Conversations with Mani Ratnam

By: Rangan Baradwaj

Narrated by: Vikrant Kaul

"Mani Ratnam’s Nayakan is among Time’s ‘100 Best Movies Ever’; and his Roja launched A.R. Rahman. For the first time ever, Mani Ratnam opens up here, to Baradwaj Rangan, in a series of freewheeling conversations— candid, witty, pensive, and sometimes combative—and looks back at these and nineteen other masterly films. With Rangan’s personal and impassioned introduction setting the Tamil and national context of the films, and with posters, script pages and numerous stills, Conversations is a treat for serious lovers of cinema as well as the casual moviegoer looking for a peek behind the process."

Great material let down by subpar narration

Trying to listen to the audiobook of “Conversation with Mani Ratnam” by Baradwaj Rangan (Published by Penguin-Random House) on Audible.

Great material as always with BR, but very sub par narration. The insightful and passionate style of BR talking about anything cinema and a fascination with Mani Ratnam as a filmmaker is keeping me around, but barely. sitting through the narration is like pulling teeth 😞 the narrator has a droning monotonic voice with limited ability to pronounce the names of Mani Ratnam films in Tamil as well as a distinct inability to inject any emotional depth into the material. Imagine the Indian Railways PA system voice reading out an ebook on autopilot 😞

Bailing out of the audiobook halfway through the Intro. Will try to get a print or ebook version. Avoid the audiobook 🙁

Superb

Considering the lack of Academic literature compared to Avod literature written about Bollywood it is an great Tribute to South Indian films especially for people like me who grew ups the both North and South Indian films.