March 08, 2004
 

General

I hate John Dunlop. I hate him for getting the bright idea of the pneumatic tyre sometime in the late 1880s. Dunlop was a veterinarian whose son was prescribed cycling as a cure for a heavy cold. In those days, wheels were treaded with metal and so the ride wasn't comfortable. The story also goes that his son destroyed his garden by cycling in it. So Dunlop tried to smoothen the ride by making a tube using glued strips of rubber, wrapped the tube around the wheel and wrapped the tube in linen tape to make a tread. Then he inflated the tube with compressed air using a pump for filling footballs. Lo behold, the first pneumatic tyre, making rides smoother for millions of vehicles!!

However Dunlop's bright idea meant that if you had a punctured tube/tyre, your ride was stalled because you couldn't take the vehicle anywhere without fixing the puncture. Thats exactly what happened to us yesterday when we went to watch Ab tak chappan at a nearby movie complex. Read on for a brief review.

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Movies

Ab Tak Chappan features Nana Patekar as Sadhu Agashe, the encounter specialist and his life. The movie is produced by Ram Gopal Varma and is directed by yet-another-new-director-introduced-by-RGV. Of late, most of Ram Gopal Varma's productions have tended to border on the dark side, such as Bhoot, Jungle, Darna Mana Hai. In Ab tak Chappan, he goes back to his favourite gang/underworld/cop theme. Nana Patekar's bosses have full faith in him, but one of his subordinates (Imtiaz, played by the chap who played the dissident Lakha in Lagaan - isn't he getting stereotyped in these roles?) thinks he's a publicity monger. The new police commissioner isn't too impressed with Sadhu Agashe's encounters and tries to bring him down to earth. Sadhu is in regular touch with a most wanted underworld don called Zameer (who seems to be living in Malaysia) and Zameer has an enmity with the 'company' of Feroze and Rajashekar. Zameer constantly tries to bring Nana over to his side, but keeps failing. Feroze is captured by the cops but escapes from jail. Revathi (who plays Nana's wife) is murdered at a party. Zameer tells Nana that he suspects Feroze has killed her. Nana's life takes a turn for the worse when he is held responsible for a corporator's death (who he'd met the day before he resigned) and he has to flee Bombay. Imtiaz now heads the team Nana was in charge of and they manage to snare Nana. Nana's juniors, who support him and are against Imtiaz, kill Imtiaz and free Nana. Nana Patekar, with Zameer's help, flees India and lands up in Zameer's place.

Does Sadhu Agashe manage to find out who his wife's killer was? Will he team up with an underworld don to finish off another? Is there a twist in the tale? Well, don't bother to go and see this movie. There is a twist, for sure. But its not worth 3 hours of your time and nearly 100 Rs of tickets/eatables etc. It is not a patch on the most recent cop movie I saw,
Kaaka Kaaka by Gautham, starring Surya & Jyothika.

We certainly expected more violence than was eventually shown, which is odd for a gangster-police movie. Ab tak chappan, is what the producer RGV, will be saying the day after he says ab tak pachpan, which is what he'll say the day after he says ab tak chauvvan ... it'd be a miracle if this movie ran for 56 days. RGV should be counting down from Ab tak bees.

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Cricket

An interview with the real McCoy, the real master blaster, Viv Richards on his birthday.

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Link of the day

Spam is nothing new, it goes as far back as March 1994. An even earlier message is found through the Internet Archive. Find out what the Monty Python group's contribution to this is.

Labels: movies, review

Rambled @ 12:00 PM

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