Three kings!

So, India's Beijing Olympics medal count has gone up to three! Kudos to wrestler Sushil Kumar (bronze) and middleweight boxer Vijender Singh, who has ensured a podium finish.
PS: NDTV should take off this report from its website. NOW.
PS2: CNN-IBN called Sushil Kumar a 'boxer', complete with a tag-line, 'Packing a punch'
on its early web reports. Heh.
PS3: Indian sports writers never had it so good, eh. I'm waiting to read what Nirmal Shekar has to say.

The worst headline ever!

It's all over for Michael Phelps

I demand that the entire sports desk of the newspaper which carried this headline (in yesterday's edition, and never mind what the strap line was!) be arrested.

Cricketer 'writers'

Christian Ryan on cricketer-turned-writers. Michael Atherton writes in the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 2008:

"You might worry about Adam Gilchrist, say, butchering an attack and smashing a bowler to smithereens," notes Atherton, "but Lara made captains, and bowlers, look silly. If you knew you were going to die, you'd prefer a single bludgeoning blow to the head, or a quick bullet to the brain, rather than death by a thousand ever-so-precise cuts."

Nice, eh? Care for a counter-view? I remember reading Ted Corbett in Sportstar:

"He has shown that all over again in what you might call a net for his big trial at The Times. He has commentated and written every Saturday in a Sunday newspaper. His TV work does not appear to have suffered — indeed he has now improved to a standard which makes him about the best in the country. His articles of perhaps 2,000 words each Sunday show the same reliability, the same insight and the same level-headed choice of words you might expect from his performances as a — mainly losing — Test captain."

Read the full article here.

RGV

Check out this interview of Ram Gopal Varma by Bharadwaj Rangan. I have nothing against B-Rangan and his views on cinema, except that he goes overboard at times. (Yes, I should avoid repeating 'stock' phrases)

"But then he's got cinematic sense," a journalist friend told me recently. Fine, but then again, am I to understand that if Raja Sen or any other reviewer/film critic/writer overdoes it in a film review, he or she is faffing, simply showing a flair for doggerel, while B-Rangan can go on and on about anything related to cinema and leave readers enchanted?

PS: I like reading Raja Sen's reviews. They make me laugh. Wasn't it Alfred Hitchcock who said, "It's only a movie."

Independence Day

Happy Independence Day! I'll be keeping a hawk's eye on the media coverage of this, too. Heh.

Brijnath on Tiger Woods...

And here's another of Rohit Brijnath's pieces, in which he likens Tiger Woods to a fighter. A pugilist, that is.

Something to write home about (from Beijing)

I got home from work at 2 am and then stayed up all night (or day) reading what the several Indian sports correspondents in Beijing had to say about Abhinav Bindra and his gold medal. It's not often that I pick up a copy of HT, (the paper is rapidly heading nowhere and it remains to be seen what the new editor(s) can do to set things right) but am I glad I did so yesterday. Wait, TOI probably had the best all-round coverage (I even learnt that Bindra's pet dogs are called Buddy (Saint Bernard) and Chottu (Beagle) Ha! ) but this piece by Rohit Brijnath is a must-read. Ok, so sometimes Brijnath goes overboard ("He breathes." Heehaw!) but that he wrote this over a year ago is amazing. Laughably, HT Mint wants the 'credit' for 'predicting' the medal just because they published the piece. And all this while we thought Brijnath did the predicting. Tsk, tsk.

Gold...

Well, this is great. Abhinav Bindra has struck gold at Beijing. Fantastic achievement, eh. And yep, the media coverage of this will be worth reading (and watching, too).

Touché -The Sizzler...

It's my weekend again. I will head to a steak house close to my office, Touché -The Sizzler, which, according to sources, is the best in the city, and indulge myself. They serve alcohol, too. Yay. And yes, I'll watch the Beijing Olympics inaugural ceremony. There's also the India vs. Sri Lanka series decider. Meanwhile, check out this write-up on a recent media poll (on the 'Sri Lankan Tamil' issue) conducted by Ananda Vikatan, a leading Tamil weekly magazine.

MJ...

M J Akbar gets political (as usual) in his latest piece in Khaleej Times.

Kuselan...

Well, turns out I was wrong about the movies bit. Kuselan released here, too, so watched it yesterday. Superstar rocks, but the movie per se is nothing to write home about. P Vasu is a mediocre director who will never be forgiven for giving us (mallus, if you please) the mangled remains of the classic Manichitrathazhu. Bah. Well, he has stopped well short of ruining Katha Parayumbol with this one, but that he dreams of making Chandrumukhi-II (such an avoidable sequence in Kuselan!) gives me the jitters.
However, the cinematography by Arvind Krishna is fantastic. And there is something about that photo of Rajini of the '80s, (it's a movie still I guess, but don't know from which film it is) which is shown hanging on the wall of a room in Balakrishnan's (Pasupathy) house, which leaves you in no doubt of the sheer charisma and star power of the man.

PS: Soumya Bhattacharya is the new RE of HT, Mumbai.

Whoa...

It has been a long day at the office. No movies worth watching this weekend, so I guess I'll catch up on sleep. If you haven't read it yet, here is CNN-IBN's explanation on why it did not telecast the 'tape.'