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Arkangel by James Rollins - book review

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 Arkangel happens to be the latest edition in the sigma series, one of the most prolific novel series ever with almost over a dozen stories on the ultra secret US government agency, whose job is to protect the world from unfathomable dangers and challenges presented to the very existence of human life and not just American (for a change).  The core strength of all of those stories being the unbelievingly original plot involving famous personalities or places or characters or situations, that get dragged into the plot, which unless thwarted by the Sigma team, and in the hands of the villain team, may potentially get weaponized and lead to global destruction or human extinction. In fact almost all of the stories in the series could be snuck into this plot and yet he manages to churn novel after novel into best sellers says about the skill of the author. Arkangel, fails miserably in this aspect for it already has that hook plot to keep the viewers interested. This time, Sigma force is in
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Of songs and meanings

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Na. Muthukumar, is one of the favorite lyricists of many tamil film fans, who loved his creations even off screen as standalone presentations. Be it his poem collections or his song lyrics as a collection, most of them are rich in fantastic imaginations and sheer poetry that lasts longer and linger in your mind for much long. As many claim his best efforts, movie wise, was with Selvaragavan directed films and with Yuvan shankar raja as the music director. The trio worked magic on screen and churned out several chartbusters that were not just lilting melodies but quite rich in lyrical content as well. I happened to read about one such song which was my longtime favorite and when i read the reasoning behind the song and how it was constructed as a question-response kind of a word play i was astonished to say the least. It is one of the saddest songs in scripted in tamil movies ever and makes heart breaking viewing. But the sheer poetry behind that song made me write this post, which is a
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Guruvayur ambalanadayil - movie review

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 I dont the remember the last time i saw a decent comedy movie in tamil. With the advent of mega serials and with their ever growing reach, well into those domains that were considered fit only for big screen viewing, the opportunity for comedy in movies have shrunk drastically. If you make a family subject, which offers good scope for humor, it is branded as mega serial and people feel they get more than their money's worth in tv itself for such stories and refuse their patronage. And you can hardly have laughter unless it is maniacal for the villain, amidst all those blood and gore that rule the mainstream movies. Amidst such trauma/drama comes this movie which has its own laugh out loud moments and some genuinely funny screenplay. Basil Thomas, i was stunned to read that he was the director of Minnal Murali, looks like a kid just out of school and has so many box office wins under his belt. He plays the hero in the movie and has as much screen time as Prithviraj, the real sellin
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Of war and other things

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 In my few decades of existence i've witnessed very few global situations that have spooked the world as much as the current situation might have. There are certain spots that are never quite devoid of conflicts, like the middle east, several places in Africa and the not so economically prosperous regions of Europe like the Balkans. As a kid, gulf war was the first major war that i saw on TV with all those scuds and patriot missiles, glowing green on screen and bursting like diwali crackers. I was more curious to see how those cruise missiles were launched from ships, hardly having the maturity to realize what was happening on the other side. Bosnia-Serbia war was the next big one, that was mostly followed on newspaper. I am not sure chronologically which one came first but remember that one was filled with much more gore and lead rise to several movies. Slobodan Milosevic, Bosnia Herzegovina would've made as much difficult words to ace on a typing exam as much as verbal. But t
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Of sequels and sothapals

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There is a long standing belief in tamil movies that sequels of movies that were superhits usually tend to bring bad name to its illustrious predecessor and flop big time. There is always additional pressure on movies that are brought up as sequels right from day one because, they have to live up to the success of the previous version, which is the catalyst to its creation. The additional challenges being, how to make the already set storyline, revealed to the audience, more interesting and entertaining. It is like a magician trying to go one up on his trick after revealing his hand and it is never easy. The obvious weaknesses listed here are the potential pluses because of which the sequels garner more attention. The ease of relatability for the audience, time save in introducing the backstory for the characters, the familiarity of what happened previously which feeds on to the frenzy of what is coming next in the sequel are all the pluses which will become its own negatives if not ha
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Brinda -drama series review

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When i saw the ad for this series, Trisha was the primary reason that hooked us onto this. She looked very old despite the best effort from her make up team and i started watching the series with literally no hope after getting to know that she was playing a police inspector. The first episode ended in an intriguing note and the series literally took off from the next episode onwards. For starters more than the individuals, it is the work that has gone behind the story board in making the investigation process interesting, has lent more teeth to the storyline. The way each of the murders are linked and how it keeps on getting extrapolating makes interesting viewing for sure. What starts as a serial killer case, becomes a major case of mass murderer and the reasoning behind all those killings is quite novel to be honest. The director does a tight rope walk on a knife's edge in many cases where religion is involved and makes sure that he is not branded as favoring any one in particul
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Just junior things

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 Junior trips with questions that really sets me scrambling for a response many a times. Whenever he comes across some new word or a character or a concept he will ask about it with his own perspective added as basis behind that question. Recently he came across the word dictator and his immediate thought was it describes school teacher, for they do the dictation in classes. When i told him it is quite different in concept even though the words kind of meant the same, he asked follow up queries. Possibly the way i explained about dictatorship led to the confusion, but his queries made me wonder how to give a response that is convincing for me first up. I told him that, dictators are kind of bad people, who try to rule everyone with their power. He asked why they are bad and i was stumped for a response. For he had equated dictator to king and since kings rule over their subjects and its their will that is carried out by the people, he wanted to know why dictators are bad but kings are
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