2008: The Good, Bad and Ugly for Tollywood

Yes, I’m sure. 2008 is a Good, Bad and Ugly year in our most beloved industry, Tollywood.

The year entered with a biggest flop of the year named, ‘Okka Magadu’ with Balakrishna and other massive masala actresses Anushka, Nisha Kothari and Simran in YVS home banner.
Meantime, pure mass masala film 'Krishna' gets victory and that proved once again that it is all about the art of story telling. Massive actor Ravi Teja along with Trisha under the captainship of V V Vinayak gave a hit to Tollywood.

The remake romantic tragedy ‘Vaana’ proves a real tragedy for M.S. Raju.

This much hyped ‘Vaana’ film of M S Raju's directorial debuted venture it got its consolation through the audio chartbusters. But, in the summer took the power heat when Pawan Kalyan and Iliana starred emerged with a big hit in the form of 'Jalsa' breaking the opening records and some fantastic songs that are still haunting at many places. Simultaneously, some hyped movies have been biting the dust in the form of 'Bhale Dongalu'.

Even Nagarjuna's divine presence could not save the film 'Krishnarjuna' from collapsing registering another failure for Vishnuvardhan Babu and soon darshakendra K Raghavendra Rao came up with his debacle 'Pandurangadu' which was more a sleazy treat than spiritual one. The good thing about that was the performance of Balakrishna. Amidst all this chaos, one ray of light came in with the outcome of 'Kantri' giving NTR Jr a hit. His dance, fights and stunts have been gets good graph and stole the limelight.

This was followed by a rather lucky escape for hero Allu Arjun who came in with his 'Parugu' and though it was given a big stick by the critics and audience, given the fact that there was no big release around the film managed to crawl to a decent mark.

The frontline director Puri Jagannadh who came in with his much hyped 'Bujjigadu' and it was solely due to the impressive performance of Prabhas that he was able to keep his head above the water and of course the songs.

Apart from all these, the movie that emerged as super hit out of silence is 'Gamyam'. The new director Krish, gave this most valuable victory to the Tollywood, and he bagged a big film offer with Vaijayanthi banner victory Venkatesh as lead.

Young actor Ram who came back with a vengeance scored a super successful hit with the film 'Ready' and this turned out to be a big hit of sorts.

On the other hand, the biggest disaster of the decade turned out to be 'Kathanayakudu' with Rajinikanth and Jagapati Babu trying their best to save the film from sinking. This was followed by the much hyped 'Dasavatharam' and though the poor story, good presentation, but bored screenplay, but Kamal Hassan impressed with his critically acclaimed hard work and saved the ship.

The film managed to bail out with decent returns though it did not touch a commercial hit. The later half belonged to the small ventures and except ,Ashta Chemma’, 'Kotha Bangaru Lokam', 'Blade Babji', ‘Vinayakudu’ and ‘Yuvatha’ the rest collapsed.

The final tragedy is really matured and elegant movie 'Surya s/o Krishnan' got its share of critical acclaim; such movies are more needed for the society, but did’t succeeded in the commercial line.

So all in all, the only saving grace for Tollywood has been the major chunk of small banner successes and it is about time they gear up with some quality stuff and meaningful stories for the next year.

http://www.hyderabadsaimira.com/ wishes good luck to Tollywood for the year 2009.

Venkateshwarlu Bulemoni