Sivaji- The BOSS's BOSS

Sivaji-The Boss was by all means a movie made just for Rajni. With all the media hype and fan lore the movie ought to be seen . Reason being the movie is all about Rajni and his charisma. Truly that's what every rajni fan wants and not the true message shankar tries to press with his every other movie. Shankar on his part has done a pretty bad job considering the fact that he has convoluted around the same core since his first movie in Gentleman. Indian and Mudalvan to an extent were the exceptions. Shreya was a treat to watch. To me she is the next best thing tamil filmdom has seen since Asin's arrival. Vivek after a long run of loss of form is back with his catchy lines and spot comedies. Though he seems to be running out of ideas atleast. Suman has just done his part as written in script lacking the punch and aggression as expected of a Rajni's villain. This is where I feel Raghuvaran or even Prakashraj would have dealt it with aplomb.
At no cost am i gonna talk about the movie's crux. But having read Prashanth's article I feel it is injustice to despise the movie completely. From my opinion Rajni's movies since the 90's have basically lacked good storylines with Thalapathi, Padiyappa & Muthu apart. But, for an actor who is full of grace, style and charisma I doubt if that would really hamper the movie at all. So is the case in Sivaji. Shankar has tried passing the message in a different way(atleast intended to) and has clearly not shown any innovation in his ideas. The movie might lack logic as Prashanth had pointed out in the CPR scene. But frankly Rajni's mass comes from B and C sectors who definitely would'n know a thing about it. So to me that's acceptable though he is a software engineer. And Prashanth remember afterall he is a software engineer who could amass 200 crores just by working here for a decade or so. We only wish. So forget logics and commonsense. And to the next claim on Prashanth's as to why Rajni did not hire an advocate to enforce his issues is probably anyone's guess, considering the project quote. For all, the movie might have so many negatives but the one positive that is Rajni is good enough for a 3 hr entertainer. All that a Rajni fan would want is sit, watch the spectacle that is Rajni. The Superstar on his part has done an excellent job in assisting vivek with his catchy linefits and spot on comedies. The Sivaji,MGR, Kamal spoof was thoroughly enjoyable and so was the climax mimics by Chinni et al. The 'Motta' boss get up reminded us of rajni's yesteryears as villain. In all Rajni has carried the whole weight on his shoulders and delivered an enjoyable, stylish and a charismatic performance that makes Sivaji a clear winner among his most recent movies. To put matters in one line 'kettaley adhiruthula' is exactly what sivaji storm is. So to all,the advice would be rush to the theatres watch the splendour of rajni and enjoy it. Only one man in the Indian film history can turn an absolete story to a super hit and that is undoubtedly Rajni. Big B , SRK please find a hiding Sivaji has arrived to storm theatres all over India and most particularly in US.The fanfare here in Chicago and other major cities is just amazing. First day first show has never been this crazy away from India 'Walk into Sivaji with Sweet Pongal' was the say in Chicago;'Sivaji T-Shirt w/ ticket' in Bay Area and so was it in all major cities in US. That should just sum it all.

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!

DMK-Sun TV rift

Looks like the rift between the media giant and the ruling party is happening after all!
Karunanidhi is celebrating his birthday today. Sun TV was all set to cover the events as usual, but it turned out that it was not to be. Reportedly a high party official from DMK called Sun TV and told them that they need not cover the event as the party has invited Raj TV to do so. Sun TV is also beginning to evacuate its offices at the Anna Arivalayam.

Meanwhile, Raj TV has 'officially' joined DMK. And its Managing Director Raajhendran had said only he had joined the party and not the channel and that the channel would continue to provide neutral coverage as always! Word is going around that DMK is all set to launch as many as 12 channels with the help of Raj TV's expertise. DMK also is launching its own flagship channel 'Kalaignar TV'. Reportedly the yet-to-be launched channel has already purchased the telecast rights of Rajini's yet-to-be released movie 'Sivaji' for a whopping price which even Sun TV was not able to pay.

And Sun TV's coverage of Kalaignar's birthday has been rather mute, and understandably so.

On an offnote, Jayalalitha came out with a statement that DMK had ordered ADMK's headquarters in Royapettah (I think got the location right) as it was flouting CMDA guidelines or some similar nonsense. Jaya had come out strongly against DMK and its mentor Karunanidhi and has said something to the tune of "we will not rest till these perpetrators are brought down".

maadu and sandys visit to minneapolis

Maadu and sandy weekend getaway at minneapolis. Maadu makes contraversial comments upon life sandy and nelli in typical maadu style.. my mokkais shld be prdnd..:D..

DOGGG....too much of media bashin eh?? here is something a bit different...

And as I said earlier, I am back. I just finished reading a very interesting book...well at least for people like me who take a lot of interest in subjects like world politics and more specifically politics of the Islamic world. FRONTLINE PAKISTAN by Zahid Hussain gives you the story of independent Pakistan, may be or may be not the insider story but certainly chronologically lists various events that have shaped up Pakistan and how the growth of Islamic terrorism has taken shape. The book covers areas that not necessarily find space in the media in India which is shocking considering the fact that as a neighboring country, events that occur in Pakistan must be important for us both at face value and strategically. Well the Indian gov has better sources to get "news" on Pakistan but still putting it in a newspaper would do little harm. The book starts off with the regimes that have changed and the policies of these regimes and how islamization of Pakistan starts under general Zia and the whole story after that. The funny part is the islamization of Pakistan has a link to India too…it is the deobandi school of thought that along with the wahhabis of Saudi Arabia is leading the revolution The book extensively covers the terrorist operations right from the anti soviet operations with the CIA in cahoots to today’s jihad and gives lots of insights into the working of militants from let, harkat, al qaeda and all the bunch...and more importantly how they actually are hugely popular organizations...unlike the general mindset we have in India that TERRORISTS HAVE NO RELIGION...TERRORISTS HAVE NO SUPPORT...more importantly the book focuses on the Musharraf regime and how it has been playing the double game of being successful while countering international terrorists and been miserable while countering the growing terrorism back home... no not in terms of Kashmir but the huge sectarian conflicts-not well covered in Indian media-growing clout of madrasas and mullahs, compromises he makes to be in power. The book also goes through the role of the ISI, how it has grown to be much bigger than the government, the islamization that has also got the ISI army and the militants on one platform and increasingly have squeezed out Musharraf. overall pretty good book...seriously speaking very objective in its descriptions that’s why I earlier said the book did not have "insider info"...it is a compilation of events with almost zero bias even against INDIA( something ram guha's book is not... talking about INDIA after Gandhi...ram shows his own biases...just started reading), is a bit sympathetic to Musharraf...well even I am now...because looking at the way things are shaping up with respect to indo-pak and in general how a liberal pak would be more helpful to India’s cause. It is better to have an untrustworthy pro west military leader than an Islamic general who by the way are in the paki army in scores and are waiting to get Musharraf out. And after reading the book I am rather glad that these guys are out of India and not a part of the undivided India, which a lot of my ideologues dream of. Find time to get a copy and go through...

I'm back

just finished with the MBA essay prep yesterday and thought I should get back to posting...and what else could I start off with but the MS university artist freedom issue( sandy... will get back with my thoughts on the women’s rights in a couple of days...have a couple of other issues I want to write on)..Neway let me get to this...so on an eventful day we have an internal art exhibition happening in MS univ but of course other than professors we have art collectors and gallery owners and "eminent ppl" attending...and we have the HINDUTVA BRIGADE...lol...had to use the word considering its popularity with the media and especially how one of the headlines today anchors pronounces it. And as usual vandalism etc and the poor kid is put behind bars. So now arises an important question of how the right wing Hindu is preventing the Indian civilization from progressing in a liberal direction. Let me get to my view...ideally the artist should not even bother anybody. Nobody should be giving damn about what he wishes to potray.but unfortunately we do not live in such a world and it is essential to engage in competitive vandalism to protect ones interests. And why the competitive vandalism? The media in this country (forget the right wing sympathetic papers or the couple of neutral papers we have in this country...they do not count) has taken to Jawahar's policy of secularism where the minority...not necessarily religious...has to be treated extra special while the majority can be kicked a couple of times in its balls. I find it amusing that the Danish cartoons which incidentally portray reality if u ask me (will write about a book related to this...that was one of the other things I wanted to write about) were crude offensive derogatory a threat to civilization and all the crap I can think of. All the media was speaking in the sympathetic voice, condemning it, I could not see a shabnam hasmi or a teesta or artists protesting in favor of artistic freedom. Now let me get to MF who at this age has t live outside his mother land because of the atrocities of......I do not wish to list his paintings but I never have come across one painting where his artistic freedom comes to fore when the subject relates to Moslems. It is these double standards that get me a bit irritated...now let me accept that Modi is behind the hate in Gujarat...by that logic Manmohan must be behind the hate in India as it is the central gov home ministry that has filed cases against MF. Let me finally finish off with this thought. WE ALL MUST ENCOURAGE TOTAL ARTISTIC FREEDOM AS THE ENLIGHTENED OF THIS SOCIETY SAY...THEN WHY NOT PROMOTE PEDOPHILIA AND ACCEPT IT AS FREEDOM OF AN INDIVIDUAL TO EXPLORE INTERESTING SUBJECTS???

p.s.- not that I would love to see pedophiles roam around just an area I wanted to bring up as we often shun it away from public space...considering the fact that Indian children are one of the most vulnerable children in the world and more than 55% have experienced some form of exploitation within the family.