Indian Cricket Team - New look is the new Mantra

Flashback 5 months back. After a humiliating defeat at the hands of Scotland and exit from the first round of the cricket world cup India were really the underdogs for the Twenty 20 world cup and amongst the teams with least experience for this particular format.

A couple of hours ago what most of us experienced was nothing short of pride and happiness which we probably felt after lifting the 83 Cricket World Cup. Looks like Indian team is back with a bang this time. So what could have led to this reversal in the fate of Indian cricket ?

To begin with this Indian team wore a typically new and fresh look. Led in front my the young and intelligent M S Dhoni this team was ready to take risks and most of them paid off. M S Dhoni was really confident about the new players. I could not imagine Dravid handling over the last over of the critical match (both against Australia in the semis and Pakistan in the finals ) to Jogender Sharma especially after he had gone for a hammering in the previous overs. It is this faith in the new players for M S Dhoni which payed back.

Dhoni again displayed some great leadership qualities and led from the front. Never once in any of the nail biting matches he ever looked tensed or worried. He was always pumping in more confidence in the likes of Sreesnath and R P Singh, and look what he got in return the World Cup.

Unarguably one of the best batting performances in the World Cup was by no other than Yuvraj. Literally snatched a couple of critical matches from the opponent. The six sixes in an over against Broad was a visual treat which I would definitely be remembering for a long time now.

So everyone would agree that this change in Indian team is definitely a welcome change. Looks like it's time for Dravid, Ganguly's and Tendulkars (Yes you heard it right, Tendulkar) to move along and give some breathing space to the fresh blood in the team. No doubt that the trio I have just mentioned are one of the best players the game might have ever produced but yes as we all know "Nothing Lasts Forever" and "The only constant thing in this world is change".

Ratatouille Movie Review - It will make you smile

Release Date : Aug 24, 2007
Director : Brad Bird
Writer : Brad Bird
Voice : Patton Oswalt, Ian Holm, Lou Romano, Brian Dennehy, Peter Sohn

With such a hard name to pronounce, to see such a simple and soothing movie like this was undoubtedly a great experience.

For a movie from Pixar animations (the same studio which brought Cars, The Incredibles) there are always high set of expectations for the technical quality of the movie which this movie has defintely met. The animations of the movie are so stunning that at times the animation movie was looking much more realistic than any real movie.

In short the movie is all about the idea of a great chef in Paris, France who prophesis that "Anyone can Cook", and how this sentiment drives a cute little rat to believe that he can become a chef and finally does so in great style.

Agreed that the story of the movie is quiet predictable and is a regular underdog story and how he achieves his dreams. What makes this movie a touch above the regular suff is the fact that the way this movie has been presented is really beautiful.

In short go for a movie and you sure would not be disappointed.

Rating - 3.5/5

Apne is watchable

There are just a few hindi movies which i miss watching in the first
couple of weeks and then he ahead to watch it in the third week. Apne
is one such movie and honestly i do not regret this decision. i went
in the theatre not taking with me very high expectations and i came
out quite satisfied.
In short apne is a movie about yesterday s boxing champion (played by
dharmendar) and how he wants his unfulfilled boxing dreams being
fulfilled by his sons (played by bobby deol and sunny deol).
Eventually as expected they come out victorious and give this movie a
happy ending.
The biggest problem with apne is the heavy dose of stereotyping which
this movie exposes us to. Why are the foreigners always cruel and
selfish , and indians always the other way round . In another in the
boxing ring bobby and sunny never actually look like boxers with the
extra kilos of flab on their bodies. In addition the scene in which
bobby's childhood handicap is fixed just by a simple fall on a bench.
This one was real hard to digest. In addition the heroines of the
movie have moving more to do other than just dancing and smiling.
The star of the movie is undoubtedly dharmendra who holds the movie
from the start till the end. Although i have never been a big fan of
dharmendra but have to admit that in this movie he still has enough
charm left to leave the viewer spellbound. Though at times the speech
is not too clear but is manageable.

Thank god its friday

Finally here comes the day of the week which we all wait for very eagerly the whole of the week. Any ideas what makes a friday evening so special and a monday morning so horrible ? As far as i believe its all in the mind. Any thoughts ?



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Turn your Mobile in an PC.... Morange

After losing my brand new Nokia 5300 (cmon' it was only 4 months old) I finally settled for Nokia 6233 this time primarily because of it's stereo sound speakers, but honestly I wasn't too impressed, though the phone is not that bad. Now that Airtel in Delhi is providing GPRS/EDGE facilities even in prepaid mobile I started searching for some java based Google talk chat application for mobile which might work on my Nokia Series 40 v3 phone.

After googling for the same for a while I came across a java app called morange which as per them converts the mobile into a full fledged PC. At first I was apprehensive as I had not heard about this application and wasn't too sure whether it would be safe to install it on the mobile or not. On further searching I visited it's official site and it looked kind of genuine.

Morange installed pretty smoothly on the mobile and it supported both HTTP connection and socket connection from the mobile (At the moment I guess Airtel in Delhi is just providing HTTP connection for prepaid). The features in the application are great right from support for google talk, yahoo messenger, msn, RSS readers, en email client that works over a HTTP connection, remote file access program for accessing files from the computer and so on. The application comes in standard edition and VIP edition . Standard edition does offer most of the stuff and with some payment ( I guess its around $30 per year if I am not wrong, kindly check with the website www.morange.com for the correct rates) you could opt for the VIP services.

Two days after using Morange I would like to recommend it to all the people out there like me.. who would like to convert their mobile handsets in a full fledged PC. Visit www.morange.com for more details.

One Love - A magic woven by A.R. Rahman....

Some people are built up with a golden heart. Whatever they do does is nothing short of wonder, especially when it's gotta do something with a good cause. The person in discussion here is the great music maestro A.R . Rahman. In his debut film he did wonders with his patriotic song "Bharat Humko Jaan se Bhi Pyaara Hain.." followed by list of his patriotic songs or songs for a noble clause. "Vande Mataram" in my opinion is one of the greatest work of Rahman, followed by a beautiful adaptation of our National Anthem in "Bose - The forgotten hero." Patriosm wasn't left behind even in films like "The Legend of Bhagat Singh" .

 

In recent times Rahman composed an anthem for Tsunami victims, followed by "Pray for me Brother" for the support of A.R. Rahman foundation. Now after all this noble work A.R. Rahman had once again come up with what he does best - music, singing and that too for a noble cause. In support for "Vote for Taj" campaign Rahman has come up with a single "One Love" with mindblowing music and some great lyrics. To top it all its been released in 6 lanugages including Hindi, Tamil, Telgu, Kannada, Malyalam and Benglai and is definitely one of it's kind piece of art. The song actually transforms you into a land of love and really grows on you after a few listening.

 

So as usual A.R.Rahman gets a "thumbs up" for his great effort for his tribute to the one and only "Taj Mahal".

Jhoom Barabar Jhoom - Movie Review

Movie - Jhoom Barabar Jhoom
Director-Shaad Ali
Date of Release - 15th June 2007
Music Director - Shankar Ehsaan Loy
Actor-Abhishek Bachan, Preity Zinta, Bobby Deol, Lara Dutta, Amitabh Bachan
Producer - Aditya Chopra

With a star cast as good as this and some rocking music from SEL , I was really expecting this movie to do some wonders in this hot Delhi summer, but alas even this movie failed as miserably as does the prediction of the Met department fails regarding the arrival of monsoons in Delhi ;-).

The movie had nothing going it's way from the word go. Preity was looking stale in the role, with Abhishek overdoing his part. Bobby and Lara are perhaps the only saving grace of movie well supported by some good music and well picturized songs. In short the movie is all about Preity and Abhishek waiting for their fiances at the waterloo station while the train gets delayed by a couple of hours. The conversation between them extends their relation from just being mere acquaintances and what happens next is told as the movie unfolds in the second half.

Irrespective of a rather childish story and script, the movie does have some humorous moments which does leave you in splits but I am sorry that they are easily overpowered by the otherwise boring movie. To add to your woes you have Amitabh Bachan jumping into the screen wearing a funny colorful jacket whenever the movie tries to pick up some pace.

All in all this movie can be easily be defines as an opportunity well wasted and should very easily be avoided.

Rating 1.5/5