"Poem Ratan Dhan Payo" Movie Review (Hindi)

My review:

https://www.telugu360.com/prem-ratan-dhan-payo-review-a-royal-feast-of-timeless-values/

"Kanche" Movie Review (Telugu)

My Review:

https://www.telugu360.com/kanche-review-an-evocative-love-story/

"Rudramadevi" Movie Review (Telugu)

My review:

https://www.telugu360.com/rudrama-devi-review-authentic-but-imperfect/

"Shivam" (Telugu Film Review)

My review of "Shivam":

http://www.telugu360.com/shivam-predictable-and-long/

"Subramanyam For Sale" (Telugu Movie Review)

My review of the film:

http://www.telugu360.com/subramanyam-for-sale-telugu-movie-review/

"Ok Bangaram" (Telugu)/ "O Kadal Kanmani" (Tamil) Movie Review

When it comes to romance, Mani Ratnam has an uneven advantage in making even the mundane plots dance on screen with unblemished technical brilliance and undiminished attention to the nuances of love. “Ok Bangaram” passes the test for Mani Ratnam  and it is no mean feat for one of the finest masters of Indian Cinema. He has made a memorable romantic movie in every decade since the 80s that gets burnt in our psyche. “Mouna Raagam”, “Gitanjali”, “Sakhi” and now “Ok Bangaram” joins that league. Even if the plot is not something unfamiliar and the treatment lacks wow factor at few places, the finesse of the film with all the visuals, the rich music of AR Rahman and the tracks between the lead pairs (there are two pairs in fact) transport you into trance. Roping in such technical stalwarts like PC Sreeram, Sharmistha Roy, Sreekar Prasad and Rahman, Mani can heave a sigh of relief that his product, after a long gap, will taste some success at the box office. 

Indeed the plot is mundane and much cited on silver screens - a live-in relationship between two mature professionals - Aadi  (Dulquar Salmaan) and Tara (Nitya Menen) who are spectacularly in love with each other while keeping an eye on their fledgling careers. Dulquar is a gaming guru who conceptualises  imaginative online games that rake in the millions and Nitya is an architect who is seeking her Masters in Paris. Dulquar stays as a PG with an elderly couple  - Prakash Raj and Leela Samson. Love grows between the two young pros with faultiness often arising from live-in expectations. It goes through a roller-coaster ride before a familiar climax with many moments of truth inspired by the geriatric couple of Mrs and Mr Ganapathy (played by Prakash Raj and Leela Samson). But Mani Ratnam doesn’t believe in a riot of love without a cause, so you see a romantic track with the duress of a success-seeking professional and the affections of your immediate family, however dysfunctional or the care of those who need. In 138 minutes or so, Mani Ratnam’s old magic of story-telling returns without any temptations of narcissism of the craft or visuals that rush up your adrenaline. With good screenplay, stunning visuals and a commendable starcast, the movie deserves a once-watch even if some familiarity with his treatment creeps in at many points. In many ways, the old film “Sakhi” still remains unsurpassed because of the beauty of a sober plot that has many uncharacteristic twists and pathos moments. 

Yet, “OK Bangaram” scores high because of the freshness of the pair. Nitya Menen takes the cake in the movie with an effortless performance that will win hearts, she is at once vulnerable yet measured, cute yet cold-blooded with her mother, innocent but also volatile in moods. Wearing dresses that she might wear on a day of no-shooting, Nitya strikes a delicate balance with versatility and grace unbelievable for a South heroine. The only thing that takes away marks in her performance is the  inconsistency in her characterisation; she first turns down a lover who is interested in her estate but with Aadi, she gets distracted all the time falling for the same tricks that she believes boys play before getting fresh with girls. Aadi, played by Dulquar Salmaan is exciting. The boy who won all the hearts in “Bangalore Days” is the most promising youngster that Mani Ratnam has re-launched for an audience far removed from Mollywood (Malayalam movies). Whether in control of emotions in love or losing it, in anger and poise, camaraderie at work or sympathy for an elderly landlady, Dulquer smarts ahead with a great show of talent - something that comes easily to him from father and superstar Mammooty. His characterisation is the most consistent and worthy of a protagonist coming of age. Kudos to Actor Nani for lending his inimitable voice to Dulquer in the  Telugu version. Nani’s voice has amplified Dulquer’s character for the masses - it is a great idea and a good sporting gesture. Normally, Aalap Raju or Srinivas Murty are the only voices you hear for all Tamil heroes in Telugu versions but this is a delectable experiment - must be at Dil Raju’s bidding who produced the movie in Telugu. Prakash Raj gets such a meaty role in this film, after “Iruvar”that he should thank his stars for a spotless role which will re-ignite his career in that space where he was virtually unchallenged. If Jayasudha stole the show in “Sakhi”, Prakash Raj did it in “Ok Bangaram” with shades of “SVSC” performance. Leela Samson gives a soulful performance as a lady losing her way in life with Alzeimer’s. Her lines linger on and give the depth to an otherwise elementary story. 

What endears the film is Mani Ratnam’s mature handling of the themes and visuals he wants us to go home with. He could have been tempted to show cliched scenes of fights to elevate heroism or sympathy to pad up the love story etc.but he shows great restraint by sticking to responsible and refined cinema. In the film, for example, the heroine’s mother uses her influence to subject the hero to police torture. Any other director would have shown the scene  - right from Shankar to Rajamouli but Mani dismisses it as an aside plainly told by the hero to the heroine, matter-of-factly. Similarly, a love story doesn’t fire up without a customary item song or a drunken scene or fights. Cleverly, quite deftly, Mani shows none of these banalities - instead, he uses the montage of the gaming animation to show stunts and other chutzpah - skip it or snooze, the story doesn’t jar you. Heroism for the heroes and glamor for the heroines - both these get redefined by Mani in the film, a lesson somewhere for master manipulators of emotions in Tollywood. It is good that successive failures and biting criticisms of Mani’s previous films have made him mellow in his love with the craft versus attempt to tell a good story. 

Mani has told a good story with a familiar message though - with conventional trappings and some deja vu moments of bitterness and celebration in love and life. But the effort shows and leaves you with a nice aftertaste unlike some of his forgettable films in the last decade. Helping him to get a breather again are technicians who worked closely with him in several films. PC Sreeram, that ace cinematographer proves  a nonpareil when it comes to catching fire with screenshots. This time, he choses Mumbai’s lesser-highlighted imagery - torrential rains, jerky rides  on bike, high seas of the Arabian Sea with up-close shots of the ships that keep a vigil on the coast at night and many other shots like that. Sreeram’s work is itself paisa vasool for the film and makes it above-average viewing. Of course, his lighting is legendary - and while he makes the lead pair sizzle in their chemistry and screen presence, he has highlighted the old pair in the moods that Mani wanted them to be in, Leela Samson’s shrinkage from a carnatic musician to a forlorn patient is captured well by Sreeram as also the shots in the trains in which lot of Mani’s films revel. AR Rahman’s music has been a chart-buster before the film released, now it will egg you on more since the film is a treat to watch. With nine songs rich in variety and orchestration, Rahman has given the season’s best songs and BGM. And Mani hasn’t fully done justice to their picturisation;  he hasn’t subtracted though from the music with his visual output. Visually, the song on the gaming concepts that greets you on titles has the raciest groove in the score. The carnatic  number sung by Chitra is the only song abruptly cut short by Mani. Otherwise, almost three or four songs which are good audio tracks are extended in the second half which increase the hummability of the songs. Songs by Rahmanand the music co-scored by Rahman and another troupe take the experience to a new high. Mani’s imagination is not commensurate with Rahman’s perceptible instrumentation reserved for “Mani Sir’s films”. The only song that stands out is the duet in the lodge in Ahmedabad where the young lovers feel the physical temptations of love but don’t give in yet. Dubbing-wise, you don’t feel this is coming from Tamil, the quality and the Telugu diction  is so good. Also, references to local towns and a couple of politicians make it credible. Sirivennala’s lyrics make the Telugu songs enchanting and classy compared to some of the hopelessly inapt lyrics penned in Mani’s previous films dubbed from Tamil. Instead of using words like “Gunde Kinda Needocche” and “Kuriseti Gadiyaaram”, Sirivennala uses lilting words which are also sensible. Dialogues by Kiran are in the same metric length of Mani Ratnam - crisp and business-like. Despite many moments where you feel the lag of a director who is not able to outgrow his favourite love scenes and hurrah moments, “Ok Bangaram” will get Mani’s fans happy again. Here’s a master who gets his mojo back. It is not brilliant and not the best of his movies - but he re-presents the timeless paradigms of skin-deep love for another generation confused in online chats and careerist obsessions with reinvigorated craft and squeaky clean touch of class. Watchable, for sure.

Rating: 3.25 / 5

#ManiRatnam #OkBangaram #OKadalKanmani #NityaMenen #DulquerSalmaan #ARRahman #PCSreeram #Tollywood #Kollywood #MovieReviews #DilRaju #PrakashRaj #Nani #OKBangaramReview 

"The Theory of Everything" (English) Movie Review

A biopic on the life and times of Stephen Hawking is a baffling attempt by any stretch. The man wearing an out-of-shape pair of spectacles with a withdrawn gaze dripping saliva even if in a state-of-the-art wheel chair and communicating something just by blinking his eyes is a familiar visual to people around the world. What can his life offer? How interesting has it been? What are the most thrilling moments, his saddest and happiest days and what were the high-points of his remarkable life? What made him pulsate to live life as if nothing changed after the doctors gave him just two years to live? What is egging him on for so many years that even at age 72, after presenting scientific papers and authoring a book that sold over a 10 million copies "A Brief History of Time", he still wants to push himself to write that one theory that strings everything together on how the universe came to being? Universal studios brings another authentic replay of a life that is still inspiring millions to throb to liveliness instead of resigning to fate and wimping out like a vegetable.

"The Theory of Everything" takes us through a recount of Stephen Hawking's life as written by his wife Jane Hawling in her autobiography of her ex-husband - now separated after three children. Directed by James Marsh with an exceptional screenplay that uses the narrative befitting a film with scientific theories and expositions, the leading pair is played with vividness and intensity that stuns you. Eddie Redmayne plays Stephen Hawking and Felicity Jones plays the first love and better half of Stephen. Unlike most films of this genre which bamboozle you with intellectual largesse and concepts that leave you dazed, the film sprinkles the essence of the science and cosmology that grew in Hawking's mind since he set foot in Cambridge with an arresting humility and then builds the romance between Stephen and Jane majestically - making it as evocative and beautiful as films like "A Beautiful Mind" or "Mr Holland's Opus". There are distractions, but by admission, honest admissions as the romance goes into unchartered territories for both the Hawkings towards the second half but the controls vest with the screenplay writer and the director throughout in the 123 minute visual. You don't get bored even once.

Irrespective of whether you regard Hawking as a scientist or not, his resilience and approach to cosmology have provoked people into investigating the unknowns of the universe, be it black holes, string theory or the debate between Quantum theory and the theory of Relativity and of course, space-time singularity. God has been extremely kind to this man who was given not more than two years to live when attacked by pneumonia - and his wife had two choices - either let Stephen lapse into coma forever or let the doctor drill a hole in the neck bypassing the throat that will silence him forever. She chose life over coma. From that point, Stephen experiences unsurpassed love and affection from his wife, his parents, his esteemed colleagues who enthused him to greatness. He coudn't utter a word but gives his denouements on the universe through a voice synthesizer specially designed for him. Eventually, his famous companion leaves him but he feels her around just as his theory on black holes. In 1974, a big blackhole called Sagittarius A-Star was discovered and the same year, Stephen combined everything we knew about black holes with what we knew about quantum theory - and proposed the surprising truth that black holes that suck light and energy have to evaporate away to nothing because they shrink and shrink. In a way, the film's climactic scene brilliantly captures the essence of quantum theory and the proposition made by Hawking. Someone asks if he believes in God. Hawking looks at the girl in the front row who drops her pen on the floor. You see the pen but what if the floor is not there any more - a plausible event in a quantum world - and the visuals cross his mind as if he walks out of his deathly chair to lift the pen from the floor. Actually, he does nothing of that sort,  he remains seated on the chair. And then he answers with effect of words that mean as if the universe is created without boundaries unlike what we knew before as bounded world - and this can only be the work of some creator we can't seem to know.

On the whole, "The Theory of Everything" leaves you with a trance-like experience and tickles your imagination with lines that ask the right questions in physics with relevance in space and time - the two dimensions where searchlights are still on and cosmologists like Stephen Hawking are grappling with linkages to the Big Bang theory. Despite such heavy content, the film's creatives ensured the simplest language and analogies like potato and peas to explain the divergence between Quantum theory and Relativity. The film's heart of the matter, however is the many-layered romance and the friendships that endured Hawking to live a meaningful life. According to a recent cover story in Outlook magazine, Hollywood has made outstanding films based on  93 out of the 100  best-selling books of all time. This film is another feather in that direction. What else can we do but applaud and salute a film that receives eight Oscar nominations. Watch out also for John Jahnson's music score - evokes emotions out of everywhere. Hawking would raise a toast to the director and Eddie Redmayne for playing it so truer with a boisterous blink of an eye.

The Best and Worst of My Film Reviews in 2014: A Report Card

Films Reviews rarely get rated. Even on million dollar websites and sensational TV Channels, you hardly find eggs and rotten tomatoes on a reviewer's record of the year. I have no such luxury. But I aspire in that direction. I take my reviewing seriously. When I watch a film, I look for entertainment not intelligence. I judge if the film is watchable or not. I decide if the film is a good example for family audiences. I rate it on aesthetics, refinedness, creativity, acceptability and above all, sustainability of run at the box office. And then I rate it  as honestly  and objectively as I can  - on calibrations of 0.25 on a scale of 1 to 5. If it is average, a rating has to cross 2.5. If it crosses the average rating, it has to be decently good film to touch 3 and beyond. It is really good film if it crosses 3.5; it means it is a paisa vasool. It has to be a crappy film if it doesn't even make it to 2. Then all my ratings are relatively ratable - means if you put two movies with 2.75 each, then the movie rated 3 has to be really better than 2.75 to get the rating it got. This rating business is not to my liking but it became a feature of my reviews on feedback from friends on social media who find it useful in navigating the labrynth of analysis I inflict on readers. So this year, I am giving all of you a report card of the movie reviews I have done for releases in 2014. Thirty two films have been reviewed this year as of 30th December and I have put all my ratings against them - usually reviewed within 48-72 hours of the film's release. As I see, there are some famous misses like "Race Gurram" which went on to collect over Rs.50 crs. But if there is one metric on which I like to be judged vis-a-vis others, it is consistency, dear reader. Most movies rated 3 and above have been top grossers. Movies like "BangBang", "Kick" and even "PK" have all crossed Rs.250 crores or beyond and they were rated 3.5 by me. If there are any misses, I own up to all of them. If there have been bang-on or consistent, it raises my enthusiasm to more responsible levels. As always, love your feedback and more essentially, the brickbats. Please remember, however, that films are quite personal in the way our minds process them. It is not necessary we need to agree. And there is never one way to view them or review them. Even if I take my films seriously, you needn't take the reviews, least of all mine, seriously. If the crowds vote on a film with their feet one way or the other, sometimes it is a good idea to junk all reviews and go for a film, or not, whichever applies. Happy Viewing and Happy Year ahead. Yours humbly.

Films Reviewed in 2014 and their respective ratings.

=======================================

Yevadu (Telugu) - 3.25/5

The Wolf of Wall Street (English) - 2/5

1-Nenokkadine (Telugu) - 2/5

Highway (Hindi) - 3.75/5

Aaha Kalyanam (Telugu) - 2.5/5

Legend (Telugu) - 3/5

Pratinidhi (Telugu)- 3/5

Paisaa (Telugu) - 2/5

2 States (Hindi)- 3.75/5

Race Gurram (Telugu)- 2/5

Rowdy (Telugu) - 3/5

Kochadiyaan (Tamil)/Vikramasimha (Telugu) - 2/5

Anamika (Telugu/Tamil)- 3.5/5

Manam (Telugu)- 3.5/5

Ulavacharu Biryani (Telugu) - 3.25/5

Kick (Hindi) - 3.5/5

Drushyam (Telugu)- 3/5

Bobby Jasoos (Hindi) - 3.25/5

Anjaan/Sikindar (Tamil/Telugu)- 2.25/5

Run Raja Run (Telugu)- 4/5

Aagadu (Telugu) - 2.75/5

Anna Belle - 2.7

Karthikeya - 2.5/5

Loukyam (Telugu) - 3/5

BangBang - 3.5/5

Govindudu Andarivaadele - 2.5/5

Brother of Bommali - 2.75/5

Linga (Tamil/Telugu) - 1.5/5

PK (Hindi) - 3.5/5

Mukunda (Telugu) - 3.5/5

Ugly (Hindi) - 3/5

Night At The Museum part three - 4/5

#MovieReviews #FilmReviews #MovieRatings #Ratings #Hollywood #Bollywood #Tollywood #Kollywood #IndianFilms 

"Ugly" (HIndi Film Review)

I always fear Anurag Kashyap's films not just because they are dark and sordid and present  a grim picture of humanity. I dread his films for the monsters of fear that prey on my mind long after I moved out of the parking lot. "Ugly" had all the trappings of an Anurag Kashyap film - written and directed by him, full-blooded "A" certificate, negative title that promises to show the ugly side of modern life in Mumbai and produced by "Dar" motion pictures as if fear has become the new private equity in Bollywood productions. (But isn't it always the case with most films in India, alongwith love). So I went to the film, thankfully, alone. I was warned. And I paid the price. For 123 minutes, Anurag Kashyap cast his evil spell with a realistic story, "inspired by actual events" about a 10-year old girl's kidnapping. The kidnapping happens in a busy corner - a male supermodel parks his sedan and tells his daughter just to stay put in the car for five minutes as he finishes his errand upstairs. He is joined upstairs by his friend and protege - a casting director. He tells the hero-aspirant that the girl is missing. (But how did he know a girl is inside the car?). They search all over in vain and rush to the police station. Many frivolous chats with the FIR team later,  enters Ronit Roy - Crime Detection ACP. He takes special interest in the case because the missing girl is his foster daughter. His wife - Tejaswini Kolhapure (remember Padmini Kolhapure? Her sister) and the hero-model were once married and now divorced and Kali - the missing girl is their daughter. The story then moves with a riveting speed on what lies beneath a simple plot - there are layers of ugly side to each character: the hero-model loves his ex-wife and daughter a lot but lives-in with another model, Ronit Roy overworks his official machinery on the case of missing Kali so that he settles old scores over the hero-model, Tejaswini Kolhapure is unemotional as a mother but is trapped in feelings of helplessness over an unhappy marriage and many, many affairs with her ex-husband's associates, she is chronically depressed and has a grouse against Ronit Roy for being stone-deaf to her desires and demands, the casting director associate of the hero-model has many shades of grey and plays double games with everybody in the plot and then there are side-characters, kith and kin of Tejaswini who capitalise on the kidnapping drama and add to the angst of the two leading male characters.

The drama unfolds at breakneck speed but on familiar grooves - the police team keeps a tab on most people with GPRS installed devices and tracking equipment of all phones - and the suspects - all lead characters carry on their conversations unabashedly, adding to the viewers' confabulations. Hidden motives include greed, lust, guilt, revenge and revulsion. Anurag Kashyap is good at exposing the dark side but leaves the frames of highlighted emotions unadulterated - you hate them but that's what it is like, take it or leave it. It's a society that has thrived on it's own insecurities and created a rabid, almost incurable feedback loop of crime insensitivities. Here, the lower and upper middle-class is trapped in exploitative and manipulative mind-games with each other and therefore becomes a breeding ground for transactional trade-offs setting it up for the most unthinkable crimes. Behind every great fortune, there is  a crime but behind every crime there is a fortune and those who failed in life. "Ugly" is a mirror to those folks who eke out their living with faultlines in their moral fibre. 

Despite the film's speed, it lags because many sequences were not edited well - a surprise in Anurag Kashyap's films. In many scenes, the lag comes because of the director's obsession with showing the vulnerabilities and the imperfections of the characters. For instance, when the hero and his associate narrate how the girl was kidnapped, the police officer asks the most insensitive questions and also the dumbest questions which are the ways in which the police system works in India - be dumb so you get entertained and educated. The loose ends in the plot, however, remain unanswered like the gaps in investigating the obvious clues or witnesses, or maybe that's the intended message of Anurag Kashyap. But the ending is a shocker  - and reveals Anurag's fallible side of cinematic sensibilities - he has no boundaries when it comes to commercial cinema, he can shock you out of your wits without an apology. That's what "Ugly" is all about - an extension of his bare-all attitude and a periscopic view of life in it's ugliest shades. You may not come out with any feelings of positivity - because the characterisation shows as if "Sab Mile Huwe Hai". This maybe a school of cinema that I don't want to see too much of. Despite the intelligence and the candidness, the film is full of hard-core expletives that come out as a mouthful from even the most urbane people in India. Music by GV Prakash Kumar is wasted but the BGM by one Brian McMere is spine-chilling. Watchable once but only if you like sordid and dark human drama.

Rating: 3/5 

#Ugly #MovieReviews #Bollywood #AnuragKashyap #DarkCinema

"Brother of Bommali" (Telugu Film Review)

In a film industry dominated by male chauvinism, a team of new writers pair up with director Chinni Krishna to give a heroine-oriented role. Allari Naresh must be lauded for agreeing to share the screen with Karthika - the tall, dark and muscular daughter of yesteryears' star Radha  calls the shots all the way in a fresh story not seen in Allari Naresh films of late. 

The story goes like this: Naresh and Karthika are twins born seconds apart but they grow up differently. Contrary to the pink brain-blue brain syndrome seen in twins of a girl and a boy, Naresh and Karthika turn out to be gender-atypical extremes; Naresh is a sheepish boy and a non-confrontist. Karthika is  tomboyish, no-nonsense girl who is at once abrasive and aggressive. She is the shield protecting her elder  brother infact. Naresh falls in love with a cute girl and is about to settle down. That is when their parents force him to postpone marriage until his sister ties the knot. It is interval time and the suspense moves at fifteen nautical miles per hour with Karthika revealing she has, o wonder of wonders, fallen in love with a boy Harshavardhan Rane. The twist takes a new level post-interval when the boy Karthika falls in love with is about to marry a girl who is loved by the real villain of the film who keeps running into Allari Naresh - his name is Abhimanyu Singh - that intense-looking guy last seen in "Ram-Lila : Goliyon Ki Rasleela". The girl he is in love with is none other than the "Varudu" girl - Bhanu Mehra. With all these twists, there has to be one man who will be needed to bump the villains and straighten the gang that acquieses to the perfect marriage of hearts. Thats when Brahmanandam enters and brings the story to the end as predictably as he is good at. 

On the whole, "B/o Brahmali" is an entertainer mostly with 143 minutes of comedy and dramatic scenes of women empowerment rarely seen in Tollywood. The second half lets you down with lot of lags and needless scenes that remind you of "Kandireega" and Sreenu Vaitla's films. Yet, the film makes an impact because of freshness in treatment in the first half and the dialogues that pack a punch in ever scene. Music by Sharath Chandra shows lot of variety usually missing in his recent output. Allari Naresh has done an EVV Satyanarayana act by starring in a film scripted to back a heroine more than the hero. That heroine and the sole fulcrum of the plot is Karthika  - she may not have the looks but she carries the film right through. I found she has better screen presence than Naresh. The film has gaping holes - the familiar flaws of Tollywood plot, of tomfoolery, over-simplicity in plots, hyper-comedy situations out of common situations. But it is mostly watchable and few dialogues linger on your mind long after the din of comedy dries - like the dialogue of the heroine when faced by sexual harrassment at work. Despite the overtness of the comic effort, as a viewer, my mind rewound to the classics of EVV on the power of the feminine - like "Aame", "Chaalaa Bagundi" etc. Had this plot got made with a star like Tamanna or Samantha with a Superstar hero and got a classier treatment, the movie would have been a runaway blockbuster. Right now, it is not and we can watch it but once. But the effort deserves patronage. 

My Rating: 2.75/5

#BrotherOfBommali #Tollywood #MovieReviews

"Villain" Movie Review or "Raavanan" Movie Review

"Raavanan" or "Villain" movie tries to break new ground in showing villain as hero and hero as villain. It assembles an ace team who are at Mani "Sir"s beck and call - AR Rehman, Santosh Sivan and a starcast that's contracted to give super-profits even if they show up once. `Ramayana' comes alive in this movie and throws up some dazzling moments - but Mani is losing touch with evocative themes and entertainment in the pursuit of cinematic excellence and artistry.  No wonder they are not firing at BO. Vikram shows more versatility than Aiswarya.

Paid Reviews?

There's lot of buzz in some websites and blogs that Tollywood producers pay cash to websites for giving favorable reviews in order to promote their films. A three-star or a four-star rating will make a world of difference - this is similar to the stock market operations. In stock market, operators identify some stocks with potential which can be buzzed up to new highs, later on cashing on the higher price levels to start offloading the stakes to realise huge profits. This is fine as long as the fundamentals support stock prices, or else, all hell breaks loose. Ditto, for movies which buzz. If there's no content, no movie can outrun the buzz. A four-star rating on a popular website can sustain only if the movie has some stuff and content. Its a close call for a blogger or a web journalist or a reviewer to choose between instant riches vs. credible success. Sooner or later, you will be found out -whichever way you are leaning towards or against.