Thala's Aarambham - "A very usual base topped with Thala's Extravaganza....."

No different from other movies , arrambham did get a huge block buster opening and this time i feel it was massive. As always watching movies of big star on first day show is a unique feel one should never miss. I enjoyed the experience. Let me go straight to how the movie is starting with Cons...

*** Spoilers inside ****

Cons
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1) A worst storyline or say a very regular or usual story line noting much impressive
2) No gripping screenplay. Total let down and lot of disconnected shots may be editing was not upto the mark
3) Aaraya a bad choice or a choice didnt justify much to his character and more over working on MS DOS doesnt make him a hacker
4) So many loop holes or logic skips everywhere throughtout the movie but since its a big star movie unfortunately got to swallow the hard pill
5) Nayantara , a fairy angel not fair enough
6) Thala dance steps was not as good as it was in mankantha
7) Yuvan was a huge let down , nothing impressive in BGM
8 ) The selecting of cast is horrible and Tamizhachi song that girl was too horrible.
9) Hare Rama song missing from the movie , so sad
10) Normally in thala movies dialogues will be always remembered , but in this they didnt impress much especially " Make it simple " was too simple . I guess director really made this movie too simple forgetting that he is working for a big star.
11) Rana was not properly used and his character should have been given more scope.
12) Sloppy action sequences
13) First half aarya unwanted lengthy flash back could have been avioded but it was okay
14) Tapase last news reading was funny and crap sloppy tooo
15) Villan role was not that powerful.

Pros
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1) As always thala means mass , he always deleivers that energy in every film . None can beat him up in that
2) We can see the difference in his body tone up with first half and flash back second half. He did worked hard on his looked damn awesome
3) His body language improved so much and its just astonishing to see him change with every film.
4) Camera work was awesome and visuals were too good. Every frame ajith would easily capture our attention. Teri mass.
5) Though the script didnot support him much , ajith led entire movie in his shoulder.
6) Good song tracks as we know they already released some time back but some songs visuals were good.
7) Its thala thala and thala everywhere...!!
8 ) There are scenes like ducati bike drive and a scene when police try to arrest him holding his hand were all OSM and gave goosebumps but unfortunately not many memorable scenes were there.
9) Kishore role though was short but was good.

Verdict
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Movie was missing that extra punch and spice needed for a revenge movie plot. Lot of unwanted shots could have been cut down and more importance could have been given to the script and screenplay. But mistakes apart , this is no bad movie at all. Though it had a regular storyline still this movie was definitely worth watching one and especially Thala fans would love watching this movie because its all and all ajiths fare. This would definitely cover the larger audience of mass fans and no doubt it will be a blockbuster hit of the season. But if you ask me about normal movie goers this is just one other film worth spending money for this diwali and is definetly a one time watch. The last climax did deliver some message some political liner but was not too loud n clear. If we take mankatha movie has a bench mark , aarambham would score only 50% from it. Yet this is one movie never to be missed and if you like Thala ajith movies and if you wanna see him yet again on a cameo role with a salt'n'pepper look then this is for you. Dont miss it . This is sure a thala deepavali (**at-least for his fans ). A good commercial flick worth a try.

 Rating : 3.5/5 for thala fans | 2.5/5 for normal audience | 2/5 from other star fan's

 

Lucia - Real Stunner , First ever Mind bending movie in the History of 100 Years of Indian Cinema.

To the Viewers :-
============
# One of unique creations in Indian cinema never tried before . Am stunned . Who said we dont have talents who can make movies like Nolan or Lynch or that said any top overseas director. I feel its just the lack of Opportunity and support. This Movie Lucia is just one finest example proving that wrong...!! You dont need crores to bring a best movie , all it needs is your skills and passion towards it. !!! This movie will serve as a eye opener for many upcoming film makers and also for experienced film makers. First movie impressed me in kannada industry was Mungaru Male and now Lucia will be my favorite collection. Waiting for original DVD so i will buy that way i will contribute to these creators who did their dream project about the dreams.



" Your Small Life is Somebodys "BIG" dream "
Such a short and sweet statement yet carries so much meaning to it. Unless you see this movie you will not understand the power and impact this statement has. A Stunner.

Sathish Neenasam ( Nikhil )

Sruthi Hariharan ( Shwetha )

Review :-
=======
Extraordinary performance by these young cast Sathish Neenasam ( Nikhil ) and Sruthi Hariharan ( Shwetha ). This movie is a pure example that in hands of a good director even a iron core can be casted to diamonds.Every heart always got some wishes it desires for but never received. What if a source presents itself with a promise to give you that and how easily one would be tempted to try it without even giving any second thougts about the consiquences forms core to this story. A man suffering from insomnia takes a magic drug pills called Lucia which has a power to induce sleep and at same time generate Lucid dreams , a term of never ending addictive dreams makes one feel close to reality. How this man Nikhil lives upto both these worlds fullfilling his desires in his dream world and at same time how it escalates to a stage where it almost costs his life completes this story behind Lucia.

You might ask , if this is the story then what is so special about lucia. Well, story might sound simple but how director toggles those frames from real world to the imaginary dream world and how he makes us to sit tight at the edge of the seat till movie finishes is what makes it so special about this movie. More over these kind of plot was never ever tried before in indian ciema before as there are so many movie buffs who love mind bending movies and for the same reason great director like Nolan or Lynch have so many followers. But making a movie is not important , but how well you wrap it and present it is all what matters and Director Pawan kumar proved himself he is no short of great directors here. Normally mind mending movie would sometime cause nausea because too much of consolidation or too much blending of characters would result to it , so one has to really be cautious that the mixup of multiple stories doesnt pollute the script. In this regards , lucia is a genuine attempt as it doesnt really confuse us too much though at some point or at most we really be not knowing what is real or dream anymore but by the time this movie finishes , it unties most of the knots and delivers the basic message what this movie intented to press on giving us a sigh of releif.

Though that said, last 10 minutes the whole plot conspires itself giving the choice to the viewers to guess themself what is real and what is not and chose their own ending for themself. No wonder this is a touch of Nolan and may be for same reason apart from the dreams subject , this film lucia been compared to Inception by many. But i will really be not the one who will compare these two movies on a same scale because they both are unique and best at their own levels. This film Lucia will be one of finest cinemas ever made.A salute to the team involved. I feel this is just the beginning.

Verdict :
=======
Lucia , an immortal movie going to live through time and space , a never ending dream of indian cinema and a kickstart into a different genre of films first ever brought into indian cinema. A crystal ball experiance , pure as a hallmark gold and a experiance of a life time. Watch it and enjoy it. A movie which never to be missed.

To the Oscars :-
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# Damn you Oscar , if you dont choose this as best foreign language film of this year , damn you will loose your respect & credibility from every Indian citizen who follows you. You wanted a good movie and we gave one. Dont turn your blind side against us. We proved. Its your turn to prove.

To the Director ( Pawan Kumar ) and crew :-
=============================
Eeh Kalanichitra thumba chennagidhey , addarindha olleyadu. Bharatiya cinema Dalli ondu trend setteru , atyuttama ondu . Neevu mattey Nimma Sibbandigalu Bharatiya cinema hemme madida...!! Abhinandanegalu
Translation : This film is so good , very good and new . This movie is a trend setter in indian cinema , a unique one. You and your crew made our indian cinema proud ..Congradulations
( ** incase of any mistakes above with my kannada pronounciation , please forgive )



Trivia :-
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Lucia is Kannada's first crowd-funded film. When Pawan Kumar decided to try the Crowd Funding route, he set a duration of 100 days in which he hoped to raise 51 Lakh INR. The amount was raised in just 27 days. The entire film has been shot in digital format on Canon 5D and GoPro.When Nikki is brought to the tent with the promise of treating his insomnia, A TV screen shows images of Christopher Nolan's debut movie, Following. Also shown in the tent scene is a clip from the movie Requiem for a Dream in order to depict the central theme of addiction, which lead to the characters' imprisonment in a world of delusion and reckless desperation that is subsequently overtaken by reality.

LUCIA Complete Crew @ Lucia Audio Release

Baag Milkha Baag ( 2013 ) :-

Damn good Biopic , what a inspiring film it has been. I am sure there is no better way our Indian film fraternity could hail this man , a hero of nation Mr.Milkha Singh (a) Flying Sikh. Movie had 3hr run-time but never one minute felt that time passing by , such a pleasant and beautiful movie it is. Farhan Akhtar was really dazzling with his performance in this movie , what a justification he did to his role , just amazing. Especially the last 30min he really toned down his body so much for this movie to show his hard training exercise, a rigid workout towards his runs , that's how committed he was to this film. I am sure the real Milkha Singh himself would have been proud of Farhan performance for portraying his character. And special mention to the damn inspiring BGM and every time Milkha runs , our heart stops but with only thing going on is the BGM on our ears giving goosebumps all over. Some shots were perfectly captured and was visually stunning.Hats off to



Director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra for coming forward to choose these biographical subjects as there are so many national hero's whose name just faded in time unnoticed and it becomes one of responsibility of film makers to bring them to light. Bhaag Milka Bhaag is one of finest Inspirational Sports film in recent times and these are movies which are never to be missed.


( Milkha Singh recap intro : wiki )
** Not many go to wiki or internet and check , but i take the pain of adding it here so we spend 2 min time to just know more about this hero.

The Flying Sikh, is a former Indian track and field sprinter who was introduced to the sport while serving in the Indian Army. As of 2013, he is the only Indian male athlete to win an individual athletics gold medal at a Commonwealth Games. He represented India in the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome and the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. He was awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian honour, in recognition of his sporting achievements.




Milkha Singh had been promoted from the rank of sepoy to junior commissioned officer in recognition of his successes in the 1958 Asian Games. He subsequently became Director of Sports in the Punjab Ministry of Education, from which post he had retired by 1998. Singh had been awarded the Padma Shri following his success in 1958. In 2001, he turned down an offer of the Arjuna Award from the Indian government, arguing that it was intended to recognize young sportspeople and not those such as him. He also thought that the Award was being inappropriately given to people who had little notable involvement as active sports people at all. He said that "I have been clubbed with sportspersons who are nowhere near the level that I had achieved" and that the award had become devalued . All of Singh's medals have been donated to the nation. They were displayed at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi but later moved to a sports museum in Patiala,where a pair of running shoes that he wore in Rome are also displayed. In 2012, he donated the Adidas shoes that he had worn in the 1960 400m final to a charity auction organized by Rahul Bose, the actor.


 
Singh and his daughter, Sonia Sanwalka, co-wrote his autobiography, titled The Race of My Life. The book inspired Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, a 2013 biographical film of Singh's life. Singh sold the movie rights for one rupee but inserted a clause stating that a share of the profits would be given to the Milkha Singh Charitable Trust. The Trust was founded in 2003 with the aim of assisting poor and needy sportspeople

BHAI ( 2013 ) : " History doesn't teach him anything "

If you put every piece from a fruit basket and make it a mixed juice , the end product would be BHAI . Director  Veerabhadram Chowdary tried to make this blend but the proportion was not right and it horribly went wrong. And coming to our King Akkineni Nagarjuna as Bhai yaa one more time as DON with suits and boots , doesnt really get it well. A good actor is one who learns from mistake but after so many flops from ragada , King , Kedi , Don , Damarukam , Greeku veerudu and Boss, still he had not learnt anything from history. His body language was good but his too much overdose of punch dialogues were horrible and same old stunts we irritating to watch. Once side the script is nothing new as so many movies have came with the same story still we felt it could give us some treat but unfortunately nothing short of getting a headache. Adding to that is this DSP music with Drums and beats only , even for sentiment emotional scenes or romantic song , he tries drums and folks. Horrible it is....looks like he doesnt know anything else. I believe even our Drums sivamani can be best in this and can easily replace DSP , Such a headache it is..and adding to this every 10 minutes there is one song placed forcefully. Cant describe the pain sitting through this. We know nagarjuna can fit to a Don character but doesnt mean he has to do only that always and if he does , then better be the script and other departments support him. In this phase he will soon be out of the industry. Tamil actor Prasanna did his debut in Tollywood through this movie ,though he came in as a encounter specialist , no later he becomes a comedy police. And as usual there is a recent trend of using Comedy king Brammanandham in every movie and this movie is not even immune to it. He comes in at second half tries to give us some laugh to audience who are already tired and half dead. His magic didnot work in this film because those comedy tracks doesnt really suit with one side torture of constant songs placed everywhere. Richa Gangopadhyay was cool flling in as heroin but too much of everything is waste . Boring to the core and her presence in this film is only for filling up Songs with Nagarjuna. Overall one of worst movie again from Our tollywood King and every penny wasted. I doubt if its worth watching in theater unless if u are couples wanting to go to a empty theater filling up corner seat. I would rate 1/5 and that too for Nagarjuna only.

Idharkuthane Aasaipattai Balakumara ( 2013 ) IDAB :-
The decision was too late to watch this movie on a big screen but after i did , now i feel that this is not really a must watch movie to be watched in first week of its release. The trend of our film making continuous with these  kind of movies in name of Comedy genre with humor plot which disappoints me totally. May be its just the impact of going through so many movies of this type past four months in same plot but its really too much to take. Movie is nothing more of plot surrounding a life of five people surrounding TASMAC and how these parallel characters cross each other in their life makes the core story. If it was not for vijay sethupathi , this movie would have hardly passed a week in theaters. But i must admit that Vijay sethupathi acting as Sumar Munji kumar was one hell of a performance and his body language , dialogue delivery were just stunning and makes us laugh out our heart wherever he fills in this movie especially when he says Kumuda Happy annachi .He just proved that he can really take any kind of challenging roles and it was all VS fare throughout. But that said other characters also justified their presence. But the weak storyline or say a very very normal script disappointed me to a extreme. Songs were good but if we have to just enjoy a movie just for fun with no logic or no expectation IDAB might fill-in but for others. A very normal movie compared to other vijay sethupathi movies and it didnt impress me much. Watch it for VS else safely skip it.

My rating : 2/5

Escape Plan ( 2013 ) - " Viewers couldnt escape from the Boredom "

As we almost know from the trailer what the plot going to be for this film , but just by the heavy guns on the film  Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger we all are very much pumped up to see this film on silver screen. Movie starts very firmly with a good show-up of SS as a Escape artist who can breakout from any Highly secured locked down prison. Its about how he gets trapped into a highly sophisticated prison like in Korean movie Old boy where people can pay private contractors who can kidnap , keep someone as prisoners for years or as how long they need and how he gets out from there with help of his prisoner inmate Arnold forms rest of the story. But with that high level of expectation we had , this movie was not really upto the mark , visuals were very normal so many loopholes untied ends and logic skips and was really not up-to the mark like his previous Prison movie "LOCKUP". Phase of the movie is good but the storyline was not strong enough and couldn't justify viewers at many places. Nothing much to say about it but if you like both these Big star movies then you might like this movie else this is just another normal movie to watch.

My rating : 2..5/5 . 

One of powerful haunting and disturbing movie i have seen in recent times. Movie is about couples Steve and Alexandra and how their life turns upside down in just one birthday eve. Steve is a successful businessman a home security consultant survived by his wife Alexandra and two cute children. Movie starts fine just like any other family drama but there comes a sudden twist when Steve returns home in evening on his birthday only to find that his entire house is locked down with no exit out from the house. He starts to realize that Alexandra had planned everything to lock him down and make him watch a recording of her own in TV. At first its starts with birthday wishes from her and from his children but no sooner things take a wild twist only for Steve to realize how unhappy Alexandra was with her married life and how much she was tortured and broken every-time when he was with her as if she felt like living dead. She tries to prove how pervert Steve was and how she felt every-time he came to her and so goes the story with finally Alexandra n children leave him totally orphaned by erasing every glimpse of their memories hurting him eternally high.

The movie is adults only as most part of the movie is filled with explicit content. Though the intention of it is too prove the intensity of the script and to depict the huge pain Alexandra went through , but yet at times it could make us feel uncomfortable. But definitely this is one hell of a unique script and a rare movie i seen before and sure was really engaging till the last reel. Might be this movie intend to send a strong message to larger audience , still something definitely makes us uncomfortable here. But the technical aspects , screenplay and making was just awesome and is definitely falls under my best thriller collection . No harm giving it a try and will be worthy.

Frozen Grounds ( 2013 )

One hell of a Investigation crime thriller , i never thought this could be that interesting and engaging. Based on True events about Serial Killer Robert Hansen at Alaska and How he was locked down with many trials of investigation is the story...John Cusack as Robert Hansen fit the role perfectly and did his best and never to miss mention Nicholas Cage with his stunning acting as a State trooper and investigation officer designated for this serial crime. Just really felt sorry for the victims at end of the film as more than 30 plus victims were brutally killed and 70 plus victims were raped and tortured. Till now , no one new the real motto behind his kills but they way he was depicted in the movie sends chills to our spine as in were were in Frozen grounds of Alaska. We cant expect too much of a dramatic finishes as its based on true story but yaa director Scott Walker did his best to cover as much details as possible in the short run of this movie..I would say not to miss this movie and this is sure worth a watchable thriller on recent times based on a serial killer.

More on Robert Hensen Real story: http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/weird/robert_hansen/

Utube Documentary : www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KC9wMVDkOg

Real Face of Robert Hansen ( Serial Killer )