Flights of Fantasy with Aruna Sairam as the pilot

There are some days when you know the luck is on your side. Today was definitely one of them for me. How often can you go to a ticketless concert without a pass and enter Chowdiah hall and find a seat right in the middle, 9 rows from the stage? The answer is once and for me it was today. 

Heard Aruna Sairam and like the other 1000 odd folks who were overflowing and filled the stage as well was mesmerised. Aruna Sairam has the potential to create a rock concert with all the ages (from the late 70's to the early 10's) participating with equal gusto. It was a spectacular concert. And the best thing this time was that I did not have to ask the maama or maami sitting next to me as to what raga was being sung. I just used my mobile and google instead. Guess they never thought of that when they made Google. With information at my finger tips, I actually understood the raagas being sung as they were sung!

She sang about 15 songs for a full 3 hours. The main piece was the RTP in Madhyamavathi with the Pallavi beckoning all the 8 Lakshmis. Each Lakshmi had her own Raga to welcome her, of course! The concert had everything...the Abhangs, the thillanas, the oothukaadu songs. Aruna had all of us eating out of her hands! Always a pleasure to be a part of such an event even if our role is to just listen and walk away.

PS: As in a Oothukaadu song that I heard Aruna Sairam render, there is a small note from the Adiyaarkku Adiyaarku Adiyaar! I felt that the usual smoothness was just a little lacking. Flights of Fantasy series by Ganjam was referred by her as Flight of Fancy about 3 times! And in one of the viruttams calling Thiruthani Muruga, she Thiruthini Muruga...slight jarring from an ever perfect performer.

Closet Matters

Since we are on a roll this weekend, I did the second movie of the weekend...Dostana. Hearing the hype engines work their magic, one would have imagined this is the next best thing to sliced bread. 

By now we all know how mainstream Bollywood has decided to include them as part of mainsteam cinema in this movie. So I left my mind in the car and went in to enjoy the movie.

My verdict So-So! There were some funny moments but overall it was not a 'wow what a movie!' experience. Abhishek is best with his timing, Kiron Kher is over the top, and poor Boman is reduced to a sterotype. This movie is just being funny for the sake of being funny. And so you enjoy some moments. But everything was very surface...no depth. I guess they did not plan it that way. It as a laugh and leave comedy...so I laughed in the theatre and left!

Elephant song

When one is on a cruise boat, you are expected to sit down and enjoy what you see. Some of what you see you may like and some you may not, but sit you must. If you like the trip, you can come back again. If not, the cruise boat does not give a damn and so wont you. That was what I thought when I watched Vaaranam Aayiram. Gautam Menon, one of the few directors, to whose cinematic language I can relate best these days has presented a photo album, or coffee table book that you can flip through. The only catch being you cannot turn the pages, only he can and at his speed. Hence I write these as observations and reflections as I really am not supposed to interpret anything.

You really go through the adult life of a young man whose father provided the right kind of support or direction at the right time. A good father can be the pillar that can make a child to a fine young adult. Coming to what we saw in the journey, there were three love stories. A lot of ups and some deep downs. And how the father is there for the son in the downs. In some sense, I would have liked to see more multidimensional aspects of the relationships. I enjoyed that in Cheran's Thavamaai Thavamirundu. My interest was held during most parts of the movie. I thought the end could have been done better because I felt that it would never end! The other aspects of the movie were standard Gautam Menon fare. There were some rough edges where it felt that the whole family is enacting its love story for us. The coolness quotient for me though was the fact that Surya lives through the same college period as I did. While I clearly did not have the romantic tracks and hence the music tracks he had, I could at least sing along (thamilla sonna othhu oootharathu!!)

In terms of performances, Surya was excellent and Krishnan was awesome! So glad to see Simran back! Sameera is sweet but she has an one dimensional smile...What a smile...sigh!. Ramya or Divya Spandana was cute. All the others were in the shadows. Music is excellent, Harris Jayraj at his best. Camera work was nice with lot of shots reiterating the 1st person narrative! 

This movie is a love story made by a director for a father and for an actor he adores. The actor really nails this one! I wish the father was just a tad crisper and not without the flab! Coming to the question, will I get on the ride again...I doubt it but would definitely look at excerpts if someone were to show it to me!

The Frame and the Painting - Beautiful Picture

Here are two guys who went to the same school who kept in touch and as their professional careers matured, thought they can take the best of their worlds and create something nice or nicer. I am referring to Anil Srinivasan and Sikkil Gurucharan after I listened to their concert (can you believe it was free!!!) called Madhirakshi today. 

Easily one of the best musical experiences that I have been to in a long time. 

The thing that gets to you is the voice of Gurucharan that was enhanced by the Piano of Anil and the Ganjira of Purushottam.  Suttum Vizhicudar thaan, then an ashtapadi followed by Ksheerasagara....It went on. One amazing song after an another. They covered Sanskrit, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, and Hindi with ease. Language, obviously, did not matter. Music Did!

There was a piece where they allowed the Ganjira to have a solo play. It was the piece written by Kalki about a lady waiting for Muruga. She goes on to say that after she has seen her love, how she finds happiness in solitude. This was the portion of the song that they played. It did strike me odd that the thani piece was tagged to this song! A friend with whom I was discussing this suggested that may be the Kanjira was being played alone to reflect the solitude! I thought that it was an interesting take to the whole positioning of the thani piece in the concert.

After the vote of thanks they did an encore piece, Omana Thinkal. The audience was transfixed as if the lullaby was for them.

Amazing experience! Worth doing it again. Sikkil is part of my December must hear list!

PS: The Frame is what Anil referred to his Piano and the Painting is what he referred to Gurucharan's voice

Drum Beats!

I am writing this after 16 shows of Magic Drum, including a 3 show Sunday! There were those in the team that actually did all the 16 shows! Can you believe that? I managed to do 9 I think!

Here is an anwer to the question I had earlier...yes there is a GOD! Oh Yeah! What was a disaster of a rehearsal metamorphosised and grew into an amazing show. As the days went the performance levels went up and up. Towards the end we actually were confident that we could pull it off. 

There were several crowd favorite moments. But there were some total cast favorite moments which the whole cast was rooting for. My favorites were a few. One was the barber in Good Luck Gopal. It was one scene that always had me in splits. The other one that I loved were the Old Lady in the white crow. It was a guy doing the role of a Grand Ma and it was just too funny! I loved the Gujju accented postman in a village in Karnataka in the Last Laddoo! We had a blast with some wardrobe malfunctions where for a brief moment (pun uninteded) we saw what no audience ever wanted to see :-).

I think the coolest part is that an organization was able to generate funds for their noble cause and it was not inspite of us putting a bad show! People did walk away happy that they saw something worth their time and we were happy that the money that they paid went to something worth our time!

The Fear of God

After an absolutely nightmarish rehearsal yesterday, possibly the worst that I have had so far EVER in doing plays, I believe in GOD.

Seriously, this play has been one of the toughest. I started doing this play only to find out that I may not be able to do it. I had an important (?) wedding to attend right in the middle of the play dates. So I pulled out. Then as luck would have it they postponed the play performance dates. And yours truly was back in. And even then I had only a teeny role as I was doing back-up to another dude. His work got the better of him and he dropped out. There I was right in the thick of it without even realizing it. At about the same time, my work caught up with me with travels ever so often. If it was not work then there is always Bangalore traffic. What would have taken a crow 35 mins to travel, takes me 2 hours. Being in Bangalore traffic is akin to constipation. You want to go, but it is just not going!! I can literally let loose on the road for the last 30 sec of my travel to rehearsal.

After all this we found ourselves doing rehearsal yesterday with the knowledge sinking in that next week is the performance. We are doing it in partnership with Dream a Dream. There are 2 more days and our performance is no where near where it should be. I have begun my prayers...

Rock On - A Ballad?

You know the end of the movie in the beginning. So there is no edge of the seat suspense.
You know all the turns and twists...there were some interesting twists. But nothing out of the ordinary. So no shocks there
You have heard the music, nothing new there.
In some sense you do know the people! I guess that is what makes this work.

The movie was really unhurried in its pace. It kind of took its time to move towards the end. The end was naive but you really could not have had any other end. The strength of the movie was really the performance of all the actors and how they appeared believable! While I lack the depth to comment on the technicalities etc or argue with the story teller on how well he could have made it, I judge my liking of a movie by whether I had a good feeling when I left the theatre. The answer is I did!

Once in a while you do need these kind of movies. Something to take you back to those days, put up your feet and smile!!