Kho Na Jaaye Yeh - Taare Zameen Par

At the end of the year comes a gem, which enthralls, entertains, educates and most importantly makes you think about the "little stars" on this earth and their predicaments.

The movie tells the story of Ishan Avasthi a dreamy 9 year old for whom the world seems a bit different. He lives cocooned in his own world where alphabets concoct against him, the numbers just don't make sense and the whole world doesn't seem to understand his predicament. His grades are at a ebb and he seems indifferent.

His parents, a loving mother and a very busy executive dad, just can't fathom why their son just can't seem to fit in to this competitive world, while his elder sibling is the perfect kid who tops his school, plays tennis and is adept at whatever he does. This contrast and the reason behind it is credited to Ishan's indifference and he is packed of to a boarding school which they believe will bring Ishan in line.

Here Ishan who has always had his family around him is himself unable to understand why his parents decided to send him away from them, turns into a recluse. But as they say everything happens for the good and here he meets Ram Shankar Nikumbh an stand-in art teacher who for the first time in Ishan's life is somebody who cares to understand his problems

The passages that follow where Ram analyzes the vibrant mind of Ishan and makes the people around him understand the need to give each child his own space is a must watch.

As for performances, Darsheel Safary as Ishan is just brilliant, he encompasses the fragility and spontaneity of Ishan's character with elan. They way he emotes in some scenes of this movie is to be seen to be believed. It just shows the caliber of the child artistes of today. Aamir Khan's performance as Ram is expectedly adept, this I am sure would be considered among his best performances and his most fulfilling too.

But more than Aamir the actor, it's Aamir the director and the film maker who deserves the accolades for making this gem. He seems very adept at his skills behind the camera as he is in front of it, if this is what he can give us for a start, I do surely look forward to many more classics from Aamir.

The music deserves as much credit as the movie itself, Shankar Ehsaan Loy have given in one of their career best sound tracks. "Taare Zameen Par", "Kholo Kholo" and "Maa" are top notch. Prasoon Joshi reiterates his class with some incredible and contextual lyrics.

This certainly is the best movie of 2007 and is a movie made by people with heart in the right place. It's an effort which should be highly encouraged. Very few movies have captured the complexities and issues of a child as this one has. I highly recommend this movie and even think it should be made mandatory viewing :) for all parents and parents to be.

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Super Heroes Beware - BOSS is here

It's finally confirmed.. the real Indian super hero does not walk around in a cape or a mask...

Leaping unimaginable distances and smashing the life out of a hundred goons all maintaining that smile on his face ... who else but the SuperStar is BACK!!! Rajnikanth is in the House...

Sivaji mania is everywhere and it doesn't seem to be dying out any time soon...

The word HYPE does not do justice to the crescendo of anticipation and excitement on this side of the Vindhyas created by this mother of all potboilers. The mere announcement that AVM one of the biggest production houses of the South had pulled the coup of casting the King of the Masses with the ultimate mass director had sent tremors of excitement and fear through the film fraternity all over India. For one this wasnt going to be just another movie... either way that is.

For all this hype and hoopla around the movie I just had to check this movie out. Admittedly I am a big fan of Shankar and Rajni movies and the prospect of them teaming was great.

For once lack of a substantial storyline in this movie wasn't something that surprised me... Most Rajni movies of recent times, with the exception of Chandramukhi has been based around a common thread. That of the do gooder who looses the battle towards the interval only to regain everything smashing everyone who stood in his path and uplifting everyone who followed him. Sivaji only adds to the list with that much and nothing more. Shankar just adds his usual dose of his views on how to solve corruption and bring the black stuff out to light.

May be the stakes were too high to experiment, coz when Rajni tried to stray of the path a tad with Baba... it was a disaster; by his standards of course.

The movie starts of with Sivaji being escorted into a jail, from there movie runs in flash back mode when Sivaji(Rajni) returns from US, where he seems to have made quite a fortune.

The good hearted Sivaji wishes to utilize the money to bring education to all, but the system and the people who bend the system stand in his way... How Sivaji realizes his dream and brings these baddies to book forms rest of the story.

Like most tamil movies of recent times, Sivaji runs on multiple tracks with a track devoted to Sivaji wooing his lady love Shriya[to whom we shall come back to soon] which also forms the comedy track to one where he engages in a battle with Suman. The tracks switch monotonously with rarely any connection between the two.

The first half of the movie is quite light and racy with Shriya being total eye candy, thats all that is required of her actually and she is more than adept at it. Shriya easily switches between the extremes of being the austere simpleton to the glam doll in the songs.

Among the supporting cast Vivek is at his best matching Rajni scene for scene and dialogue for dialogue. Suman tries to be menacing and subtle but comes out too plain and pale. Also mentions to Nayanthara in the the opening song who looks fab.

Rajni in a role written for him to the T; stands out, impressing us with his comic timing in the first half and being the style icon in the second. It must be said he looks a lot younger in the movie and his dress sense with credit to Manish Malhotra has gone up manifold. Whts bit of a let down is the action sequences which are a bit too over the top even by Rajni standards.

There was once a question on why there were no superhero movies in the South. After seeing this movie I kinda had the answer. What more could a poor super hero do.... ;)

Another highlight of the movie are the songs more so for the spectacular sets and picturization than the tunes themselves[we definetly have heard better from Rehman]. Overall the movie is like a collection of set pieces guaranteed to make the Rajni fanatics go crazy.

When taken overall it surely falters a bit. But what the heck when there is the Superstar on Screen and the crowd go beserk in the aisles ... who wants a story line after all........

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Bond Jam's Bond

Thats what i would like to call the guy/gal who actually wrote this.....

This anonymous Infoscion show us what a true blue Bangalorean is at heart... a eternal optimist

Read on and Enjoy

"Over these last few years of living in Bangalore , I have slowly grown to like the jams, which this city provides in abundance.

These jams do build your patience and character. Is it a coincidence that India ’s most patient cricketers, Dravid and Kumble, hail from this city of jams? (Dravid is even nicknamed “Jammy”). Does it tell you something? Sri Sri Ravishankar…does he get his daily dose of spiritual inspiration while in a jam?? And will I also get a halo after a few more years of this “character building”?? There are, I am sure, thousands of future Anands stuck in the Adugodis and Anand Rao circles, who are plotting their moves against future Kramniks… those poor little Kramniks stand no chance. And if you see a professor-like guy prancing around the Palace road jam, you can deduce that a postulate in Physics has just been proved.

A few days back, I had a thought - If we can have reviews of movies, which occupy only a few hours of our life in a month, why not reviews of traffic jams, which takes up significant hours of our day?? So here is my review of some of Bangalore ’s famous and not-so-famous jams(in no particular order).

But before that, a general comment - As they say, the taste of food in a restaurant is dependent on the ambience ; similarly, the way I see jams, cozy inside the office shuttle or public transport, is different from the way the owner of the swank new SUV sees it. (btw, if you are the owner of the swank new SUV, don’t run me down).

1. The Hosur Road Jam - Unarguably, the mother of all jams. We (ex-) Infoscions are proud of being (once) associated with a great company. We are equally proud of contributing in no small extent to this jam. This jam gives a great glimpse of the Other India - colorful music-blaring interstate buses, garment factory workers, highway trucks, smoke spewing lorries and such. Provides ample food for thought for socialist minds. (Rating: ***1/2)

2. The jams around K’mangala/Forum mall - Definitely the best jams in town. PYTs (Pretty young things), fancy cars, and fancy restaurants; this has it all. But you can’t afford any of those. Never mind!! Your sadistic brain can take pleasure in the fact that the guy in the fancy car next to you is cruising around for a parking space, feasting his eyes on the PYTs , while his family is having dinner in one of the fancy restaurants. (Rating: ****1/2)

3. The KG Road jam - To be experienced in the evenings before a long weekend. Every auto/taxi in town seems to be stuck while going towards the City railway station - your hair stands on end, you start sweating, the heart beats faster, and you get the rush that a Michael Schumachaer gets on his last lap. And just as the auto moves, a movie show ends and a few hundred more vehicles pour out… Which was the train that hooted just now?? (Rating: ***1/2)

4. The Jayanagar jam - The puzzle-lovers jam; Jayanagar is maze of bylanes, one-way streets, no right-turns, no left-turns, traffic signals and whatnot. It is an establised fact that Point A to point B, in Jayanagar, can be reached in 6436 distinct ways. But whichever way you take, you are left with a hollow feeling that another route had a better and bigger jam? (Rating: **1/2)

5. The jams around Marathahalli/ Whitefield - The IT professional’ s dream jam; As she sits in the office shuttle looking at other office buses, she can make her career plans. A typical evening in this jam goes thus:

Voice from Company A bus : “Any J2EE developers in your bus?”. Three guys from Company B bus respond “Yeah” and get down. By the time, the bus crosses the Marathahalli bridge, the first guy is hired as a J2EE developer. The second guy, who didn’t know what J2EE meant, is hired as a project manager and the third guy is rejected as he realised late that he has already worked for Company A last year.

(Rating: ****)

6. The Airport Road jam - Similar in taste and character like the Koramangala jam but has socialist twist. This jam treats the rich businessman, who will later travel business class on Jet, the same as a poor programmer, who had unusually come to office early in the morning, 3 months back, to buy one of those cheap airline tickets. (Rating ***)

7. The BTM 7th Main x 7 Cross jam - Close to my home, so close to my heart. But alas, the spoilsports at BDA finished the flyover at the Jayadeva circle and brought an end to this jam. But for a couple of years, this jam used to give me pure joy as vehicles of all types created a tangle in the small bylanes of BTM layout. The BDA is now planning a new flyover at the Udupi Garden junction; so there is still hope (Rating ***1/2).

We jam lovers - currently this club consists of only me - have petitioned the government to protect and preserve traffic jams as a cultural asset of Bangalore . Just so that traffic jams are not endangered in the future, we have these suggestions:

1. Build more flyovers - Flyovers do not reduce jams. They just transfer it to the next junction. And in the 2 years that it takes to build them, you are assured of some joyous jams. I am drooling…

2. No public buses - If everybody goes by buses, where will our culture go?

3. Make Tata’s 1-Lakh car cheaper by making it tax free - Imagine every two wheeler replaced by a car…The prospects are mouth-watering."

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Blood Guts Glory

300- the name in itself is unconventional, and considering the story a very obvious choice. 300 as the name and subtitles suggest is story of 300 Spartan warriors facing a army of a million from Persia.

300-is a very visually stylized adaptation of the graphic novel also titled "300" by Frank Miller. The graphic novel tells the story of Battle of Thermopylae where a army of 300 Spartans had held up a army of Xerxes which came to conquer their land. They held up enough for the Spartan navy to arrive and beat Xerxes to the retreat.

The first thing that strikes you about the movie is the stunning visual imagery, composition of each shot, each frame is just so beautiful. The power of CG is at the fullest, what with only one of the scenes in the movie being actually shot outdoors. Be it stunning landscapes or the grotesque battle sequences, everything is done with total honesty to the comic book genre. The picturization is not a very real one but has the element of fantasy to it. Characters are made larger to life and their dialogues out of a story board. And considering that was what the makers set out to do, they have achieved to the fullest.

The movie opens with sequences which are meant to establish the credentials of an Spartan warrior. Each of the one hand picked and the deformed and diseased eliminated. Every child is made to go through an initiation in to pain and endurance. All this to create the ultimate war machines that the Spartans claim to be.

The story follows the travails of the Spartan King Leonidus, a man of virtue and honour who stands up to protect his nation as the rest of it is embroiled in corruption. He sets out with 300 of the finest warriors in Sparta against the wishes of the Counsel to protect his nation, knowing fully the might of the self proclaimed god Xerxes.

What follows is a blood smattering, torso piercing war sequences, although grotesque in depiction shot with with a certain sense of aesthetics. You see people being beheaded, legs chopped off and hordes of Persian warriors assembled by Xerxes from across Asia turning into heaps of dead bodies. Its all in your face... with little left to the imagination.

What unravels further is a nothing unexpected, as seen many American war movies... guts, pain, endurance and glory. But what strikes you is the way it gets told on screen.

The director Zack Snyder has recreated the war sequences using CG as well if not better than many Hollywood movies before made with budgets many folds of this movie. Just for the trivia this movie was made at around 1/5 the budget of Spiderman!!!.

People like me who would like a good war movie would like this movie and the people who donot like seeing limbs severed better stay away. Overall this is quite a entertaining movie which doesn't leave you unsatisfied.

Traffic [non]Sense

Here is a funny article worth posting that I found ...

I hope you like it too.. [and yeah I know my creativity is DEAD]

"This hilarious article was written by a Dutchman who spent two years in India, as a visiting expert. A little long article but makes interesting reading!!!


For the benefit of every Tom, Dick and Harry visiting India and daring to drive on Indian roads, I am offering a few hints for survival. They are applicable to every place in India except Bihar, where life outside a vehicle is only marginally safer.

Indian road rules broadly operate within the domain of karma where you do your best, and leave the results to your insurance company. The hints are as follows: Do we drive on the left or right of the road? The answer is "both". Basically you start on the left of the road, unless it is occupied. In that case, go to the right, unless that is also occupied. Then proceed by occupying the next available gap, as in chess. Just trust your instincts, ascertain the direction, and proceed. Adherence to road rules leads to much misery and occasional fatality. Most drivers don't drive, but just aim their vehicles in the generally intended direction.

Don't you get discouraged or underestimate yourself except for a belief in reincarnation; the other drivers are not in any better position. Don't stop at pedestrian crossings just because some fool wants to cross the road. You may do so only if you enjoy being bumped in the back.

Pedestrians have been strictly instructed to cross only when traffic is moving slowly or has come to a dead stop because some minister is in town. Still some idiot may try to wade across, but then, let us not talk ill of the dead.

Blowing your horn is not a sign of protest as in some countries. We horn to express joy, resentment, frustration, romance and bare lust (two brisk blasts),or just mobilize a dozing cow in the middle of the bazaar. Keep informative books in the glove compartment. You may read them during traf fic jams, while awaiting the chief minister's motorcade, or waiting for the rainwater to recede when over ground traffic meets underground drainage.

Occasionally you might see what looks like a UFO with blinking colored lights and weird sounds emanating from within. This is an illuminated bus, full of happy pilgrims singing bhajans. These pilgrims go at breakneck speed, seeking contact with the Almighty, often meeting with success.

Auto Rickshaw (Baby Taxi): The result of a collision between a rickshaw and an automobile, this three-wheeled vehicle works on an external combustion engine that runs on a mixture of kerosene oil and creosote. This triangular vehicle carries iron rods, gas cylinders or passengers three times its weight and dimension, at an unspecified fare. After careful geometric calculations, children are folded and packed into these auto rickshaws until some children in the periphery are not in contact with
the vehicle at all. Then their school bags are pushed into the microscopic gaps all round so those minor collisions with other vehicles on the road cause no permanent damage. Of course, the peripheral children are charged half the fare and also learn Newton's laws of motion enroute to school. Auto-rickshaw drivers follow the road rules depicted in the film Ben Hur, and are licensed to irritate.

Mopeds: The moped looks like an oil tin on wheels and makes noise like an electric shaver. It runs 30 miles on a teaspoon of petrol and travels at break-bottom speed. As the sides of the road are too rough for a ride, the moped drivers tend to drive in the middle of the road; they would rather drive under heavier vehicles instead of around them and are often "mopped" off the tarmac.

Leaning Tower of Passes: Most bus passengers are given free passes and during rush hours, there is absolute mayhem. There are passengers hanging off other passengers, who in turn hang off the railings and the overloaded bus leans dangerously, defying laws of gravity but obeying laws of surface tension. As drivers get paid for overload (so many Rupees per kg of passenger), no questions are ever asked. Steer clear of these
buses by a width of three passengers.

One-way Street: These boards are put up by traffic people to add jest in their otherwise drab lives. Don't stick to the literal meaning and proceed in one direction. In metaphysical terms, it means that you cannot proceed in two directions at once. So drive as you like, in reverse throughout, if you are the fussy type. Least I sound hypercritical; I must add a positive point also. Rash and fast driving in residential areas has been prevented by providing a "speed breaker"; two for each house. This mound, incidentally, covers the water and drainage pipes for that residence and is left untarred for easy identification by the corporation authorities, should they want to recover the pipe for year-end accounting.

Night driving on Indian roads can be an exhilarating experience for those with the mental make up of Genghis Khan. In a way, it is like playing Russian roulette, because you do not know who amongst the drivers is loaded. What looks like premature dawn on the horizon turns out to be a truck attempting a speed record. On encountering it, just pull partly into the field adjoining the road until the phenomenon passes.

Our roads do not have shoulders, but occasional boulders. Do not blink your lights expecting reciprocation. The only dim thing in the truck is the driver, and with the peg of illicit arrack (alcohol) he has had at the last stop, his total cerebral functions add up to little more than a naught. Truck drivers are the James Bonds of India, and are licensed to kill. Often you may encounter a single powerful beam of light about six feet above the ground. This is not a super motorbike, but a truck approaching you with a single light on, usually the le ft one. It could be the right one, but never get too close to investigate. You may prove your point posthumously."

Ciao.........