Passenger & Other (Malayalam) Films

One of the things you can feel so fortunate about being born is to have born in india. While they call U.S the melting pot and truly cosmopolitan - india overwhelms you with its sheer variety of people, languages, culture, food and... colors. For me, it's the films. Know the kind of films people like and it's almost like knowing them...!

Malyalam films have always boasted themselves of created for the "educated" "elite" etc., Well, i started liking them from the college days in Coimbatore - specifically from Vandanam. Then there was Chanakyan that really got to me. Wish i could find it on DVD. Navodaya Films made a string of good films.

While not all - or even most - movies are as good as normally touted (what's wrong with the regional films? Each claim their's is the best...!) - off the top of my head, can think of only two films that satisfied immensely so far. Blessy's Thanmathra and Ranjith Sankar's Passenger. Blessy is quite uneven, to say the least but Ranjith Sankar is more impressive - even better than Telugu's own Sekhar Kammula. Love reading his blog sometimes. Varnachitram Interviews | Part 1 | Part 2

Shyamaprasad

http://www.shyamaprasad.info/onmovies.htm

of Ore Kadal, Ritu is good too though not remarkable.

Now for the gripes...! They make Malyalam films in 3 months...! While this shows their efficiency, also the end product rarely has any production values and often the ideas are never fully developed (or) given their due. And of course, they cater to regional tastes - like most regional films in any other language...!.

Hindi films have the $$$ but no originality - except of course a few. These are very common observations but to break out of them has proved so rare. One weird thing i notice with Hindi films of late is - they are too confused about the target audience and aesthetics. They are never going to be good basing their stories and tastes on hollywood films - shot completely in foreign locales... why in the world Sharukh Khan need to prove something (or) speak to the U.S and meet the president... are they out of their mind?.