> > Dear Venkat, > > Rondar Guy's MADRAS MUSICNGs in MYLAPORE TIMES .. > > any one having the collections ?? > > thanks Vijay. sps > the famous murders...wow, if someone can get the two famous madras murders....
coming to think of it,here is a bio of the great mkt
Hi Kalki was harsh on most movies. he reportedly gave auvaiyar only a good chit. but as the saying goes, people who live in glasshouses should not throw stones.. thats what happened to kalki. all his movies were torn to pieces by the press which was waiting for its turn. imagine what would happen if subbudu performed a kutcheri. kalki was particularly harsh on p.u chinnappa. on kittappa i dont know. even in this particular review i dont know his views on k.B. S. will check out.
Pudukkottai Dakshinamurthy Veenai Dhanammal Maharajapuram Viswanatha Iyer Thiruvavaduthurai Rajarathnam Pillai Konnakkol Paakkirisami .... some of the All Time Greats of Yester Years !!!!!!
Not to speak of MK Thiagaraja Bagavathar!
In Chennai, T Nagar, Pondy Bazaar, (formerly) Rajakumari theatre (- which belonged to her once. Janapriya shopping complex) is near Thanikachalam street, on which MKT's bunglow was situated.
Film Financier Lena Chettiar's bunglow was just across the road (near Hindi Prachar Sabha !)
Superstition was that : " Appanaippaadum vaayaal suppanai paaduveno ?" caused MKT downward trend.
I have heard somewhere that Kalki thought the acting in Nandanar was dreadful.. he is supposed to have said that even animals can act better ! (he is definitely capable of being acerbic!) His Carnatic music reviews (which he wrote under a pen name "Karnatakan") tended to be harsh, but with humor and sarcasm.. there is a collection of his music reviews published, but I haven't been able to find it.
Posted by: "Vijay Kumar .S" vj.episteme@gmail.com vj_episteme Sun Feb 10, 2008 10:22 pm (PST) http://www.hindu. com/cp/2008/ 02/08/stories/ 2008020850351600 .htm
hi venkat, why did kalki tear this film to pieces as described above..
Regretfully, Nandanar failed at the box office and `Kalki' in a famous review in Ananda Vikatan tore it to pieces
Hi randor guy otherwise a good researcher made one mistake kalki had left ananda vikadan in 1941 and the movie was made by vasan. the review came in kalki magazine( not known for its unbiased views- in fact the first and most complimentary film review ever published was about majority stake holdr m.s subbalakshmi's sakunthalai)
kalki was particularly irritated with a rather sexy scene that occured. not much details are available except that a rat was involved in the scene. kalki termed the movie a insult to sekkilar, gopalakrishna barathi, and even the rat. he said if the rat was to see the movie it would commit suicide. venketesh .
November 8, 1944 Madras, a sea-kissed sunny city founded some 350 plus years ago by an employee of the East India Company, Francis Day, the provincial capital woke up as usual as the resplendent sun rose out of the blue waters of the Bay of Bengal. To one of its citizens,named C. N. Lakshmikantham, a colorful character of considerable notoriety, a popular journalist of the 'yellow' variety it would be his last day on this planet. Only he was blissfully ignorant of it all. Indeed if someone had told him so that day- break he would have laughed it off, mixing it with some rich colorful two-letter Tamil words (the equivalent of the English four-lettered ones!) and most likely he would have slapped that bold someone! Such was the man, the earliest of yellow journalists, the prince of muck-rakers.
After finishing his mundane morning chores this go-getter was on his way in a man drawn rickshaw to meet his lawyer an Indian Christian who looked more like a Shakespearean actor with his wavy hair, long side-burns and all named J. Nargunam. At that time he had only a modest practice and lived on Maddox Street, Vepery, not very far from where Lakshmikantham lived in a narrow house-lined street in nearby Purasawalkam. The client and lawyer were good friends and met almost every evening after court hours.
Lakshmikantham was quite a court-bird. And a big of a jailbird too. Indeed his pre-journalist life reads like a chapter from a best selling suspense thriller. He had ambitions of becoming a lawyer, something he loved but he could not afford to go to Law College. Yet he did not forget it and read law books. He frequented law courts of Madras city and hobnobbed with small fry lawyers, briefless, breadless ones and litigants of the illiterate kind. Clever and quick-witted he soon became a law tout. Touts though prohibited by law are men who take cases and other legal matters to lawyers for a substantial 'kick-back' in the fee. Patronised by briefless and struggling lawyers some touts in Madras with a smattering of legal knowledge earn more than most lawyers. They draft deeds and documents, wills and notices mostly for illiterates and some touts resort to forgery and fabricating documents very casually of course, for a stiff fee.
Lakshmikantham was one such tout and smart enough to argue his own cases in court. One of his shady deals involving the fabrication of a sworn affidavit created by him in a case filed against him by a leading Madras daily found him in the dock in the Madras High Court Original Sessions. During the hearing he escaped hoodwinking a posse of cops and for a while he lived a happy-go-lucky life, until the cops nabbed and brought him to trial. Found guilty he received a 7 year jail sentence and was ordered to be imprisoned at Rajamundry, then in Madras presidency and now in Andhra Pradesh. While the train taking him was crossing a river in Andhra he, hand-chained, managed to escape fooling the guarding cops and jumped from the chug-chugging train into the river below shrouded by darkness. With chains and all he swam across the big river and disappeared into the dark night. He roamed around freely for a long while until an angry girl friend tipped off the searching Madras city cops. Back in custody he was declared a 'dangerous convict' and deported to the Andamans. With an ocean surrounding this famed island prison, Lakshmikantham could not even dream of escape. He served his term until as a war security measure he along with others was set fee and shipped back home.
Back in Madras, a notorious ex-convict, he avoided courts and cops for whom he had an understandable allergy! Life had to go on and he dabbled in many things. He ran a small restaurant serving meat dishes which in south India were then known as "military hotels" {Eateries serving only vegetarian food were called 'civil' hotels}. He lost in this venture and looked around for greener pastures. Soon he found one, Journalism. A profession that would bring him money, fame or more precisely notoriety, and a violent end.
Around 1943 he launched a film weekly in Tamil "Cinema Thoothu". It was a different kind of magazine. Lakshmikantham did not publish articles about theories and trends in cinema and such. He filled the pages with tales of bedroom activities, amours and amatory adventures of prominent filmland figures like reigning superstar M. K. Thyagaraja Bhagavathar, brilliant comedian hailed as the 'Charlie Chaplin of India', N. S. Krishnan and his star wife T. A. Mathuram, successful producer S. M. Sreeramulu Naidu and many others enjoying stardom and immense popularity in south India. He ran "series" about Bhagavathar and Krishnan as a weekly feature. He wielded a facile pen and his writing was lively, punchy and enjoyable to read. Bhagavathar, a singing star was then at his zenith of his career and fame. More a singer than an actor his following was incredible. Masses, classes, intellectuals, upper crust folks, all loved him, his music. Women adored him and many society dames threw themselves at him. Such was his charisma. At this time he was one of the most famous figures of south India, a household name.
No wonder, "Cinema Thoothu", the first of its kind was a raving sell- out and copies sold at a premium. The Tamil-speaking world had never seen anything like this weekly. The south Indian society, some forty and odd years ago was conservative, old-fashioned and subjects like sex were strictly taboo and barely whispered. In such rigid, regimented atmosphere not surprisingly people loved gossip and scandal and hungered to read and know all about the goings-on behind closed doors in high places. Movie glamour had already seeped into the skin and soul of society and this wily pen-totter took a hundred-and- ten per cent advantage of it all.
What was Lakshmikantham's aim in running such a magazine? He professed, at least in public to be a traditionalist with a missionary zeal to uphold the ideals and high values of ancient Indian culture. He claimed he was socially conscious reformer come to earth, to clean the stables free of sinners and seducers, adulterers and the likes. But his real aim,
coming to think of it ( thanks to a chat session with divakar sir)...we can draw a lot of parrallels to PS from this even!!!
- a slightly hot headed guy getted bumped off ( aplogies to all AK fans for the comparison) - a mystery women involved - doubts cast on a lot of people - a gang being used for the act - a murder weapon ( knife) - a prev murder could be assigned a cause ( the boat mail case disclosure - the beheading of pandyan...can we call it murder - ok he was hurt, without any arms - so could call it murder) - a witness ( the rickshaw puller) though being present not able to be called as an eye witness ( VT??) - wrongly accused ( VT) in prime of his youth and imprisoned...upcoming star!!! - witnesses turning hostile - then prime accused being set free
if we extrapolate to nandipurathu nayagi - a letter being used as a evidence....