odadune
Star of the item number
not around much due to stuff in my personal life.
Posts: 1,494
Favorite actor: Currently a certain Kumar, but I like most of them
Favorite actress: whoever's in films I'm interested in this week
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Post by odadune on Sept 22, 2014 23:47:45 GMT
I know they offered the role to at least one desi actress (Samantha Ruth Prabhu) who couldn't take it due to scheduling issues. It's quite possible that they shopped it around to the usual female suspects on the Tollywood/Kollywood circuit and most of them had commitments that wouldn't work with Shankar's long-drawn-out production schedules and Vikram's perfectionism (or felt that being tied down to this project for so long wouldn't give them enough prestige to offset the lost income from ordinary eyecandy roles in ordinary masalas).
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Post by dariya on Sept 25, 2014 3:34:15 GMT
^ True, there are definitely many other factors contributing to white-girl casting than just "ooh, white skin model, pretty!!". I hadn't thought of that. In any case they're always just there to look pretty anyways so I don't suppose it matters who takes the role.
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odadune
Star of the item number
not around much due to stuff in my personal life.
Posts: 1,494
Favorite actor: Currently a certain Kumar, but I like most of them
Favorite actress: whoever's in films I'm interested in this week
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Post by odadune on Sept 25, 2014 3:46:15 GMT
Yeah, "stunningly attractive" and "able to convey romantic interest in a male lead who's not necessarily Vikram or Vijay levels of attractive" seem to be the main requirements for a Shankar heroine-if anything, I would gladly have swapped Shriya Saran out of Sivaji and into Anniyan because the self-invented mythology or artistic priorities of the latter seems to call more powerfully for a Woman On A Pedestal Who Inspires Chivalric Feelings than Sivaji does.
So far it's looking like this one* is in the same vein, plus it's rumored to be set in the modeling world, so a glamorous vaguely foreign woman who barely speaks the local language may not be that out of place.
*Man, between Shankar's "I" and Neeraj Pandey's "Baby", there's a lot of movies right now that are embarrassing/slightly confusing to call by name.
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odadune
Star of the item number
not around much due to stuff in my personal life.
Posts: 1,494
Favorite actor: Currently a certain Kumar, but I like most of them
Favorite actress: whoever's in films I'm interested in this week
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Post by odadune on Oct 25, 2014 18:09:39 GMT
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Post by Prem Rogue on Nov 1, 2014 21:08:52 GMT
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odadune
Star of the item number
not around much due to stuff in my personal life.
Posts: 1,494
Favorite actor: Currently a certain Kumar, but I like most of them
Favorite actress: whoever's in films I'm interested in this week
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Post by odadune on Jan 3, 2015 15:23:10 GMT
Fascinating stuff, Prem Rogue, thank you for sharing!
Hindi language video for one of the songs, I don't know offhand what the Tamil title would be:
This is the song that the "weightlift girl" and "transformable motorbike girl" snippets are from, but somehow it feels less cracktastic than Shankar's norm inspite of that. It appears to be satirizing the objectification of women rather than playing it straight, but some may find the imagery involved uncomfortable in either case, so, be forewarned.
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lydia
Junior artiste
Posts: 58 
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Post by lydia on Jan 7, 2015 10:03:21 GMT
So maybe beast is just a fantasy. Obviously lips out of sync because they've dubbed in Hindi.
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odadune
Star of the item number
not around much due to stuff in my personal life.
Posts: 1,494
Favorite actor: Currently a certain Kumar, but I like most of them
Favorite actress: whoever's in films I'm interested in this week
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Post by odadune on Jan 8, 2015 12:33:23 GMT
I kind of think the Beastlike character is a song fantasy, but the storyline with the Quasimodo lookalike will have general B&B references too. Thanks for posting the whole song-all i had seen were brief teasers from it.
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odadune
Star of the item number
not around much due to stuff in my personal life.
Posts: 1,494
Favorite actor: Currently a certain Kumar, but I like most of them
Favorite actress: whoever's in films I'm interested in this week
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Post by odadune on Jan 14, 2015 12:57:51 GMT
And Shankar decides to show the kids how to make a generic "cavorting with your love interest" picturization anything but generic:
And it's even a pretty good song.
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lydia
Junior artiste
Posts: 58
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Post by lydia on Jan 14, 2015 22:24:07 GMT
Reviews are out. Quite a few reviewers (among them Rangan) are saying that the visuals are great but the story lets the film down. Too predictable, no surprises - lo-o-ong. "Vikram all dressed up but nowhere to go." I will see for myself this evening.
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Post by dancelover on Jan 14, 2015 23:14:02 GMT
Where is that river? Does anyone here know?
Dancelover (aka Map-addict)
And Shankar decides to show the kids how to make a generic "cavorting with your love interest" picturization anything but generic: And it's even a pretty good song. |
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lydia
Junior artiste
Posts: 58
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Post by lydia on Jan 15, 2015 10:49:23 GMT
Saw it. Liked it. Liked the fact that it was real masala - not 'fake'/send-up masala. Didn't mind the length because the chronological shifts upped the pace. Fabulous visuals. The romance was well developed... (I like masala films that are quite romantic). Story quite thin but some bits still had me guessing...withheld info. shown later in flashback. Enjoyable.
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odadune
Star of the item number
not around much due to stuff in my personal life.
Posts: 1,494
Favorite actor: Currently a certain Kumar, but I like most of them
Favorite actress: whoever's in films I'm interested in this week
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Post by odadune on Jan 15, 2015 12:31:47 GMT
Cool! Does it end more or less happily? (Feel free to use spoiler tags if you prefer)
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lydia
Junior artiste
Posts: 58
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Post by lydia on Jan 15, 2015 12:48:07 GMT
{Ending Spoiler}
Happy ending.
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lydia
Junior artiste
Posts: 58
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Post by lydia on Jan 15, 2015 21:45:59 GMT
Rachel Saltz quite liked it ....'I is exuberant and unselfconscious but too cartoonish to engage your emotions.' From her review it's clear though, that she was hugely entertained. (see below) Review(New York Times)
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Since Sept. 6, 2022, Chiloka has not been reachable. (