2005 was, I thought, an eventful year not just in my life but all around me too. So I thought I'll just say random stuff about the year in this entry.

Tamil Cinema
It was a wonderful year for Tamil cinema, with a lot of talent being exhibited, together with the standard stupidities that are an annual ritual. I saw a lot of great films this year. I think the standard is definitely going up, with new people taking over old.

Some films that I think are the pick of the year (in order) :

1. Kanda Naal Mudhal
2. Kanaa Kanden
3. Arinthum Ariyamalum
4. Ghajini
5. Ullam Ketkume
6. ABCD
7. Anniyan

Notes:
I actually wanted a top-ten thing, but I found I couldn't think of ten films off-hand.

Kanda Naal Mudhal, by debutant director V Priya, was surprisingly brilliant. I was impressed by the movie even before its release because of its sleek promos and posters and wonderful cast and crew. The crew has five National Award recipients including P.C. Shriram (Cinematography). The cast has Prasanna and Laila, with many great supporting actors like Karthik (of Vaanam Vasapadume) and Revathi. The movie is produced by Prakash Raj's DUet Production, which is enough to convince me to watch; He's greatly impressed me as a producer with his Dhaya, Naam and Azhagiya Theeye.
The movie is surprisingly flawless. For a debutant, Priya shows great skill in putting a movie together. I thought the screenplay was brilliant; absolutely no lag. I was also impressed with the way she wove the movie's six songs into the script with no incongruity. Yuvan's music and background score is among the best he has ever done. I think if he makes a new year resolution to exclude rap in every movie he scores music for next year, he can make every one of his albums hit the top of the charts.

Ghajini might be fourth on my list, but I still though it was brilliant. The three above it just excelled with their startling realism. I was also impressed by Ullam Ketkume, but I thought it fell short in terms of musical score and cast performance. For all the hype about Harris Jeyaraj's Ullam Ketkume, I was thoroughly unimpressed. I liked only Dhoda Dhoda; Mazhai Mazhai and Kanavukal Periya Kanavukal were okay. Mazhai Mazhai is quite a nice song, actually; congrats to Rajusundaram for destroying it single-handedly with his horrible choreography. If the performances had been better, it would have beat Ghajini with its brilliant script and realism.

Chandramukhi's absence is not a mistake. Though Jyothika's performance was very impressive, and Vidhyasagar's music was very nice, I was not impressed by the movie. Even though I am not really a Rajini fan, I think that his movies have a style and finesse that is enjoyable to watch. That was absent here. The one thing I'm impressed with is Rajini's willingness to make movies in which he is not so much the center of attention. I await Sivaji with great anticipation. (Because so many greats are coming together : ARR is back with Shankar, Rajini's in the lead, Sujatha's doing script, KV Ananth is doing cinematography, JD-Jerry and Balaji Sakthivel are in the story team)

I haven't seen Thavamai Thavamirundhu and Sandai Kozhi yet; I heard they're very good.


Music

1. Ghajini
2. Anniyan
3. Ah Aah
   
4. Arinthum Ariyamalum
5. Kanda Naal Mudhal
6. Raam
7. Kanaa Kanden
   
8. Oru Kallooriyin Kadhai
9. ABCD
   
10. Majaa

Notes: Harris has managed to impress me on both of his last two releases. He is changing his style and still doing well; that's good. He's experimenting with music; that's good too. One qualm I have is that he should stop repeating himself with stuff like Rangola Hola etc. Another thing is that his background music is still very bad. He has to learn to emote with music. Anniyan was a good effort, Ghajini had good places in the flashback scenes that were nice. But more often than not, his music is jarring the flow of narration rather than enhancing it. Especially in fight scenes. I think Anniyan's fight scenes were dissapointing largely due to Harris, though to be fair I have to say they were inherently not good.

Yuvan has impressed me with several good albums this year. He just has to let go of rap. He is relying to much on rap to move some of his songs. He has to wake up and realise that his biggest hit albums are those with no rap in them : Arinthum Ariyamalum, Kanda Naal Mudhal, Daas, Kathal Konden, Poovellam Kettupar, Dheena, Manmadhan (Thathai Thathai's rap actually made sense and enhanced the song).

So that wraps up Tamil Cinema 2005, I guess. Stuff I'm looking forward to next year : Gautham Menon's Vettaiyadu Vilaiyadu, Shankar's Sivaji, Vishnuvardan's Pattiyal, the untitled Jeeva movie that will be starring Arya, the script Maniratnam is working on which I am guessing and hoping will come out next year, debutant Krishna's Jillendru Oru Kaadhal, K.S. Ravikumar/Kamal's Thasavatharam, S.J. Suryah's Puli.

Labels: Lists

kanna wrote at 10:10 PM

2005 has been the craziest year of my life. Seriously. Like 2000 (I got into ge and went to henry park) and 2003 (ri) for me, it has been so pivotal. These three years have really shaped what I have turned out to be.
If I hadn't gotten into Henry Park and met those people I spent three years of my life with, I quite possibly wouldn't have turned out the cheerful, humorous person that I am. Then again, if I had stayed in my old school I might have even aced psle; The top score of greenridge primary (my old school) was 282 or something, and I was beating all of them hands down till the year I left to go to henry park primary.
RI has definitely changed me in unfathomable ways. It has created my identity; one that would be very different if I had gone to sji as my parents had insisted. I don't know; I might have been a better person or worse.
Nobody can guess how any one event changed your life. Every small thing that has happened this year has changed me. I've been thrown into new experiences. I've had a wonderful array of people enter my life. I've been challenged. I've been given responsibilites. I've been loved, I've been hated. I've been given new identities. I've been forced to make decisions that shape my life and who I am. I've been made to reflect on my own values and what I stand for. I've been challenged to form opinions of the people close to me.
I've been handed my life as a half-formed lump of clay and I've shaped it with every decision I have made.
Coming through this year, I've sustained scars, no doubt. But I think I like the new Kannan better than the old one. I see confidence and faith in himself within the new one. I see him creating values that he choses to live by. I've seen him decide what he is going to do with his life.
This year has given me a lot of wonderful memories that I'll cherish all my life. I'll never forget Sorkalam. I'll never forget Nava and PJ. I'll never forget Savaal. I'll never forget Karthik shaking my hand and hugging me on stage and handing ICC over to me. I'll never forget Oct 26.
I will never forget pooni, nava, puva, divya, sutha, melu, latha, shaf, siva[shankari], suriya, farzana, shyama, sinddu, kuna, siva, aruna, lakshmu, priya, suadi, kash : all the wonderful new people who have entered my life. If you're not on the list, apologies; I know that whoever you are, you have definitely impacted my life this year.
So buhbye, 2005! We had a great deal of fun, no? Too bad 365 days is all we could spend together. Thank you for all you've given and taken away, 2005.

kanna wrote at 8:51 PM

I read a very nice article in kumudam and found the online version so i can post it here. It's in tamil so you probably can't read it directly off the blog. Here's the font, save it into your fonts folder; worst case, you should atleast be able to read it if you copy it into Word. (unless you're shaf or tanjim; to be able to read it, you're gonna have to learn tamil first)

font: http://kumudam.com/kumudam.TTF

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Labels: Articles

kanna wrote at 10:58 AM

I was browsing through the Hinduism Today website after reading the articles sutha posted on her blog when I found this. Quite an interesting viewpoint.

January/February/March, 2005

IN MY OPINION

Growing Up Mixed Up

---

Mom is Hindu. Dad is Christian. I'm too little of either and looking for more.

By Jennifer Verwey

Growing up in an ethnically mixed family isn't easy. My mother is Indian and Hindu. My father is Caucasian, American and Christian. The fact that they got divorced when I was a year old further complicated matters, but that is another story altogether.

When I was very young, I went to church with my father's mother but rarely worshiped at all with my mother's Hindu parents. In this way, I spent my earliest years in the casual influence of two religions, not giving either a lot of thought. Then I went to school.

When I would tell classmates that I was Indian, they would ask what tribe I was from or say, "How." I would explain that I was an Indian from India, but then I had nothing else to say. I had no idea what being a Hindu really meant. I didn't even dress like an Indian, although I wore my hair long and braided. All I knew was that we didn't eat beef and my grandparents fasted on Thursdays.

Many factors affect a child of mixed parentage during the formative years when social skills are learned and friends are made. My mother wanted to make sure I was exposed to both sides of my heritage, but because we never went to a Hindu temple, this exposure was lopsided and left me feeling confused. I didn't fit in anywhere. My only friends were Christian. I had received a Hindu name during high school, but no one ever used it in addressing me. I never thought of changing my name legally. I just figured the ceremony was a sort of baptism into Hinduism.

After high school, I moved in with my father and his family to go to college. It was during this time that I chose to be baptized into Christianity in an effort to find some sense of identity. After a few years, Christianity just started to feel wrong--and pretending that I was white definitely felt wrong. "But I am white, aren't I?" I asked myself. "Yes, I am, " I replied. "But I am also Asian Indian."

I stopped going to church and began a serious search for true spiritual fulfillment. For a time I felt like I had found my place in Wicca which shares certain ideologies with Hinduism. Gradually, however, I realized that wasn't quite right either. So I decided to go back to my "roots " and delve more deeply into Hinduism.

Since then, I've been reading everything I can get my hands on. I have also tried contacting my Hindu relatives for further education, but geographical distance has kept us from communicating extensively.

I live in an area of Michigan where there is very little "Eastern cultural diversity, " so finding other like-minded people is almost impossible. I want to wear a salwar kameez or a sari, but there are no shops anywhere here where I can buy such things. And I don't even know how to tie a sari.

My purpose in writing this is to try to convey some sense of the difficulty I've experienced growing up without a firm spiritual and cultural background. Having gone through this, I now firmly believe that a child of mixed ethnicity needs to be raised in the religious life and culture of only one of the parents. The child needs to feel like she or he is not being bounced back and forth between two worlds, never truly belonging to either.

My husband is a very open person and supports me in my spiritual search, though he is happy not delving into spirituality at this time. I strive to learn as much as I can and to change my life accordingly. If the time comes that we decide to have a child, we will determine which way we wish to lead that child, and we will pick only one path for his or her belief system.

I found the website is actually very interesting and has a lot of useful articles, even for people who are not Hindu. Some are quite thought provoking like this one.

And no, this isn't the post i've been writing for dunno how long; that one's still coming.

Labels: Articles

kanna wrote at 1:39 PM

Thank youuu, princess! Woo hoo, shafali gupta fixed my blog!
This girl was so superuber sweet that she retyped the whole of my previous entry on blogspot so that it is visible and so that the funny symbols disappeared... So sweet, right?
So thank you, shaf!
Ooh, and i know i haven't updated in a while; i'll post up a new entry by today.

kanna wrote at 12:32 PM

kanna wrote at 11:15 AM

Yaaayyyyy! Thank yoo, princess, for setting up this bootiful blog for me!
Welcome to my new blog people! Ooh, and people, if i say anything about any of you, no offense, k? Any reference to people living, dead or wishing to die upon reading my entry was completely unintentional.
So yeah, toodles, people!

kanna wrote at 1:49 PM

dudeeee.... blog la... teeheehee.. (:

kanna wrote at 8:31 PM