The White Tiger: Book Review

“The White Tiger” by Aravind Adiga is narrated by Balram Halwai, the protagonist of the book. He is a successful entrepreneur. He is a self-made man who rose on the back of India’s economic prowess. In a poverty ridden India, he represents future.

Balram narrates the book as a letter to the visiting Chinese premier, which develops over seven days and nights in the city of Bangalore. The story is rather much complicated than it looks at the initial pages.

Balram hails from Bihar, before moving to Bangalore, he was driving for the son of an old-fashioned landlord. One day, he steals a bag containing a huge sum of money from where he worked and left for Bangalore to start his taxi business with the money he stole.

As the story unfolds, it turns out that Balram is not only an entrepreneur but also a criminal with ability for self-justification. As in Balram’s words, he described the life of his family was in “the Darkness”; A life of feudal hardship, where there were brutal landlords hold power, children are put into servitude rather than going to school and elections are a mere buying and selling business.

This Book is far, far away from glamour, where the protagonists aspire to get into Bollywood or becomes the youngest web entrepreneur. No, this book is intense and puts light on the darker, dominating side of India. 

This book is utterly unrealistic to the lives of the rich urban Indians. In plain impassive style, he scrubbed the shine of a self-congratulatory India and showcases a country where the compression by the society has reached a breaking point. 

The White Tiger identifies with the middle-class India. Although, this book talks repeatedly about revolution and removing “the Darkness” which somewhat made it a little monotonous.

The Characters are quite believable; the insensitive upper class landlord and his wife, who are typically cruel to their employees and the ambitious Balram, often smitten by the charm of money and luxury. The parts were he was sent to buy alcohol for his employer; he is dazzled to see all those English liquor or by the smell of perfumes in the air, while he visit a shopping mall.

I find the cruelty by the rich people and the depiction of the nation in this book, a personal vision of the Author, about India rather than just a fiction tale. This book does reveal the darker side of India, but at the same time totally ignores the modern India, which is definitely on the right side of progress. Aravind Adiga won the 40th Man Booker Prize for his debut novel The White Tigerin 2008. 

Recommended.

-Amrit R

Special 26: Reviews

With great actors like Jimmy Shergill, Manoj Bajpai and Anupam Kher and not Akshay Kumar. I was very sure that Special Chhabis will at least be a good watch. But this film proved be to far better than just good, this film is definitely special. It is not as great as Paan Singh Tomar or Gangs of Wasseypur, but definitely better than many 100 crore club film.

Special Chhabis will not let you leave your seat at any moment. It definitely has the masala of a bollywood film but notably only the masala we like. And it has one of the best climax till date.

This film is based on real life incident about a heist happened in 1987, where a group of conmen raided a jewellery store by posing as CBI officers. The characters are a little bit larger-than-life, which I will consider as a flaw in "Special Chhabis".

I won't talk about the plot much, you gotta see this one yourself. 

Acting is good by the whole cast, and surprisingly Akshay Kumar was somehow one of the best actor in special chhabbis. He may get  a best actor nomination next year. The Scenes were Manoj Bajpai and Akshay Kumar both clashes are actually the best ones according to me.

The Actions are not typical ones but tricky ones, that you will like for sure. Kajal Agarwal, is just useless in the whole film.

Manoj Bajpai, once again stolen the show as Waseem Khan. With every new film, he is establishing as the greatest actor in Indian Cinema.

Neeraj Pandey have raised the bar with his last film "A Wednesday" and special chhabis is definitely lived up to his creator's name.

My Ratings: 7.5/10

-Amrit Rukhaiyaar

Race 2: Reviews

Abbas Mastan is not the duo we look forward to, especially after the disastrous “Players”. But Considering the success of “Race”, you can fall for the trap called “Race 2”.

The film begins with great action scenes, and just when you will anticipate what this movie is all about, you will be punched in the face with a twist, and then more twists, some of the twists were actually great. That is why I am not totally thrashing this film in my review. This film has surely managed to be called a thriller. But the disaster is the result of too much unwanted style and typical use of Bollywood punches.

You may attract to the huge star cast, but beware; I am going to reveal their performances now, Saif is the best though, John is trying hard to be a bad guy, he fails miserably according to me, the ladies, too cute, and acting too dumb, no one can digest them as killers. Anil Kapoor was most irritating of the lot; all his witty jokes were not witty at all, and Amisha Patel, God knows, what is she doing in this film?

Although, there is nothing much wrong with the direction and screenplay, but the plot of the film is directionless, I must remark. Good music is forcefully wasted into a bad film. Had they made a good story, we hardly needed any song.

Race-2 is not a movie you should waste money going to expensive multiplexes, if you are so desperate to watch it, go to a single screen. It is not better than both “Matru ki bijlee ka Mandola” and “Table No. 21” among other 2013 releases.

If you watch movie with noticing details of it rather carefully, you will not like “Race-2” at all. But may be some scenes are likeable, I am not sure with that either. Race-2 is the film, which everyone will talk different of, I wonder how many of them will praise it. You can go for it, if you are looking for a good day out with friends.

My Ratings: 2/5

-Amritt R

Kick Ass: Hit girl steals the show.

Listening to the original soundtrack of “for a few dollars more” and it is giving me immense passion to write, wow every chord every string used in this particular track gives a jolt of ecstasy in my blood streams. By the way, this track has been re-used in Nicolas Cage starring Kick-Ass and is used as theme music for the Hit Girl. Oh god, this track and this character hit girl have become my latest love, I could watch her fight all day while listening to this track in the background, I think I am running out of words here to explain how beautiful this track is and how beautifully it has been put to use for the Hit Girl in Kick Ass.

Here is the video to the tremendous scene with the tremendous sound track:

So what do you think, isn’t she enigmatic? At first this little girl reminded me of Alice, the “Resident Evil” Alice. But then I realized, she is way too quick and flexible than Alice was and of course she is stunningly beautiful, she is also one of the lead characters in Martin Scorcese’s Hugo. Some Actors lands in Hollywood to play the lead character only, she reminds me of Superstars Natalie Portman and Leonardo Dicaprio, remember them as kids, in films like “Leon the professional” and “What’s eating Gilbert Grape” and “This boy’s life” respectively.

She is truly going be Hollywood’s next sweetheart in the years to come; she is definitely someone to look out for. She will hit it very soon.

-Amritt Rukhaiyaar

The Vampire Diaries: Reviews

Don't get mislead by comparing it with the Stephenie meyer's Twilight Saga, Twilight was a complete mess of characters drenched up with overacting and confusing links, whereas VD is a  perfect mixture of romance, thriller and drama added accordingly with some flamboyant characters and historical measures.

Elena, a 17 year old chick, with no parents alive is as sensible as his brother is not, she gets attracted by the charm of the vampire Stefan Salvatore who is actually some 160 years old, their romance was just starting to groom when enters the hottest character of the show "Damon" and the show becomes a sudden hit with great acting by humans, vampires, werewolves and witches. Vampire Diaries has got gizmos as well, and that too really fascinating ones, that you will actually start to believe that there were vampires for real. 

Every character is as important as the other. Every person I meet has their own protagonist according to them. You will develop more love for this show once the hybrids comes up.

This one is a must watch for every Drama Addict.

My rating: 8 out of 10

-Amritt Rukhaiyaar

Agent Vinod: Movie review

Okay, the first thing you will think of this movie is… “Have I seen this film before? Yes, my friend, you have, but not once or twice, you must have seen a dozen films like this before, Saif Ali Khan in and as Agent Vinod is a RAW agent trying to act like some of the later James Bonds. The shoot of the film is done in multiple locations; some of them were Afghanistan, Russia, Morocco, Somalia and India. Like any other Indian film, the female lead, Kareena Kapoor, playing the role of Iram Parveen Bilal is on the same sides with the protagonist himself. 

 Some of you may hit the ‘like’ button for Agent Vinod if you like reading books by Sidney Sheldon but don’t expect any brilliant twist in the movie as Sidney Sheldon delivers in his book. Director Sriram Raghavan tries to give an unexpected ending to the film, but it was too late for any new surprises. Everything in this flick was just too predictable. Even the songs were below average, you can’t praise it for that. On the other hand, the background score in this movie was really interesting; they played random music at any given scene, which was only the thing that clicked right for Agent Vinod. Also this film could have been more stylish, like Don-2 was. Summarizing everything, I would give it a 4 out of 10. Don’t waste your money on this one, instead wait for a DVD copy on the torrent.

 

IMDB Rating:  5.2/10
My rating:           4/10

-Amritt Rukhaiyaar

Real Steel: Plot and Summary

This Hugh Jackman flick is already 3 months old and I believe, you already have screened it somewhere, but if you haven't, I will strongly recommend this movie to my readers. To be honest, I haven't seen Hugh Jackman, in any character other than the wolverine, so it was him, which made me sit and watch this movie, and as the movie kept going further, I started loving it big time. This movie has got style, your love for Ring-fight cinemas will develop like anything, you may consider it a sci-fi but somewhere deep inside, you will know that actually its very touching. Starring Hugh Jackman and Dakota Goyo, real steel is about three most important characters, Charlie, Max and Atom. In a time, when Ro(bot) Boxing is quite an entertainer, Charlie is a cool under performer in such a sport, and is father to Max. Max believes that Atom, being an old generation Robot, is capable of beating stronger Robots than what it is provided to play against. Its a Coming-of-age story of Charlie (Hugh Jackman) and Atom (the G2 Robot). Charlie once used to be a big name in Boxing is now living life with what so ever he could earn through his Robots. Max one day found Atom in a junkyard of Robot Parts, and brought it home and found that actually this "Atom" is more smarter than most of  the latest version Robots, I would consider this flick as a Coming of Age Sci-fi movie for Kids, Youth and Family Audience. Do watch for some emotional adventure executed brilliantly. Don't miss the initial credits, you will find a name called "Steven Spielberg" and you will be watching with more enthusiasm then. You must watch this one if you are the kind who likes to go for intelligently graphed emotions.