One of the all-time blockbusters of MGR, Ulagam Sutrum Valiban (1973), was just yet another characteristic pastiche of song, dance, fight and emotional overkill. Yet it was in the eye of a political storm in the early 1970s well before its release; no stone was left unturned to stop it seeing...
Novel and cinema are always strange bedfellows. There have been instances of writers pushing back against filmmakers’ tendency to tweak their stories. For instance, when J D Salinger’s short story Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut was adapted into the film My Foolish Heart (1949), he reportedly flew...
It’s a given that historical fiction or a film always harks back to a dynasty and a king in the lead, glorifying his exploits, sacrifices and valour, depicting magnificence and mesmeric charm of palaces, jewels, battles, traditions, temples, arts and so on. The genre is a kind of panegyric on...
Tamil iconic writer Kalki’s historical fiction Ponniyin Selvan serialised in the Tamil magazine Kalki for three-and-half years in 1950s still retains its appeal for countless readers in Tamil Nadu. Drawing heavily on historical accounts of the Chola regime from the middle of the 9th to the 13th...
At a time when child marriage was the norm, women’s re-marriage a sin and women’s liberation pooh-poohed, a daring woman rose up — breaking free from the shackles of patriarchy — and stormed the male bastion. T P Rajalakshmi sang and acted in stage plays and films and directed movies, breaking...
Kasinadhuni Viswanath, a legendary filmmaker and one of the doyens of Indian cinema, may be no more but his oeuvre speaks volumes about him. His 93th birthday was just a little over a fortnight away when he passed away at age 93 in Hyderabad on February 2 2023. The ‘kalathapasvi’ as he was...
After Rajinikanth re-released his 2002 film Baba in 2022, which unfortunately became a damp squib again, like 20 years ago, his peer Kamal Haasan is set to come back with a digitally toned-up version of his 2001 film ‘Aalavandhan’, also a box-office dud back in the day. The film’s producer...
The acronym MGR still inspires awe even after 35 years since the demise of the Tamil cultural icon Maruthur Gopalamenon Ramachandran (1917-1987). MGR lives on in Tamil cinema and politics. His stellar 42-year-long film career from 1936 to 1977 went hand in hand with his enormous political...
It takes perseverance to be an actor, a lot of it to be popular and much more to sustain the popularity. This unwritten law of tinseltown holds good for all ages. Right from Tamil superstar of yesteryear M K Thyagaraja Bhagavathar to the post-1950 superstars MGR and Sivaji Ganesan to the...
Parthiban Kanavu and Raja Raja Cholan, two Chola themed movies, proved to be duds in the box office. Boasting of big stars, big writers and grand themes, they came a cropper. And some of the elements that proved to be the nemesis of those films are there in Ponniyin Selvan too. Ponniyin Selvan...
