Balaji's Thots

While time travel is one of my favorite genres when it comes to movies, I don’t think I’ve read any books in the time travel genre (unless ofcourse I count Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which had Harry, Ron and Hermione go back in time in one of the best segments of the [...]

While we’ve had our share of interesting and quality films so far this year, big ‘event’ films have been far and few between. But we are getting a bonafide one on Wednesday as Mankatha arrives in theaters. A number of factors have gone into making it one of the biggest releases of the year.
Mankatha is [...]

Reviews for Nil Gavani Sellaadhey, Kullanari Koottam, Theneer Viduthi, Veppam and Rowthiram are now online @ the reviews site.

Assistant directors who are promoted to directors tend to exhibit the style of their mentors in their early films. So its no surprise that Veppam, the debut film of Anjana, who worked as an assistant director to Gautham Menon, resembles a Gautham film with its slick look. But the depth in characterization that was seen [...]

Not withstanding the personal friendship between Rajni and Kamal, which they’ve both expressed both in words and actions(the former more than the latter though) over the years, I don’t think there’s much hope of seeing the two biggest stars of Tamil cinema together onscreen. While the two actors always maintain that they’d be willing to [...]

When I got my own website 2 years ago(2 years and 1 day to be exact), I mentioned that I’d noticed three reasons – marriage, fatherhood and owning a website – behind active bloggers becoming irregular and since I had already crossed the first two events, I hoped that having my own website wouldn’t jinx [...]

John Verdon’s debut novel Think of a Number was an inventive and suspenseful mystery that impressed me with its fascinating puzzles and clever answers. Verdon gives us more of the same in his sophomore effort Shut Your Eyes Tight. While the plot is more complicated and the subject matter is more unsettling, Verdon once again [...]

Rowthiram is for Jiiva what 2008’s Bheema was for Vikram. The film is at heart a masala movie with romance, sentiments, comedy and some interesting ideas about how society functions. But all that is pushed aside by the action, arising out of Jeeva acting like a superhero. The action is staged well but without a [...]

Reviews for Pillaiyar Theru Kadaisi Veedu and Udhayan are now available on the reviews site.

Trailer

Mankatha definitely qualifies as one of the big movies of the year with the double qualifications of being Ajith’s 50th movie and his first teaming with director Venkat Prabhu. So it came as a surprise that the film had such a quiet trailer and audio launch. But now they are out they will do their [...]