The Namesake..painfully so

I got to watch this movie as part of a special screening yesterday! Yes am a fan of Jhumpa L's writing too....but feel screen adaptation of novels in Indian Cinema seem yet to get the right mix. I felt the movie needed some sizable editing. All lead characters did their jobs well....but then I really felt the movie was highly arty, not that am against art movies .

Yes there is an audience for the movie, NRIs and all Bengali's....they can relate to it instantly and the rest of us, it is a bit of a disconnect.

It is worth if you are also looking for a movie which makes more sense other than the usual masala stuff! For all other urban yuppi stuff perhaps delhi heights is a better bet.

Blue Billion get crushed

Was never a Cricket fan, and if I were I would never have been for Team India, reason being, we are all hype no output!! Not only that I find the game a complete waste of time, considering you waste 8 hours on watching people play...and yes the team play..hahaha!!

Most papers and magazines were filled with so much hype about the team before the start of the game....I hated the fact that I had to just look for some newsworthy stuff...especially in sports!! So a Christino Ronaldo steering Man United was far more exiting than say an India winning over Bermuda(can anyone tell me on the map where that country is?) Winning perhaps is what Australia did against arch nemesis South Africa. 163 Crore down the drain in pitting for Team India, we might have had our first F1 Racing Track, or perhaps a class a training school for niche sports such as swimming/chess or tennis.

The cricketers are not to blame, surely they were pathetic earlier, the world cup just nailed it for them!! Perhaps they concentrated on their game rather than grooming products and pushing FMCG products. As for the viewer, he should start watching some other game, at least there won't be a lot of sulking at the end of the game. I so wish our team was more like the French Football team lead by Zidane, he took them to the final before he headbutted the winning the game away!! Killer Instinct that is what team India lacked!! What a waste!!

Jump...creatives run out of ideas

While watching a music channel recently, I came across 2 advertisements that were amazingly similar.....so much so that they looked exact replicas of the Madonna Video-JUMP. One was the new Thumps up Ad featuring Akshay Kumar and an oddball advertisement for parachute oil...dunno what this brand is trying to do perhaps be ubercool. Fact is both are pathetic creative ideas which have been made without any creative juices flowing . Originality seems to have packed the bags and left the building!

Add to my misery the ads ran next to each other...if there were no cans in between...hardly would we have managed to see the marked difference....cutting cost seems to be the mantra these days...even in the ideas department!!

Ravving about Rave

Last week around 300 people were caught in Pune city ....all were attending a rave party!! This is not something that raised by eyebrows...these things have been happening for long time. From the time the we have seen "Dum Maro Dum" we know that there exists a secret group that is into drugs/booze/sex ....but what took me aback was a mainline publication had an editorial propagating the fact that perhaps as the world adopts things like Yoga and other things Indian...we should adapt western culture ie Rave.
Am not pretty sure how well known the fact is in west but rave parties are looked down upon even in the US and Europe. Yes, we have our own intoxicating ways to indulge, and he did mention holi ....but dear sir do let me know, yoga is a good thing ...mac is not....and when they came here we did "indinize" them ...it is still a vada pao...by the name of MacVeggie Burger....Rave...we will have fun...there is nothing draconian about it....and accepting raves as part of it ...doesn't it take the air out of the fun??

So much smoke without the fire eh?

When participation age lacks participants

One of my clients strongly believes this is the “participation age”, so do I. Problem is there are not many takers to the same thing. There are a lot of people who work on this and yes communications at the next level must be happening exactly in your hands….or rather handset. But fact remains; there is a lot of polarity in the user groups. Sample this most users are men, be it blackberry or any other interface. It is amazing that innovatios are so uni-polar in this country. Yes, boys need their toys and girls are more utilitarian, but then in this age of materialism, the spent should be more equivalent.

Try this one if you happen to visit a pub/disc, switch on your blue tooth on the handset and seek, am sure the point am trying to make will dawn upon you!! That is in itself a statistic!