One of the qualities I pride in myself is that I enjoy all forms of entertainment. Whether it be movies, books, music, video games or even art (though to a much lesser extent), I enjoy getting myself engrossed in the amazing worlds they offer. Each one of them is unique in its own right and choosing any one over the other would be nearly impossible for me.

However, very recently I noticed a distinct lack of book-reading from myself (and yes, this is including study books also). I am pretty much sure the new computer has spoiled me. Apart from getting myself immersed in the beautiful islands of Crysis and listening to the indie rock of Arcade Fire and Modest Mouse and, of course, roaming around with friends (a part of every college guy's life), I have been pretty much neglecting books for many months now. You know it's drastic when the last book you read was Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows way back in July.

I did realize that I have about an hour's spare time during the time I take to reach college by bus and all of it is spent sleeping while listening to music. In order to utilize that time more effectively, I decided to get back on track as far as my reading habit was concerned. Last year, at almost the same time, I discovered about the magical world of Hogwarts and the rest as they say is history. This year my infusion into reading is going to begin on a more varied note with the following books:

Split Second - I started reading David Baldacci novels based on reading reviews from fellow blogger, Balaji Balasubramanium. Having read The Camel Club and Collectors from the Camel Club series, I went into the library today with the idea of picking up Stone Cold -- the latest book in that series -- only to find out it had been borrowed by someone. So, I ended up picking up Split Second which is the first book in the Sean King & Michelle Maxwell series and from a quick glance on the back cover, I hope it will be intriguing to say the least.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - I remember reading the title in Balaji's blog and when I saw it at the library, I checked out the synopsis and even though the book does seem to be aimed at children, I think I will find it a very interesting read.

I also have the aforementioned Stone Cold and The Five People You Meet in Heaven (both of which had been borrowed from my local library) lined up after I am done with the above books. I also hope that this time my latest foray into books actually lasts quite some while unlike the last time.

Indiralokathil Na Azhagappan has a lot of expectation behind it. For one, Vadivelu is just coming off the huge success of Imsai Arasan 23am Pulikesi which turned out to be a huge blockbuster and has to prove that Imsai… was not just a one-off show and that he can pull of two hits in a row -- something which is even eluding many of our top heroes. And we are still expecting our first huge hit of 2008 with all the pongal releases turning out to be complete duds and as mentioned with Imsai… behind him, it is not surprising to expect Vadivelu to give us our first huge hit of 2008. Sadly, INA does not fulfill any of our expectations. With a threadbare, incoherent storyline and even weaker screenplay, INA gets its foundation all wrong and expects Vadivelu to carry the movie solely on his own shoulders which he cannot since the movie fails in the comedy aspect as well and ends up being a total snoozefest.

Summarizing whatever little story the movie has is pretty easy. Azhagappan (Vadivelu) is a stage actor who lives a pretty ordinary life with his mother and a few friends who are part of his stage acting crew. His mother, however, drops a bombshell that he will have two marriages and his first wife will die. He marries a statue as his first wife to get rid of the curse but that statue ends up being Rambha (Suja) from Indiralogam who has come to be in such a state because she could not return to heaven in time. Azhagappan is then taken to Indiralogam and Yamalogam where he gets to see all the wonders first hand and realizes how messed up the situation up there really is. How he sets right all that is wrong in both heaven and hell and what consequences he and Rambha face forms the rest of the story.

It is really a moot point discussing about the story anyway. Whatever I mentioned in the previous paragraph is pretty much all there is to it. However, what little there is has also not been scripted properly and the screenplay is all over the place and the pacing of the movie is really slack. Logic also falls short at many places such as how nobody thinks about following Vadivelu to check out where he really disappears to at night. Bad sentiments have been inserted in places near the interval and the climax but they seem overly artificial and we end up squirming in our seat because of them rather than connecting to any of these characters.

What is really pitiful is that the movie ends up having some really good messages underneath such as how a completely evil man ends up doing some good deeds and lives a short term in heaven for it and is destined for hell after that or how the opposite is true for really good people who end up in heaven after serving a short term in hell in the afterlife. A few other stuff like how even the worst of people can listen to reason if somebody just puts it to them in the proper way are all lost in the sea of mess that is the movie’s scripting.

Thotta Tharani’s sets really do a lot to make the movie watchable for its duration. He has recreated the vision of heaven and especially hell nearly perfectly and it is fascinating to watch all the sets and the art direction is top notch in almost every way. Music is really average and even the much hyped about Shriya’s item number is big letdown both in audio and picturization. Costumes are another one the movie’s few pluses and fit in with the art direction neatly.

One cannot help but pity Vadivelu in the movie. Apart from donning three roles he also carries the movie entirely on his shoulders. As Azhagappan he does not do anything different from other comic roles he has done in a variety of movies. His Indira role does not get enough screen time but whatever little there is adequate. It is as Yama, however, that he really shines. Although the God of Death has been portrayed as a brutal murderer, Vadivelu has done well to make the character funny and a bit likeable. The new girl Suja, as Rambha does not have much to do but does get a few good lines and she does justice to them. From the supporting cast, it is only Nasser who impresses as Naradha.

Overall, Indiralokathil Na Azhagappan falls flat and does not live upto any of the huge expectations. With unfunny dialogue, an incoherent storyline and weak screenplay, INA will bore you to death and actually make you feel relieved when the misery finally ends.

In my first look back at the year 2007, I take a look at my personal top 5 of movies that I liked throughout the course of the year. Please note that this list is not based on box office collections or on how different they were from the set formula for Tamil movies, it is just based on how much I liked all of these movies. So without further ado, my list is as follows:

5 - Kattradhu Thamizh - I honestly have very few words to describe this movie. It could be considered a deep love story beginning at the ripe age with fantasy and ending with tragedy, it could also be considered as an anti-social film about how our first language gets little to no respect at all in this day and age. Whatever it was based on, it did have a deep impact on me with Jeeva’s and Anjali’s wonderful performances at the centre of it all. Surely one to catch up on if you haven’t yet seen it.

4 - Oram Po - Coming from the same school of film-making like Vishnuvardhan, something different from the usual was to be expected from Pushkar and Gayathri and they delivered with the highly, to put it in the Chennai-slang, “local” film. John Vijay could probably be one of the finds of the year with his natural village-slang and timing for comedy, everything he did brought the house down. Most aspects of the street-racing shown did remind one of the Fast and the Furious series but still giving it a highly Chennai look and taking an inside look at the auto driver’s life deserve a thumbs up.

3 - Chennai 600028 - Very rarely do sports movies become a hit in Kollywood probably because of the deviation that is required from the generic Tamil movie. With Chennai 600028, Venkat Prabhu proved that a sports-based movie can be made within the framework of commercial cinema combined with all the glitz and gloss to appeal to the urban audience also. Probably the best aspect of the movie was how natural the whole movie felt; from the comedy of Premji Amaran to the usual fights arising when gangs (or people) from two different areas collide were picturized with such energy and rawness, almost every aspect felt life-like in this highly commercial film. With wonderful numbers like Jalsa..., Un Paarvai..., Veedu Veedu... and a highly energetic soundtrack from Premji Amaran, I can only hope that Venkat Prabhu continues in the same trend with his next movie, Saroja.

2 - Billa - Remaking any old classic is a difficult task in itself but taking a movie that made Rajinikanth a superstar and, in total, has already been made three different times and make it look as if it is an entirely new movie is a colossal task and that is what Vishnuvardhan achieved with Billa. In a nutshell, Billa has already set a benchmark on which future Tamil films that want to be slick and stylish will be judged. Ajith’s natural smart looks and urban demeanour were utilized to the maximum potential and that, combined with a pulsating soundtrack by Yuvan Shankar Raja, near-perfect western style cinematography by Nirav Shah and wrapped up in a two and a half hour jaw-dropping package by Vishnuvardhan made Billa one of the best movies of 2007.

1 - Mozhi - If there was one spot in my top 5 (or top 10 for that matter) that was never in doubt since the moment I decided to make a list, it was the top spot and that goes to Mozhi. This movie, to me, proved that a director doesn’t need to go all sad and teary-eyed on viewers to make a realistic movie. And make no doubt about it Mozhi was as realistic a movie as any released last year without having the dreary aspect mentioned above that is assocaited with most "realistic" Tamil movies. With fantastic performances from the entire lead cast especially Jothika and Prakash Raj backed up by melodious music by Vidyasagar and top-notch screen play and direction by Radha Mohan, Mozhi is undoubtedly the best movie of 2007.

Sivaji - The only reason I did not make a top 10 was I could not find a place to insert this movie in it. So, I ended up doing a top 5 and giving Sivaji a special place of sorts. Honestly, had this movie been made with anyone but Rajinikanth as the hero, it probably would have been a complete dud at the BO. Shankar’s usual trademark touches make their appearances here too – the lavish sets for songs and their beautiful picturizations, an overall message that forms the crux of the story etc. – but it is Rajini who really stood up and made this movie the blockbuster it was. Looking half his age, Rajini along with Vivek looked at home in the comedy sequences and looked amazingly smart in the song sequences and looked every bit of the Sivaji we had imagined him to be when fighting the baddies against Suman. Shriya got her big break with this movie that has led her to being paired opposite Vijay, Vikram and, recently rumored, also with Ajith. Shankar wrapped it in a neat package that, although not at all meeting any of my expectations, did turn out to be quite a good entertainer.

So that’s it people, movies like Pokkiri, Paruthi Veeran, Evano Oruvan, Kireedom, Kallori etc. were also some which I really enjoyed watching a lot and would’ve made it to a top 10 had I made one but since this is the first time I am doing this sort of a list, I stuck with the easier top 5. And since I did not watch most of the diwali releases especially Polladhavan, I thought it was safer to do a top 5. Hope you had a good time reading it.

First off, the truth; I have never actually sat down in front of the TV and watched a series that "I" actually liked. My favorite TV show so far is the Friends and I became a fan of that because my sister was a big fan of that. Other than that I have occasionally sat down and watched Jag, X-Files, Everybody Loves Raymond and again all of those have been series that my sister had been watching for quite some time. But very recently I sat down and decided to give a few shows a try of my own and from then on have been very impressed by two of them.

The first one and the one that has me riveted each time is House. The series is into its 3^rd season here (4^th in the US) and I started watching it only from about the end of the second season. To be honest, I have never watched a medical drama before. The closest I ever came was something known as Medical Investigations or somesuch in the Discovery Channel. The episode that actually got me terrifically interested was House vs God. I imagined it as being dark and serious but it turned out to be a mixture of everything including comedy which I did not expect to find. Hugh Laurie was not uncommon to me, I had heard about him and seen him in Stuart Little but here he has just lapped it up so much that I cannot imagine anyone else as House especially his comedy timing, dialogue delivery and body language are spot on. The supporting cast does its job pretty well and this is one show I hope goes till the 10^th season like Friends. I am actually going to buy the 1^st and 2^nd season DVDs sometime in the near future since I have not watched them yet.

And the second one is Numbers. I am a math geek, I love math and if it hadn’t been for my even greater interest in Computer Science, my future would have definitely been related to math. The first time I saw an ad for Numbers on TV, I told myself “I have got to check this out!” but as always I never did. I actually only started watching the show when I was casually flicking channels and getting bored with nothing else to watch. It was about the 19^th episode of season 1 and had something to do with using math to calculate human efficiency and I digged it. From then on I have watched the show regularly and it actually just completed its 3^rd season here. Though I did miss much of the first season and a good number of episodes in the third, the actual math used to solve each case is highly intriguing. Of course, the show does have low quality production values evident from the highly graphical explosions but still the main cast is wonderful and does a great job especially Rob Morrow as Don Eppes, David Krumholtz as his brother Charlie and Judd Hirsch as their father, Alan. Again this is one show I hope does go a long way because the way math is used in each episode is pretty brilliant.

Apart from these I actually did start watching Top Chef but that is only because of the awesome dishes that are put on display in that show. So, really the only two series that I have actually become interested for myself are House and Numbers. Any of you interested in these or found a few shows that have captured your mind, post ‘em here.

So, I completed Neverwinter Nights recently and I have to say I was amazed by how well it played considering its age. The main reason I played it was that I am getting a new computer in December and I know I will be busy playing The Orange Box, Crysis, Oblivion and almost every other great game from the past three years, so I will have no time to play this. But I am glad I chose to do it because it gets added to Planescape Torment, KOTOR, KOTOR2 in the list of amazing RPGs I have played.

Although I completed it over the course of about 6 months (WOW!) it never stopped getting better from time to time. And part of it is the story. To be honest at about the middle of chapter 2, I was not much impressed and incredibly many of the sidequests had better substories than the main one itself. But the twist at the end of the second chapter really hit me in the face. And from then on I thought it was really epic with quite a bit of history of the gameworld and so on. Though it was not as complex as Planescape Torment I felt it was awesome and quite epic in its own right.

I played KOTOR before this and at the beginning I was a bit put off by the graphics and gameplay. But since I stuck up to it, I was able to overlook the graphics and the gameplay got really interesting one I started leveling up and the amount of exotic items we can find in this game is incredible and some of it really helped in certain sidequests which would have been difficult without these items. I would suggest anyone who plays the game to atleast put up until the end of the first chapter because the gameplay and story of the later chapters is well worth some of the turn offs of the earlier ones.

Overall, I really enjoyed Neverwinter Nights and it ranks as one of the gaming experiences I most enjoyed. On other notes, since my exams have started no gaming for about 15 days after which it is going to be gaming marathon and madness with the new system and The Orange Box, Crysis and others and I hope to bring certain impressions of those games like this one in my own quest to keep this blog alive.

For people who care, here is my full review of the game over at Gamespot.