On My Film Reviewing career I have been informally reviewing films since 1990 though I was breathing films literally since I was in my mothers womb, according to family legend. My first published film review was for an ANR film Praana Daata, I won an award from OU College of Journalism for my film review of Nirnayam in a competition fiercely contested by seasoned writers in 1991. Afterwards, it was sporadic. Then I started reviewing films for Wow Hyderabad - it is now past nine years and I write some review or the other for them more because of a sense of regard they have for me in Telugu films - otherwise, I wouldnt fit into the young, immensely talented crowd of writers and editors in the magazine led by the venerable Ratna Sekhar. The version in Wow Hyderabad is short but conveys the meat of the matter in less than 200 words. Between 2003 and 2009, I started reviewing films in SMS format - it used to go out to a few friends and relatives by a bulk sms - it grew to a subscription list of about four dozen people who said they waited for my short take on the film just seen. Then I started posting long, so looong and loooonger reviews on facebook since 2009 and then by public demand started re-posting them onto my blog: BooksMoviesAndWhatever.blogspot. I review a film as diligently as I can and try to assess the film purely from watchability and entertainment angles even if I touch upon the subtler aspects of film-making in my limited ways. I take feedback, both good and bad, quite seriously. As if life depends on it. I have developed a sense of judgement over time which is still imperfect but passes off as intelligence. Occasionally, the judgement falters - for example, this year, two movies I failed to judge positively - Drushyam and Race Gurram. I was either hyper-critical or hyper-ventillatory or both in case of Race Gurram. The Allu Arjun film was berated by me but it went on to collect over forty crore rupees. Venky film - Drushyam collected over eighteen crores or so and still became a sleeper hit. I didnt like both the films, though. I still stick to my guns. Over the years, I have learnt to rein in my personal likes and dislikes for the films - there used to be a time when I was a fan of Nagarjuna, then Chiranjeevi, later Pawan Kalyan and afterwards Mahesh Babu. But now I am pretty much neutral. I have outgrown my matinee idol obsessions but I still go to ridiculous lengths to watch a movie on day one, night show. There is one secret undercurrent in my style of reviewing, if some of you have got the drift of it already. I like to pontificate on the commercial success or failure of the film because this is one clear grey area that websites and blogs fail to highlight. That way, I can sense a phenomenon in the making as it unfolds before me when I am watching a film. I predicted that Anand will be a bigger hit than Shankar Dada MBBS. I predicted that Arundhati will be a monstrous hit on day one. Likewise, I predicted that Aagadu will be a mega disaster. I see finer points of where the novelty lies, where the emotional connect is, whether repeat audience comes and so on. Yes, many of you may not like it -- but here I am with serious ambition to be a part of the trade that critics in seriousnesss, not the part of the brigade that sees a movie thats a headache as a headfake. But please note, once again, Aagadu is a flop.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Sep 2014 04:04:11 +0000
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