One of the best write-up about Sachin double

Sambit Bal - On CricInfo

Sachin Tendulkar’s record-breaking didn’t stop on the field on February 24. He shattered many on Cricinfo. We recorded 45 million page views that day, and our highest number of unique users in India and the United States. The match report for the Gwalior ODI became Cricinfo's single most read piece of content.
It has always been so. If evidence was ever needed to confirm Tendulkar’s status as the world’s most-adored cricketer, it can be found in our logs. Month after month, year after year, he remains the most-searched cricketer on Cricinfo; by a huge margin, his profile page is the most visited player page on the site; and in any given month, headlines (often more than one) featuring his name are among the top 10 on the site.
Among other things, he also broke a couple of our servers that day.
Trust me, we make serious contingency plans for peak moments, and certainly we have never underestimated your love for Tendulkar. But obviously, there is no accounting for it. As he stood a couple of runs away from making history, so many of you logged in together that our servers blinked. It was a desperate few minutes, but in a sense, it was also a moment of vindication of your faith in us. Many of you got on Twitter to vent your frustration, and there was one post that stood out: “You know you are large when you crash Cricinfo.”
We hope to be ready for the next peak. We have just ordered some Tendulkar servers.

Publicity- The new age BTL marketing

A lot of debate is being done these days about ethics in news reporting. The press drew a lot of flak for its lack of reposibility during the stand-off in Mumbai. Everything is dressed as breaking news and run a million time till the crux of the issue loses its dignity and becomes a boring by-line. On-site reporting sounds ridiculous and often assumes farcial proportions similar to the scene in the movie " A Wednesday" where a news item is recorded to showcase potholes on roads. Every telecast has experts and laymen presenting their analysis and opinions about anything and everything. All news items theses days use superfluous language to describe the most insignificant piece of news. Where news is supposed to be objective presentation of facts and well researched figures , it is now becoming an assault on ones emotions. Interviews and debates on TV have become fencing matches where the participants try to show their one- upmanship. Such a trend has resulted in a skew in the media space that each news item gets. Insignificant issues receive exponentially high screen space and some news pieces of import get shunted for lack of glamor.

Such a trend in the indian new channels has created a new paradigm in BTL publicity. The basic concepts underlying are what they always used to be but the impact it has over the audience has increased tremendously. As always, what is needed is a scandal, controversy or a standoff. Small modifications and tweaking in the right direction and Voila, you have a mega publicity campaign on your hands. Lets check out this story. An american company launches a new social networking site. They do not have a media campaign at all. A minister makes a comment on the website which is seemingly controversial. Ab-ra-ca-dab-ra and Twitter becomes a household name in the nation and still the company has not spent a dime on publicity.

A super star makes a comment about cricket players of our neighbour which offends the group who are always ready to take offense on anything which really does not concern them. And bingo the new movie of the super star gets so much of publicity that even the biggest of corporates cannot afford such a budget. The "idiot" who had a planned media campaign for his new movie spent a ton and the star who was at the right place at the right time harvested rich wind fall. I guess from now on people should get into agreement with all these self righteous moral , spiritual and theological groups who are waiting to take stand against anyone who even sneezes inappropriately to get publicity. As the cliche goes " There is nothing called bad publicity".

These examples show that those who have gained have done so by default and not by design. So that brings to us the big question " Can such a circumstance be created?

Kutty - Breath of fresh air

After a slew of mediocre movies with some involving plots that are out of ordinary, this movie Kutty with a light-hearted approach towards a time tested love triangle comes as a welcome relief. At the base level there is nothing new about the whole drama but the narration has done the trick and made the movie enjoyable. The fact that this offering from Dhanush comes after duds like pollathavan and padikkathavan did help in lowering my expectation to such a level that a decently nice performance from the dude made the movie seem so much enjoyable. The scene where he drives the jeep singing the popular number from mullum malarum ( senthazam poovil) really won me over.

This movie has again reiterated the fact that a good screen play and fresh narrative is the key to success of a movie. An uncluttered plot, decent music and good humor in the movie has seen to it that the audience do not get bored at any point. Talking of humor in certain sequences were totally hilarious adding to the appeal. Instead of dull looking friends the heroine has good looking females around her. On the whole I started watching the movie with not so good expectations but got a fair deal. A happy movie to watch.....

Aayirathil Oruvan - Review

While watching this big budget Selva Raghavan Pongal release, I got reminded of one particular scene in the movie Ayan where there is this director guy who comes around to Surya and asks him for suggestions on hollywood movies to watch in order to finalise the scene in his movie. For all the originality and crude reality that SR lends to his films, I felt that he went about like the director above after watching AO the other day. Frankly it was a big disappointment for all the hype surrounding it.

The scenes in the movie continually remind you of many adventure/fantasy/grail hunt movies we have watched over the years. The basic ingredient being a "metaphoric treasure" lost through the ages and the clue to whose whereabouts lies hidden in obscure coded manuscripts. This in itself does not lend to the accusation that I have made but going just beyond this most basic requirement you start to find resemblances to the movies like Lara Croft ( Father-daughter archaelogist pair), Alan Quartermain ( Expedition to find a missing loved one who has gone beyond the known realms and possibly found the treasure", Prophecy of a chosen one coming from out to deliver the masses from suffering ( Apocalypto, 10000 BC) , Mummies ( Seven dangers on the path-Seven plagues unleashed) and on and etc.

Given this kind of "borrowing" I atleast hoped that SR would give a strong script to make the movie engaging but there too it falls flat. The narration is a total drag on especially in the second half. The plot itself lacks credibility as the treasure in this case being a " Statue of the housegod of Pandyas" which was taken away by the Cholas. A whole line of descendants of the Pandyas whose life revolves around bringing back the statue stretches the already thin plot to the point of breaking.

But on the whole the movie, especially the first half, brings something new to the average tamil audience not in terms of some message or anything but in terms of showing the female lead in a different light. The dialogues that do not have the euphemesim, ambivalence and conservativeness traditionally associated with tamil movies draw lot of shouts from the audience. The scene in which the two female leads let out a string of expletives was kind of refreshing.

As a movie AO has tried to show the tamil audience something new but has ended up making them restless in the second half. A shorter and crisper version of the movie without so many holes in the plot would have been so much more enjoyable.