For a beginning, don't go to the theaters expecting another Panchathantiram or Thenali. This movie is altogether different from those other KSR - Kamalahassan combo movies. This is somewhere in between Anbe Sivam and Panchathantiram. A movie with a message plus comedy. A feel good movie. Just sit back, relax and enjoy the cruise....

The Story

Ambu@Nisha (Trisha) is a popular actress and is engaged to Madhanagopal (R.Madhavan), a successful and rich businessman. A series of misunderstanding during the shooting for the "Oyyale" song with Suriya leads to a quarrel inside a brand new Hummer that Madhan bought specially for Ambu. And the quarreling lead to an accident with another car. Both of them were safe but no one knows what happened to the other car. The fight between the two ends as Ambu decided to take a break for holiday in France together with her childhood friend and divorcee Deepa (Sangeetha) and her two kids.

And now enters our universal hero Major R.Mannar (Kamalahassan) as a private detective sent by Madhan to spy on Ambu. As a return Madhan is to pay for the medical fees for Mannar's friend Rajan (Ramesh Aravind) who is suffering from cancer.
After a series of investigation, Mannar confirmed that Ambu is clean, loves only Madhan and is not flirting with any other guys. Madhan who is now a relieved man, backstabbed Mannar by refusing to pay the medical fees for Rajan since Mannar could not find any fault on Ambu.
Desperate to pay the bills for Rajan, Mannar decided to play a game by lying that Ambu is seeing a man.This made Madhan furious and ordered Mannar to continue the investigation and he promised to settle the bills.
How and where the lies leads form the crux of the movie.Will Madhan end up marrying Ambu? What was the significant of the car accident in the movie? Well, watch the movie to find out how the movie ends..

The Characters

As for the characters in the movie, all of them played the roles to perfection. Madhavan was simply superb and played the character to perfection.Suspicious and drunkard. A perfect casting for this movie. However, he did look like he gained a few kilos. Trisha spoke in her own voice for the first time and I do hope she will continue to do so in future. Acting along side with Kamal is no mean task and she managed to pull it off successfully.Sangeetha as a divorcee, money minded, a good friend and a mother was really good. A very special mention to Ramesh Aravind as the cancer patient. His acting was awesome! You can really feel the pain that he is going through in the movie.Oorvasi as Ramesh Aravind's wife acted in a serious role after some time. And not forgetting the kid who acted as Sangeetha's son, I believe he has a bright future and we might get to see him in a few more movies. Well, as you can see I did not comment on KamalaHassan's performance.err...do we need to comment on his performance?? Everyone knows how good he is and what can I say? Good to see that Kamal managed to reduce his weight and we can't see his belly anymore.hehehe..Kudos for Gauthami for his costumes selection. My personal favorite would be the black shirt and pants he wore during the stage show (the theme music). First time I saw someone wearing a Transitions lenses in a Tamil movie. :P     I'm wearing one, but I am not acting in any movies. LOL!

Whoever came up with the idea of showing the flashback scene in reverse mode in "Neela Vaanam" is brilliant. I assume it should have came from Kamal himself.Notice that Kamal will be singing normally but their action will be in reverse. Cool!

The Music and Background score

All the songs seems to be well placed and some songs runs in the background ("Who's the Hero" and "Manmadhan Ambu") so, feels like it does not distract the flow of the movie.The first song ("Boogolam"- was not in the Audio CD) during the beginning was nice and soothing to the ears. Background score was apt for the movie. I taught "Kamal Kavithai" was removed from the movie but strangely found it ways into the theaters. Perhaps it was removed only in India. "Neela Vaanam" is my all time favorite song from DSP so far. The lyrics of the song is awesome.  As for the music, Devi Sri Prasad (DSP), well done!

Summary

Overall, this is a movie about love, friendship,betrayal, the suffering of a cancer patient with a sprinkle of comedy. The movie takes it own sweet time to progress until the interval. It will be much faster during the second half and towards the ending it was really funny. This is a story based movie where each characters of the movie is well etched so there is no illogical scenes or unneccessary scenes in the movie except for two. One, the bullfight scene. I felt it was a bit silly. Maybe it was just me. Two, when Madhan confess his love during the climax, I felt it was a bit unbelievable. Maybe it was because he was drunk? I don't know. When Sangeetha confesses her love, it was a bit more belieable as she was more of a money oriented person and drunk.  What am I talking about?? hehe..go and watch the movie yourself.
NOTE :

1. Please do not compare this movie with Endhiran as both are in a different league altogether.

2. You will enjoy the movie if you dont set your expectation too high.

Verdict : A smooth cruise till you reach the destination! Madhavan, Sangeetha and the kid will definitely make you laugh!

For the first time ever, I was eagerly awaiting the time for me to watch a Malaysian made Tamil movie. In this case, I am referring to "APPALAM". No offense to all the other locally made Tamil movie that was shown in theaters, but this one was simply because it was about the relation of a father and his child. You guys will understand it once you become a father... :P.

The second reason was because of the director, Afdlin Shauki. The curiosity of how did a Malay man would direct a Tamil movie raised the bar for the movie (of course he also had the talented Shasi Tharan Rajoo as the assistant director.) Third reason was for the song from Dr.Burn - Appalam which is considered a hit in Malaysia and the forth reason was for the casting. Really wanted to see how all this local artist would perform on screen.

The Story

The movie begins with both Appalasamy(Ganaa) and Nalaini (Jaclyn) getting married in a temple just like any Tamil movie where the parents does not give consent for the marriage. The good part is, there was no flashback scene shown to tell you what happened. Its just that you know that is the case with Ganaa and Jacyln's expression.

Next, the famous song by Dr. Burn kicks in and in between the song, the story unfolds.

The story was set in 1992 in Penang and Appalasamy opens a stall that sells Indian food and his Appalam is very very tasty and huge.With the help of his friends, Wong (Iman Wan) and Hassan (Afdlin), they opened a restaurant in Penang. In a period of 10 years, Appalasamy became very successful as we can see their are now living in a huge bungalow and driving a Mercedes. How he became rich was not shown in detail as I think that was not necessary since that is not the core of the movie. However, they did show that he was opening a restaurant in Ipoh. So, could be that he has quite a few branches. Well, if we can accept Rajinikanth becoming rich by the end of a 5 minute song, this is totally acceptable!
Appalasamy was working very hard so that both his wife and daughter would be able to live a happy life until he does not have time to spend for his daughter and wife.This was deliberately shown in a few scenes where he could not attend the ear piercing ceremony and the dance competion of his 10 year old daughter.
The death of his wife due to an accident while quarrelling over the phone changed his life and he vowed be with his daughter so that he can protect and take care of her no matter what happens. Now, the story moves to another 7 years, and Appalasamy's daughter Shruti(Raja Ilya) achieves 10A1's and wanted to go to KL to furhter her studies and from here on you need to go to the theater near you to enjoy the movie! I do not want to go furhter from here as to not spoil the fun and drama in the movie.

The Characters

Appalasamy ~  Gana Pragasam

Shruthi ~ Raja Ilya

Nalaini ~ Jaclyn Victor

Siti ~ Sharifah Amani

Vassan ~ Vassantha Kumaran

Booty Slap ~ Shashi Tharan

Hassan ~ Afdlin Shauki

Wong ~ Iman Wan

Jasmine ~ Haanii Shivraj

Shasha ~ Kristina Vinokree

Mr. Prakash ~ Sathia

Teacher\Karate Master ~ Gunseh

Booty Slap’s Manager ~ Muthu Kumaran

Instead, I would like to write about the characters which were pillars of the movie. The performances of Ganaa and Raja Ilya is definately an award winning performance. This has to be Ganaa's best performance so far as we only used to see him in full fledged comedy movie but for this movie, emotion is very important and I believe Ganaa managed to deliver the needed performance. Kudos to Afdlin for choosing Ganaa to do the same character he enacted in Papadom.

Raja Ilya expression was good and seems to be correct at all places but for one thing which is the Tamil dialogue that she speaks (I assume that is her own voice) was not very clear. Not always but maybe just 3 or 4 times. And again, that is acceptable since Tamil is not her mother-tounge. Raja Ilya as a 17 years old was a perfect choice for the movie.
Sharifah Amani who came as the friend of Raja Ilya was very natural and funny too. Jaclyn Victor's performance was good but i think she might need to improve on her dialogue delivery as it seems forced at some places.Another actor that worth the mention is definitely Vassan. He was really good and manage to tickle your funny bones (the scene in the swimming pool was one of it.) Shashi Tharan as Booty Slap with his dialogue delivery and body language managed to give a different kind of  performance.
Overall the comedy in the movie is very original and does not copy any other movies (even Tamil movies) except for the Sathyah and Gunseh part. I will come to that later.The moment you see Afdlin Shauki, expect some unexpected comedy to roll in. This fellow is very good. Some of the scene are during the baby naming ceremony, when Ganaa is leaving  to KL to work as a gardener, the scene in the car after Shasha(Kristina Vinokree) threatened Ganaa and many more.

All the other supporting characters played their characters very well and was very natural. Congratulations to all the characters in the movie for living the character on screen!

Minus Points

Honestly speaking, I did not enjoy Sathya and GunSeh's acting very much. Their performance reminded me of Vadivelu (one of my colleague in office told me the same thing). They should have sticked to their original way of acting and if they did not try to imitate Vadivelu, it would have been better.
Another drawback of the movie is that none of the actors besides Sharifah Amani speaks the northen dialect despite all of them were born and raised in Penang. For me, since I was born and raised in Kedah, found it to be a bit akward. The director should have paid a little bit more attention on this.
The final dance scene of Shruti,hmmm...I'm not a professional dance or even a dancer to begin with but the dance could have been better choreographed (since, in the movie Shruti was said to be the best Bharatanayyam dancer in Penang). I think, the meaning of the song was not projected properly in the dance. Well, that's what I think...dunno bout others.

Conclusion

Overall, the movie was fully enjoyable and funny. Being a UPM graduate myself, it reminded me of those days when I saw the familiar locations of UPM. I just hope the movie will be a huge hit in Malaysia shown in other parts of the world as well.Make sure you watch in the theaters near you!

Verdict : Appalam; very crunchy and tasty!  Served with full set banana leaf meal. Enjoy!

Poll :

[polldaddy poll=4208237]




Enjoy the trailer and the songs below :

Appalam Trailer :

After All Valkai  :

Uchakattam :

Thaana Vanthe :




Vikna

Scene 1 :

Dad : Raj! Raj!

Son : (ignored the father is calling as too busy watching movie)

Dad : Raj! Raj! Come here for a while...

Son : (cheh!want to watch movie for a while also cannot aa..) The thought crosses his mind, as he walks to the dining hall where the father was sitting in front of the computer trying to figure out something.

Dad : Do you know how to launch Media Player?

Son : (OMG! This one also dunno aa?) And slowly he showed to his father, how to access Media Player. (Well, it was Windows 95 at that time.) But, the father was still a bit confused and Raj in a irritated voice rudely told his father again. Luckily, this time his father managed to understand it and Raj straightaway walked away without saying anything to continue watching the movie.

Later, once the movie finished, Raj went to sleep feeling sorry that he acted rudely to his father and wanted to apologize. Too bad, his father was already asleep and Raj deep in his heart knew his father was hurt by his attitude earlier. Well, there still time tomorrow morning to apologize, Raj thought and he went to sleep.

Scene 2 : (early next morning)

Brother : Raj! Raj! wake up! something happened to Dad!

Raj : What!!!!

Immediately, Raj jumped off from the bed and ran to his father's bedroom. Things that he never imagine would happen, happened right in front of his eyes. His father was suffering a heart attack and passed away right in front of his eyes.

Raj : Oh Dad!Why! Why! I didnt even get a change to apologize to you! I'm sorry Dad!

[background song from Nayagan, Thenpaandi Cheemayile being played as a situational song]

It has been 8 years now, and Raj still could not forgive himself for hurting his father's feeling that day... :(

The END!

Well, just a story that crossed my mind...don't get too emotional..I could have gone a bit more detailed in the Scene 2, but FINAS would have give 18SG for that scene, so have to chop a few scenes here and there to get a U certificate. :P

The point is, we always tend to forget or take for granted when the people we love soo much are so near to us.We'll never know when Mr.Yaman is checking his waiting list and says "Ahh! It's your turn today!"

A mother will always steal the show compared to the father.hehe. A father rarely shows his love to his son directly like a mother does as his son\daughter grows older as much as he did when we were a baby. Well, something like Amitabh Bachan in Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Ghaam..Those days there were no digital camera or camcorder or whatever you call it to snap as much of picture\video that you want for us to see how much the father would have showered his love to us, 20-30 years later.

As you grow older, a father will show his love by giving you all the neccessary things for you to be prepared to live in the ever challenging world! He will do his best even though he has no money is his hand so that his son would get a Degree in some University. What he did to get the money....the son will never know. That's how a dad keeps the secret so that the son will concentrate only on his studies. A father rarely spends for himself, even for Deepavali and all the expenses goes to his child\wife. A father, will always be annoyed on Father's Day as the children will spend more to celebrate Mother's Day and yet, the love for their children will never fade. :P A father will never says he has no money, when you ask to buy books.

At least, that's how my father had been towards us.

Just wish you were there when,

- I got my Degree in UPM

- found my love of my life

- got my first Job in TMnet

- bought my first car(Kelisa)

- bought my first house

- got married

- bought my second car, Kia Rondo

- when your grandson was born.

I Miss you and Will always love you! Too bad, you are not here now for me to tell you directly. Hope there is high speed broadband access in heaven or wherever you are right now for you to read this blog!

:) The sole reason I'm writing about a Father's love is because the movie Appalam that is running successfully in Malaysian theaters right now. Might be going

tomorrow
sometime this week to watch the movie. After all, its a story of a love of a father for his daughter.. Go watch it in theaters only and not on download\or pirated CDS!! (Of course, you can watch it on DVD once the original DVD is released..buylaa..don't go pinjam from friend and then pass to another 10 friends and at last the owner would not get back the CD)

Support Malaysian artistlaa!! Well, I sense another review is coming soon.....hehehe!

Vikna

Well, after the huge hype created for Endhiran, me and my wife went for the movie at Alamanda Putrajaya yesterday noon.

Had some technical difficulties with my brain as I bought the ticket for 11.25am via GSC online but the next day thought the movie starts at 11.45am. Went to the theater a bit late at 11.33am. Hopefully we did not miss anything as it was showing the title credits or whatever you call it when we went in.

Ok, now about the movie. This movie has the simplest intro of Superstar Rajinikanth in decades...You'll know what I meant when you watch the movie yourself.

Overall I enjoyed Rajinikanth's performance. He was simply awesome as Dr Vaseegaran, Chitti and Chitti 2.0 (my favourite of them all)

Dr Vaseegaran

Rajinikanth looks smart and looks totally handsome. He delivers the character perfectly. Rajini's expression as the scientist  is good compared to his other movies. One example is during the conference when Chitti is asked if God exists? Rajini's reaction when Chitti gave the answer really gave the impact that it should. His coming timing is always perfect as we already know. No comments on that.Overall, Rajiikanth's performance as Dr Vaseegaran is sans any Superstar's style and mannerism. Credits should go 100% to Director Shankar.

Chitti

Rajinikanth as the Chitti  is totally loveable with his innocence and again his coming timing is perfect. Chitti is super intelligent and all the scene involving the Robot is really enjoyable.The dialogues during the arguments that occurs between Dr. Vasee and Chitti after Chitti confesses its love to Sana is very well constructed. Unfortunately, we can clearly see that it's Rajini's double during the fight scene in the train and during Chitti's Dance Showcase. But, that is totally forgivable. :P

Chitti 2.0

Yeah, Rajini is totally menacing as Chitti 2.0. His performance is superb. After years, Rajinikanth has performed a superb villainous role. It must have been a piece of cake for Rajini to do such a role as that is how he started his career during those days..In fact, this was one of the main reason why I went to see the movie on the second day itself. I love to see Rajini as a villain. Though, Rajinikanth looked a bit old as Chitti 2.0.

Sana (Aishwarya Rai)

Ahhh....Aishwarya.. what to comment about her?? For a commercial movie, she delivers the required level of acting.  She looked gorgeous throughout the movie...

Shankar

This is the man who made it all possible. A 10 years old story finally came to life thanks to SUN Pictures. This fellow knows the nuances of commercial cinema and took it to a higher level. Difficult for others to beat this but of course, in future more sci-fi Tamil movies will be pouring in all because of this "first of its kind movie".

AR Rahman

His music is already a chart buster everywhere in the world but my humble opinion is the background score could have been better. After watching his performance in Raavanan which was totally awesome, I was a little disappointed with the background score.Well, only a little... Anyway, ARR rocks!!

Danny Denzongpa

He fits perfectly as a corrupt scientist. Great acting from this fellow.

CGI

For a Indian movie, the CGI is superb, minus a few places here and there. Which of course can be ignored...The CGI works at the temple is one of the highlights. I was totally impressed with the CGI during 30-40 minutes before the end of the movie. The snake, gun firing ball, the drill and of course the surprise robot...all of it was awesome!
Awesome! Awesome! Awesome! dot!

Other Castings

Santhanam and Karunas provide adequate comedy provided their limited time onscreen.
So does all the other casts in the movie.

Conclusion

Overall, if you want to experience the grandness\richness\greatness of the movie and the awesome acting by Rajinikanth watch it in the theater!
One of a kind movie!
Now, I'm thinking when will I go for the second show??? Anyone care to join me?

Latest Update (05/10/10)

My above article on Endhiran is published on Behindwoods.com!! Do check it out :

http://www.behindwoods.com/features/visitors-1/endhiran-malaysia-05-10-10.html

Vikna

For the first time, I am writing something that is not related to photography in my blog. This is because at last after a gap of a year or so, I managed to find out the method to install unsigned apps to my Nokia 5800 (V51.0.006).

Hahaha....what a big relief and I almost give up until a few hours ago (before I manage to resolve the problem and decided to blog about this..)

I believe there are more out there still confused on the steps to achieve it as there are many websites out there giving tips but most of it does not work.

First of all, I would like to give credits to (http://nokia5800.net/help-guide-signing-unsigned-apps-without-hacking-your-phone/) for providing the website to generate the .cer and .key files.

Ok, enuff talking and lets go straight to the topic.

STEP ONE : GETTING THE .CER AND .KEYFILES

1. Go to http://www.symbian-freeware.com/download-free-signer-for-symbian.html and download Freesigner application

2. Then go to http://andy.ehandysoft.com/devcert.php



2. Follow the steps provided in the website. (Note : it will take from 12-24 hours to generate the required .cer and .key. So be patient.)

3. After 12-24 hours return to the same website and enter the IMEI# again and this time, you will get a similar page as below. Click the link that I highlighted with the RED BOX.



4. Download the RAR file (something like 201008241843556.rar) to your favorite location. :P

5. Extract the file (again, to your favorite location) and you can see similar files as below.

STEP TWO : INSTALLING FREESIGNER

1. Connect your mobile phone to your computer and transfer Freesigner, .cer and. key.key file to a desired location.

2. Install Freesigner on your mobile phone. You might  be getting the below error : Expired Certificate.



3. To resolve the issue, I change the current year from 2010 to 2009 and reinstalled and Voila!

STEP THREE :  FREESIGNER SETUP

1.Now that we have installed Freesigner, launch the application and go to Settings.



2. Click on Self Sign Cert and then click on the "Back" button. This will allow you to choose the path that you have saved the .cer file. Once selected, repeat the same step for the KEY.key file under Self Sign Key

STEP FOUR : SIGNING THE APPLICATION WITH FREESIGNER

1. Now we are done with the settings and you can start signing applications now. Launch Freesigner again and click on Add Task > choose the drive the application is located and "Add" the application to be signed.

(Note : you can sign a few application by repeating Step 1 )



2. On the next option, select "Self Sign Sis" and OK. This will then sign the app within a few seconds and the signed application will be located on the same location of the original file.(The signed application name ends with Application_Name_signed.xxx)

STEP FIVE : INSTALLING THE SIGNED APPLICATION

1. Try installing the SIGNED application now and you will definately succeed!

2. This step worked for me, however I would not be able to guarantee that it will work for everyone. Do try and leave a comment so that someone would be able to help if I can't help you guys!

Thank you!

After a gap of 13-15 years, manage to set my foot in the famous Maran Sri Marathandavar temple.

Reached the temple at around 9.30am (as is was the tonsure ceremony for my brother's baby girl. See : TirhanaSree - The First Haircut). As we entered the temple is was almost empty. My first thought was, we went too late as the morning prayers should have finished by now. But, to my amazement people are basically pouring in at around 10.30am as the noon prayers was about to get started.

Didnt expect soo many people to be there...well, this is a nationwide famous temple. So , I supposed I should have expected this..

Hmm...the temple has gone trough a massive transformation during my "short" absence...hehehe...The design of the temple and colour choice is very nice.

There was a board saying "No photographs inside the temple", but I saw one smart Indian fellow taking pictures of the deity in the Moolaastaanam..No comments... and some foreigners taking picture inside the temple...

So, most of my pictures are from outside the temple rather than inside. However, still managed to take few picture from inside.Could not resist taking the pictures as the architecture of the temple is awesome.

We stayed there until the Noon prayers and after the annathaanam, left the temple to return to our beloved home in Kajang.

Checkout the photos below :

At last...my first official family photoshoot....after photographing the City of Lights and Floria 2010, got the chance to photograph real person..hehe

Well, the person in focus is the lovely cute babygirl of my brother, Thillaivasan and Shasikala and the function was held in Sri Maranthandavar Temple in Maran, Pahang.

Left my home around 7am as my GPS on Nokia 5800 says that I will take around 2 1/2 hours to reach the destination from Kajang. As the GPS said, reached the temple at 9.30am...a bit early as the function only starts at 10am. :P

Click here to enjoy the photos

Me and my wife had always wanted to go to I-City, Shah Alam once I managed to get my hands on my beloved DSLR camera, EOS 550D.

She had shown me the picture of other people's blog who had gone the previously and oh my...it was simply magnificent!

At last, managed to go to the place on a fine Sunday night with my wife, 1 year old Kavinash and my wife's brother..Once you step your legs there, just one word came to my mind...WOW!!!   There were decorative lightslighs everywhere....

Good to know that there was no entrance fee charges apart from the RM1\RM2 (weekdays\weekends) parking charges. And do bear in mind that the place will be a bit congested to enter the area. I went on a Sunday, so not so sure bout weekdays..Nevertheless, it is definitely worth it!

And, there was a large projector screen showing some of the FIFA World Cup 2010 commentary from TV1. :P

Checkout my photos below :

Date : 11th July 2010 (Event is from 10th July 2010 till 18th July 2010)

Official Website : http://www.ppj.gov.my/putrajayafloria/floria.html