SO_COed into writing my first post
I never thought I will be writing my first post in an inebriated state, thanks to BACARDI black and SoCo (southern Comfort for the uninitiated). There are a multitude of reasons for this. Even as I would like to believe SoCo kinda rekindled my cinematic bearings, the main reason i guess is the UTSAV post. It took me to a time and place when I first saw this movie. The mention of the Asha/Lata duet prompted a quick search on Itunes and needless to say one thing lead to another- SoCo …. Bacardi with Rafi, Mannadey, Lata, Asha and Talat Mohammed for company.
Call me a hopeless romantic (I would refute it with all my miniscule wisdom), but there’s something more to an evening with the afore mentioned maestros and daaaru. All conversations lead to movies, songs, song writers, actors and the emotional undertone which they lent to umpteen lives.
My friend was talking about the vineyards of Hunter valley from her recent trip and all I could think about was having another installment of ‘Nammukku Parkan Mundiri Thoppukal’ after the bottli is finished (…always after the bottli is finished). The talk turned to emotional content vs technical brilliance in mainstream Indian movies and all I could think of was ‘THAT’ time in mallu filmdom when there was a mind blowing movie released every 2 months.
It was a decade of absolute brilliance in Mallu Town!!!. With Padmarajan, Bharathan, K.G George and Sibi Malayil ruling the roost with meaningful commercially successful cinema and Aravindan and Adoor Gopalakrishnan chalking out their unmistakable signature into the history of moving images. It’s remarkable in more ways than one since it was also the decade which saw maximum recognition for directors, writers and actors from Kerala, nationally. What more could anybody with a cinematic bent of mind hope more for? Pure Heaven!!!
It was, luckily, the same decade which saw yours truly, pass out from a disciplined school life to a rather less regimental college life. But this post is not about that. Nor is it about writing voluminous reviews about movies from that era.
Rather it is a small reminder of the time gone by, when a stream of moving images conveyed a sense of meaning far beyond comprehension in a bland world.
Its significance is thrust in your face when you look at the films which are being churned out these days. Most of them reflect a lame attempt to mimic the 90’s masala formula of Bollywood.
Some have said time (or was it life) is like a mirror (seriously don’t expect me to remember where i read that… suKoed remember?). I don’t know about that but time seriously paints a P A T H E T I C picture from where I am looking at Mallu filmdom today.
Enough for now…
Looks like I can make another shot from the leftover in the bottle… yiPPeeeee!!!!
More to come … “Ethu sathyam .. ah..sathyam… ah..sathyam……” as naseer would say it!!
Tags: Malayalam
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Sydney-siders rule, sober ho ya drunk!! Welcome aboard, DPac!
sobeRRrrrrrings chalu wb
Good post Dpac..Welcome aboard….
you’re first one to call me *chalu* dpac! oh, my family would be proud.
mAit it was ’sobeRRrrrrrings chalu’ not chalu and wb together lol