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This one is a total poppy-cock, but one needs to give it its due credit, for, it does clarify one thing; And that is "Why GVM chose to make NNN right in between VTV and NEPV!" :P

Lettuce

One vegetable that has managed to influence the entire world, single-handed, into believing that rabbit food and vegetarian food in the West are one and the same!

00 Status Reinstated

So, I did watch Skyfall, that too on IMAX, which has evidently made someone to count to Dec 21. It was a good watch, albeit some buttering the back to mark the 50th anniversary of James Bond on screen, and a fitting tribute it was, to mark the quinquagenary bringing in some retro accessories and music.

For someone who has watched all the 22 Bond movies leading up to the film, Skyfall offers quite a number of eye-brow raisers, annoyance and rare smiles. Let me make it clear, I am no fan of James Bond nor Ian Fleming's style. I must admint, I have never read Ian Fleming nor Alaister MacLean, but, simply from the screenwriting and movies, I favour MacLean's lead characters, plotline, thrills and idea of entertainment, much better.

Staying with Bond series, it was unfortunate that it was Dr. No which was filmed first and not Casino Royale, the first assignment of Bond as a 00 agent. Dr. No portrayed Bond as a suave, go-lucky and cold-blooded operative, which was played to perfection by a then lesser known Connery, who went on to become a huge success as James Bond which forced the producers to bring him back from retirement into Thunderball after a notably eccentric performance by Lazenby in his only Bond film OHMSS. However the fans of Fleming's original novels were supposed to have loved the rather rebellious portrayal of Bond in OHMSS, but were critical of Lazenby's acting prowess, especially with the surprising romantic plot in the film and the only 2nd occasion where James Bond is to be seen in tears (according to the books).

It was in the era of Timothy Dalton, the man who took James Bond rather too seriously, that, a serious and darker side of the character was shown on  a consistent basis as opposed to Moore's often fantastic light-humour and at times mock-worthy sequences. Quoting Steven Jay Rubin :

"Unlike Moore, who always seems to be in command, Dalton's Bond sometimes looks like a candidate for the psychiatrist's couch – a burned-out killer who may have just enough energy left for one final mission. That was Fleming's Bond – a man who drank to diminish the poison in his system, the poison of a violent world with impossible demands.... [H]is is the suffering Bond."

It is for this reason, as a follower of this series, I would have wished to see this re-invention of 007 with Casino Royale had come in the Dalton Era, especially when they have run out of original Fleming's adversaries - SPECTRE, Cold War, Rogue Spies and residues of SPECTRE, after Bond kills Blofeld, that they were forced into ridiculous and fantastic fronts with Moore's last few movies. Dalton Era also coincided with the end of Cold war, which also was reflected in Living Daylights, and a Casino Royale would have marked a new SPECTRE, and they could have picked up a fresh series with a redefined and spectacular new adversary.

In the big picture, Skyfall was disappointing for me, for they chose to divert their agenda to M as the only pivot in the plot, ignoring the new dimensions of the "yet to be named" organisation that Bond had uncovered while tailing Dominic Greene. Also disappointing was the "Die Hard" like plotline and sequences that were unfitting to a spy movie, but was credible, given that M and a personal revenge against her were the principal to the line. In fact, Silva brought remembrance of Simon from Die Hard with a Vengeance; So did the London Tube! :P

Silva happens to be a rare combative villain in the series, after Francisco Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun (The Best Bond movie, in my opinion) and Janus (rogue 006 in GoldenEye), more like Janus. This combative villain is refreshing to see, amidst the routine arm-chair based masterminds aided by heartless operatives ever since Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

On the whole, the movie had a spectacular opening sequence that would rival Casino Royale, Die Another Day or The World is Not Enough, an ordinary narrative on how Bond comes back to M with a start-stop like screenplay and a notable seriousness shown by Bond to get fit and back into service, which otherwise has been a resigning attitude in most of the earlier installments and finally, a rather sentimental exchange with M. Bond cries for the third time on screen, and for the second time since new promotion as a 00.

Some strange things about this installment are the ones surrounding M. In all the earlier 22 movies, M is never known to make a public appearance, but in this she gets out of her car mid way!. Also, M's real name is seldom revealed and nor his/her residence is made known. If I remember right, it is shown for the first time in Casino Royale when Bond breaks into her house which stuns her and even in that, the apartment is shown to be some kind of "unaccounted" space in the core of a building, without windows or doors, while in Skyfall, she is shown to "enter" her house through a "door"!

In the end, Mallory comes in as M, more like Bernard Lee as the first on-screen M in Dr. No, Eve Moneypenny assumes the secretary desk and our good old foam cushioned door takes office while the hat stand is still missing :D , I only wish they do a Dr. No again, next time around.


Note: A female character who was an important figure, in a sentimental angle, in the hero's life, dying in his lap marking a turning point in the hero's personal and professional life is a 'heard of' line from somewhere. Where ? - Clue : An epic of a fiction NOT in english ;-)

Shallow Integration

I was in 8th class, when our Physical Sciences teacher resigned and we had the Department Head Mrs. Radhalakshmi substituting in her place for the last term of the year (Jan-March). I remember, it was a chapter on Carbon, in chemistry. The teacher had been through a couple of hours on the introductory part of the chapter and decided to have that chapter assigned as a seminar (for self-reading). Students were divided into groups and were given a sub-topic (not more than a page long, in the book). We had "Sugar Charcoal", while a friend of mine had the introduction to my section on the types of charcoals.

Now, that we were expected to do something more than mere reading of the material at hand, I tried to prepare sugar charcoal by heating up a cup full of sugar on the stove top, lest I had realised that charcoal is made out of dehydrating sugar in the absence of oxygen!, I ended up making a molasses out of it (ofcourse after having ridiculed amma's warning that only molasses comes out of heating sugar crystals and nothing else). I then picked up an old medicine bottle, half filled it with sugar and went to the chemistry lab asking for a conc. sulphuric acid, to pour it in to dehydrate. We were laughed at and sent back. I finally had to end up with a paper cutting of a retort set up and marked the retort content as sugar + acid and blotched up my turn, but my friend who went in earlier in the hour with the "Types of charcoal", is the real matter of interest here.

He is known to be a real smart fellow, and a kind of a teachers' pet for his hyper behaviour and for being the smallest one in the class. He read out some 3-4 lines of introduction from his notes and took three pieces of some strange dark things & a spoon full of powder in a paper wrap, and laid them down as "1) Wood Charcoal, 2) Animal Charcoal, 3) Sugar Charcoal and 4) Powder Charcoal (not sure about this last one)". I was stunned! As and when I was trying to stand up (from the first bench) to have look at the teachers desk to see how sugar charcoal looks, a loud voice came from the last row -
"டேய் ஸ்ரீனிவாசா, நாலு துண்டு அடுப்பு கரிய கொண்டுவந்து டேபிள்ல வெச்சுட்டு இத Wood charcoal, Animal charcoal னு அளக்கரிய?". The whole class burst into laughter but there wasn't much to blush about, as all of us had a giggle about how smart he could get and the hour went on.

Coming to the state of affairs today, in the public discourse, if at all there is any - be it a (entertainment) TV debate, a TV Chat show, middle-class movies of the 80's, how often you have gotten vexed with the shallow talk that people make without having made the slightest of efforts to understand the defining identity of individuality or a group or a community and assuming the unexplained, seldom critiqued, hollow terminologies, of which they have no knowledge other than the assumption that everyone is happy to ascribe the same sense to the word which they themselves haven't made real sense to their own satisfaction in the first place?

Srini tried to sell the story by placing four pieces of cooking coal as four different types of charcoal, while the so-called Intelligentsia is trying to put four pieces, of which they have no clue about, together, and thrust it on to the public discourse with an envelope identity of their choice. I would prefer calling Srini's as some integration while the later is only a shallow integration.

Arjunan Saakshi

2nd movie by the Passenger fame Ranjith Sankar is a Prithiviraj starrer - Arjunan Saakshi.

I believe Passenger was a 'Cricket's Solomon's Throw' for the director, but Arjunan Saakshi doesn't fare far behind. But for one or two compromises for a star like Prithiviraj, the director has done full justice to the script and the central theme. The most catchy part was the Courtroom climax, where the protagonist sums up his promised statement in private to the Judicial bench.

.... loosely translated to english

Given are the documents indicating the consent to withdrawal of all the legal blockades against the Metro-Rail Project made out by these four accused. This Project must see light, Your Honour; Not just for they were the dreams of Late Feroze Muppan, it must be accomplished for each of us individuals.

Not by my personal genius that I have been able to bring the guilty to light. Not out of incapacity, the Police and the enforcemenet system were unable to establish the truth, their hands are rather tied! I am not Arjunan; I am a poor victim of a mistaken identity who got entangled into this; but Arjunan is somewhere amongst us, yet he is unable to find courage to come out and expose the truth in day light. His fear is your failure, since you are the creators of Arjunan and his likes. When people like Freoze Muppan are eliminated from among us, when an average citizen is denied justice, people like Arjunan keep propping up.

Where is Aabaavanan ?

There was one ambitious filmmaker who came up with a brilliant Oomai Vizhigal, a very good Inaindha Kaigal and a good Karuppu Roja over a span of 10 years. Aabaavanan! Looks like he scripted and produced the first two while also directing the third. All three were off-beat in genre for the respective eras in tamil cinema. Now, he seems to have met with his creative end after the television disaster 'Sambaa', while there still are some unspoken links with Ayngran Intl. in the lines of film-making.

Looking back in time, in 1986, when Tamil cinema had entered the trap of compromising production values and planning movies with the star value as the only marketing front, Oomai Vizhigal should have come as a big surprise. One must admit that these kind of dark-thrillers were almost run in the mill in Malayalam cinema after K.G. Geroge's Yavanika(1982), and Aabaavanan's handling of the screenplay was very unprofessional, clearly reflecting the lack of experience of the team. Nevertheless, credit must be given towards production of such a plotline with limited star value and an upcoming actor like Vijayakanth choosing to play a grey-haired veteran cop while still seeing an upward path in his film career.

One big blotch to be marked is the visible lack of details, while losing the plot to very unimportant romantic fronts, that too three of them. Despite this, one can never fail to appreciate how the film is carried on by three veteran artists, who had very less connection with mainstream cinema at that time, if at all any, a less known Karthik and a practically unknown Arun Pandiyan, and how they managed to see some commercial success out of it. Had this been handled by a creative director of that time like Pratap Pothan or Balu Mahendra, it could have seen light with a tight screenplay while at the same time save a thought for it could have turned disastrous in the hands of Perarasu's of 80's.

While one may argue that Inaindha Kaigal came at the same time as Vetri Vizha and Soorasamharam and was very much with the trend, the plot line was far too ambitious when compared against any action flick of that era. The plot line involved espionage, organised crime, Military corruption, court-martial, prison break, border tension, and above all, the only cinema which dared to explore Indo-Chinese border tension after 1964. Ofcourse, quite a few action sequences were plain lift-off from many Bond movies, but the interval block of "Inaindha Kaigal" and the prison break scene with a flying trapeze were defining moments in Tamil Cinema history. Again, it was a victim of vintage unprofessionalism in screenplay and dialogues, but I would pin hopes on reviving such a plot-line in the form of a remake, for it has too good a scope and deserves a slick production, more so as a trilingual (Tamil-Telugu-Malayalam) high-budget attempt.

Qualified(?) Opinion

ஒரு கனவில் அரைகுறையாகக் கண்டது :

மாமி : "ஸ்ரீராமா! ஜோசியத்த பத்தி உன்னோட அபிப்ப்ராயாத சொல்லு"

நான் : "என்ன கேள்வி மாமி இது?"

மாமி : "என்னடா நார்மல் கேள்விதானே!"

நான் : "சரி. எனக்கு ஜோசியத்த பத்தி என்ன தெரியும் னு கொஞ்சம் சொல்லுங்கோளேன் "

மாமி : "எனக்கு பெருசா ஒண்ணும் தெரியாது. ஏதோ பத்திரிக்கைல படிச்சதுதான்."

நான் : "நான் அதக் கேக்கல. 'எனக்கு' ஜோசியத்த பத்தி என்ன தெரியும் னு உங்களுக்கு தெரியுமோ அத கொஞ்சம் சொல்லுங்கோ னு கேட்டேன்"

மாமி : "அது எப்படிடா எனக்கு தெரியும்? இப்படி அர்த்தாம் இல்லாத கேள்வியா கேக்கார!"

நான் : "ஒருத்தனுக்கு ஒரு விஷயத்த பத்தி தெரியுமா? தெரியாதா? தெரியும்னா எவ்வளவு தெரியும்? அபிப்பிராயம் சொல்லர அளவுக்கு தெரியுமா? னு எல்லாம் தெரிஞ்சுக்காம அபிப்பிராயம் கேக்கறது அர்த்தமான கேள்வியா?"

நக்கீரா!

ஒரு விஷயத்தை மறுப்பதர்க்கு பிரத்யக்க்ஷ ப்ரமாணம் எத்தனை பலவீனமானது என்பதர்க்கு ஒரு எடுத்துக்காட்டு :

சோ அவர்களின் ஜட்ஜ்மென்ட் ரிசர்வ்ட் நாடகத்தில் ஒரு வசன பரிமாற்றம்

சமூகசேவகி : "அந்த பைய்யன் இந்த குற்றத்த செய்யலைனு உங்க வக்கீல் எப்படி சார் நிச்சயமா சொல்றாறு? அவருக்கு எப்படி சார் தெரியும்?"

குமாஸ்தா : "அவன்தான் இந்த குற்றத்த செய்தான்னு நீங்க எப்படி நிச்சயமா சொல்றீங்க?"

சமூகசேவகி : "அவன் அந்த ரூம்லேர்ந்து வெளில வரும்போது நான் பார்த்தேனே!"

குமாஸ்தா : "எங்க வக்கீல் பார்க்கலையே!"