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Origin - book review

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Usually Dan Brown’s book fall into the below set of process – when you are reading it you will feel the thrill of a roller coaster ride with adrenaline rush, as it reaches climax you would feel the excitement of a kid opening birthday present, after the initial few minutes of completing the book the mind would be reeling with all those information trying to process and after few hours you would be left wondering was the climax worth all those events that transpired in the course of the book. Also his novels will double up as travelogue for the respective city/country of the premise and would definitely send in flocks of tourists, curious to visit those places so beautifully crafted into his stories. In fact, locations have almost played the role of a key character in his books. Origin is no less different. And the guts of the guy to portray the king of Spain as gay!!! If you need any reference in stirring a hornets nest, Dan Brown should be on your speed dial.

Like all his novels, the…
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Question for the ages

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There was a dialogue in “SPYder” the last movie that I saw recently. It goes something like -If you kill a deer it’s a crime but not a goat. Maybe because their numbers are more. With so many humans abound, makes all the more sense to kill more of them – is the analogy with which the villain operates. With recent Vegas shooting makes one wonder on the psyche behind these psychos. That guy had made such elaborate setup to carry out his attack, it doesn’t look the act of an demented mind but more of determined to destruct. Had the killer been of a different colour and nationality, god only knows how many more countries would’ve been bombed to oblivion by now and how many hundreds of civilians would’ve paid the price with their lives and how many thousands displaced. As a race, we are in a race of our own to make a society of immigrants. Pretty soon those without a state for themselves would far outweigh those within secure borders.
Be whatever the ideology, its nauseating and scary to t…
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Waterboarding - book review

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Waterboarding – the second of the many to come published books by Brags.
The title might have come into prominence, post the war on terror initiated by the Americans and more specifically on the torture “treatment” meted out to the Guantanamo bay prisoners. The title is an allegory to the mental trauma of the hero, Ved.

The story is told through diary entries of the three main characters, Ved, Sara and Maya. The story opens with Ved, who meets with an accident and suffers amnesia. The missing pieces of his life are filled in by Sara and Ramesh, who hide the details about his girlfriend (ex) Maya. Maya texts Ved enquiring about his condition and seeing a text from an unknown number induces curiosity in Ved, who goes about figuring, who is Maya and why is she not in his life anymore. He also finds out the reason why Sara was not revealing the details and as he comes to terms with the reality and realizes what he wants from his relationships, his health condition has other plans. His ind…
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Spider - review

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This week-end movie watch was the latest toast of tinsletown – SPYder. Considering that it was a bi-lingual and for a fact that the telugu superstar has dubbed on his own in tamil, it still felt like a telugu movie with him on screen. But for him, the rest of the cast didn’t exhibit that vibe. Somehow it was still not connecting with Maheshbabu. May it’s the baggage of his super hits in telugu or because of so many dubbed versions of his telugu movies in tamil. Somehow, it still feels alien to watch him, despite his best efforts. May be the fact that, at the pretext of underplaying, he was plastic in emoting, didn’t help either. Somehow movie actresses and doctor roles don’t quite tally, at least in recent past. Almost all the loosu characters are shown as MBBS students or even practicing doctors, when their characterization wouldn’t even merit them to be tutorial passed.
After a really long time, tamil cinema gets a crackpot, psychotic and ruthless villain. The last one I could recol…
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Attention seeker alert

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Attention seeker.
Whenever I find this term bandied around, it makes me stop and observe that particular situation. For I feel, there is no greater insult to ego than being labelled as attention seeker. Agreed, there could be specimens who purposely do and even thrive on such activities. But for the innocent many, it’s a punch in the gut that knocks the wind out of them. The most recent instance I heard of this word was during the infamous “Big Boss” show, where one of the participant was labelled as such. That lady terms herself a failed actress and has been pretty vocal in her efforts to attain fame-dom through the program as her vehicle. She un-abashedly had taken part in every stupid task thrown at her and had “played” at the last legal extent allowed within the rules of the game and even secured top points. Yet the crowds didn’t vote for her and she had to lose out.
It’s just another reality show and the results are pretty much stage managed at every single step of the way. But t…
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Kurangu bommai - review

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What makes a movie a good one, might be the question for the ages. Does word of mouth publicity or viral spread or appreciative critical feedback or the performances of the artists and their honest attempt or is it the script and screenplay? Maybe is it a bit of all. For either or all of the reasons listed above, “Kurangu Bommai” movie, caught my interest.

Storywise it’s a simple revenge tale, but the way of telling makes it tad more interesting than countless many on the same topic. Also the strong supporting cast with excellent performance from the leads adds to its lustre. Vidarth, hero/producer, finally seems to have made his way onto the list of notable actors, with his improved knack of picking the right scripts that suits his style. Be it “Kutram kadithal” or “ Kidayaain karunai manu” or even “Aal” for that matter, none of his releases have major promotions, but for word of mouth support. And he seems to have mastered the art of underplaying, which doesn’t bother much even on r…
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How much is too much?

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The most fascinating aspect of the IT industry, is its constantly evolving nature. Several years back, I had posted about surviving in this industry and how this field is yet to witness its first batch of retirees – meaning, those who’ve started their career and completing it in this field alone. While those in manufacturing like traditional business domains, have a straight forward career path with definite milestones and end dates, IT always ensures that, being in this industry is like walking on a tread mill. You need to keep walking even to stand on the same place. The tech with which one might’ve started his career, would’ve become obsolete in few years’ time and worst part being, it would take away a good chunk of his professional profile, making him redundant.

With mobile phones competing with computers for processing speed and features, gone are the days, when IT was niche and specific to those from computer background. Nowadays, anyone with a half decent smart phone, knows mo…
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