IFAC #11: Colourful Southie film picspam

Nuvvostanante Nenoddantana ; Siddharth & Trisha









Muthu ; Rajnikanth & Meena









Konchem Ishtam Konchem Kashtham ; Tamanna









Kaadhal ; Bharath & Sandhya












Iruvar ; Aishwarya Rai

Indra ; Sonali Bendre & Chiranjeevi

Dhool ; Vikram & Jothika

Arul ; Vikram & Jothika

Anniyan ; Sada

Aata ; Ileana

A small guide to family counselling: Konchem Ishtam Konchem Kashtam.

Because the title of this Telugu family entertainer I believe translates something along the lines of "Sometimes sweet, sometimes difficult", one can't help but think of Karan Johar's Kabhie Khushi Kabhie Gham. It is indeed all about loving your parents, but instead of overwrought melodrama with a cold, almost cruel patriarch who values his pride over anything, Konchem Ishtam Konchem Kashtam diffuses some realism into its otherwise fluffy family values. The fact is that family life is more than singing songs on happy occasions and even if the love is there, sometimes people do the wrong things, say the wrong things and despite the love being there, split up.

Not surprisingly, the latest Siddharth-starrer in Telugu, directed by Kishore Kumar (um, not that Kishore Kumar) is a romantic entertainer of great quality.

The newcomer Tamanna plays Geeta, a smalltown girl who comes to Hyderabad for college and runs into Siddhu (Siddharth). She is unimpressed with him to begin with, and it's really no wonder. He's a seemingly incurable flirt, going from girl to girl like a hyperactive bee of sorts. But hanging out with him and their mutual friends, she begins to see another side of him. As it happens, the poor boy is from a broken home, and is actually very sweet despite his flirty ways.

They become friends, and then much more, but just as they're to have their first date, Geeta's father arrives and takes her back home. Siddhu, having seen DDLJ enough times, goes to Geeta, but her father (surprise!) disapproves of the match and asks Siddhu, "If your family is broken, how am I to believe you can keep my daughter and your family with her together?".

Now, instead of arguing about the logic of the statement, Siddhu and Geeta are faced with the task of getting Siddhu's divorced parents back together.

Easier said than done, right?

KIKK is not a perfect movie; it takes a long while to warm up, as Siddhu really does not come off as very likable at first, and the romance develops slowly. Tamanna is a breath of fresh air, though, and for her first role she does an extremely good job of carrying the movie when Siddharth isn't winning the viewer's sympathies at first. Eventually the film finds its pace and becomes a solid entertainer.


Prakash Raj - or as we now call him, Prakash Dad - does a fine job in the film, as always. It's great to see the falling out of the parents, the difficulty of the situation, and how they can't quite bring themselves to just forgive and move on. It feels problematic in the same way situations in real life typically are; there aren't any simple solutions to fix these relationships.

But it's great to watch Siddhu and Geeta try anyway, and run into their own problems, and resolve those. The chemistry is lovely, and it feels like these really are people whose personalities match, instead of just being the cute couple you root for. The way they move from friendship to love feels natural, as well.

The soundtrack is perfect, peppy Shankar-Ehsan-Loy. Fun to watch, fun to listen to - no groundbreaking stuff but solid all the same. Tamanna can dance, as can Siddharth (and boy can he!), so absolutely no complaints there. I foresee myself rewatching these songs a ton.

But speaking of complaints, I (kind of) have one.

Because I was so underwhelmed during the first 40 minutes or so, I can't help but think maybe this "Siddharth + Telugu family entertainer with youthful romance at the center of it" combo is getting too old. Gasp, shock! I know, I didn't think I'd ever find myself thinking it, much less typing it. The thing is, I can't get my Siddharth fix off this movie as well as some of the others, and I don't know what to blame. Is it the script, his character literally being a pastiche of the Siddhu characters we've seen in virtually every film he's been in? Is it the fact he himself is uninspired? Is it the fact Tamanna miraculously outshines him? Is it just the damn silly haircut?

Look, I'm not saying he's bad in this. He's not. And the movie doesn't suffer because of my lack of fangirliness, either. Even if it's in the same vein as Bommarillu, it's actually pretty original.

Of course, there are some absolute duds in the movie - the comedy storylines featuring a father of Geeta's friend and another one featuring Siddhu's friend are just such a waste of celluloid. There are some Southie comedians I suppose I 'get', but I think I can count them with two fingers, and neither of these guys were one of that crowd. On the second watch I'll make sure to fast-forward.

I think what's sometimes more interesting than how I rate these Siddharth-starring family entertainers is how variedly people react to them at large. Some people worship Bommarillu, others feel its a waste of time, others despise Aata and some find it cracktastic. It'll be interesting to see where KIKK falls in people's Siddharth-o-Meter's. I have a feeling it'll make less waves than the others, but will be regarded as a good movie.

For me, I think it'll be decided via rewatches. It's cute enough to be rewatched for sure, but not addictive enough to demand it.

And even with the feelings of slight underwhelment as stated above, Siddharth, in case you're reading, don't stop making these, because I'd rather watch ten more of these than a dull Southie action-focused masala. Trust me.

Let's talk about ..Siddharth!

The first time I looked at pictures of Siddharth (shown to me by stimpy, good friend and my door to South-Indian cinema), I thought to myself, "Eh, cross a puppy and a young Portuguese football player and you get this guy. Sure, whatever."

Fast-forward a month or four, and I watched Rang De Basanti, which I adored. The Portuguese football player/puppy cross guy was in it, too, but I was too busy drying my Madhavan-induced tears to pay attention. Everybody else was kicking up a fuss about him, though, a hype that I brushed off quite quickly. Yeah, so he can act. Whatever.

Again, time went by, and somewhere along the line I started seeing a long, long Telugu film title pop up here and there. During one of my visits to stimpy's wonderful film library, she nudged the very same film into my pile of borrowed titles. Nuvvostanante Nenoddantana, the film was called. "Everybody's been talking about this film," I said with a shrug. "I guess I could see it."

I popped it in with low expectations and was soon presented with ...

In retrospect, this was the watershed event. I know many people, even existing Siddharth fans, found his character Santosh annoyingly hyper - like a kid high on sugar - during the first half of NVNN. Not me. I love all of it. Ostrich pants, random dancing included.

And now, after having seen everything with this guy (and owning all but two of his movies), it's quite embarrassing to admit that what drew me in was not his award-winning serious acting, but rather the young but fantastic all-around entertainer with an eye for good scripts that we see mainly in his four Telugu films (NVNN, Bommarillu, Aata and Chukkallo Chandrudu - in my personal order of preference). On the other hand I could argue that this Siddharth is exactly what Indian cinema overall needs; younger heroes with not only the sufficient acting and dancing skills but also enough charm to genuinely win over audiences, not just ape the older stars that do.

Tragic times have struck us, though. Since the Vishal Bharadwaj AIDS awareness short, Blood Brothers (also starring Ayesha Takia and Pankaj Kapur), Siddharth hasn't been filming anything. His name is connected to a number of things, but nothing official about anything as far as I know.

Regardless, if you find yourself shaking your head reading this post, or any of the exuberant praise that I give this guy in this blog, don't worry, I didn't see it either for a very long time. In fact, I think the real revelation only happened after I saw Bommarillu and realized I couldn't wait to see whatever his next film would be. The film was of course Aata, and you all know how I feel about that film (obsessed is a good word).

This concludes the first post in my self-indulgent opportunity to fangirl stars "Let's talk about ..!" series, where I'll be going over my favourite Indian actors/actresses. Believe me, there are many. ;)

Filmi year 2007.

Aata - my film of the year.

2007 was quite an interesting year in films for me. I felt like there was a dry season between the early months of the year and the final months of it. This meant a large portion of my year was destined to be quite Bollyless (or more correctly, Indian cinema-less). I blame the films I anticipated - Guru and Eklavya were both enormous letdowns, and while I liked the former to buy on DVD and should buy the latter for Saif collection, the combination of unexciting Bollywood and the discovery of something new in East-Asian entertainment made me completely abandon Bollywood for a while.

I did still watch movies - when Siddharth's 2006 hit Bommarillu finally got a DVD release, I rushed to watch it and ended up loving it. But that was on the Telugu side of things, of course, and for months the movie was the only Indian film I saw.

So what drew me back in? Ironically, it wasn't Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, though the film was one of my biggest favourites this year. It wasn't Life in a ..Metro, another 07 movie I saw during this period of unenthusiasm. It wasn't even the Dharmendra starrer oldie I watched, Mera Gaon Mera Desh aka Vinod Khanna Is the Gabbar Singh of Sexy. The movie that drew me back into Bollywood in 2007 was ... drumroll please ..

Ek Hasina Thi!


Quite randomly I decided to show another Indian film to my friend who was coming to town, and had seen select favourites of mine (ranging from Bunty aur Babli to Sholay). I considered my pick, then grabbed EHT and went my way. My friend was critical of the movie, unfairly so in my view, but more importantly, I enjoyed my umpteenth viewing of it. And when I returned home, I sort of sat down and asked myself, "Hey, why did you ever drop out of Bollywood happenings?"

I made a list of recent movies I ought to watch and rushed to see EHT director's new film, Johnny Gaddaar, starring some newbie and Dharmendra. I expected to see a lacking movie, thinking maybe Ek Hasina Thi had been a fluke but what I got was quite something else..

Johnny Gaddaar is deliciously clever, awesomely edited and unpredictable like you wouldn't believe. It's also violent and a tribute to the noir genre, which is also fantastic. A tale of deceit truly done right. You know who betrayed who from the get go, but the way the story is told makes the ride enjoyable. Here's my longer review on Livejournal (slight spoilers in the last half of it).

In 2007 I also made this blog, listed my Top 10 Indian actors and did a massive update to my guide to Bollywood for complete newbies.

My favourites this year, by the way, are the J-films; Jab We Met, Johnny Gaddaar, and Jhoom Barabar Jhoom. The film I fell most in love with, though? Aata all the way.

And as always, the year doesn't feel quite over yet. I've yet to see a bunch of 07 biggies, from Chak De India! to Tara Zameen Par.

Oh well. Maybe this year.

Once more, with feeling - Aata again.

The fact is, I'm sort of obsessed with Aata right now. I occasionally have these spouts of random enthusiasm for a movie, the kind where I rewatch the songs, listen to the soundtrack non-stop, screencap, icon and generally obsess over them. The weird thing here is, I feel like this time the movie deserves my enthusiasm, but it has to be recognized that it's not the best movie, though I'm treating it as that. It's actually kind of trashy in a genuinely not-that-good manner, but I love it for all of its ridiculous aspects. (I think a lot of this obsession can be contributed to timing but that's beside the point, really.)

It's a good movie, just not a great movie. I mean, let's take romance for example. In Aata it's ridiculously filmi to the point where I'm not sure if it even makes much sense. I'm not even sure if there's that much chemistry between the two leads. Their characters aren't exactly amazingly well-written or anything, and there's enough skin show and raunchiness to last a lifetime. But I still adore it, so so much. Maybe 90% of that appeal belongs to Siddharth, maybe I'm too biased to tell the difference anymore.

Another thing about Aata is how incredibly mislead I was by the promotional stills of the movie. Hence this post. I took an insane amount of screencaps and now will post the most representative of them so people may see what Aata is really like. On the other hand I have to recognize that I never looked up all of the promotional pics but the ones I saw seemed to suggest the film as oddly action-y.

Things You Can Expect to See in AATA

1. Siddharth is in lurve.


2. Ileana is not too impressed.


3. They're soaked. Get used to seeing this. A lot of this. All the time. Quite often, for no real reason.


4. Faces really close. You'll be seeing a lot of this, too. Sometimes their faces will even touch. Oh, and they're most likely soaked when doing it.


5. Ileana spends time hanging out in Siddharth's crotch. Didn't I tell you it was kind of trashy? Also, Siddharth in pink. If you're playing the Certified Aata Drinking Game whose rules I will eventually invent, you will have to take two shots now.



6. Guns, guns, and more guns. Also, henchmen dressed in black. Leather. Guns.


7. Siddharth being amazing. Which is basically equivalent to just being himself. Let it be once again noted that this is not a film for non-fans.


8. I want to tell you these sort of scenes serve a purpose in the movie, offering a rich detailry to the core symbolism of the socio-historical manifestation .. well, the point is, they don't. And do you see me minding? Not really.

9. Though I think my biggest complaint about the promotional stills was that they failed to show how wonderfully colourful and beautiful Aata looks most of the time. Also, I think this also showcases why I love Southie picturizations. Sometimes they'll just do the ordinary "dancing on a dusty street" thing, other times they pull sometimes friggin' amazing like this. I love the composition of even the most simple shots, like this:


I think that's it for now, about Aata. Though looking through these, I'm not how representative they are of the film. It's like there are two levels to the movie - clever, fun story and raunchy crowd-pleaser song picturizations. You can't screencap the story so what you get instead is this: the cracked out colourfest songs and other cuteness. Take it for what you will and remember I'm posting about a movie I'm ridiculously in love with right now.

I give it three puppies and a golden star. Aata (2007)

Aata didn't look like a good movie. Actually, let me correct that – Aata didn't look like a good Siddharth movie. See, it has to be said that Siddharth Narayan is just one of those actors who need a scale of their own when it comes to movies. His short filmography (the man only debuted in 2003!) is filled with absolute gems of film making, just all around excellent picks that shows he knows a thing or two about what makes a good script.

So, going into Aata I expected an okay Siddharth movie – the kind of Chukkallo Chandrudu, perhaps even closer to Boys (his first movie is only really worth one watch in my opinion). Nothing of the innovativeness of Bommarillu or the overall brilliantness of Nuvvostanante Nenoddantana. And in a way, what I got was certainly closer to CC than NVNN, but I still friggin' adored Aata.

Siddharth plays Srikrishna, who quite literally grows up on movies. He's illiterate but has learned every hero mannerism, every movie song and line perfectly as his dad's job is a projectioner at a film theatre. The title of the film means 'game', which Srikrishna is more than fond of, and these form the core of the plot – oh, and the love story of him and Sathya (Ileana), a girl he randomly bumps into and in true film hero manner, decides to save as, in true film manner, she is chased by the villain's (Munna) henchmen.

It's a true Siddharth show, not much for those in the audience who do not love, oh I don't know, absolutely everything about him. That's not to say the plot isn't good, but for non-fans the character he plays might be annoying, and overall, well, it might not be worth much seeing as how he's in nearly every frame. The movie is also decidedly ridiculous – if you buy into it, you're in for a great ride, but if you try to get a Bommarillu out of it, it's just not going to work. Some of the ridiculousness feels like a gentle spoof of film conventions, but some is probably just there for the crowd-pleasing masala aspects (gratuitous Ileana skin, gratuitous wet anything scenes – though as a fangirl I am of the opinion that wet Siddharth is always necessary).

The songs are wildly entertaining – and another nod to Siddharth for singing in one of them, and actually doing a good job. The ending, despite the film's otherwise conventional plot structure, is positively surprising. Aata has become my movie du jour, which basically means I have rewatching to do, screencapping to do, and more gushing to participate in once more people see this movie. If you've already joined Church of Siddharth, run to get this one. If not, then make the effort to see Nuvvostanante Nenoddantana. Go!

(At some later point I will ramble about Siddharth in length in this blog. I feel like he deserves a post or 87.)