Tag: AR Rahman

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cinema:tamil FRS

FRS:Ponniyin Selvan 2

So you all know what an FRS is right? Right? 

Seems Mani sir did not find time to read the FRS of PS 1, well maybe he was busy (duh obviously) and it reflects in PS2. 

So our writing team was found adapting FRS points from the PS1 post – uh um rephrasing if you could call it that. 

This is of course purely unacceptable behavior in the FRS writers room. 

We fired the entire writers room. 

That is our commitment, even adaptation needs well you know, integrity. 

So here we are with the new FRS writers, at least those we could find. 

-100: Narration, even if it is by Kamal

Kamal basically summarizes Part1 in few seconds, it could have been the same introduction from PS1 because that too was a summary or a situation analysis and nothing much happened except character introductions. 

+50: Wow, finally a temple in a series about Cholas, the great temple builders! 

Guess it’s Melkote, so long live Vijayanagara empire!  

PS2 begins where Surya was left pining in Thalapathy, there’s a similar “kovilil paadum penn” meets “porukku sellum thalapathy” situation. 

With all honesty, this is the sweetest part of both the movies only to be brought to a close by a song that is about separation. 

Sweet becomes bittersweet. 

We rewinded ourselves to the opening of PS1, where there is the fog of war and Karikalan walks in as it clears almost like a theater curtain. 

Nandini’s introduction is more literal – she draws the curtain of her palanquin. 

Mani makes no bones about both the PS movies being about Karikalan and Nandini, the supposed dramatic high points are created to revolve around them. 

But then the movie could have simply been called Nandhiniyum Karikalanum and not an almost incidental Ponniyin Selvan. 

Welcome again to the FRS of Nandhiniyum Karikalanum- based on the characters from Kalki’s Ponniyin Selvan. 

–25: Franchise which aims to tell the glory of an ancient dynasty is focussed on how its hot headed soup boy prince almost brought it to its feet just because he could not get over a girl. 

Good call writers! Good call! 

Ok say last time they left us hanging about the lives of PS and VT- will they survive? Of course they do, they break this suspense in the trailer itself. 

So much for another attempt why did Katappa kill Baahubali moment. 

-70: Odd Madurantaka Thevar is odd max.

In the last movie, he beseeched the help of all the small kings in order to make him King, this time he is holding Kasi Tamizh sangamam with a group of Naga Sadhoo types. 

Sivoham and all that, but the small kings plan seemed slightly better. 

Over the course of the movie he would take another turn and that would be the most funnies of all funnies ever attempted. (not spoiling) 

Madurantaka Thevar Vaazhga! 

-101.5: Mani sir interrupts the tense search for Ponniyin Selvan for a Aga Naga poetic love sequence whose setting was probably suggested to the assistant director by ChatGPT when asked to list a few poetic locations. 

Isolated island with one boat. 

Does this serve the story? Umm debateable, but it surely satisfied all the fans. 

Mani-on-the-nose-poetic-aesthetic-is-poetic. 

Kundavi Devi Vaazhga! 

+42: Wherever you are in this universe, you are never far away from Azhwarkadiyan Nambi. He is everything, everywhere, all at once. 

It almost reads like an advertising slogan, but really it is the truth if his eyes are in Pazhayarai , then his ears are in Kadambur and he himself is somewhere camping with Karikalan but also appears in Nagapattinam. 

Does he have a twin brother? 

The FRS writer room when on ground nut and tea break came up with a theory that Cholas silently invented cloning but restricted it to only their spies so they could put one in each key district. 

Thirumalai Azhwarkadiyan Vaazhga!

+21: The Rashtrakootas might like this movie more than the first part. 

-200: Pandians are not going to like this one single bit, it is like for two movies the same plot element of Pandian Abathudhavis try, try and try to kill the Chola Pulis. 

All in vain, there is even a meta statement that Nandini posts but then that too lands as a joke. 

The Pandian Abathudhavis are the startroopers of this universe. 

Meenkodi Velga!

-34: Confusing motivations are confusing. 

Does Nandini want to kill or not? What does she really want? 

The only guys with clear motivations are the Pandians and they are made to look like the terrorists from last year’s Beast. 

Difficult to root for characters without having to clearly know what their motivations are. 

-101: Director wants to convince us that the Pandian assassins will succeed this time, just before the interval. 

Again there seems to have been no thinking involved in these attempts, they just go at the Cholans with whatever they get, shouldn’t there be some planning? 

+102: Jeyam Ravi as Ponniyin Selvan is the only actor in the ensemble who got his character, but sadly he is playing in a different movie only. 

Ponniyin Selvan Vaazhga!

-302: Loool Tanjore folks not able to identify Ponniyin Selvan because he is wearing mask loool what is this like Tamizh Padam spoof level 

+86: Karikalan accepts Periya Pazhuvettaraiyar’s plan to give away the kingdom to Madurantakar. 

If only they had agreed in part one itself this would have saved Lyca and co some millions. 

As the famous saying goes, for this cotton gunny bags could have remained in the godown itself. 

-201: Mani sir introduces props and characters to either forget them or to drop them on the way to Thanjavoor. 

What happened to the horse Semba? It surely mattered to VT till a point? 

What happened to the throne that Nandini was longingly looking at in PS1? 

Why did a crown which suddenly popped up on Sundara Cholan became the main prop in the climax? Where is the throne that is there in all of your movie marketing? 

Not to forget the fish engraved sword, which again comes to no purpose. 

I mean like…there’s a whole story about characters but that would put us in a very bad place, but still better placed than Kandan Maaran. 

All of this screamed that the movie was not well thought through, besides being rushed into production. 

However it is completely possible to be enthralled by some of the visual flair in PS2

+101: Cinematographer Ravivarman Vaazhga (best thing is to name all cinematographers after painters, as they are in effect painters of light) 

But Mani sir is irked by the idea of having to shoot two people talking and hence has to introduce rotating camera tricks every now and then. 

Embrace the drama Mani sir, it is what it is. The need to be seen as a visual filmmaker is coming in the way of telling a good story through characters. 

-80: Something something happens and we are now in the middle of the war and we didn’t know what to scratch our heads for- whether it is to understand what war is this or why Partibendran Pallavan and VT are now on opposing sides?

Oh wait there was this Nandini seducing Pallavan scene. Whatever came off that? 

Spare a thought about Nandini who is in control of the situation almost all through the movie but then ends up being shown as a victim in the hands of many men. 

Anyhow all’s well that ends well.

Cholas are on the way to their golden age and we went home feeling bad for the Pandian Abathudhavis (again).

You can read the FRS of PS 1 here.

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cinema

FRS: Sarkar

FRS: Sarkar
One finger, election swinger

So by now everyone knows what an FRS is right? If not we probably will have to fire the entire marketing department at the Lowly Laureate.

Wait a minnit, we don’t have a marketing department; but what we have is a musical department.

<Musical Department plays Sad Appu theme from Aboorva Sago on cue>

Editor: Get on with it. Please.

-501: To us, as usual posting late FRS; no excuse dammit! (That’s the editor’s only contribution, he wanted us to include this to show that unlike most publications, writers here are relatively accountable)

-30: Director feels that it is important for him to show all the great “empires” in world history in the titles just because he named the film Sarkar.

+12: Vijay played a magician (sort of) in his previous film thus confusing many people to believe that this movie could be a biopic of legendary magician PC Sarkar.

But rumor was that this was abandoned from the word go because a movie about an Indian magician would actually be interesting and would involve lot of hard work etc unlike this one. There we said it.

-404: It has been decades since the IT industry became a good part of the Indian economy but Tamil movie directors don’t want to understand what this IT is only.

-33: IT company head honchos will call employees out to the bay area and ask them to google about a CEO of rival company under fears of a takeover by the said CEO because he is visiting India.

We mean LOOOOOOL, all the Saturday Night live comics put together cannot beat this master of an open. Funny and fun forever.

-169: IT company girl who is ‘researching’ about CEO is actually watching a youtube video called “Sundar in Las Vegas” also tells something to the effect like “he is a playboy, but very cute ya”

Las Vague-as

+101: Vijay does breaking the 4th wall to speak to greet his fans even in open spaces.

Everytime Vijay na breaks the 4th wall, a season of house of cards is cancelled somewhere.

-36: All the dancers in Las Vegas know the exact same steps as CEO Sundar, do they go to same dancing class? If so did GL Corp pay for their CEO’s dancing classes?

Oh BTW all songs in this movie are just Vijay dancing in the foreground with fancy lights/ferris wheel in the background.

#OOOOooooOOO

+56: We can clearly see what CEO Sundar is doing in Vegas, thus this movie has broken the long standing myth that what happens in vegas stays in vegas.

-22: Movie goes into ultra slow motion when CEO Sundar lights up a cigarette

Slow in motion, low on emotion

<FRS Mini Bytes>

Unwritten rules in Tamil Cinema be like if you are going to shoot on a runway then it must be in slow motion to emphasise “hero-walking-down-flight-stairs” or in other words what is commonly misunderstood as style

</FRS Mini Bytes>

-57.8: Movie keeps emphasizing that CEO Sundar’s corporate strategy is entirely driven by acquisitions, well even if we do take that at face value; we think movie misunderstands acquisitions and thinks it is something like going to a mall and buying a watch kind-off thing. I mean these are complex, like ok let’s go a little deeper into this.

{I would like to point out that here FRS writers work twice as hard as the writers of this film; and thus our sentences now resemble CAT problems}

Historically acquisitions have benefitted the seller more than the buyer (in this case CEO Sundar) and majority of the deals that went through could not meet the projected revenue numbers, which means that CEO Sundar would have to answer a lot to the board.

<Now that’s a movie that I would like to see>

Wow, a tech CEO who makes tough choices by acquiring companies that don’t make money is taken to task by the governing board, that makes an interesting story.

</Now that’s a movie that I would like to see>

What we really want to say that things don’t look so well for GL Corp.

+101: ARM is total genius, instead of having usual tagalong sidekick that hero can bounce off jokes; he moulds that character into Keerthy Suresh, only that it doesn’t work to the intended comic effect, nevertheless genius attempt.

+102: Usually some smart critic will use the term “subverting audience expectation” although at that point they mean they were not prepared for such a film, which means to say that we can safely deduce that most critics make up their mind about films before they watch.

Loool and people actually trust critics with their choices.

OK back to subverting audience 101, here ARM has subverted critics expectations like a total boss.

Usually, on seeing when the heroine character not having much to do in the course of the story, critics wearing blue and other color shirts will say something like in exasperation :”hey, what is Keerthy Suresh doing here?”

ARM is boss, he has so many years of experience in the film industry and hence anticipates the whole scenario and subverts critics expectation by making the hero Thalapathy Vijay aka CEO Sundar aka Vijay na to ask the question: “Hey, Keerthy Suresh; what are you doing here?”

Critics thought movie was very ‘self-aware’ (again one of their phrases) and gave centum marks for the film.

-55: Sundar’s lawyer’s name is Malani which half of the name of Ram Jethmalani; but still Malani commands the same fee as Ram Jethmalani.

When you come at half the name, you only deserve half the price.

+236.2: CEO Sundar becomes Lawyer Sundar after overnight reading of 300 KG law books, this we believe is a tribute to the underappreciated art of last minute cramming or known in some academic circles as “mugging”.

+38: For the cost of one movie ticket you get to see two villains and one secret villain, as consumers of goods we were very happy. But very sad to see that all villains have only one strategy which is : send goons to kill Sundar.

Buy 2, get 1 free

Villains may come and go, but the demand for goons has shown a healthy increase, but we would like to know if there is an increase of minimum wages for such professions.

Mostly there is a union for these goons, there are unions for everything anyways.

-38: Needless to say CEO Sundar will defeat goons single-handedly; but of course he uses both hands that was just an expression.

His corporate training tool-kit comes with 40+ hours of action block training from the school of super subbarayan, looks like.

-102: Benevolent ARM is benevolent.

Looks like ARM was very happy with what his writers came up with for the first half and so in that happiness sent them packing to some location and the writers never returned, hence ARM was forced to take newspaper headlines and make them into situations.

What ARM did not realise was that most newspaper headlines are boring, and if people wanted to read newspaper headlines they will buy or borrow newspapers and not buy or borrow movie tickets.

-342: But this is our usual rant that falls on deaf ears. Everyone goes to tamil movies to be educated, who are we to question that?

-86: Although Sundar is CEO of GL Corp, he only wishes his compatriots should have 1990s type desktop installed in their new office. Also at this point we begin to doubt the actual role of CEO Sundar, he always keeps talking about marketing and branding which is what a CMO would do.But anyway, good for GL <spoiler alert> Sundar resigns.

Cutting across party lines

+56: Hero solves all problems. Everyone is happy, elections are reformed, parties have been cleaned up and good governance has been put in place; until of course in the next film Vijay na is asked to deal with a different issue.

All numbers are incidental and non-indicative

Regards

Team FRS

 

Categories
cinema cinema:tamil

2.0: Hollow Spectacle

2point0

 

Shankar’s sci-fi sequel begins in twilight.  A wonderfully constructed suicide; it could very well be a testimony to the director himself.

 

Is the Shankar sun really setting?

 

If it is, then it really wants us all to remember the previous glory.

2.0 is an oddly stitched together film of mostly “Shankar elements”, who knows this movie can give rise to an ‘Ultimate Shankar Movie Checklist’

 

Here goes an initial draft:

Shankar’s main vigilante will want to kill people to make things right because no one listens to him- Check

He might use some ancient text/symbol/martial art to justify/aid his killing- Check

Vigilante will compete himself & previous Shankar films in devising improbable deaths- Check

Using common folk to convey the confusion about what is happening on the ground or “public pulse” shots- Check

A set piece in a stadium- Check

Amy Jackson’s ….never mind – Check

Corrupt businessmen and politicians- Check

 

Ok, yes there is a lot more which we left out including the minister’s secretary wearing safari suit (Check).

Directors tend to repeat themselves, happens all the time man.

We understand that people can run out of ideas and would very much recycle existing works; marketing has a fancy name for this called “re-purposed content”.

The beauty of such content is in making it feel like a whole new experience, in 2.0 the opposite happens and the regular stream of Shankar references also do not help.

The film reaches fantastical levels of unconvincing-ness when Akshay Kumar turns up as prosthetic Pakshirajan or bird-man who somehow has summoned the dead spirits of sparrows to take away cell phones from humans. He believes that humans+cell phones have caused the caused the sparrow deaths and they must be punished. He also believes in wearing a sweater in Thirukazhukundram (70 Km from Chennai).

Dr. Vaseegaran on the other hand believes no man is match for bird-man and summons up Chitti ( The robot from Endhiran). Yep, that’s it; very simple.

Shankar and his team of writers (including Jeyamohan who is writing the Mahabharata in modern form) have gone to the Keep It Simple School of Screenwriting.

If there is a problem, then there is an immediate solution and the protagonist knows what it really and exactly is and hence there is no real tension. Even when a gigantic metallic bird threatens to destroy the city.

Let alone the story, 2.0 refuses to engage in complexities in its science too; everything is reduced to positive and negative. This reductive science approach undertaken to cater to the breadth of the audience ends up hurting the film which after a while feels like a hollow assemblage of well rendered visual effects.

Immediate wow-factor not withstanding 2.0 also overstays its welcome, so eager it is to show us this spectacle that it forgets that the film is pretty much over before the titular 2.0 appears.

2.0 is again Rajnikanth who in the absence of good writing and an effective BGM makes those scenes work with ‘that’ trademark laugh and quips, but by this time it is difficult for humans to really feel connected for the final forty minute action display.

Very early on in the film, an engineering student falls ‘immediately’ in love over the immaculate beauty that is Nila (Amy Jackson) only to fall immediately out of love when he comes to know that Nila is in fact a humanoid robot.

Good to look at, but nothing much beyond that.

Oh wait, that’s the movie too.

 

Categories
cinema cinema:tamil Uncategorized

FRS: Accham Yenbadhu Madamaiyada(AYM)

aym2

Hi

So we all know what FRS is right? right?

-213.33333: Narration.

It ain’t a GVM movie if it doesn’t have narration. STR in Auro 3D

-140: Hero is a wastrel, MBA but still a wastrel

+52: Potential rise in the sales of already rising sales of Royal Enfield bikes, because impression-ables will think “Yo man, that’s who I am, a wanderer” which is good for Royal Enfield, but we are kind.

-17: Movie prances around a bit before getting into a “bikes vs babes” song in which hero explains as to why bikes are true love and life of boys are better without them and all this love shizz. Yo! Boys Im a biker bro.

-1.2K: Hero falls in love exactly 2 seconds later.

-320: Absolutely nothing happens in the first half, absolutely. Ok this is how it goes.

Girl and Boy will be in same room as in TV room, we think they might discuss something which could be interesting, but then we don’t hear it. Why?

Narration

Cut to scene with Hero playing carrom with buddies, who does narration again in real time.

Many movies talk about this kind of love, this love in which the interesting bits are left out and we have to, in good faith of the lead actors cuteness believe that they are love.

-5: F.R.I.E.N.D.S

-10: Actual friends who just rally around hero, nothing to speak also.

-63: Like all heroines, here also made to play cute, but since this is a different film here an extra component of ‘elegance’ is added. No one really knows what elegance means, maybe it is best explained by Conjeevarams and FabIndia kurtas.

+80: Heroine and her friend want to be a writer duo who will make scripts for Kollywood, yet director does not utilize this opportunity.

-29: Hero contemplates on going on a bike trip for 300 days before going on one, hero is worse than me in planning, should he be the hero?

-271: And Number One in our Unbelieveability Index: Girl will keep talking to one guy on daily basis for what seems like almost a year but still will not know his name. DEI and this is the biggest suspense in the movie. #yeppa

-90: Road Trippin

-457: In course of Road Trippin, hero knocks on a villagers house to ask for one night stay which they provide, hero then goes into social commentary on how people in villagers have a big heart and cities are filled with narrow minded folks who will buy tickets to movie which will call them narrow minded.

Has the director not heard of stayzilla?

-15: Forced comedy, based on the fact that girl eats a lot, heroine also puts her ‘elegance’ on hold so that she can lend herself to this joke.

-16: Hero washing his face directly from bisleri bottle sequence which aims to be well shot but actually doesn really make sense, because hero has just come out of upscale road themed dhabba which will surely have well maintained restrooms where hero can wash face. These things, I tell you.

-17: when they finally reach kanyakumari, seems they have reached Antartica only, soooo long the road trip also interspersed with 120 songs

+56: Girl and Boy go to lands end to wait for sun to rise. This is key cinematic event because, first time in Indian history of cinema, both characters on screen and in the theatre are waiting, of course for different reasons.

-2: Couple go to Kanyakumari, but do not go to Vivekananda Rock. I mean why wont you?

+32: Director Favorite Alert: It ain’t GVM movie, if it does not feature Kerala.

+15: Movie features Udupi_Manipal for a fleeting second. #rockkit

-20: heroine stands in Honnavar and says she in Maharastra.

-71: To every reviewer who said the first half is breezy romantic. Dei.

Yah Yah now only we are coming to second half.

Raymond Chandler, the pulp fictionist who fought all his later life for the recognition of his genre once said in a screenwriting TEDx, “when in doubt, have a man come in with a gun”

We can infer that the director of this film attended the TEDx

-20: Something something happens, then we find hero with gun.

-45: Gun has more bullets than my office parking lot (see what i did there)

+22: baba sehgal as raging but clueless villain. First time in history of Indian cinema that both audience and villain dont know what is happening on screen, I meant together.

+100: Whenever Baba Sehgal says Aata Maaji Satakli. Three times i think.

+120: Birth of a new style. In the middle of a high octane chase sequence we get to know that the hero actually had learnt to drive in this chase only, this is what we call the ‘make it up while you go in goa’ type of filmmaking. Very meta reference.

-119: Hero becomes more self aware, almost yogic in his self awareness, his narrations become deep messages to the soul that has lost its way and how it must fight back against the universe, if hero had a bigger beard, maybe they would have called him Sadhguru. Heroine is riding pillion, loss of elegance because now in chase mode.

-40: Tom Cruise method acting type of bruising, hero will get cuts and scars on his face which will never affect his handsomeness, in fact these scars enhance the handsomeness. Heroine is still riding pillion. Not commenting on elegance anymore because it is boring for us only.

-2: dei reviewer boy why using handsomeness again and again

+10: Hero’s name is still a suspense at this point in the movie, we are more frustrated than Baba Sehgal but kudos to the director for keeping up the suspense. Surgical Strike on our curiosity.

OoooooOoooooOoooo

+40: Birth of a new style: last ten minutes of the movie seem to be directed by someone else , is this the birth of outsourcing in direction? Who directed the last ten minutes, was it Hari or Suraaj, nation wants to know.

Also heavy narration at this point and Baba Sehgal looking like the most troubled soul on the  planet.

+5: For us for not giving away the suspense and writing such a post.

-900: Movie actually puts 900 days later as subtitle, hence messing up with my arithmetic while i try to convert it to years, movie still does not end in the time take by my stupid mind to do this basic calculation. Movie also uses days as metric in the first half of the film, sometimes it uses years also.

Damn it, why cant you use one standard unit of time. So problematic.

-100: The End.  Hero plans second road trip. Heroine still riding pillion, refraining from commenting on elegance.

-50: Director says movie inspired by a moment in ‘The Godfather’, but director does not mention if it is the Malayalam film or some other film.

Aata Maaji Satakli MAX

All numbers are irrelevant and arbitrary. All spelling and grammar mistakes are intentional, because we dont know grammar only. Semi-colon. LOL;

The FRS team

Subam

Categories
cinema:tamil reviews

WHAT THEY DO UNDER THE BLANKETS

CK AND MM AT THE MOVIES: O KADHAL KANMANI

Okay_Kanmani_film_poster

Moderate Manohar approached the end of the corridor with much hesitation, in his hands was an envelope, the fine-ness of it indicated its foreign nature. As the door creaked to an open, he could see Caustic head down on the table, the room only filled with the soft electronic buzz of an unsaved word document.

“CK, the appointment has come….” Began Mod quite loudly.

MM: CK, the appointment has come!

CK: huh…what?

MM: the appointment from Chicago Sun Times, it came in the mail just now.

CK< widens smile>: IS it? Wow when are we leaving?

MM: Not we.

CK: huh?

MM: It’s only me they want, as in…they can only accommodate me right now.

<A little background here, CK and MM quite fed up with their lives in Chennai had applied for the post of resident movie reviewers in Chicago, although CK was sceptical about working abroad, he finally realised its importance and was quite looking forward to it, now everything had just fallen flat for him>

CK took a moment, or maybe even shorter than that to recover and went ahead and patted MM on the shoulder.

CK: “Great, you are taking this up right?”

The room was again filled with MM’s hesitation and the soft electronic buzz.

Some higher power intervened in the form of the editor who barged in unannounced like he owned the place, in fact he did.

Aye Sinamika Tamil Lyrics – OK Kanmani

“CK!MM!, OKK review on my table, fifteen minutes, already every major media and everyone with a Facebook account has already written a lot about it. We shouldn’t miss out.” The editor walked out with the same pace.

MM: Let’s discuss the movie first, later perhaps…

CK: Nevermind…whenever it suits you.

MM: Should we start with the bit about how bold Mani Ratnam is, making a film on live-in relationships?

CK: No….this isn’t about that, I mean at least I feel so, it isn’t.

MM: Should I wait for you to tell what’s it about?

CK: It is about validation of love, this whole live in relationship thing is to keep it all contemporary and all that… you know like that skype call and the iPad song

MM: So contemporary that they have T.M Krishna’s latest book “A Southern Music” in the shelf somewhere in PrakashRaj’s house

CK: Understandable, considering the fact that Leela Samson plays an Alzheimer’s affected Carnatic singer, oh my god their walls are the same colour as the zari of the Kanchipuram sarees that these singers wear for concerts, so much richness. Also Thanjavur painting, it is the stuff upper middle class dreams are made of

MM: let’s come to the production design bits later, let us get back to the validation of love part, I think that this is a new concept, the exploration of live-ins

CK: No..no ..Mod, that’s what the director wants you to believe, to linger on the surface, the whole movie is about Tara and nobody else. Tara is the updated version of the Mouna Raagam Revathy.

MM: hmm..wild, willing to break rules and attracted to rash lover boy types and bored with domesticity etc…

CK: exactly, but she is also in a way the Agni Nakshatram Nirosha, not giving a damn because of a troubled past. Tara here hates marriage because her parent’s divorce affects her even now.

MM: But she falls for Aadi….they both fall for each other.

CK: Yes, but she never thinks much of him, atleast he is thankfully never full of himself, he just says “he will become rich like Gates etc”, she doesn’t think much of his game development career also when compared to her overtly passion filled love for architecture, she really doesn’t want anything serious.

MM: so when she really does realise she loves him anyway, he is about to go and he has already done something, but still she will only want him to say it. < “Marriage”>

CK: Yes enough instances to prove that this is a Tara fuelled relationship and not a flirty boy meets serious girl cute love story. First call back, first kiss even, all initiated by Tara.

MM: I see…where this is going, but what about Bhavani and Ganapathy, where do they actually fit in?

CK: they are clear examples for Tara to believe that a traditional relationship can work, she seems to be the one who is most affected by the happenings in their lives. Again a validation that she requires for secure love, in the end she isn’t clear about her career.

MM: So this is how is it going to be written? I mean this line of thought?

CK: What other is there? Isn’t this plain as daylight?

MM: No…no…what about the actors? The setting…the music and PC’s camera work, he seems to have let out this beast of a camera on this couple and the writing itself?

CK: Isn’t it what the others will also be saying? Mumbai trains and rains, mornings with pigeons flying, tastefully lighted blanket interiors and characters who alternate between sophistication and words of yore (“ummanamoonji! Kadavul”), the director’s insistence that friends of protagonists be as beautiful as them, etc, isn’t it what the others will also be writing or already written? OK we can write such stuff as well.

MM: Hmm..yes I think, I haven’t read any of them…in totality I liked the film, even from this love-validation-security angle you are coming from

CK: that’s the only angle I like the film from, and also Nitya Menen’s eyes.

MM: Surely we will throw in a bit about Nitya Menen’s eyes and what about Mani Ratnam’s comeback?

CK: What about it?

The editor walked in again, looked at the manuscript and said, “Throw in a few words about Nitya Menen’s eyes and about Mani Ratnam’s comeback, also meet-cute love story of our times etc”

MM: Yes sir, it’s there

Editor: Good, good Manohar, so this will be your final filing for my magazine…congrats on your appointment in Chicago. As for you CK, you are stuck with me for life.

CK: That, I am, sir.

CK went back to his table to file the final copy, but in the ruckus that the foreign appointment had created, he forgot to mention that the video game within the movie had a more interesting storyline than the movie itself and about The Shining reference he had caught in the film.

It was at this time MM said, “We need to talk”