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Home » Pawan Kumar

Posts by tag

Pawan Kumar

13 posts
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  • 5 min

Kannada Roundtable 2021: Directors On How They Define Good Cinema

  • Posted on December 25, 2021December 24, 2021
  • by Kairam Vaashi
Six directors from the Kannada industry explore the definition of good cinema and what kind of films have left an influence on them.
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  • 5 min

Kannada Roundtable 2021: What Drives These Six Directors

  • Posted on December 23, 2021
  • by Kairam Vaashi
Six directors from the Kannada industry come together to discuss various aspects, both personal and institutional, that surround filmmaking.
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Pawan Kumar On How His Theatre Experience Shapes His Work
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  • 3 min

Pawan Kumar On His Puneeth Rajkumar Film ‘Dvitva’

  • Posted on August 22, 2021August 22, 2021
  • by Baradwaj Rangan
“Directing is understanding that what you saw in your head isn’t really going to happen, and yet, you enjoy it,” says the director.
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Pawan Kumar On How His Theatre Experience Shapes His Work
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  • 3 min

Pawan Kumar On How His Theatre Experience Shapes His Work

  • Posted on August 17, 2021
  • by Baradwaj Rangan
“I don’t spoon-feed or say things directly. I like to leave them open to interpretation,” says the director.
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Kudi Yedamaithe, On Aha, Is An Impressively Written And Elegantly Shot Series
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  • 3 min

Kudi Yedamaithe Is An Impressively Written And Elegantly Shot Series

  • Posted on July 29, 2021July 29, 2021
  • by Baradwaj Rangan
Both Amala Paul and Rahul Vijay anchor the series with their earnest performances. The best thing about Kudi Yedamaithe is that it doesn’t treat sci-fi as otherworldly.
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Ikkat Kannada Movie Review, Out On Amazon Prime Video: A Good Old-Fashioned Odd-Couple Comedy That Never Tries Too Hard
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  • 3 min

Ikkat Is A Good Odd-Couple Comedy That Never Tries Too Hard

  • Posted on July 21, 2021
  • by Vishal Menon
Set entirely within a small Bangalore apartment, every character contributes to the laughter just as how every nook and corner of the space gets a funny scene or two.
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Kudi Yedamaithe, On Aha, Throws Refreshing Surprises
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  • 4 min

Kudi Yedamaithe, On Aha, Throws Refreshing Surprises

  • Posted on July 19, 2021
  • by Karthik Keramalu
The premise of the series involves a cop who’s looking into the case of a kidnapped child, figuring out a way to save him.
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Review Of Honeymoon On Aha: Mostly Silly But A Sporadically Funny ‘Love-After-Marriage’ Story
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  • 3 min

Review Of Honeymoon On Aha: Mostly Silly, But Sporadically Funny

  • Posted on November 28, 2020November 28, 2020
  • by Vishal Menon
The show’s biggest conflict involves Praveen having to deal with Tejaswini’s past. There’s no judgment; the show does not take a moral stand either.
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Best Kannada Thrillers From Different Eras Now Available On OTT
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  • 4 min

Best Kannada Thrillers From Different Eras Now Available On OTT

  • Posted on September 24, 2020September 24, 2020
  • by Team FC
Ten Kannada movies, starting from the 60s, that every fan of thrillers must see.
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15 Kannada Films Beyond KGF And Which OTT Platform To Find Them On
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  • 5 min

15 Kannada Films Beyond KGF And Which OTT Platform To Find Them On

  • Posted on May 6, 2020May 19, 2020
  • by Team FC
A tragic love story. A fun college movie that can surprise you with its depth. A sensitive look at a balding man’s quest for love. Kannada cinema is going through a dream run, and here are a few films from across genres you can now watch with subtitles.
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Alidu Ulidavaru, with Ashu Bedra and Sangeetha Bhat, is on Amazon Prime: A rewind of Arvind Sastry's horror-thriller, which could have used more tension The interval point is crazy -- I mean, good-crazy. Remember the interval point of Kahaani? This is that level of crazy. But the rest of it doesn't quite add up. Arvind Sastry's Alidu Ulidavaru opens with two men on a bike approaching a house. They look like they are part of a food-delivery service. Or maybe they’ve got a package to drop off. Either way, neither man wants to do whatever they’ve come to do. Finally, one of them summons up the guts and walks up to the gate -- and just then, in front of his terrified eyes, the gate latches itself. The man runs away, screaming. Is this really a haunted house? Or are we meant to think it is a haunted house? Are those two men really a part of this story? Or are they snuck into this scene -- and only this scene -- in order to make us believe that the latch did indeed fall on its own accord, unaided by human intervention? Fix this stretch in your head and revisit it after The End. Meanwhile, we move to Sheelam (Ashu Bedra), the anchor of a super-hit television show called Kaarana. As the name suggests, he looks for a reason, a why -- which means he is a man of cold logic. In each episode, he debunks ghosts and haunted houses, proving that what was thought of as "inexplicable" can be explained: namely, there is a reason. If you thought it was a ghost, it's probably a guy in the guise of a ghost. Sheelam has finished 99 episodes and his TRP-obsessed boss asks him to look out for a biggie for the 100th. He's such a stud, he doesn't need a crew. He just installs cameras everywhere, waits for the "ghost", figures out the reason, and walks away coolly with another TRP-busting episode. The film gets off to a wordy start, but the television-channel ambience is convincing. Sheelam is shown cutting a promo, which is actually something he would do. There are other anchors, notably a "guruji", who hosts a show on astrology, or some such thing. He keeps arguing with Sheelam: It's stupid to say you will believe in something only after experiencing it… We need the humility to accept that some things are beyond us. He could be talking about those two men at the beginning. But Sheelam would probably say that those men were already afraid and this fear played tricks on their minds and confirmed what they had decided to believe even before approaching that gate. Alidu Ulidavaru, thus, is a horror movie with a small twist. On the one hand, it wants us to believe those two men. On the other hand, the protagonist himself is a non-believer. As Sheelam prepares for his landmark episode by researching on Brahmarakshasa-s (i.e. the souls of Brahmins who died gruesome deaths), he is diverted by events that I won't discuss here. All you need to know is that the show he wanted to do isn't the show he ends up doing. The interval point is crazy -- I mean, good-crazy. Remember the interval point of Kahaani where we thought the protagonist might have ended up crushed under a train? This is that level of crazy. But it doesn't add up. Pawan Kumar appears as a man who seems to be mentally unhinged. His character promises much, delivers little. Screenplay-wise, he's just a conduit, the human equivalent of a courier -- he delivers the protagonist to a haunted house. Something similar could be said about Atul Kurkarni, too, who shows up as a cop investigating a murder. But we keep getting flashbacks in parallel. In other words, we are actually being shown what happened -- even as the Atul Kulkarni character is trying to find out what happened. Something's off about the screenplay's structure. It wastes too much time establishing Sheelam's work and workplace, and it's only at the interval point that the plot really takes off. You could argue that the philosophical discussions that came earlier are important, that this isn’t just a mystery but a mystery with meaning. Only, it isn’t. These discussions might have worked if Sheelam discovered, slowly, that the guruji might be right after all -- but these portions where doubt sets in, they are treated like set pieces. It’s a sudden tonal shift. What's needed, what's missing is atmosphere, a tension that hangs over the film like a heavy mist. I enjoyed Midhun Mukundan's score. He mixes electronic effects with creepy, down-to-earth sounds -- like a razor being sharpened against a belt, or a tinkling spoon. Ashu Bedra walks through the film with a one-note expression, but I liked that his fight scene was split with his ass-kicking girlfriend (Sangeetha Bhat), who's a self-defence trainer. These are interesting touches, but they don't come together in a way that spooks you. In this kind of movie, the house may or may not be overrun by ghosts. But the audience should definitely end up haunted.
View Post
  • 4 min

Alidu Ulidavaru, With Ashu Bedra & Sangeetha Bhat, Is On Amazon Prime

  • Posted on May 6, 2020May 9, 2020
  • by Baradwaj Rangan
The interval point is crazy — I mean, good-crazy. Remember the interval point of Kahaani? This is that level of crazy. But the rest of it doesn’t quite add up.
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Roopa Rao’s Gantumoote: Is This The Dawn Of A New Era In Kannada Cinema?
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  • 6 min

Roopa Rao’s Gantumoote: Is This The Dawn Of A New Era In Kannada Films

  • Posted on April 22, 2020May 25, 2020
  • by Basav Biradar
In more than 85 years of its history, there have been very few experiments in the genre of coming-of-age romantic dramas in Kannada cinema, leave alone narratives with female perspectives
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