Mini-reviews: part 2 (Telugu edition)

Continuation of my mini-reviews pt 1

These are some Telugu films I've seen (that I could remember :D )

Avakai Biryani (2008)

Story about a Hindu girl, Lakshmi(Bindu Madhavi), and a Muslim guy, Akbar (Kamal Kamaraju) falling in love. Lakshi's father hates Muslims because of his past experience. Lakshmi's family move to the village after losing everything and ends up making pickled mangoes to make money. Akbar is an orphan and a rickshaw driver.



Storyline is nothing new but I mainly saw this film because the producer is Sekar Kammula who I adore. What I did like about the film is the two leads. It was great to see two new faces and took place in a village. There is gorgeous cinematography. I just loved how everything flowed together, just a good-feel film for me :D



Chandamama (2007)

Mahalakshmi (Kajal Agarwal) has an arranged marriage with Dhorababu (Siva Balaji). He is the sweetest guy that you've ever met. Therefore, Mahalakshmi has to tell him the truth of her past. She once loved a guy name Kishore (Navdeep) but he wasn't interested in marrying her and had cheated her. Since Dhorababu deserves better, she thought she would tell him the truth. Learning this, Dhorababu seeks to find Kishore. He learns that Kishore and Mahalaxmi had a misunderstanding and that Kishore still love Mahalaxmi. Dhorababu want to unite the two lovers. In the process, Mahalaxmi's childhood friend, Rani (Sindhu Menon) ends up falling for Dhorababu.



It is a fun film. It gives you the same feel as Ashta Chamma. However, it is not as good. What Chandamama lacked were adorable couples.

Kishore was a selfish prankster. Mahalaxmi was a bit flaky and annoyed the heck out of me. I really didn't care whether or not they got together or not. What I do love is Dhorababu! Why do the girls always like the jerks?

I couldn't believe that this Siva was the same guy in Aarya who played the annoying Ajay! How funny that both Shiva and Navdeep played Ajay :D I absolutely looooved Siva. He reminded me of a moustached Surya back in his earlier films. Navdeep is a cutie but he tried a bit too hard to be funny and slick in his role, which didn't make me like him anymore. I have yet to find a role of Kajal's that I really liked. I don't really have a problem with her, it's the roles that she chooses. Sindhu cracked me up in her short role.

Overall, worth a watch!



Kalavar King (2010)

Rajesh (Nikhil) is street smart and goes around town making loans, after loans, after loans. Shruti (Shwetha Prasand) accidently drops her chain necklace in Rajesh's home. She looks for it everywhere because Narendar (Ajay) gave Shruti the chain necklace and is in love with her. Rajesh must find the chain necklace since he has taken it for a "loan." In the meantime, Rajesh is forcing Shruti to marry him.



It's another case of forced marriages when the heroine doesn't want to marry the villian. However, this story is a bit different in the case that the hero and heroine do not fall in love with each other and that's the reason why she doesn't want to marry the villian. She is scared of the villian and just wants out. The hero realized that he made a big mistake in trading in the necklace.

There were cute moments and Nikhil was cute dancing but other than that,. Not really worth watching. It was good to see him after Happy Days. I mainly watched it for Swetha but she looked really bad in the film. Nothing like how she was in her Telugu debut film, Kotha Bangaru Lokam.



Kantri (2008)

The orphan Kantri (NTR JR) is fearless but helps out the orphanage since he can understand the pain. He later joins forces with the don Pothu Raju (Prakash Raj) only to find out that he is the long lost son to the don.



The film has a lot of twists and the love story between Kantri and Varalakshmi (Hansika Motwani) and Priya (Tanisha Mukherjee) was only a backdrop. It added to more of the confusion. I didn't really care for the romances at all. Varalakshmi was really annoying and whiny. I preferred Priya's personality.

Overall, I did enjoy the conness of Kantri. He was smooth and slick, loved his thorough plan and twisted things around with Pothu Raju. Again, I looooove NTR Jr's voice and always a pleasure to see him dance!



Lakshyam (2007)

ACP Bose (Jagapati Babu) is ah honest and sincere police officer who is happily married and lives with his parents and younger brother Chandu (Gopichand). Chandu and Indu (Anushka) are college students and fall in love with each other. Villian Section Shankar (Yashpal Sharma) kills anyone who comes in his way and does not leave any evidence or witness behind. With the help of a backstabbing police officer and politian, he takes loans from the bank and blames it on Bose. Everyone turns on Bose. Chandu does his best to prove to everyone that his brother is not crooked.



Worth a watch! Some scenes were slow but overall, it's a good film. I liked the fact that I was able to see Gopichand in a lead role instead of the supporting cast or a villian. The beginning was focused a little too much on the love angle but glad it didn't take that long for the storyline to kick in. I do think how they met was cute and fun. Anuksha reminds me so much of one of my favorite 80s Bollywood actress, Poonam Dhillon.



Style (2006)

Ganesh (Prabhu Deva) is one of the best dancers ever. This causes his rival, Anthony to become jealous. A tragic accident has caused Ganesh to lose both of his legs. With the encouragement of his loving sister, Priya (Kamalinee Mukherjee), he looks for another dancer who could train since dancing is his passion. Raghava (Raghava Lawrence) loves dancing but works cleaning up in a dance school in Vizag along with his four friends. No one ever recognizes his talent. Ganesh sees the dancing potential of Raghava and his friends on tv and wants to train them to compete with Anthony in the dance competition.



This is what I call fun! I loooooved this film. That's what you get for putting two of the best choreographers from India in one film -- Prabhu Deva & Lawrence! OMFG! From the beginning, I was hooked. Sure, the ending could've been done better but I am easy to overlook stuff like that.

The starcast is huge itself. Well, to me, that is. Kamalinee Mukherjee is one of my favorite actresses. Then add in Charmy and Raja too. I loved it! The dancing was top-notch.

Admittedly, I have to say that Style could possibly be in my top 10 films. I mean if you have a film about dancing, this is it!

PS - I'm starting to have a slight inexplicable crush on Lawrence. I need to seek more of his films.

Vedam - Allu Arjun in an awesome multistar film!

On Saturday, I went to watch the first show of Vedam . I couldn’t miss a chance to watch Allu Arjun on the big screen. Therefore, I verified the show times because I was upset with missing out watching Varudu during opening weekend. On top of that, I went solo. I don’t care. I just haaad to watch it :D

Some people have been questioning me why would I go watch another Telugu film with *out* English subs. Well, I used to go watch Hindi films with *out* subs too. No difference here. It wasn’t until a few years ago that every Hindi film that released had English subs. My first Bollywood film in the theater was Pyaar Kiya To Darna Kya. The experience was phenomenal because I could finally say that I was able to watch it in the big screen during opening week! My Hmong friends and I used to try to watch them when we got the chance. However, only certain stars’ films – Shahrukh, Kajol, Salman – were available on the big screen and there were no English subs too. That never stopped us for watching! If my friends couldn’t go, I’ll go without them! :D



That same feeling I had with Hindi films is what I feel with Telugu films right now. I had my chance to watch Desamuduru on the big screen, but during that time, I was still new to Telugu films and decided not to watch in the theater with *out* English subs. Fast forward, three years, later. I don’t care. I’ll watch Bunny in anything. I do not want to wait a year later for the dvd. I want to watch it. Right. Now.

Even though Vedam doesn’t have subs, I am just grateful to have it offered in my town. Especially Telugu and Tamil films, and sometimes even Kannada and Malayalam films. Some of my online friends can not even watch Hindi films in the theater yet.


My local theater

First of all, Vedam has been compared with the Oscar-winning Hollywood movie, Crash. Vedam is *not* a remake by any means. The storyline is just similar with several unrelated people coming together. It could be said the same with the other Hollywood movie, Babel. Even Bollywood has done it with Salaam-E-Ishq and Life in a Metro. So why the need to point-out Vedam like that? Let’s not forget it has been done before with Ayutha Ezhuthu (Tamil) / Yuva (Hindi) too.

Since I really liked Gamyam, I was looking forward to Vedam (besides Bunny being the other main reason).



Watching Vedam without subs was no big deal. It really is not that hard to follow at all. While I did get the gist of the movie, I may have missed a couple of comedic parts. There were a lot of laughter from the audience, especially during Bunny’s scenes.

Over the past few months, since my post about why I love South Indian films, I talked about Telugu films still having the masala factor that made me fall for Indian films, in general. Some Telugu speaking people argued with me that Telugu films need to step it up because other film industries have. To me, Vedam is a perfect example of stepping it up and still having all the masala flavor – drama, action, comedy, love. It’s all there!



So all this talk and still nothing more on Vedam?
Well, here goes :D

PS - I made caps from the many trailers off YouTube. 

Sorry for the bad quality



Vedam is the story of five random people who come together at one point and meet in a significant place.

Meet character #1 - Vivek



An aspiring rock star who has a chance to go to Hyderabad with his band and get his big break.

I haven't seen Manoj Manchu in anything prior but thought he did a good job. His dimples are so adorable.



Vivek and Lasya (Lekha Washington) have a love-hate relationship.



Meet character #2 - Ramulu



Poor elder man who has a lot of debt to pay and forced to leave his village in Sirisilla to go to Hyderabad.

Nagayya was perfect. I read that this his debut film? What? He just sleepwalked through his performance.



Ramulu and his daughter-in-law, Padma (Saranya), try to find a way to get extra money.



Meet character #3 - Saroja



A prostitute from Amalapuram who wants to go to Hyderabad to pursue her own brothel business.

After watching Anuksha Shetty's powerful performance in Arundhati, I wanted to see more of her. She definitely has that amazing screen presence.



Her bff, Karpooram (Nikki),  accompaines Saroja.



Meet character #4 - Raheemulla Khureshi



A muslim who is discriminated and wants to leave Hyderabad and live in Dubai.

Manoj Bajpai is one of the most underrated actors in India. I've been a fan of his since Satya. He is such a natural and I am never disappointed with him.



Raheem & his wife (Seiya Gautham) try to escape their difficult times but their past start to haunt them again.



Meet character #5 - Cable Raju



The playful, cunning cable guy from the slums of Hyderabad.



Cable Raju lies to his wealthy girlfriend Pooja (Deeksha Seth) that he is rich and wants to impress her with the money that he does not have.



One of Bunny's best performance. I raved about his performance in Aarya 2, which knocked me off of my seats. However, his performance as Cable Raju took a different route.

In Vedam, Bunny made me laugh and cry. My heart sank on this scene when his conscious got the best of him.



What I also love about Cable Raju is the comedic scenes. I loved the funny fight scenes, which is comparable, to me, with Jackie Chan's style of comical martial arts. Bunny pulled it off very well. He is already the best dancer in India (to me) so adding in the flip-action fight scenes were not hard for him to pull off. [I can *not* wait for Badhirinaadh since he is in Vietnam right now training for martial arts]

I honestly thought Bunny was going to be paired up with Anuksha but instead he was paired with former Miss India beauty queen, Deeksha Seth, instead :( She is a cute girl and reminded me so much of Katrina Kaif. However, after seeing her character Pooja, I'm glad Anuksha took a more challenging role as Saroja instead. Bunny still has not repeated any of his heroines till date (here's in hope to be one of the leading heroines in the future, heck, I'll just be happy in the background)



Each character struggled with something missing in their lives and had to "find themselves" and wanted to change what has happened in his/her lives so far.

I love how each of the characters were introduced. Instead of opening credits, a single frame was frozen with introduction to each of the characters. Interesting to introduce Allu Arjun last, since he Manoj, & Anuksha were in most of the promos. In addition, Manoj was introduced first, as a guest star. To me, he was more than that and had enough screen time to surpass as a guest star.



When first hearing the soundtrack, I did like it but thought a few of the songs were misplaced in the soundtrack. After watching the film, everything flowed together.

Even though most of the songs (or is it all? trying to do it from memory) were used, about 1/3 to 1/2 of the songs were used.

Song #1 - "Now or Never"
Vivek's intro



Song #2 - "Yemi Telisi Nanu Mohisthivi"
Saroja's intro



Song #3 - "Prapancham Naaventosthunte"
Cable Raju transforming from dud to stud at girlfriend's party
(To be honest, if Bunny didn't bust-a-move, I would've been upset :D)



Song #4 - "Yegiripothe Yentha Baguntundhi"
Saroja and her big escape plan



Song #5 - "Vedam"
Vivek changes the mood from lonely to fun



Song #6 - "Roopai"
Cable Raju needs some money



I found this from the Vedam music launch really interesting and had to post here.

No involvement of dad in Vedam selection – Allu Arjun
Allu Arjun said, “A new banner is being launched with Vedam movie. People questioned my logic in working for this movie. They opined that Vedam might not be the right movie for me as I had several commercial hits. I know that I will become a better actor if I work for Vedam movie. I am touched by the story and I am very emotional about the movie. My father is involved in movie selection of all my movies. Vedam is the first movie in which I didn’t involve my dad. I had shown the movie after the shoot is complete. He said that I got many hits and I will continue to get more hits. But I might not get great movies like Vedam often in my career. I will get a good name as actor with Vedam. I am happy to do the Rupai song that is also penned by Keeravani



Lastly, with the red plaid shirt, I was hoping that Bunny wouldn't wear it throughout the film like he did with that brown plaid shirt in Parugu. Instead of wearing it 80% throughout the film, it's 60% this time. However, this time, he often took off the red plaid buttoned up shirt and swung it on his side showing off the black t-shirt underneath :) Instead of Bunny getting kidnapped in this film, he is off on a mission to find some money in a day/night course



 Yes, Vedam is definitely worth it. Imagine if I love it that much, how eager I am for the dvd to come out with English subs :)

ETA (06/15/2010)- Interesting article from Idlebrain about Krish's inspiration for Vedam. Spoilers!