[Movie] Don

Well, I watched Don at City Pride-Kothrud (Pune) last Sunday, along with my brother and cousin brother. I had not seen any of its promos, still had some positive vibes, because this remake was being directed by Farhan Akhtar, whose earlier two movies Dil Chahta Hai and Lakshya are among my favourites.
...and he has indeed lived up to the expectations. His version of Don is as good as the original one. Here are my comments on the same....

Story/Script/Dialogues:Writing anything about the story would giving away the movie's USP. So suffice it to say that the story is different from the original one.
Most of famous dialogues from the original movie are retained: such as "Don ko pakaDna mushkil hi nahi, naamumkin hai" "yeh tum janti ho ki pistol khaali hai..." "Muze uske joote achche nahi lage...." etc.

Music/Songs:
Music is by Shankar-Ehsaaan-Loy and they have done a good turn by retaining the theme from the original. Songs have been kept to the bare minimum. "Main Hu Don" is rather good, and "Khaike Paan Banaaraswaala" has been made more zingy.
The song by Kareena Kapoor is more vulgar than sensuous. In fact, it is rather boring.

Cinematography:
Simply supperb! Almost entire movie is shot in Malaysia, and it is refreshing to see something other than the snow-clad mountains of Alps/Switzerland or the by-now familiar trio of Paris-London-New York. I guess this year more Indians would be visiting Malaysia than ever before.

Cast:
Apart from Shahrukh as Don, the star-cast consists of Boman Irani, Priyanka Chopra, Isha Koppikar and Arjun Rampal. Boman Irani is the best of the lot. It's a joy to watch his facial expressions and body language. He is certainly one of the most versatile actors we have today.
Priyanka Chopra seems to be modelling herself on Angelina-taai ( the one who was in Pune, not so long ago, along with Brad-bhau and Shiloh Nouvel-baaL).Isha Koppikar and Arjun Rampal do their roles rather well.But, the movie rests squarely on the shoulders of Shahrukh.... and let's admit it, the King Khan has certainly done a good job. His Don is more flamboyant, more flirtatious and.... well, much more cunning and ruthless. Of course, Shahrukh is yet to overcome his typical mannerisms, but they don't affect the don's character to a great extent.

Direction:
Full Marks to Farhan Akhtar. He has interpreted the classic in his own way, without damaging the original. This Don is more sophisticated ( uses a Compaq laptop and drives nothing less than a Mercedes), the film is a polished work of art and is edited in such a way that it picks up the pace gradually and then never slows.]

Do watch this movie.... it's full-too paisa wasool.
I am aware that there would be some who want to spoil the mood by comparing the remake with original and whining about Big B's acting etc... IMO, Amitabh's movie is certainly a classic but Shahrukh's Don is as good in its own right.

[Movie] KANK: IT-style Review

On 2006-08-12, Saturday, we watched “KKKabhi Alvida Na KKKehna”, a movie directed by KKKaran Johar and starring SRK, RM, AB, Jr AB, PZ, KD, JA, AR, etc etc, ad infinitum. Here, I have written a review using typical IT jargon. Hope you will enjoy it.

1. The program KANK has not been built as per proper Functionality Design Specification (script).
2. The director should have first created a proper Design Document (screenplay) and then begun the actual coding.
3. AmitabhBachchan is a powerful class with a number of methods and functions but it has not been effectively used.
4. AbhishekBachchan, a derived class of AmitabhBachchan, inherits all the attributes and properties of its parent class.
5. ShahRukhKhan and RaniMukherjee are emotionally overloaded and go into an infinite weeping loop every 60 milliseconds.
6. The methods such as Songs() and Cinematography() have been properly executed and produce fantastic results.
7. PreityZinta is an abstract class, which looks pretty but actually does nothing.
8. Functions like ArjunRampal, JA, and KD pass NULL values and are redundant.
9. The program takes an unbearably long time to terminate… about 3 hours and 20 minutes.
10. Overall, the package is not worth purchasing. You may opt for pirated copies, though.

[Movie] Da Vinci Code

Well, Yesterday night I watched the movie "Da Vinci Code" with my office pals.

The movie is based upon best-seller book of same name by Dan Brown. The star-cast consists of Tom Hanks (as Robert Langdon, the symbologist), Audrey Tautou (as Sophie Neveu, the French cryptographer) and Alfred Molina (as Aringarosa, the priest) apart from others.

Movie is about two-and-half hour’s duration. It is directed by Ron Howard (Academy award- winning director of Academy award-wining film "A Beautiful Mind").


Plus Points:

1. Tom Hanks fits perfectly with my own image of Robert Langdon. He has the right bearing, the body language, and doesn’t go over the top.
2. Unlike other movies based on novels (Devdas), here the director has stuck faithfully to the book right from first page to the last, with minor modifications. Even dialogues are mostly from the book.
3. Most of the shooting has been done on authentic locations, be it Louvre Museum, or St Sulpice Church. Only the Westminster Abbey has been filmed from outside.

Minus Points:

1. The character of Sophie Neveu.... While reading the book, I had pictured her as an introvert, with a round face and bright eyes. However, Audrey Tautou who plays the character is miles away from this image. She has an aquiline face, with a hard-set jaw-line. Moreover, she fails to emote well. Just imagine... one fine evening, you come to know that you are the direct descendant of Jesus Christ, and she appears to take it very casually!
2. It is quite clear that director has assumed viewers must have read the book. So the movie rushes at a breakneck pace, and sometimes many points are not properly explained. Unless one has read the book, it would be difficult for someone to understand the sequence of events on screen.
3. In spite of technical finesse, the movie somehow fails to make an impact. When you have watched something like "Titanic", or our very own "Lagaan” you take the movie home alongwith you and live in the atmosphere for next few hours, even a few days perhaps. "Da Vinci Code" failed to have this kind of after-movie impact, at least in my case.

In Conclusion,If I had to rate "Da Vinci Code" (movie-version) on a scale 1 to 10, I would put it at 6. It doesn’t disappoint you, but it doesn’t excite you either!!
My suggestion would be, do watch it if you get a chance, but in case you can't make it, don’t fret yourself... you wouldn’t be missing out on too much.

[Book] An Overview of New Physics

The Dancing Wu Li Masters
An Overview of New Physics-- Gary Zukav
Bantam Books
Don't get confused by the main title... the book has nothing to do about any dancing form we know of; but it deals with an altogether different dance that we will probably never able to see... the dance of elementary particles.

Yes, this book is about Particle Physics... or to be more precise, about Quantum Mechanics.

The good thing about the book is that it begins right at the beginning... with Max Planck's Theory of quanta in 1900, which is generally agreed upon as the birth-year of Quantum Mechanics. Next, it goes on to describe the evolution of the theory in a chronological order: Einstein's Theory of photoelectric effect in 1905, his theories of special relativity and general relativity in great details (again without any math!!) Bohr's model of atom, Broglie's matter waves, Pauli's exclusion principle... moving on to Schrödinger’s wave function, then one of most fundamental theorems of all .... the Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle.... the Dirac equation and discovery of anti-matter, Neumann's quantum logic, the famous EPR paper, Hideki Yukawa's meson theory, Feynman diagrams, theory of quarks and culminating with the Bell's Theorem, which physicists consider to be the most important theory of all time.

Scared? Don't be!! It all makes a very very exciting reading.... just like unraveling of a mystery.
However, there are three tips I would like to give:

1. This is not the type of book one reads after a heavy meal, lying down on a bed, idly turning the pages. You need to focus on the matter and think hard as you go along.
2. Though no mathematical background (other than what you studied up to 12th standard) is assumed, one must have ability to visualise. There are a number of thought-experiments involved, most of them by none other than Einstein himself. For ex: Consider you are riding on a light wave. Then how will u observe the hands of clock on the wall opposite to you? They will have come to a standstill!
3. And, this is most important ... Do not read the book in one stretch. Theories of relativity and Quantum Mechanics are full of many new ideas, most of which go directly against our common sense. Trying to digest the entire book in one go is a guaranteed way to drive you nuts.... ask me!

Nevertheless, do read this book. It lifts us up from the mundane matters of our daily existence and takes us into a state of trance. We begin to look even at a simple phenomenon in an entirely different way.

And that, in my opinion is more important than knowing about quantum theory.