Being a person who hardly watches 4-5 new movies in theatre every year, I generally wait for a movie to be screened on TV to watch it. And that too these days, since all the new Hindi movies are shown on TV within 6-7 months of their release itself, I get to watch those ‘soon’. So after a long time, I watched a ‘new’ Hindi movie on TV last Sunday – Cheeni Kum telecast on Sony. The main reason why I wanted to watch this film even though I knew the story will never appeal to me was the cast and the crew of the film.

What I liked in the movie:

• Tabu, whose acting I have always admired, suited the role so well and as usual has given a wonderful performance. I loved her costumes too.
• P C Sreeram’s cinematography!
• Ilayaraja’s songs and BGM were brilliant! And what with Shreya Goshal singing the songs! I didn’t like Vijay Prakash’s singing (song – Cheeni Kum) though.
• Dialogues were good too here and there.
• The kid acted well too
• The climax when Amitabh repents that he was selfish and didn’t wish for the recovery of the girl

What I didn’t like:

• The second half was dragging and boring.
• This became yet-another-movie with the introduction a kid with a terminal illness. How many times have we been made to sympathize the characters on their deathbed, trying to appear cheerful and as though they are enjoying their lives even though they know their end is nearing soon??
• Tabu telling her father that she will marry Amitabh even if her father kills himself!
• Amitabh’s line of reasoning to Paresh Rawal didn’t appeal to me either.

So how did you all like the movie?

Is On! Yippee!!!! 🙂 Blame it on my laziness or whatever, I am now just copy pasting what I wrote in my blog last year:

It’s that time of the year again when there are so many concerts happening in every nook and corner of the city that you will end up being confused as to which one you should attend that day! No wonder Madras is the place-to-be for a Carnatic music rasika in the month of December!

A year has passed! Sigh! 2007 happens to be the year in which I have gone to the maximum number of concerts before the start of the season. Starting from tomorrow, there is a Sanjay or a TMK’s concert on most of the days! I wish I could attend all of it! Every time I look at the schedule of the concerts for the next one month, I am missing the half-yearly and the semester holidays all the more! 😛

A couple of years back, sometime in the month of December during my semester exams, I got the CD of Rang De Basanti after a week or so of its release. Listened to the songs and liked them all instantly. But since I was busy attending concerts on most of the days, I didn’t listen to the songs properly till January.
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There are only few roads that don’t have potholes and during the rains, it becomes all the more difficult for the drivers of the vehicles to avoid the potholes since they will be filled with rain water and you never know the existence of a pothole unless your vehicle hits it. Apart from those commuting by roads regularly, who else will know the where the potholes are present in a road? The only people who came to my mind are the Neel Metal Fanalca (for the uninitiated, they have taken over from Onyx, the garbage disposal in Chennai) workers. They will obviously know all the potholes in a road since they clean the roads everyday. So why not give them the additional task of informing some official about the potholes present in a road and that official can in turn, get some workers to atleast do a patchwork on the potholes ASAP?

I have no clue about how the Corporation currently monitors the potholes in a road or if we can inform anyone about the potholes in a road and get them to do a patchwork on it. In case you know, then please do let me know too. This was just an idea that I got and thought I will just write it down here.

With such a nice weather that too on a Monday morning, will anyone be in a mood to work? 😉 This was the thought in my mind since morning. That’s when I listened to Vanessa Mae’s Contradanza, thanks to Hari’s post. Amazing! It’s bound to get you hooked to it instantly! Even after an hour of listening to it, I still can’t have enough of the song! Do listen to it if you haven’t before. Will surely help drive away Monday morning blues.

I have been avoiding tags for a long time now either because I totally forgot about it or was too lazy to answer questions. 😛 This time, though I have not been tagged by Arvind directly, I am taking up his tag.

1. Name one person who made you laugh last night?
Durga

2. What were you doing at 0800?
Reading Arvind’s post
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A Concert by Take Four – Sri Vikku Vinayakram (Ghatam), Trilok Gurtu (Percussion), V Selvaganesh (Khanjira), R Prasanna (Guitar)

I reached Music Academy at around 6:50 pm for the concert that was to start at 7:15 pm and found almost all the seats in the two centre bays of the balcony, occupied. The first thing that struck me on entering the auditorium was the crowd. Having been to the Academy only for Carnatic music concerts, I have seen only the usual kutcheri crowds there. But on that day, everyone from a paatti in a 9 yard saree to a kid was there – crowd was something like the one at Saarang. As the concert proceeded, I wondered how the paatti would have liked it. 😉
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photo of A.R.Rahman and his wife, Saira Banu:

Nice photo! I guess this photo was taken on the same day as the last month’s interview one.

Got the photo from here

Update: Since I didn’t check the ARR Yahoo Group regularly the past week, I came to know only later that this photo was featured in this interview.

The weekend before last, I had been to Trichy. To begin with, the road from Tindivanam to Trichy was very bad, thanks to the work going on for converting the highway to a four-lane one. I would say it is better not to go via this road till the work is over, which is around April 2009! I visited quite a few temples at Trichy. I am going to just write whatever I remember about each temple. These temples are already famous ones. So you might already know about them. Due to time constraint, I was able to take very few photos only.
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Unputdownable and interesting! The one thing that I liked in the books of Michael Crichton that I have read till now, ‘Congo’ and ‘State of Fear’, is the way he presents the facts and findings from research, that runs into many paragraphs, in such a manner that it blends into the story and doesn’t make it even a single bit boring to read (how many of you agree?). In fact, I felt all those scientific research stuff made a pretty interesting read.

In ‘Congo’, there were many parts that I enjoyed a lot – the description of the African rainforest, the gorilla, Amy, saving Peter from the many other gorillas in ‘The Lost City of Zinj’, all the lead characters escaping from the cannibal tribes at the last minute and lots more. A great book indeed, though I liked none of the lead characters except maybe, Amy. 😉