For the first time in my life, I got to see a movie on very first show of the first day of release. Yup...I walked to the theatre, next door, got a ticket and walked in to see Ezham Arivu. Wow! It was quite an experience.
The story is about a guy-next-door who happens to work in a circus and who also happens to be related to a Great Tamil Prince ,Warrior and Sage, Bodhi Dharma, who lived several centuries ago. Shruthi Hassan is the biotechnologist who seeks to revive the ancient sage's attributes in the young Surya. The movie has everything going for it from the word go. Good music, good-looking actors, lots of masala and loads of action sequences.
For one, Surya is ravishing in his warrior avatar. Second, the cinematography is excellent. I was spellbound by the imagery captured while the young Bodhi Dharma traverses different landscapes as he travels to China. It almost feels like poetry on a large screen. Absolutely loved it. Same can be said of the melody and the picuturisation of the song 'Mun Andi'. Exquisite stuff. 'Oh Ringa Ringa' was so fast-paced that it actually hurt my eye. The rest of the songs were pretty ok, too.
The plot, I felt, was a tight and neat but the action sequences were a bit exaggerated. But all that is part of the fun in a Tamil masala flick, right?
For me, the movie was definitely entertaining and in fact, a little bit informative, too. I got a bit curious about the Bodhi Dharma and even looked him up in google. So, i guess, the movie did what it set out to do - it made an impression on me. Good stuff.
But, what I really find interesting, these days is how much our Tamil movie makers are willing to move off the beaten track and carve a niche for themselves by doing things differently. Experimenting with different ideas, right from clubbing history with technology in Ezham Arivu, to creating a different kind of love story in Mynaa, to giving a new meaning for the word friendship in the movie Nadodigal.
Yes...Tamil cinema in the past few years has become daring, unafraid to toy with radical ideas. Kudos to the Tamil audience for welcoming such bold themes with great elan. But then again, Vijay's masalas and noisy telegu remakes also make it big in box office. So, I guess, the Tamil movie goer likes every kind of movie. After all, variety is indeed is the spice of life, be it reel or real.
Recently, the Supreme Court came down heavily on Television channels for using ‘hate and all such spicy things’ to increase their ratings especially during their prime-time debates. Terming hate speech a ‘poison’ affecting the social fabric of the country, the Supreme Court asked, “Where is our nation headed to if hate speech is what we are feeding on?” Mainstream channels still hold sway and the role of the anchor becomes critical. Media must have freedom of expression but should know where to draw the line, the apex court added. The Supreme Court’s rap for Indian Television media comes at the heel of several controversial and often polarizing discussions that prime-time debates usually delve upon. These vitriolic debates often reach heated heights when communally or socially inflammatory issues are discussed with an eclectic ‘panel of experts’ who most often out-shout each other. Media traditionally is called as the fourth estate, the fourth pillar of democracy that is the w...
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