Carpool Cheats, unlicenced plumbers, resume liars..

Most of you know that there was a site called carpool cheats, that made an example out of folks violating carpool lane rules because they thought no one was watching..

The initial reaction was along the lines of "vigilante justice" in the carpool lane, but later we heard that the site organizers were threatened by the cheats and they backed off for fear of retaliation..

Around the same time(might be wrong on the timeframe here) a website called Angie's list was started which got feedback from users on electricians, contractors and plumbers so one could check their background. This was free if I remembered right but now you have to pay money to do a fact check on a plumber! Guess they don't want free feedback anymore and have gone to verifying the feedback. They are all formal now and have to worry about competitors bad mouthing each other. Guess that costs a lot of money to keep that straight.

A recent observation on "Linkedin", there are many folks who exaggerate their resumes and have even found an instance where a recommendation I wrote for someone has been cut and paste into a recommendation someone else wrote. Now what do you do? Copyright your recommendations?

Why isn't there a site that fact checks resumes that are posted? In other words collect a 360 feedback on anyone registered on the site. If you say you did something or accomplished something, have someone who was on your management chain e-verify it and also have someone who worked for you e-verify it?

Wouldn't be a bad idea to have people rate you on a scale of 0 to 5 stars as an employee, individual contributor, manager, leader, inventor etc.... no?

If such a site already exists, do let me know! If not, should patent this idea and start a site like that.. then again, one has to worry about being attacked by everyone from the local chef at the desi restaurant to the CEO's who happen to drive on the same freeways as us..

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A new genre?

After a long time, wife insisted I get out of the house and watch a movie on Friday night.

Guess the gray hair and visually obvious stress was a concern to everyone at home. So off they sent me to watch a new release Tamizh movie called "Sarvam". Did not understand even the title or the context, didn't know who was acting etc. etc.

Went to watch with the cousin and MIL. Before the movie started asked the cousin "so what is this movie about?" and the answer was "romantic thriller".

I was stumped. Romantic thriller? Did not know that there was a genre of movies like that.

In any case, the movie had a romance section in the front half and a disjoint supposed thriller section in the second half. It was a crying shame that the songs were done so well, with fantastic picturization and special effects, although in one or two places the locales and backdrops were so good that all the hero and heroine had to do was walk gracefully to carry the song and they screwed it up with some real bad dance moves. If you have seen the movie, you know exactly what I am talking about.

Sometimes you can give an architect the greatest of Italian Marble, Venetian stained glass, ocean floor sandstone, Burmese teak wood, etc. etc. but he could completely blotch it and make a freaking random heap of rubble out of the whole thing!

Sarvam brings to mind an old grandma adage "kurangu kayil poo maalai" (give a flower garland in the hands of a monkey). The monkey does not know how to appreciate the flower garland and will eventualy rip it to shreads. Someone gave this director a lot of beautiful elements to piece together or he did create a lot of beautiful pieces himself and he eventually......

made Sarvam out of it!

It was good that we went with no expectations. The first half of the movie was entertaining enough to compensate for the second half.

This movie is not just a romantic thriller, it also belongs to another genre, a nonthrilling thriller.

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By chance, if you are lucky *

You get to watch Luck by chance on DVD.

Maybe my expectations were too high after watching "Rock On"?

Konkona was great, even Isha was tolerable. Farhan was barely making the cut, and the music did not carry the movie.

Somehow my taste in movies has one lowest common denominator. No matter what the genre, the movie should keep moving forward! It should hold my attention. Any movie where I doze off or pull out my phone and have a temptation to check email, has disappointed me.

The first half of this movie was very well made. It was witty, funny, very natural and had everything going for it.

The second half was so predictable and at one point was just suspended .. it was like a feather hovering just before it takes another drop.. except it just hovered there, a little too long!

The last movie we (MIL and me) watched was Spellbound (the Hitchcock 1945 B/W movie) and watching this after that was not a good idea. We both came out saying "hmm.. that guy made a movie for almost 2 hours with 4 main characters and kept us engrossed and here we are dozing off in a 2009 movie".

We are now hoping for Delhi 6 in the coming weeks. We know the music is awesome..hope it moves us as well!

* Ps. I should add that in the second half the senior artists who were playing supporting roles were really showing off their acting talent and by comparison Farhan pales.

Moral of the story, dont have seasoned veterans play your supporting casts when you are making a movie about moviemaking with young leads!

pps. Note to self : going forward, lower expecations a tad before walking into a movie... dont expect much and be surprised!

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Mums the word

Well that is a very cliched title, you say?

Take a 100 cliches, from the Cliched book of Cliches (which I will write if it does not exist already) and string them together within a span of ninety minutes and add some special effects that make no sense, and what have you?

Mummy 3!

There are no "mummys" in this movie. No, I take that back. There are two mummy's. One is the hero's mother and the other one is the heroines mother. One mummy is immortal and the other one is well, just a mummy!

For some reason, there are skeletons in outfits which run around (and are referred to as Mummy's) and Yetis? which are too clearly, men in rubber suits. They did not even bother to make the effect "special". It reminds you of the duct taped monsters in Johnny sokko and the Giant Robot from when I was a kid when computer aided tricks were not around. And three headed Jet Li dragons and, and and and.....

Sentimental mushy family cliches for a full 10 minutes in the middle of what is supposed to be a masala movie with special effects to numb your already dead brain!

An entertainer, they said!
Fancy trailers, with the olympics, they did!
Mummy, they said!

Young Luke, "insult your love for movies", is what they did...

Bah!

ps. Note to self. No more watching sequels with #3 or beyond in their name, unless released in DVD. No more watching sequels, unless anyone and everyone we talk to gives it rave reviews.

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WANTED - updated

Instant review :

WOW !!!

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Now that the movie hangover is gone, more words!
Went to the movie without knowing anything about it. Originally was going to watch the PIXAR movie. Then a last minute change and watched "Wanted". The cousins had already read the reviews of the european release and told me that it was a "good action movie". Knowing nothing else about the movie was actually a plus.

It was a really well made movie. I am tempted to draw parallels with Dasavatharam, but will refrain from doing so.

Assuming that :

Bullets can curve,
Weavers figured out Boolean algebra and boolean representation of the english alphabet a thousand years ago,
the heart can go 400 beats/second (apparently hummingbirds go 1200 and a humans can go 220!)
James McAvoy can be cast as an accountant turned assasin
Angelina can still rock ...

well wait, that last one was not an assumption!, the movie is total entertainment! Keeps you on the edge of your seat, especially after Angelina shows up. The plot, twists given the assumptions are not bad.

There was a certain unique style of displaying everything in this movie (Unique along the lines of Matrix, Sin City, Amelie, etc.) and it was self consistant within the framework of the movie. The director did not violate his own rules, something I always appreciate in a movie. Let me explain. If you are making a movie about flying pigs, and a certain pig is doing sorties, it is within the framework of the movie, because there is a baseline assumption that pigs fly!

This movie has some amazing fight sequences, chases, special effects, and style, and style and more style!

All said and done, came out thinking

a. worth the ticket price
b. If this is an indicator of the summer movies this year, will be watching a lot of good movies.

WallE, Get Smart, Hancock are already on the growing list!

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