Our career is our own baby!

Everyone around us will help and support our baby grow...

But ...it is our responsibility to
- provide right nutritious food at right time...
- admit baby in good school at right time...
- provide right financial support for baby to grow and stand on its own.
- provide love and care for baby and spend sufficiently good personal time with baby...
And of course to clean up our baby's diapers and wash baby's bums when in mess..!

Everyone loves the baby if it is good looking..!
Everyone will notice how well or not you are taking care of your baby...!
But truth is knowingly or unknowingly ... we ourselves forget our baby, don’t provide support and take baby's life for granted!!

Remember whatever we say and do... we cannot afford to ignore our own baby for the consequences are far more serious in the long run!

 

Music knows no limits and boundaries!

I am a diehard fan of the legendary Musician A R RAHAMAN and his music. But today I discovered something interesting on net! A kind of someone doing a cover for an original ARR track.


Listen to this cover made by Alaa Wardi!! Jiya re from Jab Tak Hai Jaan!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoSdrc3_FdQ

It is truly amazing and sounds even better than original in some places! I tried my best to find any traces of any musical instruments, but could not! It is just human voice and some technical innovation!

This form of music is called A Cappella Music. In the simplest common usage, it is music sung without instruments accompanied. All sounds are created by voice, mouth and body only.

And in this form, this guy Alaa Wardi is a Rock Star!! Hats off to himi!!

You can listen to his other tracks here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WikcPREx0DM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QakBtoOIlIc

Who is Alaa Wardi..?
http://www.youtube.com/user/AlaaWardi

Enjoy the music!

Hit Movies … Flop Movies.. Why..?

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still images. These still pictures when projected in a theatre at a certain speed through a special projector, give an            effect of a continuous motion picture i.e. the picture which has a motion and in which the characters can speak, sing, dance and can do almost anything!

These pictures are produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects. The world’s earliest motion picture produced was "Roundhay Garden Scene" in 1888. Since then the movie making process across the world has undergone humungous changes and it has developed into an art form and industry.

Entertainment consists of any activity which diverts your attention or helps you to relax in your leisure time. Entertainment can be anything, such as watching a play, a show on a TV or a movie..etc.

Active forms of amusement, such as sports, are more often considered to be recreational activities. Activities such as personal reading or practicing a musical instrument are considered to be hobbies.

There are many types of channels for entertainment. But movies have become one of the mainstream entertainment channels because of the latest technology innovations, the evolution of internet, mobile world, the availability and speed of processing of information, the quality of movie production that is available now a days, the ability to reach broader audience in a short time. People enjoy and feel entertained watching movies from different languages, themes and with different star cast on different categories made by different nationals.

Because of this very reason, even the taste and expectation of the audience has gone up and new bench marks have been set up for movies. Long long ago, we had only black and white movies,  that 35 mm movies, then we got into Eastman color movies, then Fuji color movies and then cinemascope movies... then 70 mm movies. Even in sound track, we had only mono live sound, and then moved onto studio sound and then to stereo sound track.

After that many innovations like DTS and Dolby Sound have taken place. No wonder each department of a movie making process has undergone huge change and evolution. All this was possible only because the cinema throughout the world has embraced technology very well and kept pace with it.

At the same time, the audience has also kept pace with movie quality and their expectation is also quite high now. We don’t expect anything less than a decent storyline, a 70mm, Cinema Scope with DTS, a decent choreography, a great action sequence, a warm photography and a soothing music track and of course great action by all lead actors.

What makes a particular movie a super hit..? As we discussed above, the bench marks for any good movie have been set very well. Every cinema loves goes to theatre with certain expectations. Today’s audience is quite aware and well educated about what to expect from the movies. There are some very basic ingredients each cinema lover would expect from the movies.

Some basic expectations are..

·         A good storyline and screenplay, so that there is some meaning for the whole 2-3 hour production.
·         Storyline can cater to different types of audience based on the taste (Ex: Action movies, romance, comedies, thriller, period movies..etc)
·         No one wants to see a group of disconnected scenes and bundled as a movies and thrust upon the audience. There should be continuity in the storyline.
·         Good performance for most of the star cast.
·         A warm, decent cinematography, sound track, choreography, direction, production quality etc
·         Some wow factors in the movies.. Something that is unique and has not been done before.

Overall theme of the movie caters to a particular set of audience and based on the size of such audience across the world, it becomes either a hit or flop.

We very well know that all the movies produced in all the countries will not have all these characteristics. But still they go ahead and become block busters! (Read as Dabaang-2 ! ). Sometimes it is quite surprising how this happens, but there are many reasons behind such success.

We can see there are some prominent reasons behind such block buster stories as shown below.

 

The advertisement that used to be done for movies has changed drastically now. The budget spent on marketing, creating hype about the movie, PRO etc have gone up. The whole movie production cost has jumped by leaps and bounds. For Ra-One , a recently released bollywood movie, a whopping Rs.52 Crore was spent on was spent only on marketing through various partnerships, which set the record for the largest marketing budget in India.

Such kind of investments, approaches, strategies create lot of interest, hype among the audience and expectation about the movie goes up. Everyone would like to watch the movie in the first 2-3 weeks itself and more in the first week.

The producer would like to encash on such mindset. What they do is release a large number of movie prints  across the world and have more theaters screen the movie at a time. So even if the movie is an average movie, it might well become a hit because of no. of prints released! You might be surprised to hear that for Ra-One almost 3100 cinemas in India and about 900 across the world were showing the movie in the first week!!

So it is the marketing strategy of the produces that sometimes plays on the mindset of the audience and movie becomes a hit.

On the other hand, some movies though not so great, still become a hit because of a reverse strategy. That is, the producer puts in his best effort to make the movie, but does not unnecessarily hype the movie and keeps his expectations at realistic level. In this case even the audience does not have much expectation on the movie. But when it is released, they would have gone to watch the same with least expectations and it would have actually exceeded their expectations and won their hearts!

This is what exactly happened in the case of DON-2. The movie is not great compared to Hollywood movies, but the sheer production quality, some great locales and action sequences have made it a hit and people feel it is worth watching once.

There is another category, these are low cost movies but have a little good story line. Don’t spend much on gimmicks and hypes. They are made with a pretty low budget and become super hit merely because of storyline supported by good performances by lead actors. Once such movie was No one killed Jessica. They made it in plain Rs. 9 Crore, but this movie grabbed about Rs.47 crore in box office and then went on get another Rs. 45 crores in Satellite rights! Really good gambling!

Having said that, there is no master formula for making a super hit movie. Every movie is kind of a lottery for both producer and the audience. But understanding the taste and expectation of the audience is a biggest challenge for every producer.  He has to constantly keep playing between ‘trying too hard’ or ‘not trying at all’.

Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose!

Death and Truth

Death uncovers many a truths..
And buries many a truths...
It makes many a people realize many a truths..!
Death pulls down many a false perceptions..
And many a false images…
Death is so strange..!
It is so sudden...yet inevitable.
Still we take it for granted.
Death plays with truth in so many ways!
Yet it is the ultimate and supreme truth!


What an irony…!

“Ra-One” does not live up to its hype..!

Good or bad ..there were two movies in production last year at the same time with similar plots. People were spreading rumors that one is the copy of other. Both were made with almost equal budgets and equally powerful star cast. But one of them was released first and set a bench mark good movie making in India with all its innovative techniques, approaches, a good story line and many other good things. But the success of this movie became a bottleneck for the other. No one knew what the plot was all about, but the hype around second movie was quite high before its release. At last the movie got released and unfortunately it turned out that it was nowhere near the bench mark set by the first movie.
That is what happened to the latest release Sharukh starrer "Ra.One". It has not been able to break or even match the bench mark set by "Robot".
For all the hype created by Shahrukh's "Ra.One" I watched the movie with my family. Coincidentally even ROBOT was coming up on the same day on SONY TV. That’s all the more reason to compare both of them.
I never get carried away by any reviews on any movie; I just go, watch, feel for myself and then try to see if the director has genuinely tried to deliver a good movie. I watch any movie for the actual movie and not for any stars.
A movie’s success primarily depends on its storyline/plot, narration, screen play, star cast, editing, music, cinematography and then followed by choreography, special effects and sound design..etc.,.
If the primary functions are not doing well in a movie, the enabling functions just become helpless. End result is the movie falls flat on its face. We cannot lift any movie just by doing great in enabling departments.
The storyline of "Ra-One" is quite simple; it is a story of a father and his relation with son, where the father is ready to do anything to impress his son. As per son's wish he will design a computer game where in the bad guy is more powerful and is pitted against a very normal hero. But due to unexpected turn of events, the villain gets into the real life of father, mother and son and tries to kill them. And at the end good wins over evil forces and it is a happy ending.
It is a good imagination..! Not bad all! We could still have got a decent movie had the story been treated with some sensitivity and caution.
As soon as the movie begins , there is a one deliberate sequence involving Sharukh, Priyanka and Sanjay Dutt with some old Bollywood tunes coming up in the background. Till the end I could not relate this anywhere to the main story. It just stands apart. There are many such sequences which do not gel well with the primary story.
The first half revolves around the hero Shekhar Subramaniam, his gaming company, staff, his wife and son and how the bad guy of computer game enters their lives. The characterization of Shekhar as a Tamilian Father settled in UK, his bonding with his MTV class son should have been handled very well. The treatment given to this part is very shoddy. The director would like to say that Shekhar is a traditional Tamilian engineer who respects all family values and a little orthodox and expects his son to be a good guy always. There are many way how this character would have been groomed. We could have borrowed from Sharukhs own character of a NASA Scientist in Swades.
But here hero is eating noodles and curds with hands !!! I don’t think any of our Tamil friends would agree to these kind of scenes. It just does not look authentic. The movies wiki page says they have done close to 3+ years of pre-production work from 2004 to 2007. But unfortunately I don’t see any of that work showing up in the movie. Anubhav Sinha has clearly shown his inexperience here. I personally felt a genuine good Tamil Movie director should have directed this whole sequence.
Now moving onto Shekhar's son Prateik. Why such a girlish like look to Prateik..? My daughter actually asked me whether he is a boy or a girl..? No explanation!
There is one sequence where Prateik calls his father as Coward. In another sequence Shekhar actually confronts the bad guy Ra-one to save his son. Both these sequences needed lot more punch, some good dialogues and action to showcase father-son relationship and their bonding.
Then comes the owner of the gaming company and his staff. I did not understand why the owner has been shown like a comic character when we are making a serious sci-fi movie. Being a technical company head, we never see him as a serious person, when so much has happened in his company and the gaming characters have actually entered the real life of some one, he is simply selling the same software and looks totally unaware of what is happening.
So problem with first half is lack of emotional punch, continuity in story and poor grooming of characters. We see the movie in bits and pieces which distract the viewer.
When Shekhar dies, the G-One the good character of the computer game comes in to rescue and protect the family. This is where the film actually picks up some space and looks quite promising. There are some really good action sequences here which you would enjoy seeing in a bollywood movie.
But again after the interval, the director loses control and struggles to narrate and take the story forward. The whole second half is a simple computer game with only two characters G-One and Ra-One. There are not many characters to support them and make the story interesting. You might feel you are playing one simple computer game sitting in the theatre.
The pre-climax sequence with Mumbai Local Train is one silver line in the movie. It is done very neatly. The two songs Chammak Challo and Dildaara are good. Acting wise there is no challenge for any one here. Whatever opportunities were there in the movie, they have been wasted. Playing the role of Tamilian Gaming Engineer Shekhar would have been good challenge for Sharukh. But as I already mentioned, he does not seem to be comfortable in that role at all. He looks great in super man role and Chammak Challo song.
Overall the movie does not appeal to you as a single piece, it appears as more of series of events packaged together. There is serious lack of research in the movie. Special effects are good, but not great. Songs are good, but Vishal-Shekhar's music looks little loud in the second half. Cinematography by Nicola and Manikandan (of Tamil movie Ravanan fame) is great. Editing by Sanjay and Martin is decent.
At the end, a strict focus on story, screenplay and narration would have made this movie as one of the best in recent times. A little rigor on the characterization of hero, his son, wife and Ra-one character would have helped a lot. At some point, it seems director has tried too hard to deliver a decent movie and failed because of that.
Because of all these, the hard work of technical crew, singer Akon, brief appearance by Rajini sir and Voice over by Amitabh Bachchan seem to have gone in vain.
This does not mean that Sharukh will lose money in this movie. The producer is a smart business man, he has released 3500 prints across the world. Satellite rights have been already sold. Even if the movie runs in all the theatres for decent one /two weeks, the producer will recover his investment and make good profits.
One last thing, there is an attempt in the end to keep the story open and bring up a sequel to Ra-One. But unless a serious attempt is made to do good research and exercise control on the story, screenplay and narration, I don’t think the sequel is worth producing!
I would give TWO out of FIVE for this movie.

FORCE does matter!

Sometimes there may not be anything great in a story and end is predictable. But it is because of the sheer magic touch that director gives to the narration, packages the sequences and takes audience along with him, that movies do make an impact.
You would have seen what happened in Dabaang! It was just the refreshing touch given to a good old story of two brothers.

This is one such movie where the director comes up with an innovative narration, gets the right set of people on board, keeps the narration pacy and delivers on end product. Force is one of the recent best bollywood action thriller films by John Abraham, directed by Nishikanth Kamat.

It is the story of a top cop Yashovardhan (John Abraham) and his team fighting against the drug mafia spread across the country. How the drug mafia runs, how NCB handles them, what are the limitations of system and how honest officers and their personal lives suffer in the hands of anti social elements. This forms the core of the story.

But this simple story is been narrated well with a backdrop of fresh romance between hero and heroine in the first half. Some of the sequences between John and Genelia are brilliant for their sheer simplicity and realism. You will never get to see a single scene between the two which is 'extra'.

The characterization of heroine Maya (Genelia) by director is really good. After a long time I saw a heroine's character not being dumb in an action movie dominated by hero and his actions. Genelia is quite lovely and lively! Don't miss that !

First half goes very fast with encounters between cops and criminals, good action sequences and a romantic track. The entry given to both the hero and villain are simply superb!

John is very comfortable in his role and has truly delivered a power packed performance as macho top cop. But it is the villain whom you simply can't ignore! The negative character Vishnu played by new comer Vidyut Jamwal is very strong and very well groomed. Vidyut comes up with an equally powerful performance against John. Some of his action sequences are so real and believable! I heard he is a model turned martial fighter turned actor who won the audition for this role among the stiff competition from 500+ people. Vidyut is quite promising in his role. Hats off to director for giving equal weightage to both these two characters!

But the icing on the cake is equally impressive star cast and their performances. Everyone has given their best. Coming to other technical aspects, the picturesque locales captured by Cinematographer Ayananka Bose, melodious music by Harris Jayaraj (Don’t know whether he has copied them from his own Tamil movie Khaka Khaka), the crisp and pacy editing by Aarif Shaikh, great Sound Design by Sanjay Mourya & Allwin Rego and last not the least the paisa vasool action by Allan Amin form the core and support the director in his narration in a big way. Overall it is a great team work under a great director who never loses control.

Having said that, there are few grey areas which could have been handled in a little better way. The drug mafia details, how the criminals exactly operate and what different channels they use, would have been narrated in some more depth (like how Manirathnam handles a particular domain.). In this movie it is handled at a peripheral level with more focus given to John and his crew. Also, there is a mention of limitation of the system in handling the whole mafia. This is also treated as a secondary topic.

There is a concept in Hollywood called 'frenemy' where enemy sometimes appreciates his enemy for his intelligence and skills. Many Hollywood movies are based on this concept and come up with more intelligent and innovative action sequences. May be director could have adopted that kind of concept here.

Here hero and villain are always after each other. Had it been the Hollywood way, the director would have got some more head space to introduce even more adrenaline pumping action and a different ending for the movie.(On the lines of Fast & Furious-five where you would see edge of the seat action till the last minute.)
Remember this is not a plain vanilla NRI love story. You many not watch it with your family. This is a truly for action lovers.

But that does not disappoint you at all. Do watch it purely for John's beef cake physique and actions, an impressive debut of Vidyut, bubbly Gelenia and a complete 10/10 performance by all the supporting cast and technical crew.
I have a suggestion for this director, make it a franchise and come up with a sequel soon! :)

Just Dance...!

Opportunity... Determination to prove..exposure to different forms, sheer talent , pure form of dance, fight hard..win at any cost...if you ask me.. all these vocabulary , words were quite unheard in India at least about 10 years ago. Life has changed so much in India in last one decade. The revolution of media, the impact modern reform policies, the awareness in Indian youth..everything has an impact.

I feel many times people born in 1980 or after are really lucky ones for having landed in India just in time! At the same time, I also feel bad that I should arrived 10 years late into this world!

So there is clear cut difference in the way this youth thinks, plans and executes his/her strategy..and achieves success. Obviously they are called "Gen Y", the true face of today's youth.

There are umpteen examples happening today in India which we can quote. But today I would like to take the example of Dance as one such revolution where Gen Y is really making lots of news.

Traditionally many forms of dance have existed in India and abroad for many many years. But the many talented youth of this country, did not get that required exposure, training and awareness though there was a huge potential to perform. I am watching all these dance reality shows regularly for last 2-3 years. I feel some of them have been really good in terms providing a great plat form for upcoming artists of India to perform on a big stage, to provide right coaching, to correct their flaws and lift their confidence.

Some of the good dance reality shows I have seen are Dance India Dance , DID Little Masters, DID -2 etc.., I myself am not an artist and my knowledge also was quite minimal on dance and its various formats. But today, I feel I have fair amount of knowledge in that area. When someone says “locking and popping” or “contemporary” or “lyrical” I know what kind of dance to expect. I can difference between stunts and dance, classical and modern types. If someone is dancing on the floor I can confidently say whether he\she is a good dancer or not.

I liked the dance numbers choreographed by Terrance Lewis, Remo D'Souza and Geeta Kapoor, Sandip Soparrkar, Marzi Pestonji, Rajeev Surti and of course Shiamak Davar!

Shiamak and his troupe are an ultimate team..they are one of the best I have ever watched. His knowledge and expertise on dance, technicality involved and more than that his attitude and humbleness towards people and his achievements in last 25 years are simply amazing! He is one person whom I respect a lot. (Sachin, A R Rahman are some of the other people in my list.)

I feel somehow ZEE TV which presented these shows has a better handle in managing these kind of shows. Their reality shows have right mix of Rich Content, Learnings for participants, Good coaching from Gurus, Entertainment Quotient and Value for your time. Other channels did not have this for some time. I watched coupe of other dance shows on SONY and STAR TV etc.. but I felt they were copied from some other shows in USA kind of countries and lacked in depth and providing that desi touch. But now after 3 years…this year I can say.. all of them are catching up with ZEE and may be even overtaking them.

STAR TV did it this year by signing Bollywood dancing sensation super star Hrithik Roshan as its host for their upcoming reality show “JUST DANCE !“. That was a kind of Master Stroke from STAR. Also they have roped in Farah Khan and Vaibhavi Merchant as mentors for this dance show which is icing on the cake.

I have seen all their auditions so far. I can confidently say the quality of dance and artists is really really high. The bar has visibly gone up. It was very difficult task for choreographers Farah Khan and Vaibhavi Merchant to select among all the talented guys and gals. And now the 51 contestants from across the world have been selected for final audition to dance in front of Hrithik in MUMBAI.

It is going to be a tough test for even Hrithik to choose among these best talents.

Dance has been always a pleasure to watch for me.. it helps you relax.. it heals your mind..and you really feel good. You feel good when whole world watches Indians performing in these shows. I feel amazed we have such a huge pool of talent hidden in India!

Please watch the show “JUST DANCE” on every Saturday and Sunday at 9PM IST. It is truly PAISA VASOOL ! J