Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Chennai - 600028

I haven't written anything since December, in spite of the fact that I have been watching at least 5 movies a week. In this time, I have had the pleasure of watching fantastic movies and as much as I wanted to scribble a few lines about movies like 'The last King of Scotland', 'The Queen' and 'Mozhi', I couldn't find the time. Damn! Work gets in the way of everything these days.. Even an absolute dud like Maayakannadi that left me seething, couldn't bring me back to the blog, but I have to say a few words about this one.

I didn't have the slightest expectation from 'Chennai 28', but it was about street cricket and that was reason enough to watch it. The last time one of Gangai Amaran's sons directed something, the result was utterly pathetic (Bambarakannale).

This movie isn't short on cliches but the lack of a 'hero' character is a big plus. I would pick a flick like this over any Ajith/Vijay movie every time. I had a great time watching it. Of course, it helped that I was crazy about playing cricket as a kid and I could identify all the little things associated with it.

It's far from perfect. There are 5 people speaking at any given time in the movie and the acting feels straight out an amateur drama, but beyond all that, its a very simple story told in a fashion that suits it. There is no grandiose fight sequence, nothing to glorify any single character. Most of the sequence are straight out of life.

The pick of the actors was Premgi Amaran (thats really how it's spelt) who has a couple of great scenes and most of my friends would surely identify with his 'Enna koduma saar idhu?' and 'Saroja.. Saamaan nikalo' and I was rotf-lmao while my better half was wondering what the joke was about.

It's a welcome change and I hope more people think about small and entertaining movies like this. I hear it's doing very well in Chennai and that's a sign to so-called 'Heros' of Tamil cinema as what people really want to see.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Dear Sanjay Shankar

Do you have any connection with Christ Church Collage Kanpur? Is your father is famous newsreel producer L. Shanker?

Sanjai

sanjai_delhi@rediffmail.com