December 16, 2009

HD on wthD : 2012 in Telugu


Dad and I went to Bandarugudem(Damn, I'm not sure about the spelling!) to apply for a new broadband
connection. As expected the old, dusty relic that was the BSNL office was deserted save for a cleaner who told us the staff was 'out', while the office was open. Wow, we'd come 15kms for this.

On the bike I was contemplating asking him to stop at Venu for a quick meal when he pulled into the parking lot of... Venkateshwara theatre! I looked up at the poster and woah...2012, in telugu!
We bought a couple of balcony tickets, the movie was already on and we hurried into the um.. auditorium.

To fully aprreciate a movie one needs three most important elements: Picture, Sound and Ambience. For picture we had a yellow(seriously) screen with ugly streaks. For sound we had blaring subwoofers that were customized for bass heavy telugu numbers. The guy to my left was texting on his chinese smartphone, while a couple behind me talked. Cigerette smoke from somewhere summed up the ambience part. My seat had a beverage holder stuffed with empty popcorn packs, cigerette stubs and whatnot. I tried to focus on the screen...
Now the movie. 2012 is all about visuals. Tsunamis, volcanoes, winds, earthquakes and all kinds of CG mayhem I was so eagerly looking forward to. Who'd have thought I'd end up watching it here! One word to sum up the visual experience is "f..d", the awful screen completely ruined it for me. There's more.
All dialogue was in telugu, not that I donno how to speak the language. The speed was too much for me.
Though occasionally lines like this came up : "Door close kaataledu! Hydraulics jam ayipoiyayi." meaning "The door's not closing! The hydraulics are jammed" So door,jam, hydraulics and jam were the keywords that did the translation for me. There were other pure telugu words I couldn't discern. And knowing Roland Emmerich was never good at portraying emotions, the telugu dialogues sort of killed all that he tried to show. Don't "Say anything" John cusack, you look better that way!

I didn't sit long enough to see the little girl Lily say, "inka Pull-ups vaddu Daddy!!!"
I'd had it.

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