A new genre?

After a long time, wife insisted I get out of the house and watch a movie on Friday night.

Guess the gray hair and visually obvious stress was a concern to everyone at home. So off they sent me to watch a new release Tamizh movie called "Sarvam". Did not understand even the title or the context, didn't know who was acting etc. etc.

Went to watch with the cousin and MIL. Before the movie started asked the cousin "so what is this movie about?" and the answer was "romantic thriller".

I was stumped. Romantic thriller? Did not know that there was a genre of movies like that.

In any case, the movie had a romance section in the front half and a disjoint supposed thriller section in the second half. It was a crying shame that the songs were done so well, with fantastic picturization and special effects, although in one or two places the locales and backdrops were so good that all the hero and heroine had to do was walk gracefully to carry the song and they screwed it up with some real bad dance moves. If you have seen the movie, you know exactly what I am talking about.

Sometimes you can give an architect the greatest of Italian Marble, Venetian stained glass, ocean floor sandstone, Burmese teak wood, etc. etc. but he could completely blotch it and make a freaking random heap of rubble out of the whole thing!

Sarvam brings to mind an old grandma adage "kurangu kayil poo maalai" (give a flower garland in the hands of a monkey). The monkey does not know how to appreciate the flower garland and will eventualy rip it to shreads. Someone gave this director a lot of beautiful elements to piece together or he did create a lot of beautiful pieces himself and he eventually......

made Sarvam out of it!

It was good that we went with no expectations. The first half of the movie was entertaining enough to compensate for the second half.

This movie is not just a romantic thriller, it also belongs to another genre, a nonthrilling thriller.

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Happy Tamizh New year

Wishing you a very happy Tamizh new year!

இனிய புத்தாண்டு நல்வாழ்த்துகள்!!

Love

Daddy, Mommy, Grandma and the Matching Salwar Girls

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Patience Little one

Grandma is back. Tamizh comes back with Grandma because she insists on talking with the kids in Tamizh. They usually reply to her in Tamizh.

The five month grandma absence has turned the Little one to almost 100% English.

A conversation between Grandma and the Little One earlier today:

LO : This is my bow bow doggie. (the toy pooping doggie)
GM : Tamizhla sollu! (say it in Tamizh)Say "idhu ennoda poo poo doggie"
LO : This is my poo poo doggie.
GM : say it "in Tamizh"!
LO : Gives her one frustated look and goes "This is my poo poo doggie in Tamizh!"

We pretty much saw Grandma's middle stick uproot. Clean bold!

The score : Grandma out for a duck and Little one has figures of 0.1-0-0-1

Let us see how Grandma does in her second innings!

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Happy Tamizh New Year

Wishing you all a very happy Tamizh new year!

இனிய புத்தாண்டு நல் வாழ்த்துக்கள் !!

Thanks to the Natesan's for giving them "matching" dresses for their Birthday!

Today's dressing session brought back memories of me and my brother, when we were the same age!

Wait, if you are thinking.. "oh so cute. Sundar and his brother must have worn matching outfits as kids!", you are way off base. There is only some truth to it!

When we were kids, our family went through tough times because my dad who worked in the insurance business was going through a labor strike. He did not have many choices. It was either sit at the picket line and forego pay or be ostracized. He chose picket lines, and that meant no pay! So we moved out of our big rental house to a small asbestos roofed shed the entire year of my 3rd grade(3rd standard!).

Naturally, there were no new clothes and we would end up getting new school uniforms stiched for diwali and no new clothes on our birthday. Somehow our parents made us understand what we were going through. For the next two three years, they were making a slow comeback, and that meant identical clothes for the two boys!

They would take us to Bombay Dyeing shop in Luz Corner and buy the same cloth by the meter and invariably ask the question "how much for him and how much for the little guy?". My brother and me would protest, take my parents to opposite ends of the shop to pick different patterns but invariably economics would take over. For a long time I used to see those books on my dad's shelf which said "Macro Economics - by Taylor" and would think that the guy at Art Land Tailors in Luz corner wrote those books!

Same pattern, same clothes and worse for my brother, he would get my hand me downs, which meant he would end up wearing the same pattern for another year or two. The horror! For some reason the parents, the relatives and even family friends would think this was "cute". Hopefully we were really cute, and they weren't laughing behind our backs. The phase finally came to an end, when I went to high school and my brother was as tall as me and eventually became taller than me. He was probably praying every day for some miracle by which the matching outfit, hand me down horror would end and was glad that it did.

Today it was so different watching the two girls, so happy to be wearing the same dress. Guess that is one of those things where, girls are different from boys!

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Movie Sequences

It is common these days to see Indian movies blatantly copy foreign movies with a small twist in the end. For some reason, the entire scene by scene lifting of another movie has reduced drastically in the last year.

The new trend is to just recreate segments of hit western or south east asian movies. Segments as in, a series of stunt sequences, family situations, drama situations etc. Needless to say, if they never gave any credit to the original after copying an entire movie, they are not going to give any credit for copying segments.

The funny thing is the arguments between me and the Mrs. on these sequences. Somehow she manages to forget the original sequence and is amazed by the creativity of the Director or actor or cinematographer! That gets to me more than the director. It is easier for me to show relation to the original when the source of the sequences is another Indian movie.

For example, the movie we watched recently can be expressed with the equation:

Thotaa = Thotti Jaya + Fanaa - Chimpu

where Chimpu is the fudge factor, or in movie terms the sludge factor!

Here is another sequence:

Hero is cornered on a high rise building
He is standing on the parapet wall on the top floor looking down
The old and wise cop is puffing and panting but nevertheless has a gun pointed at the hero
Cop delivers a dialogue about how the entire building is surrounded and it is "surrender" or "death by falling"!
Hero lets cop count
Just as cop counts one hero spots a train in a distance. (the tracks are not even close to the building, but what the hell!)
When the cop counts three, there is a .5 second pause and the hero falls, arms out
Then we see the rope he is holding
He swings a distance of around half a mile and precisely lands on the top of the train.
The hero looks back and smiles
The old cop who looks like he needs eye glasses rated +5.5 in the right eye and +6.5 in the left, gives a wry smile and identifies the hero's face from the train top a mile away..

Familiar??? Lets see what you think the original is!

Here is another one.

Boy comes to girls parents house to be introduced.
Boy has just lost his job before joining girl on the trip
He needs money
The prospective father in law figures out that he has money troubles
So they have a race (running, go-cart, whatever) and if the boy wins the girls dad will loan him the money, if not the boy should leave the girl alone and walk away!
In the same movie girl stops talking to boy because he hid his "losing the job" part from her. Eventually boy helps girls dad join girls mom (they are fighting as well) and the parents help girl join boy! The director of the Tamizh copy is even supposed to have attributed the sequence to a wrong original! If you are a movie trivia buff name the original, copy and the wrong original mentioned in the media..

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