Started watching “Family Man” Amazon series, after seeing so many recommendations. Manoj Bajpai, whose nose seems to get more crooked with every episode in that series and more so with every single cigarette he smokes throughout, is the lead player – The family man. Surprisingly, no one else in the support cast is shown to have any family!!!! Priyamani of Paruthiveeran fame, plays his spouse and also as a mother of 2 kids. There is a deliberate attempt to involve South Indian stars to give a Pan Indian appeal to the cast and it does work to some extent. The very first episode shows how Manoj has his hands tied in a situation, where in he had to act responsibly in front of his kids, while his professional avatar is a 360 degree different case. He enters into a dilapidated typical Mumbai housing board building, gets into an out of order elevator and reaches a floor which is right out of Men In Black series, with top notch gadgets. At times make one wonder, if our government departments really have such gizmos for their use. The kids, especially the elder girl, are typical movie kids with their adhigaprasangi attitude or is this way present day kids are?!! Content wise, it is typical Vijaykanth movie setup, where each episode deals with one portion of a major plot that gets revealed towards the tenth and final episode of the series. Only twist or difference from erstwhile captain movies being, the hero is a typical soplaaangi and doesn’t bash up all villains. He even gets beaten now and then and purely lives by his wits. He is no iron man either and has limited use for gadgets. The character is an interesting cross over of many things that makes it more human. Especially with the final episode of the first season ending on a cliffhanger, expectations around season 2 would’ve been really high. Nice to see that media folks have started realizing the benefits of having weeklies and short period run series rather than brain dead daily soaps. More power to the tribe of Family man.
Michael Crichton along with Arthur Hailey is my favorite author. It gives immense thrill to read their books and their storylines are full of insights on the industry or genre or the institution about which the premise may be based, almost like reading a subject matter book but interestingly written in simple language which can be followed by laymen. I remember reading this book sometime around my college first year or may be bit earlier around that time. It was obviously a hard copy and was shared with me by a school mate of mine, who was also the one who introduced me to Asimov. He gave me "Prelude to Foundation" that i read for almost an year. "Timeline" was intriguing and kept me interested sheerly by its concept of time travel and i was smitten by the thought process when i read it first. This time, co-incidentally, i was also watching the movie based on the same story in parallel and somehow both the book and the adaptation were disappointing! I can understand...
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