Annakodi – Review

It was a rather disappointing term, as it took five years and further delay for director Bharathiraja to deliver his next bout of creativity. As he quotes often, across the length and breadth of Tamil Nadu, many of the small towns and villages have a tale of their own, narrating their part of the world with staunch beliefs, faith and customary practices. Known to boldly highlight that which is often either taken for granted or shied away from, Bharathiraja usually ensures that he has left no stone unturned, in each of his movie. This is what guaranteed him six national awards, for his classic yesteryear entertainers.

A journey that began in ’16 Vayathinile’, awarded him a choice award right in his debut. Proceeding on a journey through ‘Kizhake Pogum Rail’, ‘Sigappu Rojakal’, ‘Nizhalgal’, ‘Oru Kaidhiyin Diary’, ‘Tik Tik Tik’ and many more, Bharathiraja became a brand name. With National Award winning films like ‘Mudhal Mariyadhai’ and ‘Karuthamma’, he brought out the best that Kollywood can deliver. Among most of his movies, there has been a fine thread of similarity, that brings out one of the deadliest plague of the society – caste bias and discrimination. Expressed vividly in ‘Alaigal Oivathillai’ and ‘Karuthamma’, the typical Bharathiraja touch has been about love that blooms and flourishes beyond societal stereotypes like caste, creed and money – which, disappointingly, falls emotionless and flat in ‘Annakodi’.

First there was speculation about the name, then the release date and then the movie itself; all this had only increased the expectations movie, for when there is a controversy, there’s bound to a success story. Unfortunately, none of that marketing worked the trick here. First things first – the film is period set, probably close to independence, which is evident in the police’s half pants. Two small villages that nurture the hero and heroine each, and as predictable as it can get, the two populus are eternally at customary loggerheads. And there begins the saga of love. Starting off at a mutual taunting misunderstanding, as it most often happens, the two fall madly in love with one another. There is a bad yet influential man in the village, who composes the rest of the story, and who gets who in the end, is ultimately all ‘Annakodi’ is about. Well, easier said than done.

Bharathiraja has always defined love in new and out-of-the-box the box explanations. This one is also an off-beat portrayal of how the lead pair influence the life of one another and change their lives forever. Set in the backdrop of draught stricken village that thrives on farmer and shepherd population, forms an easy excuse for the love birds to join hands stealthily every now and then. This delivers a definite earthen feeling, where the director scores high, as always. Add to this, there are a lot more twists in the story, than you can ever imagine. However, despite all this, it is quite monotonous.

The second half is quite a balm, but not sure whether it is because there is a much needed break in between, or because there is actually more stuff per scene than the former. The last hour brings out most of what was intended to be a part of the movie – it ranges between love, separation, angst and anger. Going further, the movie gets highly predictable at every frame, and the story is no suspense. As if caught up in a drama competition, running out of time, climax is quite sudden, but comes as an entertaining relief.

On the other hand, everyone is advancing and becoming up to date, and our dear director is no exception to the rule. The bad side of the advancement is exposure and raw details, a glimpse of which was served in the teasers. Although the government cleared the film with U/A at the Censor Board, no adult may want the a child watching it, even under their supervision. Since it is a big director’s movie, Lakshman Narayan, Karthika and Manoj are to get a big break, but their contribution on this regard seems too little. GV Prakash has done a good job with regard to background score and music, and justifies the movie to the best extent possible, from his side of work. Picture is crystal clear, so make up could have taken care of, a little better. If the teaser made you squirm in your seat, then please be informed that it was after all only the teaser, while the whole movie lies ahead of it.

In all, the movie is a hard core love struggle, the burden of which reaches the audience by all means. After all the painful wait and suspense about the movie, the output is not quite satiating; and it is disappointing that this comes from one of the most sought after directors. To savour your earthen tastes, and for your love for the director, you can try and sit through the two hours odd long story once.

Verdict: You may like it for Bharathiraja

Rating: 1.75/5

Social Gestures and the Social Web – Part I

FROM the Below Article was Copied from the website http://blog.engag.io/2012/04/15/social-gestures-and-the-social-web-part-i/

The Original Author – MR.  William Mougayar

Social Gesturing is at the heart of the social web. Those little signals have a small footprint but a large impact.

The crowd-sourced nature of social gestures adds up to a lot of value. After all, Facebook with all its might was mostly based and founded on 3 basic social gestures: liking, sharing and linking, each taking a fraction of a second to accomplish.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the hierarchy of social gestures in terms of value and potential.  And I came-up with the following way to organize them into a taxonomy where certain gestures are grouped with each other according to the objective they are meant to achieve and the purpose they target: People, Interests or Content.

The graph below is self-explanatory. The objective of social gesturing is to a) grab Attention, b) Express yourself, c) Curate interests (or content), d) develop Relationships, or e) Engage with people.

The most commonly used Social Gestures are Sharing, Linking and Liking when it comes to Content, and Following or Friending when it comes to People. But the area that holds the most promise is Engagement with People.

There is an ascending amount of time it takes to accomplish each gesture. If you look at the two extremes, Discussing something with someone is a lot more time-consuming than Clicking on content or Sharing it.

Personally, and for Engagio, I’m very interested in the gestures around Social Engagement. I think we’re just getting started in that segment, and I plan to cover more on that topic in Part II of this post.

In the meantime, what is your opinion on the following 3 questions:

• Are there other Social Gestures that you are seeing?

• Do you see new ones that are emerging?

• Which ones do you use the most?

Related articles

• Engagio: A Canadian Startup Story and the future of the Social Web (startupnorth.ca)
• Engagio wants to be your one-stop social inbox (gigaom.com)
• How to swear in Italian (afrahm.wordpress.com)
• Don’t Export Your American Hand Gestures [Infographic] (communicationstudies.com)
• ShadowPuppets prototype lets you pinch-to-zoom, click, and scroll with shadow gestures (theverge.com)

Engagio: Recognize & Build Relationships On Social Network Easily

Engagio helps you to track your online conversations and allows you to develop meaningful relationships from them. In short, it is your tool to find quality relationships.

Pitched as ‘Your inbox for online conversations and relationships’, it is a tool much like Gmail, but is for managing your conversations in social networking sites and commenting systems. Engagio gives you visibility about the people behind these conversations and reveals their social identities profile. It saves you much time and allows you to connect with others in a much better and deeper way.

Although social media has many advantages, sometimes we fall short of managing our many relationships on social networking sites. With so many friends, family members, colleagues, classmates and relatives in our contacts list, we miss out on building quality relationships with people who matter. Engagio helps you to do that and more.

Engagio believes that commenting and conversations are strong social signals. They are stronger than likes, shares and links. Comments are implicit linkages about people. After all, you only care to comment on somebody’s post and take time to do it when you like that person or what s/he has to say. Like is easy, commenting takes time and thought. Engagio studies all that and more, and give you full visibility into the potential relationships behind your comments and conversations.

The service is frictionless and derives implicit data from your normal, everyday interactions. It does not matter whether your conversations are on social networks or inside your Engagio inbox, Engagio tracks them all. You connect to your social networks and Engagio starts to track, record, analyze and report on your interaction activity.

All you need to do is to signup from the entry page or jump to your inbox. You can easily track your conversations on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Disqus-enabled sites, Hacker news comments, Foursquare and more. This is a wonderful service for everybody who wishes to build up on great relationships without putting in much time and effort.

Chat With Command Prompt

If you want personal chat with a friend

you don’t need to download any yahoo messenger
All you need is your friends IP address and Command Prompt.

Firstly, open Notepad and enter:

@echo off

:A

Cls

echo MESSENGER

set /p n=User:

set /p m=Message:

net send %n% %m%

Pause

Goto A

Now save this as “Messenger.bat”. Open the .bat file and in Command

Prompt you should see:

MESSENGER

User:

After “User” type the IP address of the computer you want to contact.

After this, you should see this:

Message:

Now type in the message you wish to send.Before you press “Enter” it should look like this:

MESSENGER

User:27.192.168.1.88

Message: Hello SoftIT!

Now all you need to do is press “Enter”, and start chatting!

Mobile Trading

The Procyon Holdings (PROHD) name is expanding again as we push out into another development area — the Android framework. When I abandoned my BlackBerry, the choice to move to the Android platform was an easy decision. Market saturation, the development community, and fluidity between devices make this platform shine.

I’ve been having a few end user problems with the current iteration of our trading website. First, the native Android Gingerbread browser lacks SVG support, an issue that has bewildered me since I read about it. I can solve this issue by using another browser such as Opera, but I would like to use the native one.

Also working with a HTML + Ajax website on a device with a touch interface feels like you are not getting the full user experience. I want to scroll down lists with my finder, click and hold to expose options, and speed around menus.

Mobile Architecture

We had to expand our design and create a few new pieces to get data to the mobile world. New items include the creation of a daemon to simply database population, exposing data via XML, and working with an existing library to enable Push notifications.

Information Flow

The Daemon runs on our server, periodically pulls transactions from the Eve API, and places that information in our wallet table.

Our previous design was that you would have to hit the transactions webpage and it would trigger an update. Getting a page to refresh on a desktop connected via broadband versus a mobile phone is quite the different experience.

Android has a framework called C2DM(Android Cloud to Device Messaging) which enables you to send lightweight push notifications to devices.

Our vision is that when a sell order clears, a large/special sale has occurred, or a significant milestone has been reached, we send a notice. This will be visible on phone’s Status Notification Bar and cause me to act if deemed important. I have been forgetting to buy or trade a particular item after the sell orders have cleared. Forget things — loose profit.

Getting data out of our database required the creation of a webservice to produce XML output from our wallet table.

Here is an example of the sale of one item in our XML feed:

<?xml version="1.0"?>  
<TransactionList>  
<Transaction>  
<transactionDateTime>2012-04-19 06:21:04</transactionDateTime>  
<typeID>21096</typeID>  
<typeName>Cynosural Field Generator I</typeName>  
<quantity>1</quantity>  
<price>1948939.91</price>  
<profit>147803</profit>  
<stationName>STATION</stationName>  
<icon>21096_32.png</icon>  
</Transaction>  
</TransactionList>

Alpha Screenshot

This screenshot is our first proof of concept. We’re able to get information from an XML feed, display it, and get/cache images from the Eve image server. Major credit goes to my trading and corporation partner James, who has been doing the development work and educating me on the Android framework.

There is a lot we want to do with the mobile version. Menus, tabs, charts, reports, and the ability to add items to a shopping cart/wish list are all things on the drawing board.

Future Collaboration

This project is our first exposure to the Android framework and after the initial learning curve, we might perhaps coolabrate with the Aideron Robotics team on Aura. So maybe some of our trading mechanics will make their way into the Aura application.

Getting the Distance between Locations using Google Maps API

Modifying my post on drawing directions in a MapView using Google's API, I have come up with a solution to get the distance between two locations. Considering the same example I modified getDirections() to the method given below which returns distance as a string in kms(or meters).

public String getDistance(double lat1, double lon1, double lat2, double lon2) {
	String result_in_kms = "";
	String url = "http://maps.google.com/maps/api/directions/xml?origin=" + lat1 + "," + lon1 + "&destination=" + lat2 + "," + lon2 + "&sensor=false&units=metric";
	String tag[] = {"text"};
	HttpResponse response = null;
	try {
		HttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
		HttpContext localContext = new BasicHttpContext();
		HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost(url);
		response = httpClient.execute(httpPost, localContext);
		InputStream is = response.getEntity().getContent();
		DocumentBuilder builder = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder();
		Document doc = builder.parse(is);
		if (doc != null) {
			NodeList nl;
			ArrayList args = new ArrayList();
			for (String s : tag) {
				nl = doc.getElementsByTagName(s);
				if (nl.getLength() > 0) {
					Node node = nl.item(nl.getLength() - 1);
					args.add(node.getTextContent());
				} else {
					args.add(" - ");
				}
			}
			result_in_kms = String.format("%s", args.get(0));
		}
	} catch (Exception e) {
		e.printStackTrace();
	}
	return result_in_kms;
}

How to get more page views for your blog

“What makes a blog popular? What drives page views?” These are the questions that we’ve been trying to answer over the last few weeks. We were on a mission to dig into the data and analyze the strongest parameters that influence the flow of visitors to WordPress.com blogs.

Out of the 30+ million blogs on WordPress.com, we randomly selected a sample of almost 100,000 blogs to perform a regression analysis. Here are our findings, together with a few recommendations. We hope that this provides some new information, and kudos to you in case you’ve already incorporated these tips into your blog – the data suggests that you’re on the right track. Keep it up!

Make your blog easy to follow – It almost sounds obvious, but the simplest way to build more awareness is to make it easier to do so. Make sure that you have the follow widget as visible as possible. If your readers receive a notification every time you post, or see your post in their reader, there is a much higher chance that they will revisit your blog.

Comments, Comments, Comments – The most successful blogs, we found, created and encouraged a dialogue with their readers. The best way to make people more engaged with your writing is for you to engage back and start a conversation. In your posts, encourage people to comment. Also, make sure that you reply to people’s comments and continue the dialogue. This back and forth conversation is a significant driver of page views; holding all else equal, every additional comment can potentially drive up to 18 incremental page views! You can start by simply asking follow-up questions at the end of each post: ”have you ever done X?”; “do you think Y is acceptable?”. You can read some more thoughts on how to build your audience  and how to get more comments.

Post Frequently and Regularly – Your readers want to know that you are there for them and that you are “on it”. If you post frequently and regularly and have enabled the follow feature as we mentioned above, checking your blog could become a daily routine for your readers. Even if it’s a short post, write something new as frequently as possible, and at regular intervals. (The Daily Post can help with ideas, as can the advice on how to get more traffic)

While these three tips were shown to be the most important drivers of page views in our analysis, you might consider other parameters, which we found as having a partially significant effect: syndicating your post to Twitter and Facebook (using Publicize), for example, could lead to additional page views.

Happy blogging!

Google to bring cheap Android tablets

The internet giant is reportedly set to launch a sub-Rs 10,000 tablet later this year.

Google has said that it will focus more on lower end tablets.

“There’s been a lot of success on some lower-priced tablets that run Android, maybe not the full Google version of Android, but we definitely believe that there is going to be a lot of success at the lower end of the market. It’s definitely an area we think is important and we’re quite focused on,” Larry Page, Google’s chief executive officer, was reported as saying.

Currently, there are a lot of cheap Android tablets in the market but these are mostly from lesser known manufacturers.

Google’s direct involvement in low cost Android tablets could be revolutionary. In fact, the online giant is reportedly set to launch a sub $200 (Rs 10,000) device this year itself. The tablet is said to have a 7 inch display with Android 4.0 operating system, a quad core processor, and WiFi for internet access.

Social Media Integration

Spotify & Social Media

Spotify music applications offer easy integration with a large variety of different, popular social media channels. With their user-friendly applications, integrating your music lifestyle into your previously established social media channels is fairly simple. Such social media channels that your Spotify application can integrate with are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr. As of this year, Spotify was completely redesigned in order to fully and completely integrate into both Facebook and Twitter accounts. The new application also has fully functioning/interactive applications, embedded into its database structure, such as last.fm, billboard.com, and Sounddrop.

Some of the key features of this fully-integrated platform offer sharing and tracking functions with your automatically-synchronized social media friends. Such functions include tracking what your friends are listening to, discovering  what sort of music and playlists are “trending”, as well as even  collaborating on shared playlists with other friends or users. These social media integration features have become such a vital part of this new social experience (i.e. Spotify) that new users are required to have a Facebook or Twitter account in order to complete registration of the service.

Last but not least, this marriage between Spotify and Facebook has also brought upon a little reverse-integration to the pairing. This reverse-integration comes from the recent addition and invention of a fully-functioning Spotify music application embedded on the Facebook website server.

Billa II – Teaser Promo

Ajith is back with Billa II after the successful 2007 flick Billa which was directed by Vishnuvardhan. Expected to release on 25th May, Billa II is supposed to be a prequel to Billa ( unlike Don-2 which was a sequel ) and talks about how David, an ordinary man from coastal Tamil Nadu becomes the dreaded don Billa. Directed by Chakri Toleti  and also starring Parvathy Omanakuttan, Bruna Abdullah, Vidyut Jamwal and Sudhanshu Pandey in supporting roles who all make their debut in Tamil cinema, the film has music by Yuvan Shankar Raja and R.D.Rajasekharis the DOP.

Expected to be the big ticket summer Tamil release, watch this interesting teaser for now.

ORU KAL ORU KANNADI – REVIEW

RED GIANT MOVIES UDHAYANIDHI STALIN PRESENTS:

ORU KAL ORU KANNADI****

A Movie Story & Directed by Rajesh M who has done the film neatly in commercial and full of comedy.
The producer Udhayanidhi himself is the Hero of the film with Santhanam making full comedy. Heroine is Hansika, Saranya Ponvanna Udhayanidhi mother, Uma Padbhanan Hansika’s mother and father is Shiyaji Shinde. With varadha rajan and others.

From the beginning itself the movie moves in the comedy track and full of comedy mixed with stunts, songs in foreign locations. Songs are all good, music by Harris Jayraj, Camera Balasubramniam, Lyrics Na Muthukumar, Arts: Jacy, Choreography: Dinesh, Stunts Rajasekar, Editing Vivek Harshan PRO: Nikil

Very neatly and in commercial and comedy fully with excellent timings by both Udyanidhi and santhanam speaks about the story. Udhayanidhi being produced many films is hero in this and does not looks like a new actor and done his part in very good manner with Hansika a beauty fitted perfectly for the Hero.

An wonderful comedy mixed commercial movie with all credits.

Kumar srinivas
Photo/video journalist

Related articles

• Oru Kal Oru Kannadi (5inetune.com)
• Audio Beat: Oru Kal Oru Kannadi (thehindu.com)
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Explore the REST API

I have had the pleasure of working with the WordPress.com REST API over the past few weeks and am very excited to start “dogfooding” this resource everywhere I can.

One cool feature is that all the endpoints are self-documenting. In fact, the documentation for the REST API is built by the API itself! With this information we were able to build a console to help debug and explore the various resources that are now available through the new API. So let me introduce you to the new REST console for WordPress.com.

A word of caution: the console is only available when you are logged into WordPress.com and is hooked up to the live system, so be careful with your POST requests!

At its simplest you can supply the method, path, query, and body for the resource you wish to examine (it’s pre-populated with /me). Press “Submit” to see the response status for your request and an expandable JSON object that you can explore. All links listed under meta are active, so click one to make another request.

To get a better idea of what kind of parameters a request can take, select it under the “Reference” section. It will then provide an interface with some contextual help to let you know which path, query, and body parameters it accepts, what each of those parameters are for, and a field for you to provide the value.

Related articles

• Explore the REST API (developer.wordpress.com)
• How to analyze your Blog Traffic using WordPress Stats API (selvabalaji.wordpress.com)
• Apigee v2 Console: Making learning APIs as simple as possible, but not simpler (apigee.com)
• Phasing out old API, upgrade your WordPress plugins! (flattr.net)
• REST easy with JIRA 5 (blogs.atlassian.com)

vela vela song Lyrics from Velayudham

ada vela vela vela vela velayudham
nee otha paarva partha podhum nooraayudham

coming down town, coming to the sea
he is the man like shiny bee
breaking to the barriers …..
gonna come and carry us
don shout out
come get some
you cant get down, he is velayutham

ada vela vela vela vela velayutham
nee otha paarva partha podhum nooraayudham

chillax chillax song Lyrics From Velayutham

Image via Wikipedia

chillax chillax chillax chillax chillax..
chillax chillax chillax chillax chillax..

manjanathi marathu katta
maiya vechi mayaki puta
naatu katta townu katta
rendum kalandha semma katta
kaiyu rendum urutu katta
kannu rendum vetta vetta
nenjukulla ratham sotta
eduku vara kitta..

sooriyane thevaiyille vithudalama
rathiriya inga mattum inga vachukalama
thirupachi meesaiyile sikkikalama
neeyachu naanachu paathukalama

manjanathi marathu katta
maiya vechi mayaki puta
naatu katta townu katta
rendum kalandha semma katta
kaiyu rendum urutu katta
kannu rendum vetta vetta
nenjukulla ratham sotta
eduku vara kitta..

dheem dheem thananam dheem dheem thananam
ah ah..ahhaaa..ah ah ahhaa

en odhattu sayathula
ottikolla vaada ulla
patthu veral theekuchiya
pattha veika vaadi pulla
kattabomma peran ne katthi meesa veeran
muthan vechu kuthi kollu sethu poren
mayavi tha neeyum inga mayangiputta nanum
athangara moginiyum vaa nee enna katti pudikka

chillax chillax chillax chillax chillax
chillax chillax chillax chillax chillax
chillax chillax chillax chillax chillax
chillax chillax chillax chillax chillax
chilllllaaaaa….x chillax baby

en odambu panju metha
kitta vandhu kaatu vitha
un iduppu vaazha maata
naa pudicha thaanga maata
sandhu pondhu veedu nee vanthu vilayadu
patta vaanga thevaiyilla kotta podu
vetiya na sethu un marapula korthu
ennanamo pannuriye nenjukitta ketta kanava (ketta kanavu..)

chillax chillax chilla chilla chillax
chillax chillax chilla chilla chillax

manjanathi marathu katta
maiya vechi mayaki puta
naatu katta townu katta
rendum kalandha semma katta
kaiyu rendum urutu katta
kannu rendum vetta vetta
nenjukulla ratham sotta
eduku vara kitta..

sooriyane thevaiyille vithudalama
rathiriya inga mattum inga vachukalama
thirupachi meesaiyile sikkikalama
neeyachu naanachu paathukalama
chillax chillax chillax chillax chillax..
chillax chillax chillax chillax chillax..
chillax chillax chillax chillax chillax..
chillax chillax chillax chillax chillax..
chillax chillax chillax

Its not about the so called culture and tradition…!

Image via Wikipedia

Got to watch the Tamil movie – Vamsam in theater few days back. As I was much impressed with the director Pandiraj’s previous movie “pasanga”, my expectations was lil bit high. And the review in Ananda vikadan – a Tamil weekly magazine also added more expectations in to me. While watching the movie I was lil bit disappointed with a usual village subject with normal stuffs. But the efforts were good and cleanly displayed. The second half of the movie is good, especially Jayaprakash and Kishore’s performance were extraordinary. But I feel, director Pandiraj can do much more than this. I feel for these kind of movies the music is most important one. But this movie failed to impress with the music. But one thing I hate with this move and not only with this movie and with all other movies about the particular caste system. told positive or negative, but it creates impact on common people. Cinema is not only a entertainment media for most ppl, it travels beyond that. It gets into many lives and hearts. And a sensitive media too. This generation doesn’t need the things related to caste system and the stories related to that. It will create a impact on this generation too. We don’t want to see a caste based division and discrimination again with our generation. And we need our next generation without caste existence. I’m aware that these caste and subdivision are created with some good reason, but all the ex-generation gentlemen spoiled those values and now it is carried with different note and intention. And with the rapidly changing in the attitude of the living style in people, these things doesn’t mean much. So better to avoid to deal it detail in movies. Coming to this film Vamsam, the movie deals with a south region caste and portrayed the so called tradition and culture. The worst part is , few of my friends being a good critic , they like this movie and praised this movie blindly with no reason. I wondered why it was…then while discussing to them in detail, I came to know that they are from the same caste and region and they feel proud about this. I’m not finding a fault in them. Because movies is not only a entertainment , it also creates impacts. What we say culture and tradition in movies are not actually. Things were created for good cause and later it has been used for different cause. Lets create a new caste & religion free world for our next modern generation. Wish every director should have some social responsibility.ps: about the movie is afterall my views and not review. Perception varies…just expressed my views.

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Sura Music Review

Sura – Mass Curry

Ilaya Thalapathi Vijay’s 50th movie ‘Sura’ has music scored by Mani Sharma, the man who is supposedly busy with Telugu and Tamil projects. Perhaps being busy, has left him with little time that he has used the tunes of the best of his Telugu hits in this album.

The music will be a delight to the fans of Vijay with a few mass numbers that might excite them and imagining Vijay dancing to the tunes, it will be a visual treat at the theatres.

1. Thanjavoor Jillakkari

Singers: Hemachandra and   Saindhavi

Lyricist: Na. Muthukumar

A youthful and fast song that will definitely match Vijay’s dancing talent. The humming at the back is hum-worthy and will echo in your mind. Hemachandra and Saindhavi add that essential pep in this duet. A noticeable point in the song is the usage of the chorus and the humming in between verses. The beats might remind you of a few songs composed by Mani Sharma before. And just like the trend would be, a few English words in the lyrics have been penned by Muthukumar, making this number youthful.

2. Vetri Kdi Yeathu

Singers: Ranjith and Mukesh

Lyricist: Vaali, S.P. Raajakumar

The song starts of with a composition that conveys a symbol of victory or achievement and then the song has a short stanza talking about the hero. This song is probably this introduction. With a steady tempo, Mani Sharma has used the percussions to good effect, with a catchy tune and the humming of the chorus. Ranjith’s voice is bright as usual and his Tamil diction is flawless. Vaali’s lyrics talk about the hero’s attitude towards life and the society.

3. Vanga Kadal Ellai

Singers: Naveen and Maladhi Lakshmanan

Lyricist: Kabilan

This is a mass number with folk beats and a quintessential Vijay movie song. Nothing really in this song will entertain you. Even the lyrics won’t find your attention and you may even feel déjà vu listening to the music.

4. Siragadikkum Nilavu

Singers: Karthik and Reeta

Lyrics: Snehan

All movie albums these days look like having at least one song with Karthik singing and this song satisfies that craving. A fast paced melodious song between the hero and the heroine, with lyrics about love. The music by Mani Sharma in this one is just another average fare composition. Except for Karthik and Reeta’s voice, nothing is praiseworthy in this song.

5. Thamizhan Veera Thamizhan

Singer: Rahul Nambiar

Lyricist: Kabilan

“Thamizhan Vera Thamizhan…” starts of with a catchy tune and Rahul Nambiar’s voice adds energy to this song. This is basically a paean talking about the hero’s dynamism. With some excellent humming and percussions, this song might see its way in the background of the movie.

6. Naan Nadanthal Adhiradi

Singer: Naveen, Shoba Chandrasekar, Janani Madhan

Lyricist: Kabilan

Another hit tune in a recent Telugu movie, Mani Sharma has used the tune effectively for the Tamil version. This song is sung by Naveen, Janani and Vijay’s mother Shoba Chandrasekar. The song starts of with some excellent ‘string’ work and continues with drums that make it a semi-fast song. The string composition is used skillfully in between as well. In between verses, the fillers are just about average and include English lyrics. Lyrics by Kabilan talk about the praises, both the hero and heroine exchange. Over all, a catchy tune.

All in all, as the movie would demand, this album is a mass entertainer that will entertain Vijay’s enormous fan base. Though a few numbers entertain, this album is just above mediocre.

Mani Sharma has used four lyricists that include veteran Vaali, Na. Muthukumar, Kabilan and Snehan, who all have done a decent job keeping in mind Vijay’s mass image.

VETTAIKAARAN MUSIC REVIEW

Music Director : Vijay Antony
Vocals : Ananthu, Mahesh Vinayakram, Krish, Suchitra, Bone Killer, Dinesh Kanagarathinam, Shankar Mahadevan, Surchith, Sangeetha Rajeswaran, Krishna Iyer, Shoba Sekar, Charulatha Mani, Shakthi Sree.
Lyrics : Kabilan, Viveka, Annamalai.

Produced by M. Balasubramanian and B. Gurunath Meyyappan and directed by B. Babu Sivan, this much-hyped film of Vijay could be released for Diwali. Vijay appears to play the role of an autorikshaw driver who wishes to ‘bring peace’ to the country. Anushka Shetty, Salim Ghouse, Vivek, Srihari and Srinath star along with him. Many racy action sequences in this movie appear to have been done boldly by Vijay himself, which could be a treat for his fans. The music for this film has been composed by Vijay Antony (whose ‘Ninaithale Inikkum’ has been doing pretty decently).

Puli Urumuthu—
Vocals: Ananthu, Mahesh Vinayakram.
Lyrics: Kabilan

A song full of hyperbolic expressions, obviously an action-packed number! Heavy use of Indian percussive instruments characterize this song which takes off in the madhyama shruti with shades of Mayamalavagowla raga .

The relentless pace of the song could add to the dramatic effect on screen.

Chinna Thamarai—
Vocals: Krish, Suchitra, English Rap: Bone Killer, Tamil Rap: Dinesh Kanagarathinam.
Lyrics: Viveka

Plenty of keyboard sounds, we have here. The rather strident rhythms somehow seem to rob the song of any melody. The Tamil rap bit sounds cool. The lyrics are crisp.

Naan Adiccha—
Vocals: Shankar Mahadevan.
Lyrics: Kabilan

Poor Shankar Mahadevan tries his very best to infuse a spark into this song (probably the title number) but to no avail. The beats, the lyrics and the sentiments expressed (akin to MGR songs) are pretty jaded. A wee bit of gibberish in between, in trademark Vijay Anthony style! Strictly for Vijay fans. The start, though, is pretty stylish, with the Karaharapriya notes going ‘sa ni sa,sa ni sa, sa ni dha ma pa—pa ma ga—sa’. And there is a cute bit by Vijay’s son Sanjay at the end!

Karikalan—
Vocals: Surchith, Sangeetha Rajeswaran.
Lyrics: Kabilan

A very cheerful, smile-worthy duet based on the Tilang raga, which may hit the charts soon. Lovely inputs from the strings and percussive instruments. Well sung too, especially Sangeetha. The impish background vocals hold up the folksy mood of the song well.

En Ucchi Mandai—
Vocals: Krishna Iyer, Shoba Sekar, Charulatha Mani, Shakthi Sree.
Lyrics: Annamalai

Another very typical Vijay number, with predictably fast rhythms and blasé lyrics. How many such songs must Vijay endure before he moves on?

Verdict:

Vijay Anthony appears to have been trapped by the image of actor Vijay (as a dancer) which seems to have narrowed his musical options. The songs, coming one after another, sound similar rhythm-wise. One sincerely hopes the film has been crafted well and does not sink like ‘Kuruvi’ or ‘Villu’, in which case, the songs could be forgotten in a trice.

Tamil Movie Unnai Pol Oruvan Review

Main Cast : Kamal Hassan,Mohanlal
Director : Chakri Toleti
Producer : Kamal Hassan
Banner : Raajkamal Films International
Writers: : Ee.Raa.Murugan,Neeraj Pandey
Music Director : Shruti Haasan
Rview by : Unnai Pol Oruvan
Rating: 3.5/5

It was the Kamal Haasan-starrer ‘Kuruthi Punal’, made years back and directed by P.C.Sreeram, which had made me much prejudiced. I was not at all impressed by the way the Govind Nihalani-directed ‘Droh Kaal’ was remade. And it was this prejudiced kind of thought that led me to expect ‘Unaipol Oruvan’ to be a pale copy of the Hindi movie, ‘A Wednesday’, which was simply astounding. But, to be honest, my prejudices were all shattered. Director Chakri, Kamal Haasan and Mohanlal have teamed up to give a faithful remake of the original Nasseeruddin Shah-Anupam Kher starrer, with the message intact. As the movie was beginning, I was telling myself that in ‘Unaipol Oruvan’, it would be Kamal Haasan who’d be the hero and not the ‘aam admi’ (commom man), whom Nasseeruddin Shah had so sensitively portrayed in ‘A Wednesday’ (once again prejudiced thinking!). But it has to be pointed out that the makers left the ‘aam admi’ element intact and didn’t disrupt the total fabric of the original theme.
Well, coming to the story, it all takes place in flashback mode. Raghavan Maraar (Mohanlal), who had been the Commissioner of Police, recalls an incident that had happened earlier and changed his outlook itself. It all began with a guy (Kamal Haasan) planting explosives at certain strategic places and then calling Raghavan Maraar and asking him to release four dreaded terrorists, who are lodged in jail. Maraar, who first doesn’t know whether to believe it or not, is forced to believe the guy when he finds explosives hidden in the police station just near his office. Maraar and his men swing into action. But the guy who contacts them over phone is clever enough to leave no traces of his location. And from here the story takes off.
The highlight of the film, as told earlier, is its theme, startling and even introspective. The credit of course goes to Neeraj Pandey, who had scripted and directed ‘A Wednesday’, but the makers of ‘Unaipol Oruvan’ too deserve to be appreciated, for having dared to remake such a startling and sensitive movie. Of course those who had seen ‘A Wednesday’ may not feel that ‘Unaipol Oruvan’ is as powerful. But this may just be a misconception as you are already familiar with the theme and know what’s going to happen finally. Of course the lacks, only to some extent the tautness that the original film had, but this happens during re-makes. Remakes rarely match up to originals.
Performances
Kamal Haasan is his very usual self playing the central role and gets into the skin of the character with perfection. It’s better not to compare his performance with that of Nasseeruddin Shah. Mohanlal as Raghavan Maraar is good. Of course you may like Anupam Kher in the original better, but it’s better not to compare the two films and the performances. The others fit into their roles well.
Technical aspects
Cinematography by Manoj Soni is good. And so is the art-work by Thotta Tharani. Editing by Rameshwar.S.Bhagat is also good.
Music
Shruthi Haasan, the young daughter of Kamal Haasan, who recently made her acting debut with the Hindi film ‘Luck’, makes an impressive debut as music composer scoring music for ‘Unaipol Oruvan’ in a very excellent manner.
Script
There’s nothing new or different to speak about the script here. It’s in fact almost a scene-by-scene adaptation of the original and even the dialogues are the same.
Direction
Chakri deserves to be appreciated. It’s not to be considered that a re-make director needs no talents. The director has to be in full control of things, whether it’s an original or a remake and it’s the director who makes the film or mars it. Many re-makes have been marred due to poor direction. And it’s hence that Chakri deserves to be appreciated as he has made an almost faithful remake of the original.
As a tail piece let me add something. One of my journalist friends recently remarked that if Amitabh Bachchan, who was reportedly first approached for ‘A Wednesday’, had done it, the film would have gone places and got more mileage too, on the commercial front. (No, he wasn’t underrating Nasseeruddin Shah, one of the finest actors that we have amongst us). ‘Unaipol Oruvan’ scores on this front, with Kamal Haasan having his own sway over the box office all over the South and Mohanlal being a decisive force at the Kerala box-office. Still doubts remain as to whether fans, who look for the usual commercial elements, would be satisfied with the film. The climax being greeted by booing in a release centre on day one makes you think on these lines. For a fan, it’s not the ‘aam admi’ aspect that matters. It’s the star that counts. So, how would the film fare at the box office? Let’s wait and see.

Overall verdict- Faithful remake; makes an impact!
Rating: 3.5/5

Aadhavan Trailer & Songs Review

This is something never expected from the great music director Harris Jayaraj. The recent audio release of ‘Aadhavan’ turned spotlights of entire town to heed for the melodies. However, soon after hearing, the masses were enraged as Harris Jayaraj had loosely inserted his old own compositions. It’s more illustrious with ‘Hasiliye Fisiliye’ that is nothing but ‘Ada Gada’ from Satyam and ‘Oh Mohalai’ from ‘Arasaaktchi’. ‘Vaarayo’ reminds us off nothing but ‘Un Sirpinil’ from Pacchaikili Muthucharam and ‘Nenje Nenje’ from Ayan.

Earlier, Harris Jayaraj used to add the words from Christian prayer songs…. The exemplification lies with ‘Mudhal Naal Indru’ from ‘Unnale Unnale’ where you will hear ‘Hosanna…Hosanna’. Likewise, the song ‘Oru Maalai’ from ‘Ghajini’ has ‘Alleluia’…

Well, the ‘Minnale’ song – Vaseegara was nothing but a strong base of A.R. Rahman’s ‘Pudhu Vellai Malai’ as we hear the instrumental on flute.

Watch the Aadhavan Trailer.