Browsing All Posts filed under »Cinema: Tamil«

Readers Write In #583: Objects in the rear view mirror: 2000s Kollywood

June 5, 2023

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This article is the third in a series of random reminiscences of the recent decades of Kollywood. The first and second are here.  By Srinivasan Sundar Chennai 600028 (2007, Venkat Prabhu) It is surprising that a cricket-crazy city had not rolled out any memorable film based on the game until Chennai 600028 stormed the arena. The more you think of […]

Interview: Sarathkumar (Por Thozhil, etc.)

May 25, 2023

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From the Web (FTW) #7: The Magic of K Vishwanath’s songs

May 21, 2023

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Why do Indian movies have songs? Well that’s a question that is being increasingly asked now, but it was not the case earlier. Given that Indian movies had their base in the various forms of “stage” or “theatre” traditions, when sound came into movies, songs became integral. For a very long time, songs played a […]

Lights, Camera, Analysis: Ravi Varman (Ponniyin Selvan 1 & 2)

May 20, 2023

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Vijay Antony’s ‘Pichaikkaran 2’ is a sentimental, speech-heavy take on how the rich should help the poor

May 19, 2023

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Spoilers ahead… Scene after scene is set up to portray Vijay Antony as a saviour named Anti Bikili. He even gets a fight like a mass-hero.  Vijay Antony has co-written, edited, directed, and composed the music for Pichaikkaran 2 – and he appears in a double role in this spiritual sequel to his 2016 hit. […]

‘Modern Love Chennai’, overseen by creative producer Thiagarajan Kumararaja and team, makes a strong case for what Tamil creators can do in the OTT space

May 18, 2023

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Spoilers ahead… Every film has something (or things) going for it, but the standouts are the episodes by Krishnakumar Ramakumar, Akshay Sundher, and Thiagarajan Kumararaja. Modern Love Chennai is easily the best thing to come out of the Tamil OTT space. This is not to say that I liked every single short in this six-episode […]

Interview: Thiagarajan Kumararaja (Modern Love Chennai, and this man’s mind)

May 16, 2023

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Interview: Bharathiraja (Modern Love Chennai, and all other kinds of love)

May 15, 2023

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Interview: Siva Ananth (Ponniyin Selvan 1 & 2)

May 13, 2023

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Vinayak Chandrasekaran’s ‘Good Night’ is an easy watch with a few good laughs, but it struggles to hang on to a single tonality

May 12, 2023

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Spoilers ahead… This is why the film never realises its potential: the central relationship starts off well enough, but it becomes very repetitive – and in the second half, it becomes extremely contrived. Good Night, written and directed by Vinayak Chandrasekaran, has been sold as a comedy about a man with a snoring problem – […]

Nelson Venkatesan’s ‘Farhana’ gives Aishwarya Rajesh a fine chance to shine in the midst of a middling thriller

May 12, 2023

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Spoilers ahead… The director focuses on his heroine’s face, her expressive eyes – and Aishwarya gives us everything from timidity to disgust to fear to controlled rage. With Oru Naal Koothu, Nelson Venkatesan showed us he could do drama. The film was a sobering look at modern-day marriage. His next film, the very entertaining Monster, […]

Interview: Vijay Antony (Pichaikkaran 2)

May 10, 2023

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Interview: Sriram and Shridhar Raghavan

May 4, 2023

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Readers Write In #575:  PS-2 comes out with the soul intact

April 30, 2023

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By ​Raghu Narayanan Well, it worked for me…big time! Compared movie to movie, I will say PS-2 is better than PS-1. But then, saying that will be somewhat merciless because the unravelling of the plot and the untying of knots in PS-2 was always going to make it more interesting and more conclusive than PS-1. […]

Readers Write In #574:  PS-2 and why it is riddled with the same problems that plagued later seasons of GoT

April 29, 2023

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By Gnanaozhi The movie simply didn’t work for me. It has a severe GoT season 5-8 problem. Seasons 1-4 were sublime, it adapted the books faithfully but the Showrunners added some minor twists of their own (like that scene where Tywin is being served by Arya who is pretending to be a lowly servant). However […]

Interview: Vetri Maaran, Gautham Vasudev Menon, Rajiv Menon (The extended Director’s Cut of Viduthalai – Part 1, on ZEE5)

April 28, 2023

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Mani Ratnam’s ‘Ponniyin Selvan 2’ is more dramatic, sadder and more serious in tone, and a meaty conclusion to the two-part epic

April 28, 2023

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Spoilers ahead… Mani Ratnam amps down the aural drama and amps up the visual drama. Even by this director’s legendary standards, the staging is something else. Mani Ratnam has credited SS Rajamouli several times as the reason he was able to finally make Ponniyin Selvan: the mega-success of the Bahubali films made it possible for […]

Lights, Camera, Analysis: Dharani Rasendran (Yaathisai)

April 25, 2023

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Bitty Ruminations 94 – Mani Ratnam, ARR and the ‘mainstream’

April 25, 2023

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This is a take-off on Madan’s comment in the MR-ARR interview thread, where he talked about my podcast where he says I said something like “this weird strongly mainstream impulse Mani has for one who wants to be trying new things all the time. “ I want to define what I meant by the word […]

Readers Write In #573:  Objects in the rear view mirror: 90s Kollywood

April 23, 2023

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By Srinivasan Sundar Those five were the ones that were easily and quickly visible in my mirror. Most memorable films; Not necessarily the greats of the decade. I peeped again, this time to catch glimpses of my film memories of the nineties. It is like trying to open up a case that’s been filled with […]