Om shanti Om at No 11, Saawariya at 24

Contrary to my previous post actual numbers are out and it looks like OSO made it to No 11 and Saawariya slided to No 24.

CORRECTION: OM Shanti OM may be ahead! Saawariya steals the march from Om Shanti Om, atleast in US!

Update: According to Other US Reports, it looks like OSO made almost double of Saawariya. Even though my source says it otherwise, I would like to put the correction on my article.

So there has been tremendous bad reviews for Saawariya and according to Taran Adarsh it has been doing good in UK it's not that great compared to Om shanti Om. However it's a different story in US, according to US Box Office, Om Shanti Om doesn't feature anywhere where as Saawariya made a very impressive $6,00,000 in it's opening weekend debuting at No 17.

Looks like numbers speak larger than all the kiss my ass reviews and politics in big bad world of bollywood, at least in US.

No Smoking - Mind Bending, Twisted, One Hell of A Damn Good Thriller!

Let's begin with a few facts -

"Taran Adarsh and Khalid Mohammad will never understand what No Smoking is..."

"A decade later Indian junta will drool over No Smoking as one of classic thrillers ever made..."

"If gotten a DVD release(nationwide not just Indian stores) in US, this will surpass money collected by top 10 blockbusters(2007) of India.."

Someone said that Anurag Kashyap should accept his mistakes like Ram Gopal Verma does. My answer is, sure, but is there a mistake? I watched No Smoking and the moment it ended I wanted to see it again..It's like "The Shining", "Jacob's Ladder", "The cell" and several other mind bending thrillers where you watch it, interpret it your way, talk about it, discuss it, and then watch it again.
Indian public will never like this, well we don't innovate because we believe why reinvent the wheel. It's Ok and smart to do that but that leaves us in a state where we don't want to exercise our brain and if someone forces us to do that we get irritated, upset and disgusted. That's what happened to our dear critics and as much as it is unfortunate to say I would have to say that happened to most of our junta.

I wouldn't have doubted a bit that the movie would fail in interiors, but all people who call themselves intelligent, smart and claim to take India to next level, should like it or rather should have liked it. But all doesn't end here, atleast it gives India a genius director(Anurag Kashyap) who will be to Bollywood what stanley Kubrick was to Hollywood.

To sum it up I would call it "A very very engaging film".

Grand Opening by MASTER BATTER!!

Hello to all the readers on thinkincell… This is Master Batter who would be writing all about cricket (and some other form of sports from time to time). Being an Indian, sports is almost synonymous to cricket for me. This is what I have played and enjoyed all my life, this is what helps me let go of my inhibitions.(as thinkincell put it… well sex helps me let go of a lot of things). As Mathew Hayden, an Australian cricketer, once said
“Cricket is a religion in India and Sachin Tendulkar is their GOD!!! ‘
For me there is no one who has put it better. He is truly a GOD when it comes to playing cricket, the best batsmen in the whole world and still a guy who doesn’t show the slightest arrogance, is the most humble cricketer ever seen and this for a guy who is probably the highest paid sport star in the country. Well if at this point you are rolling your eyes and going… not another guy who talks about cricket… then tough luck, coz I really give a rat’s a**.

I play for a cricket club in Edison, NJ which plays in the Cricket league of NJ. You might think this is just a bunch of cricket crazy people playing in the corner of a street. What would you say about a league which has 40 cricket teams with each team having a roster of more than 40 people!!! Surprised… don’t be!! With the Indian & Pakistani population down here, this was bound to happen. And to take it a little further… there are 4 more leagues in NJ, 15 more in NY, another 10 in DC and so on…. So see Im not the one who is outnumbered here!!!
The other day I was at my club’s annual get-together and the Mayor of the town, who was the chief guest, mentioned that he was invited to watch the Indo-Pak T20 Wcup finals at a local theatre. Even he was impressed with the kind of passion & excitement generated while watching the game.( yeah it was a cracker of a game !!). “Even I got so involved” he said. This was some statement coming from a guy who did not understand cricket and is from a country that plays a game which is cricket’s stepbrother… baseball. Came to office the next day and a few guys at work congratulated me for the win.
That’s when I started thinking about it…. Well baseball is similar to cricket…. Bat,ball, wickets ( ok bases), boundaries ( ok home runs)….. call it whatever u want but they are the same. But both these games have been around for a long time then why was it that people from a non-cricketing nation are suddenly interested in cricket. That’s when it struck me that T20 actually was almost like baseball…. The fast & the furious version if you will. The purists don’t like this version of the game….Australia don’t even consider this as a real game (sour grapes I say)…but India winning the World cup has gone a long way in promoting T20. If the richest board in the world (Indian cricket board for the maximus ignoramus people) wants it, they can get this format of the game even into the US. Coz when Money talks, nobody listens to the grammar.

T20, for me, can work wonders in promoting the cultures from cricketing nations in non-cricketing nations…. Promote tourism and all the jazz along with it!! Why am I writing all this… so that I don’t have to take a vacation to actually go and watch India play international cricket in a stadium. So that I can actually watch a WORLD cup on American television (not World series which has the US states playing against each other)….so that I don’t have a game which is so controlled by television that there are official breaks in the game meant just for TV ( come on how can the last 2 mins of a basketball game go on for half an hour)…. And lastly so that you don’t have to hear me rant about this again.!!

Adios Amhi… goes!!!