Tag: mahesh babu

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cinema FRS

FRS: Bharat Ane Nenu

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So you all know what an FRS is right? right?

-780.9: To us (Team FRS)

We are now doing FRS of Telugu (telungu as we tend to use) films even when having not  one percent knowledge of the language/culture/societal dynamix/audience expectation. That we are doing this in a brazen daylight manner (actually it is night while we type this, but brazen daylight has a nice ring to it) should attract more point cuts.

But we are kind to ourselves.

Also now that we are talking about things that we have no idea about, do we qualify to be called critics?

<Forget the above, we are getting on with it, in quite bit; lil rusty>

[Pause for Cough]

we welcome you to yet another episode of the FRS

[/Pause for Cough]

{we really wanted to use flower brackets, just for representation}

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+5: No Narration, well we know that is a hard thing to find these days 

+12: Hero is very much educated, well we know that is a hard thing to find these days 

-34: Hero is educated abroad in fact he has five degrees,(includes Iberian languages and town planning) but director does not focus on plunging student debt and such realities

-67: Money shot of hero running towards the audience, but is actually running for his convocation thing.

Bharat’s Law  (not Bar-at-law)

 You are not a mainstream Indian hero if you are not late for your own convocation; but of course you reach just in time before your name is announced.

Convenience wins!

+103: When asked what he is going to do with life after being soooo educated, hero says “I don’t know” which proves our primordial hypothesis that education fundamentally is useless. (Yes, we know)

-69.52: This ‘I don’t know’ then morphs into an opening song sung by none other than Farhan Akhtar; name of song raises doubts about where this movie is going.

Actually movie is going to the next scene. (-1 to us, don’t be a wise ass, always)

Next scene: Hero’s father is dead. (yes just like that)

And now director will use the travel back home duration to tell us what we really want to know about Bharat’s father and mother.  Your childhood memories, selectively aided by British Airways.

+45: Whole movie is about the importance of a promise or in other words the importance of keeping up a promise, a lesson that Bharat learns early on from his mother. A promise that he makes as chief minister also leading to make the villains ‘accountable’. Good overall thread, connects to title too.

-1947: Bharat’s father(Supreme Star Sarath) is dead, now we know that he was chief minister of Andhra Pradesh; obviously his son Mahesh Babu becomes the next CM.

Just like how silk sarees are passed across from mother to daughter, the thing that is passed from father to son is just an entire state. 

#DemocracyDemolished but didn’t see any think-pieces about how this film encourages autocratic rule and transfer of power and dynasties etc.

-56.2: Old CM’s family friend and mentor is played by Prakash Raaj which means that all the people in the 31 districts of Telangana and 13 districts of Andhra Pradesh know that he is the villain.

#KuchBhi

<sorry for spoiling, LOL>

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-35.912: Hero now becomes CM means we will be shown 3 hrs of slow motion CM walking with his aides footage with DSP music.

Many economists think that the slowness of the motion has a correlation with the slowness of economic growth.

But like most economists, they are wrong. Because Bharat changes everything in 8 months. Sab Teekh Ho Jayega.

[Pause for Cough]

This makes me wonder, is the real villain of this movie is Prakash Raaj or is he being pup-petted by a collegium of economists, who will not have enough TV air time in a booming economy? 

[/Pause for Cough]

+50: Whenever Kiara Advani is on screen

+51: Whenever Kiara Advani is on screen and wearing yellow dress

#FocusList2018 #VassumathiRox

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Is the above rating sexist? Should we add something about Mahesh babu wearing sunglasses to balance it? Maybe we should

[Insightful Intermission-also potential Facebook caption material]

 

Mahesh Babu wears sun glasses for 79.7% of the film, we interpret this as a big middle finger to all critics who said they could not see any of his expressions on his face in previous films.

This time, he didn’t allow them to see his eyes only.

[/Insightful Intermission-also potential facebook caption material]

-17:  Kiara Advani’s father is a middle class police constable who will surely have the honour of mouthing the dialogue ” after all we are middle class, what can we do?” or some such shixx in a socio-political film

-219: CM”s new research team recruits will consist of (surprise!surprise!) heroine Vasumathi. Reason for selection stated: “they are preparing for civil service exams”

#MeritBasedRecruitment

+10: If you want to be a good CM, the first thing you should focus on is traffic, good advice.

+72: Relentless hero is relentless, Mahesh Babu also has a mass re-entry scene much like the one Indiana Jones has in Raiders of the Lost Ark; should probably add more points for that shot from Slocombe

Keeping Up With The Joneses Rule (or the ONE rule of film making)

Never steal but if you can’t avoid it, always steal from the very best

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-34: Movie is cinematographed by two aces namely Tirru and Ravi K Chandran and pretty to look at but, for a man named Chandran he really does dial up on the sun flares and halos behind the hero.

We get it, guys! Watching this on amazon prime increased the heat on our already oven like laptop

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-400: Movie does not know what to do with heroine that it sends her to her hometown (I mean DEI!!), so going add more pix just for sakes

#BringBackVasumathi

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-52.33: All songs whenever, wherever

+127.9: Hero falls in love with one specific location for fighting scene that he requests all the goons to assemble there. Not seen anything like this!

-127.9: Movie builds up too many things but doesn’t really have the time, but then that’s why hero got second chance to become CM right?

Oh it is almost 2019 already. Intent matters, bro.

<All numbers are incidental and irrelevant, except the data provided by our data analytics team based out of Pune>

Yours sincerely

Team FRS

Subam

Vanakkam

 

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Categories
cinema cinema:tamil Essay Movie Notes

The Aunty Terror Squad

FYC: Spyder

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Has there been any Hollywood movie that has influenced so many Indian filmmakers within a short while than Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight? Maybe it is about the obsession with creating an antagonist.

Oh but I’m only thinking out loud, but it could really be the next on the ‘movies-we-look-up to-for-immediate-inspiration’ after Coppola’s The Godfather.

But the Batman and Joker are already part of larger conscious because of decades of multimodal existence, making it easier for writers to evoke invested past strands and bring to life the characters; it is not the same case in a Telugu-Tamil bilingual; a genre where a master in the culinary arts would not feel out of place.

Such movies are not called masala for nothing.

The Dark Knight is a (dark) blockbuster superhero movie, the near equivalent from what we have is the south Indian mass masala.  While some of it can be considered as comic, but here the word does not refer to periodicals out of which characters leap out of.

Mass masala by itself depends much on its leading man and the story gives into him. By that very statement it means that these films are meant to work only for those who buy into the charms (or lack-of) of the star.

Which means that for the most part the writer-directors are restricted in their choice of ingredients, sometimes they have to make do with just one condiment, more often than not trick the audience by throwing garam masala in our eyes.

AR Murugadoss seems to, in my eyes at least an expert chef who can find different uses for the same ingredient.

(I am really overdoing this samayal-cinema analogy, must come to the point before things get over cooked)

Under The Influence

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I believe more than the act of being inspired by another work, it is more important to know why that particular inspirational moment worked and think before replicating it.

Spyder’s hero does what Batman wanted Lucius Fox to do, listen in on people; while the ethical ramifications of spying are superficially dealt, they provide a convincing motivation for the lead; to prevent crime before it happens.

Yes, this could be the pre-crime from Minority Report but it could also be the inversion that is seen in ARM films like making a Vijaykanth film without making a Vijaykanth film?

The hero becomes a mass hero as a reaction to personal tragedies or societal atrocities, but can he/she really still be called a hero by preventing events from happening and not let the world know?

But it isn’t really an inversion unless you follow through with the act of an unseen hero, ultimately compulsions prevail and there is a love track and so there must be songs and an overblown climactic fight which makes you forget the questions that the film tried to raise earlier.

Especially notable is when Madan Karky rhymes mosam with awesome and concludes love is eternal much like plastic.

But Spyder is still somewhere there and even these commercial elements are not without joy.

Who Wants To Be A Hero?

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Earlier in the Spyder, a scene made me reflect on an underlying theme in Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, that every person is capable of heroism, Bruce obviously states this in the concluding chapter but there are enough visual examples.

The way the common folk are involved in the events that happen to the city, not just as observers but as  active participants, they are not alienated in the good vs. evil battle nor are they just used as bait for the hero to rescue.

But why?

In Spyder’s best segment which lasts about 20 minutes, has nothing to do with Mahesh Babu  or the antagonist S J Suryah, but about common people (middle aged ladies in this case) finding courage to do what they would not normally do and lend a helping hand beyond possible imagination.

It worked totally for me and convinced that this involvement of the nameless with whom we can identify, add to how we receive a film.

Yes yes, S J Suryah character and how he seems to have played it tries to match Heath Ledger’s Joker in every step, but then there is more to the Dark Knight trilogy.

Only if we choose to see, hence for your consideration.