One of the often-cited logic to counter a negative review of mine is, ‘Mark my words, it is going to be a super hit’…or its variants. Now, let us deconstruct that logic. Film makers often use a tactic in the first week to promote their films – they advertise that their film is a super [...]

Assorted trivia, in no particular order! 1. The first review on Milliblog was of A R Rahman’s Ah Aah (Tamil), posted on July 22, 2005. But, it was on July 17, 2005 that I first decided to start Milliblog! 2. In 5 years, number of soundtracks reviewed includes, Hindi – 345, Tamil – 293, Telugu [...]

As one Milliblog loyalist (Yaju Arya) so thoughtfully noted in Aisha’s review, it looks like Amit Trivedi is the only composer who has got maximum 200 word review from me! Yaju also traced…or recalled a comment from me about how I felt, way back in February 2008, that Amit is a talent to look out [...]

I have written about single songs rarely, but Ayyanar’s Paniye demands that honor. This is one song in recent times that I can truly call a homage to the Ilayaraja genre! And it is not by his sons, but by a rank outsider! To be fair, it starts a bit too mod for comfort and [...]

The following is a compilation of some of my tweets during my recent trip to Chennai for a wedding…a TamBrahm wedding. They have been selected from many more tweets that I tweeted from my other ID – @beastoftraal. Warning: Some/many of the words/phrases can be comprehended only if you’re clued in to TamBrahm culture – [...]

A R Rahman recently composed theme songs for 2 states – the first was for Gujarat, scored for Gujarat’s Golden Jubilee celebrations and the second was the theme song composed for World Classical Tamil Conference. Now, what would be the shelf life of such songs, composed for specific occasions? In case of Bharatbala’s Vande Mataram [...]

After years of contemplation, I’ve finally give in to the temptation and started a Facebook page for Milliblog. No, I do not think too much about this blog – it’s just a personal blog where I bitch about music and movies, but I believe Milliblog has helped at least a few people open up their [...]

I was asked to pen a column for the March issue of RadioAndMusic magazine and I chose to write about my pet topic – music plagiarism in India. Here’s the magazine’s online version and here’s my column titled, ‘The bastardization of Indian Film Music’ (click on it for larger version).

Up? Yes, seen it and loved it. The Princess and the Frog? Heard about it; don’t feel like seeing it. Fantastic Mr. Fox? Wes Anderson – must see. Soon. Coraline? My hot favorite for Best Animated Feature Film Oscar – over Up! Brilliant film and it’s a pity it is releasing in India almost an [...]

I was watching the Maniratnam produced Tamil film, Dasaradhan, yesterday. It had music by violin maestro L Vaidyanathan, who has composed music for a few earlier films like Ezhavadhu Manidhan (Tamil). The background music and the songs in Dasaradhan were extremely embarrassing, to say the least. It had me thinking on the relative positions of [...]