B2BC (Back 2 Being Crazy)!

B2BC - Well as the post says, unlike traditional meaning of B2B and B2C, B2BC stands for Back to Being Crazy! Well this time, yday i thought of making it to Mungaru Male once again and HUDUGAATA back2back (7:15 and 10:00 PM shows).

As said in one of the previous blog, i cudnt get ticket sometime back. So i tried online and it was quiet easy to book and get the ticket. Only complaint about this process is, even after booking the ticket, one needs to stand in the Very BIG queue @ PVR to get the printed tickets to enter into the Screening Hall! As i had enough time and relatively not a lengthier queue, this wasn't a problem this time! But am sure it wud be if u have arrived late and see a VERY LONG queue!

Though it was for a second time, i enjoyed MUNGAARU MALE totally! Couldnt resist to eat all sorts of junk food as I was going to start a WEEK long CRASH DIET program starting today! [;)] Came out of the hall @ 10PM and decided to try if i can get tickets for HUDUGAATA! It was available and i got in with little excitement as i was tired. But eagerness to finish off Ganesh's movie made me to hang out with the theater for some time! The little excitement which I had, completely melted within few minutes of the movie commencement! The reason being, everything appeared so SICK! Ganesh's acting was reasonably ok. At times it appeared very artificial! The plot though is a direct COPY of "A Journey into Woman's Heart" - Dil Hai Ke Manta Nahin, it lacks the narration style of the ORIGINALCOPY [:D]! As IDEA NAREN pointed out few days back, scenes appeared to end abruptly several times, which is definitely a NO-NO! The director SANJAY has to get some basic film making training!

The act of daring the director - producer duo possess claiming that it is their original script, is definitely laudable! Even the punch line A Romantic Journey, appears to have been copied from the DHKMN! In one of the songs, the tune appeared to have been cut directly from RAMANA GOGULA's number! The only PLUS point the movie has, is the beautiful Photography by Sathya Hegde! Narendra, swalpa avradhu rate yeshtu keLlhi sir...... Choreography is also really great! APART from 3 songs the movie is a TOTAL ZERO!

Incidentally the ticket number for Mungaru Male was K 10 and for HUDUGAATA was L 10. My lucky number appears to be 1. That was little pleasing amidst the chaos of HUDUGAATA!

Another thing i observed was in one of the songs the director friends YOGARAJ BHATT and SURI of DUNIYA fame has same location and same scene but with different actors as in Mungaru Male and DUNIYA! Accepted the fact they did so many things together being friends, is it really necessary to have the same scenes in a song for around 30 seconds? This trend initially i had observed in DIL and Aashiqui several years back. Was the choreographer the same (or is it really got anything to do with choreography?). I came out of the theater once the song Yeno ONthara was over, and time was sharp 12:15AM! Had a very sound sleep starting from 1:15 :)

BTW how are the snaps taken from my N95? [;)] Still the relation is going strong, VERY Strong! Guys switch over to NOKIA N-series!

KALMANE KOFFEE @ The FORUM with my N95!

Well, Today was one of the day of being upset for reasons unknown! My way of refreshing on such days is being all by myself, watching a movie, shopping for an unknown item, sipping coffee repeatitively.
I drove back home to make it to an appointment. Being very reluctant to make it to the appointment, i rang up the person and found he was running late. That excuse was good enough to postpone the appointment! This started getting me back into the moods... The cloudy weather was like a icing on the cake. I was trying to capture the rain thru my N95 for past 2 weeks, but the rain and I were never together. This time, it just tempted me without really raining or pouring. :D
I decided i will move towards PVR, as i had good number of movies waiting for me. Made it @ 3rd floor of 'The FORUM' sharp 6:55. I was gload to see the vacant KIOSK, I browsed thru the movies - first tried

• Hudugaata - booked
• Cheeni KUM - booked
• Shootout @ Lokhandwala - booked
• Mungaru Male - booked (i thought of seeing for the second time)
• Life in a Metro - booked (i thought of seeing for the second time)
• Aata - show was not there

I saw some gal waiting behind me to try her luck, I decided i will quit.
Went to SUBWAY, tried the Veggie Sandwich, Somehow i like the sandwiches of SUBWAY; they are really really good!
I felt it was too early to head back. Got into LANDMARK, spent almost an hour and picked up

• Enrique - INSOMNIAC - As of now it sounds good, bonus track of remix of HERO is great
• FLAVORS - an NRIs Desi movie which I had seen on STAR MOVIES, felt could be a good addition to my album
• METRO
• The BEST OF George Michael - DVD
• ASHANTI - RAIN ON ME - DVD
  Lately am trying to study the MUSIC Videos! :D

Incidentally after returning home and unpacking the CDs, i found the DVD ASHANTI - RAIN ON ME being missed in the packed item from LANDMARK. The guys have said they will sort out the issue tomorrow when i visit them. Am not sure what they mean by sorting the issue. They have to just give me another COPY!
After being exhausted at LANDMARK, i took the snap of this Ad, its a good work, but not sure how relevant it is, for the Perfume. (it appeared for a moment as a condom ad) :D

Got into Kalmane KOFFEE, it really looks great! I was the lone customer sitting there between 8:10 and 8:30. I wish i could have opened the other DVD rather than opening George Michael's and METRO CD and dirtying the place. Have to visit again tomorrow by which am sure i will burn some more cash! Hurriedly added few words on KALMANE like the earlier POST just to do justice for the TITLE! BTW the coffee tastes really very good! Better than the Jayanagar Kalmane! BTW all the images are being taken using my N95! N95 really ROCKS! If you are crazy like me, try N95, u will ROCK too! [;)]

Coffee @ Kalmane along with my Nokia N95!

I bought Second Nokia Phone in my life couple of weeks back. The first one has been several years back in the US which was really very cute! I donot remember anything(model, specs etc) of that phone. My first cell phone in Bangalore has been a decent Samsung model (i dont remember the model either) which was quiet expensive! Then i switched to LG reliance, for the only reason that i wanted (my Laptop) to be ONLINE 24X7, especially when i was travelling. This was some time in 2004 I guess!

Later, once i saw Motorola Phones, for reasons unknown, i fell in love and had the below models

• A760 - a LinuX Phone (use to SUCK)
• MPX200 - Win CE Phone (Lovely Phone - couple of my friends bought this bcoz of me!)
• E398 - Not a Smart Phone (Decent but Good, Lost during my last trip - probably a mexican house keeping maid stole!)
• V3i - the color looked pathetic (Dumb investment! It SUCKS! ONly difference from V3 is that it has additional storage, but some how it looks very bad to me!)
• Black RAZR - V3 - i just LOVE this! (For the Sleek & Sexy Looks!)
  

I kept on waiting for Moto Q for quiet some time (nearly 2 years since the time it was launched in US) but it never was anounced in India!

Lately i got fascinated abt capturing some moments of life through the lens, thats when i started looking seriously @ Camera Phones! When i say Camera Phones, i really mean quality Camera. Somehow i felt Motorola Phones donot have enough capability of camera functionality, thats when i started looking outside. I read good remarks on Nokia N93 and N93i. I went to the shop and asked the guy to show me N93i. The person after giving enough good info on N93i, showed me N95 and advised me to go for N95 and also added that N93i will be discontinued. I got confused and returned back. After looking at good reviews on N95, finally decided to go for it. Once i bought this, i am really in LOVE with this gadget, atleast till now!

This is ALL-IN-ONE gadget! Apart from Voice Call, SMS features the other features i seek in a device are

1. MP3 Player
2. Enough Storage (N95 has 1 GB)
3. Video Player
4. TV Out (Optional, but I always wanted this).

In addition to the above, I had this requirement (lately) of Camera capability! N95 has pleased me exceptionally WELL with all the features!

Though i started to write this blog to show the pics taken through N95. I thought i would give a brief overview of my journey thru different Cell Phones. One of my new friend, suggested me to try Picassa. Am equally amazed by the tool and the cool feature of automatically generating a Collage out of few snaps impressed me quiet a lot! The above image is a collage made in 5 seconds with the snaps taken using my N95!

BTW did I mention that N95 costs Rs. 32K? Well quiet a few of my friends thought i was MAD to buy this one, i defended saying that "being single and not having Luxury(?) of spending both Time / Money with the Spouse gives me FREEDOM to go for this". But am not yet quiet sure which one is better, may be I will update when i experience the other one!

BTW, there is this place called as KALMANE KOFFEE @ Jayanagar which is really very cool - this is just to make justice for the title of this POST! :)

My Latest Craze!

I bumped into Music WORLD last weekend. As i have been lately hearing to FM, got hang of some hummable numbers like

• CHEENI KUM's (SUGAR LESS :D) number Jane Do Na...
• Hudugaata's number Yeno Onthara...
• Soundarya's Hrudayada Maatu...

Am little well-known for playing a song in a loop for days...

Picked up

• CHEENI KUM
• HUDUGAATA

along with

• ARR's Pray for me brother - bought it for the DVD (well yet to listen / watch it though...)
• BEYONCE's Beautiful LIAR - (Music Video DVD is a PLUS though am not yet sure abt the songs). Incidentally Shakira (which tempted me to buy) has performed with Beyonce
• PREM's - Preethi Yeke..........

Well after listening to the 3 songs for nearly 50 times each, tried what else were there in the albums, I found

Ommomme heego from Hudugaata being a foot tapping number and is rendered by Alisha Chinai and Zubeen Garg. This is runnning for the past 14 hours and still going strong [:)]

What is Cricket's Alternative?

Well it was almost during this time last year i got an hang of NBA Championship (Basket Ball Championship) when i was @ Dallas, TX. As i might have mentioned in one of my earlier blogs, three things i caught up with, during my last visit were AMERICAN IDOL, AMERICA's Next Top Model and the great NBA Championship (Basket Ball Championship). For some reasons i did hate to watch any of the programmes on the US Television earlier to witnessing the above programmes.

Since my colleagues @ Dallas were visiting us (me and an another friend) to watch NBA games at our place, i started following the same. Very soon, not only i started enjoying the game, use to cheer for Mavericks. The Key players for Mavericks were Nowitzki, Jerry Stackhouse, Josh Howard and the names were as familiar as Sachin, Saurav and Dravid. Nowitzki was like Dhoni who single handedly made Mavericks to win several games. His Three-pointers were like Dhonis Sixes which use to accelerate the score board as well as the excitement. Thus started my love for American Television Programmes - First one being NBA!

A brief about the game could be found here. Usually the matches are of 7 games. Each team is a host for the alternate games. So if MIAMI Heat is playing against DALLAS Mavericks, the matches are played alternatively @ MIAMI and Dallas, giving the Home Crowd Advantage for the Host Side. The way the teams are introduced with lot of lights, music and dancing is fun to watch. I think lately am witnessing gals dancing for 4s, 6s or a wicket in one-day cricket matches. This concept, is pretty easy to guess that it has been copied from Basket Ball. I found BasketBall was more fun, fast with lot of excitement. Being a die-hard cricket fan, it was difficult to digest the fact, that i started finding one-day cricket a boring game, lately. Especially after India failed miserably @ the World CUP. Maybe 20-20 is an answer to that sort of fun. Whoever wins 4 games first, is the winner, unlike our ODI series, where the teams play, even if one team has washed the other 6-0.

Coming to Cricket, earlier i held pride in being a Cricket Fan, for the only reason that - the Nation is UNITED atleast for this purpose. As you mature and start work, spending whole day glued to the TV, or Cricinfo.com is Foolishness. This way one is Inefficient @ Work and Not giving enough Time to Spouse, Family or Friends in their Personal Life is . What makes things worse is the fact that our players showing miserable performance @ the Greatest Cricket Event - the World CUP, disrespecting the entire Fan Following. Anyways there can never be a Alternative as the Madness of Cricket is hard to take out.

Just to list some games, I found

1. KABADDI - [Plz Dont laugh] - an interesting alternative for the reasons it doesnt kill time like Cricket, Players might not play for statistics, atleast there might not be sponsorors queing up and giving huge endorsements to these players, and one cannot spend lot of time in the kabbadi court saying Kabaddi, Kabaddi, Kabbadi without getting tired (we can imagine how it would be if Saurav does this). As our script writers are lacking innovation i would give one idea "Enuff Cricket, Let's Do Kabaddi" which can be a hit considering the fact that there is a huge let down on Cricket. Indeed the very Cricket Sponsorors should sponsor such kind of Movie Making.


2. HOCKEY - Does any one remember that once upon a time we use to be the leaders in this game. Thanks to (un) gentleman Gill, whose focus is butts than sticks, amidst administering the game.


3. GILLI Dhanda - One needs to professionalise this game


4. LAGORI - I guess this closely resembles Base Ball


5. KHO-KHO - Yuvraj can do a good job, we can recruit Jonty as a Coach for this

Women who touched my life and my thoughts!

Well these are couple of collages which i did some weeks back for Intl Women's Day. Even before i started working on this, i knew i would do a good job and was aiming at a prize for the collages. Incidentally the organizers of the competition made the job pretty easy bye giving the topic - Women who touched our lives! Being a capri, obviously, many women had touched my thoughts with their success. But these women had not touched my lives. My Mom, Sis, Aunt, Teachers, Few Friends and Colleagues had definitely touched my LIFE and they had made a tremendous influence on my life. I think this is the fact for every male human. I decided i will make a single collage with two meanings in it

• An Inner Circle at the center conveying about the women who touched my lives and



• An Outer circle conveying about the women who touched my thoughts!

Since the spouse or better half was also as important (if nore more important for some [:)] ) as others and since i hadnt had that experience as yet, i still decided i will make her presence felt in the inner circle. This way i arrived at the idea behind my collage.

I first downloaded images of Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams (kalpana was the one who had influnced my thoughts of aiming for sky high ambition)- their images were really very great. Then thought of Mother Teresa - incidentally i was influenced of her for only reason that she had influenced Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty - who has created a revolution in the Modern Day Healthcare in India. The Yeshaswini - Insurance programme for Farmers is his baby - though the normal public have no clue about it. Then thought of some modern day spiritual leaders, as i didnot want to have a communal angle to the collage i dropped that idea. Had the sense of proud on Kiran Majumdar, Indra Nooyi and Padmasree Warrior, thats how i roped them in. Then always being influenced by music i added Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhonsle. Though never had the opprotunity of listening to Gangubhai hangal and MS Subba lakshmi i knew they were much above than what lata and asha were to filmi music. Sania Mirza was indeed one of the recent success stories. Use to be agreat fan of Steffi Graf & Aish and to add little glamour i bought them in and added Sharapova too. I coined the words for each of the above category of women as below -

• Sjy High Ambition - Kalpana



• Compassionate Love and Service - Mother Teresa



• Passion with Power - this was influenced by the image i got



• Discipline with Thought Leadership (somehow i got these words for corporate women)



• Dedication for women from Musical field

The above did not make the outer circle complete and so was wondering whom else to add in and so thought of Sonia Gandhi and added sarcastic words Innovative Leadership to be non-political about her presence. Thoughr of adding Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton, somehow missed them. Thus the outer circle was done.

Now the inner Circle - definitely i cannot put the real life characters here, but only the concept which conveys the person. This time I tried Google Text Search and ended up at National Geographic Site. That week they were airing programm on neo-natal care, there were pretty impressive images on a baby at various stages of life in the womb. I collected 2 of them and somehow was keen to have both of them. Then i got a good image of a younger brother being taken care by a sister. I was tired of searching for images. I had spent almost 8 hours on this (4 hours at office and 4 hours at home), i just wanted to finish this and crush into the bed. It was already 2:30 AM in the morning. Luckily i found a very good image of couple. I decided i was done. I spent another hour and half with Adobe Photoshop till 4 AM in completing the collage. I felt great after a long day work. But somehow the inner and outer cirlces were not connecting.

Spoke to some friends the next day and the day after. Every one said it was great but they were wondering what the collage was communicating. The weekend i sat for 4 hours and cut them into 2 images. The image out of inner circle came out quiet good.

I found the words were also very much connecting the thoughts i wanted to convey

• Precious Nine Months


• Mother Care


• Trusted Arms to Grow Along


• For Journey called "Rest of Life"

As there was 'Seamless' word buzz every where coined a name to the collage SEAMLESS LOVE - which conveyed the same love being experience seamlessly experienced by a man from a woman either in the form of a mother or a sister or a teacher or a collague or a friend or a spouse. I was really excited how this whole experience of funny collage making experience had ended up. I became very emotional in the process of making this inner collage because everything was coming from my Heart. Also i realized what difference being passionate can make to the output of the work. Though usually am a very passionate person, offlate was a lesser passioante than i typicall use to be. I felt I was done with the collage making.

Just since i had this thought of finishing off the other collage also, and as almost 90% of the job was done. Somehow with very little interest i finished this off too.

But i did a good job in adding the text while submitting

For Women who inspire my thoughts of unconventional thinking. Thinking, that is inspired by their success based on their

• Compassionate Love & Service for Mankind
• Discipline driven with Thought Leadership
• Dedication for the Art / Creativity
• Passion Powered to Excel
• Innovative Leadership during Crisis
• Realisition of Sky High Ambition
• Hardwork

A Very HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN's DAY to the current Ambitious, Globally Connected Women Community!

I myself was amazed to see if it was I who has written all this. In fact i was impressed with the job done.

Finally, the result was - the second collage had got the second prize. [:)] What bothered me most (for a while) was how come a less-passionate work done, got better appreciation than the one which i had completed with more passion. Finally as the good old saying goes, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.

The grand prize I got was the sense of happiness, joy and passion i experienced in the whole exercise of doing it.

One Day Six Movies - What a Weekend! - I

Lately have this wierd idea of understanding how the movies are made! In literal sense, how many shots are there in the movie, where do they place the camera, how do they make the camera move etc etc. Rather than picking up a theoritical book, i decided to watch some English movies and explore. My obvious choice was the movies of the type Romance / Romantic Comedies! I had couple of movies already in mind like The Lake House, You've Got a Mail, The Break - up! Recently I bought a 180 GB External HDD and have become little fancy about filling it up with some videos. Though I have known lot of converters which can rip the DVDs, somehow an working one doesnt exist on my Laptop. So I decided to rent VCDs as much as possible and if they dont exist let me try DVDs. Contradictory to that, a few years back, i use to ask for DVDs first and then VCDs. I guess I am the only, one on earth moving BACK WARDS! [:)] Well, i could get VCDs of You've Got A Mail and The Breakup. The Lake House - DVD and i observed some one returning the movie "The Holiday", so grabbed that one. Then i decided, well will get 2 more as i had sunday too. SO i picked up "Serendipity" and rang up my friend who advised me to try "Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset". So totally i picked up 7 movies on Friday evening

1. The Lake House - IMDB Link, Warner Bros Site
2. The Breakup - IMDB Link, Official Site
3. You've Got Mail - IMDB Link, Official Site
4. The Holiday - IMDB Link, Official Site
5. Serendipity - IMDB Link, Official Site
6. Before Sunrise - IMDB Link, Official Site
7. Before Sunset - IMDB Link, Official Site

Except for the last one (Before Sunset) i finished all the movies starting Friday Night ending Saturday Evening and ofcourse with Sleep of say around 8 hours. Well will not get into the details of movies, or their stories etc. Really all of them were class movies and one would love watching them. Except for The Lake House every other movie was a REAL - TYPE and definitely one can pretty easily co-relate though it depends whether you could connect yourself to any of the characters in the movie. The ratings i would give for these movies are

1. The Lake House - ***1/2
2. The Breakup - ****
3. You've Got Mail - *****
4. The Holiday - ****
5. Serendipity - *****
6. Before Sunrise - *****
7. Before Sunset - Havent Seen YET

I have never seen movies of such a high quality in succession. I am kind of notorious in watching movies non-stop, when i go crazy. Couple of incidents to share with are -

1. It was on one of the Semester exam days. Usually i had this habit of seeing a movie @ 3PM show @ Sterling Theater @ Mysore. Incidentally i did my BE from SJCE Mysore. I use to watch a movie irrespective of the performance in the exam. Sometimes friends use to accompany, sometimes i use to bump in all alone. I finished one by 6 PM, came back to home and found my cousin who had a back subject to give planning to go for one. He had given 2 subjects that day. Morning one and Afternoon One. There was this nearby theater called Saraswati @ Saraswatipuram Mysore and we just walked in for 8:30 show. That was first time i ever saw movies in succession on a single day
2. During mid Nov 2006, i realised that i was not watching any movies at all. Reason 1, a little hectic work. Reason 2, Not interesting Company. Reason 3, Pain of standing in Queues. I decided, will watch 36 movies in 28 days. Isnt it crazy? Well I felt it too... It was a Saturday - Went to PVR trying for DON. Tickets werent available. Somehow Dhoom2 was not being screened @ PVR. Anyways, even if it was i never would have got the ticket. I browsed through the display and found "Thananam Thananam". I had heard about Kavita Lankesh making this movie and the fact that Rakshitha and Ramya acting in it made me to opt for this. It was a treat to EYES for three reasons - 1. It was like watching both a movie and a drama, as around half an hour of the movie revolves around performance on the stage, 2. Above that, I loved watching Hampi in the songs. Previously i loved Hampi in "The Myth". I have always been a great fan of HAMPI for reasons unknown. I plan to shoot it in my documentary which i am planning to make in this life time [;)]. 3. Preformances by Girish Karnad, Bharathi, and chicks Ramya and Rakshitha were indeed Great. Especially in traditional costumes, all were looking great. It was a TREAT to watch. That day evening i felt it was a great start. The next day, Sunday i went early around 11:30. There was a ticket for DON which was supposed to start @ around 2:20. I grabbed that ticket first. I dint had patience of waiting till that time. Then browsed for movies which were showing around 11:30 or 12. I found Hubbali @ 12:00. Got into it. Cameout at 2:15 and walked into the other screen showing DON. It was quiet a hectic day. But i felt it was great going. On Monday, it was the turn for one more movie. There was a near by theater by name Kamakya which was screening Dhoom2. It was easy to get a ticket in Black for 70 for a ticket which costed 50. Went in and it was a real pain in the A.. Not the movie was bad. I enjoyed the movie. But the theater was so horrible, the seats were just not the seats anybody would love, almost not workking fans, densely overcrowded, they started adding additional plastic chairs, adding to the mystery was the theater was full of mosquitoes. The passion of making it 36 movies in 27 days made me to hang around for the entire show, just praying that it would get over ASAP. That night was a real nightmare and my passion died down with my count @ 4. [:D]

Our Movie Makers, off-late (or even from the begining) are well known for Copying the Script, Music etc etc, I just wonder how come they missed the 7 movies i listed little above. Anyways coming back to my objective of learning from the exercise over the weekend, i think it has given me some knowledge, the results would be seen in my first dowcumentary or the first short film.
Now its been 30 minutes since i am keying in. Let me get back to the work which is waiting for me....

BTW, i dint watch any movie on sunday as it was the real REST day after a hectic Saturday and needed the rest as it was my Niece Bday and was attending the small family get-together in the evening.