03/07/09
Deep

Kambakht Ishq Movie Review..


I knew it, I knew it, I knew it that it’s gonna be Tashan Part II. But I never knew that after watching the movie, I would feel that Tashan was actually a better movie than Kambakht Ishq. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I hereby announce Kambakht Ishq as this year’s worst movie.. It left Chandni Chowk to China thousands of miles away…

So, let’s quickly move to the story.. Story? haha you must be kidding.. but still, let me try.. A guy and girl, who hate each other very much but eventually they end up falling in love with each other and get married..

Now, to cook up this 1 sentence story, they brought in Akshay Kumar, Kareena Kapoor, Sylvester Stallone, Denise Richard, the great Javed Jafri (no I am not serious), Kirron Kher and the producer had some extra money in pocket, so they roped in non actors, Aftab Shivdasani & Amrita Rao too…

So, now what, they had some more extra money.. so they thought we can bring in Annu Maleeeeek (I am sorry about the spelling, he keeps changing it every now and then, I hope that’s the latest spelling) and Annu bhaiya ne de daala super duper music.

Okay now what else? Some funny stupid kissing scenes, some so called “stunts”, some pathetic plot where the lead actress, who happens to be a doctor, leaves her watch in the stomach of the lead actor (while operation) (and then the watch beeps in “om mangalayshloka every hour.. oh damn, what the hell is this..), so the lead actress tries every other possible thing to get the watch back and make sure that the lead actor doesn’t know about it and do not file any case against her.. but this so called “meri ghadi sirf meri hai” process ends up making both fall in love with each other and all that crap..

Each and every scene in the movie is predictable, infact, from the start of the movie, you can easily predict what’s gonna happen in the end..

The actors were forcing themselves to make everyone laugh, they succeeded in couple of scenes too but they failed miserably in other scenes.. Kareena Kapoor thought, her skin show would attract some eyebrows but she forgot, she was supposed to act too.. I have no idea what was Javed Jafri doing in the movie.. same for Kirron Kher.. she is such a good actress..

And why the hell there was need for Sylvester Stallone? Just to make him say Kambakht Ishq in Hindi? Even role of Denise Richard was a big joke..

In short, these guys had pockets full of money, so they decided to cast all good actors and asked them to act their worst.. and even these actors didn’t bother to read the script before signing the movie..

Pathetic, bakwaas movie.. don’t bother watching the movie.. If you really want to waste your time.. watch Tashan instead.. atleast it has some better songs..

Are you still expecting the rating from me? Hell no.. I want my money back first.. PATHETIC MOVIE..

27/06/09
Deep

Blogcamp Pune 2, Unconferences etc…


Returned from Blogcamp Pune 2 around few hours back.. it was a nice drive to Pune.. the weather was pretty good.. loved the rain.. the clouds covering mountains.. Lonavala looked like heaven, felt like being there..

Oh, I was supposed to talk on Blogcamp Pune 2, OK OK.. I am back on track.. Vada Pav was pretty good at SICSR – Symbiosis (the venue), but I missed the Poha as Annkur had recommended..  :( Will try it definitely next time..  I loved the wind blowing on the 7th floor.. and the few babes roaming around in the girls hostel opposite of the venue.. and Yeah.. I enjoyed couple of sessions too.. The session by Ankesh and Annkur were pretty interesting.. but apart from that nothing impressed me much.. But the purpose of the post is not about criticizing Blogcamp Pune 2 but it is my bit improve the whole thing..

Following are the loopholes I found..

  1. No proper management, Yeah, there were couple of guys at the registration desk but that’s it.. the white board did not have any session details for the first couple of hours (the unconference started at 10 AM)
  2. The intro session ate up good amount of time..
  3. No proper sync between the 2 rooms, I think most of the people were sitting in a single room and there was no proper tracking of the activities in the other room.
  4. A person hijacking the sessions (Known as Thakkar from what I understand).. I know I know, everyone loved it.. he was good at what he was doing in fact.. but knowingly or unknowingly, he hijacked and pulled up all the people to listen to his comedy skills. I don’t think it was the right thing.. Come on guys it’s Blogcamp.. not any entertainment show.. there were people in the other room trying to give out the sessions.. but there was no one in the rooms, everyone was enjoying his jokes..

    Those guys might have spent hours of time to make presentation, prepare for the session and their hard work goes in vain.. The whole traffic gets attracted to something which could have been done after all the sessions were over too..I definitely did not attend Blogcamp to waste my time in the funny show.. and I am sure, others too did not come for the funny show..

So, how do we improve the whole thing? I would suggest, we should take some lessons from Blogcamp Chennai.. (the first one), it was very well organized, everything perfectly set and managed..

So, here are the pointers..

  1. Cut down the intro session or just take it off. I personally don’t think it will be of any use getting 100 odd people introduce themselves one by one.. this kind of exercise just takes lot of time and yields nothing.. I think the same kind of problem we had faced in earlier blog camp Pune too..
  2. Be sure to have a list of the sessions before everything starts.. Yea, I know it’s unconference and all.. but having a list of sessions is pretty much convenient for the visitors (Obviously, things can be added / taken off from it over the time)
  3. Categorize the sessions in 2 types.. say, Advanced and Newbies, or whatever categorization you feel like. Or simply, divide the sessions timings based on the theme.. I am saying this because, in the 2nd half, most of the sessions were boring.. they were boring for me but it’s highly possible that certain group of people will look forward to those kind of sessions.. frankly speaking, from what I saw, most of the people were either yawning or doing some other stuff, so this might give wrong signals to the person who is taking the session.. so, I feel it’s better to categorize so only target audience will attend the specific sessions..
  4. Time is money.. we have to make sure that the sessions start and end at the specified time..
  5. And yeah, most important, don’t allow anyone to hijack the sessions.. Yeah, I know it’s an unconference but think from the point of view of the guy who is going to take the session, what will be his state of mind (seeing no people around), what about his hard work? Still funny sessions more important?
  6. Accept sponsorships, I know few people will be against it.. accept the money from the sponsors but don’t allow them to spam around in the sessions.. use the money in getting better conference hall, get some free food, snacks, goodies etc… it helps to make the whole environment much better..

I think if things are slightly more managed, everything will go pretty much smoothly..

I hope we don’t repeat these kind of mistakes again in the 3rd Blogcamp Pune and I am sure there will be lot of improvement in it..

And finally.. thanks to Tarun and other guys for organizing the Blogcamp Pune, if you feel, I can be of any help in organizing the Blogcamp, do let me know, I will be more than happy to join in :)

26/06/09
Deep

New York Movie Review


It’s been a long long time since I have been to a theatre and watched a Hindi movie.. Yeah, strike was one of the reasons but frankly speaking, the main reason according to me was, there were no movies worth going for.. But finally the wait is over and this movie might just break the chain of flop movies..

As shown in the promos, the movie has a plot roaming around the shadows of 9/11 attacks happened in New York. 3 very good friends (Omar – Neil Nitin Mukesh, Sam – John Abraham & Maya – Katrina Kaif), Sam & Maya get married and Omar loses touch with both of them as he moves to some other place. But suddenly, the FBI detains Omar claiming that he is part of the terror group. But the purpose of detaining him to find solid evidence against his friend Sam, who according to FBI is heading a terror group. FBI forces Omar to befriends with Sam & Maya and stay with them for sometime, so that they can trace activities of Sam. But Omar does not believe that Sam is a terrorist, he goes on a journey to prove that his friend and himself both are innocent.

Overall, I really liked the movie, the story, it was pretty much strong, for a change the movie did not have any unnecessary songs and unwanted scenes.. perfect direction and editing, except for that “kind of” love making scene between Sam & Maya, it could have been snipped easily, it wasn’t required according to me.

What I liked about the movie was, it tries to shows one of the reasons for some of the guys taking the path of terrorism, it shows how FBI deals with innocent people etc.. But at the same time, I did not find ending of the movie proper, something was lacking, raised few questions.

On the acting front, all the actors did their job pretty well, Katrina Kaif is growing movie by movie.. and on the top of it she looked very cute too.. Really liked the character of Sam i.e. John Abraham.. nicely played.. Neil Nitin Mukesh was pretty impressive.. Irfan Khan was pretty decent, he didn’t have anything much to do, he just played what he was asked for.. nothing exceptional.. nothing to show his actual acting skills..

On the music front.. I don’t think anything was original.. the music was good but nothing original.. it sounded like copied partly from his previous movies and the main song (Hai Junoon) from an Indonesian song. Cinematography was pretty good..

So, overall, the movie was very good, I would rate it Rating: ★★★½☆ It is definitely worth a watch.. Go for it..

On the box office front, I think it should do fairly well as there are no good movies around.. and this one was pretty good one too..

23/06/09
Deep

Startup and more…


I attended Headstart even in Mumbai last Saturday. I was hoping to see really interesting startups but I was left pretty much wondering and thinking, why these guys start companies without even thinking about the future once. There were only couple of companies with proper business plan, rest of them lacked it. Many of the startups copied concepts from the international well established companies. I will list out some of the examples (without giving out the names obviously) of the so called startups with no plans ahead.

  • There was were bunch of kids trying to start a website which will allow the users to setup websites in just few clicks. The concept was pretty good but their idea was broken, they decided to implement something social, where as a user will make template and share it with other users, so everyone can use it. I am not sure how practical it will be as the business model. Apart from this, they were not even ready for the alpha stage and they were having demo at the demo pit. In short, they were not “ready” yet..  They did not have clear picture of what they are going to do in the future. (And if they had, they could not convey it to me…)
  • There was another team with the idea of making something on the basis of Getsatisfaction.com, again, no clear business plan, the voting manipulation wasn’t taken care of. The making money part wasn’t so promising at all.
  • Another one was based on GetAFreelancer.com, again no proper business plan. There were no answers when I asked, there are plenty of other biggies providing same kind of services, why would people come to your site? Frankly, speaking, this guy was pretty much new to this and needed some boost, I gave him few ideas and if he works on those ideas, the things should work out for him. 
  • There were many others, from something like Google docs / MS live document sharing clone, to some educational portal with great idea in mind but no proper planning etc..

I am not going to list them one by one but if you notice, everyone had some kind of base idea ready, be it based on any international site or not, but none of them had proper process lined up. No business model. Infact many of these guys never thought of any business model. They were like, we will see when things work out..

From what I understand, their thinking might be like.. we will make a good product and sell it off to any company and earn some good bucks.. (Well, I might be wrong too) But I don’t think this is what business all about… You need absolutely planning and clear picture keeping the worst conditions in mind. You should have a backup plan ready.

And most importantly, the high focus should be on money, profit.. you are spending lot of time over the project.. and for what? Social service? Just to make your name? Don’t you want your daily bread and butter? Think about money.. make a proper business plan and then just into so called startup bandwagon. If you don’t have any plans ready, I don’t think you have any right to start any business..

I know I know.. there will be people with examples like Twitter, Facebook etc.. but they all have a proper business plan, it is just that it’s been kept under the wraps and they are waiting for the right time…

I think people should not simply get into the hype of “startup” and all.. they need to sit, get back to the basic and make a plan, think about the future and think about the worst conditions.

That’s it.

Oh Yea, I am not any so called “startup guru” or anything. I am just a businessman. I understand money, profits, loss along with the great ideas. That’s it. So these are the things which always run in my mind and thought of sharing with everyone, so atleast some of the guys planning to do something new can get tips from this topic.

16/05/09
Deep

So, what actually went wrong with BJP?


*** Note: This one is gonna be pretty lengthy one ***

Yes, I am a pro BJP guy, I would always like to see BJP getting elected but at the same time, I don’t believe in following anyone blindly.

To be frank, in this election, I had high hopes for BJP, the way they started their online campaign was showing some good signs.. the good signs of stressing more on the development factor.. but as the day passed, the whole scenario changed and it turned into cat fights..

There were few incidents which I feel were given more importance and blown out of proportion by media and rivals.. e.g. being classic case of Varun Gandhi.. everyone said, his speech was inflammatory (Video), even he was slapped detention order under NSA. At the same time, Sanjay Dutt too gave in inflammatory speech, but no one bothered to care about it.. (I feel this was something not at all fair)

Read the rest of this entry »

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