Archive for 50 Tamil Movies to watch before you Die

50 Tamil Movies to watch before you die – 12

// October 29th, 2009 // 4 Comments » // 50 Tamil Movies to watch before you Die

I didn’t like Aadhavan and I gave a critical review of the movie. The critical review started immediately after the movie and my friends were crticising me that I am expecting too much from a masala movie.

Chinmaya, my friend asked over a Chicken in KFC, “So tell me which is a perfect masala”. I immediately sprung up and said ” Enga Veetu Pillai”. He snubbed and said ” the MGR movie? That’s a old one man”. I just smiled and said ” Absolutely no. Take any double action movie in any language barring a few exceptions like Vaali, you will have the same storyline as that movie. Even the re-runs of “Enga Veetu Pillai” made more money than the so called masalas of recent times”

I don’t hate masala movies in fact I love them because it depicts the true Indian movie style. A perfect masala should be enjoyable and should not be boring at any point of time. Glorifying Heroes – perfectly fine as long as the hero is Rajini and not Vishal. So here comes the mother of all masala Tamil movie of all times – “Enga Veetu Pillai”

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50 Tamil Movies to watch before you die – 11

// October 9th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // 50 Tamil Movies to watch before you Die

The Tamil history is full of legends, interesting anecdotes and wonderful heroic stories. But the number of historical movies and Historical fictions is very minimal. The ones which came are either skewed or executed in the worst possible way. I think there will be only two movies in this genre.in my list. The one which I consider the perfect movie in Tamil, didn’t do well in the box office  too.. (it will be featured in the later part of the series)

During the 50s and 60s, there were lot of historicals featuring the freedom fighters from Tamil Nadu. Veerapandiya Kattabomman, Sivagangai Seemai, Raja Desingu were some of them and worst of all came in 1973 – Raja Raja Chozhan. The problem with all the historical movies were it gives you an skewed perspective and not the true history. All movies tried to glorify the lead characters rather than giving out the true to life depictions. I think that’s were Chinese and Hollywood movies score a point.

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50 Tamil Movies to watch before you die-10

// July 21st, 2009 // No Comments » // 50 Tamil Movies to watch before you Die, Movies

Romantic Comedies are a rarity in Tamil Cinema. I believe a perfect Romantic Comedy should have the right proportions of both. How many Tamil movies you have seen with both of these coming in right proportions. I have decided to showcase two romantic comedies in the 40s-70s era which were trend setters for the future. Theses two movies have been diligently (shamelessly) reproduced by some of the later directors with some changes and still became superhits.

Rom Coms can be made in two different ways – one which will have only two lead characters, the story traverses through them and the situations they encounter. And the other type of story, depict more than one couple, their problems and the inter twining of situations etc. The first movie which I am going to show case is of the first genre.

Anbe Vaa (1966)

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50 Tamil Movies to watch before you die-9

// July 10th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // 50 Tamil Movies to watch before you Die, Featured, Ilaiyaraja, Movies, Quiz Reviews

The early Tamil movies had a right mix of movies. There were masala action as there were socio-political movies, there were fairy tales as there were historical fictions. I think one of the most entertaining of all were the stories based on Hindu Gods and mythical characters. Don’t rate the yesteryear mythical classics with the new age graphical so called “Godly” movies. The way the modern movie directors showing Gods is something they should be ashamed of.

Thiruvilayadal (1965)

The first movie that comes to any one’s mind when thinking about mythical movies is Thiruvilayadal. (more…)

50 Tamil Movies to watch before you die – 8

// July 3rd, 2009 // 3 Comments » // 50 Tamil Movies to watch before you Die, Featured, Movies

The world knows Indian movies as wholesome entertainers with songs, dance, action sequences, sentiments and comedy packages. The trend of such entertainment packages or masalas as it is rightly called was originally started by a spectacular production company called ” Modern Theatres”.

Modern Theatres, a big wig production company from small town, Salem owned by TR Sundaram had only one aim – wholesome entertainment with the right dose of action, comedy, cheap thrills and glamour.

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50 Tamil Movies to watch before you die-7

// June 19th, 2009 // 4 Comments » // 50 Tamil Movies to watch before you Die, Featured, Movies

The definition of Anti-Heroism has been misinterpreted in many places referring it to those lead characters which have some Grey shades too. But according to me and even movie analysts, anti-hero is the one differs from the normal notions of an hero. A hero in Tamil movies is usually physically smart, has sharp features, strong, intelligent, suave, stylish, compassionate, girls fall for him naturally and he never does a mistake. The norms were never broken and actors like MGR were very successful proponents of this model.

But every one of these norms were broken in to pieces when a great actor entered this movie world. His name was Nagesh and the movie was Server Sundaram.

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50 Tamil Movies to watch before you die – 6

// June 4th, 2009 // 5 Comments » // 50 Tamil Movies to watch before you Die, Featured, Movies

I am travelling 10 years back to talk about a legend. I am reading some books on Tamil Movies in order to give some good triviae. One of them which I read recently was AVM – 60 years by M.Saravanan. Avichi Meyyappa Chettiar is a pioneer when it comes to movies in India. In fact, his family is the oldest movie making family in India. He started making movies in 1935 and established AVM studios in 1945. The truth is this is the third movie produced or co-produced by AVM in the list.

Comedy has always been successful when it comes to Tamil Movies but if you make it bad, you will become a comedy in front of the audience. One of the earliest full length comedy movie is the 6th movie in our list.

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50 Tamil Movies to watch before you die – 5

// June 1st, 2009 // 3 Comments » // 50 Tamil Movies to watch before you Die, Featured, Movies

A few things before I go to the next movie.

1. Sorry for the infrequent posts and short hiatus, there are some DNS server problems with my blog. My hosting guy is working on it. I hope he gives me a good solution. And I lost two of the posts with my iPhone crash. I do my blogposts during my daily travel and my phone wonderfully crashed on Friday night and my backup is in Macbook, which is also not working currently. Aww, that’s life.

2. I hope some of my readers would be thinking why I am running around 50s and 60s in the movie list and not with the later years. The first set of movies (may be 15-16) will be till 1969, the next set will be from 1970 – 1989 and the last set will be 1990 – current running period. So wait for some more nice movies to come.

Now for the next movie in line.

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50 Tamil Movies to watch before you Die-4

// May 18th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // 50 Tamil Movies to watch before you Die, Featured, Movies

Madras to Pondicherry ( 1966)

Somehow if I take some cult classics of 50s and 60s, I always hit upon with the names of Krishnan-Panju… In fact two more movies in my list are directed by them. So I had made a small juggle in the list to avoid repetition.

When do you think the first road movie came in Tamil? Truly, there are only a handful of road movies of which only a few are hits.I could not even think of one now except for the latest Kadhalna Summa Illa.

A road movie is defined as a story which happens during a journey from one place to another. The best example would be Motorcycle Diaries, which tells the transformation of Che Guevara. But the first Tamil road movie is an absolute light hearted comedy entwined with a small mystery, Madras to Pondicherry and that too in 1966 !

The story moves along with the bus journey of a host of interesting characters from Madras to Pondicherry. An ever fighting couple with a son, who has an insatiable appetite for pakoras, a old lady with her grand daughter, a respectable family, a road side vendor, a snake charmer and above all the conductor – driver duo. But the main story revolves around a girl (Kalpana), who escapes from the clutches of two cheats and her love story with a young man in the bus (Ravichandran).She first escapes from her family, who wanted her to be married to their choice of groom and gets in to the hands of two cheats. They promise her to get a role for her in movies. Due to greed one (SV Ramadoss) of them kills the other. Kalpana becomes the witness to the murder and runs for her life, eventually ending up in the bus with others. The journey continues and all’s well that ends well…

Madras to Pondicherry - Nagesh, Karunanidhi, Ravichandran..

What so special about the movie?

The excellent screenplay of the movie with every scene filled with comic moments and the interesting characters along with apt casting. Nagesh as the conductor and A.Karunanidhi (not our CM) as the driver are memorable. Karunanidhi was one of the underrated comedians, his expressions are simply superb in the movie.

Khader as the Pakora eating son, earned him the name “Pakora Khader” and Veerapan as his irritating father are excellent portrayals. Angamuthu as the road side vendor and her chicken becomes the reason one of the best slapstick comedy sequence. You should watch it to enjoy the fun.

The movie was directed by another director duo of Thirumalai-Mahalingam, produced by MS Adhi Narayanan of Sun Beam Productions and Music by TK Ramamoorthy. I think the dialogues should have been penned by Veerappan, a friend of Nagesh who wrote numerous comedy sequences for him.

Why it’s in the list?

Just because it was one of the pioneers in the genre.I have not seen a better road movie idea in Tamil for years. Even in Hindi, they have failed to impress (Daud, Honeymoon Travels, Road).

The critics of Tamil movies always maintained that there are no good representations of genres in Tamil. Madras to Pondicherry is one of those movies, which can be quoted as an instance of difference in Tamil movies. Although half of the movie was made inside the studio due to the technical limitations of those times, the movie has to be hailed for the thought process.

You will be startled to see most of the comic scenes being copied in different formats. Like the snake sequence, the chicken chase sequence and it’s pathetic to see how people are so shameless to copy.

Madras to Pondicherry, a must watch road movie and light hearted comedy.

Trivia

1. Madras to Pondicherry was remade in Hindi with Amitabh and Aruna Irani with Mehmood doing the Nagesh role. It was called Bombay to Goa and it was a super hit. It was said that Mehmood wanted Rajiv Gandhi to do the role of Amitabh.

2. Mehmood, a fan of Nagesh has done some memorable (some not so memorable) remakes of Nagesh movies in Hindi.(Lakhon Mein Ek – Ethir Neechal, Do Phool – Anubavi Raja Anubavi, Mein Sunder Hoon – Server Sundaram and the list goes on)

3. Veerappan continued to write comedy portions for the movies. In fact most of the comedy sequences of Goundamani-Senthil duo were written by him. Yes, you are right, the master piece Vazhappazha (Banana) comedy of Karagattakaran was written by him only.

4. Thirumalai-Mahalingam later went on to direct some successful comedies like Saadhu Mirandal and Soapu Seepu Kannadi with Nagesh.

5. TK Ramamoorthy later joined hands with MS Viswanathan and the as they say ‘the rest is history’. I could not plot the first movie which they were together. They were called as the “Mellisai Mannargal” (Melody Kings).

50 Tamil Movies to watch before you die-3

// May 6th, 2009 // 6 Comments » // 50 Tamil Movies to watch before you Die, Movies

Rattha Kaneer ( 1954)

There is always an argument which goes on in the Tamil movie world on Who is the best actor … And always they end up with one name called Sivaji Ganesan. But according to me, there is one more person who can be spoken of at the same calibre as Sivaji. His name is M.R.Radha and versatility is his middle name.

Although there are wonderful movies behind his name, the one classic masterpiece which will feature in any Tamil Movie list would be Rattha Kaneer.

Most of the yesteryear actors came from theatre and with strong influences of political ideologies. MR Radha was no exception and he had a strong background of Dravidian political ideology. He was already a super star in theatre before he came on to movies.

Rattha Kaneer was a play written by Thiruvarur Thangarasu and already a famous play among the masses before it made in to the tinsel world. The most surprising aspect of the play and the movie was the radical thoughts purported by the writer at a more conservative time period.

It’s about the story of the rich man who makes merry with women defies his family, good friends and ends up as a leprosy patient. Leprosy was considered to be a deadly disease at that time and the movie also depicts the social stigma associated with such patients.

What so special?

The first half has all the strong Dravidian political ideologies of MR Radha and the writer criticising religion, casteism, false beliefs, rituals etc. The dialogues and the way MR Radha enacts the role with élan is a treat to watch.

The contrasting second half shows the plight of the leprosy patient and the social apprehensions surrounding it. Who can forget “Kuttram Purinthavan”. The movie had a apt cast with M.N.Rajam as Gantha, a memorable wily mistress character and she never recovered from that image after that movie. She had innumerable stereotypical roles after that movie. SS Rajendran as the friend and Sri Ranjani as the wife.

The music for the songs was composed by Chidambaram Jayaraman and the back ground score by Viswanathan-Ramamoorthy ( lesser known that point of time). And the movie was directed by the most sucessful director duo of Krishnan- Panju.

Why it makes to the list ?

Simply because of the path breaking theme of the movie for it’s times and the wonderful versatile acting of MR Radha – an actor under rated because of his personal life and one big mistake of shooting MGR. It has become a inspiration for many movie makers and you could find many movies reusing the subject even today. A brilliant movie to watch…

Trivia:

1. The legacy of Rattha Kaneer is continued till now with MR Radha’s off springs continuing it with occasional theatre performances along with small modifications. Currently the role is portrayed by Radha Ravi.

2. Upendra, the maverick Kannada Director-Actor tried to recreate the magic with Ramya Krishnan as Gantha but could not live up to the expectations although it made good financial success.

3. Incidentally, MR Radha went back to theatre after this movie because of his love towards it but came back to do some memorable roles later.

4. The full name of MR Radha is Mohan Rajagopala Naidu Radhakrishnan and he is nicknamed as Nadigavel

Wonderful Trivia update from Raji Muthukrishnan

After a hiatus from the screen after Ratha Kaneer (I read somewhere he was disgusted with the film world for some reason), M. R. Radha came back with a bang in Baga Pirivinai, which had Sivaji in it. After that he was on a roll with his original unique dialogue delivery

Trivia: it was M. R. Radha who gave Karunanidhi the title of Kalaignar when he acted in one of his plays.

P.S: I decided that the 3rd movie should be Rattha Kaneer and i could not get good information from the internet ( like the music director). I went on to a pursuit of DVDs and i found it in Landmark last weekend. A nice add on to my DVD collection ( Thanks to this article). The DVD is released by Raj Video Vision.


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