Confessions of a Lucia addict

In accordance with my prejudiced stupidity, I’d always assumed that the world of Kannada films has always remained hidden, dented and tainted (term courtesy Abhijit Mukherjee) for the film buffs mainly because of their utter crappy, howlarious, masala films and lack of English subtitles. I’d even wondered why there was not even one single good Kannada film that came out remarkably well whereas Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali and even some commercial Telugu film names made good rounds on the best regional movies list, among the Indian audience. To relieve me from this stereotypical notion, Lucia came out of the blue, like the magic pill that the hero of the film consumes.

*Plot Spoiler Alert*

I started hearing about this crowd-funded Kannada Indie ‘Lucia’ in my Facebook and Twitter feeds when reviews broke out and filled my whole timeline during its release. An Insomniac movie theater usher consumes a colorful ‘Lucia’ pill that helps him to lucid dream, live the dream and also rest well. His reality looks like a total sarcasm to his dream life which goes to an extent where he prefers living his dream but not his reality. His dream-scape crashes down, reality fades and engulfs in a scenario where he gets lost in the sane line between his dream and reality. What makes and takes Lucia to the next big level is its stunning ‘third act’ that will leave you perplexed and get your minds blown away into nanos.

All it takes to succeed in a mystery and psychological thriller is the third act, one stunning Abracadabra third act, to win the audience heart. One can define this by Syd field’s Three-act structure in screenwriting but as a film buff, I would like to go the Nolan way of Three-act structure approach as inferred in The Prestige.

Three parts of a magic trick while performing a ‘disappearing bird trick’ for a little girl.

First, there's "The Pledge," where the magician shows you something ordinary, like a bird.

            - The director introduces us an Insomniac lead, a roadside Romeo and his ground reality.

Then, there's "The Turn," where he does something extraordinary, like make the bird disappear.

             - The dream sequence of him as a prodigy figure.

But this isn't enough.

There always has to be a third act, "The Prestige," where you have a twist, and bring the bird back, before the audience will clap.

           - In Lucia, the Twist and The Prestige is when director/ writer Pawan kumar stuns us with the miraculous third act of the STORY where he push us, audience, along with his story and characters to get lost in limbo state where a whole new story unfolds.

Icing to this spectacular screenplay and colorful cinematography (dreams in black and reality in colors, wow) is the crisp editing and beautiful melodies, songs that doesn't bore the creep out of us. The lead actors along with the total cast has performed soulfully. What I liked most about Lucia is its high attention towards the slightest detailing over the subject. Take any random frame and watch it closely, you can sense the level of perfection and visualization that Pawan kumar has conceptualized. It will seem that he’d kept the narrative scenes simple but yet it consumes and draws the audience fully in and force us to lucid dream until the end.

In mystery and psychological thriller genre, there are directors who prefers giving minimal details or no detail and others who loves to give all sorts of clues and details and still leave us boggled. Pawan fits the second set. I liked the same with films of legends like Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Darren Aronofsky and Christopher Nolan. There is no random, fast, fading cuts over the details that he gives us. Instead he is happy to furnish and throw everything open and still keep us interested, engaged and guessing ‘What next?’. This proves how Pawan is confident and tough enough about his script.  

Shades, patterns, cuts and signatures of popular Hollywood and sci-fi films can be traced in Lucia but its restricted only to the shots, cuts and tonal color of the film but not the concept and writing. So many netizens brand Lucia as ‘Inception of India’ ‘Indianized Inception’ ‘India’s reply to Inception’ ‘Blah Blah Blah of Inception’, NO it’s not. Inception is class apart, so as Lucia, in its own standards. Recently I’ve watched two mesmerizing, black & white Indie, psychological thrillers The Untitled Karthik Krishnan project and Kshay. Both of the films have their own level of standards and wonderful art/ experiment tag branded to it but they were successful as well. A year back Eega was praised for the same reason, in commercializing the Sci-fi concept well and feeding it with perfect regional and Indian flavor thereby delighting the entire audience. Lucia took not just a step forward but a giant leap in all aspects such as production values, crowd funding, conceptualizing, acting, making, distributing etc..

Feeling good that Lucia is being well received by the audience and making good rounds in various film festivals. Also the Tamil and Telugu remake rights of the film has been procured by the revolutionary, new wave Tamil film producer C.V. Kumar of Pizza and Soodhu Kavvum fame. To my limited knowledge, Lucia is one of best Sci-fi Indian Indie with all the aspects of so-called ‘Indian commercial cinema’. Lucia is a unique product/ pill, for the fellow movie buffs, which makes us not just lucid dream about watching a standard and successful Indie but to make one. Director Pawan Kumar has not just shaken the traditional film making model of Kannada/ Indie films but totally stirred it. Bravo.

P.S. You can pay a minimal price and legally watch it online here. Please support Independent film makers.

Here’s my favorite films on the genre of dreams, lucid dreaming, surrealism, hallucination and mind-fuckery.

1. 2001: A Space odyssey & Eyes wide shut by Stanley Kubrick
2. Holy Motors by Leos Carax
3. Eternal sunshine of a spotless mind & The Science of sleep by Michael Gondry
4. Midnight in Paris by Woody Allen
5. Jacob’s ladder by Adrian Lyne
6. The Day he arrives by Sang-soo Hong
7. Dark city by Alex Proyas
8. Being John Malkovich by Spike Jonze
9. Kshay by Karan Gour
10. Inception by Christopher Nolan
11. Abre les Ojos (Vanilla sky) by Alejandro Amenábar
12. The Machinist by Brad Anderson
13. Mullholland Drive, & Lost Highway by David Lynch
14. The Untitled Karthik Krishnan project by Srinivas Sunderrajan
15. Gandu by Q A.K.A Qaushiq Mukherjee
16. Fight club & by David Fincher
17. After life (2009) by Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo
18. Enter the void by Gaspar Noé
19. Antichrist by Lars von Trier
20. The Matrix trilogy by Wachowski brothers
21. Persona by Ingmar Bergman
22. Waking life by Richard Linklater
23. Requiem for a Dream, Pi & Black swan by Darren Aronofsky
24. Videodrome by David Cronenberg
25. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie & The Exterminating Angel by Luis Buñuel.
26. Tasher Desh by Q
27. Melancholia by Lars von Trier
28. Synecdoche, New York by Charlie Kaufman

Yet to watch (Just a short list)

1. Dreams by Akira Kurosawa
2. Mood Indigo by Michael Gondry
3. Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky
4. Perfect Blue by Satoshi Kon
5. Thirst by Park Chan-wook
6. Eraserhead & Inland Empire by David Lynch
7. Crash, eXistenz & Naked lunch by David Cronenberg
8. The City of Lost Children & Delicatessen by Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

Lists goes on and on, just like my quest and thirst of watching quality films. 

Lootera – Totally loots the hearts.

Lootera comes from a guy who did his schooling at Sanjay Leela Bhansali public school and graduated from Anurag Kashyap University. Vikramaditya Motwane’s debut Udaan is based on Anurag Kashyap’s life story.  Udaan’s plot deals with a expelled teenage guy who has no choice in life than to stick with his tyrant father until he takes a giant leap in his life. Each and every one of us could relate to this movie, in some frame, especially the ones stayed in boarding schools and stayed away from home during their teen phase. It was selected to compete in Cannes under Un certain regard category and won a cult status globally. Udaan will leave you spellbound with a triumphant smile and simultaneously with an ecstatic tear and a heavy heart. His Lootera, a poignant period drama, does almost the same but on a different emotional note.

The film opens with a subtle, untold note which one could hum themselves as ‘Once upon a time, long, long ago, there lived a beautiful princess called Pakhi Roy Chaudhuri’. The story and premise of Lootera can be stripped down in two lines. After hearing a story about a prince whose life has been locked up inside a parrot, a diseased Zamindari girl believes that she will die on a day when a last leaf falls from a tree. Motwane juxtaposed a good old Indian mythological short story with O’Henry classic ‘The Last leaf’ and baked a whole delicious, saccharine flavored love story under the Bollywood mainstream grammar. He has proven that one can make a successful, sensible and a soulful story without the mainstream clichés and compromise.

Amit Trivedi has composed, sorry, crowd sourced some of the best tones, orchestra & OST from Hollywood and world music. We definitely owe this guy big for bringing in the best world sounds, Indianize few and sync it perfectly. The main theme of Lootera has  been ripped from One day’s theme by Rachel Portman and you can also hear Hans Zimmer’s Time from Inception in a long run before the Intermission. But apart from few rip-offs he has composed few original scores too. Music will make you to linger around the spectacular aura on-screen, captured flawlessly by Mahendra shetty. It will be a treat, for all those who drool and jaw drop for dim lighting yellow, groovy gray and blusih black frames with gorgeous lightings.

All the characters have justified their roles perfectly. Even the ones with limited screen space won’t make you to forget them. It was a great transformation to see Sonakshi Sinha on-screen after all the brainless, sultry skin show roles that she had done right from Dabangg. She sizzles and sets the screen on fire not with her flesh but with her elegant grace and looks dashingly beautiful in a traditional Bengali Saree. From sex siren, item number dancer to an artistic performer, she made quite a great leap and Ranveer Singh is equally good, matching her charisma, paring up with her and rendering an adorable and heartwarming on-screen romance and chemistry.

Lootera is well crafted, passionately sculptured, aesthetically cam-captured, soulfully acted. Like a fairy tale romance, one can witness the magic of pure love story on-screen after ages. I don’t remember the last time I've seen an Indian romance, period drama which is as genuine and as good as Lootera. Not in the recent years at least.

Motwane elevates and transcends you into a whole different era in the first half, immerses you in an ocean of heart wrenching, melancholic emotions in the second half and finally sweeps you off completely in the climax. Amongst the big family tree domination in Bollywood industry, Motwane stands tall, stiff, solo and firm as a masterpiece ‘Last leaf’ amongst Kashyap’s kitties.  

Opening the frame with a small, glowing, hot fire flame and closing it with sad, sorrowful snow at the end, Motwane casted his magic spell throughout the film. Lootera is an original piece art and Motwane, you’re a magician.

This post of mine has been written for movie movieroundup website. You can find it here. 

Thanks to Haricharan for publishing it.

Singam 2 - The Saint, Savior and Superman of Thoothukudi

Yo! I am back after watching SINGAM 2, Bitch!. *Breaking Bad series Jesse tone*

I am fully charged up with blood boiling intensity, tones of audacity and ground-breaking curiosity… DEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!! Adraaaa, VAAAAADAAA, Thoooku raaaa, Paaaaakrayyyaaaaa daa.. DDAAAAAIIIIIII!!!  Never felt this confident, strong, sound and profound even after watching The Dark knight series or the recent Man of Steel. Yay! Our very own Desi Dirty Harry DURAISINGAM is back with a huge ultra heavy ONDRA TON WEIGHT bang this time.

Usually I do blogpost only when I love a movie from the bottom of my heart or hate it and puke it out. But this time I wanted to do a special mention post and write about this Saint, Savior and Superman of Thoothukodi.

Hari is the man with the best local plan. He won’t showcase the use of Macbook pro, Hi-tech devices, flashy gadgets and all in his films rather he makes his SINGAM to use Windows XP, MS-office tools, Google Earth, SMS, Black market pistol, IMEI tracing, Google Maps, Phone signal Jammer, Whatsapp etc.. This man has a particular style, spice, flavor and signature in almost all his movies like Saamy, Arul, Vengai, Aiyaa, Vel, Thamirabarani etc.. No one would've know their roots, people, hometown, railway platforms, bus stand, Flight timings, pump set switch, one way road route, train Tatkal fare, Hotel & Lodge bookings like the way Hari does. I am damn sure about it.

If Kubrick and Spielberg were praised for their attention to detail, our man Hari too deserves the credit, No?. Whatay attention to detail, Man. (Don’t take eggs and tomatoes) If Tarantino has some signature scenes (violence and bloody massacre) and stereotyped shots like his very famous Trunk shot, our Hari has his own shots like Mass murder in marriage hall, 144 notice bandhobasth sequence, gang riots, caste clashes, Top angle crane shot and Helicopter cam, Aerial view, Hunt down in Harbor, Flight landing close-ups, Bus & car bombing,  lorry flying, Planting drug and arresting, property round fight with Kovil mani and Kuthu vilaku, sketch pottu thukradhu, Retta paalathu kita vetradhu, otrai sandhukulla odradhu, Murugan textiles pink and blue costumes, Small town girl’s adamant love etc.. 

I felt so many goosebumps, lightening, thundering instances and jumping-from-seats Jhapak moments while watching SINGAM 2. In one scene where Surya utters a continuous English dialogue and slams his desk yelling ‘Power of Indian police’, I almost spilled my Soda on an Aaya sitting in front row. The only saving face of Singam 2 is that it’s not as horrendous or crappy as SalmOn Khan's Dabbang franchise or Ajay DevBUM's Himmatwala remake or PAAn Kalyan’s Gabbar Singh. No, I ain’t a linguistic or a demographic or a cultural racist. Even we Tamil folks have our very own Korathi's Siruthai and Hoax Pandiyan, VishOl's Vedi, Sathyam and all, I agree. 

I wish Singam 3 is made starring not 2 but 3 glamorous malgova Heroines with Surya getting transferred to Hong Kong police department, taking help of Malyasian special squad, beating the hell outta Mexican drug lord and outsmarting Scotland yard, NYPD & LAPD. INDIAN POLICE DA. Paaaaakrya daa. Bet katryaaa da. Paaru Da. Weight pannu da.

Do some 100 push ups, run/ jog few kms, stuff your ears with sponge, wear a tight T-shirt and Boot, Take a dumbbell and march to a nearby heavily crowded local theater with sweat, shit and piss stained aroma and watch SINGAM 2. You’ll definitely like it. I did the same and quite liked and enjoyed it actually, though I needed an Aspirin later on.

First half tests your acoustic decibel level, second half tests your patience, tolerance level and Climax was like GTA Vice city Miami or Malibu episode. With league of extra-ordinary gentleman cast, safe-face Santhanam, a black villain like GTA's Lance Vance, Thoothukodi cashew macroon shaped Hansika in School costume; SINGAM 2 is the TRANSFORMERS OF THOOTHUKODI with SUPERMAN DURAISINGAM SURYA as the OPTIMUS PRIME carrying the supreme energy of the Spark cube in his rugged game face. 

And yeah, there is some fundamental Vastu and Feng-shui problem if you shoot a climax in ship, no?. Thuppaki, Sura .. ain't tat Vijayish.  Oh wait, even Mani Ratnam's Kadal dealing the same problem in climax, Right?. *Scratches head*. Also that Singam dance reminded me of the climax of Madagascar movie where the real singam Alex & friends dances for 'I like to move it move it!' song. 

Yo! Hater pellows, Going to a Hari movie and complaining that it’s too loud, noisy and racy and all is like going to Saravana stores and asking for a Giovani suit or Tommy Hilfiger accessories and ordering Kotthu Parota and Kepan koozhu with Urugai in Hilton hotel, No?. Post the movie, I speeded up my bike to 127.5 kmph and drove home, personally booked a fitness trainer, extended my gym annual membership and placed an order for Ray Ban Black Aviator sunglasses in eBay.

Looks like the dubbed English version of SINGAM 2 i.e. Pacific Rim is releasing next week. But Yo! I don’t mind it even after watching the big hugonomous robot slamming other one with a real big ship in Pacific Rim trailer. I almost had similar moments in SINGAM 2 itself.

*Insert Hans Zimmer’s BWAAAAAAAAHRRRRRRMMM sound from TDKR*

P.S. You won’t believe me. Once the crowd got disbursed after the show, the parking bay gate was still locked and none of the theatre authorities were there to open it. Few guys barged the gate, banged the lock, yelled ‘Ondra ton weight da’, broke the lock and opened the gate. I was like “HOLY SHIT, This movie must be subbed and telecasted in Egypt as an energy booster for their Revolution”. 

DAAAAII!! IDHA SHARE PANRAAAAA. COMMMENT PANRAA. TWEET PANRA.  YENNI EZHE NAAAL LA PADATHA PAAAARDAA. ADINGAAAA!! 

*Takes Bolero jeep and rushes off *

This part of my life... this little part is called HappYness.!!

On June 16, 2013, In a fine Sunday morning, a sweet shocker article about myself appeared in Deccan Chronicle's Chennai Chronicle edition under the title "Movie Buff Goes Places" quoting about my passion for movie watching and my blog posts. I am yet another nano speck of dust in the big universe of Bloggers and Cinemaniacs. Yet, I feel so proud that I was recognized for it. Feeling so positive and inspiring. Now, I understood the seriousness of it and planning to spend more of my time and resources for the same. Thanks to all of you my blog visitors, followers, my virtual buddies, FAM members, Twitteratis, friends and fellow critics for sharing with me your views, opinions and recommending good movies. That dramatic 'The pursuit of Happyness' movie's job offer moment for Chris and 'Nuovo Cinema Paradiso' climax moment for adult Salvatore when he was offered the complete montage of deleted film shots with intimate scenes. *Wipes Happy Tears*

Below is the article that appeared in the newspaper column. Check this Deccan Chronicle's web link for the same.

Soodhu Kavvum - My thoughts

This is not a review. This is a passionate discussion post about the tamil movie ‘Soodhu Kavvum’ directed by Naalaya Iyakkunar fame NALAN KUMARSWAMY, starring ‘Nightingale of Tamil Indie films’, ‘Joseph Gordon-Levitt of Kollywood’, 'Darling of the Masses' VIJAY SETHUPATHI. Stop reading this right here, if you haven’t seen the film. Do step back once you've watched it.

There are plenty of articles out there in net which reviews Soodhu Kavvum and praise the cast, crew, story, script and music of the film. In this post I have tried discussing, dissecting it and expressed the instances, scenes and shots which I loved and the way I felt about it. *Story Spoiler alert*.

The genre of Soodhu Kavvum is mentioned as Dark humour & Crime comedy. But one cannot stick Soodhu Kavuum under a particular genre, I feel. It’s a mix and total troll on almost all genres and the best part is that it parodies, spoofs and makes fun on the grammar and template that was ever followed in Hollywood, Bollywood, kollywood and other foreign films. CS Amudhan’s yesteryear’s hit movie ‘Tamizh Padam’ predominantly spoofs only tamil fims but Soodhu Kavvum trolls every single cliché on all kinds of cinema. Each and every character, shot, ambience of the scene, music, crispy hilarious dialogues and cuts iterates the same.

There are hardly few directors who break the standard procedures and grammar followed during writing/ making a particular scene or shot. With my little knowledge and observation on films, I personally consider Quentin Tarantino is the master in it. One can notice the hilarious, breaking the genre attempt in almost all QT films. Take his recent ‘Django Unchained’ for example, he gives a hat and horse to a nigger and makes him a cow boy/ bounty hunter, making fun of the evil K-Klux-Klan with their own signature masks and portrays them as a bunch of lunatics. The White and Mexican owned Spaghetti western genre has been totally trolled in Django Unchained and that’s the way QT paid homage for his favorite Spaghetti western genre.

Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Reservoir Dogs’ was a big hit and it was mainly spoken for its authentic writing and making. The success of Reservoir Dogs is that it paid homage for heist and crime genre by portraying the aftermath of a failed heist rather than a sequential/ linear discussion about the plan, mode and success of the heist. But, QT would’ve seriously handled it with his own signature style of cold blood, violence and revenge. Even this legend has been marked with a template, for now.

If one form of paying homage &tribute to a classic by explicitly liking it and making an art form inspired from it, paying homage to the classics by breaking/ spoofing about is an all-together different style and tribute. It doesn't infer that one dislike/ condemn it. One familiarized, liked, loved and consumed it more and more that he starts to joke and mock about it. Nalan Kumaraswamy rightly fits the bill here.

Dark comedy or black comedy is a new genre to Tamil cinema. But Nalan, a new-face to the feature film industry, has broken the cliche, film-making grammar and totally revolutionized the tamil film industry with Soodhu Kavvum.

Breaking down Soodhu Kavvum:

Vijay Sethupathi as ‘Das’ & his idiotic trio team –  Parody take on perfect teams undergoing heist or Crime in movies like 'Sword fish', 'Oceans Series', 'Italian Job', 'Bank job' etc... It will seem like Guy Ritchie’s ‘Snatch’ stylish movie, where the characters would be completely unaware of their actions, but here the idiotic bunch does all the mad, insane things genuinely and with perfect sense. This is the main reason it tinkles your laughter bone with perfect desi-humour.

Hallucinated heroine character- Big troll and ‘on-your face Indian cinema’ attempt. Pacing and placing heroine just for a glamour material, fantasy object, item song in most of the Indian films has been hilariously thrashed. Vijay Sethupathi hallucinates that he lives with an invisible girlfriend and listens to whatever she says or comment to him. I felt it as big spoof attempt on various Hollywood films like the giant Bunny rabbit character in 'Donnie Dorko', Danny’s invisible friend from Stanley Kubrick’s 'The Shining', Norman Bates character from Alfred Hitchock’s 'Psycho', the character of a mysterious man in black car who professor Nash sees in ‘A Beautiful Mind’. Just like the above mentioned characters, Vijay Sethupathi acts and performs whatever his invisible GF says, to some extent. When his invisible GF dies, Nalan has used a musical, the one that would appear in an emotional, sad scene amongst lovers in Billy Wilder’s films, early black & white Hollywood film scenes where the couple bid farewell to each other and walk away or die in their arms, such effect. There is even an angel song ‘Sa Ga’ in the movie where she pampers and consoles Vijay Sethupathi. Hiralious take on all the dream sequence masala songs.

The silent ‘Psycho Police’ – Good cop, Bad cop, Serious Cop, Rowdy police, Encounter police etc.. we’ve fed-up and done watching lot of stereotypical cop characters in Tamil/ Indian cinema. These characters yell, scream and utter mediocre punch dialogues and give us grim/ cold bad-ass looks at all situations. Nalan has broken this template by making the villain police character dead silent without speaking a single dialogue. The best cliché/ laughter part is when the bad-ass cop gets his face punched by one of the trio member with a pistol yelling the dialogue ‘Kaila gun vechruken, sirikira’. There was a thunderous laugh for this scene in theatre. The last but not least, the ultimate 'Iruttu arayil murattu kuthu' sequence looked like a parody take on torture sequences from 'Zero dark thirty' & 'Body of lies' climax spoof.

Vijay Sethupathi’s elder brother ‘Dr. Film Director’– Mocking so many thukkada, petty case, low-level directors roaming in Kodambakkam and Saligramam, dying to make a tamil feature film for cheap fame with just money, no idea and zero brain.

The music and BGM is a big plus and even they don’t lack their part on breaking the template. ‘Mama douser kayanduchu’- trolling the classic Jazz and Blues song genre, ‘Kasu Panam Thutu Money Money’ – Kalaichifying the 1950s tamil period films where the King/ Emperor enjoys seeing a serious dance form performance in his castle, ‘Ellam kadandhu pogumada’ –Parodying MGRs Inspiration songs like ‘Nenjam undu nermai undu odu raja’ etc..

Pizza eating politician MR Radha rather than tamil politician’s stereotypical portrayal with alcohol and Chicken piece diet, Spoofing Rajini’s ‘Priya’ movie blind-folded scene by perfectly finding the route in a funny note, trolling Hitchock’s cameo in his own film-instead of Nalan Kumaraswamy- ‘Pizza’ director Karthik Subbaraj appears driving a Jaguar car, funny and sarcastic news headlines and news scrolls at the bottom while newsreader announces some serious news, following  5 golden rules on ‘kEdnapping’, using a toy helicopter for a heist, Arumai Prakasam trying to jump from a building like ‘Mission Impossible’ Tom crusie… There is Sarcasm, Satire, Spoof, Dark comedy, Observational comedy, Surreal comedy, Parody, Dramedy and genuine humor that oozes out in gallons in each and every frame of Soodhu Kavvum.

Thou shall miss Soodhu Kavvum thy sinner.

Tamil cinema's stereotypical Douser kayanduchu. Kayatiyavar Nalan Kumarasamy & VJ Sethupathi.

We south India Cinephile's won’t just decode Nolan’s films. We decipher, dissect and devote our Nalan’s film too. All hail and welcome Nalan!

Let’s all stop our utter foolish Settai and grow up

So last week I took a new avatar as a twitter troller and trolled Arindam Choudhuri (Name changed for stupid reasons) of UTV (MOTION) Pictures about Settai, so-called remake of Delhi Belly, and it getting ‘U’ certificate with No smoking or No alcohol scenes. I was completely thrown back after reading this. ‘U’ certificate for a remake version whose original/parent version has a ‘A’ Certificate? HaHaHaHaHa and I thought my jokes were bad (Insert TDK Joker laugh). Even a LKG kid will do this basic math right.

I went to watch Settai with a close friend of mine who enjoyed and laughed whole heartedly but in parts. I sat through the whole time giving a dead-pan face and laughed a bit for few scenes. Already my interest on watching Delhi Belly remake in Tamil has been completely ruined right from the moment when I heard that it’s gonna be directed by the guy who cannot adapt/ remake Jab we Met in Tamil. Seriously, Jab we met with that curd rice company owner’s over acting daughter Tamannah Pattia as Gareena Gappor and Seval, Muniyaandi Vilangiyal moodramaandu fame USA return YoYo Bharath Singh as Shahid Kappor? Are you freaking kiddin me?

The problem with this guy is that he is very good in handling and changing the dippi copy template from North to south but content & writing is where he completely misses & plasticize it. The Tamil dialogues in his films, from the original hindi one’s, would be like the subtitled Tamil songs in English for original Ayngaran DVD. Example. ‘Kadhal anukkal udambil ethanai’ would be subtitled as ‘Hello, How many love atoms you’ve in your body?’, ‘Pathu viralgal pothathu unnai konja’ as ’10 fingers won’t be enough to make excite you and happy’ WTF! something high class grammar stuff like that.

 I hope everybody who read this post would’ve seen or at least read/ heard about Delhi Belly. Produced by the perfectionist Aamir Khan who didn’t bother about the ratings/ censor-board/ Pamily audience/ ‘U’ certificate and some other bullshit, Delhi Belly is a raw, hilarious laugh riot, completely filled with cuss words & adult content. Those were the core content, essential criteria behind the film’s originality and success. Aamir & Abhinay was very sure in converting the writing in paper to scene on screen. Aamir didn’t intruded and deteriorated the auteur’s original script in the name of Pamily/ Wide audience, cause if he had such plans, he wouldn’t have dared to produce/ make it.  For its originality and rawness, It was screened in Harvard Business school during Harvard India Conference 2012. Director Abhinay Deo was invited as a special guest for it.

If you are planning/ making a pure, plain, censored, culture oriented, wannabe funny story about 3 friends who got caught in chaos with a bad guy and finally escaping, go write short stories for 2^nd grade kids, no? If you want to poke laugh on us for scenes where characters jokes about feces, fart, kick in balls or ass and passing sexist comments, please let us walk home and watch Cartoons & Looney toons where Skunk & Wimpy farts/stinks, Small pig makes funny face, Dexter or Load runner makes feces jokes, girls kick Johnny Bravo’s balls and Bluto makes sexist jokes on Popeye and Olive Oyl.

Take an adult/ black comedy movie like Withnail & I, for example. It’s one of the best British cult comedy about two unemployed adults. It’s so mature and made mainly for adult audience.  Recently I’v seen This is 40, sort of sequel to Knocked up, about a couple who struggles with their marriage life in their early 40s. It was so real, honest and a replica of day-to-day life of a 40 year old couple, told in a clichéd Hollywood style. These Adam Sandler type movies, Seth Rogen & JGLs 50-50, The Hangover, Superbad, Seven Psychopaths etc.. (List is actually big, quoting whatever that I remember rite away), I betcha it will definitely take at least a decade to make one like that in Kollywood.

If you say that you cannot make a complete sex comedy like American Pie series, No strings attached or Friends with benefits etc.. that’s  fine it’s understandable but not even Rom-coms or Adult-coms, Dei?. Say me when our Kollywood produced a rom-com. As far as I remember late Jeeva did Unnale Unnale and it’s almost gonna be a decade since its release. Prabhudeva tried Rom-com ‘Engeyum Kadhal’ with Hansika, Justin Bieber’s elder sister.? Aiyoo that’s one helluva sad story. Don’t remind me of it. I almost went bankrupt taking my whole batch-mates, who were pissed and didn’t return ticket money.

If Delhi Belly can’t be remade in tamil with this so-called culture centric Pamily audience in Tamil Nadu, then why the hell attempt one in the first place?. Settai, Stripdown or diluted version of Delhi Belly, My Balls. If you say Settai was like a Samsung S2 or HTC one, a so called strip down/ enhanced version of iPhone, I would’ve convinced to some extent but in reality it’s like a Micromax or Videocon announcing/making/ releasing an iPhone successor for Rs.2500/-. Rings a bell?. The makers think that if they couldn’t serve Rum or Gin they could serve you a beer and make you happy. Guys, please understand the fact that you’vent served us a Beer but Dog feces or Holy Cow's Komiyam.

I don’t know hindi but I feel like yelling in Delhi Belly style “Chutiya saala, Remake tho meaning nahi malum hey na, phhir kyun thum remake movie bana raha hey bhencho!”,at the makers. Hindi folks, hope you can understand.

The problem is we tamil folks haven’t explored comedy genre as rom-com or black-com or sit-com or standup-com or dramedy rather we have categorized as NSK/ MR Radha-com, Nagesh-com, Gounder & Senthil-com, Vivek-com, Vadivelu-com and now this stupid Santhanam-com & Powerstar-com (Pukes on the floor). On comedy, We’ve failed completely as a civilization. Some kollywood folks try hard and hard and make mature comedy films to some extent like Goa, Saroja, Naduvla Konjam Paaktha Kannom, Aaranya Kaandam (black comedy in parts) etc.. but rest of the folks make shitty ones like Boss engira Baskaran, Oru Kal oru Kannadi, Kanna Ladu thinna aasaya, Kedi Billa Killadi Ranga, Alex Panadian and completely abduct and keep us still in Psychiatry ward like Jack Nicholson from One flew over cuckoo’s nest.

Our censor board’s acts are even funnier than The Dictator General Aladden of Wadiyan Republic. The Dirty Picture original and dubbed version is released with ‘A’ in Tamilnadu but not ‘A’ remake version of Delhi belly?. I see our censor board as a typical Tam-Brahm ParthaSarathy uncle who would shout ‘Aiyoo Bhagavaaney abacharam Abacharam’ for sex/nude/vulgar scenes or like the Church priest from Nuovo cinema paradise who sees the movies first, bells and edits the nude/ kissing scenes and screen the censored version to the whole folks of the town. Force feeding some adults with movies like Settai, In the name family content or kudumba padam, makes them feel like an insane, immature fellow, forced by their dads to run, play and goof around in Disneyland as they aren’t allowed to hang out at pubs, clubs and restaurants. Let’s keep counting our days where we folks will still be forced to stay alone at Disney land and stand still like Jim carrey from The Truman Show.

Dreaming in Limbo state, I wish that our people mindset changes and prepares up to adapt the relaity and everybody (Director, Producer, Actors, Censorboard) must grow a pair or at least a single ball and make/ release a movie with adult/ mature comedy, offensive language, vulgar and violence content . We adult/ mature audience must support such efforts.  Dear censors, Give us a fucking ‘A’ or ‘AA’ or ‘AAA’ but release it Goddamit.

Let’s all stop our utter foolish Settai, raise our hands to lord almighty and growup by growing a pair. Amen.