Cinema, Karam, Kapi

I have been unemployed (read Entrepreneur) for the past 5 years. Have tried various tricks in the book and have had my hits and misses in my various attempts, ventures, and so on. All along, my wife has supported me a lot by motivating me and being by side even as I attempt a new escapade now and then apart from funding some of my (mis)adventures. Similar to Actor Surya. This gentleman supports his wife and actress Jyothika so much so that it awes me the kind of love and affection some people have for their loved ones. And Jackpot sums it up like no other.  In yet another attempt from Surya’s home production house 2D Entertainment, Jackpot is an out and out commercial masala film. At least that’s what it’s supposed to be. Jyothika and Revathi along with an extended crew including villain turned comedian Anandraj (in an interesting dual role), Yogi Babu, Manobala, Mansoor Ali Khan and Mottai Rajendran make one test their patience for over 140 mins. And succeed to some extent.

I’ve always liked thriller films. And if it’s in Tamil (off late, there have been quite a few), then I give it a shot. And when it’s the second film as a Director for someone after receiving much acclaim for his previous thriller, even more. And if it’s featuring Actor Vikram, I would jump into. And that’s how I ended up watching Kadaram Kondaan today. The first 10 minutes set the film on a good note. And that’s quite important, for that’s where you hook the audience. And the entire film is edgy with slick editing and cinematography, what with yet another fantastic underrated performance by Vikram.   The film opens with a cute couple Aatirah and Vasu Rajagopalan (Akshata Hassan and Abi Hassan - Offsprings of Kamal Hassan and Nasser, respectively) get the scan done at a maternity hospital only to be overjoyed seeing the little one in the womb. The couple has just moved to KL, Malaysia and the dialogues represent they have had a love marriage which doesn’t have the blessing o

Nanda Gopalan Kumaran is out on Amazon Prime since last week. One of the fastest films to hit the OTT Platform, even as mass fans and critics dubbed it as another dud for being too preachy on the social front. Somewhat similar to LKG feat. RJ Balaji which released three months back. NGK is played by Surya, fondly called Kumaran all through the film. He resigns a cushy job after completing his BE and Ph. D only to pursue Organic Farming in his native village where he enjoys working on the earthy fields, watching the evening turn in to nights and so on. Or so, he convinces his Mother and even as his educated wife (Sai Pallavi) who seem to love his decision to stay back in the native village. Well.   Kumaran sees in a real situation how a local Village Counsellor commands so much influence on the Bureaucrats, in this case a Collector. So he decides to shun Organic Farming and suddenly become a hunchman cum errand boy for a powerful MLA overnight where he learns the tricks of

Dev is a film about Meghna. Actually. There’s more “Meghna” in the film than Dev himself. Meghna is a young successful lady raised by a single mother. She doesn’t trust men due to her unsavoury childhood memories when her father deserted her. A classic case of rags to riches story, Meghna’s life is full of grit, determination and hard work for which she’s rewarded across the world while she runs a successful firm in the USA. That’s when she gets noticed by Dev, whose friends send her a Facebook request which she eventually doesn’t accept. After all, she has over 4,000 friend requests pending on her profile which she informs Dev when they meet for the first time. Dev impresses her over the course of time and they agree to live together all their life. For a frivolous reason, they get separated only to get back together on top of Mt. Everest, of all places. The film starts with Dev, a young man who’s fond of adventures trying to scale up the tallest peak on earth even as his is

Chinathai, aval petra Rajave, Mullil thondriya chinna rosaave! While there are so many songs composed by Maestro Illayaraja who celebrates his 76th Birthday today, my most loved one eulogising the legend is this song from Thalapathy sung by KS Chitra.  My abundant love for film music to which I've been addicted for over 4 decades is only because of Illayaraja's songs which I have grown listening to, all my life. So much so, that during my growing up years I had to have some music in the background for me to even study! Nothing much has changed even today - there's always background music even when I am working on something very important, while travelling driving and even when going to sleep. Over the years, I have collected hundreds of cassettes and later CDs and had downloaded thousands of songs during the last 20 years. In the past few years though, I have stopped downloading and have been listening to Music on the Go through apps such as Raaga, Gaana, Saav

The much expected Sivakarthikeyan’s latest outing Mr. Local released on Friday, 17 th May 2019 amidst much hype and fanfare with 3 songs already being chartbusters over the past month or so. After a slam dunk that was his previous “Seemaraja”, fans and critics alike expected a super hit from the “Small Screen to Satyam” Hero who has had many credits over the past few years including his much acclaimed cross gender role in Mr. Remo. The Vijay Tv Mimicry artist rose to fame with Dhanush’s “3” Movie in 2011 and has seen a steady increase in his popularity, salary and of course Box Office RoI. He was acclaimed for his roles in films like Maan Karaate and Ethir Neechal as well as in comedies like Varuthapadada Vaalibar Sangam. But like with most heroes who hit a peak with 10 films, it’s been the same with SK being no exception who hasn’t been able to choose his roles carefully as he should. Perhaps. It was being rumored that the film crew led by SK wasn’t super impressed with the

Being a big fan of Saamy which released in 2004 starring Vikram and Trisha and having watched the film so many times and having become a big fan of the racy screenplay writer Hari, I was quite eager to watch Saamy 2. Various reasons and I skipped watching on the big screen and it finally landed up on OTT. During a travel, caught up some time and watched the movie in 2 instalments, thankfully.  From the word go, the movie was a disaster. Trisha is replaced by Aishwarya Rajesh briefly and plays the same character of Molagapodi which is down right disgusting to watch. I mean, why would the Director or how could he even fantasise this stupidity? There was no reason, really for that flashback. Perhaps he could have taken some scenes from the previous version and edited even badly which the audience would have accepted.  The film moves very slowly between Delhi, Dehradun, Tirunelveli, Sri Lanka and Airports. All key characters including Vikram, Keerthy Suresh, Prabhu and Bobby Simha