Good Fellas ....

Goodfellas ...
Another Martin Scorsese master piece. What is the funda behind Robert De Niro delivering his high octane performances again and again for Martin ? All of their associations have brought the best in both of them. Martin as usual delivers his best at what he does best, "The gangster movie". This movie is about the real life story of the Italian mafioso. (Why all the famous gangsters are Italian and mainly Sicilian ? Gotta research that ... may be another blog entry. :) )

The funniest moment in the movie
On their wedding day, with the whole new york mafioso present

Karen Hill : "The bag... , the bag with all the money ...
Henry Hill : "Oh! no, nothing would happen to that... " :) (At this point karen does not know about Henry's profession)

Martin has followed the real history and the book "Wise guy" by henry hill mostly in the movie with some creative liberty taken here and there. The only thing he did not even go into in this movie is about the affair between Karen and Tommy which happened in real life when Henry was serving his sentence.

The movie is just brutal otherwise. Great performances by all. Hats off to martin, who was denied one more Oscar for this movie... Atlast he was awarded Oscar with "The departed" for more than to erase the embarrassment of the academy. They did not want to commit the same mistake they did with Hitchcock. It is really an embarrassing detail to note that with 5 Oscar nominations and with all his movies in the top 100 all time horror/supense movies, Alfred Hitchcock never won the coveted award...

Incredible Hulk : Review

Saw "Incredible Hulk" at PVR (free tickets on Wednesdays :) ) . Just another Hollywood assembly line action movie. Nothing great about this but certainly not a waster either. Action was good, logic was very bad. (like the russian army officer aka villain wearing american army uniform) . The graphics is very decent. Edward norton has carried off his role well. Liv Taylor was oscillating between bad and pathetic. Only the hulk was a saving grace. It was nice to see Tony Stark aka iron man coming at the end of the movie...
Does Marvel Comics going to try some superhero mashups ? The Iron man and the incredible hulk saving the world together ?
Some of the best scenes of the movie are coming in the first half and shot in brazil. No one has taken a closer look than this movie other than "Man on fire"


2.5 STARS / 5 STARS

Gambling and movies ....

I recently saw 3 movies related to gambling using blackjack. "Rounders", "21" and "Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels". All the three were highly or decently rated by imdb. The best of the lot is "lock stock and two smoking barrels". The plot of the movie is amazing. Even though the end was expected, the director keeps you glued by making you think how he is going to achieve that.

21 and rounders were more of life tales. Both of them ponders more about the brilliance of the protagonist and their emotions. Matt Damon was simply brilliant in rounders. This is one of his best performances and lies next to his Oscar script "Good Will Hunting" which he won for writing the script rather than acting :( . Its a pity that this guy who emotes very subtly is yet to be on that coveted list.


My brush with gambling started pretty early. I used to play "Lotto" a lot when i was in 5 th standard. I played for some three continuous summers. I started with 25 paise lotto tickets and ended with 5 rupee stakes when i stopped playing. I even ran a lotto company then. Ran even partnerships. If i think about them now, it was an amazing ride. I picked up a lot of business sense, things about honesty etc... Having a big family and lot of family friends really helped. Every family gathering , functions always ended with playing Tambola aka Lotto late into the night...
Golden days :)

The kalam effect... Review

I bought this book at Crosswords, chennai. Took the book to the Brio cafe inside crossword and read the whole book in 1.5 hours. The book is written by Shri. P.M.Nair , who was the secretary to Dr.APJ.Abdul Kalam when he was president. The book gives the insider information about a lot of events happened in those 5 years. It sheds light on the humane side of a great individual, scientist and a patriot to the core.

Some of the incidents are very touching. Like this one...

One small girl from Agra written to the president saying that " Uncle we have only one park in our city and in that park, only one swing and that swing is not working for the past 10 days and nobody cares. Please see to that it is repaired" . A very humble, silly request from just another citizen of this country.

If some one else was there in that position as Dr.Kalam was, this letter would not even have reached the desk and directly to the trash. But because it was Dr.Kalam , it reached his desk , read upon, action taken. The swing was repaired very soon.
The girl replied to him and thanked him.

If only we had more people like Dr.Kalam manning the north and south blocks in delhi.....


The book is very readable and a good one. I would give * * * stars out of five

Chennai Trip

Went to chennai for the weekend after a long break . I usually avoid the summer time to visit chennai for obvious reasons. I thought the weather would be nice at this time of the year. Man , i was wrong. It was very humid,hot even when it is raining. The roads get clogged or muddied all through the city. It was nice time with shankar and family. I started missing Gokul already even with all of his idiosyncrasies. We compensated that with a long 2 hour conference call along with shekar. I was in landmark all the time and speaking to them.

One major difference i found between chennai and bengaluru is "Courtesy". People in bangalore are more courteous than chennai . (Some might dispute that. But having lived in both the places for considerable time, i would stick to my comments). Met esh, it was really nice just being with him. Such a nice chap. Old friends are really gold friends. :)