Saturday, October 2, 2010

Endhiran - the Robot Movie Review

I am not generally the type, to see movies on the first day. However , call it sheer luck , a six hour power cut and battery drained laptop forced me to check out the Movie. By the time I am writing  here , there have been almost 100 updates in my Facebook news feed , vouching for the greatness of the movie and I am going to be another addition to that list. For starters, Endhiran is not  your typical Rajnikanth film, no opening song , no punch dialogues,no weird mannerisms.  After a long time, Rajnikanth plays a role completely as director's actor ( Its often the scenario where Director's changes stories and scenes to suit Rajnikanth). You have to give it Shankar, making Rajnikanth stick to the demanding role without his usual cliche.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Inception - Movie Review


Inception , is the fourth Christopher Nolan movie  that I have managed to watch after Memento,Batman Begins and Dark knight.  Memento had already introduced me to his non-linear story telling screen play , where two parts of story move in opposite direction ( unlike the the traditional start to climax way).  With Inception, the director takes the screen play and story telling abilities to a whole new level of complexity.  The theme of movie revolves letting somebody into your unconscious mind , i.e, Dream , where extractors can steal your deepest secrets. True to this, Nolan turns out a edge of seat thriller, heist film.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Hand of God


I never confess to be an full fledged football fan, but I couldn't help getting caught in the football frenzy during the World Cup. From the very first world cup 1998, which I started to follow , I have tried to follow the beautiful game. Though I don't care about EPL or any other club football league unlike other self confessed football fans. Now getting back to point, whats ironic with Football is the term " Hand of God "  . For people unfamiliar with Football, this phrase was originally coined for Maradona's Goal in 1986 World Cup semi final against England. The score was nil-nil until Maradona got a pass , which he manipulated using his hand to score the winning goal against England.


Monday, June 21, 2010

How Steve Jobs turned Apple Around


If you have been following news of late, you would have noticed how Apple toppled Microsoft to become the most valuable technology company . Its been quite an turn around for Cupertino based company which was forced to get investment from its Arch rival Microsoft in 1997. I decided to profile Apple's turn around, because there are not many companies that make a comeback , once they start to go down. When Steve jobs returned to Apple in 1997 , Microsoft had become a monopoly in the Desktop PC's, with nearly 95 % running on Windows; Apple was relegated to a niche market. So how does one turn around a fortunes of a  falling company

1.  Focus on your Strengths:

Though Apple had lost out on the Desktop market, Steve brainstormed  to identify the areas where Apple was still making profits and not losing out. Simple enough to put your money where the value comes from.This included Desktop Publishing and Multimedia industry where the Macs where more prevalent and preferred to Windows. He shutdown projects like Apple Newton, CyberDog and Opendoc  to cut costs and put his resources on where Apple was still making money Macs. There are two ways to build a software product , you either develop it from scratch which requires lot of resources and time, second is to go out buy a start up which already has the technology rebrand it has your own and sell it. And the later is what Apple did when they bought NEXT operating system. This later evolved into  Mac OS X powering iMac.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Sports,Scandal aur Dhoka


Of late, the Indian media has gone into frenzied mode in trying to cover the scoop whether it is Shoaib-Sania issue, or Modi - Tharoor issue. One gets the feeling of being bombarded with the same information on all TV channels. If anybody wants to know whats Plagiarism, they can easily learn it by watching Indian News channels covering this issues. Coming back to the great Indian Paisa League IPL , as a commoner it wouldn't be surprising for your jaws to be drop on watching the amounts that floats around for the job one carries out for just 2 months. Whether its Player's salaries or glamor quotient associated with it, IPL seems to be unmatched in its persona. To throw some figures in, the two teams Kochi and Pune were bought together for a sum of 703 million USD , that's like 3138 crores in INR ; Indian Sports Budget for 2010-11 is 2069 cr in INR . Compare this with how our Hockey Players have to go on strike to get their salary hike few months ago, you get the big picture. What even more amuses me is, whether somebody can profit on buying teams at the huge rate, given that TV and sponsorship revenues will be split among 10 teams. The Pune team for example needs to make roughly 165 crore a year just to break even . May be Indian businessmen dont bother loosing a few hundred crores as long as their names are being splashed around with all the glitz and glamor. As if this is not enough, IPL is getting Tax breaks from State governments. People who own IPL teams are in Forbes Top 100 richest people; Not elderly people who get pensions . If the exchequer is going to get any increase tax revenues, its from events like this .

Sunday, February 28, 2010

The Mistake I almost Made





*This is my first attempt short story writing, so feed backs are welcome
Disclaimer: The finale of the story is as such narrated to me by one of friends , when I was in school. *


It was a cold Monday morning, "Why is it the bed seems most cozy on Monday morning??" I wondered as I gazed at the Sunlight coming through the screens. I half hardheartedly got up switched the alarm off and checked the phone. " Hiii sweetie Krishna.. GM :), Cud we meet today evening at CCD ?? " said the sms from Radhika. There is nothing like a wish from your loved one that jump starts your morning. It was now 8 30 am, I had a meeting to attend at 10 30. So I went about my daily routine in the morning and was ready within one hour. Ideally one hour time would be good enough for anybody to reach their office in a bike , unless otherwise you happen to live in Bangalore, where there are 1000 people exactly like you are going to office at the same time as yours. I made it to the office just on time with 10 mins to spare. However thanks to the rains in the night, the basement parking had got flooded, I had to search for a new spot to park the bike. I hurried to the meeting room, hoping I was not the last person to enter the room, so everybody in the room wouldn't gaze upon me. I was surprised to find an empty room. Later on examining my mail, I found out that my manager had postponed the meeting, since he too was struck in traffic. " Bangalore traffic is one place where all people are treated equally irrespective of whether your Engineer,Manager or Vice President " I chuckled to myself.
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