Agneepath (2012)

The highly anticipated Hritik Roshan starrer Agneepath released on 26th Jan and opened to huge numbers as expected. It is the remake of the Amitabh Bachchan movie of 1990 with the same name. Karan Johar produced the latest one emulating his father who had produced the original. Karan Johar produced this movie with the intention of giving "Agneepath"- a box office recognition as the original movie had bombed at the ticket window.

The remake keeps the storyline similar to the original making the small changes as the director wanted. The award winning character played by Mithun Chakravarty in the original film is totally scrapped in the new movie. Also there is the addition of the character portrayed by Rishi Kapoor - Rauf Lala.

Talking about acting, Sanjay Dutt leaves us terrified with the Kancha Cheena portrayed viciously. He makes the character memorable and puts it in the lines of villains of the stature Gabbar and Mogambo. Priyanka Chopra does her part well. Rishi Kapoor shows us why he was a superstar of yesteryears with a solid performance. Hritik Roshan gives a power packed performance and does not merely copy the character immortalised by Amitabh Bachchan.

Music by Ajay - Atul is good and grows as we watch the movie. Fans of "Kombdi Palali" will not like "Chikni Chameli". But with the hot Katrina Kaif in it, it will surely be a massive hit.

  

The Hindu Vs The Times of India: The Ad WAR

The Times of India, Chennai edition brought an ad some days ago with the tag line - Stuck with news that puts to sleep? Wake up to the Times of India. It was a hard hitting ad on all the newspapers committed to journalism.

 

The Times of India as seen by everyone gives more importance to all gossips and made up news only comparable to the INDIA TV. Now a days the size and number of pages in Bombay Times is increasing alarmingly and some days it is even bigger than the main Times.

On the contrary, the Hindu is one of the most respected newspaper with a tradition of publishing riveting articles. The Hindu is the first choice of all UPSC aspirants. UPSC remains one of the toughest exams to crack and its preparation includes all round knowledge even if means that the news are boring and that PUT TO SLEEP. Although it was observed that it has been pro-China and had a blind spot for DMK's wrondg doing and was considered a mouthpiece for A.Raja.


However it looks like The Hindu is rejuvenated under the new management. The latest ad campaign of THE HINDU displays the apathy of the youngsters towards society and the importance they give to not-so-important gossips of bollywood. They are very well executed and extremely effective ads and are being shared by the youth all over the internet on facebook and twitter.

Sachin Tendulkar .....

I will start this blog by writing about the one person I have followed and worshiped right from when I started understanding Cricket. I owe him many memorable moments and without any exaggeration he made my childhood. And I can bet my life that I am not the only one. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar - God for many  including me , is also the reason I had fights with many of my friends. I defended him during his "much written about " bad patches and also during the Ferrari controversy. I maybe
was wrong about the Ferrari thing but tell me one thing who will like to pay Rs.1.6 crore for a GIFT !!

I remember watching Sachin come down the line to hit Michael Kasprovicz for a straight six in the now  famous Sharjah Cup. I have seen most of the 90s when Team India was an one man army. One of the main reasons of Sachin failing as a captain was the quality of team he had. Most of the players were not world class and some of them were taking their initial steps towards greatness.

Only the presence of Sachin in the dressing room gives a sense of belief to his team mates and strikes fear in the opposition camp. Offpitch having Sachin as a company can be very calming too as once Hashim Amla said "Nothing bad can happen to us if we are on a plane with Sachin Tendulkar on it ".

We remember Sachin from many ads such as the Yeh Dil Maange More campaign. Many reputed brands had the privelege of Sachin being their brand ambassador. His genius on the field slowly and surely started showing results off the field too. And he was I can certainly say, one of the main reasons of the rags to riches story of BCCI alongwith the shrewd minded president Jagmohan Dalmiya. No brand profited from Sachin, as much the BCCI did. The prosperity of BCCI in turn started getting shared with the domestic players and also with retired players through pension scheme. Today a person can afford to take Cricket as a profession because of the financial stability it provides even though he fails to make it to Team India.


I belong to the generation which has only heard the folklore of the greatness of Sir Don Bradman. We saw his game only on some dark blur videos on youtube. Nonetheless his statistics speak for themselves, and an average of 99.94 really deserves coining a new word - "Bradmanesque" in the Oxford. However, I dare say, if he had played in today's world his average also would have looked a bit human. He was undoubtedly the Greatest batsman of last century. But now things must be reassessed, considering the sheer volume of statistics amassed by the only batsman to score 99 international centuries. Till the last couple of years, Sachin worked tirelessly,put aside injuries and notched up personal landmarks in the process. But since then Team India built on the strong base created under Sachin's long term opening partner Sourav Ganguly and became the No.1 ranked Test Team besides winning the World Cup played at home. If not for these last 2 years, Sachin's career would have been compared to that of Brian Lara - individual greatness surrounded by inconsistent world class talent.


Today,after India lost 7 consecutive away Tests in England and Australia all the cricketing experts are calling for the heads of the BIG TRIO of Dravid, Laxman and Tendulkar. I defend Dravid and Laxman completely but keeping the scope of this article to Sachin , I would like to question the reasons for dropping Tendulkar. Is it because of the failure of scoring THE 100th century ? For God's sake he scored 6 half centuries with 2 scores being of 91 and 94. His average might be around early 40s in these last 2 tours which looks to be very bad only when compared to his career average of 55.

I can go on writing on SACHIN - but I have decided to now write only when Sachin retires from international cricket which I hope does not come any time soon. That day would be the saddest day in the lives of Cricket fans allover the world. But as they say Enjoy the Present instead of worrying about the future  !!