That Girl In Yellow Boots

First up, I don't know if it is wise from Anurag Kashyap that he has released this movie along with the biggie Bodyguard and that too without any promotion. Though he says that he won't be competing with Bodyguard but then too the amount of screens the movie is running in is abysmally low, due to Bodyguard hogging up almost all the screens in multiplexes.
Anyways, abt the movie, in my opinion with TGIYB, AK has given us his boldest movie till date. Also it is not like his previous movies in terms of style. I mean most of the movie is low key and cinematography is quite hazy to give us the bleak look, this differs considerably from the bright colors and fanciful characters that AK usually throws at us. For most parts of the movie, I felt like that I was watching one of those old Scorcese movie wherein he picked up a character in the big city and studies him through his camera. We get to know the character's day job in detail along with some hidden purpose/goal he is having in the wholescheme of things.
The only colorful characters here are the Gulshan Devaiah as clumsy Kannada gangster and the parlor owner who incessantly talks on phone, who also happen to be the best of the side cast.
Naseeruddin Shah delivers another elegant performance but I was confused about purpose of his character in the movie which makes his character to somewhat lose out as compared to others.
Regarding Kalki, as expected she carries the whole movie quite successfully on her shoulders and I could hardly pick out any scene where I was not convinced with her character portrayal.
I was also amazed by the number of distinguished actors(Piyush Mishra, Ronit Roy, Rajat Kapur, Makrand Deshpande) featuring in so small roles, with couple of them not even having more than a dialogue in the movie.
That said, I can't still shake off the feeling that at someplaces either its the script or AK's direction that stops this movie from becoming a great success. These were small things but however they disturbed me,like the fiery argument that breaks out between Kalki and her bf(Prashant) in second half wherein Prashant keeps referring to her as "tum", now why would he do that when they were shown so close in the beginning. That thing almost killed the whole scene for me.
But I am ready to cast them aside for the around 100 mins of gem which shocks us at each step.
Final Rating: Green (catch it as soon as u can)

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Very engrossing comic/drama from Mark Twain. Tom Sawyer is the next best fictional child character to me now after Calvin.
Mark Twain's literary ability is amazing. Looking forward to read Huckleberry Finn now.



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Animal Kingdom

An Australian movie, and among best 5 movies of 2010 according to me. Tells the story of a family involved in many dirty businesses chiefly among them drugs, armed robbery. The story covers the way in which the family tries to cope up when police decides to crack the whip on the family and starts gunning down the members.
The whole story is told from the perspective of a 17 year old kid(played by James Frecheville) who is a recent addition to the family after his mother passes away. Being the witness to few of the crimes detectives try to get him to open up the family secrets.
Apart from the terrific storyline which keeps you on the edge of the seat for almost entire length there are many crackling performances.
What elevates this movie from a regular criminal drama is the extremely effective sinister characters portrayed, who are extremely street smart and know how to keep out of trouble with the police and the way they go haywire when things start falling out.
Its not always that a movie contributes something significantly new to the crime genre with most movies these days following the age old stereotypes and story curve established years ago. Animal Kingdom contributes heavily in this respect.

An Interesting Study Of Typical Freaks

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A top notch book, with some very interesting case studies about people from distinct walks of life.

The ones I liked the most were :
1) decrease in crime rate after 1990's (the highlight of the book)
2) the bagel seller's experiences.
3) The political candidate riding on the back of huge funds tends to win more.

Apart from these the theories regarding sumo wrestlers and how black people assign names to their children seemed somewhat far fetched but were still given with some interesting backup data.



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Freakonomics: The Initial Impressions

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt




Very Interesting, from the very start when the author gives a basic definition of the subject economics to the examples cited from multitude of fields to show what actions people perform based on the incentives present is really intriguing. Will be finishing it soon.



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Travails of finishing The Black Swan

Few months back I picked up a book called The Black Swan. I must say I was quite excited to read this considering the fact that it spoke about subjects such as unexpected events, luck factor, changing society and other such interesting topics. Considering the fact that the book was quite small in size, around 280 pages I was sure to complete it in couple of weeks, a month at the most.

The book started pretty well, with 9/11 example cited to explain how the things which are most improbable make huge impacts on our lives. This was continued with another fictitious example(a good one though) about how a turkey which is to be devoured on thanksgiving is kept well fed before it's sold. From the turkey's perspective everything is going on well, and with each passing day it gets sure and sure that the things will continue to be the same, except that it gets sold and eaten on the thanksgiving. This was the example given to show how an unexpected event can bite you when you are least expecting it.
The above two good examples along with few more of these set the tone well, but after few tens of pages the books get redundant, the author(Nassim Nocholas Taleb) seems to be on a mission to disgrace statisticians of all forms and he is most critical of those who use bell curves for their studies. The argument given by him is that the bell curve reduces our insight of unexpected events and we tend to live in a normal world where there will be normal events, a fair enough argument I must say but NNT is adamant to beat this point to pulp and bore his readers by bringing it up again and again. He is also on the lookout of people who predict things and severely criticizes them.
Due to all these shortcomings(IMO) it took me around 3.5 months to get close to the ending of this book, but with couple of chapters still remaining I don't have courage to pick up this book again, would like to surprise myself sometime by finishing this book.

However, that said there are many points which are really based on some good insights, like:
1) The 80/20 rule(my favorite): roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. This can be applied in other areas as well such as: world's 80 pc of wealth in hands of 20 % of people etc.
2) The narrative fallacy : Our predilection of summarizing and simplifying things which may leave out some crucial nuances. We do this to reduce the dimension of the information as more the randomness the more is the dimension of the information to store. NNT brings out interesting perspectives on this point.
3) The silent evidence: A very good example to bring out this point: There is a ship about to drown and some people are praying to their gods while others don't believe in GOD. Some people are rescued from drowning while others could not be. Its found that all the people who were saved prayed during the ship was drowning and one can argue that those who prayed were rescued, but a good observer will note that "what about people who prayed and drowned".



GoodReads link : http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/242472.The_Black_Swan

Hooking onto Tom Sawyer

Have started reading Mark Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer. With only a couple of chapters finished, I am hooked. Mark Twain has established a gusty kid in Tom Sawyer's character. The book promises to be a roller coaster ride from what I have read till now, and will soon update the blog after I have completed it.