Vaaranam Aayiram

• Saw Vaaranam Aayiram last weekend.
  
• Observed the various interpretations people were giving about the title before the movie started, the most ridiculously obvious one being "1000 colors"
• Movie turned out to be too sentimental; bottom line being that it was Gautam Menon's indulgence.
• Loved all the songs, but heard that Gautam and Harris Jayaraj would no longer be working together. Would definitely miss the unique music style, including guys singing in effeminate voices and girls in deep voices.
• My favorite song was the last one - Annul Melae panithuLi which I am currently addicted to.
  
• I found this song in youtube and was laughing hard reading one of the comments. The guy who posted the song mentioned this was sung by Sudha Ranganathan. And the comment goes like this:

Song ellam irukkattum. Sudha Raghunathan eppo purushana maathina?

who?

I don't know the name of this actor -

• Registrar in Aboorva sagodharargaL
• Avinashi's heart patient sammandhi in MMKR

Update: His photo -
Update: ANANTHU (Thanks Keerthi)

Web minus 2.0

Before the internets became a source of entertainment, information, communication, etc, it was mainly used for ____, chatting and checking madras university marks (atleast in India).

Now we live in the age of Web 2.0 with Google, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. But spare a thought for those glorious days when tamil cinema imbibed buzzwords related to IT and internet. Especially, the songs.

I was listening to this gem from Thamizhan (I think)

...
en veetin internet'il oru website undhan paeril irukku
adhil seivoma chatting
...

So that's where the concept of internets started!

BTW, have our lyricists started using Web 2.0 keywords in their songs already?

yendha saami?

Dialog towards the end of Anbey Sivam:

Henchman: Enakku saami nambikka irukku thambi. Ungalukku epdiyo.
Nallasivam: Enakkum irukku
Henchman: Apdeengala. yendha saami?

Come on! What a jarring question to ask? As if it was asked just to (re-)invoke Kamal's take on Godliness.

Of course, I wouldn't complain if it was in a regular movie. But not in this classic.

Cut...

...the crap!

Blogging itself has become a rare event nowadays. Even if I do blog, posting about films consecutively is even rarer. In the unlikely event of that happening, posting about a hindi movie is the rarest of all events.

It did happen: Movie name is TaRaRumPum (I hope I have conveyed the subtelities in the case sensitive title in the exact manner the director wanted to). I haven't watched a lot many hindi movies, but this was absolute trash for numerous reasons.

1. It's supposed to be an NRI film. What the hell does that mean? OK, let me guess - does it take place in New York? Yes. Does it feature rampant culture confusions? Yes. Do the cast go with non-Indian names (Harry, Billy, Princess, Champ)? Yes.

2. The hero is a NASCAR dirver. F1 I can understand. Mountain biking, why not. But NASCAR?! If this movie is catered towards NRI's, you lost us right there. If it is used as more useless propaganda of "Amayrican life-style" to already confused folks in India, you scored some points. Actually, wait. Yuppies in India watch F1, not NASCAR.

3. The story is about realization. The hero is portrayed as a live-for-this-minute person, who doesn't bother to care about tomorrow. There is no background details about why he is passionate about driving or racing. But he just jumps in a taxi cab and drives like crazy. Oh, the original cab driver is actually a laid-off racing team manager! Of course, his name is Harry.

4. The pair go against the heroine's dad wishes (the only character in the movie who made some sense, inspite of him asking his daughter to have an affair with the hero and forget!) and of course buy a palatial house in some place with ponds and rustling leaves but still need to come to Manhattan to buy bread. Oh, and they get married in a car (with a preacher and all) on the way to their house.

5. Each and every scene about the hero screams that he is a prize-idiot. So, his starting point is low. Then due to momentary success in racing, he rises up. With relation to his original starting point, it seems (to him and to an extent to the heroine) that he has risen really high, but the fact that he is an idiot doesn't change. Then he falls and realizes that he is still an idiot. Ably supporting him is his wife, who apparently gets her intellect from reading Elizabethan history (WHY?), Mathematical logic(!), violin, piano, karate (ok, I added that one), but still doesn't get a college degree. Oh, and by the way, she uses an ipod and throws some flowers nonchalantly on the streets of Manhattan.

The story takes a turn when the racer's luck runs out and is rendered bankrupt since most of the things they bought are on credit. They try to convince their children (they have two model-like kids) that this is a reality-show and they should curtail their spending. But that is unchartered territory for the hero and the family struggles. I don't want to give away the story(?), but actually I may be doing a service to not put you guys through torture.

There are some dramatic elements and sequences in the movie to keep us occupied for some time in the middle. The not-so-glamorous lifestyle of NY cab drivers are shown honestly. Javed Jafery's acting was pretty well done. But the positives in the movie stop there.

I don't know where the artistic freedom ends and where assaulting of intellect starts. This is not even a spoof on over-spending or we-know-and-the-hero-knows-that-it-is-a-fun-movie. It is pretty sad to see such movies being made in the pretext of "feeling-good" and "fun".

On a normal day, I would have enjoyed animated characters in a movie, but this time, I wanted to shout "OMG! Cut the crap" when papa, mama and two bear cubs dance with the hero's family!

Irritating dialogs/sequences in movies

The title says it all.

Perhaps a word or a phrase would have been sufficient, but the writer (dialogs) sometimes goes overboard and over-emphasizes things and makes a mess out of it. It could also be a situation where the actor needs to reply sarcastically, but then the writer has doubts if the sarcasm would go unnoticed and it spirals down to nothing. Or it could be that the whole sequence with the dialog is downright ugly.

An example would be the preceding paragraph where I try to over-explain what I wrote in the very first sentence!

Note: These are only opinions, and refers to parts of movies only (mostly).

1. Anniyan:
"Nee oru nasa, clarke's table, logarithm..."
- Sujatha's way of reminding us that he is an lear-ned ayyangaarvaaL from Srirangam.

2. Aaitha ezhuthu:
First things first. People happily refer to this as aayudha ezhuthu. @!*&&^

"Raatchasaa.. chandaala.. "
- Dilli's wife (I don't know the name) chiding Madhavan's character when he kicks Meera Jasmine out. Now, which cheri/kuppam female talks like this?

I am not done with AE yet!

"Testosterone, Estrogen..."
- My blood boils whenever I see this scene! Again, lear-ned ayyangaarvaL at his best.

"Pittsburgh Venkataachalapathi koil poi motta podanum..."
- Although this dialog induces vomit naturally, credit has to be given since, that is what we expect the yuppy to say

AE in many ways is Madhavan's best movie till date. Although the movie is strewn with irritating dialogs (mostly concerning Surya and Siddharth), one particular dialog by Madhavan is gold:

"padikardha uttu yeaandaaaa arsiyalukku varreengo!"

3. Padayappa:
"Nee style-a aaappdi oru salute adippiye! enga.. adi!"
- Possibly the only time Sivaji under-sold himself on screen. Even a hard core fan of thalaivar like me, hated that scene/dialog.

4. Vetayaadu viLayaadu:
"In India, we call it Raghavan instinct"
- uvve!!

5. A-aah:
There is this one sequence when a girl comes crying to S.J. Suryah since some high profile guy tried to molest her (which is quite obvious). I am not exactly sure if I am repeating verbatim, but it goes something like this:

girl: (sobbing) "avan yenna....."
suryah: "you mean.... (nods suggestively and quasi-sympathetically here) "
girl: "mmm"
suryah: "oh god/shit/whatever"
us poor audience: we get it, you pervert!!

6. Bombay:
Perhaps the second half is interesting in parts, but the first part where the hindu guy (thankfully, not a brahmin, but a saiva piLLai, nonetheless) falls in love with a muslim girl, is a gift for a bulimic patient. Almost all dialogs and sequences between these two are unbelievably horrible and artificial. The only saving grace is the song-dance element. Perhaps Manirathnam wanted to cut to the chase and take it over to Bombay as quickly as possible.

It certainly does look like I have something against Sujatha and Manirathnam. But I love the dialogs in Nayagan, Kannathil Muththamittaal, Boys (yes!) and Mudhalvan. It sometimes gets irritating when the writer assumes intellect and also think that the audience needs things to be told in an explicit manner. Stop assaulting our senses!

One of the actors of yesteryears - Major Sundarrajan had the habit of saying a dialog in english and follow it up for good measure in tamil too, just in case we didn't get it. Come to think of it, that was actually better than "Pittsburgh venkataachalapathi".