Wednesday, February 28, 2007

A "Scientifically Updated" Post

This post is not our creation, but we found it here.

To quote some of the sections we found quite interesting:

"I would like to request something to all the Movie Fans / IMDb users out there.It is as follows: -> It's OKAY to be Morally Upright but it's necessary to be SCIENTIFICALLY UPDATED first (Especially for those whose academics are from a Non-Science background)."

"if you oppose this movie you not only oppose the Father of Human Evolution Theory -CHARLES DARWIN but also oppose something important that Darwin's theory proves : Human Male is capable of producing Sperms all his Life-Time. In contrast, a Human Female's Menstrual Cycle ends roughly at the age of Forty-Five years. This Fact is enough to prove that a Male is Naturally Designed ...yes, Naturally Designed to fall in love with female counterparts all his life time(Yes,even at the age of 60 years like Mr. Bachhan's character in the Movie or even 90 years) and further still reproduce with the help any number of adult Females."

"This is an appeal to 'Indians' especially. Because it's important to know the difference between a 'Godzilla' and a 'Jurrassic Park'. It's necessary to reject the former and accept the latter. Let's accept the Reality."

Godzilla is better than Jurassic Park, scientifically speaking eh!!!!

Monday, February 26, 2007

HTPL a.k.a Hyper Tortuous Private Limited

Good movies are all alike, every bad movie is bad in its own way.

That is the reason why we prefer reviewing movies that are bad rather than the good ones. This Saturday we had the misfortune of watching Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. Just re-phrasing what Ian Botham had to say about Pakistan "This is the sort of movie that you send your mother-in-law to in the hope that better sense might just prevail and she might decide to give up the worldly existence that is full of such perils as this movie".

Reasons why we decided to watch the movie in the first place. Sandhya Mridul and Kay Kay Menon. The former is our latest muse after watching movies like Waisa Bhi Hota Hai - II and Page 3. Kay Kay of course is someone to watch out for after his excellent rendition of the word "Hello" in Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena".

The first story started off well when the director got her facts right and talked about the Halley comets sighting in 1986. But little did we realize that a "Its all happening" does not maketh a Bill Lawry. And of course we didn't bargain for Minissha Lamba (yes the same actress who once said in a HT interview that she wanted wider hips) and Abhay Deol making sounds, that one would opine belonged to 101 Dalmatians. (On second thoughts it would have fit only in a scene where all the 101 were being fried to death on an Electric Chair, and not to worry Ms Lamba I am sure the villains pet cat would rather enjoy this) rather than Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. (As a portent of things to come we have a scene where a 10-year old Abhay Deol hides himself in a trash can, we wonder whether the director was making a statement that all scenes involving him were actually full of garbage.) By the way the super hero thing, well when "Toby Maguire" can play Spider Man and "Halle Berry" Catwoman I suppose anything goes.

Then there is the story concerning Dia Mirza, Ranvir Shorey and Arjun Rampal. Well even though we are biased towards Dia (Her being from Hyd and all that), we think she should stick to hosting award functions and item numbers. Arjun Rampal, well he should stick to doing nothing actually, and Ranvir dude get a life. (Though we might not be the best ones to approach on how to do that!!)

Amisha Patel and some unknown whom we shall refer to Mr X1 from now their story seems to be for lack of better words right out of M&B (Caution: Opening this link at work might cause co-workers to doubt your sanity). People who work in my industry, dudes it is not mount and bonding diagram I am talking about (sorry couldn't resist the pun) rather the great "chick-lit-hall-of-fame" presidents. Anyway Amisha Patel gives ample reasons why she should not act and instead get married to some rich Diamond merchant (pearls actually if you go by the movie). Apparently she is this bubbly Punjabi Kudi, well we can say there is more spice in the kadi we get in our Cafeteria.

The story of Sandya Mridul and Mr X2 is very superficial to say the least and the fine actress is wasted in the movie. One would have expected slightly more discerning choice of roles from her. Even though it is more sensible than the others there is nothing of substance that actually happens in this story in the whole movie and is as predictable as finding IT Engineers or Stray Dogs on Bangalore roads.

Boman Irani and Shabana Azmi play persons past their youth, both have been married before and have suffered the loss of their loved ones. Yet again predictably the daughter of Mr Irani is no bharatiya nari and ends up confiding in Ms Azmi at the end (predictably some boy friend dumping her, we wonder where the hell do such chicks roam around man $%^%). And everything is hunky dory, except the expressions on the faces of the audience.

Finally to the one saving grace, the story involving Kay Kay and Raima Sen. Kay Kay is the typical "boy-next-door" for a change instead of the usual "girl-next-door" (we still wonder why the ones next door to us look like a cross between Queen Latifah and Judi Dench). Kay Kay combs his hair so straight that had it been any straighter Sunil Gavaskar would have been proud. Raima Sen wants toescape the boredom that has set into their marriage. Looking to break free of her "better-halfs" parents home (the way she convinces Kay Kay is probably the only saving grace of the whole movie) and of the strict order by which her husband lives his life. And quite disturbingly there is some difference between the beginning and the end as far as this story is concerned.

We recommend you watch this movie only if you think that the only possible way for you to loose weight is to make your wallet lighter by 200/-. (Then again probably not.......)

Saturday, February 10, 2007

The fourth K a.k.a Random Trip #4 -- Turtle Bay Resort Kundapur

The last trip which was to Belur-Haleebedu (I know I haven't blogged about it) left us very apprehensive of NH4 traffic, so this time we started a full hour earlier at 0730 than the last time around. But this time surprisingly there was not much traffic on NH4, and we did good time reaching Neelamangla soon. After that we took the diversion to NH48. Now NH48 is a two lane highway and has lots of curves and mostly empty compared to NH206 which is pretty much straight and has 4 lanes at most places. But I was zipping at 100kmph on NH48 when I had to round a curve and did a U-turn that made sure we went to 100-0kmph in about 10 seconds and a radius of about a couple of metres. No small contribution was due to the fact that Comfortably Numb was playing while I was driving. Anyway the photo down here will pretty much show how the ABS of my car got tested and passed with flying colors.



We took a diversiona at Channarayapatna and had breakfast at the Kamath there. At around 11am we started and hit Hasan soon and then Sakleshpur. The road degraded a lot from here on and the view was not very scenic either. We were crawling along and the Ghats section roads were atrocious. We somehow managed to reach Mangalore at about 1700 hours. Just before that at around 1500 hours we had lunch at a very shady place called Highway Inn. After Mangalore we hit NH17 and went towards Udipi. NH17 is a very narrow NH and there is a lot of traffic as well on it. So we had to give the car over to our slowest and safest driver.

We were given to believe that the resort was very close to Mangalore so our original plan was to leave Bangalore at 0400 and hit the resort sometime in the afternoon. Instead we left at 0730 and then came to know that the resort is more like 150km from Mangalore. So all said and done we reached Kundapur only about 1845.

Our ounly source of entertainment (my guitar CD and a collection of songs which seemed to have far too many Himesh Reshamiyya on it notwithstanding) was the commentary of the India-WI cricket match on Vividh Bharati. By the time we reached Kundapur we knew the sum total of ODI runs scored by Ganguly, Dravid and Sachin.

There was more disappointment to await us at Kundapur. We were 5 of us and had booked a room for 3 people and a cabana for 2. We reached only to be told that the person suposed to vacate a room had not done so and we 5 of us had to fit into one cabana. We also ended up missing the sunset.

There was a bonfire planned for the night and we just got a few mats and lied down on the beach next to the bonfire. By the time we had dinner and reached the tent all we could think of was sleep.

Next morning we got up at 0700 and played beach volleyball and then went into the sea with the waves. Yours truly realised on coming back that we had not emptied our pockets so our mobile went phut and so did the car remote. We tried a manual enter into the car only for it to start beeping really loudly. After some frantic calls to about 20 different people we found the software hack to open it manually and then finally started off at around 1100 from Kundapur.

This time we decided to hit NH206 instead of NH48 so we went north on NH17 and took a diversion to reach Kollur from where we hit Hosanagara. The drive through this section of the ghats was very good with a narrow winding road but minimal traffic. The view of the forests on either side of us was also truly awesome. We hit Hosanagara at about 1300 and then did good time to reach Shimoga by 1500. We had lunch at an awful dhaba and then drove all the way till the Kamat in Neelamangala where we reached at around 2000 and decided to have dinner there. The meals there were quite awful.

By the time we reached Bangalore the time was 2200 and we had about 50/- and about a litre of fuel left in the car.

The resort is worth visiting and the beach looks great. But definitely to enjoy the resort you need to stay there for at least a day and drive through a better route. Unlike us who reached there and left before we could even have the feel that we are on a holiday.

And yes do not get into the sea with your car remote and mobile phones.