Ohh Yes I Am Single...!: And So Is My Girlfriend by Durjoy Datta
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The fourth in the novella co-written by the authors, brought in for the first time, a narration of his story by Durjoy and written by the Neeti.

Storyline: Joy, the main character in the author’s books, is as usual, the fun-loving engineering student in Delhi University, always thirsty for love and sex. Here again, he falls in love with many girls starting from his initial school crush Nisha, Sarah, Sheeny, Manika and Natasha. The endless love stories of Joy always end up after a passionate physical and mental relationship with them, sometimes, hurting them but always depressing Joy for some time after they move on. Finally he meets Manika, a mature journalist cum writer through his friend Siddharth in a secret rave party, whom he retains as his permanent girl friend for a quite a long time. Though both of them are in deep love with each other, they don’t realize the fact and hence get separated for a brief time in between. They re-unite after breaking up with their respective new partners and start afresh their physical and emotional love saga.

Positives: The way the book is written is quite interesting with one author narrating his short lived love stories and the other writing it with her own remarks in between. Elicits the fact as to how the younger generation is taking the feeling of LOVE as a mere short term physical and emotional attachment after which they just move on with some other partners, as easily as they change clothes. Also paves the way to know how they spoil their own careers and golden lives, in such quests for relationships, thanks to social networking sites and irresponsible parents.

Negatives: I still wonder as to how someone can fall in love so many times in such short periods. Probably we now need to coin some other term for the word LOVE, as it has been totally polluted with greater need for physical relationship than emotional attachment. Impending danger of the next generation to have no value systems in their blood as their creators just don’t know anything about them. I also wonder whether these are the same boys and girls who marry some other innocent true lovers, bear children and call themselves as ideal couples without any moral obligation towards the multiple sexual encounters they had with some one else in their college days? God save LOVE !!!!

My rating is 2.75 out of 5


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OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN (HOLLYWOOD ACTION MOVIE)

Directed by Antoinne Fuqua, Produced by Gerard Butler/Alan Seigel/Mark Gill. Starring Gerard Butler/Aaron Eckhart/Morgan Freeman/Angela Bassett/Rick Yune. Music by Trevor Morris. Released by Film District

Storyline: US President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart), is captured by a Korean terrorist group, in vengeance of USA’s deployment of its armed forces in the Korean seas. The group leader Kang’s (Rick Yune), an orphan due to US military actions in South Korea, organizes his forces to take control of the White House and its defense systems to force US to withdraw its forces from Korean seas and also activate ‘Cerebrus’, a US army nuclear missile self detonating software, in order to turn the entire land of USA into a mere radioactive wasteland forever. Kang’s plot is rendered void through the brave efforts of Mike Banning (Gerard Butler), a US secret service agent and former Army Ranger. He cleverly enters the White House and eliminates all of Kang’s group members and saves the President from sure death. He also successfully deactivates the self detonating timer, in the last second, only to save the entire nation from a permanent catastrophe.

Positives: An action packed movie where we get to see the latest weapons of the world in full action. The audience will be awe-struck by the sheer military power of USA and the brains behind to control the same. The great pleasure one gets in seeing the White House destroyed by some foreign terrorists, through, computer aided graphical representation of the building and its surroundings, in note worthy. One must watch this film to gauge the potential of computerized presentation of such massive structures like White House on big screen. It’s really awesome to watch how one gets to feel as if the White House is really destroyed.

Negatives: Is the most protected building of the world so vulnerable to a terrorist attack, despite the latest technology available to detect surface-borne threats? Then where is the real security in this world? One among the many rescue operation movies of Hollywood, with a tinge of one man attempt to save the country, highlighted once again.

My rating is 3.75 out of 5

FOOD OF THE GODS (HOLLYWOOD THRILLER)

Directed By Bert I Gordon, Produced by Samuel J Arkoff & Bert I Gordon, Starring Marjoe Gortner, Pamela Franklin, Ralph Meeker and Jon Cypher. Music by Elliot.

Storyline: Morgan (Marjoe Gortner) a football player goes on a holiday along with his friends to an island. There, one of his friends gets attacked and killed by giant wasps in the thick of the forest while they were horse-riding. This upsets Morgan. Though he leaves the island immediately, he returns to the island after some days with arms and ammunition to kill the giant wasps along with his friend. But he finds that apart from the wasps there are other creatures like giant caterpillars and rats which have grown to huge sizes due to consumption of a particular food called Food of The Gods which seems to be oozing out of the earth somewhere in the island. He tries to eliminate the rats by shooting them down but their number is too huge to accomplish the task. Ultimately, he breaks open a nearby dam to flood the area full with water and all the huge rats drown in that water since they will be unable to swim due to their huge sizes. But the food powder gets into the nearby fields, which is consumed by some cattle which in turn get into children through their milk. The movie ends here, probably to be continued in a sequel.

Positives: Anyone who missed how a Hollywood movie used to be in the 1970s can watch this movie to admire their movie taking skills way back, with the lesser technology available at that time. It was well taken and the location used (Cowan’s island in British Columbia) was the right spot to shoot the movie. Music played a very important role in projecting the movie to a ‘horror’ level, rather than adventure led.

Negatives: The movie, though based on H G Wells’ novel, The Food of the Gods, was not the exact replica. The story was totally manipulated to suit an entertainment based movie, instead of the actual subject in the book. Lack of computer aided screenplay and cinematography could never bring about the real big size of the creatures to appear real.

My rating is 3 out of 5.

Note: Please refer my earlier review on the classical book by H G Wells

Oz, The Great and Powerful (Hollywood Fantasy Adventure Movie)

Directed by Sam Raimi and Produced by Joe Roth, starring James Franco as Oz, Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams as the three witches. Released through Walt Disney Pictures worldwide. Based on the original “Oz” series of fantasy novels written by Frank Baum.

Storyline: Oscar Diggs (Oz) is a small time magician in a small circus entertaining people. One day he gets engulfed into a tornado that hits the circus and suddenly enters a mysterious beautiful land of fantasy land, the Oz. There he encounters two wicked witches Evanora and Theodora who rule the Emerald City, but trick Oz to believe a story that they are being threatened by another witch called Glinda, living in the dark forest. The entire township of Oz believe in a legend that a great wizard is going to arrive to save them from calamity and celebrate the arrival of Oz. Meanwhile Oz while encountering Glinda in her territory, discovers that the true wicked witch is Theodora and not Glinda. He falls in love with the beautiful Glinda and saves the people of Oz from the destruction of the other two wicked witches, through his intelligence of trick magic created through a projector and smoke device. Glinda ultimately gains the throne of Emarald City with the help of Oz, after banishing Theodora and Evanora permanently from the kingdom. Oz becomes a hero forever in that free kingdom.

Positives: The best thing about this movie is its exquisite graphics and screenplay. The rich colors used in the astonishing landscapes created graphically, simply leaves the audience awestruck. One would have a feeling of visiting such lands of Oz at least once in their dreams. The Art Director, Robert Stromberg should be specially applauded for his design of the sets. Great cinematography and music. Mila Kunis was too beautiful to be called as a Witch. James Franco’s performance can be treated as one of his best. One can enjoy this movie in 3D with family on a weekend and worth having it as a collection in their library for its lovely ethnic graphics.

Negatives: The movie somehow failed to take success path in countries other than United States due to lack of proper marketing. Many missed this beautiful movie in theatres thinking it to be a kids movie.

My rating is 3.75 out of 5

Makers of History: Alexander the Great by Jacob Abbott
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I would say that this is the best book that I have read up to date in this year. The author was quite successful in bringing about the chronological events of Alexander, right from his birth to his death, in very simple English, that could be understood by people who yearn to learn about history, across the world.
Alexander (B.C., 356-336), son of King Philip of Macedonia, the northern province of the then Grecian territory, has been a prodigal son right from his childhood. He was under the able tutorship of Aristotle until the age of sixteen, but soon took keen interest in accompanying his father, in wars. His inborn traits of leadership, camaraderie, nobleness, organizing skills, ferociousness, and great thirst to conquer the world has made him one of the greatest warriors of ancient history, which is narrated in every history book of the world with great awe.
He was highly successful in conquering each and every nation in his voyage towards the East of Macedonia, with an army as small as just 50,000. His empire consisted of almost all kingdoms of Thebes, Thessaly, Athens, Sparta, entire Persia, Egypt, Gaza, Tyre, Afghanistan and some parts of northern India. All this, just within the age of 32 years. In his great voyage of ruthless conquests, he plundered each and every kingdom which opposed him but treated all those who surrendered with great nobility and kindness. His main target of capturing his great rival King Darius of Persia could be achieved but he repents later for being responsible for the fall of such a great kingdom. He, over a period of time, when he reached the age of around 28 years, yielded to worldly pleasures like wealth, wine and women which led to his downfall in character and great qualities, for which he was adored, worldwide. At one stage, after conquering Egypt, he even went to the extent of declaring himself as the descendant of God Jupiter and wished to be called as Son of God.
He ultimately loses all his friends and those who accompanied/assisted/protected him throughout his great voyage due to his vices. At one point even his great army refused to go with him further, as they lost confidence in his leadership and nobleness. This morally degraded Alexander to a great extent and he one night, put himself to intense alcohol consumption, after which he falls terribly ill, and dies due to multiple organ failure, and mostly confidence to live further. His vast kingdom broke into pieces of independent kingdoms after his death, only to remember him as the greatest and cruelest thief of the world.

Positives: A great book of knowledge of Alexander’s history, beautifully written, describing each and every phase of his life in minutest of detail. The reader would not like to put off the book until he finishes it at one go. The adventures of young Alexander and his speeches are very enticing to know. One gets to know about many ancient places, towns, cities and terms of history, which are regarded as the marks of great civilizations, wars and kings in those days. A great learning experience to young and old as to how the fire in one’s belly to achieve something can get him to the target with careful and able planning, organizing, directing and controlling ones emotions, skills, environment and resources available to him or her. At the same time, Alexander’s deplorable end teaches one, as to how arrogance and power, can bring him down in no time, however great he could be! A must read by every young person and get inspired by the magnificent traits of Alexander the Great.

Negatives: The author suddenly ended Alexander’s voyage with the death of King Darius. His further adventures beyond Persia into India were not described. There seemed to be equal interesting and fascinating facts to be revealed in the Indian subcontinent. That would have justified his complete voyage in a single stretch.

My rating is 4.75 out of 5


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