News Round-Up: Salman Makes Big Profit on Sultan, Announces New Heroine for Next Film. And Ritiesh is a Gentlemen. Oh, and Shahrukh’s next role might be AWESOME!!!

I really wanted to do 3 news stories about Salman, so I could have a nice structure for my headline, but no luck!  And also no luck in only doing one on him and 2 on someone else, because his 2 stories today are too big to ignore.  And then I had to shove a 4th story in there because the Shahrukh rumor is too good to ignore.  It’s all out of balance!!!  Oh well.

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Pokiri: SO MUCH BETTER than Wanted!!!!

I saw Wanted, oh, maybe 4 years ago?  Long after it came out, I think after I saw Dabangg, and got curious about the beginning of Salman’s new action era.  Anyway, it was fine, I hated Salman’s hair, but otherwise it didn’t feel like anything special to me.  Unlike Pokiri, which I watched after reading moviemavengal’s review, and which was WONDERFUL!!!  I don’t know how they managed to mess it up, but all most of the stuff that felt interesting and unusual to me in this one just went away in the remake.

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Happy Mahesh Babu’s Birthday!

This post is really for moviemavengal, since she is the one who knows more about Mahesh.  As usual with the regional industries, I am kind of in the dark and only know the little bit I have seen in the past few months.  But, it’s his birthday today, and I feel like I should do SOMETHING!  So here are a few songs from the few films I have seen, but I love the songs.  Feel free to celebrate in the comments if you have something to add!

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Devdas Part 4: The Bhansali One! The Shahrukh One! The One Everyone Knows!

Okay, I’ve talked about all the important Devdases, all the good ones that are closely related to the novel and deal with the ideas of hidden tragedies and casual disasters and all those cool things.  Time to deal with the one that is just really really really pretty!

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News Round-Up: Salman is Still a Virgin, 2 Release Conflicts Coming Up, and Yash Raj Takes Care of Its Own

Slow news day, but Salman did attend the trailer release yesterday, so we got some cool quotes from that.  And there were a couple of release dates announced.  And Yash Raj is going to battle for Parineeti and Bhumi.

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Eega/Eecha/Makhi/Naan Ee: How Does This Movie Work? And Yet, It Does!!!

I heard about Eega right when it first came out, and I thought “how can this possibly be a hit?  Not only is it kind of illogical on the face of it, it’s also super sad!”  And then I watched it, and it totally works!

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News Round-Up: Varun Might Get Married, Ali Fazal Will Star with Judi Dench, and Kajol Thanks us for Her Birthday Wishes

I’m not even sure I know who Ali Fazal is, but it’s still exciting that he might co-star with Judi Dench!  Oh, okay, he was in a bunch of Western stuff, and also Always Kabhi Kabhi, which was produced by Shahrukh, so there is a Shahrukh connection, so therefore I care about him.

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Devdas Part 3: PC Barua vs Bimal Roy Part 2; Did They Blow it At the Ending?

Feels a bit silly to have two epic length posts, but these are epic movies.  Plus, there’s two of them, so two posts kind of seems right!  Although really, they are so similar in so many ways, much of the time I am just talking about them together.  Well, and the novel.  If you want to see my starting point with Devdas, check out my post on the novel and Dev D, and yesterday’s post on the first half of these two Devdases,

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Devdas Part 2: Bimal Roy Just Took PC Barua and Made it 10% Better

Devdas!  Or rather, Devdas, Devdas, Devdas, Devdas, Devdas, Devdas.  Because I have now read the original novel, and seen 5 separate film versions.  I wrote about Dev D already, the most inventive and yet faithful remake.  Now, I want to talk about the PC Barua Hindi version from 1936, and the Bimal Roy Hindi version from 1955.  I have to talk about them together, because they are so similar, they really can’t be separated.  And because I am talking about two movies, this post is going to be split into two parts.

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Anbe Sivam: I Don’t Know, That Ending Gave Me Problems

I watched Ambe Sivam!  Another Kamal Haasan movie!  And, I don’t know, I had issues.  Mostly with the way they handled the ending.  I could see a cool idea in there, but I think it got messed up a little bit by the need to make Kamal Haasan just the coolest dude ever.

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An Orgy of Devdases (Devdasi?): Dev D as the Least and Most Faithful Adaptation

This weekend, over the course of 30 hours, I went from having seen no Devdases to having seen all 4 important Devdasi, and read the novel.  Oh, and I also watched Dishoom.  And went grocery shopping.  I didn’t sleep much, but what’s more important? Sleep or seeing every famous version of Devdas within the same 24 hour period so that I never have to think about them again?

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Kabali: My First Tamil and My First Rajinikanth Film in Theaters!

I saw Kabali!  It was SO GOOD!  Okay, the second half lost track of itself a little bit, and there were some character bits that could have been better, but overall it just had so much more depth and excitement and energy than the other movies I have seen lately!

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