55th National Film Awards

The 55th National Film Awards of 2007 have been announced and so many talented people have been recognized. First of all, I am glad that Prakash Raj won the Best Actor award. He has amazed me with his performance in Mani Ratnam’s “Iruvar“. His dialogue deliveries in Tamil made a non-Tamilian like me to appreciate the beauty of Tamil language (though I did not understand much of it). His performance as a villain in the movie “Aasai” was also wonderful. I haven’t seen the movie “Kanchivaram“, but I’m sure he must have done a wonderful job there too.

I have no words to say about Ouseppachan‘s achievement in this year’s national film awards. He has won the Best Music Director award for the songs of “Ore Kadal“. Like a Twitter friend mentioned, this award was long due. He has given us some musical gems right from the beginning of his career. I can forever listen to the songs like “Kaathodu Kaathoram“, or “Nee En Sarga Soundaryame” or “Unnikale Oru Katha Parayaam“. In the movie “Ore Kadal“, he chose to compose all 5 songs in one Raagam, that is Shubha Panthuvaraali. Even though all songs are based on the same raaga, each song stood out with its own features.

Do I even need to mention the maestro Adoor Gopalakrishnan? Though I am unsure of how well the other competitors have done with their movies, I have seen “Naalu Pennungal” and loved all the four segments of the movie which featured 4 women characters, each so powerful on their own right.

Pattanam Rasheed, whose name is so familiar to any one who watches the Malayalam movies, has rightly been awarded for the make-up of Paradesi. Shankar Mahadevan has bagged the Best Male Playback Singer award for his soul stirring rendition of Maa from Taare Zameen Par and Shreya Ghoshal has won the Best Female Playback Singer award.

To conclude, there are no controversy over the awards so far and that’s something we haven’t seen in the recent years.

The oldest profession in the newest form

Some women sell themselves for hours. Some of them do it for no price, expecting a favor in return – perhaps an opportunity for a breakthrough in the showbiz. Some of them do it for ‘pocket money’ and it varies from lakhs to thousands per hour.

There is nothing you need to do about it, unless there is blackmailing/force/inducement involved in the business.

Then there are some women, like the women in Bundelkhand in Uttar Pradesh, who sell themselves for anything that varies from Rs. 200 to Rs. 50. They are not sold for hours. They are sold forever. And for what? Food. And Survival.

Now there is definitely something that the Government which talks about country’s economic growth rates can/should do about it. The question is, where did all those announced packages for farmers go? What happened to NREGA? How well is it being implemented? What is the state government doing? What is Mayawati doing after all the statue-unveiling that she’s on to lately?

Memories of Onam

Yet another Onam has passed by. Onam is nostalgic to every Malayali, but it is not exactly what has been described in the Onam specials of magazines and newspapers. Not at least for me. I never heard a “pooviLi” in my childhood. I haven’t gone collecting flowers from the neighborhood either (though my elder brothers did). I have never seen any woman singing and dancing to the tunes of “thiruvaathirakkaLi“. But I remember waking up early in the morning of the thiruvONam day, to put a “pookkaLam” (floral carpet), which would have more leafs than flowers.

As time passed by and collecting flowers became very difficult and the price of the flowers in the market shot up, we had to resort to pookkaLams made with salt. We would mix salt with different color powders and put the “salt-kaLam” in the courtyard. My second brother, who left this world 12 years ago and was an excellent artist, would draw the kalam and we younger ones helped in mixing the color powder with the salt. To our pride, people came to see this salt-kaLam than the floral carpets in the rich houses of the neighborhood, because of the artistic mastery of my brother.

The kaLam would be finished by 7 or 8 in the morning and then came our time for bath and then playing music. The wait for Sadya came next. I also have memories of going to the neighbor’s house to watch movies. The TV channels were not so plenty like in these days and there were not many programs on Doordarshan. But the neighbor used to play video cassettes of popular Malayalam movies and we children used to go watch them. So Onam was about watching movies too.

What I like the best about Onam? It is neither the pookkaLam, nor the Sadya. It is the time when the family comes together. My sisters, their kids and my brother came home for Onam and they are staying in for a couple of days. We talk, make fun of each other and the chat sessions go as longer as the next day morning. It is this togetherness that I love about Onam. And I hope and pray that this togetherness lasts forever.

Hope you all had/having a wonderful time during this year’s Onam.

Onam with Eenam

Eenam, the Malayalam online album, has released an Onam special version. It has a very nice collection of original Malayalam songs and my most favorite song of the album is “aarO kaathil paaTi“, sung by Pradeep (male version) and Divya (female). Pradeep has done an excellent job on the vocals and Bahuvreehi’s composition is nothing short of professional work. Checkout their songs and let them know what you think.

Interview with Sindhuja

I don’t really need to introduce Sindhuja to any of the music-blog-hoppers. She is a wonderful singer and a perfectionist in music. Audio India has posted an interview with her today. Go check out the interview. Excerpt below.

sindhuja What do you dislike the most about music blogging?

Apart from the usual gripe about people not following “netiquette” or not being frank while leaving feedback etc., the one thing I feel is that blogging (or any kind of performance for that matter) makes you more audience oriented and so you tend to focus less on your own growth as a singer. I saw that happening to myself. When blogging was new to me, I would crave for comments on my blog- I think that’s natural. It became more of “how will people like this and how many comments will I get?” rather than “how well have I actually sung this and how better can I get at this?” For a time, singing for me became synonymous with recording and blogging. Rather than spending an hour practising, I’d spend the time recording an easy number, mixing and putting it up on my blog. And that meant instant “success”. Getting encouraging feedback sometimes made me complacent.

I think its very important to be ambitious and keep pushing your limits. I don’t really regret all of that though- its all part of growing up. I don’t deny that an artist always needs an audience- I agree with that 100%. In fact, through the blogging medium itself, friends have pointed out flaws in my singing that I might have missed myself and I’m really thankful to blogging for that. But at the same time, I believe an artist shouldn’t get too lost in display of talent and miss out on doing a reality check on herself from time to time- realize her limitations and work on them diligently. Or may be all this applies to just me… :-/

Prem – Tilak

Praseed Pai is a friend and an ex-colleague of mine. A well-read and self-made man, he added so much to the office vibes. We used to have lots of chat, discussions and debates on everything under the sun, leading from pornography to philosophy. 🙂 And there was something to learn everyday – a new term or an idea.

The Prem-Tilak stories were born out of one such chat session, when we talked about two of our ex-colleagues. Pai started writing the first story right away and I found it to be witty after reading it. Pai kept on writing and I told him that one day I would try sketching it as a comic strip. So on an evening in the last week, I did the first strip of the Prem-Tilak series. I will do more as I find time and energy. I did not spend a lot of time for this one, so it may not be all so perfect. And I had to draw it in Photoshop using mouse as there is no other digital drawing tool available with me.

You can read the Prem-Tilak series in Praseed Pai’s blog. Do let us know your feedback (Click on the image to view the larger version).

Prem - Tilak

Tribute to Michael Jackson

What a great way to pay tribute to the King of Pop!

From the You Tube page:

These are two performances made at Segels Torg and the Central Station (a third installment is planned to happen at Stureplan at 23.00 tonight).

The dance collective Bounce came up with the idea and invited the public to a short choreographed session before hitting the streets.

(Thanks to Arun M for the link)

Ritu – Movie review

Movie name: Ritu (Seasons)
Director: Shyamaprasad
Story & script: Joshua Newton
Music: Rahul Raj

It has been some time since I have watched a movie in theaters. Watching a movie in theaters has its own advantages and disadvantages. If the crowd around or with you is annoying enough, you lose the mood to enjoy the experience that only a cinema hall can provide. So, I usually skip most of the movies until it comes on CD. But Shyamaprasad is a favorite director of mine. There are only a few films which I go to watch by the director’s name and Shyam is one of them. I have been religiously following his films ever since his Door Darshan tele-serial days. So I decided to go to watch his latest film, Ritu, and I didn’t even call my friends to come along to avoid any kind of distraction and immerse myself fully into the movie.

Ritu tells the story of three friends and what the time has done to their relationships. The backdrop is of IT sector. Ritu is Shyam’s first work with an original story and screenplay (by Joshua Newton) and it is a youth oriented movie. So obviously the expectations were sky high. But when the movie ended, I was left with no emotion except the deep disappointment that I had. Regardless of the talented new faces, Ritu fails to strike an emotional chord.

Look at the scene where Sarath (Nishant) sees his father’s death in the hospital. There is a good scope of making you feel the intensity of the scene or the stillness of that moment. But you look at it with the same blank mind that you had from the beginning of the movie. You would want to force yourself to feel something about the scene, but with no luck. See the whole composition of the scene, the ridiculously looking doctor (who gives a good laugh to the audience by his ‘acting style’ right from his first appearance), and I couldn’t really believe that I was watching a Shyamaprasad movie.

Flashbacks seem to be a favorite technique in Shyamaprasad’s movies. It has worked very well in his movies and telefilms too. Take “Peruvazhiyile Kariyilakal” or “Akale” for example. But the flashbacks actually flashes at you in every single minute of this movie in the first half. Sarath drives – flash back, he keeps on driving – flash back, he halts – flash back, he looks sideways – flash back. Flash back, flash back… it flashes on your face repeatedly! I would say a good technique is to choose a few flashback scenes and fit it in appropriate parts, rather than flashing it all on our faces one after another.

Another thing is that Ritu focuses on multiple stories but not in a “Crash” or “21 Grams” or “Babel” way. Those movies, even though they tell stories of different lives, it all connects to one single thread beautifully. But Ritu wants to touch everything that the IT world (or shouldn’t I say competitive corporate world?) has made an impact on. The cleaner guy’s story is a good example. We get to know from his first appearance that he is a displaced citizen because of the internet city. We see his plight when we see the way his boss treats him. Or the scene in the elevator where he looks alienated among an executive crowd. Those were good enough, but wait! They had to make him talk about his plight by himself to make us “feel”. But what felt through the “scenes” were not felt by the “dialogues”.

The climax was the most disappointing. I thought the movie would end after the conversation of Sarath and Varsha in the car park. Sarath talks about people changing like seasons, and he doesn’t want to see Varsha or Sunny ever again. The movie could have ended there, but no, they want us to know what would happen to Sunny in the matter of data theft, and what would happen to him and Varsha after 3 years, and then again a copy of Sarath’s book to convince us that he indeed wrote a book. Such a pathetic climax compared to Shyam’s previous movie Ore Kadal. Compare the climax of this movie with the climax of Ore Kadal. There, Nathan and Deepthi hugs each other and Deepthi’s kids walk up the stairs. We are not told whether Nathan and Deepthi would live together or what would happen to Jayan. It was left to the audience. But look at the climax of Ritu. I would say just one thing – sometimes you don’t need to explain everything and better leave it to the audience so that they can take something back when they leave the movie hall.

The only saving grace of the movie is it’s actors – Rima Kallingal as Varsha is the most talented of them all. She handled her role perfectly well for a new comer. Nishant as Sarath Varma comes to second. Asif has also done a good job as Sunny. Manu Jose as Jithu was quite natural. He and director M G Sasi as Sarath’s brother Hari are two characters with some life. They were really wonderful even though they had short roles.

Music by Rahul Raj is good. My favorite pick from the album is the song “Pularumo“, sung by Gayathri. The male vocals seem to go out of pitch in the very beginning of the song; in the part where he sings “oru kanaleriyunnatho“. I don’t know how the music director did not notice it.

The background music was disappointing. It comes with some rock guitars at one time, which would make us think it is going to take the movie into another pace, but it ends within a couple of minutes. It pops up again when we do not expect it and then again ends as soon as it is heard. I think we have so much to learn from Hollywood on how to use background music to add value to the scenes.

Shyamaprasad is very good at adapted screenplays. I think he would do a good job with a Malayalam adaptation of One Night at Call Center with the actors of this movie. Nishant as Shyam, Asif as Vroom and Rima as Priyanka would have made a perfect fit (don’t you think some of the scenes like the car sex of Sarath-Varsha remind you of Shyam-Priyanka’s love making scene from the book ON@CC ?)!

To sum up, Ritu is a deeply disappointing movie. I admire the writing of Joshua Newton by reading his English blog from a long time, but I think he has so much to improve on script writing after this maiden attempt. I have heard one thing about script writing from a friend who is a movie buff, which he quoted from a book. If a movie’s striking point doesn’t come up in the first 20 or 30 minutes, it is not worthy of watching fully. I think it is so true about Ritu.

Introducing Padmaraj

Padmaraj Payyur was a colleague of mine when I worked in Aluva. He is a web designer and even though I knew that he played Violin, I never had a chance to hear him play. Today, he gave me a link to his first musical post and am just blown away by his music! This song is in repeat mode in my machine now and it is so soothing and relaxing.


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