Theater’s Cut

We would have often heard about Director’s cut. But theater’s cut is something most of the theaters do, usually to shorten the length of the movies so that they can run more shows. Sometimes, they do this final cut to make the movie watchable by editing out the boring (for them) part of the movie. In many cases, this will help the movie run, but in few cases, viewers come out fuming that the director was mindless, editor was sleeping, etc. In some rare cases, some actors lose their prominent scenes and end up like a half-baked character in those movies. This post is to record few such experiences of mine.
Yesterday I was seeing Aayirathil Oruvan, downloaded from torrent world. (Please don’t cry piracy. I have already seen the movie once in theater. First day, First show. Jan 14th, 9.30PM. Technically its the first show in that theater 🙂 ) About the movie, there are few things to appreciate about this movie and few things to criticize (Have been waiting for this piece). Among other things, one of my complaint was that the character of Andrea remains just as a spectator for the entire second half. But my perception changed (not to a large extent) when I was watching the downloaded copy. There is an important scene in which, Andrea meets Parthiban to suggest the malicious intention of Reema. However, this scene, along with others have been removed by the theater’s editor, leaving us fuming.
Somewhat similar to this is Uma Riyaz’s cameo appearance in Anbe Sivam. But she would have been really disappointed to see that the scene in which she confesses her love for Kamal has been removed in most of the theaters. That particular scene also explains the reason behind someone travelling along with Kamal in that fateful journey.
Sometimes, this theater’s cut turns out to be a good thing for few movies. I remember seeing the movie Paarthaley Paravasam, twice. First, on the first day of its release and the second time, after 15 days of its release. Both were in the same theater but the two versions were quite different. Theater’s editor has removed most of the annoying (for him the scenes in which Simran delivers length dialogs) scenes and made the movie watchable. However, it was too late to revive the interest of the audience and the movie made its way out of the theater in a week or so.
So, in most of the cases the people/operator in theaters play an important role in shaping up the movies. It’s not just director/editor/producer, the theater’s cut is also deciding the fate of these poor actors. Next time you find any missing link in a movie, blame the theater as well.

N.B: As thalaivar says, padam parpathu engal thozil, job is just hobby 🙂

Movies Roundup

When there is nothing to write about, I could easily make up a post on the recently watched Tamil movies. So here it goes.

Pokkisham: I think this movie didn’t even release in the theaters in Bangalore. As usual, I downloaded the “DIVX” copy from the torrent world and watched it. To be honest, one cannot really watch this movie in theater. Its painfully slow. But I managed to watch almost the entire movie barring the songs. Cheran has really enjoyed and pictured each and every scene of the movie, but I doubt audience will get the same feel. Its a heart wrenching love story. The really talented Padmapriya has enacted the role of Nadira with perfection. The movie makes us wonder what kind of “instant” generation we are living now. Here, impatience is a virtue. But he shows us a world (1970s) altogether different, in which he has to wait for weeks after writing a letter to his ladylove to see a response. Its really painful. And in the process, he made the audience wait impatiently to see something happen on screen. Besides, is it the “male-chauvinism” of Cheran?, he always makes the female characters of his movies to suffer for life.

Eeram: Few scenes of the movie reminded us of the recent Madhavan movie, Yaavarum Nalam. There, the medium was TV and here its water. What makes this film different is the characterization. Its Nandha’s character. But some say, its his biggest ever break. I don’t believe so. May be, I would have enjoyed the movie if I had watched in theater.

UPO: Thinking that its Madurai, I rushed to the theater to buy the ticket. (Un)fortunately, I bought the first ticket and ended up in the corner seat. UPO is engaging and very much appeals to the South audience. I was thrilled to watch two legends of Indian cinema on screen. But there was not much scope in the movie to show extraordinary performance. Mohanlal, still wins. Beyond cinema, there was a message, which every “common man” in India can relate with. It’s his anger. Anyhow, Lot has been said and written on this. Read somewhere that Kamal took just 5 days to complete his part. In this movie, he is successful as a producer than as an actor. Looking forward to see him in a extracting role.

Torrent

Torrent a.k.a BitTorrent protocol is really a boon for movie buffs like me. I have downloaded lots of movies using this technology. The video quality is so good that we don’t even settle for anything lesser than DVD Rip. Characters like aXXo are quite famous in Bit Torrent world for quality DVD rips. Though people from entertainment industry work towards keeping the torrent community in check, the technology and people supporting it continue to grow exponentially.
However, all these days I have restricted myself from downloading Tamil movies. It was just my way of heeding to the repeated appeals of actors, directors etc.. Wait. The reason I gave is just euphemism. The real reason is that unlike English language movies, there won’t be many seeds for Tamil movies. The video quality will also be terrible. So, I kept myself away from them and also from “thiruttu” VCDs. I always preferred theaters for Tamil movies. In Bangalore, there are a handful of theaters (apart from PVR and other multiplexes) I visit to watch Tamil movies. The problem with those theaters is that, whenever a movie releases we must rush before the end of the week. If not, the movie is gone. It will make its way to Manjunath or any other Tent houses, where watching movies might be risky, as you encounter someone beside you greasing his pipe. So, with very less time, I managed to watch Tamil movies in theaters like Balaji (Vivek Nagar), Lakshmi, Natraj and the (shady) Maheswari etc..
But now, things started looking brighter for Tamil movies in the torrent world. In the past few weeks, I have downloaded a handful of Tamil movies. Below is the list of the movies with a brief comment on them.
1. Naan Kadavul – Downloaded in that depressed night.
2. ATM (Azhagiya Tamil Magan) – To commemorate actor Vijay’s birthday yesterday. Trust me, its the best Vijay movie in the past 5 years.
3. Thoranai – It appeared like a Telugu movie dubbed in Tamil. By some mistake, 15 minutes video of first and second CD are swapped. But, it didn’t make much difference. Skimpily clad VJ, Shriya Reddy is co-producing all Vishal movies nowadays. (OMG, she is his Anni)
4. Sarvam – To watch tonight.
I wish Tamil cinema industry wakes up and stay vigilant about technologies like BitTorrent.

Depressant

A couple of days ago, one of my colleague called me to his desk to watch a video. In that video, a mentally retarded (likely) Indian electrocutes himself by holding an electric line over the train. The video really disturbed me. Though I continued with my work that day, a small thread was running at the back of my mind, pondering over his death, the surroundings, the feeble attempts made to save his life.
I got disturbed so much that I even woke up in the middle of the night and searched for that video on Internet and watched it again. Whats more depressing is that I could even see few comments saying that he deserves his death. Though its hard to accept, I sometimes feel this is the attitude of general public towards such mentally retarded and non sociable people. Though like a good human being, most of us will say that these individuals need attention and care, when we come close to such people, we prefer to move away and remain oblivious. When such people turn out to be a part of the family, most of the family members tend to become intolerant towards their acts. Families which could afford medical expenses try their best to cure them of their disease, but in few cases, the families leave them on streets. This person we saw on the video is one such person.
The train of thoughts about these non sociables led me to the movie, Naan Kadavul. The movie revolves around aghoris and physically challenged beggars. Watching the movie will be a painful experience for many individuals. When I was watching the movie in theater, I could see many women just walked away from theater (Just after half an hour from the start of the movie). One can expect two common things from Bala movies. First, the protagonists of the movie will not be the common people that we meet daily and the second is, a tragic end. Coming back to my thought, the prime reason for the commercial failure (not as successful as his previous movies) of the movie is that, this movie doesn’t have many characters that we can relate to our life. As I said earlier, when our society encounters such abnormalities, it will just move away and remain oblivious to such things. The movie didn’t have any exaggeration or blood bath like in Telugu movies. It was reality and yet our society couldn’t accept. Can’t they really be part of society? This makes us wonder that these beings are destined for death. Even the director’s verdict is that death is a boon for those in suffering. However check the following lines by a blogger,
“அறுபது லட்சம் யூதர்களைக் கொன்று குவித்த ஜெர்மன் நாஜிகள், அத்துடன் நிற்காமல் ஒரு லட்சம் உடல் ஊனமுற்றவர்களையும், மனநோயாளிகளையும் – அவர்கள் ஜெர்மானியராகவே இருந்த போதும் விஷ வாயுவைச் செலுத்திச் சாகடித்தார்கள் இரண்டாம் உலகப் போரில்!
‘இனத்தூய்மை’ இதற்கு காரணமாகச் சொல்லப்பட்டாலும், வேண்டாத சுமை ஒன்று இறக்கி வைக்கப்பட்டது என்றே அவர்கள் நிம்மதி அடைந்தார்கள்.
‘வலுத்தவன் மட்டுமே வாழ வேண்டும்’ என்ற இந்த ஆரிய வக்கிரத்தைத்தான் ‘நான் கடவுள்’ வழியாக நம்மிடம் இப்போது சுற்றுக்கு விட்டிருக்கிறார்கள்.” (Complete Post)

Blind Faith

Blind faith is what almost all the religions mandates. It will be nice if its just restricted to religions. But, it often spills over to people related to it as well. Sometimes, it even applies to celebrities. Whoever speaks/writes or even thinks against them is a heretic. One recent example is, Writer CSK’s expulsion from an orkut discussion forum created by fans of Kamal Haasan.
Not just my generation, the previous generation and even the future generations of Tamil nadu will be proud to have produced an actor like Kamal. I grew up seeing his movies and inspired by many of it. Contrast to other actors, he always advocated rationality. But his ardent fans, like any other actor’s fans, have proved to be irrational.
What concerns me more is that, apparently Kamal too loves to keep such people around him. It appears that whatever he says/writes is the ultimate thing and no one can question it. It is evident from the fact that he pronounces few English words incorrectly in many of his movies. Wouldn’t any one walk to him and tell that it is wrong? It doesn’t seem so. Does he really encourage the following line?
“Peru Konde Arivu Kondan Vinyani Freud’eyum Poorinthu Kondan“. In a recent interview, Kamal was referring to the movie “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” as being linked to Apoorva Sagotharargal. (I didn’t really understand how it was related). I believe one of his Jalras have misinformed him. As a true fan, I am now concerned that Kamal should never become complacent.

Politicizing Awards

Academy awards (Slumdog Millionaire) is the talk of the town. I am extremely delighted to see A R Rahman winning academy awards and it doesn’t really matter the movie belongs to us or West. Though Slumdog may not be his best, its pretty usual that most of the legends got Academy awards late in their career and their great works went unnoticed. Al Pacino, Martin Scorsese to name a few.
Coming back to India, the recent Padma awards was some what an unpleasant surprise to me. Its surprising that the award committee chose Actor Vivek, when there are other veteran comedians in the industry, especially Actor Nagesh (It would have made him really happy, when he was in death bed). Though his comedy sequences were filled with social messages (Starting from Tirunelveli), I felt this award was too early for him. Ironically, he has reached the end of his career, as Actor Vadivelu has over taken him in Tamil cinema comedy. Whats more shocking is that when I read somewhere the government chose Vivek for this award just to impress the people of his caste (I don’t really know which caste he belongs to).

nayan

The news about recent “Kalaimamani” was even more disgusting. Its really sad that they have chosen heroine like Nayanthara for this prestigious award. The maximum that this actress can and should get is the State award for best actress (not for acting, but for her cleavage show). I have never seen her doing a decent, extracting(though its rare in Tamil cinema) role. It really puzzles me that these newbies are getting Kalaimamani awards.
To conclude, these awards are becoming too commercial and are based on who is more popular, rather than who is really talented. Its strongly condemnable. Wish they don’t politicize these awards.
Update: Dinamani(26th Feb) had an article on this above thing “விருது அல்ல சிறிது” . I hope the award committee would not repeat this again.