And The Oscar goes to...

 The verdict was out- The Artist and Hugo won 5 awards each.My selection was partly ok, but never thought that 'Hugo' will win these many awards.Very sad to see that there was no award for 'War Horse".

My choice for best actor was also Jean Dujardin, he was charming in "The Artist". Second best was Gary Oldman in "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" .  I read in many forums and papers about Maryl Streep's performance in "The Iron Lady" but i firmly believe that Viola Davis was better in "The Help". This is Meryl Streep's third Oscar, well done!

For supporting actor,Christopher Plummer in "Beginners" was good but my choice was Van Max Sydow. By winning this Christopher Plummer became the oldest actor win an Oscar.As for supporting actress Octavia Spencer was perfect.The real surprise for me was the choice for best animated feature film, academy chose "Rango" but i thought "A Cat in Paris" was far better than "Rango", anyway given.The best director award was won by Micheal Hazanavicius for "The Artist", good choice. "A Separation" an Iranian movie won the best foreign film, this movie is a heart warming one.

Another surprise was the choice for  Music-Original Score -Ludovic Bource for "The Artist" , i thought John Williams for "War Horse" or Alberto Iglesias for "Tinker Tailor Soldier SPy will win.Perhaps Ludovic had a tough time to compose for silent scenes and he too did well,now they are planning to go for a world musical tour.Woody Allen won the award for best Original screenplay award for "Midnight in Paris".

Check out all the results here.
Overall a good year for movie goers!

Oscar My Winners...

My Oscar goes to..

Less than 12 hours left for Academy awards, here is my award winners, i had watched almost all the movies nominated in different categories.

Category	My Winner	Movie
Best Picture	Thomas Longman	The Artist
Best Director	Michael Hazanavicius	The Artist
Actor in Leading Role	Jean Dujardin	The Artist
Actress in Leading Role	Viola Davis	The Help
Actor in a supporting Role	Max Von Sydow	Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
Actress in a supporting Role	Octavia Spencer or Berneice Bejo	The Help&The Artist
Best Animated Feature Film	Alain Gagnol&Jean Loup-Felicioli	A Cat in Paris
Music Original Score	John Williams	War Horse
Makeup	Martial,Lyn and Matthew	Albert Nobbs
Art Direction	Rick & Sandales	War Horse
Foreign Language Film	Asghar Farhadi	A Separation
Adopted Screenplay	Bridget O'Connor & Straughan	Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Original Screenplay	Woody Allen	Midnight in paris
Visual Effect	Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows-II	Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows-II
Documentary Feature	Dennis & Lerner	Hell and Back again

Fingers crossed!! Waiting for the results.All the best to all the nominees. Check out the live results in this official site .. click here 

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

A thriller based on the novel with the same name by John LeCarre. I have not read the book yet. The story is about British Intelligence("Circus") spies during Cold War.1973. Smiley ,an  intelligence officer was forced to come out of his forced-retirement to investigate on mole in British Intelligence.

Smiley and his team mates were forced to retire after their failed attempt to get secrets  from Poland.Their agent was shot and they were replaced by Percy Allenline as the chief with Billy Haydon as his deputy and Roy Bland and Toby Esterhase as their close aides.They tradeSoviet's secrets code named "Witchcraft" with American.But in reality they are giving more secrets to Soviet .

Now Simley's job was to find who is the mole in the 'circus' hierarchy.Peter Guilligan ,an intelligence officer was assigned to work with him.Smiley interviewed all his team mates and collected all sort of materials.Through Jim Prideaux, who was their agent who went to Poland and was shot, since then he was fleeing, Smiley came to know about the reason behind Jim's trip to Poland and the people involved in it.His purpose of the visit was to find the name of the mole.Control, the chief of Smiley had code named them "Tinker"(Allenline),"Tailor"(Haydon),"Soldier"(Bland),"Poorman"(Esterhase) and "Beggarman"(Smiley).

Smiley found that Allenline and others were meeting the Russian agent at a particular place,the rest of the story is about their arrests.

Gary Oldman as Smiley was impeccable.Benedict Cumberbatch as Peter Guilligan too did well.Good to see Collin Firth in Haydon's role, he did superbly.Screenplay by Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan was spot on - gripping.intelligent and realistic. Director Tomas Alfredson did not try to do much with the original story from the novel , he just followed it and came out shining, well done.Music by Alberto and Cinematography by Hayte were other highlights of the movie.

This movie requires your full concentration and attention for two hours, but worth doing it.Overall a good movie.

(Mm)ம் -ஷோபாஷக்தி (Shoba Shakthi)

I have read many articles and some short stories by Shoba Sakthi but this novel is the best of his writings.Its really heartening to read this book in Tamil, never read anything like this before in Tamil, may be due to the novel's story which revolves around Eelam and different organizations in it.

The story starts with Nirami in hospital ,she was admitted after she fainted in school,her parents were shocked to find that she was pregnant.Her parents Ernest Nesakumaran and Premini were Srilankan tamil immigrants living in Paris.Nesakumaran had done something unheard of in our culture(I leave others to judge him).But that was the impact of past (tortured life)As the police came for inquiries, Nesakumaran starts thinking of his life in Srilanka(sort of flashback).

He is a son of a famous school teacher,his parents joined him in seminary as they wished him to be a catholic priest.Those days becoming a priest was prestigious thing.But unfortunately Nesakumaran followed his own steps.Deeply in love with the girl , he quit seminary and go in search of her but fate made him to join in a liberation 'organization'. He was told to do certain things which he did without asking any questions, he did not had direct contact with the 'organization' but through a middleman. Once he tried to bomb the nearby police station and another time he tried to kill the village head during the local church feast.He was caught and put in the jail.

 From this jail his whirlwind life in different jails starts.

Welikada prison outline-taken from the book

Then the story moves to the 'Black July' pogrom in 1983.The authors description of the prison and their officers were something we can expect from Shoba Sakthi since he himself would have seen some of them.From here the novels moves in a thrilling pace(But sad that this  incident really happened).The efforts of the tamil inmates to protect themselves from the Sinhalese mob and their state of mind was told in a first hand account.When i was reading the passages describing these inmates i got angry on so many people.

I can imagine how much they suffered ,unspeakable atrocities.The inmates includes Douglas Devananada,Pakiri, Kutty Mani,Maanikadasan and others.The used all kinds things to protect themselves.After days of riots ,some of them escaped death but majority (57) of them died.The rest of the story is about he was tortured by 'organization' and his life after.

Shoba Sakthi brings the essence of Eelam and its people by describing everything in detail starting from Christmas to the torture chambers.He writes with some sort of authority and he is clear in what he wants to convey,well done. I will definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants to have a experience of life in war torn Eelam and life of an tamil immigrants(specially 'freedom fighters').

Shoba Sakthi is now living in France.I plan to read his other novel "Gorilla" soon. He has also written many short stories and essays for different magazines.

Click here to know  more about Shoba Sakthi

Click here to know  more about Welikada prison

Click here to know more about 1982 Massacre 1  & 2

Best Student Cities

A study by London based Quacquarelli Symonds(QS) listed the best cities for students(local as well as foreign) to have their education and career consultancy. The qualifying criteria for cities are population more than 250,000 and at least two universities ranked in QS World university listing.I believe that none of the Indian cities have 2 universities listed in QS listings.So none of Indian cities qualified,pathetic.Good to see Singapore as best Asian cities for students.

Here are the top 20 cities:

Rank	City	Country
1.	Paris	France
2.	London	England
3.	Boston	USA
4.	Melbourne	Australia
5.	Vienna	Austria
6.	Sydney	Australia
7.	Zurich	Switzerland
8.	Berlin	Germany
8.	Dublin	Ireland
10.	Montreal	Canada
11.	Barcelona	Spain
12.	Singapore	Singapore
13.	Munich	Germany
14.	Lyon	France
15.	Chicago	USA
16.	Madrid	Spain
17.	San Francisco	USA
18.	New York	USA
19.	Hong Kong	Hong Kong
20.	Tokyo	Japan

Click here to check QS World Universities listing

Moneyball

First,brilliant acting by Brad Pitt, good to see him in movies like this.

I had watched some baseball based movies which focuses mainly on particular player or a team or a manager but none focused on the complexity behind running the club.This movie is based on the book with the same name by Michael Lewis. This is the real story of Billy Beane who is the manager of Oakland Atheletics who inspite of his low budget made his team to reach miles in 2002 season.

Left with no other options, he hired Peter Brand,a Yale economic graduate to help him to buy and sell players for the coming season.Peter Brand uses his own non-traditional sabermetrics to help Beane to form a competitive team.Initially the team failed miserably but Beane and Brand convinces the club owner to have faith in their approach.As they  promised, the team started to win.In fact they won 20 consecutive matches,an American baseball league record.

Beane who is superstitious never goes to stadium and watch Oakland A's playing but after winning 20 consecutive matches ,he visits but the Oakland A's started losing their grip on the match , he goes back and luckily the won by a single run.

Even though Oakland A's lost their fist post season match,Beane was happy that their approach paid off. Eventually he was offered a substantial amount to manage Boston Red Sox, but he refused and still managing Oakland A's.Then there is his personal story of his daughter's relationship with him and his failed baseball life.

As i mentioned earlier, this role is one of the best of Brad Pitt(yet to watch Tree of life).He had nailed it.Wonderfully supported by Jonah Hill as Peter Brand.Jonah Hill received Oscar nomination for this role. Philip Hoffman as the coach too did his role to perfection.Music by Michael Danna and cinematography by Wally Pfister -two important contribution to this movie.The director Bennet Miller's narration of this biographical story was excellent.The screen play by Steven Zaillion and Aaron Sorkin was apt as they did not bring the complex statistics in the book ,well done.Definitely one of the best of 2011.

Click here to know about Billy Beane

Click here to know more about Sabermetrics

Dhoni - Tamil movie

A movie which takes on Indian education system.First well done Prakash Raj! He has done a good job as a director.This movie is based on the movie "Shikshanacha Aaicha Gho" by Makesh Manjrekar.Since i have not seen this original version,i watched this movie without any expectations.

This is the story of Subramaniam, a middle class widower and his struggle against his son's eduction system.Kartik , who is in 9th standard is good at cricket , he adores Dhoni,Indian cricket team captain and spends most of his time in either playing cricket or watching cricket.He tries his best to learn Maths ,Physics and other subjects but he could not.Subramaniam on the other hand,tries his best to help Kartik overcome his difficulties in lessons by joining him in different coaching classes.Inspite of Kartik's as well as Subramaniam's efforts, Kartik fails again.The principal of the school asks Subramaniam either to accept to retain kartik in 9th standard or joining him in another school,for him 100% result is more important.

Subramaniam who never beat his son Kartik, beats him when he is not able to give answer for  "17 X 8=?". Kartik falls and he is comatose(d).Subramaniam in order to save his son, is forced to come out and speak about the state of education system,which lands him in trouble.The school leaves kartik out of their exam list in turn from school itself,Subramaniyam loses his job and his loan for kartik's treatment too not sanctioned.The rest is the climax.

The movie wonderfully portrays the essence of middle class life,hats off to Prakash Raj.The typical government office setup,the monthly budgetary concerns and loan shark harassment are neatly executed and shot.Another highlight of the movie is Ilaiyaraja's background score, this man is the king of re-recording,awesome but songs are not upto his own standards.But still, two songs stands out "Vilayaatta padagotti" and "Thavi thavi" .Well done maestro,we expect more from you.The cinematography by KV Guhan was really nice, specially the hospital sequences.

Prakash Raj as Subramaniam was brilliant.His myriad expressions and his mannerism makes you feel that he is class of his own.Akash Puri as kartik too done brilliantly,hats off young boy! The surprise package is Radhika Apte as Nalini, she was awesome.The comedy sequences were taken care of by Brahmanandam and Chaams , both done reasonably well,but not their best.Nasser as cricket coach, no need to say anything about his acting skill.

Even though the story line is bit preachy,its still watchable and enjoyable.We have to take home a lesson from this movie "Allow our children to follow their dreams".The parents should be a guiding force not the obstacles.

The Help

This is the story of  house maids in 1960's America.The story moves around  Skeeter,Aibileen and Minny, the three strong willed women.Skeeter,an aspiring writer wants to writes story about house maids,she herself was brought-up by a black house maid.Aibileen, whose mother and grand mother was also house maids, who last her only son in a accident caused by a white man.Minny , a house maid who was fired for using white family's toilet.

Aibileen and Minny helps Skeeter to writes about the house maids,this secrete writing projects brings lots of trouble.They explain their lives at whites's house, and they united many others to open up and help Skeeter to completes the book.Skeeter herself loses her boy friend after he finds out her role in the book.how will they succeed in publishing the book was the story.Aibileen's narration of her son's death and her opinion of  Elizabeth ,who according to her should not give birth to another child were excellent.Minny's fearful aggression and Celia's careless attitude were captured wonderfully.

Viola Davis as Aibileen was awesome,simply superb.She really lived like a house maid.She received Oscar nomination for this wonderful role.Octavia spencer as Minny was wonderful,her funny mannerism and his dialog delivery,simply too good.Emma Stone as Skeeter did convincingly well.And all the other characters did their role well.Special credit should be given to the cinematographer Stephen Coldblatt and composer Thomas Newman. Picturesque shots combined with wonderful background music made this movie enjoyable.

The director Tate Taylor had done a good job in bringing the emotions from the book with the same name written by Katheryn Stockett.I have not read the book yet,but i hope this adaptation has done justice to the book.Overall a great movie, i expect this movie to win atleast 1 Oscar.

*The boxed quotes are from the movie.

Out of the blue - Aakash Chopra

At last a good book which speaks about Indian domestic cricket.Credit should be given to Chopra for writing this book.This book mainly tells the story of Rajasthan, a team which was in the last spot in the previous year, how this team succeeded in their quest of their first Ranji Trophy.

First part of the books tells the story of Aakash Chopra's experiences after he was booted out un-ceremoniously from his state team,Delhi.Delhi is his native and he played for it around 10 years.

The below quote from the book explains his feeling :

"A player ,who has dedicated his life ,his game and his name to an association,is told that his services are no longer needed,by the press."

Then he moves on and tells his experience with other Rajasthan Ranji Trophy players.His narrative is sincere and observant.He explain details of certain aspect each of his team mates whether its their fielding,bowling,batting or their other skills.The diversity in the Rajasthan team was something i wondered. So many different background factors made these players play cricket.The sacrifices they had made to reach that level and their commitment to their dreams were told beautifully by the author.

The obscure rules and regulations in domestic cricket tournaments are harder to understand even for the players themselves, then how come the followers of the game enjoy it.For instance most of the Ranji Trophy matches are four day match, this really baffles me,its neither a single inning match nor 2 innings (as it is tough to bowl out a opponent 2 times in that short time, if BCCI wants to the team to bowls the opponent twice they should prepare a good pitch, not a flat one ).Whichever team takes first innings lead scores some vital points,the very bad thing about this rule is that most of the teams bats for 2 days or even 3 days and secure those points easily, which Rajasthan too did in some matches.There is no good fight between bat and ball here.

The author being a player gives the reader how the home teams prepares the pitches for the matches, very interesting.The planning before the matches specially after their horrible previous year and how well Rajasthan Cricket Board supported them inspite of the internal politics were told nicely.Well done RCA!.

Another highlight of this book is that information about Ranji Trophy on the boxes of every pages, very interesting.Overall a very good book.I hope more players will share their playing days like these in coming years.Im looking forward to read Aakash Chopra's first book "Beyond the Blues".

Here click here to Aakash Chopra's website

Marina Tamil Movie(2012)

The director Pandiraj has done it again!

The hero of the story is the beach itself.The story moves around the people who lives and depends on the beach for their livelyhood,specially the uneducated children. Most of the time we just ignore those little boys and girls selling different things at the beach but the director brings the life out of them in this movie. A world not known to most of us.

A realistic portrayal of all the characters makes this movie worth watching.Pandiraj's dialogues are opt and funny.Everyone in this movie done their job to perfection,specially the kids (Ambikapathy).The singer Aatkaati Arumugam and his daughter Annamma,the old man who gives everything to kids and the horseman makes this movie enjoyable.

Then there is a  love story of Senthilnathan,his only aim is to walk hand in hand with a girl in marina beach. He woos Sopana sundari by doing all sorts of things like wheeling in bike.This love episode is not in line with the theme of the story but still lovable.Senthilnathan's mind calculation of expanses for Sopana and the forwarded sms jokes explanations will make anyone laugh.Senthilnathan's friend role is neat and funny.

Sivakarthigeyan as Senthilnathan was good ,need more emotions to survive. Ovyia was beautiful and did perform well.Jithan Mohan as the post master steals the show from all the others.Kudos to Pandiraj for creating such a nice character and selected a perfect actor to play it.

The story is neatly told even though it looks preachy at certain times.Music by Girish G was not bad ,except the first song "Vanakkam Chennai" , none of the other songs i enjoyed.Cinematography by Vijay was good,he brings the 'Marina' beach alive.

Its heartening to see that directors like Pandiraj makes effort to take a  good children movie.Keep the good work.

Overall 'Marina' is a nice walk on the beach.

Safari Zoo Run 2012

My first run of the year.It was 12 KM race.Last year this race was cancelled due to heavy rain so i was very eager and excited to run inside the zoo.We woke up 5AM and got buses(2 transfers) and reached the starting point around 7:40AM , but the first wave of 12KM was already started.So i waited for second one.

Runners on their way to finish line..

The race started on time i.e 7:45AM.We ran inside 'Night safari' but on day time.The first animal i spotted was rhinoceros,a beauty.I was running in my comfort pace,did not try to over do anything.Then giraffes, mountain goats,lions and some other animals were on the race route, really a scenic race route.After around 4 or 5KM, we entered to Singapore zoo, another beautiful route.Most of the exhibits were yet to be open,still it was a wonderful experience to run inside the zoo.We ran 2 loops of 6KM each to complete the race.I finished the race less than 1 hr and without any injury.It was a good start to my racing calendar.

Scenic race route..

More than 7000 runners participated in this race and raised nearly SGD 80,000/- .Well done friends.Another important people to thank were the volunteers, you guy were amazing and cheerful,hats off!!

Medals...  mine is 12KM one

Business Today's India's Top 10 CEOs

This month's Business Today has published a survey on Indian CEOs and listed the Top 25 of them.The ranks are based on

-Country-adjusted company returns
-Industry-adjusted company returns
-Market capitalisation change

Rank	Name	Company	Industry
1.	Naveen Jindal	Jindal Steel&Power	Materials
2.	A.M. Naik	Larsen Tourbo	Industrials
3.	Y.C.Deveshwar	ITC	Consumer goods & services
4.	Bhaskar Bhat	Titan industries	Consumer goods & services
5.	Sunil B Mittal	Bharati Airtel	Telecommunication
6.	R.Sridhar	Shriram Transport Finance	Financial services
7.	Mukesh Ambani	Reliance Industries	Energy
8.	Vijay Jindal	Zee Entertainment Enterprises	Consumer goods & services
8.	Pankaj R Patel	Cadila Healthcare	Health Care
8.	Pangal Jayendra nayak	Axis bank	Financial Services

There are three in number 8.Its very sad to note that there is not even a single IT company's CEO on the list.The good thing about the list was that most of these CEOs are not MBA graduates,Why good ,since most of the youngsters think that they can become managers or get into management only if they have MBA,this list proved it wrong.

The Descendants

A beautiful and heart breaking comedy drama.One of the best of 2011 and one of the best of George Clooney.Kudos to director Alexander Payne for being non preachy about the family life, he just explores it.Well done.

Matt King's wife,Elizabeth, is comatose and as per her living will she should be disconnected from her life support.So Matt decided to inform everyone about Elizabeth's impending death.First he informs to his elder daughter Alex who informs Matt about Elizabeth's affair with a real estate guy,Brian Speer.Alex sort of hate her mother and not obeying her father. Matt wonders why his daughter is not obeying his words.He does not like Alex's friend Sid, the surfer.But gradually he understands many things about life.

Matt decides to call Brian Speer and ask him to come once to say good bye to Elizabeth. Matt,Alexandria,Scott and Sid searches Brian everywhere and finds him with his family at one of the cottage owned by Matt's cousin.He explains Elizabeth's situation and ask him to go see her once.

Then there is a story of family property under vote for selling , most of his cousins wants to sell it as the agreement expires in 7 years time. But Matt disagrees with them and he informs that he is the sole representative and he will decides when time comes.Finally when all comes around he explains Elizabeth's situation and ask them to say good bye then they disconnects the life support.

This film is based on the novel with the same name by kaui Hart Hemmings. Wonderfully directed by Alexander Payne.As i mentioned earlier this is one of the best of Clooney.His emotions when he came to know about Elizabeth's affair was awesome specially 'his run' to his friends house to know about the guy..Shailene Woodley as Alexandria King was excellent.Nick Krause as Kid , Elizabeth's friend too did his role to perfection.Amara Miller as Scottie King was admirable.

The lust green background of Hawaiian islands was shot beautifully by Phedon Papamichael .I think there is no particular music composer for this movie.The director used the existing tracks of old and new Hawaiian artists, an apt decision and it is nice to hear those tracks in movie.

A good movie to watch and enjoy..!!