Exciting!! Robert Downey at his best as Sherlock Holmes along with Jude Law as Dr. Watson come together again to unravel the game of shadows and bring down a cunning professor who plans to make fortunes by instigating world war among countries which come together on a peace summit.
A Game of Shadows poster
Now, that was the story in short of “Sherlock Holmes – A Game of Shadows”. To write more on the excitement of watching the movie in theatre, dozens of antique words will not be sufficient.
Robert Downey is at his witty best, those beautiful camouflage clothing and the funny yet important costumes that Holmes comes up with in certain scenes keep us entertained. I don’t want to let more spoilers spoil the fun when you watch the movie but I can say that Holmes travels from Germany to France to Switzerland, in full action. Hans Zimmer has retained the theme for Sherlock Holmes while adding more strings and speed to it. Action sequences where Sherlock Holmes deploys his “curse” to see the opponents moves are shown in more detail. The chase in the forest is easily the long but the best action scene of the Sherlock Holmes sequence. As always, the best is saved for the last; the climax scenes are scintillating and the expected twist at “The End” is well delivered 
.
I would rate the movie 9.25 on a scale of 10. How much would you?
Every other day someone pings me or I ping someone in a variety of e-places including Gtalk, Facebook chat or Skype or even plain old communicator. Here’s how a typical conversation starts:
Person A: Hey hi!
Person B: Hey man.. What’s up?! (or wassup, ssup, or sup or even ‘wasp!!’)
Some people complain that its pointless to ask What’s up to a person who is grounded, some tactfully reply back saying “nothing much” and some people reply literally saying “Fan, bulb, ceiling and sky 
”. Yes it is a meaningful reply, though.
Ok, today I sat back for a few minutes and thought about this unknown hollywood movie which I saw the other day, only for a few minutes while punching my TV remote buttons. There was this scene where a guy comes over to his friend and asks ‘What’s happening?’. I thought again. I wanted to blog this!
Typical people who liked to use abbreviational words said ‘What’s happ’ instead of ‘What’s happening’ which then got transformed to ‘What’s up?!”. Voila!
And so you see people, that, is a brief history of ‘What’s up!”. So, next time if someone IMs you or pings you or just walks by and asks ‘What’s up?!” you know the history 
.
PS: All of the above except the movie scene are just framed by my mind. I do not know if there is some real reason, share if you know it. Yes, it is widely believed that it originated from a catchphrase ”What’s up, Doc?” by Bugs Bunny.
Phew! Its been quite a while since I wrote a blogpost at Yusuf.in. Yesterday was a great day because I got to watch Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol at a Multiplex here in Cologne, Germany!
Boy did the movie keep us all tightly coupled to our seats with some scenes demanding perfect silence since the dialogies were spoken with “huge huskness”. So, here goes my review of the movie. Btw, no where did I notice it saying as “Mission Impossible:4″ !
Movie Poster - Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol
It starts with Ethan hunt(of course played by Tom Cruise!) at a prison in Moscow, Russia for the task of extracting a source – with the help of Dunn (played by Simon Pegg) and Carter (played by Paula Pautton). The movie title blazes through the ‘light them up’ and Ethan is given the mission to extract files from “The Kremlin” to trace down something code named ‘Cobalt’. Halfway through this mission someone talks on the IMF radio and The Kremlin security end up chasing Ethan but then The Kremlin blows up!. Security forces then believe that its an act of war after which the US president evokes “Ghost Protocol” – disavowing IMF in full; but Ethan and team are allowed to escape by the IMF secretary just to chase down Cobalt and stop it, along with the intelligence analyst Brandt(played by Brenny lee) who is then discovered as not just an analyst. They land in Dubai to trace details and its an edge of the seat action at the Burj Khalifa! Next stop, Mumbai, where they have to extract codes from Brij Nath (played by Anil Kapoor). Up next are high octane scenes of action in style, launching missiles and the impossible mission’s climax and finally, the real story of Ethan Hunt’s wife.
I loved this particular scene next to the private jet from Dubai where Dunn says “Love the jet” to which Ethan replies “Wait until you see the car” . Unfortunately, the i8 couldn’t even wade through Mumbai’s traffic and people.
To sum it up, Ghost protocol is way better than the 2nd and 3rd installments of Mission Impossible movies and to say it in four words “Paced action in style”.
I would give it a rating of 9 on 10. How much would you?
This was regarded to be the most high-profile series since the world cup.ICC even said they had shifted the venue of ICC awards from colombo to london because of this series.ESPN telecasted ads in which Flintoffisque type of person boasts how they tied with the champions and they were also world champions.Ravi Shastri Slammed England by saying that the oppositition were never world no 1and they do not have the rights to speak ill about bcci.Several Players were rested for West Indies tour because of the Importance this series had.And to top it all , a hundredth hundred was at stake throughout the series.
INDIA VS ENGLAND
Photo Courtesy:Cricinfo
The trouble started for India even before they boarded the plane,sehwag would miss the first 2 tests and the trouble just got alleviated on the first day of Lord’s Test when India’s prime,goto bowler Zaheer Khan was injured and was informed he could not take part further in the series.India lost their best swing bowler in the first day of the tour and from that day on the momentum swung towards England.The out of form Kevin Pietersen scored a double hundred after being troubled by Zaheer Khan for most of the first day.England posted a mammoth total of 474/8 declare and India succumbing to the speed and swing of england bowlers for 286,just avoiding the follow-on because of the efforts of the Mr Dependable century(his first in the mecca of cricket).While indian bowlers did come back strongly to reduce england to 6-107,England found an heroes in Prior and Broad to post a target of 458.India ended the day at 80-1 with Dravid and Laxman at the crease and Rain predicted for the 5th day ,India would have had hopes of escape similar to the one 4 years ago when dhoni and sreeshanth batted out and bad light stopping play .India were 142-4 at lunch ,with Tendulkar and raina in crease and escape route still present.Tendulkar fell soon after lunch and his ambitions of his first century at Lords just vanished.India survived till Tea session with five wickets in hand but once dhoni fell soon after Tea,Raina was left to fight alongside the tailenders who were not able to handle the swing and India lost by 196 Runs.
With India having a track record of bouncing back from the series 1-0 down,the fans did not lose hope.And the hopes were heightened when india bundled out england for 221 and were imposing position at 267-4 on day 2 post tea session.But everytjing changed when england took the new ball and india lost theiir next 6 wickets for 20 runs and England got the much needed boost and they never looked back .They savaged the indian bowling ,and posted a huge total of 544 on board leaving India a gargantuan task of chasing 458 in fourth innings.The pitch which had behaved like a flat track when England batted ,started to do all the tricks what English bowlers aimed at the Indians and except for Tendulkar’s 56,India did not have any nerves to put up a fight were bowled out for 158 runs by the end of the days play.
Well, I had to and I wanted to write about this movie. With some many comments, both extremely positive and utterly negative by people in social networking sites, I wanted to share mine as well but on a bigger platform – which is this… my blog
Onto the movie, it was today that I caught up with the movie and here is what I noted of the two and a half hours movie that entertained me to a great extent today.
According to Wikipedia, Director Venkat Prabhu chose to direct one of his three scripts as his next movie after a not so great Goa. Ajith had a keen interest to portray something on the lines of the “Joker” character in Dark Knight. Yes, we all know how vicious Heath Ledger was on screen, playing Joker. So, Mankatha (its a traditional game of cards in India) had one such role with dark characterization and so, the movie happened with Ajith and the usual gang of boys with Venkat Prabhu(with two new members)… I only know that people say “உள்ளே” (Inside), “வெளியே”(Outside) while playing that game. If you are interested, you can learn how Mankatha the card game is played.
So here goes MY review of the movie.
Mankatha the film
Onto the story-line, the movie starts with “Thala” Ajith Kumar as a police officer(Vinayak), on a fabulous introduction scene, who is then suspended from work for 6 months; he then plans to pull out the biggest heist of a very huge amount of illegal betting money just before the final match of the IPL. He actually derives a plan along with four guys who had their own heist plan. Vinayak, along with the four guys, are they successful in the heist and ’Action King’ Arjun as the sincere police anti-betting head(Pritviraj) to nab the illegal betting guys, is he successful in chasing these guys before they rob the money, forms the core story. There was never a scope for performance for three ladies in the movie, no scope for mentioning here as well. Lakshmi Rai did some justice to her bad girl character(Sona). The final twist in the movie was as expected but it was pictured very well. Special mention about Subbu who did a good job as the other police officer(Kamal Ekambaram) with Arjun.
Ajith, Ajith and more Ajith. It is Ajith all the way. You’l agree with me after you watch the movie. Yes, it sure is his 50th film and he has portrayed the Anti-hero character with much elan. The Bloopers at the credits were too good. Don’t miss them!
Yuvan Shankar Raja needs a special mention for all his work on the Background music and the re-recording. Excellence in choice of instruments/music at the right time and at the right frame. I was never tired of the theme music.
There were plenty of let-downs – in terms of a not so strong script, an utterly unwarranted comical geek!!, most action scenes hugely (or totally?) inspired from Hollywood, a few lagging scenes in the movie, songs just for the sake except ‘Vilayaadu Mankatha’ and ‘Machi Open the Bottle’.
Mankatha, sometimes உள்ளே and sometimes வெளியே. The final few scenes of the movie did enthrall everyone at the theatre. In a nutshell, it wasn’t that much of an edge of the seat game, but it was very well played towards the end and a deserved victory.
I would give the movie a rating of 7.05 out of 10. How much would you?!
Howdy! if you are reading this post, then it means you are reading this at a good time for Yusuf.in which just celebrated 2 years since August 2009. Join me in wishing my blog a very happy birthday
