Skip to main content

Oodles of disappointment, frame-by-frame


Appeared in City Express, the daily supplement of The New Indian Express, on 25th April, 2011

It is not too often that we get to see a hero, instead of beating up a gang of bank robbers, pursues them in his bike, does wheelies and dare-devil stunts, all to take their pictures and splash it in the media. It isn’t too often that the viewer gets lulled into expecting something different from such a movie. K V Anand’s latest directorial venture, Ko, sadly is all about this and much more.

Ashvin (Jiiva) is a photographer of Dina Anjal, a Tamil daily, whose prowess with the lens would make even a Peter Parker from Spiderman languish in shame. Renu (Karthika, daughter of yesteryear Tamil heroine, Radha), a reporter in the same daily, who did “responsible” coverage in Sri Lanka, is either content playing second-fiddle to Ashwin or pursuing the “scoops” he gives her after an analysis of his pictures, and by decree, falls in love with him.

Then there is the political minefield of the state, whose key protagonists are the biggies, the chief minister Yogi (Prakash Raj) and Aalavandhan (Kota Srinivasa Rao), and Vasanth (Ajmal), a young engineer. With elections looming, Ashvin and Renu get sucked into the vortex of political rallies and vendetta. Pattimandram Raja’s role looks like it has been lost out in editing. Songs have been inserted when they are hardly needed, for instance, just after the police finish investigating Renu’s house after a break-in. Despite this, Ko has an engaging first half; the newsroom is created with attention to detail, a la Shankar’s Mudhalvan. Anand as cameraman and not as the director has his signature etched all over the movie; the slo-mo fight sequences, as in The Matrix, are another of Ko’s pluses. Harris Jayaraj’s totemic music score has a Bombay Jayasree number.

Some questions remain. Vasanth’s classmates, who are contesting polls, pursue diverse professions (have I missed out on anything?). Do major newspapers conduct editorial meetings during the day? Can a reporter hold front-page of a newspaper from printing, that too, without the cognisance of the seniors?

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why the editorial is the unsung hero of any newspaper

A tad autobiographical, this account encapsulates my experiences at a news organisation. Why wait until 50 or 60 to compose one? Hell, who knows, this could even be its blueprint! So, here goes my first stab at chronicling myself... I was prepared for all kinds of weird questions for my first job interview as a journalist four years ago, for the post of a sub-editor, but I never anticipated this one that caught me off guard. Noting that I preferred to work in the editorial than the reporting section, a HR representative at the organization asked in almost an air of dismissal, implying that the editorial is something redundant, “After all, we have Microsoft Word, in built with grammar and spell check capabilities, so why must I hire you?” I stared at him blankly for a moment as a smile grew on his face, perhaps out of exult at having stumped me. I trotted a familiar refrain, which I am sure he would have encountered countless times, “Because I am passionate about writing a...
6 comments
Read more

Is what you are watching actually a cartoon?

Disclaimer: What you are about to read may seem weird, but what the hell, I am hypothesising it to be true, so who knows... Cartoons are basica lly meant for kids. The main reason e lders prefer letting the kids watch them without their sup ervision is that they need not fret over the incidence of X-rated content in it – namely content that concerns that famous three-letter word or violence. I suggest that we re-examine this mindset of ours (as someone who has grown up watching the very cartoons that I am about to damn, I have mixed feelings as I type this. Consider the following list: Tom and Jerry , Bugs Bunny and El mer Fudd/Yosemite Sam , Tweety and Sylvester and Coyote a nd Road R unner . These are cartoons which we would definitel y not squirm about before letting a toddler/child watch it. These cartoons are hilarious, have palatable themes; have caricatures that look cute (I am yet to come across a girl who hates Tweety). Tom and Jerry, for instance, was once even vot...
2 comments
Read more

Chennai’s Fourth Estate at War

Touching upon competitive spirit, the legendary writer George Orwell, in an essay dated 1945, had described sport as war minus the shooting. He could very well be referring to the ongoing veiled battle between two of India's English dailies. When “India’s national newspaper since 1878” and the “Largest read English daily in the world” decide to slug it out over Chennai’s newspaper readership, rest assured that the battle would spill over to the TV media, as was witnessed recently. Cheeky indeed were the ads that thumbed the nose at one another; though, few were in doubt over who the target was. To the uninitiated, the two newspapers – The Hindu and The Times of India (TOI) , respectively – have modus operandi that are as identical as chalk is to cheese, or uppu (salt) is to upma , a South Indian snack. The "war" in question is the race to get hold of the average Chennaiite, and eventually the Indian, newspaper reader’s attention. And no, this piece of opinion isn...
8 comments
Read more