ReviewMaster Haha – Aisha!

Cut to a small school in the rural village of Delhi, in a run-of-the-mill-opulent classroom.

Masterji: Children - match the following. Come on!

Column A – Males

1. Loaded, social misfit with all the charms of a donkey in heat
2. Fashionably balding, oh-so-sensitive, bordering on feminine, guy (Also loaded!)
3. Hunk straight out of a magazine centre spread (Looks loaded!)
4. The odd BPO guy (This guy is not loaded!)

Column B – Females

1. Fashionable, social butterfly, bordering on arrogant, girl (Loaded – you get the picture!)
2. Size zero hottie straight out of … a movie, perhaps!
3. Misguided, naïve, small town girl with small town aspirations
4. Loaded, Social Miss-fit and appendage to Female # 1

Masterji: Now children, match the above and tell me the answer.

Students: Masterji, Masterji, the answer is: a-4, b-1, c-2 and d-3.

Masterji: Excellent, But if you have gotten it wrong like the director of Aisha, Rajshree Ojha, then you better go back and revise your Mills and Boons!

This is exactly what RO (Rajshree Ojha and not Reverse Osmosis) did or did not do. Painful, especially when the audience has to sit though all possible incorrect combinations of the “Match the following”.

I mean combinations like a-1. Why? That was never going to work. We know that. Or b-3 and a-3. Those were particularly jarring ones. Gosh!

However, there are a few positives from the movie. The music is fantabulous, which begs the question – why couldn’t RO release just the music album? Ok, just one positive, I can’t think of any more!

ReviewMaster Haha!

(If you feel this ending was abrupt – try seeing Aisha!)

Quips on the Go!

MPs have announced a pay hike for themselves. They have also asked that 1000 Crores of scandal-related-income be tax exempted. Where is the logic in taxing tax-payers’ money they ask.

Votes for Rajya Sabha candidates are going cheap. JMM is quoting Rs. 1 Crore per vote while BJP is slightly cheaper at Rs. 50 Lakhs + a car! You may want to pick up a couple of votes before inflation strikes. (As you can see I don’t have the fancy Re. symbol yet!)

Kalmadi is facing the music for taking the ‘Commonwealth’ Games literally. He must have felt it was common practice to siphon off the wealth, from the games. Silly mistake, can we worry about things like vegetables now?

Speaking of food, a collection of very, very rich, well fed, MPs are debating the issue of price-rise in Parliament. Increase in levels of debate, decreases inflation through release of hot air.

Also, 400 students were recently held up and arrested for Partying. This is a serious crime, if you do not take a gazillion permissions, no-objection-certificates and permits from an equal number of Government agencies. So start planning for your 50^th anniversary now!

In other related news, the Indian Government has announced that it will set up a National Commission for Boring Societies, which will present recommendations on how to reduce parties and party related crimes (Political parties exempted!).

The mother of Scarlett Keeling fears that she could be murdered by the Goa Minister’s nexus of crime. Which came as something of an extreme shock to the people of this country; people who have a hard time imagining that crime and politics could go hand-in-hand. 

The largest photo on Earth!

70 Billion Pixels Budapest - The largest photo on Earth - created by 360world.eu

Amazing photo of the city of Budapest. Zoom in to see the minutest of details!

I Luv Hate Storys!

The recent Imran Khan hit, Bollywood blockbuster, has been tanked by critics. But despite that the movie has been a runaway success, so much so that top actors like Katrina and Priyanka are now vying for roles alongside our hip and happening, Imran Khan. Who it seems, was on the verge of being plucked out after Luck proved unlucky!

On IMDB, IHLS has 5.3 stars.

This critic has given the movie 3 out of 5 stars without saying a good word about the movie. Every other newspaper critic literally said the same thing.

But, (there is always a ‘but’ coming) most critics and viewers have missed the layer of duality that was woven in (might I say perfectly) with the plot. In fact, it was done all too well. I realized it, and henceforth, I will make it my mission to spread the message embedded in the movie!

Jay Dhingra (Or some totally not-so-gay name of that sorts!) is this irresistible brat, who unknowingly works his charms on Simran, a die-hard romantic and a colleague. And they live happily ever after. In short that is the story.

But on deeper introspection you realize, that there is a layer of complexity hidden beneath this misleading simplicity. All through the movie, the director ridicules the Yash Raj brand of romance. The usual, dupatta-in-the-wind, pink dresses, sarson da khet, guitars and caps, misty-eyed looks, candy floss and other sugary stuff. And, suddenly, lo and behold, the director does a volte-face and does exactly the same general stuff. The same usual, sad songs, teary heroines, tough decisions ('Luv' related mind you!), proposals on bended knee, flowers, pink sarees, chocolates and other miscellaneous sugary stuff.

Was he (The director – Punit Malhotra) really mocking the sugar-coated romance? Or not? He critiques and vociferously supports the same brand of Yash Raj romance. Nice.

A lot of critics and viewers naturally missed this layer of complexity and termed the movie as rubbish! But it wasn’t. It explores the philosophy and mysticism of duality, in the way the human mind perceives complex emotions; with equal measures of like and dislike, good and bad, yin and yang, night and day… (Not to be confused with ‘Knight and Day’ – which is another gem BTW!)

PS: Inception may have borrowed heavily from this movie!

Man v/s Food

What attracted my attention this week was a new reality-TV show on “Discovery Travel and Living” by the name “Man v/s Food”. We all wish we could hog on all the artery-clogging, heart-busting, greasy fried food and yet have a clean lipid profile. But that is not the way God designed it all. Shucks!

Help is at hand though. This TV show caters to your innermost food fetishes! The host holds the record for the biggest human stomach, well he must, since he puts away, literally truckloads of food with ease. The amount he consumes will put any 3^rd world country to shame!

America is dotted with food joints that have a challenge item on the menu. Adam, the host, devours these ginormous helpings as a part of the challenge! By most standards even the normal helpings are a challenge to most people, if not Asians. Challenge items can feed a small family, for a week! This is the scale we are talking about.

The challenge starts will Adam sitting behind a mountain of meat (This is no place for a vegetarian to be!), barely visible, smacking his lips and limbering up his esophagus! Adam begins by thrusting a bucket-load of food down his neck. By the end of the hour Adam would have devoured a goat or the better part of a large cow with a side order of a vegetable garden!

If you are still watching you can’t help but imagine the kind of strain this puts on the city’s sewage system the next morning. Heck, I dare not imagine the strain Adam puts on his lower orifices when he unloads it all. A mud volcano comes to mind! Holy Shit! (I need some time to purge that image from my frontal lobe!)

Bleeding-edge Politics!

We here at the Morning Haha know that our attempts at humor bring tears to even the most hardened of war-criminals. Nevertheless, we do believe that it is the ‘attempt’ that matters. Success still eludes us, but we keep trying. Maybe, a change in strategy is what we need.

A change in strategy is exactly what helped Mamata Banerjee achieve her objectives. Tears are the nuclear weapon of human emotions. As Mr. Pranab Mukherjee (and men from around the world, including the Arctic) will most definitely attest to, the moment the mushroom cloud of tears erupts, logic, rationality, good-and-bad, right-and-wrong are the first victims to be decimated. Resources, history, precedence and planning die of radiation fallout. Eventually a nuclear winter sets in.

These bleeding-edge techniques have usually been confined to the domestic scene. This is probably the first time in recent history that this weapon has been deployed in the political landscape.

Our political pundits agree that this may soon become a weapon of choice for the politically inclined. We predict that we will soon see tears being employed in courts, parliaments, TV studios (Wait! We already have that!), processions and legislative assemblies. This is just the beginning. Sobb Sobb.

Not an Intelligence failure … they said!

“The Pune blast was not the result of any intelligence failure but an 'insidious' planting of a bomb in a 'soft' target establishment, Union Home Minister P Chidambaram said.”

Whoa, not so fast Eddie!

If this is not a failure, I shudder to think what would an actual intelligence failure be.

Maybe we are being too hard on the old guy. Maybe this was a success after all. Maybe they alerted the local authorities a couple of days in advance. Nope that did not happen. Maybe they asked prime targets in Pune to be on the alert. That did not happen either.

Maybe they did warn the old, respected home minister in time for him to take cover under his desk, in New Delhi. Probable.

For the benefit of those who are linguistically challenged, like yours truly, ‘insidious’ means ‘beguiling’, ‘treacherous’ and ‘producing serious harm’. This proves that the home ministry is hard at work to come up with (not plans to counter terror attacks) better worded statements post the mayhem.

We need to give credit where it is due. And it is definitively due here. We were not dished out the stale “I salute the indomitable spirit of the people of City X”. This is a bigger relief than you think, by the way!

Yet another IIT graduate lay dead, while our intelligence agencies celebrated their ‘success’ with the home ministry. Yet another terror attack, while ‘Aman ki Asha’ continues to spread ‘Asha’ through its song, dance and fart sessions!

WTF?

Is this fair? Is this justifiable? Are we not forgetting something?

TOI on the left hand side features a couple of articles on terrorism in India. The first article talks about over 700 terrorists in J&K waiting to kill and maim innocent civilians in the name of religious war. The second article talks of a young, successful IIT graduate whose life, love and family was riddled with bullet holes, by the 26/11 perpetrators.

On the same page is ‘Aman ki asha’, the grand TOI initiative to bring the people of the India and Pakistan together. Their argument is that the establishment is different from the people of Pakistan. People are essentially similar, culturally and emotionally. Hence we can be friends. No harm done!

I can almost picture a crazed L-e-T terrorist having fits of laughter. They will take this not only as another sign of weakness but also as an opportunity to further their designs. This initiative will have a real positive impact on terrorist confidence. Way to go!

Coming back to the point of ‘being friends’. Ultimately, it is the people of the nation who are responsible for a nation’s misdeeds. They are not different from their nation’s establishment. The uber-romantic notion of Jai-Veeru-dosti between India and Pakistan is counter-productive and directionless.

Will this stop another smart IIT graduate from being gunned down? Will this make the crazed L-e-T terrorist any less crazed? Will this bring any real peace, even for a month, week or day? I sincerely doubt.

Friendship is between equals. We … are no longer equals!

God–Phone Descends!

All hail the new God of all phones, including, yes, including the now dated iPhone. Google was already the God of search engines, it now has transcended into mobile operating systems. Google-God has now taken the competition to various fruity vendors of over-priced, malfunctioning, computing hardware.

Let us also take this moment to announce the demise of Microsoft’s mobile computing platform – The Windows Mobile. Even the much-awaited Windows Mobile 7 is going to look like road-kill compared to Android 2.1. Windows Mobile is now relegated to the history books. A moment of silence please, guys!

The God-Phone touts a 3.7 inch AMOLED touch screen display, a 5MP camera, Android 2.1, 1GHz Snapdragon processor, active noise cancellation, voice-enabled search, 512MB RAM and a 4GB memory card apart from the usual bells and whistles. To top it all, the sweet hardware is from HTC. It is bank-robbery at $529.

The sad part is that this God-phone (Google calls it super phone) will not descend into India, at least not now. I, for one will be eagerly waiting for my rendezvous with God.

Check out these links to get acquainted with God!

Link 1 – CNET news page

Link 2 – Google Nexus One home page

Top 5 best Action, Adventure or Mystery TV Series

You know it is that time of the year, when music albums like ‘Top Remix Hungamas of 2009’ and articles like ‘2009: The year almost gone by!’ crop up like scandalized politicians!  It is that time of the year here at TMH too! And the entire team (wink wink) here at TMH thought that it would be a good time to slip in a list of ours too!

This is a list of 5 best action, adventure or Mystery TV series. A cleverly designed category that maps to the way the human brain organizes information (wink wink). Let’s get to it!

Prison Break: At #5 we have Prison Break, a series which combines action, adventure and loads of impossible ingenuity. It is at #5 because it does tend to stretch reality through lots of co-incidences. Only a tad though. An awfully good ‘watch’ nevertheless!

Honorable mention: Heroes

Castle: #4 is a whodunit murder mystery series with a superlative cast. Smart, funny dialogues coupled with excellent plot lines make this TV Series an unbeatable one. Extra points for the lead actors: Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic. Honorable mention: The Old Fox, Agatha Christie’s Poirot.

X Files: Coming in at #3 is the X-Files. A dark, chilling, mystery series, with oodles and oodles of small-town America thrown in for the mood. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson do ample justice to the main characters. The first few seasons were probably the best ever. The truth… is still out there!

Star Trek – The Original Series: This is at #2 only because it is from the sixties, mere technicality. Childhood defining, this series had it all: Mystery, Adventure, Charm, Action and Space. Space – The final frontier. This series has changed television, technology and millions of lives. Honorable mention: Star Trek - Voyager

House MD: At #1 is this medical mystery. Probably the smartest, funniest and coolest TV series ever. A supremely talented cast led by Hugh Laurie, who plays the role of a genius doctor leading a team of diagnosticians. Smart dialogues and Sherlockian deductions, this is the grand daddy of all TV series.

If you feel that any other TV series should have featured here, drop us a comment!

A recovering economy, tainted politicians stepping down and with monster policemen almost behind bars, 2009 is in fact closing on a high note. TMH wishes its millions of readers’ (wink wink) lots of hope and cash in 2010! (Wishes are for real! – No wink wink)

Avatar - The Phenomenon

I have never seen anything like this before! Nothing!

This movie has re-defined film-making, taking things to all new levels. I was a bit apprehensive seeing this movie at first. All Friday morning I heard reviews from radio-critics saying that the film is ‘good’ in an ‘ok’ sort of a way. Go to the theatres to enjoy the special effects – they said!

Radio critics argued, there weren’t many plot elements, the story is too simple! They failed to see that, that was exactly the intention. Epics don’t have complex stories. Odyssey, Ramayana, Mahabharata, you name it. The setting is magical – and therein lies the secret! Like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, Avatar takes you on a journey to a very possible, yet magical setting. Simple, fast-paced story telling with enough plot twists to keep you glued to your 3D goggles! Now I know radio-critics weren’t around when God was handing out the noodles!

Almost all 3D movies I have seen in the past are about comical houseflies making it to the moon or blurry documentaries on humpback whales! The single most popular tool used by 3D directors in the past was thingamajigs poking out of the screen. Now clichéd, like horror movie screams. James Cameron has deliberately avoided that annoying avenue. He has composed each shot with careful attention to the depth of field in a way that makes you feel immersed in the action.

Now, other 3D movies will look up to the Avatar’s ankles!

Quips on the go!

President Zardari had a $60 Million embarrassment recently. Which was his third most embarrassing moment; after his $100 Million and $200 Million embarrassments!

According to this news report, terrorists have sneaked into India. Authorities are looking for Pashtoons and Afghans. While that may be a good idea, they may also want to look at people carrying AK-47s, grenades and howitzers!

Sources have revealed Tiger Woods’ 14^th mistress! In other related news the Tiger signed hefty sponsorship deals with Play-Boy, Hole-in-One, The Birdie and the Bunny, Strokes under par and Iron Drive, all pro-golfer magazines!

Abu Dhabi has given Dubai $10 Billion in a surprise bailout package! Who was it that said Santa Claus did not exist?

The Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi was hit in the face with a bronze statue! Shoes, as a sign of protest, have become passé now! What next, the kitchen sink?

Scientists have recently found that even fire-flies can get addicted to alcohol. Fireflies are now swarming to local bars and pubs, companies are rushing to create special beers for fireflies, sales are up, all in all there is a new buzz in town!

There are 2 days left and prospects don’t look bright for Copenhagen. Roland Emmerich, the director of 2012, took this opportunity to announce his new movie, 2013, a sequel to 2012. At least this was good news to someone!

Dead on Arrival!

Dedicated to the millions of hapless WinMo users.

If you have a smartphone running a version of Windows Mobile 6.5 or earlier, you already know about the 10 (give or take a few) applications that make up for the entire ecosystem. iPhone users may have access to a billion applications. Good luck trying to download them all. Hah; problem of plenty. We are, oh so happy with the 10 or so apps.

In what can only be termed as a superhuman effort, Microsoft launched its own appstore called Windows Marketplace for Mobiles with a collection of (hold your breath) 800 apps. Now we have a problem of plenty. Well you may think that it is a start, if not anything else. But there is a minor catch! Only a teeny-weeny one!

The marketplace does not work for Windows Mobile 6.1 or 6.0. I don’t know if it does for 6.5. Even though Microsoft says it does. Webshot below! Good news my posterior end!

I tried accessing the marketplace and was cheerily greeted with the message “Loading…” eternally. After which my phone hangs – much like our beloved windows desktops.

This can mean 2 things. The geniuses at Redmond haven’t heard of the term ‘testing’. Or they got this project outsourced to a national park in Congo, to a team of extremely hairy 300-pound-gentlemen and women.

Screenshot of the path-broken marketplace!

I have this incredible urge to go and break something. Ciao!

Amazing Visualizer!

For fellow geeks out there - try out this visualizer from the University of Utah, which lets you zoom down to the level of a carbon molecule, from a coffee bean!

Link here.

Global auto giant infringes on the Professor’s Patents!

Protest! I take strong exception to this blatant infringement of something that has been legally published, claimed and patented by the esteemed Professor way back in 1958. By professor Calculus in Tintin’s adventure in the Red Sea! If you are thinking “Oh him, he is not a real person!” you have got another ‘think’ coming! Blistering Barnacles!


Here (You can visit this link later) is the link to Nissan’s idea of personal transportation in the future! Note the uncanny resemblance to the Professor’s invention featured below as well!

Photo Courtesy here and here.

Legal eagles will note that what Nissan proposes is at best a crude, boxy imitation of the Professor’s sleek, aerodynamic design. They will also note the design similarities, while Nissan has an inflexible control stick; the Professor had thoughtfully included a flexible control stem to help with maneuverability and balance. Surely these design changes will be implemented in Nissan’s next prototype.

The professor will be turning in his grave to see his invention being copy-pasted like this! What has the world come to these days! I was worried about global warming for a moment there.

Google does not have a world map!

Strangely, I remember reading (somewhere) that the world was charted or mapped quite some time back. Guess I was wrong! Click on the image for a larger picture.

Back - Phew!

I have been out for quite a while, which my non existent readers wouldn't have noticed.

Well back to the point - The voting you see below has closed, a long time back! Banner 5 won, Duh!

Thanks to people who have voted, Amit, Girish, Pushpak and relatives!

TMH Banners!

All right - No more long and boring reviews which are longer than the movie!


How about a poll on which was the best TMH (That would be - The Morning Haha) banner! Incidentally, all of these photos were clicked at different places. Not by design really! Click on the photos to see a larger image.

Banner I: My first banner! I clicked this photo of a crossing in Mumbai. The traffic blurs made it interesting.

Banner II: This was a close up of the bar at my home in Pune. 

Banner III: I non-violently shot this pigeon on a platform at a random station in London.

Banner IV: I shot this flower in Bhandardara. (A quaint town, on the banks of a large lake, near Pune) The wind was strong, which explains the motion blur. 

Banner V: I clicked this 'photo' from an apartment in Kolkata, on the 22nd floor. I used panorama perfect lite to  stitch a couple of photos together to create this panorama. Also added the film grains myself.


Now use the voting buttons on the right hand-side of this post to choose your favorite! I will acknowledge everyone who voted for the most popular banner in my next post!

Life Partner - The reluctant review!

Spoiler Warning – If you have spent hard earned money to see this movie, I would call you the 2^nd most dumb person on this planet. Dumbest being, yours truly, who spent to watch this atrocity and is now blogging about it. If you haven’t seen this, I would urge you read this post instead! All plot bumps and potholes have been revealed.

Like the movie, let me do a bit of character development.

Hero #1: Vertically challenged, dark and effeminate star kid; he plays the role of an orthodox Gujarati boy, whose objective in life is to get married. You admire the single mindedness of this character. We movie goers usually think about a couple of other things, like breathing and eating, not this bloke.

Dysfunctional Dad: An uber-othrodox Gujarati and dad of Hero #1, he maintains a strict regime of oily hair-dos and oilier breakfast in his family. Streaks of Utpal Dutt from Golmaal appear in this character, in the way he protects his manliness, aka his moustache.

Hero #2: Not vertically challenged, not dark and effeminate star kid; he plays the role of a banker, who drives a Maserati convertible and gets promotions on a daily basis without working.

Hero #3: Actor-turned-MP-turned-Actor, fighting the battle of the bulge, double-chins, dark-circles and other thingamajigs, plays the role of a Super - Divorce Lawyer. He usually does song and dance routines, when he is not peddling divorces.

Now onto the story! For the first time in history of blogging has any blogger gone so far, revealing the entire story of a movie. Hold your breath!

Act I – Opens with Hero #2 driving his Maserati on an airport runway. In the car are his girlfriend and Hero #1.

Hero #2: Let’s overtake this plane so that I can kiss my girlfriend!

Hero #1: Don’t you have office tomorrow?

Hero #2: No, they gave me a promotion. (Song and Dance follows).

Hero #1: Then let’s go to Gujarat and get married?

Hero #2: Ok. (Marriages, more songs and dances follow)

Act II – Opens with Dysfunctional Dad reprimanding his daughter-in-law for commenting on a stock price.

Dysfunctional Dad: So what, if you have a degree from IIM Ahmedabad? Waiters here in Cape Town have degrees from IIM Ahmedabad. (Score: Life Partner 1; IIM A: 0)

Wife of Hero #1: Do not insult my father! (Hero #1 promptly gives her one-tight-slap!)

Hero #2 to his wife: I am sick of doing all the donkey-work, washing clothes and cleaning potties! Why don’t you do something?

Wife of Hero #2: Who does all the partying around here? Hah? Who? Answer that!

Hero #3: I can see business coming my way! (Divorces, sad songs and item numbers follow)

Act III – Opens with Hero #3 getting married. Please refer to item number for Hero #3’s love story.

Wife of Hero #2: I will blow everyone here at this marriage party. (With a bomb strapped to her, of course!)

Dysfunctional Dad: My eyes are opened, forgive me son (Hero #1)!

Hero #1 to his wife: Quick marry me before she blows us up! (Wife from IIM A agrees!) (Score: Life Partner 2; IIM A: 0)

Hero #2 to his wife (Who is threatening to blow everyone!): Ok I will do the donkey-work! (Wife drops the bomb and marries Hero #2!)

The End!

You can start breathing now!

Captures from Singapore

Vantage Point

Urban Sunset

Stroll by the river

Jump

Reflections?