The Item Number

Was watching the movie "Polladhavan" yesterday. I had already made one attempt to watch this movie, got fed up of the comedy track and thought I would not watch it.

Then the wife and mother in law told me that after that 20 minutes of bad movie making, the thing actually picked up speed and the rest of the movie was "good"!

So, I gave it another chance. They were right. Once you got past the bad comedy routine, the movie did pick up speed.

Just as the movie was reaching the climax and all loose ends were being tied... out of nowhere, a Song!!! A skimpily clad woman with no relevance to the movie dancing around with some skimpierly© clad and skimpiestly© clad extras dancing in the background! Pissed me off to no end. This in Indian movie parlance, is called an "item number"!

Why would the director do something like this?

a. This is now the norm in all big budget Tamizh movies. It is like one of those chimp stories. If you don't know what I am talking about, no worries. I will elaborate as usual! In an experiment (read somewhere by Dr. Narayanöhe), they put 4 chimps in a caged enclosure. They had a bunch of banana's in a corner with an electrified fence around the bananas. All four learnt the hard way that the banana's were off limits. Then one of the chimps was replaced with a new young chimp. The other three would stop the young chimp from trying for the banana, for fear that the chimp might get electrocuted. Slowly they replaced all the chimps with new chimps. In spite of the electricity being turned off a long time ago, the chimps would stop each other from going for the bananas in that corner! So in essence, even if the director of today's Tamizh movie is new and has a fresh perspective, and the audience is mature, they cannot shake off the item number!

b. The director knows that his movie is already too long. Scientific experiments by BOGUS Institute have already shown that the average adult can hold his/her bladder only for 2 hours and 40 minutes and a child for 1 hour and 30 minutes. That said, all the kids get to go to the restroom during the interval break and the adults who never got to go potty during the interval are holding on as the movie drags towards its 3 hour completion time (Yes people! In India, the movies have a 20 minute intermission after two thirds of the movie is done). The directors introduced the item number, so that the men folk would not be able to hold their bladders while still watching the skimpsters shake their stuff on the big screen and would be forced to go to the restroom. When they come back they are able to appreciate the movie ending. If not for the forced restroom break, they would have cursed the director for a long movie! The women of course are never consulted in such matters!

c. The item number is in reality a necessity to sell the film. Audiences would rather see the movie with this soft porn song and dance sequence included than without. Now,that does not say much about the audience. Would they turn out in droves if instead of the item number, they show the hero watching porn and they zoom into his TV screen and show a 3 minute sex sequence instead of the item number? That experiement is yet to be done!

Before writing this post, I did a google search for "item number". I did not want to rant about something that obviously needs some ranting and would have already been covered extensively?! Was really surprised by what I found !

Looks like the answer may be "All of the above"!

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The little devil

What does it mean, when a married couple who have Tamizh and English as their default languages, are seen speaking in Hindi? This from a couple who were recently seen talking to each other in "Spell"!

If you do not know spell, here is an example.

Dad : Do I G-I-V-E her I-C-E C-R-E-A-M today ?
Mom : A L-I-T-T-L-E

or

Dad : have to G-O T-O O-F-F-I-C-E soon etc.

There are two reasons..

1. Jr. has now figured out the English language in its totality. She can speak, write and read! That means, she KNOWS spell. That also means she is privy to information that we try to keep from the little one when we talk in Spell and promptly goes and tells the little one. This makes it look like we are conspiring against baby and Jr. is her guardian angel!

2. The little one now understands Tamizh and English to a point where she can embarass us in public. Here is a conversation from our trip to the east coast over the last weekend:

Mom : enga pora ? (where are you going?)
Me : Bathroom (in hushed tone). Watch them for a few minutes.
When I come back towards the stroller...
Me : lets go
Little one : (with a big smile on her face on seeing me walk towards her)

Daddy? Pooh-pooh DONE ?

I have no idea how she heard or caught on to the fact that I was visiting the restroom. She announced the question, in a tone that would put the airport public address system to shame. Everyone in Terminals A through C would have looked up and thought "Good for you Daddy. But why tell everyone at the airport?", and continued on with their business.

Now the adults in the family only speak in Hindi.

We are also planning to enroll in Chinese classes starting next quarter at the local community college as a backup plan.

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Sivaji - Reviewview

Preface : This is about the Tamizh Movie "Sivaji" staring Super Star Rajni!

So what is different about this Re-view-view ?

Well, you have to see a movie to review it! I am going to violate all known ethical codes by writing a review for a movie that I have not yet seen. But I am not the first one. I have actually seen a lot of posts which say review, but talk about the hype and what to expect and promise to write the real review after watching the movie. I will join that bandwagon.

Who is who ? What is What ?

I will now proceed to set minds to rest over the various questions that people might have with respect to this post. Why should it be even relevant ? Well, people are asked a few questions in the United States and binned accordingly ! Are you a republican or democrat, are you pro-life or pro-choice, are you okay with homosexuals or are you a homophobe, etc. etc. But in Tamizhnadu they also ask you, do you like Super Star or not, do you like Sivaji or not, etc. Plus any post with Sivaji in the title is immediately judged. The author is judged on his % Pro Rajni-ness! and is promptly lauded or flamed. Considering I am sarcastic by default, I better answer these questions..

So lets proceed :

Do I like Rajni ? Yes
Do I like movies ? Yes
Do I like Rajni movies ? Mostly!
Do I still like him after he is old and tries to act young ? Yes (except the romance part).
Did I like Baba ? No
Did I like Chandramukhi ? Yes
Did I watch FDFS (first day first show) for Baba ? No
same for Chandramukhi ? Yes
When did I really watch Baba ? After it came out on DVD.
Will I wait for Sivaji to come out on DVD ? probably not!
Then why the $*%& am I waiting ? For tickets to drop to 10$
Have I made up my opinion on this movie yet ? No (seriously!)
Will my wife throw me out if I watch the movie and say it sucks ? No
Will my wife make me vadai, payaasam, etc. if I watch the movie and say I loved it ? No
Do the above two answers prove that I will express my honest opinion when I do see the movie ? Yes!
Do I expect this to be a good movie ? No.
Do I expect this to be a good Rajni movie ? Yes.
Will I watch it only for Rajni and ARR ? Yes.
Will I actually come back and write a real review later ? Hell NO! That would become an insignificant post. "Bay area man writes the 646,259,946745'th Sivaji Review" would be the headline. No Sir, not me.

Now here is my Re?View based on all the gazillion reviews I have read in the one week since this movie has been released to the general public! Practically everyone and their dog has a review of Sivaji!

Ahem...

Sivaji is a mass entertainer, where Super Star still shows that Style always rules over substance when it comes to this genre of movies. If Tom Cruise had half the style of Rajnikant, MI-III would have been a real blockbuster. It had the same hype and the money thrown in, with Cruise Star power, possibly the biggest hollywood could boast at the time, but the results were not even close. .(Well I havent seen Sivaji, but everyone else has and ergo, style has ruled over substance. As for lack of substance, that seems to be in unanimous agreement as well!).

That said, there are still a lot of gripes over the lack of a proper storyline, coherence, poor chemistry between the hero and heroine, songs that come up suddenly, length of the movie, etc. etc. The blogosphere seems to be polarized between two extremes on this one.

Some reviews say that these things while considered flaws for an average movie, do not really matter in a Rajni movie where the audience pays, just to see the man strutt his style on the big screen and utter punch dialogues. As a guy who stood 764'th in line at AMC Mercado to watch first day first show of "End of Days" or the dude who stood 1234'th in line to watch "The 6th Day" at the same theater, just to watch Arnold utter punch dialogues and throw people in the air, I can totally understand this type of review.

The next type of review goes on to pay its respects to "Thalaivar" (Rajni's nick name), his style etc., and bashes everyone else involved in making this movie with the exception of ARR. Shankar and Sujatha are prime targets with the producer being the secondary target, for wasting his money and not keeping an eye on the quality of the film! Now, how many of you can claim that you have watched two free movies in the same year, by just using your AMC movie watcher card? San and me can. That means, in the year we got married, we watched "at least" a movie a week, in theaters!! One day, we went to the 21 theater complex and found to our dismay that there was only one movie that was playing in all 21 rooms that we hadn't watched. So we watched it as well. As irony would have it, the movie was "Superstar", a film that left us speechless! We considered it an all time low in our movie watching life. As someone who has seen enough and more movies which lack substance or logic, my guess is that these guys are probably right. But a Rajni movie has to have all the Rajni elements or it would cease to be a Rajni movie. It is a self fulfiling prophecy! After Muthu was released, the Japanese have discovered the "Rajniberg Uncertainity principle", which states that it is impossible to have Rajni and Logic in the same movie and any attempt to precisely fix logic in the movie will make the Rajni part questionable!

Finally, we come to the hardcore "nay" sayers, who write, "Rajni is obligated to give his fans a decent movie", "A movie should not insult the audience's intelligence", "who will bell this commercial cat" (okay, okay, I came up with that last one), etc. etc. These are reviewers, who have either tried to judge this movie by the average movie standards or have reviewed it with an underdog mentality or trying to reason with mass hysteria, with an aim of being the sane voice. These are the ones who are promptly lauded for their guts and honesty for daring to say the truth and are also flamed in the comment box. I offer my deep condolences to this type of reviewer. India, or the USA for that matter is not free country. The internet does not have freedom of speech. If you do speak against mass hysteria you WILL be flamed! I can write a book about this! Once again, this is like saying bad things about WWF (and fear getting beaten up by some big dude next to you who is a fan), or saying bad things about Harry Potter (and fear getting beaten up by an angry teenager) or saying bad things about George W Bush (and fear getting beaten up by the government)! Apparently there are consequences if you dont agree with the general public. I would also point out to these reviewers that "Rajni is not obligated to do diddly squat!". He has made his money, and made his die hard fans happy, which were about the only things he was obligated to do, and even that obligation is questionable!

As for fans demanding more from their star and fans making or breaking a star, Rajni would have ceased to be a star a long time ago if his movies are judged by the average movie reviewer standards. The average Rajni fan is more of a fanatic. (Er, what I mean to say respectable Sir's and Madam's, is that you tend to watch Ranji movies with your FAN on in the AtTIC). That means box office logic does not apply to Rajni movies either!

Neenga ellam review than ezhduveenga. Naan reviewvukke review ezhudhuven! Idhu eppidi irukku ?

Translation (without Rajni style): You guys only write reviews. I write reviews of your reviews. How is that ?

:)

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Happy Tamizh New Year

Wishing everyone a happy Tamizh New Year.

The Tamil (Tamizh) calendar follows a sixty year cycle (like the 12 year cycle for the Chinese years). This year is Sarvasithu.

Happy new year to everyone or as they say in Tamizh "Iniya puththaandu Nal Vazhthukkal!".

Hope this year brings us a better world (an end to the Iraq war, the whole world embracing green technology, solar panels on top of every PTC bus in Chennai, no traffic jams in Cupertino, etc. etc.............). Needless to say, there are wish lists on the personal front, but I will keep those to myself! at least for now.

Looks like the New Year is indeed starting off on a brighter note!

A lot better than our previous attempt!

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Counting in Tamlish

Most of you have read this post from a year ago!

Since then Jr.'s grandpa taught her how to count 1 to 10 in Tamizh on the last India trip. She remembered it for almost three to four weeks. Then things disappeared from her memory and now she is back to square one!

Funny thing is, she did this once, did not even realize what she was saying was wrong and counted again for the video, and still did not realize her mistake! So innocent! Finally we had to remind her of Onnu, rendu , moonu!!

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