Life in a metro

I donno how I missed this film. For quite some time I have been trying to see it and finally managed to get a CD from one of my colleague.

After quite some time, this was a film where adultery did not mean sleazy scenes or quarter dress wearing and boldly love making heroines. This is a dark movie with dark characters where every character is guilty of his/her acts in one way or other. And the point is that they continue to do that as they find a guilty pleasure in doing it.

This film is a fine take on the ruthless city life and how it dilutes the moral of the humans and turns them savage, demanding, fighting and mere mortals who care about nothing but themselves. It has got some of the best actors of the present generation (most of whom of course dont have the star presence of the khans, kumars and Roshans) like Kay Kay Menon, Irfan Khan, Shiney Ahuja, Konkona.

But yeah the surprise package was the performance of Shilpa Shetty and Dharam paaji. While Shilpa shetty effortlessly slips into the desperate housewife role, Dharam ji stops grunting and instead broods of his one act which changes the course of his life. Nafisa Ali is adequate as his long lost lover while Shiney Ahuja does a decent job as the frustrated and love searching theatre guy.

The characters are intertwined very well in the story and it follows the parallel story mode quite well. While we are used to Kay Kay Menon playing the bad menacing guy, its quite refreshing to play Irfan play the middle aged-bride searching average indian male. Sharman Joshi and Kangana do their job quite well.

Another nice aspect of the film is the music. Pritam's rock band appear out of nowhere and start singing (which of course can irritate you towards the end), but the songs are really good. In particular, I have been listening to the song below for quite a long time.



The only sad part is that I read somewhere that some part of the film is a direct rip-off of the english film 'The Apartment'. I hope someday our makers would buy the rights legally and credit the original story and film writers.

Overall this film is recommended to you ONLY if you prefer some different real cinema instead of the usual masala and bindaas fare.

Pesugiren

Vasanth is one of the mature directors in tamil cinema. Although his story telling has been very simple and sweet since his first movie "Keladi Kanmani" then 'Aasai', 'Rhythm', it is also amazing that his music sense is amazing.

Every movie of his whether rocked the box office or not, atleast the songs did. Ever Nerukku Ner (which i personally believe was the worse film he made) had awesome songs.




This song in Saththam Podaade is different. Usually heroine oriented songs have hundreds of girls dancing around her and the hero, irritating with thumkas and jhatkas. In real life we dont dance around the trees and certainly the rest of the lot certainly dont join us.

The song is melodious with the saxophone filling it so beautifully with minimum orchestration. And yeah, Padmapriya looks very elegant :-)

Tumse hi

I dont know why, but I am unable to take this song out of my head for quite sometime.

Obviously I loved this song the first time I saw it in the movie, although I had not heard it before. Not only it has been amazingly sung, but nicely and neatly picturized.



For once Pritam seems to have struck something melodious and original. At first I thought that it was sung by Kunal Ganjawala, but recently found that it was sung by Mohit Chauhan of the band Silk Route.

Wish they churn more songs as such instead of the remix crap :-)

Aashiqui

How many of you remember this song?

Jungle Book

There is no chance on earth that you must have missed listening to this song in your chaddi and banyan days. At one point of time, this song seemed more popular than the national anthem. I remember that once someone started singing the first line on stage and the whole school turned out to be a chorus as every kid knew the lyrics by-heart.



Even the kids down south could recite it, even though they could not make head or tail of what the hell "Chaddi pehen ke phool khila hai" made. I think the Jungle book was telecast on Sunday mornings at 10 AM and all we neighbourhood kids would start our morning cricket match after this cartoon. Some characters I remember were Bageera, Ka and Sher Khan.

I dont know how many of you know, but Sher Khan was voiced by the amazing Nana Patekar. This was in my humble opinion one of the best dubbed shows to ever appear on DoorDarshan.

Quite pessimistically, life seemed much content and better when we didnt have much choice to make and we were happy with whatever we had. :-)

May Maadham

I dont know if it is the haunting score of ARR or the meaningful and tearful lyrics of Vairamuthu or the heartfelt rendition by SPB, but for sure this is an amazing number. Close your eyes and listen to this song and you will understand what I mean.



Quite coincidentally, this is the month of may...and I am quite feeling the same. :(

Summer oh Summer!!!!! - 1

Almost the entire human fraternity hates summer. The gleaming hot sun above your head, the sweat that trickles every inch of your body, the lack of breeze everywhere...ah....you wish to stay home forever.

Unless.....you are a student or a film buff.

The summer is the period when big blockbusters release all over the world to cash in on the vacation crowd. The students are on vacation and what better idea than to milk their money on some movie. So Hollywood or Bollywood or kollywood, they love to release big budgeted block busters in summer and laugh all the way to bank. Hollywood in particular have their own plethora of Box office releases.

The previous summer was a dud with all 3s like Spiderman3, Pirates3, Shrek3 and Oceans 13 all turning out to be one worse than the other. If not for Bourne Ultimatum, the whole summer was a bloody waste of money. Let us have a look at some of the most anticipated releases this summer.

The Dark Knight

Move over all Super heroes. The Dark Knight is back.

This one is my personal favorite as I have always loved Batman even in the Cartoon versions. And after watching Nolan's serious take in Batman Begins, it makes you feel all the more better. God bless Clooney that he threw away the nipple Batman outfit to dogs. Christopher Nolan is one of the best Directors of the younger lot and definitely the man means no-nonsense. Be it Memento or Insomnia or Batman Begins or Prestige, the young man has showed a panache for serious cinema in commercial format.

The trailer looks all the more promising as it features the hysterical and famous Joker's sinister laughter. The last time Jack Nicholson played Joker, he immortalized it. But this time, it remains in the news for a reason altogether. Inspite of heavy weights as Robin Williams, Adrian Brody, Paul Bettany and Steve Carell expressing their desire to play the ultimate super villain on screen, Heath Ledger pipped them all to play the Joker. Although fans raised their own doubts on the actor's caliber, they seem to have been out to rest once the trailers arrived.

Ledger certainly seemed all business and I wonder if he might over shadow the talented Christian Bale who plays Batman. Unfortunately Ledger would not live to see his moment of glory on the big screen. May his soul rest in peace!!!

Release Date: July 18

Wall-E

The first time I saw the trailer of Wall-e, I certainly had no clue as to what this was about. But then the same logic applies to Ratatouille. The way the guys at Pixar wonderfully translate an idea on screen, makes you wonder if they all are men with two brains. It’s not just the amazing colors shown in animation, but also the emotions they show and evoke. You are made to feel sorry or triumphant for the characters in the films and by the time you remind yourself that you did this all for an animated character, you are out of the theatre. Heck, even live action films fail to do that.



Wall-e is about a Robot who is abandoned on earth by the humans who leave this planet to occupy another one. For almost 700 years Wall-e survives lonely yearning for a soul mate (Its ok. Atleast they emote better than Arnold, Vijay or Sam Anderson). A robot called Eve appears from other planet and Wall-e falls head over heels....ooops....top over tracks for her. What happens next forms the crux of the story.

Definitely being a pixar release, the film is bound to have a bumper opening considering the swarm of family audiences’ queuing up. Expect another Pixar super block buster.

Release Date: June 27