The Apprentice 4 and more..
I feel like it has been ages since I last blogged, the last week wasnt particularly pleasant.
I sat at home sick and tired, watched a few movies and slept most of the time. I happened to watch the Apprentice on TV after a very long time, I remember watching every episode of the first season, but since then lack of time and my forgetfulness dint let me watch any of the episodes from the other 2 concluded seasons. The most prominent of the candidates on the Apprentice 4 is an Investment banker named Toral, a native of Philly and of Indian/Punjabi origin she attended the Wharton Business school at the University of Pennsylvania. At 29 she is the Vice President of a major Investment Bank in New York, She is a self made multi millionaire and an expert in closing multi millon dollar business deals. It is almost a certainity that she will not make it as the Apprentice as her aggressiveness is unbound and she is simply hated by her teammates. My pick is as the fourth Apprentice is Randal.
Now on to some of the movies I watched during my hiatus.
Parineeta- The celluloid version of a Sarath Chandra Chattopadhyay novel. Like his other novels such as Devdas, even this novel has had many adaptations and this is the 5th or 6th version. The last one I remember watching was with the legendary Meena Kumari and Ashok Kumar. The movie has been produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra who has made some good movies like 1942 a Love Story, Mission Kashmir.. etc. And after the super successful Munnabhai, VVC is back with Sanjay Dutt again playing the stellar role of Girish, the rest of the cast includes Saif Ali Khan as Shekar and a new face Vidya Balan as Lalitha. Lolita(Lalitha in Bengali) and Shekar fall in love before they know what the word means -- They share joys and sorrows through childhood and adolescence, and unknown to them the relationship of an unspoken right they hold over each other meta morphs into a love so intense, they can't even sense it coming. It takes an outsider, Girish, for them to discover that there's something between them that's bigger than both of them. Sans the climax the movie was pretty decent.
Ghazni- A story about a short term memory loss patient who hunts down his lover's killer with photographs, notes and tatoos, a rehash of the critically acclaimed hollywood flick 'Memento' starring Guy Pearce and Carrie-Anne Moss (Of the matrix fame). There have been many movies remade or inspired from hollywood, but most of them are simply cheap imitations, very few of them stand out like the famed 'Nayagan' (Inspired by Godfather and listed among Time magazines 100 greatest movies), 'Dalapathi' (Inspired by Mahabharath) and more recently Sarkar (Remake of The Godfather) All these movies were rehash's of preexisting concepts yet stood out because of a common link- great directors and great actors, Ghazni may not be on par with the ones listed above but wasnt a bad watch, because of good performances from the hero Surya as a business tycoon Sanjay and his lady love Asin as Kalpana and excellent music by Harris Jayaraj.
Crash- Several stories interweave during two days in Los Angeles involving a collection of inter-related characters: a black police detective with a drugged out mother and a thieving younger brother, two car thieves who are constantly theorizing on society and race, the distracted district attorney and his irritated and pampered wife, a racist veteran cop (caring for a sick father at home) who disgusts his more idealistic younger partner, a successful black Hollywood director and his wife who must deal with the racist cop, a Persian-immigrant father who buys a gun to protect his shop, a Hispanic locksmith and his young daughter who is afraid of bullets, and more. Overall a strong, provocative movie starring Sandra Bullock, Matt Dillon, Brendon Fraser, Ludacris and a host of multiethnic characters.
Maria Full Of Grace- This is my first time, watching a Spanish movie, I guess theres a first time for everything, A story of a pregnant seventeen year old Columbian girl who decides to become a drug mule for the sake of money for her family. She is detained at the New York airport under the suspision of being a drug mule, later her urine samples reveal that she is pregnant and they are forced to abort the x-ray test that would reveal the drugs concealed in her stomach. These drug mules are expected to swallow anywhere between 60 and a 100 heroin capsules, each weighing 10gms, 4 cms long and 2 cms wide. If any one of these capsules break, it would result in the death of the person carrying it and on each flight to New York from Columbia, nearly half a dozen such mules are sent so that even if a few are caught, the others can still make it across. If they make it, they are paid $5000 which is supposed to be nearly 10 million in columbian currency. After the ordeal in which Maria loses her friend, she decides to stay back in the US for the sake of her child, as she does not want her child to grow up in Columbia. This movie is supposed to be based on a 1000 true stories and has won numerous awards including an Oscar nomination.
Now on to some news stories in the last month or so:
A massive quake in South Asia, hit Pakistan occupied Kashmir and parts of Jammu & Kashmir. the toll in PoK is nearly 40,000 while the toll in J&K is nearly about 1000.
GM's spinoff Delphi, an autmotive parts supplier has filed for bankruptcy, paralysing the giant automaker which is still liable for a host of payoffs that may account upto $11 bn since the spinoff had taken place less than 8 years back.
Apple has launched its latest iPod called the nano, the impossibly thin iPod can hold anywhere between 500 and a 1000 songs.
Conservative leader Angela Merkel is all set to become Germany's first female Chancellor.
I Hope to be back soon, and not take any more unexpected breaks, signing off with a nice quote.
"Hope. It is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength and your greatest weakness."- The Architect of the Matrix
I sat at home sick and tired, watched a few movies and slept most of the time. I happened to watch the Apprentice on TV after a very long time, I remember watching every episode of the first season, but since then lack of time and my forgetfulness dint let me watch any of the episodes from the other 2 concluded seasons. The most prominent of the candidates on the Apprentice 4 is an Investment banker named Toral, a native of Philly and of Indian/Punjabi origin she attended the Wharton Business school at the University of Pennsylvania. At 29 she is the Vice President of a major Investment Bank in New York, She is a self made multi millionaire and an expert in closing multi millon dollar business deals. It is almost a certainity that she will not make it as the Apprentice as her aggressiveness is unbound and she is simply hated by her teammates. My pick is as the fourth Apprentice is Randal.
Now on to some of the movies I watched during my hiatus.
Parineeta- The celluloid version of a Sarath Chandra Chattopadhyay novel. Like his other novels such as Devdas, even this novel has had many adaptations and this is the 5th or 6th version. The last one I remember watching was with the legendary Meena Kumari and Ashok Kumar. The movie has been produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra who has made some good movies like 1942 a Love Story, Mission Kashmir.. etc. And after the super successful Munnabhai, VVC is back with Sanjay Dutt again playing the stellar role of Girish, the rest of the cast includes Saif Ali Khan as Shekar and a new face Vidya Balan as Lalitha. Lolita(Lalitha in Bengali) and Shekar fall in love before they know what the word means -- They share joys and sorrows through childhood and adolescence, and unknown to them the relationship of an unspoken right they hold over each other meta morphs into a love so intense, they can't even sense it coming. It takes an outsider, Girish, for them to discover that there's something between them that's bigger than both of them. Sans the climax the movie was pretty decent.
Ghazni- A story about a short term memory loss patient who hunts down his lover's killer with photographs, notes and tatoos, a rehash of the critically acclaimed hollywood flick 'Memento' starring Guy Pearce and Carrie-Anne Moss (Of the matrix fame). There have been many movies remade or inspired from hollywood, but most of them are simply cheap imitations, very few of them stand out like the famed 'Nayagan' (Inspired by Godfather and listed among Time magazines 100 greatest movies), 'Dalapathi' (Inspired by Mahabharath) and more recently Sarkar (Remake of The Godfather) All these movies were rehash's of preexisting concepts yet stood out because of a common link- great directors and great actors, Ghazni may not be on par with the ones listed above but wasnt a bad watch, because of good performances from the hero Surya as a business tycoon Sanjay and his lady love Asin as Kalpana and excellent music by Harris Jayaraj.
Crash- Several stories interweave during two days in Los Angeles involving a collection of inter-related characters: a black police detective with a drugged out mother and a thieving younger brother, two car thieves who are constantly theorizing on society and race, the distracted district attorney and his irritated and pampered wife, a racist veteran cop (caring for a sick father at home) who disgusts his more idealistic younger partner, a successful black Hollywood director and his wife who must deal with the racist cop, a Persian-immigrant father who buys a gun to protect his shop, a Hispanic locksmith and his young daughter who is afraid of bullets, and more. Overall a strong, provocative movie starring Sandra Bullock, Matt Dillon, Brendon Fraser, Ludacris and a host of multiethnic characters.
Maria Full Of Grace- This is my first time, watching a Spanish movie, I guess theres a first time for everything, A story of a pregnant seventeen year old Columbian girl who decides to become a drug mule for the sake of money for her family. She is detained at the New York airport under the suspision of being a drug mule, later her urine samples reveal that she is pregnant and they are forced to abort the x-ray test that would reveal the drugs concealed in her stomach. These drug mules are expected to swallow anywhere between 60 and a 100 heroin capsules, each weighing 10gms, 4 cms long and 2 cms wide. If any one of these capsules break, it would result in the death of the person carrying it and on each flight to New York from Columbia, nearly half a dozen such mules are sent so that even if a few are caught, the others can still make it across. If they make it, they are paid $5000 which is supposed to be nearly 10 million in columbian currency. After the ordeal in which Maria loses her friend, she decides to stay back in the US for the sake of her child, as she does not want her child to grow up in Columbia. This movie is supposed to be based on a 1000 true stories and has won numerous awards including an Oscar nomination.
Now on to some news stories in the last month or so:
A massive quake in South Asia, hit Pakistan occupied Kashmir and parts of Jammu & Kashmir. the toll in PoK is nearly 40,000 while the toll in J&K is nearly about 1000.
GM's spinoff Delphi, an autmotive parts supplier has filed for bankruptcy, paralysing the giant automaker which is still liable for a host of payoffs that may account upto $11 bn since the spinoff had taken place less than 8 years back.
Apple has launched its latest iPod called the nano, the impossibly thin iPod can hold anywhere between 500 and a 1000 songs.
Conservative leader Angela Merkel is all set to become Germany's first female Chancellor.
I Hope to be back soon, and not take any more unexpected breaks, signing off with a nice quote.
"Hope. It is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength and your greatest weakness."- The Architect of the Matrix
posted by GS at 10:06 AM
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