dasavathaaram

The much awaited magnum opus of Kamal and Ravikumar is finally here. Starring in 10 different roles with varying depths and backgrounds, Kamal has truly shown his versatility in acting and portrayal. Although some of the roles could have been avoided to lower the number of avatars, the movie didn’t seem disjointed or in bits – which is commendable.
The movie starts off with the old feud between the two prominent lines of worship in Hinduism – Shaivism and Vaishnavism. Here, a devout Vaishnavite, Rangarajan Nambi, is cruelly killed, by a Shaivaite king, as Vishnu is ousted from the temple, and his wife loses her life on the same shores that her husband loses his.
Moving into the new millennium, Dr. Govind is a leading scientist in synthetic biotechnology, who is against his boss to sell a harmful microbial for money to immoral people. Meanwhile, the entire research unit witnesses the harmful effects of the microbial as an accident happens to one of the lab monkeys. Knowing that his boss has been bought, Govind tries to remove the vial himself and succeeds to escape to his friend’s house, whose wife is Japanese.
He is pursued by an ex-CIA trained killer, Christian Fletcher, from who he escapes, but his friends die in a bomb blast. While escaping, he meets his friend, who is about to mail his packages to India, and in a mix up, the vial (which was also in a packet similar to the mailings) is switched with one of the packets. As he tries to convince the company to stop the mail from going out, he spots Fletcher and in his escape gets packed into one of the mail delivery containers and is transported to India. Meanwhile, Fletcher ‘marries’ a club girl fluent in Tamil and follows Govind to India.
The brother of the Japanese girl who dies is informed of her death and he pursues Govind after knowing he is responsible for her death.
George Bush gets updated on this loss of biotechnology and after much ‘discussions’ decides on going to India to fix this issue.
In India, Govind is met by Balram Naidu, a local official, who is put in charge of his case. As Naidu is trying to interrogate Govind, he is forced by his superior to welcome the agents from America, who have followed Fletcher to India. As Naidu leaves, the Fletchers enter the room posing as agents. After a couple casualties, Govind leaves with the Fletchers at gunpoint with a local policeman.
As they are trying to leave, the arrival of a pop singer, Avtar Singh, catches the attention of the local crowd. He ends up coughing out blood and in heed of his safety, the gate to Fletcher and his hostages is left unguarded. The group leaves in the mayhem.
Along the way to discovering the vial, the group meets with an accident where the policeman gets badly injured. As a deal, Govind sends the policeman to get help and escapes from Fletcher.
Meanwhile, Naidu is collaborating with the real agents from the U.S. He finds out that Fletcher has been to the local despatch office and destroyed all records, save one. Using the despatch list, he starts to send his officials to watch each delivery.
Govind heads to the location where his package was being sent to – Azhagiya Singar madam – which is a devotional group practising Vaishnavism. The package is sent to an old woman, Krishnaveni, who is slightly deranged, since her son died in U.S. She is very stubborn and refuses and give up her package. Here is where Govind meets a beautiful devotee called Andal, who also lives in the same house.
Naidu’s agents inform him about Govind and the package, and Naidu starts to hurry to the location. Fletcher also finds the location and keeps an eye on Govind. Meanwhile, a religious procession of Vishnu passes by in the street and Krishaveni insists on ‘asking’ her God before giving up the vial. Instead of bringing it back, she drops it off in the idol. Panicking, Govind tries to get it back but his efforts are thwarted by the rest in the procession. Getting the idea, the Fletchers try to get it as well, when the sirens stop them. To distract, Fletcher distracts one of the temple elephants in the procession and mayhem ensues. Govind escapes with the idol, but Andal persists in following him and go along with him.
For the rest of the movie, they keep trying to shake off Fletcher. Along the way, a tall muslim man is introduced as part of a family in an accident. A Dalit protesting against soil erosion are also introduced. Although these two characters weren’t entirely a part of the chase, they provided the distractions that Govind needed to escape Fletcher. The Japanese brother also understands that Govind is innocent and helps him out.
The antidote if the vial breaks out would be loads of NaCl – which is salt and using this concept, the movie tried to create a situation for one of the most horrific, unexpected tsunamis that hit South East Asia.
An interesting movie – definitely covered all the ground and without many bloopers. Considering the number of characters and expanse of the plot, the feat was amazing and kudos to Kamal for coming up with a great storyline. But certainly, some of the characters could have been better woven with the story to keep it together, though one can’t expect everything to be perfect. Definitely worth the watch.
So the 10 avatars were: Rangarajan Nambi, Dr. Govind, Christian Fletcher, Balram Naidu, Krishnaveni, Avtar Singh, the Japanese brother, the tall Muslim boy, the Dalit and George Bush.

I am Legend

Starring Will Smith, this was probably one of the most thought provoking scary movie I had seen in recent times. Will Smith is a lone survivor after a cancer vaccination gone wrong. The rest of the people had been vaccinated or infected by each other to live an existence of a wild brute, that were afraid of the dark and thrived on violent and propagation of their own disease.
Smith lived with his dog and conducted experiments to find the cure, in which he was unsuccessful so far. He would go on a hunt everyday to find supplies to survive. From time to time, his past will be shown.
After the discovery of a cure for cancer, vaccination for cancer became popular and everyone started to get it. However, the strain started developing other kinds of symptoms and people started getting more aggressive and violent and started losing their sanity.
During one of his hunts, he loses his dog to the savages and becomes desperate to kill himself and get a revenge, but gets knocked out and saved by a woman and a boy. Shocked to find another and refusing to believe that there is a safe human camp away from the island, he tries to fight away the savages, who are now on his trail, since his saviours forgot to clean off their scent.
In the last few moments, he finds out that one of his experiments was successful and he sends this cure with the woman and boy, while he dies in a blast. The movie ends with the woman and the boy reaching the ‘promised land’.
An interesting movie and thought, but it was scary to think what would happen, if indeed all that was true. Our society is very interested in having vaccines for every possible disease and do not hesitate in introducing viral strands in us, for example, with the flu. Either way, a good movie to watch.

Wall-E

Wall-E is the story of the compressing robot left behind by humans centuries ago to ‘clean up’ the Earth. He shows many anthropic qualities, in being able to trinkets, keep a pet (a cockroach) and feel love (while watching tapes of old musicals). Often during his day of compressions, there comes a huge dust storm and gale that he hides from in another machine. As he continues collecting trinkets, he comes by a plant growing inside a discarded refrigerator and adds it on to his collection. One day he sees a bright red spot that remains uncatchable and he curiously follows it, only to find that it from a huge machine landing on Earth and out of it comes the prettiest little robot. It is love at first sight for him, but it takes a while for him to confess since the pretty robot also had a quick hand in shooting down anything that she thought was harmful. He finds out that her name is Eva and takes her to his home to show all he has. After a few clashing interactions, he shows her the plant and suddenly Eva becomes unresponsive, save a beeping green light. Wall-E tries everything in his power to bring her back but nothing happens. This was probably the cutest set of scenes.

Then a few days later, the big machine comes back and sucks up Eva. Wall-E refuses to leave her and follows her along into the machine. Here he finds a whole new world and we, as audience, have some funny moments to watch. He finds out a whole bunch of bloated humans stuck to their seats and their screens without any movement. Although the thought is scary enough, sometimes it does feel that the world might just come to that. Eva after scanning and searching makes it to the captain’s cabin and he is unable to fully realize the impact of the plant. However, after a day’s lesson on Earth, during which Wall-E and Eva have fatal adventures, he is firm on returning back to Earth and after battling his rebelling autopilot, the craft returns to Earth. Mankind resumes and Wall-E is fixed!

A very sweet and thoughtful story. Definitely a must see.

Sherlock Holmes - The complete novels and stories - Part I and II

Never have I felt so complete than when I was reading this set of 2 part collection, bringing together all the jewels of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s writings about his famous sleuth, who is the epitome of excellent observations and deductions. Often I have wondered if such a person existed in the world, and if he did, what loads of astonishment he could create in this monotonous world.

These set of stories bring all the cases together starting from when Dr.Watson first moved in with Holmes to his early conclusion with Professor Moriarty and then a rebirth, including the Hound of Baskervilles, until the final conclusion of the series.

The author extracts a new skill of Holmes in every story – women psychology in the Scandal of Bohemia, cryptology and text analysis in the Case of the Dancing Men, makeup and disguise on countless occasions, etc. There are few skills that aren’t present in the stories.

Part 1 consists of the adventures, the memoirs and the return of Sherlock Holmes with the Study in Scarlet and the Sign of Four.

Part 2 starts off with the bone chilling Hound of Baskervilles and ends with the case book of Sherlock Holmes.

Personally, I feel that these books are great sources for people who would like to develop their analytical and deductive reasoning as it gives clues on how Holmes arrived at a certain conclusion. Putting these theories to practice would definitely help in decision making of the day-to-day problems of mankind. Of course, that is not to demean the intrinsic value of the methods of this sleuth, but it is give credence to the unusually complex society that we live in, with multitudes of rules and regulations.

I often consider the probability of survival of Holmes’ methods in today’s worlds. Would he have survived with his analytical and deductive reasoning? Are people as transparent as they were in the century that he lived? Most of the criminals today are aware of their act in cold blood and take every step to erase the marks that might lead to them. However, it is also worth to note that technological and biological advancements have brought even unimaginative detectives (the quality that Holmes thinks the local inspector lack in the Adventure of the Silver Blaze) are able to get somewhere without any toil. And often Holmes claims to know the n number of tobacco types or soil types in the area or locale. With so many people migrating and moving to all parts of the world, still facing an ever growing population and exchange of so many materials and natural resource, would Holmes have been able to keep track of what belongs to where and come to his conclusions as easily? Chemical analysis is possible today to gauge where samples originate from, yet they take some time to complete. And yet, for a seasoned detective as Holmes, this time of wait might be expensive. The argument may go on, yet the result might be inconclusive.

Allure Confessions of a beauty editor

Written by Linda Wells, the magazine strove to cover aspects of beauty.
Starting my life in the professional world, I needed some professional advice and since this glossy magazine reigned the world of fashion, I tried it out. It was definitely interesting to see the techniques to maintain hair, skin, body, nails separately and it was even more interesting to see the techniques to apply makeup and maintain the equipments. I have to sincerely admit that I don’t remember anything that I read, since none of them were actually doable for a person like me who gets up 10 minute before leaving to work in the morning and one who is not really interested in constantly touching up. I think I’m one of those people who thrive in natural beauty, yet with scars of adolescence, I can only depend on cosmetics to help me with the ‘beauty’.
I think discovering what will suit you and what will be good is a journey that everyone has to go by themselves and reading books aren’t really the best ways for all of us out there. Yet, this book was very elaborate and covered many aspects which might be useful to others, who might gain more by reading others’ experiences.