Ko - Movie Review

Ko is a thamizh movie that is loosely based on the events in the life of a photo journalist. The star cast includes the multi talented Jiiva (formerly Jeeva), Ajmal, Pia Bajpai and a debutant Karthika (daughter of yesteryears star Radha). The direction is handled by Ayan fame K V Anand, music by Harris Jeyraj, stunts by Peter Hein. So all in all it is quite a team that has been brought together for the movie.
The movie is about the events in the life of a photo journalist aptly played by Jiiva. The story is a political thriller with loads of commercial elements. As far as the story goes I will not spoil it for the people who have not seen it yet.
The movie has a very taught, interesting script, excellent executed by K V Anand who has once again proved that he is quite the director with another blockbuster. Never once will you feel that the movie is boring as the scenes are crafted very well and as in other K V Anand movies dont miss even the minutest and subtlest of details as they are very important to the movie. The music from Harris as usual is superb and not just the songs. Anand has picturized the role of the journalists as they are today and not type casting them to wearing khadi kurtas. Every single detail has been thought about meticulously. Anand however missed the placement of the song Vennpaniye in the movie. This kind of cuts the flow and there were grunts from everyone in the theatre. The election compaigns are captured well and also there is a dig at Lok Paritran too and the subtle reasons as to why they failed.
Coming to the acting Jiiva and Ajmal have potrayed their respective roles extremely well. However, I got the feeling that Jiiva's role was more than that of a photo journalist. But that could also be that I misunderstood his role to be the accompanying photographer of a journalist. But nonetheless these two have given their best and I can't think of anything that they lack. I feel that Prakash Raj and Kota Sreenivasa Rao however have not been utilized very well. More so with Prakash Raj than Kota Sreenivasa Rao. The debutant actress Karthika is a very tall actress. She has shown some expressions but could improve. Pia has her usual role and she has done it quite well. Unlike other commercial movies of India the heroine has some role though not very great. Bose Venkat in his cameo has done very well and plays an extremely important role in the story.
Photography, as in any Anand's movie, is extremely good. Especially the songs, Ennamo Edho, Amali Thumali, Gala Gala and Vennpaniye have been extremely well shot, especially Amali Thumali. Also the action sequences are extremely well taken. Pay special attention to the climax for the photography too.
Stunts by Peter Hein are very good especiaally in the climax. However, the first action sequence after the bank robbery feels a bit over the top even though it has been beautifully executed. This is where there is some logic missing. But you feel this as an after thought.
Overall, it is an excellent movie and personally, I feel this is far far better than Ayan. Also, don't miss it in the theatre as the photography mandates viewing the movie on a big screen

Anti Corruption Protests in India

In the last few days there has been a big hue and cry in the country against corruption under the leadership of the Gandhian Mr. Anna Hazare. Is this something sudden or have we just woken up to this stark reality recently? No, the fight has been going on for decades with a bill called the Lokpal bill like the Ombudsman in the UK and other countries tabled about 8 times with the first time being 1968. The current draft is too diluted than what Mr. Hazare is asking for and he is not alone. He has the support of eminent personalities such as Ms. Kiran Bedi, IPS, Swami Agnivesh, Sri Sri Ravishankar, Baba Ramdev, RTI activist Arvind Kejriwal and many more. Plus, most of the general public are behind him. With the ever increasing scams both in numbers and scale this is all the more important. Also, many political parties are supporting it too. The efforts to bring back the black money is also gaining momemtum. I hope we are at the climax and I wish to see the careers of most of the politicians, bureaucrats and business men be destroyed. There are protests all over the country in support of Mr. Hazare.
Why am I writing this blog after so much is being written in the media? Answer, I am not in India currently and I am unable to join this agitation in person. Therefore, the only way I can show my solidarity with those protesting is to write about it. If you are in India, please join the protests. Do not abstain thinking nothing is going to come out of it. If not, please write, blog, tweet, email etc. about it and make all your fellow Indians aware of this and show your solidarity. The Indian government will not be swayed until we show solidarity and put them in the spot.
I strongly support the anti-corruption protests in India.

Simpler Times and Simpler Expectations

The one thing that I have noticed time and again is that I yearn for simpler times and simpler expectations. Life is getting so damn complex, hectic, competitive and unforgiving. These days even the minutest of mistakes are never forgiven or people find that they can ill afford to forgive. Sometimes I see the postman or the road repair worker and I cant but help myself to want to be them. When I see a period movie then I just want to rewind.
Technology and innovations/inventions are supposedly there to improve quality of life, make life simpler and give more time to relax. Look at the inventions in the earlier days like bicycles, electricity, or processes such as pasteurization or the polio vaccine. All these inventions/innovations improved life but did not make it complex. Things nowadays are anything but this.
Overall this leads to the Hindu principle of dont expect anything and just do your duty comes to mind. It looks like either I am expecting life to lot simpler and I should not expect this and just do my duty or the world is expecting a lot from everyone. Which one is it?

Civilization before any other

Once again it has been quite a long time since I blogged. But I think this post will make up for the long hiatus since the content of this is a documentary which links mythology with history, culture and literature to the same time period(though this seems quite obvious, it is not so) and falsification of the theory of growth of a civilization for political gains.
I think you must have already guessed that I am referring to the Indian Subcontinent. There are new evidences that the civilization was thriving during the last ice age and the survivors of the last ice age were the forefathers of the current civilization. Additionally, the Vedas though currently thought to be written about 1500BC is slowly being proven false and is said to be much older by atleast another 4500 years and finally that the Aryan Invasion theory is absolute nonsense and was propounded by the British historians so as to remove any pride associated with the Indian Culture and prove themselves to be superior to us.
Kindly see this documentary (in 5 parts) which is really interesting. The theory is not completely accepted yet as the pigheaded Historians are still unwilling to accept any civilization before the Mesopotemia and Egyptian as then they will be proven wrong and all their hypothesis will be annulled and the world history will have to rewritten. So ego and pride come in the way of truth.

Part 1 -


Part 2 -


Part 3 -


Part 4 -


Part 5 -

Arai En 305il Kadavul songs

Endhiran - Movie Review

Endhiran, the most awaited Thamizh movie to date, costliest movie ever made in India and yes, it lives up to its hype to a large part thanks mainly to the vision of Shankar. It is a commercial movie on the basis of Artificial Intelligence.
Disclaimer - I apologize for any spoilers. They are completely unintended.
Even though it is touted as a Rajnikanth movie, I see it largely as a Shankar movie. The story is not revolutionary as many other movies that are coming out today in Thamizh. So what is so great in this movie?
1. After Kamal Hasan starrer Vikram, this is the only other Science Fiction movie
2. Shankar has shown his technical knowledge what with the use of medical terms for forcefully moving the hip bones to deliver the baby was exceptional (I don't remember the medical term) and shows his research (also the part to stress it was an age old practice). Also to give Shankar credit for his research on humanoid robots such as the use of the motors, the processor and the neural schema (shown when Danny Denzongpa was talking to Chitti) is good. He has shown as using State Diagrams when teaching/programming emotions to Chitti.
3. The richness which Shankar has brought into the movie such as the sets, even the cars (only Audi, Benz, BMW and Benteley are used in most parts). There is grandeur everywhere and sometimes it is a bit too much. I can't believe his productions are low to medium budget
4. Rathnavelu's camera is exceptional especially the scene at Perungudi landfill where there is a upside-down shot of the car and the capture of the action sequences
5. Graphics and Animation, which is there from the first scene to the last. It is extremely good. Even the minute differences between the hand textures of Rajnikanth and Chitti (when they hug) are shown clearly. I noticed that the entire graphics team consisted of people of Eastern and South Eastern Asia regions.
6. Shankar's direction and most importantly his vision for the movie and his ability to bring it on screen. Scenes where in Chitti say's that humans lie for self preservation, his idea of choosing the university for Robotics research (Carnegie Mellon Univ.), the idea where in emotions are to be programmed to Chitti and subtly uses the lightning strike as a intervention from God to instill emotions in the robot, Danny's words when he says that "the story starts now" when Rajnikanth successfully "programs" emotions into Chitti are few instances.

Not Impressive/Dissapointing parts
1. Every frame has Rajnikanth and there seems to be an overdose. Also Chitti, when it turns rogue, is characterized as very close to human emotions. I am not sure if that would be the actual case, but then again we have not seen a robot with emotions.
2. Aishwarya Rai's character lacks depth or for that matter even the characterization is incomplete. Something seems completely amiss. She does look extremely good for a close to 40 year old. Can't imagine her for a medical student
3. The sets of the labs of both Ranjnikanth and Danny seem to be a bit too exaggerated, especially considering that the projects are govt. financed.
4. A bit too lengthy
5. Some of the action scenes are not logical such as when Chitti fights the rogues on the train. I cannot fathom a titanium rod hitting a person with huge force and the person stands up to fight again.
6. The movie though very nice misses some special ingredient from Shankar and it looks like the script was definitely changed for Rajnikanth and I guess Shankar has admitted to it to and so not all attributes of Shankar's film is visible in it.
7. The last scenes where in Rajnikanth tries to stop Chitti is all too difficult for the common illiterate people to understand and one thing that I dont understand is how is worming one robot can worm the others. Is it that all the robots are networked? I can probably try to understand worming but how about deactivating a module on one robot deactivate it on other robots. Even if it was a server-client architecture the robot used was a client (here I am assuming that the server is Chitti) how did it affect the other robots?
8. Also, my personal opinion is that the movie might have been well made if one of the newer heroes would have acted such as Surya or Jiiva but I guess a movie of such huge budget needs a huge star and with Tamil Nadu it is either Rajni or Kamal and both their styles are very evident and huge to be modified for the movie.
9. Rahman's music is not as good as his past. Some songs are good such as Kilimanjaro and Kadhal Anukkal. The lyrics of the Arima song is very nice. Unfortunately, I did not focus on the background score and so I can make no comments on it. However, the title score (at the end) was very nicely done.

Overall the movie is enjoyable in parts but it is entertaining overall and I must say it is definitely worth a watch. Let me know your thoughts.

Madrasapattinam - Movie Review

Madrasapattinam, the name transports a person to the pre-independence era and the movie, true to its name, is set in the colonial times. However, this movie is not another freedom struggle story, though it is not devoid of it either. If one can believe, it is a love story set in the Empire days. You might think that I am going against my policy and revealing the story but there is nothing else to it and also considering the considerable time since its release in theaters it must not matter much.
Even though it is only a love story, there are some special elements that make the movie pretty interesting (probably not engrossing). After seeing the movie many would say it is "inspired" by movies such as Titanic and Lagaan and this is true to a large extent but still it is a very nice attempt by the Director
The most promising aspects of the movie are
1. The sets which brought to life the bygone days of the glorious Madras (Chennai has its own glory) erected by Selva (worked with Sabu Cyril earlier). The Buckingham Canal (I cannot imagine how much it has degraded. Chennai/Madras people should fight the government to restore it to its old glory at the earliest. It is a good legacy of the British we can have), the Central Station of yesteryears are best brought to life and the trams (cannot fathom the reasoning of the politicians to get rid of them)
2. The camera by Nirav Shah is great and he has captured the essence of Buckingham Canal.
3. Music by the prodigal genius of G V Prakash Kumar
4. Direction by Vijay is pretty slick. There is no ounce of over acting but some scenes seem a bit melodramatic. But at the same time some of the scenes are brilliantly captured. The wrestling match and the wry smile on the Indian Police Inspector's face, the spontaneous reaction of Arya to Amy speaking tamizh, the scene where in the Governor of Madras when walking out of the station, the activist questioning his authority since Independence was upon us, the characterization of the travel agent are some of the highlights.
5. Arya (he has actually acted after his good performance in Naan Kadavul)
6. Amy Jackson - can't believe she is in her teens. She looks so mature but she has also delivered in her acting and she is exquisitely beautiful. Very sophisticated.

The downfalls of the movie are
1. Flimsy story line
2. The execution grounds (not sure if they had one, but if it was there then it was duly captured)
3. Some of the actors were not properly utilized.
4. MSV's voice in the Meghame Meghame song (killed it)
But not many, come to think of it or it could be that I am blind to those aspects.

Do watch the movie and see how much of the good legacies of the British have been erased and how much of the protocol's established by them are still in force and also how they are being misused. We should take the good ones and try to reestablish these legacies.

Reincarnation

The title of the post might be quite misleading in making one think that this is another post on Hinduism but it is not so. In fact, this has nothing to do with religion. This is about bringing in a new life to this world.
I want to dwell on 2 aspects of becoming a parent from a father's perspective
1. The actual reason for a man beget a child
2. The impact of the child on the father
To start of with the reason for people to beget a child is very selfish if one was to introspect. We know of all the perils, obstacles, and despair in this world and we have gone through the same. This being the case, why would we want one more life that we would dearly love to endure the same. Of course, the optimists would suggest there are numerous pros to live, but nonetheless, I am most positive that there would be not one who would disagree with the cons associated with life, unless one chooses a life of austerity and detachment. But in the current connected world there would be no one who is not materialistic.
Therefore, to beget a child is nothing short of selfishness and of course, I would be guilty of the same too. We want a child to bring joy, meaning in our lives, learn responsibility, etc.
Now coming to actual topic at hand, Reincarnation. What does this mean in the context of child birth? My viewpoint here is that this is targeted at the parents, especially the father. While the mother nourishes, showers love and looks after the well being of the child, the father job would be pass on the knowledge and prepare him for the future endeavours the child would embark upon. (Feminists please do not try to construe the above statement. I am NOT suggesting that the mother has no role in educating the child to prepare him/her for future battles and wars of life. It is more of a figure of speech and I being a man am talking from my perspective). In order to do this, the man would have to correct his shortcomings, be it in behaviour, perspective, culture, skills, manners, outlook, etc. He would strive to become the perfect man and father. In this process he is reincarnated as a new man in this life. He would try his best to make sure the faults he has in him are not inherited by his child. He wants to pass on the best traits and skills to his child.
This is my thinking. Do you have any other thoughts on this?

A nice song (music and picturization) from Madrasapattinam

Change and Complexities of Change

    Everybody knows the proverb "Change is the only constant in this world". Many of us want a change in our lives and we yearn and work for it. But when it finally comes, I am not sure how of us are really ready to embrace it. We are consumed by the fears of the unknown and the proverb "Known Devil is better than the Unknown" seems a lot more true. We try to figure out all the permutations and combinations' of what could go wrong.
   If the above fear does not affect us then the change we yearned for does not make any sense anymore or you cannot accept it as the circumstances have changed quite drastically. This causes a lot of friction. Some of the people involved would think that the person is playing the fool with them or is expecting more than what was originally agreed.
   When change comes naturally or when it is thrust upon oneself then the impact is much less. This is like when moving from school to college.
   How do we deal with these situations? There is no one single answer expect, as the Bhagawad Gita suggests "Do our duty and leave the rest to God". But we are not so detached to disregard the friction that occurs. Also what one method works for one will probably not work for another.
   I guess I could ramble more but I will stop at this point and see if you people have anything to say.