Weekend movies

Karuppasamy Kuthagaithaarar - We all wanted the first Tamil movie we were watching after Sivaji to be good and memorable. Well, KK did take care of the latter part but for all the wrong reasons, as it turned out to be one of most amateurish movies that I have watched in the near past. Even given that the intent of the movie is kind of new to Tamil cinema, it was a pure torture to sit through the movie. Every single actor in the movie (Karan included) just reeks of so much in-acting that it is hard to take it beyond a point. Case in point, the heroine's father who is a complete no show. It got too ridiculous beyond a point that I stopped focusing on the movie and instead started looking at the various Madurai spots that are being shown in the movie. The stage theater group just takes up too much unnecessary screen time. The first few minutes of showing their histrionics was mildly interesting but it soon became an overdose & pointless after a while. If you are from Madurai, if you are like me who is staying away from the city and if you want to watch different places from the Madurai city on the big screen & if you want to see actors speak some authentic Madurai slang, then give this a watch. Or else, stay away would be my suggestion.

12 Angry Men - This is one movie which you can find in the top 50 best movies of all time and a movie which has been in my to-watch list for a long time. Finally, got to watch it last weekend. Well, the movie just proved why it is considered so highly by everyone around. The whole movie is how a jury (of 12 men) deliberates among themselves on whether to convict a man accused of killing his own father. The vote of the jury has to be unanimous. When the discussion starts, save for 1 juror, everyone thinks that the accused should be sentenced to death. The lone crusader basically says that he is neither sure if the accused is innocent nor is he convinced with the evidences that were presented by the attorneys. As the film progresses, the way each one of the 11 jurors start getting convinced the other way around and then how it comes down to the last person whose ego rather than logic makes him disagree with all the other jurors have been beautifully portrayed. When some of the jurors who are shown as highly opinionated & egoistic and who think that the man is guilty, I was wondering how the director is going to manage their changing of opinion. It was very convincingly handled. Overall, a terrific movie and I am glad that I finally got a chance to take it off my to-watch list of movies.

Sivaji (Telugu) - Mainly wanted to watch the Telugu version for the 3 scenes that prelude the Adhiradi song bcos Thalaivar has imitated ANR, NTR and Chiranjeevi in the Telugu version. And needless to say, those 3 scenes did not disappoint and those 3 scenes were applauded the most by the Telugu audience. I personally liked the part where Thalaivar imitated ANR and the fact that the song used had the familiar Mazhaikkaala megam tune helped too. It was a laugh riot. During this watching, I was more into observing the reaction of the Telugu folks rather than myself watching the movie, bcos of 2 reasons - I do not understand Telugu (the obvious one) and secondly, this was my 6th time watching the movie and so almost every single scene in the movie was very familiar to me. One of my friends who watched the movie along with me is quite familiar with Telugu cinema and he was telling me that for them, they do not get this whole Thalaivar factor thing and thus, they either like or dislike the movie purely on the basis of its face value. That was actually a very interesting observation for me. Anyway, I did note that the Telugu folks laughed aloud a lot than what our folks did in a few of the comedy scenes in the first half. Also, wherever Tamil words are shown in the movie, care has been taken to replace them with Telugu words and letters. This was my first time watching a Telugu movie in the theater and I am happy that I did it with Sivaji. One trivia I recently came to know about Nayak and I am sure some of you might be unaware of this. The character name of Anil Kapoor in the movie is, hold your breath, Sivaji Rao Gaekwad :) I was totally surprised on hearing it. That shows how big a fan of Thalaivar Shankar is and that is exactly why we see so much of Thalaivar (than Shankar) in Sivaji. Shankar has put on his Thalaivar fan cap and given us all this memorable feast. My count still stands at 6 and badly want to watch it. Every bit of information about Sivaji that I read makes me want to watch the movie more and more. Looks like the film has been brought back for the second time in cities like Atlanta and Washington DC. We have a huge Thalaivar fan in our area who is doing all his to bring Sivaji back to Seattle in a month or two. I will have to wait till then to increase my count.