Kerala Café, film review

The Kerala Café experience (published in The Hindu Metroplus Weekend on October 31)on
CINEMA Kerala Café, a portmanteau film by ten directors, is truly touching, says Prema Manmadhan

The first day, first show of Kerala Café is an experience I will never forget. Prejudiced that 10 short films will not please me, I sit, waiting just to find out what’s new. At the end of two and a half hours, I left the cinema, wondering which of the ten was the best and trying to remember which director directed which. A few scenes refuse to move out of my heart. I am glad I went for Kerala Café.
Eight men and two women (to borrow heavily from Adoor) star in this venture, ‘Kerala Café’ made by Ranjit’s production house, Capitol Theatre. These stars are the 10 directors of as many films woven together by a single thread called Kerala Café, a railway canteen somewhere in Kerala, the one link that brings these diverse subjects under one umbrella, under another label called journey. The ‘sutradhar’ of it all is Ranjit, who is not content to sit back and write scripts or direct movies alone.
Such an experiment, to give the audience a cinematic version of a short story book, has succeeded and failed, though it’s a very new concept. "It has failed where the director has not been able to touch the hearts of the viewers," Ranjit says, confidently, when confronted with this question.
And touch the heart Kerala Cafe did, for all 10 connect with the plight of people. , some the majority and others, the minority. ‘Bridge’, the one directed by Anwar Rasheed, left such a big stone in my heart that not even a two-hour slapstick comedy can lift it off. The fate of the unwanted in society, love notwithstanding, where the practical overrides the emotional as it does in the 21st century, is communicated in great cinematic style. The script, the camera and the actors all merge to make it noteworthy.
Revathy’s ‘Makal’ is another of the social issues that mock society, that is clothed so much in realism that the last scene stings. ‘Mrityunjayam’, Uday Ananthan’s film, belongs to the ‘horror’ genre and is set in today’s milieu. It stars Rima Kallingal, Thilakan and Fahadh Faasil, (remember the guy in ‘Kaiyethum Doorathu’, Fazil’s son?) who plays a journalist. He has since matured into a good actor and a handsome young man. The camera and the ambience take you back into the past but the dilapidated old ‘illam’ and the goings on remain a mystery.
Padmakumar’s ‘Nostalgia’, has the very busy protagonist longs for Kerala at the soirees in his flat, over a drink, in a Gulf country, but actually dreams of pulling down his aristocratic home to build flats: A practical man for whom emotions don’t count, a very contemporary theme, indeed. The other topical subject that is not so serious to many but very worrisome, has been handled by Anjali Menon in ‘Happy Journey’. In long distance buses girls really don’t know who may sit beside them on the plush seats. And that’s the subject. Period. Jagathy and Nithya Menon make this one tenth of Kerala Café memorable.
Shankar Ramakrishnan, an assistant of Ranjit’s gets into independent mode with ‘Island Express’. Prithviraj, with his new hairstyle is dashing with a capital ‘D’. The Perumon tragedy relived by a few whose closest relatives perished then, forms the theme. B Unnikrishnan’s ‘Aviramam’ tackles life during recession, and the hopelessness of it getting to be unbearable. Recession is also the topic that Shyamaprasad deals with in ‘Off Season’, how it has hit westerners too, handled in a lighter vein. Shaji Kailas’ ‘Lalithamhiranmayam’ is again very contemporary, in fact too broad minded for domestic consumption, where the other woman and the official woman don’t tear each other’s hair. Lal Jose’s ‘Puram Kazchakal’ does not make Mammooty into a Pazhassi Raja, but a strong hearted man who keeps his sorrows to himself. Based on C. V. Sreeraman’s story, Lal Jose has handled it with care.
Actors in this big venture are Sreenivasan, Suresh Gopi, Sona Nair, Shantha Devi, Jyothirmayee, Siddique, Salim Kumar, Sudheesh, Dhanya, Jayasurya, Rahman, Sukumari and a few others.
The camera plays a big role in Kerala Café. Credit goes to all these technicians.
Kerala Café was shown at the Middle East International Film Festival earlier this month. "It was a dream I had last May," says the man who dared to gamble with this experiment. The work was stupendous, Ranjit admits when compared to one feature film with one person at the helm. The budget of course is as low as it can get for most of the directors and artistes worked for free, he says. Why isn’t Mohanlal in this venture? "There was no slot for him in any of the scripts as any one can see, that’s why," explains Ranjit.

Puthiya Mukham, puthiya bore

Phew! Saw Puthiya Mukham. Got a headache watching the terrible angles of the camera. Wide angle shots for every frame almost does not exactly calm you. Wonder why this love for wide angle shots. It looked like a camera was placed at the disposal of this chap and he went berserk! And then I thought whether it was the Malayalam version of Crouching Tiger Hidden Lion.
The story is strange, stranger still its execution. Prithviraj has had to deal with a bad script, but he has tried to redeem the movie, but in vain. Meera Nandan is quite plumpy and therefore has lost the lovely shape of her face.
Priyamony has oomph and despite the bad role, brought some freshness to the movie, though she cannot dance to save her life.
Bala looks merely like a thug and does not rise above that. Two songs are good, the one by KK and the title song, okay.
What stands out like a sore thumb is the camerawork. Diphan, the director needs to apprentice with a good director for some more time. Hard earned money gone down the drain, and worse luck, all that time, my God!

Malayalam movie, Ritu

Saw Malayalam movie, Ritu. Wonderful movie, very topical, very moving and excellent casting, with the kind of cinematography that is true to the story. DOP is Shamdat, great guy with a lot of enthu. The story is king here and Joshua Newtonn needs to be congratulated for that.
What I really loved about the movie was that the emotional content is high without diluting the presentation. It's as close trealism as is possible without killing the entertainment value, that's something director Shyamaprasad can be proud of. It was filmed within 26 days on an enviable budget of under one crore rupees, if reports are to be believed.
K.Govindankutty, veteran journalist plays an important role with great elan. Who knew he had it in him. I knew him as a good writer, knowledgeable editor, eloquent in both English and Malayalam..but acting.. it WAS surprise.
Rima Kallinkal is the next big thing in Malayalam cinema, but she will definitely migrate to Tamil Telugu or even Hindi for she has that international kind of face, with make up and it's obvious she is ready to wear anything with a good figure and is not wary of doing intimate scenes, if the script demands it. She said in her first interview in The Hindu that she is out here to make money too. This lady will certainly go places. The male lead Nishan is a non Malayali and apparently wrote his lines in Hindi to have proper lip movements. He did his role very well, without going overboard. That's a difficult thing to do, for a beginner. The other important character called Sunny in the film had a tougher job to carry out and came out fine. Even the smallest character had a role that could not be called unwanted and each one did well. That is Shyamaprasad's victory. Ritu is stylish, it has content and it's a movie that all generations MUST see, to realise that time does things to people, including yourself , that time never stands still, that nostalgia is not all that should guide your life, but vlues hold, nevertheless. I would give it 80 marks out of 100.

Bhramaram Review

Al last, Malayalam movies are getting out of the rut. Am so glad. Bhramaram is yet another different movie that has hit the cinemas. It falls into different genres actually: thriller, sentimental, topical, cerebral and family movie, or all of these. The work of the entire team has brought out a mind blowing result:The camera (Ajayan Vincent who is Jayanan Vincent's brother and son of veteran Vincent), acting (Mohanlal, Suresh Menon, Muralikrishnan, in that order), apt sound (Mohan Sithara) and the suthradhar of it all, Blessy (bless him for thinking out of the box and working towards realisation of his visualisation) He says two cameramen declined when they saw the locales, rough terrain in the high ranges of Kerala. The city shots have novelty written all over them. Blessy has exploited up to 60 per cent of Mohanlal's talent. So far he has brought out hardly 45 per cent, I believe. Jayanan Vincent's camera makes you sit on the edge of your seat. Only at the end of the movie do you realise the meaning of the title. Flaws there are, but very very few. Year 2009 will be a landmark year for Malayalam cinema. Would that more and more directors think out of the formula.

Don't fear a check up

We had our medical check up today. Men think it's macho to say, 'I don't have the time for such things,' but I think they are plain scared and think it can be put off for fear of finding out that there IS something wrong with them. Just look at what happened to Lohitadas and closer home, to Vijayakumar, one of the finest desk hands in journalism, in India. So go for your check up: That's the moral of the story.

Rains and attitude

Going home in the rain, yesterday, I was cursing the puddles, getting angry with the car drivers who splashed water on my sari and generally irritated at the crowded buses. Halfway through, when I was walking along to board my next bus. I started enjoying it all, the water. the rain and the freedom to walk about as I pleased. I realised that once I started NOT worrying about whether my sari would be dirtied, whether my leather slipper would be wet and whether my bag would be mis-shapen, I was enjoying the rains, looking at the world in a different way and feeling relaxed. Why don't we enjoy the small mercies that come to us instead of placing gargantuan demands on poor God who is already overburdened with the likes of Sreeshanth's mother and the mothers and fathers of Idea star Singer contestants constantly fighting for His attentions?
It's attitude that matters.

Maiden blog

July 1, 2009
Wow, Great D-Day. Feels great to have created a blog all by myself. It's a kind of Eureka feeling, especially it's because a friend, Padma Jayaraj, wrote saying she wanted to create a blog but didn't know how. That set me thinking and here I am. More later, let me take in my joy first.