Bangalore breaking its own Weather records

 

If there is one city on a ‘record breaking’ spree, its Bangalore. Last year,in November, the city recorded more than 256cm of rain, breaking the record of maximum rain received in that month in a 100 years.

This month, the city is breaking its temperature records, highest since 1931.

And this combined with the acute water shortage , is making the city more unliveable than ever before.

Not Ache Din for Workers

 

 

Today, Bangalore City was paralysed because garment workers demanded a rollback on all the EPF related changes proposed by the dickhead Finance Minister Jaitley. Touch the peoples savings, and they well not rest. Its surprising how the Finance Ministry can think of such idiotic steps so that they can meet their targets.

The Govt has put their new plans on hold.

Undigital India: new way to impose curfews

 

Looks like the Indian Government has found the easiest way to impose curfews, disable mobile internet services. Interestingly, the actual mobile voice services remain active.

The internet has turned out to be the single most powerful tool in the hands of the modern protestor. The Middle Eeastern ‘Spring’ movements had proven this a few years ago. Any protest, anyone angry or unhappy, directly ‘posts’ their frustation on social media, and watch as the world spreads faster at the speed of light. Everyone on twitter seems angry, and its relatively mellow on facebook. But the truth is out, internet is the fastest way to spread word, any word. Which is why it is the first thing to be disabled in any region which goes through a turmoil. A few days ago, mobile internet was cut by the government in Kashmir during the Handwara unrest.

 

And its the same story today, in Gujarat, another state of India.

I guess the idea here to prevent spread of rumours and calls for agitations by protestors. But it paints a sorry picture, and is a kind of censoring as well.

Jacobinte Swargarajyam

 

Yesterday I watched this new Mlayalam movie : Jacobinte Swargarajyam (Jacob’s Kingdom of Heaven), written and directed by Vineet Sreenivasan, and starring Nivin Pauly. I haven’t felt such a positive vibe in years watching a Malayalam movie. I went to the theatre unprepared, recent hectic work didn’t give me time to read up on it. And I was pleasantly suprised and amazed that Vineet Sreenivasan could create such a nice feel good movie. And the how of it is explained in the end. This whole rags to riches to rags to riches (2nd time) story is based on real life incidents, one of many people who lost money during the financial crisis , and that of a personal friend of Vineet. And I am sure for years to come, this people are going to watch this movie just to get inspired.

For once, Nivin is happy playing Jerry,the eldest son of Jacob, and he watches silently from the sidelines as Jacob (the fantastic Mr Renji Panikker) shows him how to run their business. He talks to Jerry as a friend, and shares his philosphy and hard work, honesty and perseverance is all that one needs to succeed in life. Jerry takes control only in the second half of the movie, where he proves that he too has his father’s business acumen and won’t give up without a fight. Jacob and family live a very comfortable life in Dubai, where he has built his empire of business. He is extremely positive, and is proud of his achievements, and wants his children to become even more successful than him. He helps the poor, and the entire family is god fearing.  His family is his everything, and he knows that when he loses everything else, his family will be his only wealth. When a family is so well settled and close to one other, what could go wrong ? And then the movie plays out exactly this scenario. His business contact cheats him of millions of Riyals, and his investors come knocking at the door wanting their money back. Jacob stands ground, and finds a way to make some money, for which he has to leave Dubai. in an very emotional scene ,he asks his eldest son to handle matters till he gets back, and leaves Dubai.

All hell breaks loose. Jacob in stuck in Liberia (I didn’t even know such a country existed). The police arrest Jacob’s wife, and Jerry. Though Jerry knows the business, the establishment is tarnished, everyone knows the company made a huge loss, so no one is ready to do busines with them. Jacob’s second son turns out, is a black sheep,and they have to sell all their properties to generate some funds. Except for very few friends, Jerry has no one to help him. The second half shows how Jerry is able to surf this tide, and slowly win back some business, and in the process, some more time from his investors. There are long voice over scenes, where Jerry recalls his father’s wisdom. Even when he makes money, his mother reminds him that none of this is theirs, it all belongs to their investors.

Even during this dark phase in the movie, there are fun, light hearted scenes and funny dialogues. Vineet inserts himself as another self made rich guy, who is the first to trust Jerry with a small business. Jerry gets a rare opportunity to diversify his business, and gets into travels too. There is another welcome cameo by Aju Varghese. Muthu, the youngest son of the family, is an absolute delight, and a little genius, per his teacher. And of course, the story takes place in Dubai, so there are many many scenes of the beautfiul city. The director intercuts the dark scenes with fun, humour and even a little stunts to keep the movie steady. There is no antagonist per se, but that charachter Murali Menon, looks scary ! He really looks like a baddie who can cause some damage.

In the end, it all ends well. The family’s hard work pays off, they are able to pay back most of the money they owe, and buy sufficient time for the  remaining . Jacob is able to return to Kerala, and the whole family gets together. But we already knew this, they were going to get through. The movie is about their journey through hardships, and how they find strengh in each other.

• Casting coup. The entire primary cast, and every other actor are fantastic in their roles. TG Ravi as the driver, Sai Kumar as an uncle. And again, Murali Menon played in such a bad ass way. But special points go to…
• Renji Panikker. He plays a convincing self made successful patriach, the ideal head of the family. So when he falls, you feel his paint. Renji Panikker’s acting turns out better than his screen writing (from yesterdays..)
• Nivin does a superb job playing the eldest son , thrust with all the responsibilites of looking after his family. His humour is still on track, and cries and emotes as well.
• I was never a fan of Sreenath Basi, but turns out , this guy can actually act ! …if the charachter is wrtten for him. His deadpan humour contrasts Nivin’s, and gets to show off his singing skills as well.
• Lakshmi Ramakrishnan plays a caring well doting mom in the first half, and a brave mom in the second half. Even when she scolds, there was laughter in the audience, looks like no one can fight with this one mom.
• The cinematography and backgound music was awesome ! There is nice use of music throughout, lots of piano, strings..that first Onam song was fantastic ! It was nice of them to focus on Onam , even though the entire family is christian. Jomon T John surely knows his craft , and is improving with every movie.
• Vineet Sreenivasan has finally arrived as a capable, and smart director. Most of his movies featured youngsters, but shows finesse telling a family entertainer story. I still feel is a better director than an actor. Maybe he should quit acting fully, because there is surely a shortage of good directors.
• Dubai ! The scenes of the huge city play almost as another characther in the movie. Its only the last scenes which take place in Kerala, and you can finally feel the background shifting from a metopolitan city to green country side. They also satorize the sorry state of Indian roads, and KSRTC buses, an 50 years from now when you watch this movie again, that joke will still work.

 

Go out and watch this with your family. It could be the best family movie this year.

Stephen Colbert has the best writers

 

It seems I have a lot of free time at work nowadays. When I have to wait for things to get compiled, which sometimes take upto 45 minutes, I switch over to the web to ‘waste time’. Most of the time, I end up on youtube again, watching uploads of American Late Night shows. Fallon and Conan are two regulars, but then I stumbled upon Stephen Colbert.

Now every Late Night host out there has his own stlye. Fallon mostly plays games and music, uses twitter a lot and reads out jokes. Conan is plain sarcastic, uses his deadpan on anything. But Colbert by far has the best writers. His jokes blend into his dialogue, he even builds his own specially when debating things. No games, no sarcasm from him. He is just your friendly funny host. But then his writers come up with bizarre ideas to host a segment.

Take a look at this segment where he interviews Bruce Willis.

That has some phenomenal editing in there. Its obvious and visible that they used doubles for the actual stunt scenes, but then the edited that footage into the live camera footage, and the audience reaction is genuine. Fun part is that even the band plays their part fantastically. I have never seen any talk show make something like this.

Or this one: This episode aired after the Superbowl show. Stephen’s live show is cut with footage from Iraq, footage from Internation Space Station, and even the POTUS.

Once you see it, you can make out which parts were pre-taped earlier, and how they all fit in. But this is really awesome work ! Its clear that Colbert has a great team in place, specially the writers.

Check out this new one  !!