RICKY & THE FLASH ....Alas!! Without much Flash!!

As the film opens with the band performing "American Girl" in a dive bar Salt Well in Tarzana, in an almost 142 mins running time, you expect an amalgamation of dramatic comedy and a concert film,with some 'punch on your face' dialogues, but sadly enough, the only line that made me laugh out loud was during the finale where, at her son's wedding, someone asks Streep, 'So,how do you know the groom?', promptly comes her reply 'Through cesarean!!'.

The film features quite an honest premise but suffers terribly due to mediocre writing, direction & not so well etched out scenes between the principal characters specially the tension between Streep's character and her kids, comes off pretty weak.The initial chemistry between Streep and Grummer (her real life daughter) is unsettling. Their is too much fierceness but not enough nuanced anger (we can never get anything better than Unishe april & Autumn Sonata, can we?). Grummer holds her own with her Mom—fiercely vulnerable. One really decent line comes across when Rick Springfield comments: "It's not the kids' job to love you, it's your job to love them!"

Meryl Streep is bang on! Check her out in one scene when she nervously twitches her hands at the thought of becoming reacquainted with her two sons, an example of the attention to detail and the angst she can draw from her character, much much better than her loudness in August Osage County (one film where i hated her to the core!). Well, Streep might lose out her Oscar nomination this year!!

O KAADHAL KANMANI ... The camaraderie works!!

No one captures romance onscreen as intensely & passionately sans any high voltage sexual tension as Mani Ratnam does! There is just only one love making shot set at Tara's (Nithya Menon) hostel, but Mani Ratnam cleverly refrains from showing any eroticism between the couple visually, rather he makes his lead players verbally (with humor!) describe or talk to each other about what one would like to do to each other passionately on their way back home, focusing more on the post love making scenes rather soothingly (his trademark style, must say!) that’s the beauty of Mani Ratnam’s dialogues! It is all about falling in love and start a live-in relationship and letting each other go with a simple line, like Adhi says 'go wherever u wanna go, just marry me and go'! the marriage here isn't a trademark symbol, but a 'bond' that keeps them glued to each other, hence the post marital shots being shot in animation along with the end credits!
I am so much in awe of this film that i probably might even overlook the few flaws (like the confusion when Adhi goes missing wasn't explained too convincingly or 'Paranthu Sellava' song looks bit dragged, causing a minor glitch to the otherwise perfect screenplay!).
This is the first Nithya Menon film i watched and she bowled me completely with her radiance and charm in every single frame, watch her out with that big grin on her face hiding her tears. Dulquer Salmaan's spontaneous act and brilliant screen presence being the perfect foil to Menon's charm! Prakash Raj and Leela Samson's parallel 'totally contralateral' story track gels well with the urban love story! There's so much energy in the film from the title card itself , the super cool animated Mumbai city shot in a video game zone along with AR Rahman's alluring 'kaara attkara' accentuating the energy to a different level. Also, two of my other favourite tracks 'Mental Manadhil' and 'Theera Ulla' has been used very effectively. PC Sreeram's camera works like a magic bringing Mumbai come alive so colorfully, though few close up shots could have been used with little less orton-ish glow!
Its senseless to compare Alai Payuthe with O Kadhal Kanmani, the only similarities might be the opening/frequent train sequences , because the couples in these two films represent two different generation altogether! Mani Ratnam is back, even if not with a bang, but at least with something refreshing and romance in its purest form, without trying to prove his mettle by showcasing something extraordinary, and i love him for that!

Rainy days' rhymes & lyrics....!!

View from the metro (my click) kiki emoticon kiki emoticon 
It’s raining.And it has been raining almost every evening, enormous amount of rainfall in Bangalore these days. Dreamy & Charming to look at! In a much more realistic sense,well.. leave home eventually and engage with the world—the waterlogged, flooding world, traffic chaos, sewage leakage,irregular power cuts!! But let’s go back to the fact that cloudy days & rains are inherently romantic, because there is something special about gray days like these, just like there’s something special about the first warm, sunny stretch of days in spring. And certain types of weather do call for certain types of music, isn't it? Here’s some of my rainy day playlist of drifting, dreamy songs that inadvertently gets me into a romantic drool...
November rain (Guns & Roses)/ Rainy day women (Bob Dylan) / Mora saiyaan mose bole na/ Piya basanti re kaahe sataye aaja/ Rain (The Beatles) / Famous Blue raincoat (Leonard Cohen) / Rimjhim gire saawan/ Sun sun barsaat ki dhuun/ Rainy days & mondays (Carpenters)/ Aankhon ke sagar (Fuzon)........and the list goes on...!! 

Rainbow smile :) :) !!

My mobile cam doesn't have a higher resolution so i don't know if you could make out the rainbow, but returning back from work the other day, saw this huge RAINBOW stretched across the sky, basking in its grandeur! I smiled like a child! I like rainbows. We see them so rarely! There is something inherently wonderful about them. The colors. The stark difference from how the sky usually looks. It's hard to look at a rainbow and not feel uplifted

We have had enough! This one seriously didn't work!!

Mera Naam Mary - Aunty ji exclaims in horror 'Tauba Tauba!

Although Kareena gets some brownie points for pulling off that costume with her pout, grace & that hour glass figure! (That gold & silver petticoat and bra-let, which i am sure most women would shudder at the thought of trying that one, that too on stage ) Coming to the song, boy! if the lyrics weren't bad enough ("Mera naam Mary hai, Mary sau takka teri hai,"), Kareena's fervent attempts like getting water splashed on her, squeezing her own waist to drain the water & then drying her hair with help from a table fan, changing clothes on stage, beating a dhol, writhing & stroking her waist up vigorously doesn't help the song either! We surely miss our Chameli, Munni, and their Fevicol se chipki huyi Halkat Jawanis for sure!! Tch Tch!!

BAJRANGI BHAIJAAN - Abundance of 'awww...' moments !!

Predominant to the film's appeal is the angelic little gal with gleaming eyes, 6 yr old Harshali Malhotra (Shahida) who turns out to be an absolute sweetheart, clever act from the writer's part to keep her character mute (she is so much better than those hyper active, mouthing over smart dialogue kids!) Shahida’s silent responses are just a treat; check her in those close-up shots, you feel your heart being gently warmed up like a marshmallow over a bonfire. 
Applause to Kabir Khan, the director for coming up with a movie that is extremely calculated in its grand design, targeted for Khan's fan club and yet which plays wholly sincerely & its heartfelt on a scene-by-scene basis. It is so refreshing to see Khan,the big mainstream showman & the idol of the masses,submerge into Bajrangi,a small town Hanuman Bhakt, who's also an emotional fool (he is too ticklish to wrestle), takes more than 10 yrs to finish school,spends his days worshipping the monkey deity & merrily dancing like a chicken. The film is strongly supported by a bunch of likeable supporting cast, more so in the form of Nawazuddin Siddiqui, his chemistry with Salman is something seen very rarely between male leads in a film. Immaculate comic timing, body language and expressive eyes.. “cameraman Chand Nawaz ke saath, Chand Nawaz...” Perfect ! Cinematography is also worth mentioning.The film opens with aerial shots of snow-clad mountains and moves inside Pakistan capturing the scenic beauty of the region in the process. The one shot nearing the climax, with Khan, having certain preconceived notions about people of other religion, turns around and adieus the people in a gesture of 'aadab' surely brings a lump to your throat. After a long time, an out to out 300 cr blockbuster flick that is sweet, simple and earnest!!

100 days of love (lang : malayalam) saccharine love!!

How i wish Frank Sinatra's 'Strangers in the night' had had lasted for long!

I have one serious complaint against the director, there's one scene where Sheela (Nithya Menon), dressed impeccably in black, visits Balan's (Dulquer Salmaan ) house for dinner on New year's eve while Sinatra's 'Strangers in the night' plays in the background, you would want the track, immortalized as one of the iconic love tracks of all time to play throughout their course of interaction but disappointingly enough, the director stops the song midway abruptly! Nevertheless, After a long time (post kaadhal kanmani, strange enough, that too with the same lead actors!) i have enjoyed a breezy love story immensely, there's nothing unconventional in the story though, but the treatment is superbly effective throughout, more so because of the charming Kadhal kanmani lead players! The first 40 mins is way too tedious but post interval the love track picks up its pace! The cinematography accentuates the frames with its hues and textures with profuse usage of autumn colors and night lights in ortonish tone, and its good to see Namma Bangalooru being one of the ideal destination in recent time for film makers to shoot romantic flicks!

NH10 : Breaking stereotypes of a women oriented revenge saga!!

At the beginning, She rubs off the word 'Randi' scribbled on the door of a Dhaba toilet, ironically, she couldn't rub off the same word written with the battered blood of her dead husband towards the climax!

Few scenes really makes a telling impact & breaks the stereotypes of most of the bollywood's women centric revenge sagas, like before killing the baddie Darshan Kumar, Anushka lights a cigarette, puffs it off leisurely while watching dispassionately as he bleed in pain; silently rises up and hits him hard & kills him in one go with a steel rod unlike films where women actually transform into a durga/kali re-incarnation, spurts out long stretched out dialogues before killing the baddie!Also, we have hardly seen a woman driving a car in a chase sequence against the goons in Indian cinema. NH10 is a good effort but the basic premise that starts off the movie is nothing but ubiquitous male ego, leaving a helpless woman to suffer for the husband's sheer stupidity! The goons provoke the husband with a big tight slap! He knows the goons are ruthless but he chases them without any planning and that also just to threaten them with the help of gun! Abashing causes his male ego to splutter, and what follows is a gripping chase set in a morally corrupt northern rural India.

One particular shot that disappointed me the most is that the entire night sequence is shot in harsh studio light which is quite evident,as a result a shot shown in full moon loses its powerful impact on the screen because the entire shot is captured in bright light. Most of the Critics have referred NH10 as a movie filled with blood and gore, but haven't we witnessed far more brutality in films with the same theme?