[ Image: Vikatan]

Shankar talks about the Enthiran that could have been and shares a sneak peak here in Vikatan.

Mayakkam enna was a wasted effort, devoid of substance and class. It didn’t engage me as a viewer, didn’t bother to develop its rather cardboard characters and never stopped to pretend that it was a raw but class movie. All this I never wanted to say about a Selvaraghavan film but I do now. Given that I’m a huge fan of Selva’s films, I wanted to enjoy Mayakkam Enna and was already sold on the film although with just normal expectations.

The whole dating, fraaandship piece was artificial and the friends didn’t seem to belong together at all. Without dwelling scene-by-scene on why I was irritated, I guess the story wasn’t rich, its characters very superfluous without much of character, the very pretentious music that tends to cover up the nagging screenplay and of course some really bad acting. The so called ‘genius’ angst was badly expressed and its lead character gets a handful of accents that it confuses the heck out of a viewer.

The plot shifts rather swiftly from what it was trying to detail to a completely different dimension. Although it’s not uncommon for a selva film, this jump cut was crazy. How much ever one wanted to submit to the director’s thinking, he doesn’t support the shift with good reasons. If the ‘irumbu manushi’ issue was the point of the premise then the first half was totally wasted and if it was the ‘genius’ angst of the antagonist that formed the crux of the premise then the whole movie never wrapped around it clearly.

Simply put, its a movie to avoid even if you are Selvarghavan fan. I wish this is the last time I get to write such a review for a Selvaraghavan film.

Related Posts: Nasty Dynasty, Why I like/dislike Selvaraghavan?

I wanted to write a post summarizing the events that unfolded over the weekend when kolaveri went viral. Medianama did that quite well, for the most part. However three things that needs to be called out –

One, the making video itself was a make believe. The shots of Dhanush singing were just looking like lip sync and hence. Even though the song needs very little vocal effort, the recording must have happened before the video and these shots were made either during improvisation or just shot for this ‘making of’ video. This could very well be my speculation but I do think the level of professional work that has gone into this making video and the description below the video that says, ‘chinna surprise’ doesn’t gel very well. Its a very successful attempt at making a video viral. Well done!

Two, Now that everyone has reacted to this song, which is good in a way, very soon the overkill is going to make many of us frown. From blogposts to tweets, the hate will become wide spread. It would be in the best interest of the album that they release the soundtrack asap.

Three – Premji is going to use this in the next venkat prabhu film. Enna bet?

P.S: If you are wondering about the song that’s being talked about here, you must be time-travelling. Here.

One of my all time faves, thanks to MV for a remarkable rendering.

I like some parts of Cheran’s work but I never thought I would look forward to a film in which he stars. If not for Myshkin, this still photograph from Yudham Sei wouldn’t have landed here. Its only films like these that I look forward these days and not the Yendhiran types. Maybe I’ve grown old but hype works only in your twenties.

I hope Myshkin’s previous unreleased film, Nandalala hits the screen very soon. If not, the producers should release it direct-to-DVD.

Myshkin is by far my biggest hope of tamil cinema followed by or preceded by, in some cases, Selvaraghavan. Oh yeah, there is Mani Ratnam, as always.