Eulogy to an undead blog...

Well, for all practical reasons, this poor blog is dead. Well, kind of living undead or some like that, actually... I update it far too infrequently for the blog to be categorized as active, and the occasional updates like this here post prevent the poor blog from quietly slipping into oblivion. So, the unfortunate blog is caught in a strange dimension between life and death. Well enough philosophizing I suppose. This post is a summary on my thoughts on three movies I had watched in quick succession late December. And do remember that these are just my personal views, which you might totally not agree with... and I'm cool with that [except that you're wrong!! :)]

Avatar

The good: The visuals are absolutely brilliant. The color and richness of Pandora is a sight to behold. I watched the movie in 2-D, which is such a pity since I really think I missed a sneak-peek at the technology of the future.

The bad: Kudos to Cameron and team on the groundbreaking work done for Avatar, but dude where's the story? As I watched the movie, I got the distinct feeling that Cameron had spend all the movie budget on the effects and skimped on inconsequential stuff like story and plot. Also, the movie was (regrettably, in my opinion) more Titanic than Aliens. Pity...

In conclusion: A good movie, but could have been so much more... Falls well short of being a true masterpiece, IMHO.

Sherlock Holmes

The good: The action-oriented makeover of the Holmes franchise was a nice touch. It might have riled the purists a bit, but I think the overall effect achieved was creditable. And Jude Law as the trusty Watson was brilliant. A little too brilliant at times, if you ask me.

The bad: What surprised me most about the movie was that I got considerably lesser joy from what I was most looking forward to in the movie: Guy Ritchie's direction and Robert Downey Jr's Holmes. After RDJ's star turns in Iron Man and Tropic Thunder, I was expecting the man to totally reinvent Holmes. And given his ability for theatrics and pompous air, he was ideally placed to do so. But RDJ appeared very subdued as Holmes. And this is where my disappointment with Ritchie comes in... An essential ingredient of the original Sherlock Holmes stories is the dynamics between Holmes and Watson. Holmes views Watson as a trusted ally and friend, but has no particular regard for his intellectual capabilities. Watson on the other hand, is totally devoted to Holmes and is in awe of his friend's deductive skills. The movie gives Holmes and Watson more or less equal screen time and stage presence. This destroys the original interpersonal dynamics between the lead characters, and ruins it a bit for me. While Jude Law makes the most of Watson's magnified role, RDJ is wasted in a diminished role as Holmes.

In conclusion: The movie promised much, but couldn't quite deliver on the expectations. A decent watch, but not much else...

3 Idiots

The good: The movie is a hugely entertaining watch, moves along smoothly and is your quintessential feel good movie. The movie doesn't take itself too seriously, and doesn't expect you to take it too seriously either. Ideal fare for a lazy sunday afternoon or anytime you need something to pick you up...

The bad: As a crowd pleaser, the movie lacks the sophistication and sincerity of Dil Chahta Hai and the unbridled goofiness of Andaaz Apna Apna. And it's a little too Aamir-centric. Agreed the dude is an absolute scene stealer, but at times it appears the remainder of the cast only exists to serve as props to Aamir's character. And what's with all the bad blood between Chetan Bhagat and the makers of the movie. The book "Five Point Someone" was a very average read in the first place, and the scriptwriters' contributions are even more ridiculous (the delivery scene, anyone).

In conclusion: A funny and enjoyably nostalgic trip down memory lane to the carefree college days...

Well, that's all folks. No promises on the next post. Sorry about that, my blog... you're just going to have to live with my limitations. I know, life's a bitch... :-)

The Worst Movie of All Time... Ever...

I guess there really is nothing like watching an idiot movie to motivate one to blog, if only to spew venom on the aforementioned train-wreck of celluloid misadventure. Just when it looked like Bollywood was beginning to mature and churn out movies which were not a total insult to human intelligence (or even a wall clock's intelligence, for that matter), along comes Kambakth Ishq and sets the industry back by a decade. Just thinking about the magnitude of resources needlessly expended on an inanity like this makes the mind boggle, and if this sorry excuse for a movie ends up as anything but a loss-making project, I will have serious concerns about the future of humanity.

I knew any movie starring Akshay and Kareena was not likely to hit the heights, but I hadn't expected such mind-numbingly stupid fare passed off as entertainment either. Before I go any further, the customary disclaimer: "Spoilers Galore", thought I don't know why anyone in their right minds would want to watch the movie after hearing my expert opinion. But then again, the world is full of people who don't learn from accidents until they're in one. Case in point: yours truly, who watched this movie after having been warned against it by his brother. Some people are just too dense... -sigh-

Anyways, the movie is about this idiot stuntman (Akshay) and an idiot model/surgeon (Kareena) who are constantly at odds. Midway thought the movie, idiot stuntman has an accident and is rushed to a hospital where the idiot surgeon operates on him and promptly leaves her musical wrist watch lodged firmly in the idiot stuntman's abdomen before stitching him up. Idiot stuntman then goes through his daily life hearing inexplicable, periodic incantations and wondering what's wrong with him. Meanwhile, idiot surgeon has realized her mistake and her only concern is about the consequences of her negligence on her career. Damn the Hippocratic Oath and patient welfare to hell...

So, the idiot surgeon conceives some idiot schemes to get the idiot stuntman back to the operating table. To cut a pointless long story short, she seduces him into the operating theater, extracts her watch and promptly proceeds to dump and berate the recuperating idiot. The heartbroken idiot proposes marriage to Denise Richards who (surprise, surprise) consents. By this time the idiot surgeon has an incredibly rapid change of heart and begins to repent her actions. With some encouragement form other idiot friends, she gatecrashes the idiot stuntman's wedding with Denise Richards. The idiot stuntman dumps the incredibly hot Denise Richards and elopes with the idiot surgeon. The end.

I guess it is a happy ending after all. If the idiot stuntman wants to get married to someone who put her career above his life, and then proceeded to kick him in painful places when he was down... and if the idiot girl wants to get married to a guy who can leave Denise "Wild Things" Richards standing at the altar to get married to her... then the two idiots really deserve each other. And the happiest thing about the movie of course was that it ended, putting me out of my misery. So, if the movie was as painful an experience as I make it out to be, why the hell did I watch it to completion? In the desperate hope that things would get better. Trust me, they don't. The movie starts from a pretty low spot, and keeps moving down a bottomless chasm... You've been warned... Until later... cheers...

What I didn't learn at B-school...

In a perfect world every product/service would deliver exactly what we expected of it. The Sun would be shining, the birds singing and there would be beer flowing out of taps. Instead, we live in a world where pretty much nothing turns out the way we expect it to. The uncertainty can be pretty irritating at times, but also makes our lives so much more interesting. So, here's a short list of all I expected to learn in B-school but surprisingly didn't!! A disclaimer at this point: Before you read the rest of the post and get the impression that I emerged from B-school the same dodo that I entered, I must clarify that this was indeed not the case. I emerged from school a dodo who had learned a lot of new stuff that will likely (hopefully) come in handy at some point in his life. I just didn't learn about the stuff in this here post...

My biggest grouse, unquestionably, is that I went through the entire course without coming across the words “Peter Drucker” or “Alfred Sloan” once. Which, I believe is truly fantastic!! The aforementioned gentlemen can lay strong claim to being the founding fathers of modern management. And I truly believe that no management course can be complete without some inclusion of the teachings of Drucker and Sloan. Imagine going through your high school without one mention of Newton’s three laws. The omission is pretty much in the same league.

Another complaint, albeit a much smaller one, is that the central theme running through all the education dispensed as part of the contemporary management course is that of “maximizing shareholder value”, as if that’s the Gospel truth. It’s as if an overwrought manager, burdened with the responsibility of balancing the conflicting interests of multiple stakeholders in his firm, clambered atop Mt Sinai and cried out for divine guidance and the good Lord responded, “Thou shalt maximize shareholder value, boy!!”, and there was much rejoicing… The entire argument of maximizing shareholder value is based on the premise that rewards should be commensurate with the financial risk you are exposed to. But how do we know that reserving the biggest rewards for those taking the greatest financial risks is the right way to run a firm? And how do you balance the interests of multiple stakeholders that make up a firm and its ecosystem? Unfortunately, I am as ignorant of the answers to these fundamental questions today as I was before I started the course.

Finally, there’s the small matter of the treatment of ethics and CSR in MBA courses. The prominent role played by some former Ivy League geniuses in perpetrating the greatest financial meltdown of the past million years or so has painted the lot of management practitioners as a bunch of soulless, blood-thirsty and greedy Shylocks constantly devising new and exotic ways of separating honest folk from their hard-earned money. And in the light of what has transpired over the past decade or so, I must admit a manager’s standing is somewhere between that of a vulture and a sewer rat. One would have imagined that after Enron and WorldCom, ethics would have been front and center of any management course and it would be a while another incident of spectacular excesses happened again. But we didn’t have to wait long at all, did we? The current mother of all excesses can be considered a damning indictment of the current B-school model and its singular focus on the financial aspects of business.

I was still in B-school when the financial crisis exploded in spectacular fashion. While the unfolding crisis was analyzed in class, what I found very surprising was that most instructors still treated ethics as a very personal subject and usually steered well clear of engaging students in a debate on business ethics. The focus was so firmly on the “hard” skills and subjects – finance, strategy and the like – that “soft” subjects such as ethics and CSR received alarmingly little airtime. Hardly surprising then, that you have so many in the top management making “errors of judgment”. The crisis is a golden opportunity to realign business courses to the needs of the times, but history is full of opportunities lost. I guess the next crisis will tell us what we did and didn’t learn from this one. And I personally believe we won’t have to wait long to find out. So, until then, ladies and gentlemen, sit back and watch the madness unfold in this theater of the absurd… cheers…

Winds Of Change

Some of the most powerful influencers of human history are counter intuitive. Prior to the world war II, it was a norm for the victors of a war to impose excessively harsh and punitive measures on the vanquished. But this fuelled greater hatred, and further wars. It is now commonly acknowledged that part of what precipitated the second world war was the humiliating treatment meted out to Germany after the world war I. The Germans were hurting, and Hitler effectively channeled their anger to build probably the most frightening war machinery ever seen in human history. Ultimately, the world had to unite under the Allies to defeat the Axis powers, but not before it had paid an excessively steep price. But what fundamentally separates World War II from most of the other big wars in history is the treatment of the losers. After the war, the Allies, and the US specifically, spent billions of dollars rehabilitating Germany and Japan. The result was that Japan and Germany quickly emerged as important global players, and to this day remain economic powerhouses. And this switch in thinking was brought to us by a man whose teachings are in vogue again in a world crippled by the global financial crisis... John Maynard Keynes.

Globalization, and the concept of free trade, are similarly counter intuitive when thought about in narrow terms. After all, how can purchasing widget x from a far corner of the globe at the expense of a widget manufacturer in your neighborhood benefit your local economy? But this limited view does not quite follow the argument to its logical conclusion. The argument continues something like this: You purchase the widgets from a manufacturer in a far corner of the world because he is a more efficient manufacturer of widgets than your local widget manufactuer. Loss of business drives your local widget manufacturer to evolve to being a provider of service y, which he discovers he is really good at. What this little example illustrates is that globalization and the competition it enables drives efficiencies and everybody is better off.

Between 2002 and 2007, the the global economy grew at the fastest rate in history, thanks in no small part to increased global trade. So, what does this growth really mean in human terms? Again, examples to the rescue: China's supercharged economic growth over the past decade and half,facilitated by its emergence as the world's manufacturing hub, has helped pull hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. The rapid growth of the export oriented IT products and services industry in India has helped create millions of new middle class consumers, which in turn has boosted the broader economy by creating opportunities for the provision of services to this new class of consumers. None of this would have been possible if not for increased globalization and lowering of trade barriers. But all that might be about to change...

One of my professors at B-school once made a prediction that looks more and more likely with each passing day. He said that he believed 2007 represented the pinnacle of globalization and free trade, and that we would be moving towards an era of increasing protectionism and greater resistance to free trade in the form of trade barriers and tariffs. I think we are already seeing the first signs of these unwelcome winds of change, with the Obama administration's attempt to slip in a "Made in America" clause as part of conditions in its proposed stimulus package. Fierce global backlash forced the US to back off and water down the clause, but the trend is quite clear. When the economic engine is humming nicely and unemployment is almost non-existent, it is easy to sing praises of the benefits of globalization. What is infinitely more difficult is sticking by the philosophy when your growth is negative, unemployment near double digits and your constituents are baying for blood. The way the global economic future evolves will be largely determined by how the world reacts to the current financial crisis. Let's just hope policymakers in our world have the foresight to see beyond the current crisis, and don't steer us into a closed and insular future...

Enron Comes to India...

Warren Buffett is an extraordinary investor who can spot opportunities when others can only see train wrecks and disasters. That's a well known fact and you really don't need me to tell you that. But a lesser known fact, but one much more entertaining, is that he is also a master of pithy one-liners which are both hilarious and insightful. As Joey Tribiani of Friends would have said, "They're funny, but they also make you think". One such pearl of wisdom  the sage of Omaha gifted us was, "You don't know who's swimming naked until the tide goes out." And boy, "Rambling" Raju, the founder and former-chairman of Satyam and one-time Golden boy of the Indian software landscape, has been skinny-dipping for a while... Seven years to be precise, by his own admission.

Breath-taking as it is, the fact begs the question of what independent auditors, regulators and directors were doing over the last seven years. Clearly, a lot of people fell asleep at the wheel at the same time. A balance sheet gap of a billion dollars is no pocket change by anyone's standards. The number has more zeros than most people can comprehend... and apparently, more zeros than even the aforementioned parties responsible for the requisite checks and balances could comprehend. In the extraordinary letter Raju compiled admitting to malfeasance, he stated that what started as a small balance sheet gap, had ballooned into a gaping hole that threatened to sink the ship... as if what happened was an accident!! In the same letter, he also states that Satyam's operating margin was 3% which the fudged numbers helped boost to 20%+, bringing it in line with the industry average. So, either Satyam's operations were suffering very badly or Raju's clearly lying. Considering that the period between 2001 and 2007, when Raju was his creative best, was also a period of sustained boom for software service providers, I am inclined to believe that Raju was spinning a bit of yarn in his letter. Which brings us to the question "why". My explanation: Raju was siphoning off money from Satyam, most likely into Maytas and other family-run businesses. And instead of saying, "Yes, I am a crook. I stole the money", Raju tried to put an emotional spin on the whole thing by insinuating that he fudged the numbers to hide poor operating margins that would leave the company vulnerable to a hostile takeover. 

By Raju's admission, he was solely responsible for the entire fraud. Let's just try to visualize that for a moment: One man, over a period of seven years, fudges books to the tune of one billion dollars at a firm that has operations and bank accounts across the world, is publicly traded.. not just in India but in the US too, has its accounts audited by external auditors and has a supposedly "independent" board of directors. This would require the brilliant individual in question to be able to modify balance sheets, invent fictitious assets & associated documentation and possibly forge bank statements in multiple geographies. So, Raju is either Jason Bourne in disguise, or clearly has had a LOT of outside help. You decide which is more likely!! Let us also consider statements emanating from some of the other distinguished personalities who have figured in the Satyam saga. The CFO issued a statement to the effect that he was specifically asked not to look at the finances of the company. Maybe the man mis-understood what the acronym CFO stood for. By definition he was responsible for the finances of the company. If all that was required of him was to sign checks and financial statements, Raju could as well have appointed a monkey the CFO and taught him to use a pen. Oh, wait... Raju might just have done that!! Now I get it...

Many commentators have hazarded that the Satyam incident has negatively impacted India's standing in the global business community, and raised serious questions about the state of corporate governance in Indian firms. While all that is true, I believe it is not a crushing  blow that has done irreparable damage. What will determine India's standing in the international community is how the Government and corporate India react to this incident. The Government's initial bone-headed and muddled moves raised serious fears that the damage from the incident would indeed be significant. Things seem to have significantly improved since, with a new board being appointed to oversee operations at Satyam and investigation initiated into the incident. But India's history is littered with instances of fact finding missions never quite finding the facts.. or finding facts that change according to the seasons. So, establishment of facts and dispensation of justice is not a given. Well, I guess the one thing we can do is see how this new drama plays out, and hope that it has a happy ending. Happy for the employees, clients and shareholders of Satyam, that is... not for Raju and his partners in crime. What do you think I am, Mahatma Gandhi? Until later.. cheers

Movies of 2008

Call me Mr. Grinch, but I do believe that 2008 was a terrible movie year. If I tried, I probably could count the number of movies I liked all year on the fingers of my hands. But I think that would be a very ridiculous and totally pointless exercise. So, this post is going to continue the tirade I had started in the previous post, with a bit of a twist. Instead of raving and ranting at bad movies like a rabid critic, I shall be raving and ranting at some of the better movies of the year gone by, not unlike someone who has totally lost it... OK, not exactly that, but I will attempt to dissect some of the better movies of the year...

Let's start with a movie that has received almost universal acclaim: Slumdog Millionaire. The movie has a plot which is both simple and credible. It starts with Jamal Malik, a slum-dwelling urchin, on the verge of greatness at the final question of the Indian version of "Who wants to be a Millionaire". As the police, deeply suspicious of how an uneducated orphan could answer the questions, interrogate Jamal, he takes us through a colorful journey, tracing events in his life.. some light hearted and some, quite tragic.. that helped him answer the questions. A breathtakingly simple premise, which leaves plenty of room to weave intricate stories that help explain how Jamal got to the answers to the questions on the show. But here's where the movie falters a bit. While some of the stories are quite credible, a few others clearly require one to indulge one's imagination a bit... like the one that explains how Jamal got to know whose face appears on the US $100 bill. (I think it is the $100 bill in the question, but I'm too bored to google for the truth). I mean come on!! Also, Jamal who has no formal education seems to have a better command over English than the BPO employees he serves tea to. And finally, the second half of the movie is really quite fantastic and feels a bit like Oliver Twist meets Scarface... a bit "Bollywood-ish" if you will.. But as fare designed to cater to western audiences, the film clearly succeeds on many levels. It is an underdog story, with a clearly likable underdog. It captures the seamier and grittier side of India, far removed from the beautiful, vibrant and Is-that-really-India images that the "Incredible India" ads peddle to potential, unsuspecting tourists. The performances are all adequate and the movie is engaging throughout. So, not bad, all in all!! But as regards calling it a masterpiece, I guess I'm going to hold back on that...

If there was one movie in 2008 which exceeded my expectations, it was The Dark Knight, Chris Nolan's follow-up effort to Batman Begins, the successful re-branding of the jaded Batman franchise. In my opinion, Batman Begins was an exceptionally well made movie, shifting the tone of the franchise from ridiculous garishness and uniformly bad acting to a slower, more deliberate pace and smoldering intensity. TDK continues in the same vein, but is only slower, darker and more intense than its predecessor. Supported by great acting, especially by the Late Heath Ledger who steals the show as the maniacal Joker, and spectacular action sequences, TDK scales the limitations of its genre and delivers an intelligent and gripping journey into the dark and murky depths of human psyche.  Heath Ledger's joker is a villain for the ages, conveying pure, undiluted evil and is frankly, terrifying at times. At 150 odd minutes, the movie is a tad long, but totally edge of the seat stuff that takes your breath away. And ya, Bale's Batman could do without that irritatingly grating voice.. but such minor irritants apart, the movie is top notch stuff. Wish there were more movies like this... Two thumbs up from me!!

Now we get to a move that quite clearly underwhelmed me... Wall-E. Surprising, considering the fact that the movie is a very well made animation movie. Pixar has always pushed he envelope in terms of the subject of its movies... toys, monsters, cars, fish, has-been superheroes and even a rat who appreciates good things in life... and I have always been able to empathize with the characters and enjoy the ride. But somehow, Pixar lost me with its emotional robot love story. I liked the movie alright, but just couldn't connect with it the way I did with Toy Story (I & II) or Finding Nemo. True, the scenes are well thought of and imaginative, the animation is top notch and the humor, good as ever. So, it's just one of those things that one can't really explain rationally... -sigh-

Finally, the honorable mentions... Ironman: The movie was a better than average superhero movie, but what really lifted the movie was the brilliance of Robert Downey Jr. And Ironman was not the only movie RDJ elevated with his brilliance. Tropic Thunder would have been just another comic take on the innumerable Vietnam war era movies, but for RDJ's genius. The man really came alive in 2008!! And I'll probably get roundly panned for saying this, but I quite enjoyed Pineapple Express, in my opinion the best stoner/slacker flick since Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle. But I'll readily admit that the movie will probably not appeal to wide sections of the general populace. Among other movies that generally entertained without hitting the heights are Horton Hears A Who, Bolt and Kung Fu Panda. A couple of eagerly anticipated movies that mildly disappointed were Quantum of Solace and Indiana Jones IV. As regards QoS, Bond might as well have said, "The name is Bourne, Jason Bourne". The movie was not bad, but low on everything one associates with a Bond movie... style, witty one-liners, gadgets... and most importantly, hot Bond babes that invariably try to do Bond in. -sigh- And lastly, the Indy flick - not bad at all, but I guess my expectations from the movie were impossibly high to meet. Plus, the movie suggests that Shia LaBeouf, the same irritating kid from Even Stevens, will step into Indy's shoes... a terrifying prospect!! You know what would really make for a splendid 2009.... A movie in which Shia LaBeouf gets run over by a truck... repeatedly. Ah, now that would be a true masterpiece and the very thought makes me feel better already... Have a great 2009, y'all!! Until later.. cheers 8-)

Movie Madness... really...

I guess the title of my blog (To Blog or Not to Blog) says it all!! What do I blog about when there's not a whole lot interesting happening in my life. Of course, it is sometimes a good thing when life isn't all that interesting, but you do get my point, don't you? I could blog about the state of the US economy, my favorite despot Robert Mugabe or about the latest episode of corporate greed and subsequent grief, but you could get that from just about anywhere else. Besides, after a particularly heavy lunch, I don't quite feel up to the task of penning a serious post. So, this post, out of sheer necessity, is going to have a slow, easy and rambling feel to it.

I have been watching a lot of movies lately. That's what people do when they don't have a whole lot else interesting to do. I like movies. They usually don't demand a whole lot of concentration (something that I'm increasingly finding myself incapable of) and provide a reasonable amount of entertainment for one's meager investments. However, most of the movies I've had the misfortune of viewing lately have been, to put it very mildly, total crap. I mean, what kind of manure are film makers churning out these days? Dostana, Lucky Oye, Dil kabaddi, Maharathi, Yuvraaj, Fashion and the undisputed king of this pile of trash, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi!!! My God, a movie collection from hell if ever there was one. The last Hindi movie I can claim to be reasonably entertained by was Golmaal Returns, which is really quite revealing. Either I have suddenly turned into a movie connoisseur cum critic, or the Indian film industry has reached rock bottom and started digging in earnest. I'm inclined to believe the latter to be true, since I was mildly amused by Golmaal Returns, which I doubt is going to be labelled a masterpiece anytime soon.

Let's dissect "Rab Ne" for a bit. I'm assuming here that you have seen the movie, or at least heard/read about it, since writing a short review here would be too painful for me to go through. And yeah, I need to issue a customary spoiler alert at this point for those of you who would (incredible as that would be) like to watch the movie even after I have denounced it to hell. Anyways, here goes... Suri (SRK) shaves his moustache, presents himself as Raj (surprise, SRK again!!!) and his wife has not the slightest doubt it is the same person. And amazing as it is, I didn't think this was even the most ludicrous aspect of the entire film. Suri is a dull, shy and socially inept nerd. One haircut and shave later he is Raj, a loud, gregarious and flirtatious epitome of masculinity. I mean come on... if he can just as easily be Raj as he can be Suri, why the f*** would he want to be Suri? Just imagine: [dull, wimpy] vs [popular, macho]. Given a choice, what would you rather be? Duh... And to think that I paid $10 to watch this tripe at the multiplex causes much heartburn.

Anyways, I guess one can always hope for a better year ahead!! Here's wishing everyone a very happy 2009... Ya, even SRK and Aditya Chopra. But one more such movie, you guys, and those wishes will swiftly be replaced by voodoo spells. Until later, cheers... 8-)