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.

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 (!).

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:-)

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.

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.

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

Vijay,

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

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..

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.

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…

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.

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.

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…

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.