Raavan (2010)

Trailer 1 Alice in Wonderland: For a second, I thought that I had entered into the past only to realize that this movie is yet to be released in Hyderabad. By the way, Alice in Wonderland was the 1st post in this blog.

Trailer 2 The Last Airbender: Manoj N Shyamalan (Sixth Sense fame) was once considered to be the most gifted story teller of his generation. That appears to be a distant past now. The Last Airbender is his latest movie. The trailer showed some great visual effects. But I'm not very impressed with it as a whole. Considering his recent track record this is a very important movie for him.

Coming to Raavan, from the trailer and the general talk, you might have guessed the basic premise. Raavan (Abhishek Bacchhan) kidnaps Sita (Aish). Ram (Vikram), with the help of Hanuman (Govinda) tries to get Sita back and kill Raavan. Ofcourse, the motivation for Raavan's abduction of Sita is the insult of Surpanaka (Priyamani). What if this basic premise constitutes the entire movie with nothing else? The movie is going to suck & that is what Raavan is. What makes the original Ramayan interesting is the many many interesting characters and subplots without which even it would be uninteresting. This is where Raavan fails.

Vedam (2010)

In 2 months time, Allu Arjun gave one of the worst movies and one of the best movies of this decade in Tollywood.

Vedam has 5 independent stories in it which are taking place parallelly, and the characters of all the stories converge at the big climax. In my limited memory, I can't remember such a movie being made prior in Tollywood. This could be a risky subject but director Krish (Gamyam fame) pulled it off with great aplomb. I won't brief about the 5 stories but they are very different from each other and there is believability to each one of them although in various degrees.

If an award for the best performance by an ensemble cast in Tollywood is introduced next year, Vedam would be the leading contender. Nobody in the movie messed up there roles. Allu Arjun is an excellent fit in the role of Cable Raju. His performance & emotions at the end where he has a change of heart is the best that he had done until now. After the movie Arundhati, Anushka has become a clear crowd favourite. The whistles and shouts during her introduction scene were only matched by the entrance of Arjun. Anushka has nailed the role of Saroja going from funny to angry to angst with ease. She definitely is one of the best actresses in Tollywood right now. This is my first Manchu Manoj movie. He was an apt choice to play the music loving wannabe rock-star Vivek. Manoj is not only a better actor than his brother Vishnu but he is also choosing his scripts wisely. He created a good first impression on me. I haven't seen Manoj Bajpai fail as an actor and the same goes here. He gives good performance as the victimised Muslim Raheemuddin Qureishi. Nagayya as a poor weaver and Saranya as his daughter-in-law gave some honest & sincere performances as the exploited rural people who wants to educate the boy in their family.