October 2011 Archives - 5/8 - SearchIndia.com Blog » SearchIndia.com Blog

iPhone 4S – Early Reviewers Love It

Oct 122011

The first reviews of the iPhone 4S are out.

And predictably enough, the reviewers can’t stop gushing about Apple’s newest phone.

This phone comes dangerously close to displacing a $200 point-and-shoot digital camera.

….It’s even more amazing how Siri’s responses can actually form a conversation. Once, I tried saying, “Make an appointment with Patrick for Thursday at 3.” Siri responded, “Note that you already have an all-day appointment about ‘Boston Trip’ for this Thursday. Shall I schedule this anyway?” Unbelievable.

Siri can perform an incredible range of tasks. She can get stock prices, weather, currency and price conversions, dictionary definitions, measurement conversions, math totals. She lets you use your voice to edit or check the Clock, Calendar, Notes and Address Book apps, the new Reminders app and the renamed Music (formerly iPod) app. She can read your text messages to you — and let you respond, all by voice (big news for drivers). She uses GPS to know where you are, so you can say things like, “Remind me to pick up the dry cleaning when I leave work” — and she’ll do it.

….over all, Apple has done an excellent job.

Wall Street Journal:

Sometimes, as we all know, looks can be deceiving. While Apple’s latest iPhone doesn’t look different, and may not be the kind of blockbuster people expect from the late Steve Jobs’s company, it thinks different, to quote one of Apple’s old ad slogans. Inside its familiar-looking body there lurks a nascent artificial-intelligence system that has to be tried to be believed.

….My advice is that owners of the iPhone 4 needn’t rush to upgrade; they can get the new operating system. But owners of older iPhone models, or those with basic phones, will find this latest iPhone a pleasure and a good value.

Guardian:

Siri is the USP of the 4S, it is essentially Voice Control that really works. You talk to it, it talks back.

….Once again Apple is taking a lead and asking a lot of its competitors. I wish those competitors luck.

Techcrunch:

The iPhone 4 was a great product. The best smartphone ever made. Now it cedes that title to the iPhone 4S.

Incredible India 63 – Nose-Chopping, Breeding Catholics, Killer Idlis, Foot-Path Babies

Incredible India 7 Responses »

Oct 122011

Hell, we’re desperate to stop writing those dreadful Incredible India stories.

But those countless Shaitans in India just won’t let us put a period to these only-in-India stories.

Here’s a bunch of Incredible India stories that should make every Indian hang its head in shame.

* The other day a poor Dalit (an untouchable, according to Indians) went to a barber-shop in Kiragavulu in Mandya district of Karnataka and demanded a shave.

The barber refused.

And when the poor Dalit named Chikkamanchaiah insisted, the incensed barber took his razor and cut off the man’s nose.

Think we’re making this up.

Here, read this excerpt in the Times of India:

Police said Chikkamanchaiah , 51, requested Mahadev and his father Mariyayya to shave his beard. The duo not only refused to do it, but also asked him to leave the shop. A quarrel ensued, and Mariyayya grabbed Chikkamanchaiah’s hands and Mahadev chopped off his nose. He was rushed to the district hospital where doctors reattached the nose.

Say what you will but civilization is in short supply in that benighted land aka India.

* With 1.2 billion people, we think India is an over-populated hellhole shithole with hundreds of millions struggling without food, clothing or shelter.

Hell, what do we know.

We were idly perusing India-related stories on our iPad 2 via Zites (a superb Tablet application owned by CNN) and the following is what we stumbled upon at CBS News.

Catholic priests in South India concerned that their numbers are shrinking are asking the church members to breed more.

In other words, Catholics are being exhorted to have more children.

Disgusting!

Here’s the Breed-More Catholics excerpt from CBS News:

Worried about its dwindling numbers, the Roman Catholic church in southern India is exhorting its flock to have more children, with some parishes offering free schooling, medical care and even cash bonuses for large families, church officials said Tuesday.

The strategy comes as India’s population tops 1.2 billion, making it the second most populous country in the world after China, and runs counter to a national government policy of limiting family size.

But in the southern state of Kerala, where Catholics have long been a large, important minority, church authorities believe the state’s overall Christian population could drop to 17 percent this year, down from 19.5 percent in 1991. While they don’t have precise numbers for the Catholic population, they believe it is also dropping sharply.

“The Christian community in Kerala is dwindling. We realized that if the numbers decreased further, it would have a negative impact on the community,” said Babu Joseph, spokesman for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India in New Delhi.

….A large number of church-sponsored groups in Kerala have begun campaigns with the slogan “A large family is a happy family.”

….the Catholic church plans to honor large families at a ceremony next month.

* We’ve always considered our Bollywood stars as a bunch of Chutiyas.

Some of them like Salman Khan are hit-and-run murderers, some like Shiney Ahuja are rapists while others like Sanjay Dutt traffic in prohibited arms.

And then there are the big time Pak-Loving Chutiyas like Shahrukh Khan who insist we should all love our Terroristan neighbors.

Now, another Bollywood star Ranbir Kapoor has joined the Chutiya gang with his gushing praise on that useless Congress ‘neta’ Rahul Gandhi in the Hindustan Times:

Recently, for the first time, Ranbir opened up about the Gandhi scion. “It feels great to know that people think I’m eligible, but if you ask me, Mr Gandhi is the future of politics in India. So, it’s an honour if people put me in the same bracket as him,” says Ranbir. Interestingly, according to the results of a survey conducted by a matrimonial site from Mumbai, Gandhi tops the list of bachelors most likely to get married in 2011

* Whoever knew that our favorite breakfast Idli-Sambar could be deadly. Continue reading »

Rascals Box Office – Big, Big Disaster

Bollywood, Box Office 1 Response »

Oct 102011

Some movies should never see the light of the day.

Even if they were made, they should never have been released in theaters.

One such movie is Rascals, a movie that’s been completely trashed by reviewers.

Directed by David Dhawan, the piece of junk features real-life Indian criminal Sanjay Dutt, Ajay Devgn and Kangana Ranaut.

In a sign that God exists, Rascals has fared miserably at the U.S. box office.

For the October 7-9, 2011 opening weekend, Rascals grossed a mere $168,082 at the U.S. box office, putting it up among the lowest grossers for a Bollywood film in America.

Rascals released on 61 screens and had a per screen average of $2,755.

See for yourself how Rascals fared compared to a few prominent Bollywood films:

Related Posts:
Rascals is Garbage, Say Critics

cheap air tickets to india

Paris (2008) Review – Lovely French Celebration

Foreign Movies 3 Responses »

Oct 102011

Élise (to her brother): You’re all alone here? What do you do all day?
Pierre: Watch other people live. Wonder who they are, where they go? They become heroes in my little stories.

As we were desultorily flipping through the drama section on Amazon Prime Video streaming a few hours back, the 2008 French movie Paris caught our attention.

If you ask us why, we wouldn’t know.

Perhaps because Amazon’s streaming collection is so pathetically anemic that Paris stood out.

Oh, and what a wise decision it turned out to be.

Paris Oozes Class

Directed by the respected filmmaker Cédric Klapisch, Paris is an adorable movie, oozing class in every scene.

French filmmakers have a certain class that American directors have difficulty matching.

Good French movies are like panoramic paintings that hold our steadfast gaze or, better still, they’re like a sumptuous Indian feast on which one can gorge endlessly without fear of indigestion.

Paris is an ensemble film that has seven or eight plots.

No, the different stories are not treated with equal importance.

Some like the story of the sick man with a failing heart Pierre (Romain Duris) and his sister Élise (Juliette Binoche) take up a lot of screen time while others like the journey of the Cameroon immigrant are touched upon only fleetingly.

Some are humorous like that of Professor Roland Verneuil while some others end up in tragedy.

And the different stories are not even connected in any big way.

Instead, look at the various stories in the movie as vignettes of different lives in the extraordinary city that Paris is said to be.

What makes the film alluring is that each of the stories is so well captured, even those take up little screen time we found endearing.

Besides directing this fine movie, Cédric Klapisch also wrote the film. You can be sure that it won’t be long before we see Klapisch’s older movies like L’Auberge Espagnole and Russian Dolls.

Some of the actors in Paris were familiar to us. We had seen Juliette Binoche briefly in Paris, je t’aime, Mélanie Laurent in Inglourious Basterds, François Cluzet in Tell No One and Romain Duris in Heartbreaker.

Others like the amazing Fabrice Luchini, who plays an elderly history professor Roland Verneuil besotted with a young student, and Karin Viard, who plays the bakery owner, were new to us. And we were much delighted to have made their acquaintance.

For some of the most humorous moments in the film, we owe a big thanks to Fabrice Luchini. His dance scene had us rolling with laughter. The other classy dance, of a different kind, was the one by Juliette Binoche.

Juliette Binoche (an Oscar winner for her performance in The English Patient) and Romain Durris hog the screen time and they’re an absolute joy to watch. Masters of their craft, both.

All these years, we were captive to Julia Roberts smile. Not anymore.

Going forward, the benchmark of a beatific smile for us will always be Juliette Binoche.

Oh, what a woman!

Music & Photography

The soundtrack of Paris comprising of familiar famous numbers is simply awesome.

Seize the day (Performed by Wax Tailor), Douala Paris, Daniela, Lands of 1000 Dances, Sway or the hauntingly beautiful Gnossienne No.1 are a feast for the ears.

Despite their origins elsewhere, the songs are well in tune with the movie and elevate Paris into an exhilarating trip.

Of course, we’re gonna buy the soundtrack. Listen to the snippets of the CD on Amazon.

Christophe Beaucarne’s pleasing cinematography is the icing on the cake of this must-watch film.

In a million years, our Bollywood and Kollywood canines won’t make a similar movie because the classless people inhabiting that cursed land and reading this fine blog would never appreciate or watch such a classy movie.

Cemetery Junction, The High Cost of Living – 2 Decent Films

Hollywood 3 Responses »

Oct 092011

‘Tis true we’re sloshed every night.

But the truth is tonight we’re sloshed more than usual.

Can barely get fingers to move across keyboard.

Yet, we feel like we ought to, at least briefly, touch upon two fairly recent movies that we lately watched and enjoyed.

The first is the 2010 British movie Cemetery Junction featuring a bunch of mostly no-name young actors except for the ever-classy Ralph Fiennes and Emily Watson, who have short roles in the film.

Set in the 1970s, Cemetery Junction is a coming-of-age movie (wateva that cliched shit means) centering around three young wayward lads from the lower classes or, to put it a little less crudely, from working class families.

Two of the youths end up in banal, dead-end jobs, one in a factory as a welder and the other as an announcer at a train station.

The third lad, Freddie (Christian Cooke) has big, upwardly ambitions.

Fella wants to have a nice Rolls, a big house and that kind of stuff. And to make it all happen, he joins as a salesman in a life insurance firm.

But Freddie is a misfit in the insurance business. Plain awful in fact, as he’s reminded one night by one of his buddies.

Felicity Jones plays Julie, daughter of the district insurance manager, fiancee of the upwardly mobile insurance sales boss Mike (Matthew Goode), an old classmate of Freddie and a feisty girl who dreams of becoming a National Geographic photographer one day.

Is the girl happy with her boyfriend?

So, whaddaya think happens next?

Well, all of the youngsters want to get away, far from Cemetery Junction.

But as with most things in life, few ultimately get to do what they say they want to do.

The movie is pretty humorous, well acted, tightly written and neatly directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

WTF more do you schmucks need in a movie.

We don’t know about you schmucks but we enjoyed it.

Hey, wait, did we tell you that we liked Jack Doolan (who plays Paul/Snork) best among the three lads.

* Our second nice find is a Canadian film, The High Cost of Living.

This 2011 film set in Montreal is written and directed by Deborah Chow (a Chinese immigrant to Canada from Australia).

Filmed on a tight schedule of just 20 days, the movie is about the aftermath of a hit-and-run car accident that causes a pregnant woman to lose her first child.

Losing a child at any age is never easy, but when it’s the first child that you’ve been eagerly looking forward to the ramifications can be severe.

The driver who caused the accident is a small-time drug dealer who turns remorseful after the accident.

A simple tale that’s neatly told.

But the last third of the movie could have been better. Were the actors tired?

Isabelle Blais as the pregnant woman Nathalie and Zach Braff as Henry, the drug dealer do a fine job.

Neither Cemetery Junction nor The High Cost of Living are masterpieces but compared to the Bollywood drivel that rains down upon us week after week, these two movies are eminently watchable.

Both movies are available at Netflix on DVDs.

Rascals is Total Garbage, Say Critics

Bollywood, Reviews 11 Responses »

Oct 072011

The first reviews of David Dhawan’s Rascals (Sanjay Dutt, Ajay Devgn, Kangana Ranaut) are out and they are overwhelmingly negative.

The reviewers have basically puked on Rascals.

Here are excerpts from a bunch of reviews on Rascals:

Times of India:

Rascals is what one can call a ‘vacation’ filmmaking stint where everyone works on the film as if they were on a ‘holiday’ and the audience is expected to ‘leave’ their senses behind. The actors make least efforts to add conviction to their performances and the patchy writing just allows them to play as they please. Invariably the director tries to camouflage the shallowness in the story by adding depth only in the decibel levels of the dialogue delivery….Rascals ends up being a silly and stupid comedy!

NDTV:

The gags in Rascals are so stale and tasteless and the situational comedy so devoid of any kind of originality or freshness, you wonder if David Dhawan just made this unfunny comedy to please his friends who play the major roles in the film….Two long painful hours of mirthless gags and skits adding up to no sense of hilarity.

Rediff:

For his latest Rascals, starring Sanjay Dutt and Ajay Devgn, Dhawan sponges a bunch of comedies from his own stable and outside to rustle up a series of misadventures that are dumb, dated and dreary. But that’s not its only problem. Rascals, with no structure or motive, cannot (rather does not even try to) conceal its desperation to make itself funny. And this insecurity shows in each and every gag.

Reuters:

David Dhawan must really hate us. Or maybe he wants to exact revenge on his audience. That must be why he subjected us to this three-hour monstrosity that is called “Rascals”….Dhawan hasn’t even bothered with a coherent script –- it’s almost as if everyone connected with the film landed up on sets and asked themselves, “now what juvenile gag can we come up with today?”….This is the cinematic equivalent of torture. Avoid at all costs.

CNN-IBN

David Dhawan, who’s no purveyor of good taste, plumbs new depths of crassness with this expectedly insensitive film that’s so short on real jokes that it makes light of everything from starving orphans in Somalia to the physically handicapped….Donate your cash to charity instead of wasting it on this wretched film!

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SearchIndia.com Blog

iPhone 4S – Early Reviewers Love It

Incredible India 63 – Nose-Chopping, Breeding Catholics, Killer Idlis, Foot-Path Babies

Rascals Box Office – Big, Big Disaster

Paris (2008) Review – Lovely French Celebration

Paris Oozes Class

Music & Photography

Cemetery Junction, The High Cost of Living – 2 Decent Films

Rascals is Total Garbage, Say Critics

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NDTV:

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