After moving to Bangalore in October, 2006 from New Delhi, I applied for a broadband connection from Tata Indicom (big mistake).

After applying, I was told that the connection will be provided to me within a week, but I got the broadband connection after 4 of those “so called” one week.

Even after paying the advance rental for 4 months to avoid paying the installation charges, I was charged the installation charges. Took some shouting and abusing from me for them to return the installation charges, which took around 2 months to get processed.

Now the real horror started, which I can term as a big pain in ass and waste of time. The connection used to be down most of the time of the month and the major chunk of my mobile phone bill was going on calls complaining and abusing people at the customer service of tata indicom broadband.

This did not happen on one occasion but numerous occasions throughout my broadband service term with tata indicom. I have even forgot counts of the problems which I had.

I will let you guys know the most recent problem which frustrated me so much that I decided to end the service from tata indicom as I prefer staying without a internet connection rather than availing the service from these worthless people who do not know how to serve the customer.

1. I was on leave for Diwali holidays and was in my hometown. I came back on 7^th of November and found out that my internet connection was not working (nothing unusual). Being a weekend, I decide to call them on Monday.

2. On Monday 10^th of November, I gave then a formal call and logged a complain request with them to fix the interconnection. I was given an assurance of 24 hours for the internet connection to be fixed.

3. After 2 of those 24 hours passed with no response from their backend team or any contact from their customer service, I felt I should call them and throw in some abuses to get the connection fixed. I did that religiously and was again given an assurance that the complain will be forwarded to the backend team and will be attended on urgent basis. I knew very well that I will end up abusing them again after 24 hours as I had prior experience of this on the numerous occasions when my connection was down.

4. After another 3 of those 24 hours passed, I thought I would call those idiots at the customer service desk of tata indicom and show my undying love for them. After showing a little of my love to them, my call was escalated to a so called supervisor (another worthless guy with low self esteem). After listening to his explanation, I felt like showing my love to him but restrained myself as I though this guy might be able to do something for me (big big mistake).

5. Another 2 of the promised 24 hours passed but I got no response either from their backend team or from the lovely people at tata indicom customer service (I hope u get my sarcasm here), I had to give them a call to show my love to them which had grown deeper and deeper in due time. I was dying for them to send a backend support person at my doorstep so that I could strangulate that guy and hang him from my ceiling fan to cool down my frustration. Again I ended up being transferred to a supervisor. This time I was not able to hide my love for the people of tata indicom and gave him some abuses. Again I got a promise for 24 hours from that particular supervisor. Poor guys got blasted by me for giving that promise. I felt like putting my hand through the phone and strangulating him there and then, but I guess the technology has not developed so much to teleport me to him like in the movie “Matrix” (how would I have loved this; I cant even explain to you people).

6. Another 4 of those 24 hours passed. I have fed up now I cant bear even the voice of those bunch of jokers telling me about what they are doing for the connection. Still I had to give them a call as that was the only thing I could I have done. This time god blessed those people with some information and I was informed that the local service had some technical issues. Here I was unable to understand, what was taking a company like tata indicom to fix a local server even after the problem being reported 12 days back. SHEER INCOMPETENCE!!!

7. Days Passed by and I was loosing my nerves. I called twice more and got the same pathetic reply that the work is in progress and they will forward it on an “urgent” basis (at this point of time I had by hearted their entire call scripts).

8. On 28^th Of November I sent an email to their Appelate Authority in Mumbai as well as the Nodal Officer of Bangalore. The email is given below:

This is to inform you that my internet connection is not working since approximately 20 days since 7^th-8^th of November. The complaint number XXXXXXXXX was logged with you people on 10^th of November and even after numerous calls to your customer care number, the connection is still not working. I have not even received one call back from your customer department to update me on the status or the connection has not been working for long.

Any valid explanation for this would be very helpful as well as expediting the repairs on my connection.

I have been told by your customer care representatives and a supervisor that the issue is with the local server. If that’s the case then may I know what can take a company like Tata Indicom to take so long to repair or replace a server??? I expect that you have ample infrastructure to replace the same or have you lost money in the current economic recession that you cannot afford to repair or replace a small server.

Any response to this will be greatly appreciated. I would also request Ms. Priya (Nodal Officer for Bangalore) to give me a callback as her number is never reachable when I try to contact.

A frustrated Customer of a worst  service from Tata Indicom Broadband.

Rahul R Verma

Account email: xxxxxxxx@vsnl.net

Complain number: XXXXXXX

Billing Complain Number: XXXXXXX

9. After 4 good days, I got this reply from the nodal officer. I have added my feeling to the email in brackets and in red bolds.

Dear Mr.Rahul,

Greetings from Tata Communications. (Screw you and your greetings)

This is to inform you that as confirmed from our technical team the broadband connection is not restorable  due to technical issues. (And it took you one month to figure that out? Btw.. how was it working for nearly 2 years before this??? Height of incompetency)

Hence kindly confirm for further action in this regard. (Other Action : Shove the Internet connection with the ADSL modem up your ASS)

We sincerely regret for the delay and inconvenience caused. (Only the ADSL modem in your ass will make me truly accept your apologies)

Regards

Nodal officer South3

10. Now I ended up calling their customer service number again to know how to get rid of their worthless internet services. I was informed that I will have to send an email to their customer service email to get it disconnection. I showed my last love (I think u got what I meant here) to them on the phone call and disconnected.

11. I have sent the email religiously and now I am waiting for the connection to be removed. Though I would love to see a person from tata indicom broadband at my doorstep to strangulate him.

Inner peace has dawned upon me and I am now a much happier person.

So people who are willing to take an broadband connection from tata indicom, think a hundred times. You will be better without one rather that getting one from tata indicom.

And for people who are using tata indicom without any problems, I have sympathies for you as problem is on your way soon. Maybe you are lucky as those idiots have not taken a look at your connection. Keep your connection hidden, as if they notice you.. you will get jinxed too.

Three Cheers for the worst ISP on the planet… they take bad service to a whole new level!!!

PS: Try a search in google with the keywords tata indicom broadband. You will come up with lot of interesting experience like mine.

I would suggest you to view this video posted on You Tube which shows an TV report on Tata Indicom Broadband carried on by CNN-IBN.

Now I will keep you all updated if I have any thing else to share regarding Tata Indicom Broadband.

All hail tata indicom broadband.. which sucks to the core.

If you don’t like movies with somewhat unbelievable premises justified by a dashing leading man, hilarious supporting characters, and tear-jerking moments that will make you cry , than stay away from P.S. I Love You. For all of you saps out there, prepare for a film that’s so surprisingly endearing, you’ll start wondering why you can’t have a husband who will love you enough to die young and then send you letters posthumously.

Based on the best-selling novel by Cecilia Ahern, P.S. I Love You is an uplifting ballad about love and loss. The film opens with Holly Kennedy (Hilary Swank) and her goofy Irish husband Gerry (Gerard Butler) fighting over a

seemingly innocuous comment Gerry made to Holly’s mother. Just when the couple realizes how much they need one another, the film cuts ahead several months to Gerry’s funeral, where Holly is absolutely devastated. Fortunately, during his battle with a brain tumor, Gerry composed a series of letters to be delivered to Holly after his death, each encouraging her to live her life, each ending with the phrase “P.S. I Love You.” As the letters pile up, Holly struggles with memories of her past as her two best friends Denise (Lisa Kudrow) and Sharon (Gina Gershon), and the shamelessly blunt bartender Daniel (Harry Connick Jr.), all struggle to get her to start anew.
P.S. I Love You is one of those painful films that makes you cry right off the bat, then lifts you up with some choice comedy (courtesy of Lisa Kudrow) only to slap you in the face with a heart-breaking flashback. But despite the extremely depressing subject matter, the film still emanates an aura of hope, which keeps it from sinking into Lifetime: Movie of the Week territory. Ultimately, the film serves to prove that annoying adage you hear after every break-up, “‘Tis better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.”

P.S. I Love You – Trailer

What’s most impressive about P.S. I Love You is that the actors managed to feel like real people, despite the script’s gimmicky premise. Borrowing some delivery tactics from her days as Phoebe Buffet, Lisa Kudrow will have single women everywhere exploding in laughter as she searches for a man who is single, straight, employed and knows how to kiss. Meanwhile, Gina Gershon shines as the more grounded best friend and Kathy Bates gives her standard powerful performance as Holly’s frosty mother. The true standout of the film though is Gerard Butler, which is pretty impressive considering he dies within the first ten minutes. Not only is he a gorgeous man with an accent who sings (try to compete with that boys), but he also has this amazing chemistry on screen that makes you crave him more and more after every scene.

Even though the depressing plotline is right up her alley, Hilary Swank makes a real departure from her typical Oscar winners here, drawing from her 90210 days as the waitress who won Steve’s heart and then lost it to bad ratings. Swank does best in scenes where she’s responding to her cast mates, but has trouble embracing the leading romantic female role. Meanwhile, Harry Connick Jr. does well enough with his brutal honesty but somehow doesn’t manage to make Daniel seem endearing enough to forgive his quirks. The biggest casting misstep is with singer Nellie McKay as Holly’s younger sister Ciara. Though it’s only a bit part, McKay is just too offbeat for the generally down-to-earth tone of the film and is painful to watch.
P.S. I Love You isn’t going to break the chick-flick barrier but it packs a powerful two hours into a concept that on face value seems pretty cliché and corny. P.S. don’t forget to check out the phenomenal soundtrack featuring the heart-wrenching song “Love you till the end” that will keep you in your state of blissful depression for days after seeing the film.

[audio:love you till the end.mp3]

I absolutely LOVED this movie. I went to see it alone and honestly I thought it was amazing. It made me realize that life is short…when you are so in love that you can’t imagine your life without the other person…. you must live each day to it’s fullest. Leave the petty stuff alone and enjoy every moment you have with the one God has blessed you with. I laughed, I cried, I felt like falling in love all over again…corny, but true .. but I don’t think that you should feel bad for leaving an honest review…everyone sees things differently.

Sensational, grandly sinister and not for the kids, “The Dark Knight” elevates pulp to a very high level. Heath Ledger’s Joker takes it higher still, and the 28-year-old actor’s death earlier this year of an accidental overdose lends the film an air of a funeral and a rollicking, out-of-control wake mixed together. In “The Dark Knight,” Ledger makes all other comic book screen villains look like Baby Huey. Like Shakespeare’s Iago or Richard III, like Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter or Javier Bardem’s implacable murderer in “No Country For Old Men,” this is no Method maniac, asking or telling anyone about his character’s motivation. At one point Ledger throws up his hands and says, agitatedly, that it’s a waste of time looking for a rationale behind the Joker’s smeary psycho-harlequin makeup.

“I’m a dog chasing cars,” he says. “I wouldn’t know what to do with one of them if I caught it.”

Director and co-writer Christopher Nolan, who fashioned the screenplay with his brother, Jonathan, has created the most ambitious and sleekly beautiful of all the superhero screen outings. A handful of others—” Superman II” and ” Spider-Man 2″ come to mind—may have fewer loose ends and a more exhilarating spirit. They’re certainly shorter; this one is 152 minutes. But “The Dark Knight,” which improves upon the solemn authority Nolan and Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne brought to ” Batman Begins,” has an atmospheric shimmer all its own. Its unsung hero is cinematographer Wally Pfister, who makes every interior and exterior a thing of burnished, menacing beauty. Shot largely in Chicago at night, greatly aided by production designer Nathan Crowley, this is the most nocturnally insinuating entertainment since Michael Mann’s “Collateral.”

No heartland paradise

Sampling every flat Midwestern dialect he no doubt heard while shooting in Chicago, Ledger gives the Joker the deceptively bland vowel sounds of heartland America. But Gotham City is no heartland paradise. It teeters on the verge of bloody anarchy, and its most outré citizen licks his chops, literally, as if he can’t get the taste of blood out of his mouth

While billionaire playboy Wayne continues his clean-up campaign Gotham City finds a new symbol of righteous hope, district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart). He has it all: a fervent desire to clean up a dirty town, plus the love and devotion of Wayne’s ex, the assistant D.A. and one of a small handful of Gothamites who know Batman’s true identity. She’s played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, stepping in for (and improving on) Katie Holmes. Gyllenhaal’s curled-at-the-corners smile matches up perfectly with Bale’s.

The D.A. teams up with Batman and the weary honest cop Jim Gordon ( Gary Oldman in a mustache that says “trust me”) to combat organized crime, though Batman’s vigilantism has inspired all sorts of copycat, low-rent imitators. Then, just when the film needs a good jolt, Dent undergoes a radical physical and psychological transformation and becomes, literally, two-faced.

Trailer No. 1

Villain isn’t squandered

The transformation comes at a narrative cost. The film’s focus is thrown slightly out of whack, and it’s too bad his coin-flipping gambit is so like that of “No Country’s” Anton Chigurh. Not everything in “The Dark Knight” works: Some of the more painful flourishes—a grenade plopped in a bank manager’s mouth, the terrorization of Gordon’s children—are too much. Yet so much of “The Dark Knight” works on different levels simultaneously. It’s a brooding crime saga with some spectacular action sequences. My favorite pits Bale’s Batman and his “Bat-Pod,” the world’s deadliest, most awesome motorcycle, against Ledger’s Joker in an 18-wheeler. The setting is Chicago’s LaSalle Street canyon, and what I love about the scene—aside from its eerie, 3 a.m. vibe—is Nolan’s reliance on good old-fashioned stunt work. “The Dark Knight” offers plenty of digital effects, but they never take over.

Nineteen years ago Jack Nicholson’s Joker won a lot of the credit for the popularity of director Tim Burton’s “Batman.” In contrast to that stylish but uneven picture, one of the splendid things about “The Dark Knight” is its refusal to squander its villain. This is a true ensemble piece, and you can’t say that of most $180 million franchise products. Ledger’s scenes are few, carefully considered, often startlingly brutal (one scene, over in an eye-blink, involves a disappearing pencil trick and a man’s skull) and freakishly effective.

Six sequences constituting about 20 minutes of footage were shot using IMAX cameras, including the opening bank heist and a fabulous swoop across the Hong Kong skyline. (The narrative takes a detour for a matter of extraditing an Asian businessman back to Gotham and to justice.) There’s a sweep and spaciousness to the imagery here, and even a simple chase sequence such as the one staged along Lower Wacker Drive feels freshly considered. The violence, however rough, is largely free of the lingering, jokey sadism prevalent in so many comic-book and graphic novel-derived films. Nolan paints an inky portrait of a city falling apart, and in a movie rife with two-faced masquerading freaks, the Joker is merely the least conflicted of the bunch. Ledger’s work is improbably droll, impossibly creepy, meticulously detailed. See for yourself.

MPAA rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of violence and some menace).

Running time: 2:32

Opening: 12:01 a.m. Friday.

Starring: Christian Bale (Bruce Wayne/Batman); Christian Bale(The Joker); Aaron Eckhart (Harvey Dent); Maggie Gyllenhaal (Rachel Dawes); Gary Oldman (Lt. Jim Gordon); Michael Caine (Alfred); Christian Bale (Lucius Fox).

Directed by: Christopher Nolan; screenplay by Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan; photographed by Wally Pfister; production design by Nathan Crowley; edited by Lee Smith; music by James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer; produced by Charles Roven, Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan. A Warner Bros. Pictures release.

What does it take to move forward in life? One of the key things needed to move forward is the ability to focus. The mind must be clear about what it needs to focus on. There are times when it is critical to focus on what is taking place at that time. My advice is to focus on what is most important or that appears to be the priority. If you do not focus on what is most important; you could be in real trouble in the near or not to distance future.

Another key point to moving forward in life is having the ability see success. If someone is unable to see success then they may never feel inspired to seek greater achievements in life. There must be inside the heart something that enables one to see success. If we look at most people who have done well moving forward in life; we will see that they all had the ability to see success.

Well, if you have not watched the movie, “Meet the Robinsons” then do so. It is such a lovely movie.

What I love about the movie is its message, which is: Keep moving forward. No matter how many times you fail, keep trying because eventually you’ll succeed. There’s even a quote at the end of the movie from Walt Disney himself that contains the phrase in it. [If you're the cynical type, don’t be so quick to dismiss the message as trite. Even if you’re not an animated film fan, check out the movie for a dose of inspiration.]

The message is so simple and yet so profound. It’s easy for all of us to develop a bit of an inferiority complex as we struggle to find a career we love and pursue it. I experienced many failures myself as I was making my transition—from exploring lots of possibilities and feeling like none of them was the right one, to trying to create a financial plan for how to make it happen and not seeing a way out, to trying to be grateful for what I already had and feeling miserable instead.

If your goal is precious, and it is, Walt Disney’s words are poignant, inspirational, and on point. Here’s what he said:

“Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”

Life can hit hard. Sometimes you get knocked down when you don’t even see it coming. Some are cheap shots, some are glancing blows and some can bring you to your knees. When this happens, it’s not about how hard you get hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit, but still find the strength to keep moving forward. It’s about having the will to continue in spite of the obstacles.

When you get hit, do you stay down? Or do you reach down somewhere deep inside of you and pull up the courage that lifts you back on your feet to keep moving forward? You do have a choice. Consider these Nine Ways to Keep Moving Forward when you are faced with this choice again.

Forget Regret

Leave your mistakes and regret in the past. They don’t define your value, then or now. When you stay in the past you become stuck and unable to move forward. We all have made mistakes with our job choices, friends and relationships. The consequences can hit us pretty hard. However, to begin learning how to put these experiences behind us – by letting them go, we can begin to live in the here and now. Give yourself the gift of forgiveness and keep moving forward.

Learn from Failure

Learning from failure and having regret are two separate things. Regret is an emotion; a feeling of disappointment along with a modest amount of shame or guilt. But to look back at a circumstance and figure out what went wrong gives you some very important information. This review allows you to evaluate what worked and what didn’t, and more importantly, why. Often when you are removed from a situation, you can look at it more objectively which will allow you to make better choices to keep moving forward.

Ask for Help

You are not alone. It may feel that way sometimes, but there are many people who would extend their hand and lift you up if asked. All you have to do is ask. Consider co-workers, neighbors, or your church. Often times we are afraid to ask because we don’t believe we are worthy to receive the help. Think about this: we are surrounded by millions and millions of people by design – for a purpose. A hand to grasp, a shoulder to cling, and a face to radiate hope can help you to keep moving forward.

Believe You are Worthy

Whatever your goal, your dream, or your desire, you are worthy of achieving it. The closer you get to it is when the enemy of you soul will begin putting doubt in your mind by playing the self-limiting tapes that say you are not worthy. Replace these old tapes with a newer one that contains the truth – you are worthy to have your heart’s true desire and to keep moving forward.

Take 100% Responsibility

Except in rare and unfortunate circumstances, you are responsible for the quality and condition of your life. Your career, your relationships and your happiness are all under your direct control. Sometimes we choose to do nothing when we get hit hard because it’s just easier and less painful that way. But the real pain is only deferred. You have to live with yourself. You have to live with the voice in your gut, your inner wisdowm, that says you gave up too soon or didn’t try hard enough. When you hear this inner voice speaking to you, it’s usually right. It’s you choice, then, to get up and keep moving forward.

Know What You Want

This isn’t about the how, only the what. In order to move forward in life, you need a firm foundation to step from. Understanding what and where you want to go in life will provide your vision and spirit – your foundation. The how will figure itself out when you know you want to keep moving forward.

Trust

There are no accidents without value. When you get hit hard and land on your back, look for the reasons and for the value in this. Open your heart and trust this happened for a reason. Perhaps it was to test your determination or to alert you to the fact you were on the wrong path. Either way, trust the experience is happening for a reason and be open to making adjustments in order to keep moving forward.

Want it More

How badly do you want it? How badly do you really want to achieve what you are working so hard to accomplish? When you get hit hard, you have an opportunity to answer this question. It’s one thing to say you want to do something, or to be something. But to walk through the pain; to get up and keep moving forward knowing there may be more pain ahead, is a test of your determination and resolve. When you find yourself getting back on your feet, you have indeed answered this question and there’s no doubt you will keep moving forward.

Keep the Faith

Faith: A strong belief in something without proof or evidence
At the end of the day when you are weary from all of the effort and energy you have expended and you are sore and tired from being hit hard so many times, but the dream is not realized, the one thing that tells you to keep going; to get up tomorrow and to keep moving forward, is your faith. Honor this and cherish it. Faith is what makes you human. It gives you energy and hope. And if you let it, your faith will deliver you to wherever you want to go in life.

I hope that helps you all.

As you move forward in life, occasionally look ahead to your next horizon. The next challenge you see will give you the drive to keep moving forward. Looking forward will hone your ability to achieve success.

Cheers!! and

Keep moving forward.

Review for the other movie which I watched today in office. Still I have 2 more hours to stay in office. I am planning to watch another one. Maybe I could post a review for that too. Cheers!

Jackie Chan and Jet Li join forces on-screen for the first time in this lavish action movie.

Jackie Chan has said for more than 10 years that he’s wanted to work with his friend Jet Li, but plenty of fans probably figured they’d have long white beards — or long white hair — before the two action stars finally got together. With “The Forbidden Kingdom,” it’s finally happened. In this adventure-fantasy — and love letter to the conventions of martial-arts movies — Chan and Li each have dual roles: Chan plays an elderly Bostonian shopkeeper and a “drunken master” for whom wine is an elixir of strength. Li plays a monk well-versed in the martial arts and, even more magnificently, appears as the wiry, mischievous Monkey King, a mythical Chinese figure with the ability to transform himself into 72 different animals or objects. The bad news about “The Forbidden Kingdom” is that the picture built around these two stars — it’s directed by Rob Minkoff, who made the wonderful “Stuart Little” movies, as well as “The Lion King” — isn’t quite worthy of their skill and charm, and the plot is far more convoluted than it needs to be. The good news is that the picture is so good-natured, it’s easy enough to disregard many of its flaws. “The Forbidden Kingdom” is lavish in its approach — it attempts some rather extravagant battle scenes — yet it still seems modest in its goals: It’s more interested in being a Saturday-afternoon entertainment than a blockbuster.

Jason Tripitikas (Michael Angarano) is a shy Boston teenager who adores martial-arts movies, renting them from a sleepy little store in Chinatown run by the elderly firecracker Old Hop (Chan). In the backroom of Hop’s dusty store, Jason finds an antique bowstaff; a mystical turn of events sends him back in time — and to China — to return the staff to its rightful owner. His allies in this dangerous mission are two men he meets in his travels there: Lu Yan (Chan), who’s constantly swigging from his jug of wine, and the Silent Monk (Li), a serene figure in flowing white robes who is also a skilled fighter. Jason also meets a beautiful young warrior maiden named Sparrow (Liu Yifei), whose mission, it turns out, dovetails with his own: Both of them must fight the Jade Warlord (Collin Chou) and Ni Chang (Li Bingbing), a fierce, ambitious beauty whose streaming white tresses are part of her weaponry. By vanquishing them both, Jason will be able to free the long-imprisoned Monkey King (Li).

Confused yet? You will be. The story, written by John Fusco, is a mishmash of Chinese legend, literature, films and TV shows that barely holds together. The Monkey King is a figure in the Ming Dynasty novel “Journey to the West,” and his exploits have been dramatized in everything from opera to TV shows. “The Forbidden Kingdom” also includes references to numerous Hong Kong action classics, among them Ronnie Yu’s magnificent 1993 “The Bride with White Hair” (which was itself based on a 1950s novel).

But the befuddling plot doesn’t keep “The Forbidden Kingdom” from being an enjoyable spectacle. The picture’s attempts at humor don’t quite work: The banter between Li and Chan could use some more polishing from the director, partly because while Li and Chan speak English reasonably well, their hesitancy prevents their timing from being as crisp as it needs to be. Their martial-arts skills aside, though, both Li and Chan have already proved to be marvelous actors: Chan’s comic charms won’t wear out even after his body has slowed down, and Li, in pictures like “Jet Li’s Fearless” and “Unleashed,” is such a magnetic, sensitive presence that he doesn’t even need to fight to hold our attention.

That said, the fight sequences involving Chan and Li in “The Forbidden Kingdom” — which were choreographed by the great Woo-ping Yuen, the man behind the action in the “Matrix” and “Kill Bill” movies — are thrilling to watch. As they challenge each other, there’s more joy than aggression in their graceful contrapuntal kicking, their swift, responsive jabs. When Chan and Li match wits, each celebrates the other’s presence. This isn’t just a martial-arts display; it’s generosity and camaraderie in motion.

Good one. Worth a watch without spending money on tickets to the multiplex.

Still Dozing in office as not much work today. Downloaded few movies today.. one being 88 minutes and the other being “The Forbidden Kingdom”. Some review for the movie… In this post review for “88 minutes”.

Al Pacino tries hard to make this squirrelly thriller worth your time. Above is the Movie trailer

Director: Jon Avnet
Screenwriter: Gary Scott Thompson
Starring: Al Pacino, Alicia Witt, Leelee Sobieski, Amy Brenneman, Deborah Kara Unger, Benjamin McKenzie, Neal McDonough

The only reason to see an Al Pacino movie these days is Al Pacino. And maybe that’s not even a good enough reason. In Jon Avnet’s listless, squirrelly and ultimately nonsensical thriller “88 Minutes” Pacino plays Jack Gramm, a star forensic psychiatrist and professor responsible for sending a man whom he believes to be a serial killer, John Forster (Neal McDonough), to the electric chair. On the day the sicko is scheduled to die, Gramm receives a mysterious call on his cellphone: He has 88 minutes to live. But trust me, it feels more like around 236.

Did I mention that even though the serial killer is supposedly in jail, a rash of murders, done exactly in his style, comes to light on the very day Gramm receives the mysterious call? So who, exactly, is trying to kill Gramm? Could it be one of his forensic-psychiatry students, such as the feisty, brainy west Texan Kim (Alicia Witt, a capable actress stuck in a dumb role)? Or Mike (Benjamin McKenzie, of “The OC”), the arrogant, know-it-all med student? Or bright, sweet Lauren (Leelee Sobieski), with her trustworthy milkmaid face? And what about the dean of the university where Gramm teaches, Carol (Deborah Kara Unger), who slouches through the movie with her hair in a harried-looking updo, wearing a coat that looks like a bathrobe?

At one time or another, Gramm eyes each of these figures with suspicion, and so does the camera: It never met a red herring it didn’t like. As if that weren’t enough, Gramm also has secrets, most notably a mystery involving his younger sister’s death. There’s always something going on in “88 Minutes” — a cellphone ringing at just the right moment, a character interrupting to say, “Jack, I got ahold of so-and-so, and there’s a problem,” a comely young student stripping down to a filmy camisole for no particularly good reason (except the obvious one). The picture opens with an unpleasant capture-and-torture sequence involving — get this — two beautiful young Asian-American sisters. Twins, no less.

Avnet lays all this stuff out before us with a straight face — the picture is humorless and witless. The barrage of allegedly important details is supposed to keep us intrigued, but it barely keeps us occupied. By the time we find out who the killer really is, we’ve entertained so many possibilities that one culprit is as good as another: Avnet and screenwriter Gary Scott Thompson (who wrote the B-movie joyride “The Fast and the Furious”) try to stuff so much suspense into the corners that nothing in the movie has any weight or consequence.

Pacino, at least, takes it all in stride. He’ll listen to some other character’s inane dialogue and respond with an appropriately arched eyebrow or comically pop-eyed skepticism. And even when he’s stuck with lousy dialogue — in particular, a speech where he has to describe that painful family tragedy — he takes the care needed to deliver it as if it matters. Pacino has gotten past the point where we have to assess every additional wrinkle or gray hair to decide whether or not he’s aging well — he’s reached the age where he looks no-age, and it’s a good place to be. He wanders through “88 Minutes” in a baggy suit that looks slept-in, but he’s the only thing in it that’s remotely awake.

Paramount Pictures

Harrison Ford in “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”

“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”

Steven Spielberg’s beloved adventure series has built its own Temple of Hype — but the latest installment manages to surprise and delight.

A few months back, just before the release of Chak De India,” I happened to be standing near a poster for the movie at PVR Bangalore. A young man, who looked to be in his 20s, walked up and, after spending a few seconds surveying the image of hockey playing girls in their quaint get-ups — like hockey players from another world — said to his girlfriend, a little wistfully, “I don’t know why, but I want to see this.”

The idea of being drawn to a movie and not knowing why is practically lost in the contemporary moviegoing experience, at least when it comes to mainstream Hollywood pictures. We’re so conditioned to feel excitement over the new Spider-Man movie, the new Batman movie, the new Judd Apatow-produced movie, that the idea of walking up to an interesting-looking poster in a multiplex and thinking, “Now this might be something,” is almost unthinkable.

It’s completely unthinkable in the case of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” the fourth installment in Steven Spielberg’s rabidly beloved adventure series, which has been building its own Temple of Hype for several years now. But the strange thing about Spielberg’s latest is that, for me at least, it miraculously pulled off the effect of feeling like a surprise: The picture both fulfilled some vague, unexpressed hopes I didn’t know I had and also left me with the sense that I’d just seen something I wasn’t quite prepared for — the kind of contradiction that great showmanship can bridge. In a movie climate that seeks to promise bigger, bolder thrills, “Crystal Skull” daringly offers less, in the sense that it gives us action sequences that rely on visual logic rather than lots of fast cutting; its computer-generated effects are used with relative judiciousness; and it features human faces that actually look human — in other words, they belong to people who have aged, visibly, with the rest of us. “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” made by a man who’s amassed a great deal of money exploring the dreams and fears of childhood, and featuring a one-time action hero who’s now in his 60s, is an adventure about the inevitability of adulthood — but if you put that on a poster, almost nobody would come.

The “Indiana Jones” pictures, based on characters and stories created by George Lucas, were inspired by ’30s movie serials that were old-fashioned even by the time of Spielberg’s ’50s boyhood, and the party line on the series is that it stems from Spielberg’s unflagging obsession with lost childhood — anyone’s lost childhood. But even if “Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull,” like its predecessors — the most recent of which was “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” released 19 years ago — harks back to a past that Spielberg didn’t live firsthand, the nostalgia it’s selling isn’t the smug, self-satisfied sort, but a more melancholy variety: Now that we live in the future, there’s nothing to look forward to — even rocket ships have become passé. Why not resurrect a hero who spends his time delving into the earth for ancient — and, in this case, otherworldly — artifacts? For Spielberg, the only way to get back to the future is by digging into the past.

“Crystal Skull” is set in 1957, 19 years after the close of the last installment in the series, and Indiana Jones — just like Harrison Ford, the actor who plays him — is 60-ish and vaguely creaky. Indy’s old enemies the Nazis, so reliably evil they’d become as comfortable as house slippers, have been effectively vanquished. But there are new enemies waiting to take their place, specifically a team of Soviet operatives led by a ball-buster in a Buster Brown haircut: Her name is Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett, in a marvelously purring, stylized performance) and she’s keenly interested in a crateful of contents that the U.S. government has been keeping under top-secret wraps in a Nevada warehouse. Whatever’s in this crate — I won’t tell you what it is — is linked to the other, more important thing Irina and her countrymen are seeking, which happens to be the special crystal skull of the movie’s title. Never mind that the thing, when we finally see it, looks like a coffee-table gewgaw stuffed with aluminum foil; it holds the secrets of the universe — what Cold War hussy worth her weight in rubles could resist that?

Irina and her henchman collar Indy and his sidekick, Mac (Ray Winstone, in a sadly underdeveloped role), to help them find the mysterious wooden box they’re after, which is just one of many similar containers stacked floor to ceiling in that Nevada warehouse. They finally get what they want, leaving behind a mess of debris and smashed crates — one of which, in the movie’s slyest visual joke, contains the Ark of the Covenant, the precious MacGuffin of the first movie, a gleaming gold treasure that’s been cast aside as if it were yesterday’s news, because, after all, it is.

After his escape from the Russians, Indy returns to his home, and his teaching post, in a leafy New England town, but there’s trouble there too: Because of Indy’s knowledge of the thingie-in-the-crate, the FBI has insisted on ransacking his files and forcing him out of his job. If he’s an American hero, he’s also one who can’t trust his own country: As the dean of the college, Indy’s close friend Charles Stanforth (Jim Broadbent), laments, “You have reason to question your friends these days.”

Just as Indy is about to leave town, he’s accosted by a greaser kid who glides into the picture on a motorcycle, à la Marlon Brando in “The Wild One” — which makes no sense unless you accept that the cell walls of “Crystal Skull” are permeable, allowing the shadows of characters to wander from one movie to the next. The kid’s name is Mutt (Shia LaBeouf), and he needs Indy’s help in locating a man he considers a father figure (who turns out to be John Hurt in a rough cloth serape, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves). That fellow also happens to be one of Indy’s former colleagues, and so Indy agrees to help Mutt in his quest. The rest of “Crystal Skull” involves a trek to Peru in search of — what else? — a long-lost kingdom, as well as Indy’s reunion with his old flame Marion (Karen Allen), from “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” And Irina continues to slink through the picture like a leopard goddess.

Some have already proclaimed “Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull” a tired sequel; what’s more remarkable to me is how unjaded it is. It’s the most tender, warm-spirited and entertaining picture Spielberg has made in years, and I say that as someone who’s regularly rejected the whatever-it-is that Spielberg is often trying to sell: There are Spielberg pictures that I love (“E.T.,” “Jaws,” “Schindler’s List”) and others I despise, like his delusional work of sci-fi craftsmanship “War of the Worlds,” which I consider one of the ugliest, most mean-spirited pictures of the decade. Spielberg is an extraordinary craftsman, but he’s not a great thinker, and when he tries to stuff big ideas into his movies — as in “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” or “Munich” — his point of view is never quite clear, maybe because he doesn’t really know what he thinks. His ideas tend to be blurted out in signposts along the lines of “War is hell” and “Revenge gets you nowhere.” He knows, cannily, how to make movies work as you’re watching them; but I’ve found that many of Spielberg’s movies disintegrate in my mind not long afterward. They may be built to last, and still, they break down.

But at his best, Spielberg is certainly capable of tapping, to almost unnerving degree, collective moods and fears and longings, both emotional and cultural. I don’t think of Spielberg as any sort of savior of contemporary cinema: He is, after all, an executive producer of the “Transformer” movies. But “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” — its smart script is by David Koepp, and it was shot in muted, suedelike tones by Janusz Kaminski — is so beautifully made, and so full of inventive, delightful touches, that it feels like a manifesto, as if Spielberg were taking a stand against the crap we’re so often forced to sit through. At one point, Mutt and Irina engage in a sword fight atop parallel moving trucks — this isn’t a new idea, but Spielberg makes it look fresh and vital.

LaBeouf is appealing enough in “Crystal Skull”; he sensibly keeps his performance as low-key as possible, which you need to do when you’re acting with Harrison Ford. Ford has never been a particularly expressive actor, though he has often managed to give sturdy and nicely understated performances in spite of it. Now, more than ever, he has the face of a tiki god — yet he seems more expressive rather than less, particularly in his first scene with Allen. When he sees her, his face shows what can only be described as pure delight, and it’s little wonder: Allen, an actress of a certain age who isn’t afraid to look like a real person, is radiant here. Her performance is like joy let out of a box.

“Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull” also contains one of the most grimly funny sequences I’ve seen in years. Indy has just escaped from the Russians, and he heads, with obvious relief, toward a small town, the kind of place where freshly washed sheets and towels, stretched out on clotheslines, flap in the breeze like friendly flags. He dashes into one house, looking for help, and finds a family parked in front of the TV set. (The show is “Howdy Doody,” with its sinister-cheerful theme music.) Only this isn’t a real family — its people are made out of plaster, like department-store dummies. Indy realizes he’s stumbled into a fake town that’s been set up by the government for a nuclear test, and he scrambles into the family refrigerator (comfortingly, the legend on its door reads “lead lined”), hunkering down for the inevitable blast.

That refrigerator keeps Indy safe from radiation. But is he safe from his own country? Spielberg floats the question without ever attempting to answer it. He doesn’t have to. The sequence suggests that even Spielberg knows the limits of nostalgia: Here, he literally explodes our collective fantasies about American family life in the ’50s. Indiana Jones is a hero precisely because he’s so skeptical of the perceived comforts of that life: He’d much rather travel the world, maybe alone or perhaps with a partner or two, digging up secrets. “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” is a mainstream family blockbuster about the allure of the solitary, unconfined life. That’s not a contradiction in terms. That’s showmanship.

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http://www.rapidfind.org/upload/index.php

You might find a download for the movie. I do not suggest it and it is up to you to decide if you want to download it or not.