10 supporting roles that helped further the Ulaga Nayagan's dominance

For those of us who've grown up watching Rajni and Kamal, we know the drill.

Big Star + Big Director + Big Composer = Big Bucks.

A few days back I was doing a rerun of Thenali (that KS Ravikumar/Kamal Hassan takeoff on 'What About Bob' that made a few zillions at the box office). As the scenes rolled by I did my usual, "If i was making this movie who would I cast as XXXXX".... I came up with a few names for all characters except two and one of them was Jayaram's (The other being Kamal of course :p).

A few days later I was typing away into the browser thinking of movies where supporting characters defined the very success of the big stars that the movies were meant as vehicles for.... I came up with a really long list and then decided to trim it down to movies which starred only the Universal Hero Kamal Hassan.


So here's my list of ten supporting roles that helped turn Kamal Hassan movies into blockbusters, furthering the Ulaga Nayagan's dominance.


Honorable Mention: Shahrukh Kahn in Hey Ram

Although Hey Ram didnt set the cash registers ringing like it should have, it gave us the pleasure of seeing Shahrukh and Kamal together, not to mention hearing Shah Rukh talk trash in Tamil... and you can trust Kamal to take a cute little singer and turn her into late-night masala channel.



#10 Karan in Nammavar

Before Karan turned himself into a snorting overweight lunatic whose movies miraculously turn into average grossers in the C-centers, he was a loser who acted bit-parts in low-budget commercial flicks..and before that he acted in one movie with the big K.





#9 Daniel Balaji in Vettayadu Vilayadu

Most of us nay-sayers didnt think this guy would prove worthy enough for the K to tangle with in this cat and mouse thriller by Gautham, but once the movie hit the screens, Daniel had us convinced...but like all traditional one-film-wonders he chose to act in a few crap-fests after this one.




#8 The entire cast of Sathileelavathi

This was originally going to be just Ramesh Arvind, but apart from that irritating 'almost sex' titillation with Heera this movie was a riot!








#7 Madhavan in Anbe Sivam

This movie was apparently K's answer to R's B. We all still ask ourselves if Sundar C came up with this one, but whatever.. i'm not complaining.. this movie transformed Madhavan from a buck-toothed a-center brat to someone who could hold his own against the best in the business.




#6 Mohan Lal in Unnaipol Oruvan

Mohan Lal is one stout piece of awesomeness who has
National Awards x 4
State Awards x 9
Filmfare Awards x 10

....Nuff said.



#5 Prakash Raj in Vasool Raja MBBS

For all his annoying gimmickry and mimicry Prakash Raj was probably the only person who could do to Kamal what Boman Irani did to Sanjay Dutt. So .... yeah...







#4. Jayaram in Thenali

They say Mohan-lal was initially slated to play this role, but I really couldnt see him as the superstar psychatrist who is brought to his knees by a hard-to-handle patient. I still remember waiting outside the theater with Ganesh, Sriram and Deepak to watch this one; hell bent on watching it for Jyothika and Jyothika alone...




#3 Pashupathy in Sandiyar

I know..they called it virumaandi in the end thanks to some whiney tamil politician, but without pashupathy's dark and rustic touch, this movie would've been a squib damper than the ending to a Karan Johar movie.






#2 Gemini Ganesan in Unnal Mudiyum Thambi

The day after I did a rerun of this in the USA, i went to a red cross camp to donate blood and they turned me away saying I'd been exposed to tuberculosis and malaria in India. Yes. I was also exposed to few million other seething Tamilians who wet themselves when they watched this movie.



#1 Chevalier Sivaji Ganesan in Thevar Magan

It is the year 1992 and Bharathan decides over some puttu and kadala that he's going to make a movie. He ropes in K and requests the best actor in the history of southern cinema to play his father. Most discering tamilians watched it ten times in a loop and randomly smashed things with their heads for a week after. A few zillionz later, that shameless king of B-country remakes 'Priyadarshan' decides that Anil Kapoor needs a hit and re-does the movie in Hindi (where it won another 8 filmfare awards btw...)

P.S. Any gems that deserve mention above? Put it in as a comment! :D

(Thats it for now ! Thanks for reading! Comment away!)

Endhiran - A sci-fi enthusiast's take on all things Robo

I finally saw it. I FINALLY SAW IT ! Endhiran, Shankar's 167 crore magnum opus will go down in Indian film history as one of the defining movies of this era a-la a thiruvilayadal, a thillana mohanambal or an ayirathil oruvan (the old one…not that self obsessed 3 hour gorefest that came out last year).

As Endhiran's box office figures continue to inch towards the big dipper, Kamal hassan is probably banging his head repeatedly against a wall and Shah rukh is drowning himself in a bottomless trough of dal makhani. But well ... I'm guessing no producer would've agreed to sink 150 crore into a project unless it starred the 61 year old demigod superstar.

All through Endhiran I couldn't help but feel a strange sense of foreboding. Its the same feeling I get when I read Bicentennial Man or I-Robot(AND NO! I'm not talking about that crap-fest of a movie starring Will Smith... the only thing the movie shares with the book is the title... AMEN).

According to me, what we saw in Endhiran is exactly what the future holds for ? Well, by saying this i dont mean that a scientist with a strange hairdo will create an android in the comfort of his oddly shaped lab with the help of a failed singer and an irritating sidekick. But, like all sci-fi buffs I believe we're closer to creating a Chitti than you might think.

One reason why many of my sci -fi friends dismissed Chitti as being a work of fiction was his memory rating... a whopping 1 Zettabyte. I, on the other hand am a little more optimistic about this... consider the fact that the RAM on my laptop now was unheard of a few years ago.

Also; while a 1 terahertz processor isn't something you'd be able to buy off a shelf at BestBuy tomorrow, they exist and work pretty well.

Isaac Asimov mentions in his later writings that he had to coin the term 'positronic brain' to explain the incredible levels of artificial intelligence in his robot characters. He was apparently writing I-Robot at the time when the positron was being discovered and it was becoming a popular buzz-word in science circles. Shankar and Sujatha explain Chitti's intelligence as being based on a hard coded Neural Schema (something that Chitti himself is unable to reveal to anyone). It'd be interesting to know if Chennai's frontbenchers got all this, but still.. I guess they had rajni and aish for company and weren't complaining.

As a race, we've have been obsessed with the emotions of non-humans since the time we learned to create (statues, cave drawings…you get the general idea). This concept, when delineated in film hasn’t always been convincing. Spielberg did it well in his 2001 release, A.I. while Roberto Benigni as Pinocchio was painful (one a side note: I still wonder how A.I. would’ve turned out had Kubrick actually gone ahead and made it in his lifetime…but no… he abandoned his plans to make a movie about an ultra-advanced robot and made a movie that gave us some nude footage of Nicole Kidman instead.Thank you Stanley Kubrick..RIP).

In Endhiran, Chitti is upgraded with some software that simulates hormones and is given several seminars on emotions and sexuality by his creator. Once this is done, he promptly goes about hitting on his creator’s fiancée; eventually becoming so drunk with love that he reveals his neural schema to his creator’s arch nemesis. The 'software induced hormones' explanation was a nice touch and i don't believe I've read that explanation for a robot's behavior anywhere (ten points for originality, Shankar!).

Chitti, while courting Aishwarya Rai in the first half, explains how they cant essentially ‘get busy’. When he is eventually upgraded to a leather clad killing machine with a grey tuft of hair, he is able to create an electronic embryo from within and is ready to impregnate the object of his affections. Well, then I guess for some strange reason Bohra’s red chip had a few tons of porn along with all that DESTRUCTION PROGRAMMING :|.

//////Spoiler Alert////

Shankar usually ends his movies with one final revelation (remember that ‘Tell me your dreams’ ending he gave us in 2005?)… Nevertheless, SPOILER ALERT (KINDA): Endhiran cuts to 2050 with Chitti’s parts lying inside an acrylic case in a museum and that girl from the old gokul santol ad who never seems to grow up is on a museum tour with her class.But he kills the whole scene when Chitti's disembodied head actually speaks out. I dont know if i'm missing the point of this scene... but it seemed kinda lame to actually make him talk.

//////Spoiler Alert Ends////

On the whole Kudos to Shankar and Kalanidh "SunTV" Maran for making this movie worth the wait. Rajini's next release will most probably be the much-delayed Sultan-the Warrior. So cya there ! :D

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