Twitter is a different animal. Just like hows blogs and social networks are also distinctly different from each other, twitter the micro-blogging tool is way way different. The one thing that’s common among them is i-scratch-you and you-scratch-me back[ISY-YSM].

I have been witnessing of such blog politics at close quarters and I generally hate it as it spoils the joy of blogging and how it gets you into a sort-of unwanted race. Now this isn’t a blogpost to prove my worthiness.

Keeping the poltics of the blogosphere aside, the growth of social networks is putting people into a different stress. The one that makes you accumulate friends, colleagues and followers. You accumulate as many friends as possible at Orkut, As many colleagues at Linked In and as many “followers” at Twitter.

I infrequently update my twitter page with a silly message or two on what I watch and what I’m doing. There’s nothing more to it. I follow some friends through the twitter feed from Google Reader and there are a bunch of friends who do the same thing.

From time and again, I get notes from twitter that someone unknown to me is following me on twitter. But today was a revelation. And that scares me sometimes. Either I’m a super blogger that people aren’t just satisfied with my blogposts that they also want to follow my footsteps at Twitter. Or it is the ISY-YSM syndrome. Of course, I don’t follow those I don’t know or those who aren’t even known to me through their blogs.

Today was a revelation. I received a note from Twitter that Jason Calacanis is now following my updates on Twitter. Since Jason is a blog celebrity, I have known him through his weblog for a long time now. Jason Calacanis the owner of Weblogs Inc and Mahalo is now one of my “followers”. Yay !! or Whew !! depending on how you take it. Jason doesn’t know me but he wants to follow me on Twitter. For what ? To discover this, I drifted off to Jason’s Twitter page and I see that he has 17000+ followers and he is following 15000+ people. I don’t get it. Jason’s a nice guy and I have nothing against Jason but how does one follow 17K+ people twitters and have 15K people following them ? Scoble has even more followers and he follows more people that anyone else. I find it tough to follow just 10 people. For me that’s information overload.

This is the kind of party politics(as we call it in Tamil Nadu) that is spreading like a disease in social networks and I’m also a proud contributer to it. The ISY-YSM is also pretty evident in small networks that is anything indie. From independent personal blogs to independent writers, film makers, musicians this is very common. The very notion that independent movement is largely independent isn’t exactly true.

Movies made by studios are ripped apart by movie critics and reviewers from all over. Whereas indie-films are watched a handful crowd who are themselves budding indie film makers and they also know the film-maker in person. This makes the indie movie reviews very superfluous. Something like Madan reviewing Tamil Cinema in Vijay TV.

Madan is a integral part of who’s who of Tamil Cinema. And his reviews are also very mellow, infact they are pretty in-accurate at times, owing to the fact that he already knows the film-maker as a friend or a peer. Wouldn’t it be embarrassing to tear apart their films in a prime-time program, even if they deserve it to be that way.

If I were to make a movie as an independent film-maker, I would largely depend on blogs to get the news out but I would certainly expect a honest review of it. A good movie will eventually be noticed and a bad movie dropped even after getting enough brownie points from fellow bloggers. Wouldn’t it be embarrassing when you make a dull-headed movie and bloggers, your so-called “followers” applaud it.

Huh !! the days of our lives !!

Billa was painful. Excruciatingly. Even the best guy to do this remake job, Vishnuvardhan, failed, big time. With Billa, Ajith has exhausted all his options. What’s left ?

Go back to the drawing board(if there is one), and he should rethink his options. He should be looking at his career and verify his career highs. Aasai, Kathal Kottai, Kadhal Mannan, Vaali and Dheena. The rest of his films are pure crap or moderately interesting films. All the above films are major hits, with due credits to the director/story/screenplay. Isn’t it time to get a class in acting(the one that includes dialogue delivery) ? Seriously, no jokes.

The only other way, Ajith can pick up his career is comparing himself to Vijay, which is invariably happening, thanks to the fan clubs. But this wouldn’t be fruitful to him. Why ?

Vijay’s major success stems from the fact that he has accepted his limitations and started to tread on the path that has been laid by yester year heroes with similar limitations. Vijay should thank Rajini for being a veteran on this route. And he does.

Can Ajith pick-up the heroic path of Vijay. NO. Why ? Because heroism doesn’t happen. One has to create it. Not a single scene of Billa, Ajith was trying to be heroic, including the scene where Ajith escapes from the bridge by diving down. There isn’t a movie where I’ve seen Ajith as heroic as Vijay. And that’s why he shouldn’t be compared to Vijay.

Part of Ajith’s success comes from his cool personality, lover-boy image, a typical middle-class south indian boy. A good family drama, a neat down-to earth comedy film can do the magic. There are hundreds of stories and tons of directors waiting for Ajith to make this happen. And Ajith has been quite successful to pick up fresh talent. It’s just that he has shunned them for some time now.

There are two directors whom I really think can give Ajith a break provided Ajith changes his mindset and starts to concentrate on his areas of improvement. Not Mani Ratnam. Not Shankar. Go Figure.

Previous Ajith Kumar Rant.

Vasant’s latest movie, Satham Podathey was exceptionally bad. Though it had its moments, on a whole it was a huge letdown.

Nitin Sathya did much better in Chennai 600028. Prithiviraj is soon going to be dubbed as the hero for ‘feel good’ movies. Good luck !!

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Jodi No. 1 - Season 2 was dramatic. Simbhu probably got more air-time than anyone in the show. He also added a piece of marketing for his upcoming movie, Kalai. Proved again to be an immatured teenager by cracking constant jokes on the compere. Rumor has it that Divyadarshini is reported to have nightmares about Simbu.

Vijay TV doesn’t sport commercials during these shows. Donno how Rupert Murdoch can run a successful-yet-loss-making unit for so long. With such an elastic budget, they can also afford to throw the entire videos of these shows on You Tube or on Vijay TV itself.

But they have to be appreciated for improving the standard of television shows. And that’s one reason I think, marketers should start advertising on Vijay TV.

On the other hand, Sun TV’s Mastana Mastana was awful. Bad Direction.

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The December ‘07 Marghazhi Music Festival is on. As usual, I’m missing it. But just look at this long list of performances by artiste.

Sudha Raghunathan and Sanjay Subramaniam top the numbers of performances with 14 prime-time performances. Nithyashreem, Bombay Jayshree, Unikrishnan, Sikkil Gurucharan, Neyveli Santhanagopalan, O. S. Thiagarajan, Malladi Brothers and others follow with atleast a dozen performances. Imagine the case of attending these artists’ last show for the season. Should be a rough one.

I envy the ones who get to watch a Sanjay Subramaniam show and eat onion rava during the break.

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Ananda Vikatan stopped Sujatha’s hugely popular Katrathum Petrathum, few months back.

Very recently, he started a new section on Kungumam called Sujatha Pathilgal. And it’s a pity that Kungumam still scans its weekly issues for their online presence.

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If we are repeating the same joke of sending Indian movies for Oscar, let’s just send, Chennai 600028 and get over with it. Atleast we can inform the academy that this an romantic/sports genre movie.

Someone needs to tell our Oscar Recommendation Academy not to send some weirdo flicks.