A moo point, basically …

So there’s a guy who has the following characteristics –  

- muscular, popular, spectacular, single, dashing

- owns fast car(s), is filthy rich, friendly, smart

- ambitious, musically inclined (plays the guitar), holidays in France, extremely popular and kind

- can’t dance.

And people are making fun of him solely because of the 4th point - that and probably because his parents, in what must have been a pretty rare bout of extreme drunkness, went and named him Pappu. Some folks have even created a controversy over this (link via this), which is quite ridiculous – probably even intentionally planted by Aamir Khan, who talks to the media only when he has a movie release around the corner

I never knew being able to dance was so important. This song might have been written by the aam junta (average person) to make fun of the popular kid in class everyone secretly hated, but all it does is just make me plain depressed. I want to be Pappu! I’m 25% there already !!

Most movies crave for hype. Aamir was released without any hype or real promotion, but it picked up purely on word-of-mouth publicity, which is probably the truest test of how good a movie is. But by the time I watched it, the movie had been so trumped up, it didn’t seem to be that good.

<digression> I’ve often heard people say mouth-to-mouth publicity instead of word-of-mouth, and I have without fail imagined lifeguards in red bikinis coming to rescue folks. Every time. </digression>

The actor is a revelation – one of those few actors to go from TeeVee to MooVee quite effortlessly – although I must confess I’ve never quite seen any of TV series. The characters are played quite brilliantly by all actors (mostly Marathi actors, which is a sad reflection on the current state of Marathi cinema. Again I must confess, I don’t watch it much ). The story is quite standard but the plot is very nicely written (my English Lit. prof. must be so happy I finally understood the difference). Calling this movie a copy of Phonebooth is like saying The Thin Red line is a ripoff of Saving Private Ryan. The qawwaali in the movie is quite nice too.

And yet, the movie leaves you unsatisfied. Why? I explain with the help of my source of daily rozi-roti i.e. MS Excel.

Fraction of Movie completed	Stage in the movie	Nice? (Normalised w.r.t. Initial Hype)
-0.2	Initial Hype – Awesome!	1
0	Start (Missed first 10 minutes)	0
0.2	The first twist (Taxi scene)	0.5
0.4	The Dongri scene (filled with crap)	0.7
0.6	The tale of the two sisters	0.8
0.8	Retrieves bag (Refer Video)	1.1
0.9	Final twist in the bus	1.3
0.95	The slo-mo in the end	-0.1
1	Fini	0.7

In true analyst, here’s an overdose of the same information – but this time as a graph. 

Clearly, Average (0.667) < Hype (1). Hence proved.

I still give it 3 stars. And I do think that people should stop inserting redemption for kaum (community) in every movie with Muslim characters (e.g. Shaurya).

Ed: I’m not alone in the disappointment/ sense of being let down. PFC and J Ramanand concur too, apparently.

Hero is unassuming/way-over-the-top (one of the two extremes). Hero is brilliant and yet quite caring in either case.

Hero has a major screw up and ends up affecting himself directly or indirectly.

Gamma radiation, Krypton, Mutation, Transmorgification, Radiation and such exotic-sounding terms are thrown around at will to justify anything and everything.

Hero says ‘This is my gift and also my curse.’ Or he says ‘Angry. Rwaaarrw’ and it’s understood that that is what he means.

There is a bunch of absolutely irrelevant thugs/ goons/ school bullies out to generally pain the Hero. They get their a$$es kicked major time in the process and we get to snicker ‘lyoosers!’ at them. They also serve the dual purpose of giving the Hero some much needed match practice.

Hero tries to get rid of his boon/curse and succeeds in doing that… but not quite. Then some Maniac gets hold of those/ equivalent/ better powers and becomes something scarier, nastier and with worse mouth odour, which makes him a menace to society and Greenpeace protesters.

Maniac goes on to kill many people but for some reason never actually harms Hero’s gal. The relationship between Hero and his Damsel can be best described as It’s complicated.

Hero returns to fight Maniac. Maniac dies (but is not directly killed by hero) or is at least rid of his powers/abilities. Hero gets to kiss his gal at most once and then he’s off to do the noble thing – i.e. live a life of celibacy and make up for it (well not literally) by screwing bad guys.

Make Hero slender, supple, net-savvy and with a convoluted dressing sense – you get Spider man.

Make Hero hairy, bulky, a monkey and generally pissed off at everyone in life – you get King Kong.

Make Hero hairless, green, bulky with absolutely no dressing sense and generally pissed off at everyone in life – you get the Incredible Hulk.

As far as the actual movie goes – nothing new, somewhat entertaining, good visual effects, lots of destruction, weak jokes, predictable story.

Imagine your face while trying to calculate 1793/41, or when you’re quite constipated. Then imagine yourself doing a maanja lappet (tying up your thread after losing your paper kite) with all fingers outstretched while having the above face. That’s my rating for the latest Hulk movie.

(Nice review this one )

After an exhausting qualifying schedule, the Euro 2008 football tournament now enters the quarterfinals stage. Lalit Modi (The controller-auditor-general-senator something for the recently concluded IPL Twenty20 tournament) must be baffled by the decision to play Round 3 matches of the same group at the same time.

The men have been separated from the boys (and from the French – ok, that was a bit unnecessary). Given the tension and speculation, the teams expected to qualify for the Quarter Finals did qualify after after all. My predictions for the tournament now are -

Why …

… not Netherlands? ’cause they’re a big bunch of chokers. ’cause, in Andrei Arshavin, they’ll be up against a superlative player. ’cause their huge goals tally is mainly because of their enthu for counterattacks alone. And because Guus Hiddink is a class apart.

… not Spain? ’cause the lack of wingers will hit them badly. Italy will play through the centre, and Zambrotta-Grosso will come forward and provide ample crosses. ’cause Luca Toni is long overdue a goal. And because Buffon is special.

… not Germany? Schweinsteiger is a big oaf for getting himself sent off. Gomez is just one big giant oaf. Ballack is good, but not a magician. Klose just seems bored and lost. And Podolski has had his fill of goals.

… not Portugal? Finishing will let them down eventually. And they are, like Netherlands, big chokers.

… not Italy? They’re good, but not that good. Pirlo looks jaded, the defense is at times quite frail, and they also seem to be having a fairly luckless tournament.

… Croatia??? They have a good coach, excellent midfielders, hardworking forwards and fast full backs. Most of all, they are under no pressure – advantages of being underdogs. Plus they face Turkey in the QF, which might very well turn into a confidence-boosting match.

This is of course contrary to who I am actually cheering for – A dream final (for me) would be Germany vs Italy.

Very nice entertainment so far!

Ed1: Croatia seem to have taken up the ‘Choker Bali’ tag. Germany look a different team altogether with Schweinsteiger in and Gomez out. Time to change predictions!:(

Ed2: Italy without Pirlo are pathetic. Worryingly for Spain, they couldn’t score in 120 minutes. Arshavin is the man of the tournament already – and he’s played just 2 matches. Turkey has 4(5?) frontline players injured/ suspended – Germans always seem to get the easier draws in major tournaments!

Many people find football boring. Watching eleven (twenty-two, in fact) people tussling for the same ball for over 90 minutes seems like a waste of time and energy. Especially when you have no idea about the players, the teams, the tournament or the ball who seems to be getting too much of the attention.

For all these kind of people, I present a new reason – watch it to to become a more aware global citizen. Watching football can greatly help you increase your general knowledge about countries, the people, their styles and most importantly – their names.

Take someone by the name Zurab Khizanishvili. Once you get past the lols and wtfs, you might wonder why people have their names so ridiculous. Now football will might not answer that, but you will nevertheless come to know that such names are often associated with people hailing from the tiny country of Georgia. You will no longer be stumped if, for example, a person were to walk up to you tomorrow and say – “My name is Levan. Levan Kobiashvili. Guess where I am from?”

Or take the name Kahveci Nihat. The name is nice because the syllables can be rearranged quite freely to get names which seem equally (un)likely – Nihaveci Kavat, Nahveci Kihat, Kahneci Vihat, Kaniveci Hihat etc. In fact, just writing this confused me enough to go and confirm on wiki. This happens with other Turkish names too (Tuncay Sanli)

Further examples of names and helpful pointers -

-ov : invariably Bulgarian (Stoichkov, Petrov, Berbatov)

-ov (-off) or -ev + look extremely menacing: invariably Russian (Kerzhakov, Ivanov, Andreev, Akinfeev, Bilyaletdinov)

-ic + look like they’ve just returned from a fight in which they got bashed up more: Serbian (Vidic, Zigic, Ilic)

-is(-os) + long names with too many alphabets repeated and yet sound somewhat similar: invariably Greek (Nikopolidis, Papadopoulos, Papastathopoulos, Christodoulopoulos)

Words with a lot of j’s and i’s thrown in to earn more scrabble points: Dutch (Sneijder, Nistelrooij, Ooijer, Mathijsen). They still earn much less than …

Names with rarely used consonants like w and z all arranged to resemble the charts you’re made to read during an eye check-up: invariably Polish (Wawrzyniak, Kuszczak, Przyrowski, Błaszczykowski, Janczyk).

Names which sound like something you would eat: invariably L’Italie (Chielline, Pastroani, Barzagli, Natali)

Players who do not look/sound like they belong to the country they’re playing from – invariably French (Anelka, Makalele, Zidane, Samir Nasri)

The advantage of doing a not-too-intellectually challenging job is that if you can find a way to beat the system somewhat (i.e. win the battles, the war is unwinnable anyway), you can have plenty of spare time (and resources) to do a lot of random things, good and not-so-good. On second thoughts, this might not exactly be an advantage, but still …

The disadvantage of course is that you’re doing a not-too-intellectually challenging job. I just realized how important tense is … transforms intellectually-challenging into intellectually-challenged.

Reading and reviewing arbit reports elaborating upon certain people’s moronic behaviour and its impact on people all around the world i.e. the credit crisis in the US, one is tempted to take frequent breaks. On one of these breaks, the mind does wander -

- What will it take for The Fed to win at least one French Open. How can it be possible that vastly inferior mortals like Sergei Bruguera and Michael Chang have bragging rights over Roger?

- Why is it that most people in Mumbai think ‘A swanky 3 BHK apartment‘ when asked about there Dream house? Shouldn’t a dream house at least be a house all by itself, especially if it’s in a dream? Or shouldn’t it be at least like this?

Aside: What are the boundaries separating a realist, a cynic and a pessimist?

- How cool are Fractals and how very convenient is the concept ‘infinity +/- anything is still infinity’? Had I taken up a Ph.D., this would had been my choice of research – although given my complete lack of credentials, I doubt I would have (had?) gotten a scholarship anywhere

- Manipulating people is probably what the word Power really means. Manipulating people and convincing them that it’s for their own good is what Behavorial science/ economics is all about – like making people pee where they should by giving them a fly sticker to aim at on the loo-wall. Or realizing that one can increase Listerine mouthwash sales by simply increasing the size of the cup since most customers typically follow directions on the bottle quite strictly (‘One cupful at a time‘)

- The amount of effort people put into the most randomnest of things is par imagination – like devising a Bacon number; or compiling an Anti-Grand Slam list (link via Jabberwock); or devising the most awesome toys to play with (link via kottke.org). For the last one, try it out first and then check out this video – the engineer inside me goes boingboing every time I see it! . Or if there still is nothing better to do, they go and put captions – rather capshuns – on cat photos and go lol, thereby producing in the process the ‘most overrated blog’ according to TIME magazine.

- To satiate the technical mind even more, how cool are places like indexed, graphjam and of course, xkcd – the best geek webcomic which makes me nod my head in agreement in a totally uncool way – every time.

So that’s that. Back to Ms Excel.

(Long football post. You have been warned)

The Euro 2008 football tournament kicks off today (has kicked off already in fact as I type), and it promises to be an awesome one for two reasons -

1. England is not playing. Hence, the english media will be forced to realize that there are more important things (and better teams) to look at, and better news to report than what clothes WAGs wear.

2. There is no clear favourite – Spain and Netherlands are favoured to go far, and history says that they are the South Africans of European and World Cup Football i.e. chokers with an inability to perform when the situation demands. Germany and Italy join them more because of their record than on current form.

I cheer, as always, for Italy and Germany – my 2 favourite European national teams. Although Alessandro Nesta and Paolo Maldini are gone while Fabio Cannavaro is injured (my favourite player of WC 2006), Italy still have a good defence and wonderful finishers in Alessandro Del Piero, Di Natale and all to win crunch games. Germany are awesome because they have wonderful individual performers – Ballack, Klose, Lahm, Podolski and Tongue twisting Schweinsteiger – and they have awesome team spirit.

My feelings for France are similar to those for Arsenal – love their football, love even more to see them lose. With Frank Ribery and Thierry Henry injured and Trezeguet not picked because of random reasons, things are going to be tough. And given that their co-groupies are Italy, Holland and Romania (who have an awesome striker in Adrian Mutu), their task becomes tougher. Yay . They do have one of my players to watch for the tournament – Samir Nasri. Damn you Arsene Wenger – One can’t help but admire his eye for talent.

Spain have all the star players but play the wrong formation, because of which Fernando Torres will end up being ineffective. Plus they have minimal team coordination- kind of like the English national team actually. They have good players though – Casillas, David Villa, David Silva, Iniesta and their most underrated player – Xavi Hernandez. If only they can stop being good only on paper …

Portugal have an awesome defense and a spectacular midfield – Cristiano Ronaldo, Ricardo Quaresma, Deco and all. Problem is, they have a specacularly average collection of Forwards in Nuno Gomes and Postiga.  That might just prove to be their undoing, unless Ronaldo decides to do his country a huge favour and replicates his brilliant club form of 2007-08. Their coach Scolari is very good, but he just might end up restricting the free flowing football of his wingers, which would be a real crying shame.

Holland are not as good as everyone is hollering them to be – unnatural formations, not too good defenders, midfielders playing out-of-position, injured players (Babel, Robben, Melchiot) or players returning from injury (van Persie) – not good tidings for a ‘favourite’. They do have match winners like vNistelrooij and Sneider though …

My dark horses for the the tournament have to be Croatia and Russia. They have a lot in common -

- Instrumental in knocking out England in the qualifying phase.

- Good coaches. Russia’s Guus Hiddink is in fact a miracle worker, having shown his versatility with Holland, South Korea, Australia and now Russia. He is my first choice to replace Sir Alex Ferguson two/ three years later when he says he’ll retire. Or maybe not – SAF is irreplaceable

- Young, interesting midfielders. Good goalkeepers. Somewhat easy qualifying groups. And a lot of confidence in themselves, which always helps.

Not that I don’t think Sweden, the Czechs or Greece are bad or anything, but I wouldn’t really put my money on them to enter the last four.

Players to watch: Samir Nasri, Karim Benzema (Fra), Mario Gomez, Hitzlsperger (Ger), Sneijder (Ned), Torres, Silva, Villa (Esp), Quaresma, Ronaldo, Bosingwa (Por), Modric (Cro), Akinfeev (Rus), Quagriella (Ita), Larsson, Wilhelmson (Swe), Behrami, Vonlanthen (Sui)

Hopefully there’ll be an Italy-Germany final – Cheers to that