I haven’t yet wrote anything about my reactions to Baahubali: The Beginning even though I loved it. I will probably write more after I’ve rewatched it again a couple of times when the DVD (or hopefully a Blu-ray) comes out. One of the highlights of the movie is Prabhakar who plays the barbarian chieftain. I happened to find a very nice video interview (with subtitles!) by iNews where Prabhakar tells about his experiences in the film industry. He discusses interesting topics like working with Rajamouli, Maryada Ramanna, Baahubali, some of his other movies, his friends’ reactions to his work, and so on. I was so delighted when I learnt that my to-watch DVD pile contains more than one movie where he has a small role!

If the video is too long, there is also a nice written interview by Idlebrain.com where he tells more or less the same things. Aww, he is so cute!

Prabhakar is also on Facebook and he just got a new fan.

The teaser of the most ever awaited S. S. Rajamouli’s epic Baahubali: The Beginning has been released! Full trailer will release on June 1. Unfortunately the apparently spectacular 1-crore audio launch function was postponed but it too will most probably happen very soon. I hope there will be a YouTube live stream available as it has been quite common thing for the audio release events of big budget Telugu (but for some reason not Tamil) films.

I think I saw some similarities to Rajamouli’s Magadheera. I wonder if Prabhas will defeat more than 100 men.

magabali

The availability of South Indian movie-related merchandise has been almost nonexistent at least online (I’m not sure what the situation is in India). One of my bad habits is that I’m quite a materialist and like to have items that are somehow connected to things like movies or stories that are important to me. Even posters of the southern films seem to be very rare.

Availability of t-shirts hasn’t been much better than of posters. The super-epic Kochadaiiyaan t-shirt was never available. The website of the Japanese official Eega/Makkhi t-shirt wasn’t very foreigner-friendly. And on top of that, while not really an official movie merchandise, the famous pink panda shirt (known from at least Magadheera and Orange) appears to be sold out!

However, now the most awaited movie of 2015, Baahubali, has took the first step to the right direction to fix the problem. Their official shirts and hoodies are sold by an online store called Whoz High and they can be bought at baahubali-whozhigh.com.

baahubali-tee1baahubali-tee2

The collection includes t-shirts as well as some other types of shirts and hoodies. I would like to have also a Baahubali t-shirt but I chose to order only hoodies because I didn’t like the designs of the big horse and the lion that much, and hoodies were [at the time of the order] the only type of clothing that came with Prabhas’ epic logo from the movie’s teaser pictures.

I have no idea about the average price level of Indian clothes but INR 799 didn’t feel too expensive for a hoodie so I ordered one in both colors, “Bombay Black” and “Kasol Blue”. Unfortunately the shipping cost to Finland almost doubled the price but I didn’t let that stop me as this was so unique opportunity. The ordering system at the website doesn’t support international orders at the moment but their website gives instructions how to order by email.

baahubali-hoodies The color difference can be seen only in very bright lighting conditions.

baahubali-hoodie_blackbaahubali-hoodie_blue

I really wanted the blue one because I already have too many black clothes. Unfortunately, in reality the blue hoodie is much darker than in the pictures, so at first I thought I got two black hoodies. The color difference can be only seen in very bright lighting conditions (like in the flashlight of a camera) – in normal lighting they were almost identical. It’s nothing serious, but it would be nice to have more difference in the colors if there are only two colors available. However, I have been very happy with the black one and I’ve used it regularly. I hope it won’t be completely worn out when Baahubali comes into theaters!

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