Dil Se...fanaaa...!!

Recently watched fanaa and felt a sense of deja vu and then realized that the experience of wathcing it was for me wathcing Dil Se yet again.
Dil Se was one movie i loved and I still remember coming out of the theatre after watching dil se with my friends and i was the only person in the group whi had liked the movie. While my friends were commenting about how it was very much a non-Maniratnam-style movie, i felt that it had all the elements that made it a vintage Mani Ratnam movie.
Fanaa brought back all those and even if we cannot compare Kunal Kohli to Mani Ratnam, you have to give credit to the director for making the movie watchable.Pitting fanaa against Dile Se is pitting 2 of the finest actors of our generation against yet another 2 exemplary actors.
The intensity of Manisha in Dil Se is matched by that of Aamir's performance and the playfulness and angst of Shahrukh is more than easily challenged by the superb performance of Kajol.
The youthful rendering of "Jiya Jale" fould a reflection in the equally captivating voice of Shaan in "Chaand sifarish" and The pathos of the song "Sat rangeere" and the yearnings of "Ae Ajnabi" have been tried to be matched by "Mere haath mein".
The background score for both the movies are haunting, yet another similarity between the two movies.You feel that the story kind of lost itself somewhere in the between in both the movies and they seem to have an abrupt ending.
All said and done, fanaa has become another of my favorite along with Dil Se....

5 Years...a long time!

wow!!
Suddenly it has sunk in that I completed 5 years of my career!!!!
Feels.......special.

Subtle Beauty

"Mun paniyaa"
The beauty of the song from the tamil movie Nandhaa is matched by the excellent picturization and makes us wonder how a song can be so romantically picturized when the hero and heroine does not even hold hands in them.
When you watch the visuals and immerse in the splendid vocals of SPB, you sense a feeling of nostalgia and find yourself falling in love all over again!!That is the power of subtlety and it describes how emotions can be shown in just a plain look.

This song needs to be seen by all those sleaze kings who fills the movies with vulgarity in the name of romance.

Thrissur Pooram Exhibition

Oru kappu Kaaja Chhaya Kudikkoo
Kuthiraye pole kuthikkoo!!!

The above 2 lines in mallu would roughly translate into "Drink one cup of Kaaja Tea and trot like a horse!!"This is a sample of the innumerous advertisements which are belted over the loud speaker at the pooram exhibition. In the sweltering heat of Thrissur, who would want to have a glass of Tea?
I strongly suspect that the lead male and female announcers for these advertisements are always the same year after the year!But then exhibition would not be exhibitions without these back ground announcements.I went for the exhibition after a gap of 3 years and nothing much has changed.The same old Textile merchants with their collection of "bedsheets from Rajasthan" (Pooram exhibition used to be the annual bedsheet-upgrade time for my mom, till some time back! It also used to be the time to buy "Good Quality" knives etc for the kitchen, though i wonder how much of a quality instrumnet that had proved to be!!). Then there are the bangles/toys/fancy items shops which repeat themselves at almost surprisingly regular intervals.(The pooram exhibition would contain approximately 60 stalls in a big snake-like line).

At strategic positions, there will be the refreshment stalls and i can recollect that we used to put on our act of being tired/fatigued when we were about 2 stalls near to the refreshment stalls!!!. In those days, an outing like this was the only time when we got to drink aerated bottled drinks(Read "Limca"/"Thums UP").
I would be eagerly looking forward to visit the only book-store in the exhibition (excluding the other categories of bookstalls viz religious ones) and would have had already elicited a promise from my dad to get me a "Hardy Boys" or a "Three investigators"!!Often, re-freshments would be had from the stall nearby where they would be selling sugar-cane juice(simply mouth-watering!!). This time, however i was left wondering whether they would be using good water to prepare those drinks!!!
Then we have those "Bubble men"..these are the people who sell the soap bubbles for 5 bucks. They used to be a must-buy in any visit, although they never managed to reach home!!The last stop would be for the second round of refreshment at the last stall in the exhibition - the one run by the Indian coffee House. But i was saddened to find that space converted into an office, with the coffee-house shifted.

Pooram exhibitions is pretty much the same as i remember it to be 15 years ago...just hope that it remains the same...

Some things you would never have seen 10 years back in a pooram exhibition
TATA AIG insurance stall
Tread-mill stall

Another note: Aluva people might brag about their Aluva shivarathri mela and Cochin people about the ubiquitous carnivals, but there is nothing like the Thrissur Pooram Exhibition!!

The GOAL

After a long time....finished a book on the same day as i bought it.
5 and a half hours nonstop from 11 30 in the night to 5 o clock in the morning.

The Book: The GOAL by Eliyahu Goldratt

Chandramukhi versus Nagavalli

Was watching "Chandramukhi" the other day..and was stuck by the changes that were made to the movie from the original mallu version, just so as to appeal to the type of audience the tamil audience are..no offence meant of course!For instance, there is the famous "Vidamatte" scene done by Shobana where, at the end of the dialogue, she lifts a double-cot bed in fury (posesses by Nagavalli) with her single hand and the scene is conveyed so powerful, albeit in a subtle way.

The same scene in Tamil version, in order to convey the power of the character, they had to have a scnene in the beginning of the movie where 4 people are shown carrying the cot and the heroine asking the hero why 4 people are required to carry a cot and the hero saying that it was a very heavy one and 2 people cannot carry it!! That way, people would be able to understand the power of Chandramukhi when she lifts the cot up with her hand!!

Another instance is when Thilakan (the famous astrologer in the movie whom the elderly folks trust more than the psychiatrist-protagonist) makes his entry and the way in which he recognizes Mohanlal. It was done in an almost natural way!Here, the parallel character had to be shown as having hatred of Rajni and then he had to be convinced of Rajani's power (seeing a "Jyothi" on his face) before he could do some research and be aware of Rajni's powers!!
And what has Jyothika done? maybe she should watch the original..but then she is going to get so depressed when she comapres her performance to Shobana's that she might just decide to quit acting!
We had started watching the movie with the mindset that its going to be a combination of the mallu movies "Manichitrathazhu" and 'Aaram thamburan".But then it turned out to be a mix of the one's above plus ..........The Anaconda, Crouching Tiger...etc!!!

Mirajkar Selected!!

I just loved the new ad of "Times of India".It is yet again a theme which we have seen in one flavour or the other before, but what stands out here is the characters chosen for the ad. All of them have done a terric job, the best part being that the characters are sooooo natural.The old man's action, after looking at the news of his grand son getting selected into the team and the old clipping about him being dropped from the team, was so endearing.It kind of symbolizes the fact that newspapers are with us during our times of misery and happiness and it does not differentiate between the emotions when reporting the truth..be it sweet ....or bitter!!Amazing ad..