Wednesday, October 26, 2005

God save us

Warning : This is purely for fun. If you want to scold me for this, manasukkullaye thittikavum :-)

Natural disasters have become commonplace these days with mother nature spitting her rage all over the globe. Even the most developed countries have not been able to cope up with the destruction. So what's causing all this? What do we do? These are questions that are ringing in everybodys mind.

Starting from December 26, when Nayanthara tripped and fell flat during a song sequence in Chandramukhi, the world has witnessed massive earthquakes including the huge aftershocks caused during the picturisation chase sequences in Gajini. The only present incident, it seems, which occurs at a higher frequency than an earthquake is the Supreme Court condemning Buta Singh for his active role in violating the rules regularly, to facilitate which the Government is thinking of passing an ammendment act to add an appendix section to the constitution. When Vaasthu Lion Dr.S.Naagapaambu was consulted regarding this, he said that a quake would not have occured in Pakistan if Pakistan was near Madagscar - it's correct position according to Vaasthu principles. Indian Railway Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav mocked at the statement and in an attempt to tackle the issue scientifically, ordered relief material consisting of 1000 barrels of lubricating oil and 10,00,00,000 ball bearings to be sent to Pakistan in an attempt to smoothen the motion of the tectonic plates.
Pravunplugged predictions : With Nayanthara doing an item number in Sivakasi, people in Pakistan better be prepared for some aftershocks starting Nov.1

There was a time when people in Tamil Nadu did not know what water was. The recent floods in the state could be ascribed only to Asin in Gajini - proof that not just humans, even god drooled at her, and to a great extent at that. The meteorological department, with its extremely reliable forecasting techniques like 'the throw of a die' and 'picking up a tarot card', says that heavy rain are expected over the next 48 hours because of a kaatrazhuthu thaazhvu mandalam. Thanks to them, the rains have stopped and the situation is now under control. The only forecast which the department is good at is - "Vaanam or alavu mega mootathudan kaana padum". Obviously, sky-na clouds irukka dhaan seyyum. National Students Asspciations (NSA) chairman Mr. Sathyaraj has requested all his student friends to swing in to relief operations. When asked if he would join the students in the relief operations, he says, "I have to do some math homework. The teacher has asked me to find out my age, and am still counting. I have to give her the answer by this week, so I'll be a bit busy". The Seceretary of the NSA, Mr.Chinni Jayanth was not available for comment.
Pravunplugged predictions : With Asin going to Kerala to celebrate her birthday today, heavy showers are likely in Kerala and Karnataka.

Katrina, Rita and Wilma - three major hurricanes that have battered America. Nameology expert Ms. Anamika says that all the havoc caused is because of careless naming. She says the hurricanes are in such a hurry because they have been named hurri-cane : 8 distinct letters and hence bad luck. "Naming it Sorikayne would solve the problem", she says. On the other hand, hemology expert Mr.Paarangal has adviced Mr. George Bush to wear a Navaratna ring, which he claims would put an end to America's miseries. The Americans are however taking a more scientific approach to solve the problem. In a move to divert the hurricanes, they have requested Padmashree Dr.Kamal Hasan to come to Florida. The experts say, "Since the hurricanes are given names of sexy women, we expect them to stay away from Mr. Kamal"
Pravunplugged predictions : Paavam hurricane!

According to Mr. Nambatheengal Madayan, disasters of such magnitude occur when Jupiter is in the 9th house, Saturn in the 8th house and Buta Singh in government house without paying proper rent. Mr. Madayan welcomes the move of the Supreme Court to move Bhuta Singh out of the government quarters. He says the disasters would reduce a great deal after this. "But ultimately, things are in the hands of god, we need another avatar of god to save the world", he says.

May be we already have that incarnation?

click to enlarge

PS : Maybe its not a nice time to wish my galfriend a happy birthday. But what the heck, she is my galfriend and so.....Happy Birthday Asin!! :-)

Note : On a more serious note, I guess we seriously need to pray to end such disasters. Too many this year! Started on Dec 26 2004, the day I started this blog!

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Monday, October 17, 2005

Gajini : Review



Read review . . .

Though not much of a movie-goer, I never miss out the big movies. I try to watch them first day. After Chandramukhi and Anniyan, Gajini was one movie I expected a lot out of and thus decided to watch it first day inspite of a mammoth Rs.120 ticket at Sathyam. This ended up being a not-so-great movie, but it definitely is better than most movies around.

Surya plays Sanjay Ramasamy, a short-term memory loss patient. He overcomes this handicap of his to take revenge on the guy who killed his lover. That is the gist of the movie. The theme, as many know, is inspired by the Hollywood flick Memento. I haven't seen Memento myself. After hearing the original story I feel Murugadoss had a pretty neat Indian version in mind. But what came out was entangled in logical loopholes and an excessively masala climax which hamper the overall impact of the movie.

First, this movie breaks away from the monotony of Tamil masala. A new subject with a nice treatment. Surya and Asin steal the show. But for them, I pretty much feel the movie would have got nowhere. The romantic sequences have been etched out beautifully by the director and the pair has done full justice to their character. The flashback, in which the duo appear, is well placed in the movie and comes as a welcome break for the audience. Its complete drool time when they appear on screen. Asin is complete drool material! A good mix of a homely and roomly girl!

Though the positives end with that, they definitely make the movie worth watching atleast once.

Nayanthara's screen presence is amazing. She literally fills the screen. Filling the giant screen at Sathyam is quite a task, which was earlier accomplished only by Ramkumar when he went Repeeeettu in Chandramukhi. She has pierced her nose, applied lotsa kaajal on her eyes, not shampooed her hair for around two years giving it the coir look and put on enough weight to become the second largest mammal on earth after the blue whale. On the whole, she would have made a scarier ghost in Grudge saving all the make up. Her expressions were so scary that it is believed to have earned an A certification for the film. To top it all off she wears extremely small, tight clothing and is constantly being chased. First time since Rajnikant's "Annayin Aanai" (?) that I saw a baby elephant run in movies. Those of you guys who felt Nayanthara was a good country wood, after watching Chandramukhi, please check out this movie.

The songs are completely out of place in the movie. They seems to appear when you least expect them. But for "Oru Maalai" and "Suttum Vizhi", Harris Jeyaraj irritates. Senseless BGM that don't even let you follow the dialogues. Mandaiku maela mudi valartha mattum Rahman aagida mudiyuma? Mandikulla moolai-um valaranum. The fact that he is a lover of all languages comes to the fore once again in this movie. For the chorus, he has used Japaneese, Chineese, Sinhaleese, Burmeese and Dharbees till date and is expected to use C, C++ and Java in future. Innovation-aam. Paavam Surya who got this "Zoooooooooolooooooooooooooooooo, Boooozoooooooooooooo" BGM. I was thinking to myself, "athu Magix-oda naai paeru-la?". I hereby invite Maruthuvar Ramadas and Dalit Panther Thirumaalvalavan to take strict action against Harris Jeyaraj for izhivu paduthifying Tamil language.


Click to enlarge : Gajini Map

The villain looks to be a Northie. Heroines import-ey big kodumai, idhula villain vaeraya? Pathetic. Don't we have enough talent around? Why pick somebody who can't even speak Tamil properly? Idhula double action vaera. The villain twins have comically been names Ram and Lakshman. I was just hoping there isn't a Yaadon Ki Baarath style re-union and thankfully that did not happen.

Except for "Suttum Vizhi", which had some sweet graphics in it, the other songs have been picturised just decently. "Oru Maalai" was nice because of the cute Surya-Asin scenes, but whether it did justice to the song is a different question. One tends to lose the song and stay fixed to the scenes. That's not something appreciable. Though "Oru Maalai" came out of HJs repository (Mudhal Mudhalai from Lesa Lesa), the song still has the impact. HJ seems to be running out of tunes already.

The stunts are pretty good in the movie if we choose to overlook the presence of a foamy canvas where the villains fell. That was something very evident in the fight sequence before Asin's death - a long black sheet with lots of folds on it is supposed to be a tar road? The climax fight once again contained the time-slice shots. It did not irritate me this time around because it was used minimally and also not a direct copy of Neo vs Smith.

Lapse of logic is ok, but lack of logic konjam over! Was that part of indianising the movie? Romba kevalam.

The pace of the movie, which makes the first half enjoyable, is lacking in the second half and the movies drags. The movie had the potential to be a lot better. The expectation which the first half generates is not satisfied in the second half with its masala cimax. What had looked to be a novel attempt ended in a yet-another-Tamil-movie fashion. That makes one dislike the movie to an extent. Overall its a decent movie that could have been a lot lot better.

P.S. : Asin-ku enna vayasu?? Enna vida chinnavala ava??

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Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Life is beautiful . . .

. . . without girls in it.

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Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Chanakya, the fool

Supreme Hero Sarath Kumar's 98th film, Chanakya, was released last week. This means Sarath is just 2 short of his 100th film. This also means that Tamil film producers have not learnt from 97 past mistakes and it explains why they usually end up hanging from their Khaitan fan.

Sarath is often hailed as the Arnold of Tamil Nadu. True. Most people including Salman Khan prefer to roam without a shirt in the entire film with a loverboy image. That's where Sarath stands apart. He has got a great body which he has flaunted in his previous 97 films in the climax in front of the villain. The villain also does the same and they both end up admiring each others cuts and "curves". Dumb, isn't it? This image did not help his political career one bit. So Sarath sincerely requested directed Venkatesh to earn him the image of an intellectual. Since there was no way Sarath was going to do things beyond his reach, the director did the only thing he could : he named the movie Chanakya.

Chanakya is the story of an auto-driver who witnesses a murder. The villain tries to kill him without realising that the hero of the film, even if it is Sarath, is the smartest ass around. Sarath faces the villains, does detective work simultaneously to solve the crime and obviously succeeds. This is the first time in Indian cinema's unfortunate history that Sarath does detective work and is made to think so much. To make people believe that our man is capable of all this, the director displays facts from "Tell me how, tell me why, tell me what" books throughout the film : The brain weighs 500g when the baby is born, The brain of a full grown adult weighs 1500g, 95% of the human brain is filled with oxygen etc etc which Sarath was surprised to know and lauded the director for his painstaking effort. [Gossip : Sarath is believed to have got a copy of "Tell me why" and is currently analysing why the sky is blue in colour.]

Sarath's lady love in the film is Namitha. Frankly, she seems more brainy than Sarath (pun intended). She is the highlight of the film with her amazing screen presence (kids are requested to avoid 70mm screens in their own interest). After her last movie, she had taken a long break in Mudumalai and is now in the city. It was indeed a sweet shock to see Namitha back into mainstream movies. The rights for her previous film were exclusively given to Jyothi theater by the censor officials. The director was stunned by her perfomance in earlier films and decided to harness her raw (once upon a time) talent in this movie.

The music by Srikanth Deva and the songs penned by well known lyricist X (I dunno thios mahaan's name) also deserve special mention. The title song is an extremely karuththu ulla song : Uchi uchi uchi uchi uchi, naan yaera poraen uchi maela uchi. It happens to be Sarath's best title track till date. The song "Onnu vaangina onnu ilavasam, ajaal gujaal ajaal gujaal" contains powerful lyrics for the future citizens of India. "Ambuli maamu ambuli maamu, naan singilu maamu" is an emotional song in which mom feeds baby Sarath nila soaru. The pick of the songs from the film is, "Tharuveeeeeeya... tharamaateeeeeeeeeeeeya ... tharalaena un paechu ka". It has Sarath and Namitha dancing in school uniform. Sarath became extremely nostalgic during the shoot. He remembered how in 1889, when he was in 2nd standard, he used to go to school during the rainy season. Namitha looks very pretty in skirt with the thumb in her mouth. Even then she is too big for 2nd standard.

The film is sprinkled with action sequences. The best one being the fight in an MTC bus. Sarath fights with 30 rowdies armed with weapons and he gets past all of them to emerge the winner. The fight sequence was a novel attempt, it was based on a token system like in Aavin milk booths. The rowdies come and get hit in ascending order of the token number assigned to them. The climax is ripped from phone booth but Venkatesh still deserves credit for ripping off a good climax.

Graphics have been used effectively showing bullets coming from Sarath's eyes. Such thigs may be new for Sarath fans, but engala maadhiri Captain fans-ku idhellam sarva saadharnam. He will shoot, will shoot, shoot.

On the whole, Chanakya is a wholesome family entertainer if you forget about the story, screenplay, dialogues, camera, editing and direction. Sarath has played an entirely different role moving away from his usual three role formula where he plays dad, son and dad's onnu vitta chithappa, all minutely differentiated by make-up. He deserves to be praised for such attempts. If Kamal can play a detective cop in Vettayaadu Vilayaadu, why can't Sarath play a detective auto driver in Chanakya? Disappointment for all Kamal fans as Chanakya beats Vettayadu Vilayadu by three months.

P.S. 1 : Don't even think that I was jobless enough to watch this movie. I have just seen the trailer :-) Don't think am discouraging you movie goers. Am just encouraging you guys with the info that Sarath films always make a good pastime in the absence of Captain films. So go watch it! :-)

P.S. 2 : I did watch Gajini, first day. A decent film, not all the great an effort. Want to write a review, but pretty lazy :-)

P.S. 3 : A million thanks to Sangeeta for this Dunno how it got there this time! That was in Mumbai Mirror.

P.S. 4 : You guys know whom to wish tom? Advance wishes to Kaadhal Mannan, Kadalai Mannan, Girl Pickupper, Sanga thalaivar Ferrari :-)

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