Variety is the spice of life

For long, Hrithik Roshan was called as “One hit wonder”. When his second hit came after a while, the calling increased the count to two. It took a while for him to establish himself as a good actor, even though many of his movies flopped. Peter Swanson could very well be the Hrithik of thriller genre. His initial 3 books were super duper hits with so many twists and surprises that set the bar very high unfortunately for his own good. His next couple of books were so dumb and dull that, every time a new book got launched, it was received with a dread of which side of the creative bed it might’ve been from. When I saw the title “Kind worth Saving” it became quite clear that this is a sequel to the superhit “Kind worth killing”. To be honest I was expecting a more spiritual sequel with an overlapping character thrown in for the thrill. But this book being an almost literal reprint of the former, feels like a joke retold. The same setup where two people discuss as casually as a weekend pla...

I am not a big fan of horror series especially those involving Gothic elements, Vampires, Werewolves, and all. It is irritating to keep guessing what is happening and who is getting hit or bit in that absolute darkness that encompasses most of the scenes in such movies. For whatever reason, almost every single frame of such movies is pitch black and especially the impactful fights and the climax, which by default are set in darkest of tones possible. And the special effects, in the name of making them as close to real as possible, often overdo the gore and goo, which makes it further nauseating to view on screen. With this mindset, I was skipping this series for quite a while, until my cousin sister told she and her kid were watching it and it was decent enough. As a storyline, I never liked Addams family series for its macabre theme and spooky sense of humour which was dark at its brightest best. With the entire series based on Wednesday Addams, I started watching the series with abso...

For those who follow Tamil YouTube news channels names like Madhan, Madhesh, Kishore Swamy, Rajavel, Ayyappan and Savuku would’ve been quite familiar. Couple of days back, in his newly opened YouTube channel, Madhan had unleashed a string of videos that were sting operations conducted by him on the others mentioned in this list, that has literally set the social news media network on fire. The entire summary of those sting operations was about targeting TN BJP leader and his allakais along with taking revenge on those who spoke ill of him and chased him away from limelight. Revenge is the primary intent behind those operations and looking at the number of hits garnered by those videos within hours, suffice to say Madhan has achieved his intent Magna cum laude. Single handedly he has brought the entire new influencers and their network to its knees and the impacted parties are clueless now for a response. Some of them, who were under the garb of holier than thou, using it to add credibi...

Every time I watch a movie, my constant cribbing has always been about, how every moral or sacred institution (as per “erstwhile” society) is under attack from the so called “rebel” movie makers and how they repeatedly stress on their viewpoint over the audience as it is something derived from the society and not forced by them. For example, the concept of marriage and the societal norms around that institution has been the most violated one since the beginning of this millennium. When Mani Ratnam, who has made a name for himself by churning out successful hits based on fragile relationship between husband and wife, launched Alaipayuthey, it literally took the attack to the next level. Till that time, it was about interpersonal equations and how two people in an incompatible relation, survive, and struggle and eventually succeed. If we take the timeline a bit further back, Balachander, Sridhar and those famous directors of that era, milked this theme to the extent possible, victimizing...

Recently saw this Malayalam movie in Netflix and wanted to share my thoughts. When I read the reviews, it mentioned about a twist in climax and every single one of them had spoken so highly about the same. As if all the reviewers sat together, had a chat, and posted the content, every single one of the reviews was uniformly same, that the entire run up till the climax is slow and towards the last 30 minutes, the movie picks pace culminating into the climax twist! I felt, more than twist in climax, it was a twisted climax!! The story is about 2 identical twins, both serving in Police department, at the same station, one as Deputy Superintendent and other as Assistant Sub inspector. There is no suspense or twist in their back story, with both being blood brothers, having an abusive alcoholic father and separated at a young age with one of them staying with the mother and the unlucky one with the father. The father dies a gory death, as a punishment for his sins and the sibling who ended ...

I am sure most of you would love a story with a good twist in the end. The grand reveal or an interesting surprise that makes you go “Wow” in wonder. We tend to remember such stories for long and for the sheer excitement it brought the first time you read them. I remember one such story from my middle school and it used to make me feel sad at that time, whenever I had to revise that lesson while preparing for some test or exam. The lesson’s name was “Cop and the Anthem” by O Henry (William Sydney Porter), who became the reason for the first time I ever head the word “Pseudonym”. Till that time, I never knew people related to arts, used different names while writing/performing rather than using their original name!! I used to wonder why without getting a convincing answer to that question for long!  “Cop and the Anthem” is the story of a poor homeless guy, who sleeps in the local park during night. With harsh winter fast approaching, he wonders how he will manage to survive and when...