Filed under: Currently Watching | Tags: Currently Watching, movie, Tamil, Kanthaswamy, Vikram, Shreya, Mexico, Excuse Me Mr. Kanthaswamy, song, Tamil movie, Robin Hood, Vadivelu, theatre, kothu roti, chicken curry
Awesome movie. Really long, but I would have sat there all day watching if that’s how long it went just to stare into the bedazzlingly icy dark green contact lensed eyes of Vikram 
Or staring at the landscapes they shot in; by beautiful beaches, deserts, Mexico, especially Chichen Itza, oh my. So very breathtaking. The whole production was made of win.
SPOILERS FOLLOW
Really great easy-to-follow yet not boring plotline. Vikram plays Kanthaswamy, an income tax investigator for the CBI. He is of course awesome at his job. Shreya, who has outdone herself as leading lady, plays the confident minx as Suppalakshmi. The daughter of a billionaire raided and ruined, she sets out to make Kanthaswamy fall in love with her and then sorta…ruin his life. As revenge. Anyways, the banter between them is pretty amusing; I don’t think I’ll get “Excuse Me Mr. Kanthaswamy, oru coffee kudippoam, come with me” out of my head for a longggggg time.
The story deals of course with income tax officer Kanthaswamy’s alter-ego, who is a superhero of sorts. Think Robin Hood-esque in purpose, but with way, way better resources and a small organization rather than a one man show. The state’s (well, the government and a few evil billionaires, really; everyone else think it’s God’s doing) scramble to figure out who is behind the ‘Kanthaswamy’ phenomenon, forms the core of the plot. As serious as it sounds, it’s interspersed with lots of comedy, especially with Vadivelu’s work XD.
But yeah, all in all, excellent. And really comfortable experience since the theatre wasn’t crowded like crazy..it’s been over 2 weeks : D. Oh except for the crazy Tamil guys a few seats away who snuck in of all things to eat, Kothu Roti, still in its container, as well as some chicken curry to put on top XDDD. Hilarity. I almost died laughing.
Filed under: Currently Watching | Tags: Autograph, Bala, Bharathwaj, Currently Watching, Dishyum, Five Star, horrible, Kaadhal, Kanda Naal Mudhal, Manjal Veyil, Masilamani, movie, Prasanna, RK, romcom, Sandhya, Silambattam, Siva Manasula Sakthi, Tamil, Tamil movies
What with my recent Tamil movie high, and the movies I’ve been watching consistently being really good- Siva Manasula Sakthi (SMS) and Masilamani being awesome (seriously, the cutest romcoms I’ve seen in a while) , and then Silambattam being reasonably fun if not for the excessive violence- I guess I expected too much of the next movie that I chose to watch: Manjal Veyil.
It’s actually sorta deceptively attractive on the surface. Come on, the leads are Prasanna, who was awesome in movies like Five Star and Kanda Naal Mudhal; and Sandhya, who I don’t really like all that much, but has gotten state awards and everything for her roles in Kaadhal and Dishyum. I’ve never heard of the director, and the music couldn’t be that bad either when you hear it’s by Bharathwaj- after all, he did deliver the hits for the movie Autograph.
Those are over two hours of my life that I will never get back. In addition to the mindnumbingly stupid movie, the horrible quality of the Sruthilayam DVD made me want to kill myself for choosing to watch this thing. Spoilers are gonna follow, so if you want to make the colossal mistake of watching this for yourself, don’t continue.
So you see these two leads going to college, lalala, having fun, cut randomly to first song. A few minutes later, cut to the meeting of the villain (RK, who the director apparently has a deep, deep hate for; why else would he cast him and give him a horrendous wig?) who upon failing to get the prize he wanted in a carnival game (One of those cutesy porcelain figurines. Yeah, you read that right.), oh-so-villainously breaks it when Prasanna wins it.
Cut to Sandhya’s house where her sister is getting married to her father’s friend’s son, apparently a HUGE favour because OMGSHEHASDIABETES AND HAS TO HAVE REGULAR INSULIN SHOTS. Yup, so Prasanna and friends show up to help prepare for the wedding and the groom shows up at the same time. Guess who? RK,who falls in love with Sandhya instead of the older sister makes some evil evil plans to off her sister before the wedding and force the family into marrying off Sandhya instead. Somewhere before the 20-minute mark in the movie, another song is sung and danced to. Don’t worry, this rate slows until the lack of songs are totally noticeable. So, with some evil flipping of the fake hair (Didn’t anyone think that maybe this guy is too old to be playing in this youth movie when they had to give him a FREAKING WIG?) and some malicious plans like electrocution and switching the girl’s insulin with something else, the family ends up being forced to switch brides the night before the wedding.
Guess what Sandhya and Prasanna do? RUN! They run into their old professor who acts as the helpful adult figure. And he suggests “Alright kiddies! Get married! No one can hurt you then!” And here it comes…they’re not lovers like everyone thinks! (Then stop acting like it, you idiots.) Only close friends, so much so that they would do anything for each other! In fact, Sandhya is in love with someone else, an artist she met a while back. (TOTALLY MISCAST character played by some random dude named Bala. It’s hideous, this flashback, in its utter lack of chemistry). But oh, they can’t find him right now, cuz he’s sorta disappeared off the face of the earth, looks like. Cut to flashback (It’s been a while since I’ve seen one of those in a movie.) of the two meeting, falling in love in of course a remarkably short time and singing and dancing and all that pizzazz. And then he disappears just like that.
Back in the present, Prasanna gets a job at Subway and attempts to find Bala, while Sandhya…waits at home. Prasanna is chased and has to fight off RK, who’s still looking for Sandhya, who apparently isn’t good for anything but crying and telling Prasanna that she’ll give up her love (and then he’s all, no you can’t). Anyways, one day, Prasanna manages to find Bala who apparently was wrongly arrested that fateful day (CUE FLASHBACK) and lalala will get out tomorrow. At which point he and Sandhya will get married. BUT RK shows up and in a totally unreasonable fight, dies, leaving Prasanna mortally wounded. At the hospital, Sandhya (guess what?) cries and breaks up with Bala in the worst deathbed scene I have ever seen because they’ll have to take care of Prasanna for the rest of their lives, and won’t be able to be together. (Onoez). In response, Prasanna who was apparently conscious, rips out his oxygen mask and kills himself. Monitor flatlines while heart rate still reads 55. Sandhya cries. THE END.
In conclusion, if you value your sanity, DON’T WATCH IT.
Filed under: Currently Watching | Tags: Amitabh Bachchan, Black, Currently Watching, Hindi, movie, Rani Mukherjee
It’s a Hindi movie that was really good. Though at first, it felt like a rip-off of Helen Keller, which it was for the first half of the movie, then it got interesting as it diverted on a more original storyline. It was a Helen Kelleresque girl, in the same situation, but the teacher instead of being more like Anne Sullivan, seems to be rather loopy himself. But he is brave and persevering and manages to make her come out of her shell. The story continues onto how she goes through university, up till she graduates, which takes a very long time. But a parallel story shows her teacher’s gradual progression to severe Alzheimer’s which was sad. In the end, it sort of ends up as a teacher-student role exchange thing. This sounds vague but it really was heart-breaking yet inspiring to watch. Amitabh Bachchan did a great job, but Rani Mukherjee was so good that I didn’t even realize it was her until the end credits!
It’s one of those movies that you just have to see. I really want to see Jodhaa Akbar, Dhoom 2 and Deepa Mehta’s stuff soon, too.
Filed under: Currently Watching | Tags: Currently Watching, drama, family, Korean, My Girl
I just finished watching My Girl, this Korean drama. I’d bought the DVD set last summer, but was busy watching Goong (another great drama : D) with my mother (yeah. you read that right.) and that one was really long. So, I watched the first couple of eps of My Girl last August;then about 9 days ago, my mother asked me to put on this one. And we started watching. It’s basically about this girl (who is good at lying) and this somewhat rich guy she runs into, who asks her to pretend to be his long-lost cousin in order to save his grandfather. The rest is about how she fares, and of course the inevitable emergence of the love triangles…more like a weird web really. It really brought that quote about lies to mind- “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive”. It was pretty funny; though I think I still preferred Goong, which was a bit more on the serious side than this one.
The funny part was that when me and my mother started watching, eventually the whole family ended up watching (dad, grandma, brother). And it was really funny to see my parents, who usually keep clear of my love of East Asian culture, saying “That actress is really good.”, and “Tamil stuff sucks compared to this”, etc. Even at the end, my parents loved it so much that they wanted me to burn a cd with the My Girl OST. I was really happy to have brought them over to the dark side, muahahahaha. The only thing was that my mother wanted to watch 2 hours worth every day, and as a result, we didn’t really get to watch anything else for over a week, but alas, that is a small price to pay : ).
Anyways, it’s a really good drama and I would definitely recommend it to anyone. The songs are great too; very addictive. XD Next I’ll probably watch One Litre of Tears which I heard is really good, even though my mother says she doesn’t like sad stuff cause it makes her cry. : p
