Nadunisi Naaygal

The person who is well-renowned for making breezy-romantic flicks of late, has attempted a genre that's not well exploited in Kollywood yet .Yes Gautam Vasudev menon at a Thriller now ! Though the recent Myskin's Yuthem sei also falls under the same genre , I wasn't quite impressed with it.Blame on in the fact that some of its scenes resembled or rather reminded me of the movie SAW.

I'm not a fan of thrillers. In fact ,I despise such movies.But being an admirer of Menon's work, it was natural of me to have expectation.And the caveats -Not for Weak hearted souls,Only for Multiplex Audience,Only for 1.3o hours ,No Songs & No BGM, have stoked it further. Thanks to my 3rd trim midterms exams,I couldn't see it on the first day but managed to hit the theater on the 3rd day with 13 of my BIM-mates (i.e.) Yesterday @ Ramba Theater ,Trichy.

The movie starts with deafening gun shots at a police officer by a tall guy in a blurred background.And the police falls rather slowly in the nearby stagnant-water and it splashes around.That scene picturisation itself depicts the brilliance of the Auteur Menon.Following that ,in a hospital setup, that tall guy,the protagonist Veera, starts narrating his story(movie story)- A Gautam's cliche. He starts describing about his past experiences and incidences that made him who he is now - An MPD Psychopath Killer ! Through that narration, Menon sheds light on the darkest nature of humans: Incest , Child Abuse & MILF sex.To intensify the impact, he resorts to an overdose of SEX & Violence in a rather new dimension that's unexplored in Tamil cinema yet.The way the protagonist woos girls one by one and killing them are familiar concepts though.After these intro-killings comes Sameera Reddy,the ravishing beauty who gave heart attacks to youths around the world, through the movie Vaaranam Aayiram.Though her character is the turning point of the movie,she fails to score miserably in front of Veera.Her scope is too limited though and I find a thing that's missing this time- Her Charmingness.... A big let down :( Then the story revolves around how Veera kidnaps Sameera and ensuing incidents that lead to his arrest.

Besides Menon & Veera there's a guy who deserves special mention here.It's the Camera-man Manoj Paramahansa.Being a thriller he's got plenty of opportunity to showcase his exquisite skills and he pulls it off so brilliantly.Sometimes you stop following the story and just be awestruck by the way he cranked camera. A Glimpse - In the last scene,Veera would be chasing Sameera in rain and this scene is captured from a top like someone standing just straight above you and watching you from there ! And about lack of music - You wouldn't feel that it lacks music at all ,which can be attributed to Menon's brilliant way of story-telling.

To sum it up all ,it was worthy of my Rs.80/-

There are many people who had written bad reviews about this movie.In fact ,people who came with me bashed movie like anything,but I liked it :) Watch it if you are the one who craves for different genres :)

Blank

I have been thinking to blog frequently but couldn't do so for one primary reason - You need some content to write about, which i believe that I get, only if i read some books.I don't often get time to read books and hence I'm not able to blog as well.So I thought about why don't I blog about what "I think" - what's getting chewed in my mind often - My perspectives about everything.But I'm afraid that would put me in a disadvantageous situation, where, everybody would know what I'm thinking and would start "Judging me" based on that.Luckily, I'm reminded of Godfather's movie dialogue "Never let others know what you think ! " .
It's true that everybody is eying for an opportunity to snub others even at their slightest mistakes.It's the inherent nature of human being to keep on judging other people on every action they do .They always try to judge others either below or above themselves, and I don't wanna give them a chance to do that here :)
Hence that logically throws me back to square one - What to Blog ? Well, I'm thinking of writing about things happening around me ,that are content-enough for a blog and useful-to-some-extent for the souls that peruse my blog once . OK,I stop this here,got 3rd term midterms exams from morrow.

One helluva Final, I should say

The much anticipated Final Cricket duel in Wickets'11 happened today in front of entire BIM crowd.It's a match between the 2nd year Marines vs 1st year Galacticos.Galacticos had an upper hand considering the fact they were the winners of the last semester volleyball Tournament.

Now getting to the Finals - It's one cracker of the contest - At the beginning, Galacticos scrambled to get the going - they couldn't score .The opener Kaushik prasanna gave a decent start and got out and the Galacticos' other opener, the star batsman, Kaarthik J was finding hard to get his rhythm and Galacticos were fizzling down at a score of 35 for 7 overs. And that's where the Playmaker Sakthi kamal stepped in, and started carting the ball around and took the score to 90 with his brilliant innings.Thanks to timely contribution of Prem Karthick, the score reached 108 at the end of first innings. If you thought that's the safe target to win a match,stop,think again - That's where the match started !

With almost the entire crowd of BIM including Velociraptors, cheering for Marines,they started their innings with PC & Suraj.After PC's dismissal,Not-in-form Suraj & Giri took control of the game and with Suraj's devastating play the Marines gained an upper hand with 64/1 for 7 overs.Pressure mounting up , Galacticos messed-up the bowling and they found it pretty difficult to come back in the game.And then it happened - Suraj got dismissed.And Rajaram , the captain of Marines ,who carried the entire crowd's(as well as team's) hopes on his shoulders stepped in -As the Marines already got an upper hand hitherto,the arrival of Rajaram has was an harbinger ; but the unexpected happened there too - Rajaram got dismissed for duck and that's where Galacticos made their real-entry in the game.With the wonderful bowling attack lead by Parthiban,the Galacticos captain, they dismissed the successive batsmen for paltry scores. Marines were slightly losing their hope with wickets tumbling and the crowd goes to graveyard-silence.Then came Bharatram of Marines and hit 2 sixes of 2 balls and made sure that Marines were back in the match.As Galacticos and Marines were snatching the game from each other in a round-robin fashion, the audience were kept glued to their seats.Now Prem Karthick bowled and took 2 wickets in a single over and that put the Marines in precarious situation and successive wickets fall dashes the hope of Marines .

Now Marines had to hit 10 runs from the final over.Finny Manigandan and injured Rajagobal were the batsmen and Kaushik was the bowler.This pair managed to get 5 runs off 4 balls and Finny was facing the 5th ball off Kaushik.Kaushik bowled a full-toss and the lean Finny smashed it and the ball crossed the boundary.The entire crowd became delirious and started running towards the middle of the ground and fire-crackers were burnt all over the ground and the players were celebrating the victory.Stop ! - The umpire announced that it's just a Four not a Six ! With 1 ball left and scores at tie,Galacticos wanted to tie the match at least.They kept all fielders inside the 30 yards circle to stop that single off the last ball but Finny flicked it to leg side and sealed the Victory for Marines ! And that brought Glory to Marines !

It's out and out entertainment for the entire BIM - Both Galacticos and Marines had showed their best and regaled the audience - What more can you expect from a Match of Wickets'11 - One helluva Final ,I should say!

-- MARINES --

-- GALACTICOS --

Thank you Guys for the Wonderful Memories !!

Ponniyin Selvan

Well ,they say this is one of the best Tamil novels ever written.To substantiate that fact the Tamil Nadu Government Nationalized this novel and it's available as open source to anyone to publish. I happen to read one of such open source e-text versions which incidentally was prepared in my college MIT as a part of KBC research project for preserving ancient Tamil Literature and the e-text link is available here - Ponniyin Selvan
To say about the novel,I kinda liked it to some extent for the way Kalki had stroked it.He's adept at beautifully portraying things especially when he's describing about Nandini's / Kundavi's beauty -You can't help but keep wondering about how B-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l Nandini could be ! Some of the conversations between Aalwarkadiyan,Vallavarayan,Kundavi deserve special appreciations.Sometimes you get so much engrossed with the Chola world that makes you forget yourself and get completely entangled with the novel & sometimes the opposite ; especially when the characters try to explain the same things again and again - Since this novel was written as series in Kaki magazine for 3.5 years,he had to repeat the same things again and again to make audience understand it if they missed some part of the series or forgot some portion and this repetitive nature obstructs the flow of the novel too.

Some of the greatest freedom for a Thriller writer are:

• One can twist the character as one wishes and one can change circumstances upside down which will be completely opposite to what you thought/guessed at first
• You can introduce any number of characters in-between without being questioned ,just because it adds meat to your meal (the story)
  
• And the characters can change their mind/stance as and when needed. I could find lot of things that are unanswered / require special explanation by the author etc

Overall I have a mixed feelings towards this novel - I do not know whether I like it or not !

I'm not sure if i'm biased just because it's a Tamil Novel.May be thriller isn't my cup of tea.May be I believe English novelist are way better than Tamil counterparts.May be I read it so fast and missed something.Anything could be a reason for my apathy! Forgive me Ponniyin selvan Fanatics !