Raanjhanaa

Raanjhanaa is a movie that revolves around the life of a self-centred Zoya, played by Sonam Kapoor. The movie is not about a demented stalker, not about slitting wrists for love, not about politics and not about inter-caste weddings.

Dhanush's first Hindi movie has been doing well and doesn't require my approval. In a lot of places, he does remind us of his previous movies. There is a bit of 3, Kadhal Kondaen and perhaps a few more. Dialog delivery suffers but his acting and emotions make up for the flaws. When the producers released the trailer, they obviously showed the highlights of his hindi speaking skills and the tamil audience were slightly spellbound. That feeling slips away when we get into the mood of the movie.

Zoya is the centerpiece of this movie. Its her intentions (I am unsure if I can use the word selfish to describe her intentions), that drives the so-called protagonist Kundan to do whatever he does in the film. Love is just another emotion in the movie. In fact, Zoya's silence and vengeance are the deeper aspects of the movie that tend to stand out during the second half. 

So men, here are the rules simply put. Even in small towns, your silly pranks and smiles will not work. Get ahead and get smart. Women need more than blood. They want you to be educated and ambitious. What Kundan does in the second half of the movie is unbelievable and absolute nonsense. Its a directorial flaw. And Zoya does get a bit emotional towards the end for Kundan but it was too late.

Nevertheless, the colors in the movie are brilliant. Music heightens your spirits to a completely new level. Raanjhana is best understood when you see it from the eyes of Zoya.

USHA BUO 2013 - Predictions

With the seedings out, its now time to have a quick look at the pools and the games that follow. Here it is

Pool A	Pool B	Pool C
Learning to Fly	Stall 7	Spinergy
Blitzkrieg	Chakraa	DoD
Storm Chasers	Airborne Chicken Pox	Cat Dogs
Shurikens	Falcons	Fly Wild
Dishqiya	Dhokla Biryani	Fringe Flickers
Blue Rays	Discreed	Flying Spirits
Spin Doctors	Discotech	Airborne Small Pox
Airbenders	Air Traffic Control	Spin Offs

With 8 teams in every pool, it is going to be a lot of games per team before they get divided into Gold, Silver and Fun (that's how the organizers decided to call the last pool). The first two days of pool games is not going to be easy at all and I am sure we will be in for a few surprises.

If things go by the way my brain is thinking right now, here is what we can expect from every pool.

Pool A will be topped by Learning to Fly (nothing different. Same team, maybe a few new additions. They should sail through, especially considering its grass and they have been quite consistent on grass). It will be a good fight for Storm Chasers with Shurikens in the same pool (if the people I used to know  in Shurikens are still around I mean). If they get their act together, then team Blitz has a chance too. Dishqiya is a good contender as well considering that they have worked together as team for sometime now.

Pool B will be topped by Stall 7 (but for a few X-Men characters missing from their roster, the college team has come a long way and should sustain their run), followed by a good fight for the next few places between the following teams: Airborne Chicken Pox (guessing this is their A team as there is a small pox somewhere down the line. Airborne performed well at Kodai when I was there and at the Heat last year. They should do well this time around too);  Falcons (the young boys of Bangalore give most of the teams a hard time) and Chakraa (a team that I know closely and has been doing reasonably well)

Pool C will be topped by Fly Wild (runner up at Chennai Heat. These guys should be on fire this time around), followed by Spinergy and DoD. Cat Dogs are going to have a tough time in this pool with 3 other strong teams.

The Gold Pool would probably look like this, in no particular order or ranking

Learning to Fly

Stall 7

Fly Wild

Spinergy

Storm Chasers (the design of Pool A makes it easy for them)

There will be a sort of scramble for the next 3 places. An educated guess would be DoD, Airborne Chicken Pox and Chakraa, but we cannot leave out the Falcons who have the capability to create an upset. Watch out for the games these teams play as they could go either ways. Interesting that out of the five teams mentioned above, three are in one pool. Which sort of gives DoD an easy entry to the Gold Pool unless the Cat Dogs throw a surprise party. I decided to leave Blitz out of this equation because their performance hasn't been consistent beyond Chennai Heat.

As there is not much information about the Gold Pool match-ups, in the end its mostly going to be a final between Stall 7 and Learning to Fly and I am expecting the host team to continue their winning streak.

PS: These are completely my thoughts from the information I have. I will be only happy if more rabbits are pulled out of the hats.

USHA BUO 2013 - Seedings Analysis

The seeding of teams and pools for USHA BUO 2013 was just released today. The organizers Arjun Lall, Satish Raj and Abhishek Srinivas have done a good job in getting out the information for the tournament. We'll come to that soon.

A quick look at the seedings (Don't mind the font. Silly excel troubles)

1	Learning To Fly	9	Cat Dogs	17	Discreed
2	Stall7	10	Fly Wild	18	Blue Rays
3	Spinergy	11	Falcons	19	Spin Doctors
4	DoD	12	Shurikens	20	Discotech
5	Chakraa	13	Dishqiya	21	Airborne Small Pox
6	Blitzkrieg	14	Dhokla Biryani	22	Spin Offs
7	Storm Chasers	15	Fringe Flickers	23	Air Traffic Control
8	Airborne Chicken Pox	16	Flying Spirits	24	Airbenders

So we have the usual suspects on the top (see the first column 1 to 8)

DoD seems to have moved up. They have been doing quite well as a team and we expect them to do well this time too.

Blitzkrieg at 6 was something not expected, considering that they have not been a consistent performer (atleast from what I know).

Storm Chasers Mumbai at 7 - also a good team but not quite sure if they can be up there.

Airborne at 8 - definitely a hardworking team and I think they entered the Gold pool last time in Chennai Heat if I am not wrong.

CatDog from Delhi (guessing its the original Stray Dogs), Flywild, Falcons and Shurikens have all been pushed to the next 8. Quite a shock.

All three teams (above) are definitely at a seeding that is contestable. I am not getting to the point of asking why they are where they are. TD's have the ultimate call. We still don't have a strict process of maintaining rankings in India Ultimate. And not all teams have participated in all tournaments. They end up doing a mix and match as and when required.

For now, seeding seems to be okay. Watch out for the next post about pools and predictions.

Singam 2

The original Singam was a treat to watch. An emotional yet strong police officer story with all the commercial ingredients to make it a perfect Tamil entertainer. Singam 2 is not quite there. Too many characters, bad music and not so great villains make this movie longer and boring.

Singam 2 shows a quick recap of Singam before leading into its theme, just to let you know that they are following the original track that was laid (which also means that we have to provide screen space for all the characters from the old film - what a pity). Tamil cinema still hasn't reached a stage where they can do something like a James Bond franchise with unrelated movies and yet do fantastic at the box office. I am sure we have the capability but many directors still are hung up on song and dance.

So what's new! An item number with Angadi Theru Anjali, local and international baddies, Hansika, and Santhanam.

Singam 2 is all about Suriya. If at any point you removed all the surrounding characters (esp family, love, and comedy), the movie would still make sense. And if the director had made any attempt to remove a few of those characters, the movie would have been slightly better too.

Hansika as an infatuated school-girl adds just color to the Tuticorin backdrop. Santhanam's sequences are not very enjoyable but his mockery of scenes and dialogues from the first movie are definitely a treat. Three villains and one of them calling himself the King of the Indian Ocean (absolutely ridiculous), I definitely think that Prakash Raj did a much better job in the first movie. Rahman does a good job in playing his part as one of the bad guys.

The movie takes us to all sorts of places. Starting from Tuticorin to Chennai, Kerala and then South Africa as well. Scenes are quick and short but predictable and weak.

Don't even get me started about the music. In this one, DSP fails to make your feet tap. After the first song, you are convinced that the first movie's soundtrack was worth every minute of your ear.

I find it very difficult to continue this review because of the confusion the screenplay creates by having so many scenes. In the end, all I can remember is Suriya finding a way to ensure that every bad guy is out of business. Beyond that everything about Singam 2 is waste of time. Having said that, a theme to just oust baddies is quite horrible because that's been the premise of Tamil Cinema for generations. So director Hari doesn't churn out anything interesting.

Going at this rate, actors like Suriya, Vijay and Vikram will become a forgotten trio if they don't invest their time and talent in working on meaningful scripts.