Movie Review: Love Aaj Kal

I don’t want to be a pile-on but in my opinion, Love Aaj Kal is one of those ok-could-have-been better movie. What saves it from falling into the bucket of mediocrity is – surprise – not the so-called refreshingly different story-telling of director Imtiaz Ali but the matured performance by Saif Ali Khan. A love story where realization dawns late in the day is something Bollywood has churned out effortlessly. Saif’s own Hum Tum comes to mind immediately. Love Aaj Kal tells the same story set in the present…but the past acting as a catalyst. The goings on in the present are disparate but yet intertwined, occurred decades apart but yet are parallel. This essentially is the crux of the story and is both the high point as well as the downside of this movie!

Present Day: Jai Vardhan Singh (Saif Ali Khan) and Meera Pandit (Deepika Padukone) are a new-age dating pair. Less of lovers, more of friends, foreseeing each others’ moves, knowing each other intimately, they are not tied down by commitments or promises. When a higher calling beckons, they’re not afraid to end their relationship and remain friends. But there’s something they don’t know, rather, don’t realize. Veer Singh (Rishi Kapoor) is the catalyst to their realization; but how does he know that it is love in between them? Simple…coz he’s been there, done that!

44 Years Ago: Veer Singh (Saif Ali Khan) and Harleen Kaur (Gisele Monteiro) see each other everyday. Silence speaks louder than words between them. Veer Singh pines for Harleen and albeit belatedly, Harleen also reciprocates. Veer promises to the skies and to himself that in this birth and in all births, Harleen will be his soul mate. Do they overcome the hurdles and come together? How does yesterday’s love comes to the help of today’s love? Well, you’d have to see the movie to know that

Secure Your Online Credit Card Transactions…Register!

People…starting tomorrow – August 1st 2009, your credit card transactions will be more secure, thanks to the Reserve Bank of India’s guidelines making it mandatory for all such transactions to be accompanied by additional authentication/validation by providing information that is not visible on the cards.

All credit & debit cards of all banks have to be registered under the Verified by Visa or Master Card 3D-Secure program before 1st August, 2009 to continue using them for future online transactions. Once registered, users will need to provide the PIN/Password specified at registration time to transact at any merchant site in India.

All you need to do is log onto your bank’s website or contact them to complete the one-time registration formalities. Your password/PIN during the registration process will be needed whenever you make an online transaction thereafter. After 1st August 2009 onwards, after entering your credit card details during payment process, you will be redirected to your bank’s Visa/MasterCard authentication page where you will be prompted to enter the details. Upon successful authentication, you will be redirected back to the website you made the transaction with.

Movie Review: Luck

Its ironic that how unlucky one has to be to get dragged into watching a tripe of a movie called Luck! I was feeling it was a damn good Sunday and only good things will happen to me all day …until 11:00 AM i.e! That’s when the movie started and poof! there went my luck…and also 3 hours that I will never get back! Now I may have been using the word ‘luck’ quite often in this write up…but that will always be small in number when compared to the number of times that word is spoken in the movie. After all, every number – large or small – is small enough beside infinity!

 

Luck is a movie which is all about human betting and dangerous games where people real people face real danger, to earn some money…and other morons place bets on them! And of course, it all takes place in a place where there is no law or police or rules or regulations and people can do as they please. I have an inkling that that place is called Soham Shah’s Imagination! In the movie though, its shown as South Africa where betting kingpin Musa (Sanjay Dutt) and his honcho Tamang (Danny Denzongpa) assemble a motley gang of people who are willing (almost!) to ride their luck and take part in death-defying tasks to win a jackpot worth 20 Crores. These include heavy-in-debt Ram Mehra (Imran Khan), have-a-wife-to-save ex-serviceman Major Jaabar Pratap Singh (Mithun Chakraborty), sold-by-parents Shortkut (Chitrashi Rawat), miraculously-escaped-from-death-row convict Raghav (Ravi Kishan)  revenge seeking Ayesha/Natasha (Shruti Haasan) and some other random phoren babas and babes. There a few hi-fi stunts with some of them scraping through and some dying along they way, all of which is attributed to the one glue which holds the film together – luck!

Total Solar Eclipse, Tomorrow!

The Longest ever (in terms of duration, and in this Century) Total Solar Eclipse is occurring over our skies…tomorrow! It would last about 6 and a half minutes and the shadow of the Moon would start from the western ghats of India and will stretch all the way into Japan’s Ryukyu Islands.

On Wednesday, 2009 July 22, a total eclipse of the Sun is visible from within a narrow corridor that traverses half of Earth. The path of the Moon’s umbral shadow begins in India and crosses through Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar and China. After leaving mainland Asia, the path crosses Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and curves southeast through the Pacific Ocean where the maximum duration of totality reaches 6 min 39 s. A partial eclipse is seen within the much broader path of the Moon’s penumbral shadow, which includes most of eastern Asia, Indonesia, and the Pacific Ocean

On Wednesday, 2009 July 22, a total eclipse of the Sun is visible from within a narrow corridor that traverses half of Earth. The path of the Moon’s umbral shadow begins in India and crosses through Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar and China. After leaving mainland Asia, the path crosses Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and curves southeast through the Pacific Ocean where the maximum duration of totality reaches 6 min 39 s. A partial eclipse is seen within the much broader path of the Moon’s penumbral shadow, which includes most of eastern Asia, Indonesia, and the Pacific Ocean. [Full and detailed information available at NASA's GSFC ]

The Eclipse will start at  5.28 am IST as the Moon’s shadow will touch the Earth at somewhere out in the Arabian Sea. The shadow will then move in an South-Eastern direction towards  China and will reach the Pacific Ocean and then will finally lift off the Earth at around 10:00 IST. I think it is too early in the morning! In fact, in some places, sunrise itself will be in an eclipsed manner! That would be cool to watch, ain’t it?

Totality will be visible from the Indian cities of Surat, Baroda, Bhopal, Varanasi, Patna, & Guwahati, with Taregana in Bihar said to be the best place to view the event! Well, Hyderbad will get to see a partial eclipse but it’s way early in the morning and given the cloudy skies that we’ve been experiencing lately, I doubt whether we’ll be able to see it in all its glory. Better catch up the news bulletins afterwards. And please, do ignore the cock n’ bull rumour-mongering stories about Earthquakes and Tsunamis that dumbass channels like India TV/Zee News/Aaj Tak etc will air! And stay clear of the astrological gibberish that is sure to be bandied about!

And if you’re planning to watch n’ tweet, do use the #tse22 hashtag and let the tworld know of it!

[Edit: Updated the time frame of the eclipse in IST.]

Four Years

 

Time indeed does fly! The memories of the joining day, four years ago, are still just as fresh in my mind…as if it was just day before yesterday! Dekhte hi dekhte…four years have elapsed and I embark upon the fifth year of employment…with the same organization.

I’ll take this opportunity to extend my thanks to everyone who has cared for, supported, cheered, aided, abetted, uplifted and encouraged me.

Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the sixth instalment in the Harry Potter books/movies series and one which had wrapped up production and post-production back in 2008 itself. But with The Dark Knight having scorched the box office that year, Warner Bros decided to postpone the movie to the summer of 2009. This might just prove to be a masterstroke, considering that the movie may well turn out to be the best one in the series yet (according to some people, not including me!). Those who’ve read the books might feel that this one is better than the predecessors but as a sole movie-franchise-watching person, I feel that this one is a mere stop-gap stuff; something transitional…a gap-filler, call it that if you will!

The sixth year at Hogwarts starts with Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) being whispered about as the chosen one but Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) knows that without being fully prepared, the battle is not to be won. He uses Harry as bait in order to coax Professor Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent) into retaking his position as potions teacher at Hogwarts coz he knows something that would be invaluable to defeat Lord Voldemort. Back at school, the teenage hormones are raging and just about everybody seems to be falling in love…either knowingly or unknowingly or even forcibly (er…love potions induced i.e.)! None more so than Hermoine Granger (Emma Watson) who starts feeling jealous of Ron Weasley’s (Rupert Grint) seemingly jovial escapades with other girls. Even Harry is not spared as he finds himself attracted towards Ginny Weasley (Bonnie Wright). Cho…who’s that? Amidst all this love and laughter (and yeah, Quidditch of course) Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) has his own secret agenda, which despite Harry’s protests, is ignored and culminates in the ultimate revenge for Lord Voldemort. Hogwarts is, at last, breached and one of its faithful soldier falls. But not before unlocking a part of the secret of the enemy’s weakness.

’09 German Grand Prix – Sunday Race – Mark Webber wins his maiden Grand Prix

Red Bull’s Mark Webber scored his first ever Grand Prix victory at the Nurburgring in the German Grand Prix in a race that was expected to be weather-effected but was dry throughout. Sebastian Vettel finished in 2nd place to hand Red Bull their second consecutive 1-2 finish. Felipe Massa scored Ferrari’s first podium place of this season in 3rd place.

Williams’ Nico Rosberg unobtrusively drove to the 4th place finish as Championship leader Jenson Button finished in 5th place ahead of teammate Rubens Barrichello with the Renault of Fernando Alonso and McLaren of Heikki Kovalainen finishing in 7th  and 8th place respectively. The race’s only two retirements were Sebastian Bourdais and Kimi Raikkonen – with hydraulic and mechanical failure.

The start was a crucial affair as the Brawn of Rubens Barrichello managed to come alongside pole-sitter Webber and that prompted a right-side lunge from Webber which was deemed to be ‘un-sportsman like behaviour’ by the FIA stewards and promptly handed him a drive-through penalty. By the end of the first lap, there were a couple of incidents – Webber & Barrichello’s moment & then Lewis Hamilton, using his KERS, streaked alongside the leaders at the start but ran wide at the first corner and as the rest of the field trooped past him, picked up a right rear puncture which effectively ruined his race. Both the Ferraris made a good start and were in the midst of it all but a mechanical failure put paid to Kimi Raikkonen’s race and he retired on lap 36.

But not before he sort-of ruined Adrian Sutil’s race (yet again!) Sutil was running in fourth place and as he emerged from his first pit-stop, Kimi tried to overtake on the outside and there was contact which saw the Force India’s front wing clipped off. Another pit-stop effectively ended Sutil and Force India’s quest for their maiden points. Last year at the Monaco Grand Prix, it was Kimi again who ended Sutil’s 5th place run as he lost control exiting the tunnel and careened into the Force India’s back. Heartbreak for Sutil!

With the threatening rain never materialising, it was a race of strategy and the Brawn GP team switched into a three-stop strategy in the latter part of the race as a tyre-graining problem affected their race somewhat. Red Bull however had the truer race pace and despite Webber’s penalty, they stuck to their strategy and emerged the biggest winners with a second consecutive 1-2. Fernando Alonso picked up the pace at the end of the race and clocked the fastest lap of the race.

New WordPress Smileys Vs. Older Ones

As mentioned in an earlier post, WordPress has changed their Smiley set. And there has been widespread criticism across the blogosphere, in some of the comments here, comments on other blogs and even on the WordPress Forums. I too was one of the early critics but it really doesn’t matter that much, does it?  Smileys are often used in informal and personal blogposts and the so-called “geeks” rarely use them.

I myself have used them on some of the posts, but the usage here pales in comparison to that on the discussion boards I frequent. Almost all of my posts are laden with these yellow characters and the one forum where I’m Admin, I constantly scour for new ones and update the database!

But there’s some good news for those who hate the newer crop of the yellow people on WordPress. Word on the Forums is that the WP team is discussing changing them and is even looking out for a smiley set that is GPL v2 compliant. So if you know of such a set (or have designed something like that), do drop in a word to WP Support.

Meanwhile, the below table shows the older WP smileys vis-a-vis the newer ones and the text required to generate’em on your posts (just remove the spaces).