ShashwaTalk

Euphoria: My Favourite Songs

2010-10-06T07:52:00.005+05:30

Euphoria is one of my favorite bands. They say they created the genre of Hindrock. I don't know what that means, but their songs are enjoyable and the videos (lot of them directed by Pradeep Sarkar) are exceptional. So here is a list of my favourite Euphoria Songs in no particular order:

1. Dhoom Pichuk:
The one that started it all. I guess this saved Archies Music (I think they eventually folded up) from bankruptcy. The video was awesome, Shubha Mudgal's vocals in the end took the song to another level, so did the setting, Benaras (I decided I will go there after seeing this video and it is still pending). Here is the video:

3. Kaise Bhoolegi Mera Naam
This song is average but video is awesome! It tells a story in 3 minutes and does a good job at that. Boy Pradeep Sarkar has some talent (why on earth did he make the idiotic Laaga Chunari Mein Daaga? ). So this video shows Vidhya Balan's marriage which is messed up and in typical Bollywood style, Palash Sen jumps in and saves the day!. I particularly like the cut at 3:23 mark. Nice job! Here is the video:

2. Hum (Rok Sako To Rok Lo)
This is one of the relative unknowns. I remember this song was used in one of the Maruti Adverts. I love the song due to minimal (or no?) usage of electronic instruments. It features "Miss India" Mehnaz. So here is the video:

4. Sha Na:
Features Neha Dhupia in her pre-Bollywood stardom days. The song is pretty nice! Most impressive is the chorus which means nothing but I find myself repeating days on a trot.

5. Phir Dhoom:
Another Pradeep Sarkar Gem, this video was the first one of the second album. And boy it was number 1 for a long time! I remember this Veejay on Channel V cribbing that artists need to make better albums just to unseat Euphoria!

6.Mantra:
This was India's first single album. Just one song, 2 versions for Rs. 20. The concept failed miserably, but the song was solid. In the starting of the video, there is this producer type person who is depressed that the video doesn't have girls and the band doesn't want to go to a foreign localtion for shooting! The song is great but the Guitar Solo at 3:10 takes it to the next level (and brings it in this list:) ). The best part about the video is that the common man stars in this, not the band. Awesome.

7. Tum:
This video features Michelle (the same female in the Dhoom Pichuk video). This time though, the song is much better than the ultra depressing video. Don't have much to write except I prefer happy endings

8. Maaeri:
Masterpiece, the video and the song. Have nothing else to say.

9. Bhoola Sab
Highly Underrated, but I like it due to good guitars, the whistle and a totally unconventional video.

Commonwealth Games

2010-10-04T10:03:00.005+05:30

And they have started! The opening ceremony was awesome! And with it came a powerful statement about us. We mess up yes, we have idiotic politicians, the Aussies play mind games all the time, but when it comes to getting stuff done and ensuring we put up a good show, you cannot beat India. The hoopla all the news channels were making about the bad condition of the Athletes' Village was just another way to garner TRPs. Yes we messed up, but hey thats how we roll!

No I don't endorse corruption and I am pretty sure, Suresh Kalmadi can join the Forbes List of Richest Indians this year, but people are speaking up, and this is a big change! We might not be ready to host the Olympics as yet, but hey who wants to? Since 1996 all of them have been loss making!

I don't understand why we want our games, our infrastructure, our security as per "international standards"? What is it about "international" that so charming? Aren't these games about Indian Pride? We do things our way, we have chaotic traffic, we have lots and lots (and lots (and lots)) of people so we can't expect that we will be like other countries. But we can be best we can be! And yes CWG opening ceremony was exactly that!

Here is to hoping that we can have a decent haul of medals this time and another rocking closing ceremony!

PS: Is there someplace where I can see the entire ceremony? I want to hear The President's speech!

The Indipop revolution of the 90s

2010-10-01T10:56:00.003+05:30

In the Big Bang Theory, one of Sheldon's dreams is to invent a time machine. Well it has already been invented. YouTube.

YouTube takes you back to the glorious days when 21 inch CRT television was the greatest thing and you had 25 different channels! Also there were no pesky DTH services, there was the cable-wallah dude who used to mis-report his numbers so that he could keep monthly charges low for consumers. God bless him!

You can see all the old ads, tv serials, songs, opening titles for all your favorite series as kids (Rant: There was a Pepsi Advertisement, Freedom to be Azaadi Dil Ki which I can't find anywhere! Please help!)

So basically randomly visiting different eras on YouTube I realized that one species of entertainers has disappeared from the scene, the Indian Popstars. The 90s were the golden days of Indipop. We had slew of "stars" from Baba Sehgal or Alisha Chinoy or Suchitra Krishnamoorthy or Raageshwari or Saagarika or Anaida or Mehnaaz or Altaaf Raja (god this is a long list!)

What differentiated these guys was that they didn't usually go for Playback singing and published their own albums. More so because they had their unique voices which weren't suitable for actresses (Alka Yagnik anyone?).

The videos that were made in those years were pretty slick and match up to the international videos of that time. I guess in those years, Pop was a niche product and hence these guys were not catering to the auto rickshaws but the cassette players in the cars and hence they were a class product.

What happened to these guys? Well here is my Hypothesis. Sonu Nigam happened. This dude who started with Gulshan Kumar belting out average (not bad though) imitations of Mohammed Rafi (in my opinion the greatest singer ever!) was rising in Bollywood. At the same time he had a hit TV show going on. In middle of all this, he came up with his blockbuster album Deewana. I think that's when pop started dying a slow death, though there were sporadic groups like Bombay Vikings or Euphoria (no they are not rock!) which came through. But the great days of Indipop were over.

Chak De India

2010-09-17T09:34:00.003+05:30

You know a movie is awesome when you are seeing a spoof and you want to see the original. I was seeing the MTV spoof “Cheque de India” and realized that well, the original is pretty awesome.

When you see a movie for the second or third time, you start seeing small things. CDI (sounds cooler and a bit like CID), follows the grand tradition of Yash Raj Films of having Shah Rukh Khan, has pretty women, has then dressed in Chiffon Saris (the pre final party) and has shoot on foreign location (d-uh Australia). But then it misses the lead heroine or shooting in Switzerland or a romantic song. Also the characterization of the Indian cricket player is damn shallow.

Then again, this movie is all about Shah Rukh Khan, he hams to the max (albeit very effectively), sheds more tears than the females, has the most fiery lines (the talk before the finals is pretty inspiring!) and basically remote controls his way to World Cup victory.

The plot is pretty straight forward about the redemption of a fallen hockey star (SRK) who appears after 7 years in the hockey wilderness. He has missed the crucial penalty against Pakistan in the finals and is branded as a traitor (and more so due to his religion). In real life had Chetan Sharma been a Muslim and had been hit for six of last ball. I am pretty sure he would have been late Chetan Sharma (with all due respect, not that I expect he or anyone he knows will read my obscure article)

So Mr. Khan (in real and reel life) decides to coach a group of 16 girls who are still not a team and decides that they will win the world cup (THAT was the big hint what is going to happen in the end, in sports movies, usually the team audience sees practice wins right?). Well after some initial issues, he (with some assistance from roadside Romeos) manages to make a team which plays and goes to Australia.

And they are beaten 7-0 by the Aussies in their first match. Remember we are Indians and we can do miracles at the last moment. So the team slogs their collective asses, and barely scrapes a win with Britain. Then a montage and we are at the quarter finals. Here we are bullied by the Argentineans who don’t know how sharp we are. We learn their tricks in first half and destroy them (and I am pretty sure in Hockey there is reservation for blind people in referee category, they ignore obvious fouls from both teams!)

In semis we meet Koreans who work with man to man marking. In the greatest of coaching traditions, the coach discusses this with the goalie (yes she is the captain but what can she do? Oh yeah she says that also!). Well the coach (who incidentally was the most successful center forward in the country) doesn’t know how to tackle that (wow!) so he needs the senior player (who has rebelled against him and is permanently sitting out) to tackle the damn Korean team. And she does that! She scores with a defender and we reach the finals!

70 minutes and one tie break later, India are the world champions!! Awesome!

Well yeah but what I do remember is that suddenly the coach is being portrayed as the best thing that happened to hockey since Dhyaanchand. This hypocrisy is so true. My grandfather always said that only the rising sun is worshipped.

The film works on many levels, amazing acting by all actors (except maybe that dude who played the cricket star), especially the supporting hockey staff. Also the camera work was awesome, you felt like you were in the match. I guess NOT having stars worked in the favor of the director.

A crucial test for any sports movie is that the audience should feel the thrill in the penultimate moment of victory, even on repetitive viewings. Well it did pass the test for me (only one after Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander, in which I still get scared Aamir Khan might lose the race).

In the end of the movie I was shouting “Chak De!” all over again.

Roadrunner

2010-07-08T10:45:00.001+05:30

One of my favorite cartoons is the Road Runner Show. It features Wile E Coyote who wants to capture this (in my opinion irritating) bird Roadrunner. So Mr. Coyote launches all these elaborate schemes to capture Roadrunner and has a spectacular failure rate of 100%.

Coyote buys these nifty gadgets from Acme Industries. If it was for real, the owner would be the richest man on this earth and Acme would be the largest corporation on the planet. Sadly, that is not the case. Well, the only issue with the products is that they end up failing spectacularly at the critical moment. Anyhow, this is one show where I wanted the Roadrunner to be caught and be eaten. It was an irritating creature, and somehow never was able to get my sympathy (like Jerry the mouse in Tom & Jerry).

Looking back (am I that old? Seriously?) I realize Coyote represents all of us. We think we can plan for everything life throws at us, and catch the Roadrunner. But somehow, Roadrunner (life) finds a way to mess up these plans or at the critical juncture something (Acme Industries’ products) gets messed up and we are left hanging in the canyon with only one option, to fall down with a helpless shrug.

To summarize, careful planning is no match for dumb luck.

I just hope Coyote catches that damn road runner and roasts it slowly and eats it!

Titan Watches

2010-07-05T08:29:00.004+05:30

Q. What is common to the following famous people: Aamir Khan, Rani Mukherji, Mozart, Sheetal Mallar, Aishwarya Rai, Tara Sharma, John Abraham and Minisha Lamba, Maria Gorreti, Praveen Dabas, Rahul Bose and Saira Mohan?

A. They all have been featured in Titan Watches advertisements.

Ever since I can remember watching TV, I remember the Titan Jingle. Today browsing through YouTube videos, discovered that there is a Titan Industries Channel ) which has advertisements going way into the past.

Seeing old advertisements to a new one is like seeing evolution, from the long 2 min advertisements in the eighties to the 30 sec advertisements we see now (which is a testament to either decreasing viewer attention span or increasing rates of airtime). In case of Titan, right from their first advertisement (Introducing Titan Quartz) to the latest ones, barring a few exceptions, all commercials have been less than or equal to a minute. Which I think is awesome.

I also realized the growing power of star value. Sure there is an Aishwarya Rai advert, but when she wasn’t THE Aishwarya Rai. In fact she has been shown as a wife in that advertisement; I guess she started playing a wife on screen recently only. Nowadays, you have Aamir Khan, Rahul Bose, Rani Mukherji, Saira Mohan and John Abraham endorsing various Titan Brands.

Titan has had the same music for the incredibly long time, few people will know that it is Mozart’s 25^th symphony. This consistency in branding I think is something Titan should be proud of.

Here are few of my Favorite Titan Adverts through the years:

So many things spoken with music and no words

And again.

I remember this ad when I was a kid, since it had only one word, Papa. Superb!

Pixar: 100% Genuine Animation!

2009-07-14T04:55:00.004+05:30

Just saw Pixar's latest movie, Up (you haven't seen it? You should! rather you MUST). Coming back to my point, i sort of realised that time and again Pixar gives us a masterpiece which has critics drooling and box office register ringing. How does it manage it? After every hit, expectations go up a bar and every single time Pixar meets them! Just have a few thoughts on how it manages (its speculation, i might be wrong)

1. Talent: Pixar has the best talent. PERIOD. Be it John Lasseter(the pioneer is computer animation), Brad Bird or the voice actors (Tom Hanks, Woody Allen, or the people who have the sound effects)

2. Faith of the Leaders: Steve Jobs (Here i am taking a small leap and ignoring that George Lucas sold Pixar) didn't fire people even when Pixar was a loss making company which made computers (yes not animation!) and spent from his personal fortune (agreed he had loads of money, but he did spend it!) to keep it afloat. There was this quarter when these chaps didn't manage so reach double digit growth but he kept them alive.

3. Adapting to Changes: Once they realised people liked animation (some award they won for Luxo Junior) they moved in fast and planned a full length computer animated movie (Toy Story)

4. Partnering the best: And to make their first movie who they went to? Some sidey finanacer? No they went to big daddy of animation, Disney. And they did make history.

5. Self Belief: So you managed to convince Disney who has all the money so this means he can push you around? No way! You have the Brains (yups that does give tonnes of belief). Money can be replaced not brain power! So these chaps (actually Mr Jobs again) negotiates a deal with Disney which had Pixar logo being of the same size and having same visibilty as disney so the film going people remember a Pixar-Disney film not a Disney film. And this self belief also ensured that they could kick out Michal Eisner (the deal was one of the reason).

Now the thing is how can we map these things in our own life and own work? Open for discussion!!

Wordle

2009-06-25T02:00:00.002+05:30

Made this from this website since dont have anything to write

E.T. - The Extra Terristrial

2009-06-19T00:55:00.006+05:30

I was seeing ET-The Extra Terrestrial (approximately 109th time) and was again struck by the visuals. Usually people tend to do great things once, Steven Spielberg has the knack of doing them again and again, be it ET or Schindler's List or the underrated Amistaad.

Coming back to ET, the robot itself which depicted ET was a masterpiece. The eyes were so expressive you tend to forget it is a machine not a real person(that's the aim of cinema isn't it?). The scene when E.T. says "phone home" is pure magic!

Then the actors. The kids were awesome. Maniratnam in India and Spielberg can extract wonderful performance from kids. For Maniratnam's finesse see Anjali or even the acting of the kid Manisha in Dil Se... or the twins in Bombay.

Getting back to ET, it has been said that this is something similar to the story of Jesus Christ. I didn't realise it initially, but after reading I got it (it happens! I am no Superman!). This chap coming from other world, touching lives of so many people, selects his St Peter (Eliot) and his apostles (the kids on bikes) who fly by magic (holy spirit). Then there is a reference to resurrection also, when ET dies and then appears to his apostles in a almost magical way (glowing heart and liquid nitrogen spewing out from the Van's behind). Wow!

I have been trying to write this small piece for 2-3 weeks and always end up watching the movie when I sit to write and going again :)

One more thing, even though the movie was a superhit and a masterpiece, the game which came with the movie is considered one of the worst ever! And it is supposedly considered to cause the North American Video Game Crash in 1983. So everything was not magical about E.T. :)

Update: The logo for Steven Spielberg's studio, Amblin entertainment is taken from ET only. Look below:

IPL Advertisment

2009-06-07T20:54:00.006+05:30

IPL Advertising in India is awesome. However, global advertising is not behind. Here is an example:

Wonder why didn't he learn Hindi Abuses if learnt to eat the hot curry :) Maybe Bhajan might teach him that.....

Google Chrome

2009-05-27T12:07:00.006+05:30

When Internet revolution came to me, the browser wars were officially over and IE was the undisputed winner. I used IE for a long time till Mozilla FireFox 2.0 was released with a lot of fanfare. I was a hardcore convert.

Mozilla is really cool! It is made cooler by the plug ins/themes which can be used to modify the looks and functionality and what not! Heck you can make stuff yourself or modify the look yourself if you are too finicky about it!

There were others like Apple's Safari. Safari is the browser used in iPhone and Macs and is supposed to be really good. I find it to be gloomy and clunky looking browser thanks to the grey colored interface. It is light and it is fast but not destined to be used by many, at least on the PCs.

FireFox 3 was launched and made a world record. Yeah it is pretty cool (new interface and stuff) but it takes time to load (maybe something Bill Gates did to promote IE?) but it was the best thing around and was my default browser.

Then came the launch of Google Chrome which promised a "A Fresh take on the Browser". Intrigued, I donwloaded it. I found it is faster, has a sleeker and a cleaner interface and has tonnes of cool features. My favourite Feature is the Create application shortcut feature. Chrome is there to basically screw Microsoft and this feature proves it. You have Gmail, Google Docs and Google Spreadsheet (competition to Outlook, MS Word and MS Excel) and you create and application shortcut feature. Now you double click on it, thanks to Chrome being super fast you get it immediately on screen!

This is going to be a fun battle to watch out, Google vs Microsoft. Wait and watch.

Till that time keep using chrome.. It is pretty cool!

Bye Bye IPL 2

2009-05-25T10:04:00.004+05:30

Lalit Modi announced yesterday that IPL has become a global phenomenon, and left no stone unturned to prove it. Be it having Eddy Grant (I didn't know who he was before IPL closing ceremony) or Akon (who repeated two songs for 30 mins, and his sound system had some issues) or Katrina Kaif (Jai ho, Pussycat Dolls remix, she couldn't dance but looked GORGEOUS).

I think Lalit Modi thought that by Smack That, Akon meant smacking of ball with the bat. Akon won't agree to that that that meant something else (is it correct English? I think so). And he was lip-synching! If they wanted to hear a tape of Akon why fly him in and his DJ? Akon also presented Miss Bollywood her crown while singing Beautiful. This lady is hot but wooden. All in all this section was a letdown.

Then came Katrina Kaif, radiant in white, while Jai Ho (Pussycat Dolls remix) blared in the background. Barring KK everything else sucked. Be it choreography by Shiamik Davar or the song ( I hate it! It murders the spirit of the song which is ok ok not even an Oscar winning compostion, Rahman has done better work before). And that was it! Just one song and it was over! Such a mega letdown!

The fire drummers (Phoenix something) were the best performers for the closing ceremony. The performance was mindblowing and suited the occasion (African drummers, playing with fire in darkness, yeah it was good).

Eddy Grant's performance was pretty good. I liked the song, Gimme Hope. But then it was ruined by one and only Shiamik! Vande Matram couldn't have been sung at a worst event. It felt out of place and inappropriately put in. Grow up! You guys want to be global but then have to show off nationalism at such places!!!

If Lalit Modi ever read this, a piece of advice, don't have so many speeches! SA Premier was more interested in soccer, you were more interested in wife and kids and glamor. And please have longer Katrina Kaif perfomance!!!

Why H1N1 fears India

2009-05-21T15:46:00.002+05:30

After SARS , Avian flu here is another global virus, Swine Flu or H1N1. And people globally are scared and running around for a cure and getting paranoid and the usual hoopla.

Living in a country which has 0.6 Doctors per thousand people, I should be scared. Cursory checks at airport (the government is on High alert, my foot!) and approx 50 milion tourists coming in, the probabililty of swine flu coming to India hovers somewhere around one.

I should be scared. I am not scared! Im from this country where I have to fight daily for my survival with 1 billion human beings, and a stupid virus will kill me? I have this (kind of stupid) theory that this fight for survival has made Indians the most resililent population group in this world. These new kids on the block (SARS, flu and the bunch) can't compete with the terror of Blue Line buses in Delhi or Arun Lal's commentary, or Sooraj Bardjaitya's flicks (MPKDH and Vivah).

Come on H1N1, Come to India and we will ensure that you fear us!

Dariya Dil - Tu Mera Superman

2009-05-19T10:19:00.000+05:30

Lazyness strikes again, so I am uploading another priceless video.....

Greatbong has some priceless comments on this song here

CID

2009-05-18T18:53:00.005+05:30

Sony has this long running program, CID. I neither like nor hate this show, but over the years (it has the Longest running crime investigation serial award, Wikipedia informs me), we have found some common things that happen in every single episode of CID. These include:

ACP Pradyuman (third from left, in the suit) has this line, in which camera zooms into his face, his eyebrow snaps up and he says, "Ab dekhta hoon yeh mujrim mujhse kaise bachta hai"
If there is any dangerous work, like going up an electric pole or diving underwater for some thing, Inspector Fredricks (second from left in the picture) always does that.
Inspector Daya (extreme right in the picture) slaps the criminal and the scene cuts to the crime branch (this happens in every episode I have seen)
The team finds some common thing (paan stain, pesticide etc) and ACP Pradyuman says "Jaao, poore Mumbai shehar mein __________ (insert the item from the list above) ki dukano mein jaake dhoondo ki kisne _______ (date of crime) tareekh ko yeh samaan khareeda tha". The funny thing is that the shopkeepers ALWAYS keeps records of the people coming in and going out!

Long Live CID!!!

Big Brother

2009-05-14T13:37:00.006+05:30

I have always been a big fan of google. It was the White knight which was free. It was a cool company with coolest people working there and making great things. It stood (or still does?) for everything anti Microsoft.

I have grown up on MS software (MS DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.0 is my earliest computer memory) and initially was in awe of this behemoth. Then thanks to media frenzy I realised they were forcing their products on me. Fine by me, one gets used to IE icon and can choose not to use it. Big Deal. What I didn't like is these guys killing companies like Lotus (acquired by IBM), Borland (which made C++) and Netscape. They scrwed these all by integrating their software in the windows shell, and making these look like slow clumsy programs (disclaimer: I might be wrong)

Going back to Google, I embraced google happily, using every product they threw @ me and testing it and giving feedback (do they even read it?). I fear though that is google becoming the Big Brother? If some paranoid cop thinks that I might have commited a crime (I wont!!) all my surfing habits will be handed over to him? Will 2024 be like 1984?

So many people claim to be Google Killers, be it Cuil, or to be launched Wolfram. I don't think they can! Google is too big to be killed by these. The only one who can kill google is Google itself and Sergey Brin and Larry Page are smart asses, so doomsday for Google is far far away.

Shera

2009-05-11T13:23:00.005+05:30

Here is a video from another Mithun-da classic.. Shera...

Disclaimer:Watch it at your own risk :)

Kolkata Knight Riders- K K Haar?

2009-05-06T13:28:00.005+05:30

Korbo, Lodbo, Jeetbo Re. The War cry of the King's men. Seeing that video makes me feel sad. Sad for KKR, Sad for SRK, Sad for the crazy Bengali Fans. SRK is refusing to go back to South Africa and is dancing in some builder's son's wedding. He is reportedly so depressed with the performance of his knights that he wants to bid good night to the franchisee.

I personally think this year the team is destined to screw up. Last year it was Deccan Chargers. This year it is KKR. Yesterday, in the match with Delhi Daredevils, KKR looked like a team which was carrying its bad luck apne saath (they could talk to Sunny Deol)

I think (I am talking like a cricket expert, but come on, if Gaurav Kapoor, Chang and Mandira Bedi can so can I) they should put their heads down, pray for a miracle (only prayers can help them) and wait for IPL Season 3. And God Forbid if they under perform in Calcutta...

Cost Of Democracy

2009-05-04T10:26:00.004+05:30

Election season is on in India. Lok Sabha has 543 seats and around 7,000 candidates. The average spending per person (officially is around 15-20 Lakh) comes to one crore (citation needed). This means 7,000 crore is spent by the candidates themselves. On top of that there is expenditure of 1,120 crore budgeted for election expenses.
All this money is being spent.. To what end? Why???
My question is.. Do we need this political tamasha? Where a fading actor promises to hugs a dalit woman and is dragged to courts on grounds of obscenity? Don't we have enough entertainment from daily life that we need this horribly expensive tamasha?
Is democracy needed? As it is your vote doesn't make a difference. Whoever wins, the politicians get richer by the day, and the poor people poorer. At times like this i think either we should have a dictatorial government or voting should be allowed only to educated people (say 10th pass or something) so that they understand their responsibility. As Ben Parker said, "With great power comes great responsibility". We have the great power to elect our representative but no sense of responsibility. God Save us all!

Susan Boyle

2009-04-27T12:36:00.006+05:30

Millions of words have been written about Susan Boyle and her performance on Britan's Got Talent show. Here is the video if you haven't seen it (What is wrong with you??). Now this 47 year old woman who was nobody some weeks back, has a huge fan community, a wikipedia article, has been interviewed by CNN and has a movie being made on her life!
Some observations.
1. Instant fame: 9 days, 100 million+ views, 20 million overnight. If she stands for election she might easily become prime minister/president (Obama's victory speech had just 18.5 million views, damn!).
2. Bridging the old and new: First telecasted on the "traditional" media, Television, the video came on the "new" medias, YouTube, Facebook and the works. More importantly events like this make you realise the Democratization of the media has happened.
3. Sharing: Or as per Friedman, Flattening of the world. People are sharing information like never before. Someone in India can see the performance of a Scottish woman via an American website. If this is not globalization then what is?
4. Hypocrisy: Right now since she sang so well everyone is rooting for her. What if she had met expectations of the judges and embarrassed herself? That was being expected, right? No wonder she would have been a subject of another viral video, but just think for a second, What if she wasn't so good? All the rooting for Underdog, Beauty is skin deep bull crap would have evaporated right then and there.

Mard

2009-04-21T13:52:00.000+05:30

Mard- a masterpiece by Ganapati Bohra starts with a scene which any good Bollywood movie should begin with… an attempted rape scene. But the attempt is stopped by MC (I am talking about Mithun Chakraborty you perverts) who punches the rapist through the wall and says these immortal lines, “Panga nahi leneka, mitti mein mila doonga” and then masterfully proceeds to beat up the goons to pulp.

MC plays Arjun, a honest cop who beats up goons and their CM fathers and is transferred (funny inspectors can be suspended right?) constantly.

Mithun wows the audience with an amazing action scene, where he beats the fellow police officer, who had neglected his duty since he was having tea and sandwiches. So for 10 minutes every dialogue from MC has the words. “Chai, sandweech (he says it that way!)”.

The best lines of the screenplay however are taken up by JL (Johnny Lever, not Jennifer Lopez). Here is the situation, JL is outside the temple with his mother and brother. The mother offers his Prasad of Ganapati. JL replies “Mujhe sirf ek hi Ganapati pata hai, who hai director Ganapati Bohra. Prasad se yaad aaya TLV Prasad ki picture hai, bahut hit chal rahi hai, main jaata hoon”. Brilliant! Bravo!

Then there is Shakti Kapoor (if Mithun is god, then sidekick number 1 is definitely Shakti Kapoor) with the immortal line, “Mach Jaayegi Hahakaar, jab apne pe aayega jabbaar”

All in all the movie is a good package. It may not touch the heights achieved by Kanti Shah for Gunda or even Loha, but the film can stand on its own feet. I still cannot have tea and sandwiches.

You can buy the movie from this link. No I don't get any commission for this.

Pepsi-Coke Cola Wars: RIP

2009-04-17T12:12:00.000+05:30

I grew up on Cola wars and loved the Pepsi-Coke wars. Now I look at the adverts they are a pale shadow of the 90s and early 2000 when the fun was at its peak. Now we have Coke celebrating “open happiness” and Pepsi doing the stupid advertisement on some promo on the Twenty-20 World Cup. Summer is going on! And no Cola Wars! This sucks!
Coke is trying to give the warm fuzzy feeling it has globally and maybe trying to globally align Indian advertisments to that. And Pepsi… less said is better. The Ranbir Kapoor-Deepika Padukone advertisements were a debacle. There was supposed to a sequel to the Canteen advertisement which was never aired maybe due to poor response. What is wrong with Pepsi? I think they should go back to SRK and Sachin. The new generation of superstars are not working out for them.
I miss the attacks and counter attacks and the rivalry! Someone please do something!!

Few Links....

2009-04-15T09:44:00.000+05:30

Here is couple of websites which I have been looking at

www.futilitycloset.com For arbitary Trivia

Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive Archive of Wonderful pictures of our universe. Some make really good wallpapers :)

Idiots!

2009-04-14T09:17:00.000+05:30

What is it about India that ensures that we have the biggest idiots being born here on regular basis. Latest is an entire group of idiots who have a name for their group, the Samajwadi Party. Now they have decided that computerization has created unemployment and hence they are against it. Also he is against usage of machines in agriculture and wants people to do work manually. (Actually it makes sense, if these guys get elected, they will shut down the IT companies and all the engineers will have to search for some work. All these unemployed people can be used to work on the farms.)

He also has issues with high corporate salaries and thinks that corporates be paid minimum wage as decided by the government... Yeah right Einstein and who will pay the taxes? Maybe we will take some money you "allegedly" made while you were the CM? He thinks this will make National Capital!!

These guys are also anti-English and the party's manifesto also mentions that it will work to abolish schools providing expensive education in English medium.

To see hypocrisy see their website (anti-computerization at its best huh) which is also in English. Do not miss the section headed 10 Reasons to join Samajwadi Party!

Slumdog Millionaire

2009-04-10T15:20:00.000+05:30

I got this mail today which heavily criticized Slumdog Millionaire. It read:

(Have edited it)

THIS IS VERY TRUE !

Yes, indeed it is a matter of pride for us as 3 Indians won 3 Oscar awards.
But at what cost ?
When we look at the other side of the coin, I feel what we lost is more than what we won.

It is film by foreigners about the story of Indians and the only exception is A R Rahman.

Directed by Danny Boyle
Produced by Christian Colson
Written by Simon Beaufoy
Music by A. R. Rahman
Cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle
Editing by Chris Dickens

The film portrays the poverty in India and shows to the world what kind of life is lead by the children in slums. Pre Independence Britishers equaled Indians with dogs by saying "Dogs and Indians not allowed" into a restaurant.

Even after 50 years of Indian Independence these western people call the children in our slums as "dogs". They made good money making fun of India at International level. There are many humiliating scenes in the movie which will make us feel ashamed, like:

* The children posing as guides at Taj Mahal and cheating the tourists
* The children working in hotel refills the Mineral water bottle and cheating the customers
* Pick pocketing, stealing and reselling tourist footwear
* Grounding a car of a foreign tourist
* Training and employing the children for street begging
* Making a child blind to make him an impact beggar
* Training and pushing young girls into brothel house
* Children becoming criminals at the age they don't know what is life
* Host of the game suspecting the knowledge of a slum boy and trying to mislead the participant. etc., etc.

Hollywood journalists called Slumdog as "Poverty Porn".
What impact will this have on India amongst the audience of western world ?
What do the children in slums learn from this film?

If we had won an Oscars for a film like Lagaan which shows our fight against the Britishers by defeating them in their own game, every Indian would have been really proud. The Academy did not find Lagaan good for an award but found Slumdog Millionaire very good !!
The above is an opinion of many, Of course, you are free to have your own !!!

Now i believe that whatever they have shown in the movie is pretty genuine.Let me go Point by Point:

* The children posing as guides at Taj Mahal and cheating the tourists: Anyone who has been to any tourist place knows this. Its true
* The children working in hotel refills the Mineral water bottle and cheating the customers: Again a pretty common phenomenon
* Pick pocketing, stealing and reselling tourist footwear: Its India for gods sake!
* Grounding a car of a foreign tourist:Thought it was little over the top, its commercial cinema not a documentary!
* Training and employing the children for street begging
* Making a child blind to make him an impact beggar
* Training and pushing young girls into brothel house

Sadly, it is the dark underbelly of India

* Children becoming criminals at the age they don't know what is life: Damn it! Where does the author live? I think in the state of Denial!
* Host of the game suspecting the knowledge of a slum boy and trying to mislead the participant: Pretty rich coming from a nation which thrives on stereotypes of fair skin and high caste!

Lagaan was the classic case of feel good cinema which catered to Indian audience and made them happy. It is possible for a Slumdog story to occur (just outline that a boy of slums wins KBC) but definitely it is impossible that something outrageous as Lagaan could have happened! Rains after match winning performance which ensured that villagers don't pay tax and enjoy for 3 years!

Get Real Guys!

Tata Nano: Smart Idea!

2009-04-09T14:13:00.000+05:30

The hoopla surrounding Tata Nano has ensured that people don't notice (or maybe they did, should I say people I know didn't notice) that if you are not one of the lucky 1 lakh people who get the car, you have two options. First is you take back the deposit and re-book later or second choice is you keep the deposit with Tata and be in the queue. The chances increase if you keep deposit with Tata. And they are also paying 8.5% for it.

Nice idea _______ (whoever thought about it, fill in your name) You are getting around 1 lakh that too below PLR (which is around 15.5 %). Effectively Tata Motors is saving 7.5% flat on interest. Cool idea!

Combine this with the Sops and concessions Gujarat Government is paying (to the tune of Rs. 10,000 crores) Nano is already a success before the factory starts!

Great Going Ratan!

Why I miss the Late 80s and early 90s of Bollywood…

2009-04-06T14:08:00.000+05:30

Guns had unlimted ammunition
The henchmen of the goons have learnt how to shoot
Villains no longer have fancy names
Heroes are no longer invincible
No more thakurs exist in the village anymore
Rape scenes have reduced
Actresses fight and not get hit in the head and faint
The hero doesn’t have a younger sister going to college (and waiting to be raped)
The whole village doesn’t dance in fancy clothes behind the main cast
There are no songs with hidden nuances and double meaning which can be enjoyed.
There is no tall black goonda who beats the hero before dying and shouting “AAAAAA” in a horrible way.
Movie titles do not contain words like Badla, Saugandh, Zindagi and stuff.
Heroes are no longer farmers and sons of poor farmers.
There is no kindly soul who does some qurbani so that the hero/heroine become something in life.
No more melodramatic mothers who wear white saris and stitch clothes for the hero so that the hero can become Bada aadmi.

Nobel Prizes

2006-10-28T18:52:00.000+05:30

Nobel prizes are the symbol of achievement for any person in the six fields, physics, chemistry, biology, peace, literature and economics. Nobel Prizes, started by Alfred Nobel who didnt give a dime to his children but bequeathed all his fortune to these prizes (well except Economics which is given by Bank of Sweden in the memory of Alfred Nobel) have had lots of eminent winners down the years.

Still I feel the Nobel Prizes missed out on lots of people who deserved it notably Mahatma Gandhi and also gave prizes for wrong reasons like the one given to Einstein for Photoelectric Effect not for relativity saying(unofficially of course) that relativity was way out whereas gave the prize to Bohr, whose theory was way out and proved wrong eventually.

The Prizes are hyped due to their heritage, the money and the past winners. I strongly feel its the winners who have made Nobel Prizes the most coveted medal for scientists and other people.

Also I feel science is moving away from the common man especially the science prizes. Earlier science was much closer to the common man especially Physics where a common man could comprehend what was going on. After seeing the citation for this year's winners one will say "What the HELL is going on!!".

In this way IG Nobel prizes are much better. Cool inventions, cooler ideas and much much closer to the common man!!

IE 7 vs Mozilla 2.0

2006-10-26T23:19:00.000+05:30

The war of browsers is back again! And Microsoft for the first time is defending its share of Internet browser market against Mozilla. Mozilla, an open source project is continuously eroding Microsoft IE's market share. IE 7 is the first fresh release from MS since 2001 and incorporates lots of features of Mozilla (Yawn!! Do SOMETHING new guys!!!)

Im an avid IE fan. The reasons being the speed with which IE opens and its tight integration with windows.

So after working on both the browsers i feel IE 7 has been beaten to pulp by Mozilla 2.0. Since on my XP IE 7 is not integrated with the windows shell so its lost its primary advantage of speed. It will be a plus point in Windows Vista but most of us are not changing their OS so soon for Vista which requires higher configurations.

Where Mozilla scores is the amazing collection of add ons. Man i was bowled over by the number of add ons and various stuff developer community has made. From utilities that show how many websites you have surfed, how much time you have wasted online to plug-ins that ask questions, the range is amazing.

Also Mozilla has a HUGE developer and testing community and hence bug are fixed rapidly and precisely.

I feel with Mozilla 2 and IE 7 we can see the power of open source software. I really hope that when Mozilla 3 is released Mozilla has a 80% marketshare and IE is dead.

GandhiGiri

2006-09-13T18:51:00.000+05:30

I saw the movie “Lage Rahe Munnabhai” and was bamboozled with the concept of Gandhigiri. The movie was accused to be more melodramatic than the previous one but I feel that is required when one is dealing with a subject of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

One of the most influential leaders ever, this frail guy rocked the country with his simple ideas and effective implementation. In the book Freedom at midnight, the authors write about his fast that in country which lacked effective communication between major cities the news of Gandhi’s fasts traveled like wildfire, each tit bit correct. How it happened is beyond me.

Going back to the movie being melodramatic, it was fitting for a movie made with Gandhi’s thoughts in mind. Hell, Gandhi was melodramatic. Be it the weapon of Satyagraha or his Dandi March or the announcement of his fasts. He loved melodrama as he shrewdly understood the Indian psyche, the love of melodrama present in the common man. It was the melodrama that forced the stiff upper collared Englishmen to consider leaving the crown jewel of their empire and sending Mountbatten (as close as someone could come to being a melodramatic Englishman) to arrange the departure of the British from India.

But in Gandhigiri we have found another weapon, one which is better than all H bombs of the world combined. The simple reason is we have 1 billion people which no one else has. A vibrant democracy (or maybe not) India can actually give these weapons to the world and sit back as another weapons race starts. But no NPT or CTBT required here.

Gandhi steadfastly opposed Globalization. He believed that all the villages of country should be self sufficient for their own needs (food, milk etc.) and behave as a mini community. This I feel looks incredibly stupid in today’s context where the world is flattening (Thank you Mr. Thomas Freidman!) and we have a chance to compete with and defeat any foreigner on their home grounds and not having to leave ours. Better will be have the country or the globe as one village and have all the communities (a.k.a. countries) equally developed or rather each developed in its own specialized field and assisting, no trading its skills with the other. I think this would have pleased Gandhi.

Still Burns the Fire within

2006-07-22T14:20:00.000+05:30

When the patience wears thin
When surroundings turn dark
Anything you do feels like a sin
You still want to leave your mark
Eroding passions, lost hopes
Broken down man, shattered dreams
Hopes piercing broken glass
I see pieces of me scattered around
The pupils of my life dilated
And all emotions depilated
But I stand tall
Watching my dreams fall
My life is a never ending ocean
Where every drop a tear of failure
Every failure, a story of pain
Every pain, a ocean in itself
Dreams are running away from me
Insanity eating me from inside
I stand beneath the sky, losing my religion
Cornered by the undying pain
A lonely voice I call
Screams of despair killing me
Still burns the fire within
My sensations burnt my life ashes.
----- D S P
Datta, Shashwat, Potnis

Untitled

2006-07-22T14:19:00.000+05:30

The Road is long and winding
The darkness all encompassing
But he walks by
On roads where shadows are afraid to lie
The fear is growing larger
The light is sinking deeper
The hope falls
But he walks unbidden through the dark halls
The memories of past haunt him
But he walks gaunt and thin
At the end of tunnel there is light
& I won’t give up without a fight
And then suddenly there is light
Everything is beautiful and bright
He looks up and sees The One
Who says "Welcome my Son."

The Chronicles Of Narnia

2006-07-22T14:18:00.000+05:30

This year the movie The Chronicles Of Narnia – The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe was released internationally. Based on the series of novels by C.S. Lewis, the movie had a truckload of special effects. The effect was fantastic, especially the Lion Aslan (that was the name of the lion) talking. The movie tells us about the magical land of Narnia which is under the spell of Jadis – The white witch who has caused winter without Christmas since the last hundred years. Very childish one would say but then again it is intended to be a novel for children, just that adults (like me!) enjoy them as much.
The movie was brilliantly directed by Andrew Adamson, who kept the balance between faithfulness to the novel and the director’s vision. The acting was great especially by the girl who played Lucy. She lit up the screen every time she smiled. The action sequences were handled beautifully.
Then again the novel had a certain demarcation between good and evil. Except the fact that one of the characters turned over to the dark side but came back blah blah… the same old story again, the storyline is remarkably straight.
It has been said that the book had an underlying Christian theme. This can be seen in all the children’s novels from that period. Be it The Hobbit or this one (I know only too!!), the underlying Christian message is all to evident.
Nowadays the works by children’s authors are more bold and better etched according to modern tastes (that has to occur!! Isn’t it too evident??) These works come from an entirely different time, a simpler time. Now there is no clear good or evil, everyone is selfish. These works personally appeal more to me.

The Fantasy Genre:

2006-07-22T14:17:00.000+05:30

The Oscars were swept by the LOTR trilogy, especially in visual effects category. The third movie especially made some sort of record I think equaling Titanic and Ben – Hur. When I see these movies or read the books some things strike to me as very important. The first one is the demarcation of good and evil is very clear. This was true in the original Star Wars Trilogy but the new one was a brilliant piece when you see the evolution of Aniken Skywalker, the Jedi Knight to Darth Vader.
Going back to fantasy genre it is said it is enjoyed by thirteen year olds or grown ups who have brains of thirteen year olds. I tend to disagree. This genre is meant for people who are trying to seek perfection and order. They can’t bear to see the injustice running in the world and are helpless to fight it and end up seeing these movies as a route to escape from reality. Moving along this line of thought I think movies are means to escape from reality. Everyone has his way. Some escape by watching candy floss romance, some by supernatural horror and so on.
Also another question arises. Do movies actually do justice to the work of authors? Personally for all the books I have read on which movies have been made only two make the cut. The Godfather and The Chronicles of Narnia. One thing is sure no director can condense the book in three hours. So the directors for the above two movies limited their focus to a lesser part and were faithful to it. Some parts were omitted but they didn’t destroy or change the narrative. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for LOTR. The movies were a great watch for some one who hasn’t read the book but for people like me it was a letdown. Lots of parts were changed, over dramatized and simply deleted which formed an important part of the narrative.
Warning – this paragraph is for people who have watched the movie and/or read the book. LOTR haters next paragraph please!! When I had watched the Trilogy in the theater I was flabbergasted. What about the scouring of the Shire? How does Saruman die? Why the romance of Arwen and Aragon being over depicted? Why the sword being given to Aragon in the last part? Then the answer struck me. It was so simple! Commercial demands!! Peter Jackson might be a brilliant director but he can’t ignore the public demand. The masses want action, romance and adventure together. Which JRR Tolkein’s works would not have supplied. They were a piece of literature never intended to be made into epics. By the way he insisted LOTR was never a Trilogy. It was a compilation of 6 books.
All these doubts had almost lifted my faith on the Fantasy genre. They were further compounded by Eragon and Eldest. The faith was renewed by two authors. One was Samit Basu (GameWorld Triology) and the second was Jonathan Stroud(Barteimus Triology). Here no one is good or bad, everyone is surviving. And you can have laugh on the way too.
Samit Basu’s first work was Simoquin Prophecies. This book didn’t have a pirated copy so you can gauge its popularity. The work was astonishingly awesome. The whole world was crazy yet had an underlying order. Simoquin Prophecies marked a new beginning in its genre. The trend was continued in Samit’s next book, The Manticore’s Secret. Another piece of absolute brilliance, the GameWorld Trilogy rules!!
Jonathan Stroud’s work stands apart due to the fact that even though it moves in the realm of jinns and magicians, it is a bitter reflection of today’s society. It ends rather conventionally but still it manages to keep the reader hooked. The best out of the three namely – The Amulet of Samarkand, Golem’s Eye and Ptolemy’s Gate was the final part. It is simply brilliant. it disappoints in the fact that the author still clings to the conviction that basically all humans have an underlying goodness within them, which I hold to be untrue.
The fantasy genre has many brilliant authors like Terry Pratchet (DiscWorld Series) who I still have to read. As and when I read them I will keep every one posted.

Fevicol Ad Campaign:

2006-07-22T14:16:00.000+05:30

In the late nineties, Fevicol, a brand of Pidilite Industries had the same boring ad where two groups of people were trying to separate two pieces of wood joined by Fevicol, and they failed. The ad was further extrapolated to 2 elephants trying to do the same job (it’s the trademark of Fevicol). The ads were boring to say the least.
Enter O & M and Piyush Pandey.
The ad was the Cannes award winning hen and egg advertisement. It had a cook who was making omelet and was breaking eggs for the same. One of the eggs failed to break, as much he tried. The ad ended with the cook seeing that the hen was eating its food from a container of Fevicol. The ad didn’t have a single dialogue and yet it shouted the message across so brilliantly. The ad got a Cannes Lion and rest they say is history.
Another ad which was for Feviquick was another masterpiece. This ad was shot in a day at Powai Lake in Mumbai. This ad featured a full professional fisherman who was with all equipment and was trying to catch a fish. In came a naïve South Indian singing on the top of his voice. Our fisherman hushes him up. The guy unabashed puts THREE dots of Feviquick on a flat piece of wood and dips it in. And presto! There are FOUR fishes stuck on the wood. The fisherman just looks on. A voice over says, "Chutki Mein Chipkaye, Feviquick!" (Sticks in a moment, Feviquick). The ad again won an Abby.
The ad campaign has been winning awards each year since ages and comes up with ads that surprise everyone and are absolutely brilliant. These ads contributed a lot to rise of Piyush Pandey’s image as the ace copywriter of the country. Personally I think the idea is now pretty tired that an image of Fevicol can stick everything in its vicinity but if everyone loves it, who I to say anything am!!

An Important Axiom

2006-05-15T20:19:00.001+05:30

Seeing the latest phone by Nokia and Sony in the market one wonders do i really need dem?? well here is a perfect formula to decide.
The capacity of mobile networks in your country can be ascertained by the price of the phones available. Case in point, the market as well as the networks in India are in no position to support even 2G services hence the best sellers in India tend to be Black and White phones be it Nokia 3315 or Nokia 1100.
So next time you see the ad of Nokia N 91, check out its price in terms of your local currency, if the cost of that phone is equal to 200 - 300 times the minimun denomination practically used (in India Rs. 10) go ahead and buy it, your networks can support it!!

The Windows 95 Launch Campaign:

2006-05-09T21:50:00.000+05:30

In 1995 Microsoft decided to replace its operating system DOS with Windows 95. The Windows OS was the successor of much hated Windows 3.0 and Windows 3.1. Actually Windows 3.0 was supposed to be the last Windows version before Windows 95 was supposed to be launched. But the combined effects of Delay in Launch of Windows 95 (code named Memphis) and the solid amount of bugs in Windows 3.0 forced Microsoft to launch Windows 3.1 (later a minor upgrade 3.11).
Windows 95 had minimum system requirements of 486 processor and 8 MB RAM, also 640 MB HDD (amusing that was max available that time just 10 yrs back!), which was on the higher end. It promised an exciting change from the drab interface of DOS and as usual was hyped heavily by Microsoft.
Now this campaign had certain unique features. For the first time a software was being so heavily hyped and marketed so heavily. Microsoft had realized computers were no longer the dominion of geeks and general public had to be sucked in to increase the market. For the launch of Memphis in New York, Microsoft did not buy a cent of ad space in newspapers (much to despair of newspapermen), no TV time and not even a hoarding. Yet the launch was extensively covered. What Microsoft did was to hire the Empire State Building and paint it Read Blue and Black (with light at night of course!). Also to create the hype, Windows 95 was launched on Midnight. Stores selling Windows 95 were instructed to be open at 12 so that people could flock in. All these events are really eye catching and caught media’s imagination.
Across the Atlantic, the Gimmick of painting a landmark had been done (The Ministry Of Sound, a Disco in London, had had its logo displayed on the Houses of Parliament). Londoners next day only saw one headline on page 1 in a daily which read “Windows 95 launched”. What Microsoft had done was that they had made a deal with the newspaper to sell (actually distribute) the paper for free. Again very non conventional but very eye catching and something media loves to talk about.
The downside of the campaign was a major one. Never again Microsoft was able to market a new product on a very large scale. Everything which was done for Windows 95 was in the superlative. Anything after that would be a follow up on that campaign. This is disastrous for any company. Now at every launch every one expects Microsoft to do something bigger and better but Microsoft itself goes for (relatively speaking, otherwise also the launches are really big for a software whose first version is full of bugs!!) a low key launch because they also they can’t match the Windows 95 Launch.

Apple 1984 Ad

2006-05-04T02:42:00.000+05:30

This ad has been talked about so much fully dissected and minutely analyzed. But still I will write about this one. I had read about this advertisement in Odyssey by the guy who threw out Steve Job as the CEO of Apple. This guy was wooed away from Pepsi by Steve Jobs but this guy ended up throwing out Jobs. Jobs had told him the famous words, “Do you want to spend your life selling sugared water or do you want to change the world?” This line was a killer and this guy (I think his name was John Sculley) came to Apple.
Cut to 1983, Apple was launching its killer computer to fight on PCs. Christened as Macintosh aka Mac, it promised good days ahead for Apple. Now these guys decided to make the launch big.
In the United States, the most watched sports event is the SuperBowl. These guys decided to introduce Mac to general public during SuperBowl 1984. They called their ad agency Chiat/Day and directed the agency to make the advertisement and spare no expense. This ad was to be directed by Ridely Scott, a hotshot Hollywood directed who had Alien and Bladerunner to his credit (and now Gladiator). Shot in London, this ad was the most expensive ever shot till that time.
Apple had originally bought one and a half minutes of air time for one and a half million dollars. When the senior management saw the ad, they directed the ad agency to sell the airtime. A buyer for 30 secs was found but no one bought the one minute time. Apple decided to go ahead with the ad.
It was shown to a large audience for the first time in October 1983, at Apple's annual sales conference in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Based on their initial reaction, Apple executives booked two slots during the upcoming Super Bowl. However, the Apple board of directors was dismayed by the ad and instructed management not to show it and sell the slots. Despite of the board's dislike of the film Steve Wozniak watched it and offered to pay for the spot personally if the board refused to air it.
A perhaps apocryphal story has Apple only able to sell one slot and then deciding that they might as well use the other and show the ad. It aired at the first commercial break after the second-half kick-off.
In reality, the reason the commercial was saved from total cancellation was the result of an act of defiance and an act of bravado.
The board hadn't demanded the commercial be killed, nonetheless Sculley asked Chiat/Day to sell back the one and one half minutes of Super Bowl television time that they had purchased. The original plan was to play the full-length, 60-second 1984 spot to catch everyone's attention, then hammer home the message during a subsequent commercial break with an additional airing of an edited 30-second version.
Defying Sculley's request, Jay Chiat told his media director, Camille Johnson, "Just sell off the thirty." Johnson laughed, thinking it would be impossible to sell any of the time at so late a date, but miraculously, she managed to find a buyer for the 30-second slot. That still left Apple with a 60-second slot for which it had paid $800,000.
The decision whether to run the commercial was left to VP of Marketing William V. Campbell and Executive VP of Marketing and Sales E. Floyd Kvamme. In the end, the two decided to run the commercial.
Ok now I have directly copied stuff fro website so that the people who haven’t seen the ad can appreciate it.
The camera opens on a corridor in a futuristic city. Heavily dressed males march in unison past surveillance cameras and computer screens. A blonde athlete, wearing red shorts and a white Apple Picasso t-shirt, runs towards us carrying a hammer. We now see that the men all have shaven heads. One wears a gas mask. Riot police run towards us, batons in hands.
We’ve been hearing a male voice coming through the public address system. And now we see Big Brother’s face - with two sets of glasses - on a huge wall-sized screen. “For today we celebrate the first, glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directive! We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology, where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths.”
“Our Unification of Thought is a more powerful weapon than any fleet or army on Earth! We are one people. With one will. One resolve. One cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death. And we will bury them with their own confusion!”
The athlete runs into the auditorium, pursued by the security troops. She swings the hammer round and round, releasing it to go flying into the screen. “We shall prevail!” The screen explodes. The seated skinheads mutely gaze at the explosion, mouths agape.
The text is displayed and spoken, “On January 24th Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984.” The ad finishes with the six-color Apple logo.
The ad was very topical and as well as strtegical. IBM was about to launch the new PCjr computer for the home market. The Apple Macintosh would be launched later in the month, surpassing the Apple II. This ‘teaser’ was designed to alert viewers to the new era in personal computers, long enough to stop them from investing in the IBM. The whole advertisement represented the capacity for the Apple color screen to outdo the monotone world of the IBM.
The 1984 theme comes from George Orwell’s novel, “1984″, originally written as an critique of Fascist government in the years after World War II. Orwell introduced the phrases, “Big Brother”, “thought police”, “two minutes hate” and “newspeak” and “telescreen”. The voice from the telescreen in the novel is expressed faithfully in the Apple ad. Apple, by providing an alternative operating system, was challenging IBM’s monopoly on the development of personal computers. As it is not very hard to imagine Big Brother was IBM.
This ad can be viewed and downloaded from the following link:

http://www.uta.fi/FAST/US7/NOTES/clips.html

Enjoy and get hooked!

Just an update, the ad ran again recently but this time the female was wearing an iPOD!!

Cola Wars In India

2006-04-29T17:04:00.000+05:30

For the Cricket World Cup 1996, Pepsi was not the official sponsor of the tournament, Coke was but Pepsi had a whole kitty of best players from the sub continent and abroad. The ad campaign of “Nothing Official About it rocked the country and knocked the wind from Coke’s Lungs. Possibly from this time onwards Coke also realized the value of celebrities in India and henceforth went ahead with that strategy.
Another consequence of this campaign was that from the next Cricket World Cup, advertisers began signing exclusive contracts which stipulated that competitors can’t have players who are in the tournament acting in their ads. And sadly for Coke, it was Pepsi which was “official” this time.
In 1998, the movie Kuch Kuch Hota Hai took the country by storm. Pepsi then took out another ace from its sleeve. This time SRK, Rani and Kajol starred in the ad. Also starring was the future star Shahid Kapoor who was noticed by the industry. The punchline this time was “Yeh Dil Maange More” which was an iconic line and struck a chord amongst the people.
The Coke people responded to this ad in a different and unique way. They actually spoofed the ad, the product used being Sprite, again to hilarious effect.
Pepsi responded with a spoof on it’s on its own, starring Azhar and Jadeja hitting on the Coke line of “Eat Cricket, Sleep Cricket, Drink Only Coca Cola” with the punch line of “More More Cricket, More More Pepsi”. Coke again hit back, this time with Thumbs Up ad. They portrayed the cricketers as monkeys and ended the ad with “Don’t be a bunder (monkey!!) Taste The Thunder!!” Things turned ugly with Pepsi going to court and finally ended with Coke withdrawing the ad.
The year 2000 heralded the rise of a new superstar, Hrithik Roshan. Both Coke and Pepsi rushed to sign him, but Coke won (possibly due to the fact that they promised that all the ads starring the superstar would be directed by his father). The first ads starring Hrithik Roshan were launched in Diwali Season. Pepsi hit back this time with a SRK ad which also had a Hrithik look alike. This ad was directed by Prahlaad Kakkar and was in a bad taste. Rumors ran about SRK’s insecurity and rest but the episode really was a footnote in the epic battle.
Around this time Coke’s market share surpassed Pepsi for the first time since Coke’s launch in 1994 (Trivia: Coke was first re-launched in India in Agra) and suddenly Coke was defending and Pepsi attacking the market share.
Now the wars shifted from cola to clear lime segment. Coke realizing that in India Thumbs Up was a valuable brand and it could not use it for opponent bashing. This time it was between Sprite and Pepsi’s Mountain Dew.
Pepsi had launched Dew with “Do the Dew” tagline emphasizing on Adventure sports. Sprite killed the ad with “Do The Do” ad which was funny and memorable.
The Cola Wars are here to stay. Its been just 10 odd years in India for them to start. In the USA they are on since a 100 years. The battle actually throws up some amazing ads and lets hope they continue.
Yeh Dil Maange More!!!

The Hyundai Santro Launch Ad Campaign:

2006-04-27T20:25:00.000+05:30

The year was 1998. The Indian market had been recently opened for car manufacturers. Lot of the biggies including GM and Ford had made a beeline with their models. So when a South Korean company announced that it too will be entering what analysts expected to be a hot spot people were, putting it mildly skeptical. So in January 1998 at the Auto Expo in New Delhi the Santro was launched. The car was not the highlight of the expo; it was Tata Indica which was destined to be in the limelight.
Some information about Santro first. Named and sold as Alto worldwide, it was a Class B car (in India, because of Maruti Suzuki 800 all the cars which are Class A worldwide are Class B here) and was mildly successful. Launching it was a gamble and all the car makers worldwide were going for Class C and D which had lower volumes but more profit margins and required less investment. But Hyundai was looking at India as an export base and keeping that in mind set up the factory in Tamil Nadu somewhere near Chennai.
The common man had heard about Ford, GM and Mercedes, but Hyundai? Naah! So first thing in Hyundai’s strategists’ mind was making people aware about this company. The company decided upon having Shah Rukh Khan (SRK) as the brand ambassador. The super star was a perfect choice.
The very first ad (the one I saw) of Hyundai Santro was screened somewhere in Feb 1998. The ad depicted a Korean executive going to SRK and asking him to endorse the car. SRK was naturally skeptical about endorsing the company and the executive smiles and produces a nut! He says that we at Hyundai make everything in the car right from the nut to engine and body.
This TV ad was supplemented with print ads showing SRK holding the nut and asking for people’s opinion that whether he should actually endorse the car or not? Naturally this campaign made the people aware about the company. People knew it was a South Korean company with a car to sell which was enough for a company with almost zero brand recall a few months back.
Then the big day came with the launch of Santro. In itself the car was superb, with Tall Boy design (first for India), elegant curves and an awesome engine, the car sales zoomed and Maruti’s Monopoly in the country was seriously challenged and Zen had a serious competitor.
The company’s initial advertisement campaign was a brilliant piece of work and set the tone for the rest of the advertisements.

New Series:-

2006-04-27T20:24:00.000+05:30

From Now onwards I am going to write about my favorite advertisement campaigns. These campaigns have really influenced me as in really shown me how creative you can get. Also I will be writing about the ones which flopped.

The search for the answer:

2006-04-14T15:25:00.000+05:30

Since the time of Isaac Newton, scientists have been looking for one thing- Theory of Everything, or TOE or GUT (Grand Unification Theory) they call it. Currently the Most Basic forces of nature are:
Gravitation Force
Electroweak Forces
Strong Force

Now the unification fails as soon as gravity comes into picture. Since it actually becomes effective when the masses are huge, the effect of the force becomes very weak as soon as we talk at microscopic level. The Universal Constant of Gravitation, G is so small (6.67 X 10-11) that it’s in fact absurd to think that gravity has any role to play when we talk about distances so small.

Quantum mechanics (which defines behavior of particles in microscopic world) and Gravitational Theory have always been at loggerheads. But when it comes of analysis of place where there is a huge mass concentrated at a point (case in point, center of black hole, universe at the time of big bag), we need a synergy between them.

Personally I feel there is something wrong in the whole Quantum Mechanics structure. This feeling is shared by many for the simple reason that results Quantum Mechanics throws up are so weird (that’s the only way to describe them!!) But I agree that’s how nature works. The essential problem lies in the fact that how this theory was developed. Unlike Einstein’s theory of Relativity (General theory described Gravitation) where the theory was given by pure genius and intuition (by no means I tend to disrespect the great Quantum Mechanics’ researchers) and then the results were confirmed, in Quantum Mechanics always we tended to see the results and fitted the theory to confirm the result. Now after 100 years of doing this the theory has described all possible permutations and hence all new results tend to fit the theory.

The big question is WHEN?? When will someone give us the answer?? I feel that the one who will do it won’t be a Doctorate or even have masters. He will be a young student of science who believes that this thing is wrong and has teachers who believe that they are teaching the wrong stuff. Too far fetched I am thinking!

Journals

2006-04-09T13:33:00.000+05:30

Laboratory Journals : These things were used (are used infact) by researchers to keep their records of experiments and the results. but here in my bloody college we have to write the journals mostly copy them without any rhyme or reason. man life suck!!

Reservation and RDB

2006-04-08T12:46:00.000+05:30

When i saw rang de basanti i really thought these guys were idiots coz they died as their friend's death was misrepresented. i really believed in DJs thought that their is nothing worth to die for. i cant belive these idiots are trying to spoil my life , yes MY life for some idiots' votes. hearing roobaroo i really can kill :) well not exactly i really believe Arjun Singh's life is in danger not from terrorists but from the average guy next door's gun.
God knows when will that bastard die but i hope its a really painful death!!

Cricket

2006-04-07T09:16:00.000+05:30

Once upon a time i used to see all the matches follow them like crazy and man was a cricket maniac, but now it doesn't make a difference who is playing and who is winningg. it seems strange coming from a person who used to wake up at 4 to see australia destroy zimbabwe at home.
why have i lost interest in this game?? am i the only one??
Also this reservation shit is stupid..... why do we ppl of general class be subjected to these stupid tortures while these sc/st/obc enjoy??? Mandal sucked and congress is the biggest leech on the country.
alking about leeches khandekar is also one of them..... gotta know he'll be teaching us again next semester....SHIT!!!!!!!
why does aphale get special treatment from the HOD??Why his stupid subject is being kept as elective and why no fiber optics?? I will talk to the HOD today.....Chaitrali mam is supportive but god knows how dat stupid HOD can be convinced. i think we can have reservations for the HOD's post. only mentally challenged and infinitelly stupid people who could not do anything should be allowed to become HODs coz here all of them already are!!