What's Your Rashee - Movie Review

I was really looking forward to watching this movie. As they say too many expectations disappoint and that’s what happened with me tonight. WYR is a big disappointment.

We all know the story still I will summarize it here hopefully without any spoilers. Yogesh Patel is an NRI who is forced to find and marry a girl within 10 days. He does not have much time so he decides to meet 12 girls – 1 from each rashee and each played by Priyanka Chopra and ultimately ends up marrying one of them. The movie has its good moments – and most of them belong to PC.

It is PC’s best performance so far undoubtedly. This girl surprised everyone with her performance in Fashion and then in Kaminey and once again in WYR. Harman Baweja is huge improvement from Love Story 2050. He seems to have a good handle at comedy and does not disappoint. Darshan Jariwala is excellent as always. Dilip Joshi is funny and plays the role of a Gujarati business class person very effectively.

Music is very fresh and soulful. Baring one or two songs all of them are very well composed, written and sung. Jaao Na specially is very soothing. However, while watching the movie you realize they are forced in storyline. Nice camerawork. They have captured various facets of Mumbai including Marine Drive, Haji Ali, Kamla Nehru Park as well some areas of Navi Mumbai effectively.

The movie also has some really good social messages against dowry and child marriages.

However, I have some very basic questions for AG:

1. Was it really required to have one song per almost every character?

2. Was it really required for the movie to be 3 hours and 20 minutes long?

The biggest minus of the movie is its screenplay which is really weak. I am ok with long movies; I enjoyed Jodha Akbar even though it was equally long. But when a really long movie starts to bore you and you have to look at your watch several times during the movie - it definitely raises such a question. Seriously, WYR does not have content good enough for so much time. Had it been wrapped up within 2.5 hours it would have been a much more interesting movie.

I also found some of the stories (Tula, Dhanu and Sinha) pretty much unrealistic. The plot about whole 4 crore lost in share market is very weak and fact that the entire movie is based on it is bizarre. Stories involving each of PC characters should’ve been much shorter and preferably without those annoying songs. The movie also gets predictable towards the end. At least an hour before the end I correctly guessed the girl whom Yogesh Patel would marry.

Overall, one should watch this movie once and only once for PC. She should win Actress awards for this. However, be prepared to be bored for this marathon rom-com.

My Rating: 2.5/5.

P.S.: I have not read Kimball Ravenswood by Madhu Rye. It’s a very popular novel so I believe the movie adaptation has gone wrong and original story must be really good.

Bollywood's Copy-Paste Extravaganza - 2008

Bollywood is becoming a more and more popular brand these days. One of the fundamental reason is that quality of our movies has improved a lot over the years. Accept it, we make much more sensible movies then we used to back in 80s and early 90s. At the same time, the world has become global. There are Indians in every part of the world today and at the same time a lot of south asians around world who always follow our movies. On top of that, now the western audiences are also starting to appreciate bollywood genre of cinema.

However, the picture is not all mushy-mushy for Bollywood and Indian cinema. Script piracy is happening big time in Bollywood and there are so many movies which are direct copies of their hollywood counterparts. Its a shame so many of so-called intelligent actors and directors are also part of this. I am going to list here several films released in year 2008 only - that are either direct copies or somewhat intelligent copies of hollywood movies or other international movies. As far as I remember I read about this on rediff sometime last year and kept this list with me to post it on my blog sometime.

Race (2008) - Goodbye Lover (1998)
Krazzy 4 (2008) - The Dream Team (1989)
God Tussi Great Ho (2008) - Bruce Almighty (2003)
Ugly Aur Pagli (2008) - Yeopgijeogin geunyeo (2001) (Korean movie - English title: My Sassy Girl)
Maan Gaye Mughal-e-Azam (2008) - To Be Or Not To Be
Dil Kabaddi (2008) - Husbands and Wives (1992)
Kismet Konnection (2008) - Just My Luck (2006)
Yuvvraaj (2008) - Rain Main (1988)
U me aur Hum (2008)- The Notebook (2004) and 50 First Dates (2004)
Dostana (2008) - I Now Pronounce You chuck and Larry (2007)
Ghajini (2008) - Memento (2000)

I was really shocked to know about that Ghajini is essentially nothing but a very bad copy of Memento - specially after Aamir Khan making all sorts of claims in him blog that it is not a copy. Personnally, I hate Ghajini but still its a copy and I love Memento. Here's wrapping up this blog with a sincere wish that Bollywood will be copying lesser movies in future and if I come up with a list next year - hopefully it will be much shorter.

Adios!!

My Dear varun899

This is amazing, superb and fantabulous. I never something like this to happen. I had completely given up on even decided to spend rest of my life with those long lost memories. Before you jump on any conclusions, let me clarify I am talking about my yahoo id.

I first started using the Internet during the summer of 1998 - when I had the longest vacation of my life - almost 6 months. I remember I used to go to a computer class to learn computer basics(I really want to laugh at myself even thinking about it). The instructor at the class - who was also a distant relative - taught me including others about the Yahoo Messenger. Soon after that and I am not sure exactly when - I created this particular id of mine - which I am pretty much sure - was my first yahoo messenger Id. I used it for a long time - 1998 to 2006 - that's a long time - isn't it? So sometime after I came to US in 2006, it was one such evening. There was some issue with yahoo messenger servers and as a result I couldn't log on to my yahoo messenger account and out of frustrations I ended up requesting a new password and in the whole process - my original password was no longer valid. I didn't remember answers to my security questions and I didn't know which email id I had specified as the alternate email id. So, I kept trying but I could never recover my password and my account had gone in hibernation forever. Sometimes, I used to think somebody must have hacked my account as a prank and will soon return me my new password. But that never happened. I even used to rally after Poonam - accusing her of stealing my id so that I don't stay online long. lol... how silly !! But yeah, that was me.

After that, every once in a while - I would try and recover my password - with no success of course!! I would say in the past 3 years - I must have tried at least 10-15 times resetting my password through the various yahoo mechanisms and I never succeeded.

Somehow, out of nowhere today was one more such attempt. While sipping coffee in the afternoon, I decided to give my luck one more chance. And surprise, suprise - yahoo has improved their password recovery system and now they provide you hints about your secondary email address where they can send you the link to reset the password. And finally I was able to recover my dear password for my dearest online account - my first yahoo id !!! What a Joy!! I had so many friends in the list I never was able to interact with again because I had no other contact with them. But now I do and I hope to revive contacts with at least some of them. Just imagine, this id was part of my life for a good old 7-8 years. My joy is beyond any limits today. Its feels so nice to have you back in life after 3 long years, my dear varun899 !!!

State Of Play & A Discovery

We went for a movie this Friday - State of Play. It was a long time since we watched one in theater. The promos really created that excitement in me that you have for so wanting to watch a movie. Every time after watching the promos - I used to tell Poonam that we will watch this one in theater. Often, when you have such high expectations from the movie - the movie fails to satisfy them. Luckily, State of Play is not one of them.

It is an impeccable movie with a complex story line, gripping direction and unexpected twists. All the characters are well-defined and all of them have a hint of grey - just like all of us in real life. And of course the stellar cast of Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams(The Notebook fame), Helen Mirren(The Queen fame). I was just looking up the actors' names on the IMDB.com to make sure I don't mis-spell them and I learned that movie is directed by Kevin Macdonald who has earlier directed The Last King Of Scotland. What a movie that was!! No wonder this one was so good. Coming back to the cast again - it had an amazing supporting cast of Robin Wright Penn(jenny from Forest Gump) and Jason Bateman(Hancock and Juno) along with others. Jason Bateman played a very interesting character named Dominic Foy. I would say that about 15 mins of the movie that covers his character - was the funniest - everybody in the hall was laughing.

So, whats the movie about? Its a political thriller-drama where there is a murder at the start of the movie and a senior reporter who is the friend of a congressman is trying to get to the bottom of it along with his young colleague who happens to write a blog for their newspaper's online website. So, I will stop here raving about the movie - all I will say is do watch this one. I think its much better than Russell Crowe's last - Body of Lies. Not to mention - that was more of a Leo DeCaprio movie.

After much more delay and a few more weeks of cold wintry rainy weather - the Spring is finally here. It started on late Thursday with a warm afternoon, a beautiful Friday. And what a Saturday - roll down those windows people - the warm weather is here. The air was filled with that new fresh heated up springliness. Don't try to look up that word up in dictionary - I just made it up ;). So, as we explored the area behind our apartments this Saturday afternoon - firstly we noticed this trail in the woods. After walking a few meters, we felt there is a children's play area where a few children are playing - being carefully watched by parents. As we walked further, we realized there is a full-time public park right behind our apartments - just minutes walk away. It has a basketball court, a tennis court, soccer and baseball grounds and some beautiful trails for walks. JackPot !!! I am delighted by the discovery of this public park right behind our home and I am looking forward to spend several of the spring/summer afternoons and evenings there.

Not sure about the Title

Its amazing how the world wide web has affected all of us. Take for example, Iain O'Brian. He is a kiwi cricketer - a bowler to be precise - who writes a blog after each day of cricket he plays. He has quite a few followers now - including me. The guy is really honest about himself and writes some good stuff. His blog is essentially an account of the match from say New Zealand point of view. How they feel about their situation, their opponent, their winning and losing ! It gives you a point of view which you can never get other then from an honest player who is more than happy to share his joys and sorrows on the cricket field with the rest of the world. As of today, he has some 227 followers of his blog and I won't be surprised to know if there are more Indians then Kiwis in those 227. Could you imagine such a thing 10 years back? This is the today's WWW and amazing tools like blogger which have brought all of us so close to each other and affected so much.

We drove to Hartford, CT yesterday to attend a 1st birthday party of Kunal and Aarti's son Aarya. Aarti is a very close childhood friend of Poonam. The drive took little more than we expected but it was a fun outing. Poonam was very happy upon meeting her close buddy the pain of driving was definitely worth that happiness. It was the first time both of us went to CT for that matter and we liked the quiet downtown of Hartford. We went to Anup-Reshma's place in the afternoon. We chatted(I hope grammer is right there :P ) for a while, played some card games and finally headed to an Indian restaurant to eat dosas. mmmmm they were really yummy. loved it. We went to Veggie Express in Hackensack and would love to go there again.

Picking up from my last blog, India finally managed to save that test match thanks to splendid innings by the 'new Wall' - a title given to classy Gambhir by the captain Veeru. We are doing very well in the 3rd and final test and looks like we should win it convincingly from now on. We are leading by more than 500 runs lead on the board. We haven't declared yet but we will soon this morning and then it shouldn't be too long before Bhajji wraps up their tail. Exciting !! Looking forward to a big series win in the New Zealand after 40 something years.

hmmmmm.... didn't watch any movies this week but loved watching 24. The series is getting more and more exciting and I can't even remotely afford to miss it. Listened to songs of Jai-Veeru in the car on the way to CT and we really enjoyed listening to Tennu Le. Planning to catch a flick now - most likely its going to be Aa Dekhene Zara as Poonam wants to see it. I am more keen on watching Barah Aana, but may be some other time.

I believe the toughest thing about blogging is giving title to your post. Its hard for me to write about just one particular subject for the entire blog so picking the blog title always ends up being tough. I have noticed Amitabh Bacchan never gives a title to his blog posts. He write one every day so I believe he is also in the same boat as me. So, I think I am going to just give some random title to my blog today.