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She Says She Says: The Women in Chekka Chivantha Vaanam
Copyright ©2018 Film Companion.
Interview: Anand Shankar
October 2, 2018
Anand Shankar, director of NOTA, talks about his learnings as an Assistant Director in Bollywood and in Tamil cinema. (He assisted Siddharth Anand in Anjaana Anjaani, and AR Murugadoss in Thuppakki and 7aum Arivu.) He talks about his sensibility and why his second film (Iru Mugan) was less “Hollywoody” than his first (Arima Nambi). He […]
Interview: Vijay Deverakonda
September 27, 2018
Vijay Deverakonda, the star of NOTA, talks about being called the the biggest star in south Indian cinema. After Pelli Choopulu, Arjun Reddy and Geetha Govindam, he assesses his position, his female fan base, and the perceived change in his attitude and behaviour. He talks about the dynastic system of the Telugu film industry and […]
She Says She Says: The Women in Mani Ratnam’s Cinema
September 26, 2018
Namita is going to be doing a fortnighly, female POV show for us. This is the first episode. Copyright ©2018 Film Companion.
Readers Write In #50: Why the Baahubali movies failed in China
September 24, 2018
Vamsi: Your insight about wrong marketing seems very credible. That’s what i thought was the right takeaway from all that you said. I still don’t think Baahubali 2 had bad special effects, it just didn’t have grand stuff on a scale compared to LoTR or Avengers. I feel it’s about Scale than Quality. Ant-man won’t […]
Every Mani Ratnam film, ranked
September 20, 2018
Read the full article on Film Companion, here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/every-mani-ratnam-film-ranked-baradwaj-rangan/ To call Mani Ratnam a mainstream filmmaker is a bit redundant, because every (primarily) Tamil filmmaker is a mainstream filmmaker: Tamil cinema does not have an “art film” tradition, the way Malayalam or Bengali cinema has. But even within the mainstream, there are two ways to […]
50k subscribers
September 15, 2018
Almost exactly a year ago, we made the decision to branch off into a separate South channel. Today, we’ve crossed the 50,000 subscribers mark. A small milestone. A big thank-you.
“U Turn”… A focused, heroine-oriented mystery that’s mostly engaging
September 14, 2018
Spoilers ahead… Read the full review on Film Companion, here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/u-turn-movie-review/ Pawan Kumar’s U Turn is a remake of his Kannada PSA-disguised-as-a-horror movie, and it contains many… U-turns. Let’s begin with the ostensible leading man, crime reporter Aditya (Rahul Ravindran). He has a thing for Rachana (Samantha), the intern at his office. But she’s the […]
“Care/of Kancharapalem”… A slow-burn romance with a twist that’s not just clever but also deeply moving
September 5, 2018
Spoilers ahead… Read the full review on Film Companion, here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/co-kancharapalem-telugu-movie-review-baradwaj-rangan/ Erich Segal’s Love Story probably defined for all eternity that love means… never having to say you’re sorry. It sounds pretty, and it looks great on a greeting card — but does it really capture the depths of this emotion? I’d rather buy the […]
“Geetha Govindam”… Overlong and over-dramatic, but this entertaining romance more or less works
August 18, 2018
Spoilers ahead… Read the full review on Film Companion, here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/geetha-govindam-telugu-movie-review-baradwaj-rangan An early scene by a bus stop perfectly sets up the protagonist of Geetha Govindam. Vijay (Vijay Deverakonda) is doing one of those stalkery wooing numbers, trying to catch the eye of a pretty woman (Anu Emmanuel). He’s been trying to catch her eye […]
Interview: Pooja Kumar
August 4, 2018
Pooja Kumar, who is in Vishwaroopam II, talks about the experience of acting opposite writer-director and star Kamal Haasan, and how she learnt to look at her character as part of the whole movie. She talks about being from a Hindi-speaking family and learning Tamil, and auditioning for Kamal over Skype. She also speaks about […]
“RX 100.”… A generic angry young man’s generic love story, until a solid twist turns everything on its head
July 20, 2018
Spoilers ahead… Read the full review on Film Companion, here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/rx-100-telugu-movie-review-baradwaj-rangan-kartikeya-payal-rajput-ajay-bhupathi/ Shiva (Karthikeya Gummakonda), the hero of Ajay Bhupathi’s RX 100, is the kind of up-yours, super-macho man we’re seeing a lot, lately, in Telugu cinema. He’s built like a tree trunk — when he spreads his arms wide, he seems to be inviting birds […]
The Prithviraj-Parvathy starrer ‘My Story’ is a meh story
July 12, 2018
Read the full article on Film Companion, here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/prithviraj-parvathy-my-story-movie-southern-lights-baradwaj-rangan/ Plus, thoughts on this unnamed genre, which finds new ways to embadden an already bad movie. There’s a genre of Indian cinema I’ve come to dread. It hasn’t got a name (and truth be told, there haven’t been that many representative films), but it’s basically about […]
Baradwaj Rangan, let’s talk about bias!
June 14, 2018
Read the full article on Film Companion, here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/baradwaj-rangan-kaala-review-critics-mani-ratnam-twitter-conversations-southern-cinema-bias/ Because it’s impossible to have a proper conversation on Twitter, I imagine a chat with critics of my ‘Kaala’ review and argue why form is important and why ‘Mani Ratnam’ isn’t a bad word. There may be spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen ‘Kaala’. So you’re […]
“Kaala”… The second Rajini-Ranjith outing is better than ‘Kabali’, but still an odd fit for both
June 7, 2018
Spoilers ahead… Read the full review on Film Companion, here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/kaala-movie-review-rajinikanth-pa-ranjith-dhanush-huma-qureshi-baradwaj-rangan/ Six years after Mullum Malarum (1978), director Mahendran and star Rajinikanth made Kai Kodukkum Kai, a sensitive drama now remembered mostly for the Ilayaraja beauty, Thazhampoove vaasam veesu. The film bombed. It’s difficult to say why exactly a film fails — it could be […]
Great actress, middling biopic
May 31, 2018
Read the full article on Film Companion, here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/keerthy-suresh-dulquer-salmaan-mahanati-baradwaj-rangan-southern-lights-column/ Thoughts about and around biopics and ‘Mahanati’, starring Keerthy Suresh and Dulquer Salmaan. As a Tamilian – or at least, as someone more familiar with Savitri’s work in Tamil cinema – Nag Ashwin’s Mahanati (Great Actress) felt incomplete. (There is a Tamil version titled Nadigaiyar Thilagam, but […]
“Diya”… An interesting premise that needed better writing, better performances
April 27, 2018
Spoilers ahead… Read the full review on Film Companion, here: http://www.filmcompanion.in/diya-tamil-movie-review-baradwaj-rangan/ Like last week’s Mercury, Diya is not quite the horror film (in the pure, genre sense of the word) it’s been advertised as. As with Mercury, the basis of the premise is a tragedy, and the ensuing events are tinged with the ache of […]
“Bharat Ane Nenu”… Mahesh Babu stars in an entertaining, and at times rousing, political fairy tale
April 23, 2018
Spoilers ahead… Read the full review on Film Companion, here: http://www.filmcompanion.in/bharat-ane-nenu-movie-review-mahesh-babu-baradwaj-rangan/ In Koratala Siva’s Bharat Ane Nenu (I, Bharat), Mahesh Babu plays an overachieving Oxford student — he has five degrees (including a diploma in food science!), and he might have gone on to a sixth (in animal husbandry? Aztec mating rituals?) had he not […]
“Mercury”… Even in his slightest film so far, Karthik Subbaraj proves he’s one of our most exciting writer-directors
April 19, 2018
Spoilers ahead… Read the full review on Film Companion, here: http://www.filmcompanion.in/mercury-movie-review-baradwaj-rangan/ With Karthik Subbaraj, we expect a twist, so here’s one from his new film, Mercury: the title card that dedicates this film to all silent films, from Raja Harischandra to Pushpak. The twist is that Mercury isn’t like any of those earlier silent films. […]
The contentious nature of the National Awards
April 14, 2018
Read the full article on Film Companion, here: http://www.filmcompanion.in/the-contentious-nature-of-the-national-awards-baahubali-village-rockstars-sridevi/ Musings on the country’s most prestigious film awards – and this is not about whether X deserved to win over Y. Another year. Another set of arguments over the National Awards. For instance: Did Sridevi deserve Best Actress? Indeed, under normal circumstances, would her performance in […]
October 3, 2018
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