Sabarish

I have seen some really amazing, touching, thought-provoking and some funny short films in Thamizh over the last few months. The people behind this are evidently extremely creative and the efforts they have put into their work shows. Some have elaborate setups and others just a regular camera and a free movie editor software.

Given below are some of the short films that caught my attention that I had to share with you all. These are all in my mother tongue – Thamizh (Tamil) – but some of them do have sub-titles.

I’ll start off with one of the first Thamizh short films I saw on YouTube. This film introduced me to this whole world of Thamizh short films on YouTube. The film is about a guy who is going to introduce his girlfriend to his parents and what happens at that meeting. Brilliant acting, direction, camera work and such a real script! The starting scene is killer!

The next movie is by M.Balaji, who was also responsible for the first film. His strength is obviously emotions and getting the best out of the actors. Do search for his other films. Anyway, this short film is about a grandfather who is eagerly waiting for his foreign raised grand-daughter to return and sing for him, like she used to do several years back. Very touching film! The scene where the grandfather tries to bridge the generation gap by listening to rock music is super!

Bonus: This has English sub-titles.

The third short film is about a man and his car and his village. Written and Directed by S.U. Arun Kumar. Brilliant work! Reminded me of the Cars movie series where we actually feel the cars are almost human-like characters!

The next short film is by Manoj Priyadarshan, who dishes out a hilarious version of how some men go that extra mile to please their girl friends. The camera/scene work could be better but the story and comedy is spot on!

The last movie I’d like to share is about this couple who meet again after breaking up two years earlier for various reasons. Again great direction, superb acting (the actors seem to be working with multiple directors!) and great work by the cameraman on this one take short film. Scripted and directed by Ramya.

Bonus: This has English sub titles.

That’s about it for now. I hope you enjoyed this ‘short’ selection! YouTube is an ocean and one can find a lot of great short films in various languages and genres.

Do share with me in the comments any short films that you have seen and enjoyed.

2008 was a sad year in India with all these terror attacks and bomb blasts and the recent Mumbai attacks. It pains all of us to see such mindless death and destruction, but is there anything we can do about it? Well one of the first things we can do is check piracy. Some articles that I read in the papers and online about how buying that cheap CD/DVD from the streets or renting movies from the neighbourhood movie library (who buys the pirated movies) actually might be funding these terrorist organisations.

Below are some articles I could find online -

Piracy funds terrorism | http://www.window2india.com/cms/admin/article.jsp?aid=3810

Check piracy to defeat terrorism | http://www.samaylive.com/news/check-piracy-to-defeat-terrorism-says-nasheed/602463.html

Interpol Links Piracy To Terrorism Funding | http://www.allbusiness.com/retail-trade/miscellaneous-retail-retail-stores-not/4368051-1.html

This is seriously shocking stuff and I think we need to raise awareness of this and have enough self discipline to avoid going the cheap way, which could prove costly later.

After reading these articles I thought of doing a little myself and avoid buying or renting out pirated movies and got myself registered at seventymm.com – a one stop hangout for renting movies online. 

They carry this disclaimer about the legality of renting movies from them -

We carry all the movies which are legally released in India with a certification from the Censor Board of India. If a movie is not released by the studio or distributor for rental purposes, we won’t be able to provide it for rent to you. So if a movie is not legally available in India, we will also not have it.

I now rent out all my movies from seventymm and I must say the service is great. I’ve been a member for under a month now and have rented out 4 movies so far. I got some membership offer of Rs. 750 valid for 4 months and 24 movies (DVD or VCD). This roughly works out to around Rs. 31 per movie, which is great! My package lets me borrow one movie at a time, which is home delivered and picked up. They have other plans with different rates, where you can borrow unlimited movies at a time and keep them for as long as you wish.

Once you register on their site you can set up a movie queue. They have tons of movies to select from and you can add them and change the order around in your personal movie queue. You can request for a delivery, upon which the first available movie from your list is delivered to you and any previous movie that you might have borrowed is picked up (depending on your plan); you can also request for a pickup only, wherein the movie queue is not processed and only the previous movies are picked up.

The DVDs so far have all been of great quality and I haven’t faced any issues with the entire service. I’ve built up quite a nice movie list with lots of Tamil and some Malayalam movies as well to watch with the family. So now we even have regular movie sessions! :)

Delivery time wise I haven’t had an issue so far and usually within a day or maximum two after requesting for delivery the movie is delivered. One can even provide an alternate address (such as the office address) and request for them to come to the alternate address if unavailable at the home address.

The only drawback as such with Seventymm and my one-dvd-at-a-time rate plan is that if I don’t rent out 24 movies in 3 months, then I’d still end up paying Rs. 750/-, although they do have an option of ‘pausing’ your subscription, which can be done by calling the help-desk.

Some other alternates to Seventymm

- Big Flix | http://rental.bigflix.com/bigflix/Home

- CatchFlix | http://catchflix.com/index.php

Here’s hoping more people stop buying and renting out pirated movies.

Whoah! Been rather busy at work these past couple of weeks and couldnt find time to blog until now. Infact i’ve been staying back at work so late that most days I go straight to bed after returning home and actually don’t get on the comp at home!

Saw the movie Hostel last friday night. It was another dark, freaky, horror movie. Not the ghost kind of horror…but real chilling, gory, violent, shocking kinda stuff. The movie comes with the tagline - ”Welcome To Your Worst Nightmare” and sure has some hellish scenes in them.

Went out with project team mates last Saturday after some training at work and had nice fun! After a long time went to the Microsoft office for a meeting regarding the student community. Met a lot of old friends and enjoyed pizza and later I took my friends out to Coffee Day.