Sivaji

It’s the worrrrrrrrrrsht movie that I have seen in a long time. I was talking to a friend who is a big fan of Rajnikanth ( I am too!.. and as footnote in the middle of this paragraph he is gng to see this movie again he says) raised some poignant points about Shankar’s style of film-making. His main crux being we should not be wasting time, money etc.. but the opulence he shows to pander to the public is disgusting.

The movie as such has absolutely no storyline. To think he had spent close to 65 crores on the movie is ludicrous. He doesn’t seem to have heard of the terms screenplay and production values as such even though he is a renowned filmmaker! I mean “ give me a break!”!! Now I have heard people say that Hollywood gets away with just as many big budget blockbusters with ludicrous fantasy storylines. But if you notice they do not compromise on the screenplay, they employ very slick editing and are extremely professional about the way the movie is made. When you think of the budget that Shankar employed you would come to expect at least something slick (logical I have totally given up on from Indian cinema and is not a criteria I evaluate the movies I like coming out from the great Indian Cinema paradise). But what you get is a amateurish ( I am being lenient with my criticism!) effort which is an extreme disappointment. To think I paid 16 dollars for the ticket (on an average I have never been charged more than 8 dollars for any movie here!).

I am not going to give away much of the storyline for the benefit of those who havnt seen it.. but come on the guy is supposed to be a graduate from America and is extremely surprised when a doctor ( Raghuvaran) performs CPR! A 6th grade boy-scout knows what CPR is! And then the character of Sivaji wants to invest his hard earned 200 crores back home. He is supposed to be a software analyst by profession. But he cannot hire a bunch of lawyers to make his investment legitimate and needs to be defeated by the “system”! What BULL CRAP! And then to make the movie a hit you have dialogues like “ the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer”. Isn’t that just pandering to the public? I am not questioning the fact that poverty is a big problem. But its not like the rich industrialists are all just big black asses and all the poor are angels in disguise and have hearts of gold. You have various characters in all walks of life. Why cant filmmakers accept that and come up with at least some good variations rather than mundane variations on the same story that has been building the foundations of Indian cinema.

Shankar by the way says that this is not the type of cinema that I want ot make but have been tagged at by producers and distributors after the humongous success of Indian ( that I must say was a brilliant movie ) and have been forced to use the formula of spending about 10 crores on the sets of each song and the same story line in all subsequent films. That is total nonsense!

The only good thing about the movie is Shriya and her tit shots.. everything else is below par including Viveks comedy ( though a few handpicked sequences are decent).. If I could give negative rating I would give -1 out of five stars.

The Rupee vs. the Dollar- A Macro Economical Analysis from the perspective of an asinine individual

If you thought I have any kind of an opinion on that my mission is accomplished and I am right now rolling over the floor laughing!

I am seriously of the belief that Calvin is the greatest modern philosopher. A couple of comic strips really stood out as to a few issues I have been thinking about. The first of which illustrates as




Isn’t this an epitome of all our ideas as far as the middle and upper middle class goes. We don’t do anything about the situation.. we like to blame everything around us and I have heard a number of people say that is the prime reason they do not want to settle back home in India. That was certainly not in my mind when I came to pursue a postgraduate degree here. The only thing on my mind was a new adventure and exploration of something that I felt I would want to be doing in years to come. When I hear my parents and relatives discussing political situations, road conditions, garbage problems they all get passionate and love blaming every politico in the most horrible way possible. Not to support any of those horrible politicos but are not we equally to blame! We do absolutely nothing about the situation. We apparently have enough to deal with in winng daily bread and watching “saas-bahu” serials be it in hindi or tamil. We cant even get out society organized to clean up the neighbourhood and 75 percent of the people in the neighbourhood would surely crib like hell if any kind of proposal was brought in where they would have to spend some money collectively! The thing with the middle class is that though we advocate capitalism we are all closet socialists who want as many freebees as possible but do not want to be repressed for it.


The other illustration




I saw pirates 3 Spidey 3 and Shrek3 both the three of them on the opening days totally pandering to the Hollywood summer franchising. Now I am a fan of the fantasy franchise and liked all three movies unlike a lot of ppl I dragged along with me. Fortunately no pain was meted out to me for my efforts. Now the thing is that Hollywood just doesn’t know when to kill a successful franchise. All three movies left pace for a fourth to be made. It started with sequels then went to trilogies and now the fashion is just keep going after the star wars thingy. That’s why I like JK Rowlings resolve in maintaining some artistic dignity in completely killing the HP fantasy with the seven books and not returning with HPs repressed son or anything ( in this of-course I am going by her interviews and hopefully she sticks by it!)
Bollywood is gng that way alright and catching on to the marketing strategy required to cash in on the success!