Independence Day Frisbee

Chennai Ultimate Frisbee conducted an Independence Day bootcamp. We made a poster and invited people to join us at the beach.

Network 18 group was very keen on covering this event. Divya, an ultimate player, who also works with Network 18 covered our camp live from Besant Nagar Chennai at about 7am. Here is the video (not edited).

Ramadass attacks CII’s Chennai version 3.0

So, today, our ever-revolting friend Ramadass has opened his mouth again. Read that here

I have observed this for some time now. For anything that is aimed at development or industrialization, our man is the first person to protest.

This time its against Chennai 3.0 - the CII conference.

When some people are dreaming of making Chennai like one of the top cities in the world, this guy is speaking of driving away the middle class and the poor sections.

The last time I took a walk around Parrys Corner in Madras, I was thinking to myself - "Wow, Madras would be such a beautiful place if Parrys Corner was converted to look like Manhattan or Nariman Point. With high rise buildings on that side of the city, it will be a whole new transformation"

Obviously, when cities grow and become important for business, people will have to move out to the suburbs. We still cant have the same auto rickshaw guys loitering around and creating a traffic menace. Things have to get organized at least some day. To this day, when we speak of having visionaries and thought leaders amongst us, we have some thoughtless leaders like this one.

What are you?

So let me know what kind of a person you are - Left or Right? I am hoping to get some thoughts about this before I post more information.

By the way, an explanation for FONDU is available here

Sathyam - Tries Hard

I found some time yesterday evening. So I decided to catch up on the latest police based movie - Sathyam.

Sathyam - starring Vishal is what I would call as "yet another police story", but definitely not a very successful attempt.

The film begins by mocking a few themes portrayed by previous police movies - Kaakha Kaakha and Saami but still doesn't fare well. Even after seeing so many mature police movies through directors in the past, Sathyam's director still shows his IPS officer has a super hero, which is truly unbelievable.

Vishal has toned his body a lot, to look like a completely athletic police officer. The six pack craze has come to everyone now after King Khan displayed his. Sad, every other officer around him, sports a reasonable "tamil nadu police belly". Obviously, we know that Vishal cannot dance well. And that clearly shows in the song sequences. Dialogue delivery is okay but needs some clarity and thought. Vishal has performed quite well, otherwise. His portrayal of an honest police officer is quite commendable but that doesn't last for long.

We know that there are only some things that a policeman can do. There have been too many movies in the past and some have actually hit reality quite well. Sathyam is quite out of sync that way. Especially the fights. Totally insane. No police man can fight 20 plus people at a time. Its stupidity. I mean, why keep fighting. If you have to get them out of your way, then shoot below the waist and get going. Why waste your script on stunts.

Script and Screenplay takes a downward turn from the beginning. Encounters are done at gangsters or criminals not because politicians are bored of giving them cover. Its another way of eliminating people who repeatedly commit crime. We know that justice is in the favor of the advocate who argues convincingly. Encounter eliminates a chance for the advocate. That's all. And like they say in the movie Kaakha Kaakha, encounter is not done on any tom, dick and harry. When the criminals don't fear about shooting cops, why should the cops shoot below the knee? Sathyam movie takes you to a car chase. The background is the court near Egmore but the car chase happens on the highway to Andhra Pradesh. Vishal surviving and trying a monologue even after a bullet is fired at his chest. Too much love in a police movie kills the momentum. Sathyam does that as well. Finally, "mother sentiment". Can't we just get rid of this? Why do you have to portray heroes as "mamma's boy" - so loving, caring and all that bulshit. For god's sake, this is not a family story.

Upendra - the kannada hero, in his first tamil movie has done a wonderful role. Until a certain point in the movie, he keeps you wondering about why he is doing what he is doing. He definitely turns the movie around a bit. His thoughts in the movie totally reflect a resonably educated man and I do agree with him.

Nayantara - again, a waste of time. Her try with comedy is sick. Her moves in the songs are quite sexy. The introductory scene is quite interesting. After that the love scenes start dragging. In of the songs, it looks like Vishal and Nayantara are totally in love with each other. One police story in the past, with such scenes, ended in a wedding. Let's see if this one does too.

Harris Jayaraj's music hasn't lived upto the expectation. Background scores clearly show that he cannot try something new. Even the songs. The last one reminds you of "Kalyanam Thaan" from Saami. The rest also have deep connections with songs he has composed before and other tunes in the market. Composing music is a really tough job - agreed. Safe bet is to try an existing formula. Doing that again and again is a very bad idea.

Work on the camera is very good. For whatever script and screenplay was decided by the financiers and the director, the cameraman has done an amazing job. Scenes are very crisp and have a touch of perfection.

Overall: Moderate.

Insights

I ran into this piece of information on the web. And I was surprised.



If you think, you can give an explanation to this one, then please add your comments.

Kuselan - somehow friendly

What happens when a Malayalam movie is made in Tamil with a different set of actors and technicians? you'd rather call it a new Tamil movie.

I have strong reasons to believe that Katha Parayumbol - a great Malayalam movie starring Srinivasan got a similar treatment by the director P.Vasu. Commercialization. That's the only word to describe.

The story is about the life of a barber who lives in a town; and his superstar friend, with whom he had studied in school. The superstar comes to his village to shoot for a movie. The whole village is in a celebration spree to get a glimpse of the star. The moment they get to know about this connection, everyone in the village treats the barber and his family like how they see a person who has won the lottery. In that way, this film is a great representation of how behavior changes. But very soon, the movie starts focusing more on the superstar and the barber goes out of focus.
Pasupathy plays the role of a barber and Meena plays his wife. They try very hard to make ends meet. They don't have money to pay fees for their school going children; live in the most run-down house of the locality and don't even have food to eat, but Meena manages to wear starched saris and foundation / rouge for every scene.

Pasupathy does an excellent portrayal of a poor barber. His expression and dialog delivery is superb. I think he has studied Srinivasan's role from the original movie; in detail. But what to do, commercialization of the movie has erased the main theme and his presence. He gets sidelined and then the director suddenly remembers - oh my god, we forgot about this barber guy and then gets him back to focus again. This sequence keeps repeating.

Nayantara - total time pass I would say. No scope for acting. Actually she does nothing worthy in the whole movie. I wonder why she accepted to do this role. Too many close up shots on her body is definitely some eye candy. Rain dance and song is hot. Just before that song everyone wonders, rather they panic, where Nayantara is. Then they show the song. After that no one is bothered about Nayantara.

Coming to the comedy tracks. Vadivel - the vaigai puyal. Although he spends a lot of his screen time beating up his employees, his comedy concept is nice. Santhanam, Livingston, Santhanabharathi, Manobala and a lot others who are part of the comedy really keep you rolling in laughter. At least comedy is what sells in this movie through the first half. It really saves the movie.

Music by GV Prakash Kumar. Quite good but reminds you a lot about songs that you have heard before. One song (Perinba) reminds you about the title song in Veyil. Another song (Nayantara's rain dance song) looks like a slight lift off from a song that was composed by one of the bands in AR Rahman competition "Mirinda - Ooh La La La". The Shankar Mahadevan song about cinema, the way filmdom works and about Superstar, all in a song, is beautiful. The Egyptian theme based song sounds very much like "MJ's Remember the Time".

Last but not the least. Superstar. He is at his best. Apart from the usual scenes about fans and stardom, he comes across in the movie as such a simple person, which is highly commendable. If you've read the book, "The Name is Rajnikanth", then you'll be able to closely relate the last scene of this movie with superstar's life. There was actually a Kuselan in superstar's life; because of whom superstar managed to leave Bangalore and reach Madras in search of a future. But, what the hell. This movie still largely glorifies superstar and not Kuselan.

The message that comes out towards the end is about friendship. At the end, the producers could have made a witty remark saying "Happy Friendship Day" considering that the movie was released in August.

Overall: Good time pass for the family.

Friendship Day

NO greeting card 2 give, NO sweet flowers 2 send, No cute graphics 2 forward, Just a kind heart of an ever loving friend wishing u advance "HAPPY FRDSHIP DAY"

So thats the first SPAM I got today morning for Friendship Day. And then few more started coming in. But they weren't as funny as this one.

Anyway, I always believed that after a point in your life, you kinda feel weird rather funny about these things. I mean, there are so many other things to do than buying an elastic friendship band or some filigree stuff that you can tie to your wrist or pin up to your shirt or bag. God knows who came up these ideas.

You know what - Friendship Day and all those Days dedicated to Mother, Father, Sister, Brother, Dog, Cat, Neighbors are all for the West. Ok, we have Rakshabandhan. That's a different story altogether. But why I connect this to the west is mainly because of the magnitude they attach to these relationships. Children are so independent at young age. They are left to decide what they want to do. They marry. Not once, but quite a number of times. Also do several other things that we may not do. So, for them, relationships are just like written on paper. Ok, I am not telling that the people in the west do not have values. Their bold thinking about what they want to do in their life takes more gets more preference. That's all. So, they need such days to periodically remind them. And during such moments, they do everything they can to make that day special for that person in their life.

We Indians are not like that. When our friend calls, we have all the time in the world to spend with him or her. Sometimes, we go over and above the limit to do anything. Same goes with the values that we attach towards our immediate family and relatives. At least its been like that. I don't know how much of this "me and my space" concept has influenced us lately.

So the one thing I remembered distinctly among several others about Friendship and Friendship Day was this video. Wait! don't go and click immediately. So, I managed to find this on You Tube.

Closely watch the dialog at 1:32 about Friendship. Now that's simply amazing I say.



But don't be surprised if I go ahead and write a poem on friendship or maybe an icky sticky mindlessly sentimental post on the essence of friendship. I am capable of doing that. Just for the sake of writing another post; fill space you could say. That's all.

Wonderful

I was super impressed after seeing this on the web. I really wish I could write stuff like this and send it to you know who.

I hope you like the video.