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Movie Madness

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Y,

I have a different take on the popularity of SLM outside of india.

MARKETING.

Admittedly both of us know, that ARR has risen to higher musical heights than what he displayed in SLM, prior to SLM, and post SLM. But Jai Ho was a catch gungho, in tune with the general upbeat nature of the movie, inspite of a downer topic.

It has all the holly/bolly/kollywood formula: boy gets girl (velly velly important), good music, bad guy, good guy, some tears, some dancing, hope for the poor, orphans, big city, excitement of game shows, brains winning over brawn, david vs goliath… I could go on.

Add to it, the power of hollywood marketing. The film cost US$ 15 million, the north american rights US$ 5 million, final gross US$377 million. Marketing cost, though not tallied yet, was definitely more than the cost of the movie.

Personally, if I want to consider art house indlich movies of late, I watched deepa mehta’s water last week. I found it moving, touching and with none of the hype of SLM. ARR did the music for this one too, but a very subdued one with the melody flowing along the same lines as the depth of the movie.

thank you.

ps.. here is an alternate take on why SLM succeeded.

Southern California InFocus - "Slumdog Millionaire's" journey to success
 
Yamaka sir,

I found SLM rather cheesy, feel good film and the poverty more than a tad romanticised. Really no different from any other bolly film. In fact certain bolly films have been far more exceptional. Except it was in English taken by an Englishman.

I've listened to far better compositions by AR. SLM music was passable at best. Nothing to shout about. I watched it in the cinema from the beginning till the very end. Certain parts were brilliant and others rather predictable.

Sir, Mani, Bala, Balachander have done the magic Danny Boyle has many times over. Except it was in Tamil.
 
I watched water some years back with my mum and my aunt. It was brilliant portrayal of Brahmin widows and what they had to go through. One of the best Lisa Ray's film I have seen.

I don't even want to insult Water by comparing it with SLM. While Water tries its best to be honest SLM was just way too "filmi".

Perhaps I am being a tad unfair. Perhaps SLM never claimed to be anything more than filmi. Then why all the awards? They churn out similar stuff every year in bolly/kolly/tolly etc. They never seem to get any awards in Hollywood. I still maintain its because of Danny Boyle and what Kunjuppu mama has written about the marketing.
 
amala said:
Yamaka sir,

I found SLM rather cheesy, feel good film and the poverty more than a tad romanticised. Really no different from any other bolly film. In fact certain bolly films have been far more exceptional. Except it was in English taken by an Englishman.

I've listened to far better compositions by AR. SLM music was passable at best. Nothing to shout about. I watched it in the cinema from the beginning till the very end. Certain parts were brilliant and others rather predictable.

Sir, Mani, Bala, Balachander have done the magic Danny Boyle has many times over. Except it was in Tamil.
Click to expand...

Hello Amala:

Regarding your last point, please recall what Ang Lee did with his "Crouching Tiger .. the Hidden Dragon" a few years ago.

By giving proper subtitle in different languages, he marketed it to the English/French/Other language audiences.. and it bagged very many international awards.

My angst is why good Tamil movies not prepared to be seen by world audience? Now we have mighty marketing Corporates like Reliance Big Picture and Sun Pictures etc?

About ARR: Yes; he has volumes of work better than in SLM... but the Magic to be seen by world audience is what SLM gave him. A platform to showcase his talent.

People always ask why not Illaya Raja, MSV getting the Oscars? They did not get the right platform to showcase their product to the world, I would say.

As Kabir Bedi once said, Indian movie producers and directors make movies to only Indian audience in mind.. not the world audience.

That should change, IMO.

Cheers.

ps. About marketing: SLM was first taken over by Warner Bros - they dropped it saying "it won't fly - we should take it to DVDs straight"; Christian Carson objected; then Fox Searchlight saw it as a gem in the pile of garbage; they saw the potential..and marketed it to the fullest extent. They were right on the money.
Yes, if the product is EXCELLENT and very promising, it can be marketed to the world audience. If the product is so so then nobody will be enthused to take it and run... my criticism is India/Tamil movies are NOT made to be seen by the world audience! They go to only about 2% of the world audience, ignoring the bulk, I dare say. Cheers.
 
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dabangg (2nd time)

when your 21 year old invites you to watch a movie with her, it is only a dumb dad who refuses. yours truly being marginally smarter than dumb, accepted the offer, and bonded with my offspring for a couple of hours together with salman, sonakshi, and (ofcourse) munni!!

the last time i saw the movie, i had challenged the missus if she can match upto munni, which was quickly replied with a deft swing of the rolling pin. nowadays, i know from the way the pin is hold, which way the swing would go, and i with equal dexterity avoid it :)

was it my eyes playing the fool, or did sonakshi look prettier the second time. not sure, but to my daughter, this lady had a pure south indian look - what i would call மாம்பழ மூஞ்சி.

ofcourse the song chori kiya (along with glimpses of magnificience of dubai) is my favourite, though munni ruled the waves (till sheila bumped her). my offspring thought that malaika was pretty enough, with the sufficient 'come on' look of a vamp.

salman cannot dance for nuts. if michael jackson be given a 10, salman deserves a zero. still, he looked dashing enough in his police uniform and moustache & six pack.

it was surprising to see dimple kapadia, so old. yet handsome enough with remnants of her once famous beauty. i think she had a sister named simple, and a daughter named pimple? no? ;)

there are a couple of social issues that were touched, but probably not noticed by an indian audience.

first ic marriage - salman is a brahmin here, proposing to a potter's daugher (i think the potters come close to the bottom of the varna classification). i enjoyed the sheer audacity and suave in which the courtship was carried.

the second was the prevailing lawlessness and gangs in rural U.P. along with rajneethi, ishqiya, we are getting a flavour of the feeling of rural U.P. and also how this state of 200 million people, residing in the prime lands of indo gangetic plain, where 4 annual harvests are the norm. lucky land but too many people and too much corruption.

the movie was as my progeny remarked, 'cheesy', but flavoursome cheesy. good entertainment value, but definitely not deserving the numerous awards that it has received. somewhere there we have erred in our value system, when evaluating movies.

it made salman & arbaaz very rich, secured a firm foothold for sonakshi and enabled us a pleasant couple of hours of troublefree entertainment.

3 :)
 
engeyum kaddhal

the movie starts off and stays in paris france. i guess tamil movies are in big leagues now re money making. in my time, they could barely afford a song scene in phoren lands. today it is the whole movie. hmmm..

prabhu deva makes a guest appearance with the title song, and once again, confirms (in my opinion) why he is among the best choreographers of indian movie scene. also the man has moves that could give a good competition to MJ.

i am not too fond of jayam ravi. he has a baby face, smooth and chinless. wonder what and who gave him the breaks to enter the movie world. definitely not looks or talent, though the missus likes him a lot. i guess he has his fans :) no explanation for that though.

hamsika motwani, now renamed hamsika, is there - chubby, cherubic and wiggles in all the wrong places. cannot talk tamil for nuts.

i dont understand the kollywood craze for fair skinned north indian girls who come down south with an attitude, no language skills, make big buck and spit on the hands that feed them (apparently none of them have a good opinion either of the south or southern males) :(

terrible actress hamsika. hope she moves on to bollywood. good riddance.

the story line is not so bad, and the movies flows very smooth that i did not have to look at the clock even once. it is also believable, considering the numerous young entrepreneurial millionaires coming out of india.

i liked all of harris jeyaraj's songs, with 'dhimu dhimu' ringing for a long time in my mind. good memorable hummable tune.

inspite of hamsika, i would recommend folks see this movie.

3:)
 
எத்தன்

எத்தன் - honestly i do not know what it means.

it is one of those low budget movies with unknowns in the main lead.

the heroine, sanusha, looks and acts tamilian. cute and not bad acting in a light weight role.

the hero, vimal, in a borderline role between good & naughty, almost but not quite, pulls it off.

the storyline is immaterial and unconvincing.

the editting is crisp. one song, இலையுதிர்காலம் is decent. others are forgettable.

if you are bored and have a dvd of this movie and மாப்பிள்ளை, i would suggest you pick எத்தன்.

1.5 :)
 
Dear Kunjuppu

Leave all those 'reel life' stories. I find one very interesting 'real life' incident!!:)

In one of your earlier posts you told that when you had challenged your wife with regards to munni, you got a slap across the face! Now you are telling that you were dealt with a swift blow from the rolling pin!

Please, do me a favour! Kindly recall the incident and clearly tell what happened!

a. You got a slap across the face
b. You were dealt with a swift blow from the rolling pin
c. Both a and b
d. Something more graphic than all of the above :)

This will really help in giving the right rating for the above incident.

Please be kind enought to clarify, Kunjuppu :)

Kind regards
 
mskmoorthy said:
I enjoyed watching "Wedding Banquet" (1993) by Ang Lee The Wedding Banquet (1993) - IMDb . It is much different from his movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (which may have had a huge box office hit all over the world for the stunt scenes.
Click to expand...

wedding banquet, is the first chinese movie, i think, to deal with homosexuality.

it had rave reviews then, and even though i have not seen it, i have heard only good things about it.

it is another effort, to make light, or create a humourous side, to what is essentially, a serious, and to many parents, even today, a heart breaking subject.

i think, it is not the fault of the children who turn out to be gay. it is the parents who have such solid hard rock views, that they find it impossible to mellow and change. instead like the hard rock attitude, that they espouse, they break down and go to pieces.

the western society used to be like this till the 90s, when things started changing slowly and surely, in the right direction.

parents of my generation, overall, i have seen, in north america, accept the sexual orientation of their children, publicly. for not to do so, would be going against the wind the society is blowing.

i have had one distant relation in the usa, who married his male partner, with the parents and close relatives attending. :)

i do not know this guy enough to wish him the best, but he has my best wishes nevertheless. God Bless.
 
valli said:
Dear Kunjuppu

Leave all those 'reel life' stories. I find one very interesting 'real life' incident!!:)

In one of your earlier posts you told that when you had challenged your wife with regards to munni, you got a slap across the face! Now you are telling that you were dealt with a swift blow from the rolling pin!

Please, do me a favour! Kindly recall the incident and clearly tell what happened!

a. You got a slap across the face
b. You were dealt with a swift blow from the rolling pin
c. Both a and b
d. Something more graphic than all of the above :)

This will really help in giving the right rating for the above incident.

Please be kind enought to clarify, Kunjuppu :)

Kind regards
Click to expand...

:)
 
sadasivam.sridharan said:
I somehow feel that the melody and well meaning lyrics of film songs of 1960s have totally gone in the present day film songs.May be this may be my personal view.
Click to expand...

diffrnt times, diffrnt folks, diffrnt strokes :)

the songs, (and almost all songs in vinnai thaandi varuvayaa), omaana penne & aromaley can rank with any of those 60s songs, i think.

if you discount the dappanguthu songs, there is an amazing array of blends of music in today's tamil movies, with just as many music directors. no longer it is an oligopoly, which is good.

of late, my personal favourite is ramesh vinayagam. his enna idhu from nala dhamayanthi is haunting to the core.

karthick & chinmayee are top notch singers, i think. saindhavi is coming up and up. her engagement to gv prakash, hopefully does not dent her music ambitions.

even bombay jayashree, takes time off from her busy schedule to belt a tune or two in filmi world. :)
 
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Dear Kunjuppu mama,

Have you got any movies lines up to watch? If you haven't, may I humbly request that you watch Payanam and Seedan. Only because I enjoy reading your movie reviews and I'd like you to review these please . You're our resident movie reviewer now :). I for one shall take your film critiques quite seriously.

Thanks in advance :)
 
Dear Kunjuppu and Amala

I want to thank both of you for bringing up the movie 'Water' in this thread!

I watched this movie today and was very moved! Loved the acting of Seema Biswas! Baby Sarala has also done a very good job in this movie! The climax brought me to tears! Great movie!

Kind regards
 
Dear amala,

I am hoping that others too would join commenting on the movies they see.

I see nothing wrong in having two diametrically opposite reviews on the same movie. It just adds to the spice of looking at the same event through different eyes.

I have seen both seedan and payanam, both a few months back.

I do not remember much of payanam, except sections of it, was suspenseful enough. Based on rather fading memory, I would give it 2 :)

Sedan, I recollect more vividly. Maybe because, it was another disappointing movie from my current favourite actor, dhanush? He appears in an extended ‘guest’ appearance, which is more of a supporting role.

The story is borderline faith based feel good story. I do not want to go into the details, for there is not much detail.

Boy and girl, love, separate, and brought together. This time with divine intervention. If you can believe it.

This movie also confirmed, in my opinion, that suhasini maniratnam is a terrible actor. She was equally bad in nala dhamayanthi. if she was good once upon a time, then she has forgotten all her acting skills.

The one song, that sticks in my mind is ‘saravana samayal’. Thanks to this song, I learned, that in order to get vendakkai poriyal crisp, add some yogurt; rasam should never be boiled. Hints that I follow without fail, since then.

2:)
 
Bollywood Hollywood

Bollywood Hollywood

A director has to be careful when making a spoof. the result can give a back kick, worse than a mule or a donkey.

deepa mehta, definitely deserves two back kicks for producing this movie - an attempt to spoof on bollywood movies, in a canadian environment, with desi or canadian desi actors.

the story is about a rich indian boy (yes there are rich canadian brought up rich indian boys thanks to daddy business or their own smarts), who abandoned his white girl friend thanks to family.

he asks a spanish looking girl, who is really an indian, lisa ray, to 'act' as his betrothed, for some silly agreement to see his sister married.

it so happens, lisa, also a punjabi, a rebel, who has left home and worked as escort (it leaves to your imagination to figure out what she did or what she did not do).

deepa, comes close to making a good movie, when she questions the middle class morality of desis - the boys could play around, but the girl has to be a virgin. almost pulls it off, but not quite - thanks to an unbelievable bollywood ending.

lisa ray is gorgeous, as a desi, rebel at home, sleazy outside, but not effective as a romancer. rahul khanna does his part well, as a man torn between honesty and handmedownhypocracy.

ranjit chowdhury, the chauffeur, (yes the family is rich), displays some heart in the movie, especially when he puts on his drag queen costume and acts in the local theatre (the local drag scene is lively and toronto has the second largest gay population in north america)

it is exhilarating to see my neighbourhood in a movie - i live just around the corner from moti mahal, where lisa meets rahul the first time. also the familiar stores where she buys saris and also the grocery stores.

the one song rang rang mere is danceable, hummable and can be heard a few times. the other songs are just passable.

incidentally, this movie won a lot of canadian awards, which just shows the poverty of quality movies, made in canada.

the shakespeare quoting grandmother was a novelty, but not so strange as it appears. the indian education system till the 70s, especially the matriculation or the anglo indian high school certificates, provided the best of english literature, and inculcated a love of the arts. i have classmates who can verbatim quote the whole of julius caesar.

can be seen once on dvd or free

3 :)
 
Dear Friends

I am just wondering if anyone of you have seen the movie 'இயற்கை' (Iyarkai)!

It is a Film which won the 'National Award for Best Feature Film in Tamil for 2003'.

It is a story based on love triangle but the screenplay is so very different! The movie is so very natural and moves on a slow pace. It is a very touching movie according to me.

The heroine is 'Kutty Radhika' and the heroes are Shyam and Arun Vijay. Seema Biswas also acts in this movie as the sis-in-law (அண்ணி ) of the heroine. Pasupathy (I love this guy and all the characters he has acted in) has acted as the Father of the local Church.

All the songs in that movie are good to hear and one that I just love is 'காதல் வந்தால் சொல்லி அனுப்பு உயிரோடிருந்தால் வருகிறேன்'!

This movie is really worth watching!

This is my POV and I would really like to hear the verdict of our 'ஆஸ்தான' reviewer :)

Kind regards
 
valli said:
Dear Friends

I am just wondering if anyone of you have seen the movie 'இயற்கை' (Iyarkai)!

It is a Film which won the 'National Award for Best Feature Film in Tamil for 2003'.

It is a story based on love triangle but the screenplay is so very different! The movie is so very natural and moves on a slow pace. It is a very touching movie according to me.

The heroine is 'Kutty Radhika' and the heroes are Shyam and Arun Vijay. Seema Biswas also acts in this movie as the sis-in-law (அண்ணி ) of the heroine. Pasupathy (I love this guy and all the characters he has acted in) has acted as the Father of the local Church.

All the songs in that movie are good to hear and one that I just love is 'காதல் வந்தால் சொல்லி அனுப்பு உயிரோடிருந்தால் வருகிறேன்'!

This movie is really worth watching!

This is my POV and I would really like to hear the verdict of our 'ஆஸ்தான' reviewer :)

Kind regards
Click to expand...

Shri Valli,

I loved this movie as much as you did.

Its a wonderful triangular love story, in a very slow and realistic pace, between a sailor (Shaam), who is a orphan, gets settled in the port town of Andaman, a ship captain (Arunkumar), as one of the ship's captain that keeps visiting the port and the village girl who sells furits and other things to sailors on ships, that arrives the port.

As you said, the tiniest details of all the characters in the movie were beautifully picturised, such a way that, it makes us feel living with the characters.

The end part of the movie is awesome. In a celebration, all dance, wearing Santa Claus Mask. The girl much to her suprise finds Arunkumar back to the place, while unveiling his mask and at that moment, the focus goes towards shaam who moves to a distance and looks at the pair, slowly unveiling his mask.

The climax of the movie is very very touching. It leaves a mixed emotions of joy and sorrow.

This is a very good movie that you have brought up here. If Sri Kunjuppu have not seen this movie, this movie would be the best suggestion from your side, for him, IMO. And as you said, Sri Kunjuppu would than come up with his best critique, in his own artistic way..

 
Dear Ravi (dear friend)

Glad to note that you have seen that movie and enjoyed it!!

Please call me Valli (no Shri, ok?).

Kind regards
 
Wake Up Sid

Wake Up Sid

Big cities have a unique identity and there is a special charm to stories that are part of the lore. New York has so so many. So has London. now Mumbai is joining this select group, with movies, stores centred around the character of the city.

We had once upon a time in Mumbai, a metro story… and now ‘wake up sid’. Starring konkona sen sharma (kk) and ranbir kapoor (rk).

Rk is a spoilt brat, only child of a self made industrialist, who due to busy partying,. Kk is a newcomer from Calcutta to Mumbai, to seek her fortunes, and about 4-5 years older thank rk. They meet accidentally, and rk helps kk find a place and settle down. Kk soon finds a job in a city magazine. Now the story starts.

Rk fails to graduate and Unable to take the parents’ admonition, leaves home, and seeks refuge in kk’s flat. He cannot stand joining daddy’s business.

The rich boy soon learns to behave and adjust himself to the strained circumstances. Rk is handy with a Nikon camera, and with it, manages with, manages with kk’s help to get an internship at her magazine, which eventually turns to a full time job, thanks to his photography skills.

In the course of the month, that he stays with kk, rk matures, and eventually makes up with his parents, with newfound respect and affection on both sides. Without much ado, he says good bye to konkona, and …. I will leave it to the reader to find, by seeing the movie.

The movie is a familiar topic, but has been dealt with very intelligently and lightly. The editing is crisp. Konkona, as an older woman, is tops. She is another actor, with Indian looks which gives her character a special warmth and feeling. Ranbir is adequate as a goofy immature rich kid. Probably a repetition of his real life.

The song iktara, is inserted at various intervals, depending on the mood. Not a great tune, but adequate.

All in all a wholesome enjoyable movie.

4:)
 
valli, ravi,

i dont know anything about 'aasthana reviewer' or 'artistic way'.

let everyone pitch in and review. variety gives the spices and flavour to any subject.

interestingly enough, we have not had a movie where there is a disagreement of views. that should be interesting.

will add iyarkai to my list...thanks.
 
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