Everything that happens is for good (or has a better reason) - that’s the underlying theme for Dasa. Kamal had said in one of his interviews that his 11th role in the movie, that of a screenplay writer is what he is looking forward to and I feel that has turned out to be his BEST role of Dasa
Shortly after the movie begins we are taken to the Nambi and 12th century - Kamal as Rangaraja Nambi (though for 10 mts) is fabulous - the scene where he is being drowned along with the Vishnu statue and the leadup to it is jus a sign of the level of entertainment we can expect in the movie. The movie then moves to Washington DC and we meet Govind the scientist - what happens there and the connection between the rest of the Kamals and a Bio weapon/Sand theft/Tsunami is where Kamal the screenplay writer has excelled in. The first half of the movie races forward in full speed, second half starts off in normal speed and again goes to a full peak finish. Apart from the screenplay and wonderful dialogues (playing with tamil at times) by Kamal, he is superb as Balram Naidu/Christian Fletcher. Asin has done a great job, so has MS Bhaskar. Its a laugh riot in most scenes MS Bhaskar comes (same with Balram Naidu). Camera work was outstanding and Devisri prasad has done a not bad job in the rerecording (esp the music for Fletcher was ) Kallai mattum(good camera work) & Mukundha/ Oh Oh Sanam songs wonderfully choreographed - wait & watch Ulaganayagane song. Mallika does what she does best in the Kaa Karupanukkum song.

Krishnaveni Paati/Boovaraghan/Nambi are the next best avatars in order. Climax fight between the Fletcher and the Japenese guy (Narahasi) was wonderfully choreographed - we dont even realise its two Kamal’s fighting Bush’s mannerisms and his portrayal of his intelligence sooooooooooooooooooper

In short a film not to be missed by anyone - 100% entertainment - easily one of the best screenplays to come out in recent times in Indian films. Btw dir K.S.Ravikumar ?!?!?!? I found his touch only in one cliched explanation given by a doc to avatar singh in the climax

PS : I know this aint a proper review - but dont wanna reveal the story and thrill for the ppl who are yet to see

The only let down for me in the movie was the graphics scenes involving the 12th century drowning and some Tsunami effects - cud have been loads more better!!

YIPPPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Am going to watch Dasavatharam tonight at 9 PM am sooooooooooo happy!!

at the same time irked with Ayngaran who is distributing the movie here - any stupid idiotic Hindi movie gets screened in literally 4-5 screens with Net Booking all available and for similar big budget/crowd pulling movies like Sivaji/Dasa etc they dont make available Booking via Net and to top it all the people at the theatre literally scream back at you if you call em to find out about the movie release time/ticket distribution time. Theatres in India are far far better with atleast proper response in this regard. GV Yishun seems to be the main theatre with Tamil movie releases and with this kinda customer services its really irritating. Its ofcourse clear that the theatre people themselves aren’t clear of the screening time - what’s more confusing is that Ayngaran claims GV Yishun theatre to be their own and still they dont have a clue on the exact release date/time

ok, now that I have finished my rant, time to gear up for the movie - Being in Singapore has its own advantages like this, being able to see a movie one day before the release in India (even in case of comparing it with Special preview shows in India still we get to see it about 3 hours earlier). Sivaji was one such experience - now Dasa. Can’t wait for the movie - would post my review after the movie darisanam

I had earlier with the help of youtube trailer come up with all the 10 characters Kamal is playing now this is a good image which comes in the trailer itself, cleverly disguised - some pics being upside down etc.
Courtesy : Kamal orkut community

Just imagine a similar situation for the Royal Old Monks had they won some games. Rahul Dravid, being the perfect student of the game and knowing well in advance of all this, wisely chose to not win continuous games for his side. Katrina giving a kiss would have been more than tempting for Dravid, but imagine Vijay Mallya on his hips - would have been disastrous .

Hereby, salute Mr. Rock Solid Rahul Dravid for his Exxxtra Senselessry Perception

Offlate, most of my sleep has been deprived thanks to IPL (matches start at 10:30 PM for us here). It has brought out a lot of wonderful moments - Who can forget the Ponting celebrating with Ishant (even had an instance of him running all the way from slips to share something with him) in the first ever match and what about the sixes by Shane Warne off Symonds to win the game in the last over. My support for Dhoni went all the more up after his support to Sivamani during the incident at Bangalore (For the less informed, Bengalooru security guy dismantled Sivamani’s drums etc when he wanted to perform inside the ground after the match - maybe he didnt know who Sivamani was or was too bitter about their TEST T20 team )

Elsewhere Sreesanth after deservedly getting the slap from Harbhajan has been performing very well after that (Psst. From now, whenever sree is not doing his best all we need is someone to slap him). And before I forget, a special mention to the Cheerleaders, esp of Bangalore and now recently Jaipur and also the cute girl from Chennai Superkings (Couldn’t get foto ). Deccan Cheerleaders haven’t been bad either but poor girls have nothing to cheer about.

Not surprisingly the teams with the best or should i say innovative/fearless captains have topped the table like Chennai with Dhoni, Rajasthan with Warne, Delhi with Sehwag and Kolkatta with Dada’s magic slowly catching up. yeah, Punjab too is on top but the credit of that need not go to Mr.Attitude Yuvi nor to Priety who has been hugging everyone in the squad except Sreesanth, no wonder he is crying hoarse. Shaun Marsh (along with Pathan/Bajji’s slap to Sreesanth) deserves that credit. He has been playing neat and wonderful cricketing shots with almost no slogging and its been a treat to watch.

And IPL has now given VVS a hairline fracture making it convenient for him to sit out of the remaining matches and let Gillie handle the embarassment - if only he had done that earlier, Deccan ‘Dischargers‘ might have found a way through to the top. Coz with Gillie’s captaincy somehow EVEN the ‘kill-me-i-wont-get-runs-but-waste-deliveries-Venugopal Rao’ is hitting boundaries. The less I write about Bangalore Old Monks err ‘Royal Challengers’ the better. Enough posts on them and their ‘I-have-constipation-Rahul-Dravid’ are over the web. Watching L Balaji a.ka. ‘Naayudu’ get a hatrick for Chennai has been one more pleasant memory from IPL - having played for some time with him and him being my friend’s friend, it was even more heartwarming

Now the tournament is interestingly poised with Rajasthan/Chennai almost set to enter the Semis with most likely Delhi and Punjab to follow suit unless Kolkatta/Mumbai spoil the party which should be interesting to see. Since Sachin is set to return for the match against CSK it should be a fabulous sight to watch him play alongside Sanath Jayasuriya.

If giving a blockbuster is difficult, even more difficult would be to follow it up with another one. Dharani with a hatrick of sorts in the form of Dhill/Dhool and Gilli comes up with yet another fast paced ‘hero smashes villain and saves people’ formula. With a big family to take care, Vettrivel (Vijay) in an effort to go to Malaysia takes up a one time job as a Kuruvi (a guy who moves stuff from Malaysia - Chennai). The issues he faces after reaching there in the form of Suman and gang and how Vijay brings Suman’s and Ashish Vidhyarthi’s illegal diamond business to CBI’s notice is the movie’s story. In between ofcourse is a love track between Vijay and Thrisha (Suman’s sister). Movie is an entertainer with comedy sprinkled (including a couple of non-parliamentary ones ) generously in the first half and action packed in the second. Scenes involving the diamond theft and escape with Thrisha to Chennai and the flight scenes and the ones involving Jeeva are taken from Vettam, malayalam movie. Contrary to reactions after audio release, Mozha Mozhanu seems to the winner in picturisation along with Happy New Year song. Thaen Thaen is unnecessary in the movie and could have been removed. On the other hand editing and Cinematography is good and Vidyasagar’s BGM in some places (the Malaysia club scenes/Cuddappah scenes) are very good. Suman is good as a villain though his voice is a bit soft to be menacing, the heavy built villain in the diamond ‘kvaary’ is good. Ashish Vidyarthi with doses of telugu dialogues does ok.

Pros :
Vijay’s comedy sense and dialogue delivery (he is becoming thinner and thinner day by day though )
Vivek

Cons :
Lots of logical potholes (surprisingly from Dharani)
Gravity defying stunt scenes including the ridiculous intro race scene (though the first fight in Malaysia is top notch)

Movie should get a good run in the B and C centres and for general audience should be ok for a one time watch and a good treat for Vijay fans. My personal verdict - can watch once, dont expect logic.

Who cares if Delhi and Hyderabad were battling each other at the IPL - the news of Dasa trailer being telecast in Kalaignar TV was enough to keep me awake . With no telecast of Kalaignar TV here, had no option but to wait for the Trailer to be uploaded to Youtube by some kind souls and finally at about 1AM the rocking trailer was up.

The opening scenes itself was enough to create the euphoria - top notch. Coming from Devisriprasad, I was more than surprised that the BGM (one specially for the trailer I guess) was awesome. The trailer was moving so fast with so many frames, perhaps to not reveal the 10 characters, but at the same time keeping up the interest of the audience. Thanks to continuous pausing and playing in YouTube and other video tools, I have tried my best to unravel the 10 characters Kamal is playing

The 16th century scenes, esp the scene where Nambi and the statue are taken along in the boat (to drown in the sea perhaps) is magnificent. Tsunami scenes/the king’s place etc and a lot more scenes showcase the film’s class - Cinematography is Brilliant. Guess I might be soon running out of adjectives LOL. This is one movie to look forward to and in all probabilty could be THE Movie to change the way, World (forget North India - they were never a competition ) looks at Tamil Cinema. Especially after the collections of Sivaji and the mass reach it had, TFI needs also a movie in the calibre of Dasa to showcase its potential. Kudos to Kamal and all others for the effort put in and cannot wait for May 2nd or 3rd Weekend release of the movie.

All along during the umpteen times of watching the trailer, one thought running non-stop through my mind was ‘if only ARR was associated with this’!! - Hope Marmayogi fills that void

The perfect start to IPL, one which Pawar/Lalit Modi & the entire BCCI would have dreamt of. The opening ceremony went on really nice and the rope dance was really impressive, equally eye-grabbing was the fireworks.

Dravid won the toss and surprisingly put Kolkatta into bat. What one was to witness next was perhaps the best ever innings of power hitting. Mc Cullum hit 13 Sixes and scored 158 (highest ever in T20). SRK with his cheerleading squad of Arjun Rampal/Karan Johar (their cheerleading girls look so ugly and who wants to watch these guys - SRK, borrow the cheerleaders from Mallya ) had enough time to jump up and over the boundary lines. Katrina in to cheer BRC with the insistence of Mallya was left with nothing to cheer, LOL. Royal Challengers did not even bother to challenge the score and were dismissed for 82. Thank God the gorgeous cheerleaders from Bangalore cheered Kolkatta too giving enough reasons to watch the one-sided match.

IPL is here to stay. Also being in Singapore had its own advantages. Ad free telecast is any cricket lover’s dream and that’s what we got Wonderful experience and 43 more such days - I AM THRILLED is an understatement

Happy New Year - A good attempt of rap + folk mixing. The rap bit in the song resembles Pettai Rap very much. The lyrics are really cute and the ‘You know you know’ bit is too good . The song’s picturisation in Malaysia together with the Malay lyrics add to the glamour - different kinda song. Picturisation should decide the hit factor. Awesome voice by the hot Sunidhi Chauhan in the song

Dandanaa Darna - The intro song for Vijay sung by a newcomer (Sangeeth) is catchy after a few hearings. Should be a big hit with the children and would definitely be a chartbuster with the Vijay dance factor added in

Thaen Thaen - Only melody in the otherwise fast based album. I feel like i have heard this song already - cant recall where. If this would be a hit in the Kandaen Kandaen (Madurai) mould is anybody’s guess

Palaanadhu - Thought for a moment its a Himesh song with Vidyasagar singing in his nasal. Attempts for a punjabi song (perhaps a situational song) gone wrong. This one could be a dark horse song though with the picturisation. A funky type of song.

Theme Music - Rap in this song is AWESOME!! Was not so impressed with the ‘appadi podu’ techno mix in the song. Guess would be used in fight sequences in the movie

Mozha Mozhanu - the yamma yamma bit for some reason reminds me of ‘Ek lo Ek Muft‘ (no offense to the original). Song is in full fast mood and in one different kinda rhythm. Gotto see picturisation of the song - cant imagine the dance style for this yet

Overall an album with a possibility of 3 chartbusters mainly dependent on Vijay and the BO status of the movie. Compared to an album like ATM, Kuruvi is very different, but songs definitely would be a bigger hit than the former, that’s for SURE!! Definite hit with the B/C Centres.

Also all the songs are only about 4 minutes or so effectively reducing atleast 10 minutes of the film, its gonna be a racy one for sure!!

Update : After multiple can’t get enough of Happy New Year and Sunidhi Chauhan’s voice - the girl ROCKS - ‘you know you know you know’

Kuruvi is all set to fly high. The expectations on the album are very high after the blockbuster album Gilli and the combination of Vijay/Dharani/Vidyasagar is going to be rocking. Going by the promo stills and news in the web, the songs should be all fast based and it would be very lucky if we get atleast one melody. I liked all songs in Gilli - but hope atleast one melody is IN since Vidyasagar gives very nice melodies. Also in the news is a song by Yogi B (Polladhavan ‘Engeyum Eppodhum’ Fame) - so with all these factors my expectations are very high on this album. Gotto wait and see

updated : Above is the CD image and looks like no intro song - yet to listen to the songs and would post a review after that. Songs should also be available for download pretty soon in the web as is the trend nowadays. Can’t wait to listen to the songs!!!