The Departed

Departed: (first line, purely direction wise Omkara was way better :D )

Cast: Matt Damon, Di Caprio, Nicholson(a.k.a Frank in the movie), Charlie Sheen, Wahlberg( he rocks), Alec Baldwin.

Sorry for the late review: so will start with some lines that would make you think abt seeing the movie. ( anyone in mumbai, drop a line i wont mind it for the 3rd or 4th or 5th time)

Opening line:
Frank: iam not a product of my environment, my environmnet is a product of me.

Frank is a Irish gang lord who rules over the neighbourhood of Boston. Colin sullivan (matt damon) is the hot shot police recruit who joins the intelligence department out to get Frank. But he is Frank's protege and owes a lot to him.

Enter Billy Costigan(Caprio), a kid with a 'gang' background who wants to a policeman. But is forced to become a mole in Frank's gang.

Now both sides have mole, and the rest of the movie is a simple cat and mouse on who finds out about whom and who dies first.

Of course you have the vulnerable Madolyn (Vera Farmiga), to whom both young men fall for, but she does not interpret the narration.

Caprio is great as the guy who never knows when the world would shut down on him. You should see him say 'Yes, Frank, i can be like you, but i dont want to'.

Damon plays the part. But king Jack takes the cake. " i smell a rat", "i always have had p**** form and could never understand someone wanking off in the theater" "you like the little c*** sucking on your d***""

The end is trademark Scorcese, and his adaption of this Hong Kong movie is brilliant. Some of the Boston'isms i hear from my friends are not too far from reality.

Another teaser:
Ya marriage looks good. Your peers know you are not gay. And when women look at your ring they know you have cash and your d*** works.

9/10. :D

In Orbit Malad

If someone were to doubt that the fact about a consumer culture boom in India, then he/she must visit inorbit on a weekend. The crowds must been seen to be believed. You get them in all shapes and sizes. Big, small, beautiful and not so beautiful, yuppies, families all of them.

The reason is: The most obvious one is the fact that urban a megalopolis like Mumbai has very little space, to walk or to talk. To chalo, shopping hi sahi is the motto.

The mall itself is a beautiful structure. Built in a kind of coliseum (round) manner, it has 3 levles of construction. Getting to the mall by road is through SV road and take the diversion to Malad Jogeshwari link road. From stations like malad or goregaon will cost abt 20 bucks by rick. The mall has ample parking space so anybody worried abt that front can chill. Amenities like clean water and toilets are a huge plus too :)

The circular walkways are a shopping paradise. Wtih three chains like lifestyle, shoppers stop( each of these at 2 levels) and Spencers and a lot of designer/exclusive( Ritu Kumar, Marks and Spencer (errr..thats quite designer in India), Body Shop, UCB, Planet Sports, footwear ....). You have alternate shops selling stuff from nameplates ( i dont recall the right word :), for your home), jewellery ( at a nook beside lifestyle on ground floor) and a nice paint-it-yourself store that allows you to paint what ever you want on ashtrays,coffee mugs etc and let you take it home.

The Food court: Yum....for all the crowd around this place ( lots of BPO's around), this place gives the widest array of food ( althought malad has lots of eateries,more on that sometime) except probably very little exotic stuff. Coffe day, barista, pizza hut, rajdhani ( amazing thali at 125) moti mahal( dal makhani) , thai lotus(try the sizzler) are all good.

You do have fame malad to unwind. My only grouse, Ruby Tuesday as the only watering hole. food at ruby sucks.

Of course the Crossword makes In Orbit the complete mall. And ya you do have lots of events happening at a centrally located lobby. So people in mumbai chk it out ( if you already havent) and non mumbaikars, check it when you are here. If you get bored you always have hypercity :)

PS: Huge locational bias, the mall is my second home :D.

movies that changed bollywood

No particular order here: (Mainstream Only)

Dil Chahta Hai: The simple tale of love, told through the experiences of three friends, this movie raised the bar of movie making for ever. Slick production, amazing performances and music and a great eye for detail ensure you can keep watching DCH.

Hum Aapke Hain Kaun: The mother of all soap operas, this feel good movie did exactly that made you feel good. Eminently hummable tunes, elaborate sets are rituals and plethors of emotions turned the tide for using entertainment as medium of showcasing lifestyle.

Sholay: One word: Blockbuster. This is the first and the truly big blockbuster which has fans across generations. And you tend to pick characters you like and they become immortal. The cult of sholay.

Satya: The ultimate gang flick. It tracks the grim realities of the underworld which is so entwined in our normal lives that you wouldnt probably realized it. Hard hitting performances and a raw urban energy made Sathya the benchmark of all such films

Zanjeer: Rise of the angry young man. The tall brooding and upright officer was the beginning of the rise of the Big B. Add to that the innocense of Jaya Bhaduri and the presence of Pran and Big B as a phenomenon begins.

Munnabhai: I dont know whether this genre will be repeated or not. But this series of movies throws back ot Raj Kapur times (excpet the immense sorrow :D ) where you have good people and bad people who are not assumed to beyond redemption. Humurous street lingo and good chemistry between the actors ensures that this might be a 'formula' that might work in future too.

random thots

web 2.0 enterprise 2.0 social networking entertainmetn parties, home, cities, culture, revolution, change, food, cost of living, cost, money, simplicity, complexity, intelligence, speakers, computer, lampard, chelsea, nolan, bolton, allardyce, henry, van persie, rossi, federer, social ineqaulity, sc/st caste 'creamy layer', UP wala, bihari, dilliwala, orkut, jhoom, meditate, satcharita, books, tickets.
'

Money from equities

who makes money from equities and why is so much money chasing this field:

1) American domestic consumption fuelled by the housing boom ( now going into a bust). The boom was primarily due ot very veyr low interest rates which meant that you could buy houses. You sell those houses at a profit and consume the money.

2) who was providing the money for this.. the world is willing to, becuase they need a stable place to invest. which means that the us has a very high capital account deficit. ( their trade balance aint doin too good either coz of the higher oil bill)

3) so no one produces anything in america and the bank says so mcuh so that all debt values are known. so the money geos ot markets where there are lot of variables like in asia

4) hedge funds want alpha returns and this is available only in volatility :)

companies->anlaysts->funds->investors

companies-> pvt placement

there are a lot of other channels for money to flow in and out.

will keep writing in

kite runner

the book by khalid hosseini is one of hte good books i have read recently. thought provoking....you are acutlaly drawn into the setting, you imagine hte scenario's as its unfolding, feeling good bad, torn and look for redemption in the end. teh characterization of people leaves no doubt to how the world would be when seen if the talibanesque style were to succeed. but as the cab driver says, you have seen only one afghanistan. our world views is also determined by what we have seen, not as much by what the reality is. When the two intersect we are left numb by the acts of violence. When you meet people like assef and their world interwines in yours, thats when true violence stares in your face. And what about redemption, Amir found it, but many people would never probably find it in their lives. They would just be thinking about hte time s they could say... for you, a thousand times over.

Equities

Equities as an asset class are wierd at worst and extraordinary simple at best. Company makes money and its stock should be a value of that and the future cash flows possible right ? But it doesnt work that way-the movement of the stock is purely determined the kind of press the industry generates in the short run, and by the number of hedge funds that are present in the market the short run ( 6 months) can give the weak a heart attack. Add to this the day trading speculators and you have a good cuisine to ruin your blood pressure. But the long run price very much factor of the additional money a company is able ot add to its shareholders. As buffet says Options and futures might just be speculative investments, as I am getting involved inthe market, i understand they are an important aspect of price discovery. The amount of risk that options enable you to diversify ( or speculate) or put your money in equities means that they would always exemplify the overall equity risk. will write more on this. Schumi retires, fed ex moves on, sachs is the largest hedge fund, man are we moving or what ? :)