Wednesday, 9 January 2013

Why the fuss about ‘Vishwaroopam’?



The war between Kamal Haasan and the theatre owners continues with the former resorting to police complaints that he had been receiving threats over the phone.

I don’t have enough technical gyan to list out the merits and demerits of DTH or the traditional theatre shows. A few years ago, someone had tried something similar in Kerala for a Malayalam film and it was discarded. No reasons were given.

As a fan of Kamal Haasan (his comedies are entertaining as long as he doesn’t attempt an exaggerated ‘Madras Tamil’ accent), I’m more worried about certain reports, very unofficial ones, that say that the film’s story has lot of similarities with the most recently released Vijay film, 'Thuppaki'. These are just rumours probably inspired by the fact that the title is written in an Urdu style inspired Tamil font. 

There was an elaborate article in a Tamil magazine that Kamal Haasan doesn’t even own a house in Chennai. Rumours have been afloat for a very long time that he had incurred a lot of debts during the making of ‘Maruthanayakam’, a decade or two ago. Maybe it continues. A very flabbergasted Kamal Haasan went on record asking, "When did I say I was poor?"

Now, about technology and Kamal Haasan’s obsession with it.

A few years ago, he tried experimenting with technology during the making of ‘Mumbai Express’ (or was it ‘Madras Express’? My internet connection is very slow and can’t wait for 15 minutes to run a Google search on it). I believe it was a camera this time. Friends of mine who saw the film in the theatres complained that the images were of bad home-video quality.

Technology is a good thing, but instead of using it simply for the sake of being the first to use it, a better approach would be to bring in new methods only when there is a serious need for it.

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