Kaminey - the lovable one

Going for a night show at Sathyam has its own charm and ease - the road back is not so fraught with the unnerving traffic. So it was me, vasanth and his friends. Wonder why Sathyam wont have hot coffee during night hours, doesnt quite make sense to just have only cold coffee especially for the night shows. Anyways, enough of the complaining part.

The only other movie I watched that of Shahid was "Jab We Met", which was Imitiaz Ali's debut as director, and surprisingly I liked the movie. Never thought too much of Kareena and Shahid - the latter seemed to be quite happy to be called as the pocked sized Shahrukh, not just for the hamming bit but even in the unkempt hair and over the top antics. From the first frame in Kaminey, it promised to be a mad caper, with one Shahid twin lisping and the other stammering. Vishal Bharadwaj, director-music director-singer-screenplya, doesnt take too long to sketch the main characters. And come the twins, come the flashback - so we are shown rather in a short burst how the twins grew to hate each other. Charlie ( the lisp bro ) says "fortcut" for "shortcut" and carries off his part as a wannabe horse racing bookie with consistency, while Guddu stammers his way through the role of a NGO activist. Add in Priyanka as "Sweety" as the emotional Marathi spewing love of Guddu who gets "knocked up" in her inebriated moment with him. The script writer of Taare Zameen Par, Amol Gupte, plays the venomous Marathi devout "Bhope", an aspiring politician who hates the sight of Mumbai immigrants. He also happens to be Sweety's brother and does everything possible to stop Guddu's marriage to Sweety and eventually knock him off too. Tenzing Nima plays Tashi, the remorseless drug dealer, who is after a guitar filled with cocaine which accidently lands in the lap of Charlie. Few of my friends were disoriented by the camera work and rapid edits, especially the strobe filled "Dhan Tana Tan" song, which tries to bring forth the potent mix of drugs and loud music. At the intermission, the corrupt police backed by Tashi get hold of Guddu, while Bhope gets hold of Charlie. A rendezvous on the local mumbai train is staged to exchange the guitar and the twins, with each group planning to outwit the other.

The second half gives scope for the audience to engage in the love hate relationship between the twins and the visceral scheming of Bhope and Tashi who leave no stone unturned to meet their personal agendas. Add to this mix a bookie gang of bongs, who employ Charlie and have a fascination to spend on assault weapons, and wear their hearts on the sleeve. The movie moves at a rapid pace and we end for an "all for guns and drugs" type shootout including police, bhope, bongs and tashi with their respective cronies. The baddies kill each other as expected, and at the end of the movie we see the sweet couple Sweety and Guddu ending up their own pair of twins, while Charlie goes after the bigger riches in the bets on horse stables.

All in all a good gangster movie, with a superb sound track and intense acting by the cast. A must watch, even if one is not a big fan of the dark genre of Vishal Bharadwaj. 4 out of 5 !!

The Amethyst and Mocha Mojo - Coffee with a difference

Two different coffee shops ( as differnet as chalk and cheese, must I say ) in three days...in Chennai. Am sure many of the coffee lovers who prefer to have their coffee outside the safe confines of their homes once in a while, would have visited atleast one of the two - The Amethyst. The fact that it is closer to Saravana Bhavan and Sathyam makes it all the more worthwhile to pay a visit. The place apparently has been renovated to match the splendour of the years gone by : it is actually a colonial mansion. A regular plain croissant used to be a must have for me, until recently when they removed that staple item from their menu. On the latest visit, I found the potato wedges ( 110 Rs ) to be the best of the breed, accompanied by a yummy creamy dip. The crostini was not all that great, but the coffee was its usual self - good :-). My friend ordered a tender coconut which was priced at a hefty 80 rupees, but the quantity made up for the steep price.



The USP of the place are its verdant garden, ample parking space, a stately interior with plush cushion chairs, well placed steel and coir seatings under cool natural shades around the main building, and of course the fresh and well done pastries and the best potato wedges ( as on date ) in town. For those net savvy folks, the wi-fi comes at a price of Rs.60 per hour ; always find atleast one netizen hooked onto a Apple MaC ( it always has been a MaC, wonder why. Is it the same person all the time ? ).
Location : The Amethyst, Padmavathi Rd, Gopalapuram, Chennai



Mocha Mojo is all hip and jazz. Modelled on 70s retro style, with chic colours on brick styled interiors and 70's western music and a toilet to go with the overall theme, the place is a definite stand out. The few times I have been there, the place is packed mostly with college goers but there is proof of middle age and working professionals haunting the place too. Everything about the place is different, be it the glass water bottle with a cork lid and a mint plant suspended within or the hookas on the first floor or the huge mug in which the final hefty bill is brought to your table. The menu is very western and has calorie information, with no room for Indian traditional fare. Me and my friends ordered minced lamb noodles ( Rs.250 ) and a 3 egg white omellete ( Rs.180 and came with some of the best fresh italian style bread, kidney beans based tomato sauce, flavoured butter and amazing french fries ). The coffee shop offers caffeine beverages, shakes, pastries and pies, panini and pastas and more. Not a everyday hangout place, but well worth the ocassional get-together.
Location : Mocha Mojo, 72, 1st Avenue- Indira Nagar, Adyar, Chennai-20

The week that was

For all those hardcore followers of Sivagiri :
Sivagiri - The Crusader

Three issues have been in news over the last week, which probably have garnered more news bytes, second only to the swine flu. Instant hit has been BJP's "over the top - let me be first type reaction" to Jaswant's book on Jinnah; Then comes the media-savvy and smug "My name is Khan....Shah rukh(ja) khan"; and finally "Kaminey" and "Kandaswamy" ( I am afraid the early reports have called the tamil flick a dud ).



BJP is in a downward spiral, with party idealogy ( we are told they are still are not sure what it is ) being relegated to the background and LK Advani being marginalized even at a dottering age of 82. All the hoopla around mild and moderate ex-BJPer Jaswant Singh, his book and his subsequent explusion smacks of BJP's muddled thinking post Vajpayee era. Their internal mess has took roots post the lok sabha electoral debacle. Every credible political commentator vouches that none from the 20 core party members of BJP might have read the 600 something page book on Jinnah, leave alone reading between the lines. Their reaction is being ridiculed on the basis that it is Congress who indirectly are at the receiving end in the book, owing to Nehru's support for the two nation theory; Sardar Patel has not been shown as the troublemaker as is being played out in BJP circles. Jinnah purportedly has been shown toeing the logical line of seeking a separate nation owing to unfavourable bias towards the minority community. The popular verdict on who is the hero and who is the villain in the book, has not been announced as yet. Will wait for that....until then hope BJP doesnt shoot itself all over, while Congress stands by and waits for its turn to hog the limelight. That would mean lesser expenditure for the next elections - something our politicians wouldnt prefer.



SRK has taken his smugness and confidence to greater heights with his over-the-top reaction to his frisking at the NJ airport. While most of them feel that it is a publicity stunt by King Khan, he defended the same by saying that "My name is Khan" will be done only in 8-9 months; we have to give the man the benefit of doubt. He denies that he didnt feel offended because the authorities deliberately failed to acknowledge who he was, but still believe his ego got to him. But we have to appreciate the man for the kind of media empire he has built since his "Hi Chaps, Fauji" days. Congress MP Ambika Soni did put the Congress on the wrong foot when she called for an ill-advised tit-for-tat policy. She did her bit to get some news bytes, alas no match for BJP's "Quick Gun Murugan" reaction.




Kaminey, for all the negative connotations to the word, has been getting thumbs up, unanimously from all quarters. Shahid, post his "Jab We Met" performance, has managed to shrug off the tag of SRK wannabe. Vishal Bharadwaj, seen as a desi version of Tarantino, doesnt mix too much pop-candy in his serious movies - Omkara was a dark drama loosely based on Othello - and now Kaminey. Cant wait to watch this flick.



On the other hand, "Chiyan" Vikram's superhero caper Kanthaswamy is of a mind numbing length of 3hr 20 mins. The length wouldnt have mattered if it were a Lord of the Rings or a Ben Hur, instead the early reviews have been very disappointing. Shriya probably will walk off with the eye-candy honours while Vikram and Suzi Ganesan will have to get over the disappointment. It still might go onto rake in the moolah, but am sure the lead actor's and director's reputation have taken a hit. Wont watch this one, unless dragged into the theatres by unforeseen fateful forcing by faithful friends.

Landmark Quiz 09 - Chennai

Another Landmark Quiz and another bummer. While I have visited the quiz since my 10th grade, never made the cut: the closest we came was during 3rd year of college when we fell short by 1 point, that too when we were at the peak of our quizzing powers. We registered for the 18th edition of the landmark quiz (which apparently will be telecast) as a corporate team and called ourselves the "Quizzards of the Quizditch". Not sure about the total number of teams who sat for the prelims, but the Music Academy hall was full and additionally few folks were on the waiting list.
Dr.Naveen Jayakumar, who apparently is one of the top 10 eye surgeons, along with his even more quiz wise mom and another associate, set the questions for the show. The crowd, as usual had celebrities (read as the ever popular quizzer Kasturi), grandparents and their grandchildren, serious quiz veterans, and people like me - who just hoped to qualify. The prelims consisted of 40 questions, and we ended up scoring a mediocre 21, while we could have worked out easily another 6 questions, if only we had been quizzing regularly. Well, the cutoffs were way too high with the least being somewhere around 33 and the top score was a cool 37.

There were prizes for best team names from school, college and corporate respectively. Some of the whacky ones included:
H1 Anyone, H1N1 Someone, Pigs fly Swine Flu, Born to Rule-Forced to School, Dhakkan Chargers, Mama Machaan Maapillai, No Enthu Da

Incidentally, the regional winners from respective regions didn’t consist of the native folks, instead was made up of predominantly Chennaites who probably migrated to those regions for few days solely for quizzing. The top two teams from Pune, Bangalore and Mumbai joined ones from Chennai finals, and it promised to be a mouth watering affair. After a 10 minute break, the finals started with the traditional team QED lagging behind in the first few rounds. The quiz format was pretty simple - with 20 Qs split into two rounds, two buzzer rounds and one final round of 5 questions. At the end of all, two teams were tied for the top spot and three were tied for the 2nd runners-up spot. After 3 sudden death Qs, QED were crowned champions (consisting of the ever consistent VV Ramanan) while "No Enthu Da" took the second spot with Jayakanthan's team taking the 3rd spot. The winners got gift vouchers in addition to a trophy and PS2 set. Vijay Amritraj, who was accompanied by his parents, graced the occasion and was impromptu with some wisecracks. All in all a wakeup call for the likes of me, who aspire to do well year after year: dead but not buried yet.

Below are some of the prelim Qs:

1. The background female voice in the National Anthem - D.K. Pattamal
2. What does M stand for in MR Radha and M Vasanthakumar - Madras
3. The two females from India who passed away recently and were voted by Vogue as top 10 beautiful women in the world years back - Gayatri Devi and Leela Naidu
4. The element which was found by french astronomer Pierre Janssen in 1868 to exist outside earth before it was spotted on earth, and had its existence was determined in the tobacco fields in Guntur ( Something to do with liquid ) - Helium
5. The two marks usually found as footnotes in books/articles - Asterix and Obelisk
6. In FedEx word, where can you find the hidden arrow - between E and X
7. What are a bunch of bananas called - A hand of bananas
8. Where would you find the poster: What does it take to find love - a) money b) luck c) smarts d) destiny - Slumdog Millionaire
9. The answer was swine flu, don’t remember the Q
10. A dish traditionally made from Thamiraiparani River water made famous by a marwari family around 300 years ago in their shop Lakshmi Vilas - Thirunelveli Halwa
11. Which animated habitant of the bikini bottom and belonging to the spongiferes species was recently added to the Madam Tussaud's Wax Museum in NY - SpongeBob Squarepants
12. While travelling by train, at which place did Gandhi stop and was inspired to don his famous dhoti after seeing the local peasants? - Madurai
13. Other than Cricket and Tennis, in which other sport Hawk Eye technology is used? - Snooker
14. Which state accounts for 48% of the area of Pakistan and is the largest? - Balochistan
15. Who pioneered the first rath yatra - NT Ramarao
16. These two personalities were at the Systems Research Institute in Pune, while one won the Magsaysay award this year, the other had an equally profound effect on the corporate world. Who were they? - Deep Joshi and Narayanamurthy
17. Maya Kulkarni stepped in to play the tambura to accompany these two musicians in 1969 to perform in front of a couple hundred thousand of fans. Who were the musicians - Pt Ravi Shankar and Ustad Allah Rakha at the Woodstock festival
18. In HG Wells, war of the worlds, what did the Martians die of? - Common Cold
19. Who or what was part of the initial Apple Computer Corp's logo? - Isaac Newton
20. This organization got its name because the members used to meet in the offices of each other in turns - Rotary Club
21. French Open in Europe refers to the Golf Tournament instituted in 1906. By what other name is the famous tennis tournament referred - Roland Garros
22. Who or what inspired the name Yensid Retlaw for the sorcerer in the story Fantasia - Walter Disney
23. In Mahabharata, one character sought the art of warfare from a character, who had given away all his fortunes and hence decided to teach art of warfare instead. Who were the two characters? - Parashuram imparted the knowledge to Dronacharya
24. What term was coined by the Finns to refer to the weapon used by them against the Russians? - Molotov Cocktail
25. Which fictional character's death was announced in the NY times editorial in 1976? - Hercule Poirot
26. Which Kannada's poet's statue is being inaugurated in Chennai? - Saravjna
27. The decline of vulture population is a cause of worry for which community in India? - Parsee, coz they leave the dead bodies to be eaten by vultures, since they don’t bury or burn the bodies
28. Traditionally vessels are named based on the meaning of words. Which vessel gets its name from the Sanskrit version of "leaf" - Pathiram (from Patram)
29. Visual from Angels and Demons. Link with a road in Chennai - Pantheon Road, and the visual showed the Pantheon which is the temple of all gods in Greek mythology
30. Visual of Kat Kaif dressed as whom in a lakme fashion week - As Barbie
31. Visual of a game whose name is after a very popular quiz show - Mastermind
32. Visual of a building (clue a white fence), which famous American writer - Mark Twain (white picket fence in Tow Sawyer)
33. Clip of Nagesh in a movie, what is the title role - Server Sundaram
34. Visual of a personality in three different movies: Spiderman, Hulk and? - Stan Lee
35. Clip of inauguration of a building? - Hotel Atlantis in Al Jumeirah in Dubai. 7 times of Beijing Olympics fireworks used for this inauguration, which was visible from space
36. A soundtrack which was inspired by a original composition in an 1936 English movie by the maker who composed the music as well - Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times
37. Soundtrack of a movie which was to be released today - Vikram in Kanthasamy

iD - Idli Dosa at Sathyam Cinemas

With two hours to kill before the late night movie show, we stopped by the uber-cool "iD" restaurant on the first floor in the Sathyam complex. As is the case with any hotspot in Chennai, we had to wait patiently for our turn. The only thing traditional about this place was its name, rest everything was chic and novel. The waiters were decked in all black and appeared energetic in serving the fare to the eagerly awaiting clientele. After about 10 mins, we got our due table and requested for a menu card. Instead we were given what looked like a bookmark, on the back of which were listed the dishes in a novel way : Simple traditional south indian fare - broadly classified as Idli, Dosa, Vada, Pongal ( Sweet and Salt ), Beverages ( Chai, Coffee, Lassi etc ), Adai and Paeserattu, with most of them having sub classifications. We ordered Keerai vadai ( which was overdone and was hard to bite into ), Masala vadai ( quite alright ) and Medhu vadai ( the best of the lot ). Once we moved past the initial intertia, the orders just kept flowing - adai, rava and masala dosa, appam, idiappam ( accompanied by cocunut milk/khurma/veg stew ). Once we realized that we had actually come for a movie, we stopped, but not before ordering two masala chais ( very dull and too thick for a T ). The plates were of steel and reeked off modernity, so were the porcelain cups for sambar and chutneys ( green, white and red chutneys ). The prices were reasonable and the meal for the 4 of us cost around Rs.430. A nice place, only if you were to club it alongwith a visit to the movies or need to bite into something as late as 11 in the night.

Public Enemies - A short take

We caught up with "Public Enemies" at Serene/Sathyam for the friday night show. Michael Mann's previous best ones have been - Heat, The Insider, Manhunter and The last of the Mohicans - and so the obvious expectations were set for another pot-boiler. With Johnny Depp and Christian Bale thrown into the mix, the movie sure should have been an exhilarating ride.
Loosely based on the real life story of John Dillinger ( Johnny Depp ), who with Baby face Nelson and Alvin Karpis wreaked havoc with bank robberies around the great depression era ( 1929 - 1934 ), the movie sets the tone with a prison breakaway by Dillenger and his cohorts. Agent Melvin Pervis ( Christian Bale ) enters the screen blazing down Pretty Boy Floyd ( Channing Tatum in a cameo ) in the woods. The scene shifts to Edgar Hoover commissioning the FBI and appointing Pervis as the lead detective to hunt down Dillinger and the likes. The rest of the movie is the cat and mouse game played out between the agents and the robbers, with the law gaining the upper hand as the movie progresses. One by one, Dillinger's associates are gunned down and he is finally left to protect his love interest which ultimately brings about his downfall. The movie is interspersed with Dillinger's love interest - Billie Frechette ( Marion Cotillard ) and 3 clear sequences of bank robberies and an additional prison getaway.

Highlights :
The period setting, gun fights and stake outs.
Handy cam style chase sequences
Johnny Depp's simmering ruthlessness and occasional wisecracks

Letdowns :
Underutilized Bale
Slow pace of the movie
A rather weak background score
The dubbing could have been better. Dialogues appeared muffled in an effort to recreate the southern US accent of that period.

The movie overall doesnt live upto what we have come to expect from Michael Mann, but still delivers in patches. Worth one time watch. Rating - 6/10