‘Escape Plan’…

 

‘Escape Plan’  features veteran stars Stallone and Schwarzenegger, is a weak attempt to produce an action entertainer against the backdrop of ‘almost-impossible-to-break-out-from’  prisons.

Interestingly, the two main themes in the films– a security expert exposing the flaws by breaking in and out of the systemt and the  jailer who is almost like a student of his prisoner but decides to make it difficult for him–are borrowed from two Robert Redford movies.(‘Sneakers’ and ‘The Last Castle’)

Stallone plays a taciturn ‘specialist’, a la Michael Scofield in the hit TV series ‘Prison Break’, and Schwarzenegger is the vocal guy who knows ‘how to get things from time to time’ in the prison, a bit like Morgan Freeman’s Red character in ‘The Shawshank Redemption’. Their chemistry makes a few scenes work but doesn’t really set the screen ablaze.

In the end, the movie suffers from too much of Stallone and Schwaznagger and their ability to pull off the film on their old shoulders. A few more accomplices would have lightened up the proceedings, but that would have made this film into another ‘Expendables’?

But, what works for the film is that a normal movie goer wouldn’t expect too much from the film and if you are fan of Stallone/Schwarzenegger, the few scenes that click make you sit through the film.

 

Why Flipkart is raising so much money

When top online retailer Flipkart raised $200 million in July, it was asked a pertinent question: Why did the company go to its existing investors rather than new ones? While Flipkart pointed out that the move showed confidence of the current investors in the company’s future, rivals and analysts argued it was a decision made due to lack of options. “Existing investors were finding it tough to exit, so they decided to re-invest.” Three months down the line when Flipkart went to the market again to raise $160 million, it faced a new question: “Why does it need funds so soon?”

To that, Sachin Bansal, chief executive and co-founder of the company, says the money had to be raised for “technology and supply-chain expansion to reach more and more people”, adding that these are long-term goals. The company has notched up a total of $540 million in funds over the last six years, $360 million of which has flowed in two tranches this year itself.

More at Business Standard

The Already Existent Future Of The Age of Context

We are going to live in the age of Iron Man’s J.A.R.V.I.S., not Batman’s Alfred. That is the gist that I get from reading Shel Israel and Robert Scoble’s new book, The Age of Context: Mobile, Data, Sensors and the Future of Privacy. Okay, I declared sides in the eternal Marvel vs. DC debate, and my pro-technology bias, but for good reason.

The Age of Context is a tour-de-force documentary of the state of technology in 2013 looking across a broad number of fields: healthcare, transportation, the electronic home, urbanization, mobile devices, marketing, and understanding customers. There are so many references to real companies, inventions, and people in this book, it is encyclopedic—yet only in 276 pages in my e-book copy.

More at Fortune.com

ET, IT…and the rest