Tag Archives: Brahmi!

Nagavalli

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Another adventure without subtitles and our first Venkatesh film on the big screen.  Not only that, but from the buzz surrounding the film we were expecting lots of dancing and a snake revenge film,  many of our favourite things!

The basic story is a sequel to the hit Chandramukhi, advertised with the tagline ‘She’s back!’. And she is – or is she? Venkatesh is Dr Vijay, the student of Dr Saravanan who vanquished the vengeful spirit last time. He is called in his mentor’s stead to deal with a suspected possession which may be linked to some sudden deaths in a remote household.

Vijay, when not  pursued by all the ladies of the house, debates the role of science versus religion with the family’s guru Ramachandra Siddhanti (Avinash) who had actually called him in on the case. The cure for mental illness or possession that is demonstrated by Ramachandra consists of hitting his patient with a stick and demanding they speak. Vijay’s scientific method is letting her have a good cry, and telling her she is cured. Neither really filled us with confidence especially as both men consistently failed to identify the right person who was nuts or possessed (depending on your view). The question of god or science did keep coming up in the film, and both men seemed to be somewhat persuaded of the merits of the other side. So they tried to do something intellectual – but the giant snake detracted from any serious philosophy going on.

Vijay is, at times, insufferably superior as he uses his psychiatric training to read the household members and tell them all about themselves. For an academic who represents the side of science in this story, he has some very dubious reference materials. Every book he read looked like it had been bought from an airport book kiosk and hardly gave us any confidence in his ability to diagnose anything.

There are many inexplicable plot elements. For no apparent reason there is also an absolutely huge cobra-python-anaconda monster lurking around the house and grounds.  Which the family find mysterious, although they found a giant snake skin, which really should have been enough of a clue that there was something rather strange going on.

In the course of his investigations, while wandering around the grounds on the trail of Chandramukhi (whose real name was Nagavalli), Dr Vijay is jumped on by a gang of men who leap down from the trees. This is never explained and is possibly just a way to make sure there was at least one group fight scene in the movie. Despite one of our fellow audience assuring us it would somehow be cleared up, it wasn’t. But that applies to so much else in this film it hardly matters.

As in Chandramukhi the story moves back into the past which gives Anushka the chance to strut her stuff as Nagavalli and explain the back story. Her performance was outstanding in terms of acting, but her dancing suffered by comparison to her predecessors in this role. Still, in one scene she perfectly expressed her fear, hatred, anger and will to survive purely through body language and facial expressions. She really is an impressive actress. Unfortunately she was way too tall for her olden days love interest, which added a lot to the unintentional comedy.  The olden days also provided an excuse for some sumptious costumes and rather dodgy hair extensions for Venkatesh in his role as the evil Nagabhairava Rajashekhara. He seemed to have discovered gold lame a long time before anyone else. Perhaps it was that which funded his extravagant lifestyle and blingy accessories.

Richa Gangopadhyay was given some memorable scenes towards the end, and almost stole the show. Shraddha Das and Kamalini Mukherjee were quite effective and it was interesting to see the ensemble cast working through the more thriller styled investigative scenes.

Sadly despite the prominence of dancing in the film, none of the leads were particularly good  dancers, so the story tended to fall a little flat in the execution of these scenes.  The later scenes where Chandramukhi/Nagavalli has her revenge were so totally over the top that it was impossible to take any of it seriously, and we don’t think we were meant to. Overall the film was held together by Venkatesh helped to some extent by Brahmi, who had a substantial role as Dr Vijay’s student. There was so much comedy in the rest of the film that a separate comedy subplot didn’t really seem necessary to us, but it was there anyway.

Venkatesh certainly seems to deliver what his fans wanted. The audience reaction to him was great and people cheered every time he swung into action. The dual characters let him show off his acting range, and the olden days allowed for the more physical scenes that the modern day setting lacked. His horse riding style was memorable to say the least, but we don’t think any horse would tolerate him for long.

The special effects are, in a word, terrible. The cut and paste of scenes against  green screen looked really amateurish and was surprising in such a big budget film. The overuse of coloured contact lenses was also a distraction throughout the close up scenes. We don’t think the audience was meant to laugh at so many of the historical scenes, but they just didn’t work.

The last half of the film was quite dialogue heavy and it was difficult to keep interested as the Dr Vijay slowly worked his way through the possible candidates for possession or insanity. However the beautiful costumes and fabrics did keep us somewhat entertained. Despite this being advertised as a horror film, it never reached those heights. The film is much more farcical than frightening, and seemed to play much more to the comedy of the situation. The thriller and mystery elements were good but the film seemed to shift from whodunnit to supernatural horror and back with some holes in the logic. The film descended into boring and bad territory for about twenty minutes, but was revived by Richa Gangopadhyay, Venkatesh and Anushka in the final scenes. This was our first chance to see Venkatesh on the big screen and he lived up to his reputation, although the story really didn’t.

Ek Niranjan

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We did say it is silly season here and what could be sillier than Sonu Sood’s wardrobe in this film? Exactly.

Ek Niranjan is a typical good guys versus bad guys effort from Prabhas and Puri Jagannadh who teamed up previously in the almost equally silly Bujjigadu. Kangana Ranaut supports in a surprisingly conventional heroine role, and Sonu Sood makes a splash in his familiar quirky villainous avatar. The story is simple enough in a convoluted way. But really, the power behind this film was firmly in the hands of the departments of dress and dance.  We suspect they wrote the screenplay too.

Prabhas is Chotu, stolen from his parents as a baby by a local wild-haired Fagin like figure, Chidambaram (played by Makrand Deshpande who is familiar to us from Swades). Chotu spends his whole life trying to find his family, and keeps in touch with Chidambaram, who is now in jail.

Chidambaram, dodgy mentor and dubious father figure, often says God plays kabadi or chess with people’s lives but he seems to have a fair go at playing kabadi with Chotu’s life himself. Chotu makes a living as a bounty hunter. He is a thug on the side of the law, and probably more morally upright than many of those in uniform. His rowdy bashing brings him into contact with local thug Jani.

Kangana is the local guitar teacher, whose brother is in the gang headed by Jani Bhai. Her neighbours happen to be Prabhas’ long lost parents and also the parents of Kailash, a killer in Jani‘s gang (yes, that does make him Chotu’s brother so you can see where this might be heading).  She is a standard film heroine – not much to do but run after the hero and away from the bad guys once she sorts out who is who. We kept waiting for her more usual persona with the drugs and tortured psyche to turn up, but the most tortured thing about her were the hotpants.  Kangana’s character started off quite promisingly, if unbelievably, as a guitar teacher but was quickly relegated to the sidelines.

Budget conscious directors please note the sensible use of hotel bathrobes for backing dancers, and the minimal fabric required for the girls:

Sonu Sood is Jani Bhai, the local crimelord and fixer for crooked politicians. He seems to think he is a misunderstood hero, although it is clear he is a petulant psychopath with possible colour blindness.  Let’s just take a moment and appreciate Jani’s style. He seems to subscribe to the Shahid Kapoor school of shirt buttoning:

 

 

 

 

 

It’s obvious (to us) why Jani feels he doesn’t get the respect he is due.

 

 

 

 

 

Rather than come out and say ‘man, it’s about the scarves!’ his gang pretend they don’t notice. Sonu does struggle to keep a straight face in some scenes, which is understandable given the outfits and dialogue, but still detracts from his supposed villainy

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Brahmanandam and Ali take care of the separate comedy side plot, and it’s not their finest work. Brahmi is a guru married to a young and lovely woman and Ali is his Captain Jack Sparrow inspired rival. There is a small comedy track with Venu Madhav as the loser enamoured of Sameera who gets beaten up by a horde of angry ladies wielding snake beans . And another unnecessary comedy track involving Sunil and the ladies of Bangkok.  None of these scenes make any sense and don’t add anything to the story, having the opposite effect of distracting us instead.

There is all the usual confusion and heavy-handed signalling of things to come. Prabhas and his parents cross paths over and over. They talk, they share food, and they know each other as neighbours. This was probably supposed to be tantalising in the ‘will they or won’t they recognise each other’ arc, but really didn’t create any sense of urgency or tension. Veeraiah (Tanikella Bharani) and his wife (Sangeeta) are really just there as something for Chotu to miss and allow Prabhas more excuses to perfect his sad puppy look.

More could have been made of the contrast between the two brothers, one who grew up with loving parents but turned to a life of crime, and the other who grew up in a gang of beggars and thieves but ended up fighting crime. There is lots of predictable action: running, fighting and crying (Prabhas), running, crying and squealing (Kangana), and drinking, whinging and rampaging (Sonu). There are multiple double-crosses and switches of allegiance in the course of the story but throughout it all, Chotu is the hero and always does what is more or less right, a bit of slapping excepted. His enemies are all bad guys – they deserve what’s coming to them!

The climax of the film is set in Bangkok, as all the characters are beset by coincidence and end up there for no apparent reason. It includes a really peculiar tribute to Michael Jackson, starring Erina (that item girl from Arya 2). It’s refreshing to see people missing MJ for the great artist he was rather than focussing on all the weirdness, despite the somewhat odd placement of the song and its lack of connection to anything else in the film. Finally, Jani gets his comeuppance, thanks partly to long suffering Brahmaji (Brahmaji) and everyone goes home to continue the great divine kabadi match.

The supporting performers, and there are possibly too many of them, do what they have done so many times over. Tanikella Bharani is wasted in his role as he is at best a background presence. Posani Krishna Murali is an uninhibited and unhinged politician with a murderous intent and an equally strong fear of being caught, and outdoes Sonu Sood in scenery chewing. Makrand Deshpande manages to make Chidambaram memorable and imbues the drunken conman with a level of pathos and complexity this film didn’t really deserve.

Prabhas wasn’t granted any immunity from crimes of fashion, switching from jeans & solid colour shirts to the more exotic in the blink of an eye.

The Mani Sharma soundtrack isn’t particularly memorable, and does borrow heavily from western songs. Choreography by Pradeep Anthony seems to be designed to show Prahbas in the best possible light, so is rather hilarious on occasion, possibly intentionally. Maybe not. We are particularly delighted by how lame this one looks – is there any cliché from the 80s that they missed?

A suitably silly offering for the festive season.

Temple says: This is just daft from beginning to end. Entertaining, but really daft. The story is improbable, which is not unusual, and the costumes are ridiculous which is also par for the course, but they go all out in their chosen direction which I find pleasing. What does set it apart from a mediocre pot-boiler are the performances which are pretty good. Prabhas is gawky and always seems slightly startled to find himself dancing away like a mad thing. I really like Kangana in this and I thought she handled the light heroine role with ease. It was nice to see her not play a character with overwhelming problems (apart from the overwhelmingly silly plot). Sonu Sood pretty much reprised this role in Dabangg and I think he enjoys being a villain, although I would like a bit more serious darkness from his performances from time to time. The support cast were good but there were too many of them cluttering up the story and not really going anywhere. The plethora of comedy sidekicks was just annoying and for the most, lacking in comedy.

The soundtrack is average and really, without the spectacular visuals the songs don’t hold up so well. The movie is dominated by Prabhas and Sonu Sood – I think they have a long and promising hero-bad guy future ahead of them. They’re on the same eye-level so it must make those dramatic glaring scenes a lot easier to film too as they both fit in the same frame!  And please give a round of applause to the wardrobe team who made it possible for me to watch this film again and still be thoroughly entertained. I didn’t even use ALL the scarfy screencaps in the post. Imagine what you’ll discover when you watch it for yourself! This gets 3 stars from me.

Heather says:  This really is a very silly film! Just when you think they can’t possibly get anything more ridiculous for Jani Bhai to wear – they do! And every song just has more and more amazing moments and totally over the top choreography – I love it! There is something very endearing about Prabhas, maybe because he is just that little bit tall and looks slightly awkward. He is always entertaining to watch as he throws absolutely everything into his role, and Ek Niranjan is no exception. While Sonu Sood does go a little overboard in his villainy, Prabhas manages to keep the story in sight and delivers a credible performance. The interplay between the various gang members, the various twists and double crosses and the posturing and menace between Jani Bhai and Chotu really lifts this a bit above the usual good guys bad guys movie.  I would have liked a little more focus on the hunt by Chotu for his parents and there could have been a nice contrast between the two brothers.  But the performance by Makrand Deshpande as Chidambaram made up for that lack as he really is excellent in his role.

Some not so good points. The comedy with Brahmi and Ali is irritating at best, and Sunil is also wasted in his weak comedy role.  Venu Madhav’s comedy track at least has some relevance even if it isn’t particularly funny.  The other disappointment is Kangana, who looks out of place and uncomfortable for much of the film. She really doesn’t seem to fit the guitar teacher role at all, and has very little rapport with the kids.  However as the film progresses and there is more interaction with Prabhas, she did loosens up and is a little more convincing.  An unsatisfactory performance when I know she is capable of much better than this.  However these are small quibbles when looked at against the truly amazing endeavours of the wardrobe department. Overall an amusing film and although I won’t watch the entire film often, the songs are definitely worth a number of viewings. 4 stars

Orange

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We had a vested interest in seeing Orange, having spent a lot of quality time loitering around the shoot as it took place in Melbourne. The lure of seeing Ram Charan on the big screen, along with the ever entertaining Genelia and our hometown was just too strong to ignore.  We avoid reading previews of new release films before we see them, as there is too much PR hype and politics to get much useful information, but the arrival of Charan on Twitter certainly got our attention! The cinema was full, and with a higher number of families and kids than we usually see at the South Indian films here.

Charan plays Ram, a wildlife photographer and graffiti artist with a truly excellent selection of t-shirts. He lives with his sister and brother-in-law in a fancy apartment and drives a flash car. He has strong views on love and honesty and won’t back away from his values. After an earlier relationship with Rooba (Shazahn Padamsee), shown in flashback, we see that he learned a lot about himself and what he wants from life. He doesn’t believe that simply saying ‘I love you’ makes for a relationship, and doesn’t believe it is honest or realistic to promise a lifelong love. He is affectionate, caring, demonstrative, but he is not going to commit to a lifetime, and he will not sacrifice just to keep his loved one happy. He doesn’t want his girlfriend to sacrifice anything for him either – he has been through this unhappiness and is genuinely trying to find an honest and respectful balance.

Genelia as Janu makes a ridiculously chirpy entrance to the film, cheering as she watches a marriage proposal and being as excited for the lovers as if it was her own relationship. She does believe in the idea of soulmates and lifelong love connection and wants that from her partner. She is in love with love, and looking for Mister Right. Several potential Mister Rights form part of the comic sideplot.

So of course, these lovely looking youngsters with completely opposing views fall for each other. The film is then about Ram and Janu getting to understand each other, and the choices they make.

With Puppy (Brahmi!) aiding and abetting Janu, the relationship develops in fits and starts. Ram is persistent and Janu is interested but wary of this charismatic suitor. We knew long before Brahmi mimed Krishna playing his flute that Ram was a ladies man! When he happily admits to having had NINE girlfriends, in relationships spanning from 1 to 387 days in length, Janu decides he is just too much to handle and tries to back off but cannot deny her feelings.

Although for the most part the film is a fluffy romance, there is a serious conflict at the core. While the audience can empathise with both sides, it is clear that something major would have to change for there to be a traditional boy gets girl happy ending.  We could maintain sympathy for both the romantic Janu and the more challenging Ram so found the conclusion to be reasonably satisfying and in keeping with the characters. However we suspect that if you can’t connect with Ram’s character, the film will not hold your interest.

Charan’s performance was great. He was charming, funny, energetic, emotionally engaging and totally looked the part. He was convincing as the school leaver Ram, and especially as the urbane young man about town and his body language really suited the different confidence levels of these stages of his life. The fight scenes were typically dramatic and physical, and Charan’s dancing is, of course, brilliant . The choreography was lots of fun and Charan seemed to have a great time sending up some cheesy romantic moves. Seeing these films without subtitles and having only a minimal understanding of language, we rely on the tone and expressions of actors. Charan made us see him as Ram and we understood his character’s views and feelings so we have to say it was a successful performance.

Genelia was her usual bubbly self, perhaps too bubbly, to start with but really showed some depth to Janu over the course of the film. She conveyed the struggle between having feelings for someone and knowing that it wasn’t going to work. We could see her grow from a carefree girl to a more independent young lady as she confronted her own beliefs and tested them for herself to see what she wanted.

Nagendra Babu had a small but pivotal role as Ram’s neighbour who was living in a stormy domestic situation.  Brahmi and Prakash Raj are always a familiar delight to behold. Brahmi got more to do in Orange , and his comedy was a bit more varied and often very funny. He also had a fine collection of t-shirts, and a habit of reading Mills & Boon before bed. Prakash Raj was the Telugu cop who gave Ram the reason to narrate his life story. He had little to do, and really it need not have been a Prakash Raj role although we are always pleased to see him. We did watch some of the scenes with him and Charan being shot so we certainly enjoyed that. The rest of the support cast were fine but as we have to concentrate on the main story, we didn’t really give them enough attention to be able to comment much.

We love the soundtrack and the songs looked amazing on screen. We are somewhat disappointed that Melbourne scenes are inter-cut with Sydney to give the impression of one Australian city, as the Melbourne -Sydney rivalry is HUGE, but we will forgive it as we got the opportunity to watch this film being made. Bhaskar managed to skirt the problem of geographic displacement by blending the locations well. The places Ram and Janu were seen were appropriate for their student lifestyle and helped the film’s credibility. We are always a bit judgmental about the skankily dressed white chicks in songs but Orange is family friendly for the most.

Some special notes: We greatly enjoyed Anand Ranga’s updates via Twitter, and shared his anxiety about the weather. When he casually mentioned filming with a lion, we expected maybe a fleeting appearance in a song. Not a full blown encounter with the King of the Jungle who apparently frequents the NSW forests. We cheered a lot! But the audience went wild when the Glen Iris tram was on screen – who knew the number 6 tram was that much of a star? We also enjoyed seeing a return of the pink panda t-shirt first spotted on Charan in  Magadheera, this time being worn by one of Ram’s friends. There was plenty for the alert viewer in Orange!