Kakaji shines..

I knew this is a beautiful song.. but check out the dance moves.

insightful SMS

Today morning I received a SMS. It said "Your true character is defined by how you treat the people who can't do anything for you"

I promptly replied to my friend "How do you treat politicians?"

Unbelievable! Incredible!!

Every year there is one performance that just comes out of the blue and becomes an instant star. This is this year's instant star. A 10 year old with a voice that just cannot cannot CANNOT come from her tiny frame. I could bet 100 dollars that this is just a child lip-syncing to an adult opera singer's recording.

And her expressions! She reminds me of a 8-10 year old Dakota Fanning whose eyes and expressions seemed to spookily mature.

whoa!

What just happened???

Econ-animation 101

Complex Subject ... Simple Message ... Interesting presentation.
I wish all regular school/college lectures could be like this :). Let me know you thoughts on this.

Thoughts to ponder

A post after a long long of time. And this mail compelled me to post following reply.

I received above said mail from my relative and I was like "ye kya chal raha hai? who creates such a damn mail?". Generally we all get such mails where the only action you need to take to prove yourself as true Human/Indian/Hindu/Marathi/Punjabi/Tamil etc etc etc is to FORWARD mails to your friends. (I wrote about one such mail on my blog here).

So the reply is like this:

"Very true, But the point is why should we expect someone serving us for free?

If someone is doing a hard work, that's right being a politician is a very very hard work, why should he not be paid adequately? If you are running a company or holding key position in corporate world, you will earn much more than what a politician earns. (I mean legal income for both ;) That's why talented persons don't opt for political career. I am of the view that political remuneration should be such that all the talented persons should view it much above IT/Banking/finance/consultancy jobs.

In the present scenario only ones who does not get any job enters to politics. Few others enter politics because their business is politics. All the second/third generation leaders are only carrying their family business forward. Their pa/grandpa have invested so much in politics that if they don't harvest the crop, who else will? They will make fool of themselves if they don't cash the crop.

Any type of work which needs dealing with people having lower IQ/awareness than you is painful. (Thats why I am happily designing buildings from office but not dare/willing to enter the actual construction business). Honestly ask yourself why you are not entering politics? The immediate answer comes there is a lot of "gandagi". So a person who is dealing with this gandagi day in and day out is ought to be "ganda" himself. Ralely people remain clean in politics. Because unless you have very strong will and very high vision you are bound to be trapped by the people surrounding you.

So Rather then blaming the politicians, many times I think that they are doing a great job by filling the position where none of "US" want to be. After the independence there was a shortage of higly-educated people entering in the politics. In the struggle of independence all top leaders were lawyers, journalists, teachers, philosophers, scientists or such. But I don't know why very few people opted for politics after independence. So there was vacuum. This opportunity was sensed by people who did not have great visions. Thus they entered into politics and subsequent generations tried to make politics difficult to be assessed by others so that they can have monopoly over it and run it as business.

Many time I also disturbed by the gravity of the situation of our nation. But a little deeper thinking reveals that everything is in the place where it should be. If the kind of politicians we have in our Vidhansabhas and Loksabha they deserve to be there, because better than those did not dare to fight elections.

It also happens that many times we are so obsessed with dark/dirty part of politics (and for that matter any other aspect of life) that we dont see gray or white shade of it.

So the problem is multidimensional. And the last line of the mail really makes no sense. 855 crore is not even sufficient for a flood relief of a small state. It can only make life's of very few few people livable."

I keep replying to such mails with unexpected replies, and I guess some people have removed my name from their "forward" list. At least my replies did save me if not humankind/India/Hindu/Marathi/Punjabi/Tamil etc etc etc.

Please also share your views on this.

college kids got talent...

Remember the Super Mario thing from last year's 'India's Got Talent'? No? Here...





Now, take it to another level altogether... in America's Got Talent 2010...

Trailer Park 3

Let's start with Frieda Pinto... Julian Schnabel... and Bombay Theme!



One for fun....



And the rest.... interesting for one reason or another...

Who would not want to buy this..

.. Atleast the ads are really cute!!

Also check out the links at the RHS of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niOCmIuts90&feature=channel for more if you want to see more similar ads.



Cheers!

2010... the awards so far...

I have seen Inception only about an hour ago, so clearly this post will be unduly colored because of that. But that's ok.. we'll not consider this my "movies of first half of 2010" post, but a part of my "let me salute Inception" posts.. :)

Note: the foreign Language movies are mostly of 2009, but got proper US releases only in 2010. so....

so.....

Best Supporting Actor: John Hawkes (Winter's Bone), Guillermo Francella (The Secret in their Eyes),  and Niels Arestrup (Un Prophete)
special mentions: Pablo Rago (The Secret in their Eyes), Nana Patekar (Raajneeti)

Best Supporting Actress: Priyamani (Raavan/Raavanan) and Olivia Williams (The Ghost Writer)
special mentions: Soledad Villamil (The Secret in their Eyes), Dale Dickey (Winter's Bone), Ellen Page (Inception) (well, she looked great.. and we KNOW she is a great actress... didn't have to do all that much here though.. still, they are my awards, aren't they? :P which reminds me.. I think I'll give one to Marion Cotillard too!!)

Best Actor: Tahar Rahim (Un Prophete)
special mentions: Leonardo DiCaprio (Shutter Island/Inception), Filippo Timi (Vincere), Naseeruddin Shah (Ishqiya), Vikram (Raavanan)

Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone) and Giovanna Mezzogiorno (Vincere)
special mentions: Noomi Rapace (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Vidya Balan (Ishqiya), Hye-Ja Kim (Mother)

Best Screenplay: Christopher Nolan (Inception)
special  mentions: Michael Arndt (Toy Story 3), Park/Bong (Mother), Sacheri/Campanella (The Secret in their Eyes)


Best Director: Christopher Nolan (Inception)
special mentions: Roman Polanski (The Ghost Writer), Debra Granik (Winter's Bone), Michael Haneke (The White Ribbon), Juan José Campanella (The Secret in their Eyes)

Best Picture: Inception
special mention: Toy Story 3
slightly less special mentions: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Secret in their Eyes, Vincere, The Secret of Kells
ohh.. and some more: Mother, Winter's Bone, Ishqiya, The Ghost Writer, Shutter Island

ohh.. wait.. Best Picture isn't the last award here.. I have another...

Master of Rahul's Movie Universe: Christopher Nolan :) :)

Update:


After seeing Inception second time....

I'm replacing Ellen Page with Marion Cotillard in best supporting actress... :)

Also... needless to say, Inception takes all the technical awards... Best Editing, Best Sound Design, Best Visual Effects, Best Music Score (a very special mention to Toy Story 3 but, really, Inception's score is something else entirely), and maybe even Best Cinematography (with Shutter Island and The White Ribbon giving it tough competition... perhaps even sharing the award).