Desicritics Author: Aspi

Music Review: Trickbaby's Chor Bazaar

Aspi — Mon, 9 Feb 2009 00:29:24 EST

Trickbaby are an Asian fusion band who are precisely two albums old. Their first - Hanging Around - a delectable collection of amped down fusion of Punjabi and low key British house beats came out in 2004.

It was a year later that they broke big for fans in India when Rohan Sippy invited them to reboot "Sabse Bada Rupaiiya" for his movie Bluffmaster. In a CD full of highlights composed by Vishal and Shekhar, Trickbaby's composition was a standout. A few of their songs also made it into the background score - "Neelaa" (which samples Silsila's "Sar Se Sarke"), "Indi Yarn" and "Nine Parts of Desire".

One more year went by and Trickbaby did more Bollywood - composing the title track to the Fardeen-Vivek Oberoi-Esha Deol-Amrita Rao starrer "Pyare Mohan".

Now, two years later, Trickbaby have their sophomore CD - Chor Bazaar - out. And it's got its own India release on the Saregama label.

What exactly is Chor Bazaar like? It's a signature Trickbaby album, which means it's full of synth beats, seductive vocals and Indian percussion via dhols, tablas and drums. There are some clean guitar riffs - there is only selective feedback laden picking on a couple of songs to fill out the beat. The whole thing is very melodious - each song has multiple hooks that prompt sing alongs.

On "Fighter" which opens the CD, Saira talks about getting into arguments without intending to. She narrates an addiction to auctions just because she wants to win the final bid. As in all songs, she drains the emotion of the song in favor of sexy, breathless vocals. And combined with Steve Ager's smooth production - it sets the tone for the rest of the material to come.

There are twelve tracks on Chor Bazaar - two are remixes: Nine Part of Desire gets the cowboy guitar treatment and Neelaa has some minor tweaks. The other nine tracks are new songs. And while I'll let you discover the CD for yourself, there are a few worth highlighting.

On the title track, Trickbaby invite Gogol Bordello's Eugene Hutz (vocals), Sergey Ryabtzev (Violin), and Yuri Lemeshev (Accordian) to create a zany, Russian flavored tribute to India's one of a kind, dubious-goods markets. It's a bold move - perhaps even a confounding one. But it works really well because it not only captures the fervor of a chor bazaar but the Russian lyrics reflect the phoren-maal nature of the items usually found on sale.

There are plenty of genuine fusion tracks as well. Trickbaby use a clap driven percussion to power "Babu" which is sung in Hindi. "Broken Dreams" is in English and Punjabi and uses faded Bollywood influenced backup vocals.

Chor Bazaar is so groovy its well worth the wait. But next time, guys, please don't take so long between CDs.

Movie Review: Little Children

Aspi — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 00:36:11 EST

In a series of intertwining scenes that make up the climax of writer-director Todd Field's movie, Little Children, Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet) loses her daughter in a park at night. Frantic, she runs around looking for her and finally locates her, unmoving staring at a streetlight high above her, circling moths and all. She grabs her daughter, who never wishing to be confined in a car seat now scarcely protests at being put in one. And somewhere as her daughter's situation strikes Sarah's as metaphoric, she breaks down and sobs. Her daughter pats her on the head like you would little children and says "It's ok, Mom"

In Field's complex, layered Little Children Sarah joins three stay at home Moms every day in the park for play dates for her daughter. Enter Brad Adamson (Patrick Wilson) a stay at home Dad who brings his son to the same park. The women drool over Brad and one of them dares Sarah to get his phone number. Sarah does this and more - she elicits a hug from Brad that scandalizes the women.

Field very carefully goes about mapping the circumstances that contrive to ignite an affair between Sarah and Brad. His screenplay is solid, his staging of scenes is meticulous. Yet the story would have felt threadbare had it not been for a couple of actors.

First, Jackie Earle Haley shows up as Ronnie - a pedophile who is trying hard to be normal despite knowing he is fighting a losing battle. His story arc is tough and uncompromising and he does really well in this - eliciting our sense of horrified fascination instead of trying to squeeze us for empathy. This lends the movie a distinct edge and creates a fulcrum to hang the rest of the story (and large swathes of societal satire) to hang off. (Haley won an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his work here)

And then, Kate Winslet does a terrific job. She has mere on-screen moments to convince us that she would choose to scandalize her friends as she does in the early part of the film. Yet she manages to convey to us Sarah's sense of maladjustment among her friends, her possible contempt for them, her definite amusement at their daily talk, her sense of frustration at not being able to carve out a more intellectual and passionate life for herself. When the key moment arrives, you don't question the absurdity of it. (Winslet was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar)

Little Children is as much fun to watch as it is tough to sit through. While I didn't enjoy it's repulsion chic, I did get its necessity.

Also, I'm not a big fan of narration in movies: Wil Lyman's narration is supposed to invoke a sense of children's documentary in the movie - and despite an amusing interlude, where he imitates the voice over in HBO's Inside the NFL for a football game - it did nothing to change my mind about narration in big cinema.

Book Review: The Unofficial LEGO MINSTORMS NXT Inventor's Guide

Aspi — Mon, 3 Dec 2007 00:36:11 EST

The really neat thing about David J. Perdue's enthusiastic and systematic starter guide for Lego robot fans - The Unofficial LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Inventor's Guide - is that it incorporates a number of practical, essential things you need to know. But it does this without making the task of building robots feel intimidating. In other words, it's a book that makes you want to get off your chair and start building Lego inventions.

A lot of the book's readable style comes from the progressive way in which the material is presented. Perdue starts by introducing the various parts in the kit and giving an overview of how these are put together and programmed. This is followed by an introduction to the various pieces - a breakdown of the NXT, servo motors and various types of sensors. By digressing briefly to explain how these parts may be used, this chapter gets your juices flowing.

Just as importantly, Perdue then lays out the physical TECHNIC pieces and explains how these are used. This gets specific - various pieces and their capabilities are explained, giving you the ability to address them using specific terms (clearing up a lot of communication if you are building this with a friend - or a child).

Later, there are short paras with pictures on how to combine these pieces to create standard constructs in robots - wide beams, corners, angles, dynamic structures, etc. This bit of practical advice presented in menu form up front is a great idea because later as you are building the robot, you get to recognize the design pattern you are using.

Finally a discussion on constructing gears to transfer motion and an introduction to the NXT-G programming language brings you to the invention projects. The walkthroughs on the projects are fairly engaging to follow. There are step-by-step instructions about how to build the physical robot.

The accompanying pictures are pretty clear but I've always had problems with the progressive building steps. In this book there are a couple of embellishments that really helped. First, each step has a picture and count of the parts added in that step. And sometimes there are arrows to show how the insertion of those pieces takes place. In fact these help so much that I'd have liked the arrows to be there in every picture and perhaps formatted in a different color for clarity. In more complicated robots, portions are built separately and then put together in an effort to organize the complexity.

In terms of the accompanying programming, Perdue simply shows the program in a breakout figure. The program is commented on briefly enough that you know what various blocks might be doing. You can download all the programs for the robots from Perdue's web site. This is a cursory approach but it's forced by the limitations of having to explain a graphical program.

There are seven major bots in all - there are robots with wheels (zippy-bot), legs (guard-bot) and even one with a turntable using an ultrasound sensor (golf-bot).

Also be sure to check out the Amazon site for the book where Perdue has added pictures of selected bots with notes.

Book Review: Learning ASP.NET with AJAX

Aspi — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 03:10:55 EST

Built on top of the .NET framework, ASP.NET is Microsoft's flagship technology for building web applications. By tightly integrating it with Visual Studio, which remains the premier development IDE across all platforms, Microsoft has made ASP.NET a compelling technology.

The important thing to understand about O'Reilly's Learning ASP.NET 2.0 with AJAX is its guiding purpose. As stated in the preface: "What is the quickest way for me to build real web applications with the least hand coding?" In essence its a beginner's guide to ASP.NET and in that, it remains true to its purpose throughout the book.

Aligned to the purpose, the authors (Jess Liberty, Dan Hurwitz and Brian MacDonald) focus heavily on the tool used to build ASP.NET applications - Microsoft Visual Studio (or Visual Web Developer). All the code is in VB.NET. This bothered me a bit initially because I program primarily in C#, but while going through the book, I realized that this barely slowed me down in terms of understanding the code. In fact, translating some of the examples into C# was not only a breeze but kept my eyes from glazing over.

I'll get one more issue with the book out of the way: its treatment of Ajax is cursory, primarily coming in Chapter 3. And its tightly bound to its usability within Visual Studio. Given the goal of the book, this is fairly consistent because the authors resist digressing into a discourse of Ajax and instead stick to integrating Ajax into the overall ASP.NET tutorial.

This singularity of vision is the strength of this book and makes it a pleasure to read. It comes with some really good samples and code discussions, and it guides you through the major features of ASP.NET as exposed by Visual Studio. At some points I did long for some real-world discussions (what are the cons of using Master Pages, for example).

The book covers useful ground for beginners: there is a chapter on maintaining state, one on interacting with a database, another on errors and exceptions, yet another rather useful one on security and personalization. Again, because the book is a starter course in ASP.NET, the authors keep it light, expecting you to fill in the gaps yourself. Everything you learn in the book is tied together in the end in the final chapter where you read about building a basic commerce application. (The author's don't cross-reference material from individual chapters, however).

Learning ASP.NET with Ajax is an excellent text on table stakes ASP.NET. Its very well organized and contains a good balance of text, pop out tips and source code.

You can download ASP.NET here and the AJAX extensions here. Visual Web Developer, which is a web-centric version of Visual Studio, along with the .NET 2.0 framework is available for a free download here.

Book Review: Designing Web Navigation

Aspi — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 17:34:18 EDT

Early on in his impressive book - Designing Web Navigation (O'Reilly Media, 2007, Technical Editor: Aaron Gustafson) - author James Kalbach carefully and precisely introduces us to the fundamentals of web navigation.

This isn't a book in which the author has thrown in a grab bag of his experiences together and presented them with splashy graphics. Instead, Kalbach breaks out concepts, often presenting conflicting points of view (he mentions Alan Cooper's call to dispense with navigation entirely) and embellishes it with research from the fields of usability and human factors. This approach makes the book feel academic but it doesn't take away from the readability of the text at all. (In fact, it would make a pretty good textbook for a related course)

At one point in the initial chapter, Kalbach quotes research from usability expert Jared Spool that suggests that users who use Search to find a page in a web site are much less likely to browse the site than if they found the page using the site's own navigational aids.

This point is a critical one because it underpins Kalbach's focus on navigation. You can rely on Search to get users to your page, but the search engine now becomes the navigation of choice for the users - it has no vested interest in keeping users on your site. If you want your web site to be sticky, then design great navigation.

A little later when explaining the types of navigation and constructing key questions to formulate when designing navigation, you have the epiphany that this book isn't just about web sites. Instead it is laying down the paradigm for the flow of any application - networked or otherwise.

All through the first part, Kalbach's ability to dig into the details and anticipate the curiosity of the reader holds up well. Thus, right after listing the different mechanisms of navigation (paging, tabs, breadcrumbs, etc), he talks about some uncommon forms of navigation and ties them to the browser's own navigation mechanisms (back button, bookmarks, etc).

In Part II, a framework for navigation is presented. In the two early chapters in this section: Evaluation and Analysis, Kalbach talks about taking a step back at the beginning of a web design project to ask some key questions about the site under design. Evaluation and analysis techniques are discussed but importantly a systematic way of conducting preliminary research for the site is presented.

In the chapter on Architecture, we learn how to lay out navigation concepts, information structures, organizational schemes and site maps. These form the blueprint of the application flow. The stress on these aspects is important. As software architects have known for long, time spent up front is cheaper than time spent correcting things later (if they can be corrected at all).

Two more chapters round out this section: one explains layout and the other digs into presentation via typography and color. The treatment here is cursory but gives the user a fair idea of what is involved. A suggestion would be to bolster the references at the end of each chapter with some books that provide a detailed practical treatment of these topics.

Newer technologies like Ajax are changing the level of interactivity built into web sites. And in doing so, they are opening up new ways to navigate content. Kalbach doesn't forget to address this in his final chapter. But this is a newer area and the body of research isn't of the same density. Most of this chapter is spent discussing some of the newer techniques, their advantages and some common pitfalls. There are useful examples to go peruse to observe a noted technique. As Ajax pervades web sites - and given that this is an important text I would like to see around for a long time - I hope Kalbach integrates his final chapter into the rest of the book in later editions.

Each chapter is accompanied by a brief list of questions. These have been well thought out - I found myself reading and thinking about most of them and it actually helped me revise the material collated from the book up to that point. There is a list of references also and each book suggested is accompanied by a few lines that describe its relevance and importance. If you collect all of these, you will end up with an impressive list of reference material on related topics - and most importantly you'll know when to break each one open.

Congratulations also to O'Reilly and the book's design team. Color and white space are balanced beautifully in the book. The font (Hoefler Gotham) is crisp, clear and easy to read. My only nitpick would be that the color of the smaller headings is a little light - which caused me to miss them on several occasions. The graphics look consistent and sharp, the binding is excellent. I'm not a huge fan of break-out boxes but they've been done well here.

Book Review: The LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Idea Book

Aspi — Tue, 2 Oct 2007 00:19:35 EDT

In July 2006, Lego replaced its traditional programmable robotics kit based on Lego bricks with a newer version based on TECHNIC pieces. While this disappointed many fans who had a sizable investment in the older kit, it did allow more robust robots to be constructed and opened up avenues to newer, unique designs.

The idea behind Mindstorms NXT is to build a robot with moving parts using the pieces, attaching any of a variety of sensors for input and then using a central processing unit (called a brick) to control the sensors and drive the robot's reaction. All basic pieces are sold in a single kit.

The programming is done entirely using a variant of National Instruments' graphical LabVIEW programming language (which I worked on in the mid-90s) called NXT-G.

Mindstorms NXT represents the most accessible robotics kit available in the market today and the source of many hours of creative fun. It also has an array of excellent online documentation from a variety of sources. There is copious online help built into NXT-G as well.

Given this ecosystem, the new The LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Idea Book: Design, Invent, and Build (No Starch Press) takes contributions from 11 authors and adopts a cookbook approach. The book briefly explains the basics to get you grounded in the material. But quickly thereafter, the book takes a leap to address intermediate builders. The assumption is that online resources will help bridge the gap. Its an approach that works.

Roughly a third of the Idea Book contains a number of tips and techniques for using the kit. The chapter on programming, for example, painstakingly points out that the challenges in using a graphical programming language. It points out common pitfalls and often used workarounds to overcome them. A brief chapter discusses the sensors and how to use them. There is also an excellent and timely chapter on using the NXT with Bluetooth.

The remaining two-thirds of the book (Part II) is dedicated to building eight robots of varying complexity. There are pictorial step-by-step instructions on how to construct the robot followed by a section on how to program each robot. Often there are some troubleshooting tips or a tail piece on how to enhance the robot.

All of the robots in the book seem engaging to build. There is a rock, scissors, paper-playing robot, another helps you take digital pictures using a standard camera, yet another simulates a crane with a grabber.

Which brings me to the one drawback in the book - the instructions on how to build. In all fairness, putting together Lego building instructions is a painstaking process to get right. In the book, the authors photograph the robot as it is built progressively from the same angle. As a differential between pictures, they list the parts used and the number of units of each part. It is up to the reader to figure out how the parts are used and where by scanning the two pictures.

This, I found to be a tedious exercise. Its not prohibitive in any way and my 8 year old son at one point built out one of the simpler robots and indicated that it was not too difficult.

The Idea Book is an excellent addition to your collection if you are a Lego Mindstorms builder. I would also recommend it to fans who show up at tournaments and are looking for a better understanding of Lego robot construction.

Movie Review: A Different Spice Flavors Miami Vice

Aspi — Wed, 8 Aug 2007 00:04:44 EDT

In Michael Mann’s undercover drug-bust thriller Miami Vice, everyone goes about doing their thing with calm efficiency. Sure, there are moments of drama – but they are dealt with underplayed emotion and direct consequential action. And tricky though the movie is to get engaged with – especially in the first ten minutes or so – it ultimately pulls you in with a gorgeous seductive vibe.

As a TV series, Miami Vice was a cheese fest that lasted from 1984 to 1989. Having produced the movie under his shingle, Mann is intimately familiar with the franchise. But he is also an extraordinary director – and in the movie he turns the feel of the show upside down and delivers a movie so gritty that it can best be described as UnMiami Vice.
Mann does this first by carefully replicating available light in his scenes. Often the camera is held by hand or mounted on the shoulder in longer-than-usual continuous shots. Mann avoids techniques like jump-cuts to make sure his movie doesn’t completely descend into reality territory. He creates an urgent energy that runs through the film and becomes its signature.

Sound effects are kept deliberately real – although the temptation to punch up a few here and there must have been great, especially for a summer tent pole like this movie. The music is played under the main audio track as opposed to over it.

Although the movie looks wonderful, it has some problems for which it provides its own rather elegant solution. But first, the bare bones plot – one of the two major issues with the flick.

Following a leak and a deal gone bad, the FBI turn to Miami-Dade detectives Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Ricardo Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) for help. The detectives set up a front as shipment transporters and start trafficking cargo from Cuba to the US for a mysterious drug lord named Montoya. Slowly, they set Montoya up for a fall.

Farrell and Foxx are both terrific physical actors. But displaying layers of facial emotion is not their strong suit. By keeping the plot loose and thin and the emotion underplayed and real, Mann has to deal with the threat of losing emotional weight in his film. Here, a risky piece of casting delivers in spades.

Gong Li is a fine actress and a strikingly beautiful woman. But none of her previous performances prepared me for her work here as a Cuban Chinese drug dealer’s business manager called Isabella. She slides seamlessly into the challenging format of the movie and makes it her own. She is able to put emotional distance between herself and the other characters in the film, but fill that distance up with a range of feelings. Her face remains a mask with sparing expressions – consistent with a character that has to deal with dangerous criminals on a daily basis and outthink most of them. But her body language around different characters conveys a different story – and acts as a guide to what she experiences internally.

Her turn anchors the movie and ultimately makes it more than an ordinary sleek thriller.

Movie Review: Depth Comes from Unlikely Places in Ratatouille

Aspi — Thu, 2 Aug 2007 00:02:10 EDT

There have been precisely three animated movies that have impressed me since Disney's Toy Story brought practicality to bear on the promise of CGI to change the animation landscape in 1996.

Tarzan, the last notable non-CGI animated blockbuster, made me sit up and take notice with the way in which the animators were able to manipulate objects of high detail and move the titular character seamlessly between the front and back of a static backdrop.

The attention to detail and the ability to render it in Pixar's A Bug's Life left me speechless. I remember my eyes darting around the screen so much that they positively hurt when it was all over.

The third movie to fill me with the same sense of wonder about the craft was Ratatouille. It is just as good because the movie itself arrives with an innovative plot filled with hackneyed situations and often forgoes genuine enchantment in favor of quick thrills.

Remy (Patton Oswalt) is a rat who is born with a gift. He has a super-sensitive nose and a palate to match, both of which give him a laser-sharp sense of good food. He arrives in a restaurant in Paris which seems to have lost its way. Unbeknownst to the management who understandably don't want rats around, Remy joins forces with Linguini (Lou Romano) to conjure up magical recipes and restore the restaurant back to pole position. Along the way they encounter important life lessons - standard fare for this genre.

There are two exceptional things that save Ratatouille and make it a really good time at the multiplex. First, the canny and versatile Ian Holm shows up as Skinner, the head chef at the restaurant who has a vested interest in seeing the restaurant remain at status quo. Holm sinks his teeth into the role by essaying an unapologetically ridiculous French accent. He makes Skinner smart, pompous, vulnerable, afraid, swashbuckling and driven. It's a hilarious performance which culminates in one rollicking chase scene with Skinner on a scooter.

And the innovative animation is the second one. More than any movie I've seen, Ratatouille is able to deliver terrific depth and perception in frame after frame. (Compare this to, say, the flat and lifeless backdrops of a major blockbuster like Shrek 3.) Although the characters are cartoons, the backdrops are rendered in true form. And by dissolving the sharpness ever so slightly between multiple objects in the backdrop, the animators of the movie have managed to create a fully realized 3D universe that is positively dazzling.

Movie Review: Déjà vu

Aspi — Thu, 7 Jun 2007 00:24:27 EDT

I watch a lot of Denzel Washington movies. And there is a reason for that. But it's not just that he is effortlessly good looking. Or that he is such a genuine acting talent. Or that he rarely turns in a bad performance.

The reason is that with Denzel you get to watch an actor who is at the top of his game. More than most other actors, he can change the complexion of the scene with something deft - like the pout that portrays momentary disarray or the megawatt smile that can project arrogance, pleasure or sarcasm. He can deftly stoop a little lower than normal to convey vulnerability - or turn a little slower than usual to get your attention. He can deliver a line in a completely flat tone and force you to read his inner turmoil. Because of the vigor that he brings to each role, the movie Denzel is in becomes immaterial. Each of his recent films has felt like sitting through an acting class.

Yet Denzel isn't as huge as he should be in Hollywood. More often than not he picks interesting subject matter. He picks good directors. He protects his characters well. He raises the game of everyone around him. Yet there are one or two things wrong with his movies - internal or external. And usually they suck the commercial life out of the project.

Take Déj� Vu for example - an emotionally taut thriller that works on multiple levels but stumbles badly on one. The movie - edited brilliantly by the way - starts off with a montage that depicts sailors and their families boarding a ferry in New Orleans that will ship them to a party. The mood is upbeat, laughter is in the air.

The ferry blows up via a bomb in a pickup truck parked on the boat. Over 500 people are killed in the carnage. Denzel, playing an ATF agent called Doug Carlin investigates the crime.

At this point Val Kilmer shows up portraying a somewhat tubby FBI agent - Pryzwarra - and the stage is set for Déj� vu to take its big fall. Kilmer offers Carlin a way to look - via a complicated system of satellite surveillance and computer extrapolation - into the past. This turns out to be so complicated poor Denzel is used to ask a number of basic questions so that audiences can get it via him. It made my head hurt but more importantly it slowed the movie considerably and unintentionally. The science of it sounded pretty ridiculous too.

No sooner had that happened when an unnecessary twist requires us to understand a completely different explanation for how everyone can look into the past. And the new premise is just as painful to understand or buy. It caused me such instant indigestion that it was hard to swallow the plausibility of everything else that happened afterwards.

Still, everyone tries their damndest. Denzel, in particular, turns in another bravura performance. Tony Scott - displaying some of brother Ridley's visual flair - uses the sci-fi angles to deliver some unusual twists to well worn clichés. Paula Patton belies her inexperience to turn in a fine performance that holds the key to the mystery. And Jim Caviezel chomps up the few good scenes that come his way.

Hard working jockeys all - flogging a dead horse.

The Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Challenge 2007 Report Card

Aspi — Mon, 4 Jun 2007 00:47:45 EDT

Not since Einstein came up with e=mc^2 has a more universal equation been coined: SRGMP - Reshammiya = 0. If Himesh hadn't jumped in and saved SRGMP last week by singing that one song of his (he keeps changing the lyrics each time - nice trick), the show would have sucked.

Several times a week the gurus and mahagurus of Sa Re Ga Ma Pa 2007 Challenge lecture their contestants on singing. They give them points, torpedo two of them and make them cry. So what if we were to reverse the situation - rate the people who are in the front and center of the show and see if they come up smelling roses?

I am in awe of Head's (host Aditya Narayan) milquetoast amicability. I even like how he ducks and weaves like a flyweight boxer when he's holding the mike. But he is a terrible host - often letting the show run away from him and asking the same inane questions in embarrassed, hushed tones to losing contestants. And while I'm at it - Head, you need to add a bob to your routine otherwise I can see a left arm roundhouse pole-axing you in a heartbeat. Aur mehenat karo! 35/100

Asha Bhonsle was the mahaguru in the first segment of the show. Ashaji, the way you dismantled a song and then put it back together again was fascinating. And your wink-wink nexus with Vishal-Shekhar and constant needling of Himesh Reshammiya was fun to watch. Yet it disappointed me that you came down hard on women who dared to display spunk and sensuality. However there is no question I miss you already. Do come back - but do so with an open mind about the evolution of singing in Bollywood. 80/100

The new mahagurus - Rajesh Roshan (you know, the first of the two Roshan brothers who publicly ceded that he was bald) and Khayyam - put me to sleep. Well, there was that one time when Khayyam thundered "Masha-Allah! Chasme Buddoor!" that I did wake up. But then even toothpicks couldn't keep my eyelids up. 0/100

Bappida, you are so fashion forward with your gorgeous outfits that it is safe to say no one will dare to try and catch up with you. The blaze emanating from your bling leaves me bedazzled. I love that coy smile whenever your gharana is called on the floor. The show desperately needs some jhatka - I know you are the one who can provide it. 70/100

Ismail Darbar, I'm not sure about that cuddly lab rat look. But your direct and informal approach to mentoring is interesting. Your alliance with Himesh also makes sure the true star of this show stays engaged. Your sense of drama could use some tweaking, but no one is perfect - not even one who demands perfection from their students. 60/100

When it comes to starting a jhagda, no one does it better than you, Vishal and Shekhar. And the show gets a lot of juice from it - never mind that it's bitter juice. Without that flavor the show would be dead and you'd all have to go back home unless you can find a lot of good singers - which doesn't look like happening this season. 65/100

Himesh, the show had its poorest episodes when you went kutti with your fellow mentors and refused to say much. However, your flicking of Vishal like a fly in last week's episode was a joy to behold. Your sense of drama and timing are also noteworthy. Just when SRGMP was flagging you jumped out of your seat and promised to give a losing contestant one of your compositions. Then you ordered the orchestra to join in, jumped on stage and sang that song. Bravo! 100/100