Thamizh padam
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Warning: This post might be a bit NSFW. First, watch this. Then we’ll talk: This post began with an urgent request for my email id from Ganesh Raghuraman in the middle of the night. Since he knew me well enough, I figured that the matter had to be of earth-shattering inconsequence for him to sound so desperate,
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I always love the bit where Bond meets Q and gets a bunch of toys, all of which, would you know it, get used in critical situations. Which leads me to wonder about the dramatic possibilities of an action sequence where 007 desperately needs an exploding pen and finds himself stuck with a portable defibrillator
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Forget the drama about who might win, the post-performance gushing or even the insightful commentary from some of the judges, the “comedy track” about fat kids and Tamil accents and whatever else the producers’ desperate, picayune imagination can come up with in order to fill the airtime with something other than just music. Here’s the
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A famous actress — the Ms Meena of the title — returns to the little village she grew up in, presumably to shoot her last film. The villagers, most of whom live in reduced circumstances, hope that her visit will change things for the better. Much of their hope rests on the person of Ravi,
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Thalaivaa begins, as all films in multiplexes do these days, with a fairly long and graphic advisory on the hazards of tobacco consumption. While I appreciate the thought, I cannot help but chuckle at the irony of placing it at the beginning of a film about an underworld don and the son who takes his
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Now, I can be a bit of a churl when I am reviewing movies. But honestly, my expectation from a regular Tamil masala movie is simply that it go about its business without fuss and not make too many mistakes. If the hero wants to beat up a score of snarling interchangeable henchmen all by
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Warning: Beware of… nah, nothing here is a spoiler, given what the trailers give away. But who knows what someone might take umbrage at, so beware, anyway. Okay, so what exactly is all the hoopla about? Or is it just me who is unable to see the offensive material packed into a story about an Al
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This is not going to be about how good an album Kadal is, or how Rahman’s doing a great job of importing blues and gospel to our shores. This album may not rank among his absolute best, but it is certainly very good. More importantly in the context of his recent collaborations with Mani Ratnam, melodious —
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At this point, I suppose, I should define “we”. I refer to peole like me, born in Madras in the nineteen-seventies and ripening into cinematic awareness in the decade that followed, in Mani Ratnam’s decade. We are possibly the most qualified to write about Mani Ratnam. We might also be the least qualified. — Conversations
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What is this fascination for intelligence officers in mainstream Indian cinema these days? There was Agent Vinod, a secret agent who seemed to get caught so often and in so many countries that he clearly ought to have picked a different line of business. And Ek Tha Tiger, whose ridiculousness was redeemed by the fact that the
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