Now, I have been having quite an idle time. And when I am faced with such a situation, my mind wanders around thinking of just randomly awesome things, trying to quench my “khujlee” for “nirmal anand“, which I have no control on. Now, I cannot mention all of them, as I can’t remember most of them, and those I do remember either are too strong [read: X-Rated] to be mentioned here, or just don’t make any sense. But, idle daydreaming can also be quite fruitful. In this case, what I have come up with is a possible script of a kick-ass Bollywood movie. Now, we have seen a lot of Zombie movies, and as you might or might not know, I love zombie movies. But we are yet to see any Bollywood director make a proper Zombie movie. The keyword here is ‘proper’. Yes, we have seen live actors sleepwalk through a whole movie (*cough* Sanju Baba *cough*), and wooden faces which can corrode a zombie (*ahem* Mimoh!!). But we are not talking Ramsay face-painted monsters, or Vikram Bhatt’s lineup of monstrous unintentionally comic actors. Zombie business is serious shit. And to suit everyone’s taste buds, I am presenting you three different takes that Bollywood can adopt as its own spin on the Zombie movie genre. The sole purpose behind this post is to generate some collective creative juice so that we can get a much needed break from the deficiency of fresh new ideas. So here are..

** 3 Ideas for The Next Bollywood Zombie Movie **

a) Comedy meets Horror:

Something on the lines of Shaun Of The Dead or Zombieland. You know, something like zombies on the loose in a Mumbai local train, and busy Mumbaiyyas not giving a shit, until one of them gets bit. And then, he bites the zombie back so hard, that he almost eats his eye out. Yep, it has to be gross and graphic, and gore has got to be not-toned-down and for a change, gut-wrenching. Of course, after that, the first bite victim would have to transform into a zombie himself, and start spreading the “rage virus”.

The story could be told from the perspective of a group of  South Mumbai slackers (like that Wake Up Sid gang), who have no idea of what is happening in the real world. And then, their parents and fellow college mates start vanishing. Best part here could be the inclusion of zombie outbreak on the sets of Bigg Boss (just like in Dead Set – which I’d highly recommend everyone to watch). Who wouldn’t love to see a zombie Dolly Bindra battle it out with a zombie Kamaal R Khan?? And our heroes could beat them up to pulp, quite literally. The group could even have some sort of a Zombie Kill Count.

Don’t tell about this to – David Dhawan or Priyadarshan.
My choice for the director – Dibakar Banerjee.
Background Score – Ram Sampath’s cracking grungy loud score.
Death count - 100+
Guest role zombie – Salman Khan, the host of Bigg Boss.
Proposed Title – Maar Maarke Laal Kar Dunga ( I’ll beat you until its red)

b) Horror:

Something on the lines of 28 Days Later on the streets of Mumbai. Or The Crazies in Delhi. Or the very awesome Dawn Of The Dead. This could be a very challenging job in terms of creating a perfect claustrophobic scenario. e.g. a whole movie (of 2 hours tops), set around a group of IT employees / call centre guys, all strangers, but getting back home late night from work – from Gurgaon to Delhi, only to see CP (Connaught Place) has been completely burnt down (since the army tried to bomb down the zombies).

Subplot- Another group of guys stuck in Delhi Metro underground, who cannot escape because the gates are shut, and their only way to survive is to stick together, even though there is clearly an ego clash ( insert a North Indian love triangle here). There has to be some casualties here, and a desperate need for night vision glowing eyes of the zombies. And of course, there has to be a religious fanatic inserted in the mix of the young and hip guys, who has her own spin on the story. And the slutty one dies first (but of course).

Don’t tell about this to –  Vikram Bhatt or Sanjay Gupta
Director of Choice – Ram Gopal Varma. The man made Raat, so all your arguments  are invalid.
Cinematographer – Binod Pradhan. He knows best how to show Delhi in an apocalypitc way. And also, that’d mean RGV would have to lose out the tilted camera technique. Also expect some shaky cam.
Background Score – Sandeep Chowta
Death count - All the main lead characters, especially the ladies. The chicken characters survive somehow. And there has to be some explanation about the outbreak. Possibly, an infected person from Singapore landed at IGI airport.
Proposed Title – Dead Delhi

c) Thriller/ Political Drama:

This is the most ambitious one in terms of idea. There will be only shots of the zombies through television screens in the form of news broadcasts. The focus here is on human drama, and how a quarantine camp arrangement in an apocalyptic world set in India would function. This should be something like Torchwood: Children of Earth / Miracle Day .

A zombie outbreak is a national emergency, and it would be absolutely interesting to see how the nation’s leaders would deal with it (given that we have the writers and the director making the best use of good actors and smartly written situations). Set in a near present Delhi, where the nation’s youngest Prime Minister ever faces the nation’s worst nightmare. The President has already been bitten on an aeroplane. But that is not the worst of it. How would the law and order system work when we have a nation of a billion, and almost 30% infected due to some virus spread by biting? And the count is increasing. Joint families trying to hide their loved ones, even when they are being bitten, and armies forcibly taking them away. Politicians taking care of the rich and the powerful to be kept in secured location, and a journalist leaking the story to the masses who are trying hard to survive through all of this. Aaj Tak is still the fastest news breaking channel. Also, a gangster chain operated by an ex-Army guy, who is smuggling people into these secured locations.

Don’t tell about this to: Subhash Ghai or Sanjay Leela Bhansali
Director of Choice: Neeraj Pandey or Raj Nidimoru and Krishna D.K.
Background Score: Amit Trivedi
Death Count: Reported many, none shown onscreen.
Proposed title: Rashtriya Aapatkaal (National Emergency - think about it. The story of a zombie outbreak, told through a sting operation on the nation’s leaders. Of course, there is no democracy to be spoken of, but who in their right mind, would like to lead a nation at such a moment, instead of saving their own asses).

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Spread the word right now using the buttons below, so that someone in Bolly land can pick up these ideas and translate them onto screen right away. Of course, me being a non-trained scriptwriter, there is an amalgamation of a thousand ideas which are thrown in the mix here. If someone intends to clean them up to produce a more cohesive plot, be my guest. If you are connected to any filmmaker, film magazine which can make these ideas get flashed in front of the right people, please feel free to do so (and a little credit thrown at my end would be very welcome). As always, comments and criticism are always welcome.

Ra.One was supposed to hit a triple home-run. Ra.One was supposed to melt me inside out with its massive scale and mindblowing shimmery effects. Ra.One was supposed to be not just good, but awesomely great, and pave the way for the future of Indian cinema to wake up and smell the digital coffee, rather than sit on that melodramatic Karwa-Chauth and Sagai flavoured couch. Of all the things, Ra.One did manage to possibly give a taster for the things that could be in the future. But at the end of it all, it falls way short of my expectations. Oh how much I wanted to like this movie, but even with the best of my efforts, this movie swings between the extremes of annoying slapstick and total wtf-ery. Of course there is a whole bunch of shit loaded in this vehicle which kept me engaged and entertained. Butthere is a whole bunch of absolute dog poo as well. The script is so flawed and mindless, that I can only facepalm at the thought that the talented makers spent almost 5 years to end up with a product like this. As a faithful consumer of this product, this is my open letter to the makers – Shahrukh Khan, Anubhav Sinha and the writers. Here are my 5 complaints against Ra.One.

P.S. I invite SRK fanbois and gals can actively protest and counter my points in the comments section.

**5 Complaints Against Ra.One**

1. K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid)

KISS is an engineering principle, followed by designers worldwide. So it is indeed such a shame to see the ‘designers’ of Ra.One screwing that principle, in the face. I don’t get what the point is when it comes to writing a simple and straightforward Good vs Evil script. Why would you wander off forcibly injecting unnecessary amounts of slapstick of the “BAD” kind. This is bloody 2011, and no one, absolutely no one enjoys humour of the ‘Rajendranath’ types. I don’t find it funny when SRK has curly hair to justify his Subramaniam lineage. I don’t find it funny when he has to eat curd with noodles. And seriously, what was that thing about Bebo’s thesis on Indian gaalis – in London? Was that a linguistic thesis? How difficult is it to focus on the Good vs Evil theme, by giving us more info about the background of Ra.One / G.One, rather than focussing on SRK’s parenting issues and crotch being hit by a football.

2. Consistency

The movie has a serious issue with consistency. On one hand, SRK’s Shekhar Subramaniam has an issue with being not-so-fluent in Hindi and also being bad with English pronunciation (That MJ impression was atrocious and whoever wrote that scene needs to have a career counselling done right away. Seriously dude, get a day job). But when it comes to delivering idioms to his beloved son Prateek, all of that goes straight out of the window. The man effectively delivers those lines like an Urdu Shaayar in a Lucknow Mushaayra.

Another point to be noted – WTF is this Ra.One game? Is it a simulator, to be played with those Mo-Cap gear, or is it like Virtua Fighter meets Mortal Combat? In the expo, when the game is released, or even when little Prateek gets an exclusive test run in the lab, he has the mo-cap gear on. But this is meant for wider public release on a gaming console – (there are PS3 and nVidia logos flying all across). How does that sum up? If it is indeed a Mo-Cap simulator like XBOX Kinect, then how the fuck did Prateek get a DVD, and start simulating the moves in his home PS3.

Finally, the H.A.R.T. is supposed to be a virtual thing, with no special physical significance. In the real world, it is just another glowing bulb. How does the divide between the real and virtual get bridged? No body cares a single fuck about explaining that to me. Speaking of which, in the final climax fight Level 3 – how the hell did Ra.One, G.One and Prateek go from being inside the lab to being teleported into a virtual map, with burning lava and all the explosions. And how the hell did Prateek get out of it. No answers!

3. Seriously, Lucifer ?!?

Speaking of Prateek, if your son has an online avatar by the name of Lucifer, you have some real thinking to do, than to try and impress him by creating an evil villain, or writing a thesis on Indian feminisation of swear words. This is a 10-11 year old we are talking about, who by the looks of it, likes Iron Maiden’s Eddie (which is great), MJ’s Bad (again great), but bullies around fat kids in the class. And we are supposed to root for him? If it was me, I’d get that little bastard bitch slapped in the face and teach some manners first.

Further, there is not even a moment spent on explaining Prateek’s genius in coding, and how a 10 yr old gets around with fiddling the source code of apparently a programme which has complex AI logic, when all we know of him is his ability to identify if a PC is connected to LAN or not. Logic fucked in the earhole.

4. Sanju and Piggy Chops.

Sanju Baba’s sleepwalking routine continues even outside his Housefull and Dhamaal movies, and in a brief cameo (thank God for that!), he shows how really really bad (in the worst way possible) can a Khalnayak be. And skimpily clad, lady in red Priyanka Chopra does nothing to make it look good. The whole dream sequence was just another ‘najaayaz’ opportunity to show off SRK’s packs.

5. The curse of Level 3

Finally, the mother of all complaints. This is supposed to be an awesome game, with an awesome villain. And it has just 3 levels. And oh, if you don’t have the HART, no one dies. How stupid of the villain to not have figured that out? Seriously, would you buy a game for say £40.00, with just 3 levels?

Besides, what is Ra.One’s motive?  To get even with Lucifer who kicked his ass in the first two levels. What will he do when he’s done killing Lucifer? What would then be his purpose? A bald Arjun Rampal roaming around streets of London, like a hungry Hobo, shooting red Rasengans. A hero is only as good as his villain. And with the limited menacing factor of Ra.One, G.One is reduced to just a techno baby sitter. Not a really good role for a superhero capable of jumping through roofs and shooting those Kapow energy balls.

Of course there are a few more complaints that’s burning up my mind.

#. Like what is with Satish Shah’s compulsive obsession with power yoga’s connection with the pelvic thrust?

#. All Chinese are not Jackie Chan..but this one knows Kung Fu..fo sho!

#. A gaming convention in London, and the lady (Shahana Goswami) addresses the audience in Hindi. And all my European mates nod in agreement. Also, this so called tech-aware junta get totally bowled over by a Hologram projection.

#. What is with the sheer amount of booty popping, booby groping, and crotch kicking? So many bruised bollocks!

To conclude, to me, Ra.One was a mixture of these complaints, and a string of other stuff which I quite liked. And hence, it is a mixture of some goodness and some absolute crap. I will be discussing the 5 awesome things about Ra.One in part 2 of the review. For the time being, comment away in the comments section below.

And just for the record – the OKS rating for the movie: 2.5 Condom Condom out of 5

Inarguably, Science Fiction is not a very popular genre in the land of the Indian film industry. The Indian film industry, as a whole, produces more than 600 films a year and not even a handful can boast to be in some way linked to this genre. This is quite embarrassing given the fact that majority of the Hollywood blockbusters have their SFX work outsourced from the country’s brilliant creative workforce. Of course, one can raise such arguments such as reincarnation or ghosts to be some sort of science fiction. Well, if that was the case, then we should rest it right now and crown Twilight fans aka tweens to be the scifi nerds of this generation.

Moving on, science fiction is about taking that flight of imagination into the realms of the unexplored and the unexplained, but still somehow governed by the laws of physics, chemistry and biology (and all of its sub-categories). And in the words of the great Morpheus – some rules can be bent, others, broken. Hollywood has been able to explore into the extremes of science fiction and has produced brilliant cinematic interpretations of some of the brilliant works by Arthur C Clarke, Philip K Dick and Isaac Asimov. And looking at the summer blockbusters over the last couple of years, science fiction has been the genre of choice. Why hasn’t Bollywood been able to replicate the same sort of success from scifi? Things might be changed when Ra.One hits the theatres this Diwali. After all, a good story is a good story.

Let me put forward my argument of the Indian movie scifi genre with a few examples. Some of these are wickedly entertaining and brilliant pieces of cinema. Others proved to be pure abomination. In this list, I will be discussing 5 such movies which grace the awesome list of SciFi in Indian Cinema.

The Alien(1967)

We kick off this discussion with the 1960s cancelled project – The Alien, helmed under one of the greatest auteurs of cinema , Bharat Ratna – Satyajit Ray. This is one of those sad stories of how a creative mind was exploited by Hollywood honchos. Ray’s script was to see the light of the day with Columbia Pictures hiring Marlon Brando and Peter Sellers in the cast list. And then, shit happened. Ray’s Hollywood rep – Mike Wilson got Ray’s script copyrighted as a co-writer, even though he had to do nothing with the creation of the script.

The Alien’s screenplay portrayed the outer space creature in a positive light. Ray’s biographer drew Robinson, described the screenplay to have a scene where the alien sees a flower, and his eyes glow with a yellow light, and then it passes his hand over the plant, and the flowers start to bloom. The alien looks pleased. That was written in the year 1967. And in the year 1982, a certain filmmaker by the name of Steven Spielberg came out with a little known feature film called E.T., and claimed it was all original. Read more about it here.
India’s first attempt at sci-fi was met with a tragedy, ambitions taken down by greedy Hollywood studio men and then later profited by plagiarists who posed as visionaries.

Mr. India (1987)

And then, after two decades of reincarnations, shape shifting snakes, revenge dramas and lost and found stories, Shekhar Kapoor came up with his own version of “the Invisible Man meets jingoistic Manoj “Bharat” Kumar”. The result was a protagonist as a Mr.Goody Goody India, who has orphans to raise, a violin to play, a pot-bellied Bawarchi by the name of Calendar, and seduces Sridevi in a blue sari. An epic formula for an epic movie. But wait, there’s more. There’s the telephone in the chief editor’s office which always gets wrong numbers. There’s junior versions of Aftab Shivdasani and Ahmed Khan. There’s Daaga and Tejaa and Miss Hawa Hawaii. There’s Professor Dadamoni who has been hiding the invisibility wristwear all this while. And there’s Mogambo with his fucking epic lair which can put Dr.No to shame.

Just like the most loved SciFi movies of the 80s, Back To The Future, Mr.India very efficiently and very smartly picks up the naughty aspects of invisibility and keeps the audience at the edge of their seat. From winning money at a casino (aided by Sridevi in a Chaplin avatar – see pic above), or beating up villains as Bajrang Bali, Mr.India had all the goodness, jam-packed to the brim. And it even answers how would a leather chair look like if an invisible man was to sit on it. Ask Annu Kapoor! Even the slight mention of Mr.India makes me want to rewatch it all over again. And that’s what we call fucking epic.

Koi Mil Gaya (2003)

Like it or not, Rakesh Roshan did make India’s version of E.T. meets Close Encounters meets Forrest Gump, and that sort of amalgamation is only bound to be good, by virtue of its constituents. It spawned future superhero elements, which we’ll not cover under the scifi umbrella [The same reason we do not consider vampires to be science fiction]. Of course there are the annoying bits here – in your face Bournvita promotion, female lead being treated as a competition prize, and some really annoying teacher whose best Tech question is – How do you Copy and Paste files in Windows? Seriously, even my mum can do that.

But above all these pitfalls, there’s the blue and rubbery Jadoo, who wants to phone home. He is solar powered, and can transform the limping loser to the dancing hero. If only for that, and for Rekha, Koi Mil Gaya is a worthy mention on the SciFi list of Bollywood.

Patalghar (2003)

The very same year as Koi Mil Gaya, a Bengali movie, much humbler in terms of scale, but thumping with a heart as big as Godzilla’s, Patalghar - directed by debutante director Abhijit Choudhury, made splashes and waves across the Indian film festivals. Sadly, beyond the local Bengali cinema circuit, this did not meet the commercial reception it deserved. But nevertheless, it was filled with colourful characters such as Aghar Sen (Soumitra Chatterjee), Bhootnath Nandy (Joy Sengupta), Vik (Biplab Chatterjee), Begum (Mita Vashist) and a very cracking role by child actor Sourav Bandopadhyay as Kartik. Based on the story by Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay, Patalghar‘s charm is in the innocent, simplistic yet charming imaginations such as an alien planet called Nyapcha, a powerful annihilating machine , and of course Aghor Sen’s book of riddles. It almost gives a sort of Satyajit Ray deja vu. For cinephiles who love scifi for the sheer concept, and the execution of simple ideas, this is a must watch. It excels in the technique as well as the story-telling.

Endhiran (2010)

Finally, Shankar’s Endhiran is the most obvious entry on this list. By virtue of its magnitude and scale, Endhiran knocks down even its Hollywood counterparts. There’s quotes flying from Isaac Asimov’s The Three Laws of Robotics. There are three Rajnis..wait, there’s actually way too many for you to count. There’s facemelting action sequences which can make Michael Bay look like a amateur. There are some annoying plastic bits in the form of the screaming Mrs. Rai Bachchan, and the slap-worthy mother who is furious to see her naked daughter being rescued from a fire [ The biggest WTF moment of recent years].

But Endhiran rises above all of that. Its action sequences have been embedded in tech and scifi blogs around the world, and even people who have no idea of a South Indian film industry, now swear by its magnificence. The idea of AI reaching such a stage to develop human emotions such as anger, envy and love is a direct nod to Asimov’s Bicentennial Man. That and Danny Denzongpa’s evil chipped Rajni clone bots, complete this list.

As for the abominations in this genre, we have quite a few examples of how it should not be done. In recent memory, Love Story 2050 (2008) and Action Replayy (2010) come to my mind. As I look forward to the big budget blockbuster Ra.One , all set to invade our movie screens, I hope it does rule and smash all box office records. So that the future of Indian cinema can see more and more scifi elements and whacky ideas find onscreen life.

As always, this list is incomplete. So please leave your thoughts and suggestions in the comments below. Cheerio!

I am going through a mental state right now. And hence, my ideas, my thought process and my interpretation of daily life is bizarre (even for me). It’s probably an after-effect of sleeping 5 hours a day, and watching too much sci-fi. For the uninitiated, I am a self-proclaimed geek ( I have a separate blog catering to that side of me – 9e3k ). Anywho, that bit of background information was necessary, because whilst recapping to 2000′s JP Dutta feature – Refugee, I have made some liberal changes in the name of creativity and the sole purpose of achieving ‘Nirmal Anand’.

Original synopsis: Refugee tells the story of two lovers from either side of the border. Abhishek portrays the lead role of Refugee, an illegal transporter facilitating families to cross the border. And then he falls in love with one of the passengers – Naaz (Kareena Kapoor ). And then they sing, they dance, they face conflicts from the border authorities, and eventually overcome all odds. And oh, she conceives a baby and has the delivery at the Line of Control. And if I can remember correctly, Suniel Shetty ( who plays this Pakistani army dude) names that holy place of delivery – Insaniyatstan. Epic Etymology.

Now with no disrespect to JP Dutta or to the entire team of Refugee, hasn’t that story of love been done a zillion time before? Ok, not a zillion times agreed ( there aren’t as many movies made yet LOL). How about we give Refugee, the much needed booster kick and convert it into an Epic Sci-Fi saga. In four scenes flat.

Scene 1: Lost in the desert between this universe and the other, is our female lead – Bebo.

Yes, she is cursed by a Timelord. Not Samay ( or Harish Bhimani),  but by a proper Timelord, who sucks out energy from her life-source. That is, the remaining time she has to live, is all converted into KiloJoules of energy, and she is stuck in this time-frame of 4 seconds. Poor girl.

Scene 2 commences after the jump.

Scene 2: Our Munda – Male Lead is a space traveller and also a mutant. He received his internship under Magneto himself, and with Mannaniya Adhyaksh Mahoday Magneto’s Aashirwaad, can bend not only metals and matter, but also time and space. A brief demo.

Yes, the ability to bend not only metals, but also  matter, time and space have been added for convenience of the plot. Creative Freedom you see.

Scene 3:  BEBO won’t trust Junior Bachchan. It takes two songs to convince her that indeed, Sadda Abhishek can break the curse. Bebo’s doubt is that if Abhishek is that powerful, then why is he not wearing an underwear outside and instead wearing a Pathani suit. Silly woman. No budget for costumes due to SFX budget. Anywho, after extra efforts of man convincing woman, an exercise is triggered, where North and South poles of the magnets situated in Abhishek and Bebo’s palms respectively, are joined and separated. This process is repeated 42 times *wink wink* !

Scene 4: Once the curse is broken, the only thing left is for the couple to kiss and make out and live happily ever after. But since this is a SciFi love saga, almost on the lines of Star Wars (but less politics and much lesser plastic soldiers), and also since we are intrinsically Desi peepuul, we enjoy our Bhangra at any occasion. So, here you go people. Let’s do the…..

JEDI BHANGRA

FIN.

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Share the love and awesomeness of this post using the buttons below. May the Force be with you. And someone please tweet this to Mr JuniorBachchan as well.

Ladies and gentlemen, introducing – first on twitter – Chulbul Pandey !!!!

Since Chulbul is a man of more words that can never fit in 140 characters, he decided to invade Phacebook! And so he did! But before he could write anything even on his wall, his Dukhiyari Amma invaded his wall.

But Chulbul wasn’t going to listen to her. In true Herogiri style, he kicks his brother, to the music of Sajid Wajid.

Time for proper intro. 21 years later…

And oh, Chulbul Pandey cannot rejisht the Jalwa… What Jalwa yu ask. See it below.

Time for the other characters to make a Facebook entry as well. Oh, I meant, Phacebook!

But Cheddi Singh will not take it so easily. As in, Chulbul invading his property and all that Hero vs Villain shit. He still believes he’s the Hero — Go figure! So, Ladies, and Gent’s here it is, the time for mammoth face-off.

And then, Chulbul said:  Screw this, time for Paap se dharti phatii phatii..

Muscles se meri shirt Phatiii Phatii..Phatii…!!!

Is that the happy ending of the story? Not done yet!!!

Here’s what Chulbul is busy with..

Thanks to Praxy ( who tweets as @Pr4k4shR4j90p41) for educating me with the wonders of Firefox to edit Facebook, and just about any website in real time, without any compiling or saving of code.

P.S. No real actors were harmed, cursed or hurt in the making of this post. Please feel free to share this post on twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, StumbleUpon etc. And again, if you do share these images, please do credit my blog as the source. Dhanyawaad!!!

Now, Wake Up Sid and me have had a complicated relationship so far. Even though I did not like it at my first viewing, this movie has kinda grown on me, just because it sets out to achieve what it is – a non-preachy, no-story, lukewarm eye-pleaser. Lemme tell you why on the first viewing it did not appeal to me at all – because of its unreal depiction of a single unemployed lady suddenly living in a ‘lavish’ [ by Mumbai standards ] apartment and doing all sorta renovation work on it even before she has to see her first paycheck. And then it all goes gaga about Sid waking up – but what was he waking up to? Becoming more responsible and waking up to Duniyadari? Seriously? That is shown by a montage of Sid organising Aisha’s room, and then going for an intern photographer job for a Mumbai magazine – which would pay how much – 15k at best? We are talking about the son of a CEO of Flower Shower – a company which supplies showers and bathroom fittings to Birla as well as a Bhajiya-wala. Anywho!!! enough of complaining.

On my recent holiday trip home, I caught up on Wake Up Sid for the second time [ courtesy Air India's in-flight entertainment ] and I couldn’t stop noticing the huge range of awesome tee-s that Sid [ Ranbir Kapoor ] flaunts throughout the length of the movie. Now, I am no fashion guru like some of you awesome people are. But I can definitely point out what’s cool and what’s not. And Sid’s range of T-Shirts are definitely on the cool list. Here’s one for instance.

Flashin' Sid

Costume Designers Manish Malhotra and Priyanjali Lahiri have certainly struck the right cord.
Check the whole bunch after the jump. And yeah, look at what the designers decide Ranbir to wear when he “WAKES UP”. Beware: LOTSA Screenshots in this post.

Spongebob Duvet

Mickey Moused!

Yeah! The Joker

Cool..Cool!! Beavis and Butthead

Star Wars..woohoo

Atom Ant

Robin

Enterprise

Superman

Being the Hulk

Snoopy

Batman

Ghostbuster..hang on...Sid, where are your eyes mate?

Tom and Jerry

Here’s the best one.The best T-Shirt ever..behold people…

Trekki Trekker...whatever!!

In the words of the great Freddie Mercury, I want it all. Now have a look at what they did to him to show what happens to Sid’s fashion sense when he “wakes” up.
Sid decides to wear a shirt now…

Shhhhh..hirt

And even wear a ladies kurti…

Okay, enough of fashion talk. Lemme just conclude with a few more screenshots capturing the moments that I really liked in this movie.

Justice on my PC..how cool is that!

Best mates.. a laugh about a break up

The wet climax..not because it was romantic..coz Mumbai loves a good shower

Awww...young Supriya jee...

And last of all….

Mamma and Beta... how cute together

Phew! That took me watching the DVD three times to get my desired screenshots. I wish I showed this much dedication in everything else. . Now go on, jump to the comments.

Now this is a first. The power of social networking and the Web 2.0 is taking Bollywood by storm- with celebrities tweeting and movie publicities and marketing campaigns running through Facebook pages. But the new Studio 18 movie – Striker takes it to a whole another level.

The movie premieres on Feb 5th in India in theatres. But, the worldwide release will be on YouTube. As far as my knowledge goes, this is a first for a major Bollywood production, and apart from Sundance indies, we haven’t seen anything like this before even from Hollywood. Except for the US [where viewing the movie will cost 5$], viewing this movie on YouTube will be free [MUFT MUFT MUFT]

The movie will be screened here [ Studio 18's YouTube channel ]. There is a lot more on the channel – from exclusive footage of making of the movie, to Siddharth – the lead actor giving us reasons to watch the movie. There’s more to it – they have an iPhone app – a Striker version of the carrom game Now that’s another first.

So, what’s this #strikerwatchalong?

All across the world, awesome Bolly lovahs are coming together to watch this movie simultaneously, on Feb 7th, 6pm GMT and will also be group-chatting about the same on Google wave. Exciting stuff indeed.

The idea of the group chat wave for #StrikerWatchAlong was initiated by Beth and thanks to her, there are already 24 people who have joined the Wave, and still counting. It’s so awesome to see people from Abhu Dhabi to Australia to Dubai to London to Chicago to Germany.. you get it.

And if you feel like joining, just add your Google wave ID in the comments section below.

See you on the 7th awesome peeps.

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Some stuff about #StrikerWatchAlong on Beth’s blog.

Striker watchalong.

Update on Striker watchalong

I have been enjoying these flurry of Storm Troopers Memes that I get in my inbox – thanks to my awesome Geek mates. And before I get on with my Back 2 Back routine of watching all the six Star Wars movies today, I thought I’ll have a go of creating my own Star Wars Storm Troopers Meme.

Of course the way to start this is with our house favorite: Kuch Kuch Hota Hai… or should we say?

Or????… ‘Inspired’ by Family Guy’s “Something Something Something Dark Side”…

And for the Meme that you’ve been waiting for, here it is:

Hindi Gyaan: Kuch Kuch Hota Hai in Hindi means – Something Something is Happening [ a metaphor for Love]