year of sports with the Florida Gators being the first team in NCAA history to win the National Basketball and Football titles in the same year. And what a way to win the football title – annihilating No.1 Ohio State Buckeyes 41-14!!

I had been screaming hoarse throughout the season that the Buckeyes were overrated and the Gators deserved to be No.1 after facing way tougher opponents in the SEC. With teams such as Tennessee, LSU, Arkansas and Alabama to contend with and playing against a great team like FSU every season as an out of conference opponent, and beating them all in the same season, the Gators were a more deserving team.

The Buckeyes dominated the game for all of 16 seconds from kickoff. After that, they didn’t even get time to figure out as to what hit them. The explosively quick Florida defense was something that the Buckeyes had never encountered (and will never encounter in the Big Ten conference) and this became evident as their quarterback Troy Smith kept getting hit from behind.

If the defense was relentless, the offense was spot on! The two quarterbacks strategy of Urban Meyer was something the Buckeyes had no answer to. Chris Leak silenced his critics by coming good in the big game and Tim Tebow has the Buckeyes scampering with his rushing skills.

You can read more about it here at CNNSI and ESPN.

Go Gators!!!

Magnificent 700: Shane Warne crosses another milestone

It was a lazy morning after a long weekend and I was in no mood to go to work. Switched on the television while sipping on a hot cup of tea and saw that England had lost two wickets and Strauss and Collingwood were doing a job of damage control. But I was more intently listening to if Shane Warne had claimed either of those two wickets. Warne had entered the test match with his tally of wickets at 699.

Soon after the English had reached their century, Brett Lee unleashed a beauty to get rid of Collingwood. Warne came on to continue from the other end. The first ball didn’t pose any problems for a well set Strauss who was batting on 50. Warne came in to bowl the next ball, he gave it a good flight, the ball reached the peak of its trajectory, Strauss read it fine so far and took a stride forward to drive it…then the ball suddenly dipped, pitched outside off-stump, spun viciously and went through bat and pad and the death rattle sounded as it hit the middle stump. Wicket number 700 for Shane Warne! And what a perfect wicket it was – knocking back the middle stump of a top order batsman who had just scored his half-century. The entire ground erupted waving colorful placards with the number 700 printed on them.

It was as perfect a moment as a person can wish for – establishing a new record in front of your home crowd – and a well deserved one too. After going through a huge turmoil in his married life, being involved in the lewd message scandal and serving a one-year ban for using banned diuretics, Warne has come back stronger than ever and claimed over 200 wickets in the last 36 test matches (5.7 wickets per match!). And considering he hunted in pair with Glenn McGrath who himself has claimed over 500 wickets, it’s a great achievement.

Warne is definitely one of the greatest bowlers the cricketing world will ever see. He has single-handedly revived the art of spin bowling among the cricketing nations that do not come from the Indian sub-continent. As Warne is set to retire at the end of the current Ashes series, let’s wish him all the best for his future.

The Missing Coffee Cups…

This is a follow-up to my previous post about some ridiculous company policies. Here’s one more that takes the cake (or coffee??).

A few months ago, coffee vending machines were installed at our workplace to provide free coffee/tea to employees. In an “unrelated” incident, a week or two ago, small, pathetic looking cups with our company logo were distributed to all employees. Last week, a rude surprize awaited us as the plastic, disposable cups next to the vending machines suddenly disappeared, never to reappear again.

After asking the administrative department, we realized that the “unrelated” incident was not so unrelated after all. The new “protocol” was that employees were supposed to take their own cups to the vending machines, have their coffee and then wash their own cups during working hours and then enjoy (yeah right!!) another cup of coffee later on. Maybe its part of their training for employees who have to travel abroad on deputation and suddenly find themselves having to learn to wash their own plates and cups.

If you are familiar with or have ever had any experience of village life or life in chawls in Mumbai, then the above scene of an employee carrying his own cup to the vending machine …. is similar to carrying a tumbler of water to the common restroom, doing your thing and returning with an empty tumbler! Damn!! We are really living in a high-tech society aren’t we?

When Virgil Donati made my evening…

It’s not everyday that you get a chance to see your idol performing live in front of you, so when such an opportunity shows up, you grab it with both hands. That’s exactly what I did when I attended a Jazz concert this Sunday evening. This was no ordinary jazz performance…it was one of the best line-ups you could imagine in modern jazz. So hold your breath as I present to you the line-up: Bunny Brunel (bass), Frank Gambale (guitars), Mitch Foreman (keyboards) and Virgil Donati (drums).

Virgil Donati is one of my drumming idols and I just could not take my eyes off whatever magic he was weaving behind that gleaming Pearl drumkit. This does not mean the other musicians were ordinary. Hell NO! Gambale is a guitarist par excellence and has some of the quickest fingers around. Foreman is nothing less than a man possessed once he is behind those keyboards and creates some unbelievable melodies. As for Brunel, well, he literally makes the bass guitar talk!

But Donati is simply irresistible. The way his hands moved around the entire kit, the evenness in the sounds from each tom, the perfect accents that added an unrealistic dynamic to the sound, it was all so mesmerizing. And what can I say about the double-bass drumming. He created some unimaginable patterns where his feet not only played the double-bass, but also kept switching between the bass drum and the two hi-hats (yes, he had hi-hats on either side of the kit!) without missing a single beat at speeds that would make a sprinter jealous! The amazing use of paradiddles and other basic rudiments speaks volumes of this master’s creativity and sense of rhythm.

After Donati finished his first drum solo of the evening, Brunel made a statement that summed up the mastery of this amazing drummer. He said something like this – “If there are any drummers in the house, now you know what you need to practice when you go home. You either practice harder or you just quit!” – and this had the crowd in raptures. But it was a very powerful and true statement made in praise of Donati. Seeing him perform live will inspire the true drummers to continue in their pursuit of excellence, while it would surely demotivate those who have taken up drumming because its cool.

I am still under the spell cast on me by Donati’s drumming wizardry. It was a once in a lifetime experience and will be one of the most memorable evenings of my life.

Osho and the word ‘Fuck’

The following is an exchange between Osho and one of his followers regarding the word ‘Fuck’… 

Q:
Beloved Master,
I feel shocked when you use the word ‘Fuck’. What to do?

Osho :
Sargamo, it is one of the most beautiful words. The English language should be proud of it. I don’t think any other language has such a beautiful word.

One Tom from California has done some great research on it. I think he must be the famous Tom of Tom, Dick and Harry fame.

He says – One of the most interesting words in the English language today is the word ‘fuck’. It is one magical word. Just by its sound it can describe pain, pleasure, hate and love.
In language it falls into many grammatical categories.
It can be used as a verb, both transitive (John fucked Mary) and intransitive (Mary was fucked by John), and as a noun (Mary is a fine fuck).
It can be used as an adjective (Mary is fucking beautiful).
As you can see there are not many words with the versatility of ‘fuck’.

Besides the sexual meaning, there are also the following uses:
Fraud: I got fucked at the used car lot.
Ignorance: Fucked if I know.
Trouble: I guess I am fucked now!
Aggression: Fuck you!
Displeasure: What the fuck is going on here?
Difficulty: I can’t understand this fucking job.
Incompetence: He is a fuck-off.
Suspicion: What the fuck are you doing?
Enjoyment: I had a fucking good time.
Request: Get the fuck out of here!
Hostility: I am going to knock your fucking head off!
Greeting: How the fuck are you?
Apathy: Who gives a fuck?
Innovation: Get a bigger fucking hammer.
Surprise: Fuck! You scared the shit out of me!
Anxiety: Today is really fucked. And it is very healthy too.

Dhoom 2: One-man show

After Dhoom became a runaway hit, expectations were surely running high from the sequel. And it sure doesn’t disappoint! We see the return of Jai (AB jr.) and Ali (Uday Chopra), this time on the hunt for A (Hritik Roshan), a thief who is a master of disguise. The duo is joined by ACP Shonali Bose (Bipasha Basu) with a Lara Croft-esque entry. Sunehari (Aishwarya Rai) is added to the mix to complete a star-studded line up.

The movie is full of mind-blowing stunts that include sand-surfing in the deserts of Namibia, roller-blading through the heavy Mumbai traffic and base-jumping in Brazil. The locales are beautifully shot and the movie has an extremely sleek and stylish feel to it. The music, though not great, keeps the movie rolling forward. However, what the movie really lacks is a story. The screenplay is threadbare and is held together mainly by the nitrous-boosted action and Hritik Roshan.

Hritik Roshan gives a powerful performance in which he handles the awe-inspiring stunts, intense emotions and the sleek dances with equal ease. He is literally the heart and soul of the movie. He is what they call the X-factor of the movie.

Abhishek Bachchan is relegated to a supporting role and comes out looking more querulous than intense. Uday Chopra’s character is almost as good as undefined. Though he adds few laughs, it soon seems to get repetitive and irritating as the movie progresses. Aishwarya Rai tries hard to add the oomph by wearing the skimpiest of dresses, but fails to deliver a performance that could do justice to an important character in the scheme of things. On the other hand, Bipasha is simply amazing in the looks department. As for her character, it seems almost unjust the way it’s reduced from an ace cop to a Baywatch beauty.

But despite the weak story, the movie is a thorough entertainer that moves ahead at a lively pace and keeps you engrossed for the entire 3 hours. It’s definitely worth watching in the theaters and is going to be one of the biggest hits. I would rate it an A minus.

Happy Birthday Sandra

A special friend requires special wishes, so I had to write this post to wish Sandra a Very Happy Birthday.

She is one of my most special friends and here’s wishing her a wonderful year ahead.

Don: Where’s the Attitude?

Went to watch Don a few days ago with some friends and one of them requested me not to write a review after the movie came to an end. I resisted the urge but the writing bug got the better of me and here I am writing about Don.

I tried my best to leave the comparisons with the original Don aside and I felt that the movie was…umm…well…not bad. Let’s look at the good and the bad points of the movie…

Good…
- As is typical of a Farhan Akhtar movie, this one too is quite sleek and stylish with some brilliant locales.
- The plot was good and the two twists in the movie (even though I predicted both) were quite good and must have taken many viewers by surprise.
- The camerawork was excellent through most of the movie.

Bad…
- The first half is quite slow and jumpy as it cuts from one scene to another without any continuity.
- The effort at developing the characters is quite sloppy. How is a software guy so adept at rappelling down high-rises?
- Why the hell are car chases shot in slow motion? They need to watch The French Connection or Ronin or The Bourne Identity to get a better idea of what you mean by a car chase.

Now let’s talk about the protagonist, the Don, played by SRK. This is probably the worst casting error Farhan Akhtar might ever commit in his film career. A Don is supposed to ooze an I-don’t-give-a-damn attitude. And Farhan got is completely wrong here. He tried to portray the Don as an angry man rather than a cool guy with a imposing personality that blew away people with his attitude.

What we get is a SRK at his hamming best, gritting his teeth, straining the veins in his neck and giving a sly smile when delivering the most popular dialog – Don ko pakadna mushkil hi nahi, naamumkin hai. On the other hand, the Big B delivered this dialog in a cool, relaxed manner with a gaze that would burn a hole through you. No silly smirks, no gritting of teeth, no straining of veins. SRK looks more like a playboy, a Casanova and tethers dangerously on the edge of appearing gay!

As for the rest of the cast, Boman Irani does a good job. Kareena Kapoor, Isha Koppikar and Priyanka Chopra are simply present as eye-candy. Arjun Rampal as Jasjit is a character that is completely wasted.

This movie will have two types of audience – those who have seen the original Don and those who have not seen it. Accordingly, the reactions are likely to be split. The first group will not be able to stop comparing and will in all likelihood not enjoy it as much as the second group.

I am from the first group and I will probably give this new avatar of Don a B minus.