Movie: Mankatha (Tamil)
Star Cast: Ajith, Arjun, Trisha, Lakshmi Rai, Andrea, Anjali and Premji Amaren
Director: Venkat Prabhu

Venkat Prabhu is known in the kollywood industry for delivering youthful movies with different storylines and screenplays every time. With Mankatha, he has lived up to his reputation. Apart from the story line, there is innovation in almost every field of the film track like photography and stunts. He has made conscious attempt to deviate from the conventional approach.

Mankatha is a movie about a group of youngsters planning a heist and Ajith executing the plan. It’s a pure mass entertainer with clearly no room for logic and reasoning. The movie opens with a spectacular entry shot for Ajit. Afterall its his 50th movie. He enters in as a police office and intervenes in a gangster fight to save one henchman. After the gravity and physics defying stunts, Ajit is seen partying with the Mankaatha theme song in the background and  Lakshmi rai dancing in the foreground. Trisha is introduced as Ajith’s girlfriend. She is the daughter of a noted kingpin in town. This kingpin is about to transact a huge sum in view of the IPL bettings. Arjun is the head of police anti-corruption team aimed at weeding out the cricket betting scandals. He is married to Andrea. A gang of 4 guys who are close to the kingpin’s circle plan on looting the money from the transaction. But Ajith interferes and takes over the lead. One of the 4 guys, Vaibav who is the right hand of the kingpin is married to Anjali. With Ajith in the helm, the heist goes on successfully. But the actual ride starts after the heist when the plan to get away with the heist. The rest of the movie revolves and zooms around this get away.

Yuvan Shankar Raja’s music is good, but not impressive. Apart from the ‘Vilayadu Mankaatha’ and the ‘Mankaatha theme’ music, the rest of the tracks are passing clouds and nothings lingers on. The songs. music, picturization and choreography don’t seemed to be connected with each other. There is a lack of single theme. They appear to have been conceptualized individually and finally packed into the movie just for commercial gains. ‘Nee naan’ a melodious track, ‘Machi open the bottle’ a mass songs, ‘Balle Lakka’ a fun song and ‘vaada bin laada’ a duet song all masala mixed and packed into the Mankaatha movie. ‘Vaada bin laada’ has an interesting picturization, but overdone graphics makes it looks like an advertising movie.

Ajith has risen to a status that his mere screen presence can pull along an entire movie. It’s rare to see a leading actor in grey hairs and he has carried it well. At certain instances he freezes with his stony expressions, but those shots have been compensated by angle of camera brilliantly. The entire movie is 100% Ajith movie and is made for Ajith fans specifically. He rules and dominates the movie frame by frame. Excellent background score, stylish shots, brilliant costume designing and simple locations add to the luster of this movie. Arjun has done a great job, fitting well with the movie and the character. True to his image of an action hero, his fight sequences are explosive. The 4 guys  Vaibhav Reddy, Ganesh, Mahat and Premji Amaran have done an exceptional job. Premji Amaran is starting to irritate with his stereotypical expressions and clichéd one-liners. Trisha is forgotten in the movie totally, but she is a pretty eye candy to have around. Lakshmi rai, Anjali and Andrea have few minutes of screen time and one song each. Again they are just eye candies in the storyline.

Though the movie has a lot of violent sequences, it has been handled neatly. Eliminating all emotional and sentimental drags, even death has been handled poshly. It’s a movie where you come out of the theater with smiling face. You are entertained beyond expectation and is worth every moment and dime spent.

I had this domain earlier, but then didn’t renew it for a year. Now it was decided to renew and relaunch it this year and I have done it. Giridhar.co.in will have my photographic portfolio and user experience related blog posts. Please visit it, bookmark it and keep commenting on it to help me improve.

Me: “I am an Usability Analyst”

They: Usable what?

Me: I am an User Experience Design Analyst

They: mmmhm… what is that?

Me: I am an Application Architect

They: What platform?

Me: I design the User Interaction of a web or mobile applications.

They: Ah! so you are a web designer.

When its any other software profession, its sort of easy to make people understand it. You just say “I am a software engineer” and there ends the conversation. But in my case its not easy for people outside my domain to comprehend the nature of work I do. Even guys in the software industry can’t get it. So I finally end up telling them the big story and the layman version of it gets the attention and shuts up the remaining conversation. It goes like this.

Version 1: I am like an architect for a building. I tell them which component goes where and explain why that component is most usable in that particular position. How humans interact with that component. What are the specifications of the layout. How is the layout presented and so on. From there, the engineers and masons take up the design and start building the house. So I do the same for any portal, web application or mobile application.

Version 2: I am like a designer for a car. I tell the size, dimensions, color and location of each spare part that goes into the car hood or the car interior. I also tell them what the car must look like from the outside. To do this, I speak to the prospective customers and get their expectation. Then I design a model car. I test it with the customers to see if that meets their expectations. Then I design the final car and give it to the production guys to manufacture it. After the car is released into the market I again speak to the customer and get their feedback to make improvements in the next version of the car.

People like the story and the moment the realize the importance of my role the conversation ends there. I am happy that I have confused one more person along the way.

But that aside, I have come across a few people who are in my line of work, who claim that they are User Experience Designers. Superficially the job title could get the pass, but if you look into the meaning, it would say that the person actually designs the experience of other users. I strongly believe that not only impossible but also illogical. Each user is unique and their experience is dependent on various factors like culture, perception, exposure, experience, age, ability, IQ, etc. How can one person design and govern the experience of zillions of users out there.

What we actually do is, to identify the common behavioral patterns and to design an application that would couple along with the real life situation and aid a better user experience. So we don’t actually design the user experience, but we design products and application that gives the best user experience possible and that is what I do for a living.

I have now officially graduated out of the Kit lens. But still the Tamron is quite heavy and the minimum range 70mm isn’t wide enough. So there would be a lot of times when I need to go back to good old 18-55, just for that 18. Tamron SP AF 70-200mm F2.8 Di LD (IF) Macro lens is quite a marvel in optics and engineering. It’s solidly built. The rubber grip in zoom and focus ring is smooth. The hood is of high quality and fits in like tank. Overall it’s a pleasure to handle. On the performance front, I haven’t taken it to the limits yet. But it’s really good so far. Macro images on F2.8 could be tricky as the focus needs to be spot on. With the absence of image stabilization one would need a lot of practice and perfectly still pair of hands to shoot with the Tamron SP AF 70-200mm F2.8 Di LD (IF) Macro lens. I paid $769 for it and already feel that its a perfect value for money.

Check out these images which I shot in and around my house.

I still don’t possess enough geekology to speak about the technical specifications and photographic performance of the lens. But be assured that I am slowly inching my way towards it.

Finally a thought struck to me. What can possibly bring back happiness to me than a gadget? and that’s when I decided to shortlist on which gadget I needed to buy. And the winner is “Tamron AF 70-200mm f/2.8 Di LD IF Macro Lens” for my Nikon D3100. I ordered it on the Amazon and had it delivered to my aunt in US and she is on her way to India soon. Now I just can’t wait to lay my hands on it. Oh yes! be assured of an unboxing video and an indepth review.

But in the meanwhile, I do think of a lot of topics to write on this personal blog of mine and most of them turned out to be dark themed. I just didn’t want to pass on my depression to you and hence its residing in the drafts folder not progressed beyond the title field. There was also a fun blog which I planned as a series of imaginary stories of a not-so-imaginary character which is residing in the draft folder, but the recent events put on a huge writer’s block and flushed away the funny bone in me. While I dive in to find that bone, and while I am waiting for my Tamron lens, you hang in there and rest assured that I’ll be back.

p.s: Please wear helmet if you are on two wheeler and don’t forget that seat belt if in a car. Your loved ones are waiting for you at the other end of the road.