D-Day review

I haven't been compelled to write anything, let alone a movie review in eons. And then last Saturday night what I saw at Jade cinema in Singapore's Shaw tower got me restless. A movie comes out of Bollywood which knocks my socks off. Its called D-Day. I was expecting to see a good movie after having checked out the ratings and browsing some reviews cursorily. But I didn't in my wildest dreams imagine that a shocker was in store for me. Nikhil Advani has made a movie that India can be proud of. Kal Ho Na Ho looks childish compared to this mind blowing gem of a thriller done with great flamboyance. The very first few scenes get you by your collar and pull you into the mesmerizing world of espionage, covert operations, assassins and the military intelligence. Is it Bollywood's answer to Zero Dark Thirty? Absolutely. In terms of content, style, narration, technique and entertainment value it is up there with the slickest of Hollywood blockbusters. And when was the last time we made a movie on this subject which appealed to any IQ level above 80? Never.

Intelligence head Ashwini kumar played by Nasser is itching to get the most wanted man in India (Dawood Ibrahim) out of Pakistan with the help of a team he has formed against the wishes of the powers that be. He is the intelligence guy we all wish we had more of in India. And the southie accent adds a very real likeable flavour to his persona.

Arjun Rampal as the intense tough as nails commando is the icing on the cake. The sheer physicality and the cold bloodedness that he brings to the character is brilliant. We have seen so many bravura performances by Irrfan khan but you cant help feel strongly for the subtlety and vulnerability he infuses in the barber cum spy he plays with such effortless ease. Huma Qureshi is clearly the find of the year. A woman explosives expert working for RAW needs a seasoned actor and she is game for it. Shruti hasan as the paki prostitute is good but has a long way to go. Finally the evil D is dished out marvellously by Rishi Kapoor.

Do the daredevils under cover manage to drag the big evil D back to India? You gotta to watch this finely crafted roller coaster ride of an actioner with panache to know that. Regardless of the climax the movie is riveting to the core. Way to go Nikhil.

Movie Review - The adjustment bureau - Mind bending concoction of sci-fi, action and romance

Is it a sci-fi movie ? Is it an action thiller ? Or is it an offbeat romance drama? It is none of the above and yet it is all of these rolled into a seriously fun mind bender of a movie experience. How far would you go to get the girl of your dreams? Matt Damon goes as far as he can and as deep as he can into what i call the urban worm holes of new york in which one door teleports him from a subway to a far away stadium in a jiffy in a backdrop of bizarre happenings. Just when he is on the brink of becoming a senator of new york his world comes crashing down because he falls in love with a ballet dancer Emily blunt. A team of mysterious people calling themselves the adjustment bureau find Damon and Blunt going against what they term as the plan of their chairman in which the love struck couple are to achieve great individual successes if were to be kept apart. And there begins the adjustment versus free will game leading to loads of thrills. The background score heightens the excitement. Matt Damon adds a soft side to his brawny antecedents from the bourne movies. Emily blunt as the impulsive ballet dancer is much more charming though as Damon's love interest.

Movie review - Peepli Live - Genius cinema, extraordinary socio-political commentary

When was the last time you saw a great satire on any subject in India? Hard to recollect you think. That's right, in eons, we havent put together a masterful tragi-comedy on the celluloid which shocks you and makes you laugh, cry, think and squirm all at the same time on the scale that Peepli live does. Great films of this calibre have been few and far between. I am reminded of Jaane bhi do yaaro and Bhawni bhawai(gujarati). If anything it is a masterstroke of cinematic genius that deserves to get Bollywood loads of acclaim and a bunch of awards. If there is even a trace of the Slumdog millionaire hangover in the minds of global audiences then pocketing this year's foreign film oscar wont come as a surprise. See it to ensure people make more of this kind of movies in bollywood. How long will you persevere the insults inflicted by crappy people who pass off as movie writers and directors. We dont deserve it.

Energy abundance or annihilation. The choice is ours.

Who wouldn't want a free lunch or better free energy ? I would love to have it. Having burnt fossil fuels for my individual needs since my birth 30 odd years ago i can obliterate some of the guilt i have gathered over time if a free energy device were to be sold at the departmental store in the neighboorhood . To get an insight into my eco-fiendly criminal past read on. Flourescent lamps would be constantly on in my study room for studying magazines ofcourse, the lights in my bathroom which i forgot to switch off a million times, the TV and radio which i ran perpetually for my amusement. And then i grew up and had more gadgets to blow electricity on. My PC and that too with an inverter to store some spare power to last me through the incessant power outages in india. i would surf the internet endlessly sometimes just looking for information while my hard disk became hot enough to iron my crumpled all cotton shirts. This was followed by my mobile phone, my PDA and then my MP3 player. Thank goodness i am not a gamer or you could add another power guzzling gizmo to it, the gaming console.Mom and dad contributed to the criminal wastage with their own channel surfing. And i havent even mentioned the motorbike yet. More fossil fuel for rides which didnt get me anywhere meaningful.And the stationary i consumed without putting pen to paper.All in all i plundered what i thought was my share of oil, coal, natural gas and trees which became my notebooks.

That was perhaps casual banter which disguised my blissfully ignorant excesses against the planet, but is there really any technology available or known to mankind which would avoid a serious environmental calamity. Can we all evolve in a more sane and prudent way as a race ? maybe yes. The work of one Dr.Steven Greer shows a lot of promise not just in terms of inventing a utopian free energy device but in terms of studying more advanced non-destructive technologies for making a big clean leap into a world of abundance and greater super scientific and spiritual prowess. People like him have made claims of having had access to technology beyond our wildest dreams and contact with extraterrestrial races which are far more hi-tech and wiser than we could possibly be in our life times. But as it always happens with any major disruptive change which takes status quo head on there seems to be a tremendous resistance to such alternative path breaking stuff which is targetted with a disinformation propaganda or dogmatically opposed with muscle and might. After all we are not done yet with trading crude oil at a 100 plus dollars for a barrel or dictating foreign policy to less endowed countries.It might be too late if this retrogressive metamorphosis continues. You may be rich today but tomorrow your granddaugther may not be able to breath clean air without the aid of some fancy breathing device .Your decadent lifestyle today is at the expense of millions of lives in the near future.Think about dying very rich and young as compared to living a long healthy rich life. And who knows what advances in geriatrics may give you a few decades more of the same fossil fuel-free life. When i last checked Dr.Greer's claims of a device didnt go too far which i suspect is because of the arm twisting and coercion in the industry-government complex circles.

Come March 11th, 2011 and a ginormous earthquake/tsunami hits japan killing thousands from the impact of the earthquake and the massive wall of water that hit unsuspecting masses. It also triggers the worst nuclear crisis since chernobyl by knocking the fukushima nuclear power plant.
Do we really want power at this cost? Who is benefitting from this? Why not take solar, wind, geo-thermal, tidal power sources and technologies to the next level and harness them. Because it leads to democratization of power generation and distribution. Exactly what the powers that be dont want or else how would they keep you in the matrix and control you.

Saas bahu bitching versus good old doordarshan.

Where has the quality of tv drama in india gone? we have digital tv today and very soon HD tv will overwhelm us but give me the analog version anyday along with quality content and i would gladly trade the sharp,colorful high resolution crap for it. where have shows like buniyaad, hum log , rajani and yeh jo hai zindagi gone ? where has the fun of crime solving in karamchand and vyomkesh bakshi vanished ? where has the warmth of Daane Anaar Ke gone missing ? where is the lightness of Mr.Yogi to be found these days? why cant we still beat the sophistication of Bharat Ek Khoj and Chanakya ?

until 10 - 15 years ago things were different on indian tv. there was class, calibre, good humour and great drama. these days we have crass, and impoverished writing. we have created slots for tv content to put in between commercials and not the other way around. we are feeding the populace's minds with the perpetual rage of the conniving mother-in-law and the constant cockiness of the daugther-in-law. we are filling their pyche with the ruthless greed of the overtly manipulative and viciously ambitious industrialist. the whole content of an average soap revolves around people plotting and getting even with each other as if it was a great hobby to pursue. isn't there enough stress in daily life already ? do you enjoy the arduous commute to work everyday, wading through the huge swamp of city traffic? the noise, pollution, potholes and the incredible stress on the infrastructure makes a routine day at work taxing enough for an individual. he doesnt need the nanad bhabhi (sisters-in-law) bickering to ruin his day even more. give him laughter, give him the warmth and affection of a doting father and caring mother and children brimming with life. give him mystery, intrigue him and educate him. a little bit of yoga and spirituality wont do him any harm. on the news front we stream visuals of once successful models doing drugs and having gone nuts and married teachers going on tv and declaring how much they love their girl friends who are their own students and young enough to be their daugthers. this is news worthy ? what value does it add to the news. who benefits from this kind of reporting. don't these sound like one of those soaps which i am lamenting about.

bring back the satire of wagle ki duniya, the richness of katha saagar and the joy of nukkad and see where the viewer ratings go. can quality ever go out of style ? i dont think so.

down with all the saas bahu shit. we deserve much better.

Introducing another blogger on the block

Hi Folks ! My name is Manish Jadhav. When everyone around is blogging out there i couldn't hold myself back and have decided to add to the electronic clutter that the blogosphere already is. This is a good oppurtunity for a wannabe writer. No one needs to certify how good a writer i am. it only costs me my time (sometimes my company's) plus a bit of bandwidth and i can start hacking away at the keyboard.Additionally Google can help me make money through ad sense if i blog is read by enough people. i wont mind some extra money for a few hours of mindless typing a month. i want to write and talk about anything that i find amusing. which means the blog is going to be as inconsistent and unstructured as it can be. i program computers for a living but if i had a choice i would have done something nicer like making a movie or writing paranormal short stories. lets see what happens as the weeks go by.

catch u in cyberspace soon.