'Iron Man3' or 'Man of Steel'?

Oh ya baby – it’s iron versus steel again.

So does the suit make the man or does the man make the suit?  Well, when the man in question is Tony Stark, the one sure thing that the man in the suit will be making is box office magic!

So every year, this movie mad blog gets into movie prediction mode and the movie for this year is ‘Iron Man 3’.

Forget the title of this post people – it’s a given – Iron Man 3 is gonna be this year’s gold.  ‘Man of Steel’ is a lil too intellectual and dark a movie to be the year’s champ.  Not just that, it’s got too many new things about it for it to find box office mojo in the international markets; and it somehow has the same vibe like Begins’ (yes, but much grander),  you know, the first (of a trilogy maybe?) that’ll herald bigger things to come. 

Though I will admit that it’s another movie that I think might just upset this prediction; read on to find that unlikely warrior.

Here are the reasons why methinks it’s gonna be an Iron Year this year:

* Marvel : Marvel is like the world’s longest running movie commercial– every year, one big, fat, huge Marvel movie comes out, blows up the box office and in the credits, it points to another Marvel movie. This has been happening since the first ‘Iron Man’ in 2008 and last year’s biggest movie, ‘The Avengers’ had Tony Stark eating shawarma and kicking alien butt, making sure that we’ll queue up for his next adventure, which inevitably is Iron Man 3.

* Another Shane Black-RoDoJr movie :  The director and actor of 'Iron Man 3' have made another earlier movie together.  Has anyone seen ‘Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (KKBB)’, that smart, delicious stunner of a clever movie with unbelievably witty lines that plays with your cerebra (“I’m retired, I invented dice”)?  It’s an awesome movie and that’s what the director Shane Black is capable of.  And strangely enough, RoDoJr in KKBB is like an adolescent version of Tony Stark, of course minus the idiot and with all of the razor sharp wit.  If you think Iron Man 3 is exactly what both Shane and RoDoJr did in KKBB, then it’s gonna be one hell of a dhamakedhaar movie!  I’m betting that it is and we will have some great one-liners.  Oh btw, initial reviews are very positive.

* Tony! Tony! Tony! Tony! – Admit it, the real reason why Iron Man is so cool is because of the oh-so-ubercool-and-unconventional - “Fuck you, I’m Iron Man!” - superhero that “uh, genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist” big man in a suit, Tony Stark is.  And we loved him for his ubercool and for his cooler lines.  In Iron Man3, they’re reportedly showing more of Tony.  And that’s really good news. Really.

* Oooo! The excitement! - OK, so did ya see the trailers? Did Ya? Did Ya? Also, there has been not-so-subtle tidbits that the ending of this movie is “bigger than Avengers”. Also, since they’re saying that the opening weekend would be ‘huge’, the buzz is strong.  Also, the next big movie at the box office (Star Trek) is two weeks away – so Stark has two whole weeks to do his magic.

* China –  It’s the international markets that bring in the moolah for Hollywood nowadays.  And internationally, Iron Man 3 is all poised for the explosion.  In India itself, it’s being released a week before US and is dubbed into some 2-3 languages and RoDoJr is already touring China, Japan and other big movie markets of the universe.  And yes, China. The Red Dragon is now the second largest movie market and Iron Man 3 has a separate movie version made only for China.

* It’s Summer Captain!  - Forget Oblivion – Summer 2013 kick starts with Iron Man 3 releasing in the last week of April in international markets, a week ahead of its US release.  This is this summer’s opening movie and RoDoJr is travelling the world to promote it.  Unlike ‘Man of Steel’, Iron Man 3 is the perfect summer movie – lotsa fun, lotsa color and lotsa explosions.

Of course, it’s another movie that could be the dark horse of the year – and that’s ‘Pacific Rim’  Remember in the 90s when almost all movies followed a certain similar template and then that pioneer of a whopper movie called ‘Jurassic Park’ with its unbelievable effects came and blew our minds away– I mean, that’s the kind of movie that appealed to everyone and anyone irrespective of language or age – I feel ‘Pacific Rim’ has that same vibe; and if trailers are to be believed, then the effects have that “something different” that can set it apart from the impressive crop for this year.

And impressive is definitely this year’s crop – besides ‘Man of Steel’, there’s ’Fast 6, Elysium,  Hangover3,  Star Trek,  WWZ,  many from the animation department…..

So folks, what’s your bet for this year? Is it Iron Man, Man of Steel, Fast Six, Star Trek or Hangover? Or something else?

Iron, Steel, Speed, Space or Booze? U tell baby?

Which movie do you think will be 2013's biggest worldwide hit ?

I wanna be an Asshole

with his recent comments about Anne Frank, Bieber has made us proud by showing that he is simply more than an asshole.

Caution #1 : This post says ‘Asshole’ a lot of times.

Caution #2: This post also has ‘fuck’ written pretty boldly at the top, so really??? 

Caution #3 : This post also says ‘Bastard’ once.

Caution #4 : See Caution #2 .

When I grow up, I wanna be an asshole!

(ok wait!.... I’m already grown up….. wait again! I might already be one…. hmmm…. )

They say that everyone has two ends - one to sit with and another to think with - and success depends on which end is used more.  Assholes are the human personification of one of those two ends (yes, this statement is true both literally and metaphorically).

Contrary to the popular notion, being a hooker is not the oldest profession in the world, being an asshole is – I’m sure the first hooker became one because of some asshole.  Assholes are omnipotent – they’re everywhere - I mean, I’m sure everyone reading this post would know of at least one asshole (please be sensitive here – we’re talking of a person here and not a body part).  And it’s an equal opportunity scenario - it does NOT discriminate based on gender – like many people know, asshole is a purely a state of mind – and some women show high potential for it too (endearingly referred to as a ‘bitch’). 

Consider our everyday instances when we have been touched by an asshole:

* The jerk who scratched your new car 

* The jerk who sets up meetings at 5PM on Fridays

* The jerk who upsets social accepted norms and civilities and asks out loud, “Jaantha nahi mera baap kaun hai?”, thereby proving that some assholes are not made, it’s heredity. 

* Politicians – oooo, these are a higher breed of this species. Respect!

But the thing about assholes is that they obviously rule.  In the dating scene, it’s said that women tend to fall for the assholes.  In the work space, it’s the assholes who score.  Even in life, the asshole who is known to cover his own ass first is often more successful than the aam aadmi, who is more careful of not offending the people around him than of his own success.  In short, Asshole is not just a piece of ass - it’s a winning way of life.

Unfortunately we are all very nice people.  And we live in a society where we all strive to be even nicer people - we all were brought up saying “If you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all” and there are more nice people out there than bad.  But you know the age old adage, right – “nice guys finish last” So we need to be assholes to get ahead in life and succeed. 

Now this is a contest post – it’s an Indiblogger-Microsoft contest(www.office365.in) where you blog about your dream business and how you could use Microsoft Office 365 in it.

So my dream business clearly is to start my dream company called ‘Assaholics Anonymous’ – a team of consultants (obviously known as ‘the Assholes’) dedicated to bring out the ‘asshole’ in you.  Our core belief is that we think everyone has an asshole hidden in them; our consultants help to bring that asshole out to the fore.   Our success rate are the industry best and we have helped a lot of people move from ‘DumbAss’ to ‘totally BadAss’

Obviously since most people despise assholes but still want to emulate them, our team shall remain anonymous but are closer to you than you think - through the tech advancements of Office 365, we’re just a mail or a chat or a call near you.  You could always send us an outlook mail (obviously by using the ubiquitous Office 365) to describe in detail of your situation.  Our Assholes and senior PITAs (Pain in the Ass) will be on the job and these wise asses and smart asses will consult you to help you get your ass back into the game.  We’ll sent you case studies of success stories in Office 365 Powerpoint formats so that you could peruse through them in your laptop, tab or smartphone.  And if email doesn't work for you and if you want to talk with us via mobile or PCs, you could always call us on your Lync and have a freewheeling conversation with our Assholes (and did I mention that Lync to Lync calls are free!). 

Follows is our patented, highly regarded and totally scientific learning methodology and framework (totally!) - First you can contact us at our website and send us an outlook mail writing us of your unique situation/problem.  After that , we assign an Asshole to consult you.   You will first receive an outlook mail from our Asshole with a set of specific questions. The mail will also have their Lync contact details.  Once you answer these questions honestly, our Assholes figure out what kind of an asshole you are and at which stage of the Asshole cycle you are currently in based on our patented framework below:

• Level 0 - "Dumb Ass" – A total novice to becoming an Asshole.  Has had a bad love life, sex life and is usually a doormat at office. 
• Level 1 - "Can’t find your ass" – Still gets it in the ass but wants to do something about it – but doesn’t know how. 
• Level 2 - "Smart Ass" – Knows his shit well. But still needs to learn to keep his ass down. 
• Last Level - "Bad Ass" – The Rock Star of the Asshole World. A true blue Asshole! Often respectfully referred to as a ‘bloody bastard’. 

After which, you can bet your ass that our Assholes will bust theirs to make you into one. You will also receive free lifetime access to our sharepoint of inspiring case studies and success stories. 

Why do I consider this as the dream business?  Cos of the enormous opportunity – there so many nice people and so few assholes – of converting the former into latter and of course, the sheer joy of making an ass of all these people.

So don't forget to hit 'Like' on our fb page for 'Assaholics Anonymous' (here).

To building up the world’s most popular community – bottoms up!

What a Guy Thinks of All Day Besides Sex

.

Faraway Music :: Book Launch, Bangalore

"Our greatest journeys are the ones without an address"

And so wrote author Sreemoyee Piu Kundu in her new book 'Faraway Music', a soulful saga of a best selling author named Piya Choudhury, who returns to her roots after a long hiatus. A powerful potboiler of human relations, the book saw its Bangalore launch at the uber cool Fava, at UB city.

Corporate powerhouse Geetanjali Kirloskar, from the Kirloskar group, and Chetan Kumar, Kannada movie star of blockbuster 'Mynaa' fame, added dazzle to the dazzling evening.

The beautiful evening was a packed event with authors, readers, well wishers and many, many beautiful people.... 

Author Andaleeb Wajid (of books 'My Brother's Wedding', 'More than just Biriyani' and 'Blinkers Off' fame) with Sreemoyee.

The BWW Boyz with the author Sreemoyee. Sreemoyee had dropped by at BWW earlier the week and met with us.

The irrepressible Manoviraj Khosla also dropped by.  Manoviraj is sporting the colors of the Bangalore IPL team, Royal Challengers, that were playing 2013's first IPL match in Bangalore at the nearby Chinnaswamy Stadium.

Hearts met, hearts spoke, hearts were mesmerized... The audience were in rapt attention to the author in conversation with Geetanjali and Chetan.

Sreemoyee Piu Kundu is the author of 'Faraway Music' and her next offering is an erotica 'Sita's Curse', followed by a lad lit 'You’ve Got the Wrong Girl' being published by Hachette. An ex lifestyle editor with publications like TOI, MetroNow, India Today & Asian Age and PR head, she’s currently working on her fourth title – 'Cut!'  Based in New Delhi, Sreemoyee calls herself a 'rebel romantic’ whose writing helps her discover ‘music in the mundane.’  She is an intrepid traveler, an incurable fashionista, a blogger on social causes and an avid poet.

Chetan doing an SRK on Gitanjali's request.

Sreemoyee and Chetan with entrepreneur Merlin and her friend Ekta .  Merlin's firm 'Rustic Motifs ' designed bookmarks exclusively for the book launch. The bookmarks (above right) showcased the traditional Kasuti folk art of Karnataka and were painted by women from the rural interiors of Dharawad.

The author has many reasons to be proud. Geetanjali Kirloskar loved Faraway Music because, “Every character, every detail was lined with such poetic promise.” Chetan, who read from the book, believes that it is the emotion and development of character that makes Faraway Music such a delightful read.  ‘Faraway Music’ has been hailed as sensuous, profound, lyrical and moving with every character so real, every loss so personal, every detail laced with poetic poignancy.  Faraway Music poses as many questions as it answers…questions of family, friendship, fame, love and loss. and all that lies in between. Faraway Music is a rage on the fiction charts.

Moi, the MC of the evening, looking like a peacock.

Floral scents, soft music, warm lights and the beautiful people of Bangalore accompanied Faraway Music on a beautiful night ...

Bring Faraway Music closer to your heart.  Buy Faraway Music (here)