Statue of Liberty @ Luxembourg Garden, Paris

Statue of Liberty: a bronze model used by sculpture Auguste Bartholdi as a preparatory work for the statue in New York. Read more about replicas of Statue of liberty here

IPL6 teams: Delhi Dare Devils

At present this team stands at eighth position in IPL-6. Nobody would have expected such a poor performance from this team. It has performed much better in earlier seasons of IPL. If I remember correct, this team stood among top four teams in some of the earlier seasons of IPL. So, this times run is little surprising for me. 

There are four strong pillars of this team. Sehwag, Pietersen, Jayawardhane and Warner. All these players are capable of turning the game on their own on their day. Pietersen unfortunately has not been active this season due to injury. Sehwag has kind of lost his touch completely. There used to be a kind of aura around him that itself was enough to reduce bowler's confidence to half even before the game begins. He was in the league of Gayle and Dhoni. But that is not the case any more. He seems too easy for any bowler now  a days. It seems sometimes as if he is doing the duty of visiting the pitch and throw some shots here and there. Except one knock of 95 he has not shown any glimpse of real Sehwag we know  in this season. Jaywardhane on the other hand is known to be steady player who anchors the inning and drives it till the end. Well he is not that off from his character even this season, but some how he looses it some where half way and it is not enough. I am not sure about what Warner is up to. His presence on pitch is pretty much negligible and I don't remember him contributing. Is he even in team in all the outings? I am not sure.

Other than these four big names, there are some other known names linked to the team. Like Irfan Pathan. I guess he is trying his best to give good performance both as a bowler as well as a batsman. He is paying back every penny Daredevils spent on him. I am glad he got his swing back though on speed clock he still seem to be struggling. But doesn't matter, he is proving quite economical and also a wicket taker at the same time. His inclusion in the Indian squad is a good sign.

Another name that is famous around is Unmukt Chand. I am not sure if he deserves this much fame for so little performance he has given. Other than captaining the under 19  team that made every body aware of him, I have not seen any real performance by him. But he is in every another ad, taunting seniors, picking Pietersen's girl and what not.  

Their Bowling squad is also good. With the likes of Umesh Yadav and Morkel, they should actually be controlling the game. But that doesn't seem to be the case. And sometimes I am not sure what makes them tilt in favor of Ashish Nehra. He has been in lot more of outings than I expect for him.

Overall Delhi Daredevils is a good team which actually deserves to be in the league of winners. But this time with all the players off color, it appears like a bunch of big names with intention of making no impression. Among all, I feel bad about Sehwag, who seems to be on his way to retirement. I hope he comes out of this bad patch and start showing his true colors. 

Andaman

Tatasky: for hard working Indians

Here comes one of the longest ads in the history of Indian Television. Tatasky has started airing a series of new ads with a background of jail as a theme of the ads. This ad has a bunch of prisoners from other countries who try to escape from jail considering India-Pakistan match as a most suitable time to escape. As the commercial begins, no body gets any clue whether it is a commercial or snaps from some movie. Although it tries to show an Indian jail as a background, people find it difficult to accept since our imagination of Indian jails is totally different. As the ad progresses, people start getting the theme behind it where a bunch of foreign criminals are coming together and making a plan to escape from jail. One will be surprised to see the kind of details ad captures to convince people about the planning. One the night of jail break, the kind of stunts these criminals do while running from the jail gives an impression of some Hollywood jail break scene. Even Bollywood jail break scenes won't match them..

Towards the end all the criminals are caught running and one of those ask the Jailer "What kind of -Indians don't watch Indian-Pakistan match" gets the answer "A hard working Indian". It then introduces Tatasky  which allows people to save the programs they love to watch but don't get time to watch it. This way they can give priority to their duties and can enjoy their favorite programs in their free time with out any hassles.

This is a fantastic ad and has been planned very skill fully. It has a power to grip you for more than  3 minutes and slowly reveals the product that convinces people. After showing complete ad for first few days, now the ad time has been reduced and so it might loose the overall affect. So, in case you want to watch this complete ad, it is available here:

The Berlin Cathedral and the Fernsehturm

The Berlin Cathedral and the Fernsehturm

Iron Man 3

Watched Iron man 3.

Before going for movie I went through few reviews. It has received lot of positive reviews everywhere, with ratings between 3 and 4  out of 5. Naturally, expectations were high. Besides, I am a big fan of Iron man series. Its first movie, making of Iron man is one of my favorites.

Movie begins on a positive note giving a background of the upcoming story and linking Tony Stark to it. It goes on to show new developments that Tony Stark is adding to the quiver of Iron man. The story sails smoothly on the support of fantastic visual effects, witty nature of Tony Stark, humorous conversations and otherwise damsel in distress Pepper Potts turning superhero scenes more than once by different means. The room size 3-D visualization(within the movie) of brain is awesome and cool.So, if you are planning a fun weekend watching a movie, I would recommend Iron man 3. If you need one more reason to watch this movie, this probably is the last movie in the Iron man series. Why? Go check yourself.

But there are few disappointments too.

For the first time, I found Iron man vulnerable and pathetic in the whole movie. I hardly found him confidently controlling the situation. Even Pepper Potts turning Iron man (or woman) or Superhero by other means looked more promising than Iron man.That's not something one expects in this series.

The Mandarin character played by Ben Kingsley could have been real and not just a dummy. It could have been more promising had they kept the character in its skin. By giving a twist to his character, they really disappointed me.

Opposition this time to Iron man comes basically from the people with some mutation. If you keep the associated science aside, you have already seen a lot of such adaptations in X-men series or Fantastic four series. I was not impressed. 

It is shown that Iron man tries to understand the mutation but he doesn't come up with a concrete solution on how to control these people. Lack of strategy to defeat the mutated army is another reason for disappointment. Well calling his own Iron man army was a strategy, but a general one against any big attack, not specific. That made Iron man look vulnerable and pathetic.

In spite of all these reasons, Iron man 3 is a watchable movie. Unlike me, if you do not follow all the super hero or mutation based, or magical power based movies, then, you would surely enjoy. If I compare the ending of Iron man series (which apparently ends with this movie) with Dark Knight series, I feel Iron man has been treated in better fashion. 

So, do watch Iron man 3 and write back your view about the movie here.

Peeping Sun