Best of 2024: Movies, Music & Reading

Here are some movies, music and books that caught my eye/ears in 2024.

Movies: Most of the movies in the list are from Malayalam. Malayalam movies have seen a remarkable resurgence in the last decade. In contrast  Bollywood or Hindi movies appears to be in a state of creative stagnation, trying to lift themes and stories from the Telugu industry (Tollywood) and miserably failing. 

I found myself struggling to recollect any Hindi movies I had watched in the past year, let alone any that left a lasting impression. This is a far cry from the vibrant era spanning the early 2000s to the mid-2010s, when Bollywood flourished with an array of memorable works.

Some of the movies in my list below were not released in 2024, I happened to watch them this year. But most of them are.

Bhoothakalam (Malayalam, 2022): One of the best paranormal movies in Malayalam that I've ever watched. Here is my review.

Premulu (Malayalam, 2024) : A chick-flick, a light-entertainer, third in a series - you decide. My review is here.

Civil War (English USA, 2024) :  I have been burrowing deep into the annals of American civil war, abolitionists and Abraham Lincoln this year. Coincidentally I watched this movie, which is unrelated to 150+ year old original version of civil war, months before I started down the rabbit hole of the 1860s civil war. Same land, different time, similar divides. My review.

Kishkindha Kaandam (Malayalam, 2024): Probably one of the best films that Malayalam produced this year. 

Bramayugam (Malayalam, 2024): Shot in the same location as Kishkindha Kaandam, but set centuries apart and brilliantly shot in black-n-white. Mammootty lords over a mad dark mansion and the movie, my review is here.

Bougainvillea (Malayalam, 2024): A stylish movie from Amal Neerad with his wife and actor Jyothirmayi rocking grey hair and her character and Kunchako Boban presenting new dimensions to his actor persona. Both actors have given great performances in an unconventional story which fails to hold together towards the end. But I loved the slick, urbane presentation. Maybe the allure of Jyothirmayi's silver strands will urge older folks, esp. Malayali men with sagging jaws and creased cheeks to abandon the harshness of jet black hair-dyes and embrace the timeless sophistication of grey hair. Sthuthi!

Barbie (English USA, 2023) : Barbie is a visually captivating and cleverly subversive film, blending playful nostalgia with sharp commentary on identity and societal expectations. It’s a whimsical yet thought-provoking exploration that transcends its toy-doll origins, offering a refreshing take on modern femininity

Society of the Snow (Spanish, Netflix, 2023): Alive by Piers Paul Reed was one of the books that I read in my teens that left a deep impression in my mind. It was about a team of Uruguayan rugby players whose plane crashed in the remote Andes and narrated their resilience in the face of unimaginable odds. Hollywood made a version of this real life survival story in the 90s starring Ethan Hawke. But Netflix's take on this incident, Society of the Snow, is the best and gripping version of this raw survival tale till now.

Sector 36 (2024): This is the only Hindi movie in my list, a Netflix production starring Deepak Dobriyal and Vikrant Massey. 

Music:  One of my favorite bands from the past released a new album this year, after long. Linkin Park's From Zero has head bangers like Emptiness Machine and Heavy is the Crown, along with many other great tracks, which makes it an almost no-skip album.

Shaboozey is my discovery of the year. It is like he found a place in music we didn't know existed and made himself at home there, at the confluence of hip-hop, country and pop. My favorite song of Shaboozey is Let it Burn.

Books : I hardly read any books this year and I am yet to finish the last two, but do plan to finish them 

1. And There was Light  - Jon Meacham
2. Circe - Madeline Miller
3. The Covenant of Water - Abraham Verghese
4. How to Hide an Empire - Daniel Immerwahr

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Thadakam (The Lake, 1982)

Before Pavanai, there was Jabbar Khan. Captain Raju makes his appreance as Jabbar Khan in an almost comical but imposing getup of a Pathan in Thadakam (The Lake), an I.V.Sasi film set in Kashmir. I.V.Sasi is true to the locations and the culture, unlike the Punjabi Houses produced twenty years hence. Thadakam is extensively shot in Kashmir, some local characters are portrayed by local actors speaking Hindi (not Kashmiri though) and there are even Hindi songs sung by Kashmirir characters in this Malayalam movie. 

Thadakam (1982) must have been I.V.Sasi's second outing set in Kashmir, after Thusharam (1981) having caught the Kashmir bug. Script and screen play are never the strong suite of I.V. Sasi movies, there are also unnecessarily sleazy situations as was required for early eighties Indian movies. Seema, Mammootty, Sumalatha, Ratheesh, Captain Raju and Balan K.Nair play some of the main characters in a movie that deals with a reincarnation episode in the life of its leading lady. There must have been a spate of reincarnation movies after the blockbuster success of Karz (1980), this must have been one of Malayalam's contributions during that cinematic season of rebirths. 

It is a low effort movie from the director after Thusharam, with a lot of B-grade sound and camera effects. It almost makes me wonder whether they did back to back shoots of both the movies at around the same time with the effort and the money put more towards the earlier movie.

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Lists : Podcasts I listen to

Podcasting is twenty year old this year having christened by Ben Hammersely with a broadcast-worthy name in 2004 and gone mainstream with a little help from iPod  & Steve Jobs right after. I never had much of commute more than 10 min to my work (thank you, universe) and due to my preference to visual media for entertainment I had been able to stay clear of podcasts for the first ten years of their existence. Then I realized I could listen to podcasts when I did chores around the house or while stewing in a bath or while on my evening jogs. 

Here below is a list of my favorite podcasts I listen to while I cook or clean or lounge in a bath. I am yet to find any podcasts I can listen to while running, so I have not started my jogging/running routine yet. I do not have much attention span anymore to commit to listening to serialized podcasts like Serial, so those type of famous, serialized podcasts are not in my list. I use podcasts to expand my understanding of the world, for learning new things or to light up my way down the rabbit holes I accidently find myself in every so often.

Philosophy, Economics, History: I do not know whether everyone becomes a philosopher as they grow old, I certainly have become very interested in Philosophy and Economics in the last decade. If I was the kind who cared about framed certificates and laurels I would have gone back to school (online or evening college?) to get a degree or two in these subjects. But I am not, these podcasts are more than enough for me.

Philosophize This: This beginner-friendly podcast by Stephen West is where I started my learning-philosophy journey. I still have many episodes left to listen and I do not listen to it in chronological order. West is a bit of a smart-a3$, and you have to remember he is opinionated too, just like the rest of us, but it is an informative guided tour nevertheless, from the early beginnings of philosophy in Greece, pre-Socrates.

The History of Philosophy without any gaps: I got to this podcast after Philosophize This, which is probably the right progression. Prof. Peter Adamson, is much more detailed and extensive than Philosophize This while presenting the same content. I am slowly chomping away at this podcast as time permits.

History of Philosophy : India, Africa China : Most of the philosophy podcasts only have a few episodes for Eastern philosophy and it is always the Western perspective of Eastern Philosophy. This one bridges that gap.

An Economic History of the World since 1400s: This is technically not a podcast, but a college course or a book by Prof. Donald J. Harreld or a TV documentary series, I watched (listened) it as the latter, using my public library account, on Kanopy. For someone who developed an interest in economics after living for decades in a world created and controlled by economics, this was a great intro to 600 years of human economic history presented by the writer himself. Unless you cared about the occasional illustration, photographs and drawing, the whole series can be consumed just through audio,

The History of India podcast : A very in-depth podcast about the history of India from 6th century BC onwards, hosted by Kit Patrick. I am yet to find another podcast that covers the range of time this podcast covers, from 600 BCE to 700 CE, about India's history.

Fall of Civilizations :  Learning from failures is always a wise idea. Even though I am not in charge of an empire, I seem to be living in a failing one. This podcast looks at the collapse of a different civilization in each episode.

Arts, Architecture, Design .....  including things peripherally related to architecture like urban planning. 

99% Invisible: From one of the best podcast hosts/producers in the US, Roman Mars, this design podcast examines our every day environment and objects from a design angle. A top design, architecture and art podcast featured in many best-of lists.

Memory Palace: Nate DiMeo's voice is mesmerizing and soothing as he tells the stories of long forgotten people, places, things. Memory Palace is Podcast Americana at its finest and Nate DiMeo is how every podcaster should sound like if you ask me.

Articles of Interest: A podcast about what we wear. It is a "sub"-podcast of 99% Invisible.

Thinking Transportation: A podcast from Texas A & M Transportation Institute about transportation and planning. As a public transport enthusiast with some urban planning connections, I listen to keep it up with the world of transportation.

The Daily Poem : A poem a day is a podcast from the Academy of American Poets which present a previously unpublished poems from contemporary American poets, followed by a description of the poem and a re-read of the poem. A short and a calming podcast.

Science: All things under the wide umbrella of science.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: While Carroll's own expertise is in physics, quantum mechanics, philosophy and cosmology, Mindscape dabbles in a wide variety of subjects talking to experts in pretty much every subject under the sun.

Redefining CyberSecurity: Working in technology, it is hard to escape the talk about cybersecurity and AI. This Sean Martin podcast covers the cyber security piece for me.

Stuff You Should Know : The title. I am not usually a fan of podcasts where there is more than one host with distracting banter and chuckles. This is one podcast I will excuse, even if it has two hosts, Charles W. "Chuck" Bryant and Josh Clark.

Brain Lenses : Hosted by Colin Wright, it is a podcast about how we see the world, ourselves and each other.

There are more podcasts to list like Reply All or Darknet Diaries. Maybe another day.

 I listen to podcasts on TuneIn Radio or AntennaPod, an open source podcast app. I don't really care for the podcasts that are only available on Apple podcasts(not an iPhone person) or Spotify. All these I've listed above are available in the two apps I use.

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Kummatty - A G. Aravindan Masterpiece

G. Aravindan's 1979 masterpiece, Kummatty is on Youtube, looking better than the original. The painstaking restoration effort, jointly done by World Cinema Foundation in the US, India’s Film Heritage Foundation and the Italian archive Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna has paid off. The vibrancy and the life in the restored print is unbelievable. The restored print is better than the original I had watched at least half a dozen times in my childhood. The restoration is a testament to the resolution and sharpness of the original analog film (Eastman color stock), even after all the negatives were lost and the restoration team had to rely on the positives, location shots and on the recollections of the original cinematographer.

Piper Kummatty and his band of followers.

Kummatty is a beautiful visual poem. A poem from a bygone Kerala, a Kerala that ceased to exist around the time the movie was made in the late seventies. It is the kind of movie you can show your American/western movie-buff friend representative of native Indian folklore on celluloid cautioning her/him the India depicted in this movie is as far removed from the present day India as snake-charmers and climbing rope-tricks.

A theyyam in the movie.

I first saw the movie when I was in 3 or 4 years old. It was promoted as a children's film. Although the director, G. Aravindan was of the opinion that he didn't consider it a children's film as he didn't like typifying his films, he said children may like it. Kerala state government went ahead and awarded it the best children's film for that year. Not to lose the opportunity to promote a world-class children's film, it was screened (almost) every weekend we visited the outdoor movie theater at the children's park at Napier Museum. I was traumatized every time I watched the movie. It was definitely not for little kids.

The mysterious figure of Kummatty, the dark vibe of the movie and the story (no spoilers) where one of my own kind (child) was thrown into deep 'existential' trouble and had to stay in that 'troubled' state waiting for the Kummatty to come back distressed me no end.

A real stray dog that landed a lead role in Kummatty.

G. Aravindan was not the most talkative of film makers. His films were contemplative visual poems. Kummatty is no different. When your main lead is a dog for the half the movie, dialog becomes dispensable. 

Aravindan's movies also served as vehicles for other talented people. Kummatty must be one of the finest cinematography projects ever helmed by Shaji N. Karun. In almost all of G. Aravindan's films, except the last couple, the camera was handled by the talented Shaji N. Karun. Well schooled in the mid to late twentieth century art house movie making techniques of long meditative shots and sparse dialog, Shaji N. Karun went on win Camera d'Or at Cannes with his own directorial debut composed along similar lines, Piravi, in 1989. 

G. Aravindan, Shaji N. Karun (photo courtesy Ramu Aravindan, son of G. Aravindan.)

The folk songs composed for Kummatty by Kavalam Narayana Panicker, set to music by M.G. Radhakrishnan have found a permanent place in the Malayalam cultural encyclopedia, with rebirths in the form of popular and rock songs by bands like Avial, decades after the movie was released.

Vilasini in one of the beautifully framed shots from Kummatty.

The only familiar face for me in this movie is of (Kuttyedathi) Vilasini. The choice of unknown actors or having common folks play part in his movie is also signature G. Aravindan. His movie, Kanchana Sita had tribal people from Andhra (location where it was filmed) playing main roles in that movie. Ashok who played the lead (kid), Chindan in Kummatty recently showed up at a screening of the restored version. Kummatty was the only movie he had ever acted in.

Kummatty's stash of animal crackers.

Kummatty sharing animal crackers treats with kids.

Kummatty is translated as 'the bogeyman' in the subtitles. I would disagree. Kummatty is not exactly a bogeyman, but he is more like a pied piper, luring kids with his songs, music, magic and animal crackers. Animal crackers are pretty symbolic in this story which is closely connected to animals. Unlike the piper from Hamlin, Kummatty has no ill intentions, he is an eternal child who finds joy and magic in the small things in life. The best compatriots he finds in his expeditions are children who share his sense of wonder and joy. 

Temple pond where Kummatty takes his bath, banyan tree and the temple in the background, where Chindan and his friends are seen watching the mysterious magic man.

Aravindan said Kummatty symbolized spring. He is a force of nature who visits a place according to his own schedule, like seasons. He comes after the rains, in spring, when lakes and ponds are abrim with water and nature is green and bountiful wearing its finest.

Evening market on the street, a common scene in mid twentieth century rural Kerala. Chindan played by Ashok is seen buying fish for his family's dinner.

Re-watching this timeless classic at the end of the first quarter of twenty-first century, it offers us a window into rural Kerala from half a century ago. None of these scenes will be naturally occurring anywhere in present-day Kerala. 

The social, political and cultural landscape of Kerala has irrevocably changed. The physical environment - built structures and the nature surrounding them, if they still exist untouched anywhere, are flanked by updated buildings and inundated with signs of progress like tin-sheet roofing or neon lighted billboards.

Chindan, with a pot of water, framed against the doorway of a typical Malabar home or temple, built of hewn laterite.

Kummatty was shot in my favorite part of the world, north Malabar. The rolling grasslands and sun burnt laterite hill tops of Kasargod where Kummatty frolics with his band of child followers is reminiscent of my childhood summers. The crimson faced theyyams and the local architecture in hewn laterite brings back memories of grand-parents and the cool interiors of ancestral homes. 

Kummatty takes us back to a lost world and a lost time,  where the pagan spiritual rituals, theyyams, bare chested grandmas and seasonal magic men co-existed with evening village markets and centuries-old banyan trees. At the discerning age I am now, Kummatty is no longer disturbing, the beautiful work of art has revealed itself, speaking of love, nature, (wo)man and the interconnectedness of it all. Thank you, G. Aravindan!

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Dev Anand & Guide (1965) - Hindi & English

Guide is a movie far ahead of its time - an ultra liberal redemptive take on a taboo subject. A dose of (reluctant) spiritualism and its hit songs may have sold the movie to the masses and made the Hindi version a phenomenal success at Bollywood box office. 

Dev Anand, Waheeda Rehman and a group of actors playing the role a film crew in Guide

What I appreciate are all the bold attempts it makes to address the conservative norms of sixties India, all packed smoothly and skillfully into a song-dance-melodrama bundle of a Bollywood movie.

I might be the minority here but I liked the English version of Guide better than the Hindi version of the legendary Bollywood movie. The English version of the Guide was written by the renowned author Pearl S. Buck and directed by Tad Danielewski. 

Both are two different movies, shot by two different directors, with almost the same set of actors, at the same locations, months apart. Guide might be the only Indian movie who had two birth fathers, a semi-identical twin movie!

Guide follows on the footsteps of Raju, a tourist guide in Udaipur, Rajasthan, India, played by the evergreen actor Dev Anand. We get to ride with Raju on his life's journey where he meets and falls in love with Rosie, a young girl, married to an aging archeologist who has no patience for her youthful spirit. The beautiful Waheeda Rehman essays the role of ebullient newly wed Rosie with stars in her eyes and her husband Marco is played by the multi-talented Kishore Sahu.

Dev Anand, Kishore Sahu & Waheeda Rehman in Guide (Hindi, 1965)

Guide is based on the famous Indian writer, R. K. Narayan's novel, The Guide. The Hindi version of the Guide was directed by Dev Anand's younger brother and successful director, Vijay Anand (Goldie.) The female characters in stories Dev Anand and his production house - Navketan Films had chosen to make movies of, including Rosie, are strong, lively, independent and modern in their outlook. 

Dev Anand during his best period of movie-making and acting between 1950 - 1980 was always on a quest to introduce new topics and broaden the views of typical Indian movie audience through his creations. He and the female leads often played morally ambiguous characters in his movies. Had they been in any other Hindi movie of the time they would have been harshly judged. No such negative scrutiny befell his movies. Adultery, long distance lovers falling out of love, black marketing, marijuana use by hippies were all explained with maturity and the right kind of conviction to get the buy-in from Indian audience who lapped up his movies and their chart-topping songs.

Dev Anand sitting on the ledge with Waheeda Rehman and Guru Dutt flanking him (Courtesy: Indian Express Archives)

Guide has the leading man (Raju played by Anand) and the leading lady engaging in an adulterous relationship. But they are also independent individuals on their own journeys who do not depend a lot on each other. This was a concept indigestible by Indian public of the sixties. But not only did Guide become a super hit movie, it is also one of a handful of movies that has secured a permanent place in a variety of top 10 list of Indian films from any era. 

Here is to Dev Anand - Indian film's liberal visionary and an evergreen style icon, who never lost his zest for life or creativity. His death came in the form of a cardiac arrest at the age of 88, two months after the release of his last film, Chargesheet in 2011, which he had both directed and produced! 

Dev Anand with his wife, actor Kalpana Kartik (Mona Singha) whom he married over a lunch break during a movie shoot

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Mother India (1957)

Mother India, the film, was the end result of a successful campaign by director Mehboob Khan to reclaim the title "Mother India" from the clutches of American author Katherine Mayo's critical work on Indian culture and society titled 'Mother India', released in 1927. Mayo's book was a scathing critique of India and its people and values and was intended to justify why Indians were not capable of self-rule at a time when all of India was firing and gearing up for freedom from British rule, which would happen 20 years later. Mahatma Gandhi called Mayo's a book, "report of a drain inspector sent out with the one purpose of opening and examining the drains of the country to be reported upon"

Soon after the independence of India in 1947, Mehboob Khan who had been intent on establishing right  Indian values on the big screen started work on remaking his own 1940 film, Aurat, by buying the production rights from the original production company. He intentionally called his film Mother India as a challenge to Mayo's work, in an attempt to eradicate the presence of Mayo's work from minds and history. An ethical or reverse astroturfing attempt that was a great success. If you google Mother India first several pages of search results are all related to Mother India, the movie or Yelp reviews of Mother India restaurants in various parts of the globe which are all Indian restaurants named paying homage to the iconic movie. Khan's Mother India was also influenced by movies based on Pearl S Buck novels - The Mother (1934) and The Good Earth (1931) and Russian films like Mother (1926) and Our Daily Bread (1934.)

The nationalistic pride of the new democratic nation is upheld high by the socialist and constructivist stylization of the movie. The iconic poster of Mother India with bold upward angles where the lead actor Nargis is seen holding up  the plough all by herself shows the determination of the rising new nation, the motherland, as Indians call their country (home country is feminine in all Indian languages) represented by the struggling but determined mother in the movie. The image is also reminiscent of Jesus on the cross, who if you ask me, was the first recorded socialist in (religious) history. The Soviet post-revolutionary posters dunked in constructivist ethos showcasing the rise of the proletariat came much later, but I am pretty sure all of these influences helped design the classic poster of Mother India.

This Mehboob Khan magnum opus usually features in top 10 list of Indian movies. It was India's first ever submission for the Academy Awards for the best foreign language film in 1958 and was chosen as one of the five nominations for that category. It also came close to winning the best foreign film Oscar losing out to Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria by a single vote.

The script by Wajahat Mirza & S. Ali Raza was deliberately written to show the emancipation, self reliance, empowerment and strength of Indian women.  The lead characters were portrayed by Nargiz, Raaj Kumar, Sunil Dutt and Rajendra Kumar with exemplary brilliance and the film became a turning point in their careers. Nargiz who was an established actor at the time fell in love with Sunil Dutt who played her son in the movie (they were the same age in real life) and went on marry to Dutt a year later. She won several national and international awards for her role in Mother India which was her last major film before she quit films post-marriage. For all the other three actors, Mother India kickstarted their careers and made them household names for years to come. 

The ending of Mother India culminates with the moral dilemma of the mother who is called to make the ultimate sacrifice that could be asked of any mother. To me, this ending is strangely reminiscent of the ending of another film four decades later featuring Nargiz and Sunil Dutt's actor son Sanjay Dutt - Vastav, where the mother commits to making the same ultimate sacrifice, a la Mother India v 2.0.

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Civil War: A curtain-raiser

Bananas are coming home to roost from all the banana republics the United Fruit Company States had planted. FBI has been disbanded, Canadian $ is the $ of choice, trading at several times the value of the American one and Texas and California have joined hands against the sitting President who is on his third term - the civil war is on.

From the director of other such disturbing classics with uplifting BGM like Annihilation and Ex Machina and the writer of 28 Days Later, Alex Garland, this dystopian peep into what is still a possibility, is a bold move for this time in U.S history.  

A bunch of journalists are the lead characters in this film which helps the director justify the detached and neutral observer track the film tries to stay on. Kirsten Dunst, as the de-sensitized photo journalist Lee is amazing and Brazilian actor Wagner Moura, the other lead just about keeps up with Dunst. I am not really sold on the waif like-wannabe-photo-journalist Jesse. Maybe Jesse's character was the only way some thematic depth and chaos could be added to the story. Otherwise it would be a war-road trip movie about some hardened (photo)journalists chasing a civil war without making many foolish decisions that might put their and their compatriots' lives at risk. Less drama overall, which is not something that sells a movie.

The film hits you hard with the imagery and symbolism of United State of America as a war torn country. The effect is amplified by mind blowing sound and music tracks. Modern warfare and the devastation that it brings along have never crossed into this nation of interstate highways, perfect lawns with even more perfect sprinkler systems and a god assigned in perpetuity to shower blessings on it. Here is hoping this empire does not fall this way. God (really need to) Bless the USA (this time.)

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Varshangalkku Sesham - A Vineeth Sreenivasan nod to Malayalam cinema

A nod that placed Kannur on the map of Kerala movie-dom. For me, that is the redeeming factor of Malayalam movies directed by Vineeth Sreenivasan. The slang, the accent/dialect, the people and the stories of Kannur (the director's birth-city and mine) were never given much prominence in Malayalam films or literature before Vineeth Sreenivasan appeared on the horizon with his youthful, sentimental films set in the region.

Vineeth's Hallmark-card-designed-for-Kerala type of movies is not exactly my cuppa, nor is this latest one from him, Varshangalkku Sesham. But the opening scene set in the director's familiar north Malabari environs with the perfect casting of his own brother Dhyan Sreenivasan, Malayalam's favorite slacker-hero, delivering his brother's lines with an innate comedic flair is a performance so pitch-perfect that it almost absolves the film's overindulgence in nostalgia.

Interestingly, the director's father, the iconic Sreenivasan , has long been a cinematic ambassador for the Kannur dialect, employing it in most of his roles regardless of his character's origin. However, his own directorial works—the cult classics  Vadakkunokki Yantram and Chinthavishtaya Shyamala,—while both commercial and critical hits, could have been set anywhere in Kerala.

The signature dialect in Malayalam movies of the eighties and nineties, when I was growing up, was the mid-Kerala Valluvandandan dialect which was supposedly the proper Malayalam for literature and films and therefore considered classy at the time. Kudos, Vineeth Sreenivasan for making Kannur and Kannur accent and dialect mainstream. Chennai (formerly Madras) and its people are next in line to thank Vineeth S. for making their city and culture the other geographical cornerstone of his directorial ventures.

Varshangalkku Sesham is meta movie, a nested node of nods.

A nod to the night breeze of north Kerala, a meteorological discovery made by the director in early 2010s. A nod to north Malabar. A nod to Madras/ Chennai . A nod to Kodambakkam. A nod to Tamil, Tamilnadu and sambhar sadam. 

A nod to yesteryear's directors. A nod to Priyadarshan and his production design style. The village scenes in the beginning almost feels like ghost-directed or designed by Priyadarshan's production designer. A nod to Mohanlal, a very weak nod at that, aided just by genes. A nod and a new life-line for Nivin Pauly. A nod to the nameless side-kicks. A nod to music, musicians especially violinists. A nod to polka dots, reaffirming their eternal status as retro, no matter which decade. 

A nod to old style Indian melodrama,  the millennial version.  A nod to Mohanlal style mund-flick. A nod to the new-generation version of the iconic Malayalam duo Dasan & Vijayan, immortalized by the actor dads of this movie's lead actors.  A nod to friends and family, who have contributed to Vineeth's success through the years.  A meta nod to characters, dialog and music from Malayalam movies of the past.   

Varshangalkku Sesham (transl. Years Later) is a nod to all things Malayalam cinema in an ensemble entertainer package, neatly packed and tied with a bow of gooey-Vineeth Sreenivasan-goodness.  It might also be a personal reciprocation effort from Vineeth Sreenivasan, paying respect to the stalwarts of Malayalam cinema like Mohanlal and Priyadarshan by creating central characters in this film to fit the progeny of these stalwarts. Although Pranav Mohanlal and Kalyani Priyadarshan are the weakest links in this movie. Dhyan Sreenivasan, shows he can act and has the range to play complex characters. 

Nivin Pauly's career is thrown a life-line and an opportunity to hit back at his critics with dialog penned by his bestie - Vineeth S. Director turned actor - Basil Joseph, Aju Varghese, Neeraj Madhav, music-director turned actor Shaan Rahman, Neeta Pillai, Deepak Parambol and Sreeram Ramachandran bring up the rear supporting the talented bro-team in this syrupy nod to Malayalam film world.

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Manjummel Boys - where boys will be/remain boys : A review

Manjummel Boys is a survival cave-rescue movie based on a real life rescue event that happened at Guna Caves (previously called Devil's Kitchen) near Kodaikanal in the Western Ghats region of south India in 2006. 

This is another one of those pan south-Indian movies (other recent ones I have reviewed in this category are Premalu and Aavesham) responding to the possibilities of profit-making through streaming  and OTT platforms where a movie needs to transcend, meta-relate, hyperlink across language and regional barriers. Bilingual characters, diverse locations across the country,  a supporting cast of regional actors from the area where the story takes place and other regional influences baked into the narrative are strategies to grab more eyeballs and box-office bucks. Setting this movie in Kodaikanal will also help boost the Tamilnadu tourism industry. Nothing wrong with making products people want.

To attract Tamil moviegoers and strike box office gold, Manjummel Boys frequently references the 1991 Tamil film Gunaa and its music, specifically the song sequence filmed at the Devil's Kitchen cave system featuring the legendary Kamal Haasan. After Gunaa's release, the cave acquired a unique identity, being renamed as the Guna Caves, setting it apart from the countless rock caverns across the globe  all going by the name of devil's kitchen. This devil dude might be quite a chef, had a kitchen at every port of call. 

Manjummel Boys also belong to my 'favorite' emerging genre in Malayalam, which I call the MCMs or Man Child Movies in this blog. In the real life incident which served as the inspiration for Manjummel Boys, it is actually a group of young boys from Manjummel between the ages of 17 and 21 who go on a tourist expedition to Guna caves and one of them slips and falls down a deep crevasse. They have the excuse of their under-developed pre-frontal cortex for the risky decisions they might have made.

the real Manjummel boys

But what is the excuse for the men in this movie where all the actors who play the 'boys' look like 30+ year old men who have not really grown up and are still displaying the antics of teenage boys. This is one place the director should have curbed his creative liberty and recruited some real youngsters, instead of Soubin Shahir, a decent actor, but looks forty.  To me Manjummel Boys is a literal man-child movie filled with men-children.

A targeted social media blitzkrieg in the days immediately after the  film's release must have paid off. The S.Indian social media frenzy over this movie could have very well been generated in bot farms in the wilds of Asiatic continent. That is the only reason I can think of why Manjummel Boys became a hit beyond compare. It is an okay movie, but there are survival movies that have been told better  including Thirteen Lives, Castaway, Society of the Snow, The 33 etc. Considering that language and geography are no barriers in this streaming global media landscape, where movie-makers has easy access to inspiration without much perspiration, this movie could have been  made better. 

The script is practically non-existent, and character development is sorely lacking. The characters' dynamics and relationships are left largely to guesswork. The current theater-going audience in Kerala seems to be mostly Gen Z and younger millennials. This realization makes me feel like a fossil in a world where anyone over 40 is considered a 'boomer.' Therefore please take note that this review comes from someone a couple of generations removed. Manjummel Boys appears to be a movie tailored for the TikTok/Instagram reels generation, whose attention spans are challenged by coherent scripts. In fact, the director Chidambaram S. Poduval's previous film, Jan.e.man, was more relatable.

But let me not rain on Manjummel Boys' parade entirely. The movie deserves praise for its strong technical execution, particularly the cinematography, production design, and sound work. Recreating the cavernous underworld of Guna caves, complete with vertigo-inducing visual effects of a bone-rattling plummet into the craggy depths is expertly crafted. 

If there's one scene that elevates the film, it's the portrayal of that pivotal fall - the turning point of the story. The way it casually unfolds onscreen with creativity and nuance is quite impressive. It catches the viewer a bit off-guard, highlighting the creative brilliance of the director.If only he had recruited some young teen Youtube stars or Insta-influencers, instead of thirty plus year old men to play boys....... 

 

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Aavesham, an agender review

The first half of 2020s is the period of man-child movies in Malayalam. There is a profusion of young male directors in Malayalam these days, many of them are very talented. This is indeed a better situation than in the aughts (late 90s up to 2010), a period I consider the driest season for good movies in Malayalam cinema. The only problem we've now is while many of the creations directed by these young stallions are technically brilliant, my almost half a century old lenses notice the myopic and know-it-all worldview of the young first before I grudgingly appreciate the movie's technical finesse. I hope this stage will not last long for these talented filmmakers as they mature taking cue from the lessons they learn down their own life-paths.

The latest in the series of man child movies is Aavesham starring the versatile experimentalist Fahadh Faasil as the fun-loving man-child of a mafia don. Aavesham is one of the better man-child movies in the recent past, a trend I started noticing from Lijo Jose Pellissery's 2017 porcine classic overdosed on testosterone, Angamaly Diaries. Another more recent one of this 'genre', also from Lijo Jose Pellissery that I had the good fortune to watch was Churuli, my review here.

Aavesham starts at one of those numerous engineering college hostels that line the outskirts of Bangalore where three freshman are hazed by their seniors and want to take revenge.Their novel idea of revenge entails recruiting or finding a local don who could be their local support and protection. Enter the crowd-surfing, quirky and fabulous Mr. Ranga, a much emaciated Fafa (Fahadh Faasil), in an offbeat action role.

The three new kids were probably recruited from Instagram or through auditions and do well with the roles they are entrusted with. The transformations of their characters as the film progresses are captured well. The modern and endearing thug sidekick, Amban is also fleshed out well. Fafa brilliantly portrays Ranga, perfect to the last bit of Bangalore-Malayali accent.  Vinayak Sasikumar's lyrics and Sushin Shyam's music  is reminiscent of Tamil movie songs. Maybe that is the trend we've to live with in these days of pan-(S.)Indian movies. Directed by Jithu Madhavan, Aavesham is a decent entertainer worth a watch for its quirky performances and the interesting treatment of its 21st century cinematic don theme.

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Premalu, a review

Naslen, Mamitha, Sangeeth & Akhila

Girish A. D. is a god of small things. Third in his series of coming of age movies flavored with dashes of rom-com spice, Premalu is a light entertainer/chick-flick with an immensely like-able young cast. The director Girish A.D threads together a narrative from nothing but stringing together tiny pearls from everyday life, just like he he had done in his two previous directorial outings - Thanneermathan Dinangal(transl - Watermelon Days, 2019) and Super Sharanya(2022.) Both of which were also utterly delightful.

Shyam Mohan & Mamitha Baiju

The script, the framing of the scenes and even seemingly inconsequential dialog between the characters bring out the depth of observation of the movie's creator. While it is a run of the mill trope of boy-meets-girl from a slightly different social milieu, it is the attention to detail and impeccable casting that makes Premalu a winner. 

Naslen K. Gafoor, Mamitha Baiju, Sangeeth Prathap, Shyam Mohan playing the four main characters steal the show. The only badly developed character (the director or writer's fault, not the actor's) is Mathew portrayed by Mathew Thomas, which was a comic exaggeration of someone on the spectrum. 

It is an urban film relatable to majority of the  newer generation film-goers in India - maybe you have lived in a different city with room mates for your first job, maybe you went to an engineering college outside your hometown and fell in love with a girl and it didn't work out as you had planned, maybe you worked in a software company for your first job, maybe even after four years of college you still remained an aimless kite, maybe you will find something of yourself in this movie, maybe you won't. Just sit back and enjoy the show.

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Pakeezah (1972), Meena Kumari and Trains

Meena Kumari's character Sahibjaan in Pakeezah has an obsession with trains, just like me. Although the root cause of our obsessions are vastly different. She almost met (she was sleeping, so she didn't get a chance to meet in the conventional sense) a handsome stranger on an overnight train journey, who left a note of appreciation about her soft feet in Urdu. Even expletives sound like poems in Urdu, so can't blame the lady if she fell head over heels reading a poetic note about her heels. 

Ethereal Meena Kumari, staring out of the window of the train, right after she has read the mysterious note

My fascination with trains could've started in my childhood filled with multi-day, overnight train journeys that took our family to places known & cherished or unknown & magical. If you lived in India in the 20th century and loved/had to travel, there was no escaping the trains. That was probably why  connecting the story-dots in director Kamal Amrohi's story is the omnipresent Indian Railways.

Pakeezah, Meena Kumari's magnum opus created for her by her husband (later ex) Kamal Amrohi is a grand visual poem which took almost fifteen years in the making. The majority of the work happening during the years 1964 to 1971 and the movie was released a couple of months before Meena Kumari's death at 38 in March 1972.

Meena Kumari designed all her wonderfully pirouette-able and elegantly colorful dance costumes for the movie. The music and the songs which can single-handedly make or break a Bollywood musical was composed by Ghulam Muhammad and the lyrics were penned by some of the best Urdu poets of the era like Kaifi Azmi, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Kamal Amrohi and Kaifi Bhopali. The cinematography and the production design must have cost a pretty penny.

It is a Muslim-social about a tawaif (a Muslim courtesan or dancing girl) who falls in love with a gentleman in a history-repeats type of situation where the same kind of doomed love affair happens to a mother and her daughter, with two different gentlemen, of course. Both the mother and the daughter are played by Meena Kumari, but there in no need for these characters to share screen time as mother dies after childbirth and the daughter is only shown after she is in her late teens as she takes on the role of the dancer-courtesan. Ashok Kumar plays the love interest in the first affair and Raj Kumar's impeccable Hindustani diction won him the role of the younger Meena Kumari's lover.

The tumultuous life of Meena Kumari, the actor, is evident on her face that ages a decade during the making and completion of the movie. Meena Kumari, while she does not look like she is 17, is convincingly young as the younger (daughter) courtesan when the film starts out. But the film which seems to have been shot chronologically shows a beaten, puffy actor ravaged by depression and ill-health, as it progresses past the half way mark.

The lovers - Raj Kumar and Meena Kumari, accidentally meet again, during a train journey towards the end of the movie

Pakeezah is a window into a bygone era and world where tawaifs and nawabs used to exist along with teak-paneled Indian railway coaches and horse-drawn tangas. Much of the actions of the characters cannot be explained or justified in the current context nor is the century old societal framework comprehensible while I am typing and gazing at the neighbor's Tesla parked on their driveway. It is a splendid period piece, elegantly crafted, a fitting final tribute to one of the greatest actors of Indian cinema - Meena Kumari, and totally woman-'owned'. 

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