Category Archives: Mani Ratnam

Guru

A brilliant movie by Mani Ratnam once again! Be it the performance of all the actors or the background score by A.R.Rahman or the cinematography or the picturisation of songs, everything is excellent in this movie!

Alaipayuthey

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The year 1999: The first time that I came to know about this movie was sometime in September-October 1999 when I found Madhavan’s photo in the front cover of the Tamil magazine, ‘Ananda Vikatan’. Since he was coming in the ad for ‘Fair & Lovely’ at that time and I found him to be quite handsome, I immediately started turning the pages curious to know what was written about him and also to know his name. I found an interview with him and this is the first of the many interviews of his that I have read/watched till now. Being a person who didn’t watch many movies, it didn’t excite me much when I came to know that he was going to act in a Mani Ratnam movie! Believe it or not I wasn’t as crazy as I am now about Mani Ratnam’s movies. In fact the only movies of Mani Ratnam that I had watched at that time were Roja, Bombay and Anjali! I had watched a couple of other movies of his but didn’t remember anything about them.
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Guru again!

I am going to write yet another post on ‘Guru’. On Sunday, CNN IBN showed an exclusive programme on the music of Guru. Mani Ratnam, Gulzar, A. R. Rahman, Abhishek & Aishwarya spoke about the music and clippings of the songs were also shown. One song which was completely left out by all of them was ‘Baazi Laga’. When even some hard-core Rahman fans themselves are saying that Baazi Laga is one song that is not upto Rahman’s standard or something like that, I wonder why not even a single word was mentioned about that in the programme.

Roja Jaaneman

Though I have known for a long time that there is a version of ‘Roja Jaaneman’ (‘Kadhal Rojave’ in Tamil) sung by Hariharan, I happened to listen to it only this August. I immediately got hooked on to it. There have been times when I have listened to this song continuously for more than ten times! Hariharan’s voice has added even more beauty to this superb composition by Rahman. Yesterday it struck me all of a sudden that it has been more than a month since I listened to it! I immediately played the song and listened to it for 3 times. That is the magic of Rahman’s music. Even though you have listened to his songs ‘n’ number of times you will still want to listen to it again and again and again!

Once in a lifetime experience – Meeting the Man Himself!

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February 2005:
It was just like any other day. I woke up in the morning and opened the Metro Plus supplement of The Hindu. There was a small news item saying that there was going to be a special programme at Landmark, Nungambakkam where the DVDs of Mani Ratnam’s movies are going to be launched by the man himself and anybody could attend it! I couldn’t believe my eyes! Mani Ratnam rarely makes a public appearance! I very badly wanted to be there for the DVD launch at any cost. The D-Day finally arrived!
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Guru Website

I browsed through the updated website of ‘Guru’ only today. Seeing the website brought back fond memories of browsing through the website of ‘Alaipayuthey’, my most favourite film. I am not going to write about ‘Alaipayuthey’ now because if I start it, it will go on for pages! The websites of Mani Ratnam’s movies are themselves a treat for our eyes and in the case of ‘Guru’, it is a treat for our ears too (the music of ‘Jaage Hain’ is being played in the background and I have now fallen in love with the music so much that I have left the site running in another window even as I am typing this!). Coming back to Guru’s website, it felt good to see the profile and filmography of Mani Ratnam in that. Being a person who doesn’t like to draw much attention to himself, I wonder how he agreed to his image being put in the CD cover and now his biography in the website. I liked the way the book opens and the story of Guru is displayed in the page in the right hand side along with pictures in the left. After seeing the site, my excitement has gone up even more and I just can’t wait for the movie to get released!

‘Guru’ Music

Being a very BIIIIIIG fan of Mani Ratnam and A.R.Rahman, the first thing that I wanted to do today was to get the CD of ‘Guru’! But it was raining so heavily that I could go & get the CD only at around 12. From the time I got it, I have been listening to it continuously! The music is, as expected, excellent! There surely is nobody to beat Rahman!