Friday, December 31, 2010

*** Happy New Year - MMXI ***




2010 was quite a good year of learning.

It was the year when one learnt that...
  • driving the black car is easy (yes! got one at last!)
  • singing a new National Anthem is tough (Pink Card now!)
  • slaying the PSLE demon finally is possible (Not me! Still, what a relief!)
  • Wiki stands for 'What I Know Is' but yet does not know why Assange had to do the voyeuristic bit for History!
  • to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull is akin to putting your tongue through the wringer (what is the population of Iceland again? I have a vague suspicion that the Icelanders provoked the said-volcano to spew ash so that they can divert the world's attention away from their economic woes!)
  • QE2 is not the luxury liner, but a luxurious credit line for the banks to ease people quantitatively (:-|)
  • Dabaang is a very good movie (Plzzzzz!)
  • while one can opt-out of the casinos in Singapore, it may not be possible to do so when visiting shady sites!
  • Singapore pays its students just for attending Secondary school and beyond
  • work increases ten-fold when the project slows down and
  • the Spanish were deaf to Vuvuzela!

Ole 2010!!

Welcome 2011!!

Please plant and tend a tree in this Year of Forests!!

Have a Healthy, Happy and Prosperous New Year!!!

For the Tamil aficionados, here are the greetings!

Friday, December 24, 2010

Manmathan Ambu: Emperor's Clothes :-{}

For a Tamil review, visit here.

In the GE world, Jack Welch introduced the culling of bottom 10% every year. The euphemistic management expression for this was that the 'bar was being raised every year'. The same goes with Kamal's movies as well. If you proclaim to make good movies and to give better film experiences to the Tamil philistines that we are, then the bar is pegged higher all the time.

In the last decade, every movie that Kamal has scripted - with the exception of Hey Ram! and to a certain extent Anbe Sivam, has been a damp squib. In corporate parlance, we call it OCUD - Over Commit; Under Deliver!

Don't get me wrong! I like Kamal's cerebral approach to movies. I really enjoy it. Even his combo with Crazy used to be highly enjoyable intellectually. But when Kamal takes the pen and starts writing, his thoughts over-flow and ends up flooding people's senses. B said this about dialogue writing: If a hand-written piece of dialogue is more than three lines, then you have lost your audience. Very true! (but then, you don't need the mono-syllable offerings by Mani Ratnam as well!)

In Manmathan Ambu, Kamal attempts to put in a lot of intelligence into the dialogues through the various protagonists: A case in point is when Trisha compares the connecting door in her caravan to the zipper in your trousers or the hook in the blouse - it is there just to ensure that we are not exhibiting anything. Believe me, typing this much, I got tired. How will it be, for someone to hear that on the screen? By the time the first five words are done, the audience starts yawning...

Oh, by the way, the movie is not based on Hitch. Apologies for leading you down the garden path; well the Singapore newspapers were led down the garden path actually. Reminds me of one of B's all-time cracker a few years ago: The only truth in the newspapers are the obituaries!

In reality it is very loosely based on 'Romance on the High Seas'. A very old movie, I believe (Thanks Guru for pointing that out!).

For about 2.5 hours the movie was like a gentle breeze across the meadows on a steamy afternoon. Cool and refreshing. Slow, it was; but the different milieu - film stars, European divorcee, private detective etc, pithy dialogues, subdued and natural performance from the various characters made it a joy especially after the sound and fury of Endhiran.

And then just when you thought that you are going to get a straight-from-the-heart movie, Kamal gets cold feet and drags the movie to his tried-and-tested slap-stick comedy route. In Delhi they used to call it as KLPD. I will not expand that. This is a family site, after all.

If Mynaa (Udhay bought that movie after all; net net, he might make more on that movie than this!), proves that good stories/treatment can run irrespective of the stars and commercial pressures, then when are the jambavans of Tamil cinema such as Kamal going to push the 'envelope'?

No half measures such as 'faulty live recording', 'grainy digital video recording'...please!

One good piece in this movie was the song Neela Vaanam which shows Kamal's married life in reverse a la  Return to Innocence by Enigma.

Manmathan Ambu is good in very few parts. Otherwise it is disappointing. It is almost as if that Kamal is the Emperor who has no clothes and no one has the courage to tell him that his scripting needs finishing. Probably he needs the little kid from the movie to tell him the truth in the real life as well :-|||

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Await

...another 16 hours for the review of the much-awaited movie of the year (tongue firmly in cheek!)...
Copied or not, we have to pay the thandal...

Friday, December 03, 2010

Manmathan Ambu (Story Outline)




For those of you who were cribbing about the tamil post on this topic, here we go...

Dr Mannar is the 'date doctor' who helps Maddy (mostly called as Madhan) to 'phatao' movie star Trisha. In the mean time, love happens and no body knows who is loving who as the movie is likely to travel in the high seas in the cruise liner across Europe.

Why Europe? Why not in Singapore? It can be cheaper you know?

These were Kamal's words to producer Udhay (heir to billions in Tamil Nadu) and U reportedly said that the movie has to have a rich feeling - and the result? Thou shall watch Europe in a real rich vein...

Oh, by the way, if the outline reminds you of the movie 'Hitch', then it is not my problem. Neither is it Kamal's problem. It is only the viewer's problem.

After all, this is what Mishkin said after being accused of lifting from 'Kikujiro' for his masterpiece Nandalala: "Watch my movie as a stand-alone. Don't compare it with anything else, even if it were lifted off Kikujiro." I can salute Mishkin for one thing - at least, he is trying to bring in a classic to Tamil and introduce good cinema to the mind-less masses, but what about Kamal? Remakes of Hollywood commercial trashes... Sigh!

A miracle that refused, refuses, probably will refuse (?) to happen...

PS: That last line is from Charu.

Source: Singapore newspapers who covered the audio release also had a very brief outline with some masala from yours truly...