When Crummy, Cruddy, Cheesy and Crappy Compete

   Movies  15 Responses »
Mar 092006
 

The last month has seen sev­eral truly remark­able things hap­pen to this blog: We turned into a group blog with two real con­trib­u­tors, and sev­eral imag­i­nary ones. Our fan fol­low­ing among phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies seems to have increased, and like all deliri­ous new fans, they can’t seem to stop writ­ing to us. (We might trash your let­ters, ladies, but your affec­tion means a lot to us.)

We watched four hor­rid Tamil movies. While that in itself is not remark­able, what is remark­able is that we have refrained from review­ing any of them. Even this post is not a review per se. It is about cel­e­brat­ing the movies in ques­tion and reward­ing them for the things they did.

And so, with­out fur­ther ado, Ladies, Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Indus­try Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and other Gen­tle­men, here we go.

The Freak­ist Bird Flu-ke Award:

Kamna Jeth­malani, the lead girl in Idhaya Thiru­dan wants to send an anony­mous email to her mom. She types up the email — whose con­tents are the proud recip­i­ents of another award — but she can’t fig­ure out how to sign the email.

Unable to pick a ran­dom name, she picks up a pigeon hov­er­ing nearby and lays it gen­tly on top of the key­board. The pigeon walks back, then forth. Then forth again, and back once more. And then flies away, to leave the half dressed girl star­ing at the screen.

The pigeon had just keyed in T. Mahesh, which hap­pens to be the name of.. you guessed it, the hero of the movie. What an incred­i­bly clever way to move a story for­ward. Any­one out there who still thinks our moviemak­ers are unimaginative?

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 Posted by Karthik at 12:23 pm

Listening, Looking, Ignoring

 Etc.  6 Responses »
Mar 072006
 

I’ve been a spec­ta­tor for a while now.

I watched silently, Krishna in tow, when a bunch of class­mates decided to take a peek into the girls dress­ing room on a trip to Ban­ga­lore. And lis­tened to their sto­ries — much exag­ger­ated, much embell­ished — after­wards, and won­dered for a sec­ond if Krishna and I had missed out on some­thing. Later, guilt.

I expressed a bit of dis­be­lief and not much more when I heard that some of the guys that I stud­ied with worked. Where work­ing means get­ting off stand­ing behind a girl in a crowded bus. Really get­ting off.

I’ve seen a lot. In buses and movie the­aters, upscale malls and veg­etable mar­kets. From cat­calls to breath­ing down the neck, from elbow­ing a fel­low pas­sen­ger to things a bit more than elbow­ing. Every­time, a silent “What the…” and I’ve moved on. Some­times, not even that.

And for the last week, I’ve watched an incred­i­ble lineup of posts for the Blank Noise Blo­gathon, and stayed silent myself.

Until now, until this post. In the hope that something’ll come out of it all.

Tag: blog-a-thon 2006

 Posted by Karthik at 5:03 am

Itemized Reductions

  Travel  4 Responses »
Mar 062006
 

When is the right time to write about Penang?

After is when.

After the ini­tial fas­ci­na­tion that mag­ni­fies the slight­est of con­trasts into exotic sin­gu­lar­i­ties has worn off. After over­com­ing the shock of being sur­rounded by peo­ple speak­ing my lan­guage, of hav­ing to watch what I say; of not look­ing too out of place in a large gath­er­ing of peo­ple not dis­cussing immi­gra­tion issues. After the joy of see­ing an Indian restau­rant at every street cor­ner has been washed away by the watery sam­bar, after real­iz­ing that tea with con­densed milk is not such a great idea.

Now is when. But what?

Surely not the archi­tec­tural dichotomy of George Town, fos­tered by arcane rent con­trol laws. Through which the mas­sive, utterly char­ac­ter­less Kom­tar sits right next to the mod­ern Pran­gin Mall, and seedy, unpainted estab­lish­ments occupy most of down­town. Noth­ing we haven’t seen before, right? Even though blind mas­sages aren’t exactly the norm in most places.

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 Posted by Karthik at 12:16 am

A Tepid Testimonial

   Movies  14 Responses »
Mar 042006
 

Bhavna clutch­ing an umbrella, Sunil clutch­ing an underarm.

The boy: toughie, hired goon, bearded brute, all rough edges and bad act­ing, tall and dark and not so handsome.

The girl: heart that bleeds for all, assists help­less peo­ple cross roads, smooth and pretty and volup­tuous and rich and pretty and smooth. Sigh. I mean, scratch the sigh.

How could they not fall in love? And how could he not turn over a new leaf, bring­ing a few odd­ball leaves along with him to keep him enter­tained at new­dom? And how could their wed­ding plans not be rudely inter­rupted by her see­ing him visit some­place not nice? And how could they not… well, no spoil­ers on this blog folks. By the way, for the record, this post is about a movie called Chithi­ram Pesudhadi.

“Ordi­nary plot,” you want to say, “hack­neyed and trite, tried and tested (and failed).” True, we say, the movie is all that, but it has a lit­tle bit more going for it — it is dis­arm­ingly unpre­ten­tious and heart­warm­ingly earnest. The earnest­ness of a first time direc­tor striv­ing hard — very hard — within his con­traints to sal­vage some­thing out of a mediocre script shines through every frame, draw­ing empa­thy from his view­ers, and Chithi­ram man­ages to get off with sym­pa­thetic winces where another movie would’ve got­ten a groan or two.
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 Posted by Karthik at 5:31 am
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