Pittagoda Podcast: S01E01

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Winner (Telugu) Movie Review

Khaidi and Shatakarni – Quick Thoughts

This is not a review. There is no point writing reviews for these two movies because you know you are gonna watch them anyway.(Plus Ravi has reviewed Shatakarni here already). This post is just a few stray thoughts that sprung to my mind while watching these movies.

And of course, spoilers galore – especially for Gautamiputra Shatakarni. You have been warned.

Naannaku Prematho: Sukumar’s Almost There

The overwhelming feeling after watching Sukumar’s last movie Nenokkadine was that of frustration. Frustration that he was brave enough to forego a big bang climax fight and settle for Hero sitting and pleading with the villain, yet felt compelled to include an “item” song in a pub in London; Brave enough to make his Hero cry for love of his parents, yet couldn’t escape shoehorning an unconvincing romance into it. Nenokkadine was a movie that wanted to be intelligent yet didn’t dare enough. When the movie failed spectacularly, I half expected him to do a safe venture this time. But Sukumar surprised by sticking to his guns yet again. But did he dare enough this time?

Yes, and no.

ఏ దేశ చరిత్ర చూసినా… : Thoughts on ‘Kanche’

The truth is obvious to anyone who even skims through the pages of history; the story of humankind is the story of fences we built among ourselves. Right from the time we were hunter-gatherers to the time we became space explorers, we have become adept at giving fancy names to these fences and even come to revel in them. Tribe, nation, religion, ideology, race, caste – the markers of our identity also became the markers of the invisible(and sometimes very much visible) boundaries. No place on earth, no civilization is exempt from this. This universal truth is what Krish tried to explore in his latest directorial venture ‘Kanche’.

Paradesi – A Review

1997.

What that year meant to school students exposed to endless essay-writing and elocution competitions on “50 years of Indian independence”, is an entirely different story. For movie-goers, this was a time when HAHK and DDLJ had already taken Hindi audiences by storm a year or two ago. Love stories had younger, more urbane couples. Pardes was the latest rage. The NRI angle was a great avenue for unconventional romance, and even patriotism. People were fiercely nationalistic and wanted to talk about Indian culture being superior to the West and all that.

Our very own east-meets-west showpiece Padamati Sandhya Ragam was ages ago. A more contemporary version was yet to be made.

In 1998, hit filmmaker, “aesthetic” female-navel-and-boob-depiction specialist, part-time pottery patron and horticulturist Raghavendra Rao (known in some movie-goer circles as “Pandu” Raghu) decided to do something about it.