The Boss starts rolling

So, there you go guys!! The start of the most anticipated movie in 2 centuries (or in simple words, in the history of Tamil cinema) has been made. Even given the unprecedented hype surrounding the movie, it came as a big surprise in the low key manner in which the pooja was held ultimately. Even Chandramukhi, whose hype was played down all the way until the release, had a better attended and more publicized pooja. This one sure took everyone by surprise as there were news reports which even confirmed December 1st to be the pooja date. But we can see Thalaivar's careful planning in all this wherein he does not want to give the movie any kind of hype. They say Well begun is half-done and here we have had a modest start to this epic movie and hopefully, the movie goes on to achieve lofty success. And BTW, Thalaivar looks amazingly smart in these pictures.

Thotti Jeya - Quick review

My prayer points to God after watching Thotti Jeya. Dear God, Please get rid of the following malices from the world of Tamil cinema:

1) Pradeep Rawath - seems like the guy who tortured us in Ghajni started his service in this movie
2) Harris Jeyaraj (until the day he stops churning out BGM in the form of some high pitched, completely unfathomable and totally non-sense voices for action sequences)
3) Stunt masters who think that making people crash into vehicles and heads getting hit by tube light frames shows off the intensity of the fight.

In spite of all these drawbacks, the movie was still a good watch. Lot better than the string of movies which were released this year and which could have been very good movies (Anniyan, Ghajni, Ullam Kaettkume, Arindhum Ariyaamalum) but instead ended up being either pretty bad movies (Anniyan & Ghajni) or just OK movies (AA and UK), this movie though not qualifying to be the perfect masala movie, it goes a long way in giving the satisfaction of watching a pretty decently crafted masala flick.

The movie's director whose debut attempt Mugavari is still one among favorites of recent years was one reason why I was looking forward to the movie (and I have been doing that for close to 2.5 months now since it was only last weekend we finally got the DVD of the movie at the local Indian store & I was the first to grab the movie - So, don't be surprised if Lazygeek comes out with a review the next week or so). The other reason I looked forward to the movie was Simbu. Though I was as big a hater of Simbu that you would come across, I started liking him ever since he has stopped all his stupid punch dialogues and finger heroics. His performances in Kovil and Manmathanmade me take note of him (not that the movies were great but they definitely offered glimpses of his all-round potential).

The romantic scenes between Simbu and Gopika in the movie are easily the best I have seen in a Tamil film since the days of Kannathil Muthamittaal (I am sure everyone loves the Simran - Madhavan flashback scenes in KM). That is a huge compliment bcos Mani Rathnam is as good as it gets when it comes to portraying subtle romance on-screen. Though the romance part is not as subtle as in KM, you would be hard pressed not to think "How good it would be if I were in love with someone?". Harris Jeyaraj's background score during these scenes only adds flavor to those scenes. And in this movie, they look all the more cuter bcos Simbu is a rowdy who has no tender feelings whatsoever. All he knows is to hit people if given the needed money. So, when the romance involves a person like him, it is obviously sweeter.

Simbu does that part well with the only grouse being that there were way too many fight scenes in the movie. In my opinion, I think that this is a movie that Simbu should not have done so early in his career. He still looks very young and he is not all that macho. Someone like Vikram would have been perfect fit for this movie but Simbu, notwithstanding his fine performance in the movie, still does not fit the role perfectly. He needs to work on his voice modulation a lot. Lot of scenes in the movie where he tries to be coarse, he actually sounds childish. Other than that, Simbu delivers a solid performance. He did not disappoint me a bit. The one scene where he tells Gopika about himself and why he does not deserved to be loved by anyone, deserves some heavy applause. My respect and admiration for him has definitely increased after seeing this movie. Though I am already looking ahead to his Vallavan, I am also still waiting for that big day when he is roped in by a big-time director like Mani Rathnam or Bala who can make use full use of his talents. Currently, he is like this wild river which is just flowing without any direction. It would take a good director to channelize his talent and deliver that one good quality film he still hasn’t done. Hari tried his best in Kovil but unfortunately for Simbu, since the movie's story was an Alaigal Oyvadhillai rehash, the movie didn’t do well at the box office and his performance went unnoticed.

Coming to the songs, 2 of Harris Jeyaraj's numbers are still on the repeat mode in my iPod. The director has even taken the Kamal route of not using the song fully (something Kamal and Mani Rathnam of late have started doing) - playing the "Uyire En Uyire' song in the background, in bits and pieces. But my other favorite number "Yaaridamum thondravillai" did not even figure in the movie. That was a let down. BTW, right when the movie starts, a slide saying "Thanks to Yuvan Shankar Raja" is shown. What’s up with that? Did Yuvan help out Harris Jeyaraj for this movie bcos of his closeness to Simbu? Any pointers...

The other disappointing thing for me in the movie was that Simbu's dancing skills were not utilized properly. I am a big fan of Simbu's dancing and he is someone, who personally I feel can stand up to Vijay when it comes to dancing, which BTW is Vijay's only forte. And when I heard the 'Thotta power-da' song in the album the very first time, the first thing that stuck my mind was "I should watch Simbu dance to these ready made kuthu beats". But unfortunately, that did not happen and that was one of the disappointments out of the movie.

Overall, definitely one of the better movies of the year and if not for the unwanted number of violent scenes of stuntmen smashing their heads and breaking their hands and villains shouting unnecessarily high pitched dialogues with their badly dubbed voices, this would have been a more decent movie & would have attained widespread appreciation than what it ultimately ended up getting.

Folks in the US, do have a fantastic Thanksgiving weekend. I will finish this post with an amazing statistic --> Guess what is the average number of calories that an American consumes on Thanksgiving day – an unbelievably whopping 7100 calories. That’s just the average which means there are a whole bunch of people who probably end up eating more than 10000 - 15000 calories. This MSNBC article has more such stats and facts about this turkey eating holiday.

You got to try this

After I read about Amar's post about shooting, I was immediately excited on trying it out myself. I guess we all would like to experience the feeling of shooting using a real gun. On googling for an indoor shooting range in the Bellevue- Redmond area, found that there was one shooting range very close to my home. So decided that I should go and try it out as soon as I could. And last weekend was the day I went to the shooting range.

To be very frank, the experience was not anything mind-blowing but I was not disappointed either since that was how much I expected going in. But the fact that you are firing real bullets is enough to have your adrenaline flowing. The one thing that would surprise you is the amount of noise that is generated when a bullet is fired. Even with air muffs on which practically seals off your ears, you can still feel the boom boom sound of the guns going off. The other word we usually related to shooting is recoiling and that was something that was on my mind as I was about to fire my first round (during which my hands were just shivering badly). But it came as a surprise that there was really no such thing called recoiling, reason being the very basic nature of the gun I had selected. May be with a bigger gun, there might be more of recoiling.

The most exciting part of the whole experience is obviously to gauge how good are you when it comes to hitting the target. You can set the target at any distance you want. On top of that, you can even select the target of your choice - you can either have the traditional bulls eye target or the body of a man as the target (like they show in films) (I have heard from my friend that some folks here have OBL's picture pasted on the face of the target)

Anyway, surprisingly I did well as far as hitting the target was concerned. I was able to get most of my shots into the target paper, which in itself is a big achievement for first timers like me. Though I could not hit the bull's eye even once, I was able to hit the circle bordering the same many times. The only downside of the whole shooting experience was the fear factor. We are talking about live, real bullets here and that is the reason for this warranted fear. In a country where incidents like these are common-place and gun-related crimes are high, it was scary (to say the least) to be inside a shooting range with a bunch of guys with guns in their hand. Even with that kind of a threat, if you are here in the US, you should try this out sometime. May be going to the range sometime in the afternoon on a Sunday will be a good idea since there wont be many guys around. Search for indoor shooting range in Google Local and it should give you the results.

Quick reviews - Garam Masala and Englishkaaran

Garam Masala - After the nightmarish experience I had watching James, I had decided not to watch any Hindi movies for a while, unless that movie is a critically acclaimed good movie (like an Iqbal). But due to the compulsion of my friend, I had to go to this new movie titled Garam Masala, a movie Rediff claimed to be the funniest movie of the year. Though I was reluctant, I saw Priyadharshan's name against the director's slot. So finally decided to go to the movie consoling myself, "He has given us movies like Siraichalai and Hera Pheri. So he can not disappoint me very much"

Boy, was I wrong or what!! After the movie, as I was leaving the theater, I was left cursing my friend. It turned out to be such a pathetic movie with full of some loud mouthed and absolutely bullshit comedy. As they say, there should be this inherent honesty & sincerity while making a movie of any genre, even if it is a comedy movie or a pure masala movie. A typical masala movie has 5 songs, 4 fights and a bunch of sentiment & comedy scenes but only those movies which stay true to the story make it big in the box office (Dhool would be a very good example for that). Similar is the case with any stereotype comedy movie. There are bound to be a number of illogical & stupid scenes in a comedy movie but the premise on which those comedy scenes are built upon should be meaningful and believeable. Take our recent Panchathanthiram (IMO, the best comedy movie of recent times) for example. The film has so many of those illogical scenes which sends us one into uncontrollable bouts of laughter but at the same time, it is hard to miss the meaningful story & plot on which all those scenes were built on. Garam Masala does not have one such meaningful story line and that is the one big reason the movie falls flat. Even by the half-way mark of the first half, I was looking at my watch waiting for the movie to end. Not a good sign for a comedy movie where we should forget ourselves.

The only saving grace in the whole movie was Paresh Rawal. It was such a relief to watch someone as natural as him in the movie. And no wonder he succeeded in evoking the maximum laughter from the audience. Everything about him - be it his dialogue delivery or his body language - made me laugh but still that wasn't enough for me not to regret my decision of going to the movie in the first place.

The film clearly reflected one thing - that there is absolutely nothing in the name of creativity in the director's mind. The plot of the movie is wafer thin and it is clear that the director has given little thought to come up with any interesting/ funny situations. So, all we get to see in the name of comedy is people shuffling between rooms and falling & tripping over couches. There is not one single scene I can recall as hilarious. To add on to that, the leading actors too let the director down so badly. To say that Both Akshay and John Abraham were horrible, would be a gross understatement. And the less said about the heroines, the better. All they had to do was show some skin and be as artificial as possible. Songs were ordinary and sounded like recycled/ rehashed version of some popular songs. (The itwofs site has already confirmed that 3 of the songs have been lifted from other sources).

Overall, a must stay away movie, by all means.

Englishkaran - Rented this one after reading some good words about the movie in Lazygeek's blog. But this too turned out to be such a huge disappointment. I mean, I did not start watching the movie with huge expectations of the movie turning out to be a great one. But I started watching it as I would do for any Sathya Raj movie of the recent years - satirical and at the same time, funny. Though there were some scenes where I was rolling on the floor laughing, the rest of the movie was such a drag to sit through. The sole highlights of the movie were the scenes where Sathya Raj was going about imitating just about everybody in the film world. Some of the actors/ actresses he was imitating were - Chimbhu, Jyothika in Chandramukhi and Ravikrishna in 7GRC & his own son in Student No. 1. My personal favorite was the 7GRC song which had me in splits. The other good thing one has to appreciate is that he has even mocked the way his own son dances. As long as you take everything lightly, I bet you will enjoy those sequences.

But take those sequences and you have a film which you will find hard to sit through. The thing I hate about such films (directed by Shakthi Chidambaram) is that he tries to convey something called a message through the movie. In this movie, the message is that when someone has the talent & the determination to achieve something in life, he/she should not be discouraged and should be given all the right appreciation and encouragement. That is what ticks me off. Bcos to convey this above said message, the director's case study is Namitha trying to be a 100m runner. How horrible is that?! I mean, she can't even walk 100m without taking long breathes and she is shown as someone who wants to win a gold medal in the Asian games. Atrocious!! If they had even shown her as someone specializing in discuss throw or shot-put, I would have gladly taken it. But then in that case, you know you cant have some scenes (like herself running), scenes for which the film's target audience would come to watch. At the end of the day, I was left wondering how Lazygeek had even few good things to say about this movie.