Kaashmora: Lil' Bit This, Lil' Bit That

Contrary to what it's makers want you to believe through the trailer and posters, Kaashmora is not an epic fantasy like Baahubali. It's more of a horror comedy movie. But it has elements of fantasy, crime and action embedded in it. I felt that it was a wrong move. The plot had many positives, but instead of fixing on what it really wants to be, they let the whole thing to run amok. So the result is an incoherent movie.

Karthi plays a dual role, that of both the protagonist and the antagonist, thus very much limiting the screen time and importance of all other characters. Except of course Nayanthara, who makes the best of the limited scenes she got, by looking gorgeous and kicking ass. Vivek who appears as Karthi's father also shone like a shooting star. Most of the other guys didn't had any idea of the purpose they were serving being in the movie.

As protagonist, Karthi's role is similar to the ones he has already specialised in many of his commercial hit films, that of a fast and smooth talking con man, which was predictably hilarious. As antagonist, the role that is hyped in trailer and posters, he gets to show-off himself and he did it commendably well. The comedy was the best thing about the movie. Most of the jokes were laugh-out-loud quality and even the ones inserted in between the tedious horror set-pieces were pretty good.

As I told initially, movie faltered when it attempted to go to places where it wasn't supposed to. The first half was pretty interesting but the second half suddenly left whatever was built in the first, and started telling a story by its own. Many characters and incidents introduced in first half is abandoned in second without any payoff. That was one reason why the flash back of the villain, though looking wonderful on screen, lacked any emotional resonance for me. It was tough for me to root for or even care for many characters. I would say Kaashmora is missed opportunity,  like most of the recent Tamil movies that arrive piggybacking on the hype of multiple get-ups of its stars.

The Zombie Train to Busan

Zombies are fictional demons, undead creatures surviving on human brains. Derived from Haitian mythology, zombies were around in Hollywood from some time. But it was George Romero's Living Dead series that established the present zombie characters. Hollywood zombies are generally ugly, walks in a slow pace and those who are bit by them also become zombies. Breaking out of zombie apocalypse is a general theme in zombie movies.

Unlike other popular movie demons like vampires, werewolves and various Nicolas Cage characters, zombies doesn't have a personality. They are ugly, dull and uninteresting. So it becomes a challenge to make a zombie movie. To succeed, either you have to go in full exploitation gear with graphic violence and nudity or you need something extra, a quirky plot twist or a different concept that doesn't depend on zombies alone. Some movies like Night of the Living Dead used sublime social commentary to achieve greatness, while some others like Shaun of the Dead used satire and comedy.

Recently I watched such a movie titled Warm Bodies which is basically a zombie rom-com. As in many zombie movies, a zombie apocalypse is ongoing and a tiny group of humans are resisting them. A zombie named R kills and eats the brain of the boyfriend of Julie, a human. He starts developing feelings for her. As bizarre the plot may sound, Warm Bodies is an interesting movie. Violence is not on-the-face kind and the movie itself is pretty cute for one involving romancing a zombie.

And that brings us to the topic, the South Korean zombie movie that I happened to watch last day, Train To Busan. Now one thing that I noticed about Korean movies is that they never go for a middle path. Its always extremities for them. Here also, the two hour running time is fully packed with extreme action and emotion. Everybody runs around and fight each other with zombies multiplying rapidly around them. We never get time off to think about what's happening on screen. Some of the zombie effects, especially in climax, reminded me of World War Z, but this one is infinitely better than the Brad Pitt vehicle in all aspects.

With all the action and melodrama crammed up, there were a few miss steps in the movie too. Some decisions made by characters seemed too improbable in the situations. Many of them were made up just to ensure that zombies reach the main characters when the director wanted them to. The movie tried to send some messages across about being unselfish and spending more time with kids, but all those were either totally muddled in the action or rendered pointless by the end.

Time Loop Time Loop Time Loop.... Repeat Endlessly

Time loop is a much repeated plot device, especially in Hollywood movies. But if made into a tightly structured, no/minimum plot holes movie, there is nothing more stimulating to the intellect. By time loop movies, I mean the ones in which events that happens in a particular time frame repeat continously.

I don't consider time travel movies like Time Cop where someone lands in past or future and alter the present, though such movies too eventually have to deal with the puzzle of looping time. You will get my point if you recall Terminator movie franchise as a whole. So that puts brilliant movies like Predestination, Looper and not-so-brilliant ones like Time Cop (it's bad-ass, not brilliant) outside our scope.

In time loop movies, most of the time, atleast one character gets aware of this phenomenon and learns to adjust his behaviour and use it to his/her/their advantage. Such movies use time loops as a plot device.





There is another category of movies in which time loop is introduced as just a narrative device. Here, the looping of time doesn't happen in actual. Sometimes the makers try to show different point of views by repeating the events.

One movie that comes to mind is Vantage Point where an assassination attempt on the US President is shown from the POV of different characters. Each loop introduce us to some new facts that adds on to our understanding of the plot.




Sometimes the makers try to visualise how a minor happening can alter the outcome greatly. German movie Run Lola Run directed by Tom Tykwer is one such brilliant gem of a movie. In this film, a girl has 20 minutes to get some cash to save her boyfriend. Three scenarios are enacted where Lola runs to arrange cash and all three has drastically varied results due to slight variations in her behaviour. The director leaves certain ambiguity as to whether she is aware of the situation.




Now if we check out the movies where protagonist(s) are aware of time loop, the choices are great. We have Source Code, a science fiction thriller starring Jake Gyllenhall, who has to solve a terror plot by living the last 8 minutes of the attack continuously till he makes a breakthrough. And he has to do it by occupying the body of a stranger.




Groundhog Day starring the effervescent Bill Murray as an arrogant weather reporter who is forced to cover an event that he despises is the first blockbuster featuring time loop concept. In this feel-good comedy, the protagonist has to relive countless times the Groundhog Day, a yearly tradition in a small town. It's a hilarious movie.

In the summer blockbuster Edge of Tomorrow, Tom Cruise learns to fight dangerous aliens by living and dying in a loop.




Most of the movies that I covered here uses huge budget, elaborate sets and sophisticated special effects to help with the narration. But ARQ, this new movie that I watched last day ingeniously puts itself forward using minimum budget, just handful of characters and a rundown garage as it's set.


In a world were all energy sources are depleted, an engineer invents a perpetual motion machine which triggers a time loop. He wakes up from a dream to see his long-gone girlfriend by his side and four invaders soon turns up. He is killed and wake up again remembering the previous episode. Now each time he tries to unknot the puzzle, he gets killed only to wake up again.

What makes ARQ stand out is the number of twists that the makers introduce in each segment. Every guess work and every expectation of viewers are thwarted systematically when the motives and back stories of each characters are revealed one by one.

Are there any other movies you feel that I missed? Are there any Indian movies that feature time loop? Feel free to comment.

പുലി പിടിച്ചതും പിടിക്കാത്തതും

പുലിമുരുകൻ കേരളക്കര ഇളക്കിമറിക്കുകയാണല്ലോ. ഞാനും കഴിഞ്ഞ ദിവസം പോയി കണ്ടു നോക്കി. ചില കാര്യങ്ങൾ പിടിച്ചു, ചിലത് പിടിച്ചില്ല. 

പുലി പിടിച്ചത്:

1) മോഹൻലാൽ. പടം കണ്ടുകൊണ്ടിരിക്കുമ്പോൾ ഇങ്ങേർക്ക് ഒരു കടുവയെയൊക്കെ തട്ടാനുള്ള  ശേഷിയുണ്ട് എന്ന് വിശ്വസിച്ചു പോയി. തന്റെ പ്രായത്തെ വെല്ലുന്ന പ്രകടനം തന്നെയാണ് അദ്ദേഹം കാഴ്ച വെച്ചത്.

2) പീറ്റർ ഹെയ്ൻ: മുകളിൽ പറഞ്ഞതിന്റെ ഒരു നല്ല പങ്ക് ക്രെഡിറ്റ് പീറ്റർ ഹെയ്നിന് അവകാശപ്പെട്ടതാണ്. ഈ സിനിമയുടെ ജീവൻ ഇതിലെ സംഘട്ടനം മാത്രമാണ്.

3) ഗ്രാഫിക്സ്: മലയാളത്തിൽ മികച്ച ഗ്രാഫിക്സും ഇഫക്റ്റ്സും ഉപയോഗിച്ചു നിർമ്മിച്ച പടം പുലിമുരുകൻ തന്നെയാണ്.  ഇതിൽ എന്തെങ്കിലും ക്ഷീണം സംഭവിച്ചെങ്കിൽ കളി മാറുമായിരുന്നു.  ചുരുക്കത്തിൽ ഈ മൂന്ന് ചേരുവകളും കൃത്യമായി ചേര്‍ന്നത് ചിത്രത്തെ രക്ഷിച്ചു.

4) നിർമാതാവ്: കൈവിട്ട കളിയായിട്ടും ചുളയിറക്കിയ മുളകുപാടം മുതലാളിയാണ് രാജാവ്.

5) കുട്ടിമോഹൻലാൽ.

6) ഈ വിജയം മലയാള ചലച്ചിത്ര നിർമ്മാണരംഗത്ത് പുതിയ പ്രതീക്ഷകൾ തീർക്കും. കൂടുതൽ പണം ഇറക്കാനുള്ള ധൈര്യം ഗുണപരമായി നല്ല മാറ്റം ഉണ്ടാക്കിയേക്കാം. കൂടുതൽ ലാഭം കിട്ടുമ്പോൾ നിർമാതാക്കൾ നല്ല ചെറിയ പടങ്ങൾ എടുക്കാനും ധൈര്യപ്പെടും.

പുലി പിടിക്കാത്തത്:

1) പൊട്ടക്കഥ. സാധാരണ ആക്ഷൻ ചിത്രങ്ങളിൽ ഒരു സംഘട്ടനരംഗത്തിൽ നിന്ന് അടുത്തതിലേക്ക് എത്താനുള്ള ഒരു ഉപാധി മാത്രമാണ് കഥ. ഇതിൽ അങ്ങനെ ആയിരുന്നെങ്കിൽ എത്ര നന്നായിരുന്നു...!

2) ആക്ഷൻരംഗങ്ങളിലെ പശ്ചാത്തല സംഗീതം എന്നാൽ ചെകിട്ടിനടുത്ത് ചെണ്ടകൊട്ടുന്നതല്ലെന്ന് ഈ മറുതായോട് ആരെങ്കിലും പറയെടേ...

3) അന്യഭാഷാ നടന്മാർ: ചിത്രത്തിന് ഒരു ഗുണവും ഇവർ ചെയ്തതായി തോന്നിയില്ല. വലിയൊരു നടനായ മകരന്ദ് ദേശ്പാണ്ഡെയെയും "വലിയൊരു" നടിയായ നമിതയെയും വിഡ്ഢിവേഷം കെട്ടിച്ചത് സംവിധായകന്റെ പാപ്പരത്തമാണോ മോഹൻലാലിനെ പൊലിപ്പിക്കാനുള്ള സൈക്കിളോടിക്കൽ മൂവോ?

4) എന്നു വച്ച് നമ്മുടെ സ്വന്തം നടന്മാർ അസാമാന്യ പ്രകടനമൊന്നുമായിരുന്നില്ല. താടി ലാൽ മാത്രം നന്നായിരുന്നു. അഭിനേതാക്കളുടെ പ്രശ്നമല്ല. തിരക്കഥ പ്രശ്നം.

The Little Prince: The Spoiled Version

Sometime back someone asked me to recommend a book for their kids to read. I suggested The Little Prince, a novella written by French aviator Antoine D'Saint Exupery. I feel that it is a book every kid should read. And one that every adult should read. Infact it is one book that, I feel one should read while one's a kid and then re-read and re-read throughout the entire life. I read it that way.

I got hold of a Malayalam translation of The Little Prince when I was 10 years old. After reading it, I was immensely happy, amazed and sad at the same time. Such a book it was. And then I went through it innumerable times till the book was battered and eventually withered. Every time I was as emotional as the first time. But as I grew up I could make more sense of it. And now I feel that this short book in turn helped me in making sense of the world around me.

Then I heard they made a movie of it. And it was getting glowing reviews from all over the world. And it amassed a 90% fresh rating in Rotten Tomatoes. And I watched it.

And it was terrible.

The plot of the novel is about an aviator who crash landed in Sahara, meeting a Prince, who left his very demanding rose flower on his tiny asteroid which is threatened by weeds of Baobab trees. It's about unconditional love, about belonging to someone, about the differences between kids and adults, about living and about dying.

And what did the movie-makers do?

They invented a new story set in present times and made all the stuff from the book a flashback/fairy-tale. It worked fine till the part where the actual story ended. And then they did the unthinkable. They Hollywoodized the ending. They did away the ambiguity of the original, which infact was the reason why the book was re-readable. They exposed what happened to the Prince, to his rose, to his fox and to the aviator. And to top it all they introduced a Toy Story-ish action climax which satisfy the shallows.

The kids who watched the movie first will never ever be able to appreciate the ending of the novel because in spite of the novel searching for the Prince and his beloved rose on faraway stars, the kid know where the Prince is and that the rose is dead.

And that is a real crime committed by the ones who made this movie.