Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Ra.One & 7-aam Arivu : Two Moronic Techno Monsters!


Ra.One (Hindi)

Shahrukh Khan : A desperado running amok?


After a series of flops, Shahrukh Khan wanted to resurrect his delusional King Khan image which is fast eroding in the highly competitive and creatively combative Bollywood movie-making industry. To settle scores with his falling stars, he initially tried a few directors and finally employed one to make this 3-D movie called as Ra.One, rhyming as Raavan. Shahrukh should have consulted Mani Ratnam to understand the curse behind the name. Unfortunately he didn't. We are therefore subjected to undergo the torture of sitting through the movie, wearing those smudgy stereoscopic glasses, as a form of divine retribution during Diwali by the ghosts of ten-headed Raavan. The film starts in the most boringly possible way ever made in the history of Hindi cinema. And it continues to carry on with the same pace and tedium till the very end. A remarkable three-dimensional feat in wasting technology. Ra-One, G-One, Lucifer, Kickass, HART, Akashi, Aiyo! and Aiyo!! These are not just terms or cliches from any of the kids' computer games. They sum up the entire script and screenplay of the film. During some of the song and dance sequences, one gets to watch the titillating gyrations of Kareena Kapoor with the 3-D effect! That remains the only solace, insufficient though! The entire hyped-up attempt of Shahrukh Khan to create an Indian science fiction superhero film ends up as a creative disaster. Tragic.


Movie Rating : 2 out of 10     



7-aam Arivu (Tamil)


Murugadoss : A mimicry artist aping to become a director!


The Tamil film industry has become creatively challenged ever since the advent of film-makers like S.A.Chandrasekhar's protege Shanmugam Shankar, Balu Mahendra's favourite disciple Bala Palanisamy and S.J.Suryah's assistant Arunsalam Murugadoss. They, along with their cohorts, have collectively set a trend where loud-mouthed propaganda and intellectual mediocrity gets renowned as works of great cinematic endeavour while successfully churning out third-rated trash. Mere technical finesse by coupling brilliant cinematography with a good soundtrack would not make up for good cinema. Which oddly seems to be the case with these crop of younger directors. The latest in the offing from this bunch is 7-aam Arivu by Murugadoss. The first episode of the film begins with a chauvinistically biased portrayal of the story of Bodhidharma, who was a descendant of a Pallava king from Kanchipuram. The historical fact that he was also called as The Blue-Eyed Barbarian in many of the Chinsese texts and the controversies sorrounding his biographial accounts get conveniently buried in the Tamil linguistic zealotry generated in the movie. This part of the film ends with interviews  of many contemporary road-side Tamilians who express their naive ignorance on the subject matter, upon which the director warms up to profoundly explore during the remaining part of the film, the storyline of which is set in present-day Chennai. The hero of the film, who works in a circus, happens to be the descendant of the historical Bodhidharma. The heroine, who is a PhD scholar doing research in genetic enginering, happens to discover the missing link. Her mission : to perform the task of genetic re-engineering on the DNA chain of the hero so that the lost valour, the immense medical knowledge and the vast technological wizardry, which remain hidden in the legendary gentic code of Tamil chromosomes, are rediscovered for the utmost benefit of mankind. To this effect, the heroine delivers an inspiring lecture, interspersed with a few choicest Tamil abuses, which gets unfortunately censored preventing the Delhi Belly effect! Employing his noku-varma technique of marital art, the Chinese villain keeps staring at the camera, thereby looking at the director first and the audience next, benumbing the drained sensibilities and left-over intelligence, to sail through the film. Here, the villain gets transformed into a comedian, which is a staple diet of every Tamil cinema. But such an inventive transformation, no doubt, can be made possible only by a Tamil gene! The grand finale of the film is yet another gutturally repulsive speech delivered by the hero on the greatness of Tamil history, Tamil anthropology, Tamil sociology, Tamil polity, Tamil economy, Tamil geography, Tamil mathematics, Tamil astronomy, Tamil science, etc., etc., the subjects which the director Murugadoss had struggled hard to pass through during his school days! The saving grace of the film are the stellar performance of Surya, the tantalising cinematography of Ravi K Chandran and the enjoyable soundtrack by Harris Jayaraj. Shruti is too plastic in her expressions and too trite for her role. Hope she follows the footsteps of her national award winning Marathi mother rather than falling into the claptrap of her Tamil father. Long live the Tamil chromosomes of the Tamil director so that it can wreck more such Tamil havoc upon the Tamil cinematic future!


Movie Rating : 3 out of 10



7 comments:

  1. red earth and pouring rainNovember 1, 2011 at 10:15 PM

    Feel sorry for u. Both give nauseating effect in way of their corporate style marketing.Fortunately, I did not venture into highly suspicious territory of these two superheros/directors. king khan should go and wash the bodies of directors of love sex and dhoka and dhobi ghat. he may gain something from that spiritual exercise. Murugadoss does not have much option. May be Sargunam of Kalavaani fame or director of Aranya Kaandam can spit something. Blogger should be more careful in his outings. Otherwise we run the risk of enjoying rape.

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  2. HA HA HA HA....I HAPPY TO KNOW YOU UNDERGONE
    TORTURE WITH TWO MOVIES IN TWO LANGUAGES.
    STILL SHAHRUK IS BEARABLE CONSIDERING KAREENA WITH HIM

    SURESH

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  3. 'Ra.One' Jokes:

    1: Govt has declared 26th Oct as public holiday to celebrate the end of Ra1 promotions...!

    2: Govt of India just announced Rs 50,000 relief to all those who watched RA1 & Rs.25,000 for those who left at interval.

    3: Breaking News...! Crocin, Disprin, Combiflam, Adol Panadol, Diclomol and all Headache Tablets Stock over after RA.ONE's release

    4: Salman to SRK after watching Ra.One, "Mujh par ekehsaan karna, dubara aisi movie mat banana"

    5: Rahul Gandhi to meet people affected after seeing Ra.One.

    6: Even Ra.mu doesn't wanna waste time by watchin Ra.one...!

    7: Nahi chala RA.ONE...!

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  4. Your review is really amazing!

    The style of your writing and your sense about cinema with a passion is
    entirely different from the reviews which are published in mazgines and
    newspapers.

    I have seen the movie "7aam Arivu". Am not that much impressed. The first half an hour of the movie is very moving and beautiful.
    But the next 2 hours are real
    havoc. It is boring to see the trick of hpynotism done by villain plenty of times.

    Other than that, your review is more interesting and good enough to guess how the movie will be.
    Especially the way u've expressed about villain's effect on the director and viewers is really
    a fun to read.

    Finally, We can say there is no "Seventh Sense" in that movie!

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  5. I am extremely glad that the stars conspired against the blogger in making him watch these two movies for what else had succeeded in shaking the slumber of the blogger in actually 'writing' a blog far from posting a poem, quote or YouTube?! That way the movies are remarkable I say!!

    No doubt the blogger is at his best when he is sarcastic and it is indeed a treat to read his reviews on movies. Particularly on lines like 'The villain employing his Nokkuvarmam technique on the Director first and then on the audiences next, benumbing the sensibilities'!! But why reviews appear only once a year? Do come out with reviews more often man! Only, the tirade against the Tamil linguistic zealotry by the blogger makes me wonder if he secretly nourishes a desire to come out with a movie himself to teach a lesson to these recent crop of directors. If so, please warn us beforehand Sire!

    As far as the movies are concerned I have not ventured to watch them for despite all those hype surrounding them prior to their release, it was a known fact they weren't worth! One was a despicable Superhero concept on the likes of Robot and the other was from a director whose earlier movies including Gajini were anything but remarkable.

    Now thanks to the review, I am doubtful if I'd be brave enough to undergo the torture despite my favorite heroes being on the lead. Hope Shahrukh returns bang with a romantic flick and Suriya with a better director!

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  6. The blogger first gives his precious time to watch these two movies. And he does not leave the theatre mid-way. Then he devotes further time on these write-ups which he could have just brushed aside with a single stroke of his pen. So much wastage of time to enlighten us? No. I think, what you can't digest you must vomit. And that is what the blogger has done. On us! I seriously wish somebody does it on Ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-king Khan.

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  7. Why do you elevate the status of these movies by writing reviews on them? If they could steal this much time from you, apart from making you watch them, then they are successful in selling them. Get out of them as early as possible. This trend is inexhaustive and neither could you change the taste of the Indian populace. Kindly devote your time to other things.

    ReplyDelete