(by H Prasanna)
1. Godard: Someone Tarantino stole from, including his production company’s name. Godard said he would like some money for that name.
See Godard-isation (no. 11).
2. Hollywood “genre” thriller: Exciting 80s movies which we feel confused about now because of all the homages in Avengers.
3. the former: Trademark BR play on words: Lokesh Kanagaraj “form”ed the movie.
See Auterist (no. 14).
4. “Mass” movie: Every movie where the protagonist vindicates himself at every turn, in the form of punchlines.
5. … that’s classy: Every movie where the protagonist vindicates himself at the final turn, in the form of a punchline.
6. dickishness: Feature of Vijay characters in mass Vijay movies to non-Vijay fans.
7. Staging: Drawing your eyes to things on screen through movement rather than pointing at something and saying look.
8. Mythological: The next 20 years of Avengers spinoffs.
9. …come and go without any sense of a character arc: Make up your mind BR, do you want ten cool scenes or character arcs and depth of screenplay?
10. Anirudh: A fugitive music director on the run for criminally high decibels in his last outing at the theaters, Darbar.
11. Godard-isation: Taking Godard’s stuff without paying him.
12. postmodern game-playing: Script with homages and critiques wrapped with personal signatures and easter eggs. One of the easter eggs is the final draft of the script.
13. “comedy track”: Recurring gags running aside the real story you wished was the real story as the real story drags on.
14. Auteurist: When you write a letter to a director for the choices in the film, instead of the star, because he is the star.
(15.) Fan-made: Baradwaj Rangan did not write or ask me to write this article or disclaimer. All interpretations are my own and he does not espouse any of them. Maybe one or two. But, any resemblance to actual intentions of Baradwaj Rangan is purely coincidental.
Baradwaj Rangan 
brangan
January 14, 2021
Haha, Prasanna, why do I get the feeling you are trolling me? 😛
LikeLike
H. Prasanna
January 14, 2021
@BR A little bit, maybe🙃 Some of these words are hardly used in Tamil movie reviews I read, except maybe by your homies like Adhitya ShriKrishna, and so on. Mostly it is just an homage to how you take Tamil filmmakers seriously and go to great lengths to contextualize what works and what doesn’t work.
I haven’t been around quite as long as others, read as much of work. I request other readers to share their favorite BRisms. Happy Pongal 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
vijay
January 14, 2021
Have never really understood what “post-modern” really means although BR uses it a lot 🙂 Have been lazy to look it up also.
LikeLike
ravenus1
January 15, 2021
Could have been included as a comment below the original article, maybe?
LikeLike
H. Prasanna
January 15, 2021
@ravenus Yes, I typed it as a comment to the original article. Then, I thought I might request others to share their favorite BRisms here, instead of the Master thread. But, all hardcore BRites here, no one wants to troll him!
LikeLike
brangan
January 16, 2021
Prasanna: Some of these words are hardly used in Tamil movie reviews I read… Mostly it is just an homage to how you take Tamil filmmakers seriously
As I have said many times before, print space necessities meant that “serious” film criticism never existed in the mainstream space. The Illustrated Weekly or Sunday or one of those magazines “for intelligent readers” would write pieces about Ray or Mrinal Sen or Adoor, or maybe how Amitabh is the biggest star (it would be more a business or sociological piece).
My generation of critics — i.e. the blog generation, with people like Raja Seb and Jai Arjun Singh — is the first that started looking at a Dharani movie with the same seriousness as a Ray movie. We could do this because (a) we were serious cinephiles, and (b) because we had all the space to write (on a blog post).
I recall my OMKARA review, way back in 2006 or something, was some 2000 words. No newspaper-era critic would have been given this space.
As for the “never used before” words, again, they are a reflection of our cinephilia, the fact that we take cinema seriously and have been Ekalavyas of American and French critics who took popular cinema seriously.
The actual word doesn’t matter. Lokesh may not even know the word “post-modern” (just as an example), but if he is doing “post-modern” things in his movie, then I look at it as “post-modern”.
Another thing about our generation critics is that we said it doesn’t matter if a director intended something or not, the only thing that matters is what is actually on screen.
So on and so forth — and this probably reflects in my interviews, too!
I am not saying you have to subscribe to all these theories, and maybe you will find it pretentious” or “over-analysing” or whatever, but that’s the reason you find this tonal difference in critics who began with me and who came after me.
🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
Madan
January 16, 2021
Post modern in a movie context tends to mean referencing old films and scenes and usually with a wink. The idea is to be irreverent (sometimes for the sake of it). It’s been discovered late in Tamil cinema so that if you have already watched Big Lebowski or Fight Club, you don’t see the fuss. I mean we are now at the point where I am thankful Hollywood has returned somewhat to looking for meaning and emotion again (at least outside MCU which I can’t really comment on). There wasn’t a single post modern thing about A Star Is Born, ironic given that it was a remake. It was sincere and earnest in the way Hollywood used to be once upon a time.
LikeLike
Madan
January 16, 2021
A good example of post modern working in a Tamil context is Soodhu Kavvum for me. I tend to appreciate post modern when it takes the parody aspect of it seriously (!) rather than go half assed and insert a post modern within a genre movie like action or masala.
LikeLike
Sai Ashwin
January 17, 2021
Okay two things.
First off, Post-Modern isn’t what you mean. What you call Post-Modern is inter-textuality i.e. references and homages. To understand Post Modern, you need to understand what Modern is and what Classical is. This is a dense subject and wikipedia is a good resource. For example, the films of early Hollywood like Gone with the wind, One the waterfront would classify as classical films. A distinct characteristic of such films is they illustrate the screenplay and use the camera more like the eye than the pen. Modern would be 70s Hollywood with more stress on the form. And Post-Modern would be anything that would create a brechtian-like distancing effect or something that can be enjoyed only if you have context regarding another piece of work. A lot of Kaufman, Lynch and Godard’s work falls into this category. I am not an expert in this, so take this definition with a grain of salt.
Secondly, this is for BR. The French New Wave critics took popular Hollywood more seriously because there was actually innovation being done there. They were exploiting the medium in new ways but the American critics either didn’t notice or didn’t take them seriously. This isn’t the case in India, at least not now. As I am telugu, there were popular directors like K.V.Reddy and Jandhyala who used the medium in new ways to tell popular and commercial stories, though not masala films.
I can’t see the form in masala films ever being utilised. Something like Rangasthalam tried a lot with its sound design and cinematography but it still succumbed to a lot of cliches. And the director never meant to make a “masala” film. The problem with this genre is that it is a requisite that the film should serve the star, hence you need to satisfy a lot one’s cinematic ideas for this. This whole idea of “50% for the star, 50% for me” which Lokesh said in the interview never works. It didn’t work with Ranjith or Karthik Subbaraj and it didn’t work for Lokesh also. It should be a “100% for me” kind of film which also is maybe inline with the star’s fans. Maybe something like Soorarai Pottru which still isn’t a masala film.
Honestly, I don’t get why serious critics like BR care about masala films. They say its “our culture”. Well, at some point we need to evolve and create better culture. I won’t be sad if the genre dies out. It has already been milked to the death.
P.S.- I find Lokesh Kanagaraj to be overrated, his fellow debutants from 2017 like Nithalan of Kurangu Bommai and Sri Ganesh of 8 thottakal impressed me more. Yet they haven’t made anything since, while Lokesh is making his 4th, that too with Kamal. As Paul Schrader says “one can’t win against mediocrity”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Voldemort
January 19, 2021
But, any resemblance to actual intentions of Baradwaj Rangan is purely coincidental.
LOL.
My favorite BR-isms (if you can call it that) are –
1) “Interesting” films vs. Films you like aka. The new Head vs. Heart debate 😛
2) “Product of its time”
3) masala-fy, massify
4) world-building
5) Form is content. (Form and content are both equally important y’all)
6) Achieves what it sets out to do (Aka Viswasam > Petta :P)
7) Alabaster Automatons (The best one, hands down)
LikeLiked by 2 people
Rahini David
January 19, 2021
Voldemort, Worldbuilding is not a BR-ism. Plenty of youtubers seem to use it. Generally for books.
LikeLike
H. Prasanna
January 19, 2021
@Sai Ashwin Regarding Masala, I found this interesting:
https://baradwajrangan.wordpress.com/2019/04/04/fc-recco-masala-shakespeare-by-jonathan-gil-harris/
LikeLike
krishikari
January 19, 2021
Especially in sci-fi world building is a big thing. I think it originated there, but every film or work of fiction has to build a believable world. As Rahini says, definitely not a BR-ism. Neither is “form is content”.
Alabaster Automatons is, however a true BR classic, needs to be set in stone.
LikeLike
Voldemort
January 19, 2021
Rahini – Yes, agreed. For that matter, most of what I mentioned are not used only by BR. Just that they are certain distinctive things that he passionately writes about, that not many reviewers/writers use. And would love to know your favorite BR-isms too. Come to think of it, shouldn’t this be the thread with most number of comments? With everyone pouring in with their favorite BR-isms 😛
LikeLike
Rahini David
January 19, 2021
Voldemort: Now that you mention it. I used to have an actual list. A sort of commonplace book, though I have no idea where it is now.
LikeLike
H. Prasanna
January 19, 2021
@Voldemort Yes, I agree that this sarakku is not specific to BR, but his mixing is rarely seen in the TASMAC he gets it from.
De’ol fashioned way for Sunny, Bobby. The first twenty minutes of the movie. Watching the movie knowing as little as possible.
LikeLike