I Hate Spammers

I probably would be one of the biggest victims of spams, considering that  I win multimillion dollars  euros and rupees every week, some dying nigerian prince wants to share his wealth with me for some reason (considering the amount of such mails I receive I believe life expectancy for Nigerian princes is very low and every Nigerian is a wealthy prince), everyday at least one girl promises to be the best life partner I could ever have, some mails have even started selling me child insurance (probably hoping that I would have by now fallen for one of those marry me spams), often RBI or Income Tax department expects me to share my account details with them, which they already have easy access to. Sometimes I receive mails with suspicious attachments, which I have never had the courage to open. Every week I receive multiple tips about earning quick money from home and almost daily I receive multiple e-mails about some walk-in for some opening in some call center offering me 10 times lower salary than what I already earn. All these are mails delivered to my inbox. Now imagine what I would find if I ever check my spam folder which receives at least 10 times more mails than the inbox. 

However recently I have noticed that I do not receive any such mails on a Sunday. That made me wonder that these spammers have become organized and have started taking weekly offs. Since I started the thought process, I continued and decided to trace the roots of spams. According to wikipedia "Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages, especially advertising, indiscriminately." I think that spams go much beyond the invention of electronic-mails. 

I belong to a generation that probably still remembers that post offices were not exclusively intended to be used for sending government or corporate communications. I have used inland letters and postcards during my early hostel days to communicate with my parents and I remember receiving postcards with some story written in it and asking me to send 10-100 such postcards to random addresses if I do not want to be cursed or if I want to be blessed. Much similar to a picture of some god on facebook asking you to share the picture if you want the blessings. Now writing a postcard and posting takes much effort than clicking share button on facebook yet just the fact that I myself have received some such postcards means that some people then used to put that effort. The number could have been much higher it the postcards said "Alcohol god will drink all your stock for a dry day if you do not share this with 25 people" or "the hot girl in your college will fall for you if you send this to 10 people" (much like deodorant commercials) etc.

Nowadays with social media becoming so prominent we are seeing multiple people becoming spammers without even realising it. Otherwise how do you classify multiple people sharing posts with titles like "Share and see what happens" (this I think is the most stupid of them all), "if you love you mother, share this post" (now how much I love my family is decided basis the amount of spamming I do), "Share, if you love Jesus" (if I do not share an stupid post on facebook, somehow that makes me an atheist). Most prominent of them all are by these pseudo patriots who believe that clicking like on a facebook post with change the country and make it corruption free. These guys more often share posts with content, which they were too lazy to verify. The height of this stupidity reached its peak when some prominent people in our national politics thought that they can make APJ Abdul Kalam the president of the country again without him even contesting for the post. 

In short. I hate spammers. Except for the ones who are too stupid to make me laugh. 

Heroine: Not a Review

I have not seen the movie yet and I am not sure if and when I will watch it. So this post if not a review of the movie and should not be used to determine how good or bad the movie is. This post is purely basis the pre-release activities of the movie. This post is a result of my discussion about the film with my friend and the analysis the followed. 

We realised that Heroine while it appears to be is not a typical Madhur Bhandarkar movie. I do not think I have to say much about what a typical Madhur Bhandarkar movie is, yet for those who yet have any disconnects. Madhur claims to be a realistic filmmaker (whatever the hell that means). This claim helps him win National Awards, because National Awards jury are sucker for realistic cinema. Madhur typical picks up a setting like dance bars, jail, traffic signal, corporate world etc and puts together all the perceived evils about the particular settings and then tries to fit all these evils in the form of a story. Irrespective of the setting he chooses, the common factor about most of his movies is that the setting is the lead protagonist of the story and all the characters are designed to portray the evil impacts of the chosen setting on themselves. Pick any of his popular movies from Chandani Bar to Fashion and you would understand what I am trying to say here. He even creatively ;) chooses his titles to avoid any confusion in the minds of tha audience. Chandani Bar is about dance bars, Page 3 is about page 3 parties, Corporate is about corporate world, Traffic Signal is about traffic signal, Fashion is about fashion industry and Jail is about, well; jail. The reason he casts not so famous faces in his movies is because he does not want the actors to dilute the portrayal of the surrounding and in few cases where he hired known actors, I presume they were instructed to play their part in a way that highlights the surrounding and not themselves. Counting the number of National Awards he has won, that seems to have been working well for him so far.

Now lets talk about Heroine. The title itself is enough to give away the difference from other Bhandarkar's movies. The title is not Showbiz or Films or Entertainment or Bollywood that means the movie is not about the Film Industy, it is about the Heroine. The main protagonist here is not the setting, it is in this case the Character played by Kareena Kapoor. Since I have not seen the movie, I cannot say how this diversion from his usual style has shaped up. Last time he deviated from his usual style, he gave us Dil To Baccha Hai. So you can get an idea.

The poster screams "it's all about Kareena"

Now imagine how his other movies would have been if Chandani Bar was titled Bar Dancer, Page 3 was named Celebrity, Corporate was named VP-Marketing, Traffic Signal was named Homeless, Fashion was named Super Model and Jail was named Qaidi (prisoner). What that changes is that they now become stories about the impact of the lead characters on their surroundings rather than other way round. Now I am expecting the people who have seen Heroine to tell me how accurate our analysis is.

The Dark Knight Rises...and how

When you have Chirstopher Nolan in the driving seat, you expect a roller coaster ride. The journey started with The Batman Begins and for the first time we witnessed someone taking superheroes seriously. In India we have Ramayana and Mahabharata; in Europe they have Iliad and Odyssey but comic books are closest thing to mythology for Americans and here we had someone treating them the way they should have been. You see how a directionless Bruce Wayne became Batman and decided to fight crime in his city in Batman Begins. Then you see Batman going into hiding after taking the blame of a crime he did not commit, trying to make Gotham a better place to live based on a lie in The Dark Knight, which by all means remains the best superhero movie ever made. Making a follow up to The Dark Knight is a challenging task. Since the day I had seen that in 2008, I have been waiting for the Dark Knight Rises and followed every news/gossip around that. Then Chris Nolan released Inception in between and raised the expectations even higher. 

I have been wandering how the trilogy would end. What would be the epic conclusion? Then the first look for the movie was released and it was a statue of Batman in Gotham city hall and I thought may be finally we get a filmmaker bold enough to kill a superhero. Then the question is how will Batman be killed? It will be stupid to get him killed by some villain. You cannot possibly have a villain stronger than a hero, that is beyond the age old concept of good vs evil. So I was thinking may be Batman will go evil for some reason and will be killed by either Alfred since he had promised to protect him and this could be his way of protecting from himself. Or would he be killed by Gordon? Then I saw the casting and found that Joseph Gordon Levitt is in there too and expected him to be the one to kill Batman and make Batman what became of Harvey Dent in the end of the Dark Knight, a symbol of goodness in Gotham. 

Finally putting all speculations to rest, the wait was finally over and here I was watching The Dark Knight Rises, the most anticipated movie in the history of film making. The movie starts eight years after where the Dark Knight ended. Crime rate in Gotham is almost zero, thanks to the Dent Act. Batman has not been seen since the day he took the blame of killing Harvey Dent and Bruce Wayne is living a solitary life in Wayne Mansion. Gorgeous Anne Hathway is Selina Kyle, a thief wearing a cat mask. You guessed it right, she is the Cat Woman. (It had to be someone as Anne Hathway to erase the memories of Halle Berry's horrible version.) From this very scene the movie starts building the premise for the epic finale, which you realise and appreciate when you see the last scene. 

Bane is the League of Shadows and intends to finish Ra's al Ghul's destiny i.e. complete destruction of Gotham. He starts with crashing a plane after kidnapping a scientist mid air. He looks menacing with his towering presence and radiator mask. Batman decides to come out of retirement to face Bane but this time he is in for a surprise. For the first time he is facing a villain physically superior than him and the fight results in Bane breaking his bones and throwing him in the pit called "the worst hell on earth" with a tv to watch what he is going to do to Batman's beloved city. But Batman is not destined to die in the pit. He has other plans. Other than his usual friends Alfred, Fox and Gordon; he has James Blake a rookie detective along with the Cat Woman to help him in his fight to save Gotham.

The movie has some references to the first movie and you are in for some surprises and twists. However it is the ending although little bit expected that bowls you over and leaves you as excited as you were in the beginning of the movie. I cannot imagine a better fitting end to the trilogy. 

I will not talk about the usual cast members because you already know. They are all in the same form as they were in the earlier two movies. This time you have Tom Hardy playing Bane, who scares you with his intimidating presence and that husky voice filtered through that radiator mask. Anne Hathway is Selina Kyle/Catwoman and she is awesome. I may be little biased here though. Marion Cotillard is Miranda Tate who joins Wayne Industries' board to save it from going into wrong hands and has little fling with Bruce in the process. Then you have Joseph Gordon-Levitt as James Blake, the rookie cop who believes in Batman. 

The story is well crafted keeping the finale in mind with interesting twists in between to keep you hooked. The action scenes are well executed like the aerial stunt in the beginning and the destruction of the football field you must have seen in the trailers. In the gadget department also you have a new introduction the Bat, "there is nothing like some aerial superiority". The dialogues are to the point, be it Bane's commanding tone or Alfred's philosophical conversations or witty one liners by Selina. Hans Zimmer's background score does well to alleviate the tension. 

So all of you. Get your seats booked and don't forget to fasten your seat belts because you are in for the ride of a life time. A fitting finale to an epic tale. On the sad note we will never again see Chris Nolan direct another Batman movie and neither we will see Christian Bale in that Cape. Whenever DC Comics decides to reboot the franchise they have really high standards to meet.