Sivaji - Reviewview

Preface : This is about the Tamizh Movie "Sivaji" staring Super Star Rajni!

So what is different about this Re-view-view ?

Well, you have to see a movie to review it! I am going to violate all known ethical codes by writing a review for a movie that I have not yet seen. But I am not the first one. I have actually seen a lot of posts which say review, but talk about the hype and what to expect and promise to write the real review after watching the movie. I will join that bandwagon.

Who is who ? What is What ?

I will now proceed to set minds to rest over the various questions that people might have with respect to this post. Why should it be even relevant ? Well, people are asked a few questions in the United States and binned accordingly ! Are you a republican or democrat, are you pro-life or pro-choice, are you okay with homosexuals or are you a homophobe, etc. etc. But in Tamizhnadu they also ask you, do you like Super Star or not, do you like Sivaji or not, etc. Plus any post with Sivaji in the title is immediately judged. The author is judged on his % Pro Rajni-ness! and is promptly lauded or flamed. Considering I am sarcastic by default, I better answer these questions..

So lets proceed :

Do I like Rajni ? Yes
Do I like movies ? Yes
Do I like Rajni movies ? Mostly!
Do I still like him after he is old and tries to act young ? Yes (except the romance part).
Did I like Baba ? No
Did I like Chandramukhi ? Yes
Did I watch FDFS (first day first show) for Baba ? No
same for Chandramukhi ? Yes
When did I really watch Baba ? After it came out on DVD.
Will I wait for Sivaji to come out on DVD ? probably not!
Then why the $*%& am I waiting ? For tickets to drop to 10$
Have I made up my opinion on this movie yet ? No (seriously!)
Will my wife throw me out if I watch the movie and say it sucks ? No
Will my wife make me vadai, payaasam, etc. if I watch the movie and say I loved it ? No
Do the above two answers prove that I will express my honest opinion when I do see the movie ? Yes!
Do I expect this to be a good movie ? No.
Do I expect this to be a good Rajni movie ? Yes.
Will I watch it only for Rajni and ARR ? Yes.
Will I actually come back and write a real review later ? Hell NO! That would become an insignificant post. "Bay area man writes the 646,259,946745'th Sivaji Review" would be the headline. No Sir, not me.

Now here is my Re?View based on all the gazillion reviews I have read in the one week since this movie has been released to the general public! Practically everyone and their dog has a review of Sivaji!

Ahem...

Sivaji is a mass entertainer, where Super Star still shows that Style always rules over substance when it comes to this genre of movies. If Tom Cruise had half the style of Rajnikant, MI-III would have been a real blockbuster. It had the same hype and the money thrown in, with Cruise Star power, possibly the biggest hollywood could boast at the time, but the results were not even close. .(Well I havent seen Sivaji, but everyone else has and ergo, style has ruled over substance. As for lack of substance, that seems to be in unanimous agreement as well!).

That said, there are still a lot of gripes over the lack of a proper storyline, coherence, poor chemistry between the hero and heroine, songs that come up suddenly, length of the movie, etc. etc. The blogosphere seems to be polarized between two extremes on this one.

Some reviews say that these things while considered flaws for an average movie, do not really matter in a Rajni movie where the audience pays, just to see the man strutt his style on the big screen and utter punch dialogues. As a guy who stood 764'th in line at AMC Mercado to watch first day first show of "End of Days" or the dude who stood 1234'th in line to watch "The 6th Day" at the same theater, just to watch Arnold utter punch dialogues and throw people in the air, I can totally understand this type of review.

The next type of review goes on to pay its respects to "Thalaivar" (Rajni's nick name), his style etc., and bashes everyone else involved in making this movie with the exception of ARR. Shankar and Sujatha are prime targets with the producer being the secondary target, for wasting his money and not keeping an eye on the quality of the film! Now, how many of you can claim that you have watched two free movies in the same year, by just using your AMC movie watcher card? San and me can. That means, in the year we got married, we watched "at least" a movie a week, in theaters!! One day, we went to the 21 theater complex and found to our dismay that there was only one movie that was playing in all 21 rooms that we hadn't watched. So we watched it as well. As irony would have it, the movie was "Superstar", a film that left us speechless! We considered it an all time low in our movie watching life. As someone who has seen enough and more movies which lack substance or logic, my guess is that these guys are probably right. But a Rajni movie has to have all the Rajni elements or it would cease to be a Rajni movie. It is a self fulfiling prophecy! After Muthu was released, the Japanese have discovered the "Rajniberg Uncertainity principle", which states that it is impossible to have Rajni and Logic in the same movie and any attempt to precisely fix logic in the movie will make the Rajni part questionable!

Finally, we come to the hardcore "nay" sayers, who write, "Rajni is obligated to give his fans a decent movie", "A movie should not insult the audience's intelligence", "who will bell this commercial cat" (okay, okay, I came up with that last one), etc. etc. These are reviewers, who have either tried to judge this movie by the average movie standards or have reviewed it with an underdog mentality or trying to reason with mass hysteria, with an aim of being the sane voice. These are the ones who are promptly lauded for their guts and honesty for daring to say the truth and are also flamed in the comment box. I offer my deep condolences to this type of reviewer. India, or the USA for that matter is not free country. The internet does not have freedom of speech. If you do speak against mass hysteria you WILL be flamed! I can write a book about this! Once again, this is like saying bad things about WWF (and fear getting beaten up by some big dude next to you who is a fan), or saying bad things about Harry Potter (and fear getting beaten up by an angry teenager) or saying bad things about George W Bush (and fear getting beaten up by the government)! Apparently there are consequences if you dont agree with the general public. I would also point out to these reviewers that "Rajni is not obligated to do diddly squat!". He has made his money, and made his die hard fans happy, which were about the only things he was obligated to do, and even that obligation is questionable!

As for fans demanding more from their star and fans making or breaking a star, Rajni would have ceased to be a star a long time ago if his movies are judged by the average movie reviewer standards. The average Rajni fan is more of a fanatic. (Er, what I mean to say respectable Sir's and Madam's, is that you tend to watch Ranji movies with your FAN on in the AtTIC). That means box office logic does not apply to Rajni movies either!

Neenga ellam review than ezhduveenga. Naan reviewvukke review ezhudhuven! Idhu eppidi irukku ?

Translation (without Rajni style): You guys only write reviews. I write reviews of your reviews. How is that ?

:)

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First pic

Have been busy at work lately. Also the girls are behaving at their worst when I get home! There has not been a lot of time for photography, considering the new camera and lena have been with me for 3 days already.

The indoor pictures (have not taken a lot of them) look great. Here is a picture of the little one, with absolutely no alteration.

The beauty of this camera is that it captures the scene, almost as you see it. Exactly same colors, light hues.

Promising you many more pictures to come..

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My ex'es

If you think that this post is about me writing a chronicle about women in my life, I will promptly disappoint you.

This is however, a chronicle, about every camera my hands have held, my eyes have seen through, captured the moments and memories forever to be viewed and cherished or banished forever in those shoe boxes in the attic. This might also be a long post, longer than if I had chronicled women, that is.

My very first dabble with photography was during my trip to Kodai during my 11th grade annual excursion. A rich friend of mine got his point and shoot camera to the trip and was taking pictures. In those days even a Yashica point and shoot was a luxury (only a handful of my classmates had access to one). When this friend asked me to take a group photo, the camera bug literally bit me at that precise moment in time.

It was two years later, when I came home after my first year in college that my dad took me to Burma bazaar in what was then, Madras. It used to be this smuggled goods market dealing mostly in knock off gadgets. I got my Yashica autofocus with a manual film wind. I guess it was nothing more than a pinhole. Stuff that today is handed out as a freebie at company picnics, worth probably a dollar or two and mass produced in China. But to me, that Yashica was everything. I used to pedal for 30 minutes to the banks of the Ganges just to take pictures of the boats. I also realized that photography was a hobby for the rich. I had to make sure I took pictures worth printing.

Three years and a few hundred pictures later, the Yashica was left back in India. I wanted my parents to send me pictures of them every now and then to the USA. I knew, I was not going to return for at least two years. After looking at all the autofocus and SLR's the other graduate students and professors were sporting, I knew that my second camera would be an SLR. I did not have the money to buy one for a few months, so I used to go to the library and read up on SLR's. Finally during the christmas break, I charged a few hundred dollars to my first credit card and bought a Ricoh KR-10M. Most of you are wondering, "A What?". Well, you have to understand that it was cheaper than those Canon's and Nikon's but had some amazing features!

That camera took a few thousand pictures, and a copy of every print is now safely tucked away in some box in Chennai, or so I hope. I would take pains to send the prints through friends or mail it and my parents would just look at the 5 or 6$ in postage and complain! or say things like "we want to see you in those pictures. We really dont care about all that scenery or high rise buildings!". Those were divisive times. A time that made me see things in different light, and the Ricoh was a big part of creating that divide between me and my parents.

The camera had also grown over the years and put on a few pounds. There was a bag, a tripod, a few zoom lenses, filters of every kind, etc. etc. Even had a piece of black stocking tied around a lens hood which served two purposes. It was an excellent diffuse filter and doubled up as something to remember my friend Victoria! One fine day, during a snow storm in upstate New York, a guy broke into our house and stole the whole bag! I was shattered. To top things off, a close friend died of a heart attack at 26! during the same time. I refused to hold another camera for more than a year.

My dear brother, who had come to visit me during a short assignment in the US asked me to buy him a camera before he went back home. We happened to meet in Philadelphia. So I took him to Rittenhouse square in Philadelphia to my favorite used camera store. The old man recognized me after two years of absence! I picked a 15-20 year old Pentax, the one with a metal and black leather finish body, manual film load, rewind and a silk screen shutter. After we bought it and were about to separate at the train station, my brother surprised me by handing me the camera as he boarded his train! He said it was my cure, and he knew I loved that thing dearly. He didnt know a thing about SLR's and would buy a autofocus with a zoom in DC.

So, the love affair started again and many a picture was taken with the old Pentax. We spent some glorious days in London taking in the sights. When the rolls came back, it was a shock to find that I had shot 6 rolls of blanks! I was near tears. Took my baby to a local doctor and he said that the silk screen was getting stuck. At the same time, I got married, all of a sudden. On my way back to the US after a whirlwind marriage and a promise of a prolonged romance, I gave away the Pentax to the young boy who was holding that powerful light in my face during the wedding. He was learning the wedding photo/video business and I sincerely hoped my giving away the near antique Pentax would take this kid away from the video business and someday save many a groom and bride from those blinding lights.

I had in a fit of rage, bought myself a Canon EOS Elan II after the London debacle. The Elan, was a camera so smart, so sexy that my wife used to get worried I would elope with it some day! It added some pounds of its own and my wife was the official bearer of the camera bag during our long road trips. She got sick of hauling it, and once we found out that she was pregnant and the doctor told us "make sure she doesnt lift anything heavy", the first thing she refused to lift was that camera bag and tripod!

I started practising with the other newborns around us. My wife saw that I got 7/24 right on a roll. To her chagrin and those of the parents of the kids, I complained that the kids werent co-operating well! All those other parents were sporting handy digital cameras. The SONY DSC's, the Canon Powershots, the Nikon Coolpix'es and what not. We did our homework (the subject was not photography, it was economics!) and got the Canon S30. Considering this was purchased a few months before the baby shower, and also considering it was so easy to use that San and even her fresh off the boat mom took a liking to this camera, it was a welcome addition to our family! In our case it was like bringing home a puppy a few months before you deliver the baby. Our puppy loved our baby, and went on to love our second baby as well!

Now that most of you readers know, the S30 has been growing old and the digital revolution is truly upon us. Add to it, I am surrounded by people who sport cameras that can zoom all the way to heaven or hell and it was just a question of time before I got an SLR camera. My one previous attempt with the Digital Rebel failed because it had focus problems and I had to return it two years ago. It has been a constant love hate relationship with the S30 the last few months, what with her refusing to open up and giving me E18 errors, just when I am in the mood for some fun. I was to put it simply, UPSET!

San decided to give me the best anniversary gift, by letting me choose the camera I wanted. Her initial budget however was a few hundred dollars! I sounded happy and was reading reviews online for practically every camera announced in the last few years when I had a stroke of luck. The Rajni movie "Sivaji" was released! Now if you are thinking "what the @#$# ?", let me explain. San insisted on paying 20 bucks for this movie ticket for a premier show. She knows that on a matter of principle I am against price goughing and I wouldnt go. I told her that I am not going to miss this movie being a big Rajni fan and all, but will wait for 10$ tickets. I will go for the first 10$ show and have fun. She went and watched the premier show with Balaji anyways and I managed to send her on a guilt trip for spending double and the clever fox that I am, insisted that I also get to spend 2x on the camera! She laughed, and relented at my logic. She had just come back after watching Sivaji and somehow my using the 2x logic to increase the camera budget by a few hundred dollars appealed to my dear wife, and she got me :

The Canon Digital Rebel XTi (400D) and a Tamron 18-200 Aspherical Macro lens!!

You will see plenty of pictures soon and I hope this beauty stays with us for years to come. The powershot, still works and San will use it to take pictures of me taking pictures!

Someone has got to photograph this photographer, right ?

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