In Defense of Mani Saar (or) How the topic moved to Mani Ratnam Vs Bala :

Lazy Geek : Ques: Why do all your films revolve around a mentally- affected man? Bala : Honestly speaking, every man is affected mentally by something. My films are reflections of those people, who had experienced it. My characters Chiyan, Nandha or Chithan are people affected by something.

I told you, All his heroes are mad. Finally he ends up calling everyone mad. Good Joke. I stopped reading the interview the minute I read the above answer. You continue reading it here. Enjoy !!

Senty : Guru, I think you are very biased as far as bala is concerned.I dont think there is anything wrong with what he said.The madness he is talking about could be the passion that we have for something.You could be that dreamy indian who wants to change all the corruption in india and let's say you spend most of your time writing petions and going to court, for a ordinary middle class guy who doesn't bother about anything.You are a MAD man.You could be a geek working passionately for 20 hrs on a day on some scientific research.for some ordinary guy you are MAD.All those mad people who we see on public places were not born that way.They were pushed into situations, which was beyond there breaking point and that brought the mad person out of them.

BALA's charecter deal's exactly with those charecters.There are peoples who "take things easy" and there are peoples who feel deep, who go into depression on failures.BALA talk's about those people.
Why can't we apreciate the story of these peoples.Do you always want to see the happy charecters that circle the trees and sing songs on colorful places all the time.Then i think your choice of Manitram as the best director is right.


Nilu : Am no fan of Bala, but ur vitriol on this instance is biased to say the least.

Lazy Geek: hey senty /nilu, sorry if you had thought this to be some some serious post. didn't u find that funny tone of mine in the post. if not , apologise for my intonation of mine. it wasn't intended. i was trying to make the post funny by saying, i said only his heroes are bad and he is concluding everyone is mad. not that i couldn't read between the lines of his interview and it was a link that was intended to be read by all.

again, i didn't like bala's characterisationa and picturisation of sethu and nandha and i am biased on him. i haven' seen pithamahan and how would u expect me to like someone who's previous movies sounded crap to me.

Senty, you last few sentences just reimposes the fact that you haven't seen kannathil muthamitaal or iruvar to conclude the fact that just happy running faces are maniratnam's camp. never mind. thanks for the time.

Senthil : Senty why don't you check your spelling and English when you write something in English !!!.I think you have a very poor knowledge about films.

"Do you always want to see the happy charecters that circle the trees and sing songs on colorful places all the time.Then i think your choice of Manitram as the best director is right "

I have never read such a stupid comment like this before.From this comment I can understand to what extent to enjoy movies..and your understanding about Maniratnam.(Its not Manitram)

Senty : Senthil Thanks for your intelligent comments and corrections.Are u a teacher by profession?.Good photography and choosing controversial subjects doesn't make a good director.I agree kannathil muthamittal is a great movie.But there is a "pagal nilavu", idhaya koil", thiruda thiruda which any tom, dick&senthil could have made.And off course all the other movies where inspired a lot from english movies.blantant copying of stories and scenes. from kurusowa's Ran for songs in thalapathi to the hospital scenes in agni nakshathram from godfather,to scenes from some one like you for mouna ragam, to the whole god father movie for nayagan.Don't escape by just saying the comment is stupid.If you think maniRATNAM movies are very realistic.. give me some examples from all of them.Intelligent senthil, i would have done lot of spelling mistakes this time also.So do send me the corrected version back.

guru, Talking about charecterisation and picturisation almost all the charecters of maniratnam are artificial except for the recent ones, almost all the charecters are entertaining than realistic.please see pithamagan with an open mind and talk about charecterisation.

Anti : Started posting my views on this topic on ur comment board. It got too long so am moving it to my blog. hope you dont mind...

Lazy Geek : absolutely no problem anti. will read it there. am coming there now and senty, thanks for inaugrating another controersy. this time it's you.

Senthil was just trying to comment about you comparing happy faces around trees to mani ratnam. there is no reason why you need to get agitated on him like this. probably you are upset about your spell correction. prbably he was agitated too by the comment on mani.

Ofcourse people differ with comments and ideas. your ideas are different from others. you think mani ratnam is the most artifical directors alive. no problem absolutely. but if you are really ready for a fair dicussion we are ready.

Answering your pithamahan request. For sure i am trying my best to be open because i was so open for sethu that I went nuts on him. from senthil's review i am convinced it is a worth watch. but bala's worth will be weighed after the watch. for sure !!

Senty : Guru, "there is no reason why you need to get agitated on him like this".If someone comes to your blog and just type's.Your postings are stupid without any substantial comment on it. what would you feel.Iam not upset about my spelling mistakes at all.U all got what iam trying to express.. so it's fine.Fair discussion is ok with me but let's not use hard words as Mr.Intelligent guy.It won't take a lot of effort for me to type some HARD words. Let's start ....

Ajay : I guess Bala is kinda mentally sick )

Anti : The "war" is on LOL. But for me its all fun... chk out the already overflowing comment sections on my posts. I dont know why he pasted sections of my own post on my own comments

Senty thalaiva.. En.. En... Ennnnnn.... (am thinking of those zillion kids shouting the same in Anjali now )

Iterative End : i did post some comments on anits page but lemme paste thm here and "compare"

i thgt Nayakan was based on a true story and not on god father...
someones comparing bala and maniratnam..gimme a break!!
lets see some characters in his flicks-
sethu- vik was short tempered..no pblm thr but the girl is spsed to innocent or stupid??never got tht !! ofcourse do ppl die for love?? the whole planet wd be a cemetry if tht was true!
nanda-horrible movie...had to take pains to erase tht movie frm my head so dont remember much abt tht..
pithamagan-a pathetic no logic story.. course all "chitans" r animals.. even tarzan wd be more civilised thn him..

mani's characters-
roja- a patriotic guy with a simple(as opposed to stupid as in sethu)girl as his wife who begs her way to free her husband(maybe she shd have taken the fight to the terrorist)
agni nat... happy go lucky guys and girls who love to play pranks... wt a min .. half of my friends r like tht..
hmmmm.. almost all his chars r believable and u can find thm in real life...
sure bala is better thn most of the dir around not bcos hes gd but bcos the others r bad but comparing him with ratnam, shankar(who makes obvious commercial movies)or even gautam is stupid..
pithamagan was totally pathetic attempt to get the "different/original story" tag...

Senty : Anti i understand the quotation thing.... i wanted to specfically point out what iam talking about.See you wrote abt me writing that pagal nilavu is a stupid movie..when i actually didn't say anything like that. that was cause you didn't give enought attention to my sentence.you could have avoided that if u followed my style.And usually with big post's people tend to skip some sentence's and they have to go back and forth to read the line that we are really discussing about.So to avoid that.....i copied those sentences .
And as far as the Joey thing ... It's a ctrl C , ctrl V mistake

iterativeend, varadharaja mudhaliar's link with nayagan stop's on the fact that he was a tamilian don in bombay. god father mudhal bagam, erendam bagam, moundram bagam appadinnu 3 bagam irrukuthu... mothella athey poi parunga... God father has been source of inspiration and stealing for so many tamil movies.From Annamalai to devar magan.

Iam not here to compare bala and mani.But ur statement intrigues me "of course do ppl die for love??"
--->Guess you read only hindu or indian expres.There is a tamil daily called dinathani...try to read the 3,4 th pages in that paper. Vikram's charecter in pithamagan is not a real life charecter.It is an imaginary charecter but the other 3 are more real life charecter's.

Anti : senty, I read your comments on my blog... thanks...


Senty : iterative....
when i meant charecterisation i meant how they are built in the movie.It Doesn't just stop with happy guy, sad girl, married gal , unpatriotic guy etc.

Very artificial dialogue delivery.YOu are very angry or upset.. how do you express your emotions."Katren........."(1 min gap)"mudivuu katraen......"(1 min gap)"ellathukkum mudivu katraen".Is this how you express your anger.It was ok for 1 movie or 2 movie... its so iritating to hear these kind of dialouge delevery again and again in all the movies.

None of the kids in his movie are realistic... every kid talks like a 20 year old.Pathetic dialect usage(all the glory to Mrs maniratnam) for village charecter's including roja.Almost All charecters are intelligent and beautiful.
Almost all the charecter's are urban charecter's.


The way arvind swamy says bharathi's "achamillai achamillai..."
you feel as if he is telling a lullaby."panniaram.. kuzhi panniaram" senji thariya in roja.The whole karthick role in mouna ragam... parking the bike before the bus,calling from principal's room mike etc are very very entertaining but not very realistic.... ayoooooo realisma appadina.....??

"shankar(who makes obvious commercial movies)".
-->how long has mani been talking non commercial movie??.
give me a break....except for his last 2 movies all movies were preety much over flowing with commercial elements.

pithamagan was totally pathetic attempt to get the "different/original story" tag...

yeah if mani would have done the movie with "Pachai nirame" where vikram sings on a beautiful location and couple of lifted scenes from holloywood move and a story line from last year hindu headline... you would have appreciated the movie.

I see that lot of people say that bala is not up to the level blah blah blah.I think there is a basic difference in the measureing scale we are using.If you are using the hollywood measuring scale.If you are looking for a movie's which talk about educated people's.a movie which you as a educated people can relate.movie's which you can show to your foriegn friend and be proud off.Then obviously it will be mani.

Nanda and kannathil muthamittal crux is about "Ezham".Then why is one considered great for intelligent story selection and other not.

My scale is an indeginous one.Let's look at the movie without a hollywood knowledge.Let's keep the glamour glass's aside for a while. Take those beautiful songs out of the movie and see what is in it.what is the diretor's input on the movie.Has he done justice to the story line.How original/realistic is it.

Balu mahendra has taken movies like veedu , sandhya vandhanam etc.There are so many great director's like govind nihlani , amul palekhar etc.But we dont consider them as good movies/director's cause it lacks the glamour of mani's movies.So where does mani fall in... ?? a COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR with "different" story lines..?? Then he is on the same scale..just the points differ ..maybe mani is a couple of points ahead of shanker... that's all

Lazy Geek : Lets do a grass root analysis and lets try to restrain from comparing Mani Ratnam and Bala.

It's like comparing Illayaraja to Harris Jayaraj.

Though Bala has 3 critically acclaimed movies to his credit, we are yet to see the real bala because he has widened his scope of even the protagonists. To be practical, he cannot take 18 movies in the span of a decade and in all 18 movies show a kinky protagonist.

With the variety in place, if he directs his next movie without even having a single effect of his previous movie and if it poses to be a big hit, let think then.

Remember all of Mani Ratnam's experimental movies like Agni Natchatiram ( pure experiments with flare ligting effects and slick picturisation) and Thiruda Thiruda were after some seriosu movies.

Agni N came after the path breaking Mouna Raagam, thiruda thiruda came after the nation-rocking Roja. So experiments have to varied in nature to prove that you are a mature kid with modern film making attitude, Just as Mani himself.


Iterative End : i have seen godfather and the similarity stops with the main char being a "don"... its all in the characterisation... tht was bad too... lazygeek or someone said smthing abt tht scene in sethu.. it so damn stupid!! most of the scenes are... mani does make commerical movies ...almost evrybody does.. balas movies dont have songs??so any other commercial elements??plz.....
evrbody wants to make money ..i am not comparing comercial and art movies ..i am comparing gd and bad movies... i love mahanadi..pbly the saddest movie of all time... tht movie is much better thn any balas movies w/o his now cliched inane and insane characters... wanna watch a nice movie by maniratnam... even if u remove the songs and comedy from anjali or idhayathia thirudhadae or mouna ragam...no fancy stuff ...very simple story.. huge hits ?? y? bcos of the characterisation...
i can name a hundred movies which i like in which ppl r poor and dont dance arnd trees but still the movie is gd.. In my opinion bala is just a over-hyped dir...
PS:i never said mani doesnt make commercial movies!! and i dont think mani is the best dir thr is..he is just the most accomplished and popular dir...

Padhu : It has been entertaining...now araiche mauvu...

Niruthenge, pa. Seems without a point now. 120 Tamil films a year'le only 2-3 padam is watchable. Athuvum mostly bit ( either songs or story ). Anthe directors'kulle oru comparison.

All Tamil movies suck...my reason is the performances. Who is professional there...either overacting or abatham...so even if somebody comes up with a great script, it is of no use. How many actors have real theatre experience ?

So given this crap of actors, Mani has done a decent job to get something from them. Shankar saw what he had to work with - he decided that it will be better to depend on ARR and Graphics ( atleast code can be recompiled )...Bala has decided that he will get the actors to act like mad men, the audience will be confused because most of the audience dont get to meet a real mad man in everyday life. So if somebody acts like a "monkey", we are forced to accept and praise it, because otherwise the "mega-pudhisalinge" will point you out for having no taste...

Actors....shot ready...kathunge like korangu, karadi, Poone...

superstar'e super actor ayachu...

super acting da machi...


Priya : I kind of agree with Padhu. I think its just the taste of each person who is debating that shows and not the potential of each director.

Having said that, Iam not able to overcome the temptation to put in my idea!! Sorry (hi hihi).

Characterization does not mean reality in characters. From ages unknown, any art form is known for exaggerations and that is what makes it an art form. I can go into soundarya shastra and how the 64 kalaigal were ranked, but am not doing it now. The point being, just by making a character do exaggerated things doesnt mean the character's personality is lost. This is for Karthik in Mouna Ragam and for all the children in Anjali and any other exaggeration you can think of in Manirathnam's (or any other director's movies). A director's talent lies in how much personality he puts in these characters that we are able to remember them distinctly. If Manirathnam were not successful in this, we would not be remembering any characters in Nayagan or Thalapathy or Anjali.

I agree with Senty in that most of Manirathnam's characters are urbane, educated people. Its not wrong to take such people and make movies about them. For that matter, most of Bharathiraja's characters are rural people and Balachander's are middle-class people and now Bala's are mentally-disturbed people. Within this broad limit of different people, we should see how the director convinces us of these incidents.
Manirathnam has gone a long way, learnt from differnet mistakes that he was able to make a deep movie like Kannathil Muthamittal. Bala, too, is improving. From Sethu, where he did not concentrate on any other character except the hero (not even the heroine) to Pithamagan, where 4 different kinds of people are woven into a story.
I think, all this debating is good, but whether its Guru or Senty, they should become open-minded enough to see both Manirathnam and Bala as individual directors and come up with their advantages and disadvantages as different people. Only in that lies the betterment of the film industry (yesh, right, like padhu said, like anybody cares what we cry about!!!)


Lazy Geek : Priya and Padhu, Thanks for pouring water to the flames.

It's tough debate to argue about characterization and other such stuff in such a place. It comes better in a characterisation.

First, I ain't against any director. I am a film lover. I watch films with an open mind. But I think I have the right to love the way some movies are directed and some movies aren't.

Within the given lot of Indian directors (not the handful tamil directors alone),I like Mani Ratnam's style. With such critical acclaim that vikatan reviews sethu as the best film in 3 decades, I failed to enjoy the taste alongwith tamil audiences and begged to differ.

All along I am saying not to compare Mani Ratnam with Bala which is obscure. Lets end that and....

Lets save some space in for Padhu's comments that tamil cinemas suck big-time. Coming for that in a moment padhu...


Priya : Thats good, Guru. I just took ur and Senty's name as examples, what I meant was that all of us (atleast as educated film admirers) should see any movie or rate a director with their pluses and minuses. I also love Manirathnam's directing style, but I do have some criticisms for him after every movie (as a good fan, I think this helps any director improve!!).
But, Iam glad that we are moving to the greatness of Tamil movies now..
padhu vs. lazy geek will form their teams now!!!

By the way, I just realized that in hte past few months, my husband and myself have been looking forward to watching more Tamil movies and almost every English movie we have watched in the past few months (we get DVDs every weekend) ahve been below our expectation!! Sorry, guys, about India losing against Aus... better luck next time..


(The Argument Continues...)
Senty : guru, *** first and foremost a correction*****
you were wrong when u said that all bala's movies deal with crazy people.Nennga "nandha" padam pathingala?. I guess not.Nanda is a just an angry young man.he is not crazy at all.pithamagan charecter is not a crazy charecter either, it's just an imaginative charecter.chittan is a person who doesn't know how to communicate,behave with people, express his love/sorrow.A person who doesn't feel anything towards loss or death.Sethu is the only crazy charecter and he also didn't become cause of love.. but because of a head injury.

comming back to your posting.so we cannot apreciate bala till he takes 18 movies ??BTW mani came into film industry not a decade but 2 decades ago.so shall i say let's mani do 50,60 movies like
balu mahendra and balalachander then i will accept him as a great director.

when you are talking about mani experimenting... what are you talking . you are talking about lighting and photography.This again goes to prove the point that the glamour associated with his movie is more than the content.Did u get to see any experimental charecters in all his movies.From mouna ragam to alaipauthey its the same urban, beautiful, mischeivous hero who goes and expresses his love directly to the heroine.The only change was his story selectecions."pagal nialvau" was the
mother of all his movies that single movie has stories,scenes and charecters for all the movies to come till agni nakshathiram.Then came roja... he started a list of movies which were stories more from the newspaper's.now from alaypauthey there is again change in the story line's.

Agni N dind't come after the path breaking Mouna Raagam,it came after the well inspired nayagan.Thiruda thiruda lla emperimenta??... in what?.giving a film with heavy subject and then going back to give a light movie is something that everbody from "bheem singh to shankar" has done.If that is maturity, there are lot of old people in kollywood.

iterative,
if u think there is no big resemblence in godfather and nayagan, then i dont have any comments.I completely agree with you that bala's movies has commercial elements like mani's.So how come mani is on a different level than bala, is it the fact that his movies are more colourful, glamourous and urban.

I agree with you that mahandhi is a great movie.It literally cried watching the movie.when was the last time you cried in a maniratnam movie??.its not that there is no sad scenes in the movie.It is just that the emotions are shallow.Iam not trying to hype bala.what iam trying to say is why just push away bala.why consider him less.how are we gonna have lot of good movies like mahanadhi.By making huge budget movies with colorful songs,entertaining charecters and new's paper headline stories.Nooo by welcoming more original storylines and appreciating directors like bala, cheran etc.But by rejecting bala, gautam etc and giving all the glory to mani we ar

I left one director who i liked recently.that is suse ganesan.If mr intelligent is the same senthil who wrote the mail to him.Your mail was awesome.But can't figure how so much creativity from a mani lover (chumma :o))

padhu... araiche mavunnu theriyuthulla... approam yen neengallu sidela
(So given this crap of actors, Mani has done a decent job to get something from them)
konjam ulunthu pottu arikiringa..??

"All Tamil movies suck..."
--> i went to your site and saw this
"***Movies:My list of Tamil movies to watch is increasing: Julie Ganapathy, Jayam, Anbe Sivam ( 2nd time ), Kakka Kakka, Boys ( nth time )...since i have the Boys DVD I will watch it now......******

saritha heroinea nadicha julie ganapathy varaikkum ella padamum pathuttu, yen engey vanthu SCENE POODRINGA?.vikram action waste padhu.... nadikavey theriyalla, JEYAM hero supera nadichirunthan ellai??

Lazy Geek : hey senty, thanks for the long long posts. some of my comments have been mis-understood by you or rather mis-communicated by me.

So you have again gone back to the agitated mood. Cool down and we can for sure talk it out about your accusation and my defenses.

Senty : guru, iam not in agitated mode... i dont know what makes you think so.. ennimey extra va oru nalanju smiley pottu annupraen.If i have understod you wrongly please correct me.

If i had offended any one iam sorry.
these are for guru(chumma)


Padhu : enna personalla attak'pannaran...athuvum en blog'e kindal pannaran...pongi ezhunthen...summa vidamateengele...

Anything I write in my blog is relative. Athavathu, I see a movie ( usually on my laptop or working parallel ) - so I type in my impressions. What a movie made me feel then...so even when watching Koundamani-Senthil comedy ( which I hate BTW most of the time ), there will be one or 2 scenes that will be ok...antha mathiri'than my +ve reviews about many tamil movies...

BTW, I see only selective Tamil hit movies - so called hit movies. The fact that I havent still watched 2002/2001 movies itself should show how selective I am. Pavam my video rental store...every time I ask them which were the hit movies in the last 2 years...

And BTW, I havent still seen "Jeyam". Vikram sadha actor. Simpu, Chimpu, Korangu, vavval naduvile evan'venumna nalla actor name vangalam. Even MGR got a national award. Kamal'e repetitive and overacting solravan naan. Only when somebody in Tamil can do simple roles like even a Hugh Grant can perform convincingly will I accept him/her to be a decent actor.

Speaking of good Indian actors, there are many. I still consider Mohan Lal in "Iruvar" to be the best performance by any actor in a Tamil movie ever. Similarly Naseerudin Shah in "Hey Ram"...No histrionics, no wooden face, no katThal, no korangu munji - just the right expressions...

When u consider Suse Ganesan as a good director..LOL...( mudhal padathileye pooshnikKa size coincidences )...

Let me relax with post-production notes of Mr.Forest Gump... chao...

Bharani : guru, looks like u had a great time with this controversy in the last few days...look at the length of the comments on ur post !!!

Senty : "All tamil movies are crap all tamil actors are bad..." --> appraon yen tamil padam pakannum?

"so even when watching Koundamani-Senthil comedy ( which I hate BTW most of the time )" --> again u hate it most of the time , but u still watch it.

"I see only selective Tamil hit movies - so called hit movies. The fact that I havent still watched 2002/2001 movies itself should show how selective I am. Pavam my video rental store...every time I ask them which were the hit movies in the last 2 years..." -->entha stmt yaaravathu ketangala...?it looks like a stmt just to trumpet to everybody that you dont watch that many tamil movies and you watch only ENGLIPISS movies.
but we all know that you end up watching tamil movies like julie ganapathy (even thought u hate it most of the time). this is to tell guru that iam not aggitated .

who the *&%$ is hugh grant. chimpu ethukku hugh grant mari nadikanuum?.So for u the scale is an hollywood actor,yeah cause you dont watch that many tamil movies.Kashtam.... Naamala suyama sindhikavey mudiyatha... should we always look at west for everything.It is like saying i will consider my mother to be beautiful when she starts wearing a skirt and high heels.I will say sambar is good when it start tasting like pasta.Sambar ennaikkum pasta agathu.But that is what is ur scale.we will be hearing stmts like "i keep eating sambar even thought i dont like it most of the times". guru "unga mela sthiyama solraen nan kudikave illa... sorry aggitate agavey illa" .

I agree with you about nasrudden shah and mohanlal.Those role that you talked about had something to lookup to,like gandhi at his old man etc etc.MGR on his young ,middle age etc.So u can say how the actor is measuring up to the given role.But the charecter in pithamagan is an imaginative charecter,you cannot compare it with hugh grant performance in a "cheasy" movie.

"When u consider Suse Ganesan as a good director..LOL...( mudhal padathileye pooshnikKa size coincidences )..."
-->talking about hugh grant "naalu kalyanam oru karumari(four weddings and a funeral)" appadinu oru padam vanthuchey pathengala.athulla coincedence illaya...??
Appron Forest gump la conincedence illaya... the same guy happens to be in all the hostorical events of USA for 3,4 decades.
entha coincedencellam enna SUNDAIKKA coincedenca..??Guru has link to suse's interview. athey poi padinga mothella...

You sound more like those hypocretes for whom a rap song saying "Back our Ass up" or eminem saying how his mother is a greater dope than him is great song cause it is in english. but a simple deva's "kathadikkuthu kathadikuthu" gana is very local and convulsing.Even though we freed our country in 1947 ,guess we still have to free lot of minds from the english slavery.

Lazy Geek : hey man senty, you rocked two days man. anyway, i ain't feeling bad at all. if i am i shouldn't be here criticizing and reviewing movies so freely.

just that the words u use made me feel u are agitated. i am sitting back and enjoying what all are people feeling about ratnam and others. it's a good feedback session than a volcano(as i said as a joke).

you don't have to add smilyes. look at my title, it has a big smiley at the end and thats how i take all these. scribbles of a lazy geek ;-)

Nilu: wow, this man senty does take "flamin" to new heights. maybe I will one day flame my living (a la senty), unlike today when I seem to be earning(and very hardly) it

Padhu : "Appron Forest gump la conincedence illaya... the same guy happens to be in all the hostorical events of USA for 3,4 decades."

LOL...Your understanding of the movie is clear from this line...

Ayya, "Forest Gump" represents the soul of America...he is not a individual...ennavo po...did it not strike you curious as to why Forest never ages after so many decades...hehehe...

No doubt, Bala appeals to you...appadiye iru...dont change...

BTW, who said I watch all English movies ??? Emotions leading to Assumptions...

I have watched 2 new releases this year...havent seen the new Matrix because everybody said it sucks...actually have seen more Tamil movies than English movies...

Marupadiyum solaren...i see very few movies but see them many times...

Priya : hahaha.. naan thoongi ezhundukarathukulla, ulagathula evvalavu nadandirukku?!! i think there should be a separate blog on these comments now... neenga enjoy pannunga...

Lazy Geek : actually what padhu says is right in this context that understanding Forrest Gump gives the understanding of the soul of america.

maybe senty, wouldn't have seen forrest gump so seriously.

anyway, i'm stopping this lengthy blog comments and moving on with my next blog post. as kings said, pillayum killidi thotillayum attathey. i wasn't intended to be like that but it eventually became that way.

Senty : padhu, What has me knowing "forest gump" as the soul of America got to do with appreciating a st forward bala's movie.So if someone is able to appreciate forest gump, then they cannot appreciate bala or anybody else other than mani.So the english movies are the bar, the standards.all tamil directors should all measure up to the english director's.So bala have to take this movie in english, and
like 30 people after seeing the movie should say that the movie is good to you.Then you will watch the movie.somebody should written an article saying that the vikram's charecter represents "fears in us" or "soul of a cementry" and put that on the internet.After reading that article, you will give a stamp that bala is a great director.

When you are such a level movie watcher, you should have been able to interpret vikram's charecter as some kind of abstraction by now.Athey vittuttu ethukku "naai, nandu, nari, korangunnu" sollanum.That show's your utter disrespect to tamil cinema.

"havent seen the new Matrix because everybody said it sucks..." -->suyamavey ethuvum decide panna theriyatha... do you need 20 people's approval to watch a movie.?

Guru ennakey entha topic bore adichiduchu.....

-->padhu anna, if you want to write, write something intresting ... enna ethu rajini mari stmt udringa...
"Marupadiyum solaren...i see very few movies but see them many times..."

Priya : Guru, If possible, somebody should send these comments to all the Tamil directors, so they can get so much valid inputs from it!!! Eppadi en idea!! So, inda topic mudiyitha!!! I thought "Junun" maadiri poyikitte irukkumnu (without anybody understadnign, atlast what its all about!!!)...

Lazy Geek : i'm consolidating all these comments into a document. i don't intend to miss these valuable dicussions in the deep holes of haloscan.

Senty : priya... enna eppadi junnonu sollitinga... ennakku romba bore adichiduchu.officela time la ethukku mellayum OB adichenna... vettukku anupchiduvanga.. nan ennimey ethuvum perusa answer panratha illa

Anti : machi... I thought this topic will end in your blog and continue in mine. I think I just opened one more avenue and the magnitude increased automatically. But it has generated into just bickering. Thats too bad. I have seen the same comments (from more than one user) repeated word to word for both my posts and then again on ur blog too. Dunno if this was unintentional, but it looks very immmature and hence does not give me any inclination to continue with this silly war of words, which is more personal than to do with the actual issue in question.

But I did get one email from an insider who apparently works with Mani (I think we know who it is, but am not sure)and that stands out from all these (unwanted) comments that flooded my comments box (though u have much more, incl one of mine , sorry abt that). Will forward the mail to u for your personal reading pleasure (after i get the guy's permission of course). I dont wanna let it out mainly cos its bound to cause more bickering and stupid verbal barrages...