Few Movies, a Book, a deleted Blog & Blogalgia

Alexander the Great is a landmark cosmopolitan Malayalam movie without any reference to Kerala. The story is a shoddy mixture of Rain Man and something very forgettable. If you would like to see glimpses of Dubai and Mumbai (Powai, Marine Drive, etc.), please see this movie. At the end, one asks: in how many days was this movie completed?

This is not a review of the movie. The comments made above should be read like a play within a play or the frustration should be viewed in the context of what happened before.

Like most typical Kerala families, mine is divided into the Mohanlal and the Mammootty camps. Last night, at eight, the first camp won the battle and the whole family went for the second show at half past nine (the presence of actor-politician Ganesh and family in a row ahead soothed some frayed nerves). The second camp lost because Mammootty’s Pokkiri Raja “definitely looks non-Mallu”. No one wanted to be a traitor and suggest Jayaram’s Katha Thudarunnu. For the last decade, we have come to expect very little from Malayalam movies but yesterday, the bars were raised because we saw Yavanika (with the Bharat Gopi) on TV yesterday morning.

Rewinding further, there is disappointment of being let down by a crime novel, Fever of the Bone by Val McDermid. This book might be the last in the Tony Hill-Carol Jordan series (also made famous by the TV series Wire in the Blood). The book started off well (the danger of virtual social networking used as the crime plot along with McDermid’s humour and the reader is goaded to accept “non-mainstream” relationships). Why was I disappointed? My rule for crime fiction is: if you want to end the series, kill the hero but please do not domesticate. They should remain weird, or better, get weirder. Can you imagine Holmes married and with a child or two on his knees?

Then, there was the blog that I had to delete. In that blog, I made a school-boy-or-girl-ish attempt to write crime fiction. I dreamt of reviews like “spine-chilling”, “page-turner”, “creepy”, “u r a monster”. My polite and stoic friends endured bits and pieces and tried to encourage me with “luv ur umor”.

Sometime around then, I visited my psychologist. He hum-haw-ed, said that I am doing well with NaSTy (Narcissistic Self-Destruction Tendency). He also added that I should stay away from blogs to avoid blogalgia (for details, please click here).