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.

The name is Rajnikanth

I was quite reluctant to buy this book, the first time I saw it on the stands in Landmark.

Then later I decided, what the hell, let me see what's in there. I picked it from a local music-world and started reading.

The book, as everyone can guess, is totally about what Shivaji Rao's life has been till now. It creates a perfect blend of what the times were during the pre-filmy years and after entering into films.

There is more emphasis on the journey, which is something that most people dont know and are not aware of. A journey of how a mischievous shivaji rao, who was roaming the streets of bangalore with his friends, wasting time and money, not thinking much about his poor family, to becoming a superhero.

The whole story is quite simple - I mean, the way its represented in the book. No bombastic words. Language is quite simple. Sometimes it feels like as if you are reading through a collection of random blog posts by the same person.



The book takes an interesting journey. There is no chronology as such. We get into the past where Shivaji is a child and then in the next one we suddenly leap into, for example, a chapter about how he got married to Lata. So, in way, even if you think that you are going to get bored reading about someone's life, you'll be kept at a reasonable pace because of changing moods.

What I could learn after reading this book is that most of what we see about Rajni in his movies is perhaps a reflection of what his life has been. He put in efforts towards making a movie on Raghavendra or Baba was only because he strongly believed that these two people make a great impact on his religious sentiments.

The most important part of this book is stories about hardships, economic dependance, friendship, struggle, hope, confidence, crisis etc. I think I can just go on. Frankly, thats the truth. There is a lot of unknown stuff about Rajni and his early years in Madras (much before he met KB for Apoorva Ragangal) and this book simply gets all that to light.

The book also tell us stuff about politics in Tamil Nadu and even the Centre, how Rajni got himself involved unnecessarily and burnt his fingers. Incidents such as the elections, Veerappan's escapades, Cauvery issue are highlights.

Coming to stuff that cant be avoided. This book could have been edited with maybe a steady mind. Its so full of mistakes. And mistakes when done on facts really irritates anyone. Especially when movie enthusiasts read this book, they'll probably want to just throw this book into the trash can for such bad editing. Most movie names are quoted wrong - dont know if there was any intention. At some places, even the connections with dates and movies are wrong. After seeing so many mistakes, I strongly felt that the book shouldnt be selling for even half the price.

Verdict: If you are a hardcore Rajni fan, then its worth a buy.. Dont buy if off the stands, its very expensive. Get it on the web. Its a lot cheaper. Or even a pirated version would do.