Thanks to Jagadish, I happened to go to this link (should have been this)and its the best match report I have ever read, though no one can question the factuality of it.

As Hurricane Katrina hit the US Gulf Coast and with New Orleans floating, I felt very sorry (what else can I do) for the affected people and started wondering why the calamity causer was named Katrina ? Is there any underworld hand in it, influenced by Salman Khan? On Googling, I realised that the naming of hurricanes started in 1953, although hurricanes have been around for a long time. At first, they only used female names. People would use the names of there girlfriends, wives, and daughters. One hurricane was named after Bess Truman, the first lady of president Truman. In 1979, a woman's organization started protesting that men's names should also be used to name hurricanes. Since then, six lists of names have been created. Now at the beginning of each season, a new list is drawn up. They start with names that begin with "A" and slowly go down the list. When a hurricane has caused enough damage and destruction, its name is retired and never used again. More elaborate story here and the list of hurricane names here.

After more than 2 months of its release, I obliged director Shankar's request and watched the much hyped Anniyan in the theatre yesternight. The message this time from Shankar is about each and every individual realising his social responsibilities and be more humane. He has used Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) to make his case more interesting and confusing. On the whole, though you could sense that its a Shankar movie, even if you miss the titles, there are enough scenes which don't carry the Shankar stamp. Even MPD isn't handled as well as Sidney Sheldon did it in 'Tell Me Your Dreams'. Needless to say, it was a remarkable effort by him to characterise split personality with words. Who can forget Ashley Patterson ?

Coming back to the movie, the songs also aren't as great as you expect from a Shankar movie, clearly placing the Harris-Shankar combo at a lower step than the Rahman-Shankar combo. Kumari..'s visuals attract very much, but I feel the song (lyrics/music) and the video does not go well together. Andangkaakka.. is a good hit though it reminds you of some Shankar's earlier songs. Iyengar Veetu Azhagey.. could well have been Iyengar Aathu Azhagey.., as there is so much emphasis on brahminical talk all through the movie. Talking about the language and accent, Vikram has done quite a good job at it whereas Sada (or her dubbing voice) very clearly could not get the iyengar accent right. I was really shocked at Shankar not taking much care about this.

Is it mandatory that the lead female character of such a action movie should always be insane ? How can Sada, hailing from such an orthodox family, attend a show like that (where Remo is introduced) and even more baffling is how can she fall in love with Remo ? There is no scene explaining that she hates orthodoxy and wants to be an ultra-modern girl. The crazy modern bits-and-pieces outfits don't fit on Sada. There seemed to little sense on her part, when she asks about Remo's background before completely loving him. But, how does just a blind back-walk across heavy traffic make her accept him ? Another blunder, I felt was how can you set a time for an alter ego to appear, when they announce that Anniyan would appear at a particular time/date ? And also, I could not comprehend why Prakash Raj & Vivek always arrived at the murder spot in disguise.

The positives about the movie is the fast-paced screenplay after the interval, Vivek's comedy and of course Vikram's amazing acting talent. Prakash Raj interrogating Anniyan and that sequence of dialogue delivery by Vikram where the personalities Ambi and Anniyan surface one after other is genuinely awesome. I would love to watch that scene a few more times. Though the iyengar get-up doesn't suit him well, he has done a commendable job with that character too in terms of accent.

The movie is surely a disappointment coming from the Shankar stable.

Thanks to William, I happened to get into Charlie Sutton's Flickr photographs. The below snap really attracted me, probably because I could feel shades of Sid in it. Whatever it is, I think its a fabulous click.

Lot of my MSN contacts have messaged me (even those who don't do often) over the last week mainly to check if I was still in India or gone abroad because they were misled by my display name - 9054 miles away ! I am very much in India and don't see any chance to go abroad in the near future too. Then, what's this 9054 miles? That's the distance between Chennai and Memphis and here are the people whom we miss as they live 9054 miles away from Chennai.

We all know this is Rahul Dravid and Cricinfo also seems to agree today. But, they didn't quite do it last week (see pic. below). I surely believe that a website of this stature cannot afford to slip-up in such things quite often. [Archives]