This site www. search India.com, has nothing good to tell about any of the Tamil actors.Just see- they ahve nothing good to write about Billa, Ranjikanth(they have made it as though Ranji is just a star and nothing else-cudn't they just write that Ranji ahs hiven good performances in movies lie 'Dalapathy' and that we've lost Ranji the acotr to Rajni the star?'😡
Reviewer's Summary - Rajni's Second Folly in Life - Blessing Ajith's Billa
Language: Tamil
Year: December 14, 2007
Actors: Ajith, Nayanthara, Namitha, Prabhu Ganesan, Rahman, Rose Dawn
Director: Vishnuvardhan
Producer: L. Suresh Balaji
Story: Javed Akhtar, Salim Khan
Screenplay: Vishnuvardhan
Dialogs: Vishnuvardhan
Music: Yuvan Shankar Raja
As far as we can tell, Tamil movie superstar Rajnikanth has led a stellar and dignified life except for two big follies.
Rajnikanth's first folly happened sometime in 1979 or 1980, when he disgraced himself with his bad behavior at an airport in South India around the time of his nervous breakdown.
Rajni's second folly is more recent and even more bizarre - when he blessed the remake of his 1980 blockbuster Billa with Ajith in the lead.
Of all the bad Tamil actors we've watched in over four decades, it's safe to say that Ajith causes the greatest agony to serious lovers of Tamil cinema.
An eggregiously bad actor and seemingly bereft of any talent, Ajith gives the entire Tamil film industry a bad name. Ajith's Aalwar was a box office disaster while Kireedom hardly set the box office on fire.
After enduring the unendurable Ajith's Billa at the horrible Newark Screens theater in New Jersey on Friday, we felt the new Billa is not only no patch on the original but it's a downright disgrace.
In fact, Ajith's Billa is worse than even Azhagiya Tamil Magan. Not an easy achievement, when you consider that Azhagiya Tamil Magan was itself a lousy movie compared to Vijay's previous movie Pokiri.
There's much that has gone awry with Ajith's Billa.
The worst piece of Billa was Ajith's pathetic performance. Prancing about like a Korangu than a seasoned actor, Ajith looks wooden in most scenes. There's absolutely no range in his emotions or his dialogue delivery.
One of the crucial scenes in the old Billa is when the Deputy Superintendent of Police (Balaji) convinces a street performer Rajappa (Rajnikanth) to impersonate the don after Billa's death. That memorable scene was handled with great finesse by Rajnikanth but completely messed up by Ajith in the new Billa.
While the story of the new Billa - filmed mostly in Malaysia - broadly follows that of the old Billa, the remake's story is disjointed with a careless screenplay that is frequently jarring. To put it succinctly, Billa is the eponymous story of a ruthless criminal and the efforts of the police to capture him and his gang.
Although a movie belonging to the action genre, much of what passes for action in Billa, whether the car chases, the killings or the fight scenes, are downright pedestrian and have been beaten to death in other movies. Hardly anything to write home about let alone savor.
Even the opening scene in Billa in the airport hangar was nothing extraordinary.
Adding to viewers' agony in Ajith's Billa are the two so-called actresses Nayantara and Namitha.
For much of the movie, Nayantara goes around wearing skimpy black attire and an ugly frown. And she looks bad in both. Nayantara is worse than Sripriya (in the old Billa) who was worse than Zeenat Aman in that 1978 Hindi film Don, which inspired the original Billa in 1980.
As for Namitha, who plays Billa's moll, will someone please tell this fat tramp that a gravity-defying bosom is no substitute for acting. Her song-dance scene Naan Meendum in Billa inflicted heavy pain on our eye-balls and ear-drums.
None of the songs in the new Billa have any life or soul in them. The old Billa had three nice songs Iravum Pagalum, My Name is Billa and Veththalaya Potttendy.
The new Billa has not a single decent song. The Ajith version of Vethalaya Pottendy is a horror show lacking any semblance of grace or class. Our neighbors at the Newark Screens were laughing disdainfully at that bozo's antics on the screen.
In the Seval Kodi song, Ajith looked ridiculous prancing about in jeans while everyone around him is dressed in religious garb. Is there no limit to nonsense?
Visually, the new Billa never rises to great heights. Like that recent ugly Sholay remake Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag, Billa is mostly filmed in dim lighting giving this bad film a gloomy look overall.
If there is any saving grace in Billa, it must surely be in Prabhu's performance as the Deputy Superintendent of Police. Prabhu (son of Sivaji Ganesan) has matured as a fine character actor over the years.
You know, Ajith is often referred to as the Ultimate Star.
But after watching his antics on screen in Billa and his other insufferable Tamil movies, we think it's fair to call Ajith the Tamil film industry's Ultimate Korangu.
Unless you are a mindless Ajith-fan, the new Billa is awful to endure, rotten to contemplate and unpleasant to narrate.
Reviewer's Summary - Good Movie; Pathetic Performance by Jyothika
Language: Tamil
Year: February 2007
Actors: Prithwiraj Sukumaran, Jyothika, Prakash Raj, Swarnamalya, Brahmanandam
Director: Radha Mohan
Producer: Prakash Raj
Story: Radha Mohan
Screenplay: Radha Mohan
Dialogs: Viji
Music: Vidyasagar
Lyrics: Vairamuthu
Mozhi is a bewitching aberration in the crowded marketplace of bad Tamil movies.
Featuring fine performances by Prithwiraj Sukumaran, Prakash Raj and Swarnamalya, this first-class movie is marred only by the pathetic portrayal of a deaf and dumb girl by Jyothika.
If you thought Jyothika was horrible in Pachaikili Muthucharam, the bimbo's plain awful in Mozhi. In scene after scene, the young lady's acting - if that's what it is - is inexpressibly repulsive to all the senses and a negation of all things artistic.
But fear not. Even Jyothika cannot do much damage to Mozhi. Such is the appeal of Mozhi's story and the performance of her co-stars.
The talented ensemble of Prithwiraj Sukumaran, Prakash Raj and Swarnamalya bring a glittering freshness, seldom seen these days in Tamil movies.
A Malayalam film actor, Prithwiraj Sukumaran is the best of the lot, a seeming natural in front of the camera.
A highlight of Mozhi is the well crafted dialogs, often absolutely hilarious.
Viewers at the CinePlaza Theatre in North Bergen (New Jersey) repeatedly broke into peals of laughter during the first show of Mozhi on Friday, February 23, 2007.
Comedy comes in the form of Brahmanandam, the oddball neighbor of Prithwiraj Sukumaran and Prakash Raj in the apartment complex.
Like most Tamil movies, Mozhi is also a love story.
Close buddies and bachelors Karthik (Prithwiraj Sukumaran) and Viji (Prakash Raj) are keyboard players in music director Vidyasagar's team.
It's love at sight for Karthik one morning when he spots a spunky young girl Archana (Jyothika) thrashing a wife-beater on the street.
To Karthik's humongous joy, the girl happens to live in the same apartment complex Viji and he have just moved into. Although Karthik is shocked when he subsequently learns that the object of his interest is deaf and dumb, he doesn't falter.
The girl on the other hand has had a traumatic childhood - suffering abandonment by the father and early death of the mother - and extremely reluctant to get into any romantic entanglements for fear of subsequent rejection.
How Karthik and Archana ultimately come together in the end constitutes the rest of the movie.
Prakash Raj appears in frame after frame even when his presence is superfluous, presumably because he's the producer of this movie.
Vidyasagar's captivating music adds to the overall pleasure of watching the movie.
(Date of Birth - December 12, 1949)
The immense popularity of Tamil movie star Rajnikanth ranks among the great mysteries of mankind.
With a face and personality that can only charitably be described as "not handsome", Rajnikanth's rock star popularity - not just in the state of Tamil Nadu (in South India) but strangely enough even in Japan - defies explanation.
His popularity and mass appeal leave all his peers - including his contemporary Kamal Haasan - in the shade. Rajnikanth is also believed to be the second highest paid actor in Asia, after the Hong Kong action movie star Jackie Chan.
Rajnikanth - the star - is no great actor.
If you enjoy watching top notch actors like Marlon Brando, Humphrey Bogart, Robert De Niro, Robert Redford or Jack Nicholson, then Rajnikanth's acting seems pedestrian and downright crude. Even among the bunch of mostly mediocre Indian actors, Rajnikanth is a below par actor.
But like most successful people in the world, Rajnikanth possesses two qualities that have stood him in good stead - persistence and luck.
Born as Shivaji Rao Gaekwad into a Marathi family in the neighboring state of Karnataka on December 12, 1949, Rajnikanth has acted in about 150 films, most of them in the South Indian language of Tamil.
What adds allure to Rajnikanth's appeal with the masses is that unlike most of the current crop of Tamil actors like Surya, Vijay, Simbhu and Vishal, Rajnikanth (like MGR and Sivaji Ganeshan before him) came from humble origins.
Before his successful foray into films, Rajnikanth worked as a bus conductor with the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation. His fierce passion for movies led him to join the Chennai Film Institute in 1973.
Rajnikanth started his movie innings in 1976 with the Kannada language film Kathaa Sangama directed by the acclaimed film maker Puttana Kanagal. But it was his performance in Veteran Tamil film director K.Balachandar's Apoorva Raagangal (1975) that brought him into the limelight.
Balachandar also gave him the screen name Rajnikanth.
Several of Rajnikanth's films including Billa, Basha, Muthu and Chandramukhi were phenomenal hits with the audience. But others like Baba met with a lukewarm audience reception.
Some of the dialogs of Rajnikanth's movies have become so well known that most Tamil film aficionados can easily recite it from memory. Take for instance, the line from Basha - Naan oru dhadavai sonna nooru dhadavai sonna madhiri (If I say it once, it's like saying it 100 times) and the following line from Annamalai - Naan solrathaiyum seiven, sollathathiyum seiven (I will do what I say and I will also do what I don't say).
Rajnikanth's upcoming movie Sivaji is expected to be released on June 15, 2007. Directed by Shankar, Sivaji also stars Shriya Saran and Prakash Raj.
Although most of his films are in Tamil, Rajnikanth has acted in a few Hindi, Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam movies. He has also acted in a Hollywood film called Bloodstone (1988) with Brett Stimely and Anna Nicholas.
Married to Latha, Rajnikanth has two daughters Aishwarya (wife of Tamil film actor Dhanush) and Soundarya.
Jothika
One of the worst actresses in Tamil movies, Jyothika is a well known film star.
A reasonably pretty and chubby girl, Jyothika is a distressing spectacle on screen for movie afficionados looking beyond physical attributes of the heroine.
Jyothika's entry into Tamil language films came after she failed to make headway in Hindi movies. Her first Hindi film Doli Saja Ke Rakhna opposite Akshaye Khanna did not set the cash registers ringing and she headed south.
Although it's hard to pick Jyothika's worst film since she is pretty bad in most, if pressed we'd say she's eggregiously bad in Thenali, Mayaavi, Pachaikili Muthucharam and Mozhi. In both Pachaikili Muthucharam and Mozhi, the young lady is just plain awful.
Try as we did, we cannot expunge from memory her distasteful performance as a deaf and dumb girl in Mozhi opposite the talented Prithwiraj Sukumaran.
Besides Surya, Jyothika has acted opposite several top Tamil heroes including Vijay, Kamal Haasan, Sarath Kumar, Rajnikanth, and Silambarasan.
Jyothika's terrible performances notwithstanding, she was quite popular with Tamil movie audiences which have a preference for plump and fair North Indian girls.
Jyothika married Surya on 11 September 2006 in a big ceremony in Chennai.
Following her marriage, the young lady has bid adieu to Tamil movies, a long overdue move by the reckoning of some Tamil film lovers.
Born on 18 October 1978, Jyothika is the daughter of film producer Chander Sadanah.
Jyothika's sister Nagma is a well known Bhojpuri film actress.
All thier movie review are bad, I guess they want Satyajit Rays' kind of movies. They ahte Tamil actors and actresses, with a few exceptions liek prithviraj, Sandhya, Meera Jasmine(I agree there) and Padmapriya. Wish they wud watch more Mal movies to see the original Padamapriya and Prithviraj(acc to keralites-repeaters)
Udne Ki Aasha
