The Face Lift called DON

DON – The King Khan starrer Faran Aktar redo of the older Amitabh hit has only done bollywood proud. Firstly, it’s a rather difficult task to remake a movie. Secondly its even more difficult to remake a movie that has created a legend. Lastly its all the more difficult trying to pull off a movie that starred a very distinctive cast and featured undoubtedly the king of those times – the Big B himself.

Of course Farhan Aktar did the right thing by casting Shah Rukh in the movie. The second best thing he did was he didn’t mess around too much with the ‘Idea’ of DON. The underworld king, bad man was still carrying himself in that same pompous arrogant way as Mr.B used to and has the same panache about his killing as much as about his wooing the ladies. A true home grown bond, if I may say.

Not to compare, but given the circumstances, its quite natural but to compare the two colossal efforts. Amitabh gave a very serious and gentlemanly look to the character with a distinct voice and his tall physique. It was his aura as an individual that created that everlasting impression of DON in our minds.

The new DON – all slick and smooth, a.k.a King Khan, will leave an even deeper impression on your mind. Not that he isn’t gentlemanly enough, but given the fact that he has to portray such a great personality, only the khan don could have pulled it off. Not to get me wrong, maybe Aamir Khan is a better actor and he would have definitely acted out the part far better, but it’s the image of the REAL DON in the minds of the people that correlates to the REEL DON.

Farhan Aktar has made a visual spectacle with a very strong Hollywood feel. Right from the very first introduction of Priyanka Chopra in the Gym, trying to stretch herself and practice some confused sort of martial arts, till the very end where the shot from below focuses on the almost smoked cigarette DON is smoking waiting to board his chopper.

In any case, the movie has a brilliant feel to it and is a must watch. A brilliant performance by the actor himself and the sound and video guys.

New World Order – Move First or Die First

I just purchased the XBOX 360 from Microsoft. This is the story of what the Redwood giant is upto and why and how I for one totally believe they will be the eventual winners of this closely fought Game Console war.

Who are the contestants ?

For a start – Nintendo, a very old and recognized brand in this space. Sony, again coming with their exceptional brilliance with the PS series. And now MS, a software company totally not connected to gaming consoles in any way except ‘developing’ the games. We here will be talking about only the XBOX and the PS3. The XBOX Launched in India this Diwali and the PS3 is due out by April 2007.

MS with its standard DVD drive is betting the market will continue to use DVD’s as a standard format for Games and that will remain so for some time to come. Sony on the other hand has placed all its chips on a delayed launch of the PS3. The PS3 carries a BluRay drive which can only read BluRay disks. Nintendo is betting its Wi (pronounced as WE) on a more interactive controller. Wonderful concept, except that there is really no telling what the end customer will choose. In India though, the story will be very much based on price.

When the BluRay association okayed the concept, Sony lashed out and grabbed it. The idea was simple. Today’s games are Visually, ergonomically and tastefully getting better by the minute. Game developers are only looking for an excuse to make games with more detailed facial expressions, better sound, more enthralling graphics. So as the games continue to get only better, they simultaneously need more space. This space could be on the HDD or on your removable Disk like a DVD. Today’s standard DVD’s can store upto 8 GB of data. BluRay claims they will be able to store upto 50Gb of data on a single disk. So this can only mean game developers now have an open field to develop games that can consume more space.

When Sony accepted the BluRay technology, MS was left with little choice. But much to surprise of many, MS decided to stick to a regular DVD drive. The reason – many believe the reason was to get a market share from many emerging markets like India where the craze of Multiplayer gaming and spending money on such form of entertainment had still not taken wings. So MS betted on a lower end technology, hoping the cost advantage will get more units out of showrooms.

So where is the problem ?

There are already games that consume 4 DVDs! Imagine how irritating it is for a gamer who has to get up and continue to change disks. Priced at USD 300 and about INR 27K in India, the XBOX is sure as hell not cheap. But it’s still selling. Imagine when the delayed PS3 launches at an estimated price of INR 48K, god only knows how many people will be willing to purchase the unit just because they don’t want to get up in the middle of a game to change disks.

A Rose always has a thorn and so is the same with the XBOX. Although it may make more economic sense right now, should the BluRay pick up as a trend (most disruptive technologies take time to take off), it will be only Sony that will emerge as the true winner. Game developers today aren’t investing on BluRay and definitely aren’t going to develop games just cause BluRay is awesome. They need to see the market shifting towards its acceptance.

Just launched in Japan, the PS3 has only 4 games to its credit today. This means that if I buy a PS3 today, I only get 4 possible games to play. I don’t know how long I will have to wait before another game is launched. On the other hand, one year old, the XBOX gives me more than 300 game titles to play, although not all of them are available in India. Not only that, I also get more than 2 Million Gamers worldwide on the XBOX LIVE.

So you see, it’s not only the early launch of the XBOX in India that may work up MS revenues but also the fact that the software giant may be very accurately estimating a true Indian’s appetite for technology.

Amchee Country - Bharat Mahan

Blogging after quite some time now. This is an old piece I wrote immediately after the Bombay blasts. Uploading it just now.

On my trip to Hyderabad recently – I happened to catch some TV just before boarding the flight. What was on - sort of amused me. I wouldn’t say it was shocking – but definitely interesting enough for me to share some pearls of wisdom.

The show was being telecast on a very popular news channel, being hosted by an even more famous television personality and of course – watched by multiple people from across fields of interest and excellence – some of whom were there for the food, some hoped to network with those more prominent than them, and lastly were the ones that seemed to have just lost their way and stuck around cause dinner was being served !

Anyways – back to the show. The show was about the tragedy that struck Mumbai last month and not to forget the one that started it all - 13 years back. Ironically, Mumbai didn’t react like the last time, and neither did the media. So the show was about how people lost their lives and how many people cannot trust the local police, blah blah and BLAH !

If I may be allowed to run my thought machine here – I would actually like to commend the intelligent individual who happened to think of this brilliant show. You see, when people die – they DIE. That’s it. Kaput. Its over. But then there are some individuals who say ‘hey – they are dead. Why don’t I make some money off it!’

So the best is to have a show – invite personalities, generate money for sponsorhip, have a large following of media, make noise and then give off some of it to those who are actually the ones this is all being done for.

I will try not to let my vulnerability be of any influence here, but the point of the matter is, we Indians take great pride in talking about our problems. In fact we love it so much that we have politicians, sportsmen, and now Actresses (read the SENsible Sushmita), all queing up outside a publisher’s house hoping for some piece of the rich fat creamy pie.

On the other hand – I was watching this movie called OMKARA – a brilliant depiction of the local milieu in UP and Bihar, where the lord is the still the one with the land. And women are best in the bed or taking care of the children. The frighteningly realistic portrayal of the life out there did multiple cerebral damages to my peer, but made me think of only one thing.

We are de facto selfish and no matter what we do, what we eat, what we wear, whom we love and whom we hate, there HAS to be a selfish reason behind it. I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing. But it’s what has resulted in us getting to a point where I see a show hosted by a celebrity, being watched and attended by celebrities, approached and paid for by celebrities and rich, and in the end of it – the charitable sum that was raised was of Rs.20 lakhs. That’s about USD 50,000 !

All this hype and all this hypocrisy may never make us a nation like Israel. They killed 20 children in Palestine and their public spokesperson said ‘We’re very sorry – at a height of 20,000 ft., from where the bombs were dropped, it looked like they were adults. We were surprised why some of them were carrying dolls, but we thought it was a terrorist custom’

You see, the Jews in Israel have had it enough for them to make such public demonstrations of their hate. They are surrounded by Christian hating people – yet they survive. They are now instilling the fear in the Arabs by killing their children. It may not be pretty, it may not be helping, but it’s surely doing its job of protecting the country’s identity and interests. Come to think of it – could we as a nation of more than a billion, come to understand the logic behind this?