Will Tabu's glamour bring in moolah?

Award winning director Chandra Siddardha has turned producer with Idhee Sangathi which is hitting the screens on Feb 22nd. Based on a short novel written by well-known writer K N Y Patanjali, the film pivots around Tabu's character - a middle class woman. Chandra Siddardha pines hopes on Tabu and believes that Tabu's glamorous photographs and posters that are out would attract the male audiences.

Although the photos of Tabu in various sexy poses come in a dream song sequence, the director says the song would be an instant hit after its release.

A satire on the current political and societal system, Idhee Sangathi has already created enough buzz and curiosity.

Continue reading...

Sundarakanda Telugu Movie New- Movie Review

Sundarakanda
Cast: Charmee, Naresh, Prema, Suneel Sharma, Ranganath, Sangeeta, Kota Srinivasa Rao and others
Story, screenplay, and dialogues: Mullapudi Ramana
Cinematography: KRK Raju
Music: Vidyasagar
Co-producer: Bhanu Prakash Reddy
Producer: K Aparna
Directed by: Bapu
Release date: Feb 08, 2008
CBFC Rating: U

K Vishwanath, K Balachander, Bapu..these masters made some memorable movies and classics in the past but their recent offerings bring blemish to their illustrious career. Bapu's latest Sundarakanda is another example. No one can associate with this old-fashioned movie that told in boorish manner. Bapu and his famous jodi Ramana (writer) seem to have stuck still in the 70's.

A jamindar marries a poor girl without the knowledge of his royal parents and the poor girl is thrown out of their home with a blame put on her. She raises her child far from the royal family. And the child takes on mission to reunite her separated parents with her own tricks.

No, we are not telling the story of Bapu - Ramana's classic Mutyala Muggu. Sundarakanda's basic story is similar to that one. The only difference is that the kid here is a full-grown woman called Pinky (Charmee) and it is not entertaining like the original masterpiece.

Sundarakanda is completely out of the sync with the current times. The story, the narration and the language that the characters speak are archaic. From scene one, it lags on and moves on with outdated screenplay.

Charmee in the role of Pinky Without A Tail and Penki Pilla has done full justice to her role but her character is uninteresting. Prema as Charmee's mother doesn't like look a mom to a 18 year old girl. Nor does the director take any effort to show difference to young Prema and when she turns mother.

Allari Naresh plays a journalist who rides on bicycle with a camera on his shoulder and takes photographs. His character is enough to show how old-fashioned the film is. Kota is the only saving grace. Music by Vidyasagar is nothing to rave about. Photography by KRK Raju is neat, though. A shot where decreasing of shadow to depict the time passed till the dusk is quite interesting. Background score (not done by Vidyasagar) is good.

Bottom-line

Anyone who respect for Bapu - Ramana, for their great earlier movies, feel disappointed with this old-fashioned flick. Quite boring!

Rating: 2.5/5

Reviewed by Navya Vaitla

Continue reading...

Vishaka Express telugu movie - Review

Film: Vishaka Express
Cast: Rajiv Kanakala, Naresh, Preeti Jhangyani, Sindu Tolani, Kota Srinvasa Rao, Ali and others.
Screenplay: Chandrasekhar Yeleti
Dialogues: Harsha Vardhan
Script Co-coordinator: Vakkantham Vamsi
Cinematography: P K H Das
Music: Vijay Kurakula
Produced by: Tulasi Gopal
Presented by: S S Rajamouli
Directed by: Mullapudi Vara
Release Date: February 8, 2008

Two strangers meet on a train and open up their hearts during the journey. One guy offers other exchange of murders. How is the idea? Interesting plot! Well, director Mullapudi Vara has taken basic plot from Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers On A Train (1951) for his Vishaka Express but he fails miserably in executing it well. Idea is good but the execution should have been better. He fails holding the audiences' interest till the climax as it is so long drawn. Lack of proper modus operandi is another flaw.

Two strangers Dr. Raja (Rajiv Kanakala) meet Ravi Varma (Allari Naresh) on a train. Raja is frustrated with his drunkard father (Kota Srinivasa Rao) and tells his problems to Ravi. Few days later, his father injures in an accident and brought to Raja's hospital. Later he dies of poisoning and the blame is put on the doctor. In fact, it is Ravi Varma who designs the death. He insists Raja to kill his wife in exchange of murdering his father. And the game is set for twist in the climax.

Rajiv Kanakala, a proven actor with varied roles, does good job but it is Allari Naresh who gets the maximum mileage from the show. He is at his best in the role of a jealous husband and psychopath. Preeti Jhangyani is okay. Sindu Tolani has no big role but she brings glamour by indulging in blink and miss kiss scene. The actors have done adequate job.

The film has flawed screenplay and has not handled with skill. The same goes for a comedy track. One wonders what contribution Chandrasekhar Yeleti and Rajamouli provided to this film.

Bottom-line

No one would love to board on this train. The journey is boring.

Rating: 2.5/5

Continue reading...

Cassandra's Dream A film review by Paul Brenner - Copyright © 2008 Filmcritic.com

Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters culminates with a warm and fuzzy Thanksgiving dinner scene where all the inner and outer relationship problems plaguing the angst-ridden characters in the film are happily resolved and familial ties are reaffirmed; a tiny beam of light in Allen's dark and bleak tunnel of life. And ever since Hannah and Her Sisters, Allen has been renouncing that happy ending in every film he's made… but never more so than in his two recent dramas, Match Point, and now, Cassandra's Dream (Allen's 42nd film as writer/director).

Cassandra's Dream is Allen's most grim and uncomfortable film to date, surpassing even Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point. At least in those films the upper class criminals get away with their deeds and get on with their lives (however psychically diminished those lives may be). Not so in Cassandra's Dream, where two lower-middle-class brothers commit a dark crime (almost a British translation of Before the Devil Knows You're Dead) that not only shatters their humanity but also destroys their family ties and much more.

Terry (Colin Farrell) and Ian (Ewan McGregor) are two brothers who are sick of their lives and want something better (the something better, as is the case in most Allen films, is material gain). Terry is a dull-witted auto mechanic prone to gambling and booze who wants to own a sporting goods store. Ian pretends to be something he is not, driving around in borrowed vintage cars repaired by Terry and claiming to be a real estate investor; he actually works as a manager in his father's downscale restaurant. When Terry wins big at the dog races (betting on a dog named Cassandra's Dream -- Cassandra also being the name of a Greek mythological prognosticator of bad events) the brothers buy a boat they never could have afforded but for Terry's winnings and see this as a sign that there lives will now change. Their rich Uncle Howard (Tom Wilkinson) arrives for a visit, and Terry and Ian decide to ask him for money to bankroll their dreams. Uncle Howard agrees to help them but at a cost neither of the brothers could have anticipated. All in the name of family.

In this unrelenting and uncompromising film, Allen directs with the ease of a master, filling his trademarked one-take scenes with tight compositions, his actors trapped in doorways and pushed to the side of the frame by walls constricting both the players and the audience in an airless, doom-laden atmosphere. Vilmos Zsigmond's drab and dank cinematography and Philip Glass' unsettling score further enhance Allen's directorial touchstones.

Allen doesn't loosen his chokehold for a moment and even though there are moments of dark humor (a man unknowingly about to be murdered meets his soon-to-be killers and talks about visiting his 91-year-old mother for dinner, saying that he doesn't want to miss dinner with Mom because "at that age you can go at any moment"), the lines stick in your craw, and Allen makes his audience twist in the wind.

The older Allen gets, the more curdled his world view becomes -- more depressing, more bitter, more hopeless. Allen used to look upon the desolation of death and philosophical despair in a bemused, mocking Isaac Bashevis Singer sort of way (his Fiddler on the Roof dance with death that closes Love and Death, for example). But lately, Allen's nihilistic and futile perception of human nature and life traps his films in a hermetic box of woe. In Cassandra's Dream, death and emptiness has engulfed Allen's spirit; the figure in the director's chair is now garbed in a black shroud, carries a scythe, and wears black-rimmed glasses.

Allen can still direct a tightly constructed, concise film of meaning and emotion, but the purchase of a ticket to see Cassandra's Dream should come complete with a loaded revolver.



I dream of Jeannie.

Continue reading...