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Showing posts from November, 2006

Casino Royale: Bond or Rambo?

Hey, It's Rambo in a Tux! That about sums up the Casino Royale effect. Is it a genre shifting of Bond? It sure is. The makers have given the pure cool headed impeccable Bond who could come out of any situation wholly intact – as cool as a cucumber – the royal snub and instead is the miserable amalgam of Rambo and Bond. A bloody Rambo who does not do it the Rambo way and a very uncool Bond who does not get his Bond right. The new Bonding effect – all that gore and the less mint attitude - is disconcerting and hard to swallow. The Big Chase An African runs up the steel frames like a lizard nay a Steel Monkey (high rise jockey?) and you begin to wow the guy. Then you watch Bond in a floral shirt in hot pursuit and your jaw drops. Its not the style, but the lack of style that makes the jaw drop. Bond sloppily scrambles up after him- more like the canine in the Hutch ad. Tsk, tsk! Cut to another scene- Bond chases the bad guys and smashes up his car real bad. And he deserves all the...

Jethamalani and Manu Sharma

A few years ago I interviewed India's legal ace Ram Jethmalani when he visited Kochi. He was really sweet to talk at length to me. One of the questions that I posed to him then was: Why he does he defend people like Indira Gandhi’s assassins? Ram replied: There comes a time in every lawyer’s life when he is called to defend such people. I consider it is as my duty to defend such a person if I am approached. The brouhaha erupting over Ram Jethmalani defending Manu Sharma seems so silly. The man should be admired for having the gumption to defend such a person. Never mind the fact that I think Manu Sharma deserves the worst punishment if he did commit the crime. It is not this eminent lawyer (a shame some said on TV) who should be blamed for callously defending this criminal ( that's his duty) but for the fact that a 100 people saw Manu Sharma pull the trigger and yet there is no concrete evidence. That speaks a lot for the people and our system. And it was funny to ...