Donnie Brasco - Movie Review and more

Last weekend, I watched 'Donnie Brasco'. I have not heard about the movie before and so did Smita who picked the DVD since the cover had Al Pacino and Johnny and she thought that I would like it.

And boy, I liked it like hell. Brilliant work by Mike Newell. Its a 1997 movie about a FBI undercover Agent Joe Priston (played beautifully by Johnny) who gets into mafia, gets close to Al Pacino who sort of acts like his mentor, falls in love with Al and after a while he finds himself so much into mafia-dom that it gets difficult to get out of it, for the simple reason that if he does then Leftie (thats the name which Pacino carries in this movie) gets whacked. Its so simple out there.

Mike is an old chap and one quick search on google will let you get up and think more about him, off late he directed 'Harry Porter and the goblet of fire' and I just came to know that recently he finished 'Love in the times of Cholera', an amazing love story by Garcia Marquez, king of reality-n-illusion. To read more about Mike, click here

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001565/#director

Coming back to movie. It starts with Joe trying to get inside the gang by feigning as jewel-guy. After the usual tricks (where Al Pacino tries to validate his jewel knowledge), Left (Pacino) starts to like him and introduces him into the gang. He gives him a new name 'Donnie'. Some of the gang terminology

"....while introducing if I say.... meet Donnie, a friend of mine..." then it means that you are a in-guy or someone to be trusted and all that where as if you say
"....meet Donnie, a friend of ours......" then you are a made guy :)

So Donnie joins the gang, unlike hindi movie he doesn't have to do any stunts to win hearts. The movie goes with usual Mafia killings, new bosses, whacking etc etc. Over time Donnie gets more and more involved, his relationship with his wife starts getting bad, then to worse. Donnie is now a big cat among them, he starts to neglect FBI. His wife wants to get out of relationship and goes to a counselor. All this while, Donnie and Al Pacino gets closer and closer. When Left's son gets admitted to hospital (because I guess he took more coke then he could possibly swallow) Joe spends time with Left.

The beauty of the movie is the gradual change in character of the agent, from a normal agent in the beginning to more of a Mafica guy in the end, Joe fights the battle. The character has been developed so well that at all points of time you can feel the dilemma which Joe is having over whether he should expose the mafia and get 'Leftie' whacked.

Finally in the end, FBI catches him, gives him a reward of $ 500 for his good work. FBI reached out to Mafia to tell them that its all over. They don't believe that Donnie was a rat and think that FBI is bluffing them. In the last shot, Left gets a call, he tells his wife that it might be a long evening, gets off his ring, watch and other stuff, most likely he is....

Its based on a true story and if you search on Joe Pristone or Donnie Brasco, you would find lot of text.

Watch it

The Google Story

Recently I wrote a review on 'The Google Story'.
Over last few weeks, I read 'The Google Story', yeah its an old title but Google is still hot I guess. Its very well written and reads like a fiction. I personally do not know much about David A. Wise, author of this book but a quick google search yields good results and after reading 2 minutes, it comes out that he has done big things to write home about.

Read the full story at
http://booksvoyage.blogspot.com/2007/07/google-story.html

Cobra - What a fine beer

My little daughter Pihu was off to my in-laws last friday and that gave me and Smita a valid reason to check out a smoky eating joint. She also had some work where she has to see how the 'HT Interacts' event is going on (she works for Zee and it was sponsoring some part of it) and that was in Deshbandhu Gupta Apartments, Kalkaji. I am familiar with the city but that in no way means that I can find some place quickly, though it does mean that it would take a much worse traffic to get me frustrated then someone who is not been here. So we found the place, saw the event and then started to scour for a good eating joint.

We zeroed in at Ego's at New Friends Colony, referred as NFC in eating-out circles.

Egos is one of those old places who have lot of old wooden furniture and those old sofa-seats, round low height wooden tables and bar stools with non-granite table tops. They serve continental, italian, sort-of-indian food and a have a very decent collection of wine and liquor. The staff is not-very-young, much more calmer, they play Eagles (Hotel California) and not ver well lit, a very good enough setting for a dinner-for-two.

A cock-tail costs 270 bucks so Smita ordered a Cosmopolitan and I chose the easy option of Indian Lager Beer (Rs 155 a bottle). We told the guy and he asked me whether I would like Cobra instead of Kingflisher which I asked for to start with, after a brief non-decisive-gestures I asked him to get that.

And BOY what a beer it was. Simply amazing. I am not sure that whether I have had Cobra before or not (I was in UK for about two weeks few years back and its a UK based beer and we had beer every night but I was young and stupid so I dont remember whether it was Cobra or Corona) but it was well worth it, it really drove me home and I guess all the international awards which it has won are all real. Its a UK based beer but I checked out the bottle and it seems its avail for Rs 40 a piece and is being bottled somewhere in Alwar. At Rs 40 a piece its a steal and my hunt to get few cases of this beer is on.
go and have a glass of Cobra beer and enjoy it. - http://www.cobrabeer.com/

- jha (Read my travel blogs at www.ghumakkar.com )

Did Himesh always look like this ?

Did Himesh always look like this ?

Strange thought. I am now used to of finding Himesh in his traditional stuff and a cap, always and I often used to wonder that when this guy gets his cap off, probably never.

So I thought more and my common sense, whatever of it is left after all these years of testing all kinds of code (you can read some of my software testing tips at http://test-software.blogspot.com), tells me that there must be a time when this middle class born Gujarati would not have spotted a head-gear.

So I hunted and found what, well the old Himesh look. Look at some of these pictures and you would get a good break from the monotony of this current look.

Just this and I actually wanted to write this as a post, well I thought why not. He is riding really really high and with every new day I am growing a liking for his songs, my two year old daughter Pihu now recognizes him, probably I taught her that as part of ever-educating-juvenile-dad, and also knows that he is the guy behind songs like 'ek baar aaja aaja aaja aaja aaaa jaaa' and 'a aa ashiqui mein teri'. He has been around long enough to carve a world for him, infact he directed music as back as 1988 (Bandhan) but was hit only by 1998 with Pyar Kiya to Darna Kya. He did few TV sops as well for Zee and our motherly channel DD. So its not an overnight or couple of years of hit movies to get where he is now. Enough of my justification for liking him.

Coming back to my daughter, I really wonder whether she would be able to recognize him w/o his head-gear. Enough Himesh, go get a shaver, you look much kewl-er and neat without this.

It happened in India - By Kishore Biyani

It happened in India is a candid and close book by Kishor Biyani, the king of retail as often called by lot many with every growing day. This book which is sort of a young biography of Kishore is co-authored by Dipayan Baishya.

Kishore or KB as often referred to in the whole book starts with telling the Big Bazaar story esp the 'Sabse Sasta Din' campaign of 26 January 2006 and it reads like one hell of a fiction. I wont leak the story but how much you can imagine a grocery store can make by selling Atta, rice and low priced tops and jeans. They do sell TVs and Washing Machines but these are not the ones which get picked up in large nos. Ever heard someone who wanted to buy one AC, actually ended up buying three of them. This happens all the time for folks who go to Big Bazaar to buy a T-Shirt or a Juice can or even a shampoo.

Coming back to fiction, the first story is very well sold to readers and that sort of binds you to read the remaining book. Some of the things which KB talks about are how there store are never a few steps up guarded by a inhibitive security person or on how not to have long aisles and how the concept of having mini-bazar is so much common sense. One of the things which everyone keeps telling us is that when WalMart or other such biggies come here with their expert inventory systems, people like KB will go bust. Well after reading it doesn't seem like as KB tells us stories and stories on how we need to Indianize things.


After the big bazaar story, KB tells us about his background, how his parent came from Bikaner and setup shops in Mumbai as traders. He is a Marwari like some of the other big businesses but he didn't chose to do what his parents were doing. He dabbled in many things, from tailoring patlooons (yeah thats what it was called way back) to setting a fabric factory.

You would be surprised to know that KB even produced a movie called 'Na Tum Jaano Na Hum' followed by another flop and decided to stop. He talks about the future and the 'future group'.

Pretty easy and good read for all. He finishes with another equally fascinating fiction which they pulled off next year on 26 Jan 2007.

Read it.