Tag: mumbai

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cinema:tamil FRS

FRS: Darbar (2020)

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

Editor’s note: why do you guys keep saying this? I don’t like it, Chumma kizhi this line; add something like Happy New Year buddies or some such thing. 

+5: Movie has no narration, this simply means that it will try and use the simple visual medium and not over indulgent voice overs to simply tell a story. Kudos. 

+2: Movie begins with suspense type character killing rowdy boys here and there, face not shown. Immediate suspense buildup. 

-2: Next moment itself, newspaper tells that this is actually done by Mumbai police commissioner Aaditya Arunasalam. So much for immediate buildup which is immediately spoiled, newspaper headlines also are quite lol worthy. 

+5: Mumbai Police have a lot of Tamil speakers on the force, this is considerably more than the number of tamil speaking doctors in Srinagar (wink! Wink! Nudge! Nudge! We made a Kaatru Veliyiday reference) 

+6.7: ARM’s Durbar is truly a bilingual in a different sense, as in people are speaking in one language and dubbing is happening in another and of course there is no sync, which is intentional we believe. 

-50: Small time crook releases video asking hero to ‘encounter’ him within a day. Bad move nanba. 

-21: Not enough pistol training for all the rowdy boys in the movie because there are at least 100 of them and when they fire at Rajni, not even one bullet even causes a flesh wound. #RowdyBoysNeedSkillDevelopment

+5.34: Rajni is introduced by showing the impression his boots make on the ceiling of the building he is raiding, much like in a monster movie. Just saying. 

Editor’s note: don’t proceed with this imagery, our offices might get hit. Chumma Kizhi. 

-11: Rajni literalises an idiom by really bringing a knife to a gunfight, of course wins 

-34: Ok ok, now we know that our hero is indeed a mad cop, all we need is a sympathetic human rights activist to tell us the backstory as to why he became the mad cop. Waiddaminit, this movie has confusing timelines! 

+7.2: SPB goes into his golden age raspy voice for one second in the opening song, that reminded us of many things. 

Editor’s note: Stop it right there. 

-21: Hero’s daughter randomly points to one girl in the whole of Mumbai city and she happens to be heroine, needless to say that the heroine is single (although never stated) etc. Convenient relationship status is extremely convenient. 

-53.2: Now hero is tasked with “okaying” heroine. Following scenes seem to have been taken from some national film archives which somehow safeguards these 80s type coffee type romance.

+22: Rajni makes a clear stand. He likes only filter coffee. Instant powder coffee down down. 

+23: Rajni makes an even more clear stand. Coffee shop sell overpriced coffee that don’t taste so good. 

Editor’s Note: We should avoid such snide social commentary like these in our reviews, coffee shops are modern places  where minds can meet and discuss…stuff, in essence as many business books written by professors inform me that really we are not paying only for the coffee but for the ‘experience’. Much like how in movie theatres we are not paying for the movie alone but for the ‘experience’. 

<Hand Baby (Kai Kuzhandai) in audience goes Kua Kua Kua incessantly, FRS writers record this as part of ‘experience’> 

+12: Movie suddenly becomes serious and wants us to care about human trafficking 

+13: Movie suddenly becomes more serious (of course in between Yogi Babu comedy track is there) and wants us to care about drug menace

Remind us to cut points when movie later will completely forget these issues. 

-67: Movie suddenly then becomes about Mumbai Police finding their respect among the citizenry which was lost because of an old incident. 

-23: Heroine akka simply calls Hero to some random marriage because one girl has lost her chain. The reason for calling is because hero is Police Commissioner. After this, there is the dreaded marriage song, where hero goes and gives advice to marriage couple without knowing who they are, even other relatives don’t know who this person is, although no issue is made of the same

-34: All songs whenever and wherever, even BGM is fully with words like Thalaiva and Superstar with percussion….we mean..what is this? 

+6: Nothing really happens for a while then director decides to introduce the main villain, who will always be an international gangster. 

+11: Said villain has been elected as the head of all gangsters, seems like a quasi democratic process too! Long live gangster democracy! 

Editor’s Note: kindly remove gangster democracy. Chumma Kizhi. Take this out I say. 

-23: Movie bounces here and there, like Rajni’s hair before making it another hero vs villain fight which we know hero will win

-40.9: Movie thinks it is actually putting obstacles in the way of the hero, but then we never really feel anything, to make a show of it, movie decides to suspend Aaditya Arunachalam and then before you put your hands to scrape the bottom of the popcorn box, he is reinstated. So much for the show. 

But that suspension scene reminded us of THAT scene from Thangapadakkam (watch from 6:00 mins)

-7: Useless villain, when he has the opportunity to escape and come back with a better plan, decides to stay back and get hit by hero. 

-502: To Mumbai City planners, a ghastly fire accident has happened some 20 years back and you guys have not pulled down the potentially unsafe building but have actually made it into a memorial. What is this? 

+303: Hero inspires kid to wear police uniform. Now whole city respects the cops, drug problem is solved, human trafficking is reduced. All problems solved. All is well. Go and sleep peacefully. 

Editor’s Note: This is not very funny. Happy New Year. Include go and sleep peacefully as the last line. Thanks. 

All numbers are incidental and arbitrary, except the facts provided by our data analytics team

Subam

Team FRS

Categories
cinema cinema:tamil

Enai Noki Paayum Thota

It’s been a week since I saw Gautam Menon’s latest film. I remember almost nothing of it. I take home images of a movie and only then, do I begin to form opinions on it (unlike whatever you might think). 

With ENPT, I can only recollect Dhanush dancing on the edge of the salt pans somewhere on the ECR. I know for sure that this does not directly concern the story- something like Sunaina’s character ( whose name I have to Google), but I guess one of the bad guys described her “gummunu irukka” (not translating due to lack of appropriate word) somewhere in the movie . 

It’s just me, I am getting old. I need to seek help to get this ENPT blog post out. ENPT blog out and ENPT out of my system, so we can really plan what to see and discuss in the coming year. Get the blog out!

So I decided to call up the buddies who put together the FRS, they of course had a good memory, but they said since we have already written the FRS of Achcham Yenbadhu Madamaiyada or AYM, the points would hold good for ENPT. 

The writers were also very smart, they said that if I badly wanted a blog post about ENPT then I could just replace AYM with ENPT, Dhanush with STR, Megha with Manjima and voila, ready. 

Sometimes, I wonder how such smart people write for us. Mostly, I forget that these people are smart people. It’s just me. I am getting old. 

Next I look to the internet, which is a rich in opinion and low on insights medium. Maybe these opinions could help me remember what the movie was all about. After all, I needed to have a memory to form opinions, this seemed a logical option. I had to do it, I had to get into death wish mode and complete this blog post. 

But mostly the internet was talking about how ENPT had a lot of voice overs, hmm they were right, but also this was a Gautham Menon movie, what were they expecting? Maybe they were expecting smart voice-overs. But then again, this is a Gautam Menon film. 

Ah, now I remember; Dhanush’s college senior is Sunaina. But I know for a fact that Dhanush is much older than Sunaina, so maybe I should write about actors playing their appropriate age, that will surely resonate on social media. It is fairly an easy piece to write, almost a low hanging fruit, even our data analytics team in Pune said it would do good for overall website traffic. I rejected the idea, low hanging fruits don’t appeal to me. That’s why I didn’t write about a 30 years old actress playing a 26 year old. 

Another section spoke about how voice overs (i.e VOs) is the modus operandi (i.e MO) of Gautam Menon, they even said like if ‘we’ don’t question shadows in a Hitchcock film, then ‘we’ shouldn’t question GVM too. On the face of it, this seems like a very intelligent argument, our data analytics team also saw such arguments get the much needed traction. 

But is it not about using a method of storytelling but how well it is used and what impact it creates on the audience, the “we” in this case. Of course, if “we” say this, the response would be like, impact is subjective etc. Don’t ask me what I thought about the voice overs, I barely remember this film. It had voice overs. 

Ah! Now I remember, Sunaina’s character name is Mythili and she works in Mumbai. 

With only these minor memories, I was again faced with the question, should I even write about this film? The options before me were clear and they all pointed to one way to escape this misery, I had to. 

Don’t ask me why, you don’t have the right, because you did not ask when Scorsese used voice-overs or when Hitchcock used shadows. 

I should probably make up sentences like “first half was breezy-romantic, second half was action packed” , but honestly, I don’t know what breezy romantic is. But I should write these things, it’s probably what the ‘we’ felt in the theatres according to some critics. 

I know this blogpost will not add anything to discourse, much like Dhanush’s sister character in the movie, much like all GVM’s sister characters. 

So I should just put it out there, get ENPT out of the way and move on. Maybe I should go to Mumbai too, just to think about this movie in detail. But that would be a costly thing to do and my life might cross with gangsters and arms dealers. But I can always stay in Mythili’s place. Damn! I should just publish this blogpost.

“Do it. Do a spelling and grammar check. Now hit publish!” a voice in my head tells.

Don’t ask me why. 

Even if it is mediocre, some critic in the future might compare it to a blog post about a Hitchcock film. 

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”