indian popular cinema
so i watched the famous (?) Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, something like 'brave heart takes the bride' which might be the most srk film ever. after a long meet cute where they annoy each other horribly all over europe, london playboy srk follows his girl to india where she's engaged to a man she's never seen. naturally he wins over her traditional family and even intended bridegroom
i'm not down with the creepy patriarchy and the plot really takes some leaps and bounds in the second half but the musical numbers are classic and i've certainly seen worse 'it happened one night' fish-out-of-water cliche filled romcoms that coincidentally didn't feature srk in his prime displaying the many sides of his talent
i'm not down with the creepy patriarchy and the plot really takes some leaps and bounds in the second half but the musical numbers are classic and i've certainly seen worse 'it happened one night' fish-out-of-water cliche filled romcoms that coincidentally didn't feature srk in his prime displaying the many sides of his talent
not to spoil rangeela for anyone, i'll put it over here. the bigger rip does look a bit better
this movie feels like camp but it's undoubtedly more than that. the colors and creative camera moves and the committed performance of the lead actress whose character is really kind of a ditz sometimes made me think of showgirls and sometimes aventurera. the songs really pushed it to another level though. there were some hints of violence and come on, aamir kahn's character is a big jerk who's going to make her give up her dream but for two plus hours it is hugely entertaining and that's saying something. the whole opening 'street' sequence is kind of amazing and if that doesn't hook you i don't know what to say
this movie feels like camp but it's undoubtedly more than that. the colors and creative camera moves and the committed performance of the lead actress whose character is really kind of a ditz sometimes made me think of showgirls and sometimes aventurera. the songs really pushed it to another level though. there were some hints of violence and come on, aamir kahn's character is a big jerk who's going to make her give up her dream but for two plus hours it is hugely entertaining and that's saying something. the whole opening 'street' sequence is kind of amazing and if that doesn't hook you i don't know what to say
^actually always thought the movie implied he's not going to make her give up dream after end...
kumbalangi nights, madu c. narayanan 2019
one of the big cult successes of the year so far - a deceptively low key comedy/drama about four brothers living together in a kerala fishing village (and eco tourism site). has sort of a strange, novelistic shape, ambling along through relationships and landscape before themes and conflicts fully emerge in totally unexpected ways. succumbs to some of the too easy prettiness of recent malayalam films, but those complaints are more than compensated for by great acting, by a team of actors who were all beloved character actor types when this went in development but are starting to emerge as somewhat major stars.
ngk, selvaraghavan 2019
selva's big comeback after years away (and one fully completed film that has yet to get a release), this is a big masala politics film that actually plays more like an abstract, faustian parable. wildly stylized - not just in the lighting and staging but the extremely mannered performances of the entire cast - and elliptical, yet still manages some straight genere thrill stuff, including two of the best fight sequences i've seen in awhile. this one had some production issues, including a full halt to production due to director's health issues, and it can be a little hard to tell where the intentionally elliptic storytelling ends and missing footage and or producer cuts begin; there's one fully misjudged duet sequence that reeks of producer interference. but this does feel like it's fully selva back.
kumbalangi nights, madu c. narayanan 2019
one of the big cult successes of the year so far - a deceptively low key comedy/drama about four brothers living together in a kerala fishing village (and eco tourism site). has sort of a strange, novelistic shape, ambling along through relationships and landscape before themes and conflicts fully emerge in totally unexpected ways. succumbs to some of the too easy prettiness of recent malayalam films, but those complaints are more than compensated for by great acting, by a team of actors who were all beloved character actor types when this went in development but are starting to emerge as somewhat major stars.
ngk, selvaraghavan 2019
selva's big comeback after years away (and one fully completed film that has yet to get a release), this is a big masala politics film that actually plays more like an abstract, faustian parable. wildly stylized - not just in the lighting and staging but the extremely mannered performances of the entire cast - and elliptical, yet still manages some straight genere thrill stuff, including two of the best fight sequences i've seen in awhile. this one had some production issues, including a full halt to production due to director's health issues, and it can be a little hard to tell where the intentionally elliptic storytelling ends and missing footage and or producer cuts begin; there's one fully misjudged duet sequence that reeks of producer interference. but this does feel like it's fully selva back.
rangeela:
maybe he doesn't intend to but he will. he's too insecure?
but i'm sure i'll watch it many more times anyway. and maybe learn to believe
i already watched all the song sequences 2-3 times each
maybe he doesn't intend to but he will. he's too insecure?
but i'm sure i'll watch it many more times anyway. and maybe learn to believe
i already watched all the song sequences 2-3 times eachhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38MijVTyP7s
virus, aashiq abu 2019
wonderfully written and directed procedural on the 2018 nipah virus outbreak in kerala, with an incredible cast of malayalam character actors. have seen some people damn this with faint praise as just a well-written and acted procedural but there's a chilly stylization to the images that i find really interesting, and a pointed interest in how the outbreak opens up some of the stranger social divisions in the state. very much worth a look and up on p***e.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6uv5bOmLeM
manjadikuru, anjali menon 2012
anjali menon's first feature as writer director, after her script for ustad hotel and the massively successful bangalore days (arguably the film that proved the malayalam film industry was in full comeback after the wasteland of the 2000s). memory piece of 10 year old child returning to family's ancestral home with parents for grandfather's funeral; he befriends his cousins and the tamil servant girl his family has hired as the adult generation vents disappointments and grievances with each other while waiting 16 days for the reading of the will. she manages an almost perfect mix of sentiment and sharp observation sometimes bordering on harsh. and beautifully textured super 16mm photography. surprised this isn't more widely seen...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oUl9NfYlS8
gurgaon, shanker raman 2017
wealthy real estate family with BAD SECRETS implodes when black sheep eldest son decides to kidnap his own adopted sister to pay off gambling debts. one of the best examples of the post kashyap north indian crime dramas i've seen, distinguished by a dreamlike, murky visual texture and elliptical editing. find the bleakness here convincing; it never descends into the edgelord nonsense of something like kashyap's ugly.
do dooni chaar, habib faisal 2010
debut feature for writer/director faisal, probably best known here for writing band baaja baarat and fan for maneesh sharma. real life married couple rishi kapoor and neetu singh play heads of a middle class delhi family (he's a school teacher who teaches tuitions in the evening to barely pay bills, she quit her job at his insistence when they got married and still resents it) . who, through the slightest of plot contrivances, decide they need to buy a car. very funny and perceptive about family and money (hard to think of many pop movies more insistent on getting granular details of monetary figures exactly right), anchored by rishi and neetu's performances. strong example of a genre hindi film did especially well in the decade and counting after the unexpected success of khosla ka ghosla in 2006.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij5fQOhKkZ4
english: an autumn in london, shyamaprasad 2013
patchwork of different malayali expatriats living in london over a few months in the fall. up there with hansal mehta's deeply misunderstood simran as the best indian diaspora film i've seen, and surprisingly makes none of the mistakes these kind of multi-character narrative films usually make - these stories don't weave together into a network, there is no epiphany moment or moment of fate apart from a glance through a window that only means something to the minor character who is doing the looking.
virus, aashiq abu 2019
wonderfully written and directed procedural on the 2018 nipah virus outbreak in kerala, with an incredible cast of malayalam character actors. have seen some people damn this with faint praise as just a well-written and acted procedural but there's a chilly stylization to the images that i find really interesting, and a pointed interest in how the outbreak opens up some of the stranger social divisions in the state. very much worth a look and up on p***e.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6uv5bOmLeM
manjadikuru, anjali menon 2012
anjali menon's first feature as writer director, after her script for ustad hotel and the massively successful bangalore days (arguably the film that proved the malayalam film industry was in full comeback after the wasteland of the 2000s). memory piece of 10 year old child returning to family's ancestral home with parents for grandfather's funeral; he befriends his cousins and the tamil servant girl his family has hired as the adult generation vents disappointments and grievances with each other while waiting 16 days for the reading of the will. she manages an almost perfect mix of sentiment and sharp observation sometimes bordering on harsh. and beautifully textured super 16mm photography. surprised this isn't more widely seen...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oUl9NfYlS8
gurgaon, shanker raman 2017
wealthy real estate family with BAD SECRETS implodes when black sheep eldest son decides to kidnap his own adopted sister to pay off gambling debts. one of the best examples of the post kashyap north indian crime dramas i've seen, distinguished by a dreamlike, murky visual texture and elliptical editing. find the bleakness here convincing; it never descends into the edgelord nonsense of something like kashyap's ugly.
do dooni chaar, habib faisal 2010
debut feature for writer/director faisal, probably best known here for writing band baaja baarat and fan for maneesh sharma. real life married couple rishi kapoor and neetu singh play heads of a middle class delhi family (he's a school teacher who teaches tuitions in the evening to barely pay bills, she quit her job at his insistence when they got married and still resents it) . who, through the slightest of plot contrivances, decide they need to buy a car. very funny and perceptive about family and money (hard to think of many pop movies more insistent on getting granular details of monetary figures exactly right), anchored by rishi and neetu's performances. strong example of a genre hindi film did especially well in the decade and counting after the unexpected success of khosla ka ghosla in 2006.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij5fQOhKkZ4
english: an autumn in london, shyamaprasad 2013
patchwork of different malayali expatriats living in london over a few months in the fall. up there with hansal mehta's deeply misunderstood simran as the best indian diaspora film i've seen, and surprisingly makes none of the mistakes these kind of multi-character narrative films usually make - these stories don't weave together into a network, there is no epiphany moment or moment of fate apart from a glance through a window that only means something to the minor character who is doing the looking.
meanwhile prabhas long awaited follow up opens next week and it looks like.... a lot
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HNnt00swZ5Q
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HNnt00swZ5Q
The two Baahubali movies are really great. Almost perfectly mythic in construction and concept in ways that go beyond the Joseph Campbell school of US cinema. The two movies work together, with different scenes informing each other as something like a son to father relationship that defines the main protagonist of each film, though even that might be said to fit better under the mythic notion of rebirth rather than a strictly family relationship, but the tone and structure of each movie is slightly different in ways that build the connections to the more symbolic notions in play. Virtually every scene in the first movie plays out like an episode, with some dilemma found, met, and overcome ending in an iconic moment almost as if separate tales of allegorical purpose in the life of Mahendra/Shivudu, but to an end that is not yet clear. The second movie refines that, by having a looser structure but giving more concrete meaning to the episodes by defining the characters through their previous activities/lives/relatives.
The Baahubalis, Mahendra/Shivudu and Amarenda are shown as singular not just for their abilities and strength, but by their unhesitating action. They almost never stop to reflect or need to weight different courses of action for which might be best, they just act. They essentially come to represent the abstract notion of absolute justice, in this way set apart from Kattappa who essentially acts as a representation of the law, bound to the whims of state. When Amarenda and Kattappa are in harmony they act as one, in perfect unison without even needing to look to the other to know what they are doing. What makes this more interesting is that both the Baahubalis and Kattappa aren't really in charge, that role belongs to the women of the film who seem to basically represent the state in various forms or incarnations. They are the ones who determine the values that the Baahubalis will act around, mostly in upholding those values save when they seem to contradict themselves, which are the few times the Baahubalis show any hesitancy as they have to weigh what they have learned against what they are given in the moment, most notably when there are contradictions in the values claimed by Sivagami and Devasena in the second film. The Baahubalis and their perverse mirror, Bhallaladeva, are more physically powerful, but the women are the ones who possess ferocious moral determination that drives the story.
So much of the rest of the movie too works towards archetypical, but exceptionally well thought through mythic concepts given vivid life by Rajamouli. The child "born/reborn" from the flood that must ascend to a higher plane and face a final task surrounded by fire. The giant golden severed head falling back down to the lower land to end the story. The echoing of scenes of archery used for wooing and that of different settings and elements to link scenes to each other and to a kind of mythic symbology. I could go on, but some of the details are now a bit too foggy to recollect and I do tend towards excess anyway, but even without all the frillery I've gone into, the movies are just a helluva a lot of fun. "It's called statescraft!" slice Just perfect. Too bad they did the blackskin thing with the opposing army and that one romantic scene, removing the armor, is pretty dicey in how it plays, even though they do ground it in some earlier dialogue to give some sense to it. Other than that though the two movies are about as good as that type of mythic storytelling can possibly be.
The Baahubalis, Mahendra/Shivudu and Amarenda are shown as singular not just for their abilities and strength, but by their unhesitating action. They almost never stop to reflect or need to weight different courses of action for which might be best, they just act. They essentially come to represent the abstract notion of absolute justice, in this way set apart from Kattappa who essentially acts as a representation of the law, bound to the whims of state. When Amarenda and Kattappa are in harmony they act as one, in perfect unison without even needing to look to the other to know what they are doing. What makes this more interesting is that both the Baahubalis and Kattappa aren't really in charge, that role belongs to the women of the film who seem to basically represent the state in various forms or incarnations. They are the ones who determine the values that the Baahubalis will act around, mostly in upholding those values save when they seem to contradict themselves, which are the few times the Baahubalis show any hesitancy as they have to weigh what they have learned against what they are given in the moment, most notably when there are contradictions in the values claimed by Sivagami and Devasena in the second film. The Baahubalis and their perverse mirror, Bhallaladeva, are more physically powerful, but the women are the ones who possess ferocious moral determination that drives the story.
So much of the rest of the movie too works towards archetypical, but exceptionally well thought through mythic concepts given vivid life by Rajamouli. The child "born/reborn" from the flood that must ascend to a higher plane and face a final task surrounded by fire. The giant golden severed head falling back down to the lower land to end the story. The echoing of scenes of archery used for wooing and that of different settings and elements to link scenes to each other and to a kind of mythic symbology. I could go on, but some of the details are now a bit too foggy to recollect and I do tend towards excess anyway, but even without all the frillery I've gone into, the movies are just a helluva a lot of fun. "It's called statescraft!" slice Just perfect. Too bad they did the blackskin thing with the opposing army and that one romantic scene, removing the armor, is pretty dicey in how it plays, even though they do ground it in some earlier dialogue to give some sense to it. Other than that though the two movies are about as good as that type of mythic storytelling can possibly be.
went out to see saaho yesterday, in the hindi version.
was somewhat skeptical going in based on the reviews, but it actually kind of works? the first hour is kind of a charmless slog but once it reveals (spoilers i guess?) that prabhas is playing a thief type and not a cop, dropping the title card like an hour and 15 minutes in, it kind of starts to click.
it is actually a very typical telugu movie post vaitla/trivikam/etc, though i can't really explain exactly how without giving away the entire plot, just very elaborately staged and budgeted. post baahubali all movies want to be pan indian hits now so the john wick like warring crime syndicate at the heart of the film is full of beloved character actors (jackie shroff! mandira bedi in a lot of amazing clothes! tinnu anand! lal! manjesh manjrekar! chunky pandey!) from outside of telugu cinema. the action scenes, as i think ani said on letterboxd, are basically a tour through all of western 20th century action films - matrix reloaded, fury road, fast and furious, the raid, mission impossible. they cast abu dhabi as a fictional country called waaji where they have jet pack cops.
i don't know. the post baahubali blockbuster situation in indian film has been really weird. rajamouli and his dad have a really preternatural gift for this kind of thing, and worked nearly a decade on pulling it off (and still say it's only practice for the mahabaratha influenced film they really want to make). this is fun but can't help but feel like missed opportunity...
was somewhat skeptical going in based on the reviews, but it actually kind of works? the first hour is kind of a charmless slog but once it reveals (spoilers i guess?) that prabhas is playing a thief type and not a cop, dropping the title card like an hour and 15 minutes in, it kind of starts to click.
it is actually a very typical telugu movie post vaitla/trivikam/etc, though i can't really explain exactly how without giving away the entire plot, just very elaborately staged and budgeted. post baahubali all movies want to be pan indian hits now so the john wick like warring crime syndicate at the heart of the film is full of beloved character actors (jackie shroff! mandira bedi in a lot of amazing clothes! tinnu anand! lal! manjesh manjrekar! chunky pandey!) from outside of telugu cinema. the action scenes, as i think ani said on letterboxd, are basically a tour through all of western 20th century action films - matrix reloaded, fury road, fast and furious, the raid, mission impossible. they cast abu dhabi as a fictional country called waaji where they have jet pack cops.
i don't know. the post baahubali blockbuster situation in indian film has been really weird. rajamouli and his dad have a really preternatural gift for this kind of thing, and worked nearly a decade on pulling it off (and still say it's only practice for the mahabaratha influenced film they really want to make). this is fun but can't help but feel like missed opportunity...
I decided to give Saaho a look in the theater as well and found myself focusing on the bits of ingenuity applied to maintain its consistent level of momentum. One instance could be this upside-down shot that tracks around until it adjusts itself right-side up with the character's plan moving forward (no sound since it's just a screen recording).
https://streamable.com/b4kt6
Other aspects like the delayed title card and the sequencing of action set-piece homages play a similar role on a macro-structural scale so the overall shape of the narrative sustains a particular rhythm across the rises and falls in tension. A supplementary pleasure becomes anticipating which action film Prabhas will integrate himself into next. Around the final stretch, the narrative almost refines itself into rally of set-piece fights and rug-pull reveals, which become repetitive but also quite effective in delivering a particular catharsis guided solely by upending spectacle rather than narrative cohesion.
@nrh, are there any post-Baahubali blockbusters you would recommend or are looking forward to? (doesn't seem like much else has been so widely embraced and, as Greg X beautifully described, carries such a strongly imagined feel for mythical archetypes).
https://streamable.com/b4kt6
Other aspects like the delayed title card and the sequencing of action set-piece homages play a similar role on a macro-structural scale so the overall shape of the narrative sustains a particular rhythm across the rises and falls in tension. A supplementary pleasure becomes anticipating which action film Prabhas will integrate himself into next. Around the final stretch, the narrative almost refines itself into rally of set-piece fights and rug-pull reveals, which become repetitive but also quite effective in delivering a particular catharsis guided solely by upending spectacle rather than narrative cohesion.
@nrh, are there any post-Baahubali blockbusters you would recommend or are looking forward to? (doesn't seem like much else has been so widely embraced and, as Greg X beautifully described, carries such a strongly imagined feel for mythical archetypes).
i don't think there's much of interest coming out of the post baahubali carpetbaggers except filmmakers who already had successes in that sphere - shankar's indian 2 and mani ratnam's long delayed (and probably doomed) ponniyin selvan project. i didn't see kgf but it might be fun? the chiranjeevi thing seems dicey but still interested to see it.
everything else is a little suspect or fails - mammootty in a santosh sivan historical epic, mohanlal doing mt vasudevan nair's mahabharatha take, they all turn out to be too good to be true, with suspect financing and no possible way to recoup investment. tellingly rajamouli's next (rrr) seems to be going for purely telugu market, not reaching out to anyone else. interestingly saaho seems to have been totally rejected by south audiences, it's just the rural hindi audiences going for it.
what's more worrying is the two most interesting industries right now (tamil & malayalam i think) are in extremely precarious terrain. the margins are just so slim, and a modi caused recession can genuinely cripple both industries.
everything else is a little suspect or fails - mammootty in a santosh sivan historical epic, mohanlal doing mt vasudevan nair's mahabharatha take, they all turn out to be too good to be true, with suspect financing and no possible way to recoup investment. tellingly rajamouli's next (rrr) seems to be going for purely telugu market, not reaching out to anyone else. interestingly saaho seems to have been totally rejected by south audiences, it's just the rural hindi audiences going for it.
what's more worrying is the two most interesting industries right now (tamil & malayalam i think) are in extremely precarious terrain. the margins are just so slim, and a modi caused recession can genuinely cripple both industries.
kgf chapter 1 doesn't have set pieces that match saaho's, but its breakneck editing pace gives it some visual sense, and narratively it's far more palatable. not sure how well it'll hold up outside the theater though. chapter 2 is coming out in november
-
Lencho of the Apes
- Posts: 1900
- Joined: Tue Dec 11, 2018 4:38 am
Someone I trust made Jallikattu sound interesting...
The opposite of 'reify' is... ?
the directors last, ee ma yau, was terrific, even if I didn’t love it as much as some of its biggest fans - family tries to conduct a burial in a small latin Christian community during monsoon season, unleashing all sorts of small nasty conflicts in the community. beautiful language and atmosphere, very dark sense of humor.Lencho_of_the_Apes wrote: ↑Sun Sep 08, 2019 1:50 am Someone I trust made Jallikattu sound interesting...
Going tonight, surprised but happy that this is getting a relatively wide us release -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOCM9wztBYQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOCM9wztBYQ
Watched War (2019), the Hrithik Roshan vs Tiger Shroff action vehicle. It's kinda endearing in how it channels the chemistry between Shroff and Roshan into their starry-eyed and hard-fought compassionate gazes with each another. The action sequences, which range from an elaborately stitched-together one-shot whirling around doors and tables to a Woo-inspired church battle of herculean physics, accentuate their abilities as performers; Shroff is afforded ample grand jeté kicks and Roshan gets just as many chances to dive out of planes, cars, and motorcycles.
I'm hoping to catch this as well! After watching Vada Chennai, I'm intrigued to check out Vetrimaran's other films.nrh wrote: ↑Fri Oct 04, 2019 4:43 pm Going tonight, surprised but happy that this is getting a relatively wide us release -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOCM9wztBYQ
asuran is easily the weakest of the vetri films i've seen, but still an extraordinary movie - he usually spends several years developing projects, infamously starting from giant impossible scripts and endlessly tweaking in post. here he is working very fast, and the quicker way of working shows i guess, with the structure feeling slightly "off" in a way i find hard to explain.
but it's an extraordinary movie. impossibly violent and harsh even by standards of tamil rural films post 2000s madhurai generation. some of the landscape filmmaking reminded me of the best of anthony mann's westerns, straining to see what is chasing you from over the last horizon.
but it's an extraordinary movie. impossibly violent and harsh even by standards of tamil rural films post 2000s madhurai generation. some of the landscape filmmaking reminded me of the best of anthony mann's westerns, straining to see what is chasing you from over the last horizon.
zoo (shlok sharma) new jack bollywood. watched cuz i enjoyed sharma's haraamkhor (thx nrh!), and while this doesn't have nawazuddin siddiqui in it (who always makes everything better), it's still a cool little ensemble work of social realism. it's very visceral, in a way that makes sense coming from a kashyap disciple. sharma does a good job letting scenes linger just long enough for tensions to resonate fully. he also successfully limits the melodrama, which this easily could've stumbled into (in a bad way). just one of the highlights includes: two would-be rappers rapping in english 'suck my dick' at a bday party for the young son of a police officer who just got finished arresting them
each month, i try to set aside a few hours for an srk flick (that's a joke about the length of indian movies. get it?), and it feels like it's just about that time of the month right now. does anyone want to help me out with a rec from the following list of srk flicks that i have available? billu, chaahat, chalte chalte, chamatkar, deewana, english babu desi mem, maya memsaab, oh darling! yeh hai india!, one 2 ka 4, pardes, phir bhi dil hai hindustani, ram jaane, shakti: the power, and trimurti. one small clarifier: the more srk, the better! the last one i watched (dear zindagi) didn't have near enough srk, and it was sorely lacking because of that
maya memsaab is the only one i know there and it’s not bad. you can do a lot worse with ketan mehta’s films (though you can do quite a bit better too).
"Most esteemed biographer of Peter Barrington Hutton"
the version of maya memsaab on netflix is censored.
oh darling! yeh hai india is great but i'd watch ketan mehta's hero hiralal before trying that one. shakti is just a cameo performance. trimurti is kind of fascinating but most people hate it. billu is also just cameo and skip in favor of the malayalam original.
oh darling! yeh hai india is great but i'd watch ketan mehta's hero hiralal before trying that one. shakti is just a cameo performance. trimurti is kind of fascinating but most people hate it. billu is also just cameo and skip in favor of the malayalam original.
thx y'all! i went with trimurti cuz when it comes to 'kind of fascinating but most people hate it' movies, i usually delight in the former camp. forty minutes in thus far, and it's bonkers! the first twenty minutes alone easily covers enough territory for two movies. now i'm at the part where srk has just made his first appearance, and i'm already hooked
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H_-4gcev0KE
had already seen mani ratmam’s raavan, the hindi version with abhishek as raavan and vikram as Rama/the cop, and finally watched the tamil version raavanan, with vikram as raavan and prithvi as the cop and its almost a totally different movie, a masterpiece where the other version is just great. vikram is just the best actor of his generation, a force of nature physical presence and brings something furious and melancholy to the role. all cops are bastards, wage war. Just constant “can’t believe they pulled this off” sequences. necessary companion to dil se, where ratnam’s belief in the possibility of the indian national project goes from pessimistic to apocalyptic.
had already seen mani ratmam’s raavan, the hindi version with abhishek as raavan and vikram as Rama/the cop, and finally watched the tamil version raavanan, with vikram as raavan and prithvi as the cop and its almost a totally different movie, a masterpiece where the other version is just great. vikram is just the best actor of his generation, a force of nature physical presence and brings something furious and melancholy to the role. all cops are bastards, wage war. Just constant “can’t believe they pulled this off” sequences. necessary companion to dil se, where ratnam’s belief in the possibility of the indian national project goes from pessimistic to apocalyptic.
sooo... trimurti was awesome! coulda been titled death wish vi: a bromance; starring not one, but two fab mustachios (at this age, cute lil srk couldn't grow a stache, even if he nonstop plied rogaine to his upper lip). and as nrh alludes to in his boxd review, anil kapoor dancing to 'mera naam chin chin chu' is perhaps one of the greatest things i've ever seen. someone please excerpt that from the film, so i can watch it over and over again on replay. i'm following up trimurti with ram jaane cuz another boxd review states that rj also has the awesome cannon group vibe to it, just like trimurti. so, apparently i'm finding six hours this month to hang with my boy srk. awww yeahhh
-
Last edited by roujin on Tue Nov 19, 2019 4:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
ram jaane (rajiv mehra) srk plays tony montana in the zaniest remake of scarface
super deluxe (thiagarajan kumararaja) immediate thoughts: wtf...? east meets west meets superbad meets weekend at bernie's meets 2001: a space odyssey meets lgbtq cinema meets hypersaturated color grading meets gorgeous long take static shot mise en scene meets ensemble film meets tangentially interrelated stories meets maudlin melodrama meets faux philosophizing and moralizing meets pitch black comedy meets edge-of-your-seat drama meets lol moments meets eyeroll moments meets jawdrop moments meets a million other things. can't say i disagree with some of the criticisms i've read, but also can't say those things worth critiquing are out of place in such a strange, fascinating web of a film. the genre jumping in particular is outrageous, but what's most impressive is how well it's all handled. the comedy coulda been directed by a master dir of comedy. the drama coulda been directed by a master dir of drama. the suspense coulda been directed by a master dir of suspense. it brought to mind dil se.., in how seamlessly ratnam moved through the shifting genre elements of that great, great film. but this is a totally diff beast. the divisiveness in reactions surrounding this film is more than understandable. there were times that even i couldn't be sure if i was really digging what i was watching, but there's so much thrown into the blender here that it kinda sorta works overall. it shouldn't. but it does. like a smoothie. you can throw all sorts of kitchen scraps into your nutribullet, and sometimes the concoction turns out sour, sometimes sweet, sometimes flat, sometimes delish. i'd highly rec it cuz it should be seen, and reacted to. i just can't guarantee what your reaction will be. i, for one, 
i always knew i had really bad toupeedar but holy shit
in ref to: just started watching kabali cuz i luvvved petta
in ref to: just started watching kabali cuz i luvvved petta