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Showing posts from 2013

Between the Lies

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Would you really want to know - - of the faux velvet sheets of a cheap motel room waiting to be burned? Were with them discarded a solitary night of intense passion or the mere warmth of a cold winter night? Would you really want to know - - of the agony of the silence of the lost words of a lost play lying in wait for its author? Were with them unsaid vain verses and solitary stanzas or mere hopes and lavish dreams? Would you really want to know - - of the golden effigy lighting up the starless night crackling with an eerie glow? Were with it burned the lies in the heart of men without a trace, never to be spoken of? Would you really want to know - - of the early morning dreams, of the desolate beach house watching its last silvery moonlight? Would with it crumble, the laughter and sorrows as the warm amber rays of a brand new day dissolve into the quiet ocean? Sometimes it's best to leave them alone - those who leave questio

Maryan (2013)

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Unfortunately. Unfortunately I have to begin this review with "Unfortunately", because unfortunately Tamil film fans who are used to the frenzied expressions of stars with some kind of weapon(s), looking directly into the screen, breaking the fourth wall and our senses, delivering kitschy, out-dated dialogues with volumes set to eleven, will find "Maryan" quite tedious and sluggish. It is quite unfortunate indeed that, while people cheered on an abysmal-at-best Singam-2, Tamil (or any other) film fans have sadly overlooked a technically-sound, engaging (in my opinion) tour-de-force film by Bharat Bala. Does love have the power to move mountains? How does love instigate courage? Is there a limit to human endurance? Watch Maryan to find out. The love story in itself is nothing new. Girl loves boy; boy ignores girl. After a while, boy falls in love with girl. But, the treatment of it, especially the scene when after realising he in fact loves her, Maryan (Dhanush) t

Vishwaroopam (2013)

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Terrorism; the word on the lips of many fear-inducing conversations, apocalyptic visions and knock-knock jokes. What is it all about? Kamal Haasan takes this touchy subject as the underlying theme of his latest film "Vishwaroopam", a slow burning thriller, which is more than your run-of-the-mill shootout with an open-ended climax, paving way for Vishwaroopam-2 (hopefully we get to see the sequel). Without mulling over the story too much, which is after all, a classic battle story between the good and evil (but the defining lines are murky), we see the "behind the scenes" of what makes a terrorist, their ideals and the indoctrination of children to make them fight against anything and everything that is not part of the terrorists' belief system. It is a relief to watch fully fleshed-out characters of terrorists (or fighters as they likes to call themselves), whereas one-dimensional terrorists were the norm in most films. The training of Al-Qaeda by the protag

Thuppakki (2012)

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What makes a good or even great action movie? There are websites to look this up, surely. But, what makes a good/great Tamil action movie? If we were to go by the popular Tamil movie reviewers and audiences (for 2012), Thuppakki (Gun) seems to be the one, edging others out. I despair as prominent director A. R. Murugadoss dumbs down a story that made me want to slit my wrists or moreover kill myself with a thuppakki that Vijay produces in the movie, as an option for one of the bad guys to take his own life. There is a hero Jagdish (Vijay), a silly sidekick Balaji (Sathyan), a sillier heroine Nisha (Kajal Agarwal) and the villain/bad guy/terrorist (what else is new?) with a roundhouse kick which challenges that of Chuck Norris, Vidyut Jamwal (dude has no name; no, not akin to the Dollars trilogy, he's just a puppet terrorist, almost to the point of being cute) and some others who die and some who don't. Story? Hmmm, good guy defeats the bad guy, and in-between he manages to s