A Good Telugu Movie? Is there such a thing?

The other day, S wanted to know if there were any ‘good’ telugu movies online we could watch. I laughed and told him there’s no such thing as a ‘good telugu movie’ these days. My brother left a very funny status message today on FB “Breaking news to all movie goers parama veera chakra washed out in moosi river. Balayya babu ajnaatamlo ki velladanta.. Daasari daasanna ayyadu” 😀 hehee This is the state of almost all the telugu movies these days…especially the ones which have star kids and their kids in them.

In the year 2010, around 149 movies released in the telugu film industry out of which, I watched only 7 and out of them…I liked only 5 and they did not have anything to do with ‘big’ actors!!

  1. Maryada Ramanna
  2. Vedam
  3. Raktha Charitha 1
  4. Prasthanam
  5. Andari Bandhuvaya and
  6. Bhimli Kabadi Jettu

These days, I logon to a telugu movie website and just browse through it. There’s Ravi Teja pulling Richa Gangopadhyay lip while she smugly looks at him….. and Balakrishna wearing an army officer’s uniform pretending to lead a country to revolution….or there is Nagarjuna dancing around with girls half his age and there’s Mahesh Babu who is potrayed as ‘God’ who’s come to save a bunch of villagers. These are just a few movies that’ve come out this year…I can keep going on and on about the Ram Charans, Allu Arjuns, Jr NTRs and Pavan Kalyans and their ‘bheja fry’, utter non-sensical movies.

In spite of big budget movies like Komaram Puli, Orange, Khaleja, Ragada, Nagavalli and most recently Param Veera Chakra declared as being biggest flops of the year, our producers, directors and actors continue to churn out senseless movies…..where almost in all of them, the female lead can be equated to a skimpily dressed plastic doll. Anushka, who was brilliant in Arundathi and Vedam…..gave a string of flops like Panchakshari and Billa and now she is back playing a bimbo beside biggies like Nag and Venky. Female actors in the Telugu film industry are not given ample opportunity to prove their acting skills and what annoys me the most is how they are potrayed in most telugu movies.

The word ‘osey’ has become synonymous with addressing the female leads in Telugu movies. There’s this need to show the hero as the ‘man who saves the day for everyone’ and how does he do it….by disrespecting women around him…expect the mother of course. The heroine is the desperate one…the one ready to jump in the bed with the hero where as the hero is under control…though in real life…most of know this to be false. The heroine always needs a man to save her….if she is kidnapped, if she being raped…if there’s a bunch of guys teasing her on the road. She is incapable of protecting herself even in the simplest of situations. Most female characters are dumb and simply listen to the hero…..and a female character, if by the grace of God, is portrayed as being independent….she is a *bitch*……who eventually comes running back to the hero….because she realises it is the man in her life that matters…….and not her career! This is the recipe for most Telugu movies these days with a minor changes here and there of course.

How long will our narrow-minded, egotistical and self-righteous fraternity keep making such movies? Will this trend ever change?? Even though the number of people watching their movies is thinning out year by year, they still declare their movies as being the biggest hits of the year and organise bogus press meets….trying to fool us. But, are we fooled? I don’t think so!

The phase is over…for now!

OK…I am back to my writing phase…I have these spells…like cricketers…when I feel like writing and when I don’t atall! My last post was when IPL was happening and now FIFA World Cup’s started 😀 Awesome! I am just glad that I’ve never  really abandoned my blog….I always come back to it. Currently listening to some crap telugu songs…apparently they are this week’s top 10…huh..how it happens I don’t know. Watched MAA Stars cricket match yesterday for a while. It was alright I thought. I did not expect them to get so involved…like getting angry when a team-mate dropped a catch or mis-fielded…that Taraka Ratna guy was so angry at one point when he got the last wicket…I thought he will go break that poor chap’s bones. Paapamm…hits kuda levu kada athaniki 😦 hehehe It was alright…until the CM came and spoilt everything…and the worst part was when Dasari started talking….I just switched everything off and watched FIFA WC. I just cannot stand that guy….acts like he’s the King of all..the best director/producer/actor that ever walked the earth etc etc but frankly I never liked him or his films. Why can’t these politicians and wannabe politicians just keep out…they have to show up every where and once they arrive…we have to drop everything…how ever important it might be…and concentrate on them…and what do they do…give boring speeches…burp…fart…yawn and leave. Baahh!! When will this culture change in India???

Anyhoo, something good did happen yesterday…first, I bought two nice handbags for myself and my mom 😀 and Germany scored 4 goals..yes 4!! I was really tired of 0-0. 1-0, 1-1 results and was craving for some real football. Germany made it look so easy against Australia and apparently no one had any real expectations from the team since they are all just a bunch of freshers. I somehow feel they are the team to beat this time round…although we haven’t seen Brazil, Spain, Italy and Portugal yet. I was totally disappointed with England’s performance. They made it look so hard…the one goal they scored and the blunder from the goalie….poor Robert Green…I can only sympathise with him. Hopefully, they will do better…they have to if they want to beat teams like Germany and Brazil…God only knows how they will turn up this time.

Song of the day is

3 reasons why I like this song…

  1. Rhythm
  2. Awesome dancing from Mumaith
  3. Venky bhai couldn’t have looked any cooler with his groovy moves and all 😀

Win Win Win!

Ahh…finally a win for the Chargers. I actually did not watch the match since I was busy ‘gymming’ 😀 My dad sent me a text which read ‘are you happy now?’ Oh my…did DC do it?’ -was my first thought! I still did not want to believe it…so went online on my ancient phone to check the score and we did do it!!! Three cheers to Suman for breaking the bad spell in the most important match. I only wish that they end up winning the remaining matches and atleast make it to the semis. It was nice to watch Venky cheering the team….high time we got our tolly celebs to do some of the cheer leading work 😀

Don’t know why I am so obsessed with the IPL. It’s not like INDIA is playing…just some stinking rich teams playing for money…not so much for pride….aahh well..some entertainment is better than none 😉

Planning to buy a new phone in the next couple of days. The husband wanted me to go for an iPhone but somehow…I am totally put off this piece of machine since almost everyone has it now. Wherever you go, the talk is about the iphone..you NEED to have these days to be part of the IT crowd…(cannot stress NEED and IT more). It’s become like a status symbol or something. So I planned to get a Sony Ericsson Xperia X10. Looks quite sleek and apparently does all the things the iPhone does. So why not? I will leave iPhone to the husband.

Hearing some really bad songs of the maestro Illayaraja. I know…it’s wierd…didn’t know he composed such silly tunes. Here’s one:

The weather seems to be improving….kisiki nazar na lage 😉 Looking forward to a sunny weekend!

Ciao!

Leader and Ye Maya Chesave (YMC)

I had this pending…so thought I’ll go ahead and finish it!

Watched Leader and YMC couple of weeks ago. Frankly, both the movies did not impress me much. I had much expectations from Leader since the director’s Shekhar Kammular and the film starred Rana…..but I did not understand why Rana’s character had to be so serious all the time. He was more like a machine than a human being. I know he’s supposed to be this young politician and all but I am sure politicos also manage a smile now and then. I liked the whole concept of buying politicians to become the CM and all…but the rest was not worthy of giving a thought. The whole female(s) angle was unnecessary. Shekhar Kammula always had meaty roles for his heroines…but I was very disappointed with the choice of story line for the female characters in this one…they did not have to be part of the movie atall! The best part of the movie was the ending…with a very decent remix version of Maa Telugu Talliki. It was good to watch Andhra Pradesh again…as ONE!

Ye Maya Chesave (YMC) seems to have created ‘some’ hysteria in the urban centres of AP. Call me a cynic, but I wasn’t totally impressed. I loved the songs 😀 and that’s it. Again, Naga Chaitanya disappoints. He’s definitely improved from his first movie…but I did not understand why he always had this irritated expression on his face and a lazy tone to his voice. Samantha was good…but I did not like her character. For someone who comes across as a ‘know it all’…she took an awful long time to make up her mind about a guy she loves very much…fickle minded she was! The two characteristics don’t go together 😛 I loved the Alleppey setting…brought back memories of my trip there with S couple of years ago. Absolutely beautiful!

One of my favourtie songs from the movie 🙂

Movie Reviews: THe Incredible Hulk & Dasavatharam

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Brief reviews of the two movies I watched yesterday. Manged to watch one after the other 😀 O

HULK:

I LOVED THE MOVIE! Edward Norton (HULK) is one of my FAV actors. There’s this innocence about his face. There’s so much love in the movie. 

Incredible HULK is definately different to the previous HULK since this HULK doesn’t want to be the angry green man anymore.  Liv Tyler is fab too as HULK’s ‘girl friend’. Though sometimes, it did feel like I was watching Beauty and the Beast 😀

Special effects are fantastic….though I thought HULK could be a little more good looking 😉

There definately will be HULK 3 and it could have Iron Man in it 😀 That will be fabulous! To know why…you should go watch the movie.

Overall, the movie is thrilling, exciting, full of action, lots of love and fantastic locales (e.g. Brazil).

My rating: 3.5/5

DASAVATHARAM

The first tamil movie I watched was Sivaji because of all the hype and it did not have subtitles 😦 Considering I don’t speak or understand a single word of tamil, it was a nightmare. I had to be satisfied with the eccentricites of RajiniKanth….which were surprisingly entertaining. It was astonishing that there were just 10 pple in the screen watching the movie.

It was a different story for Dasavatharam. People were standing and watching the movie and it had subtitles too 😀 and what should I say about Kamal Hassan. He is simply FANTASTIC. He is truly blessed. He plays ten characters in the movie; Govind Ramasaamy (the real Kamal Hassan), Rangaraja Nambi (devotee of Lord Vishnu)George Bush, Avtar Singh (a famous pop singer), Christian Fletcher (ex-CIA member aka the villian), Shinghen Narahasi (Chinese martial arts master), Krishnaveni (grandma), Vincent Poovaraagan (social activist), Kalifullah Khan (a rather tall muslim man) and Balaram Naidu (my favourite character of all…RAW official…and a telugu).

The movie starts off sometime in the 12th century. Rangaraja Nambi is drowned in the sea with the idol of Lord Vishnu by the King who is a follower of Lord Shiva. He is reborn in the 21st century as Govind Ramasamy and works for a Biotech COmpany in the US. His company is on the verge of selling a very effective but a dangerous bio-chemical weapon to the US army and Govind is out to stop this from happening. THis takes him from US to India. Following his every movie is Christian Fletcher (Kamal again) who has been assigned by the weapons manufacturer to kill Govind and get the sample back. Govind is held captive by RAW officials (Balram Naidu also Kamal) on his return India and the rest of the story is revolves around how Govind retrives the sample and saves the world 🙂

Kamal Hassan touches on many issues in the movie….from Global Warming, to War….from Social Discrimination to Religion. Considering his age…he’s in good shape. I have been a great fan of his dancing skills since Sagara Sangamam.

My Rating 3/5