Film / Documentary - Recently watched & worthy of some discussion

[mappi]

Vallinam [Tamil : 2014 : 2h30m]
Written & Directed by Arivazhagan Venkatachalam

Starring : Nakul, Atul Kulkarni, Jagan, Jaya Prakash, Others who I don't know

[
Meaning : Hard consonants used in Tamil Language writing
Movie Vallinam : Hard Group (team) of B-Ball players lead by Krishna (character played by Nakul)
]

Vallinam is like a known destination, fixed both in distance and travel time. What's note worthy is the journey.

There are no spoilers below but just the scenes that I liked in the movie :

- Opening Basket Ball match
- Title cards
- First Basket Ball reaching out to Krishna (watch to know what I mean)
- Canteen TV episode
- Demolishion of Basket ball court
- Bgm at certain parts, esp. the violin bit during the romance break-up
- Jayaprakash
- Sponsors & Industrial gaints professional (nasty) war sub-plot
- Jagan was funny - " naan eppovamay outstanding sir"
- Vallinam song sequnce
- Climax Final Basket Ball match, spl. mention to the dodges and the awesome

Spoiler: 

slam dunk

- Top notch signature ending
- Cheesy "Romance" dialouges (gave me a lot of chuckles) ; [so was reminders of Mahabaratham were funny too]

Arivazhagan, after his wonderful debut film Eeram, has scored yet another time by shooting a completely different genre and basketing it with ease and style. Cut off the lame romantic angle and over-the-top preachy coach's pleas, Vallinam just skates through its runtime. Nakul vibrates using his eyes and does some wonderful "dancing" with the B-ball, but I felt that he missed an excellent opportunity to perform, esp. during the climax turn-over of events.

What I expected was a bit more on the game basket ball, like a extended version of the title card - what is what and who is who. Breifly put, they should have eliminated most of the college-senior-junior cat fights and romance episodes and concentrated more on atleast the rules of the game (mainly scores) or its positions (guards, forward, center - slashers, combos, corner man, point players ... etc.) or the wonderful strategies (actually it had ample space to utilise some strategy discussion during the climax but what they narrated us was "we don't need bikes" ... LoL). They could have sketched each character as a position from the game and used life as a court with the B-Ball the centrical force that brings them together to acheive a goal, rather a "basket" in this case ... or well something like that. That could have projected much more in depth the feel of the film and would have rested sincere to its genre. Instead they gave us Vallinam, the film.

Vallinam : Fast Break