Monday, May 17

My Review - Ishqiya

Finally I saw Ishqiya. And I liked it. And I swear I won't listen to other people's reviews and NOT watch a movie. Simplistic, crude, earthy and very very enjoyable, Ishqiya talks of Gorakhpur and Faizabad, locations which the Johars, Chopras and even RGVs can neither reach nor understand. All three main actors give top notch performances with Naseer taking the cake. His expressions in the song "Dil to baccha hai jee" are alone enough for an award.

I give it somewhere between three and four stars.

Tuesday, May 4

Of US and Controls

Sometimes I wonder if the US sub-prime mortgage industry was the only part of America's economy that was unregulated. I was talking to a friend today and suddenly it struck me that the US is ruled by cartels. Look at telecom - AT & T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile...you are stuck with either one of these. Locked phones, bound contracts, shoddy customer service(some of which is maybe outsourced to our country) etc etc.

Now look at Hollywood. Who rules? Fox, Warner Brothers, Sony, Universal, Paramount, Disney, DreamWorks(Maybe). The big six or seven. They are supreme. So much so that someone like Woody Allen,who now makes his movies only for European audiences, said - "In the United States things have changed a lot, and it's hard to make good small films now. They only want these $100 million pictures that make $500 million."

Some people would say the same about American automakers. They(Ford, GM, Chrysler) created and stopped innovating. And then the Japanese swooped in with their Toyota Production Systems and Kaizens and what not. But that is a story for another day!

Cricket in the USA

Yay! The IPL gets a mention in the New York Times.

While we are still on the NYT, this bit about the big four competing and overlapping markets is interesting.