The Marine

May 11, 2013 Leave a comment

marGenre: Action| Year: 2006 | Duration: 92 mins | Director: John Bonito | Medium: VCD (EROS Home Video) | Trailer: HERE | My rating: 3*/5*

Favorite Dialogue: Rome: Would somebody *please* shoot this guy?

WWE wrestler John Cena plays John Triton, an U.S. Marine who returns home honorably discharged after violating his commander’s order in a rescue mission in Iraq, only to have his wife, Kate (Kelly Carlson) kidnapped by a ruthless criminal, Rome (Robert Patrick). The rest of the movie is all about the chase through country roads and swamps on burning cars and running across, spewing and dodging bullets, hijacking monster truck and police boat, gasoline fires, ending up in a semper fi  style death to Rome and rescue of Kate under water.

This action packed mindless fun thriller is my Movie of the Day.

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Thank You For Smoking

May 6, 2013 Leave a comment

thank-you-for-smokingThank You For Smoking

by Christopher Buckley | 272 Pages | Genre: Fiction | Publisher: Allison & Busby | Year: 2003 | My Rating: 9/10

“That’s the beauty of argument, if you argue correctly, you’re never wrong.”
― Christopher Buckley, Thank You For Smoking

I started reading this book at a very interesting time, when I finally kicked the butt after 13 years of smoking cigarettes. I know the havoc it has played on my health in past several years, and I don’t need any scientific data to tell me that smoking is bad. I know that there’s people out there way smarter than I am, but a tobacco lobbyist is NOT one of those people! I shall no longer be yanked around by their stinking propaganda. It is my hope that others can also break free from tobacco’s hold. It’s hard. It’s worth it.

Nick Naylor, the main character, is a tobacco lobbyist and the chief spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies, a tobacco industry lobbying firm that promotes the benefits of cigarettes. He spends most of his time making media appearances to spin whatever claims that any health professional makes about the harmful effects of tobacco. He often laments throughout the book that the media does not give him as much screen time as “health professionals”. Nick’s a player and women are attracted to him like moths toward flame. He’s part of the MOD Squad – the Merchants of Death. It includes him, representing the tobacco lobby, and then a lobbyist for alcohol and for the gun lobby. Because of his ability to easily be unethical and convincing he has become a target for anti-tobacco terrorists and is under investigation from the FBI. The main wheels of the story starts turning when Naylor is kidnapped and is almost killed because his kidnappers stick Nicotine patches all over his body, which he miraculously manages to survive the effects. His doctor says it’s because he is a smoker and his body was therefore not as overwhelmed by all the nicotine patches as a non-smoker’s body would have been. The result is that Naylor can no longer smoke cigarettes ever again because there is now too much nicotine in his system. I enjoyed Naylor’s voice because he is so cynical but also very self-aware. Sometimes he seems like he really believes in the things that he is spouting to defend the people who write his pay checks, but then in the next paragraph, he’ll use the same line that he uses for everything, which is “Where are the data proving this?”

This humorously toned, sharp and witty political satire set in Washington, DC is my Read of the Week.

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O Brother, Where Art Thou?

May 6, 2013 Leave a comment

brotherGenre: Comedy| Year: 2000 | Duration: 106 mins | Director: Joel & Ethan Coen | Medium: DVD (EAGLE Entertainment) | Trailer: HERE | My rating: 5*/5*

Favorite Dialogue: Everett: “Deceitful, two-faced she-woman. Never trust a female Delmar, remember that one simple precept and your time with me will not have been ill spent.”

O’Brother set in 1937 rural Mississippi during great depression is a brilliant comedy inspired in parts by Homer’s Odyssey. Dapper Dan hair cream obsessed Everett (George Clooney),  easily excitable Pete (John Turturro), and dopey Delmar (Tim Nelson) escaped from a prison chain gang, still chained to each other and goes looking for 1.2 million dollars that Everett claims to have stolen and buried at a farm before he was caught. They run together in chains through fields and even attempted jumping on a running train till they reached Pete’s cousin Wash’s farm. They get surrounded by Sheriff Cooley and his men  and escape with the help of Wash’s son in his car. On their way out they pick up a hitchhiker Tommy, who claims to have sold his soul to the devil in lieu of learning guitar from him. The four of them goes to a radio station run by a blind man, Root, and sing a song “Man of constant sorrow” under the name of Soggy Bottom Boys, conning Root for extra dollars. While they are their wild goose chase, their song becomes famous around the state, which eventually helps them getting pardoned by the governor.

This strangely beautiful, thoroughly eclectic and musically comic flick is my Movie of the day.

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Outliers

May 3, 2013 Leave a comment

outliersOutliers: The Story of Success

by Malcolm Gladwell | 307 Pages | Genre: Non Fiction | Publisher: Allen Lane | Year: 2008 | My Rating: 7/10

out-li-er \ noun

1: something that is situated away from or classed differently from a main of related body

2: a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample

“Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives. They persist, generation after generation, virtually intact, even as the economic and social and demographic conditions that spawned them have vanished, and they play such a role in directing attitudes and behavior that we cannot make sense of our world without them.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell examines the factors that contribute to high levels of success, be it for Bill Gates, Bill Joy, The Beatles, or Joe Flom – seems to stem as much from context as from personal attributes. Intrinsic ability appears to be a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for exceptional achievement, and what’s essential is hard work (practicing a skill for at least 10,000 hours) along with being born at the ‘right time’. Interestingly the cohort of computer giants were all born in 1950s. Though I think that Gladwell’s claims are used more as a means of getting the reader to think about patterns in general, rather than a pursuit of verifiable statistical fact.

Outliers is divided into two parts. In Part One, called “Opportunity,” Gladwell attempts to debunk several notions, viz., that geniuses are born not made, and that individuals succeed largely through their own initiative. In Part Two, called “Legacy”, he tries to show how important history and culture are in promoting success of one kind or another.

This book about complex sociological phenomenon and full of inventive theories (with gaps) is my Read of the Week.

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Men in Black 3

May 3, 2013 Leave a comment

mibGenre: Sci-fi| Year: 2012 | Duration: 103 mins | Director: Barry Sonnenfeld | Medium: Theater (DT Cinemas, Saket) | Trailer: HERE | My rating: 4*/5*

Favorite Dialogue: Agent K: Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to”

MIB3 is the sequel to the 2002 film MIB2 starring Tommy Lee Jones as Agent K, and Will Smith as Agent J. Even though its not the best of the three MIBs, its still much better than its predecessor, MIB2, though the gap of ten years between them was equivalent to getting ‘neuralyzed’ had it not been for numerous movie channels on the telly showing repeats of the movies in last ten years. The movie revolves around the escape of a violent alien fugitive, Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement), who lost his arm in a tangle with Agent K back in 1969. When Boris arrives back on Earth after escaping from special prison on the moon, after 40 years, the Boglodite time travels to 1969 to kill-off K prior to their fateful standoff. When Agent J shows-up at MIB headquarters (with a temporal fracture and a craving for chocolate milk, as discovered by Agent O) and discovers that his partner actually died decades before they ever met, he follows Boris’ trail back to the 1969, a day in advance of the standoff in an effort to not only save K and implement a protective earth cover ArcNet, but prevent a full-on Boglodite invasion that the Men in Black had, in the prior version of reality, managed to thwart.

The Agents meet the alien Griffin (Michael Stuhlbarg), an Arcadian who possesses the ArcNet and is able to see multi-dimensionally in to all possible futures, gives them the ArcNet and instructs them to place it onto the Apollo 11 lunar rocket launch occurring in less than six hours. Boris then snatches Griffin, but the agents, on monocycles (another cool feature of the movie), give chase and recover Griffin. In the end, J & K (Young agent K is played by Josh Brolin) manages to kill both the younger and older versions of Boris, and deploys ArcNet.

This comic sci-fi with funny looking aliens is my Movie of the Day

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