God

I bow to thee!

First a "mature" Guru, and then the out-and-out commercial Sivaji:The Boss and Azhagiya Thamizh Magan, followed by a historical Jodhaa Akbar, a super-youthful Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na, a very classical Ada, and now a brilliant Sakkarakatti presenting the best of all worlds. What a cross of genres!

Many of these albums would probably make the top 10 on the list of any true fan of God. If Chennaiyil Oru Mazhaikaalam, Ghajini and Main Yuvraj hit the bull's eye as well, nothing like it!

Is this His best phase ever? I think yes!

Cheeni Kum

64 year old man falls for 34 year old woman. Woman's father, the prospective father-in-law, is just 58 years old, a full 6 years younger. While the father-in-law is happy with Bhajan, Bhojan and Bhajji, an older man wants to get married. Problem? Depends on your point of view :)

This is easily one of the finest love stories I have seen on screen - there is an undercurrent of maturity which convinces you that these two slightly beyond-marriageable-age-folks know exactly what they are doing, however interesting the situation they are in may be. Probably that is the beauty of love - you never know when it is gonna strike, whom its gonna strike, and also probably not when it actually strikes ;)

Thankfully the movie is set in London in the initial stages, so you don't have a lot of the regular cliches - social stigma, people pointing fingers, society, blah blah. You also do not have to sit through cliched motions like the "hero" dyeing his hair to look younger, wearing t-shirts, showing off sprightly dance steps in some random disco, et al. Here is a man who is comfortable with his 64 years old look (though he does wear designer glasses to look cool, and has a cool ponytail too which does not ridiculous in the least), and who has no clue on what he is expected to be doing after falling in love.

PC Sriram totally rocks the scene with some awesomely shot trademark angles and composition. Super choice. So is the choice of Illaiyaraja. I am totally in love with the songs after I watched the movie. Shreya Ghosal makes Jaane Do Na sound so maturely subtly sexy :) What a voice!

The first three-fourths of the movie till Bachchan actually tells Paresh Rawal that he wants to marry Tabu is absolutely brilliant. The movie nosedives from that point and is not worth watching. You can still watch the movie thrice just for the initial scenes where Tabu and AB are just awesome. AB is perfect as the senior citizen with the king sized ego who is awkwardly falling in love with a woman much younger. Tabu is also perfect casting as the 34 year old who is having a lot of fun watching the 64 year old slowly fall for her but having a lot of difficulty admitting it :) The neighbour's kid, Sexy, was a character that could have been deleted.

Balki rocks! Go watch Cheeni Kum!

Bizarre dreams

Have been having some bizarre dreams of late.

Saturday night dream: I wake up one fine morning to learn that I have a University final examination coming up in less than a week and I have absolutely no clue on the subjects. I initially sweat buckets and then decide to give it up totally, which was when my alarm went off. I actually spent the first hour after I woke up worrying how I am going to pass those exams. No, seriously.

Sunday night dream: Much nicer. I met Thalaivar(!) sitting alone under a tree somewhere and managed to snap a few pictures with him, with the help of a (non-existent) elder sister of mine (I have no clue how such a person materialised in my dreams). I remember telling him that he should quit working with losers like P.V@$u and try working with proper directors like Mani Ratnam and recreate some of the old magic. I also asked him when was the last time he did a movie that did not have to resort to hero-worship. He almost said Baba before he fell quiet.

Wonder whats gonna be my next dream...
That I am a NASA scientist all set to land on the moon to set up the first human community?
That I am a car tester for Ferrari or Lamborghini?
That I sing for Kamal in a Mani Ratnam movie, with music by A R Rahman?
That I beat Roger Federer in the finals of Wimbledon?

Dreams are such impossible things I say :)

Random jottings

• Is it only me or does the music of Dasavatharam sound exactly like what Himesh used to churn out in Hindi a couple of years back with alarming regularity and hit potential? (I am a Himesh fan myself, but agree his songs do not have a very high shelf life) Definitely does not live up to the hype.
• Interesting trailer Dasavatharam had. More interesting was how f@rt summed it up - "Asin as Iyengar mami was impactful". Strongly agreer. And strong use of "impactful" :) The interesting part is that there is no mention of UHK (Universal Hero Kamalahassan) in his sum up of the trailer...I wonder if that is because his presence in it was just not effective enough or whether we do expect such gimmicks (for want of a better word) from the man. (Not finding fault with UHK here, I am one of the minority who felt Kamal was a super choice for Vettayadu Villayadu)
  
• Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a superb comedy! Pucca $ex comedy types. I wonder if this movie will get released in theatres in India at all, and if it does, how much of it would be chopped off...quite a bit I would think. The Preity Zinta look alike Mila Kunis is super strong.
• Fedex loses against Nadal on clay yet again. Doubt if Fedex will claim the French Open this year. I am thinking he wont try so hard since the Grand Slam is already outta his reach this year.
• Watched Tashan over the weekend. Wish Sriram Raghavan (Johnny Gaddar) was the director. His vision and style + this kind of a budget + these stars + super music = superhit pharmoola. There was so much scope for improvisation and innovation. Baradwaj Rangan has an excellent post mortem here. Other critics have a lot to learn, on writing movie reviews, from this man.
• Rangan has another superb piece here. Cant agree more. Has the Indian audience not grown up yet? Or is it the film making fraternity that is still stuck with old world sensibilities?
  
• A brilliant satirical piece on "Kerala Airways". Yep, the Kerala govt is planning to launch its own airways. Oh, Dog's Own Country is a brilliant blog to be up to date on all the idiotic stuff that happens in Kerala with alarming regularity.
• At the other end of the spectrum is updates on India's largest IT park - Technopark. This is a superb blog to stay abreast with Technopark news.

Profound

Quoting a Korean Chae Jong-Ji from this article:

You can always restore cultural heritage.

And I was thinking all these years that heritage usually refers to something that exists/is passed over generations.

Profound learnings.

ATM/B/PS

Watched a few tamil movies over the past week. Here are some thoughts...

Azhagiya Tamil Magan:

• Illaya Dalapathy skilfully, and with alarming regularity, defies gravity. He tries, but is not convincing enough in the double role. It is possiby not his mistake because the storlyline, or the lack of it, lets him down, badly.
• Special effects never looked so bad in a mainstream commercial movies with this kind of a budget. Very amateurish.
• No screenplay/story as such. Logic goes for a royal toss.
• The Extra Sensory Perception angle was pretty much unnecessary. If it was only to contribute to the climax, the storywriter might as well have though about some other gimmick. With a better director, the movie would have totally rocked I think. A great opportunity goes abegging...
• Music absolutely rocked! This is one of God's bestest Tamil albums!
• Shriya looks awesome, and tries her best to act.
• Comedy was pretty good. Shakeela, who comes in the initial reels and suddenly just disappers, could have been avoided.
• Worth skipping. Just get the audio CD and listen to it at home. Dont see the video of Nee Marilyn Monroe on TV or elsewhere, you will have nightmares for quite some nights.
• Better luck next time Vijay! Maybe you should just stick to your regular fare...

Bheema:

• Fight. Fight. Song. Fight. Fight. Song. Fight. Interval. Fight, Song. Fight. Fight. Song. Climax fight. End titles. The movie is just a lot of action scenes strung together by a weak romance storyline and duets.
• Good music, yet again, from Harris Jayaraj.
• Vikram looks very bulky, and convincing as the one-man army.
• Raghuvaran is totally wasted. I had huge expectations from a movie starring Raghuvaran and Prakash Raj :(
• Movie looks slick, though some of the action is gravity defying.

Pirivom Santhippom:

• The first half is as realistic and honest as a movie can ever be! You sometimes think a hidden camera is at work...they seem so natural. The director succeeds in just steering clear of sounding cliched...well, mostly.
• Awesome songs. And easily one of the top soundtracks of 2007. Vidyasagar's most melodious album yet.
• Sneha is the 'hero' of the movie, and she is damn effective. I do have my own reservations of her name in the movie - Sala - a kind of short version of her actual name Visalakshi.
• Some super comedy scenes - esp the parotta song scene :)
• There is not much of a storyline. Nothing really happens in the two and a half odd hours of the movie. Boy from huge joint family gets into arranged marriage with Girl. Girl falls totally in love with the concept, and members, of the extended huge family. Boy gets transfer to random hillstation takes Girl with him. Loneliness gets to the girl. Boy realises this towards the end of the movie. Boy and Girl go back to joint family. Simple! There are no major twists and stuff. Peaceful.
• The sincerest movie I have seen in a long long time. Way better than the above two movies. Worth a watch when shown on TV.
  

Come Come Country Wood

Kicked off my photo blog. Get to it here.

Inspiration for the title of the blog actually came from here :)