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Ponniyin Selvan takes the shine off Kalki’s novel?
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...
A partial victory for people with disabilities in TN cities
Something is better than nothing, the Madras High Court noted, and ordered the Tamil Nadu government to procure 499 low-floor buses suitable for use by people with disabilities in cities and suburbs. With its order of April 18, the Madras High Court has for now brought to a close the prolonged...
PS 2: A beautiful silver screen phantasmagoria
It takes a combination of a director, technicians, actors, theme of the story and the politics it speaks about to attract the audience in droves to the theatres. When Mani Ratnam’s Ponniyin Selvan 1 was released, the major draw was the curiosity to know how he had visualised Kalki’s iconic...
Yaathisai breaks new ground in historical fiction
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...
PS-2 songs out of tune with the essence of a period film?
It is customary for a historical film to take the audience across the centuries back to the period concerned with the magnificence of its visuals and the background music appropriately capturing the spirit of the period. In that respect, Ponniyin Selvan-1 passed muster thanks to the crew’s hard...
Will PS-II name Adita Karikalan’s killer unlike the novel?
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...
CMDA must plan well for Chennai expansion
The appointment of P K Sekar Babu as the Minister in-charge of the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) in February 2023 was seen by the real estate sector as a focused attempt by the DMK to get someone with core knowledge of the city to help steer its expansion. The Chennai...
Kerala farmers oppose leaving ‘problem’ elephants in wild
While two tuskers, both fond of rice, have been giving sleepless nights to residents living on the edge of the forests in the border regions of Kerala, a precedent set by the Tamil Nadu forest department which had captured and released an elephant Arisi Raja (King of Rice) after radio-collaring...
Kondaiah Raju: The painter who brought the gods home
It was artist C. Kondaiah Raju (1898-1976), who, in his portraits, infused life into several Hindu gods and goddesses and made them part of several temples and households. He was one of the few famous painters such as Raja Ravi Varma. Born to Kuppusamy Raju-Alamelu Mangammal in Chennai in 1898,...
Rudhran: Old wine in old bottle, both poor quality
It takes the right mixture of entertaining features such as interesting narrative, peppy song-and-dance numbers etc for a commercial film to be a blockbuster. But what we are, of late, being passed off with are those made with old and rusty ideas. The latest film joining the run-of-the-mill...
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