M Jayachandran, who has made Shreya sing in various films, retorted that Gayathri should go and listen to Shreya’s songs and learn from it. Gayathri responded back saying she is a big fan of Shreya and there is no need for someone like M Jayachandran to tell her what to do.

So who is right and who is wrong?

Some people have to take a black and white position, but in our opinion this issue is much more complex. The main crux of Gayathri’s point is not if Shreya is talented or not talented. The question is of chance and renumeration. According to her people like Adnan Sami, whose Malayalam would want to make you listen to Achyutanandan speeches over and over again, are paid quite a lot of money while Malayalee singers are not paid that much.

So there are two questions here. Lets look at renumeration first. Someone is paid more than others. That is always the truth. In fact there is no point in complaining about it. Mohanlal gets paid more than Asif Ali, but Mohanlal gets paid less than Rajnikanth. There is always a value chain and you have to make yourselves so valuable to get highly paid. So if Shreya and Adnan Sami are getting more zeroes in their paycheck, there is nothing anyone can do about it .

Now, the second question is about what should a music director do. Should he promote local talent or get people who can’t pronounce Malayalam. On this matter we have made our position very clear. We are sickened by the Malayalee obsession with other languages. Note that the word we used is obsession which borders on fanaticism. Many people have said, we Malayalees have an open mind. We agree with that. But if you watch our reality shows and stage programs, it goes beyond an open mind. It is as if we are sad we don’t speak Tamil or Hindi daily in our lives.

In this context we don’t understand why we get Udit Narayan or Adnan Sami or Shreya Ghosal to sing Malayalam songs. Yes, before Chitra, most female singers were from Tamil Nadu or Andhra, but you don’t feel that in their singing. But that is not true with modern singers. If you have heard a Udit Narayan or Adnan Sami singing in Malayalam, you will feel like throwing up. It speaks of the lack of talent current music directors have or the less amount of effort they put in training those singers[Having said that, Shreya Ghoshal’s diction is an exception].

To give an example, here is a video of Vairamuthu explaining how he trained Chitra(See from 4:23). When she started singing in Tamil, she spoke Tamil with the obvious Malayalam accent. Slowly and slowly, he said, he worked to remove that and now Chitra’s Tamil is as good as a Tamilian. Instead of this we have parachute singers who come in, have no clue of the language, butcher it in their songs, get their lakhs of rupees paycheque and fly back. Compared to this we would rather hear the winners of Star Singer and Gandharva Sangeetham sing for us.

Trivia

• MJ Radhakrishnan(Cinematography), M Jayachandran(Music Direction), T. Krishnanunni(Sound Recording), Vrinda(Choreography) won the Kerala state award in 2007 too in their respective fields.
• Jury Chairman Girish Kasaravalli commented that no short film, documentary or Children’s film made the mark.
• Jury Chairman also commented that there was no confusion this time on selection of awards and he also stated the obvious – that the quality of Malayalam movies have gone down.
• Lal has the unique distinction of being a succesful director, producer and now best actor.
• This year none of the super stars, minor stars , wannabe stars, meteors, comets or asteroids were anywhere near the awards.
  

Update(4th June, 2009):  Looks like it’s tough times at India Glitz, they have decided to ‘outsource’  HTML development.

The year is 2008 not 1980. Malayalees have lost the appetite for slow, sentimental, autobiographical movies, but East Coast Vijayan known for his stage shows where his name is repeated every 15 minutes has not realized it. His first film, according to reviewers induces drowsiness. Also when we thought that Jayaram’s career could only go up from where he was before, he seems to sprinting down the path only traveled by actors like Shankar and Ratheesh.

Movie Buzz writes

Vijayan East Coast who likes to be known as poet, writer, producer and now director with Novel, has come out with a film that will put you to sleep! The few audiences who turned up to watch the film, on its third day of its release and that too a Sunday, left half way into
the film.

Vijayan’s plot has been “inspired” from Hugh Grant- Drew Barrymore romantic movie Music and Lyrics, and he has malayaleeised it with some mushy romance and M. Jayachandran’s music which are melodious but not picturised well though Azhagappan’s camera is top class. Jayaram as Sethu and Sada as Priyanandini are good.

This Novel has to be flipped through, otherwise it will take ages to read it, as it moves at snail pace.

Unni Nair of NowRunning.com writes

Being a musical of sorts, Novel has some romantic songs, penned by the director himself. The songs have been composed well and shot in a romantic manner too. “Onninumallathe…” is already popular and the other songs too impress. The problem with the film is that there is nothing new in it, and also that film viewers in Kerala today don’t like to see sentimental stuff and the film has too much of sentiments in it. Being slow-paced also goes against it.

To sum up, Novel is an average romantic story marked by average performances by the lead artists and others. The scenarists could have put in more of an effort and then the film would have been better. It’s not an insufferable bore. It’s not an inspiring love-story either. Just a romantic film, that’s all!

“Scripts must not be considered as the backseat element to star value”, says the star of 2007, Sreenivasan.

“A good script is a fundamental element contributing to the success of a film. Instead of giving importance to get better scripts, obsession with star value has reduced the significance of the script in a film”, says the actor who has turned producer with his latest film ‘Katha Parayumpol’.[The scripts must take the front seat- Sreenivasan]

Srinivasan once again proved what an excellent script can do with Katha Parayumbol, one of the best Malayalam movies of 2007. He played the lead role and Mammotty did a guest appearance which made a good impact. All the reviewers agree that even though the story is wafer thin, Srinivasan has done a great job in pulling it of.

With the news that this movie will be remade in Tamil with Pasupathy playing Srinivasan’s role and Rajnikanth playing Mammotty’s role, there are lot of searches for this movie on this site. We have to see if this movie will be murdered like Chandramukhi or will it be able to retain the same spirit.

Unni Nair writes

Sreenivasan, who has done the script and debutante director M. Mohanan deserve to be appreciated for having come up with a film that touches certain chords in our hearts. A simple story narrated in a simple style. Though there is a lag in the first half, the climax saves it all. The film could have been made a bit crisper, but this flaw could be overlooked considering the director is a debutante.
The film is definitely worth a watch, especially for ordinary, ‘non-intellectual’ kind of people who would like to go and see films without intellectual presumptions and towering expectations. A good, touching film, told in a simple manner.

Movie Buzz says

The writer Sreenivasan and his director Mohanan has skillfully caricatured the characters you meet in a remote village- the moneylender and local ‘blade’ Eapacchan Muthalali (Innocent), Das Kattumantha(Salim Kumar), the boring village bard, guy(Mukesh) who runs the local tutorial college, rival hair stylist(Jagadish) tea shop owner(Mamookoya), self centered local politician who always talks about his connections(Augustine). Sreenivasan has also explored the craze among ordinary people for getting close or seen with a superstar. There is also a message that stars become superstars only because of their script writers who have given them memorable roles. The comedy laced satirical song ‘Vyathyasthanaaya…. tuned by M.Jayachandran is a rocker. P.Sukumaran camera has beautifully etched out the Thodupuzha countryside.

The film with a wafer thin story line works big time due to its climax, which has been worked out very well by Sreenivasan and a riveting performance by Mammootty.

Parashuram writes

The ultimate clincher for this film is its script. Authored by Sreenivasan, it is so layered that every frame has a comment to make about the world and every line of the dialogue on the mores of the society. The craze for celebrities and the problems of leading a principled life are discussed without being preachy or in-your-face.

Mammootty has the dignified presence of a real star and his aura and the mythical persona that surrounds him give a lifelike feel to the character of Ashok Raj.

India Glitz says

The film, skillfully repeats the representative characters, from every layer of the rural villages, (reminiscent of Sathyan films) with which the writer makes a lot of careful observations and clarifications about the phenomenon of super stardom and lives of people living in the lower strata of the society. Mostly represented by local professional actors in these roles, the film also gives an authentic feel with all sorts of storyline surprises and political criticisms in spite of its simple exterior. In the scripts, Sreeni seems to repeat some of his earlier sarcastic attributes like dark skin and heightlessness, but more commendable is that he has easily stretched a wafer thin plot to two hours and ten minutes with out much space for idleness.

One of the best and memorable characters Lohithadas has created is Sethu in Kireedom. Sethu was a simple man with a simple dream and slowly circumstances turned his world around. This is exactly what happened to another Lohithadas character, Bala Gopalan in Thaniyavarthanam who was branded as a lunatic due to a history of mental disorders in his family. The success of the writer was in making us believe in those characters and their trauma, but while seeing the character, Aravindan (Dileep), in Chakkaramuthu we were left wondering on what happened to Lohithadas of the last decade.

Aravindan, a tailor, is naive and a good hearted man. In fact he is so naive that he believes almost everything his friends say and so is affectionately called pottan. Aravindan’s object of affection is Anitha (Kavya Madhavan) who stays with her mother. Aravindan runs errands for them and is a constant fixture in their house with complete freedom. While Aravindan dreams of Anitha all the time, her affections are for Jeevan (Jishnu), her rich class mate. Things do not turn out well for Anitha with Jeevan and she ends up murdering him. The only person she can trust at that point is Aravindan, but by then her family is out there trying to put the blame on Aravindan to save Anitha. To find what happens to them you have to endure torture for about two hours.

One of the techniques to portray a naive man would be through situations, but Lohithadas decided to add a bit more weight to the character by changing his looks and by adding an irritating style of conversation and at the end of it Dileep’s character looks like a cross between Kunji Koonan and Chanthupottu. In fact Aravindan is trying very hard to be this simpleton through dialogue and mannerisms that he annoys us and does not get any sympathy. Dileep has done his best to pull off this character, but the weakness in the character turns out to be his Achilles Heel.

Kavya for a change gets to emote which is refreshing after seeing movies like Inspector Garud. In one instance she is Aravindan’s friend, Jeevan’s girl friend and her mother’s loving daughter. When her mother turns against her for going out with Jeevan, she does a Nagavalli type character change and becomes very adamant, angry and vindictive. Then in the next frame, she turns out to be playful again as if the emotional roller coaster ride in the previous ten minutes had never happened. As this character goes through comedy, romance, anger one after the other, the narrative seems to have degenerated into a vaudeville act.

Among this bunch of flawed characters, one man gets the role of his life time and that is Sai Kumar. As Anitha’s uncle, he gets some of the best scenes and flow in terms of consistency in character. When we see him the first time, we know that he loves his niece very much and as the story progresses, we see that love deepening to an extent that he is willing to do anything to save her. If Lohithadas had given the same attention to Aravindan and Anitha as he had given to Sai Kumar’s character it would have been an intense movie.

When this movie was released, it was called Chakkarapottan and had a tragic ending. This did not go well with the audience and the in the new climax Dileep does not die and Kavya is not shown in a mental asylum, but instead they walk in slow motion smiling. To understand how patched up that ending looks, you have to see the movie. Just five minutes before the ending, it was intense drama with Anitha and Aravindan lying on a railway track waiting for the train to come with a bunch of policemen running into save them. Back at her house on knowing that Anitha had murdered Jeevan, Sai Kumar asks the police to catch Aravindan and frame him for murder. Then suddenly you see both Anitha and Aravindan walking off smiling towards the sunset and you wonder against which wall you should bang your head.

Out of all the Lohithadas movies we have seen, this one is the worst. He is one of our finest script writers who can churn out very intense tales and for once we kept on wondering if it was the same man who did this atrocity. The only saving grace in this movie is the song Karineela Kannilenthedi, but you can watch that on YouTube and save yourself from rest of the torture.

Nivedyam seems to be better than Lohitha Das’s previous movie Chakkaramuthu. But then that’s not exactly a compliment. The new hero and heroine have apparently given good performance, hopefully a good addition to the new generation of actors in Malayalam cinema. One of the songs, Odakuzhal, is already on top of the charts.

Nowrunning.com says:

Vinu Mohan, who makes his debut as Mohanakrishnan is good and suits his role. The new girl Bhama as Satyabhama doesn’t impress much. Bharath Gopi as Rama Varma Thampuran and Nedumudi Venu as the temple priest excel in their roles. None of the others in the cast impress us in any way. All the songs have come out very well and have been well visualized too, especially the “Chittatinkaavil…” and “Odakuzhal viliketto…” which are in true Lohithadas style. Cinematography, editing and art-work are among the high points of the film.

The sad thing about the movie is that, the writer (Lohithadas himself) couldn’t come up with a good story line. He deserves to be applauded for having moulded the lead character as someone very akin to the mythical Krishna and finding an apt hero for the character. But the story seems to have gone out of control and just peters out. The second half of the film tries our patience beyond all limits. We expected something better from Lohithadas!

IndiaGlitz comments:

Lohithadas has been in his best in the past, contributing fresh story lines to films that always captured the heart of the Malayalam viewer’s. But recently this industry’s most dependable writer-director has been keeping away from business for quite a time and even his comeback in Chakkaramuthu couldn’t make any impressive watch. So for Naivedhyam, he has attempted a rehash of the best tried and tested formula in Malayalam, taking bits and pieces from many hit films like Sallapam, Ee Puzhayam Kadannu, Nandhanam and Kasthooriman. Any way the result is a film which comes with his own brand of narration, giving us an endearing watch, this Onam.

Naivedhyam is a simple film, revolving around simple characters. Yet, it works, partly because the story defies the regular stereotype, due to its super-efficient performances and partly due to the well-crafted screenplay and convincing storytelling.The film’s opening hastily sketches the life of Mohana Krishnan, an outspoken Brahmin guy who is presently into carpentry work to keep his family comprising of his widowed mother and sister. He is the son of C .K, a famous dramatist, who fought for the rights of writers. Even after his father’s death, Mohana Krishnan managed to study all arts and crafts till his plus two, but as his family’s prospects fell on his shoulders, he left his traditions to find better jobs to maintain his family intact. Forwarded by one of his father’s friend lyricist Kaithapram, who happens to meet him in a composing session, Mohana Krishnan arrives at the Kovilakom, headed by Ramavarma Thampuram, a pious aged man who was a dear student of Chembai Vaidhya Natha Bhagavathar.

One of the problems in Malayalam cinema is that we don’t have any bankable second level actors. This lack of young actors restricts the number of stories that can be told and so we are forced to watch blockbuster superstar movies which are indistinguishable from their previous movies. It is not like film makers are not aware of this problem. Ranjith made a small movie called Nandanam few years back with some new comers and both Prithviraj and Navya Nair went on to become stars. Director Kamal tried Goal and Roshan Andrews tried Notebook and except Roma no one really survived.

Now Lohithadas who introduced Manju Warrier and Meera Jasmine, two very fine actresses, is introducing two new comers. The actress is Bhama and the hero Vinu Mohan is the grandson of Kottarakkara Sreedharan Nair.

Mohan Krishnan was looking fir a job at Kovilakom, but the financial position of the Tharavadu was not so bright that they can offer any job for him. But Mohana Krishnan had bigger personal problems that won’t allow him to go back. And in these circumstances Ramavarma Thampuran debuts him to assist the priest at the temple owned by the Kovilakam. Nedumudi, who is a regular in Lohithadas films, says “In this film, I enact the role of an old priest in a temple owned by a Kovilakam that is in dire straits. Although the elderly priest’s health is declining, he wants to continue. That is when a young Namboothiri youth is appointed. He doesn’t know anything about mantras and rituals. The old priest gives him necessary training and entrusts him with the rituals of the temple while keeping a supervisory role for himself”.

Once the Keezh Santhi comes, the prospects of the temple brighten as he works day and night to keep the rituals of the temple. The young priest attracts the attention of many young women, including the heroine Bhama, who is an orphan, the daughter of lady who committed suicide for his misdeeds. Eventually the youngsters fall in love.[ Naivedhyam - The Onam offering from Lohithadas ]

Music by M Jayachandran plays an important part in this film and after listening to it, we can say, it is definitely not Sargam. Lohithadas as a writer has had more success than Lohithadas the director and recently the audience has not taken kindly to his creations like Chakkrapottan. The success of new comer or minor star movies depends strongly on story and screenplay as is seen from movies like Sargam or Aniyathipravu and unless this movie has something which will bring people to theater through word of mouth, it may not not be profitable.

Then last Onam, a movie with a bunch of youngsters called Classmates turned out to be the biggest hit in Malayalam cinema. The question is, will that repeat again?