Millenium Trilogy: The girl with the Dragon Tatttoo

Once again, we have a brilliant book with a lame name. Title should've been something better; something more poetic to do justice to this brilliant work by Steig Larrson. Män som hatar kvinnor ("Men who hate women" in Swedish). What did they have against the original title anyway?? It is overall a brilliant thriller with a unique mix of the classical and modern Europe. The book manages to give you a tour of the Scandinavia region, especially the small towns. In this case, the author creates a fictitous town called 'Hedestad' in Sweden.

Mikael 'Kalle' Blomkovist is like any other inquisitive lead character you would expect in a bestselling fiction. The interesting character here is Lisbeth Salander: the girl with the dragon tattoo. Eccentric yet human, dangerous but unsure, her ferocity and queer nature is mystic indeed. This asocial punk’s silence, the irrationality, the memory: it might just start freaking you out.

The translation from Swedish is decent enough and keeps you glued with the old and the modern mysteries. Got my hands on part 2: 'The girl who played with fire' and I know I'll have to get the 3rd book really fast..

Iron Man 2: I'm as confused as Mr. Stark

Let's start with the background first. I was movie starved, had heard great reviews from creatures overseas (read Vikram) and I had taken great pains to get a moderately priced ticket from Bangalore's movie goers' funds' embezzlement organization (the multiplex mafia). So the expectations were high..

And then the fall. Mr. Stark: the eccentric too cool guy, a mocking session with a senator, a drunk Iron man, the 'why is Col. Rhodes Iron Man's best friend??': and you lose count of the disappointing moments.

None of the bad guys manage to pose a credible threat. The Russian Ivan may be forgiven on some grounds at least: with a superb performance and some great effects with the electrified horse-whip.

The other bad guy: Mr. Hammer the competitor behaves way too silly to be taken seriously at any point of time. His main job is to be thrashed by everyone, be it some gorgeous reporter, the leading ladies and of course by Downey Jr. In spite of all his antics, he fails to make you smile with stupid comics and an irritating staccato.

Now the main problem: Downey Jr. I found him to be too jumpy to play the sober Holmes in his previous outing but the movie was a big hit anyway. Now that he’s been asked specifically to play the eccentric billionaire, he's gone overboard. Act way too cool, too fast, too erratic: It's a bit too much!

To summarize it, you go expecting an eccentric suave guy with a peculiar sense of humor of the likes of Bruce Wayne of Batman/Dark Knight. What you get here is a lot of jumpy creatures similar to the Transformers series..

Still I'll have to ask you to go and see the movie. It is a visual treat. The fight sequences: the bad guy cutting race cars, Rolls Ryce n all and of course: 'Highway to Hell' concluding the film. Worth a watch.

SuperFreakonomics

First things first. A big thanks to Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner for enlightening us with economics. More Importantly I should thank them for clarifying the myth that economics has to always be about money. It was a real treat seeing numbers and data from various walks of life.

Super Freakonomics lives upto the expectations of it’s prequel. It grand, slick, shocking and err.. freaky! Geo-engineering, truth about global warming, numbers to trace terrorists and monkey business (literally)- it’s got ‘em all. The global warming findings have invited a lot of criticism from various organizations and its worth to read and analyze from the stone hearted economists' (as they describe themselves: more than once) point of view.

The numbers presented here are minimal and to the point to ensure that number fearing people like me were glued. But the data, though limited is hard hitting. And the results are eye-popping.

This is a treat, whether you like economics or not. It certainly has the power to change your perspective. You might start thinking about reality, numbers and probability in your day to day activities.