Reincarnation:New formula of Tollywood
Reincarnation is a fascinating concept,it is a subject which can intrigue everyone.Indian films had their share on Reincarnation like KARZ,Om Shanti Om,Karzzzz etc… recently TOLLYWOOD has witnessed two films on Reincarnation which are breaking all records in terms of Box-Office collections and are being termed as the greatest films made in Telugu Cinema but i would like to differ.Magadheera and Arundathi have some things in common like reincarnation,aghora’s,blood,VFX and DUMBNESS.
Shyam Prasad Reddy who made Ammoru and Anji( Won National Film Award for Best Special Effects) makes a female oriented reincarnation tale Arundathi.Sonu Sood plays the role of Aghora.Resul Pookutty said “When it comes to sound,our filmmakers decide what is enough for our audience” but what we hear in Arundathi is the unbearable sound which is much above 100dB,every silly angle,moments,dialogues in the film is attached with sounds which made my eardrum a victim of poor gimmicks.
Plagiarism is not seen as a crime in our country but when it comes to films our filmmakers they see it as a birth right 
.The Drum Dance sequence is directly lifted from “House of Flying Daggers” in which Ziyi Zhang pretends as a blind girl but here the dance teacher is a blind girl.
Why even the dance teacher is ‘Arundathi’ is blind?
What is the problem if the dance teacher is not visually challenged?
The simple answer is that to create sympathy towards the dance teacher and to infuse deep animosity against Pasupathi (Sonu Sood) because he would be raping the dance teacher in the next scene.
Who is an Aghora? If Pasupathi can reincarnate how can he be called a aghora? Its very obvious that the producer and director were amused by the look and talk of an aghora but were never interested to know about a real aghora. Bala’s Naan Kadavul (Nenu Devudni) portrays the aghora in the most frightening way,it gives a slight hint to a normal viewer what an aghora is and what he actually stands for.
The plot of Arundathi is a perfect example of ambiguity and inability.After the completion of an action scene the film has to proceed forward with a frightening scene as there is nothing much in the plot and to create a frightening scene the director has a very simple trick called SOUND ..sorry its called NOISE and we have to prepare our ears for nonsensical background music which tear your ears for no reason.
Just for the sake of reincarnation Jejjamma sacrifices her life(By breaking coconuts on her head 
).
The film has to end at a conflicting point,and how to get a conflicting point?
–By creating an unnecessary logic i.e surrender herself to Pasupathi.
Why does Arundathi surrender to Pasupathi?
–To prevent the death of her family members.
Jejjamma’s marriage is never shown,we don’t see her husband but she has kids. 
The loopholes in the script are naked but still some call this film as one of the greatest film in Telugu Cinema.
A producer asks the director to create a Magnum Opus for his nephew (Why not with his son?
) and the director creates a film which is being called as Magnum Opus by many for reasons which i don’t know.Allu Arvind pockets were stuffed with money after the success of GHAJINI and now they are overflowing because of the unprecedented response for his latest film MAGADHEERA. The creator of this so called magnum opus is S.S.Rajamouli who has never seen a commercial flop in his directorial career.
I will remember S.S.Rajamouli for a peculiar reason which is for turning the careers of all the heroes of his films into an insecure mode, all the heroes in the films are strong patriarchal characters, he created Jr N.T.R in ‘Simhadri’, Prabhas in ‘Chatrapathi’, Nitin in ‘Sye’ and now Ram Charan Tej in ‘Magadheera’ , the characters which Rajamouli created are so threatening that the heroes cannot stand up to it in their upcoming films.
MAGADHEERA is probably the highest budget film of Tollywood,its a love story with the twist of reincarnation.The titles of the film are presented with a wonderful background storyboards and a small flashback scene,it gives a sense of what the story might be.The film starts with a bike stunt which looks good,now here comes the song ‘Bangaru Kodipetta’ (The Golden Hen 
) which is the remix from Chiranjeevi’s ‘Gharana Mogudu’.
We copy action,drama,emotion,graphics etc.. from Hollywood films but why don’t we copy the cameo sequences from them? Chiranjeevi garu introduction is good,he looks good in a welding cap but after that he says all the crap which can be said, i really don’t understand why the heck do we need this crap? dont we know how he danced for the ‘Bangaru Kodipetta’ song choreographed by Prabhu Deva? For what good reason this shit is thrown at us?
The first half of the film is almost unbearable 
,i just wanted to come out of the multiplex and do some shopping, the hero is behind heroine,the heroine is behind hero and the villain is behind the heroine and after some time he is behind the hero too 
and after some gap the hero behind the heroine and villain.The hero,heroine,the villain and Solomon(Sher Khan) are the reincarnated souls and the reason behind the reincarnation is shown in the flashback(most of the second half).Actually the villain is a funny guy,he even kills his father for no reason and don’t forget all the villains of Rajamouli films have a bad eye towards women 
,we have seen this type of idiosyncrasies of rajamouli in his previous films and he will use them in the future for sure even though they don’t bear any common sense.The scenes are artificially stitched together to make some plot which can be connected to the second half, the heroine and hero are busy with their song in Golconda and god knows why heroine’s father comes to Golconda where he finds his daughter romancing with the hero and blah blah blah… The first half of the film is pure JUNK.
The second half of the film is the only saving grace of Magadheera, it crafts a different episode in the history of Telugu Cinema.S.S.Rajamouli does have some amount of touch with technology,he makes us feel that we are in the kingdom of Udaighad,the horse riding scene does have its impact on the audience,the salt desert which he uses it repeatedly is wonderfully captured in the camera by ‘Senthil Kumar’ ,
he flirts with the colors,the film did get a lot of DI but apart from that the way he captures every scene is admirable.The art work has to be mentioned because of the impact it has on the audience,the gigantic statue of Lord Shiva,the sets of Udaighad are the most lavish ones which the telugu audience have ever seen. 
The last fight sequence in which he kills 100 soldiers of Sher Khan is the best of the film ( inspired from 300).The end of the flashback and the end of entertainment.Now,rajamouli is back to his cheap tactics like Item Song,fights,melodrama etc… and an embarrassing Helicopter and Tata Sumo scene.
Magadheera and Arundathi are two wasted endeavors which will be seen in Telugu film history as half baked cakes.They are made with some honesty and with lot of hypocrisy which can never stand the test of time.Unconsciously telugu audience are addicted to mediocrity and if anything which is just above mediocre is seen as a masterpiece.We do need movies like Magadheera and Arundathi but with some genuineness and frank commitment. Magadheera and Arundathi are films which rely hugely on technology but the VFX effects have the upper hand rather than the script.The Reincarnation is a new found formula which will stay for some time in the industry.
Aamir Khan wants to make Mahabharatha,Salman Khan wants to make Ramayana and others are interested in making similar kind of films but why do you want to make this type of films?
Tags: aghora, Arundathi, Magadheera, Rajamouli, Ram Charan Tej, Reincarnation, tollywood
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
“Reincarnation : New formula of Tollywood”
Really? How many other reincarnation stories you know are being made in Telugu – besides the two duds which were discussed in the post, that is?
@WB
A Hunch which might be true
…or not! would’ve gladly agreed with you, if you’d explicitly clarified that it’s the halfbaked & unnecessary CGI (prasadefx, pixelloid, redchillies, et al.) and wirework (allan amin, almost always) which’s the new fad – which is what your post more or less implies, albeit in a left handed way.
Well though I would not hail Arundhati as a great trendsetter, it certainly did prove a few points.1st of all it proved that after Vijayshanti we can still have a female dominated/oriented movie ( budget of more than 13 crores )which can work across all segments of viewers.secondly I think trends keep changing in cinema and the re-incarnation theme was not shown in such a way before( movies like OSO, Karzzzz etc are just revenge tales ) and also the movie had a thriller angle to it.all in all the movie was entertaining and for the audience it was more than enough.yet to watch Magadheera- will do so @ the first given oppurtunity.but I dont think movies in this genre can be convincingly made so easily.
@wb
Will try to write something on VFX and CGI
very cynical view of the movies projected here,
The fact that these two movies are big hits because people have liked them, telugu masala movies have always been like this..full entertainers..not for people with weak ears and strong intelligence..also reincarnation is not a new formula for telugu industry…it has been tested many times before..the use of new technology is very welcome and adds diferent look..
@hermetic
I agree that i its a cynical view, try to understand why i am cynical even though these films are far better than other films
@hermetic
“not for people with weak ears and strong intelligence”
its the other way dear.
@hermetic
the concept of Reincarnation is used in Nageshwara Rao films too but it wasn’t a formula, what i am saying is.. now it might be the formula
Ok telugu audience do not have tastes and ohh yeah we are mediocre. Gladly taken. Ok lets see some of the hollywood movies releases in recent past and discuss their mediocrity. Transformers 2 was biggest hit of Hollywood. Seriously I did not see anything in that movie. So ppl world wide have mediocre tastes and particularly Americans isnt it? Gi Joe comes from same ppl as Transformers. Another action flick with so naive script. Can u believe they spent $180 million on it?
Terminator Salvation where “Batman” Bale plays John Connor was another big budget dud and it made money. X-men origins no story big budget and made money. Public Enemies was a remake of old hollywood movie. there are so many movies made by hollywood released this year which belong to crap category, made money, and were either remakes of yesteryear movies. Another example Taking of Pelham 123. Stop criticizing for the sake of criticizing.
1.I did not say that Telugu audience are mediocre.
2.Transformers is one of the worst films i have ever seen.
3.I cant understand how does Hollywood come in this discussion..
“Unconsciously telugu audience are addicted to mediocrity and if anything which is just above mediocre is seen as a masterpiece”. Did I understood this in a wrong way????? you should tell me.
Why hollywood is brought into the discussion? because movies made by Indian film makers are being compared by critics like you with Hollywood movies. it seems like Hollywood is the bar. The point is good movies are not being made anywhere. And also you were talking about plagiarism. I was giving examples where Hollywood is copying its own movies. Even its stale there.
“Unconsciously telugu audience are ADDICTED to mediocrity and if anything which is just above mediocre is seen as a masterpiece”.
read the above statement again.
critics like me???
i admired and praised the technology used in the films, i never compared with HOLLYWOOD but u addressed me “critics like me”.
Plagiarism: Read the post again,why i raised the issue of Plagiarism on ARUNDATHI.
I liked these two movies a lot! The same old story of reincarnation but the presentation was top notch! And since when were movies logical??!! It’s all about entertainment.
and no, I’m not addicted to mediocrity. just that i can enjoy excellence all surrounded by mediocrity too!
Make masterpieces like DevD and nobody would watch it.
Neelima…..
The point is not about being logical,every film can be illogical and ridiculous but i am talking about the paths chosen to be illogical… 8-10 years ago people use to accept hero’s with big bellies,but do they accept now?there is a change in how people look at films and hero’s…. (try to understand why i mentioned this)
good to know that you are not addicted to mediocrity, you have every right to enjoy Arundathi and Magadheera,..
“Make masterpieces like DevD and nobody would watch it. ”
–If a filmmaker thinks that he is making a masterpiece then it would never be a masterpiece. Take any masterpiece in India and from World Cinema , filmmakers who create masterpiece don’t think about the audience.
“filmmakers who create masterpiece don’t think about the audience.”
Those are masterpieces for pseudo-intellectuals only.
So how does masterpieces for real-intellectual look like?
There is nothing like intellectual when it comes to film. It is just the matter of taste.
One would watch whatever he feels like watching just as in case of North Indian might like Aloo paratha for breakfast and a South Indian might prefer idli.
Can anyone tell what should be the breakfast for real-intellectual?