Variety is the spice of life

Consider these two story lines – Story 1 – Very contemporary with probably the most original storyline in recent times (unless if inspired from some foreign language film). Deals with murders that are being televised online and also has a tragic real time incident as backdrop and has an interesting twist which is untraceable. Story 2 – pretty stale. Done to death backdrop of cop vs gangster. Involves lot of flashbacks and is almost predictable or the twists are hardly original. Which of these stories would you bet on to be a winner at BO? I would want to bet on the former, for the only reason that the latter, being a cop story is dime a dozen. The movie with story 2 is “Vikram vedha”, the recent blockbuster which is running packed houses, increasing in trend every day. The former being a damp squib of a dud movie called “Inaiyathalam” (Website). When I was watching Iniayathalam, I felt at many places, what reviewers mean by amateurishly picturized. There is a chase scene in a mall...

For past few years, I’ve been so much bogged down by negativity around me, especially colleagues whose professionalism, or the lack of it, drove me nuts. I was having trouble to fathom how people can be so irresponsibly idiotic and so callous at the same time. One common thread across all those characters I could find was that they were all connected to someone seriously higher up on the echelons and had their backing and blessing for no reason obvious to me. I decided to quit fighting the shadows and reset my priorities and opted for something that I didn’t want to do in first place. I had to shelve a lot of my ambitions and goals and literally kick myself into being someone I hated and like a soldier simply following orders without bothering on the logic, I forced myself into a different routine. Needless to say the pinpricks and ego bashing were severe and took a toll on me with stress levels shooting up to stratosphere. I seldom manage to compartmentalize issues and till the time m...

Few weeks back I received a parcel, which had a slogan printed t-shirt and a thriller genre book by an Indian author. I knew that I’ve been nominated for the review and the parcel was expected but I had little clue on the concept of book curation and about the subscription box “Fiction crate”. Due to postal delay, the parcel reached me after a month’s delay and the hand written note along with the parcel, acknowledging the same, was a pleasant experience. It’s been a really long while since I received parcels with notes, that too handwritten. It was very personalized and was quite literally charmingly old world. There were some cute book marks as well and one trivia tag. The tee shirt that accompanied had a slogan on book reading and felt it was tailor made for me, literally and figuratively!! I’ve started reading the novel a while back and will post a separate review on it later in this space. Thanks to Brags for clarifying that the concept was to post a review about this conc...

Sometime back, went for a lunch meet with friends after a really long while. I don’t exactly remember the last time I had such a leisure meet with friends, not because I had been busy but off late had been shutting off myself without even me realizing it. The frustrations in office had crept to such an extent that it had totally changed my psyche and made me so much negative and angry that, I was lashing out at every single opportunity, at anyone, be it family or office. There was nothing extraordinarily different or path breaking in that meeting that set to light this thought process, but the very normalcy of the event made me realize, how far from it, I was. Whenever I read through my older blog posts, more often than not, I would be stumped by the thought process behind certain posts, on what was the trigger and many a times, I couldn’t even believe it was written by me as I would never be able to attain such a mindset to write such kind ever again. The person of that moment used t...

Few weeks back I read an article on MGR, our ex-cm and ..well if you need me to explain who he was you would be the exact person as target audience for this post. The article was one of the several thousand written since his heydays and went on eulogizing the kind of person MGR was and how his legacy continues to live even after about 3 decades since his demise. Whenever I read something about this man, I am always stumped by the unabashed adulation he manages to generate even by those who were never born in his lifetime, never been directly linked to him or never even witnessed his deeds in person. Yet, when they mention about MGR, they all go gushy mushy and all heartwarming, making him sound like a saint. Even current day superstars or crowd craze heroes never get such a warm reception or mention. Even for Jaya, who succeeded him and matched his legacy point by point, there is always a counter in the form of misdeeds done by her and on her scandals. Probably MGR had the advantage ...

As mentioned on the previous post, “Sangili bungili kadhava thora” lived up to its expectation. It’s a done and dusted ghost genre with comedy theme but the presentation and the screen play is pretty neat and for a change there is a story with a message from the ghost itself and above everything it’s a positive message. Probably the director would’ve felt, ippolaam karuthu solanumna pei ye vanthu sonna thaan undu and considering the karuthu being that of supporting join family, which is as current a concept as that of black and white TV. Other than being the usual mish-mash of CG driven ghosts plus some comic scenes, there was a settled base of a family in search of its own house and their sufferings in addition to the concept of family staying together at all costs makes it a decent watch. Though the activities of Jeeva and Soori are kiddish, the scene where multiple Suri’s take form and Jeeva identifying the right one amidst all those ghosts by asking for his favorite dish was really...

Last weekend we saw Maragatha Nanayam movie. With almost every single review going ga-ga over the movie, I was tempted to believe that not all of that could’ve been paid review. But movie wasn’t worth the hype is what I felt. It wasn’t a bad movie at all. With the USP of the movie, weighing on mimicry (Yes. You read that right) of the heroine being dubbed with a male voice and same characters speaking in multiple voices, it “sounds” novel. But wish the screenplay could’ve been more engaging. Felt like, the director would’ve selected the last few hits of horror comedy genre and removed all the common elements to add this USP and created a movie out of it. There is no romantic track or duet songs. Tick one. No special effects or CG driven ghosts. Tick two. But he has retained the comic portions to a greater extent, which works in parts with major chunk of the credit going to Nikki Kalrani (heroine) for the spunk with which she has donned the role and her body language of that of a row...