Balaji's Thots

As always, Halloween this year also was celebrated with a pumpkin carving, costumes for the kids and trick or treating.
The choice for the carving was Boo Brothers, a relatively simple design with two scared ghosts (since I bought only one pumpkin, it was an easy and safe choice since it had one ghost each for [...]

Pure action films are a rarity in Tamil cinema with essential aspects like romance, comedy and sentiments usually pushing action to the sidelines. So Peraanmai, which gives top billing to action, is a pleasant surprise. The film is not without distractions as it initially pursues its agenda of highlighting the upper caste-lower caste divide. But [...]

Blue proves conclusively that good locales and action alone cannot shoulder a movie. The action has to be accompanied by a compelling storyline, well-developed characters and a good sense of pacing and Blue is 0 for 3 on those.
The film is about a hunt for treasure on a sunken ship called Lady In Blue but [...]

Reviews for Madurai Sambavam, Solla Solla Inikkum, Aarumugam and Aadhavan are now available at the reviews site.

For adults, Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol was the equivalent of a new entry in the Harry Potter(for boys) or Twilight(for teens) series. Arriving 5 years after his last book The Da Vinci Code, which became one of the most widely-read novels in history, it’s release was heralded by midnight openings and long lines at [...]

Among today’s actors, Suriya has been one of few to show a desire to take on different roles. While it was a little disappointing that he once again chose the masala route after giving us Ayan, the silver lining was that he chose as director K.S.Ravikumar, who has one of the best track records when [...]

After all the talk of a Vijay vs Suriya contest at the Diwali BO with Vettaikkaaran and Aadhavan, things have cooled down somewhat with Vettaikkaaran withdrawing from the race. Jayam Ravi’s Peraanmai, a rather late entrant, has taken its place. While a Suriya vs Jayam Ravi contest doesn’t have quite the same appeal, both films [...]

Just because many of our actors have acted as cops, it doesn’t mean that they were all good in the role. While donning the khaki uniform and thrashing a bunch of rowdies isn’t difficult, carrying off the role successfully and memorably requires certain qualities and abilities in the actor. As can be seen from the [...]

A few weeks ago, Rediff took a look at the best cop films in Hindi cinema and I was rather surprised that it didn’t feature many of Bollywood’s most popular stars. Considering how popular the role of a policeman has been in Tamil cinema through the ages, a similar list in Tamil would probably be [...]

Reviews for Vannathu Poochi and Unnaippol Oruvan are now online at the reviews site.