Categories
cinema:tamil FRS

FRS: Annaatthe (2021)

So, everyone here knows what an FRS is right? Right?

At the outset, Team FRS would like to wish everyone a Happy Deepavali.

May this festival of lights…

Editor: Enough, I’m done with festival greetings

Writer group: we haven’t even started and also can we add the now popular phrase “from us to you or from ours to yours, chief?

Editor: No! (shouts)

Let’s just stick with the FRS, okay? Already our brand is too weak, we haven’t done an FRS in months.

Just begin.

-101: Annaatthe begins with a voice over. Always beware of narration boys! Funnily enough this narration is never followed through again the movie. It is only used as a lead in to take us six months back.

-45: People of Kolkata are eager to know who is Annaatthe, they are also using the hashtag #whoisannaatthe, but we know that Annaatthe beats up gangs who hold black money of the rich and famous, so pretty much an underground operation, why would the media be covering this and why would people on the street want to know who Annaatthe is?

Cut to Soorakottai.

+52: Obviously hero is village president, but he is also arbiter of local fights, deliverer of pearls of wisdom and doer of kurumbu, singer of songs and dancers of the (omkaara) koothu

No need to mention that everyone from 6 to 60 love him, because he is hero.

Do villagers really love this kurumbu doing hero or is this a Kollywood based reality?

Also also innocent and cheerful villagers are innocent and cheerful.

<Idea Moment>

How about a story where the villagers are actually irritated by the doings of the kurumbukaara hero types because their innocence and mischievousness always come in the way of you know, farming and they send him to Kolkata which is actually a place where the kurumbukara hero learns reality of life, work etc.

</Idea Moment >

+31: Rajni’s hair for being the representation of bounce, at times it seems like it is a separate organism with its own thoughts, wants, needs and ideas.

Did someone say idea?

<Idea Moment>

Rajni’s hair develops its own consciousness and starts to pick up radio signals whenever there are wrong doers around him, it’s mostly like a on the body travelling sidekick cum guide which helps him clean up crime.

</Idea Moment>

+155: Rajni himself for being the embodiment of enthusiasm, he does so much in this movie, more than all the rest of the cast, more than all the list of writers credited, more than what he is supposed to be doing.

It’s a pain to watch, but also at the same time painfully admirable that someone has so much spirit in trying to retain an audience.

But can he do it alone?

Umm

400: Paasakara Psychos

If you popped in (your mouth) popcorn every time someone says Paasam (affection?) in this movie, then you will run out of popcorn within the first few minutes, if you want to continue with eating popcorn and counting the word paasam be ready to break your FDs, because Popcorn is costly bhais.

Also, this family is full of Paasakara psychos that it is literally their affection which brings out the main conflict between Kaalaiyan (Rajni) and his sister Thanga Meenatchi (Keerthi Suresh).

Paasam is above everything and controls everything, it’s almost like Kaalaiyan and Thangam are possessed like in a horror film, also people around them are enablers, except the comedian who as usual sees the inanity of this situation?

Would you shower affection so much that they break themselves?

Disturbing to say the least.

Editor: please order more coffee, our writers need it.

Owner: no money, just publish and get done with it.

+19: But the ensuing drama for about five minutes is one of the best, Rajni also has a brilliant Siva conflict moment earlier in the movie where he needs to get his sister married but does not really want to.

As the saying goes, obstacles are good but conflict is always better.

Obstacle is when the hero needs to overcome something to accomplish something, conflict is when hero has to overcome something but doesn’t really feel like doing this.

Siva really does conflicts really well and Viswasam is one of the best mainstream movies which did this well in the last decade and we can keep typing away on the conflicts in Viswasam, but this is not that blogpost, that is a different one.

Here the conflict is small and it hardly registers. Siva has shown he could do it, but not always past experience leads to similar performance in the future.

<Cut back to Kolkata>

Editor: Wait a minute! Did you mention about how Meena ma’am and Khushboo ma’am brought in the nostalgia element and how people were transported to the 90s etc.

Writer group: were we?

Editor: get on with it.

<Cut again to Kolkata>

Kolkata the city where it is always Durga Puja.

-103: To reinstate that we are indeed in Kolata, Keerthy Suresh is asked to run on Howrah bridge and Victoria Memorial.

We mean…

-67: Something something happens and we find ourselves with our first major villain.

-50: something something happens and we find ourselves with the second major villain.

The something something here refers to the designed action sequences which technically should be fun to watch, but since we don’t have any real stakes here and since both the villains are no match for Rajni, there is no swarasyam left with us the audience.

Swarasyam, there’s a good title for the next Siva and Team movie.

Editor: Do put in a word about the villainous roles of Jagapathy Babu, the audience will like it.

Writer group (in unison): we write for ourselves, who cares what the audience like.

Editor: Waiddaminit! Something struck me, you guys were telling about the paasakara psychos right? Where affection itself becomes deadly to those involved?

Writer group (in unison): Yes!

Editor: So it could be like Siva’s reading of the Rajni phenomenon itself, so many people love him and the pressure just gets to him every time he makes the movie, the love they have for him could be a deterrent to what he could do on screen, it almost becomes a controlling force.

Maybe Siva and Team did experience this deadly affection pressure when they were writing the film and thus he put all that into the movie?

How is this interpretation?

What do you all think?

Writer group (in unison): We are not film companion, sir.

Subam

Team FRS

Categories
cinema FRS

FRS: Penguin (2020)

And we are back! 

So everyone here knows what an FRS is right? Right? 

+2: No narration and we all sigh in relief

-3: Movie begins with a statue by a lake in Kodaikanal,the statue has so much of the art department’s fingerprints on it that none will mistake it for a real statue. Small fail. 

-45: Oho so killer in this movie will wear Charlie Chaplin mask. 

Exclusive extract of excruciating moments from the story discussion room 

“Sir, apparently clowns are very scary, in US and all, children get scared by seeing clowns, they have also made movie based on it recently”

“We should also have clown face villain to creep out audience”

“People will find out…”

“Oh then what’s next to clown…maybe we should try Charlie Chaplin” 

“Wow, done deal” 

“Let’s also add one yellow umbrella so that it becomes very iconic” 

<End of exclusive extract> 

Sorry but lol, we could never associate any kind of fear with the Chaplin Killer, no the music also was not helping, sorry. Also he has a yellow umbrella like a CSK fan and so anyone in Kodai should have spotted him by now. 

-32: Movie is set in Kodaikanal types just because our characters can wear sweaters. Yeah please there are lakes all around Chennai, please summa don’t say lakes and all. 

Also also, we can see this trend in which Amazon is picking up tamil movies for release, both Ponmagal Vandhal and Penguin has the following

✅Female protagonist

✅Movie location is hilltop town

✅Murder and kidnapping involving children

✅Drone shot over car, lake and mountain

✅Sweater people and mist

So if you’re writing and selling to Amazon, have the above somewhere in mind. 

+23: One guy (not telling who) will do one morning call for ten minutes to tell what happened in the life of KeeSu so that audience can catch up, this is also aided by some photographs etc

-23: for that 20 minute intro call, KeeSu will reply with just “miss you too” #hmmzoned 

-80: Heroine goes into flashback mode suddenly so that we can know exactly the things that we need to know to progress with the movie. 

-71.2: Heroine will rapidly tell a penguin story to her kid, so rapid that we are sure that the kid didn’t follow, we were not sure if we should follow it ourselves, later we got to know that it’s not the full story even, then why so speed?

-11:Heroine then comeback to “present day” because someone call her name cliche

+34: Lady doctor gives good advice about pregnancy but of course none of this will be followed by our heroine, points for timely advice being timely. 

+101: Understanding husband is too much understanding 

-53: Kodai police are not going to like this film, especially when the inspector seems to have made the right connection at first. 

-56.9: If it is a slasher film involving a kid, then two definite elements will be there. One kid will be allowed to draw random things and characters will get puzzled over this, also said kid will sing some nursery rhyme. 

Supposedly all this is fresh and spooky. 

-23: Something something happens and we suddenly see ourselves watching Silence of the Lambs, no we mean not that movie within this movie, but something like that. Out of the blue surprise. 

-42: Movie really doesn’t progress beyond a set of characters and since the main slasher is also Charlie Chaplin costumed, most of the genre trappings like setting, sound design and the misty cinematography are not effective. 

So we know where they are going, before they get going. 

Also then they say the movie is about motherhood. Yeah, another addition to our hill-top horror series of films which has been giving diminishing returns. Yeah. 

Team FRS

Subam

Categories
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 FRS

FRS: Saamy 2 aka Saamy Square

saamy-2-46So you all know what an FRS is right? right?

+120: To director Hari.

critics have often told that he tends take things a few notches higher; Hari seems to have taken this criticism to heart and named the film as Saamy square which means that the current film is a result of multiplying the first movie by itself.

+6: Aarusaamy is back

Vikram so much looks the character that he makes it look like they are using extended footage from the first film shot 27 years ago.

(no this is not a side-reference to Vishwaroopam/Vishwaroop 2)

-10: Weather and mother nature start behaving badly when Aarusaamy gets angry 

(no this is not a side-reference to Sabu from Chacha Chaudhary comix)

-12: Just when you thought that there was not going to be any narration, there is. 

+18: Aishwarya Rajesh plays Bhuvana

the character essayed by Trisha in the original; but we did not see any “ivarukku badhil ivar types” serial credits at the start thus making it momentarily difficult.

-10: Aarusaamy has been married happily for over a year, but never has he once realized that the ultimate goal of his wife was to become an IAS officer #notcouplegoals

-70: Suddenly there are three sons of the original villain and all of them come from Srilanka,

the chief of them is even named Ravana; obviously hero name is Ramasaamy

+45.9: Bobby Simha as Ravana Pitchai is one of the best antagonist portrayals this year, he gets an accent, a signature killing move, a creepy BGM and performs even, just forget about the beard though.

-32: Cronies of Perumal Pitchai do not question the authority of the ‘newly-sprouted’ sons and not even one of them come to stake claim.

We hope that, this portion will be covered in the Netflix series called Saamy 1.5 or square root of Saamy 

-714: Movie suddenly says “28 years later”, which means movie should take place in 2032 but actually takes place in our time only. 

Alternate movie suggest: Saamy 2032 aka Saamy From the Future

{Aarusaamy Jr aka “6” is a humanoid robot in the service of Tirunelveli Police, which is now being run entirely by robots to fight crime against the ARUVA 2.0 gang (Artificial Robots Used For Violence and Arson) 

Accidentally ‘halwa’  falls in his mouth during a drug bust and 6 starts to believe that he is a human police and goes in search of true meaning; we can get Denis Villeneuve interested no?} 

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<GET ON WITH IT>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

+561: Movie suddenly becomes a supernatural police action film, even though this was totally unexpected, it blew our minds.

+327: Obsessive Hari heroes are obsessive about  transport

Ramasaamy (Vikram again after trim shaving Aarusaamy get-up) actually mugs entire flight time tables (both public and private air carriers), he is also very specific about kilometers etc; so good.

We believe the biggest beneficiaries of the Udaan scheme of the government are Hari movie heroes namely Singham and Saamy. Doing their bit to encourage aviation in tier 2 cities.

But Saamy is one step lower than Singham, who is known to recite  latitudes and longitudes of places by heart, thus making Google maps skip an update.

<Let’s cross our fingers for a Duraisingham and Ramasaamy crossover, should be in the lines of Ramasaamy becomes a rogue police official and Duraisingam is tasked to bring him in. Let’s call it Toothukudi: Civil War>

-201: Heroine is “foreign return”

Keerthy Suresh studies a one year course in human psychology from University of Liverpool, but does not realize that incessantly calling IPS officers during work times could irritate them.

-107: Heroine’s father is a politician in Delhi; but did not send her daughter to JNU for the psychology course.

Was he afraid she would become urban naxal or was cut-off too high? Many such open questions.

-21: Name of coffee shop where hero and heroine meet in Delhi is : Delhi Coffee Shop

(I mean come on guys!)

+17: Second time in the history of Tamil film where heroine comes and disturbs a training session at some military academy in the hills. Hi to GVM.

-305.2: It is 2018 and Soori still thinks getting himself hit by others is funny, but the joke is on us because he is there in every other film.

+7: Mildly funny Keerthy Suresh is mildly funny, she should be paid for comedic quotient.

<Business Model Moment>

Can we evolve a model where we can track the amount of laughter generated in comedy scenes in theatres, parameters could be wild-to-mild laughter and claps and then pay the comedians as a proportion to their success? This could be a merit based model which could motivate comedians to come up with actually funny stuff.

</Business Model Moment>

-34: All songs whenever, wherever 

+101: One killing set-piece

+50: Movie suddenly becomes Mad Max Fury Road in the Thar desert before the climax (one more surprise), but some sections of the audience were furious (FURIOSA!)  because run-time just crossed 7 hours.

+23: Hero establishes greatness of the police police force by choosing IPS over IAS; wait we have seen that…um…never mind

-5: Convenient transfer to Thirunelveli is highly convenient

+71: Ramasaamy has the President of India on his email contacts, and they CONVERSE IN CAPS!

Oh wait, there are plans to make it a sequel too. Saamy Cubism?

<All numbers are incidental and irrelevant, except the data provided by our data analytics team based out of PUNE>

Yours sincerely

Team FRS

Subam

Vanakkam

 

 

 

 

Categories
cinema cinema:tamil FRS

FRS: TSK

So we all know what FRS is right? Right?

<Slow narration in deep voice, usually male>

“The FRS was supposed to be a weapon of limited use, it has been so faulty as a device that even multiple upgrades have failed to better it ( hi to Microsoft system update), but the FRS (having a mind and life of its own) seems to have overstayed its shelf life far exceeding the expectations of those founding fathers (no mothers) who first thought of this nonsense crazy concept.  We thank all those film makers who keep the FRS alive.

Indha FRS ungalukku samarpanam <not translating>

TSK2

-1008: too much self-importance, no one cares about the FRS. More points should be cut for the FRS team which hates narration to use narration to begin this piece.

-5: Ganavelraja credited when someone from background asks “Do you have money? (In tamil, here we are translating, earlier we didn’t ok) because he is producer. Oh so funny. Studio Green fans can unite.

-5: Director credited when same voice over says “you have very bright future” #yeppa

-9.07: The usual-unusual method of hero introduction of showing hero’s fingers, mouth etc before showing face; while showing face and while “GETONWITHIT” would have been best way, what will the first day fans do otherwise. Also first words spoken by our hero is “jeichiduvom” (translated to we will succeed, ofc)

+1: GETONWITHIT

+23: Hero is very positive attitude based; also he is quick to provide two line summaries of goals, life and leadership and destiny. Hero’s friend is normal but.

-42.56: Hero breaks policeman’s neck, then breaks into a song “Sodakku”, suddenly whole of Chennai is celebrating, no one knows why #IntroSongParidhabangal

TSK4

-12: Hero blames system and their location for lack of jobs but doesn’t stop to address the issue of skills required for the job or the training. While opportunity (or lack of) is always the issue in such ‘hero saves his surroundings’ movies but we have always been asked to accept that the hero is skilled at face value, there is absolutely no learning curve established because mastery at anything comes with continuous…oh my god..GETONWITHIT…

-8: All rich people are not just bad but greasy palmed slave traders who profit off the spine of the bent labourer, while this may be true; again we have to accept this at a moment’s notice.

<FRS Mini Bytes>

Arthur C Clerk’s third law: any sufficiently underwritten Mass hero movie will be indistinguishable from the hero’s projected image in real life

Like here Suriya’s height is one major point to address, then how he avoid swear words but uses them only when the time comes, regular call backs to the hero’s other films etc.

All this exists in abundance

</FRS Mini Bytes>

-45: All songs whenever wherever

-32.5: Role of heroine is to make hero fall in love in <wait for it> 1….2…..3… oh my god they are cute couple now…seconds…

-62: Time and again we have fought for the rights of those who play the hero’s friend, very pitiable state

-5: Community of heroine or adopted community of heroine is explained in detail but to no real relevance to plot, oh I forgot hero gets to call her as maami. No other community is established anyways.

-89.42: Heroine knows classical dance means she will practice with children in balcony only, no other place, how else…i mean

+22: Hero sitting with kids dressed as bharatiyar means he is going to say something very uplifting

Number of kids dressed up as bharatiyar is tooo damn high!

-101: Ramyakrishnan says she has x number of daughters because in her days of youthful marriage there was no tv/radio and hence nothing much to do; this is delivered as a comic track

+12: Closely follows the adage that festival films should be colourful, Holi has been so highly adopted by Tamil heroes that entire temple floors are coloured with red colour powder.

+15: Some humour here and there

<FRS Mini Bytes>

Acting: a new dimension

The whole acting in this film is defined by how aggressive do actors put-on/ off their cooling glasses, this means that we have sit through 4600 shots of frustrated villains adjusting their sun glasses 

#ColorKannadiParidhabangal

</FRS MiniBytes>

-29: After sometime story doesn’t know where it is going so introduces one more villain, what is this da, demand based hiring?

-23.17: Movie is called Thaana Serndha Kootam but shows a lot of process of hiring thus telling that this is not a natural crowd but one that has been assembled, then how thaana serndha…seri namakku en

+75: Hero combats corruption with corruption (fighting fire with fire types)

+11: Audience made to digest that this movie is made in 80s because buses and dresses are colourful and TR movies are being released.  #PeriodFilmParidhabangal

-67: Senthil still doing Petromax comedy is funny (in the filmmakers head)

-23: It is not a film shot in Hyderabad, if there is no shot of the hero walking around the Charminar

Something something happens, obviously even two villains are not as skilled as hero and after an outrageous climax all his well

But not before hero has time to tell his message.

TSK1

+14: Movie predicts that movie ticket prices will increase, interesting foreshadowing but if we look at it from the point of ….well…GETONWITHIT….no one cares, this is supposed to by smartly written ‘festival’ film with roller coaster family audience magnetic heroic films with social angle in lighter tone

+189: Film believes that no one gives anyone an opportunity and you have to take it yourself: we still don’t know if this is the underlying philosophy of Tamil rockers, because like hero and co can adopt slightly shady methods to give justice but common people should watch films only in theatre etc…

Shubam

Ungal Naam

The FRS Team

Vanakkam