Kerala, as you know is God’s own country. Our model of development is the envy of various other states. We are literate than any other state in the union. So it is only natural that we do classy jobs in Kerala, like going to movie theaters and hooting.
Director Kamal called a press conference the other day and put the reason for failure of his movie Minnaminikootam on general public. In particular he blamed it on the superstar fan clubs.
Kamal pointed out that in the Ernakulam theater where his film is running, people in large numbers come and start hooting when the titles appear! This “hoot brigade” continues to hoot throughout the film as though they were paid money by certain people to run down the film! The needle of suspicion of those behind the “hoot brigade”, according to industry veterans is the superstar’s fan clubs. Kamal in his press conference hinted that these fans associations were targeting his films. He also said they were the bane of the industry and has damaged the edifice of Malayalam cinema.[Kamal lashes out at superstar fan clubs! ]
Thus, very proudly we can say that the common Malayalee has created a new profession which does not exist in any other state. Like mercenaries, we go theaters, hoot on behalf on rich superstars and get satisfaction out of it. Then we blog about the lack of alternatives. In the animal world, wolves, foxes and dogs do it, but just for fun.
That said, Minnaminikootam is not Classmates to attract a huge audience. Maybe people are hooting because the movie is terrible. Most of our reviewers agreed that the movie is boring, cliched and is disconnected. Maybe it is the pain of those people which found an outlet through hoots.
So we end with more questions than we started!
- When a non superstar movie releases, which superstar’s fan go and hoot? Mammootty’s or Mohanlal’s? Who among the two feels insecure.
- Or is it Dileep who has not had a hit since Manmohan Singh Govt. took office.
- Like MACTA will AMMA too split - to AMMA and Randanamma?
- Have Superstars have outsourced this to a rent-a-crowd business?
- Pritviraj is not there in Minnaminikootam, still why are they hooting?
- Who are they afraid of? Jayasurya ? Or is it Meera they are after?
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11 Responses to “Fox’s Own Country”
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VC - The malaise of hooting at bad movies is not specific to Malayalam movies. It is age old.
The movie deserved its treatment
Going on a verbal tirade against someone who dares to say your film isnt as good as you yourself believe it to be, seems to be the in-thing these days.
We had the Madambi director having a go at the Mathrubhoomi reviewer with a vengance, and now Kamal crying foul since he felt the superstar fans were booing his film down. Unnikrishnan didnt think twice before accusing the writer of favoring other films that were to follow Madambi’s release, and insisted that the critic pursue another career. And Kamal has just realised much to his dismay that the whole world is pitted against him and his film.
All I would say is, if Unnikrishnan could make films, ANYONE could play a film critic as well. Toying around with a story that is as tedious as it can possibly be, isnt a crime in itself. But believing that its the best thing to have hit the silver screen since one’s own ‘cult-classic’ Smart City, suggests something seriously wrong. And lashing out on someone who thinks otherwise, with a total disregard for what you call etiquette suggests nothing but immaturity.
As for Kamal, if his film had half the dramatic elements of his press conference, there would still have been a few souls left in the theatres.
Many good movies fail at the box office because for some reason the mass audience ddin’t like it. In this case, if some people started hooting even as the titles appeared (as Kamal said), that sure is not after finding the film boring. Obviously, they are paid hooters. So the jobless malayalees has found a new profession! Innovative, I would say.
Hooting continuously throughout the movies (again as Kamal said)is also not accepatable because there may be a lot others who wanted to watch the movie.
This is the one man show of a person who has lost his footage in the malayalam filmdom. Nothing else. Kamal followed sathyan anthikadu by doing all by himself. Story-screenplay-dalogues-direction. But the story sucked. The teenage do not want love you da-miss you da. The classmates victory is the best evidence for that. In the shooting location of minnamini he blamed the stars for their irresponsible attitude. Now the movie crashed and he turned the blam on the superstar loby. Well likewhat B.Menon did, kamal also has to do something. He is not ready to take the blame on himself. When ‘karutha pakshikal’ crashed he blamed it on the attitude of the cine viewers as a whole. Kamal has to check the victory formula of the adichupoli films. What’s the secret?Thy won’t bore the audience. Even though there is no comedy punch in the dialogues, the director boost the scene with background score. Minnaminnikkoottam surely bored the viewer since it had stale recipe. Kamal should have the mind to accept the weakness of the story. There is no more ‘niram’ audience out there to watch. Either it is a rare story or pakka comedy. We all devoured your “meghamalhar”. There were no booings in the theatre while the movie was played.
I support what Sajeev says.Directors like Kamal,Sathyan Anthikkad,Sibi Malayil etc made good movies in combination with talented script writers like Sreenivasan,Lohithadas,Renjith etc.But now we dont see such combinations anymore.
It is a pity that in malayalam film industry script writers are not given much importance.When a film becomes a hit every one gives credit to directors alone;no one applauds the script writers.When meesamadhavan,classmates etc became hits credit goes to Lal Jose alone no one tells a word about James Albert or Ranjan Pramod(the writers).
I agree that the Director is the captain of the film but script writers do have their importance.
Perhaps it is due to this fact that eminent writers like lohi,etc have now turning to direction.
visakh - easier said than done. the problem with these script writers is that they thought they could DIRECT movies because they WROTE good scripts. renjith wrote aaram thampuran and devasuram but barring nandanam none of his directions have been hits. take lohithadas the director- almost all his movies have been average or flops. Ranjan Pramod directed Photographer and it bombed.
Also because these script writers took to direction, good directors like Sathyan Anthikad took to scripting their own stories, but with limited success. Rasathantram , Vinodayatra and Innathe Chinthavishayam were less than average compared to Veendum Chila Veettukaryangal, Thoovalkottaram and the old Mohanlal classics.
Sreenivasan is a notable exception. He directed 2 realistic and thoroughly enjoyable movies and he tasted success. And he has reportedly said that he would not direct any more. And by sticking to scriptwriting he has given some good movies like Udayanaanu Thaaram and Katha Parayumbol.
It is the ego of these script writers who are poor directors and the directors who feel they are good enough to be script writes.
for malayalam cinema to survive, these people need to set their egos aside and work together and hits would happen.
Vinay i agree.But Dont u think that the films are remembered after directors and that Script writers are not given the importance they deserve.I dont think many malayalees knows James Albert(scriptwriter-Classmates,Cycle);but when people talk about ClassMates they highly regard LalJose(agreed he is a class Director) no one talks a word about James Albert.
Well, that’s just not in Kerala.
That’s every where.
Who remembers any script writers of famous filmmakers? (unless the director also wrote the screenplay).
Script is very important, its like the leg or base. Without a good script, everything else crashes down. But scriptwriters have never had that sort of fame for some reason, except for a few.
There is a reason why Srinivasan won’t direct anymore. Because its the hardest of all the jobs in movie-making.
The filmmaker has to visualize the script and transform into the visual medium called cinema.
Its a tough job, one has to be involved from pre-production to post production. hence its quite stressful. I mean the director essentially is the author of a film (like a author to a book/novel or a painter to a painting or a scriptwriter to a screenplay)
and about writer-directors; only very few people can handle that position.
Visakh - credit should be given to to script writers, no doubt but that has its pros and cons.
See the case of Lohithadas and Renjith. They were credited for some superb movies. They thought they could take on direction and how did they fare.
What i mean to say is that the credit to script writers boost their egos and make them think they can make great directors.
But coming baco to your point, James Albert and Iqbal Kuttipuram deserve as much credit as Lal Jose for Classmates and Arabikatha.
I hope these two dont turn to direction though.
Dear VC,
Since this site is all meant for malayalam movies and now what lacks in the industry is shortage of good stories, why can’t you conduct a silver screen story contest on a particular area. ie family, campus, police force and the like. Publish the good ones in the site. Let the reviewers postmortem it. The result would be great, I feel. Remember, the Maharashtra govt had made an attempt years back on film story bank to uplift the silver screen since it became a news. Don’t know the outset. It would be worth a try from this site.