Sivaji The Boss: Sudden Emergence of a Massive Film

hmm good review...but i think u r too ignorant about the strength of south indian cinema. that's because south indian films have just been ignored by north indians claiming them as just regional language films. see a film as a film instead of categorizing them as language based. in fact there have been so many other south indian (especially tamil) films which have been big budgeted ones. the only difference is that you guys are not aware about it. the only thing that I dislike about the so called bollywood is that you think u are the only ones who represent the indian film industry. sadly this is not true. there are far more technically exceptional films that are made in south india which have gone unnoticed because they don't have much star value except rajini who is now donned as an international star...i know it is hard for you guys to grasp that when he is compared with amitabh. but truth is always hard to accept. okay coming back to your argument on fans, i totally agree about the craziness of fans in tamilnadu. if u attribute the value of rajini towards this craziness, give a second thought. he has a huge fan following in japan, uae and even in usa. the so called white coloured IT fellows are way too crazy than the rag pickers. this is totally due to the massive screen presence of this one man who's charisma alone works to make his film run for a 100 days without any marketting. he might be old but people still want to watch him. there is no actor in india who can match his screen presence. whether u accept it or not it's the truth. i pleed the media to give atleast half the importance to films from the south, that they give for the hindi film industry. there are so much abundant talent that is going un-noticed. Also those who are the chair people for the IIFA, pls either change the name to BIFA (to represent bollywood alone) or better screen other south indian films. Don't u ever think that bollywood alone represents the indian film industry.

hmm good review...but i think u r too ignorant about the strength of south indian cinema. that's because south indian films have just been ignored by north indians claiming them as just regional language films. see a film as a film instead of categorizing them as language based. in fact there have been so many other south indian (especially tamil) films which have been big budgeted ones. the only difference is that you guys are not aware about it. the only thing that I dislike about the so called bollywood is that you think u are the only ones who represent the indian film industry. sadly this is not true. there are far more technically exceptional films that are made in south india which have gone unnoticed because they don't have much star value except rajini who is now donned as an international star...i know it is hard for you guys to grasp that when he is compared with amitabh. but truth is always hard to accept. okay coming back to your argument on fans, i totally agree about the craziness of fans in tamilnadu. if u attribute the value of rajini towards this craziness, give a second thought. he has a huge fan following in japan, uae and even in usa. the so called white coloured IT fellows are way too crazy than the rag pickers. this is totally due to the massive screen presence of this one man who's charisma alone works to make his film run for a 100 days without any marketting. he might be old but people still want to watch him. there is no actor in india who can match his screen presence. whether u accept it or not it's the truth. i pleed the media to give atleast half the importance to films from the south, that they give for the hindi film industry. there are so much abundant talent that is going un-noticed. Also those who are the chair people for the IIFA, pls either change the name to BIFA (to represent bollywood alone) or better screen other south indian films. Don't u ever think that bollywood alone represents the indian film industry.

Agreed to most of what you said, and I think I actually confirmed most of this

- Bollywood is assumed to be the Indian film industry, while there are numerous other quality regional language industries such as Tamil and Bengali
- Hindi film heroes would love to have the fan following of Rajnikanth

"afan" -- were you posting twice just to emphasize your fervour? I think Tamil cinema fans make fools out of themselves and their film industry with their immature antics. The Personality Cult worship has to get a grip and tone it down, because it looks really silly to the rest of the country. And no, Rajnikanth doesn't have some obsessive following in Japan, that's just something you're trying to convince yourself of to justify the whole circus show.

Well i think Sanjay u have not done u r homework. I will give u a hint just check the collection for Thalaivar Movie "Chandramukhi" in Japan then u will understand whether Japan has an obsessive following or not. As far as my homework goes none of the bollywood movies ever run for more than a week in Japan.

I watched the movie in Telugu here in Delhi. The ticket costed 200 bucks!

I liked the concept of the movie. A philanthropist - who wants to do good by establishing a college - returns from the US and discovers the nature of Indian bureaucracy.

I disliked the movie precisely for the same because in the second half, the movie loses its way. I expected a Guru style ending in which the hero would prevail over his enemies and detractors by moral arguments.

Otherwise, the movie - especially the fights - was silly. It was like a comedy. I really enjoyed Rajni Kants gravity defying stunts. The best was one in which Rajni is confronted by a goon who runs and hides behind something. Rajni simply throws the gun at him, which goes near the goon, makes a 180 degree turn, aims at the goon by itself and shoots him! :D

They tried really hard to hide his age but it was showing very clearly.

Why don't we 'dub' it in Hindi too?

I'm sure it will be remade into Hindi soon, perhaps even dubbed like Roja.

All the comments are good, but when comparing hindi films with Tamil , my rating goes only for tamil and Malayalam movies which are tecnically good and stuff matching international standard. Hindi films are competing hollywood in skin shows and illegal relations. Other than sex and skin show I dont find any good movies which can promote our country's talent.Only Aamir khan & Sanjay leela banshali are doing good. That too point to remember Aamir's upcoming movie is Tamil remake. If Tamil films was given the honour of Hindi cinema's in India atleat we can expect an Oscar every year. For all the guys who does,nt know tamil talent just a review...the top directors , musicians, coreographers, camermens,editors,in India are only from Tamilnadu.
Maniratnam, Shankar, PC Sriram, AR Rahman, Ilayaraja, Prabhudeva, Kamalahassan, Rajinikanth,
Any more comments?

The idea that Bollywood is the ambassador of Indian cinema to the rest of the world is simply a hype that was created during the "India Shining" years.
The fact is that serious movie-lovers all of the world have been noticing south Indian cinema for decades. Malayalam movies from the likes of Adoor, Aravindan, Shaji, MT etc, Kannada movies from Kasaravalli, Shankar Nag have been regulars to Cannes, Toronto, Singapore, London and other festivals way before Bollywood heard of these. You can see this deep seated admiration when you consider facts like Jackie Chan using Malayali stuntmen and himself speaking malayalam and Aishwarya Rai's character in upcoming "The last legion" with Ben Kingsley specifically says that she is from Kerala in South India. Even the life time achievement Oscar thankfully went to Satyajit Ray and not Subhash Ghai!
What has been happening in the past few years is an attempt to hijack and tie the label "India" with Bollywood. Anyone who is serious about Indian cinema knows that it is ridiculous to call Hrithik as "India's" best actor. Of course, he might be Hindi's best.
Unfortunately, There are deep seated prejudices, ignorance and racism that education doesn't help remove. Thus for an average north Indian, the four distinct cinematic cultures of the four different south indian languages all get bundled together under a derogatory "madrasi or southie" title. For him or her, Rajnikanth is all about splitting bullets and lighting cigarrettes and Malayalam is all about soft porn even while they lap up Priyadarshan remakes of 15-20 year old Malayalam movies. This is clear in a comment above where a sequence with a boomeranging gun within a song used for comic heroism seems to be the only thing about "Sivaji" that the person remembers and considers noteworthy. If we were to apply logic, all singing and dancing and even most story-lines (with dogs, pigeons and mom's prayers) will fail to make the cut.
The fundamental difference is that while Hindi cinema is caught up in a web of self satisfaction and glorification attempting to outdo only itself in baby steps and glamour mostly because it needs to cater to a wide audience with Ram-Lila mentality of wanting to see the same things and hear same lines and grades looks above talent on screen, south Indian cinema with a more educated and smaller fan following can aspire to deliver international standards of technical excellence with an Indian signature.

@Atlantean The part which you have highlighted is from a song.
If you want any examples of really good tamil films watch any of Bala's movies i.e. Sethu,Pithamagan.Ameer's movies Ram,Paruthiveeran.Did you guys know that "Ram" won the best movie and best actor category in the greece film festival?
I for one aceept that the IIFA should be renamed to BIFA as no other movie other than bollywood is screened there.

Bollywood is just crap. IIFA should be sued for giving wrong impression about indian cinema by including only HINDI cinema which pale in comparison before regional language movies. Now all of a sudden, you people have started taking notice about this after this one man show of India's biggest superstar (Of course, I mean Rajinikant). The Khans, bachchans of bollywood cant even compare themselves with Rajini in terms of popularity, simplicity, humility and abilities to generate revenues WITHOUT MARKETING. Give me the names who can equal ManiRatnam, Shankar, KamalHaasan,Vikram, Ilaiyaraaja (He is the FIRST ASIAN to compose Symphony music), PC Sreeram, Ravi K Chandran, AR Rehman, Mohanlal or good artists of Bengali and Marathi cinemas and of course The BOSS..

Its so disgusting to say Mr Bhansali or Karan Johar a talented directors. Bhansali's hit movies like Hum dil de chuke sanam was a remake (modern version) of Woh Saat Din which again was a remake of tamil movie. Karan Johar is a utter crap. Aditya Chopra is a one film wonder..

The fact is the Mumbai based bollywood have always discouraged the south indian stars through negative vibes in the media in the eighties but when they could not match the technical capabilites they simply had to accept them.. What happened after the Malayalam superstar complained about IIFA during the function itself. More disgusting is the so called shahenshah is the brand ambassador of IIFA which is nothing but crap.. Mr. Shahenshah better request the organizers to change the name from IIFA to something that suits Bollywood..

Grow up guys and accept the fact that there is a better and bigger movie industry other than Bollywood..

Guys,

I forgot to add this..

What you have witnessed is Tsunami 1 in the form of The BOSS. Wait for diwali to watch Tsunami 2 (if not atleast a huge storm) in the form of Kamalhaasan's Dasavathaaram.. a movie he plays 10 roles (first of its kind in WORLD Cinema)...

Any competition from Bollywood ?????

Guys who are very pissed off with IIFA awards for misrepresenting the INDIA in IIFA, I have a suggestion. They should come up with another IIFA kind of awards where they screen only the non bollywood movies, if it is the grudge of the southern indian people alone. then the awards should screen Tamil Telgu, Malyalam and Kannada movies only. This way they can come with Best Indian actor award for Rajinikanth, Kamal hassan, Mammooty.

Power is seldom attained by begging. It has to be taken. So guys go ahead and start an International award ceremony which matches or goes beyond the pomp show of IIFA.

what say??

I must admit that hero worshipping has brought disgrace to otherwise talented tamil cinema...

remember, so many of bagyaraj and bala's movies, so many of ilayaraja's songs were remade in hindi, surprisingly the numbers were huge from 85 - 1995 these talents incl kamal hassan are spoiled by heroworship.

something you forgot to mention is rajini's role as comeback hero in this movie sivaji , as tonsured hero he has displayed true talent.

Rajnikanth for President!

Mr Sanjay,

IGNORANCE IS BLISS.
I had a similar discussion with a North Indian in my office. When someone mentioned that this movie was releasing on 15th,
He said" Why do people watch him, They should throw him away".
I said this movie should be good especially since it is a Shankar movie.
He asks me "who is he?"
I tell him "he is one of the most successful directors who makes big budget movies with lot of technical innovations and the first to effectively and successfully use it in India.
He tells "what technical innovation? they copy Hollywood."
I say "He was the first in India to do something similar to matrix scenes in Indian movies, but while matrix was 180 degree, his was 360 degree"
He says "But who made the first degree. Hollywood guys"
I tell him "who made the first movie? Hollywood guys. So does anybody who make a movie copy from Hollywood" Basically I wanted to stress that innovating technology invented by others is not copying but using the stories and scripts is and it is very common in Bollywood. A critically acclaimed Black is a copy.
But he says "what bullshit watching heroes in green shirt and yellow pant blah blah..."

what you should know is he has never watched a Tamil film and makes comments abut them. He also does not know that Manish Malhotra is the one who dressed up Rajini for Shivaji. And then even if he is bullshit nobody is forcing you to watch the movie. So why these bashing.

Well, This is because they live in a world of illusions. They think Everything big is Bollywood and Shivaji is an exception. But it is the norm not the exception. All Shankar movies are big budget movies and after Rajini and Chirajeevi became big stars, around 25 years ago, no Bollywood star has been the highest paid star except for brief periods recently when these two were not releasing any movies. Also the very first Big budget movie was a south Indian movie "Chandralekha". Before that Hindi movies were stage dramas on film. In fact the first talkie and color movie was made in Bollywood but everything else is South. Here are a partial list,
Highest paid hero - Rajini
Biggest budget - Shivaji
First Big Budget movie with huge sets
First 3D movie Chota Chetan
First Digital keying of music - Punnagai Mannan
Best actor - Shivaji(He has get more awards abroad then at national level in India, He along with the former Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru were the only two Indians to be honoured as Mayor of Niagara City) and Kamal Hassan
Most Movies - Manorama, over 1000 films
Most Music compositions - M S Vishwanathan, over 1000 films
Best Directors - Mani Ratnam, Ram Gopal Verma
Best Cinematographer - many, all south Indians
Best music composer(popular) - A R Rehman
Best music composer(Critically acclaimed) - illayaraja, Fisrt asian whose symphony was performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Best Dancer/Chreographer - Prabhu Deva
Most beautiful - Aishwarya, Hema malini, Rekha, Sridevi

They think "South Indians" are crazy and treat their heroes like demi-god and vote them into power. But you have to consider two things. One, The craze and hero worship exists everywhere. If you think its only Tamils this is just an attitude problem. Actors and even porn stars have been presidents, governors, senators and members of parliament in all the western countries. In many states of north India they become MPs without doing anything for the people. In any case they are better than the illiterate CMs and criminals who are are elected into power all over India. Second, People look at MGR, Jayalalitha and say Tamils are crazy. The are not the only stars. There were many who could not make it big in Politics including the greats Shivaji Ganesan and Gemini Ganesan. MGR's films were written and promoted as political propaganda and he had thousands of politics linked Fan clubs around TN. And Jayalalitha did not have many crazy fans and no vote base when she was a actress and she was promoted by MGR, not the people and she became popular after she became a politician as she as considered a strong leader for the poor, brahmins and women, i.e mostly AIADMK support except the brahmins. About Hero Worship, To Mention a few Have you heard of Elvis, Beatles and Micheal Jackson. Recently when a feud started between Amithab and Shahrukh the support each got was even more fanatical.

The foremost illusion is, they think south Indians are not as civilized as them. Well I do not want to go into details but Cholas , Pandyas and Cheras are much older than Mauryas, supposedly the first dynasty of India(North India). Asoka has mentioned these dynasties in his rock edicts in the 3rd century BC but history books mention them only since medieval time. It was the richest part of India till the British created a feudal system. The Bakthi form of Hindu religion we follow was preached by Ramanujan and lot of it is also due to Shankaracharya and Madhavacharya.

South India is also the most literate region.

They say
"People are strange, When you are a stranger"
people look stupid and ignorant if you are stupid and ignorant

So please grow up. Stop this crap about Tamils. It has been going on for too long after the independence.

Well said SLK. I really loved your comments. Atleast by now people in the north should recognize their ignorance about the south. As far as I can tell, there are only two problems which prevents South Indians from making a mark in the Indian Film industry which is currently dominated by the utter crap bollywood. One is the language and the other thing is that we don't market ourselves as good as the people in the North. The only ones who can come to our rescue is the media. The media and the press gave a wonderful marketing hype for the latest Sivaji. They have to do the same for other south indian films also. A lot of great films like Anbe Sivam, Anniyan, etc have just been ignored because of the lack of marketing.

Anyway wait for another 90cr budgeted movie named Dasavatharam from none other than the great Kamal who is donning 10 stunning roles which is none of it's kind the world has ever seen. The south has much much more to offer than the north. The only thing we need is some limelight and recognition.

OK, while I agree that Bollywood has pretty unfairly taken on the tag of Indian cinema I think most of you here are missing three things:

First, there are non-Bollywood north Indian movies (be it Punjabi, Bhojpuri, etc) that are just as passed over as South Indian movies. And South Indians ignore them too.

Second, things are nowhere as bad as they used to be. In the 80s, people used to regularly ask me how far my family lived from Madras, the only place they'd ever heard of down south. Compare that to today when people have not only heard of my hometown, but a number of them have even visited.

Third, it is one thing to have pride in the cinema of your region but that doesn't mean you get to run down other people. Bollywood might not be to your taste but that doesn't mean it's automatically "crap" across the board.

The answer to chauvinism (which btw, this post is not an example of) is not more chauvinism.