One of my all time faves, thanks to MV for a remarkable rendering.

The leading scene to the song Mannippaaya is probably the only contribution of Vinnaithandi Varuvaaya to Tamil Cinema. And a very good one. It isn’t different but a very clichéd one. The way it was passionately shot made all the difference. With such a well rendered song from Rahman and Shreya, Gautam had only one choice, to build it up very well. The whole song was ecstatically sung and a major part of the song was picturized in the same way. Especially when Simbhu sings animatedly when driving a bike, been there done that.

The Alleppey night, the boat, the lyrics, the love struck Simbhu and Trisha, the choreography and even the graphically falling star all support Mannippaaya’s heat. One would wish if the whole song never moved from that place. As the song divulges into other dreamy sequences and montages, it looses the passion of the night where it starts. Nevertheless it was the only scene I loved in the film. And ofcourse, some parts of Aaromale.

Gautam sticking to Simbhu’s point of view and not showing an extra scene of Trisha when Simbhu not being present is good screen-writing but his biggest problem are the dialogues. He should probably take help from someone else or stop repeating the, “I want to make love to you” lines. Seems super artificial when squeezed into real-life situations.

P.S: The Thirukural harmony in Mannippaaya sounded unrefined.

Fanboy version of Rahman’s Hosanna mixed with the dance sequence from the bubbly 500 days of Summer.

Listening to Cat Stevens the whole of y’day was solacing. A Deep voice, lonely acoustic guitar strums and subtle harmony characterized Cat Stevens’ music. So if you like such a setting, he is the master-blaster.

This blog has already become a collection of youtube bookmarks. Adding to it, here is one more that influenced my late teen/early twenties(now that I have moved away from it). This song has much more to it than just Cat’s voice. The lyrics, in form of a dialogue between a father and son reveals a father’s remarks on his life behind him and for the son, the life ahead of him. Such philosophy!

Post from July 28th, 2007 -

I admit, I’ve been excessively obsessed with this song. Partly because I think Selvaraghavan made a crappy video of a cool song. The camera and Ravi Krishna eyes are fixated on Sonia’s bosom and I think thats a cheap thing to do, given the realistic lyrics and a great rhythm.

I propose someone to re-shoot it and make a pretty good video. Maybe with available resources, I would even re-shoot it myself at Seattle and edit it using Final Cut . Imagine this, as the electric guitar plays, a tall desi guy with a hooded black t-shirt, the mountain ranges on the backdrop, walks on a bridge while its raining. Cut it to a mall, a desi girl with her American teenage friends, walking past this chap with a wink in her eye, eating baskin robbins. Cut back, to the raining bridge. Cut again to wide angle shot, the guy walking on the alki beach with a backdrop of seattle downtown. I’m sure it will do justice to Yuvan’s cool beat. Some day…

I’m still obsessed with this idea of re-shooting the song. Currently looking for camera(!), help with shooting/editing, a desi guy, 2 non-indian females and a sunny seattle day. Coming this summer…