2.0

I haven’t been in the blogosphere much lately, thanks to some changes happening in the physical world, more about that will in a few weeks. But this is something I have to share. The Tamil movie 2.0, a sequel to Enthiran (or Robot), was released recently. My family (along with the kids and friends) went to see the movie on Saturday and let me know that it was amazing and that I shouldn’t miss it. Luckily we had a screening of the same in a nearby theatre and I happen to have a discount card for that too. So we decided to try it out. They had only one show and it was for 7.40 pm.

Mr M hasn’t seen the prequel to this movie so I filled in with the basic storyline about Chitti and we were there ready for the moving, hoping that they had subtitles. Thankfully, they had and I should say it was the best ever subtitles that have ever been done so far. Even the very colloquial lines were well translated. Whoever did the subtitles, hats off to you!

The movie is very grand, hovers between fantasy and modern or even futuristic technology, has very very few songs, very fast paced and doesn’t make you sleep. Rajni does look aged and tired in many scenes. The one-liners are very cute, especially with the humanoid. References to the prequel are there but nothing you can ignore if you haven’t watched it. Mr M enjoyed it and thought the storyline was very good and very appropriate for current times. I am purposefully not giving away anything about the story because it will kill the interest. The only thing I thought could have been done was to cut short the last fight. I had this issue with the prequel too. I thought the last fight scene was going on forever. They could have edited it a lot. But then most people love that and I might be in the minority. Even though they have pitched for a sequel, I sincerely hope they stop here. Otherwise, it would get very repetitive and end up being boring irrespective of how grand it is and it could be.

I really enjoyed the various facts presented throughout the movie which forms the premise of the story and they are very interesting. Makes you think and read about them too. That is a big positive out of the movie. Bringing the huge and difficult topics which might be too technical for a layman to understand and presenting it with a healthy dose of facts and a generous helping of masala. Overall it is a movie well done and the visual effects are a treat. We enjoyed it and it was a well-spent Saturday night.

Tuesday Tunes

Tuesday Tunes

Today I am going with a song I loved in a movie I saw a couple of days ago. I enjoyed the movie, Baahubali 2 (Tamil), which is a sequel and loved the grandeur and the graphics. Among all the songs, this one is more fantasy based and I enjoyed it more. Not to mention the song is lovely to hear with some good beats.

To support or not

I don’t remember the last time I had to argue with my family about something non-family related and argue vehemently at that. I am usually a person who wouldn’t engage in arguments unless I use it to expand my knowledge of that specific matter by playing devil’s advocate. And arguing over WhatsApp isn’t fun, even though it can be useful to curb your emotions which might come to the fore when you are talking in person.

So, what was this argument all about? I am not sure if you have heard about the Jallikatu protests that have been going on in my state in India. There was some support shown by Tamilians all over, US, UK etc Everyone supporting the traditional sport of Jallikatu (a bull taming sport) held during the second day after Pongal (the harvest festival). You see, the Supreme Court had banned this sport citing cruelty to animals and people wanted to rally against the ban. Especially students. The protest was on a very large scale and it was all peacefully done (in a very non-violent way) which I really appreciate. My siblings also participated to show their solidarity and support to this sport. Not just them, my very close friends too spoke up and started using the ‘I Support Jallikatu’ picture as their WhatsApp profile picture.

A lot of news, talks, messages, information was being passed on in the WhatsApp family group about this and it came to a stage where I was asked to show my support by joining the people here in London if there were any such thing happening. I told them that I do not support the cruelty to animals in the name of culture and even though I support the fact that the local breed of cattle which is diminishing should be addressed, Jallikatu might not be the only solution that we should be resorting to. Also once the Government removes the ban, people will go back to their own life and forget all about organic breeding, farming, supporting farmers, supporting local cattle breeds etc until the next year when the sport is banned again. That ruffled a lot of feathers. At least they didn’t pounce on me for my views, but I was bombarded with so many cultural references and stuff like that through the messages.

Yesterday, when the protests were getting to a close, the political parties played their game and turned it violent where the police officials themselves involved in arson and put the blame on the students. I was expecting this to happen. Because that is what happens every single time we try to protest peacefully. Every party wants to gain mileage with any such huge event to gain votes.

I wanted to write all about it but wasn’t sure where to begin. Mr. M and I used to discuss it every day for the past week about why my folks or others are not seeing the bigger picture? It totally turned into an emotional blackmail thing. If I didn’t support it, I wasn’t a Tamilian who is proud of her culture, so if I am a Tamilian I would support it, no matter what. That wasn’t agreeable to me. I had questions for which they didn’t have answers. And I was told that I was being unreasonable.

But today, I found an article which highlighted each and every single question I had (it is so convenient when someone who is better at writing their views expresses your thoughts) and I think it will be better to share that instead of going through the same questions again.

Jallikattu: ethics versus entrenched traditions – [http://www.thehindu.com/thread/politics-and-policy/Jallikattu-ethics-versus-entrenched-traditions/article17082324.ece]

I am sure that article will bring up a lot of comments (I am yet to go through the comments there) and some harsh ones at that too. But I am glad that I found that.

Magizhchi!

I did mention on my SoCS post that I will be watching ‘Kabaali‘ movie with my friend. We did. Even though I was shocked to see only 5 of us in the theater in Boleyn Cinemas I am not sure if it should be attributed to the success or failure of the movie. There was a news that the movie was leaked online a day prior to its release. And Boleyn Cinemas was not a well maintained movie theater, sadly. The only saving grace was they had the subtitles for my friend, who otherwise would have had a very bad time trying to understand. Heck, I needed those subtitles for some parts of it because the slang was very Malaysian Tamil and I didn’t understand most of those words. And according to my friend, the subtitles were very well done (as opposed to some of the ones he had the pleasure of seeing in Bollywood movies where he had to focus hard to ignore the grammatical errors 😛 )

So what did we think of the movie? I am a Rajni fan, but not to the extent that I have watched all of his movies. I haven’t watched his last two movies because I knew, even from the trailer that they would turn out very bad and it did not give me the ‘you gotta see this’ vibe. But ever since I watched Kabaali’s trailer I wanted to see it. And there are a lot of good points that I really really appreciated. He isn’t romancing the heroine who is almost half his age. The romance angle was very subtle and also it shows more of when he is old and still in love with his wife and is searching for her. He plays his age. He has some scope to act when compared to his last 5 movies. It was a gangster movie. When I heard the songs separately, I didn’t quite like them, but in the movie most of them were in the background, so they went well with the story line. This was a big deal for me. I wanted a commercial entertainment movie and that is what I got. And interestingly my friend also liked it for its commercial value.

We both were a little confused with the Malaysian politics and how people kept backstabbing each other. But after some time I got the hang of it. My friend struggled to get that part especially in the first half. It is based in Kuala Lumpur and about two gangs there. Unless we are aware of what had happened with Malaysian Tamils over there, I don’t think we can appreciate it. But I am glad that someone made an effort to shot an entire movie (except for a small part in Tamil Nadu) in KL based on the life there. I have no clue why there were so many bad reviews for the movie or why Rajini was criticized so much. He is criticized not matter what he does, so I shouldn’t be bothered. I don’t really care for his or any of the movie star’s personal life. That is their own. As a profession, he, the director promised me a good time in the movies. And they kept their promise. That is all that matters to me. Magizhchi! (Cheers!)