Sunday, June 26, 2011

One English movie and some Kannada songs.


Right. Let’s start this with a paragraph movie review.  We saw Cars 2 this weekend. We have to say. We liked it a lot. The detailed analysis of the world from a car’s eyes is truly awesome. Here Lightning McQueen plays a supporting role. The movie revolves around Mater, the bumbling tow truck best friend. How some old cars play villains and how Mater is mistook for a spy and in the end how he saves  the world is the story. Without discussing about story line much, we will tell you this. Very rarely a sequel is better than the first movie. Here is one such movie. Larry the Cable guy is totally delightful as Mater. We give this movie two thumbs up and a 9 out of 10. This is like your childhood dream come true. All your Hotwheel cars and all your yeeeeoooowwww’s.  Watch this movie.

We came back and we were not feeling sleepy. So we thought we will listen to songs. Kannada ones.  One song was from Hudugaru.  It was an item song called Pankaja. Somewhere between “Akka nim maneyalli naayigu Dancu barutta” and “Nim ooralli thamaTena hodyakke chancu sigutta” , we started thinking about how Kannada songs have gotten back their mojo. There was a phase where Kannada songs were qualitatively poor. Once Ravichandran and Hamsalekha kinda broke up, the Music became more to the mass than class. Apart from some movie exceptions, most songs did not catch our fancy much. But then suddenly it seemed like all is well again. What happened?

If you think about it, this seems to have begun from Mungaru Male. Everyone tends to agree that Mungaru Male really started this upward trend. It increased the listener count by many folds. Many of our friends who were not really fans of Sandalwood music started listening from then. And then the quality started improving. Not just the lyrics. If lyrics are outrageous, tunes became catchier. It was like the music industry picked itself up and decided, “Right, We need to show others what we are about.” We like this new trend.  We do not mind listening to nothing but Kannada songs.

After that almost every movie that has been released, has had at least one beautiful or catchy track. Even movies which were pretty horrible had one nice track. We don’t want to start listing the songs we like. Because there are plenty. Our phone has hundreds of new Kannada songs. And every day we get to add some song or the other from a new movie. We, being a Kannada movie fan, absolutely love it. Kannada Industry has always had people who make some really good musical movies. But in late 90’s it was limited to Ravichandran. He had his way with the leading ladies and always had flowers and fruits and honey around and on them. But it was not just about visually pleasing his male audience. He made sure that the songs were melodious. He was immensely talented when it comes to picking songs.

But now the number has increased. Every other director, every other producer, every other actor seems to crave for quality. There is some flip side to it as well.  The local talents seem to have been neglected. Sonu Nigams and Kunal Ganjawalas started hogging the space and have replaced Rajesh and Hemanth. Shreya Ghoshals have replaced Pallavis and Nandithas. Sure the Bollywood singers are talented. But shouldn’t these songs go to the local talents? We are pretty sure any good Kannada singer can sing the same songs just as well. Why do we have to go to Bollywood and pay more money? Pallavi Arun is the best and most versatile singer in Kannada industry. Give more chances to her than Shreya. If the songs are as good as they have been for past few years, audience will listen no matter what.

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