Review : Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Harry Potter has been a lucrative franchise for Warner Brothers all these years. It has steadily pulled in people at each movie release. After the release of the final book in the franchise, the sixth movie in the series has been eagerly awaited by millions of fans world over.

After having seen the latest edition in the series I must accept that the movie has been a bit disappointing. First the good points, the characters have definitely matured and that can be clearly seen in their teenage depictions. Once again Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson have turned in excellent performances in reprising their roles of Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermoine Granger respectively.

As many who have read the book will know, that Draco Malfoy is given a very important task for his year at Hogwarts, hence he does get a lot of screen time and his character has been developed much more. The movie is sadly not without its drawbacks. The Order of the Phoenix which were introduced in the previous edition “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” have sadly been ignored and most of their parts have been removed from the movie.

The movie seems to be more of a teenage romance comedy, and the dark brooding times have not been depicted so well. Voldemort is back, but it scarcely seems to be the problem. Quite a lot of screen time is spent in establishing the love interests of the various characters, something that could have been reduced.

Tom Riddles background has not been discussed much in the movie making one wonder on what will help him locate the remaining Horcruxes. A few ends which have been left loose during the movie are like What happens to the Weasley’s after their house is destroyed by Bellatrix Lestrange and Fenrir Greyback? This and some other questions merited much more time being spent on them.

With the final edition in the series to be released as a two part series in 2010 and 2011, I sincerely hope that it does not suffer the editing scissors as has been done by the present movie. The director may as well have remembered that the Lord of the Ring Series had a runtime of more than 3 hours even but were accepted by the audience.

On the whole I would give the movie 3 /5 and well I really do not need to recommend this movie, do I?

Links

IMDB Page

Wikipedia Page (Film)

Wikipedia Page (Book)

Official Website

Transformers : Revenge of the Fallen – A Review

The Transformers movie franchise was first started in 2007 by Micheal Bay and Steven Spielberg, with the star billing of Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox and Tyrese Gibson and others. Transformers : Revenge of the Fallen (TROTF) is the second movie in the series (I’m hoping there will be more of them).

TROTF picks up from where the original Transformers left us. The Autobots led by Optimus Prime are helping the US Army stave off the attacks from the Decepticons who are back to once again try to take control of a secret weapon left on Earth by the original Prime’s, a weapon powerful enough to consume the sun’s energy and leave us in complete darkness.

TROTF takes us from Shanghai in China to the cities of the Continental United States with the final climax taking place in Egypt on the Pyramids themselves. TROTF stands out with its amazing Graphical Effects and the various battles between the Autobots and the Decepticons are breathtaking.

The venture again suffers from the lack of clarity of the various transformers being Autobots or Decepticons. Once again an excellent performance by both Shia LaBeouf as well as Megan Fox who have recieved ample screen time. The characters from the previous edition continue on to this version as well although their roles have been greatly reduced.

On the whole its a very action packed film but with a bit of a weak plot and storyline. On the whole I would give the movie a 4/5 for the amazing action sequences and acting.

Here are a few links for the movie

Official Website

Wikipedia Page

IMDB Page

CAT 08 – The Results

Wow!! Just around 24 hours to go (considering the IIM’s release their result at 3P.M. I.S.T each year). Its finally starting to sink in now. At the end of these few hours I’ll come to know whether I stand any chance to be among those lucky few who get to be grilled by the IIM professors for a place at these top B-Schools of our country.

The path to this day has been an extremely long one, and now that its finally here the tension is mounting. Will I make it or will I be unsuccessful?? That’s a question most of us will be asking ourselves. The road to this day hasn’t exactly been a smooth one, with other B-School entrance exams being held on every Sunday in between and for most of us will culminate with our last exam to be held on this Sunday for FMS(DU).

Tomorrow is now a new day and a new morning, and will hopefully bring to most of us some form of happiness I hope, for others its an indicator that there are other things in life and the IIM’s are not the end of the story. Destiny will always have something in store for us, and it will be released when the time is right. So buckle up, enjoy your success and do not rue your failures as there is always a new day to come, and a new mountain to climb.

And for those waiting with bated breath for the results, here are a few links to keep an eye on tomorrow.

EDIT: Well it seems the results are accessible to a few of us. For others here is the official Key available on the CAT IIM website : CAT 08 Key. The Key can also be accesed at the following link : CAT 08 Key.

CAT IIM website

CAT IIM website Result Page

IIMA Admissions Page

IIMB Admissions Page

IIMC Admissions Page IIMC 2008-20010 Cut Offs

IIMI Admissions Page

IIMK Admissions Page

IIML Results Page

IIMS Results Page

I’ll keep uploading more informations as and when it is available.

In the mean- time a Best Of Luck to Everyone…

Mumbai 26/11 – India’s 9/11??

It’s finally over. One of the most horrendous terrorist attacks in India which has left nearly 200 dead, over 300 injured and a symbol of India’s history – The Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai badly damaged is finally over. Ten people held Mumbai to ransom over the past three days and with it most of the world, staring at their television screens as the tragedy unfolded live in front of them.

The tragedy, one of many inflicted upon India over the past few years, saw the emergence of a new form of terror, that of targeting foreigners, of taking many hostage, but still not negotiating, going for a battle to the end. After the airplane strikes seen in September 2001 this has been the emergence of another form of terror, so what all is left in the arsenal of these trigger happy, inhuman terrorists is any ones guess.

For the first time the strikes seem to have been performed by highly trained men, some of whom were barely out of their teens, which made the task of combating with them all the more difficult. The terrorists have increased their knowledge to such an extent that combating and stopping them will become further difficult in the time to come. This must come as a wake up call to all the nations plagued by terrorism, that we must all work together to remove this enemy of humanity before they wipe us all out themselves. Considering the fragile nature of international relations, a show of unity has attained utmost importance.

The question in the minds of most of us Indians at the moment is the failure of our intelligence machinery to detect these attacks before they take place and to stop them in their tracks. The past five years have seen us being hit continuously but, there still has been little or no progress made to combat these terrorists. Our government it seems has not enough strength to take on these terrorists. None of our politicians have left an opportunity to protect their vote bank. They have readily jumped at any opportunity to take credit and politicize any issue. Sadanand Dhume has written a brilliant article for the Wall Street Journal on the Blunders of the Indian Goverment. The article can be read here.

Our politicians are only interested in staying in power in the government, progress it seems is a word not to be found in their dictionary. Every such tragedy has seen the politicians make statements on the need for better intelligence work on our behalf, but these statements are forgotten the very next day and Indian lives are lost. They wish to have multiple policemen and commandos roam around with them to protect them as well as a show of their strength, of the amount of power they wield, but nothing is done for the common man. The common man’s life is dispensable, theirs is not.

What our country needs most are leaders who believe in doing work for the people, and not in attempting to benefit from each and every issue. What we need is unity among the people and not division among us on the basis of caste, religion, statehood, language. What we do not need are politicians, but leaders.

Human Life is precious and is necessary for the progress of any country. The slaughter of the people of India will not bring about any progress, it will only hamper the same. Until our leaders understand the importance of the lives of other Indians, looking behind our shoulders and ducking down at any sound which reminds us of Mumbai in November 2008 will be the only option we have.

In the end a word of gratitude and praise for the Indian Armed Forces, the National Security Gaurd and the local police without whom we would have been still stuck in a deadlock with the terrorists and countless other lives would have been lost.

Singapore F1 Grand Prix

On popular request I am finally going to pen down my experience of the first Formula 1 Night Race held in Singapore over the weekend of 26 to 28th September. Firstly I must apologize in the delay of the writing of this article. As you can clearly see the Common Admission Test aka CAT kept me busy for quite some time.

Moving on, firstly I’d like to say that the experience was amazing. Starting from the very fact that Singapore is an extremely well maintained and clean city, to the race itself which was an experience in itself. This being the very first Grand Prix attended by me, the first race in India is expected to be held in 2010, and added to that being the very first night race ever made it in to a historic event in itself.

Ill post more about Singapore later, and shall concentrate more on this historic event.

A Ferrari F1 car in action

A Formula 1 car as most people are aware are one of the fastest production cars in the world. Technologies invented for the vehicle industry are mostly discovered for use in these cars to help them reach speeds of over 300km/hr, and to go from 0-160 km/hr and back in less than 5 seconds keeping all safety considerations in mind. But the sound of a Formula 1 car is what makes your heart simply race. Its this 130dB sound which pumped up my heart to such an extent that I even removed my ear plugs putting my ear drum in the immediate danger of bursting them. Such is the sound of an F1 car that its simply amazing to hear.

Such is the fan following of Formula 1 that there were 32,000 fans in my grandstand, rumored to be one of the largest among all the F1 circuits in the world.

There were ten teams participating in the 2008 season and most of the fans in my stand were ardent Ferrari fans, and the grandstand was majorly covered in the Scarlet color of Ferrari.

One of the most impressive things of the Race was the construction of the race infrastructure in such a short period of time. Singapore being an island nation, has the problem of lack of area to contend with but, the construction of the race track and the grandstands were a proof of the amazing advancement in construction methodologies being used today.

Although the race was won by Alonso, a win which surprised most of us as Renault was not expected to put up a grand display this year, but his two wins did make the season more interesting with it finally culminating in the extremely interesting race in Brazil. Hopefully we will see a future Ferrari win at this technologically marvelous circuit made all the more stunning with the amazing usage of Artificial Lights to light up the circuit for the First Night Race in history.

I am now desperately waiting for my next opportunity to watch my next formula one race and hopefully that day is not far away, when Formula 1 racing comes to India. We already have had a driver in F1 and now even a team in F1, so the race is not far away.

CAT 08 Institute Cut Offs

This is a link for the overview of the CAT-08 cut offs by the various institutes.
PagalGuy

The institute level cutoffs as per last year scores. (Courtsey TotalGadha)

B School Percentiles

Hope this helps.

Happy hunting.

CAT 2008 – A Review

So, finally its over. 16th November has come and gone and CAT 2008 has been successfully completed. So here is my take on this exam.

On the whole the paper this year saw an increase in the number of questions from 75 to 90. The change not being made in each and every section but with the addition of 15 questions to the verbal section. This although created an impression of increasing the time allotted to the verbal section but the level of difficulty was such that any one could easily manage to complete the same within 50 minutes.

The quantitative section was tougher compared to the previous years and would hence have a lower cut-off. The data interpretation section was divided into quite a few individual sets, which increased the difficulty in selection and added to the difficulty of this particular section.

On the whole a balanced but moderately difficult question paper with the net result of an increase in the cut-offs this year. We can easily expect it to cross 120 this year.

The various CAT coaching institutes have given their own answer keys for the paper and it remains to be seen what the IIM’s declare the answer key to be.

Here are the links to the various results by the different institutes:
Career Launcher
Time
IMS
TotalGadha

In addition PagalGuy has collected the answer keys from the various institutes and come out with an analysis of your answers with relation to those given by the various institutes.
PagalGuy

So best of luck to all those calculating their scores as well as to those who will wait for the IIM’s to declare the results.

CAT – A few hours left

So, just under 12 hours left to go and I’m all reared up for the challenge. At the moment I feel there is nothing more I can do. It’s all up to the IIM’s now to set a paper which mere mortals like me may attempt and hope to get a chance to compete with others in the next round of GD’s and interviews.

So until tomorrow, when i write my analysis of the paper, here is wishing everyone embarking on this endeavor with me a Best of Luck, and as I often repeat to the others – Have Fun and Do Not Worry. This is not the end of our lives, it’s a new pathway we have embarked upon and there will be a number of opportunities on the way for all of us.

Good Luck and God Bless

CAT 08

Today is November 14, while I’m writing this at 10PM(IST) the CAT aka Common Admission Test for the admission to the IIM’s is just a day away, 36 hours to be exact. Wow, so its all gonna culminate into a test which i write for barely two and a half hours. Simply Amazing.

Remembering the day i started my preparation, I still remember clearly as I had only gone to collect information regarding the various programs, to today a journey which lasted nearly 11 months will all end up in a few hours. A few hours which may make or break me.

Is it fair to judge a person within a few hours, with a test which is being written by 2.7 lac people this year? Is it fair to pitch you against them all and decide who gets through simply on a test, irrespective of whether you are 21 or 42 with the appropriate knowledge of the world?

Well the IIM’s think so and to an extent so do I, because like it or not I have added myself to this rat race.

So what will happen in a couple of days? Will the IIM’s outfox us yet again with a huge surprise or will I be able to tame the CAT? This question will only be answered in January when the results come out, but what is worrying to most of us is what sort of a paper will we get on Sunday? Will it follow the pattern of the past two years or will it be completely different?

Another factor which has made this years paper unpredictable and scary is the thought of CAT going online next year. Will it remain the same as it has or will it move towards the GMAT and its Computer Adaptive Test nature? With all these unknowns in the picture, belling the CAT has become all the more important.

So, I must wait for this Sunday to find out what destiny has in store for me.