i started to watch films pretty early in life. there were any number of movie buffs around me. my cousins, their friends and all those boys and girls who would camp at our ancestral home during summer - all of them were severely stung by film-bug. naturally, that rubbed on me and my earlier visits to two nearby theaters could never be better. mgr, sivaji and later rajnikanth - kamalhasan movies were special treats my father and his brother would pamper us children with on special occasions, and sometimes, during weekends.
when i was in college, it was due to the influence of the last benchers (i could remember them - ramasubramaniam, sundarraj, mohanraj, mugunthakumar, rajkumar, venkatesan, ragupathy) i started watching english movies at imperial talkies in shevapet. mindboggling. my entire perception about films had to undergo a sea-change and for the first time in my life, i came to understand that film-making is a very serious and solemn business. the sensitivity involved is no less that that is involved in writing or making a work of art. in fact, film-making is an art by itself. thanks to imperial talkies, my next ten years of so were busily spent in watching almost all the movies screened there. (later, very sadly, imperial talkies started screening third rate malayalam movies with two minutes porn clip intercepting the movie. and this theater eventually was shut down as its audience fell down drastically).
i still remember the year. 2002. it was when i bought a dvd player. it was the same year my friend at pondicherry took me to nehru street there. there were a couple of video shops vendoring thousands of hollywood, english and foreign movies. i could find there almost all the movies i wanted to see but could not do till then. i borrowed a few thousands from my friend and bought as many movies as the loan could negotiate. i came back home with two or three big bags of pirated movies and started relishing them non-stop, unsaturated. in fact, the more i saw, the more i craved for. to sir with love, to kill a mocking bird, spartacus, the greatest story ever told, since you went away, come september, the sound of music, barbaros, cleopatra - the list went on and on. also, this was around the same time i stopped watching tamil movies. after thousands of english movies into my mind, i could not endure the torture of tamil movies any more. i felt nauseated at the scent of tamil movies.
i should have watched around 5000 movies or quite close to the number. everywhere i go for freelancing classes or meeting young people, i throw at them a list of english movies they should watch. i consider this important no matter how these boys and girls take my recommendation. i grew up watching these movies and i am better for it. and it is my business to tell people around me about these movies and i should convince them why they would be better too by the experience of watching these movies.
this morning [25-1-2016] i chanced upon two films sites on net where a couple of recommendations are given for the readers. one is about 25 most inspirational movies. i was happy to know that i have seen all the 25 films already and many of them are really inspirational, i should say. i feel i should get you guys the list so that you too get happily stung by the film-bug, that is, english movie-bug. in case, you have not been so far. thank you.
channel42.com recommendations:
- dead poets society
- eat pray love
- the pursuit of happiness
- life of pi
- one flew over the cucukoo's nest
- the pianist
- a beautiful mind
- forrest gump
- schindler's list
- million dollar baby
- stranger than fiction
- to kill a mockingbird
- october sky
- cast away
- the shawshank redemption
- life is beautiful
- awakenings
- adaptation
- rush
- the theory of everything
- freedom writers
- braveheart
- edward scissorhands
- the imitation game
- lincoln
i think all these films could be downloaded from famous sites committed to this purpose. the boys and girls at engineering colleges do it in a jiffy. i seek help from my students at these freelancing classes and they load my pen-drive with the list of movies asked for.
these twenty-five movies should tell you why i stopped watching tamil movies from 2002.
0 comments:
Post a Comment