Variety is the spice of life

 March 5th is a date i wouldn't forget in a hurry. If i make a list of top ten days of my professional career where i felt low, this would be right on top of the pile. The news that came in that day, was cushioned a bit by the other discussion that happened earlier that morning. It was as if, your heart would give in at 5 pm and you get a new heart for transplant just hours before that news break. Off late i've been thinking a lot of my post life situation and scenario for no reason and that incident made me think even more of such possibility. Eventually we all have an expiry date, which as Rajini says in a movie, "Saagara naal terinjitta vaazhara naal naragamaaidum" (if you know when you will die, every single living day could become hell). And if people realize that we are all eventually going to die, the amount of crimes and wrong things they do will definitely come down. But if we keep looking at that target date, we will forget to live and that universal thought...

If at all there ever was movie that is a potpourri of southern languages, this would be it. A mallu movie, with a telugu-ish title, with lead character studying in Salem and most of the story happening in Hyderabad, they almost cover the full circle of south India. There are many dialogues in tamil and some in telugu as well!! But this is not the USP of the movie. It is neither a ground breaking or first of its kind ever story line or nor does it has extraordinary scenes and situations where the characters act their skin off or have ultra high octane action scenes. In fact, the movie is the ante thesis of all this and is as simple as it comes when it comes to rom-com's with the treatment similar to hindi movies of the late 90's or early 2000. The title of the movie crops up right when the hero sits dejected after his love proposal rejection during the last day of his college. He is as clueless as any average college pass out, without any ambition but counting on moving abroad t...

I should've updated "Trip Wire" as the next in review in the series, but felt that book to be quite tedious and for an almost non-existent story it dragged for close to 300 pages. And the ending rivals "Balayya" movies, with Reacher getting shot right in his chest, only for the doctor's in all their "surprise" claim it to be a "medical miracle" that his pectoral muscles literally stopped a bullet and Reacher survives!!!  But "Running blind" the next in the series, more than made up for it. With Jodie, the lady who gets introduced in previous book, having a continuation in this one as well as designated girl friend of Reacher, also doubling up as his lawyer, the series actually get a second character who has a running storyline other than Reacher. The story begins with a bar fight that is settled by Reacher in his own way. Only for it to balloon into a controversy involving FBI, who somehow profile him as a potential and almost c...

 I often used to wonder why our drama series fare relatively less when compared to the ones made by Western production houses. Budget is an obvious reason  which not just gives a much needed punch to the production values of those series, but also helps in getting popular faces to play key roles. And the setup being something that is already established with their audiences, the production houses don't have to oversell any series beyond regular advertisement methods. Even though some of the series, especially those produced by Netflix/Amazon kinds, have similar budget scope, the main area where i feel our series falls short being dialogues and screenplay. Some of the stories that come up on Amazon and Netflix are quite good and as intriguing as any Korean or English series. For example, Kala Paani on Netflix was awesome and felt as Hollywood-ish as any series made. The situations, dialogues, screen play every aspect about those series was spot on to say the least. Amazon tries...