Archive for Qalandar

EXCERPT:

“Doesn’t M Sasikumar know this? Doesn’t he know he can’t just spring out of nowhere and dazzle us with craft and control and give us one of the best first features ever made, so wonderfully written and so beautifully shot and put together? Doesn’t he know he’s got to make tinny excuses about not having the support system of a multiplex culture or not being able to rope in saleable stars, and therefore end up making a highly compromised work – with item songs like Kathaazha kannaala – that merely exhibited promising slivers of his talent, rather than one that showcased him as a fully-formed visionary who appears to have done for the bloody bylanes of Madurai what Scorsese did for Little Italy in Mean Streets?

I realise I just might have oversold Subramaniyapuram to a degree that the film cannot hope to live up to, but when you’re excited about something and when you rush back for a second viewing immediately after the first (possibly to pinch yourself and check if, indeed, your reaction to the film was proportionate to its merits), you want to shout from the rooftops – especially when the kind of theatres the film is playing in are likely to deter certain classes of the audience. (Couldn’t the city’s multiplexes have knocked off one screening of The Dark Knight, say, or the dreadful Kismat Konnection, and accommodated this local product? Not even in a noon show?)

But go – please go. Go and strap yourself to the time machine that is Subramaniyapuram, which is set in 1980 – amidst single-sheet Bombay Dyeing calendars and plastic wire furniture and posters of Maanthoppu Kiliye and TV sets with sliding-door shutters bursting to life with Koodayile karuvadu. And against this backdrop lies the story of a bell-bottomed gang of five that looks ready to audition for the sequel of Paalaivanacholai, featuring a schoolteacher who wears the kind of fugly rectangle-rim spectacles we saw on Nizhalgal Ravi in Mann Vaasanai, and a heroine named Thulasi (Swathi) whose ears are pierced by gilt-hoop rings and who ceaselessly bats her enormous eyes in a manner that leaves us in little doubt that her favourite heroine is the Sridevi of that era.”

Complete Review at: LINK

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As I arrived home today to find the Sakkarakatti CD waiting in my mailbox, I was struck by the fact that even thirteen years after I first encountered the sound of A.R. Rahman, even when the soundtrack in question is not associated with a Mani Ratnam film, and promises to be, most assuredly, a “minor” work in the context of Rahman’s oeuvre, my excitement when unwrapping the album remains undimmed. Some of that is obviously because Rahman — even “lesser” Rahman — speaks to me in a way no other Hindi or Tamil composer does. But much of that is also due to the fact that even “minor” Rahman contains gems, the sort of musical passage that rears up to dazzle the listener when least expected. And much of the excitement is undoubtedly due to the fact that it is often precisely in Rahman’s “lesser” work that one encounters the nimble sense of play, the occasional cheekiness, that once made him the most light-footed of all of Indian popular cinema’s titanic presences.

On that front, Sakkarakatti does not disappoint: it isn’t pathbreaking music, but it is, quite simply (and provisionally, given these are early days for me where the album is concerned), an immensely enjoyable, even satisfying, album. [Continued]…

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[Thanks to Matrix in the Shoutbox-- Qalandar]

There’s a beautiful high-angle shot, early in The Dark Knight, that looks down on Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) in full Batman regalia as he perches atop a Gotham skyscraper, surveying the city he lives to protect, then leaping off and spreading his majestic bat wings to swoop down into the night. Bruce’s trajectory is also the film’s. It traces a descent into moral anarchy, and each of its major characters will hit bottom. Some will never recover, broken by the touch of evil or by finding it, like a fatal infection, in themselves.

Read the rest HERE

[Slightly edited from the version posted Monday]

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Shocking news, and in a city which hadn’t experienced this sort of horror to date.

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Maddy bags 4-film deal with Adlabs
Author: Upala KBR Date: 10 May 2008

Madhavan in Control mere haath mein hai! A still from 13B
Madhavan’s marketing acumen is what has pushed producers Adlabs to sign him on for four more films. Says Saurabh Varma, Chief Marketing Officer Adlabs, “We are impressed with Madhavan’s performance and marketing skills in 13B and are in talks of him signing him for more films.”

What’s Madhavan’s contribution to the film? Varma says, “When you sign a marketing expert who is also the hero of the film, we are shaping up the best talent. He makes an amazing contribution to the team and brings huge energy to the table right from how one can exploit the film through various means and methods to international promotion, internet, TV, radio everything to marketing strategies.”

Madhavan adds, “I like to design all my projects when complete. Once the script is locked with the director, I don’t touch it. It’s important to have a marketing strategy in place as markets are evolving today and aiming at a target audience. I like to get involved in every aspect of marketing. I had done it for Ramji Londonwaley and all my south films. In fact, in the south, I make sure my contracts have my dates divided number of days for shooting and number of days for promotion. I expect other artists to do the same.”

That makes him an Aamir Khan, then. Maddy says, “I have a long way to go before I get compared to him. I have always idolised Aamir the way he’s works and the energy he devotes to all his projects.”

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Outlook
May 05, 2008
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Window Next Door
NAMRATA JOSHI
Three Pakistani films come to India, crossing over many kinds of boundaries

Nomi is fair, blue-eyed and handsome in his designer stubble. The engaging youngster plays pranks on village elders, flirts with his kohl-eyed sweetheart, Salma, and dreams of her prancing around in a sexy ghagra-choli with her dupatta blowing in the wind. The lovers sing mushy songs (Nomi nu Salma naal, Salma nu Nomi naal…Pyaar pyaar pyaar…) in picturesque fields, their attire changing with every beat. Samir is the guy Salma has been betrothed to in childhood. He also sports a fashionable stubble but is a BSc fail, cigarette-smoking, disco-dancing wastrel. He has a bohemian, TV executive girlfriend, who swings her bare midriff better than Esha Deol in Dhoom, dances next to the pool in itsy-bitsy outfits and, much to Samir’s irritation, gets pregnant soon thereafter.

Sounds like a frothy new flick coming soon to a multiplex near you? Only this isn’t Bollywood; it’s yet another Pakistani film, Mohabbatan Sachiyaan, which hits Indian cinema halls next weekend. The differences from a masala Bollywood film are hard to tell, apart from the Punjabi lingo and the unfamiliar faces of the lead players. The lovers are mirror images of Raj and Simran in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jaayenge. In DDLJ the hero called the heroine senorita, while here it’s the villain who calls her that. The eloping-on-the-bike scene is vintage Bobby, and the juxtaposition of rural innocence with degenerate, mechanised, urban relationships is a theme played out in many of our movies.

[Thanks to goodfella for bringing this to my attention...

...and dedicated to JasonTodd and Kash, or, more appropriately in this context, Two Face -- Qalandar]

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