Stuart Broad

The dude must be cursed when it comes to T20! In the first T20 world cup, he was clobbered for 6 sixes in one over by Yuvraj singh: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l4Hyv0Utrs - courtesy of Flintoff rubbing Yuvraj on the wrong side before that over - and now he misses 3 run outs and drops a catch, all in a crucial last over, against the Dutch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zODrolR8TVc. If he wasn't demoralized back then, it's really hard not to be now. 

On a related note, everytime I start thinking T20 is not here to stay, something exciting happens and proves me wrong. If at all anything is going to be affected by the constant rise of T20, it's the ODIs, definitely not the Tests. I remember when I was India in 2007, after watching India win, there was no interest in the ODI series (against Australia, I think) after that. It seemed like it took forever for every single match to finish. Now there are rumors that there is a rift between thala Dhoni and Sehwag. Yeah right, like there isn't enough drama in T20! 

On another related note, GO CHENNAI SUPER KINGS!!!! 

Sarvam

Apparently, I don't learn from my mistakes! As shocking as that may sound (or not), it's very true. I read the movie reviews online and fall for them time and again. Sarvam proves that past achievements don't count when it comes to making movies. You just have to be at your creative best to churn out good movies every time. I went to watch this movie in a theater instead of opting to download it online only because it was directed by someone who had given decent movies like Arindhum Ariyaamalum and Pattiyal. 

I was just beginning to like the way the titles were being shown and that's where it ended. Right after the titles, we see a song with a Michael Jackson-ish video with the hero generally singing about enjoying life, in Ilaiyaraja's voice. When the song ends, there is no connection at all to the next scene. What, they don't even care to show it as a dream song these days? 

This movie was advertised as a romatic thriller. There was a little bit of the romantic part, but the thriller part was completely missing. May be that was it! Just because there is a guy with a beard, repeating the same dialogues with a serious face, are we supposed to feel like we are watching a thriller? The only good thing that I could say about this movie is the songs. It's not even worth watching this movie online. What a waste of $11! 

Best Side Dish EVER!

For the poor vegetarian buggers out there, the name is chicken-65. Don't ask me the reason for the name.  I have done enough research and no solid explanations yet. For me, it is the ultimate  appetizer/snack for beer and if you are a non-drinking unlucky soul, it goes very well with curd rice. I made this last night and one of my neighbors told me this morning that whatever I was cooking last night smelled really good and she felt like knocking on my door in the middle of the night. I will take that as a compliment and she absolutely has no idea that I don't share! ;)

True Friends INDEED!

As I continue my reminiscing ways, there is one incident that happened during my school days that I remembered and wanted to write about today. I believe it was during my 11th grade. There was this girl from my colony that I was crazy about since my 7th grade, but I have never talked to her even once. She didn't even know I existed until a couple of months before this incident. 

One fine evening, I decided that I should talk to her and told two of my best friends Karthik and Balaji about it. Like all good friends, they were happy about it and motivated me more. The truth was, they were sick of my everyday ramblings that go something like "Machaan, nethu ava ennai paatha da!" (She looked at me yesterday) and they wanted it all to end. I wanted them to go along with me for moral support and of course to help me out if I get beaten up by the roadside do-gooders seeing a damsel in distress.  Surprisingly, they agreed without a second thought. 

The plan was to confront (that's right!) her when she gets out of her ______ training. It's a good 2 Kilometers from there to her house, so I was sure that I can make her talk to me before she gets close to her house. When she walked out of her class, I saw that there was a kid walking along with her. I recognized him as her neighbor and with the hopes that he wouldn't know me, I approached her leaving my friends behind after getting their blessings. As soon as she saw me walking towards her, I could clearly see she was getting all nervous. She started walking as fast as she can. When I caught up with her, I was panting! Without going into the details, except for the fact that all I managed to say was "Hi", I was VERY VERY disappointed at the end! After watching her walk away, realizing that I had managed to get her all mad at me, I wanted to talk to my friends real bad. I turned around looking to hear some consoling words and imagine my surprise when I couldn't see them anywhere in the line of sight in any direction. After about 5 minutes of standing there all alone, I saw them walking towards me from far away. Even my sad face couldn't stop them from laughing! What can I say, my friends are just pretty good runners! 

By the way, that blank up there, it's Karate!!! 

Duplicity

The story was very confusing for the first 15 minutes or so or atleast I felt that way. Actually, I think it was the beer! I was at one of the very few theaters where they serve beer. Nothing could be better than this combination of the two things that I love the most – Movies and Beer. May be you greater mortals won’t have the same problem. If I remember right, this is one of the movies that belong to the fun category, without worrying about the logic, after a long time, since Ocean’s 11. Yes, Duplicity belongs to the category of Heist/Spy flicks, except that it’s not money or jewelry that they are trying to steal. But, there is a major difference here compared to the other movies of the same kind, which will leave you wanting more at the end. You should watch it to know it.

I liked Clive Owen’s acting when I first saw him in Derailed though the movie wasn’t as good. Here he seems to be repeatedly fooled by Julia Roberts, only to find out that it’s not him who is being fooled, but it’s us, the viewers. One second he is the victim and the next moment he takes control with ease. I am still wondering if he would have made a better and a much cooler James Bond than the very serious Daniel Craig. And then there is the inimitable Julia Roberts with her trademark laugh. Assuming this is not a remake of some older hollywood movie or a foriegn language movie or an adaptation of a comic book, it's an original Hollywood movie that I thoroughly enjoyed after a very long time. 

LOL!

Anu and I were on a call with my friend Shiva to wish him for his birthday. Suddenly, the topic diverts to women and driving.

Shiva: Women can't drive!

Anu: Don't put me in that list. 

Me: Oh yeah, I remember now, Anu said men can't multitask.

Shiva: Eei, enna pechu pesare, do you know how hard it is to manage 3 girlfriends at the same time? 

Good one dude!

Super-hyped Millionaire

Seriously, 8 Oscars for this movie? Clearly shows how the Oscar selection committee gets it wrong time and again. I haven't seen any of the other movies that were nominated in the Best Motion Picture category, but I don't have to be psychic to know that there was surely a much better movie that deserved the award. The best part of the movie was the last 5 minutes, when they manage to make you sit up and think if he is going to answer that last question or not. 

And to think that some celebrities in India made such a big deal out of this movie by making smart-ass comments describing how the movie shows India in a bad light, it's just hilarious. Mr.Bachchan, you have to know when to shut your mouth. If someone sees a duet that you have done with heroines running around a tree and says that Indians are silly and stupid, would you have stopped doing that? We don't do that in real life, do we? It's all about the money dude! You have made enough, now let others do the same. 

Though I am glad A.R.Rahman won two Oscars - for something that he himself accepted was not his best work - I don't understand what qualifies a song to get nominated in the best song category. Does it have to be part of a famous movie? Hopefully from now, more of our music gets recognized globally! If there was one category that this movie deserved an award in, it's the editing. It takes a lot of effort to make sense with a non-linear screenplay. Kudos on that! 

Norman Days

Of all the places in the world, I decided to come to Oklahoma to do my Masters. Let’s just leave it at that as this post is not about that. For a change, I am going to pour out some of the nice (Cricket) memories. When I was desperately searching for something to do, other than the courses I was enrolled in, suddenly there was talk about a tennis ball cricket tournament! There were three apartment/residential complexes with major Desi presence. I lived in an off-campus place called Essex Square, nicknamed the unofficial Indian Consulate by the International Student Office. There was an on-campus place called Kraettli and finally another off-campus place called Bishops Landing, where the people who usually don’t get an apartment at either of the first two places go.

It was decided that there would be three teams, each representing the respective apartment complexes. Somehow I managed to get into the team that was full of Telugu guys with my nice guy attitude, or so I would like to think. I can vaguely remember that they were one guy short and hastily added me as the last member, since I lived next door to the captain.

On a fine Saturday morning, we all set off on a mission, wearing full hand shirts and jeans with bright white sneakers! As we arrived at the ground, I realized that the ground was indeed a huge parking lot! My knees started aching just thinking about playing on that hard surface, especially since I hadn’t done anything that could be termed as physical activity in the past 6 months or so. Soon we found out that the Bishops Landing team is not going to show up. So, it was decided to have a best of three tournament between Essex and Kraettli. I don't remember much about any of my contributions in the first game, but we lost it. The next game was in the afternoon on the same day. I remember contributing towards an important wicket by taking a blinder of a catch, which turned the match in our favor. We did win that match. As expected, we did lose the final match the next day. One thing I understood was that the people from the Kraettli team were always trying to bully us, whether it was a run out decision or a wide ball. 

During the subsequent semesters I became a little known to the extent of captaining the Essex team. Though there were other teams in the mix with all the new arrivals fresh off the boat, it was always our arch rivals Kraettli, who were stomping us everytime we were in the finals. On one such instance, I was bowling the last over with Kraettli needing 12 runs in 3 balls to win, with the last pair in the middle. The last batsman actually limped to the striker's end. He was a small skinny guy. Obviously, I wasn't taking him seriously. I can bowl at a good pace and if I am not bowling wides, it would turn out to be a good ball. I decided that I should bowl slow balls in order to prevent wides. The batsman was standing there like a baseball batter, with the bat up in the air. I smirked as I was running in and bowled a slow but full length ball. The next second it disappeared over the long on boundary. It was a six. I was astonished at what just happened. There were still 2 balls left and I still had some confidence left that we could win this. Next ball I bowled a little faster and it ended up full again. One more baseball-like swing and one more six over long on. Everyone in my team just stood there for what seemed like an eternity while the batsman was carried away by his teammates! They couldn't believe that I single-handedly lost that game. Even today, my friends make sure that I don't forget that over. 

The next semester we came back with a vengeance (it was about time) and the matches were played in a proper cricket ground that OU had provided for the Sooner Cricket Club. By now I had become a kattaan and it gave me great sense of satisfaction that people would justt stay at the boundary line when I bat. Since we used to play almost everyday with the same people from Kraettli, they knew we had better players than their own. They brought in new players who used to play for the Sooner club - the ones that played league games with the actual cricket ball. I had Ajai, the best batsman I could have, Shiva, who could bowl great leg spin, Roux, who can hit boundaries at will, and Ravi, the other kaattan of the team, just to mention a few of my good players! At the beginning of the game, it was unanimously decided that the captain would not bowl ;), so I donned the role of the wicketkeeper. Even before Kraettli could start scoring, they were all out for some 60 odd runs in 13 overs. One of the highlights of the game was a diving catch I took off of a leg glance. Shiva did well with his deceiving leg spinners. I was literally praying to Sachin that Shiva shouldn't start bowling wides as I very well knew we might as well walk away, if that happened. Ajai and Ravi picked up most of the wickets with their wibbly wobbly medium pacers.

I opened the batting with Ajai. We didn't show any urgency as we took our own time, scoring in singles. By the time we crossed 10 overs, Ajai was gone and Roux was in and he started hitting sixes. Soon, I joined in and finished off the match with a boundary. It was a great win, for which I had to wait for almost 3 years. We even took pictures after to savor the moment and to rub it in on Kraetli's players' sad faces. They had talked a lot before the game, like we should have LBWs, as they claimed that most of the Essex players use cross-bat shots. Well, we showed them what those shots could do! 

Vennila Kabadi Kuzhu

After watching Subramaniapuram, I was craving more movies with a village backdrop. If it's combined with a sports theme, nothing could be sweeter than that! The main theme of the movie is Kabadi and there is a love story on the side to go with it.

It's about a local Kabadi team in a small village overcoming all odds and making it big against some professional teams in a major tournament (yes, it's not an unusal story these days). They are mocked for not winning any games and for wasting time in the name of Kabadi without doing anything useful. The team members range from a couple of bachelors to a newly married man and a tea-shop owner, whose mother in law keeps cursing him for nothing. Then, there is the hero, a very ordinary unknown face, who is just the substitue player of the team at the beginning. 

There are no unnecessary characters in the movie in the name of comedy or villain-ism(?!)- everyone has a purpose, from the bus driver to the rival team members. Speaking of comedy, everyone does their own bit to tickle our funny bone, in a genuine way. Watch out for the parotta eating challenge - it's comedy at its subtle best! Of course, the Kabadi matches don't match the intensity of the Cricket matches of Lagaan or Chennai-600028 for that matter. The climax left me very unsatisfied! I guess the director wanted to shock the audience and he sure did it, but I felt it was totally unnecessary. Overall it was a fine movie with loads and loads of nativity and a sensible screenplay, which seems to be missing in most movies these days! Vijay and Ajith need to watch this movie atleast a 100 times to learn...NO, they should just stop acting, because they will never learn!

A Wednesday

If there was ever a movie that defines the phrase 'Short and Sweet', this should be it. No beating around the bush in the name of character development, no crappy duets, no fight/song to introduce the hero, no punch dialogues, nothing that you see in most of the Tamil movies these days. Hits the spot right from the beginning and keeps up the intensity throughout the movie. Both the lead actors, Anupham Kher and Nasseerudhin Shah, fit their parts to a T. When I first heard that they were doing the lead roles, I was a little apprehensive about it, but then they proved beyond any doubt that they can bring in aggression from nowhere, no matter how old they are. As mush as I hate to admit it, Hindi movies are proving to be something far better than Tamil movies.
Now, here comes the best part! Apparently, Kanalhassan has bought the remake rights to this movie and plans to make this in Tamil with Mammooty/Mohanlal. If anone can do justice to this story, it's definitely Kamalhassan. I do not have an iota of doubt that this remake - if it ever happens - will be light years ahead of the original. But, you know what? I'd rather have Nasser doing the Police Commisssioner and Kamalhassan do the role of the terrorist, which would be a complete reversal of what they did in Kuruthipunal. Wouldn't that be something?

Fast but not Furious!

If I have not mentioned before (oh, I sure know I have) that I drive a BMW 325i, here is a chance to bring it up again. Since I have never posted anything about my car in the 3 years that I have owned it, you have to bear with me now. When I was looking to buy a new car or a used car 3 years ago, this is the first car I looked at. With only 24k miles to show for 5 years, it looked brand new. I took it for a test drive and absolutely fell in love with it. No wonder I named it 'Lakshmi Reloaded', as a tribute to my first car Lakshmi. A week later, it was parked in MY garage! If you are wondering where I am going with this, hold on my dear readers (yes, both of you). 

I was driving back home from the gym today at about 7pm and stopped at a red light. A Ford Mustang pulled over to my right. I looked at them and there were two guys with shaved heads in it. The guy in the driver's seat looked at me and said something. I had my windows rolled up, so I couldn't hear him and I didn't bother to roll them down either. Then, he started pointing with his hand towards the road ahead of us. He wanted to race! Though it was very tempting, with an empty road ahead of us , I managed to ignore him. As the lights turned to green, he sped ahead of me, like I accepted his challenge. As my ill-fated luck would have it, the next lights were red and he was waiting there for me. When I pulled over next to him, he was laughing so loud, I could hear him even with the windows rolled up. My ego was bruised, to say the least. Again, when I looked at him, he was pointing towards the road ahead of us. My heart was racing now. The not-so-good-side of me was taking control. From that point, there are two more lights and I decided to take my chances hoping the lights wouldn't be red and I could take the left at the second lights to get to my garage. 

The moment the lights turned green, I gave it all the gas I could. The mustang was able to keep up with me but not after I shifted to second and accelerated. Soon, I could see them on the side view mirror. Without mentioning the speed here, let's just say that I was way ahead of them! And this time, all the lights were green and I took the turn as I watched them go past the lights on my rear view mirror. Oh, what a satisfaction! I am still trying to wipe the grip off of my face after 2 hours!

Moral of the story - Mottai adichavan ellaam Vin Diesel aayida mudiyadhu! (Everyone with a shaved head can't be Vin Diesel)