"The name's Bond. James Bond."

Yesterday night my roomie and I reached home around 9pm; I was in bit early and was watching Shiva on TV. He came and asked shall we go for a movie. Two movies were pending - Casino Royale and Dhoom-2, but I was not thinking as he was ill and just came in after a drive. I am always ready to go out, and since he brought up the topic, so get-set-go.

The nearest theater, Ega, was showing Dhoom-2. We decided to go for it. We knew getting tickets will not be a problem as you can definitely get tickets in 'not-to-be-mentioned-ways'. Just when we starting my roomie's friend called in and said that today's rate in Ega is Rs. 200/- (extremely costly!), but it would have been a bigger tragedy if we would have dropped our plan then. His friend was at Woodlands, another theater, trying to get tickets for Casino Royale. We told him to get two more for us. Luckily he got the tickets and we saved lot of bucks (Rs.140/- per head).

I had got quite a varied feedback for Casino Royale from friends and newspaper reviews. Some of them liked it very much but there was an equal lot who didn't like it at all. Few of the comments which I got were like Bond is not having any gadgets, Bond gets fooled many times, etc. Nevertheless I went with a clean slate.

And my verdict is its one of the excellent Bond movies I have seen. Daniel Craig did a awesome jobs, he fits the role well. The plot is based on the Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel by the same name. James Bond is introduced in this novel and is shown as an agent learning the tricks of the trade. He has promoted to 007 status, but still has to learn many things which goes with that status. He makes few mistakes, gets deceived quite a number of times and even is almost killed once. But as the saying goes, it the end which matters; Bond has the last word - "The name's Bond. James Bond."

My best sequence in the movie will the one in which Bond races in his Aston Martin DBS to save Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) in the moonlit night in Montenegro. Vesper is tied in the middle of the road. Aston's head-lights fall on her when the car is just inches away from smashing her head and Bond diverts the speeding Aston Martin at the last moment.

If you are a James Bond fan, then missing Casino Royale would be a crime! For me, the wait starts for the next one :)

Finally caught up with Don

Don - The Chase Begins Again, directed by Farhan Akhtar, is a remake of the 1978 film, Don. But I guess remake is not the exact term to explain it; 'adaptation' will go better. The two films are essential same in their storyline but are still different due to the tweaks in the plot by Farhan.

I will not get into the story or the details of the tweaks, maybe some of you are still planning to catch the DON. But I would love give my take of the movie. The 1978 superhit boasted of legends in its star cast - Amitabh Bachchan, Zeenat Aman, Pran, Iftekhar, Helen. The storyline and the charm of such greats was enough for it to be an excellent movie. And when talk about remaking such a movie; its bound to evoke lot of high expectations. And I would say it was clever on Farhan's part to change the plot a bit. He made changes in two fulcrum points of the plot which does brings out a total different aspect. In some ways though I find the new plot similar to Face/Off, a 1997 film directed by John Woo starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage. Nevertheless Shahrukh and Priyanka did a great job, never easy to be in shoes of Amitabh Bachchan and Zeenat Aman.

Let me also tell why I chose to call it an 'adaptation'. The 1978 Don was setup in a time when underworld used to operate mostly inside the country and girls were not expected to be self-sustaining. Now we live in an era where everything is global, many things which happen in other countries do have a bearing on our lives. Girls are now more pro-active than before. Farhan has accordingly spread the plot on a larger canvas, where Don's gang operates between Malaysia and India. Also Priyanka doesnt needs go for a fight class before confronting the Don.

So on a whole its good remake ('adaptation') but somehow falls a bit short on the charm which Amitabh Bachchan's Don had, but you should complain on that. My advice take it as a new movie you will surely enjoy it; the moment you get into a comparision mode you will waste your money.

http://beta.saptarshi.info/

Launched the beta version of my homepage! Many parts might not work properly, sorry for the inconvenience. I would be very happy if you give comments regarding the issues/suggestions.

Look-wise there is not much difference in the beta edition yet, in fact in some cases the content might be bit older. Major difference is the way the page is made. This time I am exploring the AJAX technology and using it to have dynamic content. My two-pointed objective in this exercise - understand AJAX and simplify the website management.

I am planning the release date around the New Year.

Beta homepage url: http://beta.saptarshi.info/
Normal homepage url: http://www.saptarshi.info/

If you want happiness for a lifetime ...

"Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work." -- Aristotle