Tuesday, 11 April 2017

UTurn of Film making down south








The film making has taken big UTurn down south at least. Few notables (which I have covered so far) in this category are Lucia & UTurn from Kannda; Kaka Muttai, Visarane & Joker from Tamil; Pelli Choopulu, Yevade Subramaniam, Kshanam & Manamantha from Telugu and Drishyam almost all box offices.

Each one is a gem in itself and changed the way of film making down south making way for fresh talent and forcing established ones to mend ways of commercial image & cinema. Tamil and Kannada industries are known for experimenting quite often, I am excited to see the wave change in Telugu industry where Ram Charan took Dhruva route taking a back seat for making space for story and antagonist, hero & heroine met and lived happily ever after was not the case in Jr. NTR’s Janata Garage and Nag limited himself to wheelchair for 2.38 hours as quadriplegic with support of Karthi (this role was turned down by Jr NTR) in Oopiri, a French adaption of ‘The Untouchables”. Item & hero intro songs are not mandatory, separate comedy track is no more compulsory at least for now in most of the Telugu movies.

The stories of these film makers behind making these off beat movies are equally fascinating.
Pawan Kumar (Lucia & UTurn) pulled off Lucia on first ever Kannada crowd funding. UTurn was made on a real story of where a guy jumps off 13th floor and emerges unhurt because his dead wife saves him after her death (with daughter) in an road accident on Bangalore road owing to common mistake people make to move road blocks.

Rakshit Shetty of Ulidavaru Kandanthe fame (English translation, As seen by others) who admits that he used to work on his theatre/film projects during his office hours, as he always managed to find couple of leisure hours during 9-5 window, honest confession, is isn’t it? This movie makes you to form your own climax basis different perspective of 4 characters you travel with during the film and leaves you unanswered of your own questions

Chandra Sekhar Yeleti worked on his Manamantha project for good 3 years especially on tightening the screenplay (must be record time for a Telugu director) to make a compelling climax at the airport and struggled to find artists with no Telugu commercial film baggage to make this story realistic.

Manikandan’s outstanding debut is all about aspiring story of two kids to taste Pizza at the newly opened hut in the slum grounds, where they used to play and steal eggs (their main source of protein) from crow nests on the only tree, which is now cut down. Manikandan says, why we judge people by appearance and colour, even we don’t spare animals & birds. Interesting timing here to match idiotic comments of Tarun Vijay racism row: ‘We’ve south India... we live with black people’. Always admire the beauty of parrot but now crow….that makes the title “Kaka Muttai” (Crow Eggs), finally crow gets its glamorous filmy touch and film won National award for Best Children’s Film of 2015.

Why should the parrots & white have all the Glory?

The story boards of these movies leaves me to recite a poem of great Telugu poet Sri Sri (Srirangam Srinivasa Rao)


Kaadedi kavitakanarham kukkapilla, sabbu billa, aggi pulla (Nothing is inappropriate for a poem - a puppy, a bar of soap or a matchstick)....


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