New ARR masterpieces and rumors!

Last two days, have been listening to bootlegged versions of a up-coming ARR masterpiece, albeit in Telugu. Waiting to hear the original versions when they come out in a couple of weeks. BTW, all you ARR fans, a veritable feast awaits in the coming months. First SJ Surya's bilingual take on the Tom Hanks starrer Big and then the next MR flick, again a bilingual (multistarrer this time). The soundtracks should be as usual gold mines for the respective producers, (the three tracks I heard are simply mind-blowing, with one particular soft lullaby like track featuring Sadhana Sargam and Unni Krishnan making me listen to it atleast 10 times in the last three hours) but about the movies, all comments reserved - at least for SJ Surya's effort. First thing, it stars himself and I dunno how good he is as a actor. As a director he seems quite ok, as Vaali demonstrated.

And then about Yuva / Ayutha Ezhuthu, I have no doubts about the movie - its MR, for heaven's sake. He might be off the audience's preferences sometimes, but for the connoisseur, his movies are pure nirvana. The initial buzz from the promos seems to be quite encouraging - though this yet to be corroborated rumor that it's MR's take on the Oscar nominated Cicade de deus (City of God). Read Roger Ebert's review of the City of God here.

I read this UN-CORROBORATED RUMOR first on Lazy Geek's where one of his "admirers" had commented about it. It found its way here and when I left a comment on there. BSubra (this is his Tamil blog BTW) was kind to email me and he says that he had caught it too from Lazy Geek's where KG had left a comment. Someone ask KG where he read this piece of info. It's spreading like wildfire and all fingers point to him or at least the trail goes cold at his fingers.. LOL... And after all this someone posted on the ARR fans group that he had read this piece of info on Junior Vikatan. Now it figures.

Now, when I look at it, seems that there is actually a resemblance between the City of God's story and what has been paraded everywhere as the storyline for Ayutha Ezhuthu/Yuva. But it is best that we stay restrained about this issue till the movie releases. As this commentor on TFMpage says - "But we are all working on assumption here. Let's wait and see what 12B is all about. When news of the mouse sequence in Tenali was leaked to the press, everyone jumped to the conclusion that it was a remake of Mousehunt. The film turned to be a remake of some other English movie." The case about Tenali was carried by everyone incl. Rediff and The Music Magazine. So let's wait! Till we can actually hear the songs, satisfy yourselves with the track listing from tamilurban.com which again is quite different from what was posted on TFMpage (and on the ARR fans group)sometime in December. However this time, a lot of people associated with the movie have been talking about this songs and so I guess this IS the listing. So much for my waiting to hear Harish Raghavendar's first song with ARR. That might have to wait yet.

Update: The Yuva trailers (on Bollyvista) rock and I happened to catch 20 second previews elsewhere of all the AE songs! If only those 20 seconds did not have the name of the website's name as a watermark!. Its not the whole song and why the watermark ?:p. And my friend who caught the City of God over the Univ's cable system says from the trailers, the only similarity apparent between COG and Yuva/AE is the fact that the movie seems to be set in an slum :p

Test Cricket Losing Crowds in the Sub-Continent?

The first and last test match that I actually watched in a cricket stadium was the famous 3rd Test between India and Steve Waugh's Aussies in 2001 at Chepauk. On the third and the fifth days, the atmosphere was electric and there were crowds even to watch the teams have a light practice session about an hour and a half before the start of play.

Well, the boos that Ganguly received on dropping two (or was it three) consecutive skiers that left the bat of John Wright should be heard to believed. There was that much of a crowd at about 8:00 in the morning. J and another P too can vouch for that, for we were together for those two days of play at Chepauk. The point is, there was a sell-out crowd ready to lap up any action that was dealt out by the Indians and the Aussies and I had, till today, thought that this was the norm. Propping up that opinion was the images and sounds that I remember from the India-Pakistan Tests of 1999 in Calcutta and Chennai (the latter I followed via radio coverage)

But Cricinfo has this Roving Reporter peice from Galle where Murali spun his web around the Aussies on the first day of the first test and Tilakaratne Dilshan had the Aussie bowlers hunting for leather almost all day in the next. But apparently only 1500 people watched the first day's play and the peice makes it sound that test matches in the sub-continent are losing their spectators.

I haven't had the chance to watch that many test matches in India on TV after I came here to the US, but all you guys back home should know. Is that true? Is this the case in India too? I have been wondering why the Indian Board looked at just 3 tests and 7 ODIs (is it 5 now) for the Pakistan tour. I commented to some friends that an addition of an extra test while cutting the ODIs to 5 would probably make the tour much more interesting for the spectators and fill the PCB's coffers. Was I wrong?

YSR loses credibility?

I went on the I2FS site after a long time (following George's posting about the Karz soundtrack) and found that three of the songs that I have been listening repeatedly over the last few months are all lifts. That raises credibility questions about YSR and to think I was slowly starting to place YSR in a pedestal that was almost equal to IR in terms of listening preferences. And these were just the three songs from Kadhal Konden that I raved about in this post. Needless to say, I am embarrassed.

Karthik, who maintains the i2fs page says (it) turns out that the film's theme in itself is lifted from a German movie called 'Klassenfahrt' (English title, 'School Trip')...not only the theme but also the mannerisms of the original's lead guy, whom the Tamil hero Dhanush apes unabashedly. I remember Dhanush getting loads of praise from the Tamil press for his 'acting' in the film.... Hmmm...

Blogroll updates!

Recently, I have been on a number of blogs that escaped my radar earlier. I decided to finally add them to my blogroll. And I have been lazy too. I added some to my blogroll and did not exactly tell you guys about them. So today, ore kallula rendu maanga.. (singing a Kamal-ish tone). Here goes...

Jayendran is my neighbor. He has been my neighbor for quite sometime. We used to play cricket together and then he moved to the same apartment block as mine. He seems to have big plans that he tells us about in a rather poetic manner. He's an ardent Kamal fan, a up and coming CA and a fellow quizzer. Welcome da....

The Nattu formerly known as "Inter-nettu" is now in Oz where he scribbles quite frequently. By the looks of it, he's still the net-junkie as he was in the early days of Internet at Tirumalaisamudram. Do not miss any post of his, particularly this one.

Dev is a RSK-ite who was once a fused tubelight (Dev, see I still remember your team name from 1996-97). These days he is a dyslexic atheist, who also seems to be an insomniac. Dev, I think you can be cured. Just read my posts regularly and REM will beckon you immediately.

Hemanth is really a nice guy whose blog actually takes its name from the character played by Chris Penn in Reservoir Dogs. And to think that I thought he was so taken up with himself. He writes about his angst at Madras being renamed Chennai and thinks that its a shame to rename a place after the person who sold it to the Brits at the first place. He's a movie freak and maintains another blog exclusively for everything to do with Chennai, its movies, the politics and its news at a place quite reminiscent of that standard Chennai fixture where everyone exchanges information with everybody else - the teakada (for the non-tamil speaking population in cyberspace, teakada refers to the local "Tea shop". Do visit him and his teakada.

I dunno who Ripples is. Ok, I know that Ripples is a she and might also respond to the name Priya. Ok, not so sure about the second part. But all I know is that Ripples seems to be a very private individual and yet she is diverse with her interests. Lives in Chicago and creates ripples in everybody's thoughts through her words here.

Dubukku is a think tank. Recently he shed his anonymity and had a SunTV-esque Photooo vaaaaram. He claims that he is Rengaraman Sankaranarayanan aka renga and that he has absolutely no claim to fame. However others claim that the image conveyed by one of the pictures that he recently posted might just become his claim to fame if he ever moves to the Bay area. Look out for him if you live in the immediate environs of the Old Blighty where he roams. Welcome to you too Dubukku thalaiva..

Last but not the least, the Mastermind and some of his friends (can I be included in that list too, sir ;) ) put together a blog exclusively for issues pertaining to the finer points of that game favored by the nerds, dorks and the RCs - quizzing. Among the recent topics of discussion was the debate about the pros and cons of the Direct and Passing system and the Infinite bounds system. You can trust us trivia junkies to discuss trivial details like these, but if you know what I mean, you'd appreciate this as a issue of great importance to the quizzing community ;). So if you are a quizzer, do not miss the notes (and the stones) that accompany Interrobang (particular the post that explains the idea behind the name of this quiz blog) that boasts of, among other features - a question of the week.

Welcome to you all. I have been on your blogs often and I guess it was high time I added you all to my blogroll....

I am still speechless (and hence this post is title-less), an hour after I chanced on this site while searching on Google on 2005 Corvette, wallpaper. For someone who holds his breath everytime he sees a automobile screaming down on the road, this must be pure nirvana! Check out the wallpapers of the Mini Cooper Convertible launched at the Genva Motor show recently. One word... WOW!!!!!