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Film

Review: Insidious Chapter 3

Far from being scary, this film falls flat in several places and does not hold the audience’s attention for long.
by Ravi Shet

Rating: 2 out of 5

Making his directorial debut with this horror film, Leigh Whannell brings Insidious Chapter 3, a prequel set a few years before the haunting of the Lambert family. The film begins with a young girl, Quinn Brenner (Stefanie Scott) approaching a psychic Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye) for a chance to talk to her late mother Lillith (Ele Keats).

Quinn thinks that her mother has been trying to reach out to her through the world of spirits and Elise can help her through the reading. Elise refuses, however, but she agrees later. But she is not able to complete the reading, since she hears a demonic presence that threatens to kill her. She advises Quinn not to reach out to her mother on her own. Regardless of the warnings, Quinn still attempts to reach her mother which opens doors that are meant to be closed.

She starts hearing noises in the night and the next day, she notices a dark figure waving to her offstage before going onstage for an audition at the theatre academy in New York. While crossing the street, Quinn again sees the same dark figure waving to her and she stops to look, but a speeding car hits her. The accident temporarily leaves her bedridden and she is looked after by her father Sean (Dermot Mulroney); however these problems are nothing in comparison to the ones she faces when she is tortured by demons trying to get at her soul every night.

 

This film provides no chills and thrills and is not likely to stay with you once it’s over. There were just two scenes of note – onen where the demon grabs Quinn and attempts to pull her over the ledge, and the other, where the spirit of Black Bride nearly kills Elise. Curiously, there is not back story for the demon in the film, though it is a burnt victim with a breathing mask. The end of the film signals the hint of another installment coming audiences’ way; however this installment of the Insidious series falls flat when compared with its previous two fellows.

(Picture courtesy trrdatfiltz.890m.com)

Categories
Event

Rural Maharashtra plays rugby in Mumbai

Maharashtra Mini Rugby 7s tourney kicks off today at Bombay Gymkhana grounds; 16 teams will compete for the top honours.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Maharashtra Olympic Association (MOA) recently announced a month long celebration of Olympics starting from Olympic Day, June 23, 2015. As a part of this celebration, The Rugby Association of Maharashtra (RAM) is hosting the Maharashtra Mini Olympics Rugby 7s tournament for senior Men and Women at Bombay Gymkhana Grounds, CST, Mumbai on Saturday, June 27 and Sunday, June 28, 2015 between 10.00 amto 5.00 pm.

A total of 16 teams will battle for the honours in this championship. As per their ranking, only eight teams from each category qualified to participate in the Mini Olympic 2015 in Rugby 7s discipline. In the qualifiers, 23 teams from across the state competed in Ambarnath, Thane on May 8 to 9, 2015.

The qualified district teams for the Mini Olympic 2015 are, Men’s category – Pune, Mumbai, Mumbai Suburban, Nashik, Kolhapur, Gondia, Thane and Jalgaon. And in women’s category – Pune, Raigadh, Mumbai Suburban, Jalgaon, Gondia, Chandrapur, Thane and Nandurbar

Speaking on this occasion, Sandeep Mosamkar, Joint Secretary- RAM said, “Olympic month is an effort to encourage the sentiment of introducing sports in the lives of youth across the nation. Rugby has been instrumental in transforming the lives of youths across various parts of the State. “As a representing body that is passionate about developing the game of Rugby in India, RAM is delighted to be actively involved in the Olympic month celebrations by hosting the Mini Olympics Rugby 7s”.

He added, “There is no dearth of talent in rural Maharashtra. Youth from various regions displayed extreme passion and enthusiasm during Rugby qualifier matches held in Thane. We are confident that tomorrow’s championship will be the key to discover the potential of the next breed of national players from across the State.”

The Maharashtra State Rugby Team has brought laurels to the State by winning the Gold Medal on two consecutive occasions; the Rugby Sevens Event of the 33rd and 34th National Games of India held in Guwahati (2007) and Ranchi (2011) respectively. And have continued the momentum by winning Silver (Women) and Bronze (Men) Medals in the 35th National Games of India, held in Kerala (2015).

(Picture courtesy www.afternoondc.in. Image is a file picture)

Categories
Film

Review: Welcome Zindagi

A fresh look at many current happenings in society, the film gives the message of hope to the broken hearted.
by Ravi Shet

Welcome Zindagi directed by Umesh Ghadge is a remake of the Bengali film, Hemlock Society. The film starts with a discussion on love and relationships followed by a song (featuring Prashant Damle (Prashant) in a club. Meera (Amruta Khanvilkar), a fan of Prashant who never misses his shows is also shown in the same frame enjoying the moment.

Meera is a journalist by profession, who catches her fiancé cheating on her just 10 days before her wedding. She is already feeling lonely and ignored since her father, Dr Rajwade (Vivek Lagoo) has remarried after her mother’s death. On top of everything else, she hears that her boss is about to fire her from her job. Cornered in every possible way, she decides to end her life. For this, she meets her father and asks him for a prescription of sleeping pills on the pretext that she isn’t sleeping well. She thinks overdosing on sleeping pills will be a quick way out.

But at the moment she attempts to consume the pills, somebody rings her doorbell. That somebody turns out to be Anand Prabhu (Swwapnil Joshi). He enters the house and sees the bottle of sleeping pills, which he promptly flushes out. However, Anand does not tell her not to end her life – instead, he advises her to do it in a systematic way.

 

It turns out that Anand is the founder of Happy Ending Society, an organisation that believes every individual has a right to decide his or her destiny. He convinces Meera to enroll in three-day ‘suicide camp’ which will teach her many ways in which to end her life systematically. Convinced by his proposal, she leaves with him for the camp.

The pace of the movie is well maintained and the dialogues are crisp. There are few good cameos by Bharati Achrekar, Mahesh Manjrekar and Mohan Agashe; however the film truly belongs to the lead pair. This film is recommended for family viewing – it is humorous but sympathetic of all the issues we face in our lives, and gives hope to all those going through problems.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Categories
Tech

Review: Teewe 2

We test the recently released and improved streaming dongle Teewe 2 and come away pleased with its performance and features.
by Manik Kakra | @Manik_K on Twitter

More and more people these days want their TV to be a bit more than just an idiot box. We have had smart TVs in the market for a couple of years now, but haven’t seen anything that provides any extra utility. This is where the likes of Teewe and Chromecast come in. Teewe, an Indian startup (MangoMan), came out with its first streaming stick last year; got good reviews, and is now out with the new Teewe 2, apparently better since they have listened to a lot of customer feedback.

What is it? Teewe 2 is a streaming dongle. It allows you to mirror or throw something that you’re watching on your phone or PC or have it stored right on your TV’s bigger screen. In the box, you get an HDMI cable, a relatively longer USB cable, power adapter, the stick itself and a setup manual. The stick is a little bigger in size than a usual thumb drive, but a bit smaller than the original Teewe.

The looks. It is all-black, made out of plastic, with the HDMI port right at the top and microUSB port on one side. Its internal hardware comprises a 1.6 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex A9 based processor, quad-core GPU, 1 GB of RAM and 4 GB of storage space (not accessible). It is essentially based on Android 4.2’s development tree and the company provides firmware updates in the background.

Teewe_2Setting up the device. It supports Windows (requires Java installed), Mac OS X, Linux (JVM), iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and even has a plugin Chrome along with a Web app. Insert it in your TV’s HDMI port, put the smaller microUSB side into the Teewe 2 dongle and its charging USB side either into a power socket (through the power adapter) or your TV’s USB port.

While most TVs will provide for power through a USB port, if yours doesn’t, you would have to make use of the long microUSB cable extending it to power socket. As soon as you switch your TV’s HDMI mode and fire up the app on your device, the dongle will search for the device while connecting to a WiFi network. Keep in mind, both your device and dongle need to be on the same network.

What’s good. I tried the device on Chrome and an Android smartphone, and found the app to be pretty decent. The Android app shows you content from YouTube (you can search further), local content on your phone like images, videos, and audio files. Using the Chrome plugin, you can either play some video or audio content from a Webpage or mirror a tab, so whatever is playing on that tab exactly mirrors on your TV. For movies stored on your PC, you can even have subtitles streamed and synced with any movie playing on your TV, but this feature is only available on Windows for now.

Performance. The stick streamed up to 720p at 60FPS for me. The Android app allows you to select from HD or SD, though you cannot do it while playing a video and have to select it from the app’s main page once. Streaming worked smoothly and I rarely found a stutter. If you’re streaming from, say, YouTube, its loading and playing time obviously depends on your Internet connection. If you’re playing local files, the dongle uses FTP, and it worked well for me, whether high quality images, audio files or a video. I couldn’t get the Teewe 2 stick to do full HD 1080p, though. For now, it doesn’t mirror your entire phone or PC, but the company is working on it. Buyers also get 60 GB of additional broadband data if they’re using an Airtel connection, and two months of free EROS service via the Teewe 2 apps.

The verdict. All in all, I think the Tewee 2 does its job really well. It is mainly for streaming content from the Web or local and has no fancy, useless features that would make it perform poorly. My only concern is with the ChromeCast 2 launching quite soon, but if you aren’t bothered to wait, and are looking for a good option to make a better use of your HD TV, the Teewe 2 could well be a good buy for you under Rs 2,400.

Would you try this device? Tell us in the comments section below.

Categories
Film

Review: Spy

An unusual action heroine on a mission to tail a deadly target –an interesting premise falls flat in the execution.
by Ravi Shet

Writer-director Paul Feig presents the action-comedy secret agent film Spy with Melissa McCarthy (Susan Cooper) playing the pivotal role. Susan is a desk-bound CIA analyst helping her partner Agent Bradley Fine (Jude Law) on a secret mission to Varna, Bulgaria to find a suitcase nuke bomb. She is connected with Bradley through his earpiece and watches via satellite from the CIA office in the United States, where you see bats and rats all over the office.

Bradley accidently kills his target – Boyanov – without finding the suitcase nuke bomb. The CIA sends Bradley to break into Boyanov’s daughter Rayna Boyanov’s (Rose Byrne) house to where the bomb could be. Before killing Bradley, Rayna reveals that she knows the identities of all the CIA’s agents and whoever follows her will be dealt with in the same way.

Susan volunteers to become a field agent and gets approval from her boss Elaine Crocker (Allison Janney) on the condition of a track and report mission; however Agent Rick Ford (Jason Statham) dislikes Susan’s interference in his territory and follows her everywhere. Susan travels to Paris to spy on De Luca (Bobby Cannavale), Rayna’s contact. One of the De Luca’s men along with Lia (Nagris Fakhri), the Bollywood presence in this film, changes Rick’s bag for a bomb; however Susan saves Rick’s life and also kills the man in a hilarious way – before throwing up on his dead body. Susan then follows Rayna to Rome where she successfully prevents her assassination in a casino and also gains Rayna’s trust.

 

Despite its funny action premise and some stellar performances, this film falls flat due to excessive dialogue and slapstick in between the scenes, especially in the scenes between Melissa McCarthy and Rose Bryne. However, Jason Statham’s character keeps the audience engaged, particularly in his scenes with Melissa. The film would have benefited from a shorter length and less talk.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

(Picture courtesy

Categories
Film

Review: ABCD 2 (Any Body Can Dance 2)

A tiny plot and passable lead performances are bolstered by lots of dancing in ABCD sequel, and is worth one watch.
by Ravi Shet

The plot of this film is the journey of the real life Fictitious Dance Group’s from Mumbai’s Nalasopara to the finals of the World Hip Hop Challenge in Las Vegas. ABCD 2 (Any Body Can Dance 2) directed by Remo D’Souza, features a motley crew of dancers named ‘Mumbai Stunners’ with Suresh (Varun Dhawan) as their lead.

The group, also comprising Vinnie (Shraddha Kapoor) and a crew of others, are accused of copying each and every dance move from a famous dance group – Philippines’s ‘All Stars’ by the judges (played by Remo D’Souza, Terence Lewis and Seema Pandey) and are disqualified from a reality show. Post this incident, the group is taunted by one and all as a bunch of cheaters (a customer calls out to Suresh, who is working as waiter in a pub as a ‘cheater’, then sarcastically corrects it to ‘waiter’, a woman in a salon tells Vinnie she wants a haircut like Katrina Kaif, and says Vinnie can do it expertly since she is good at copying, etc.) Even a popular TV comic mocks the group on his show.

Suresh wants his group to participate in the World Starz Hip Hop Challenge in Las Vegas and prove to the world that they are not cheaters through their dance performances. Vishnu Sir (Prabhudeva), a struggling choreographer guides the team and also renames it as Indian Stunners. After that, the film follows a fairly predictable graph.

 

There are a few moments that drag it down, especially in the second half; however the dance sequences makes up for the movie and really hold your attention. Varun and Shraddha have put in a lot of effort with their dancing to match the likes of Dharmesh Yelande, Lauren Gottlieb, Punit Pathak, Raghav Juyal and others.

The cinematography by Vijay Arora is excellent, especially the shots taken in Las Vegas. Prabhudeva’s entry, followed by his dance and the last dance sequence of the film are standout sequences. Sachin-Jigar do well in the music department.

All in all, this is a good film to watch if you’re not looking for a very strong story and lots of dancing.

Rating: 3 out of 5

(Picture courtesy movies.ndtv.com)

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