Gold for India

India has got an Olympic gold medal after a gap of 28 years. The last time we had done it was in Moscow in 1980 for Hockey. With Abhinav Bindra we now have an individual gold medalist. First ever!!

With a silver last time for Rathore and now Bindra’s gold it seems shooting is the sport which is slowly taking over where hockey had left. The fact that Abhinav has followed his World Championship with this gold medal shows that neither of the wins were by fluke. Kudos to Abhinav.

This medal win will shadow the terrible performance by other members of the Indian contingent at Beijing. The hyped medal hopefuls like Sania Mirza and the archery team have flopped. Sania pulled out of her first round match!!, while the archery team which had got a bye in first round failed to make it any further. Only an extremely optimist person would have any hope from the duo of Mahesh and Leander.

The only one who is doing any good at Beijing is Saina Nehwal. Hope the win by Abhinav motivates her more to get one another medal for India.

It hurts when a country the size of India fares so badly at the Olympics. The Cricket frenzy doesn’t help either. The rankings are topped by teams and players from other countries. Its a sorry state for Indian sports.

Well… Congrats Abhinav Bindra!!! Congrats

Dark Knight

The movie Dark Knight is superb!! It has everything going for it. A good story, excellent acting by all and superb performance by Heath Ledger as “Joker”. Christian Bale is convincing as The Batman and as Bruce Wayne. Aaron Eckhart portrays the clean Harvey Dent and his fall to become Two-Face nicely. All others are good too.

As i said earlier though the movie is Batman, its Joker who steals the show. Heath Ledger is simply superb. He has brought to life a Joker very different from his predecessors. This Joker is sadistic psychopath. Ledger manages to get this effect clearly from underneath the garish makeup and painted smile. This Joker sends a chill down your spine unlike any other villain in recent times.

Apart from acting, the background score is another department where the movie scores brilliantly. As with any superhero movie, the stunts and special effects are good. The one sequence that stands out is where Batman jumps from one skyscraper to reach the other one, the shot is spectacular.

The plot essentially is the good wins over the evil. But for this to happen, the hero has to introspect. Does a vigilante need to give up his code, his ethos to defeat the evil?? The story gives us the evil villain, Joker as he is. He is an evil person no strings attached. We don’t deal in his past. But we do take a look at the psyche of the hero, his alter ego Bruce Wayne. The story looks at how he accepts the need of the society for a hero with a face.

All said and done, this movie is must watch. It is the best flick of the year.

Its just the start of the 2nd half of the year, the better half as far as good movie releases are concerned and i am looking forward to some more brilliant movies this year.

Kung Fu Panda

The animation flick “Kung Fu Panda” works. Its a good watch cause it delivers on almost all points one expects from animation flick from Pixar.

The movie is about a panda Po who works in his dad’s restaurant and dreams… yearns to be a kung fu master. He is a fanatic follower of kung fu, on the eve of ‘dragon warrior” ceremony he accidentally gets nominated as The Warrior to fight the evil Tai Lung. This irks the real contenders “The Famous Five” and especially Tigress. She snubs Po at every possible opportunity.

The story then continues on the usual path of this nobody panda learning the tricks and succeeding in the mission.

What sets this movie apart from all other “good over evil” movies is the treatment. The opening sequence is in the chinese puppetry style and reminds one of “Samurai Jack“. Unlike most others the film sticks to authentic “epic” feel and completely avoids the “pop and celebrity references” which has become the necessary ingredient for animation. It stays away from spoofs and parody. Yes, some action sequence are similar to kung fu epics like “Hero” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”.The film is wide screen and this adds to the epic feel. The detailing of the background and the music helps too.

Now to the heart of any kung fu movie, the action sequences. This one scores well on this front. All are good, but the ones that stand out is the escape of Tai Lung from prison and the dimsum training of Po by Shifu. This two just shows how much effort has gone into making this one a authentic flick.

The choice of voice over stars is excellent regarding the main characters. Jack Black’s voice defines the very nature of Po. While Dustin Hoffman brings to life Shifu the master. The other star voices are that of Angelina Jolie as Tigress, Jackie Chan as the monkey, Lucie Liu as Viper.

The message is clear…. “Live your Dream” and “Be your own hero”. The movie delivers this all the while staying true to kung fu epic.

Go watch it…

Bombardier C-series launched

Bombardier today launched the new C-series aircraft at the Farnborough Air Show. This new family of jets is of 110 – 150 seat capacity. There family consists of two aircraft, C110 for 100 to 125 passengers and C130 for 120 to 145 passengers. The launch customer is Lufthansa and the aircraft are to enter service in 2013.

With this launch Bombardier breaks into the space dominated by Airbus and Boeing. For both the launch means they will have more competition for the B737-600 , B737-700 and for A318. But it also means direct competition for Embraer E-series or “E-jets”

Though the C-series seems to boast of same specs as low end B737 and A320 family, the two are not ready to acknowledge the same. They have reasons to do so. Being a part of a large family, the 318s and 737-700s offer cost savings to airlines in many operational aspects. The same crew can be used to fly any of the family, and the engineering staff need not undergo extensive training for new aircraft. For Bombardier to be able to penetrate this space, they will have to offer much more than 10% operational savings they claim of.

There is no doubt that the market for smaller jets exits. Both Airbus and Boeing have been selling decent numbers for their products. Embraer claims to have 850 firm orders for their E-jets. This just shows the existence of market where Bombardier will have to carve a niche for itself. Apart from the existing competition, China too is entering the fray. It has launched “Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China” (CACC), the first aircraft planned is 100-120 seater airliner and also plans to launch regional jets.

The competition is hoting up in the smaller airliner market. And with any other market, more competition will ultimately benefit the customer.

Will GoAir be the first one to go off radar?

GoAir the Mumbai based low cost airline has announced a whooping 37.5% reduction in its monthly flights for the upcoming season. Now it will operate only 500 flights instead of 800 per month. This follows on back of string of reductions which saw the airline reduce its operations by nearly half over past couple of months.

The airline which is fully owned by the Wadia brothers, has been finding it difficult to raise capital from open market to expand its fleet. The rising fuel bills has hit the industry hard.

As it tries to cover up losses by curtailing flights and also by raising the fares, the drop in load factors is a worrisome sign. For GoAir, the competition from Jetlite, Deccan and Indigo has hit it hard. The competition meant that it was not able to raise its fares to cover up losses. Whatever little all airlines raised the fare by resulted in drop in number of passengers flying.

For GoAir whose fleet never crossed the double digit mark, the spiraling costs, and lack of revenue means a death toll. The small fleet means it has not been able to achieve any scale of economies and thus it is the hardest hit. Almost all other low cost airlines have backing of operators or promoters with deep pockets. This is not the case with GoAir.

The drastic curtailing of operations, shutting down of many stations, reduction in daily flights, severe job cutting are the desperate measures being taken to stay afloat. The rising oil prices are not helping the cause for Go.

It is now imminent that GoAir will shut shop. Its just matter of time as to how long does Jeh Wadia manages to keep it flying. The shutting down of Go just shows that we havent learned much from the 90s boom and burst of aviation in India. Then we saw the rise of Modiluft, Eastwest and Damania who sank without a trace. The cycle is being repeated. GoAir is now nearly gone. Hopefully there wont be many followers, and the field remains competitive for the benefit of customers.

Google Lively…

Google has finally launched its own virtual world “Lively”. With this they have joined the other virtual worlds like “Second Life”. Lively is a plugin which is available only for Windows and is compatible with Firefox and IE. Once installed, the user can enter Lively from any other networking site or blogs. It already works with Facebook and soon will be available for MySpace too.

There are differences between the two. While SL is one big virtual world where you can interact with people almost anywhere in it. It’s not so with Lively. It basically allows you to create an avatars, and also rooms, where you can chat with people. You can play your videos on the virtual screens and post pics too. Also as of now all the content on Lively is Google created. So this seems just as better version of Environment on Yahoo IMs.

The customization is limited as of now. For me, a user of SL, the options are just too less. Also the fact that the view offered is 3rd person cam view. and for movement you have to drag the avatar across the room, put this version far behind the other available in market. I feel the need for more 1st person perspective and the ability to maneuver the avatar like in game by keyboard or joystick.

Well all one can hope is that this being just the first release we can definitely see much more improvements in coming days. Also more user generated content.

Now to the business aspect of the launch. Where does it fit into the Google’s growth path? How do they justify a search engines entry into virtual world space? Google’s management is saying it has no plans to sell ad-space on Lively. So is this one more application like Earth, Picasa, which hardly generates any revenue for Google??

The reason Google wants us to believe is “More time spent online by user, means more the chance of him clicking on the ad links on the search result page.

I dont think so… There has to be something more to it….

Sachin pepsi contract ends

The news say that the Pepsi hasn’t renewed the contract with Sachin Tendulkar. This marks the end of a long standing relationship, one has been used to see Sachin endorsing Pepsi since early 90s. Anyways it was imminent, Pepsi had already distanced itself from the other two senior players Ganguly and Dravid. The company has shifted its focus on younger players inline with its current campaign of “Youngistan”.

Many of Pepsi-Sachin advts have been good and quiet a few have been memorable. How can one forget young Sachin playing gully cricket and smashing the windshield of pepsi van. Or the “Main kaun hoon” spot with Shane Warne & Carl Hooper.

Also cant help but remember the one with all children wearing a Sachin mask and drinking Pepsi. It brilliantly captured the thirst of every young budding cricketer to be Sachin Tendulkar. Also the Bubbly ones with Big B.

i will surely miss these spots…They added to the entertainment of the match, and in a much better way than Ranbir & Deepika.

Hitler Beheaded!!

The opening of the Madame Tussauds wax museum in Berlin was marred in controversy as it included a figure of Adolf Hitler. One protester who got in as a visitor beheaded the wax figure, cutting short the Fuhrer’s second innings in Berlin. The man apparently was shouting slogans to effect “Never again war!!”

Apparently this wasn’t the first of its kind attack. The Hitler figure at the museum in London has been attacked numerous times. It was only after 9/11 that Osama Bin Laden’s figure was able to outnumber the attacks attracted.

Well..i don’t get it. This attacks serve no purpose. You may like it or not these are the people who have greatly influenced our history. The impact that the WW-II had on European countries and on their colonies cannot be erased. Hitler in his way has transformed the world and the way its perception of many things. Merely breaking the statues or suppressing anything to do with Hitler is not the answer. He is part of history and there and the only thing any one can do is to learn to not repeat the mistakes he made.

Same for Osama. His attacks on US soil has changed the way we live today. Those attacks has resulted in every single Muslim being looked upon as terrorist. The attacks has led to multiple security layers being added at airports and every single passenger being scanned. You may not like all this but he has impacted our lives and he is part of our history.

The same mentality is evident even in India. It shows manifests it self in renaming of streets and areas. Across India streets which were named after some British officers are being renamed after Indian figures. Ditto for institutes. In Mumbai the government has gone ahead and renamed the airport and one major railway terminus VT, after Shivaji Maharaj. I agree that he was a great warrior and has done immense work for the common people of his time, but that was all in Maharahstra. Mumbai was not even on his map. He built his navy and trade at the Murud fort near Alibaug and from the Vasai fort completely bypassing Mumbai’s natural harbour. The British were the one’s who developed it and brought railway to India. Same with Carter road. It was named after the local collector of the British era, who lived here and worked for local people. But now the road as been named after the famous composer, Naushad, just cause he lived there.

People should realize that breaking statues and renaming places is not the way to change history. It cannot be changed. All we can do is learn from the mistakes of ancestors and not repeat them.

Aamir

One more over hyped movie in a week. As with “In Bruges” just couple of days back, had gone for Aamir with high expectations. But alas….

To its credit, the story is actually different than the usual Johar/Yash Raj crap, albeit a copy of south asian flick “Cavite”. The story is of Aamir, a UK returning doctor to visit his family in Mumbai. He gets robbed at the airport and is handed a phone. He keeps getting instructions to get a job done and is warned that his family will be killed if he won’t do it. This job carries him to muslim dominated areas of the city. Along with the instructions for the job, the captivator tries to brainwash aamir and fill him with ideas of jehad and high morality of mujaheddin. The story ends with Aamir being forced to become a suicide bomber, but he ends of killing just himself.

The film is the launch vehicle for Rajeev Khandelwal, its a very bold choice to enter bollywood with such different movie. His portrayal of helpless victim is good, but he has his limits and fails to do justice to the extreme closeup shots. The captor, the boss who is making Aamir do things, played by Gajraj Rao is much better. His menacing terrorist is well etched, even in the scene where all we see is his hands stroking a child’s cheeks.

Now to direction. Though the debutant director Raj Kumar Gupta has got decent performances from his main actors as well as the supporting cast, he fails on technical aspects. There are glaring continuity mistakes all through the movie. The overcrowding of extras doesn’t help too. It seems he has used the residents of the locations for that realistic feel, but this amateurs keep staring at the camera ( supposedly staring at aamir) and thus spoil the mood.

Overall a decent flick, watch it if you want something different than the usual song & dance sequences of bollywood. But don’t expect too much.

Arctic Oil

The melting of the icecap at the Arctic circle has sent the oil industry in tizzy. It is massively speculated that there are huge oil reserves below the freezing sea. The predictions are as high as 100bn barrels of oil and more gas. It is being touted as the next frontier of the oil.

The environmentalist will cry themselves hoarse to stop the exploration, but i am sure oil corporations will have their way. The stakes are just too high to ignore. In fact the race has begun in earnest. Russia has laid claim to the region and is exploring the sea bed to prove the continental shelf extends more and thus get more arctic region to itself. Denmark has started the same off coast of Greenland. On the other side Canada has setup deep water port on its north shoreline and US is gearing up at Alaska. All this just on speculations.

There have been massive finds in the continental shelf region, in the gulf of Mexico and the Sakhalin islands is a good support to the speculators.

But getting that oil will be difficult. First is the political issue, there is no treaty to share the Arctic land, so it will be sticky situations. As mentioned above the countries bordering the region have started extending their claims for the land, It will probably end up as a slug fest in the UN. Also sensing the spoils that are to be had, the other nations who don’t share a coastline will be interested in having a shared system like that for Antarctica.

After getting around of this geopolitical issue, the actual drilling comes up. It will challenging to drill for oil in the Arctic ice. The natural terrain and the climate makes it challenging thing. The melting of the ice, does make it easier.

Along with these political and technical issues, one also has to look into the ethical part of it. Is drilling for more oil the only solution? Is’nt it like feeding a vicious cycle? exploit the region for fossil fuels, when it has been damaged by the use of the very same fuels?? What effect will this massive finds have on alternate energy sources? Will they continue to be promoted when we will be in position to continue the same fossil fuel lifestyle??