Krrish

Sequel to Koi Mil Gaya, the original team assimilates Priyanka Chopra, Naseeruddin Shah and an additional cast of Singaporean actors to this superhero movie.
Krishna lives with his grandmother, Sonia, and one day his school principal discovers that the boy has exceptional IQ. Fearing for his safety, Sonia takes Krishna away to live quietly in a little village in Manali and protects him from the world. Most of the kids around do not befriend him, since his powers scare them off. He grows up with nature and mostly alone.
One day, he rescues a beautiful woman, Priya, to whom he loses his heart and gains the friendship and awed respect of all her friends. When they leave, he misses her a lot.
When Priya and friends return home, they find out they have been sacked. To save their jobs, Priya lies to Krishna about her non-existent love for him and invites him to Singapore. Krishna argues with his grandmother, since she doesn't want him to leave and herein, he finds out the secret of his parents' death.
His father, Rohit, was a genius and he is invited by Arya, a renowned scientist, to build a machine that sees the future. When the machine is ready, Rohit is killed in a lab fire. His mother dies in shock.
The next morning, Sonia prepares for Krishna's departure and he promises that he would keep his powers a secret. When he reaches Singapore, he makes a new friend - Christian. He visits his friend's circus and he is forced to reveal his powers by rescuing some kids in danger, when a fire breaks out in the tent. He finds a broken mask - such that he keeps his promise and yet save the people. Entire world is thankful and curious about 'Krrish'. Christian finds out about the true identity, but Krishna asks him to take the identity and the reward for his little sister's operation.
Priya begins to truly fall in love with Krishna. She finds a tape from the circus and discovers that Krrish is Krishna and when she is preparing the tape to hand it over to her boss, Krishna partially overhears about how the whole incident started with a lie. He is heartbroken and heads back to India, in spite of Priya apologising. But, he finds out that his father is still alive through one of his old friends.
Arya wanted to kill Rohit so that Rohit can never help a competition, but the old friend saves Rohit by telling Arya that the machine needs Rohit as the password. So Rohit is kept alive in a machine in a vegetative state, but the world thinks he is dead.
Now, Krishna gets back to Arya and gets his revenge and brings his father back home.
The movie was fast paced and Hrithik really pulled off the superhero stint very well. The movie was slightly reminiscent of Hollywood flick Paycheck, with the future-seeing machine, but different in other ways.
The songs weren't upto the usual Rajesh Roshan mark, although the background music was very atypical of Hindi music - since they had a very Southern Indian classical music tinge - something that might have emerged out of Rahman's or Vidyasagar's keys. But Hrithik amazed me with his dance, as always. Except for the gruelling 3-hour length sitting on a rotten blood-flow-cutting chair, I have no other thumbs down for this movie.

Human Trafficking

Dealing with one of the third most serious international offenses, the mini series stars Donald Sutherland as the head of the investigation surrounding deaths of young hookers in the U.S. Girls from many different locations are duped into the trade of sex slavery - through the glitter and glamour of modelling; the attractions of an exotic trip with a loving man; plain abductions; exploitation of family's poverty - the list is endless. But all their immediate fate is one - slavery in one of Sergei Karpovich's brothels.
The movie shows just few of the many ways the women are exploited, insulted, raped and stripped of their honour and humanity. The incidents catch the attention of Mira Sorvino, who confidently sells herself to Donald to recruit her on the case. From there, she starts to crack down on Sergei's empire bit by bit.
The series focuses of few main women - Helena, Nadia and Annie. Helena is from Czech Republic living for her little daughter. She encourages attentions from a man who speaks up for her in a bar and finds herself thrown into the web. She keeps herself sane by thinking of the danger that would await her daughter, if she did otherwise. She is the first to be rescued by the team, but is shot dead by Sergei's sniper. Her daughter Ivanka is brought to the States and kept safe.
Nadia is a 16-year-old motherless child, who is almost strangled by her father's safe and sedentary lifestyle. When a New York modelling opportunity presents itself, it is more than enticing and she hides it from her father and leaves the country. Her only solace is Helena's friendship. She tries to escape unsuccessfully. Eventually, she reunites with her father, when he pretends to be one of the bad guys, looking for her.
Annie is touring Philippines with her parents and is rudely abducted by the local child brothel owner's men. Her parents try very hard to find seek her out, but with the local authorities helping the bad guys, there is little hope for them. Annie's mother continues to look for her. When she is just about to leave the country to save her breaking marriage, Annie gets an opportunity to call her. With some advertising along with her not-for-profit agency, she tracks the brothel owner, but he has escaped with an insider tip off. Eventually, she and all the kids with her are discovered in the container they were going to be shipped off in.
Mira's final plan is to catch the men red handed with some undercover operation. Her cover is almost blown off, when Sergei finds her too old for the trade, but eventually they catch him - dead.
Touching story for a tear-tank like me, especially scenes that bring back happy recollections and families together. But definitely an important and scary topic to think about. I have been sheltered all my life and I often wonder why my parents are so strict. Looking at this, I can only side my parents in their protective arguments. Yet, I think it is what such protectiveness that eventually leads children to run away from them and classic example in the movie was Nadia's case. Had their been understanding more than blind prohibition, the situation could have been better for the young teenager and her father. Still after watching the movie, I can almost hear my parents' sermon about how bad the world is, instead of seeing what they could do differently.
It is sad to think that even after so much progress and advancement, women and children have to be fearful and wary of men. Even though this need to exert sexual force is prevalent among other living species, for procreational reasons, humans are probably the only ones, in my opinion, who do this for nothing more than sadistic pleasure and profitable reasons. These men could have been nothing more than blood leeches and death for the Sergei character in the series, was not even an equal intensity of punishment to the amount of destruction he had inflicted on the many lives he 'ruled' over.

Watermelon

Written by Marian Keyes, the book is the story of a woman, with a new-born baby, dumped by her husband.
Claire is rudely awakened to reality by her husband, when he leaves her for her neighbour, just after she has given birth. She returns to her parents' home in Dublin, where divorce is unheard of, and keeps believing that James will return back to her, but he doesn't. Over time, she recovers bit by bit. She also discovers a new admirer - Adam, who seems to having a secret past. Just when things are going well with Adam, James returns to get her back. With great difficulty, she decides to give her marriage another chance for her baby, hurting Adam. But she starts discovering other things about James that eventually snaps her and she returns back to her parents' home. When Adam drops by a few days later, it's a joyful reunion.
Although the book started off a little annoying, with Claire constantly saying 'sorry' to the reader, it was a quick joyful ride. The imagined entanglements of Claire was definitely a joy to read. It was almost like having Austen's Emma in a modern situation, except she was thinking of herself and she was much more screwed than any of the ladies in Austenian eras could have been. The attractions of Adam was slightly dream-like, but I suppose it is so rare to see nice guys that it is bordering disbelief. The accusations that James was heaping on Claire, as much as it seemed excessive - some of it might have been true. Looking at the other Walsh girls in the book, it was kind of hard to imagine that Claire might have turned out slightly different. Of course, the way James was blaming Claire entirely was wrong, but she was also a reason for their breakup, yet that didn't justify James' choice of having an affair.
Anyway, a quick and joyful read. But don't except any enlightenments or philosophical thoughts in here.

The Dispossessed

Margaret Murphy writes this crime fiction based on the East European asylum seekers in England. The novel starts with the discovery of a teen prostitute of Middle East Asian origin brutally murdered and dropped off in a garbage bin. The investigating officer, Jeff Rickman, is in charge of the case, with his close friend and colleague Lee Foster, who also happens to be Rickman's main source of annoyance. They have recently donated blood together and the nurse flirted enough with Foster to go on a date with him. They investigate for a long time, but they can't find anything more than what they already know. Meanwhile, another set of gruesome attacks on four of the immigrants raises racist attack questions. A group of street children are injured and caught on the scene.
Rickman's girlfriend, Dr. Grace Chandler had found the teen prostitute's body and is disturbed by the visions. She also finds out that both her boyfriend and her translator at work are hiding things from their past, that she wants to help them with. Grace works at the hospital for the immigrants and her translator, Natalja is also an immigrant to Liverpool. Grace tries many times to open both Rickman and Natalja up but to no avail.
While investigating the crime scene of the teen, detectives find out that Rickman's blood is found on the scene. On suspicions, Rickman is taken off the case. But eventually, they find a link between the nurse who took Rickman's and Foster's blood and a pimp, Alex Jordan, who had a bad history with Rickman. They also find out that their blood had been tampered with, so Rickman is brought back. Just after he returns, he receives a phone call from a doctor stating his brother is asking for him. Puzzled, yet angry, he visits his brother, Simon, and finds out that he just recovered from coma after an accident and has lost all his memory. He remembers no one except Jeff, and even him from younger days. Simon is married to Tanya with two boys out of his marriage.
Putting all that aside, he returns to work. He has a strong hunch that Jordan is taking revenge on him and is responsible for the murders. Another East European is killed, just after he called with information on the previous murders. By this time, the teen prostitute is identified as Sophia Habib.
Grace receives a visit from Natalja's old friend, Mirko Andric, since he is not able to talk to Natalja directly. Grace is puzzled but agrees to help him out. She is worried more about shiftiness and bursts of emotion that Natalja shows. Finally, she calls Natalja's case worker (for asylum seekers) up, but receives nothing. Rickman confesses to Grace about his troubled past with his brother and connection with Alex Jordan.
The next morning, Rickman is about to confess to his superior, when they get called up for Natalja's murder. At the spot, they discover that it's Grace who was murdered. Shocked, Rickman visits Jordan's home and threatens his current girlfriend. He returns home deranged.
Meanwhile, investigation continues and the department finds out that all the refugees worked with a common law firm. They delve further. They also find out a shady past of Mirko's. Finally, it seems that the law firm works with likes of Jordan and Mirko to find potential people who can stay in England, gets their identities and sells them off to the highest bidder refugees (who were refused but have the cash to buy themselves a life).
The story ends with Rickman reuniting with his family.
The final climax of how the murderer was incriminated was a treat to read, although the beginning was much of a drag. On the whole, it was a decently paced novel, but the author could have thrown bits of much more interesting information in the beginning as well to keep the readers hooked, instead of constantly closing up the characters.

Dus

With big screen names like Abhishek Bachchan, Sanjay Dutt, Zayed Khan, Sunil Shetty, Shilpa Shetty, Rima Sen, Isha Deol, Gulshan Grover and so on, one would have better expectations, but the movie was probably the most challenging movie to tolerate to-date.
Abhishek, Sanjay, Shilpa and Zayed are part of the Anti Terrorist Cell, who are in-charge of (obviously) stopping attempts of terrorism. They receive information that a fatal operation is expected on May 10 and they start their enquiries. They capture a local terrorist during a bomb threat and send Abhishek and Zayed to Canada to capture one of their men and interrogate.
Sanjay finds out that the enemy seems to be watching him and knows every move of his. His sister is captured. He finds out who the mole is and gets more information - operation Jeet. The evidence leads him to the important people in the ministry and eventually he finds out that the target occasion for a blast is Indian PM's visit to Canada. He takes the flight to Canada to join the others.
Meanwhile, Abhishek and Zayed meet Esha (their contact in Canada) and capture the enemy's man - Pankaj Kapoor. They also get into trouble with a local cop - Sunil, who ends up helping them. There isn't much information that they get out of the man they captured, but eventually he leads them to killing the head of the operation - Gulshan. Since the cops had promised freedom in return, they let Pankaj go.
Just when they are about to leave the country, they find out from their boss that their contact in Canada had already been killed and Esha was the enemy's girl. Also that Pankaj was actually their enemy and he had fooled them well. The target seems to be a huge stadium, where Pankaj had brought in kilos of bomb. The team tries hard to lose the bomb and succeeds, also losing Abhishek.
The film was a big hit when it was released, but watching it now, was just sheer torture. The special effects, although extremely well done, were just irritating and unrealistic. The forced coolness of the movie was more annoying than anything else. The songs were a disaster, save perhaps the funkiness of the title song. Heroines barely had any part to play. And it was really silly watching the foreign actors in the movie falling prey to the Indian actors' heroics. Definitely worth the skip.