But how do you ensure that your reviews catch the eye in this crowded marketplace and are discussed by others with authoritative gusto?

Fret not. Here is a primer form Crank’s Corner, with its over two decades of professional journalistic experience in being irresponsible, that tells you how to look for nuances that will make people drop their jaws in astonishment, and how to mine the ‘material’ for sub-texts that will make you look like a true movie connoisseur.

We have taken Mani Ratnam’s latest release Chekka Chivandha Vaanam for practical demonstration.

Talk of other films: One of the mistakes that rookie reviewers commit is to talk of the film that they see on the screen. Whereas your professional film analysts expound in detail about films that is not the subject of their review.

For instance, in Chekka Chivandha Vaanam, the film sets off with an attempt on the life of a don, mostly referred to as ‘Periyavar‘.

Your greenhorn reviewers will begin their narrative on him. The cineaste reviewer would also start with Periyavar. But not in the manner you think.

“When they refer to Prakashraj as Periyavar, you immediately perk up at the name. Hah! What a deliciously devious conceit. Periyavar is after all the name of the don (played by Sathyaraj) in Mani’s first mainstream Tamil film Pagal Nilavu.  That day moon is probably the one verily blazing a ruddy trail on the horizon now. Chekka Chivandha Vaanam is, in my mind at least, Mani asking, and answering, the question: What if the Periyavar and his sons had ran away from Kanniyakumari to Chennai and set up their underworld empire all across?”

Let us illustrate this point with one more similar example. In CCV, the opponent to Periyavar is another don, Chinnappadas (a name that is mostly well-known in Tamil cinema as that of the character played by Sathyaraj in Kadolara Kavidaigal.)

“Periyavar’s arch rival is Chinnappadas. Is he from Muttam? Why not? He, of course, speaks a dialect that is decidedly Tirunelveli and Nagercoil. Sathyaraj’s Periyavar vs Sathyaraj’s Chinnappadas in a city setting. It is a mouth-watering prospect. But Mani does not cook up a smorgasbord with their clash. Instead, he just dishes out a crumb or two that barely whets our appetite.”

Shoe-horn an epic: Critics have brought in — while reviewing Chekka Chivandha Vaanam —- Kurosawa, The Departed, Ponniyin Selvan, King Lear, etc. You must also invoke such weighty stuff. But don’t kid yourselves, because we know that your film watching experience in your formative years was mostly confined to the releases at Parangimalai Jyothi theatre. So the Kurosawas and Goddards are ruled out for you. But luck is with you when it comes to Mani’s movies. You can safely fall back on any one of the famous epics that he seems to inevitably take inspiration from.  Thalapathy was from Mahabharatham. Ravanan was from Iliad. Just kidding. It was indeed from Ramayanam. So if you look deeply, you can somehow make a connection somewhere.

In CCV, the strong friend of the warring brothers is Rasool, a character played by Vijay Sethupathi.

“Is Rasool the Karnan to the warring brothers, who though are not Kauravas in numbers, but sure are in spirit with their fratricidal tendencies? Rasool in himself is the son of the sun. After all, ‘Ra’, not surprisingly, is the Egyptian sun God.”

Or you can talk of the uncle of the brothers, who does all the dirty jobs for them, to be based on the character of Shakuni.

You might think such connections to be tenuous and silly. Actually, the more outlandish your reasoning is the more it will establish you as an intellectual.

Think abstract and, if possible, illogically: In Chekka Chivandha Vaanam, the songs from A R Rahman, don’t figure in the movie as proper songs. Mostly because, we suspect, that he had not delivered them till the films’ release. (As a matter of fact, two songs were released after the film hit the theatres.)

Never mind. You must find a virtue amidst this contingency.

“One of the remarkable aspects of Chekka Chivandha Vaanam is the use of Rahman’s corruscatingly orchestrated songs in the movie. Mani does not put them to use. You hear a few snatches of them in the background. A musical bar or two here and there. But they are, for all practical purposes, absent. Because these gangsters at war, with bullets and grenades flying all around, have no space in their lives for dulcet notes. Music is literally and figuratively a descant in their lives. Implicit in all this blood and gore is the larger thought that the best songs are the ones that are still waiting to be sung.”

Original article: Chekka Chivandha Vaanam: A review primer

©2026 Crank's Corner. All Rights Reserved.

Chennai, Sept 4: A look at the 69 medals that India secured at the Asian Games at Jakarta will throw up many questions like 1) How did we miss out on Kabaddi gold? 2) Why did we secure just two medals in boxing? 3) Which Indians won the two medals in Kurash?

No, wait. What the hell is this Kurash?

Is it a real sport? Looks more like the name that Tamil parents are wont to give their new-born son.

Kurash is a martial arts based sport. Not just Kurash, this Asiad saw a few others like Jujitsu, Pencak Silat and Wushu, and they were hugely popular among the spectators consisting mostly of other competitors and team officials.

The problem with sports like Kurash, Jujutsu is that the rules are not known to many, which often includes the actual participants and medal winners. We believe that in Pencak Silat the competition was decided on first-come-first-serve basis. Pencak Silat winner turned out to be the cleaning lady who arrived to mop the floor.

To make things clear, Crank’s News comes up with small briefs on these exciting sports events that can surely capture the imagination of today’s youth provided these sports do the commonsense thing of being available in downloadable formats for mobile phones.

Kurash: Kurash is an old Turkish wrestling that was founded in — why not? — Uzbekistan. This makes it clear this is not a normal sport.

As a sport, Kurash has plenty of things in common with Judo in that you will not have a clue as to who is winning the bout. The principal aim in Kurash, like in Judo, is to grab the opponent’s attire. Otherwise precious little happens. No fighting ever occurs. So to define, Kurash is ancient Turkish wrestling of dress grabbing invented in Uzbekistan.

In Kurash, participants wear different coloured clothing. So you can differentiate between them, something not possible at all in Judo, where no one can tell whether it is men’s or women’s competition.

There are three kinds of scoring system in Kurash: Halal, Yambosh and Chala. To win the contest, you have to score a Halal. As per the Wiki page of Kurash, the throw that is close to Halal is given Yambosh. Two Yambosh makes a Halal. The throw that is close to Yambosh is given Chala. No number of Chala can equal a Yambosh.

So basically Chala is like the Vice President. Just around without serving any great purpose.

Jujutsu: Jujutsu is also called Jiu Jitsu or Jujitsu or Juijuitsu. Jujutsu is basically Japanese martial arts of confusing spelling.

“Ju” in Japanese means “gentle, soft, supple, flexible, pliable, yielding”. If a small, one syllable word can have so many meanings, I think we can possibly accommodate all the words in Japanese in one A4 sheet. (Japanese Teacher: “Students, in your 9th std last year you learned 3 words. Things in your 10th std will be a lot difficult as your portions will cover 5 full words.” *Students sigh agonisingly at the enormity of the task before them*)

Coming back to Jujutsu, this was the first time it was introduced in the Asiad, and the event  that was featured here was Brazilian style one. The difference between Japanese and Brazilian Jujutsu is that the latter is played in beaches, and in figure-revealing bikinis. Okay, unfortunately that was not the case. The Brazilian Jujutsu turns out to be just as devoid of action as the Japanese one.

Wushu: Martial arts are designed to safeguard and defend yourself  in situations where you are faced against persons who also practice the same martial art. Otherwise they are just posturings.

Wushu, we are told, is Chinese Kungfu, where Kungfu is Chinese martial art. That would mean Wushu to be: Chinese Chinese martial art.

These East Asian martial arts surely need better nomenclature.

Wushu involves two events. One is called Taolu, and the other Sanda.

Taolu is basically that Chinese martial art that comes handy —- please write this down — when you have to fight no opponent. Seriously, Talou is just a set of routines that you perform in front of judges who give you marks based on the skill you exhibit. Taolu, in other words, is gymnastic floor exercise in traditional Chinese attire.

The other Wushu variant, Sanda, mercifully involves fighting.  It incorporates aspects of wrestling, boxing, kickboxing, and sniper shooting.  Just kidding about that last one. But you know it.

India won 4 bronzes in Wushu at this Asiad, which is a huge achievement considering the fact that the sport is hardly known here, and India did not send any Wushu team to the Asian Games. The usual fight among the officials was good enough to fetch the team bronze medals.

Original article: The extraordinary sport of Kurash also known as Turkish dress grabbing

©2026 Crank's Corner. All Rights Reserved.

Going forward, you can expect Ronaldo to bleat, Chitti-like in Endhiran, meh, meh, meh, to further prove that he is the true GOAT.

Now that we have made puerile fun of Ronaldo to feel slightly better as Messi fans, let us also realise that everything is not lost for Argentina, and it can still make it to the knockout stages provided these things happen:

Argentina beats Nigeria, and Iceland loses to both Croatia and Nigeria, or even draws both, or Willy Caballero joins overnight Iceland team, or they realise there is no nation called Croatia because Britain had actually voted for Crexit, or Nigeria has no kit to turn up for the match as the team jerseys, which have been a huge hit and are now sold in black market, are stolen by the Russian underground mafia…as as we said the possibilities are endless.

But while we may be sympathetic to Argentina’s cause, Iceland as plucky underdogs has become hugely popular and there is a groundswell of public emotion for it to make it to the pre-quarters. The support for Iceland is understandable, as it basically consists of a bunch of amateurs. Its coach is a dentist back home. The goalkeeper Hannes Halldorsson is a filmmaker. The forward Alfred Finnbogasson, when he is not playing football, is in his free time the country’s Prime Minister. This is in contrast to Cristiano Ronaldo who actually thinks that he is his country’s Prime Minister.

Aside from Iceland, another team to impress is the hosts Russia, which has scored an impressive eight goals in two matches. Accepted, one of Russia’s opponents was Saudi Arabia, whose players approached the game gingerly because they were not sure whether or not the leather on the football was obtained after the animal was killed as per halal norms.

Anyway, coming into this tournament, Russia was the lowest ranked among the 32 teams. But suddenly we see them pumping goals after goals, so how did this transformation happen? Well, this is the beauty and unpredictability of football, but also allow us to point out that it may not be just coincidence that the family members of some of the important players of Russia’s opponents have been reportedly found missing in the last few days. And they were last seen being bundled into a dark van by tough-looking men of East European descent.

Ha. Ha. Ha. That was some good-natured ribbing of the Russians with standard stereotypical joke that the world has been using on them even before the Kennedy era. Away from the teams, plenty of debate has been centred on the efficacy of VAR (Video Assisted Referee). And, by boy, we are glad that the football administrators decided to use VAR, and it has served the World Cup wonderfully well by generating enough controversies that make people search for, on Youtube videos, even matches involving Iran.

Adjudication of on-field decisions through off-field video replays are now part of almost all international sports. But there seems to be one major difference between other sports and football.

System in most sports: Players, when they are unhappy with a decision, signal to the on-field umpire to to seek the help of off-field adjudicator, who watches the video replays of the said incident to give a verdict.

System in football: Players, when they are unhappy with a decision, signal to the on-field referee, who immediately whips out the yellow card.

Seriously, this is the rule in football. The players cannot ask for a video replay. It is not allowed. Only the referee, under his own volition, can refer any decision to the off-field referee. The system basically is: the appeal against a referee’s decision has to come from the same referee. Well done, FIFA! What were you smoking when you okayed this proposal?

VAR controversies are understandable though because video replays, as our experience with cricket shows, confuse rather than provide clarity on many occasions. Modern sports have taken recourse to video replays because why settle for man-made controversies when you can use technology to create state-of-the-art, bigger controversies and scandals.

As the tournament heats up there will be even more contentious moments, and if any of them involves the Portugal team, do remember to search for it on Animal Planet. That is where they show clippings of the real GOAT.

Original article: Which planet is Cristiano Ronaldo from?

©2026 Crank's Corner. All Rights Reserved.

This edition of the World Cup (21st) is one of the most open as experts believe there are no clear favourites, but you can safely say that one among Brazil, Germany, Spain, Argentina, France will be the winners as the World Cup has seldom thrown up surprise champions, except in 1966 when England managed to win through the rarely-used veto power of the host country to award controversial goals for itself in the finals.

Anyway, as the world gets down to follow the soccer matches, here is a quick lowdown on the World Cup.

Number of matches and teams

A total of 32 countries are participating in the tournament, and analysts using all their expertise predict that 31 of these teams are most certain to return home without winning the Cup.

The tournament will see a total of 64 matches, 60 of which you’ll hardly recollect a week after the World Cup.

Host Nation

Russia bid for the World Cup aggressively when it became pretty much clear that it was the only way that it could qualify for the tournament — Russia is the lowest ranked team among the 32 teams. Mind you, this fray includes Peru that for the record has only a total of five or six football grounds and just 20 playable footballs in reasonable condition in the whole of the country.

Russia, of course, won its bid based on the impressive football infrastructure and the fact that it has access to nuclear arms and that it would not be averse to use them if need be. But before we get all snarky on Russia, let us also remember that it is the land of Lev Yashin, Oleg Blokhin, Igor Belanov, and countless number of journeymen football hooligans who leave a strong imprint wherever they go.

The 64 World Cup matches will be played across 11 Russian cities including Kaliningrad, Krasnodar, Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don, Saint Petersburg, Volgograd, Yaroslavl, Yekaterinburg, all historically well-known for the fact that you can’t spell them correctly without a handy Atlas by your side.

Heading into the World Cup, it is peak summer in Russia and the temperatures have already hit around a sweltering 19 degrees Celsius, which to give you a perspective, is also the temperature here in Chennai inside a well insulated refrigerator.

Teams

The spotlight is fully on teams like Costa Rica, South Korea, Senegal. Ha Ha. Ha. Who are we trying to kid. You will hardly read about them unless they somehow make the semis or finals. Mostly, you will be stuck with having to read about teams that involve the likes of Messi, Neymar, Ronaldo, Mo Salah, Iniesta. This also the case when they play club football.

All eyes are undoubtedly on Lionel Messi and whether he can help his Argentine team win the Cup or not. The World Cup medal is the only thing missing in his CV, even though we can’t think of a situation of him being ever in need of an CV.

Argentina is predicted not to be among the favourites to win the Cup. This should make Messi and Argentina happy, because this prediction has come from Goldman Sachs, the global leaders in not getting any prediction right.

Brazil has a settled unit, while Germany looks sturdy, France is brimming with energy, Spain is organised. But we hope Poland has a great run, just for the fun of journalists and broadcasters trying to get the hang of names like Wojciech Szczesny, Artur Jedrzejczyk, Lukasz Piszczek. (If Poland does well many sub-editors in sports desk will have quit due to extreme stress).

And there are the first-timers to the World Cup like Panama and Iceland. Iceland is one of the smallest nations to play in the World Cup and its population is so less that it has to make do with the cricket team’s wicket-keeper as its football team’s goalkeeper. It is also not sending a 23-member squad as required because that would reduce the country’s population by a huge percentage.

As far as Panama goes it is a country that has a rich tradition in making people wonder as to what it could be famous for. Basically, very little is known of the country, including in which continent it is located.

Prize Money

Apart from the prestige of winning the World Cup, there is also prize money to be won. The winning team gets to take home 38 million dollars, which when you convert to reality is not even half of what an individual player like Messi earns in a single year. The teams will probably use the prize money to tip the ball boys.

VAR

This is the first World Cup where VAR (Video Assisted Referee), the football version of DRS, as it were, will be used, and this will help end bickering over on-field refereeing, and start new bickering over video refereeing. But it is still not clear that using VAR technology whether it is possible to retrospectively disallow the goal that England controversially scored in 1966 finals. FIFA rules are silent on it.

Mascot

The World Cup has a mascot, but nobody knows why. The mascot is named Zabivaka, a wolf, that you can’t tell by looking at its mascot image. All mascots are basically unrecognisable, silly, goofy versions of the animals they are supposed to be.

The World Cup also has an anthem for the same reason we have Governors for our States. A silly tradition.

Match ball

The match ball has been a subject of discussion ever since ‘Jabulani’ (the name of the match ball used in 2010 World Cup) created huge controversy with its wild trajectory. Every time a goalkeeper kicked it, it swung back into his own goal. This is how 2010 WC became one of the high-scoring ones.

The makers Adidas have named this year’s ball as Telstar 18 — Telstar in remembrance of the football of the same name used in 1970 World Cup, and 18 in remembrance of the number 18.

The main attraction of Telstar 18 is that it comes with embedded near-field communication (NFC) chip because the makers were high on heroin during the manufacture.

The chip, we are told, can be connected to a smart phone to get access to how many times Sergio Ramos feigns injury or falls down when he so much as comes into contact with a violent air molecule.

That more or less covers the pre-tournament details, and now over to the much expected first match between Russia and Saudi Arabia. Russia should relish the home conditions, and they have also got their strategy down to pat by playing first a team whose players must have been fasting all day for Ramadan. If Saudi Arabia has at the end 11 players standing, it can be deemed to have done well for itself.

Anyway, we at Crank’s News are excited about following the World Cup over the next month or so, and we are hoping to get to know of new players, fresh tactics and hopefully the spelling of Jedrzejczyk at least once without using the copy-paste option.

Original article: All World Cup details including spelling of Wojciech Szczesny

©2026 Crank's Corner. All Rights Reserved.

The latter is more worrying what with the IPL telecasts being more about commercials and less about actual cricket. The thing is, looking at the AC ads, even Delhi Daredevils can proudly say, “hey! our cricket doesn’t suck as bad as these”.

Take the ad in which there is one Moorthy, who is supposed to be a South Indian. His neighbour comes and plonks himself comfortably in a couch in Moorthy’s house because, he says, the AC’s cooling effect is better at Moorthy’s house. Why does Moorthy allow his irritating neighbour to impose himself on him so much? The neighbour has pictures of Moorthy in a compromising position with his maid. No, actually we don’t know. But that can be the only plausible reason.

Moorthy and his neighbour speak in heavy-accented Hindi  — they are South Indians, you see — and we are supposed find this humorous. Thick-tongued Hindi was not funny even when Mehmood tried it in films several decades back. And these ad-makers are still peddling it and hoping to appeal to the millennials.

But this AC ad is not the worst. There is another one for another brand of AC in which they have tried to — this has to be the height of desperation — mimic this moronic Moorthy character with a lookalike who speaks with a similar silly accent. Mimicking Moorthy is a bit like somebody trying to emulate the death bowling talent of Corey Anderson.

If these ads are downright stupid, there is one which features the actress Samantha that is plain bizarre.

I’ll use all my journalistic ability to describe this ad in total detail: Sitting in front of a mirror, Samantha applies makeup to her face. She uses a lipstick or some such to put a bindi dot on her forehead.

The ad ends.

Seriously, that is it. This is supposed to be an ad for a brand of AC.

This ad is probably the first in the world that has nothing to do with the product, or for that matter, any product.  How on earth did the client approve this ad?  Don’t know, but it is fair to say that the team that okayed this ad must have had a lot of people with MBAs. Modern-day management education always erodes that part of the brain that houses the thinking cells.

Another product where where there is little possibility of having good ads is automobiles. You may probably have noticed it, cars in car commercials climb the most steepling of dusty slopes, course through the deepest of rivers, trek across the wildest of jungles, and sometimes even fly, but are never shown to run on actual roads — one with real traffic and real people —  where you will drive it.  Again, I blame the modern-day MBAs.

Take the ad for an SUV that features Ranbir Kapoor. He emerges from a building and stars the vehicle, and voila — this is the power of the modern-day automobiles  —  the building collapses. If this technology is real, it is a handy one to have. We must buy this car immediately and — as a duty to the nation — rev it up in front of the building that houses Republic TV.

Tyre commercials are equally tiresome. One man and woman, on a rugged bike, arrive at a restaurant, only to be greeted by a ‘sold out’ board, which would make it clear that they have come to a cinema hall and not a restaurant because nowhere in the world a restaurants dangles ‘sold out’ message. If anything, it hangs out a ‘closed’ board.

Anyway, the man and woman, unperturbed, do the most commonsensical thing: They order on Swiggy. No, characters in our ads no longer do anything remotely practical: The man-woman duo ride the bike to some hill and fish from a river using a spear and cook it because we know hilly forests come equipped with fully-furnished modular kitchen.

These being ads during the IPL, we must talk about some featuring cricketers. A pizza commercial has RCB players drooling over Rs.99 pizza. Yeah, it is quite natural to believe that cricketers who earn in crores become big fans of low-cost pizza. One ad has Yuzvendra Chahal going gaga over the extra cheese in the pizza and how improved it has become, and, as if on cue, Virat Kohli says something snarky in Hindi, and immediately,  the resident pundit in Hindi in the RCB camp, Brendon McCullum, understands the joke and breaks out into a laughter.

On second thoughts, McCullum might have been laughing at Kohli’s idea of bowling Corey Anderson at the death.

Original article: Samantha’s bindi and Corey Anderson’s death bowling

©2026 Crank's Corner. All Rights Reserved.