ENDHIRAN – The pre-experience fiesta!

And the countdown to what better be(!) a feverish cinematic experience has kicked itself off in all the glorious spirits – I’ve decided to run pretty high along!


Because, here’s what I am ready to binge in – our ego – in all logical sanity –does deserve a second chance after the Sivaji debacle(! - again) – Here’s my freakish why – And all this is besides another irresistible, self-invited attempt at pulling out that spare neuron out of Shankar’s brain (which we believe he’s born with). It’s a movie-lover thing that we simply cannot go blind over !

Anyways-

One-and the safest bet of all - Shankar’s sensibilities – we are hoping against hope that he did sit over his book of learning while the world was recessing, on what went wrong with his last experiment with, well, the almost same team . If he tragically didn’t, God save his divine status quo in the critics books.

Two-and this has to be the trump – the world class team involved – from the visual creators of Avatar (and terminator! and Jurassic park!) to our very own masters of the soil – Rahman and the late Sujatha .

Three – One of the best thinkers Tamil Cinema sadly had to let go of – the late Sujatha’s writing - So this movie ought to live around a story despite the gig and the unavoidable need to cater to the mass. It was born out of Sujatha’s head, something that has not often gone wrong.

Four – And Finally – the demigod himself ! This probably could make one of the last sparkling moments of the incredulous journey of RajniKanth, the phenomenon, no other star has experienced. I’m touting for Endhiran for a very good chance for the man to begin his humble sign off from limelight. So, give us a last Rajni- experience while you can and move around as you hear younger voices (but still the claps). Maybe you are done. Almost!

And lastly – here’s what we might be missing – Sujatha’s dialogues. A better cinematography (not that Rathnavelu could go bad under such expectation but where did Ravi K Chandran or P.C Sreeram have to go!?) and the classic Thotta Tharani !

I will keep away from commenting on the music. For those who had to hiss under the breath(like me) in devastated expectations, come on, it’s Rahman, after all and he does need to make compromises with a Rajni film. But who knows? It might just get grander on screen.

In utter and complete hope that my spirits hold up high, in the same (if not higher) ecstasy, after I come out of it all, I am going back to the syndrome now.

If it lets me down, I am gonna give up on nobody but you, Shankar – YOU !!!!

Another sweet review

 - from Sarah Norkus, author of Eleventh Summer(which is a very beautifully told tale of a painful childhood), Until the wind changes and now The Secret Diary of Sarah Chamberlain.

- 'Really enjoyed reading 'Sugar Spring Tales'...very good introspective writer. I could feel the joy, anger, or pain of the characters through their thought processes.  My favorites stories were Autumn Leaves and Train Tales.
Renu has a gift for writing and I look forward to reading more.'
 
 
A deeply felt word of 'Thanks' to you, Sarah !!!
 
eleventhsummer

'Pasanga ' - a native gem

Some movies paint some long lasting love over your heart – for the simplicity, for the huge heart they carry and for, as we say, the simple goodness in their soul.


This wonderful little movie ‘Pasanga’, with its small-home-big-heart theme, found its way straight into the favorites of 2009, after winning so many hearts and now the national award.

I'm feeling a heartfelt sense of joy – it’s a movie that gives you an earnest trip back to those simple roots of living!

Way to go, Kollywood !

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Forget 'title', what's that thing?

       I haven’t met anyone or experienced anything in the last four hundred odd hours that could have stood the remote chances of throwing in some random seeds of inspiration in me.

I feel blank.

Yup. After about twenty minutes in plain, blank nothingness to drag to this line, I’m convinced I do. What am I waiting for? An angel to slide down the sky and hand me a magic wand and kiss me in the forehead !? Gosh. For God’s freaking sake.

But actually, as a matter of everyday thing, what sort of sign is it when you have checked sleep out that door on a cool, moonlit night, because you wanted to spend some time in the living room listening to Savage Garden with a bowl of hash browns, but the song that a decade earlier sent warm butter across your heart, does – nothing, now and you realize, to shitty misery, that you have been scraping that empty bowl too long.

Honestly, what are we supposed to do when the infamous inspiration is hiding under the dead? - Mine might have slipped right off my wrist.

Sorry, I’m running fatally low.

No. I just ran out, actually

 
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And things do move on ..

A few words from the first glorious review of ‘Sugar Spring Tales’, from the ceremonious hands of Linda Heinrich, author of Jason’s Helmet.

-  just finished reading the book. Wow! It was delightful. At first I had a problem with the adult endings, but after awhile I enjoyed sitting back and letting my mind wonder about what would happen next in the lives of these characters.

After we left Richmond, we drove to Toledo and then to Charleston, West Virginia. I read to my husband while he was driving. He enjoyed the stories also. I can certainly see this book in a gift shop.
...
 
Linda – Here is a clichéd but genuinely heartfelt ‘Thanks’ for all the encouragement and most importantly the kind smile you carried when I first got to meet you.

Visit Linda Heinrich here.


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It's good to halt every so often before moving on..

"If we are to live life in harmony with the universe, we must all possess a powerful faith in what the ancients used to call "fatum", what we currently refer to as destiny"
                                                          - quoted from the movie 'Serendipity'.

Sometimes, life takes you on a beautiful trip to places where you’ll find yourself. And you’ll discover a little something that nobody knows about you, but yourself. And when it happens, against all audacities you have ever clung on to, the best and the only thing you can do is throw your arms up in the sky and let everything that’s supposed to happen – happen, beautifully.


New York City is one such sign of a dream that merrily smiles back at you in all the right spirits of life, with such passion that a tear of hope will occur to even the most unbelieving of hearts. Amidst and under the overwhelming dreams of millions of souls that step into this city for making life bigger or to bask in the sheer joy of experiencing the seductive charm of the place, this glorious city is a woman who is artistically majestic, classic and tender – like she’s warmly taking you into her palm, giving you all that you had hoped for. And you feel alright about everything. Yet again.

It felt like some abstract beautiful life again to live thru’ this one week of some of the very best and the most exhilarating moments I’ve had in a long while. Falling in love, all over again, is probably what had happened.

Here’s to this little city of the world, that is romantic in the pure sense of what it means .


Here’s to life and all the little stops we make by those destinies that were waiting for us to arrive.


Here’s to love -


Video - Northern Sky - Beautiful Moment


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Of life and its tentacles..

.... Had been at the much hyped Hanover Book Festival, this Saturday. Typically lived up. Exactly like the end of other much hyped sensations that leave us like thawed peas – pale and wrinkled ! But there is one thing I came back home with. Met, among a bunch of others who had a platter of books to their credit, the lovely and warm Sarah Norkus, author of the successful ‘Eleventh Summer’ and the graciously sweet Linda Barron Heinrich, author of ‘Jason’s Helmet’. Both Sarah (Sally, as she is fondly called) and Linda accepted copies of ‘Sugar Spring Tales’ for an honest review and almost moved me to dramatic edges of surprise by offering me signed copies of their hugely successful books as – here’s the brilliant part – a token of encouragement!

Spending more hours walking around the tables of authors like – gulp! – Joanne Liggan (who also organizes the event every year) than at my own, kind of unshackled the staggering tensions of a newborn. It’s a big, big world of millions of brilliant writers! Save my dreams, dear Lord !!

In other news, I’m psyched up (in an uncertain way) about what the world is raving about.  ENDHIRAN.  Sure, I can’t help jiggling over kilimanjaro. And Boom Boom fires up some wildly cosmic imaginations under my nose. Yet, here's the thing - While I’m bobbing my head in utter defiance to every Rahman-loving  soul, I can’t help the shagged doubts underneath. Remember the gig around Sivaji? I’m hoping Sankar did attend his classes on learning from your own mistakes.


AND - My blog needs a visit to the spa. A tired looking daisy hanging around the Babylon of a mud-brown backdrop is just not happening!

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