Bang for the Buck

  14 Responses to “Bang for the Buck”

1. 

   Vijay says:

   Jun, 30 2005 at 11:21 am

   Some big directors/actors(including Kamal) waste their time on insignif­i­cant things that dont add up to a lot on the screen. This is just another instance. Kamal spent sev­eral months appar­ently, learn­ing to shoot rocket launch­ers for a 2-minute scene in Kurud­hipunal. In the end, what dif­fer­ence did it make for the viewer? Many such exam­ples can be given. Mis­guided sense of per­fec­tion. Time that could have been bet­ter spent on pol­ish­ing the script/screenplay or plug­ging the holes.

   That aside, Shankar tries his best to cater to audi­ences from A, B and C cen­ters. That’s his strength as a com­mer­cial movie maker, that’s his weak­ness as an artist. Dis­cern­ing movie view­ers com­plain, but the pro­ducer does’nt.
2. 

   Karthik says:

   Jul, 1 2005 at 11:13 am

   Vijay — very sen­si­ble points. Shankar is a very suc­cess­ful direc­tor, and Anniyan was a big hit: but my point was that he could have got­ten the same result with less effort.

   Tamil movies can­not be Hol­ly­wood: they have a very lim­ited mar­ket, and we _have_ to make com­pro­mises, unless the movie can appeal to a world­wide audience (!).
3. 

   Raj says:

   Jul, 1 2005 at 10:04 pm

   Has to be one of the most hyped Tamil movie ever! and it fiz­zled ten min­utes after it started. What a total waste of money and time and I agree the fake accent was a com­plete put off. Didnt care to watch the songs.…but lis­tened to a cou­ple of them on raaga.com.… pretty catchy:-)
4. 

   Sibyl says:

   Jul, 2 2005 at 8:14 am

   Thank you, thank you for warn­ing me in advance.
   I wasn’t warned about Chan­dra­mukhi and I saw it along with many well-meaning Rajni fans, me think­ing naively that it would be faith­ful to the bril­liant Malay­alam original.

   I had to sit through the movie, una­mused and bored while the oth­ers guf­fawed with laugh­ter and ooh-aahed…Rajni, appar­ently, is the best.
5. 

   Navin says:

   Jul, 2 2005 at 9:49 am

   Karthik,

   I read ur post on Ila­yaraja a while ago.. couldnt spot it now..

   I made a longish post on TIS here –>

   http://blogontheweb.com/navin/

   I know I sound a bit hyp­o­crit­i­cal.. but its open for com­ments. Pls do take a look.
6. 

   vijay says:

   Jul, 4 2005 at 12:01 pm

   Navin, link is not work­ing. Pl check before you post.
7. 

   Karthik says:

   Jul, 4 2005 at 12:20 pm

   Vijay,

   That post was not the first one on his blog: Click here instead.
8. 

   suks says:

   Oct, 25 2005 at 3:36 am

   Dis­cern­ing movie watch­ing crowd??
   agreed cin­ema is an art form, a reflec­tion of life.
   But what form of life do movies like matrix, star wars rep­re­sent? why have they become so-called “world hits” ?? of course peo­ple arent talk­ing about real­is­tic cin­ema here.. the big screen has and will always be a medium of grandoise imag­i­na­tion. Why is it we appre­ci­ate the poetic beauty of the clas­sics, wherein the same “roses behead­ing them­selves in shame” con­cept has been in the rife…weary of the pres­sures of life, the cienma hall is a 2hr stress reliever where u live a life out of your mun­dane every­day wor­ries and strifes.. such mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal potray­als are very much in taste.. i am sorry to sound harsh, but i sense a strain of mis guided hypocrisy in both the post and the com­ments that fol­low it…
   i m not too sure if this com­ment will catch atten­tion, being quite out of date… nev­er­the­less to sat­isfy myself..
9. 

   Karthik says:

   Oct, 25 2005 at 1:31 pm

   Matrix and Anniyan in the same breath? Poetic clas­sics and roses bow­ing in shame in Anniyan are the same thing? Ok, Suks. We will agree to dis­agree — I could try and explain, but our per­cep­tions dif­fer so much that it is unlikely we’ll agree.

   But I’ll say this: The graph­ics in Matrix were the movie. They were not out of place script­wise, and the exe­cu­tion was per­fect. In Anniyan, the graph­ics were out of place, unnec­es­sary and shod­dily exe­cuted. Grandiose imag­i­na­tion is alright, but if you force your imag­i­na­tion to be grandiose all the time, then it is not so cool. Every one of Shankar’s movies are coated with this false grandios­ity, and that irri­tates me no end.
10. 

    suks says:

    Oct, 26 2005 at 3:55 am

    Well, i can see ur anguish at the humungous chasm between our tastes.. but nev­er­the­less, con­sider the tar­get audi­ence.. I would say that Shankar has toned down graph­ics to the lay under­stand­ing.. if it affects the sen­si­bil­i­ties of the so called eru­dite crowd,i m sorry to say, that the lay folk still exist and will always do. Maybe you and ur bretheren could do a leap and bound and ele­vate ur tastes in a jiffy, but the aver­age man with very less access to the “west­ern­ised world” does things at his own pace.. Early graph­ics in the west too wer­ent as “classy and debonair” as matrix seems to be…And besides, cul­ture and taste should take its own course to devl­op­ment, not be dic­tated by the sen­si­bil­ties of a niche crowd. If the British found indian cul­ture harsh and crude, and tried to impose their own per­force, (which they tried to do) we would have lost a lot many things we now cher­ish and show­case to the world… There could be more than one path to progress… Give tamil cin­ema of the main­stream cat­e­gory some time to grow, before admon­ish­ing its style and con­tent… Mas­ters of west­ern cin­ema are more open to com­mer­cialised, dreamy bollywood/kollywood than our own bur­geouise… After­all it all boils down to 3 hrs of blow­ing ur imag­i­na­tion. Per­haphs your lifestyles dont let u blow them as shown by these movies, but the pop­u­lace still gets enter­tained…
    And if the con­cern is about the plau­si­bilty of the sto­ry­line, i guess anniyan and matrix fare equally well.. For­get the technicalities…
11. 

    Karthik says:

    Oct, 26 2005 at 9:42 am

    Suks, Appre­ci­ate your civil response.

    The sub­text of your reply seems to be that I am being snob­bish, and let me point you to DoZ’s won­der­ful post on the topic. It is not snob­bery, or “west­ern­ised taste” or “eru­di­tion,” it is mostly anguish and irri­ta­tion. You think “lay” peo­ple appre­ci­ate the corny graph­ics? The com­ment I heard most in the the­ater when the roses did it was “Aaram­bi­chi­tanya.” Watch­ing smoke com­ing out of some­ones ears and throw­ing mock arrows might have been fun and novel in Gen­tle­man, but Shankar has repeated it over and over and over and over in all his movies, and ennui has set it. The whole point of the post was that Shankar spends money unnec­es­sar­ily — that he could pro­duce an end prod­uct as good as this (per­haps bet­ter) if only he would get over the big is good men­tal­ity. And BTW, I don’t expect him to, he is too drunk on suc­cess to real­ize his flaws.
12. 

    suks says:

    Oct, 27 2005 at 12:33 am

    well, as for DoZs post.. its after read­ing that, i chanced upon ur blog… Was kinda taken aback at the con­trast in the treat­ment of the same topic…if i m to be can­did, yours did hav a high handed approach, wheras i really enjoyed Doz’s post.
    Which is why, i left the “unusu­ally strong worded com­ment”…
    Peo­ple, used to watch­ing home videos on the couch, prob­a­bly would find the “BIG is GOOD” con­cept child­ish and uncouth.. But, agreed the jump­ing off the ciel­ing and stu­pid roman­tic dio­logues of remo were kinda irk­some for nor­mal sen­si­bil­i­ties.., Still, one cant write off the movie as an insipid enter­tainer. I, for one found it amusing,overall, if not “intel­le­cually stim­u­lat­ing”. This aaram­bichutanya dio­logue is for the “fatigued” movie goer.. not for the chance cin­ema hall vis­i­tor.. Besides, it did con­vey some mes­sage, peo­ple i knew, even those who were crit­i­cal of the it, could relate their real life with the inci­dents in the movie, though cer­tain aspects were exag­ger­ated, it did carry a sem­b­lence of truth.. That par­tic­u­lar scene where the phoren returned desi waits for the sabha chance which is given to a less qual­i­fied but big shot rec­om­mended gal, and his reac­tion cap­tures it all.. Peo­ple are so fond of say­ing “U guys suck man”… Con­vie­niently for­get­tin that they were once a part of the abomi­nous “u guys”…
    As for the civil­ity, i m gra­cious for our acknowl­edge­ment of that.
13. 

    Karthik says:

    Oct, 27 2005 at 1:20 am

    Suks,

    Not sure about high-handed. Fun­nily enough, I was left defend­ing my Gha­jini review — peo­ple thought I was being too kind. As for the rest of your com­ment, I was not look­ing for intel­lec­tual stim­u­la­tion when I watched Anniyan. I was look­ing for enter­tain­ment, and the whole point of the post was that what­ever enter­tain­ment the movie pro­vided could have been pro­vided at a sig­nif­i­cantly lower cost. That’s all there was to it.

    If you want classy film­mak­ing within Tamil cin­ema, look at Bala and Mani­rat­nam. If mind­less enter­tain­ment is your genre of choice, Muru­ga­doss, Cha­ran and *gulp* K.S.Ravikumar pro­vide it at half the cost of Shankar.

    PS: By the way, Anniyan didn’t do all that well in Tamil. Dif­fer­ent story in Tel­ugu, though. Does that mean peo­ple were being too intellectual?

    PPS: Thanks for all the com­ments, it keeps my mind of the inces­sant rain pour­ing down here…
14. 

    suks says:

    Oct, 28 2005 at 1:47 am

    Yep, the inces­sant rain and the imbroglio that fol­lowed, has sure made me realise, that here i am hagggling abt some worth­less movie, when the world around me is in semi-chaos. Any­ways, thanks for patiently bear­ing through the mind­less arguments.

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