Shamitabh Audio Review

Illayaraja is my all-time favourite music director and Dhanush, one of my favourite contemporary heroes! Naturally, Shamitabh, the upcoming Hindi movie, they are working together in, is one of the movies I am eagerly awaiting. Meanwhile, thanks to Facebook, I came to know just today that the audio of Shamitabh was launched almost a week ago! Now, how can I stop myself from not listening to the album?

Grapevine has it that Shamitabh is about young man’s dreams of making it big in filmdom. It is natural that the album opens with the song, “Ishq E Phillum”, rendered well by Suraj Jagan. The lyrics are a clear indicator that the grapevine is indeed right! However, the song is brilliant in only patches! The Illayaraja touch is “visible” only at a few places. Otherwise, the lyrics make the song, describing a young man’s obsession with films, makes it interesting to listen to!

The next song, “Sha Sha Sha Mi Mi Mi”, crooned brilliantly by Caralisa Monteiro, is a chartbuster in the making! You can “see” the Illayaraja touch in this song, though it might slightly remind you of the famous (1980’s) Runa Laila albums!! The violin interludes, especially the second interlude, have the classic Illayaraja stamp on them!! To me, this song is my pick of the album!!

“Pidly Si Baatein”, rendered by Amitabh Bachchan, that follows is another interesting song of the album. A solo violin interlude, lasting 20-odd seconds, makes it worth listening! Only Illayaraja can come up with such brilliant stuff I guess!! And yes, hats off to Amitabh Bachchan for an amazing rendition!!

The next song, “Stereophonic Sannata”, is a remix of Illayaraja’s 1980’s chartbuster, “Aasaiya Kaathule Thoodhu Vittu” (Johnny). Shruti Hassan’s voice spices up this song that has sufficient doses of modern day percussion instruments to keep Gen Y busy on the dance floor!!  

“Thappad”, crooned by Suraj Jagan & Earl D’Souza, again sees an interesting mix of percussion instruments and sounds like a song tailor-made for the dance floor!!

The album signs off with “Lifebuoy”, an interesting song that remixes the original lyrics/tune of the Lifebuoy ad!!

Overall, Illayaraja seems to have attempted to please both his diehard fans as well as Gen Y, for whom a song is something that is meant to dance!! In the process, we only get to hear the classic Illayaraja only in patches!! Thankfully, diehard Illayaraja fans have a huge collection of his songs from the 1970’s to 1990’s to listen any time and this one certainly doesn’t fall into that category!!

I Movie Review

Put yourself in my shoes for a while. Imagine living far away from your hometown for a very longish period of time. Imagine missing your family and friends whenever you celebrate a festival. Imagine things falling in place suddenly and you are about to visit your hometown for Diwali! And then, it pours cats and dogs right from the time you land in your hometown (it’s anyway Northeast monsoon season in Chennai during Diwali)! Thanks to the rains, imagine being forced to stay indoors, not being able to meet all your friends and ending up celebrating Diwali minus the crackers!! This is exactly how I felt watching Shankar’s much awaited “I”!! It has everything you expect out of a Shankar film, wonderfully shot songs, a brisk screenplay, amazing performances, yet, fails to fulfill your craving!

Credit to director Shankar for his screenplay that keeps you engrossed, though the storyline is a simple true-love-always-triumphs. It is pretty easy to guess what’s going to happen next, but he maintains the tempo and manages to keep your attention focused on the screen. As you can expect in a Shankar film, the songs have been shot/choreographed too well. The action sequences have also been shot pretty well, especially the one involving bicycles, shot on a rooftop! This action sequence will be remembered for a long time.

No praise will be too high for the kind of stuff Vikram has come up with!! Be it as a body builder, be it as a star-struck fan of the heroine Amy Jackson or be it as a hunchback extracting revenge, he comes up aces with his performance. To come up with such a brilliant performance with so much of prosthetics (as a hunchback) is no mean achievement. Be ready to see his name being called out at most of the award ceremonies next year!!

Amy Jackson’s role in this film isn’t the routine sing-and-dance-with-the-hero kind of stuff. She fits into the role of a leading model to the T. After a brief period of sounding monotonous, Santhanam tickles the funny bone in this movie. Special mention to PC Sreeram, whose photography was a treat to the eyes, especially the song sequences shot in China. AR Rahman’s background score was a treat, especially in the bicycle action sequence, his re-recording added to the effect.

Coming back to where I started this post, though the plans to celebrate Diwali didn’t go exactly the way you wanted it to be, you’ll anyway be happy for having visited your hometown after a long time. Same is the feeling with “I” too! Though it lacks the all-important Shankar “punch”, it has the complete quota of the Shankar “touch”. It is definitely worth your time and money if you disagree with a famous film critic’s view that “Shankar’s niche is now a cliché”!!