Saambar Salsa : The 'Avatar 5D' Experience

"Hey Pintu do you have Dhoom" ? asked Ronnie, one of my colonial friend to our local Video parlor owner.
"Ya"
"How's the print?"
"It's clear, you wont confuse Rimi's melons with Esha's" with a wicked smile he said to Ronnie.
"No....if the print is not clear then I'll return the CDs"
"C'mon Ronnie, did you ever get a 'bad hall print' from me?"

While going back to Ronnie's place I asked him " Did you really have to borrow a hall-print movie" ?
He said, "C'mon dude, Hall print gives you the right kindda experience. You feel that you are at theatre but you are actually not , it's a diffrent technology all together"
I said " totally...just imagine how much of money we are saving that way, no conveyance, no pop-corn costs, you pay just 15 bucks where in you'd have paid 115 per tickets" sarcastically.
"ya..that's what. you get 'sostay pushti, full sontushti' (which means,total nutrition at a very low cost but with full satisfaction) and the best part is , you dont have follow the dialogues with patience, just laugh when you hear the audience is laughing"

I recall this conversation with Ronnie which took place 5 years back and there is a reason because of which I mentioned the conversation above. Recently I watched 'Avatar' in 3D. Wasnt it wow ? Yeah It was. Someone asked me about the special effect of the movie, I said it should win oscar in 'Visual Effects' category for 3 consecutive years. I believe you all will agree to what I said. But as far as 'effects are concerned' I have more to add. I'm sure most of you have watched Avatar in 3d but did you actually feel that you are in the jungle during the jungle scenes ? I know you did not the way I did 'cuz I watched the movie at a theatre called 'Shree Padmanabhan' at Trivandrum.

Yes my friends this incident is from my days in Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala, where I spent 2 months, where I had to report for my intial stage of training. Well they call it capital but it's nothing more than a town. Shops are closed within 7.30 in the evening, no malls, no chicks( I mean good lookin')no good theatres, no night life, nothing. During week-ends only recreation is Drinking and you abuse your company, your boss, your team-mates, your ex-girlfriend, your ex-girl friend's present boyfriend et al. lol ... yea you kindda have sea beaches at every signal crossing but for how long can you take the beauty of sea-shores ?

Anyway back to the point...... 'ShreePadmanabhan' is one of the 'coolest'(ya jack-ass they have A.C) theatres in Trivandrum aka Thiruvananthapuram. I dont know how much you spent on your movie tickets but for me I wrapped up everythin within 95 rupees.

Jealous ? Ya you should be . Let me give you a break-up of my expenses. 35 bucks for the movie ticket( amazing isnt it?) woh bhi ... AC hall. They were out of balcony tickets so we had to go for RS and the difference is not much, it's like 10-15 bucks. Dont think that I'm a cheap bastard who wanted to save 15 bucks because of which I bought rear-stall tickets, I repeat, they were really outta tickets as it was like the 2nd or 3rd day after the release. First of all they movie created a big hype before it's release and south indian people are very much attracted to 'super-natural' stuffs and extra ordinary stuffs and technology is very close to their heart. Whenever they see Rajanikanth kickin' bad asses without his feet touching the ground for like 10 minutes they take a bow....lol.

Anyway...so I spent 35 bucks on tickets, another 30 for 3-D glasses, 18 rupees as bus-fare(to n fro) 12 bucks for potato chips(which gave me loosey woosey next day) .. poor me :-(

Me and my friend Manojit paid a visit on the previous friday as we were expecting, like the rest of India movies release on fridays over there as well, but we were proven wrong once we reached the theatre. We asked a security guard about the delay who said as the hall doesnt have the right technological infrastructure to play hi-fi movies like 'Avatar' so they are upgrading the whole thing and they will play it from Monday. We were pretty disappointed as you can understand. Because it took us some time to find the theatre where Avatar was scheduled to play. I remember we were browsing the street walls for the movie poster, and once we found the Avatar poster we jumped onto a guy whom we thought could read Malayalam. The 'jalebi-type' written letters on the poster actually said 'Shree Padmanabhan' where the movie was playing(will be playing). We really went through some hard time in order to locate the hall and once we came to know that they are not actually playing we abused I dont know whom, finally had to pacify ourselves with chilled beer which was available near by at a bar.

On the movie day we had the company of our friend cum coleague cum my room-mate in Chennai Indrajit aka 'the magician' (the name was coined because of the migician-type mustache he possessed, which he got rid of ... or should I say sacrificed due to lot of nagging and pranks by me and Manojit). So 3 of us entered with immense anticipation of Jimmy Cameron recreating the wonders. Actually we know what he has done , what he has created but how much did we get as an audience? During the scenes in jungle the crowd made a lot of noise like different animals including silly 'meeoww sound' which we all did during our History classes back in school, I mean when we were kids.

Indra was experiencing 3-D in a different dimension. During the interval he told us that in the midst of the 1st half once he just took-off his glasses just to see how the screen looks witout the glasses and he saw the audience were trying to hold avatar-tails as they felt they could really touch those. Can you believe it ?

Once the 1st half was over I went out to look for a pack of chips(the ones which gave me bad time next morning...remember?) . The corridor that connects the theatre exits to the cafetaria were crowded with people and they were smoking over there. Well I am a regular smoker but it doest mean I smoke anywhere and everywhere. We were really surprised about the fact that people were smoking but suddenly I thought of becoming a citizen of Italy, I mean I also wanted to have a fag, so I told myself..."Adi....when you are in Rome...do as the Romans do". While enjoying the fag suddenly we heard a roaring cresendo coming from the theatre. We thought the movie has resumed, so we fought our way to the door and guess what we saw as the reason for the cheering, whistles and other praising chanting (which sounded like a roar altogether) !!

On the big screen they were showing some ads and in one of them oops!! no no...in almost all of 'em Mallu supa'sta' Mohanlal was featured. His pics where pasted against mobile-reparing shop's ad, local garment-shop's ad, local beedi's ad n I dont know what all they were showing. I swear while watching the ads(which were mostly hand written or handmade collages) people had their 3D glasses on. Even I saw some dude riding his bike on his way back home after the movie with the 3D galss on.

Well I really feel proud to be a part of the historic moment for Keralites that a 3D movie were playing in their neighborhood for the first time and I also feel proud to experience the movie in 5 D. You must be wondering what 5 D is...well we already have 4D movies, maybe someday 5D technology will be launched where audience will act in movies, where they will make 'meeoww-sounds'(if it's required according to the director of the movie)......

Mr. James Francis Cameron are you listening ? Just wanted to inform that if you make a 5D movie then dont forget that there is a city(?) in India called Thiruvananthapuram aka Trivandrum where people improvized your 3D movie to 5D by their instinct. So dont forget them ever.