Movies – Page 2 – Mega Power Chit-Chat

Baahubali: The Beginning teaser

By Mikko Posted on 2015-05-31 Posted in Movies No Comments

The teaser of the most ever awaited S. S. Rajamouli’s epic Baahubali: The Beginning has been released! Full trailer will release on June 1. Unfortunately the apparently spectacular 1-crore audio launch function was postponed but it too will most probably happen very soon. I hope there will be a YouTube live stream available as it has been quite common thing for the audio release events of big budget Telugu (but for some reason not Tamil) films.

I think I saw some similarities to Rajamouli’s Magadheera. I wonder if Prabhas will defeat more than 100 men.

S/O Satyamurthy

By Mikko Posted on 2015-04-16 Posted in Movies 2 Comments

I guess I’ll have to write a short post about the coolest thing that happened last week. I’m so envious of the American and Australian Tollywood fans as they apparently get to see most of new Telugu film in theaters. Here in Finland we get only the biggest Tamil movies (some may even have two or three screenings!), and Telugu movies are much rarer. Often the Telugu movies do not even come with subtitles. (In our Eega show we had an additional video projector for the subtitles and an awesome guy who manually changed the visible line through the whole movie!)

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So, after a short wait (just a couple of days earlier I had heard that there was going to be a screening) I was finally able to see Trivikram’s S/O Satyamurthy (which means “Son of Satyamurthy”) on last Saturday. Furthermore, the film had subtitles and it played in a new movie theater less than a kilometer away from where I live!

The film stars Stylish Star Allu Arjun as the son of Satyamurthy (Prakash Raj). This was my fifteenth Allu Arjun movie and the second time in a theater (after Iddarammayilatho), and he’s still my favourite dancer. His acting isn’t terrible either. (But his hair is, at least in some scenes.) The heroine is played by Samantha. She is good but gets about as much screentime as in Dookudu (which means not much).

S/O Satyamurthy is a quite typical Tollywood film with almost nothing special. Now I’ve seen three movies from the director, Trivikram, and he still hasn’t really impressed me. Devi Sri Prasad’s music is OK but not his best. This is also far from the best Allu Arjun film. It was still worth watching and a rare chance to see Upendra on the big screen. He was perfect for his role and not as crazy as in his older movies that I’ve seen.

The film uses a lot of dialogue and the subtitles aren’t too readable (too long lines, sometimes they are too fast, very infrequent usage of capital letters, and impossible to read on white background) so I was somehow able to follow what happened but I don’t have very clear idea about all the details. For example, Brahmanandam can get the whole audience laughing and even with the subtitles I don’t most of the time understand what was so funny. This movie would need a rewatch with pause button. However, I can’t blame only the movie about my difficulties to follow the story as my old eyeglasses caused me a little headache when I continuously had to read the small subtitles from the back row. I’ll definitely update the glasses before Baahubali.

It remained a mystery to me how the organizers thought they could show a movie of length 2:40 with an intermission in a time slot of 2:15. Next they were playing a presumably tedious Finnish biographical film for a completely different kind of audience. I think I noticed some “high-culture lady” trying to enter the hall sometime during the climax scene, maybe thinking it was already the next movie that got postponed, but she was quickly scared off by furiously shouting Upendra.

For a more detailed summary of the plot I recommend reading Cinema Chaat which is probably the most useful Tollywood review website on the internet.

Preethse: A Violent Love Story!

By Mikko Posted on 2015-04-03 Posted in Movies No Comments

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What kind of movie advertises itself as “A Violent Love Story”?! Oh, it’s an Upendra movie, I should have guessed. Upendra is famous for this kind of stuff. Preethse (“Love Me”), a 2000 Kannada movie, is actually a remake of the 1993 Hindi film Darr which I haven’t seen but which also is calling itself a violent love story, so maybe I can’t blame Upendra for everything this time. The movie is directed by D. Rajendra Babu and the main cast includes Shivrajkumar as Surya (“The Sun”), Upendra as Chandru (“The Moon”), and Sonali Bendre as their common love interest Kiran. The short intro video clip before the DVD’s main menu confirms my preconception of what kind of movie this is going to be.

When love exceeds all limits it becomes pure.
When the purity is hurt love becomes insane.
This is a mad love story!

The story is a simple love triangle drama: Surya loves Kiran and Kiran loves Surya. They have a good friend, Chandru. Kiran has a very obsessive secret admirer which happens to be Chandru but nobody knows it’s him. Chandru tries to assassinate Surya so that Kiran would love him instead. The rest of the story is all about how they find out about the stalker’s identity and who gets to keep the girl.

The songs are nice and catchy and most of them fit well into the story. Music director Hamsalekha got a Filmfare Award for this movie.

Previously I had seen Upendra in Upendra and A which were also directed and written by Upendra. Even though the story of Preethse isn’t by Upendra, his role was very loyal to the crazy Upendra-ish style that I’ve seen in his other movies. However, technically Preethse is far from Upendra’s directorial films – no more hyperactive editing for example.

The violent love story wasn’t as violent as I had feared. I actually even liked the movie a little. The WTF feeling wasn’t as strong as during and after Upendra and A. I still have H₂O to watch before I run out of subtitled Upendra DVDs for some time.

It’s not rare that Indian films have crazy stalkers but few are as crazy as Chandru. (The Telugu-dubbed version of this movie has even been titled as Sadist.) He reminds me a little of Allu Arjun as Mr. Perfect in the 2009 Telugu movie Arya 2, except that in Preethse the stalking part lasts the whole movie and the final outcome is different. I can’t wait for S/O Satyamurthy (releasing this month!) which will have two of the world’s creepiest stalkers in a single movie!

Chandramukhi and Nagavalli

By Mikko Posted on 2015-03-24 Posted in Movies, Superstar Project No Comments

Superstar Project 2/174.

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To begin with, here is Rajinikanth’s title screen for the Superstar Project’s title card gallery. In 2005 it’s already quite shiny.

Chandramukhi is a Tamil superstar starrer from 2005, directed by P. Vasu. It is a remake of the 2004 Kannada movie Apthamitra (also directed by P. Vasu). Besides the superstar, the cast also includes Prabhu, Jyothika, Nyantara, Vadivelu, “and others”.

Chandramukhi is a “hounted house” type of story. Sometime in history, a fatal love triangle had taken place in the mansion and as a result, one of the rooms is inhabited by a ghost of a dancer named Chandramukhi. Fortunately, we have Rajinikanth, an excellent psychiatrist, to save the day. The story is interesting and easy to sit through at least once, but it doesn’t have anything so special that I would re-watch it in the near future. (Watching the sequel two days later was already enough of the same story.)

I have nothing bad to say about the songs either, although I like the more recent Rajinikanth songs more. One funny thing was the song sequence where Rajinikanth is flying kites with his friends. The result can be seen in the following image.

There are two fights in the movie. The first one is the compulsory Rajinikanth introduction fight which once again is very entertaining because of Rajinikanth’s Law of Gravity. The second one feels a bit pointless, but it’s an unwritten law of nature that whenever a character is played by Sonu Sood, he is a villain and therefore has to be defeated at some point.

Another noteworthy gravity moment is when Rajinikanth saves Prabhu’s character from drinking poisoned coffee.

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Chandramukhi has a 2010 Telugu sequel, Nagavalli, which is also by the director P. Vasu. It is a remake of the 2010 Kannada movie Aptharakshaka (again by the same director). In this movie, Chandramukhi returns and once again a psychiatrist’s help is needed to drive her away.

This film doesn’t feature Rajinikanth except in some flashbacks from Chandramukhi. Instead, the film stars Venkatesh as Rajinikanth’s assistant. I realized that somehow I hadn’t seen a Venkatesh film before, and he actually is quite good in this one. I also liked Anushka’s role as Chandramukhi. Rajinikanth’s authority is in danger as his assistant’s assistant is played by none other than Brahmanandam. M. S. Narayana is in a minor role and he dies almost immediately after his introduction which felt a little inappropriate when watched so shortly after the actor’s death in real life. In addition to those actors, the film also features Shraddha Das who is known for her roles in at least Arya 2 and the Malayalam horrific horror film Dracula 2012.

Though the actors’ performances are good, the movie doesn’t have much to add to the story of Chandramukhi. We get to see a little more of the history part. Also the climax scene is nice. (Now I need to add random thunderbolts to my rules of K/Tollywood drinking game.) I believe that Nagavalli can be watched without seeing Chandramukhi first, but I would still recommend Chandramukhi over this one.

Murattu Kaalai

By Mikko Posted on 2015-03-20 Posted in Superstar Project No Comments

Superstar Project 1/174.

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The first entry in my new Superstar Project is his 1980 Tamil film, Murattu Kaalai, directed by S. P. Muthuraman. The film is Rajinikanth’s first film with AVM Productions and had highest budget ever in a Rajinikanth film at the time. According to Ramachandran’s book, this is also the film that made Rajinikanth into a commercial hero.

Rajinikanth is a farmer/bullfighter and the story is about defeating a nasty landlord. We get to see bullfighting, a dramatic love triangle, treacherous bad guys, more bullfighting, an interrupted wedding, fighting on top of a moving train, and there are also some very strange-looking jumping stunts in the climax fight scene at the landlord’s house. Overall, the film was a nice watch but a little slow-placed at times.

While doing the Superstar Project, I’ll also try to take screenshots of the Rajini moments in opening credits, as it would be interesting to see when exactly they change into the bombastic spectacles that they are today. Murattu Kaalai simply displays his name without any mention about his stardom.

Student No.1 (Aaj Ka Mujrim)

By Mikko Posted on 2015-03-13 Posted in Movies No Comments

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The DVD release of S. S. Rajamouli’s debut film Student No.1 (2001) would really need the English subtitles. I had postponed watching it in a hope that someday I would be fluent enough in Telugu to understand it without subtitles. Luckily, I noticed that the movie has been dubbed into Hindi (as Aaj Ka Mujrim) and the dubbed version has subtitles, so I was finally able to watch the last remaining film that I hadn’t seen from my favourite director.

I don’t know much Hindi but I think the dubbing was mostly OK, far from the Russian dubbing style where one man just reads the whole dialogue with a monotonic voice. Watching a dubbed version was a little challenging as the familiar actors had strange voices. Sometimes it’s difficult to follow the dialogue by reading the fast-paced subtitles if you have no idea who is talking. Looks like the dubbing company didn’t ruin the whole movie like they did to Magadheera. At least this time they didn’t remove all the songs.

The movie has Jr. NTR, Gajala, and Rajiv Kanakala in the lead roles. (Rajiv Kanakala is always unintentionally so funny because “Kanakala” means a chicken-fish in Finnish.)

OMG! One of Ajay’s first supporting roles!!!

Jr. NTR’s character is of course the hero of the film. He is a new student in a law college (or was it a love college?) but it doesn’t take long when he finds out that the college has bad reputation because nobody ever graduates — the school is ruled by a violent gang which efficiently prevents all teachers and students from teaching and studying! It’s no secret that the hero is going to fix the situation but I can’t tell much more without spoiling the dramatic interval revelation.

This movie has only a couple of fighting/action sequences which is less than Rajamouli’s or Jr. NTR’s movies normally have but it doesn’t really need any more. Good fighting skills are almost a requirement for any Indian movie hero (except Siddharth) and we see enough to become convinced that also this hero can fight. This time however the hero isn’t supernaturally strong against the bad guys but he still does a couple of cool things, like jumping forth from a sea of burning fuel. (I think I’ve seen this somewhere else before!)

This is again one of those movies that have all the three of them: Brahmanandam, Ali, and M. S. Narayana. This time Narayana is the only one who is somewhat relevant character as he plays a teacher in the college. Ali and Brahmanandam play an engineer and a doctor but they are used only in two scenes and didn’t add very much to the story. However I liked the bad joke that the doctor wants to cut a car accident victim’s leg with a handsaw to save him while the engineer would prefer to cut the car instead.

I guess the songs were nice but I’m not going to do any in-depth reviews of them as I was watching the movie in a “wrong” language.

Story
Star Power
Fights
Comedy
Overall

Student No.1 obviously isn’t among the most entertaining Rajamouli movies but I still liked it very much.

The subtitled Hindi version can be found on YouTube, uploaded by Goldmines Telefilms.

Kantri

By Mikko Posted on 2015-03-10 Posted in Movies No Comments

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Tonight I watched Kantri which is a 2008 Telugu film directed by Meher Ramesh and starring Jr. NTR, Hansika Motwani, Tanisha Mukherjee, and Prakash Raj.

I didn’t have very high expectations and Kantri indeed turned out to be just like an average masala movie. The story has a couple of nice twists but nothing revolutionary. Jr. NTR was as good as always but this time he had only about average dancing and fighting choreographies. Prakash Raj gave a solid performance as the villain which was expected because he has acted in a similar role for uncountable times. Hansika and Tanisha were used only for the romantic subplot which was ridiculous (but funny) and unnecessary. Tanisha’s role was much smaller than many of the supporting actors’ roles.

The movie has the complete set of the three most frequent Telugu comedians: Brahmanandam, Ali, and M. S. Narayana. This time they are also accompanied by not-so-frequent but funnier Sunil which is funnier also this time. The comedy scenes, which often are long and boring in South Indian movies (because of too fast paced subtitles and sometimes incomprehensible cultural references), are kept short enough in this movie, and most of the jokes are easy to get with a fairly brief amount of prerequisite information of the South Indian cinema. It’s not often that comedy is actually the strongest part of a masala film.

The songs were not very memorable. I already forgot all of them with maybe the exception of “One, Two, Three, Nenoka Kantri”, and one song might have had some lyrics about mangoes…

Story
Star Power
Songs
Fights
Comedy
Overall

Overall, Kantri is not a must-watch movie but pretty watchable for one time if you enjoy watching Jr. NTR. If you’re not yet familiar with Jr. NTR, watch Yamadonga (2007) instead. If the director Meher Ramesh is new to you, I would rather recommend his next film, Billa (2009), except if you like Rajinikanth. Be sure to watch at least Sivaji (2007) before this one or you’ll miss some awesome Sunil comedy!

Sri Balaji Movies has uploaded the movie to YouTube with English subtitles.

Rudhramadevi trailer

By Mikko Posted on 2015-03-05 Posted in Movies 2 Comments

The official trailer of Rudhramadevi is finally here!

Rudhramadevi, directed by Gunasekhar, is currently the second most awaited Telugu film (at least for me). It has a huge budget and its star cast is full of big names like Anushka, Rana, Allu Arjun, Krishnam Raju, Prakash Raj, Cathrine Tresa and Nithya Menen (and Ajay!!!).

The trailer has some funny moments and the costumes look great. However, the visual effects are quite disappointing considering the high budget. (Just look at the sword’s glowing outline in the picture below.) The trailer somewhat reminds me of the 2014 Tamil animation film Kochadaiiyaan which was widely criticized for poor visual effects. Rudhramadevi still is a must-watch movie, but the story must be really extraordinary if it’s going to survive multiple watchings.

Arya marathon

By Mikko Posted on 2015-01-22 Posted in Movies No Comments

November 27 was the fifth anniversary of the release date of Arya 2, so (actually quite coincidentally) it was a great day for an epic, over 5 hours long Arya marathon! Both films, Arya and Arya 2, are directed by Sukumar and starred by Allu Arjun as the main character Arya.

First time is saw Arya 2 sometime during the winter 2010–2011. After Magadheera, it was the second Telugu film that I’ve ever seen, and I’ve loved the Telugu film industry ever since I saw the opening credits absurdly announcing Allu Arjun as the “Stylish Star”.

The movie marathon was also the perfect reason to finally rewatch the original Arya. It was better than I remembered but still not as good as Arya 2. The songs are actually quite good and it was fun to notice that Allu Arjun does some dance moves that were familiar to me from Arya 2. Arya is quite creepy in this movie and I’m not entirely sure why Geetha (Anuradha Mehta) ends up loving him. In fact, she eventually tells that she has loved him throughout the whole movie, which by the way wasn’t very obvious. (But I think that unrealistic loving is a problem with many other movies as well.) Also, Ajay (Siva Balaji) and Subbu (Subbaraju) are quite one-dimensional unlike the corresponding characters in the sequel. However, I think overall Arya is a very nice movie and I will probably watch it again some day. I might also try to find the remake versions in Tamil and Bengali.

Arya 2 is probably one of my favorite movies as the crazy, endless plot twists cause such an indescribable amount of strong emotions (well, mostly anger). Now that I’ve seen the movie about seven times, I think I’m finally able to watch it without losing track of the storyline too much (even during the complicated hostage triangle sequence).

While Arya is quite creepy already in Arya, in Arya 2 his creepiness level grows much higher than any other character’s in any other movie that I have ever seen. I’m not sure when exactly Geetha (Kajal Agarwal) falls in love with him in Arya 2, but she clearly doesn’t love him straight from the beginning like in Arya. I think Arya really doesn’t deserve to be loved by her – in my opinion, Shanti (Shraddha Das) would have been the perfect match for him. It’s sad that the movie doesn’t reveal what happens to Shanti afterwards. I hope she can find another Mr. Perfect who understands her feelings better than Arya.

In Arya, the other main role character, Ajay, is just like an ordinary bad guy, but in Arya 2, now played by Navdeep, he is much more complicated. He may not be the nicest guy in the world, but should I still feel bad for him because Arya ruins his life?

Dasavatharam is more tolerable than Brahmanandam’s characters on average, which is good because his role in this movie is longer than the average Brahmi role. The movie also has one of my favourite supporting role actors, Ajay, as Subbi. This particular role might be the reason why I like him more than most of the other regular supporting actors in Telugu cinema.

An almost relevant footnote: My friend thinks that Siddharth is hotter than Allu Arjun. I made a little online poll to find out which one of us is right.

Yoddha – The Warrior is coming!

By Mikko Posted on 2014-08-16 Posted in Movies 1 Comment

Many of the South Indian cinema fans probably already know S. S. Rajamouli’s Magadheera (2009) which was one of the most successful Telugu movies ever and maybe the best one I have ever seen. There has been much talk about a possible Hindi remake of the movie but nothing concrete has happened. So, it was very exciting news when a Bengali remake Yoddha — The Warrior was announced. The director of the film is Raj Chakraborty and I think the main role actors are going to be Dev, Mimi Chakraborty and Nigel Akkara.

I have never seen a Bengali movie before but because Magadheera is one of my favourite stories, I probably have to go on a little expedition to the world of East Indian cinema. The Bengali film industry has already remade Rajamouli’s Maryada Ramanna but I haven’t seen the remake (yet?) so I don’t have very good idea of what kind of remakes the Bengali industry tends to make. I’m not sure if it even makes any sense to try to remake Magadheera as it’s so beautifully perfect as it is that it would be very easy to just completely ruin the story. Even more frightening is that the director Raj Chakraborty says that they are making Yoddha within just 75 days and with less than a quarter of the budget of Rajamouli’s original version.

Now they have released the first look poster of Yoddha and this is how it looks:

While Dev is not as handsome as Ram Charan, the poster itself is far more better-looking than any Magadheera poster that I’ve seen, so all hope may not be lost just yet!

They also released the theatrical trailer!

The trailer is not really that terrible either. It looks almost like a shot-for-shot remake with same camera angles than in the original, but there are some interesting changes too: for example, it seems that the horse riding contest will be on a narrow mountain road instead of the vast desert. I wonder if they are making completely new songs or using the original ones translated into Bengali…?

I don’t know the names of the Hindu festivals very well, but If I googled correctly, I think they are planning to release the film already in this autumn. (Heh, it feels so quick after waiting for Kochadaiiyaan and Baahubali for so many years.)

Yoddha’s official Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/yoddhathewarrior

Category: Movies