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.