Sholay producer GP Sippy dies...

If one was to ask a 100 Indians to name one Bollywood film amongst the millions released in the last 80 years or so, one name will dominate the poll – Sholay.

The movie was released in 1975 – and no one knew then how big a legend was being born. Everything in the movie came together perfectly. It broke all previous records and in real terms no Bollywood movie has ever come close in over 30 years.

Numerous movies still have references to the characters, dialogues and scenes of the movie. I am one of the die-hard fans who has an original 1975 poster of the movie adorning a wall in my house.

I recently saw the re-make of Sholay - RGV Ki Aag. All I can hope is that GP Sippy did not see it. I sincerely request all Sholay fans to avoid the same at all costs.

Rating: *****+

Click here for teasers:
One
Two
Three

Finally (still fingers crossed...)

I was a bit harsh on Allen Carr three months ago when I claimed that their therapy did not work. It certainly did - though it had a delayed reaction (on me). I did smoke for another day before I kicked the addiction in September.

It's been three months now and I have not smoked a single cigarette (or cigar or pipe or...). The fact that smoking has been totally banned in England in bars, pubs & restaurants helps.

On a recent trip to Morocco - I had everyone smoking around me in enclosed places (there is no smoking ban there), but I did not feel the need to light up at all.

I have succeeded, this time (I think). So for all those who really want to quit smoking, may I recommend the Allen Carr method. If it is not available in your country, please read the book. It helps.

10 years later....

We owned our first classic car in Chennai, India. It was a Morris 8 (1948 model), but due to our move to Mumbai (then Bombay), we had to sell it in 1997.

10 years later, we will soon be owners of the blue MG Midget (1967 model). We will be getting the delivery of the car after Christmas... I will post more pictures once we get it home in London...

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005

Amazing speech...

...and the Oscar for the best orginal script of 2007 goes to...

..The Darwin Conspiracy.

If I had read this in a fiction, I would not shunned it as too imaginative.

"March 2002: A man vanished in the sea and his canoe was found after weeks of police search. As the body wasn't found an inquest declared him dead in 2003. His wife claimed insurance.

Nov 2007: The man (John Darwin) walked into a London police station and says: "I think I am a missing person" and claimed he does not remember anything after a family holiday since 2000 (A case of complete amnesia!) The police contacted his family, only to find that his wife (Anne) had sold off all their UK properties just 6 weeks back and emigrated to Panama.

As the story unfolded, the police discovered the whole fraud. It was planned from the very beginning - the vanishing, the insurance claims, the move to Panama....

Mr Darwin has been charged, while Mrs Darwin is still not back from Panama (she is selling her story to every tabloid in town before she gets arrested)

I am still not convinced that the story is complete...there is definitely more to it. Let's wait for Anne Darwin's arrest.

Click here for teaser
Script: **********

Does someone care what the consumer wants?

I own a Nokia N95 mobile phone, which is the the most technologically advanced phone I've ever had. It's a phone, a computer with wifi, a mp3 player, a 5mp camera with flash with a a memory card (available up to 8GB today).

As I mentioned in one of my blogs, I have a wifi network set up at home and I wanted my N95 to connect to the wifi network and access the hard drive (containing all my music files). But it would not access the external hard drive for some reason - either the two platforms are different or N95 does not behave like a host. Imagine if I could access my music library through my phone - my N95 would become a remote control for the whole music at home (see Picture)

May be I am imagining - but isn't it what every consumer would want?

Om Shanti Om

A wicked spoof on 70's Bollywood. To fully appreciate, you should have seen Bollywood movies of the 70's or you will not catch the satire. It has every possible masala you can imagine in a movie - romance, song & dance, reincarnation, action, comedy...

Shah Rukh Khan has done an amazing job. So has the newcomer Deepika.

Hat's off - making a spoof is easy, but to make it the biggest earner for Bollywood (of all times) is another thing.

Can I see it again? Of course, I WILL see it again...

*****

Click here for teaser

Flightplan

Saw it on Sky again... a 2005 thriller with Jodie Foster.

Imagine flying from Berlin to New York with your six year old daughter and your husband's coffin. When you wake up 2-3 hours into the flight, you find your daughter missing. An initial search fails. The pilot (Sean Bean) is called in to ask for a thorough search. The little girl cannot be found.
Add to it that you cannot find your daughter's boarding card in your jacket's pocket, you've been on calming-medicines, none of the fellow passengers remember having seen your daughter aboard, the flight attendant says she did not see anyone next to you before the flight took off....and when they call up the security gates back at Berlin, it is confirmed that nobody by your daughter's name ever boarded the flight.

Are you imagining things or has the whole world suddenly turned against you? How can a six year old disappear from the flight?

Excellent plot, brilliantly shot and Jodie Foster. Any more incentives required to watch?

*****
Click here for the teaser

Blood Diamond

A gory tale of how the diamonds from Africa travel to Tiffany's, De Beers and other stores in Europe and US. They change several hands, take a few lives before adorning the fingers in the developed world.

A well told story – built on harsh realities (by no means a real story). Leonardo DiCaprio has acted brilliantly – He was nominated for the Best Actor Academy award for this movie. Worth watching.

****

Click here for teaser

Home Wifi Network

I am quite impressed with myself. Over the weekend I built a wifi network at home. How does it all work? (See attached picture)

– Buy an Apple Airport Express

– Cable it to your BT Broadband Modem

– Connect printer and/or hard drive to the Airport Extreme

– Change your Mac settings to connect (via wifi) to the Airport Extreme for broadband access rather than BT.

Now you can access broadband, the external hard drive and printer wirelessly all over your house.

In my case the 500GB hard drive contains all my music, data and pictures – thereby releasing space on my iBook…and I can access iTunes or iPhoto

The new car...

I remember when my parents bought the first B&W television - it had three control buttons:
Switch on/off/volume, brightness & contrast.

I recently bought a Denon 7.1 channel AV amplifier. It has separate buttons to switch on and off. It has more buttons than I will ever use (or any normal non-geek will). I fully understand that the device is multifunctional but it does not have to compromise simplicity.

iPod wasn't the best portable mp3 player in the world - it was designed with a normal consumer in mind. Nokia is the market leader because it has not changed its user interface since the early nineties - That explains the millions of people who never buy any other phone.

I picked up my new car today. Without getting into the details of the make and model, I must confess that I ordered the highest spec series with the infotainment, SatNav, Adaptive Cruise Control et al. When I couldn't get things to work (they weren't intuitive), I reached for the user manual - it runs into 1200 pages and could be one of the electives in a management programme. I don't know where to begin and how to make everything (or anything) work. I guess that is why God created weekends.

Blow

Though I had seen this movie a while ago, I thought it was good to write about it. As I am planning to read my own blogs when I retire - it would be useful to have a record of what movies I would want to see again...

Blow (starring Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz) is based on real life story of George Jung who commercialised cocaine in America in the 1970's. His operations were large scale enough to hire planes and professional pilots to bring in "stuff" from across the border. But all the money he made did not change one finality - it was illegal and the law eventually caught up with him. George is still in the prison and will be released in 2014.

*****+ This is probably Johnny Depp's best performance till date. A must-watch movie - a classic of our times.

Click here to see the teaser

All the technology....

Late last Friday night my wife and I decided to stay-in and watch a movie. After scrolling through all the Sky channels, we figured out that there wasn't anything worth seeing that we hadn't already seen. We browsed through our DVD collection – nothing worthwhile there too. The closet Blockbuster would have closed an hour ago. We've all heard about downloading movies so I thought I'd give it a try. The unlicensed P2P (Kazaa, Limeware) are hardly worth because of wrong cataloging, copyright laws, virus etc. and it can take a few hours for a movie to download (if you're lucky) and the iTunes store has limited titles.

So all the technology in the world could not help us get us a movie to watch. Shame.

I have heard of rental movies being delivered by post (www.lovefilm.com) but that needs advance planning too. I am not entirely sure if someone has looked into a way of delivering movies to consumers at the last minute.

How about a "hole in the wall" movie delivery system? There is no reason why movies have to be on DVDs. The movies can be recorded in excellent quality on SD/flash cards, which can be easily dispensed from the local movie points (just as cash points).

Someone from the industry needs to convince all television manufacturers to provide a memory card slot and reader in the televisions and presto – you've got what a consumer wants. Maybe someone is already working on the idea.

Apple, Sony – are you listening?

Inside Man

My wife & I picked up a great movie on Saturday...

Let me admit - I am a sucker for thrillers.

Four armed men take hostages in a bank in NY. As the police arrives and negotiations start, it seems like the captors are in no rush to escape. As the drama unfolds and the police bust the building - they cannot tell the hostages from the captors. What's more - there is no real robbery and no one can be convicted. Until, of course...

***** Must watch. Denzel & Clive are fantastic. Jodie Foster is amazing as usual...(I am biased towards Jodie Foster, though this is not a career defining role for her)

Click here to see the teaser

At last....

The Nobel Foundation has officially regretted not giving the Nobel Prize to Mahatma Gandhi, saying there was none more "stark omission than this."

Gandhi was nominated 5 times for the prize - the last time was a few days before his assassination.

One of the reasons given is that the father of non-violence was neither a "real politician, nor a humanitarian relief worker" It is amazing that people who followed his non-violence teachings were awarded Nobel Prizes in later years, but the Mahatma himself did not get it.

I am sure Gandhi would have never regretted not getting the award - that is precisely why he's called the "mahatma" - he wasn't in it for the awards, the accolades and the applauses. like you and me. I am reasonably confident that he would have declined any award given to him for what he thought was his "duty" to his motherland.

What surprises me is that it took the Foundation 60 years (after the death of Gandhi) to realise the mistake.

News: Co-op has overtaken Tesco...

On our recent drive on the motorway, we saw something unusual - Co-op overtaking Tesco easily. I thought it was worth letting everyone know....

iPhone

Saturday - we were invited to one of my wife's work colleague's leaving do for lunch. The family (American) was moving back home and were obviously happy. In their various travels to US, the guy had picked up Apple iPhone - which became the star of the party. Once it was out of his pocket - that's it - there was no going back - every person (we were at least 20 of us) wanted to have a go at it.

It's a masterpiece. The touch screen is very intuitive. As can be said for most Apple products - it is far ahead of the competition.

It's getting launched in UK on the 9th of November for £299 and a 18 month contract with O2. As for me, I am saving for my Frogeye.

Changing priorities...

After a few years of wanting to buy a MG Midget (Pre-1972), I have changed my mind...my priorities have shifted to Austin-Healey Sprite Mk I (Frogeye/Bugeye in US). It is the predecessor of Austin-Healey Mk III, which was the same as Midget that I wanted (with a different badge).

Reason: Quite simply, I find the form even more fascinating with the headlights mounted on the bonnet, the smiley grill and the dash colour-matched with the interiors.

Implications: I will have to wait longer to save to buy one.