Archive for Movies

Movie Review: Aadhavan – The Sun Never Rose

// October 19th, 2009 // 14 Comments » // Movies, Reviews

For the last few years, I have never ended a Deepavali without watching a new release and it’s part and parcel of Deepavali celebrations in Tamil Nadu. This year with all the biggies except Surya opting out, we were left with Aadhavan for our Deepavali movie.

We were left with Mayajaal (Home Theatre, that’s the nickname for the multiplex) as Sathyam opened with red boxes in online booking and Sangam went to the Fans association (!).

When you go to a KS Ravikumar movie, you can be sure of two things – the movie will have pucca masala of songs, dance, comedy, sentiment, action etc and you will not get bored watching the movie. As a producer’s director, he has a success rate of almost 80% of his movies becoming box-office hits. (the one which failed initially was his best)

Aadhavan will not bore you, nor will it interest you. It will be just another Tamil movie with just another big hero with just another borrowed storyline with just another predictable ending. Will it be a just another hit? May be ( That’s for you to decide)

Aadhavan-gallery-5

Aadhavan ( Surya), a hitman working under his foster father (Sayaji Shinde) is hired to kill a judge (Murali) who is investigating an organ trade scam, by Reddy (Rahul Dev). He misses the shot and vouches, that he will kill the judge at any cost. He joins as a household servant through Vadivelu in Judge’s huge family headed by Grand Mother (Saroja Devi).

Aadhavan slowly enters in to the hearts of the family members (yawn $&@?) as he says he is the long lost son (Madhavan) of the Judge, who ran away because of a murder. Thara (Nayanthara), Madhavan’s aunt’s daughter falls in love with Surya. After mix-ups and mash ups, with a predictable Tamil movie climax, all ends well.
Aadhavan is produced by Udhayanidhi Stalin with KS Ravikumar as the Director. The music composed by Harris Jayaraj, cinematography by Ra.Ganesh and edited by Don Max.

Pluses

1. The comedy in the first half. You have guaranteed laugh riot with Vadivelu and Surya. I think only KS Ravikumar can infuse such comic situations in to such movie plots.

2. Surya – he fights, he romances, imitates MGR, Sivaji, Kamal and Rajini, takes daredevil risks, excels excellently in comedy and even emotes well in Senti Scenes.

3. The cinematography – is awesome in songs and fantastic in fight sequences. A visual treat indeed.

4. It was wonderful to see Anand Babu back in screen, dancing as he  is used to ( leaving away his funny hairdo)

Minuses

1. The sagging second half and the big pot holes in the screenplay. The time lines are extremely compensated and at one point you don’t understand where the story is happening (Kolkata or Darjeeling)

2. The music is not even average. I think Harris Jayaraj is running out of commercial loops. Except Hasili Fisliye, others are not interesting and provide bumper speed breakers for the movie. (Does that tribal song “Maasi Maasi” resemble Mayya Mayya from Guru?)

3. The CG in the flash back is a shame to the improving quality of CG in Tamil Movies. If the implementation is bad, any concept goes for a toss. Pathetically implemented and I felt Ramanarayanan’s Amman movies were better

4. Some of the fight sequences could have been made better. I dunno when will they stop using Surya in parkour sequences and this one is a straight lift from Casino Royale ( Dont worry. It’s only for few minutes !!!)

5. You can’t count the number of people in that family. I don’t understand the point. Were the whole bunch cast for “Varayo” Song or vice versa?

6. Did I see a Tata Docomo ad in the paper read by Saroja Devi in the flashback sequence? Wake up Guys, you are in a movie industry where a guy acquired 1940s Anandha Vikatan to authenticate a time line.

In short a movie which was produced by Udhayanidhi, directed by Ravikumar, acted by Surya with the name Aadhavan, it never rose to the expectations.*

A 2 Stars/ 5 just for first half comedy and Surya.

*PS: All have names either of the Sun God or names derived from the Sun God.

– Post From My iPhone

How about What's Your Raashee?

// October 6th, 2009 // 9 Comments » // Movies, Reviews

“How about what’s your Raashee?” asked my friend Hima. I said “No way. I heard it’s too long for romantic comedy. And I can’t tolerate Harman Baweja”. “Hey, you like Ashutosh’s movie right. You even saw his Swades”. “Swades was different. I think it’s a wonderful movie”… ” I heard it’s a nice movie” , joined Chinmaya. I should have thought twice when a guy who doesn’t know hindi and a guy who loves mindless Sharukh movies says it…

“Oh, we already booked and you are coming”. I was like “what?”.. I made up my mind to sleep well as it was a night show and that too you get awesome seats in Seasons (Sathyam). We (Myself, Hima and Chinmaya) were just on time after a simple dinner at Noodle House.

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10 Best Roles of Kamal Hassan

// September 21st, 2009 // 11 Comments » // Movies, Tributes

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The one actor, film maker I adore is Kamal Hassan. I don’t think anybody can be compared or match his acting prowess for years to come. He is unique, a número uno and was born to act. He is celebrating his 50th year in Tamil cinema. He entered in to the hearts of Tamil movie goers as a small child singing “Ammavum Neeye” on August 12, 50 years back.

In his Golden jubilee year, I am revisiting his 10 best roles over these 50 years. The 10 best roles doesn’t mean that these are his 10 best movies but these roles brought out the different faces of this versatile actor.

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50 Tamil Movies to watch before you die-10

// July 21st, 2009 // 2 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 // 6 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 // 4 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).