Saturday, June 16, 2007

Sivaji the Sensation

I was never planning to watch Sivaji, The Boss, Rajnikanth’s latest blockbuster on the second day of its release. Infact, I didn’t know I’d be in one of the theatres this morning till the fag end of yesterday. The whole of Friday went by as if a carnival was happening around the corner and I wasn’t a part of it.

Stories came in hordes.

Articles on Sivaji topped the ‘most read’ sections in newspapers. Sivaji made to the headlines in every news channel worth a mention. About 2100 members were to hit the theatres on Saturday from the company where I work. One employee bunked the office on Friday – first day of release – citing the classic ‘grandmother’ reasons and was caught red-handed while giving a review to NDTV. I don’t know what he was thinking! Purely official mails carried the ‘Boss’ themes. Magazines wrote about tickets selling at 1,900 Rs and being sold out till the end of June'07. You hear about the 30$ tickets in the US, and a guy spending 50$ on popcorn for jubilation throws. The temptation was too much to resist. And then, an influential friend of mine gave the lucky call - first show on the second day of release. ‘Wow!’

I hit the theatre at 7.30 this morning. The first thing I noticed was the presence of police – understandably to ebb the frenzy. The movie started, the 'Boss' walked in with a mask, the dancing began, the whistles blew everyone’s eardrums off, and all of it peaked to an unprecedented high when the Superstar gave his first glance at the audience. Amidst the crescendo, in that moment, that very moment, you know there can only be one such guy, perhaps in the whole world.

The movie itself is proper entertainment – one that just can’t wrong. The first half just rolls across – and you just feel very happy being there. Vivek is at his best; Shriya’s got a thunderbolt screen presence, and AR Rahman’s tunes keeps growing on you as you listen more and more. The plot is a perfect mass entertainer, one where nothing can ever go wrong – good wins evil, do-good to society, and a bunch of dumb villains. Add to all this, the music videos are something else – you know where all the money went in making this the costliest Indian movie yet. Let’s not even start about Superstar’s antics and their effects on the audience.

I don’t think I was a full-time Rajnikanth fan before, but I guess I am one now. Salutations to the brand called Rajni, one that has been built without even endorsing one product on small screen television or anywhere else.

Watch the movie if you don’t want to be left out of the carnival in the town. Watch the movie because everyone around is going to speak about it – for sometime to come. Watch the movie because it’s the latest ‘Da Vinci Code’ in this part of the world. Watch it coz you have to watch it!

9 Comments:

At Saturday, June 16, 2007 10:56:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Govar - welcome to the world that is Rajni.. Proud that u have also been converted to rajni fan now.. [:)]

Always a thondan of thalaivar
avar sevaiyal
oru rasigan
venkat

 
At Sunday, June 17, 2007 6:43:00 AM, Blogger rads said...

haha, cool. Quite the appealing review. :)

 
At Sunday, June 17, 2007 11:39:00 AM, Blogger Govar said...

@Venks: :) Always a thondon of thalaivar? :)

@Rads: Yeah, go watch it. It's quite entertaining!

 
At Tuesday, June 19, 2007 12:59:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

machi, i also happened to watch the first show on 2nd day and in b'lore. I go fully by ur words :-)

 
At Tuesday, June 19, 2007 6:06:00 PM, Blogger M B Mahesh said...

Was on the second day too.

mumbai was a slight disappointment! we tried shouting and shouting but the audience to high class.

But one thing, they started with the wrong print - a telugu one and the audience was ready to bash the owner then and there! total eruption!

BTW it is good that u ended saying that u have become a rajini fan! else some ppl, including me, would not mind bashing you! :D

 
At Tuesday, June 19, 2007 11:06:00 PM, Blogger Govar said...

Mahesh... and Mahesh. Ahem. Yeah, I guess I was an intermittent fan, but am one totally now. He zimply deserves it!

 
At Wednesday, June 20, 2007 1:45:00 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

Influential friend...hmm !

Andavan sollran, you movie pakraan !! LoL ! Lucky you !

Glad you are an official fan now !

 
At Wednesday, June 20, 2007 2:04:00 AM, Blogger Arunkumar said...

nice post.. glad u r joining the bandwagon :) me IN ever since i saw him first on screen :)

well, the movie won't get released in Ohio until 24th but who cares we drove 10hrs to goto NJ to watch Thalaivar in action !!

our 12 seater van was decorated with Thalaivar sivaji snaps and every foreigner was seeing it like 'oh man, whats this they got here?'. they took pics from their cars, waved hands at us, we shouting back.. was terrible fun even b4 we landed @ the theatre :P

never ever AVM logo wud have received such a sound.. as u said,only one man has the right to deserve that whistles/popcorns/paper/aarathis/pumpkins/screams/dances/shouts of thalaivaaaaas/what not...
in the world and it has to be THALAIVAR :)

who has guts to invest 80 crores(approx 20 million USD) on an Indian movie and expect a huge ROI?
if there was no RAJNI magic.. i read in rediff that if the movie runs for 3 weeks (almost all shows booked for more than a month already), its gona fetch 150 crores which is approx 37 million USD...

i watched ARR concert in NY after the movie but the atmosphere of the movie just clearly overshadowed the concert !!!

God knows how many more times i will watch it :) Will post with some pics in my currently-dormant blog !!!

 
At Wednesday, June 20, 2007 6:08:00 AM, Blogger Govar said...

@Arun: You BETTER post the pics. And FAST!

 

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