bill4u - while many were not entirely comfortable with KB's deliberate take on dysfunctional human relationships, I agree with you that his era was a much cherished and welcomed one in terms of taking cinema away from big stars to scripts - Sreedhar did that to an extent, but faded out..also almost all of KB's finds did him proud...

MGR's films were - from a cinematic pov - a disaster in terms of creativity - poor NT ended becoming a lion eating curd rice (as Kamal affectionately quips several times)...

KB thus had a great influence on an entire generation of filmmakers for the good..