Monday, November 24, 2008

Vaaranam Aayiram

What could have been a really nice, heartwarming movie about a father-son relationship has been spoilt because of the smart-ass attitude of the director. What he and most of the Tamil movie directors need to realize is that if you can’t pack a powerful punch of emotions in 2 hours, you can never do it in 3 or 4 hours. It’s like how the Indian team used to claim that having 7 batsmen was going to win them matches, when they made Dravid the scapegoat/wicketkeeper! If you can’t do it with 6 batsmen, then forget it. Bad analogies aside, this movie is the best example of how the second half should not drag. Gowtham did it with Vettaiyaadu Velaiyaadu too.
The first half took me back several years, in fact more than a decade, reminding me of my relationship with my dad. I still remember when my dad took me aside (and away from my mom) and told me “I know you are going around with that girl, but don’t overdo it”. There were a also a lot of funny moments between Surya and Sameera Reddy, the girl he is madly in love with. More than the movie, the people who were sitting behind me were making me laugh out loud. When Sameera Reddy finally accepts that she has fallen in love with Surya, with the Golden Gate bridge as the backdrop, Surya immediately picks up a bunch of very small flowers from the grass and gives it to her. The girl sitting behind me tells her husband, “Paaru, avan evalo romantic-a poo eduthu kudukkaraan, neeyum irukkiye, enakku molaga bajji eduthutu vandhu kuduthe!” Before I could stop laughing, the husband goes, “Beach le bajji dhaane di kedaikkum, adhukku naan enna panradhu?” I felt like I was sitting in Abhirami theater for sometime there! Coming back to the screen that was in front of me, Gowtham definitely knows how to handle the little things between the lead pair without making it look cheesy. I can give him that.
During the second half, I don’t know about the other people in the theater, but my eyes were watering up for sure. WAIT! Before you make any judgments on my sensitivity levels, let me make it perfectly clear that I had tears in my eyes because I was all sleepy and I kept yawning non-stop. If you want to show a man’s journey through his successes and failures in life, you don’t necessarily have to take up half of our lives. Even one of the best movies of the last century, Forrest Gump, which coincidentally (!) deals with a man’s life journey, was only 2 hours and 22 minutes long.
Overall, the movie was good when it took us through the 70’s and the 80’s, started to slow down during the 90’s and finally limped it’s way to the end credits after 2000. Oh yeah, there's also the pathetic attempt at justifying the title at the end, by making Simran explain the meaning of Vaaranam Aayiram!

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Adios Sourav!

No matter what you say about his technique against the short ball, he will always be one of my favorite cricketers. For some reason, I have always liked the cricketers most panned by the critics for technical and non-technical reasons. Examples from the past would include Ravi Shastri (yeah, laugh it up) and Azharuddin. I am going to try to write atleast a few words about Ganguly, without mentioning that clichéd saying about his off-side technique supposedly said by Rahul Dravid.
When you look at Ganguly he doesn’t look even a little bit aggressive. In fact he has this look on his face like a kid who just lost his parents in a carnival. He saves his aggression for when he bats. How many batsmen can step out to a fast bowler and dispatch the ball to the boundary like he does, without any apparent effort? Do I need to say about the way he handles the spinners? Don't even try telling me that he has his fifties and hundreds ONLY against the minnows. Well, what were the other big guns doing in the same match? Someone has to get a big score even against the weaker teams! I cannot think of a much better pair than Ganguly and Tendulkar to have opened the batting for any country and demolished the bowling attack like there was no tomorrow. The statistics prove that. It's was obvious that he slowed down a lot in the past 3 or 4 years, but he definitely had his fighting spirit intact. It showed in his comeback after being dropped from the team.
I had the chance of watching the last day of the test match between India and Australia. It was really heartening to see Dhoni handing over the captaincy to Ganguly after the 9th australian wicket fell. That man deserves it! Not everyone gets to leave on a high note, but Ganguly chose the right moment and the right series. Good-bye Ganguly, we sure will miss your well timed drives piercing a packed off-side. And for one last time, "On the off-side, first there is God, then there is Ganguly". Sorry guys, couldn't resist it!