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  • January 30, 2010

    Nasty Dynasty

    First, a pedestal for Selvaraghavan’s Aayirathil Oruvan just like the one put up here for Peter Jackson’s King Kong.

    Fantasy genre is a very special one. Just like Harry Potter lineup, if you don’t get into the movie, your brain starts questioning how Harry Potter didn’t hit on the brick wall when trying to walk through a pillar in the train station. Not all of us are hardwired for such instant leap of faith. Cutting down such crap with which reviews usually begin and starts to bore us with such psychological theories that the reviewer referred to before writing the review, Aayirathil Oruvan is a kickass film that should be enjoyed in a full screen without uttering a single word to the next seater. All you might know, he might have already taken the leap of faith and immersed in the movie and you are just thinking, how the hell can lightning strike on karthi while being blessed.

    In any case, AO has stupendous writing, great pace, wonderful camera, immaculate art and costumes and ofcourse an apt finish to the neat start. The movie hasnt been pulled off just by the different landscape or thoughtful subtexts in screenplay but by the actors who have made us believe that the movie could be a true story.

    And yes, the critics say that it has tinges of Gladiator and every other historical fantasy they have seen so far. Sure. For that matter, King Kong had big influences from Titanic and Jurassic Park. It was still considered as a herculean effort. And Selvaraghavan needs to be lauded for pulling it off with limited resources.

    Above all that the movie kept me glued to the screen throughout the length of the movie. It was paisa vasool and I felt I should have paid a few more bucks for entertaining me thoroughly. Not a single movie after Virumandi had me tied up so badly. If you are crazy enough, you would love Aayirathil Oruvan. I pity the ones who hated it. You just missed an interesting piece of Tamil Cinema for who knows how long you would have to wait for another movie as gripping as this. SORRY!

  • January 19, 2010

    The Daemon and the Genius

    http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/86x-u-tz0MA&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999

    This was just brilliant. Dramatic and mythological in its narration and very east in its philosophy. I’m too tempted to lend my piece of detailing but will hold-off because of the lack of words that I can use to describe my daemon/genius. It may sound cocky to say that but inevitably we have all experienced this moment atleast once. My daemon/genius could very well be a lame one neverthless it exists, not in the form that Liz explained but differently. I tend to call it the self but sure, genius works as well.

    If you haven’t, you should, atleast skim through the second 36 chapters of Liz’s Eat, Pray, Love which I thought was very well written despite the cheesiness in the title and the feminism that people thought existed in this book.

  • December 13, 2009

    Certain things

    Why am I unable to write something elaborately these days ? Thanks to Twitter and its social counterparts, not only my reading has gone down, writing too. Every thing I want to write is now being crunched in the head, meaning every word goes through serious criticism if its actually necessary, replaced with synonymously shorter words or with similar SMS glossary, then typed as characters(instead of words).

    I was prolific with blogging once before the info-overload hit. When it did, I was tracking 250+ blog feeds on my feed reader which drew me nuts. To take myself out of the over load was quite a task and I’m not overloaded any more. I track a handful of blogs and follow a dozen or so twitters, all of whom I know personally(@ravages, @chenthil, @mdeii, @anantha, @writerpara) or have read them(like @shashitharoor) or watched them(ok, i know its sinful to follow a celebrity but i do think @trisha_26 is slightly(very slightly) better than most of her k.wood peers).

    In any case, Twitter has moved away from its initial state. Instead of ‘What are you doing now?’ its ‘What’s Happening?’ now. So I’m going to stop rambling about brushing, driving and/or sleeping. And I don’t believe in answering What’s Happening all the time. Pause.

    What triggered this post was that I found this 1072 page novel of Stephen King at Costco(sort of Chennai’s big bazaar but with a big BIG). Totally a wrist breaker to the extent it shouldn’t have even be printed but only sold electronically. I even wonder how King wrote with so many distractions going on around the world. In his partly autobiographical, ‘On Writing‘ King reveals his secret of writing such absurdly thick and gripping novels is to lock himself every morning until his daily quota of 10 pages of words are typed.

    P.S – This is an unfinished post from November 25, 2009 at 10:50 pm. Don’t exactly remember how I intended to finish this. So instead of this remaining in the draft section for a long time to come or get deleted, it sounded better to publish it. Sorry if this didnt make any sense, just like my other fully written posts. Take it easy!

    In any case, Chennai and Airtel together, have made me ramble big time on twitter. So there is that.

  • December 8, 2009

    CB Pricing

    In my hand is Amit Varma‘s My Friend Sancho that I was happy to pick from the best seller’s section in Landmark.

    The book was priced at 195 rs and the ‘specially’ discounted price that landmark advertised it for was 165 rs. While I, to some extend, understand the pricing politics behind the books, I wished it was priced at 95 rs like the hotselling Chetan Bagat’s 2 states.

    Beyond the story and the easy-to-read style of Chetan, I do think the 95 rs pricing of his books make him more affordable and approachable. Well its a Catch-22, one would say.

    In any case, I loved the subtle design of the cover, the blurb, the author intro and acknowledgments. Now to the book.

  • November 9, 2009

    Apocalypse and Attention Spans

    http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/sIFYPQjYhv8&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999

    Pathetic state of affairs. And this interesting-yet-not-so-surprising post on Times. Apocalypse now….run!

    Link – Praveen.

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