The Golden Era of Dr.IR and Dr.SPB

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#256 ஹே ராஜா, ஒன்றானோம் இன்று
(ஜல்லிக்கட்டு, 1987 , மனோவுடன்)

Murali sir's first post in the NT thread of TF section (Part 1) gives this interesting tidbit - that MGR attended the 100th day function of this Sivaji movie in the same month of his death (Dec 1987). I'm not sure about my memory but somewhere in the hub I read that MGR kissed NT's cheek on this occasion and MN Nambiar immediately demanded (jocularly) that he should get one too The successful Manivannan movie had Sivaji acting with Sathyaraj (& possibly SPB sings for Sivaji in this song while Mano gives voice for Satyaraj). Radha danced for the second version of 'dAs dAs chinnappa dAs dAs' (same tune as the small BGM song of kadalOrakkavidhakal, starts as 'kaththichchaNdai pOdamalE' sung by KSC) and there is a MV song for NT 'Eriyil oru Odam'.

I did watch this movie when released, in Palakkad. I'm not quite sure whether the following phenomenon happened on that particular night but it definitely happened on a number of occasions: That of having to buy a ready-made shirt after deciding to watch a movie by peer-pressure (i.e. as an alternative to go to the room & wash a shirt for wearing to work the next day ). There was this 'Milan Dresses' in the Sultanpet junction of Palakkad - a brightly lit store on the opposite side of "Elite restaurant" (that we talked about in the discussion of meeNdum OT songs) where I did this "shirt-buying-to-watch-movie" thing on a few occasions.

I remember liking portions of the movie (I think NT retires as a judge but takes up the assignment of confining Sathyaraj to an island) but didn't like it enough to revisit / remember scenes / dialogues etc and have favourite parts to recall. The music album can also be called as one of the "average" albums of TFM (and by rAsA standards definitely below-average album, with Mano doing that kAdhal kiLiyE kAdhal kiLiyE song). Typically, after watching an IR movie, one song or two gets muNumuNuththufied for at least a week - even if I had not heard them before. In the case of jallikkattu, it was 'kaththichchaNdai pOdAmalE' and that tells the overall quality of the songs.