Daniel Kasman, Director of Content at MUBI, has some very nice things to say about Tamil cinema.
MUBI is a film website that integrates a subscription video-on-demand service, a database, and an online magazine known as The Notebook.
Attending the 47th edition of International Film Festival Rotterdam he was all praises for Vaayai Moodi Pesavum, Polladhavan, Naan Kadavul and Kattradhu Tamizh.
Writing about ‘House on Fire’ a selection of films from Tamil Nadu which were screened at the festival, he writes, “this section posited a new wave of films from this south Indian state which now bests Bollywood.”
On Vetrimaran’s Polladhavan (Ruthless Man) starring Dhanush, he writes: “Ruthless Man begins as a portrait of an under-employed and layabout class of lower-middle class men in the capital of Chennai, led by star Dhanush—here perhaps the world’s most handsome bum since Spencer Tracy—as a young man whose only two life goals are to buy a new motorcycle and finally speak to the woman he’s had his eye on for two years (desires listed in order of preference).”
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On director Bala’s Naan Kadavul (I am God), he writes: “There is certainly some lightness in the film—two music numbers in particular, one of the god preening, brawling and stomping around, and the other of another band of beggars performing for and mocking local policemen are ridiculous fun—but I Am God, along with Ruthless Man (Polladhavan) and Tamil M.A (Kattradhu Tamizh), truly paint mid-2000s Tamil Nadu with brilliantly bleak, bitter and volatile hues.”
Read the full post here.