Variety is the spice of life

Movie songs are always a source of amazement for me. How did the director, conceive the situation or a particular scene to be followed or preceded by a song? How they finalize the lyrics and the tune? Are the scenes for the song decided before or after composing? Certain songs have some situational sounds being included, like whistling, yodeling, birds chirping etc. Are they decided during the first stage itself or the music director added them out of his choice? Chatur nar badi hoshiyar song from hindi movie Padosan, Sangeetha swarangal from Azhagan, chinnachiru vayathil from Meendum Kokila – whenever I listen to these three songs, I keep repeating them a few times. Never fails to lift my spirits and make me smile. And each of these songs add up to the above list of questions with no answer J Especially the hindi song.  What an amazing setup!! That, it is absolutely racist and demeaning to south Indians, is a sure dampener for many. But for that fact, it is a song which is lif...

Sometimes, even to mention the post as a review, when such a big doyen’s work is involved, sounds pompous. La.Sa.Ra is such a reputed person on the tamil literary circles that it is almost given that any of his work would be a classic. Paarkadal (Ocean of Milk) is the first and only book of his that I’ve ever read. Typically, I’ve a prejudice against tamil novels/works, that they dwell too much into layering/metaphors/similes, that some of the work, that I had read, felt more like poetry on prose form and that too not your usual easy going verses type, but more complex ones, which are total bouncers for pulp fiction fans like me. Every time, I resist the temptation to put the book down and pick up a simple English one, I’ve always benefited in unearthing or rather shattering my own belief, by picking one up, which have resulted in enjoying such remarkable creations like this novel. This book must’ve been a work from the 70’s maybe, but the format is so current – in almost blog post s...

By this time, the movie would’ve already become the all-time highest grossing movie, overtaking Avatar. So, review podalaina saami kutham aaidum endra kaaranthinaal..here you go. The movie starts from where it got left off from previous one – Infinity war, with more people vanishing without trace, the case in point being one of the Avenger family, that turns him into a vigilante/contract bully. As predicted from the trailer, Ant man comes to the rescue, with his suggestion for time travel. Even though Iron man refuses, he finally relents and the micha socha Avenger team, create a machine, travel across times, collects all stones. All with the aim to revert the, life altering gauntlet snap by Thanos, the super villain. That they fail miserably, as Thanos gets to know of the plan and attacks them ruthlessly this time and how they come up trumps over him, with the loss of Iron man and Black widow, forms the rest of the story and climax. Egapatta logical loop holes and so many question...

Next one in the Agatha Raisin series proved to be everything that were noted from the first book. Not sure if I read it in sequence or not, but the pace of storytelling was bit quicker in this one. Agatha, forever pining for the love of James, keeps chasing him, only for him to reject her advances out right. There is a justification also, as to why he is so shy of committing to a relationship, but why not especially with her hasn’t been answered, in this book at least. This book goes one up on the count of murders from the previous book that I read. One guy gets killed and the lady who speaks to Agatha about that murder, gets killed as well. Agatha, with bit of support from James, investigates and manages to unravel the killer. She almost gets herself killed and like typical movie plots, the police intervenes at the last moment and saves the day. To sum it up, it’s a crime of passion. There are some investigation scenes as well that are reminiscent of hardy boys and famous five. The ...

This attempt is courtesy, the writing prompt shared by Raji, which mentioned about a story premise of soul mates. Apparently, there is a statue in the middle of a road, which will come to life, if the person touching it, happens to be the soul mate, of the person trapped inside the statue. “So..soul mate vanthu silaya thotta..it will come to life..is that it?” “Aama” “Sounds so clichéd” “What is clichéd about it?” “From the time of fairy tales ithana solitrukanga. Kiss a frog, sleeping people or stone. Bring them to life. Make them as miserable as everyone else, so that they feel they are better off in their original form” “You are too pessimistic to be even called a pessimist” “Seri..un kanukku padiye varuvom. See that Greek statue in “shame shame puppy shame” pose” “Cheee..buddhi poguthey” “Hello..what if you touch it and it comes to life nu kekka vanthen” “Means he is my soul mate” “Mannangatti..means there would be a naked guy standing in front of you in public” “What ...

Certain movies, have their intent in right place. But the end result could be quite different from what was envisaged on the drawing board. I got that feeling while watching the movie and post the end credits as well, that somewhere there was a miss from what was intended towards what got made. With a running time of 100 minutes and a theme relatable with Hitchcock movies, the basic premises where all covered perfectly. But even within this short run time, there are scenes that looks redundant and could very well’ve been trimmed further. Especially the interval block and the immediate scenes post the block. The movie begins with the scenes shown on trailer – hero being cello taped to a chair with heroine sitting on the opposite chair, with cut wrist. It becomes immediately evident, when they show the apartment number as K13, that the story is going to revolve within that room. With an open room and almost no one outside for most of the scenes, wonder why the hero doesn’t make a break...

At last some shade of positivity at least in the form of book. Was really worried with the kind of content I was grazing at, be it books or movies. Thanks to mister Mages, who shared this book, which turned out to be perfect antidote. The story felt more Enid Blyton-ish in setup, flow and made a nice read. And it was a detective series as well. Probably the most naïve murder investigation I’ve ever read. But still makes up in its charm. I googled about the author and was amazed at the list of books published by her. My god!!!! She seems like a factory for churning out books. Not sure if you can classify these novels as kids section but may be bit more serious than the Nancy drew/ Hardy boys genre. I suppose, this particular book, is somewhere midway through the series, for there are no formal introduction to the characters. Be it Agatha or the village or her crush James, everyone is being mentioned on the fly and any backstory related to them, discussed over the course of conversatio...