THE PLIGHT OF TELUGU CINEMA

Phew...! Its quite some time since i've bothered u with my posts. And i came with another one now.


I am in hyderabad now and on a mission to watch as many movies as i can. In the last two days i watched two bolllywood movies- METRO AND SHOOT OUT AT LOKHANDWALA. Thinking about those films made me write this post.


This may sound arrogant but I'm fed up with our telugu movies. Our making standards are really high but what about story and screen play?? For how long we have to watch stupid love stories, faction dramas, scenes where 50 + hero dances with 18- heroine with 100 group dancers, defeats 100 rowdies with single hand, dream songs in stupid foreign locations, the so called out of place item numbers.........

Just think. In this whole year, is there a telugu movie unanimously accepted by audience.
I dont think so... There are some movies commercially faring well but they are just better than the worse ones.Where does the fault lie??

We still believe in formulas. A grand introduction of hero, a solo song, some love scenes, a separate comedy track, some sentiment scenes, a thrilling interval block, powerful flashback episodes, a grand climax fight, a mass song preceeding climax and if possible an item number. Isnt this the so called winning formula?( of course, subjected to slight variations)

Success does not have any formula. The secret lies in talent, hard work and innovation. The plight of our cinema changes only when our writers and directors start believing in story rather than stars, box office formulas and crazy combinations.

Our telugu movies has some funny genres. For example take faction movies. The movie starts with our hero living in some place leading a peaceful life. There will be a heroine who loves him and does all sorts of romantic stuff to attract the audience and to please the audience. Then the grand flashback where the greatness of the hero is revealed. In this flashback there will be another heroine. but this heroine will be sort of family type. She usually dies at the end of flashback or waits for the hero till the climax. End the flash back, comes the climax where hero starts with a sword in his hand and teaches the villian a lesson. One introduction song of hero, two songs each with two heroines and one song with hero and both the heroines. This last song will be usually imagined by a comedian. Just try to count the pictures with this theme. I am sure u will lose it.


Another problem with our heroes is that they lock themselves in a frame called image. Thats not the case with bollywood. The actor like tushar kapoor who acted in full length comedys like kyaa kool hai hum does the role of a gangster in shoot out at lokhandwala. The actor like akshay kumar who is famous for action roles did full length comedy like hera pheri. The most popular hero now in bollywood Abhshek bachan did so many cameos in many films. In shootout, he portrayed a role of a police who dies in first 2 minutes of the movie without even putting up a fight. Can we expect any of these things in telugu cinema. NO!!! The good thing about bollywood is that now there are no fixed artists for roles of heroes and villians. There are no heroes. Only artists.....


One more thing i dont like about our movies is the egos of our stars- the lack of multistarrers.
"I am open to multistarrers but we are looking for a good script" is a common dialogue from every hero. And by good script what they mean is equal weightage to their role if possible more weightage. Can balakrishna play second role in a chiranjeevis movie like salman did in sharukhs kkhh.... NO WAY. Our fans will not be satisfied will be the answer. I cant blame them. The only good thing i can remember is krishna playing Nagarjuna's father in VARASUDU. But he succumbed to pressure and didnt try it again.


One may say" whats so special about bollywood. They are straight lifts from hollywood movies." Its true. But, original are not they are different, more real and convincing than most of our telugu films. What we need is a LAGAAN, a METRO, a MUNNABHAI( minus extra fights and songs ofcourse) , a OMKARA.....Just imagine how different their stories are, how fresh their treatment is... there is no scarsity of fresh plots or talents. The change should be in the attitude of our heroes and writers. Then only we can see some really memorable pictures in the future....