Weekend movie - Sarvam

Like I said in my earlier post, I am spending most of my time on Twitter these days. But still did not want to leave this blog unattended for long. So, thought instead of writing my usual essay style posts on movie reviews, I will at the least try to post some short & crispy reviews like the one below. Let me see how far this goes.

Sarvam - Sarva mokkai

Plusses

• Yuvan's music, both the songs and the BGM.
• Nirav Shah - captures Moonar in all its glory.
• Trisha - only bcos her role was a short-lived (pun intended) one
• Can't think of anything else

Minuses

• Arya - Lazy dance movements, poor dialog delivery and even poorer body language. Can't believe this guy can sleepwalk through a role as he does here, even after a 2-year course at the Bala school of acting.
• Chakravarthy - After seeing this 'performance' of his, I am getting jittery about the fact that he is part of Endhiran
• Terrible and boring screenplay. For a wannabe thriller movie like this, it drags beyond redemption.
• Five Star Krishna. Seriously, someone should tell him to just stop. Cant stand his antics.

Vishnuvardhan has given enough reasons for us not to even consider him when coming up with a list of 2nd ring of most promising directors in Tamil.

p.s: For those of you who are still breaking their heads on what that song is which plays whenever Arya sees Trisha, it's this - Mella mella from an obscure movie called Vaazhkkai

The Best albums series - A.R.R.

Have been pretty busy lately and so blogging has taken a backseat. Twitter is where I am spending most of my time these days. You can follow me in twitter here (ellaam oru vilambaram :) )

Anyway, this series is something I had thought about more than 2 years ago. As the title of the post says, this series is about what we all feel as the best album of each music director in Tamil. Towards that, I will list what I consider the top 5 albums of that MD and also, name another 5 albums that I considered (or in other words, honorary mention) and finally THE best album of that MD. Since this series is only for music directors in Tamil, I am only considering their Tamil albums, though some of them like in ARR, have done lot of work outside of the Tamil film industry. After that it is all yours as I would like to know what you guys feel about the list & eventually the best album of that director.

I was thinking that may be I should do this for the 4 leading MDs in tamil film music right now - Yuvan, Harris Jeyaraj, ARR, VidyaSagar. I had to leave out Mottai out of this whole equation bcos IMHO, it is just not possible to even go about listing the Top 50 albums of the Maestro. May be, I can do The Top 5 albums of the Maestro in every decade, from the 1970s to the 2000s. But thats for another day and time.

So, I am starting with this Rahman here (you know, him being the flavor of this season & all) and planning to post 1 entry of this series every week. So, here goes my top 5 albums for ARR.

Thiruda Thiruda
Rhythm
Kandukondein Kandukondein
Duet
Alaipayudhe

Other albums that I considered were:

Kaadhalan
Roja
Iruvar
En Swaasa Kaattrae
Minsara Kanavu

His best album - Thiruda Thiruda

Reasons for ranking Thiruda Thiruda as his best - even during those days when his genre of music was already popular, he kind of broke fresh ground with this album and the one expression everyone had on hearing the songs of this album - stunned. Among the 5, it was kind of a close fight between Duet & Thiruda Thiruda but finally had to give it to TT for the above said reason. Every song in the album was/ is a gem and Rahman showed a wide range in that album. From Chandralekha to Raaasaathi, this was one complete album from Rahman in every sense. 15 years removed from the date of the album's release, this album sounds as fresh as it sounded back then. That, in itself is a true testimony to the quality of the album.

So, what will be your choices for the top 5 albums and also, for his best album to-date? Let me know.

Weekend movies

Was on this frenetic movie watching spree, couple of weeks ago. So, thought of jotting down some quick thoughts on all those movies:

Kaadhalil Vizhundhen - Just can't understand how this movie could go on to become a hit in India. Was atrocious and after the key plot point was revealed, it was a torture to sit through the movie. Thriller movies riding solely on a twist in the storyline should be taut and racy and when they fail on both those aspects, it becomes unbearable. Nakul, for all the image transformation that he has gone through, just can't act. Period. He was very unconvincing and started getting on my nerves beyond a point. I think all this movie proved by its success is that all you need for a movie to succeed at the BO are a song and Sun pictures. The choreography in the Nakka Mukka song was pretty good though I have to say that any kind of dancing cannot do justice to a song like that.

Ghajini (Hindi) - I belonged to the set of people who expected a lot out of Aamir, in that he would have given the movie a complete make-over and also not have the short-term memory loss as a gimmick. And that is why this movie disappointed me, way much more that the Tamil one did. Absence of the annoying Nayanthara (but a close-on-the-heels Jia Khan) and the stupid climax from the Tamil version made the Hindi version eminently watchable but then given the frequency at which Aamir Khan does a movie, this was a huge let-down. Couple of Rahman's songs were good but the re-recording was stale. Aamir himself was not as good as Surya, while watching Asin repeat her performance from the Tamil version was an eye sore. Looking forward to the next Aamir movie to get over this disappointment.

Johnny Gaddar - Another movie that has been on my to-be-watched movie for a very long time. Liked it a lot. The biggest strength of the movie was that inspite of us knowing all along who does all the murders, the movie still holds our rapt attention until the very end, though the ending was very predictable. Shankar Ehsaan Loy's music was a big highlight in the movie, both the songs and the background score. Among the 5 members of the gang, Vinay Pathak stood out, closely followed by Zakir Hussain (the one plays the Shardul character). The hero of the movie, Neil Mukesh, was strictly OK on the whole, as in many scenes, we expected him to hide his crime a little better than what he actually accomplishes.

Dasvidaniya - A movie not to be dismissed just bcos of the fact that it has a storyline similar to The Bucket List. Wouldn't call it a classic but definitely loved it, especially the climax which overwhelmed me. There was a phase in the movie which definitely dragged for a while but then the climax more than made up for it. Vinay Pathak was a perfect choice for the lead role.

Quick dieting tip

Have you ever noticed this? If you go to do some grocery shopping with your stomach empty, you tend to buy lot more stuff than what you would normally buy when you are full. This has happened so many times over the last few months that I thought I should definitely post this one for folks like me who are on a perennial diet seeking mode.

I guess it is only natural that when we go to a grocery store when we are really hungry, we purchase so many stuff as though we are going to eat everything right then and there. Consider this against the case when you go shopping when you are full. Say, we go to a grocery store after a sumptuous buffet at an Indian restaurant - you will be so full that you will dislike the very sight of many of the eatables. And thus, you will end up buying only the bare minimum stuff (milk, cereals, frozen vegetables, Orange juice, etc) that you would buy during every other grocery purchase of others rather than an expansive buy (which in my case, would include chicken tortillas, ready-to-eat chicken wings, chips, bacon strips) if you had gone with an empty stomach.

So dieting folks, please take the clue. While you are hungry, don't stop at the grocery store. Closing this post with my favorite quote about dieting - Losing weight is not a destination but a journey. How true?!

Why Yuvan, why?

நல்லதோர் tune போட்டு அதை தானே பாடி, நலம்கெட புழுதியில் எரிவாருண்டோ? சொல்லடா யுவன் ஷங்கர் ராஜா

Weekend Movies - Kireedom and Kadamai Kanniyam Kattupaadu

Quick thoughts on these 2 movies that I had written a long time back right after watching these movies. Can't remember many scenes from both the movies but still wanted to post these here.

Kireedom - Well, after watching Kireedom, you just can not feel but sorry for Ajith, for he, as always, puts his everything into the movie but he is letdown big time by the director who in his efforts to appease his fans, spoils the entire show and makes the movie a complete bore. Making a movie like this is like preparing a meal, where if you falter at any point by adding more of the spices or salt, the entire meal becomes inedible and that is precisely what happens here. The director tries hard to make us empathize with the travails that Ajith goes through, but it just doesn't cut it, mainly bcos of all the other ingredients that are added to make the movie more appealing to his fan base. I could not even sit through even the supposedly good scenes in the movie - the scene at Ajith's house where Trisha & Ajith are talking in a water tank. It is hard, not to compare this movie with Dhil, an agmark masala movie which had an almost similar storyline and I can easily say that Dhil was miles ahead of this one. Dhil did not try to be a very serious & to-the-point movie. It had all the ingredients that you would expect in a masala movie but it still stayed faithful to the central theme of the movie - that of Vikram trying to become a sub-inspector of police. But here, the script goes haywire beyond a point and nothing could salvage the movie from that. Ajith, hmm...seeing his performance in movies like Godfather and this one, I would probably go to the extreme of saying that even Vijay, with his limited repertoire of expressions & acting, is eminently watchable than Ajith. I would not haven imagined in my wildest dreams that I would type something like this (bcos as many of you know, I am a big-time hater of the other guy) but Ajith does not do anything to change the opinion of sympathisers like yours truly. But then, Ajith was atleast watchable. If there is one person who is consistently irritating and gets on my nerves in every single movie that she appears in, it has to be Trisha. She is at her usual best - artificial in every single scene. The first 30 mins of the movie when Ajith & Trisha fall in love with each was absolutely unwatchable. Raj Kiran does a decent job, as always and delivers what was expected of him. G.V.Prakash's songs are awesome, easily one of the highlights of the movie. It is only when you see Ajith mangle in movies like these, you seriously wonder what if he had acted in Naan Kadavul as per the original plan. A sense of deja vu sets in, as I think I might have typed the same thing in my Godfather review too but that is what readily comes to my mind, every time I watch an Ajith movie.

Kadamai Kanniyam Kattupaadu - Have been wanting to watch this movie for a while mainly bcos of 2 reasons - 1) Kamal produced it with another actor in the lead and 2) the film is supposed to be the best of the 80s when it came to cop stories. With my dad in the Police department, he usually quotes this movie in our discussions. But afterwatching the movie, though I could kind of understand why Kamal came forward to producing this, the movie was a huge let-down. The only positive thing to take home about the movie is its length (just above 2 hours, I guess) and the fact that the movie had no songs. The most irritating thing about the movie was the number of parallel threads running at any given point of time. After a while, the number of such threads just grew too large that I began wondering how will it all be tied up at the end. And surprisingly, the director does not bother to tie some of the loose ends up. Sathyaraj is OK. One of my uncles always cites Sathyaraj's performance in this movie as one of the best. I did not even remotely think that way. He has performed way better than this in many of his movies and this is one over-the-top performance. Nothing much to write about this below average movie.

Conference Championships Preview

So, it has come to 4 teams after such a topsy-turvy season. Here are my thoughts on the 2 games for the weekend:

Eagles Vs Cardinals: It would be an understatement to say that the Cardinals have stunned the NFL with their advancement to the conference championship game. Absolutely nobody gave them a chance against the Panthers last weekend but they not only beat them but also humiliated them in front of their home crowd (I was in Charlotte for new year and you should see the cockiness in most of their voices as to how the Panthers will for sure make it to the Super Bowl without any issues). If the Cardinals are the most surprising team to be left in the fray, the Eagles are probably the most expected as once the playoffs began, they were the team nobody wanted to play. They have lived up to their name with 2 outstanding victories, at the Vikings and at the Giants. After the Seahawks, the Eagles are my most favorite team and McNabb is my favorite NFL player. So, I am really happy for them.

As far the game, I think the Eagles will win it handily. When Kurt Warner is given all the time in the world, he is a great QB and when he is subjected to pressure that one expects the Eagles defensive coordinator Jim Johnson is expected to bring, he is at best a mediocre quarterback. So, I expect him to have a game slightly better than the one he had against the Patriots where he threw for a mere 30 yards before being benched. The Eagles don't have a quarterback who makes poor decisions like Jake Delhomme did last weekend for the Panthers. Brian Westbrook is always just 1 play away from running away with the game. Good defense, solid running game, efficient passing game - the Eagles recipe for success.

Pick: Eagles by 7

Ravens vs Steelers - The Steelers are the team that everyone loves to hate and the Seattle folks certainly do that after our loss in the Super Bowl game 2 years back. Any time a rookie coach and a rookie quarterback take a team to the conference championship game, we should appreciate it. What the Ravens have done this season has been just short of remarkable. Their bloody good defense always keeps their offense in the game, no matter how badly they do. The Pittsburgh Steelers, on the other hand, statistically have the best defense in football and also have in their ranks the Defensive Player of the year, James Harrison. So, this should be a cat fight between the 2 leading defenses in the league in what is expected to be a low scoring game.

Given the fact that the Steelers won both the regular season match-ups and given the NFL reasoning that it is almost impossible to beat the same time 3 times in a season, I pick the Ravens in this one. Roethlisberger's tendency to hold on to the football, just that wee bit longer, is going to be a major factor as he either will be sacked or will be forced into a turnover of some sort by the ever hungry Ravens defense. Flacco hasn't been sacked even once in the playoffs nor has he thrown an interception. All that will be crucial in this match-up where the margin of error is going to be very small and will ultimately prove to be the deciding factor. As a loyal Seahawks fan, I will be rooting for the Ravens.

Pick: Ravens by 3