Movies Trivia

Some movie related trivia :

O Brother where art thou
....in which the title character sets out to make a grim, socially conscious film to be called O Brother, Where Art Thou? After the privileged director experiences hardships of his own, he decides that comedic films are of more value than self-important dramas. Similarly, the Coen brothers' movie also has the tone and imagery of Depression-era realism interlaced with a comedic element.

Gulaal
How did the script of Gulaal come about?

Chaudhary was born in Darjeeling, India. After pursuing a career in modeling and earning his degree in software engineering, he opened his own company in Bangalore. When Chaudhary was defrauded by his business partners he took an opportunity to move to Mumbai in order pursue a new career in acting. Chaudhary was inspired to write his own script after seeing the film Satya with its script written by Anurag Kashyap.

Gulaal : Rana ji lyrics

राणा जी म्हारे गुस्से में आये
एसो बल खाए
अगिया बरसाए
भबराए म्हारो चैन

जैसे दूर देस के टावर में घुस जाए रे एरोप्लेन

राणा जी म्हारे ऐसे गुर्राए, एसो थर्राए
भर आये म्हारे नैन

जैसे हरेक बात पे डेमोक्रेसी में लगने लग गयो बैन
जैसे दूर देस के टावर में घुस जाए रे एरोप्लेन
जैसे सरेआम इराक में जाके जम गए अंकल सैम
जैसे बिना बात अफगानिस्तां का बज गया भैया बैंड
जैसे दूर देस के टावर में घुस जाए रे एरोप्लेन

राणा जी म्हारे

Elections in Rajasthan : The Gulaal Effect?

Gulaal, a fantastic movie, based on a hypothetical story, in which
some Rajputs disgruntled with the Indian democratic setup, plan
to have their own rule back, as was the case in pre independence India,
was released on 13th March, 2009.

In the election results which came out on 16th May, 2009, all the
four contestants belonging to the royal families, who fought the
elections from Rajasthan, won.

Coincidence?

Hope you didn't miss it !!

Kolkata knight riders have won !
And boy, have they done it in style !
A last ball win over Chennai Super Kings, the team at position 2 in IPL.
Fake IPL Player, we are all waiting to hear from you ..

Dynasty and India

A lot of people have pointed out the absence of young leaders
for BJP's defeat. Congress seems to have plenty of them right
now. Rahul, Priyanka, Sachin Pilot and his wife, Jyotiraditya Sindhia,
Son of Sheela Dikshit, Milind Deora(S/o Murali Deora), Naveen Jindal,
Jyoti Mirdha(D/o Nathuram Mirdha)

BJP has very few.
Manvendra Singh(Son of Jaswant Singh), Dushyant(Vasundhara Raje's son),
Yediyurappa's son etc..

Numbers may be different for both the parties but one common thing among
them is, they are all sons/daughters of existing politicians. For all the brickbats
thrown at Dynastic politics, it seems to be the only channel for producing(reproducing?)
the youthful faces in Indian politics. Is India too young,immature to comprehend
meritocracy? Is that why there are so few young faces in the so called meritocratic
organization named BJP?

BJP, what next :-)

What can BJP really do now?
It is not in power, so it cannot give loan waiver to farmers.
Nor can it give away more reservation - the two things
which have clearly worked for congress. And it's surprising.
Agriculture minister of Congress was planning IPL when
the farmers were killing themselves in his own region. As the
polls neared, they announced a loan waiver package.

Despite the mass protests, Congress went ahead with
more reservations in higher education. As a result of
which, a general category student is less and less likely
to get a seat in the engineering and medical colleges
now.

On the other hand, BJP just can't give away the Ram Mandir or Article 370,
nor can it seek apology for Gujarat Riots. It can't oppose reservations
openly. What can it really do?

Lok sabha elections : Jodhpur : Caste wins again

In these Lok sabha elections, Congress fielded a brand new candidate
in Chandresh Kumari. She used to contest from Himachal Pradesh
earlier, but this time she was flown in Jodhpur as she is a Rajput.
And, after delimitation, Jodhpur had become a Rajput dominant
constituency. And, guess what, she won ! Caste system rocks !
Jai Ho !

Election commission web site : poor job in 2009 elections

It is really disappointing. Election commission's website has put up
a really bad show in this election. I don't know how did they fare
in the previous elections though. Here is the link for candidates'
affidavits and it doesn't have affidavits of Rajasthan candidates
still(Results are out now, if you don't know). Also, the results
stopped to refresh after around 6:30 in the evening. Really sad.

The unbearable lightness of being

I had watched this movie once. Something or the other keeps happening in my life, which makes me repeatedly utter these words : "The Unbearable Lightness of being" There is something mysterious about this phrase. My mind keeps resonating with these words every time I think of the phrase : "The Unbearable Lightness of being" Below is a review of the book, I found here. The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera

Kundera’s most famous novel is a complex book. Set against the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the story evolves around different fictional topics but could just as well be the story of real people. A man torn between thought and emotion, between love and lust. A woman who lives for rebellion. Another whose body is simply an amplifier for her emotions. Tomas, the male protagonist, falls in love with Teresa and marries her, while still having many one-night stands in an attempt to give weight (meaning) to his life. Moreover, he maintains a love-affair with Sabina. Teresa is aware of Tomas' adulteries and cannot bear the situation, which manifests itself in numerous detailed nightmares illustrating the realities of life. For Teresa, love and sex go together, whereas Tomas believes that having sex without love is possible. The female protagonist therefore suffers from the heaviness of life, while her male counterpart feels the unbearable lightness of being. Teresa later tries to gain this lightness for herself. Most of us carry the heavy and the light, the expression of either part depending on our character and circumstances. For that reason, one can identify with Teresa as well as Tomas and Sabina too. Kundera led me to understand that the "specialness" of relationships is not really held in the place that we tend to think it is nor manifests itself in the way that we wish. That love is not what we think it is and unfortunately can sometimes only be gained through situations that we would otherwise find abhorrent if not consumed with these feelings. Sex and love are so intimately joined that it is very difficult to distinguish between the two. Tereza stayed with Tomas knowing he spent most days and nights in another woman’s arms because she loved him, and therefore would suffer anything for him. For her, sex and love were the same thing and that is what tormented her but at the same time made her stay. Is Tereza’s acceptance weakness or a pessimistically hopeful attempt to gain love through persistence and loyalty? The very fact that they stay together and seem to find some degree of happiness illustrates that an acceptance of a relationship that falls well short of satisfying and fulfilling hopes, is possible. Is Tomas and Tereza's tolerance of their imperfect love, their acceptance of where they have arrived at simply a reflection of the fact that you can't change the strong’s oppression of the weak? You may hate it, as Tereza hates Thomas' infidelity, but you have to accept it and move on. However, this suggestion that change can only be incremental (at best) and that basically everyone must cope with life, however awful, must be rejected. Life without dreams is no life at all, but perhaps this is the very point that Kundera was trying to portray. Kundera plays with opposites: life and death, heaviness and lightness throughout his story. The reader can try to decide which life is happier: the light or the dark? What is "The Unbearable Lightness of Being?" It is the realization that, with no hope of knowing the right path from the wrong, there can be no wrong path. One is necessarily absolved of mistakes. The search for meaning in life leans towards the necessity of significance, which comes from a sense of weight. Are events forgiven in advance because they happen only once? But, is it also not unbearable that events only occur once as we can never go back and rectify our mistakes? Everyone wishes they could replay a past error; a lost opportunity, a lost love, a relationship that should not be. Is this not unbearable?! Is this not a weight we feel pressing down on us every day? The novel is an attempt to identify what makes us need companionship in life so badly, trying to understand the relationships between the conflicting desires that humans possess and act upon. What makes a man leave the woman that he loves and is perfectly happy with and seek something intangible in the arms of a mistress? Why does the same man sacrifice everything he has - freedom, social status, and his life's work - only to go back to the same woman he absolutely had to leave before? Is the absence of any responsibilities and ties in life really a "lightness"? Could this absolute lightness turn into absolute emptiness and thus become unbearable at some point - a burden pulling us to the ground? It shows how vulnerable we are, and how miserable we can be made by our contradictory desires, aspirations and impulses. If you read deep enough into this novel you’ll repeatedly think, ‘he’s talking about me’. "How can life ever be a good teacher if there is only one of them to be lived? How can one perform life when the dress rehearsal for life is life?"

Physics video lectures by Walter Lewin

One of the best teachers around, Walter Lewin.
A lot of his lecture notes are available online in video form.
After watching his videos, you wish every course had
video lectures. Here are the links for 3 of his courses :

Classical Mechanics
Vibrations and Waves
Electricity and Magnetism

Indian money in Swiss banks

Left parties had raised the issue before anyone else
but no one lent them an ear. But when L.K. Advani
speaks, the world listens, at least the Congress party
did. And P. Chidambaram is out there with a promise
for swift action. It pays to be a popular party,
as the left parties might have found out with this
episode. This incident also establishes L.K. Advani's
credentials as a man who can raise reasonable issues,
though many leaders in his own party must be wiring
their money out of Switzerland after Chidambaram's
assurance :-)

PS: Advani quoted Wikipedia in his statement. Either Indian
politics has come of age in becoming tech savvy or there were
no reliable sources for Advani's claims.

New initiative by Govt. Of India

Government of India has an online Grievance forum at http://www.pgportal.gov.in

The govt. wants people to use this tool to highlight the problems they faced while dealing with Government officials or departments like
1) Railways
2) Posts
3) Telecom (incl. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) & Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL)
4) Urban Development(Delhi Development Authority (DDA), Land & Development Office (L&DO), Central Public Works Department (CPWD), etc)
5) Petroleum & Natural Gas
6) Civil Aviation(Air India, Airports Authority of India, etc)
7) Shipping, Road Transport & Highways
8) Tourism
9) Public Sector Banks
Allahabad BankAndhra BankBank of BarodaBank of IndiaBank of MaharashtraCanara BankCentral Bank of IndiaCorporation BankDena BankIndian BankIndian Overseas BankIndustrial Development Bank of India LtdNational Bank for Agriculture and Rural DevelopmentOriental Bank of CommercePunjab & Sind BankPunjab National BankSmall Industries Development Bank of IndiaState Bank of Bikaner & JaipurState Bank of HyderabadState Bank of IndiaState Bank of IndoreState Bank of MysoreState Bank of PatialaState Bank of TravancoreSyndicate BankUCO BankUnion Bank of IndiaUnited Bank of IndiaVijaya Bank
10) Public Sector Insurance Companies
GIC of IndiaLife Insurance Corporation of IndiaNational Insurance Company Ltd.The New India Assurance Company Ltd..The Oriental Insurance Company Ltd.United India Insurance Company Ltd.
11) National Saving Scheme of Ministry of Finance
12) Employees' Provident Fund Organization
13) Regional Passport Authorities
Regional Passport Office, AhemadabadRegional Passport Office, AmritsarRegional Passport Office, BangaloreRegional Passport Office, BareillyRegional Passport Office, BhopalRegional Passport Office, BhubaneswarRegional Passport Office, ChandigarhRegional Passport Office, ChennaiRegional Passport Office, CochinRegional Passport Office, CoimbatoreRegional Passport Office, DehradunRegional Passport Office, DelhiRegional Passport Office, GhaziabadRegional Passport Office, GoaRegional Passport Office, GuwahatiRegional Passport Office, HyderabadRegional Passport Office, JaipurRegional Passport Office, JalandharRegional Passport Office, JammuRegional Passport Office, KolkataRegional Passport Office, KozhikodeRegional Passport Office, LucknowRegional Passport Office, MaduraiRegional Passport Office, MalappuramRegional Passport Office, MumbaiRegional Passport Office, NagpurRegional Passport Office, PatnaRegional Passport Office, PuneRegional Passport Office,
RaipurRegional Passport Office, RanchiRegional Passport Office, ShimlaRegional Passport Office, SrinagarRegional Passport Office, SuratRegional Passport Office, ThaneRegional Passport Office, TrichyRegional Passport Office, TrivandrumRegional Passport Office, Visakhapatnam
14) Central Government Health Scheme
15) Central Board of Secondary Education
16) Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan
17) National Institute of Open Schooling
18) Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti
19) Central Universities
20) ESI Hospitals and Dispensaries directly controlled by ESI Corporationunder Ministry of Labour
Many of us say that these things don't work in India .
Couple of months back, the Faridabad Municipal Corporation laid new roads in his area and the residents were very happy about it. But 2 weeks later, BSNL dug up the newly laid roads to install new cables which annoyed all the residents. A resident used the above listed grievance forum to highlight his concern. To his surprise, BSNL and Municipal Corporation of Faridabad were served a show cause notice and the guy received a copy of the notice in one week. Government has asked the MC and BSNL about the goof up as it's clear that both the government departments were not in sync at all.

So use this grievance forum and tell others who don't know about this facility.

Funny : How was Pranab Mukherjee inducted into cabinet for the first time

"His initial inclusion was an accident, having gone to witness
the swearing in of ministers at Rashtrapathi Bhavan, when
the number to be sworn in was found inauspicious, the
spectator Pranab was added on to make it auspicious."

Source

The Black Trillion

I never knew about this report until I read it
today here.

According to a Swiss Banking Association report of 2006-07 India leads the
top five countries in deposits — the others are Russia, the UK, Ukraine and China.
Here are the top 5 countries in terms of foreign deposits in Swiss banks :

India : $1.45 Trillion
Russia : $470 Billion
UK : $390 Billion
Ukraine : $100 Billion
China : $96 Billion

For those of us who are unaware, Swiss banks provide a real easy way
to park one's money. They don't ask any questions. They don't hand
out your information to anyone, that is actually anyone.

So it has long been suspected that almost all the black money
amassed by Indian Politicians and Businessmen goes to these
banks.

And the issue was raised in parliament by Communist Party of India- Marxist (CPM).
Honestly, no other party could have raised this issue.
One may hate the Communist parties for so many things, but
there are times I truly feel thankful that they are doing a good job.
A much better job indeed.

O. Saya Lyrics

Source 
O...Saya

They can't touch me
We break off
Run so fast they can't even touch me
Been that gypsy
Touch me I'll show you tricks with my zig-zag quickly
Pick up that pack on my journey
Dogs run, they start to follow me
Have my luck, some days they suck
When you live for the buck
We get for the family

One day I wanna be a star
So I get to hang in a bar
I'll go to Vegas with the playas
Just to forget my scars

ek do teen chaar paanch chheh saat aaTH nau das gyaarah baarah terah (1-13 in Hindi)

Sweat shops have made me shifty
Like a ninja with speed I'm nifty
I hope I live 'til I'm fifty
See my city go from gritty to pretty

IIT Kanpur : Satellite and Suicides

I don't know what to make of these two news stories,
both of them less than 1 week old, related to IIT Kanpur.
While the satellite development is a very welcome news,
it seems only a blip on the radar. Suicide stories
from IIT Kanpur have been far more numerous in past
4 years. According to the following link, there have
been 7 suicides in that duration plus many attempts.

Satellite
Suicide Attempt

In my opinion, if and when, IIT-Kanpur decides
to launch its satellite, it should be dedicated to
those students, whose life it could not protect.
To the students, who were made to believe that
ruthless pursuit of academic excellence was the
only thing that mattered.
To the students, who have ruined and who are
ruining their lives believing in the same theory.

Oscars

What is that one thing common in most of the Oscar nominated movies?
They are slow, well, mostly. In that way, they are a good imitation of life.
Isn't life mostly slow? Like a Test cricket match. Nothing much happens.
It takes a movie like The Dark Knight to strike that right balance between
push button entertainment and meaningfulness. And though, these
Oscar nominated movies come across as boring when you watch them,
they seem to have a lasting impression on memory as compared to the
pop corn flicks. May be due to their slowness or may be due to
the quality of their content.

Blogosphere votes for BJP

Seems like it's a new season. Recently bloggers had supported
Obama quite openly. Now it's the turn of BJP. Offstumped,
Atanu Day and Abhinav Khandelwal have openly supported
BJP. I guess it's only going to catch on from here. So, it seems
quite natural that the "tech" junta is going to vote for BJP
out and out. Only problem might be most of this "tech" junta
and the significant others in their lives might be living at a place,
where their voter id card won't help them in casting a vote.
Also a big chunk of them may not even have a voter id !
Since you have to be physically present when the videography
for the voter id takes place.
So, good luck and let's hope their vote is where their heart is
and their feet are at the same place on the polling date to which
their voter id belongs. Amen !

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Its length could have been curtailed by at least
45 minutes which would make it almost 1 hr 45 mins.
Anyway, mostly boring, this movie is. Still I would
recommend a watch, just to figure out, how to get
a child down from a high rise building, who wishes
he could fly.
Chalo then, bye.

Happy go lucky

This is a movie nominated for this year's oscars, for best original screenplay.
God knows, what's so great about it? It has been good to me, as it has induced
hypersomnia in my hitherto insomniac body. So good night everyone and see ya.

Note: Anyway, the way the driving instructor of Poppy has been portrayed,
is very real. I have encountered two instructors. Both of them were a pain
in the a*se.