30 Rock season 4 overview

This season on 30 Rock ,I found that there is less and less of TGS and more of Liz’s (Tina Fey)and Jack’s(Alec Baldwin) problems .It was nice when they had to be dealt with simultaneously in the madhouse that is the NBC studio . But now we are seeing less of the studio and more of random plots.

The new addition to the cast has not exactly been a very good decision compounded by the fact that Jenna Maroney is going nowhere and Tracy Jordan has just not been the same. Infact the demented star that Tracy is,he seems bloated and those psycho weird punch lines and histrionics haven’t had the same impact as earlier.

The jokes and one-liners just don’t stack up that well compared to earlier seasons.

The season had infact started off quite well with the season opener smartly titled ‘season 4’ and had set the premise, but somehow it lost steam after 4-5 episodes and it seemed flat to me for a quite a number of episodes .However , 30 Rock has bounced back and shut shop with decent half a dozen bunch of episodes .The finale ‘I do do ’ written by Tina Fey herself was quirky and fun .

30 Rock almost always has had a healthy influx of celeb A-listers making appearances during the course of a season . This time, Julianne Moore has got half a season long arc . I loved Elizabeth Banks’ news anchor role- Avery Jessup ..fantastic skin she has .I have liked her ever since her coquettish bank teller role scenes with Leonardo DiCaprio in ‘Catch me if you can’ .

Of the ones this season, me thinks Matt Damon’s was the shortest and best but it's likely that he won’t return for one too many episodes next winter ..I mean come on, he is Matt Damon !

Though reasonably okay, this season somehow didn’t seem that crisp. And it would be fair to say it has been a bit underwhelming if not disappointing. However they have been renewed for another season and that would be surely be better. And how about a track where Liz Lemon has a steady boyfriend balancing her eccentricities?Wouldn’t that be fun?

Just recently,during her promotion of her movie ‘Date Night’, Tina Fey said that“ its because NBC is so deep in trouble that 30 Rock is on air ”

...now that’s not true ,it’s as good a single camera sitcom as they come and the show has some gas left in the tank for newer episodes. It has been held together by the ever terrific Alec Baldwin playing NBC boss, but there have been rumours that he won’t stay beyond next year ..

Sort that and Season 5 out NBC and Tina Fey..Please

7 reasons to watch the French Open

This year's second grand slam starts this Sunday in Roland Garros,Paris.

7 is reason enough ,but i would love to see a pic of her and Rafael Nadal with their respective trophies.Both last won there in 2008 ,i hope both of them reclaim it.

Let's see what happens !!

T20 kits – good, okay and mediocre

I thought of doing a kit analysis of teams in the super eight of the ongoing Twenty 20 World cup in the West Indies. So here goes.


West Indies
They have been stuck with the maroon shade for far too long; ever since colour clothing began in 1977-78.There have been bad prints and even worse colour combinations that the windies have adorned over the years, but this one sported in World T20 is a weird multi cut raglan sleeve accompanied by yellow dotted prints. Those muscular dudes just look odd in that attire. 3/10

Australia
In T20’s Australia had started with its sleeveless shirts worn over a stitched at neck contrast body hugging inner and they have kept that pattern only the shade of yellow and green and occasionally grey keeps changing. The tees are different and the aussies look smart and menacing in those. 7/10

Sri Lanka
The Lankans have an okay dress .Nothing great or even experimental .Its the same that they wore in the last edition .Blue and yellow v-neck and polo collar–mediocre design by Reebok. 6/10

India
Ever since India shifted to darker blue in early 09’, the shade and the dash of orange has given them a very suave look .The raglan cut sleeves have a very smooth curve which blends the tricolour and joins the orange oblique patch at the back of the neck. If we look closer the kit has loads of patches of clima cool and dry fit material on the lowers as well. Nike has put some design sense into the kits and the Indians even though not the most muscular and fit of all, do look the smartest of the lot. 8/10

New Zealand
The kiwis look the best when they are dressed in black and shades of greys to break the colour monotony. Even the blackcaps have opted for the tighter fitting tees. But the introduction of gold to the side panel is just – egg throwing bad design .Even the super cool Shane Bond can’t carry off that dress. Get rid of the gold and the black caps would be fine. 5/10

England
They have got one of the better designs in the competition with their shoulder patches and fluorescent green armpit piece. Adidas who sponsors the kit has wisely kept its logo understated and the deep royal blue with minimal contrast piping is a very impressive kit that is sported by the English. 8/10

Pakistan
Without a regular outfit sponsor, Pakistan dress as a bunch of second class clubbers who just got their numbers printed by the local sports shop and who in turn copied adidas’s 3 stripe design but kept the stripes to 2 as he ran short of material .They are struck with the colour green ,but its sad that they always choose the most murky green .The best they looked was in the 99’ world cup in England where they had sported fading fluorescent green and played the final at Lords. Disappointing and have been so for a really long time. 4/10

South Africa

As Harsha Bhogle put it ‘ they all seem to be wearing a one size fits all tee.’But the jersey looks pale, quite similar to the Proteas performance in the ICC events . 6/10

The trend has been to get the players tighter, fitter, close cut body hugging dresses that shows off some rippling muscles as the T20 is seen to be a more power based version of cricket. Though I would like to see the kit sponsors being bold and tasteful in dress designing .In fact there should be two sets of kits – one for home and other for away matches. Although it’s not required as a differentiating factor as say in football or rugby, but it can be an interesting proposition in terms of merchandise sales.

For far too long we have had shades of blue and green running in the stadiums. Green has Pakistan, South Africa, Australia, even consistently horrendous dressers –Bangladesh .The blues are Sri Lanka, India, England and off late every associate nation.

Some variety would’nt hurt.

The buzz on Google buzz

The buzz on Google buzz
What is the buzz? How do you use it? How is it any different?

What is the buzz?
Buzz is the latest attempt at breaking into the global social networking market by tech giants Google. The service, which was unveiled on Tuesday, February 9, pitches the search specialist in direct competition with players like Facebook and Twitter.

Why is it important?
It’s important because of who is launching it. Like Apple, when Google speaks, people tend to sit up and take notice. They’ve already labeled it as “Google's approach to sharing.”

The buzz (pun intended) surrounding the announcement was huge. With twitter and search engines awash with people searching and sharing information from the launch press conference.The immediacy of Buzz also comes from the way it will be rolled out. It also has a head-start on other social networking sites as it is being incorporated into it’s free Gmail service – which already boasts 170 million users. So basically, if you have Gmail, you have buzz.


For further details have at look at the link.

http://gulfnews.com/business/technology/the-buzz-on-google-buzz-1.581091

Hyperlink cinema - part II

In fictional literature, no character is introduced, however insignificant he or she may seem at that point of time, who doesn't appear later on at some crucial moment to give the narration an unexpected twist. Hyperlink cinema is sort of reflection of this type of literature and has emerged in the movies over the last few years. It is being lapped up by the audience who have grown to accept that the chances of 2 strangers from different walks of life meeting at different times is probable with the advent of technology and the direct result of a shrinking and flat world.

The phenomena of ‘six degrees’ of separation as cited by Malcolm Gladwell in his book ‘The Tipping Point’ is a great supporter of this idea and which says that every individual in the world is connected to every other individual by via a minimum of six steps.

So now we have movies with several different, seemingly unrelated storylines that are all connected in some small way. The action of one character, unbeknownst to them, affects another character, and the film follows that effect, instead of the character. People are linked up in interesting, often surprising ways, and the whole thing has a ‘butterfly effect’ feel to it. Each event has its own ramifications and repercussions that touch several other lifes and characters are involved inadvertently in several stories at once, with subtle, passing or major influences.

These films unfurl slowly and methodically ,like layers of an onion or as a jigsaw that seems to take shape out of obscure pieces, a collage made from varied ingredients ,but beautiful regardless of that or more so because of that.

Hyperlink cinema is truly a new genre, with potential for telling stories across cultures,generations, and boundaries. It involves stories about people more than stories involving people, with plenty of subtitles and with climaxes that may not necessarily have any clear conflict resolution or summit clash. Many may come out the theatre with the feeling that nothing happened in the movie but essentially that is the aim- to show a slice of life, not the whole lifespan in entirety. Sometimes the subtext carries more significance than the main scene and you have to respect that point of view as well.

Cinema evolves; and the more the techniques, perspectives and vantage points, the more enriched becomes the medium.

Hyperlink cinema - part I

Hyperlink cinema, the term itself sounds interesting; because it combines something we associate with websites to cinema.

Hyperlink is a genre of cinema in which the multi-threaded storylines tell different tales and the narrative cross and connect at unexpected points. These films are not multimedia and do not have actual hyperlinks, but are multilinear in a more metaphorical sense.

Playing with time and characters' personal history, interwoven storylines between multiple characters, jumping between the beginning and end (flashbacks and flashforwards) are its prime elements, as illustrated brilliantly in Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu's films Amores Perros(2000), 21 grams(2003), and Babel(2006).

Hyperlink cinema are films where the characters or action reside in separate stories, but a connection or influence between those disparate stories is slowly revealed to the audience. The narration is often non linear with no specific timeline and events may be portrayed out of chronological order.

Hyperlink cinema is a term coined by author Alissa Quart, who used the term in her review of the film ‘Happy Endings ’(2005) which was used later by noted critic Roger Ebert when reviewing ‘Syriana’, also in 2005.

There's a growing influence of the world wide web and multitasking in the genre, where captions act as footnotes and splitscreens ,as elements of hyperlink cinema. Quart also
considers the television series '24'and Alan Rudolph's film Welcome to L.A. (1976) as early prototypes. Crash (2004) which beat Brokeback Mountain to the Oscars for best film, is an example of the genre, as are Robert Altman's The Player (1992), Steven Sodenberg's Traffic (2000), City of God (2002),Love Actually (2003) and Syriana (2005).

Mani Ratnam's underrated gem ,Yuva (2004) is a genuine addition from India ,so is its Tamil version Aayitha Ezuthu(he shot them back to back) ,where 3 stories ran parallelly until they all merged at one point in the movie and then there's a racy dash to the climax. Love Actually (2003) written and directed by Richard Cutris had seven stories that are fleetingly connected, and by the end seamlessly blend into each other resulting in an immensely watchable flick. Nikhil Advani tried to adopt the idea in Salaam-e-Ishq (2007) but it was a massive downer as the stories seemed too contrived. Earlier, last month we had Love sex aur Dhokha with its 3 vaguely connected stories, but there, the focus was on shooting it if it all was found footage.


To continue..…..

Pepsi has lost it

If we look at the beverage scenario of just the carbonated cola drinks in India, Thums up comes up trumps everytime..and why?
Because they have always maintained their core identity - to deliver the thunder.

Pepsi’s 2010 campaign is so pathetic, so downright ridiculous, utterly silly and bordering egregious that it has surpassed laughable territory to become – ‘I don’t care what they do brand’.

Pepsi used to be anti-establishment and about youth .remember how they started with Juhi Chawla and Remo and Aishwarya Rai ? The slide has been gradual and I don’t know who holds the advertising accounts of Pepsi, but their summer campaigns have been outlandishly bad for a while now.

Ironically they offloaded a lot of celebrities that they had on contract in quest for appealing to the younger generation and the same people like Sachin and Shahrukh have landed better deals having said their byes to Pepsi.

Pepsi will continue to languish ..for it continues to back expensive and stupid commercials.

I also believe that in India, the sale will shift towards the more healthy drinks and beverages instead to carbonated aerated water that Pepsi or coke is.
The lime and mango and pineapple based drinks will take over . Pepsi has lost it.
Coke tastes way better anyways.

Ab Aeterno

I am finally catching up with the final season of Lost –the whole flash sideways. But episode 9, Ab Aeterno-Latin for ‘since the beginning of time’ looked most promising and is easily the best episode this season-the final season.

Ab Aeterno, is also one episode which didn’t have the flash sideways which is seen by many fans as a useless contrivance but I still have faith in the writers (I liked Sawyer’s flash sideways in Recon) .Mostly the end pieces are set in place only we need to know how and when exactly the timelines split and if they will bleed in and merge eventually. And when it all ends, we will know why the flash sideways were needed.

That’s the most beautiful part about all this .We are still clueless and curious.

We still don’t exactly know what happened in 1977 and what exactly did a dying Juliet mean when she was about to say ‘it worked’ before she died in the arms of Sawyer.

We need to visit the Dharma days, at least one last time, to know for sure what exactly ‘The Incident’ did to them and what was the purpose of the Swan with a button to be pushed every 108 minutes. Was it the huge electromagnetic exotic material release that caused the time jump or if indeed it was the detonation of Jughead or was it both happening simultaneously?

One episode should be there to explain the cause and effects of ‘The Incident’.
And it would be lovely to go back to the coolest time period on the island.

Coming back to Ab Aeterno, at 47 minutes running time, I was just engrossed at the proceedings and the revelations.

Ab Aeterno has given a lot of answers; as also given the credence and stamp of approval to the assumptions that the Lost community has lived with over the years. It answers in a mind boggling way drawing analogy and choosing metaphors and that is a welcome change from the tradition of answering the questions by posing more questions.

People have long speculated the hell and purgatory theory and this episode has shoved that theory to the bins.

We have the whole and extensive backstory of the island’s longest and ageless resident -Richard, except for the two warring forces since eternity in Jacob and The Man in Black.
It was kind of obvious that the they would figure in the Richard flashback .However the whole Canary Island and Isabella angle showed how and what made Richard make the choices he did.

I can stick my hand out and say that Ab Aeterno is the best Lost episode yet .Better than the Pilot, Through the Looking Glass and perhaps The Constant too. And probably can only be topped by the hugely anticipated episode 15 –Across the sea.

Richard’s flashback starts in 1867, with the shot of him riding a horse back to his ailing wife Isabella in their home in Tenerife, Canary Islands. With Isabella coughing blood, Richard goes back again to summon a doctor who refuses to come back to treat her and tells that the money he is offering for the medicine is just not enough. A desperate Richard falls into plead mode but somehow ends up accidentally knocking the doctor dead on the table edge. Richard ends up losing Isabella and in prison for his murder, for which the crooked priest wouldn’t absolve him of his sin.

However a ray of hope appears as the priest strikes a deal with Capt. Whitfield and sells Richard as a slave for Magnus Hanso’s expedition to the new world in the Black Rock. And the Black Rock gets caught in a huge sea storm ends up on the island breaking the Tawaret statue and landing shipwrecked a mile inside the beach. That was a nice ploy, answering 3 questions at once.

The Man in Black approaches Richard and convinces him he is in hell that Jacob is the devil and he has to kill him if he ever wishes to be with is wife again. Nice manipulation; after having killed the whole crew on The Black Rock in his smoke monster personification.



Richard sets about to kill Jacob but instead gets the living daylights kicked of him by Jacob. This is also the first time that The Man in Black has tried to kill Jacob. That was an interesting tit-bit. Jacob realises that Richard has been fed details by his nemesis and dunks him in sea water to shake his belief that he is not dead and not in hell.
That was quite in your face baptism, mind you.

And when Richard is receptive to him now, we hear the fantastic explanation of what exactly the island is. Quietly looking at the bottle of wine in his hand ,he says
“ Think of this wine as what you keep calling hell. There are many other names for it too: malevolence, evil, darkness. And here it is, swirling around in the bottle, unable to get out because if it did, it would spread. The cork is this island and it's the only thing keeping the darkness where it belongs.”

Jacob tells Richard that he can’t bring his wife back, can’t absolve him of his sins but does grant him to be immortal in exchange of being the representative and intermediary between Jacob and the people he brings to the island and that’s how Richard is ageless.

However for me the last scene between The Man in Black and Jacob was just – super spectacular.Acted so brilliantly by Titus Welliver and Mark Pellegrino respectively. You could see the frustration of being kept on the island so long on Welliver’s face and Jacob’s faith in what he is doing on Pellegrino’s. Having said that, Nestor Carbonell as Richard gave his absolutely finest performance till date.

And finally, brilliant use of genie in the bottle metaphor.
Jacob gives the same bottle of wine, something for him to pass the time,
The Man in Black raises the bottle of wine, tries to uncork it, and when he can’t, turns it upside down, he smashes the bottle against the log, he is sitting on, splashing wine everywhere.
Just terrific!

The king of good times

Imagine this..
He gets a call on his private number from Deepika Padukone requesting a hotel suite for the IPL game later in the night. And he obliges graciously but hoping that he doesn’t get another call and also that Katrina Kaif is busy shooting someplace else. But surely life isn’t that easy, Ms Kaif will call and the cold war of the co-brand ambassadors of Royal Challengers Bangalore continues to soldier on.
But Vijay Mallaya has to worry about other things too.

Later this week he has to be in Shanghai as the owner of Force India and maybe fly back to be at the semis if Bangalore get through to the last four .However, such busy schedule has its benefits too. For who else in India has a formula one car named after him ?
Mallaya has.

VJ-1 last year and VJ-2 in 2010, in a Mercedes powered car that has potential to be in top 4 constructors by the year end. The man looks so hands on in his operations that may be he even interviews the air hostesses and cabin crew for Kingfisher Airlines.

Dr.Mallaya has to take care of the aviation operations; a very easily loss making industry ,good thing that his breweries are doing nice and fine ,serving the finest wines and with lion’s share of the Indian market share and number 3 worldwide.
Then there’s the Kingfisher Calendar shoot, the various business sittings, auctions of players and brands that he thinks should be in the UB portfolio.

But at such an age does he really have to globe trot and do all this?
Of course he has to !!
That comes with him being his umbrella brand's best known face and therefore he has to continue to dine with the businessmen, throw awesome after match parties in 5 stars and yatches, juggle trans world itineraries and more or less be ubiquitous.

What next for him?
Maybe an EPL team, or maybe not. He already has East Bengal in his kitty, why bother with foreign clubs? I am not sure, but he still doesn’t have a street named after him in Bangalore, his father Vithal Mallaya has though. That can be a silent ambition on the agenda of the stylish silver maned businessman.

Nowadays we see his son accompanying him, that is part of his growing up and on field internship .We all would kill to live like that .Won’t we trade to have the tensions that he has instead of worrying about where the next month’s money is going to come from? Such are the lifes and times of Vijay Mallaya-the king of good times.

Vanilla twilight

Adam Young is a myspace.com sensational who was unsigned and he had released his singles independently until ‘Ocean eyes’. I came to know about him in tabloid! when he toured the UAE recently. I have had his songs on my playlist for a more than a fortnight now and I really like vanilla twilight
Just read through the song here.


Vanilla twilight

The stars lean down to kiss you
And I lie awake and miss you
Pour me a heavy dose of atmosphere

'Cause I'll doze off safe and soundly
But I'll miss your arms around me
I'd send a postcard to you, dear
'Cause I wish you were here

I'll watch the night turn light-blue
But it's not the same without you
Because it takes two to whisper quietly

The silence isn't so bad
'Til I look at my hands and feel sad
'Cause the spaces between my fingers
Are right where yours fit perfectly

I'll find repose in new ways
Though I haven't slept in two days
'Cause cold nostalgia
Chills me to the bone

But drenched in vanilla twilight
I'll sit on the front porch all night
Waist-deep in thought because
When I think of you I don't feel so alone

I don't feel so alone, I don't feel so alone

As many times as I blink
I'll think of you tonight
I'll think of you tonight

When violet eyes get brighter
And heavy wings grow lighter
I'll taste the sky and feel alive again

And I'll forget the world that I knew
But I swear I won't forget you
Oh, if my voice could reach
Back through the past
I'd whisper in your ear
Oh darling, I wish you were here.


Vanilla twilight could easily be a song sung by a soldier in Iraq longing for his love in Ontario, Canada; however Adam young wrote it for his girlfriend in a different scenario. I haven’t seen the video and I have pictured the song in my mind entirely differently.

But then later I came to know about that the song was actually penned as he remembers his girlfriend who unfortunately passed away before her time.

Still,I find hope in it- the remembrance of times that were beautiful because of their togetherness. It’s a lovely song little song, a must have on your playlist – vanilla twilight. ’Fireflies’ is another cool number, the more popular one - the international billboard topper especially in Australia and the US. Adam has had 3 releases and his discography includes Of June and maybe I am dreaming.
He has used synth pop and alt rock in both.
When you hear you will know.Highly recommended !!