Cinema, Karam, Kapi

Inspector Jaikumar (Ashok Selvan) is investigating the death of a high-profile corporate czar S. Gurumurthy (Samudrakani), who is the CXO of one of India’s largest, listed and reputed Real Estate companies  and a key sponsor of IPL T20 Cricket,  based out of Ghaziabad, NCR. The upright executive, with no visible scars on his reputed corporate  career all along, is killed by torture, much to the surprise of the community at large.  Little do people know that Gurumurthy had a shadow life too, acting as the hit-man of the company’s owners, by making gullible small-land owners to surrender their cultivable land for real estate development across Northern India. Indrani (Trisha) runs the CSR arm of the company, which among other social initiatives also runs a school and a college, where the children of poor farmers are enrolled. Jaikumar & Indrani have a parallel love track going on, with their wedding solemnised. (Indrani had a past affair, btw!) Jaikumar takes spec...

Ace Director Mani Ratnam and septuagenarian actor, the multifaceted Kamal Hassan have joined hands after 31 years in their latest outing Thug Life . Co-produced by both personalities themselves, the film was released at over 1,000 screens in India and worldwide, amidst a huge publicity undertaken by the crew over the last fortnight. Kamal Hassan, Mani Ratnam and the lead actresses Trisha and Abirami, along with Simbu alias Atman TR Silambarasan travelled extensively across the southern states, Mumbai and even to Dubai to promote the film, while they also gave a lot of interviews to mainstream and social media. Songs by AR Rahman, who comes together with Kamal Hassan after 25 years (since Indian which released in 1999) have been hitting the charts for a while. The music release event a fortnight ago in Chennai was well received with live orchestra by the singers and artists.   The film, which was hyped a lot over social media platforms by various Influencers and media houses for t...

Many wondered who this young lad was, from where and how did he land up in the Tamil film music scene and whether he would be a one-film wonder with his unique voice modulations and rendering effortlessly some tricky tunes, after his first number released 6 years back in the film Kadal, which was directed by ace Director Mani Ratnam and music composed by his protégé and confidante AR Rahman, whom he introduced 25 years back in his film Roja. The number “Adiye” was not only an instant hit with great top of mind recall but has also endeared the singer’s successive songs. In fact in the first half of 2019, there was a new song of Sid which was released online every 15 days or so, taking his total count of songs sung now to around 50 in three languages, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam. Personally, I have loved his songs all along and have attended a few of his Live concerts as well during which he exudes so much energy that the audience seem to enjoy – while many croon along with him ...

I have been a fan of Mani Ratnam movie for over 30 years, I must confess. This is not the first time Mani is handling a multi-starrer. Exactly 30 years back, his much acclaimed Agni Natchathiram released which had two young heroes Karthik & Prabhu in the lead with a fantastic role by Vijaya Kumar. In 1991, he pulled off Thalapathi featuring Superstar Rajinikanth & Mammooty. In 2004, we saw Ayutha Exhuthu with Surya, Madhavan and Siddharth in the leads. From controversial political overtones in films like Mumbai, Dil Se and Guru to extreme romance-led subjects like Alaipayuthe, Raavan, OKK and most recently Katru Veliyidai, he has tried his hands on every genre perhaps. Having produced most of his films by himself, he never had the need to worry about critical acclaim or Box-Office collections. Add to that, he has to his credit portraying young heroes in their early career as strong protagonists - Prashanth, Arvindawamy, Madhavan, Shah Rukh Khan all the way up to Dulqeer Salma...