Sivaji…Paraak..Paraak..Paraak

The day, AVM(for those who dont know..AVM is a very old/prestigious film production company in India) announced a movie with Superstar Rajnikanth, is still vivid in my memory.(Of course it was not too long ago , so I remember it really well , It was actually on SUN Thalaippu Seydhigal..I have it on my TIVO).I was so excited that I called all my filmi friends in India immediately and chatted with them about what a huge opportunity this is for Rajni,Shankar and the Tamil Film industry as a whole.

For all the readers wondering...what big opportunity ?…well. This film could be Tamil Industry’s “Sholay”,”Titanic” etc...in magnitude, box-office collections. It can rewrite record books.i.e if the opportunity on hand is not wasted!

It has been long since Rajnikanth has acted in a film which had the director as the captain of the ship. Well technically the director is the captain of the ship for any movie, but for a Rajnikanth movie its different and most of you know why?(If you dont..its a long story..so jus take my word for it)

Well all that changed with Chandramukhi Rajni's previous release earlier this year.There are glaring holes in Chandramukhi, technically and logically, but the movie served its purpose. It brought Rajnikanth back to the forefront of Tamil Cinema after the BABA debacle.Chandramukhi was entertaining and the movie re-established Rajni’s status as the box-office Baadhshah of the South Indian Film Industry.

Rajni’s earlier release, BABA flopped. Well I don’t understand that!

Let me explain..BABA was nothing but what Rajni believes (he actually believes that he is the son of God..im not even kidding you folks…the dude believes that he is a Yogi or something) and he wanted to spread the message of Religion/Faith to all the people.

The masses rejected it. But when you think about it, BABA and Chandramukhi are not much different. In BABA, Rajni says that there is a 200 year old Yogi, still living a healthy life in the Himalayas and he actually has a conversation with “Babaji” in the movie.

Whereas, in Chandramukhi he claims, there is a snake in a bottle, for more than 100 years, guarding the angry revengeful sprit of Chandramukhi .The snake happily returns to Guindy Snake Park when the spirit is freed.

Now both of these events are fantasies, how did BABA flop? Well I think BABA was a failure at many levels. The movie had a decent story (by Rajni Movie standards) but the screenplay, dialogues where very patchy.Sureshkrishna the director, really messed up a lot in the movie. If you notice, you can make out that dialogues were improvised during the shot and most of that was out of place. That won’t happen with Shankar!

Anyway I digress, I think now, Rajni will have a opportunity to work on a Social theme after a long time. If you dissect all of Shankar’s movies, they would have a social theme.(Except maybe for Kadhalan) The film has KV Anand(brilliant cameraman/director of Kana Kanden) ,AR Rahman ,writer Sujatha and choreographer Raju Sundaram lending support to Shankar.

I hope they don’t screw up. But again. its going to be real hard to screw up with such a team. Folks , get ready SIVAJI is going to be a treat !

I wanted to post this yesterday (12/12/2005), marking Rajni’s 56^th birthday but I could not. Better Late than never I guess…..Happy B'day ..Thalaivaa !