Thursday, February 5, 2009

Arundhati Movie Review

Movie: Arundhati
My Rating: 4.25/5
Banner: Mallemala Entertainments
Music: Koti
Cinematography: Senthil Kumar
Visual Effects: Rahul Nambiar
Story & screenplay: Mallemala unit
Editing: Marthand K Venkatesh
Producer: M Shyam Prasad Reddy
Direction: Kodi Rama Krishna
Cast: Anushka, Sonu Sood, Deepak, Manorama, Sayaji Shinde, Kaikala Satyanarayana, Ahuti Prasad etc
Release Date: 16th Jan 2009

Review

Story

Arundhati (Anushka) belongs to Gadwal samsthanam in 1920’s. She is known for her bravery in saving the Samstanam by killing Pasupathi (Sonu Sood) an evildoer who creates ruckus in that place. She is praised as Jejemma (named after the famous Goddess in that area). But the spirit of Pasupathi haunts that place. Another girl is born in the same lineage after 3 generations and she is named as Arundhati. The spirit of Pasupati is after Arundhati to take the revenge. The rest of the story is all about how Arundhati puts an end to the evil spirit of Pasupathi.

Artists Performance:

Anushka: This is Anushka’s first performance oriented film and she is simply amazing in two roles. There are many shots in the film where the scenes from the present time will dissolve into to flashback and vice versa. These scenes are done on Anushka are crucial in the film. She has to show the variations between the old Arundhati and new Arundhati. She did exceptionally well with subtle yet impact creating performance. Shilpa and Sowmya dubbed the voices of old and new characters respectively.

Others: Sonu Sood looks deadly in the role of Aghora. His performance is excellent. A special mention should be given to P Ravi Shankar who dubbed the voice of Sonu Sood. It is a great opportunity for any dubbing artists to get a role like this. The way he pronounces ‘ninnu vadalaa … vasta .. vasta’ is extremely good. Sayaji Shinde got a beautiful role ‘Talla Sayibu’ in this film. He is completely believable in that role. Manorama is very good. Deepak is nice. Satyanarayana and others are good. All other artists are appropriately cast in their roles.

Technical Departments:

Story of the film is good. Screenplay is very good. The beauty of this screenplay is about revealing the story and information in parts. There is always something to look forward to with anticipation in the film. It possesses one of the best screenplays in the recent times. Direction by Kodi Rama Krishna is very good. However, there are a couple of violent scenes that are disturbing to the family crowds. You can see a few Hollywood inspirations like Lord of the Rings. A couple of episodes (the thread of drum dance by the guru & establishing Arundhati as the warrior) should have been more effectively established.

Visual effects and graphics done by Rahul Nambiar are extraordinary. Cinematography by Senthil Kumar is excellent. Background music and rerecording by Koti is brilliant. The songs in the film go with the flow of narration. Art direction by Anand Sai is first-rate. Make-up work is good. Editing is smooth. Digital Ingredient (color grading) is very good. Production values of this film are extravagant.

Final Analysis:

First half of the film is excellent and the second half is good. The plus points of the film are performances, screenplay, technical values and grandeur. The only negative point I see in this film is violence (got an A certificate from censors), which is very much required for the film to be effective. After a long time, I watched a Telugu film that has both content and technology rightly mixed to give a vibrant output. Arundhati is a film which you can proudly show it as a Telugu film to all your non-Telugu friends. And it will live up to the adjective of ‘Magnum Opus’. Two thumbs up to Shyam Prasad Reddy for making a brilliant film. Don’t watch it on internet or pirated DVDs. Arundhati is a film that must be watched in a good theater with nice sound/projection system.

Source: Idlebrain.com

Friday, January 30, 2009

King Movie Review

Movie: King
My Rating: 3/5
Banner: Kamakshi Kala Movies
Music: Devi Sri Prasad
Cinematography: Prasad Murella
Art: Prakash
Fights: Ram - Lakshman
Editing: Varma
Screenplay & Direction: Seenu Vytla
Producer: D Sivaprasad Reddy
Cast: TNagarjuna, Trisha, Mamata Mohandas, Srihari, Deepak, Geetha, Brahmanandam, Sunil, MS Narayana, Krishna Bhagawan, Jayaparakash Reddy, Ajay, Surya, Chandra Mohan, Sayaji Shinde, Venu Madhav etc
Release Date: 25th Dec 2008

Review

Story

King (Nagarjuna) belongs to the royal dynasty of Coimbatore. He has a doting mother (Geetha) and a loving brother (Deepak). He has three brother-in-laws who are after the blood of the king in order to get a share in their property. In this scenario, King gets killed when he visits Dehradoon for a project work.

Bottu Seenu (Nagarjuna) is a local mafia man in twin cities who does settlements. Gnaneswar (Srihari) is an innocent don of the city. Bottu Seenu falls in love with an aspiring singer Sravani (Trisha). But Sravani is of a soft type and she likes soft guys. Hence Bottu Seenu takes the avatar of a software engineer to impress her.

The rest of the story is all about whether King is killed or not.

Artists Performance:

Nagarjuna donned three roles of different dimensions. Among the three, Nagarjuna impresses with the mass character of Bottu Seenu. Nagarjuna should be appreciated for acting in some self-deprecating scenes (like Brahmanandam beating Nagarjuna's legs). Trisha’s character has two shades in the film and she is cute.Mamata Mohandas is not the second heroine of the film. She played an important character. Srihari is cool as an innocent don who has a thing for drawing horrible paintings. Brahmanandam donned the role of a music director. His character has stark resemblance to that of a popular music director in Telugu film industry. The shot in which he poses as a guitarist for Srihari's painting is hilarious. Sunil's role is nice as the guy whose identity is stolen by the hero.

Technical Departments:

Story: Story of the film is the potpourri of various films.

1. The basic plot of sibling rivalry is taken from Hindi flick Race.
2. The heroine – Srihari aspect is taken from Dhee
3. The spoofs in second half are done on Chandralekha and Chandramukhi.

Some of the shots like bullet trajectory (Wanted film), hiding gun in loo (Godfather) and beating the legs of a paralyzed person (Simhadri) too sound inspired.

Screenplay – Direction:

Seenu Vytla is an expert in screenplay. But the screenplay of this film is both good as well as bad. Good because the screenplay is extremely complicated. Bad because the finesse is missing. The director could not evenly distribute the twists in the film. He has one twist coming in interval. And he let all other twists come in the last 15 minutes of the film. The best thing I liked in the screenplay of the film is the thread of hero stealing the identity of Sunil. It is beautifully written, but was not used to the maximum extent. The concept of fetish for painting horror images was already done in Seenu Vytla’s ‘Anandamanandamaye’ film. It is more effectively used in this film (especially the three drops scene).Direction of the film is adequate. The director could have made Srihari character little serious as he is shown as a completely innocent man. The film needs a lot of trimming in second half from the moment the gang enters King's palace.

Other Departments:

Music of the film is average. The songs that interested me were King title song and Bammardi. The cute walking of Nagarjuna in a beach song shot in the nice. Kelli Dorji enacted the role of the rapper in King title song. The much touted 8-heroine song does not impress. Some of the steps in this song were adapted from OSO song. Background music of the film should have been better. Cinematography is adequate. Dialogues by Ravi fits the bill. Some dialogues like 'King gelavadu. Gelipistadu' are good. Few dialogues like 'King ni pattukovadam kastame kaadu, asadhyam kuda' (Hindi Don's dialogue 'Don ko pakadna mushkil hi nahin na mumkin hai') are clichéd. Editing should have been crisper as there is lot of lag in the second half. Production values for the film are good.

Final Analysis:

First half of the film is alright. Second half should have been better. The climax of the film looks contrived. The plus points of the film are Nagarjuna and a few 'Seenu Vytla' kind of comic moments. The weakness is unevenly distributed content in the film. We definitely expect a better film from Seenu Vytla for the kind of talent he possesses. We have to wait and see how audiences embrace it.



Source: Idlebrain.com

Mast Movie Review

Movie: Mast
My Rating: 1.5/5
Cinematography: Srinivas Reddy
Story ,screenplay & Direction: S V Krishna Reddy
Art: Jaya Prakash
Executive Producers: VRK Rao, Suresh
Editing: Nagi Reddy
Produced: Zee Motion Pictures
Cast: Shivaji, Srinivas Reddy, Ali, Siva Balaji, Anchal, Sunil, Brahmanandam, Uttej, Raghu Babu etc
Release Date: 23rd Jan 2009

Review

Story

Visually impaired youngsters Siva (Shivaji), a deaf (Srinivas Reddy) and normal guy Pandu (Ali) are good friends
and they live together. They meet a beautiful orphan Anupama (Anchal) and give shelter to her. In the mean time, Siva falls in love with her. But there is a twist in the tale. She actually is running away from a goon called Bahadur (Mukul Dev) who pressurizes her to love him and she has a lover too.

Total Analysis:

S.V.Krishna Reddy who lost his magic long back comes with Mast this time to regain his past glory. But the movie clearly proves that SVK is still languished in early 90’s and his style of narration is clichéd and boring. The film’s story is copied from Bollywood film - Tom Dick and Harry (2006) which itself was remake of Tamil movie 123. Only basic point is taken for it and changed the story (if there really exists?) with old-styled jokes, half-baked scenes.

Not a single scene in the movie is praise worthy. Most of the movie seems like a street play. Nor are the performances are good. Technically too it is substandard.

Sivaji does overboard in the role of blind person and he looks like a buffoon most of the time. Ali and Srinivas Reddy try hard to create laughs but their weak characterization has no scope for it. Newcomer Anchal shows off her assets but she doesn’t have grace. Mukul Dev (of Krishna fame) does a guy of sadistic villain and he is okay.

Director SV Krishna Reddy might have directed some memorable movies in the past but his flicks in the recent times are scaring the audiences. Of all his recent bad movies he delivered, this one takes the cake.


Finle Analysis:

Mast is an entirely avoidable film. A big bore. No two ways about it. One wonders how does corporate company Zee Motion pictures okayed this dumb script.


Source: telugucinema.com

Shh Movie Review

Movie: Shh...
My Rating: 2.75/5
Banner: Apoorva Chitra
Art: Madhu Rebba
Music: Sri Vasanth
Cinematography: Murali Mohan Reddy
screenplay & Direction: Hari Charan Prasad
Editing: Ravindra Babu
Producer: Hari Charan Prasad & Sukanya
Cast: Shafi, Mithuna, Madhavi Latha, Siva Krishna, Roopa Devi & Rallapalli etc
Release Date: 23rd Jan 2009


Review

Story

A doctor (Shafi) comes to a village along with his family to serve the villagers as a part of his social service activity. When he visits a temple, the priest over there makes him to see things that are not visible for a naked eye. He also gets premonitions that enable him to see the glimpses of future. A ghost contacts him. The rest of the story is all about how the doctor unearths a murder mystery.

Artists Performance:

Shafi is good as the doctor who goes through psychological transformation. Though his Telugu is good, he need to get his pronunciation right with perfect diction. He has a strange style of delivering dialogues. Mithuna is adequate as an understanding wife of Shafi. Madhavi Latha doesn’t have much role to play in the film though her character is pivotal for the film. Rupa Devi who did the role of an occult practicing woman is highly convincing. Siva Krishna and Rallapalli are adequate.

Technical Departments:

Story of the film is good. The story is based on an English novel called ‘Stir of Echoes’ (1958) written by Richard Matheson. This novel was made as Hollywood film with the same title in 1999. Richard Matheson is a celebrated writer who wrote novels which were later adapted into popular films like I am legend, The legend of a hell house etc.
irection is adequate in parts. Narration of the film is slow. Screenplay of the film should have been written in an interesting way. The flashback episode which shows the murder of the girl is not effectively shot. If we carefully look at the threads in the film, all of them possess ingredients of an interesting thriller. But the director could not use all these threads to give a proper ending in the climax. These interesting threads are –

1. Baby girl speaking with the spirit.
2. Hero communicating with spirit.
3. Premonitions and the ability of the hero to foresee the future events.
4. Occult practicing woman following the hero and inviting him to come to her at the time of difficulty.

Our horror/thriller film directors use dimly lit place and darkness to create chilling effects. But the director Hari Charan stayed away from using such tricks and he stuck with the content. Another interesting thing I observed in this film is overt affection between the couple in the film. Husband and wife hold their hands and affectionately touching when they go out. We don’t see such practice in our Telugu commercial films.

Other departments:

Songs scored by Sri Vasanth are good. But songs are not required in this film, especially the hero’s love and wedding song (no relevance to the story). Rerecording and sound mixing is very good. But at times, sound was used excessively. Cinematography is adequate. Editing should have been better. Dialogues are ok.

Final Analysis:

The story idea is good. But the director didn’t adapt it onto the screen properly. A better screenplay and an interesting narration would have helped the movie to reach the crowds effectively. This kind of story has commercial appeal to it, but the director treated it more like an art film.

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Shh Movie Stills And Latest Telugu Movie Photos


Source: idlebrain.com