Kanupriya Sindhu

Chandni Chowk to China: Don’t watch even if it comes for FREE!

January 27, 2009

Unfortunately got to watch Chandni Chowk to China yesterday, oh yes some of my friends had warned me against it but as I said “UNFORTUNATELY” ended up watching this movie and I don’t have words to express my reactions towards this movie. No, I won’t write any review of this movie, as I don’t think there is anything to write about this movie at all.

Rather I would simply tell you 5 reasons as to why NOT to watch this movie even if someone is offering you a free ticket:

It’s one of the most moronic movies I would have ever seen in my life.
Even if you have slightest positive feeling for Deepika Padukone and her acting skills, you should not watch this movie as suddenly you will find yourself hating her. You keep on wondering, “why on earth did she decide to work in this movie”?
Dialogues of the movie have to be definitely awarded as one the worst dialogues ever written. I’m wondering what could have been the quantum of pegs which the dialogue writer would have taken before writing the dialogues of CC2C? 15 or 17 or more???
After seeing Mithun Chakravarty’s kicks on Akshay and its after-effects, you will lose your all knowledge and belief on Newton’s gravitational laws and other such theories which you would have acquired by working hard in your childhood days. Trust me even Rajnikanth’s stunts look more believable as compared to the ones shown in this movie!
Story is not story at all, rather it looks like a spoof of all masala movies of yesteryears – twins getting separated in childhood, heroine looking for her lost twin, godfather of the hero killed publicly in the mid of a village by goondas and people standing mum, heroine trying to take revenge of her father’s death, hero building body and learning action stunts to fight with bad men and hero-heroine singing songs by flying in air, no not in a plane but in an umbrella! Yes song placements were horrible; it can easily become case study for aspiring film makers to learn “where NOT to place songs in a film”

Need I say anything more? I think you would have got my TRUE feeling about this movie by now. These are my personal views and you are free to differ from mine but personally speaking I will NOT recommend this movie to anyone at all.

Other Details of the movie:

Duration of the movie: Close to 3 hours
Best to watch it with: Someone with whom you want to take some revenge, get him a ticket and make sure he can’t come out in between 🙂
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone, Ranvir Shorey, Mithun Chakravarty
Director: Nikhil Advani
My Rating: – (minus) 5 / 5 (Hopelessly Pathetic)

Myspace’s new marketing / engagement strategy: Black Curtain

January 21, 2009

Now this is one such marketing cum engagement initiative which I’m sure can’t be missed. Myspace has launched this initiative known as “Black Curtain India” where its Indian users get to watch new releases for free and that too before the public release of the film! The initiative starts with an exclusive screening of four golden globes winner and one of the most awaited movies of recent times – “Slumdog Millionaire” on January 23 at Fame Theatre in Mumbai. Movie screening FREE & that too of SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE? Yet another interesting example of marketing with entertainment content. I am sure this will grab lots of eyeballs for myspace.

All you need to do is following (as mentioned in their website, click here to visit the page):

Add Black Curtain India profile to your friends
Include Black Curtains India screening profile in your top friends
Print out your profile with Black Curtains India in your top friend
Show up at the theater with the print out

After Slumdog, Black Curtain has plans to do more free screenings like Ice Age 3, Valkyrie etc. Now this seriously sounds very tempting to me as a consumer! Even though I am not regular on Myspace but still this made me stick to their website and surf some more content on their pages today. Myspace India had already started focusing on Indian entertainment content by associating with programs like Nach Baliye but getting associated with movies and arranging free premieres like these will give them an edge now. At least they will get to see some more traffic and bit more engaged visitors. But hope they do it on a continual basis and not as one of those engagement strategies, else like many other promotional campaigns of other social networking sites, this will also act as an initiative which will lead to one time positive spike in their pageviews graph.

Screw it, Let’s do it!

January 21, 2009

Last year one resolution which I tried to fulfill to a large extent was getting back to my reading habit again. Once a voracious reader, my reading habit has almost gone to nil since the day I started working. With other priorities and absolute paucity of time, I hardly managed to read much book in last 3-4 years. So, in 2008 one of my resolutions was to get back to reading books. I knew I couldn’t get back to my old count of reading which was almost a book every week, so I thought of setting a reasonable target of 1 book every month :-). Well, I didn’t accomplish it fully but still I’m happy as I managed to read 10 books – 7 fiction & 3 business in 2008 as against only 2 books in 2007 :-(. And the good thing was whatever I read turned out to be good or you can say that I only went for popular and positive review books. I just thought to share my views on some of those books and recommend it to my blog readers as these are really good reads as per me.

One of the books which I read last year and really liked was “Screw it, Let’s do it” by Sir Richard Branson. Though I am not much of a motivational or gyaan book loving person but still I liked it. In fact I liked it a lot! It’s a quick read, engaging from start to end and very-very positive. It stirs your mind & leaves a very different kind of impact on you. You just keep on thinking, “oh all this happened to Richard Branson before he became Sir Branson??? Though I was very much aware of the story of his life but still reading it again in this book was a very nice experience. I got so impressed with this book that I gifted it to two of my close friends who are into entrepreneurial ventures. I think this book is a must for all those who are working in some start-ups, or are entrepreneurs or are planning to start something on their own. And yeah number of pages are quite less, so you can finish it off quickly. I have already rated this book 5/5 on many book sites 🙂

Myspace’s new marketing / engagement strategy: Black Curtain

January 21, 2009

Movie Marketing: Chandni Chowk to China

January 19, 2009

chandni-chowk-to-china

Co-branded ad of Thumbs Up to promote the film Chandni Chowk to China has been doing rounds on television for weeks but now they have also introduced co-branded pet bottle of Thumbs Up to create more buzz about this movie. This bottle has added to the visibility of the movie through extensive retail presence. CC2C is yet another film which has been marketed quite aggressively. According to press releases, the budget for brand tie ups and promotion of the movie is as high as Rs. 100 million which is close to Ghajini’s estimated budget of 140 million. Apart from the regular movie marketing stuffs, like communities on social networking sites, an interactive website and contests on different portals, CC2C has managed to create quite some excitement in the market through its association with popular properties like MTV Roadies, leading beverage brand Thumbs Up, airline brand Jet Airways, interesting radio contests like the one with Red FM in Mumbai (winners got the chance to fly kites with Akshay Kumar) & with Fever in Delhi (Fever had arranged for a bus where people could get on the bus and participate in the contest, the bus was having Kailash Kher, music director and lyricist of the movie, the bus finally went to studio where fans got the chance to meet Akshay Kumar and Deepika Padukone). Well, looks like this movie has managed to get a good ROI through branded association itself.

Marketing wise I think CC2C has done a good job but let’s see how the movie performs at the box office. The opening received a lukewarm response but I think it’s too early to comment on the same. I have personally not seen the movie yet so can’t comment about the movie as of now, though there are enough examples in the past to prove that like any other product, in case of movies also, just promotion can’t do anything if the end product is not right. Remember the likes of Drona or Love Story 2050 and their fate despite being heavily marketed by thier promoters???

Thanks Nautankey!

January 19, 2009

Got this from Nautankey almost three weeks back but since I was travelling that time, hence did not get the chance to put it up here and then got tied up in work rut. Decided to put it now as today seems to be a horrible day for me, so thought an award even if its a virtual one may cheer up my day :-).

Nautankey – thanks, thanks & more thanks for giving this to me…such sweet stuffs really bring a smile on my face and it keeps me motivated to somehow find time to do more and more blogging despite my horribly packed work schedule these days.

Now the rules:

Display the Award in your page – done with a big smile 🙂
Award them to your favorite commentators
Ask them to forward it to their favorite commentators
And don’t forget to link their page to their names

Now I need to give it to my favorite commentators… Waise toh I love all my commentators who take time to visit my blog and express their thought on my posts (big THANKS to all of you :-)) but this award I would like to give it to all my old blogger friends who started comment on my blog loooong back on my O3 blog, who always commented with a genuine heart and intention of encouargement & healthy interaction on my blog. Initially when I started writing in 2003, I never expected comments and interaction from so many people but there are these people who were always there to read my posts and whose comments really encouraged me to write more and more and before I could have realized they made blogging an addiction for me instead of just another hobby 🙂
So, here goes my list:

My first few names is a list of those people who are not bloggers but still do take time to always read my posts and give their critical inputs (mostly negatives 🙁 but those negatives always help me to improve further :-)). I am not mentioning their names as they don’t have any blog to be linked to, but I’m sure they know who am I referring to 🙂
Tanvi: My childhood and best friend. Though she is not a regular blogger but she is the most regular reader and commentator of my blog since my 1st post which is as old as 2003.
Meher: She is one of the most regular and sweetest commentator from my O3 days and yeah she is always there to read my blogs and comment on it :D. I wanted to link her O3 blog but she does not use it anymore hence linking it to blogspot one.
Savy: For all her intellectual inputs and thoughts expressed on my blog and yeah she was one of the initial few who always used to tell me to write more and more.
Niceguy251: For all his sweet interactions on my blog.

Clap, clap clap for all of you and cheers to all my the readers of my blog 😀 !

Movie Marketing: Chandni Chowk to China

January 19, 2009

Twitter launches “suggested users”

January 16, 2009

Today morning when I logged into my twitter account, I found this new tab “suggested users” in find people section. It has to be a development between yesterday to today as it was not there two days back when I had clicked “find people”. But what is interesting is that there was no formal announcement or whatsoever on twitter main page about it, quite a silent launch of a new feature from twitter! Though there are lots of external tools and apps for twitter but twitter on its own has hardly launched anything in recent times. So, when twitter launched something on its own I must say I was having somewhat high expectations from it but when I used this tool I didn’t find it much useful. In fact I can’t understand the logic of this recommendation at all. So, is twitter recommending these users to me based on my profile or my friend’s list profile or the nature of my updates? The algorithm is not at all clear. And to add to that what disappoints me further is that I am getting quite common suggestions for my both accounts – I maintain two accounts, one my personal account and second on behalf of my company where I work. There is hardly any similarity between these two accounts, neither in terms of following / follower list nor in terms of updates or profile. So, how come the users suggested are having so much similarity? So, is it just a set of some users which twitter is recommending to everybody in different permutations and combinations??? And some of the other recommendations are absolutely bizarre, have a look on the two scrnshots:

twitter1

Twitter launches “suggested users”

January 16, 2009

How come holidays end so soon?

January 12, 2009

Am back, was off on a family vacation to Varanasi, Lucknow & Delhi for eight days. Oh was it really for 8 days??? If yes, how come it ended so soon 🙁 ? Perhaps I was so busy enjoying it that never realized when time slipped away. It was fun to be away from work with minimal access to laptop and phones all these days and to add to that deadly cold weather of north! I can say literally that it was really a “chilled out” vacation 🙂. After all these years in Mumbai and Bangalore, facing winters of Delhi and Varanasi with 3 – 4 degree temperature was some experience I must say. Both me and N are from that part of the country itself but still…I think Bangalore weather really spoils you to adjust anywhere else. We both got down with cough and cold but despite ill health and in that chilling weather also one thing which we really enjoyed throughout our trip was food – from Jalebis and Lassi of Varanasi to Kababs and Panipuris of Lucknow to Samosas and Chats of Delhi, Yummm! This was totally a foodie vacation, both of us before leaving were having these great plans of enjoying street side food and kababs of Lucknow and for once we stuck to our plan LOL! Now it’s a different thing that after coming back, I have hidden my weighing scale below the bed, I really don’t have the courage to face the scale now 😀

Overall it was a very good trip and I have lot more to share about my trip which I will do in my subsequent posts. As of now, it’s time to get back to work. Monday after 8 days of leave is really terrible, isn’t it? It’s 8:10 pm already and still no hope of leaving for home anytime soon…Had a long day at work which I guess is going to continue to be a long night too 🙁

Chandni Chowk to China: Don’t watch even if it comes for FREE!

Myspace’s new marketing / engagement strategy: Black Curtain

Screw it, Let’s do it!

Myspace’s new marketing / engagement strategy: Black Curtain

Movie Marketing: Chandni Chowk to China

Thanks Nautankey!

Movie Marketing: Chandni Chowk to China

Twitter launches “suggested users”

How come holidays end so soon?

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