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2010 Movies

A movie you MUST watch & a movie you MUST NOT watch!

December 29, 2010
Two movies and two dramatically opposite reactions: 1.) Tees Maar Khan – One of the worst movies ever watched 2.) Udaan – One of the best movies ever watched. These two movies are not comparable at all as they represent two very different genres, but even if I evaluate these within their own respective genres, my reaction still remains the same.

I was not expecting Tees Maar Khan to be any well-plotted, thought-through movie or any kind of intelligent comedy, but I didn’t expect it to be this disaster too. I thought it would be some slapstick fun but forget about having even a single moment of smile, throughout the movie I kept on wondering what the hell it was. I think Farah Khan made “Tees Maar Kan” exactly like the way Akshay Kumar made the movie “Tees Maar Khan” within “Tees Maar Khan”…story thought on the spot, dialogues conceived on the spot, actors clueless till the end and the director also clueless till the end! I was never a great fan of Akshay Kumar (in fact I don’t like him), and whatever good impression I had gained for Katrina after her performance in Rajneeti has got washed away with her “main aur make up laga ke aati hoon” recital in TMK. Trust me apart from Sheila ki Jawani dance, this is the only dialogue which she has spoken and repeated at least zillion times in the movie. Pathetic, terrible, disgusting and not a bearable movie even if you get tickets for free.

Coming down to the movie which I watched on DVD recently – Udaan, I’m wondering how I missed to watch it in theater. In fact was not even aware when the movie got released and went off theaters too. Huh, sad that lack of marketing can make people miss gem of a movie like Udaan and heavy buzz can actually make one waste money on a crap like TMK. But what a movie Udaan was! I just looooved it. Poignant storyline, great acting, superb direction and a fantastic ending. Must say that Anurag Kashyap & Vikramaditya Motwane have done an amazing job by making this film and no wonder this film was officially selected to compete in 2010 Cannes Film Festival. The story is about a 17 year old teenager Rohan who was expelled from his school on a silly mistake and had to return home to his abusive and oppressive father. The film revolves around the emotional journey of Rohan (Rajat Barmecha) who has to deal with the nuances of a tyrant father (Ronit Roy), a young step brother Arjun (Ayan Boradia) about whom Rohan was not even aware of till he came back from hostel a supporting chacha (Ram Kapoor) whom his father hates, the struggle between his dreams of becoming a writer and his father’s ambition of making him an engineer & finally his fight for believing in himself and standing for his own dreams. It’s a movie which touches a chord somewhere deep within, a movie you must experience on your own to really understand the emotions of different characters. Difficult to decide for me as to whether it was Rohan’s suppressed anger or Arjun’s suppressed fear which really makes your heart go out for those two poor kids…at times I really had lump in my throat. A must, must watch movie for all…a movie which you really should not miss at any cost.

Think these are the last two movies for me in 2010, more movies now next year only. So, what’s the plan for you for this new year eve? Planning to welcome it with a bang or deciding to spend it peacefully with family & friends :-)?

So, what are you searching today : Google Zeitgeist 2010

December 18, 2010
I had written a post on Google Zeitgeist 2010 report on my marketingchitchat blog but apart from brand findings, the general findings were further more interesting enough to make me do a post on this blog as well :-). For those who don’t know about Zeitgeist – it’s a report published by Google every year where Google reveals the spirit of the year through the aggregation of millions of search queries it receives every day. Here is a snapshot of the India result and in case you are interested in knowing more about the report you can click here.
So some observations based on the report:
  • Micromax is second fastest rising query, well the mass market targeting surely works in India and this low cost mobile manufacturer is on a roll.
  • And the point about mass appeal definitely seems to be true in case of celebrities too, Sonakshi Sinha is high on the list of “fastest rising people”, just one movie old but then let’s not forget the movie was Dabangg – mindless bakar but a true paisa vasool full on entertaining typical bollywood cinema, Chulbul Pandey ka jadoo on aam junta was phenomenal.
  • I thought Orkut is dead and almost everybody on this planet has been there and is done with it now, but well Orkut is very much there in “top 10 most popular” section. Though wondering if it’s the positive or negative search string leading to this popularity of Orkut.
  • Movie section has Kites leading the list with 3 idiots on number 4. How? Who and why on earth were people searching stuffs on Kites? No, you can’t even do a negative search for such a hopelessly pathetic movie!
  • First time ever, a swamji has found a place in the top-10 of any search list, yes this swamiji is none other than Nithyananada who is the second most searched term in Bangalore’s Zeitgeist report.
  • People are searching more on “how to get pregnant” than “how to impress a girl” or “how to make money”? Two curiosities – 1.) Are women searching more on “how tos” than men? 2.) Is infertility rate on that a high rise in India too?
  • Someone else pointed out another interesting trend in “how to section”, read it bottoms up – reduce weight >> improve spoken English >> impress a girl >> kiss >> get pregnant …interesting and makes more sense than reading it in top down order, isn’t it :)?