November 30, 2007 at 11:25 am · Filed under bollywood
I was looking at this rediff report and, if you are the guy who wrote it, you need therapy. Seriously.
First things first, what’s this whole ‘battle’ about? Aamir Khan didn’t enjoy Black, and Mumbai Mirror tells us all about it:
I didn’t like the film. I found it very insensitive, it sends out very wrong signals. It was extremely manipulative. I could see the effort in the manipulation, and the art of the director is in not letting you see the manipulation. Most importantly, it was about a child who had these problems, an alcoholic person comes and says you have to leave her alone with me for forty days, and he slaps her around. I don’t know of any parent who’d agree to that.
Agreed, he has a point. But, Aamir, to be honest, an alcoholic teaching a blind child is a lot more convincing than a terrorist making out with a blind woman in Delhi. You have your take on things, and I have mine. My point is, opinions are like the human rear: everyone has atleast one on offer for the taker.
And that’s where it ought to end. A sane man, or a woman too (just in case this blogger gets bludgeoned for suggesting that women aren’t sane) would simply put the matter to rest and move on with life. No big deal, honestly. The guy who works his butt off all week, sweats bullets at the workplace, earns his daily bread and saves it up for Friday night doesn’t really bother with this ‘battle’.
But, pray tell me, why is rediff doing what I hoped they wouldn’t? Their piece uses terms like ‘battle’ and ‘adversary’, making it sound like they’re at each other’s throats. Hello? A didn’t like B’s flick, and B thinks A’s being dumb. Period.
I thought the writer was trying to be funny. Until I read this bit and did a double-take:
With such industry stalwarts fighting this bitterly, we must ask: whose side do you take? Tell us.
Oh, hell yeah, I mean - we must! How can we possibly go on with our lives without taking sides? Guys, give me a break. This is in all certainty TWI material.
So, a word of advice to my dear folks out there on rediff: think of better ways to increase your ad impressions. This is, with all due respect, lame. Not a lot of respect due there, eh? Tell you what, really, it doesn’t matter. Come December 21, and nearly all the guys who swore by Bachchan will queue up at the box-office for TZP.
- - -
On a lighter note, Mister Bachchan, would you please stop running into issues with the Khans? First SRK, now Aamir, what next, Salman? And then? Why leave the mini-Khans (read: the Fardeens, the Zayeds) or the micro-Khans (read: Jiah - a ‘micro’ if there ever was one)?
November 27, 2007 at 7:22 pm · Filed under fiction
I walked out of the multiplex into the INOX parking lot, and looking around, I counted three cars. It was well past 2.00 am and, personally, I really enjoyed Johnny Gaddar. Well, to be honest, I enjoyed the whole cinema experience that night, considering it was a true test of my will power - I was dating this drop-dead gorgeous chick I bumped into while at Calangute and the animal in me lost out to the movie-buff that I was. No mushu. Unlike many couples in the theater, we ended up watching the movie.
Besides, I had just gotten off the phone with who I think is my ex. I’m not sure if she counts as an ex anymore. We haven’t broken up although we never really went out either. But try as you may, I can’t be friends with a girl I’m in love with. No freaking way. Ask me to blow the JD(S) supremo instead. The problem was me. Mea culpa, as always. Luckily or unluckily, I had this other one-night-buddy for company tonight, and her idea of a date was a movie in INOX Panjim. Sigh. Whatever made her happy.
But she didn’t like the flick. She probably didn’t get it. I’ve always maintained that most single women are blessed with either beauty or brains. If they had both, they wouldn’t be single, you see? Which brings me to another of my increasingly growing number of fetishes.
Older women. Sometimes, married women too.
I’m just being honest - I somehow can’t get my mind around single women for too long. And while I’m no Daniel Craig unless he gives up gymming for a year and lives off Pizza Hut, allow me to quote a scene from Casino Royale:
Vesper Lynd: am I going to have a problem with you, Bond?
James Bond: No, don’t worry. You’re not my type.
Vesper Lynd: Smart?
James Bond: (shaking his head) Single.
I got into the black Santro I had rented, while the other two cars were still in the parking lot. One of them was standing still. The other, most certainly, wasn’t. Apparently, Johnny wasn’t long enough (the movie, I mean) for that bit of the Animal Kingdom to benchmark their reproductory capabilities. I was humming the title melody oh-so-softly. Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy aren’t just musicians - they’re the pied pipers of Indian music - and yours truly is just another music-maniac rodent succumbing to their beckoning. I invited her inside, and, with the belts safely strapped and the car in motion, I asked her what she wanted to do. Very, er, gentlemanlike, if you may. Which was very unlike me.
It is only apt that, at this stage, I must remind you that this was a civilized catch. Very unlike ‘my’ type, which includes the unsophisticated ones who wouldn’t mind spending the night out at the airport having a six-buck mallu chai. Six bucks I have, a six-pack I don’t - and as beggars can’t be choosers - I simply make do with whatever comes my way. This one, however, was different. She was fussy, she had long fingers which only accentuated the importance of nail-polish to womenfolk, she never left the vehicle without spending a lifetime adjusting her face (although that is some face, I tell you), and she was totally brand-conscious. Well, so am I, but atleast you’d find desi Provogue all over me, and all inside me (or, inside my wardrobe, to be precise). This one was a Levi’s freak, and maybe a Benetton loyalist as well, and everything she wore was as firang as it gets.
Personally, I didn’t care. The lesser the better, if you ask me. As I sped south with a midnight Miramar breeze caressing my cheeks, I nurtured this part-sexual part-occidental desire to lose the clothes that guarded her lovely frame. I thought about what might happen tonight. I wasn’t sure. She was a bomb, but she was as boring as she was beautiful. It was awkward. The kind of girl you don’t want, but can’t takes your eyes off.
That she would spend the night with me was a taken. That she would sleep with me, wasn’t. I needed to figure it out somehow. Like every other guy, I’m blessed between my legs with an itch too. Besides, sex is as addictive - if not more - as smoking or boozing. Add that to the fact that she was sitting adjacent, in the navigator’s seat, although she wasn’t much of a navigator herself. Honestly, her sense of direction was as accurate as Jack Sparrow’s compass. She had gotten rid of the footwear, and a good thing too. Those were lovely feet. A bit of a tan from her stay at Baga, I guessed. The pair of denims that enveloped her legs was probably a bootcut, hugging her hips firmly. She wore a white strappy top, the neck as deep as the Atlantic’s bed, and if the idea behind the shirt was to conceal anything, it failed miserably. The lips were still wet with gloss - cherry, to be precise, as I luckily found out later - although they were slightly marred with a tinge of darkness.
‘She does nicotine’, I heard myself saying, trying hard not to recall that scene from Desperado. I don’t particularly like the idea of getting a smoke smooch from a Zamira. I looked at her again. She wouldn’t, would she?
I was clocking 110kph now, and the Santro started to wobble on the road, like jelly on cheesecake. I didn’t bother braking, instead, I continued accelerating until she - the car - started screaming for mercy. Babe adjacent was uninterested.
This was the moment, though. If she refused me now, I might’ve gotten us killed. I don’t know if she knew it or not. But, honestly, that was a lame way of landing a girl for the night, don’t you think? It was all too complicated, and being the simple guy that I am, I brought the vehicle to a halt and asked her the easy way. My style.
‘I need to tell you something.’
‘Yeah?’
‘You’re beautiful.’
A smile. Was it out of pity? Honour? Self-praise? Whatever. She just smiled, wihout saying anything. I had to do the talking, for sure, otherwise the only sex I’d get that night was from a stray mongrel on the sidewalk. And I don’t do dogs, hadn’t reached that state of desperation yet.
‘Honestly, you look seriously hot today. I can’t get my eyes off you.’
Another smile. I started to wonder if she was losing her ability to speak. Mute-sex isn’t my idea of pleasure. It isn’t attractive, is it?
‘Can I get a kiss?’
She looked at me, probably wondering what had gotten into me. True, I mean, what had gotten into me? A kiss? What? Where? When? How? Why did I ask? Did I really want to? Of course not. I looked back at her. This was the moment.
This girl, I figured, she can’t kiss for nuts. No authority, no seduction. Just skin-contact, and the only take-home from that smooch, or smoochlet, if I may, was the aftertaste of cherry. I love fruit.
‘Back to the hotel then?’
‘Yes.’
This was it. This was the moment I’d been waiting for. It was now or never. I asked her.
‘we are gamperilonger hotel, imbomburanchu single bed, howprunkanivongal sleep fawghrealsy night?’
Gibberish. What the fuck? I tried again.
‘You don’t mind sharing the bed with me, do you?’
A giggle. Atleast, she evolved from her mysterious smile. ‘No.’
‘I can’t promise I’d keep my hands to myself though.’
‘Why not?’
‘You know why.’
‘No I don’t.’
When girls go into this play-dumb mode, you got to be wary. Luckily, I was there before, so I knew how to play this one.
‘Ah, no worries. You’ll find out soon enough.’
Curiosity killed the cat, but it absolutely murders the pussy. Women just can’t NOT know a half-fact. She nudged, poked and even scratched at me all throughout the journey back to the hotel, but I wouldn’t give in. She was dumb - yes - but not that dumb.
We entered the room, and she fell plop on the bed immediately, stretching her arms out and stifling a yawn. Like, she’d been waiting to sleep all day. By herself, of course. I asked her to make way for me too, unless she expected me to sleep on the floor. She promptly moved across. I then did the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life.
I asked her. My style. Straightforward, and very, very lame.
‘I want to have sex with you.’
‘You what?’
‘Listen, don’t be playin’ dumb. You know it, doncha? Lookit you. Lookit me. I can’t do this anymore. Now, will I be getting somethin’ tonight, or am I not?’, in the best black accent I could come up with, sounding like a 15-year old Chris Tucker trying to land the black women in the audience. Half-invite. Half-request. Total hunger.
She made a weird face, a cross between a frown and an teacher’s inquiring gaze, before she spoke. And she spoke slowly.
‘You said I will find out tonight.’
That was my cue. Was that my cue? It was, I guess so. I rummaged through the drawer. She was surprised to see that I had stacked protection in it last night.
‘So you planned this all along? You’re a naughty kid.’
Kid. She called me a (grimace) kid. I wanted to retaliate with a ‘fuckin’ granny’ or two. She was just twenty-nine. Five years is negligible, one would think.
Anyway, I didn’t need an invitation anymore. Got into the bed, and after she helped undress me (and herself, I guess), got into her as well. Granny wasn’t into foreplay. And I wasn’t into sex. It showed.
‘You suck at this.’
‘I know.’
‘But you aren’t virgin.’
It was a question. Was it a question? It was. Anyway, I assumed it was.
‘Find out yourself’, I managed to mumble, as I frantically kissed every bit of her face - and the rest of her - as if I would run out of kisses that night. My eyes were wide open but I wasn’t looking anywhere.
I was surveying a territory unknown to me. The terrain was smooth, and while I ran myself through it, I figured out where and how it rose and fell. I had no clue where I was going, or what I was doing. For all you know, I was probably driving through the wrong lane, making the wrong turns and probably even halting arbitrarily. I was like this unpredictable rickshaw, murdering the streets, getting into places I shouldn’t be, going either too slow or too fast. I’m trying to figure out the right word to describe what I was doing. I can’t, so I’ll make it up.
Explofuckingration. Erratic and erotic.
Five minutes into it and she realized two things. Firstly, this wasn’t an opening innings. I had played a knock or two before, and it was evident that I wasn’t seasoned yet. Secondly, she figured out that she’d have to help me out if anything had to happen. Maybe she was a navigator after all. Her touch improved things a bit. In fact, a lot.
It - the experience - was awesome, and so was she, and when the moment of fulfillment arrived, a sigh of contentment left my lips. She, however, was more vocal. It was some relief though. Excruciatingly fun while it lasted. What was that song again? Pain and pleasure?
‘This has been the best night I’ve ever had’, I lied to her.
‘Never mind’, she snapped back.
What the …? What was that? What went wrong? I just had to find out what suddenly happened. Maybe it was me. Maybe I used her or something. Maybe I wasn’t good enough. Yeah, that must be it. I apologized, this time meaning and measuring every word I said.
‘I’m sorry. I know I wasn’t good.’
‘No, it’s not that.’
‘Then?’.
Silence. Pin - drop - silence. So much so, that I could hear the both of us breathing. And maybe the folks in the other room too.
‘Sam, tell me something honestly.’
‘What?’. My heart was beating now as if I was in the middle of an EAI interview and someone was going to ask me the exact latency value of RV 5.4.
‘Why did you fuck me if you love someone else?’
Love? What? Where did that come from? On second thoughts, I’d rather she asked me about the latency. Atleast I could make something up. Here, I was, defenseless, a Karna struggling with the screwed wheel of his chariot. No response to the fatal arrow flying in.
‘I couldn’t resist. You’re fucking gorgeous. I’m ugly and starved. I don’t land too many women, you know.’
‘I hate this about you.’
‘What?’
‘You’re outrageously honest.’
‘Would you rather I be dishonest?’
‘No.’
Then, as an afterthought, ‘yeah, sometimes.’
‘Okay. Here you go. I love you.’
‘G’night Sam.’
Finality. Finito. What the hell? And why was I suddenly trying to befriend her more than ever?
‘This is it?’
She draped the quilt over her glorious body, still clad in lingerie. For a moment, I was wondering if I should suggest that it made more sense to get the clothes on and lose the quilt. Not worth it. Life’s a lot easier when you don’t argue with a woman. I slipped into my regular-fits and slept beside her, looking at her, as she was lying looking the other way. Once in bed, I usually sleep in no time. That night was no different. I thought I was dozing off when she turned to look at me, and she smiled. Those lovely, luscious inviting lips. I wasn’t getting hard again, though. I’m not a camel, you see. I simply grinned back, reciprocating her killer smile with my boring one.
‘I’ll tell you a secret, Sam.’
I was all ears.
‘When you smile, but you mean it for someone else, it hurts the most.’
Christ. That is so true. I thought about the other girl. How many times has she smiled at me, although it wasn’t meant for me? I thought about the ‘ex’. I thought about the girl I just made love to, albeit loveless. I thought about myself, a meandering dot in the middle of this complex three-dimensional structure of two L-boards, love and lust. The lust bit, fortunately or unfortunately, was over.
And they say, love makes the world go round.
It sure does, in damned circles of nothingness.
November 25, 2007 at 4:51 pm · Filed under geekland
Statutory warning: if thou ain’t geeky, adios already.
Taggy’s cricket update bot, which is out yesterday, inspired me to look at the Twitter APIs. I mean, what better way to spend a Sunday morning juggling a India-Pak test match, and trying out some some new API, with yesterday’s pizza leftovers to keep me company?
Firstly, for those who are new to Twitter, here’s a quick Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V from their website:
Twitter is a community of friends and strangers from around the world sending updates about moments in their lives. Friends near or far can use Twitter to remain somewhat close while far away. Curious people can make friends. Bloggers can use it as a mini-blogging tool. Developers can use the API to make Twitter tools of their own. Possibilities are endless!
To make a long story short, Mr. X twitters and Mr. Y follows him. When Mr. X updates his status, his followers (which include Y) will get a notification. That simple? Yep. No kidding.
Now, the Twitter API itself allows you to build remote applications that talk to Twitter, for retrieving updates/friends/followers or to simply update your status.
Yours truly is pretty much at home with Java, so a quick Google for a Java Twitter API revealed ThinkTank’s open-source interface to Twitter. The package, jTwtiter, is oh-so-simple to use, and comes with good documentation, like most Java libs.
To start with, I thought of building a Twitter bot that is scheduled to run every day in the morning, pick up a list of Indians who are born on the day and update the bot’s status. In which case, whoever follows the bot would get notified of the update. Just a random use-case to get a comfort level. Of course, it’s pretty lightweight and hardly any code, but here is what a crude design of the app would look like.
There are two classes, CelebBirthdayUpdate and WikiBirthdayAdapter. CelebBirthdayUpdate instantiates a new WikiBirthdayAdapter and transmits two arguments, a date and a nationality. WikiBirthdayAdapter internally connects to Wikipedia over HTTP (using the Apache Commons HttpClient API), gets a dump of the HTML output and scrapes it using simple string/regex functions to retrieve a Vector of Strings, which contains each birthday for the day. I initialled picked XPath - am a big fan of X-technologies - but string parsing here seemed simpler and faster, especially as the Wikis are structured decently enough.
CelebBirthdayUpdate simply iterates through this list, and for each item it finds, invokes the Twitter.updateStatus() method to set the remote status of the bot.
Here is what the code looks like:
CelebBirthdayUpdate.java
package com.sslabs.twitter.playground;
import java.util.Date;
import thinktank.twitter.Twitter;
public class CelebBirthdayUpdate {
public static void main(String[] args) {
WikiBirthdayAdapter wba = new WikiBirthdayAdapter();
Date today = new Date();
if (wba.execute(today, "India")) {
if (wba.getBirthdays().size() > 0) {
Twitter twitter = new Twitter("wikibday", "******");
for (String status : wba.getBirthdays()) {
System.out.println(status);
twitter.updateStatus(status);
}
} else {
System.err.println("No birthdays to update.");
}
}
}
}
WikiBirthdayAdapter.java
package com.sslabs.twitter.playground;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Vector;
import org.apache.commons.httpclient.DefaultHttpMethodRetryHandler;
import org.apache.commons.httpclient.HttpClient;
import org.apache.commons.httpclient.HttpException;
import org.apache.commons.httpclient.HttpStatus;
import org.apache.commons.httpclient.methods.GetMethod;
import org.apache.commons.httpclient.params.HttpMethodParams;
public class WikiBirthdayAdapter {
private List birthdays = new Vector();
public List getBirthdays() {
return birthdays;
}
public boolean execute(Date date, String nationality) {
boolean result = true;
SimpleDateFormat wikiFormat = new SimpleDateFormat(”MMMM_dd”);
SimpleDateFormat outFormat = new SimpleDateFormat(”dd/MM/”);
String disp = outFormat.format(date);
// Create a HTTP Client
HttpClient client = new HttpClient();
String url = “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/” + wikiFormat.format(date);
System.out.println(”Looking for ” + nationality + ” birthdays at ”
+ url);
// Create a method instance
GetMethod method = new GetMethod(url);
// Build a retry handler
method.getParams().setParameter(HttpMethodParams.RETRY_HANDLER,
new DefaultHttpMethodRetryHandler(3, false));
try {
// Execute the method.
int statusCode = client.executeMethod(method);
System.out.println(”Status response: ” + statusCode);
if (statusCode != HttpStatus.SC_OK) {
System.err.println(”Method failed: ” + method.getStatusLine());
result = false;
}
// Read the response body.
System.out.println(”Connected. Retrieving response …”);
byte[] responseBody = method.getResponseBody();
System.out.println(”Response retrieved.”);
System.out.println(”Parsing content …”);
String body = new String(responseBody);
int start = body.indexOf(”<a name=\”Births\”");
int end = body.indexOf(”<a name=\”Deaths\”");
body = body.substring(start, end);
String births = body.replaceAll(”\\<.*?>”, “”);
String entries[] = births.split(”\n”);
for (int i = 0; i < entries.length; i++) {
if (entries[i].contains(”, ” + nationality)) {
birthdays.add(disp + entries[i]);
}
}
System.out.println(”Parsed: found ” + birthdays.size()
+ ” birthday(s)”);
System.out.println(”Method invocation complete.”);
} catch (HttpException e) {
System.err.println(”Fatal protocol violation: ” + e.getMessage());
e.printStackTrace();
result = false;
} catch (IOException e) {
System.err.println(”Fatal transport error: ” + e.getMessage());
e.printStackTrace();
result = false;
} finally {
// Release the connection.
method.releaseConnection();
return result;
}
}
}
The sample output for today (25/11) looks like this:
Looking for India birthdays at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_25
Status response: 200
Connected. Retrieving response ...
Response retrieved.
Parsing content ...
Parsed: found 0 birthday(s)
No birthdays to update.
Method invocation complete.
Apparently, Wikipedia isn’t aware of any celeb Indians born today, so let’s see what happens tmorrow. Astonishingly simple, innit? So if the idea of working with a microblogging API turns you on, go for it.
And, wikibday?
Here is what the notification would look like …
For all those of you who are already on Twitter, follow wikibday for these random, useless updates at 09.00 AM IST every morning (cronned locally), although taggy’s bot - meninblue - is a more useful one to look at.
November 24, 2007 at 12:04 pm · Filed under bollywood
To be honest, I didn’t really expect much from this director’s flick ever since he gave us Chocolate, which is probably the biggest rip-off in the history of Bollywood, I might add, not just the Usual Suspects bit, but the entire album is testimony to Pritam’s thieving capabilities.
But Vivek Agnihotri surprises me with Goal. Indeed, there are factual errors. Yes, it’s dramatic. And it might be the worst football flick to hit Bollywood. But - credit be given where it’s due - it somehow works, without evoking many yawns.
The plot is rather similar to Harimohan Paruvu’s ‘The Men Within’, except that - and this is an act of cinematic bravery in Bollywood - it’s based on football and not cricket, and based out of UK. Shaan (Arshad Warsi) is the captain of the Southall United Football Club, in a community that’s as British as the Old Pakistani Consulate area in Dubai. Yes, they’ve got Pakis, Bongs (east-Pakis?) and Indians who come together to unite in their passion for the game. Asians in the UK. Supposedly, victims of racism - or so we’re made to believe. Well, atleast that’s the driving force behind Southall’s thirst to win. It’s not about football - make no mistake.
And we thought, they were actually trying to save the ground. The Southall Chairman, in an ‘emotional’ moment, dies of an attack while Shaan is driving him home. Shaan sees the body go still, stops the car, the corpse’s head turns around, and the smart-ass midfielder is absolutely convinced that the man is dead. He didn’t feel the need to check the wrist for pulse, or anything of the sorts. Just breaks into tears, the director screams ‘cut’, and the next scene - the funeral - is already halfway through. Wow. How convenient.
Suddenly, the folks realize that they need a coach. Enter Tony (Boman Irani), who - for some ‘inexplicable’ reason - is trying to hide his identity. He agrees - after a few minutes of persuasion - and gets to work immediately.
So Shaan’s family is small and content. Wife Jenny runs a restaurant that fries Kababs, although spice has little place in the joint. Sister Rumaana (Bipasha Basu) is rather attractive, just out of college, a medical degree, and the new physio for the Southall team.
What the team need, however, is a striker. So, Coach promptly walks across to Aston and throws in a desi carrot or two, nearly saying ‘join us son, for here is where you belong’. To whom, you ask? Why, Sunny (John Abraham), of course, who is ridiculed - or he thinks he is - because he’s called a Paki. That’s bad enough for him to throw a few punches. But the striker isn’t joining yet, he needs a team, not a circus, he says. And that’s that.
Until, of course, Aston pick their team and Sunny’s name doesn’t figure. And folks capitalize on the racism issue. Colour. Coach makes the kid sweat for about 10 minutes in the rain, and he’s convinced. Southall it is.
Right, so with the new striker in place, Southall start winning. Football is a team sport, I heard? So one, good striker makes it a winning team? Heck, whatever. Marks to Agnihotri for making this ridiculous idea look a tad convincing on screen, and more marks to John and Arshad for making the viewer believe it all. All in all, worth a watch.
And the flaws, criminal ones they are. If only Goal had remained a ‘football flick’, we’d have loved it. Instead, there are shitloads of factual errors. Professional footballers, for the record, do NOT get drunk every night. Man United’s dressing room isn’t open to the general public, and is certainly not open to a Old Pakistani Consulate Southall soccer team. Paki girls don’t call their brothers ‘Bhaiyya’ as much as they’d call them ‘Bhaijaan’. A hairline fracture to the nose doesn’t result in fatality.
And hey, what was that? A tournament that lasts atleast seven months? Because - at the start of the it - Mrs. Warsi goes, “I’m pregnant”. She watches the finals with a stomach and a half. Right. And I’m President.
Yes, there is the typical Bollywood overdramatization too. Background score sets it up, Coach mumbles a few ‘inspirational’ words, and everything was done to evoke patriotism minus Vande Mataram going off in the background.
And the dilutions. A Qawalli, as absurd as it gets. The sub-plots. The father-son-relationship that ‘drives’ the climax. Chak De was that subtle recipe which had the right amount of ingredients, blended together extremely well. Goal, in contrast, is EVERY possible ingredient chucked in.
In spite of the drawbacks, if you are still recovering from the OSO-Saawariya trauma, then go watch Goal, atleast to bring back some faith in cinema. For the men, there’s the option of watching how Bollywood makes a mockery of soccer. For the women, there’s John and there’s testosterone.
Maybe it’s wrong to compare Goal with Chak De, but I will - sue me - and I tell you, while Boman-SRK comparisons can be made - because the Parsi actor has dome brilliantly well - the overall product is a couple of notches below Shimit Amin’s masterstroke. Arshad’s honest performance and John’s eye-candy help it along, but a hit it’s not.
And Bips, as she rightly self-proclaims, is very sexy. Ergo, watchable.
