Get your Tamil right...

I havent been this hopping mad ever. Actually, wait, the 1st time was when I endured Chennai Express. I could NOT sit through the movie, no matter how skimpy Deepiga's outfits where.. Yes, I know I have misspelt her name but I have done that intentionally!! Why cant I? When you can happily go about walking all over our beautiful Tamizh, I shall mess up your names! Gah.. 

How dare you show Dudhsagar lake and pass it off as a Village in Tamil Nadu? Call me next time you lose your way towards Tamil Nadu.

How dare you create a fake village in God knows where and make it look all cute and prim and proper and get people to assume that is how people lived..

How dare you mix up religions and create a temple with a God from a different sub case and a priest from another and assume my thatha would let that slide 

How dare you show a tradition that does not even exist - guy carrying a girl up the temple and make it seem like they are the most LOVING couple!! blah.. 

How dare the Deepiga keep saying "Bokwas" and make it look like that is how we talk!! Hullo, come have a conversation with me- i shall dazzle you with my tamil, hindi and english.. 

Phew!! Just when I thought I was done picking out all the bones from this torture of a movie, there came another one... 2 States.

I am not a fan of Chetan Bhagat, he should have stopped after five point someone!! No, did he listen to us? No, he went on to do few more things with pages inbetween [ I refuse to call them books] and am sure he scribbled knowing some director somewhere will lap em up and he would go on to become the next Shakepeare!! Bleddy Hell... 

So, there is this thing with pages in it called 2 states that got lapped up and made into a movie-- starring the dead pan Arjun kapoor and the pretty yet dumb Alia bhatt. He is a north indian boy and she  is a south indian girl. That is all.. There is nothing south indian about her or the entire set in " so called Chennai"

What surprised me was that Ananya [ Aalia] speaks beautiful Hindi while her tamizh is very fudged up.. And she is said to have grown up in Chennai all her life.. Next time call me, I shall come tutor actors in Tamil.. Hindi too if required! 

The boy lands in Chennai, they show the airport and he gets into an auto- FYI there are no autos inside the airport [get your facts straight], he then goes down the city, crossed the Chennai central [ almost telling the viewers - see how correct we are in details] and then suddenly next turn is into Pondicherry lanes [ the yellow wall and tall grey windows and narrow lanes that are so unique to Pondicherry]

The roads are filled with kolams, really? Not in the middle of the day!!  And not all of us put elaborate kolams outside our home daily... 

The house has a courtyard in the center and the lady of the house loves to sing.. how typical, right? Except here she is turned down by all the bhagavathars... [no explanations offered] and suddenly one day Arjun organises her show at his office function and she sings like a Nightingale!! Really?? wtf.. 

Again, the generalisations that Amrita Singh spews on the "Madarasis" is just so steriotypical and so 1940s!!! And we Tamilians do speak beautiful English, in case you did not know!! 

Well, I can go on and on... But am tired and fed up.!! All I wanna say is = Next time you Bollywood folks decide to make a movie set in TN or if the character is a Tamilian, call me for some insights!! I promise you- the movie will fare better~ 

Chennai International Film Fest

So, the CIFF this year was a super duper hit. Why? How? Cos i managed to attend, and not just attend a few, but saw 14 movies. Yes, you read it right. I had made up my mind to not only register, but to make it a point to attend as many as possible this year since last year was a bit of a wash out.

Oh, and the cherry on this cake is that I got featured in an article in the New Indian Express as well.. Check it out-

Link to the article

The Landmark Sale....

The Landmark Sale..

"Books Books and More Books.. all of this at a discounted price!" is the song that plays in my head everytime i read about a Sale or offer. And so with all the eagerness of a child going Toy shopping, i headed to Landmark, Apex Plaza, Nungambakkam Saturday evening...

Landmark is a store i used to frequent, almost daily during my college days. So much so that almost every staff knew/recognised me. And then, i saw the other outlets [Citi center & Ampa Mall] come up, and i began visiting them as well. So, this sale was like opening doors to a Treasure chest....

Was i excited? Yes
Was i eager to grab a few books? Yes

But within minutes of scrounging through the tables and mounts of books across the tables, i was disappointed... to say the least...

I then began browsing through the shelves looking for a few books i had been wanting to pick up/read, but couldnt find any. And the shelves seemed empty, almost, there were very few books, and most of them were old and seemed like they had been left there to be sold during the sale.

I was looking for A Brief history of time by Stephen Hawking, and after much searching, couldnt find it. One of the staff pointed me to the Science section, but alas, there was just one book by Hawking. The same story for almost all the other authors but for the Romance and Humour section. They were full...

I did notice they were selling Sherlock Holmes at Rs199/volume. Which was tempting, but i knew my cousin had the entire collection....

There was also the cool 3 for the price of 2 offer going on. And the good thing about this offer was it wasnt restricted to a particular genre, you could pick any book from across the store that had the 3 for 2 sticker and ta da... you were in for a treat.... 

I spent a few more minutes, picked up a few books- one for me, few for friends' kids and none of them had any offer. It was then off to the stationery section, where i picked up the 2 very sad worn out Stamp albums[albums to store stamps], and quite a few VZ India postcards [ which was the highlight of the visit] and headed over to the billing counter.

Walking out i wondered if this sale should be renamed "Clearance sale" or maybe i should visit one of the other outlets before jumping to conclusions....