Saturday, February 17, 2007

Review - Pachai Kili Muthu Charam

Its a bold movie, yet again from Gautham Menon.
The story line is not very complicated. A middle-aged man, Venkatesh (Played by Sarath) falls into an extra-marital affair with Geetha (Jyothika) and before he realizes he is stuck to the cobweb of conmen, who then blackmail him for money. The rest of the movie is about how Sarath saves his marriage with his loveable wife (played by Andrea) and then hits back to take all the money he lost to the conmen!
Its very refreshing to see Sarath Kumar being introduced as just "Sarath Kumar" and not "Supreme Star". He plays a medical rep who is content with his sales job and passes every chance of promotion to stay in the city with his wife and kid. Andrea plays Sarath's wife. Inspite of her not-so-south looks, she scores well in emotions and carries the role of a disappointed lover/wife with remarkable depth. I wish she gets more such roles in tamil cinema.
The story begins slow with first half an hour devoted to introduce Venkatesh, Kalyani and their son, who has juvenile diabetics. Sarath wields emotions like we have never seen. He also looks polished and bright. There is ample room for the first time to display love, lust, affection, disappointment, sorrow, contentment and fear - all in one movie. Sarath has brought in each of these emotions to their full and nowhere is it exaggerated.
The family saves money for their ailing kid and even decides to forego the idea of having another kid, just to devote their live for this kid. Its in this meloncholy-meets-reality situation, Venkatesh gets to know Geetha. Her's is another story of unsuccessful marriage life. Venky and Geetha turn friends. Geetha then takes fast moves to bring Venky into a love-lust
quagmire.
Gautham's dilemma is whether to become a Quintin Tarrentino or to be his own.The edginess and riveting narration which he followed in his earlier movies were very Quintin-like. Each scene led to the other and we did not have a minute to take a breath.But PKMC needed a full first-half to develop two micro-stories, one of Venkatesh & Family and the one of Venkatesh & Geetha. Gautham could have done well by limiting Venkat-Geetha relationship phase to the minimum and used the rest of the time to build a racy fightback.
Its this indecisiveness till the first half, that brings the movie flat, for an average movie goer. Gautham tries to break traditions one too many at the same time. First its the story line which is about extra-marital affairs. Second its Sarath doing a subdued hero. Third its Jyothika with her earthern looks and unfamiliar voice dubbing and fourth being a very slow narration much against what you would expect his movies to have.
The movie takes off in a typical Gautham menon fashion, when Lawrence (Milind Soman) enters the story and the blackmail trail begins. You are waiting to see how Venkatesh handles the moral fight and when Venkatesh finds Geetha to be a part of Lawrence's con-gang, you would come to the edge of the seat.
But the feast that we saw in Anbuchelvan-Pandiya fightback is missing here. Firstly there is no fightback from Sarath for most parts and when he does its already the end of the movie. Lawrence & Geetha (we thought) die in a gun-fight with Venkatesh, who not very mysteriously has to rely on Sarath Kumar, the action hero to fight 10 men wielding iron rods. We too had to come to terms that after all its not Venkatesh, its Sarath Kumar.
With meloncholy-lust-deceit and chase taking three-fouth of the movie, Gautham would have felt, its too little a feast for his audience and as I thought I the movie was over, Jyothika springs back even after we thought she's shot dead, to lead another excruciatingly boring fight, where she indeed dies this time. It was neither racy nor any bit climactic. While Jo is all too willing to do a negative role in the end of her career's first innings, she could have taken care about her looks, dubbing and presentation. The life you associate with Jo, is missing.
My Verdict: You must watch it as early as you can. It may not be out there for long!

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Elimination Round - Ideal Girl - Part 1

Preethi today asked me for my idea of an ideal match (The marriage type). Thinking of it, more than what kind of a girl I may like, there are many creatures I just would kill with a "HIT SPRAY" if I ever had the license. :)

First category is what I call as the neo-ramba girls. You can see them in college, office everywhere. No one except the "oh-its-been-a-long-time-since-I-saw-a-girl" guys go near them. This species oozes the oomph with extra large dangling ear rings, Revlon shades, cheap saravana stores jeans with embroidery on it and those really loud (color) and extremely noisy tuk tuk heel shoes. Just as you are stuck for words looking at their profoundly repulsive demeanour they reciprocate with "Chee, enna yen pa apdi pakre...enaku oru maariya vardhu" look. WTF?

The second category is "lovelace forever". They are very nice people. They are always there for you, feeling extra large for you. Hayoyo enada thalai le thoosi and wipes it off for you. SMS'es you with "Life is like a river. You are a goldfish. I am a dolphin" kinda message and expects you to reply with a "Sucha sweet girl you are" sms. She knows your ringtone, she remembers its time for you to pay the electricity bills, she even sms'es you to check the road on both sides before you cross.Before you realize, she knows everything about you. You can just walk straight and ask her, how many more deep breaths should I take to meet my average oxygen intake for every friday and she will have an answer. You never know. She perhaps knows. They call you by every name including babli, chintu, tintin, ashu, asho or sweetypie..that you come back home and shout in front of the mirror "ashwin" "ashwin" "ashwin" a hundred times, to feel how nice and relieved it sounds. Its all bubbly-giggly but they just dont get the point that one doesnt need to salvage the entire time, every ounce of energy and self-respect to "take care" of a guy. They are nice, lovely but carry zero magnetism

The third is ultra-pack. For these chics everything is larger than life. They exchange "Hi" with a rub of cheek and a kiss in the air, even if its just our good old besi beach, they are meeting in. They know how to wear a 9 yard saree with glass work and still manage to reveal everything. I can watch Antony Bourdain of "No reservations" eat live octopus. But I will puke if I sit with these chics for 10 minutes. They are adventurous in every sense of the word. They can tell between tasmac and a cognac which is 18th century brewed. They talk hard rock and metal.They drive custom made jeeps with 10 absolutely drunk guys in it whom she would have just met through yet another common friend whom she met the last week for the first time. (This is no exaggeration. I sadly happened to be with such a gang for precious half n hour of my 31 dec 2006)

The fourth category is Kartavya girls. They all look the same. There is only one way you can take them to orgasm - by taking them through a hypnotism spell and walk them through redmont seattle Microsoft office and show that they work there as a geek with the Vista OS in 2007. They would like "Java User Group - Code Marathon" t-shirt to Swarowski crystals. They shut down their eyes to sleep, reboot to wake up, fragement the bread for breakfast, disk cleanup their scooties, go to office in run time, take command(s) prompt-ly. Huff...enough said..
For all these complications, there is one category of girls, I just fall for. It takes one full post to write about them. Thats on Part II..
 

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