4 New Reviews
Reviews for Billa, Evano Oruvan, Kalloori and Oram Po are now online @ bbreviews.
Balaji's Thots... [Permalink]
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Balaji's Thots
On movies, books, music, technology, family, humor, travel and everything in between
Friday, December 21, 2007
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Balaji Balasubramaniam, a California-resident Tamil Indian with a few, mostly unimportant, things on his mind.bbalaji [at] sbcglobal [dot] net
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thinkers since May 11, 2005
38 Comments:
I'm shocked that you gave "kaloori" a very low rating. i would have given it a 2 1/2 just for it's realisticnes. But i did feel the movie was boring as there was no plot point to move the story forward. it made me restless for most times.
I'd have to agree with Skanda, Balaji. The tone and content of the review is very similar to Evano Oruvan and Oram pO. If you read your review again, you'd notice that only the first paragraph and the second to last paragraph contain negative comments. You've had only moderate to excellent things to point out in the film.
Somehow, I didn't get the feeling that I was reading a 2 star review for "Kalloori" at all. Moreover, I felt that maybe you were rushing to give the movie a star rating and didn't wait to see if what you wrote matched with the rating that it rightfully deserved.
This is purely my judgement based on what you have written. I haven't seen the film yet!
skanda, 'restless' is a good word to explain how i got in the 2nd half. wish i'd used it :)
sandya, actually the the para b4 the 2nd to last para also has -ve comments(had enuf of it, tests our patience, etc.)
i never see if what i wrote matched the rating. rating is what i felt right after the movie. the review is kinda what worked and what didn't work in the movie. there may be reasons why i write/don't write about some parts of the movie. so a review with all +ve comments may get only 2 1/2 stars while a review with a couple of -ve comments may get 3 1/2 stars. more on this in an upcoming long-due post on those darn star ratings :)
coming to 'kalloori', the biggest -ve for me was the climax. it negated the +ves of the movie that far and then some. but i didn't wanna give too much away about the climax either. so it was restricted to 1 short paragraph but its effect on my feelings about the movie(and hence the star rating) was a lot more :)
i wonder how shankar approved the script for "Kaloori". He must had blind faith on Balaji sakthivel or was too busy with "Shivaji". Hope shankar concentrates more on his home production and give us more quality fares in the future
Seems ideal.....
BB, can you consider posting Top 10 lists? Like Movies or songs
onbathu rubaai nottu?
Skanda, personally, I thought that Shankar did not spend a dime in marketing the film (not even a fraction of what he did for 'Imsai' and 'Veyil'). Maybe he misconstrued Balaji Shakthivel's name and repute after Kaadhal as an easy pass to sell "Kalloori" to the general public?
I saw so few ads on TV and so few efforts to promote "Kalloori" elsewhere as well. Poor marketing is equal to pushing your film into hell in this day and age, and I'm surprised that a man of Shankar's stature would commit that sin after doing such a fab job with two of his productions in 2006.
Yaanaikkum adi sarukkum! :-)
Just watched Oram Po this weekend. Looks like the movie got a generous rating from Balaji :)
-arun
I saw kalloori and not the rest yet. I somehow feel you've under rated it :)
It had all the negatives you pointed out but still had all the other positives taking it ahead. The climax was manipulative but I thought the idea / inkling was shown through an incident in first half where the gang bonds up together. It was probably thrown in as an irony to show a similar incident which pulls them apart.
It deserves a 2.5 star (in your standards)...
Merry Xmas to everyone and their families!
You ppl must be crazy..Kallori is one of the best movies in 2007..Wonder whats wrong with all of u..Just read the reviews of the top websites and they really praise this movies..All my frens who watched kallori ended up in tears including me..
HEre's a good and balanced review..The person who reviewed understood the soul of the film..
http://bharathram.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/12/balaji-shakthivel-does-it-again.htm
P/s:Im not interestd in Balaji's ratings as he's not some bigshot trade critic...Just wanted to voice my opinion..
Kallori getting the same rating as ATM n vel and oram po gettin higher rating??What the ****???!!!!
Nengalum onguludiya ratingum..PTUI!!
Anon, it's rude of you to say like that. balaji is just giving his views. I also think "Kalloori" does not deserve that rating but it's not mean it's the BEST film of the year!
Skanda, im sorry.. i dont give a damn..He deserves that..The most annoying thing he said the romance was testing his patience!!!Man, that was the best part..The delicate intimacy between tamanna and akhil was brilliantly captured..
Just visit rediff.com 's review and read the comments from different people..Not a single person hated the movie..99% said it was a heartwarming story..If balaji doesnt like it, something is really wrong with this dude..
Skanda, i dont mind if he doesnt like the movie..Its his rights but the way he criticized was simply annoying..
//Not a single person hated the movie.99% said it was a heartwarming story.If balaji doesnt like it, something is really wrong with this dude.//
If that's the case,how is it that it flopped at the box office?I can show another guy's review too where
Kalloori was called as 'not so good.'
Criticizing Anon,
Everyone's got their own views.
Create your own blog if you want to praise Kalloori. It was a boring film and there was no chemistry whatsoever between Tamanna and Akil.
And stop saying Balaji has no clue - or I think you mite have got the wrong Balaji - Balaji Sakthivel totally failed to ignite his follow-up to Kadhal. No wonder Shankar and S Pictures have rejected to produce his next. Shankar's first flop :I
Moral of the story..Good movies dont do well..KAlllori joins the list of katradhu tamil,evano oruvan etc..
S.Ganesh, theres no concrete evidence that the movie flopped..The last i heard, its slowly picking up by word of mouth..Critics have praised the movie and thats gud enuf
Prin,S pictures rejected to produce balaji's next??hahha..gud joke..I guess shankar told u personally...With people like u around, thats why movies like vel,pollathavan etc r doing good
prin, planning to do the lists as usual. only in the new yr though :)
anon, havent seen ONR yet. hope to see it and have review up b4 the new year :)
sandya, true. word of mouth helps but marketing gets the pre-publicity which counts for a lot. latest case in point - billa :)
arun, u didnt like it? its one of my top favs among the 2 1/2 films :)
bart, after the long-drawn out silent love and climax, i just felt it was a 2 :) but more people in ur camp obviously :)
prin, wish u the same :)
anon, i cannot like a movie just cos u and ur friends were in tears or other reviewers liked it. i write about what i feel about a movie and thats pretty much it. now that balaji sakthivel has changed the climax, r u gonna write another rude email to him since u guys were in tears over the prev climax? i felt it was manipulative and unnecessary and my review is my opinion of the movie :) i'm sure 'kalloori' will be in ur top 10 list if u make a list and u will praise the movie if u write a movie. the only difference is that u wont get a rude email/comment from me about your opinion :)
anon, PTU? edho ketta vaarthai-nu theriudhu but enna-nu dhaan puriyalai :) but idhu family-friendly blog. so if it is indeed a ketta vaarthai, thanx for using the acronym :)
anon, not sure i understand ur logic. if not liking the movie was my right, why should why i like it not be my right too? :)
skanda/prin/ganesh, thanx for the comments. some readers just seem to take the reviews/stars too personally :) i'm used to that by now :)
anon,i agree with u..I myself cant digest the fact that atm is rated on par with kallori..Thats an insult..i have done some homework on the net and reading people's view on kallori, and i can safely say that at least 95% of them(including critics) LOVED kallori..Based on that i consider kallori as a big success regardless of its bo collections..
Anon, i also felt the development of love and its proceedings r very natural and a delight to watch..
Balaji,even ur rating for EO was screwd..And kallori climax wasnt changed, it was trimmed..The court scenes were removed,thats it...The ending was still a sad one...
P/s:Im writing based on what i personally feel about the movie..hehe
>> if not liking the movie was my right, why should why i like it not be my right too? :)
made my head swim a bit, but i liked this comment anyway. :)
Kalloori was one of the boring movies i have seen in recent times...just cant say a movie is good if they deviate from the normal formula and make a movie...the climax was so irritating tht i came out of the theatre not able to watch it...
balaji enna ippo posts romba kuraivaa irruku?
the hero of kaloori really looks horrible. beautiful tamanna but horrible n highly ugly actors . y ??
may be director thot that wud give natural feel n look to the movie but then y beautiful tamanna . he shud ve gone for ugly actress too.
whats up sir? I see u r caught in some crossfire and it is heated.I have to agree that kallori is one of the best movies this year and in my opinion it deserves more stars (atleast more than Vel and other commercial films) , it was a good attempt, maybe not sucessful at the box office(as some people claim, i don't know about its collections).but however I understand that u r viewpoint is different than mine, and i respect that.
To the people:
comn people: as the previous person said if u don't like what u r seeing than stop visiting this website instead go read other people's reviews, a good one is bhardwaj rangan - but he does mainly hindi movies.or simply go to some other review website where the reviews for movies are better (stars are better according to you), some on that agrees with your opinions. the point is if everybody had the same opinion then we wouldn't be different and there wouldn't be anything to talk/argue about.
hey what a coincidence, i just noticed it now,exactly 10 minutes after the person before me commented, my comment go posted.
hey what a coincidence, i just noticed it now,exactly 10 minutes after the person before me commented, my comment go posted.
"i never see if what i wrote matched the rating. rating is what i felt right after the movie. the review is kinda what worked and what didn't work in the movie. there may be reasons why i write/don't write about some parts of the movie. so a review with all +ve comments may get only 2 1/2 stars while a review with a couple of -ve comments may get 3 1/2 stars. more on this in an upcoming long-due post on those darn star ratings :)"
Balaji, I am not sure if rating a movie right after you see it is necessarily the right approach. A lot of times upon reflection, the layers to a movie might be revealed. Or sometimes the plotholes might be revealed too :-)
So although the movie might ahve made you smile while viewing it, upon reflection it would seem vacuous and lacking depth.
I guess thats how most reviewers do it.Sometimes they might even see it acouple of times before making up their mind.
Just my opinion, not that I expect you to change the way you have been doing things.
But maybe this is the reason why I agree more with your reviews than with the stars :-)
//balaji enna ippo posts romba kuraivaa irruku?//
yeah why so less? I waited a week and no updates sir?
anon, sify said the climax was changed and that was what i went by. not sure what was changed :)
yasodha, lol. guess i was in visu mode when i wrote that :)
anon, phew! finally an anon who is in my camp :)
anon/glass, just returned from a short trip. regular programming should continue from the new year :)
fans, i'd say 'ordinary' rather than 'ugly'. tamanna did stick out but the director did manage to provide a good backstory for her and so i accepted it :)
glass, thanx! i couldn't have said it better :)
vijay, "I agree more with your reviews than with the stars" - wish more people did this :)
the star rating is a snapshot of what i felt about the movie. and i think the best time for that is right after. think of it as my answer to "padam eppidi iruku?" when i exit the theater :) as far as plotholes go, my reasoning is that if the movie was good enuf to hide them while the movie was running, i give it a thumbs up :) but yes, there have been few cases where i upgraded the star rating after thinking about the movie :)
Balaji,
Personally, I feel your reviews are one of the most well balanced on the web (found your blog about a little over a year back). Until recently, I used to agree with your star ratings too... in fact, they acted as a filter for me to pick movies to watch or not. This is roughly how I interpret your ratings and use it to decide whether I should watch a movie:
0 star: So bad that one might actually enjoy the stupidity
0.5 or 1 star: Avoid at all costs
1.5 star: Waste of time
2 star: Run of the mill
2.5 star: Not bad
3 star: Good movie, don't miss it
3.5 star: Wow! Get a DVD, you might want to watch it multiple times
4 star: Masterpiece, classic etc.
While this interpretation works well for me, the past few movies have thrown some surprises: I felt you were a half-a-star too generous with ATM and Oram Po, while being harsher by the same amount on Katradhu thamizh and Kalloori. I think it may help if you wrote a piece explaining how you rate movies. Sorry about over-analysing the ratings, but you see, people like me actually use it :)
Hi sir.
There have been some very rude comments when I checked earlier,
something about u and rajini - i don't want to go in to too much of depth, because it was very vulgar and cheap as well as unessecary , but it was something on the lines of: that you were giving rajini movie better stars regardless of anything(in term of movies) he does.what is your comment on this?do you agree that you are a biased reviewer? :)
Here is a solution to the problem you are having:
*Hint: Just agree that you are a biased reviewer.That way all these rude/immature people will stop commenting on your "unfair" reviews.(i'm not saying they are fair but it feels right to you and when you say you are biased in your reviews people will leave you alone about being fair).
Hope that makes sense.
Simpler Version:
Just tell the people that you review the way you think is right.And that if they have anything against it then they should either have a friendly fight or leave.
arun, appreciate the detailed comment. that post on star ratings is long due. hopefully will get to it in the new year. but on ur interpretation... seems mostly OK. but i'd say 2 stars is a 'Not Bad' while 2.5 stars is a 'Good' :) ofcourse not all movies with the same star rating are equal. its not perfect but hey, thats what i get for trying to throw all movies into just 9 buckets :)
glass, those comments were what drove me to turn on 'comment moderation'. i don't like it much and hope i can turn it off soon :)
and yes, i am a biased reviewer. i've said that many times b4. i'd go as far as saying every reviewer is biased. reviewers r human beings and they like/dislike movies based on their personal likes and dislikes. and each of those likes can be called a bias. when a reader says i'm biased all he's saying is that he doesn't agree with me :) Here is a longer post on the topic :)
A sSimple analogy - a half glass of water is both - half filled and half empty. Both views are right but the perspective differs. Therefore, criticize and be criticized - with valour.
So I finally watched Kalloori.. though the movie had sweet spots.. the ending was a big fat let down... it felt so incomplete.. wonder if the director thought the movie was going nowhere adn decided to take this route. don't blame you on the rating you gave at all..!
sir pls change the kalloori climax. so nice movie but sad ending. i cant tolerate this she should not die at last i need happy ending of this movie.
i saw this movie nearly 10times each and every time i like and especially that songs it was really touching my heart i didnt heard that kind of lyrics in my heart. this was the movie it will be in heart till the end of my life. i am crazy fan of tamanna. she is so cute,her acting is excellent marvellous beautiful there is no words to say to her and to that movie also. i am posting a comment with my tears.
when ever if i heard that last song. i will start to cry. lovely songs. i cant say it in a few words. but dere is a lots of words to say i am not getting it right now.after watching that movie i will think why she is not expressing her love to that guy. inch by inch i saw the movie. that romantic scene wow it is really different types of romantic such a nice scene. i didnt go for college. now i am missing my college life and then i hate love but after seeing that movie i need to love. i cried a lot. my request pls change the climax. she should join with that hero. i need happy ending.
plssssssssssss with tears ?
Kallori was declared a profitable venture..Hats off BS...There were even ads in the newspaper saying that students are requesting to re screen kallori in coimbatore
I love the film. Hats off to Shankar & BS for such a great film. The climax should have been positive. No vulgarity/sex etc that is the great part about the film..
You people have problems!!! Go get some help!!! I don't care what you guys reply but how can you rate it so low?
It's the best movie ever!!!!!! 3 stars for sivaji?? 2 stars for kalloori?? Ammuvaagiya naan, karuppusaamy... gets more stars than this movie??
You guys probably think chemistry between actors is when they fall in intimation and vulgarity. This movie had the REAL chemistry.
Please analyze movies better than this.
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