finally...!!!

"...A week before its opening, Warner Bros.' The Dark Knight is shaping up as the movie event of the year, if not the millennium!....Already, theaters have scheduled midnight Thursday screenings - to begin at 12:01 a.m. Friday, so as not to violate film's contracted July 18 opening. There's talk of 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. screenings Friday, to meet the advance-sales demand...."

10

It has been a wallet-bursting last few weekends at the movies:

The Happening, Dasa, Hulk, Mongol and Dasa again.

Hulk could have as well been an animated feature and Mongol is just too amazing a piece of art to write about on a Friday afternoon (I refuse to say anything about 'The Happening'). That leaves me with the one film I have waited impatiently for over half a year. Literally.

So, when I actually settled into my seat (first day, 2nd show), I had an embarrasingly wide grin on my face. And like everyone else, I too was nailed to my seat during the first 10 minutes. What followed though was a roller coaster ride of amazement and disappointment in equal measure, so much so that I left the theatre without knowing whether I actually liked the film or not. The second helping did not help either.



For what its worth, my 'Dus' things about Dasa:

1. Dasa ends with a montage of Kamal, 'before, during and after' the make up of each character (with the 'ulaga nayagane' track in the background). This is before the credits begin and so, seemed like he intended the audience to see it as part of the actual feature!!!! Its a minor detail, but it kinda gives us an insight into the thought process behind this film. This clearly is a 'come and see what all I can do' kinda gig and not the 'come, watch and get blown away' types. For some strange reason, I just assumed it would be the latter.

2. I think the folly of Dasa was the fact that much of its brilliance was too subtle to be noticed, let alone appreciated.

3. Almost no paati I have met in real life has had forearms that reminded me of Sanath Jayasuriya.

4. I have a sikh friend whose Tamil is way better than some of my Tamil friends. So I dont have a problem with Avtaar singing in Tamil. However, I do have a problem with him mouthing a phrase like 'Paarada Maanuda'

5. People say that the Tsunami sequence special effects were bad. Of course they were. This is a $25 Million film. That is half the budget of 'The Happening' (which at $60 Million is considered a teeny weeny small budget film). Even if you subject all the animation engineers in India into bonded labour, you cannot do much with $25 Million. Having said that, there is just no excuse for the scene where some police constables flee the rising ocean as if they were running away from a mouse on the loose.

6. The subtle brilliances. So many! The shot at the hospital with 4 kamals criss-crossing and the car chase with 2 kamals inside the car must have all been shot on multiple days. To have managed the same lighting and to have choreographed extras over and over again, etc must have been a continuity nightmare, pulled off brilliantly. I think the biggest indication that those scenes worked is that not many talk about it!

7. I totally loved the 'conspiracy theories' of the undying Kamal fan (http://sathyaphoenix.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/the-mapping-of-each-ten-roles-to-avatars-in-dasavatharam/). Some of them actually seem plausible.

8. Prosthetics kick ass. I think we all know that. Kamal's linguistic and voice modulations kick ass. We all know that too. These obviousnesses kinda brought down the novelty of 10 for me.

9. I think critics are having a field day butchering Kamal the writer. I dont know about that. I guess there is the script and then there is the premise. "A depiction of the 'Butterfly Effect', with a 9th century execution as the 'flutter of the wings' and a Tsunami nullyfying the effect of a biological weapon as the 'tornado'......In an industry that has been pre-occupied with 'boy meets girl' and 'good man kicks bad man's ass' for the last 75 years, I think this is pretty ground breaking.

10. Like sky diving or cardiac surgery, cinema too has no points for 'trying'. In the end it is all about the folks in the dark room with their backs to the projector, who paid to see your film. They either like what they see or they dont. It doesnt matter if you spent 100 hours to get into a plastic mask. They are still gonna come out and say "Hey that 'paati' did not look real, yaar!".

saturday morning coffee...

....and just when you thought it was a lazy saturday morning, a song comes along, 10 years since you heard it last....and brings along so much...Cat Stevens.

between hard and a rocky place...

What would you like? a lot of money or very little money?

do you want to be buried or cremated?

Royals or Royal Challengers? (i know!)

how would you rather be tortured? waterboarding or tickets to 'kabhi kushi kabhi ghum'?

'SIMPLE DECISIONS'. Are'nt they wonderful? Black & white, easy to make, you will never repent them (like for example, the guy who chose waterboarding), you dont have to discuss it with your friends and best of all, its chop chop! No time wasted.

cut to my life.

"would you like 3 or 2 buttons on your suit?"

"white bread or wheat bread for your sandwich?"

"well...you can either take TTK road and make a right or take RK Salai and make a left. Its the same distance. your call!"

"Cafe mocha or Cafe latte?"

"I have tickets to both Aruna Sairam and U Srinivas. Where do you wanna go?"

Time out. After almost three decades of 'Deciding Between Equals', I am officially retiring. It is a thankless job. Seriously.

I have to use all the neurons in my very small brain to weigh two perfectly equal options , do a pointless SWOT analysis, look at the long term vs short term gains, check the ROI and eventually pick 'A' over 'B' (for really no fault of 'B', by the way)....all in 5 seconds and what do I get in return?

K- Mocha
Coffee shop gurl: OK....that'll be $3.50

K - two
Suit shop guy: OK....you can come for trial in a week

really? 'OK' is all you got to say about it? How about a lil appreciation?

"Sir, I know the pain you had to go through....and I think you are a genius"

"two buttons? wow....you just brought down your carbon foot print and saved the earth from global warming"

"you choose Aruna Sairam??....will you marry me?"

Now, THAT will be 'fair compensation' or 'minimum wage' (depending on how 'left' you are). Unfortunately, we live in a thankless society and I just have to pay up, pick up my sandwich and leave - like as though Nothing happened in those few seconds!

Prayer

• I hope I will never have to watch another cricket match with Arun Lal's commentary
• I hope Vodaphone will be declared bankrupt in my lifetime (They are actually getting away with an online recharge system that does not work!)
• I hope Karunanidhi lives for another 45 years, stays in power and remains my neighbor, so my apartment never has to worry about security, water or power cuts
• I hope Rahul Gandhi develops a medical condition that prevents his larynx from working
• I hope Arjun Singh's english teacher will spank him hard and make him understand that the word 'reservation' is not the synonym of the phrase 'equal opportunity'
• I hope watching southpark for 2 hours everyday doesnt mean I am a sicko
• I hope the trainer at my gym, who was born and brought up in Theni, would talk to me back in Tamil, someday.
• I hope Arun Lal dies a painful death ("Sourav, quick as he is, could not stop the ball" he said today).

I hope.