Movie Review: Thiruvilaiyadal Aarambam
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Good hearted male lead, with the honourable intentions of making a name for himself in the world. Dad refuses to lend him money and give him a leg up as son tends to while time away by drinking with his mates and getting into gang fights. Statements of 'get the hell out of my house and never come back' are uttered on a regular basis by either parent. One day, like all our movie heroes, our man too takes one look at the female lead and falls for her big time. Yes, he is 'in love' with her without even knowing her name.
After seeing her big brother beat the rowdies who came a'sniffing around baby sis, hero adopts the novel approach of asking the brother for his sister's hand. Understandably, this pisses the brother off, who sends hero packing with a flea on his ear. With this starts the 'thiruvilaiyadal' (or divine play). The hero makes the girl fall in love with him and whilst they paint the town red, big bro sees red and sends for him to scare him away. Hero stumps him by accepting money from the brother for staying away from his sister. Thus starts the barter system and when his family learns of this, they are aghast and kick him out of their house for good.
Hero now has the dosh to start his business, which he does and becomes a roaring success. On and on goes the movie till the end, where it all ends happily for all parties concerned.
Dhanush plays the role of the male lead, with Shreya as his opposite number. Other notable members of the cast are Prakash Raj as Shreya's brother and Mouli & Saranya as Dhanush's parents. There is nothing new or interesting in this movie. Same old tripe, boy sees girl, falls in love and does a variety of stunts before everything ends on a rosy glow. There is nothing new or exciting about this venture. Of course, thousands of Dhanush's fans disagreed with me and made this a hit! Go figure!
Posted by DesiGirl 9:55 AM 0 comments
Labels: aarambam, dhanush, film, movie, prakash raj, shreya, tamil, thiruvilaiyadal
ARR: The Urban Legend
Thursday, November 30, 2006
A R Rahman burst through like a breath of fresh air with Mani Ratnam’s Roja and changed the way Tamil and slowly rest of India’s music sounded. Ilaiyaraja had ruled the South till then as the undisputed king among the composers. There was none to beat him, no one even to come near him. If the ‘maestro’ decided to do the score for your movie, you can rest easy in the knowledge that you are going to have a hit on your hands.
Raja’s sounds were mostly grounded in a rural background – the harmonium famously was at the composer’s fingertips at any given time. That doesn’t mean that his songs were only of the typical folk song variety. His music for Mani Ratnam’s hit ‘Dalapathi’ was phenomenal. He has composed some of Tamil industry’s most famous songs – ‘Ilamai ennum poongatru’, ‘Idhu oru pon maalai pozhudhu’, ‘Raja raja sozhan’, to name a few.
Most of his contemporaries also went along the same route – M S Viswanathan, Deva (who was more like a poor man’s Raja), Gangai Amaran etc. Ilaiyaraja did not really have any real competition – he ruled alone and he ruled long. Till a 25 year old genius burst into the scene.
A slight difference of opinion between Mani Ratnam and his favourite composer urged him to look for a composer elsewhere, latched onto the young Rahman who was busy composing ad jingles and the rest, as they say, is history. His choice of instruments, the arrangements he used, the different tones and tunes he produced – everything was as different from the prevalent music of the day as the proverbial chalk is from cheese. The public lapped it up eagerly and were soon hungry for more.
He followed Roja with some memorable songs from Thiruda Thiruda, Gentleman, Puzhiya Mugam, May Maadam, Karuthamma, Duet,Indira, Bombay, Rangeela and more recently, Taal, Lagaan, Boys Rang De Basanti and Guru. He was the first ever music composer to win the coveted Rajat Kamal Award at the National Film Awards for his debut effort. He has gone on to win this award thrice more, for Minsaara Kanavu, Lagaan and Kannathil Muthamittal - the most by any music director.
The awards he has won, the global recognition he has achieved, the wide range of projects he’s been a part of is too many to list. More than anything, what he has single-handedly done is changed Indian background music forever. Till he came onto the scene, filmi music was primarily used to give the audience a break from the onscreen action. With his advent, that changed completely – a movie’s soundtrack became as important as the movie itself. Cassette sales soared and became an indication of how the movie would fare at the box-office. 
With Alaipayudhey, he introduced the audience to the new, sexed-up version of the normally staid Hindu wedding mantras. When he sang 'Mangalyam', blended it with those awesome beats and merged it so beautifully with the theme song Enrendrum punnagai - the effect was a thing of sheer beauty. For the first time ever, it it became cool to sing mantras!
But sounding quintessentially urban didn't mean that the man couldn't do villagey music. He sure could and did, in his own inimitable style and the resultant sound is normally something we've never heard before. I am, of course, talking of Then merkku paruva-k-kaatru from Karuthamma here. Even Kummi Adi is a typical village number, Rahmanified as it is!
I shall not be remiss in not mentioning his foray into Punjabi bhangra. Though he has said a lot of times that he felt comfortable with Tamil music, as he did not understand Hindi, he has composed some absolute gems for films like Rangeela, Taal, Bombay, Dil Se and more recently Rang de Basanti. The title song of RDB, sung by Daler Mehendi sounded absolutely fresh and completely different from the usual bhagra songs one often hears. Of course I do not listen to bhangra music much but to me, they always sounded the same - till ARR and the Ting ling ling ling.
Meanwhile, Rahman’s assistants branched off on their own and took the new Rahmanish sounds with them whilst some of the new ones on the horizon were inspired by it and started emulating the same. Harris Jayaraj (Minnale, Kaakha Kaakha, Vettaiyadu Vilaiyadu), Praveen, Vidyasagar, Bharadwaj, Devi Sri Prasad were all part of this new brigade. Though all of them have gone on to make some great music scores, there is none to touch ARR, none to match his attention to detail.
The consummate professional that he is, he clearly differentiates between what is played on screen and what you slip into your CD player, unlike the other music directors, whose screen music is no different from the on they release on CD or tape. This makes his music sound that much crisper when you listen to the audio whilst the video has a special extra bit going for it. A classic example of this is his recent Kummi Adi from Sillunu Oru Kaadal - while the CD version starts with a big bang, in the movie there is a slow, folksy interlude before the actual song.
Rahman also has a special music interlude for any crunch / special situations in the plot. Oftentimes, this would be the chorus part of the main romantic song of the movie. In the aforementioned movie, the main part of the song Munbe Vaa was the background vocal for the Gautham – Aishu wedding scene, the same song that they sing during happier times.
These might seem insignificant but attention to little details like this is what sets ARR apart. Devi Sri Prasad, in his latest hit Bommarillu would have done better to have picked up these tips from the master and utilised them in his song Laloo Darvaja. Whilst having Jayasudha sing the Krishna bhajan-type number makes sense in the movie and adds to the plot, it slows down the tempo of the song in the CD and breaks up the whole rhythm.
ARR is also the king when it comes to the quality of his music mixes. His music has a slick feel to it that, despite his detractors’ pronouncement that his tunes would never stand the test of time, have nonetheless stayed the same through the years. His old hits still sound just as melodious as they did the day they came out. Though Rahman’s music take a bit of getting used to, they do grow on you after repeated listens and become impossible to move away from.
The man is not without his particular quirks – one of the most famous ones being his penchant to record at night. He is famous for doing the best part of his recording with the moon; his singers are all well used to getting on the car in the dead of the night and finishing up at the break of dawn. Recently, though, he announced he was going to try to change that habit and carry on his recording work at daytime.
Another of his famous peculiarities is his wish to keep things natural – he is rather taken up by the ‘rawness’ of a voice. To that extent, he used to make singers out of people with no formal music training whatsoever, depending more on their raw tone of their voice to carry the tune through.
ARR has come a long way from his young Dileep days, when he was struggling to make ends meet. Today, he is one of the most famous music composers in the world. He has taken his music far and beyond the country’s shores – collaborating with Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber for Bombay Dreams, working on the Chinese film Warriors of Heaven and Earth and even composing the score for Lord of the Rings stage production. He has done all this and more; but to me, he will always remain the man who changed Indian music completely, forever.
His music is everything – slick, beautiful, sublime and timeless. Long may it resonate around the world.
Posted by DesiGirl 10:12 PM 1 comments
Labels: allah, ARR, bombay, composer, hindi, indian, mani, movie, music, rahman, rakha, ratnam, roja, tamil
Movie Review: Stalin
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Oh how the mighty have fallen! A R Murugadoss, who gave us the fantastic Ghajini last year, is back this year with a bucket of old tripe called Stalin. I, for one, am convinced that the only reason good folks around the globe are putting down their hard-earned money is because it has the ‘mega star’ Chiranjeevi in it. From Chiru’s point of view, he delivers a decent message, possibly laying the groundwork for his political career but the movie is just one big washout.
In the course of the day, he comes across a semi-thug, whose FIL is the real thug (Prakash Raj in one of his most pathetic roles) who want to thrash the life out of him. Helpfully enters Trisha into his life, to provide the necessary leverage for the villain’s goondas to collar her and start yet another fight with the hero.
The movie continues along the same vein, a few song and dance routines in far-flung exotic locales interspersed with action sequences, which finally end in a climax sequence, where the hero is fighting for his life in hospital, after fighting off Prakash Raj’s goons as well as the assorted junta who had gathered around to watch the shooting but who were roped in when the supply of baddies ran out, with the doctors trying to patch him up. The docs cave in half-way as an old Army injury (the real reason why the man got the boot - that it was a medical one and as such, might be of slight importance to him totally escapes everyone’s notice) threatens to get worse but the hero’s brother shouts at and pleads with the medico in turns, who then does an about turn and starts where he left off and hey presto! the man wakes up to thank the auto fella who drove the vehicle that helped him escape the baddies who were chasing him down the highway who, just happened to be one who benefited from the ‘help 3 people pyramid scheme’ hatched by said hero, who is thrilled to bits to hear the success of his plan. Phew! Of course, by now, most of Andhra Pradesh is camped outside the hospital, praying for the hero’s recovery.
**Yawn**
How many more times will we be served this same old, left over tripe, glossed over with just enough glaze to pass off as a new movie? I have had it. This movie has so many holes in it that it can put any slice of Swiss cheese to shame. Granted, helping others is a good concept and post-Munnabhai, a lot of movies seem to be going this route but why the rest of the palaver to deliver this simple message?
There is none of the professionalism the director exhibited in his previous venture. The movie comes across as a B-grade imitation affair which is real sad, really. Take, for example, the scene where the hero puts his ‘help three strangers’ plan into action. The first person he helps is a mum, who has left her baby in her car (helpfully leaving the keys on the door) while she goes to the pharmacy. The hero and his sis happen to walk past the car, even as the baby starts to wail, open the car (!), take the baby out and take it around the shops, asking if the shopkeepers had seen the baby’s mother (!!). By now, the mum has got back to the car, which unfortunately has been towed by the traffic police (!!!). In a state, she gets to the impound lot and gets to the car instantly (!!!!) but of course, there isn’t a baby inside the car. She starts hitting the police asking everyone where’s her baby. No one helpfully points out to her then or ever, what an idiot she was to leave her baby all alone in the car, along with the keys, whilst she went shopping.
The hero has of course, rescued the infant and has left his details with the R.T.O office, who trace the car and give him the owner’s details. Hero takes baby to its home and rejoins its with its mum, first imploring with the happy dad to help three strangers. This whole parody had me in stitches, I tell you. Where in our country do we get such a wonderous group of people, pray tell me, that turn out such examples of instant service? And who are we talking about here - the traffic police, the impound lot, the blessed RTO office, for chrissake! In which opiate dream did they become so?
There are loads more rib-tickling moments of similar nature, the fight sequences, for instance. The stunt-director seems to have been inspired by Hot Shots: Part Deux - thugs literally fling themselves at Chiru from all directions who simply spins about and poof! they fall down like dominoes! This is the way every single fight is choreographed baddie runs headlong into hero, only to go flying out and ends up on his face; baddie 2 follows suit next second and so on the routine continues till the supply of baddies is exhausted.
Trisha seems to be there in the film purely for decorative purposes. But if she gets to take home a cool Rs 25 lakhs (rumoured to be much more) for wearing skimpy outfits and shaking a leg in exotic beaches, then hey, I’m sure she’d sign on the dotted line a few more times. Though I am sure she can swim passably, she has to work on the rest of it. Being shown as a champion swimmer is one thing, but jumping into water to start off a race with all the finesse of a sack of potatoes is another. Oh and the fact that she looks and is, young enough to be Chiru's daughter shall not be mentioned, ever!
Khushboo fits the part of big sis comfortably and does justice to her role, as does Sharadha, who plays their mum. Sunil in a light-hearted role with some serious overtones comes up trumps. The rest of the cast is there just to add strength to the numbers. The cameraman's awe of the mega star is visible in every frame as the camera simply dances away merrily, giving everyone watching sore eyes. The soundtrack is instantly forgettable; none of the songs even registered in my mind even while I was watching the film.
Strictly for die-hard Chiru fans ONLY. Rest of you can stay at home, relax with your favourite HotShots DVD.
Posted by DesiGirl 10:25 PM 2 comments
Labels: chiranjeevi, chiru, indian, khushboo, movie, south, Stalin, telugu, tollywood, trisha