Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Why December was such a great movie month...





You have a roller coaster year, then have an incredibly busy December. You work your ass off all month, burn the midnight lamp, when even that goes off, you just bear the excess strain of the laptop light in your eyes and carry on working. But then comes that occasional evening when you decide that it's movie time. You pay big bucks for it and go to the theater... hoping, praying even, that at least it won't be a total waste of money. Then... all of a sudden, from nowhere you get to see something on the big screen that makes you thank God that you bought that ticket and came to the theater.

That happened to me twice in close succession this month. I saw two outstanding movies.

Avatar and 3 Idiots. I didn't even have time to write a review for Avatar, but now that I've just come home fresh from watching 3 Idiots, I think it'd be unfair to praise one while forgetting the other.

Avatar showed me special effects that totally made up for the super expensive price of the ticket. 3 Idiots showed us why Rajkumar Hirani is easily the best director of the decade and why Aamir is the Ace of Bollywood. Both the movies have amazing repeat value. Both have super expensive tickets, but both are totally worth it.

Avatar has brilliant special effects along with a decent storyline to back it up.

3 Idiots... IMHO is far far better than the book it is inspired from. The best moments of the movie have nothing to do with the book. That is why I loved the movie. You know that in the end everything will be fine, but you still are engrossed in the movie, rooting for the characters. Anything that has repeat value, has it because what you've seen impresses you so much that you want to see it again. That is what Avatar and 3 Idiots do to you. They make you enjoy the show so much, you just know it by the interval that you will be back in the queue to watch another show very soon.

Special mention to Boman Irani, whose performance in 3 Idiots seems extremely natural. I think he doesn't get enough credit for the incredible work he does in Raju Hirani movies, each movie he has been the pivotal antagonistic character [not a villain in the usual sense], but each time he plays the character so naturally that it's not Boman Irani you remember, you just remember Dr. Asthana or Lucky Singh or Viru Sahasrabuddhe aka Virus :P

All in all, a brilliant movie month. One can only hope there are more such months in the coming year. Thank you James Cameron and Raju Hirani!

Saturday, December 26, 2009

December

December 09 has been by far the busiest month of my life. Everything has been in fast motion. I've worked crazy hours [current personal record being 19 hours in the day], slept very little [an average of 4 hours for 2 straight weeks], spent an entire weekend working [a first ever] and still managed to catch Avatar, Rocket Singh, Paa [wtf] and a host of other movies that I found time to catch up with. I managed to keep in touch with friends no matter what. Basically, a lot happened.

Fortunately along with a lot of work, I did end up having a lot of fun as well.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

A brilliant photo of a brilliant Tendulkar shot

Source Link - http://blogs.cricinfo.com/shotselection/archives/2009/11/tendulkar_turns_it_around.php

This photo looks like it's a straight drive, but since the wicketkeeper is facing Sachin, it obviously is not a straight drive. Tendulkar used this shot against Warne in his first innings century in the third Test in Chennai in 2001. A match we eventually won! Stuff that only true cricket lovers will enjoy. Brilliant photo!