Ye Olde Filme!

After watching Arundhati, I began to remember the older movies that were telugu classics. Patala Bhairavi and Vittalacharya come to mind. These films defined fearless heroes well before Indiana Jones came along. The movies had everything in them. The swashbuckling hero who was at ease with a rapier or a woman in his grip, the damsel in distress, the evil sorceror whose life source lay hidden in a parrot caged across the seven seas and hordes of evil creatures!

They had gripping storylines and kept me glued for hours. One scene I cannot forget is where NTR is a prince and he has apparently failed at a mission and he has no wish to continue living. So he whips out a beautiful dagger(period cutlery! These directors paid attention to detail!) and throws it up and catches it on his neck on its way down. Even the way they killed themselves was so cool! What fascinates me is that directors go to such lengths to copy the same old script of boy meets girl and yet noone wants to do a decent remake of the kickass classics!

Allright, let me lay the groundwork. Who is good enough to play the good guy in this film?

	Balakrishna would have been the obvious choice ... 2 decades ago. I reject him on the grounds that his makeup alone would eat away a chunk of the movie budget(more than the special FX!)
	Chiranjeevi, let me repeat what someone dear to me had said, we could not see him as shiva, why push our luck
	Mahesh Babu, the prince of tollywood is good looking but lets face it he would look downright silly in the frock! And run me through with a sword if he opens his mouth to say ONE dialog properly.
	Raja, is already doing a period flick with namitha(hmm so that means he is acting with 2 heroines) more on that if and when the film makes it to the theatres
	Allu Arjun and Ram Charan Tej are too urban and fresh to do any justice to a role like that.
	Gopichand, would be a good pick. Tough guy who does subdued roles with panache but then again he lacks the classy looks one would want to see in a prince.

I liked Shrikanth's look in Operation Duryodhana. I would cast him as the villain. I think he would do a great job as the evil sorceror!

Well im as undecided as ever. I wonder how many of you have seen Princess Bride. Excellent movie in my opinion. They converted a complete pansy shepherd boy into a macho cool pirate. I want to see that in Tollywood. 

travelogue long overdue!!

I have not written a traelogue about my trip to the south east. A number of reasons come to my mind, chief of them being sheer laziness. I however think it will be a good thing to look back at some of the interesting things I picked up. 

  - In Singapore, just like in India, everyone older than you can be called uncle or aunty. just add an 'a' sound at the end.

  - The landscape in the phillipines is exactly the same as you would see in naidupeta or kavaraipeta(yes im on the train as I write this).

  - Macau has some of the most amazing casinos in the world and attracts millions of english speaking tourists in the world but none of the natives speak english. If you cant speak cantonese, stay the FUCK off our island they say.

  - Hong Kong is a vibrant city that hates brown boys. You can thank the bangladeshis and africans for sustaining the lucrative drug trade. Pakistanis are bloody friendly and make excellent Parathas(buggers charge you heaven and earth in case you think im going soft).

  - Indians are studs in china as proved by the interest shown by the chinese girls(in yours truly ofcourse). Wherever we went in Shenzen, girls would ask us where we were from. It was nice to be the "stranger from the exotic country"!

Singapore is crawling with indians and so it is for that reason that the native singaporeans stand out. The women are beautiful and maintain a healthy figure. They wear shorts most of the time and their legs are immaculate. The men are smartly dressed and are very polite when you ask for help. Everywhere in Singapore it is their politeness that floors you. The city has such a disciplined system in place. It makes you want to be a part of it! I personally feel two years in this city will not only kick my career to phenomenal heights but also make me appreciate the finer things in life. It is amazing how everything the government does is for the people. All the time.

The Phillipines is a wonderful place to be in. Its like walking into India. The people are extremely friendly. The women are stunning. I saw nothing but perfect figures wherever I looked. Stare at any one for more than 5 seconds and you are greeted with a musical "Hello sir, may I help you". We did not go to Manila, but a smaller town named Clark. We trekked up to a volcano and swam in its crater(filled with rainwater, a sulphur lake). It has to be one of the most blissful experiences. Two hours of trekking and we were worn out, but one look at the paradise we had reached and all we wanted to do was take off our clothes and go for a dive! 

We also got to fly an Ultralight and that was a memorable experience! 

The whole experience was capped off with a trip to the local casino!

Macau assaulted us with its garish display of wealth. It was the first real casino experience and the showgirls were something else! Graceful moves! The highlight of the macau trip was the route we took from Macau to Hong Kong. The turbojet! Ripping across the water at incredible speeds!

Hong Kong gave us Disneyland, an experience we wanted for a long time. All I can say is, a childhood fantasy was fulfilled!

Shenzen was mindblowing for the lovely experience at "The Window of the World". Every famous landmark in the world finds its place here. It's like walking through the entire world in half a day! China has surprisingly modest people. The men and women kept frowning at my shorts!

Shri Gurubhyo Namaha

After reading harshas post about his teachers, I was inspired to write about some of the people who shaped my life. Some molded me and some left dents. For obvious reasons I will not mention names.

"Finish the problems I have assigned to you fast ma ... I will tell you a nice joke."

We wiped the sweat off our foreheads and did our best to take all the time we had left. However sheer brilliance took over and we all managed to finish the problem. She stood there with a very satisfied look on our face. Her complete conviction that we were actually interested in her joke was interesting to see. She began the joke. 

"See ma, one lady came to buy some toys ma and then she realised ma that she did not have money in her purse. Then ma the shop owner maybe he was doing mouna vradam* or something he did not want to speak to her so he picked up some blocks to ask her R U M T (are you empty)"

end of joke.

If you think the silence in the class was deafening, you are highly mistaken. Yours truly and some cooperative friends let out hideous and inhuman guffaws of laughter. The same teacher liked to torture us with her poetic experiments. She had a particular affection for acrostics. 

Creating new organics

Resultant of yesterday

Abhorrent fumes arise

Please close your nose.

Something like this. Ofcourse she used some very inspiring words like LIGHT and SHINE. Moving on. I soon realised that this lady was very low on the rung of people who are crazy. 

The next person who comes to mind is an english teacher who took his classes very seriously. We would sit around in awe as he shifted between heavily accented colloquial english and a heavy british accent with clipped words and all. I still remember on a hot day after a heavy lunch, he was pacing up and down reeling out paragraphs from a non detailed prose text book. He walked up to a window and leaned on the bars while reading something out. We all slowly looked up as his words died out. He had fallen asleep on the grill. We slowly started snickering and I think it disturbed him. He woke up. The breeze near the window had flipped a few pages in the book. He simply continued reading from the page that was before him completely oblivious to the fact that it was a different lesson. None of us dared correct him!

Hello college. With great tension in our hearts we sat down to listen to some lectures. Those of you who have done pure sciences and physics in particular, will know that a lot of the theory we learn involves lengthy derivations. One particular derivation lasted 30 mins. The professor went on explaining concept upon concept that was involved in each step. He made very clear the physical phenomena that translated into numbers. At the end of the derivation he satisfactorily concluded

v = g;

meaning the velocity is the same as the gravitational pull of the earth. We had frantically noted down each step and now sat back to crack our fingers and take a quick look at the whole thing. One of the brighter students slowly raised his hand and said, "Velocity should oppose gravity so where is the minus sign" we all realised then that the result of the derivation was supposed to be 

v = - g;

The whole class went silent and the next few words will remain with me forever. The professor walked up to the board, turned around to look at us and said, "What is there, you can always put it." and scratched a little minus sign before the g in the  equation. I know, very profound.

* abstinence from speech.

Billa : wtf??

An interview with the director of BILLA.

Director = dir ; Bakra  Man who Watched it = bmw

Bmw : Before I begin to listen to ur nonsense let us get one thing clear.

Dir : yes?

Bmw : Billa is a copy of the tamil movie of the same name?

Dir : yes ..

Bmw : and that Billa is a copy of an old tamil movie starring rajinikanth

Dir : yes ..

Bmw : and that old movie was a copy of the amitabh bacchan starrer DON

Dir : yes .. but you see since my Billa(smug smile) and the original DON(dismissive look) have the same story, I have actually only cop..err .. remade the original done with local telugu flavor.

Bmw : please excuse me for a second ...

(Bmw comes back he has obviously been crying)

Bmw : why?

Dir : sorry?

Bmw : why did you want to make this film?

Dir : Well basically I thought it was a fresh theme and I felt I could explore some of the intense portions of the story that had been ignored in the original Don.

Bmw : do you realise that large portions of the film involve the hero(face contorts intensely) walking to some hip hop beats and worse just standing there looking like a model for shoppers stop or west side.

Dir : Yes you see namitha cant move much thanks to all the ...well you know ... so every scene involving her meant we could not let actors move too much.

Bmw : who got the idea to include Krishnam Raju in this film? Who dusted his coffin and dragged him out?

Dir : yes we were very happy to have the rebel star as part of the film. His creative inputs really helped us bring out some wonderful aspects of the story.

Bmw : Who allowed him to speak english? Couldn't you find someone to dub for him?

Dir : Krishnam Raju gaaru was very cooperative he insisted on doing all the stunts himself.

Bmw : yes about that, who put a gun in is hand?

Dir : Yes I know he looked so natural with it. Everyone has been telling me Krishnam Raju gaaru has shown us all what a real police officer looks like.

Bmw : You mean traffic police dont you?

Dir : Sorry?

Bmw : nothing ... so tell me .. the part where ranga gets trained in (wipes tears) computers. Why did u spend so much time explaining about a pen drive?

Dir : we wanted the film to be educational also ... infact cbse people are seriously considering using our film as suggested reading for 8^th class students who are being taught computer science.

Bmw : excuse me for a second

dir : bathroom eh? Hehehehehe

Bmw : (slowly turns around) yes ... excuse me

(this time when he comes back his eyes are puffy and reddened)

Bmw : where were we?

Dir : I want to tell you about the music in this film.

Bmw : music? What music? You lifted tracks from famous hip hop artists and added a few veena notes in the background.

Dir : I want to thank my music director who sat with the entire creative team and produced such wonderful music. Ofcourse the choreographer was able to feel the audience pulse and make the stars do some amazing moves.

Bmw : well im amazed he made namitha move. One song mostly consisted of Prabhas trying to pull down anushkas pants but lets move on.

Dir : Anushka worked out a lot and lost a lot of weight for her look in this film.

Bmw : lets talk about her acting. For the most part she looked like she just sucked on a lemon. Why was she not told to emote a bit?

Dir : I was really impressed when she told me that she had understood the psychology behind the character. She said, a person who has lost her loved ones does not have many expressions left.

Bmw : bloody smart. What did you achieve by using Jayasudha?

Dir : jayasudha madam graciously agreed to be a part of the creative te ...

Bmw : yes we know and her inputs hauled your sad excuse for a film to a point where dogs could pee on it without cringing. WHY WHY WHY? Why did u use her?

Dir : She is basically a directors actor and ...

Bmw : I think we are done here ...

Dir : but I have not told you about the action sequences.

Bmw : I want my 100 rupees back.