Dual roles

Dual roles or Double acting in kollywood is so over rated. It becomes a significant milestone in a heros career if he does a double act role. Infact a hero cant do double acting when he enters the field, you need to get some mass appeal, before people can tolerate your face in 2 forms.
In the yester years, MGR or sivaji would try that with 2 roles beard on / beard off roles , Mole on / mole off roles. We would see a line in the middle if they both appear in the same scene showing that this was a cut and paste scene.

Then with competition in the market forced the heros to work hard to make the difference significant enough while technology and make up advancement helped them present it better making you forget that the 2 characters are indeed the same guy. Like Kamal in Indran, Chandran, Michael Madana Kamaraajan, Indian, Surya in perazhagan, Rajini in Billa where they had to change accent and body language appropriate to the character.

Now there are some movies of Chithappa (Sarath) and Meena which ridicules the concept of dual roles. It was always wig on and wig off roles.

Anyway I am attaching pictures of a hero who did double act in a recent movie. Remember these are 2 different characters. While I watched this movie I found it really hard to recognize them or see them apart.

So the quiz is for you to identify 6 differences between the 2 hero, well in normal circumstances we approve only significant differences some exceptions are made considering the hero has a simple costume change between the roles.

Now when you do find the difference (if any), put them in the comments section for me to evalauate. Competition closes sunday 21st December 2008.

Mystery of the 'missing socks'!

I am struck by this strange mystery at home. There is most definitely something happening.

After I do my weekly laundry, I always end up with atleast 2 pairs of socks missing their respective partners. Not once, not twice, every single time, not just adult socks, but also my little girl’s socks.

I make sure I put them in pairs when I wash them. Then i take them out to dry in the drier or in the cloths line in the backyard. Then i sort them end of that day (rarely!!) or as soon as i can. I am not sure if its the washing machine or the drier or even the sun. If the sock eating monster is indoors or outdoors.

I first thought junior was doing it, so now I hide the dried cloths away from her reach until I get a chance to sort. Somehow I always end up with this singles.

I have a huge collection of these single socks, hoping someday its partner will come back and they will live happily ever after, but my sock tales hasn't had a happy ending so far.

For those of you who are lucky enough to have happy sock families would not know the importance of this post. For some one like me, who would buy a new pair pretty much during every shopping would still end up spending a good 10 minutes every morning trying to find a pair of socks will definitely appreciate this.

Somedays in the mornings, when hubi is looking for socks, i throw in my helping hand, trying to sneak through a mismatch. But hubi with his sharp eyes will find out immediately if I hand him different socks, even during the busiest mornings. They are both black for heavens sake !
All of junior’s socks are pink, but i still cant find a nearest match between the singles to do some mix and match.

So i have absolutly no use whatsoever with the single socks now. But I have a separate compartment in the robe to store single socks. What if I run out of space (which is due to happen very soon!). Now I need to take the toughest decision, whether to throw the singles or still hold on.

Going Yellow !

Smile is Contagious and so is a frown !





Have heard about the smile being contagious but experienced the smile and frown disease very recently.I work with a girl from the regional web team, she works from Sydney while I am in Melbourne, have never met her and I always go to her only when I need something done. Ofcourse being in HR I don’t have lot of work happening through web team.Now each time I call her, she knows for sure I am calling for something but she always sounds so happy. When I hear the bubbly voice, I can see her speaking with a pleasant smile on the other end. Then my tone changes from “hi, how are you? “ to match her enthusiasm and I was hanging on to this enthu for like another 15 minutes after I hung up.

I met my colleague from my previous work a few days ago, we organised this lunch meeting as a casual catch up, but I have to confess that I needed to re charge the good person inside me and needed some positive energy. She said I wasn’t like this at all. I was one of the positive energy radiator and she could not believe I was losing it !

Then I realised I used to be the web team girl, I always walked into work with a smile, sometimes with a box of goodies for our test kitchen ( we had a table in the middle of the HR department where we shared new snacks in market and we called it our test kitchen). There was MW who would turn anything and everything into a joke. I have laughed loud, forwarded funny emails to other colleagues making them laugh out loud. We have shared jokes and laughed till we had tears and we always always said ‘ if it weren’t for this fun team, we would be depressed with the work’ coz we were very busy and had to deal with unusual, unrealistic expectations from Department Managers.

Then I changed jobs and work with a team , lets says is not as funny or light hearted as the old team. I still have unrealistic expectations and busy work, but with no jokes, no test kitchen, no light hearted colleagues, it makes things harder. It made me sit quietly at work and even start a blog !!!I slowly felt that the good side of me dying and the mean side of me taking over. I smiled less often, never laughed and carried out this monotonous “Hi, how are you? “ and other things mentioned in my “small talks” blog. I don’t forward the funny things I receive in my email, I don’t share my snacks (he ! he!)

I thought well, as contagious as the smile is, so is frown. Now is it as easy to smile and laugh while everyone else is so serious and mean to you? Then thought one is I should not let the good side die and two the least I could to is be energetic and smile when I bump into someone or when I pick up the phone. Spread the smile around!
Now just like a zillion Indian movies where they try hard to prove the title of the movie in the last scene, here is mine. Since wondering blogger wrote about going green, I have named mine going yellow – which I think represents smile and sun shine !.

Feminist in Me !

The feminist in me screams out loud when I see the fate of heroine in Kollywood. Well please don’t imagine a ‘Malaysia vasudevan’ voice singing ‘Oh! Oru thendral’ in the background (which is what KV sings when I start a topic like this) .

A heroine in kollywood is defined as a very pretty girl able to dance. No prerequisite in regards to acting talent or knowing tamil. Someone with all or most of the talents are very rare to find, when someone like that manage to be successful, they are the celebrities with fans building even temple for them. While they are adored to such an extent, before you know they are completely forgotten when a new one appears. The career span of a heroine is only a few years as against few decades of a Kollywood Hero.

The requirement for a hero in Kollywood is very different. He should be a tamilian, or atleast know tamil as dubbing for hero is big no no. He need not have good looks or be able to dance. He can have really bad dress sense, horrible hair style ( or no hair) , can be just too fat to dance or too old to act. The only talent could be his ability to tame a cow or buffalo and sing to them. Nothing matters.

A heroine’s career comes to a perfect fullstop when she gets married, no questions asked after she has children, but the hero continues to be in the field as a hero as long as he ‘can’.

Hero always has a heroine aged between 16 and 26, very pretty (ofcourse!) from any part of India. He can be in the field for atleast 20 years. Even when he has kids and grandkids he can still act as Hero fighting a zillion enemies, with young heroines dancing around him. His son entering into cinema makes no difference to his career. Both father and son can act with the same heroine and infact some of these heroes have actually acted with both the mother and daughter.

When the heroine is married and then return to the industry after couple of years, they end up acting as the sister (usually elder), sister in law or even mother or mother in law.

For some reason being pretty is the absolute requirement for heroines only in the industry, atleast that is understandable. Hubi says it is only fair Ambica, Banupriya or even Kushbhu could not come back as heroines because they had crossed the stage of being a heroine and I agree but my question is if a pretty heroine comes back or rather if the heroine comes back as pretty as she was, why is it so difficult to accept her.

Dear KV for argument sake said it is an ethical issue of seeing a married woman or a mother as heroine as heroines are always portrayed as a dream girl. But if we can accept Britney spears and Angelina Jolie, why is it so hard for Indian women. Infact I think Bollywood is a tiny bit better atleast in terms of the heros accepting to act with their heroines like kajol and Juhi. Some sensible heros, rather only sensible hero Amitabh chooses roles to suit his age, and outperforms each of his previous movie. Well that’s just him.


It was ridiculous having Nadhiya as Sunder C ‘s Mom in law, for goodness sake sunder would be older than nadiya. Surya and Simran acting as pair and now simran has done surya’s mom in vaaranam aayiram. Thank god the father role was also done by surya.
I am not quite sure how to end this topic, as I am unable to get answers to all the questions that raise in my mind. Is it the heros or their producers or the audience, who decides this fate of the heroines ? Is it just another dimension in a male chauvinistic society ?

What is weird is heroines like saroja devi and savithiri and few others acted after marriage and kids, some too obese to be a heroines. They were accepted and this was in the baby boomers generation. Whatever went wrong in the Gen Xs , hopefully the so called modern Gen Ys change this trend ! ( Well I lost the status of being a Gen Y by 51 days )

Small Talks !

There are some days at work when you are just sick of staring at the computer that you just need a break or have just too much to do that you don’t know where to start and you really don’t want to start as you know for sure it is opening the Pandora’s box. What do you do ?

It is times like this I take a walk to the kitchen 22 steps away from my seat or go to the café downstairs this is 48 steps in the staircase ( Ya one day I was so bored that I counted the steps ). Anyway I walk to kitchen in the 3rd level and fix myself a cup of hot green tea and stare through the most awesome view of all ( view of the Dandenong ranges and the busy intersection )

Now the last thing I want is a meaningless ‘small talk’. The ones I hear all the time are :
‘ it looks beautiful isn’t’
‘ Looks like its going to rain’
‘ how long do you have to stare through the glass until a car crashes’
It is quite funny but I would have a brain freeze and wudn’t know what to say, would mumble something and smile !

What is worse ?

Monday – ‘ How was your weekend’ or ‘Oh ! I hate Mondays’
Tuesday – Thursday – ‘Oh ! its only ------day’ fill it with that day
Friday – always always ‘ Thank god its Friday’ followed by ‘ Any plans for weekend’

Same conversation in the café with the coffee maker ( nice man gives me occasional free muffins and punches twice in my coffee card, so I get my free coffee soon)

So why does all conversations in work place around either weekends or weather ?
Is it the same in India?
Does any of you have any other topic to talk about?
Have you heard of anything funny?

Short and sweet

After dear buddy commented that it took a looong time to finish reading my blog, i have written a short one now.It is more for you to check the link


Plagiarism

A lot of times we listen to some kollywood songs and get reminded of some english, hindi songs we know of. Soemtimes it is recycled music of the same music director in a different language.
There have been obvious deva songs, few harris songs, here is one I came across.
Thanks to youtube and vetti time in hand

Oh Venilla – Kushi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HRRkcnhHWo

Songs that ruled the year !

Kollywood releases a zillion movies every year and there is just 1 song that stands out for the whole year, sometimes two. I have listed a few I thought ruled the year.


1) Kamal hits – Yengeyum Yeppodhum , Illaimai Idho Idho
Don’t remember much except as a kid heard this song too many times. It set a new trend to the songs in 80s and sure was a hit then. Both had great music, great dancing, SPB and ofcourse Kamal in it. A class in its own time

2) Aatama Therottama, Movie : Captain Prabhakaran
The movie gave our Captain his title. But this song sure did rule that year. The casting was average, we had Livingston dancing for this for God sake ! But Ramya akka (Babu thinks she looks like a patient now!) sure did a great job and the music, singer and choreography all contributed to the success. Only off point was captain running around in between the song wearing torch light in his head ! ( well I must confess I danced for this song in a group dance competition and dint win hehe)

3) Ek Dho Theen, Movie : Tezaab
Who says you need good lyrics for a song, you can even have ABCs or 123s if you have a mix of everything else right. Oh ! my God. There was not a single dance competition in 90s that went without a group dancing for this song. People who did not know a word of hindi could easily say 1 – 12 in hindi, thanks to Madhuri Dixit, who rose to the dream girl of the decade after this song. This had everything you can ask for in a song !

4) Choli ke peeche kya hai, Movie: Kalnaayak
With all the controversial lyrics, the song was an ultimate hit even before the movie was released. Costume and choreography complimented the obscene lyrics, but ofcourse hit of the year (confession again, I danced for this song too, ya ya another group dance competition and guess what ..won the first prize )

5) Aasai adhigam vachu, Movie: Marupadiyum
Seriously who would have thought Rohini could dance so well. Not much of hype for this song before the movie got released, yet this song did its turn to rule. I think the best thing was the picturization and the choreography. ( I remember one girl in the group could not dance at all but still got a place to stand too close to the camera!)

6) Chikku Bukku Raiyule, Movie : Gentleman
One song where the lyrics played a key role. Shankar / ARR combo, prabhu deva dance. Song was a hit before the movie hit the screens and post release, song was a bigger hit. (Confession yet again, danced for this song too and won second place.)

7) Pettai Rap , Movie : Kaadhalan
Another Shankar/ ARR/ prabhu deva combination. The song had funny lyrics, great beat, awesome dance and even comedy in it. Sure have heard it too many times that most of us even know the lyrics byheart.

8) Malai malai marudhamalai, Movie : Chocolat
A sure hit in all girls hostels ( no confession this time !!!!)New voice, great dancing, pretty girls, meaningless lyrics. What more do you need for a hit song ?

9) Manmadha raasa – Movie: Thiruda Thirudi
Cant say what was standing out in this song that made it such a sooper dooper hit. But the test with the new voice was a success. Then the location, choreography, dancers and costume just took it to rooftop. Sure hit among the kids.

10) Following the Manmadha raasa trend, everyone tried their luck with new odd voices, fast paced dancing, very pretty models
Cheena Thaana Doi, Movie : Vasool Raja
Vaala meenukum Velangu meenukkum, Movie : Chithiram pesudhadi
Kathazha Kannala, Movie : Anjadhey and now Naaka Mooka, Movie : Kaadhalil Vizhundhen

Movie Review

Ok after years of planning to start a blog, finally it is surya / gautham / Harris team and offcourse some time in my busy life (duh!) to start my own blog !
Where should I start.
Oh ! well every tom, dick and harry writes their own review about every movie they watch. The sun tv guy wears a suit , walks up and down the stage and gives a 2 line review about every movie ( after sathyaraj mocking him in one of his movies, condemning him for sitting down and deciding fate of multi crore movies in 60 seconds, he must have decided to walk in the show).

Here is my review on the most recent movie I watched “ Vaaranam Aayiram”. To begin with there was so much of talk regarding this title, explanations were given to our manavaadus as to what it meant, again another rumour that it had something to do with ‘Forest Gump’ wonder what ! may be the weird title ??? Gautham sure did realise it, so made simran utter something meaningless in the last scene mentioning the title.

Anyway got to start with Surya first...What can I say?
Watching him as a lover boy in Nerukku Ner to this movie, you can definitely notice his change in everything I guess, dance, dressing sense, acting, voice modulation. Man he is one determined hardworker. I still cant imagine how they made him look like a 17 year old. Can brocholli do this magic ? Surya as brand ambassador for brocholli can do what Poppoye did to Spinach ! I am sure all the mechanical boys would be in their flash back thinking about their experience with ‘ Heat and Mass Transfer’.

The first half is truly magical. The whole Surya- Sameera episode is like a poem. I must mention the music here. Every song ‘Mundhinam Paarthene’ – So much hype for the 2 lines surya speaks than Naresh Iyer and Prashanthini but their voices go soo well together. ‘Nenjukkul paidhidum ‘, what can you say, a typical hariharan song.’Yethi Yethi’ – Picturisation is very cute, especially MJ.haha seriously surya super dhan but why do they have so many voices in one song, it makes me listen to the song a zillion times to differentiate which voice goes for what line. Why cant life be simple like the 80s were there were just 2 voices in the whole song.

Anyway coming back to story line, the story sort of drags after sameera is gone.
I somehow feel the dad-kiddo relationship could have been better. With all sentences of surya ending with daddy, I could not see the dad as an inspiring hero, except for the situation when he drives the lorry I guess. Well its nice when daddy says bring your girl friends home and talk, but is it such a big deal?? may be it’s a boys thing ! Also when surya says to his dad that he should relax in life while the dad was actually lying down and reading novel was like ( naan ippo mattum yenna panren ! ) It would have been nice if they had shown the dad rose to some situation and showed some heroism. I think Simran was as much a model mom with all the hype for the dad. She stood by both suryas throughout the movie like a strong, determined lady. Btw why did they have a poor sister in all scenes with no talk of her marriage, while her own classmate was married to the brother and had a kid !

Bablu as villain and the background score during the kidnap, as friend KV says is a disaster. Gautham showing just his eyes in the climax is a true ‘hehe’ moment.
Annnal mele panni thulli was a true Bombay Jayashree piece, even though Sudha did as much justice. Anjala , kathick’s pronounciation is very good. After listening to many udit narayan, kher songs, its truly nice to hear such good tamil.
Overall Vaaranam aayiram deserves ‘Thoranam Aayiram’