(No matter where you are right now, no matter how old you are, I am sure you always have your favorite old songs by these dynamic duo that you don’t mind humming the whole day long. Image source: Silverscreen India)
Despite “starting off” with the music of Illayaraja and later discovering the new age music of A R Rahman and then Yuvan Shankar Raja, Harris and all the new music directors, I always had soft spot for the music from the 1960s and 1970s in particular songs composed by MS Viswanathan – Ramamoorthy (MSV) and penned by the great poet Kannadasan (I also liked songs composed by KV Mahadevan and AM Raja).
All of us watches movies (some on daily basis) and at some point of life, you will come across movies that can only be classified as “great”. A first class classics like this and new ones like this. We pay to watch these movies (those who subscribe to the movie channels at Astro, you will know what I mean) and thus all we ask for is that if you can’t make a great entertaining movie, then make one that is logical.
(A movie that is full of big names but also full of holes in the plot. Image source: the Net)\
(The many faces of the great man in multiple roles all these years and he still making headlines even now. Image source: http://www.bollywoodlife.com)
In terms of acting, after the great Sivaji Ganesan, we were lucky to have Kamal Haasan taking up the lead when it comes to powerful acting. And over the years, he has not let us down with powerful storyline and acting (still remember this?).
Western classical music is perspective – look at the number of people involved in a symphony! Our traditional music is lonely – Ilaiyaraja
(My collection cover image – the image of Maestro Ilaiyaraja. Image source: http://www.tamilkey.com)
As long I could remember, I have been listening to Ilaiyaraja music since I was still young and started to have an appreciation of his style of music – all the way from the 1970s (you are aware that Annakili was not his first movie and that he had to impress the producer Panchu Arunachalam by singing a song that his mother sang and using the table as an music instrument?) to his latest flick in “Neethane En Ponvasantham” – thanks to my Dad who was big fan of Ilaiyaraja (Ilaiyaraja means the “younger” Raja – that is because the Tamil music industry already had another music director named Raja – the famed A.M. Raja).
(Perhaps this is just the distraction that one needs from the National Feedlot screw-up by yet to be retired BN politicians)
Still remember when you were young and you used (and still) watch those old Tamil movies where the star actor acts in more than one role (usually playing the role of the father & son or the good & evil brothers)?
(Seeing Sivaji Ganesan in action is one thing but seeing the two of them could be a double whammy. Both interacted well on screen but still there are some limitations as to how both characters blended in on screen. Image source: Business Line)
When both roles is shown on the same scene, one character would be on one side of the frame whilst the other character on the other. The only time when these two characters overlapped each other is when one of the characters is played by someone else (it will be shown without showing the face). It was good and highlighted the difficulties that the actors, director and editor have to go through to ensure that that particular scene comes out just perfect.
Even so, seeing the same person on two different roles at the same time in a movie was a big thing back then and we knew that it was not easy to do. Just imagine the number of takes just to get the actor acting as if there was another of “him” standing next to him and the film editors cutting and stitching the film rolls at the right places.
But those were the years when technology has yet to catch up with the art of story telling.
It is a whole different ball game now and we have seen it in great deal in special effect laden Hollywood movies and they seems to be getting better at it year in, year out. Tamil movies have seen some improvement when it comes to CGIs as well. We saw a great deal in Dasavatharam (where Kamal Hassan played 10 different roles and interacting with each of them at some point of the movie), Enthiran (ya, the stupid climax) and recently Shah Rukh Khan‘s Ra.One (the storyline sucked big time but the CGI is top notch).
Now with computer animations, blue screens (green screens as the above) and well choreographed acting, the result is simply amazing. You can have more than one characters on the screen played by the same actor and they blend and interact with each other as if they are played by different actors.
[youtube=http://youtu.be/EZY_KRXXRyU]
Take for example this song scene from the movie Thillalangadi (2010) where the hero and the heroin is shown in different roles and interacting with each other in a very fluid manner (it makes it even better with Yuvan Shankar Raja‘s lovable music, very meaningful lyrics and well coordinated choreography).
Now that that is mind-blowing! Add that with a clean, logical story-telling, superb background music and fine acting and you will have a real winner.
I started blogging in 2005 – it seems to be “in” thing back then
I started blogging mainly because I wanted an avenue to put my thoughts in writing and improve on my mastery of English (I am still trying). And along the way, I have picked something on presentation, html and coding. Blogging also became a mean of communication between me and my wife when I had to travel overseas.
Then one day, I took a step back and had a hard look at my blog. Surely it was not a specialized blog – it had too many things in it, often driven by my mood, news of the day or simply, the country I was in. I often bring along my camera wherever I go and over the years, my photo collection has been growing too. I have put up some of the photos in the main blog but often it is presented as the “side story” and in smaller resolutions. I had to have a dedicated site for the photos. So, a year later my photo blog was born. It was going great for sometime – yes it has been sometime since I last update it but at least, my blogging on photos will be focused on dedicated site instead of cluttering in my already multi-themed posts main blog.
And over the years, a few more blogs have born (some remains stagnant now) – mainly because I wanted to write on certain things but I do not want it to be mixed up in my main blog posts.
Since I need to travel often and sometimes I end up going to places where there is no entertainment or cable TV (or beer), I often had to bring my own “entertainment” to keep my sanity up (it is either that or bring along a captivating computer games). And traveling also means I spend most of my free time watching movies – mostly via cable TV or when that is not possible, from cheap DVDs and movie files. It is one of the best ways to kill time – watching a good movie is almost as good as reading a good book, almost. And in the last few months, I have noticed that my collection of music, movies, documentaries and animations have been slowly growing too. And it is easier these days to transport it from a “space hungry” discs into a small file that can be stored away in an external hard disc instead of in a cabinet.
And out of the many, on the contrary I have done a very few reviews in my main blog. Reasons for this is rather simple – 1. There is already less time for me to do write-ups for more critical issues (like this) for the main blog, what more on posts on a lesser critical posts like movie reviews, and 2. While I like the diversity in my blog posts, given the number of the movie I watched during my free time, I do not want the main blog to be dominated by movie reviews alone.
Clearly I was running behind on my reviews especially when there are some unknown movies simply that blow you away. But faced with the same dilemma that I had with my photos, I don’t want to have too many movie reviews to clog up my main blog, it was clear that I need to “outsource” again – this time to a dedicated site for English movie reviews (includes others like documentaries, animations and concerts) and another for Tamil movie reviews.
To kick things up, head over here for review on the movie Buried (2010) and here for review on Tamil movie Vaanam (2011)
I hope to do up more reviews soon, now that there is a better place to do up the reviews as compared to previous time and also to distract the focus from the headache that one had when had to content with the issues facing the country and the future generation. And with an unexpected “break” in my daily routines this month, it gives good opportunity to catch up my previous “should have done, should have watched” reviews. Comments and suggestions on the review sites are always welcomed, of course.
We cannot separate “crying scenes” from Tamil movies but sometimes sadness can come in other forms as well especially when you have Kamal in the lead role.
I may have my “bad moments” with Tamil movies but I have to admit that some Tamil movies or scenes are simply gems. I talked about comedies in Tamil movies and (one of) my favourite sad moment from Tamil movies has to be this:-
(Note: Sometimes this video shows an error message – video is not available but a retry later show it is working. I don’t know why. Alternatively snippets of the scene can be found in Google video here)
