D:2

dhoom2

starring suzuki GSK-R1000K6, GSX-R600K6 and GSR600K6, great locales, great babes, putting-latest-bond-to-shame gadgetry, stupid police, muscular men, and of course abhishek, ash, bips, hrithik and that chopra dude whose dad made the movie...

movie tkt - 180 bucks
auto - 30 bucks
coffee - 36 bucks
bunking class and bird watching before and during the movie - priceless...

yup i am excited... it is that way when u expect something and the movie actually lives upto your expectations, however low they might be. this movie is probably the return of the adulthood for hrithik... he really looks as good as a sexy hunk should... damn sexy and smart... ash (if u watch closely) actually drools for him in a couple of scenes (it might be mistaken for wet look lipstick). he is that smart sophisticated intelligent muscular athletic thief who steals for the challenge of it and not for the money... yeah yeah so wot is different from D1's John Abraham... well nothing actually hrithik has great abs too... but then i don't like the john abraham... and hrithik dances well too...

abhishek bacchan is his usual grumpy exterior soft interior self... and his nagging wife is comfortably pregnant at home so that he can romance bips... even if it means only for half the movie... adn in the second half he tries to bash ash, but hrithik does not allow it coming to the defense of his girl... wait i am day-dreaming... sorry...

the chopra guy is his usual funny stuff... but this time he has a pistol in his hand... man that is dangerous... there was once a joke about what is dangerous and swings from tree to tree... it was a chimp with a machine gun... this guy handling pistols is not safe... he was shooting aimlessly... now bips was shooting too... and that is what i call a touch-a-woman-can-only-give kind... she shoots a design into the practice bullseye...that is sharpshooting...

coming to the girls, they both like dolls and think like it too... bips is reduced from a sexy looking police officer with a special talent for shooting great designs in dummies, to a bikini totting beach babe who falls for the chimp, oops sorry the chopra dude... and ash plays the negative role, where she doublecrosses and triplecrosses hrithik and finally succumbs in the end to love...

now the music score is awesome too... the screeeeeeeeeeeeeeamm of the bikes and the banging of the drums (seems like they copied from southie gana-song) is just too good... what with hrithik and ash and bips and the chimp dancing away - truly their hips don't lie... and man can hrithik dance - his solo parts are truly mind blowing...

starting from namibia deserts and shot in different scenic spots across the world like brazil and mumbai, the pic is a treat for the eyes... but the way they use these truly blows your mind off... the sands are used for surfing and the mountains for bungee jumping... and the last scene when hrithik's bike jumps to its watery grave (oops, but i hate tragedies and don't want people to see them too). There are amazing stunts here that would put bond to shame... and the disguises that they come in are also truly magnificent - i dint know that adults could disguise themselves as kids... now that calls form some serious make-up...

some of the bloopers i wish to turn a blind eye to are the silly looking stunts that are attempted hollywood style, but remain bollywood isshhtyil... and the absurd stupidity of the policemen... those are like really irritating... i do agree hrithik's disguises were too good, but his gadgets are there for everyone to see... and people don't even notice that whatever they were guarding is missing... the star studded cast had to have that many songs and they are all there complete with all the disco music adnd lights and dancing girls in shorty shorts and guys with sparkling hairgels... in fact the whole movie gave an impression of a 2 and half hour item number.

overall i just loved this movie... though it is a tragic end, it has a neat twist at the end... no, the bike is not saved sorry (what else do you think could be a bigger tragedy than a hayabusa plunging to its watery grave... there is no justice in this world)...

warning:
this is only a personal prejudiced opinion. for the true picture, i advice you watch the movie. i do recommend the red lounge. my friend complains of a stiff neck in the economy class because of the uncomfortable position in which he slept.

DHOOM MACHALE (once again, if possible at a cheaper rate)

irrational opulence

Recently I had been to Tiruppur – the knitting capital of India. It would be heartening and disheartening to note that the cloth and often the garment itself for major brands like reebok, nike, adidas and many many more have their origins here for a fraction of the price at which it is bought off the shelves. This town (yeah it is still a town), and its surrounding towns and villages have a predominant occupation as either the textile industry or farming.

I could not digest the information I gathered on this town, based on a lot of hearsay and eye-seens. The people here are hard core business men… the business is flourishing as this was an outsourced business long before the word outsourcing became a common household utterance in our country… some of the finest cotton yarn is produced here and the worldwide brands pay a premium for these yarns and the cloth manufactured… actually the only contribution from these brands is the brand name… so truly a brand is a brand is a brand…

The people make huge profits and own big houses whenever there is a windfall of profits, but in case there is a bad luck and one consignment of the company results in a loss then the very same guys are reduced to poverty – but without loss in spirit. Earlier he might have been traveling in a merc E-class and now maybe a tvs-50 (yeah these mopeds are still sold here alongside the 100 color option scooty peps…) but he still travels…

On the flip side, the city is totally polluted and the ground water is colored from all the dyes. Traffic is bad on these roads with smoking trucks and buses plying these roads with overloaded cargoes of those expensive brands. The basic necessities are either expensive for those who can afford it or carcinogenic for those who cannot.

It is funny that such a rich town is so undeveloped in terms of attitude. This town has had a favorable economy for decades as Indian cotton and yarn is supposed to be of the best quality. At this kind of money exchanged, the town should have become a huge financial capital of Tamilnadu eating up Chennai in fame… really what is there in Chennai except for the government? This is maybe one of the richest zones of Tamilnadu but the people here have not come out of their cocoons…

The city still has open drains and many houses still manure their farms directly… they use tractors and heavy farm equipment, but still spend very little for their own travel convenience. The transports used mostly are 30-40 year old breaking down trucks and buses spewing smoke all over the roads… sometimes it makes me wonder if the black roads are actually due to the tar or the smoke settled over the ages… I really could not believe my ears when people said that the premium and pure petrol actually screwed up the engines and reduced the life of the vehicles.

The people who drive the vehicles are excited to own the steering wheel for the moment… in spite of the reality that they don’t have a valid license to drive, let alone kill, they own the roads and consider it a sin to adhere to the speed limits, or even twice that. One-way signs if at all they still exist are ignored and the roads are just barely wide enough to support traffic on opposite directions to cross each other and most often the outside of the vehicle is out of the asphalt… many of them don’t even have the asphalt and use the swampy mud that soaks up the rain water and moves deeper into the earth… the roads are often neglected and there are potholes at blindspots on the long but unnecessarily winding stretches…but still these are the roads that has produced the heritage of the Narain Karthikeyan… not the straight broad stretch called the “Mount road of Chennai”.

The kind of facilities that are normally accepted with even half this kind of wealth is conspicuously missing… I cannot find any coffee-days or shopping malls, the theaters are the old weather beaten moth eaten proud 70MMs… the food in the restaurants are good, though the hygiene factor is nowhere to be seen. If anybody has been following the personal hygiene rules taught in primary school, they would give out twice of whatever they have eaten. The romantic-time-spending-under-soft-lights fancy restaurants are missing… however the normal restaurants pamper you with whatever food they have… the reason usually being the importance attached to food rather than the customer-is-king concept.

Even though these extravagances are missing, the extravagance is not totally missing. People own mercs, lexuses and land cruisers. To quote my close friend from a nearby town – there were only 3 mercs at the time of their introduction in India – one owned by some business tycoon in the north (probably the ambanis, I don’t remember) and 2 in his town!!! Similarly after the major metros, the famous international standards icici bank opened a branch in this area even before visiting many major cities. People do get those jazzy bikes and cars and trucks… but you can still find that this has affected only a very small part of the population. The majority still relies on the bullet for the mirazdars and the tvs-50s and the bajaj m80s for the middle class transport.

Gold is something that the people here are usually decked in after their dazzling silk and polyester saris and dhotis. Of course the fact that Indians still revere gold above their husbands may be one of the principle reasons for their spending in gold. But the opulence is displayed only in the metal and the material and not in the quality. I doubt that anil ambani or azim premji would invite any of these business families to their dinner parties even if these businesses were richer than them – actually it could be true, the richer than the popular business houses part, that is.

Despite so many popular engineering colleges around the towns, they still lack the basic primary education infrastructure… and some industries do proudly sport the board “No Child Labor” (yeah right it is only some). The broadbands and the internet is still beyond the reach of even those who can afford and appreciate them… oops did I jump the gun, before talking about the black and green screen boxes also known as computers… some houses use perfect lan-cords with brand new connectors to hang clothes to dry… communication still usually happens through the government post offices and at the other end of the spectrum the all pervading cellular networks. No, no GPRS and stuff… just plain voice mail…

I am not cribbing about the lack of infrastructure at this place. Nor am I saying that the bigger cities that have adopted the western culture are better off just because they satisfy some of the above requirements. What surprises me is the attitude of the people here. They are earners and not spenders. Whatever they spend on is usually not the priority number 1 of the city dwelling people of similar income levels.

This town is a classic case of money can’t buy everything. For everything else they still don’t accept mastercard.