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November 27 was the fifth anniversary of the release date of Arya 2, so (actually quite coincidentally) it was a great day for an epic, over 5 hours long Arya marathon! Both films, Arya and Arya 2, are directed by Sukumar and starred by Allu Arjun as the main character Arya.

First time is saw Arya 2 sometime during the winter 2010–2011. After Magadheera, it was the second Telugu film that I’ve ever seen, and I’ve loved the Telugu film industry ever since I saw the opening credits absurdly announcing Allu Arjun as the “Stylish Star”.

The movie marathon was also the perfect reason to finally rewatch the original Arya. It was better than I remembered but still not as good as Arya 2. The songs are actually quite good and it was fun to notice that Allu Arjun does some dance moves that were familiar to me from Arya 2. Arya is quite creepy in this movie and I’m not entirely sure why Geetha (Anuradha Mehta) ends up loving him. In fact, she eventually tells that she has loved him throughout the whole movie, which by the way wasn’t very obvious. (But I think that unrealistic loving is a problem with many other movies as well.) Also, Ajay (Siva Balaji) and Subbu (Subbaraju) are quite one-dimensional unlike the corresponding characters in the sequel. However, I think overall Arya is a very nice movie and I will probably watch it again some day. I might also try to find the remake versions in Tamil and Bengali.

arya

Arya 2 is probably one of my favorite movies as the crazy, endless plot twists cause such an indescribable amount of strong emotions (well, mostly anger). Now that I’ve seen the movie about seven times, I think I’m finally able to watch it without losing track of the storyline too much (even during the complicated hostage triangle sequence).

While Arya is quite creepy already in Arya, in Arya 2 his creepiness level grows much higher than any other character’s in any other movie that I have ever seen. I’m not sure when exactly Geetha (Kajal Agarwal) falls in love with him in Arya 2, but she clearly doesn’t love him straight from the beginning like in Arya. I think Arya really doesn’t deserve to be loved by her – in my opinion, Shanti (Shraddha Das) would have been the perfect match for him. It’s sad that the movie doesn’t reveal what happens to Shanti afterwards. I hope she can find another Mr. Perfect who understands her feelings better than Arya.

In Arya, the other main role character, Ajay, is just like an ordinary bad guy, but in Arya 2, now played by Navdeep, he is much more complicated. He may not be the nicest guy in the world, but should I still feel bad for him because Arya ruins his life?

Dasavatharam is more tolerable than Brahmanandam’s characters on average, which is good because his role in this movie is longer than the average Brahmi role. The movie also has one of my favourite supporting role actors, Ajay, as Subbi. This particular role might be the reason why I like him more than most of the other regular supporting actors in Telugu cinema.

An almost relevant footnote: My friend thinks that Siddharth is hotter than Allu Arjun. I made a little online poll to find out which one of us is right.

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Before I forget, I’ll post here my entry to the Kochadaiiyaan Fan Art Contest that was held on Facebook last May. It was a simple recreation of the movie poster with Lego bricks and a little Photoshopping. (If you don’t know the original poster, check it out here.) Unfortunately I didn’t win, but the image was featured in Kochadaiiyaan’s official gallery page on Facebook. (However, I did win in another contest but Eros Now never sent me the prize…)

kochadaiiyaan

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Many of the South Indian cinema fans probably already know S. S. Rajamouli’s Magadheera (2009) which was one of the most successful Telugu movies ever and maybe the best one I have ever seen. There has been much talk about a possible Hindi remake of the movie but nothing concrete has happened. So, it was very exciting news when a Bengali remake Yoddha — The Warrior was announced. The director of the film is Raj Chakraborty and I think the main role actors are going to be Dev, Mimi Chakraborty and Nigel Akkara.

I have never seen a Bengali movie before but because Magadheera is one of my favourite stories, I probably have to go on a little expedition to the world of East Indian cinema. The Bengali film industry has already remade Rajamouli’s Maryada Ramanna but I haven’t seen the remake (yet?) so I don’t have very good idea of what kind of remakes the Bengali industry tends to make. I’m not sure if it even makes any sense to try to remake Magadheera as it’s so beautifully perfect as it is that it would be very easy to just completely ruin the story. Even more frightening is that the director Raj Chakraborty says that they are making Yoddha within just 75 days and with less than a quarter of the budget of Rajamouli’s original version.

Now they have released the first look poster of Yoddha and this is how it looks:

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While Dev is not as handsome as Ram Charan, the poster itself is far more better-looking than any Magadheera poster that I’ve seen, so all hope may not be lost just yet!

They also released the theatrical trailer!

The trailer is not really that terrible either. It looks almost like a shot-for-shot remake with same camera angles than in the original, but there are some interesting changes too: for example, it seems that the horse riding contest will be on a narrow mountain road instead of the vast desert. I wonder if they are making completely new songs or using the original ones translated into Bengali…?

I don’t know the names of the Hindu festivals very well, but If I googled correctly, I think they are planning to release the film already in this autumn. (Heh, it feels so quick after waiting for Kochadaiiyaan and Baahubali for so many years.)

Yoddha’s official Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/yoddhathewarrior

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I recently purchased the “premium pack” edition of A. R. Rahman’s awesomely epic Kochadaiiyaan soundtrack album from Amazon. Their description of the product is only the following:

Fully Boxed and Sealed Original Tamil Audio CD Premium PACK Contains the Following. 1 Audio CD OF KOCHADAIIYAAN 2. MP3 Hits of A.R.Rahman. 3. Kochadiyaan T- SHIRT

They do not tell anything about the shirt or what are “Hits of A.R. Rahman,” so I decided to find out as it wasn’t too much more expensive than the T-shirtless edition of the soundtrack. Previously I had seen pictures only of this shirt which would have been nice, but unfortunately this was a simpler one. As the official product descriptions are quite poor, I photographed the contents of the package for the case that someone else is wondering which edition would be the most appropriate to buy.

Everything was in a box that got little crumpled in the mail.

The CDs are packed in a case that is the same size than most of the South Indian DVD cases.

The soundtrack and “Hits of A.R. Rahman” are on separate CDs.

The shirt is just a common white T-shirt with black text “Superstar Rajinikanth / Kochadaiiyaan / The Legend.” No wonder it wasn’t very expensive. The shirt’s size is M so it is a little too small for me, but as the graphics are so simple, it might be easy enough to print the same text on a larger white shirt.

There is also a Tamil advertisement of Thor 2 and some other Hollywood movies.

“Hits of A.R. Rahman” includes the following 30 songs. I hadn’t heard about any of them before. They seem to be from Tamil films of 2000s and 2010s but nothing from Sivaji or Enthiran.

  1. Innum Konjam Naeram
  2. Moongil Thottam
  3. Naetru Aval Irundhal
  4. Nenjukkule
  5. Unnaal Unnaal
  6. Yenga Pona Raasa
  7. Oliyaaga Vandhaai
  8. Nenjae Yezhu
  9. Hosanna
  10. Adiye
  11. Omana Penne
  12. Usure pogudhey
  13. Parakka Seivaai
  14. Mannipaaya
  15. Marudaani
  16. Aaruyirae
  17. Nenjam Ellam
  18. Sonnalum
  19. Sandai Kozhi
  20. Nanare
  21. Hey Goodbye Nanba
  22. Veera
  23. Mayya Mayya
  24. Yaakkai Thiri
  25. Taxi Taxi
  26. Kannukkul Kannai
  27. Ambikapathy
  28. Sonapareeya
  29. Elay Keechan
  30. Kadal Raasa Naan

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Baahubali Valentines Day Contest

After the epic masterpieces Magadheera (2009) and Eega (2012), S. S. Rajamouli’s Baahubali is definitely the most awaited movie of 2015. This February the Baahubali team organized a Valentine’s Day Contest. The subject of the contest was a proposal to one of the main actors in the film (Prabhas, Anushka, Rana). The contest was announced on 11 February and the deadline was already on the 14th so there was quite a small amount of time to design and make the proposal.

My idea was to make a Lego brick animation using some of the characteristic scenes in South Indian cinema. Unfortunately I’m mainly a Castle Lego collector so I didn’t have the necessary cars to do the crazy car choreography for the arrival of the bad guys.

So, my entry to the contest was Brick Valentine, a 42 seconds long Lego brick action movie. It was the first Lego animation that I managed to complete. It was also a chance to finally learn to use a video editing software better. This time I used VSDC Free Video Editor. I’m quite satisfied with the final outcome when the short production time is taken into account. Of course there are still some things that could be improved (voice actors would have been nice) and I would have liked to make it longer, but because of the deadline I managed to finish the project even if it wasn’t perfect.

The City