Look, up in the sky. It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a Super Scooper water drop!

The most memorable battle scenes exist in the pivot — the moment when all appears to be lost and then, out of nowhere, the cavalry arrives. The fishing boats at Dunkirk. Union reinforcements at Gettysburg. Or, fictionally, the Riders of Rohan sweeping down on the besieged city of Gondor.

For Angelenos, the cavalry has arrived in the form of water drop videos.

For days, images from the horrendous series of wildfires that continue to consume huge swaths of Los Angeles have been devastating. People forced to flee their cars on Sunset Boulevard; sparks whipped by 80-mph winds igniting entire streets; firefighters hastening evacuations and confronting literal walls of flame; the smoking shells of homes and businesses.

These images shocked, terrified and aggrieved us. It was difficult not to feel helpless, hopeless, as the fires grew in size and number.

Then, as the ferocious winds began to die down on Wednesday, firefighters were once again able to take to the air, scooping up water from the ocean and reservoirs and dumping it on the fires. TV journalists caught some of the maneuvers on camera. Citizens filmed others on their phones. Everyone began posting and sharing them on social media.

Whether in Altadena, West Hills or Hollywood, the videos — call them firefighting fancams — depict firefighting pilots angling planes over flames that appear uncontrollable and releasing, with remarkable precision, gallons of water that douse raging infernos in a matter of seconds.

It is impossible not to cheer. And at this moment, Los Angeles needs something to cheer about.

For days, fire has been our worst enemy. Randomly killing and arbitrarily destroying, it has taken on near-supernatural dimensions, appearing at times to be laughing as it sped through brush and buildings, forcing thousands to flee.

Watching it be squashed into nothing but smoke and steam is an exhilarating thing. Thought you were unstoppable? Take that. Thought you were too big to be beaten? Yippee-ki-yay, motherf—!

To a city reeling with loss, water drop videos are “Battle of Britain” and Snoopy beating the Red Baron. They’re rebel pilots taking down the Death Star, Bill Pullman’s speech in “Independence Day,” LeBron James hitting a final-second three. Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” and the Weather Girls’ “It’s Raining Men.”

The precision of the drops is astonishing, the impact heart-lifting, their moments of victory obvious and unquestionable.

The only thing missing are the job-done figures of the pilots walking away from their aircraft in vivid silhouette to a pounding bass accompaniment. For the simple reason that they are still hard at work.

But a grateful city sees them and has been offering viral shout-outs and admiration by posting water drop videos with the “Top Gun” soundtrack, sportscaster commentary and many, many applause emojis.

Two yellow Canadian Super Scoopers have been especially well-documented dropping water over the Palisades. One of them was grounded on Thursday after colliding with a civilian drone, and whoever was idiotic enough to illegally send one up during a firefight better hope the internet doesn’t find them before the feds do. These planes, helicopters and Super Scoopers are our heroes, providing support for the fearless, stretched-thin firefighters on the ground, helping to quench the Sunset fire before it claimed more homes and offering hope that at some point Los Angeles will cease to burn.

More important, the water drop videos have returned a feeling of control to the populace — and given us all something to root for.

Firefighters have been working nonstop since the Palisades fire exploded, and their efforts amid the smoke and flames have been lifesaving and heroic. It’s satisfying to watch the fruits of that hard work in the form of a fire all but extinguished before it claims yet another acre or snakes its way toward any more homes.

In fact, it’s the best thing any of us has seen in days.

Final Report:

Daaku Maharaaj makes for a decent one-time watch. It’s a stylishly made film through and through, but the key characters are written routinely. Technical departments (Thaman and DOP) significantly enhance the appeal. Solid writing that complements the stylish production would have made this film a memorable one. Watch it for Balayya in a style-packed production. Stay tuned for the full review and rating soon.

First Half Report:

First half of Daaku Maharaaj is decent, with solid visuals and an action-packed interval episode. We need to see if the style meets substance in the second half. Thaman and Vijay Kannan (DOP) together make it technically good. The second half needs to show if Bobby has written something solid.

— Director Bobby briefly dances in “Dabidi Dibidi” song with nice styling and a stylish costume for his fun moment.

— Daaku Maharaaj begins with a brief action sequence where BalaKrishna declares that he is the ‘God of Death’ leading into a flashback. Stay tuned for the first half report.

Stay tuned for Daaku Maharaaj review, USA Premiere report. Show begins at 2.30 PM EST (1 AM IST).

Daaku Maharaaj comes after a goodwill film like Bhagavanth Kesari for Nandamuri Balakrishna, and for director Bobby, it’s a follow-up to the commercial blockbuster Waltair Veerayya. Stay tuned for the Daaku Maharaaj review to find out if the Balayya-Bobby combo hits the bullseye or not.

Cast: Nandamuri Balakrishna, Bobby Deol, Pragya Jaiswal, Shraddha Srinath, Chandhini Chowdary.

Written and Directed by Bobby Kolli

Banners: Sithara Entertainments & Fortune Four Cinemas
Presenter: Srikara Studios
Producers: Suryadevara Naga Vamsi & Sai Soujanya
Music: Thaman S
DOP: Vijay Kartik Kannan
Editors: Niranjan Devaramane, Ruben
Screenplay: K Chakravarthy Reddy
VFX Supervisor: Yugandhar T
Stunts: V Venkat

U.S. Distributor: Shloka Entertainments

Daaku Maharaaj Movie Review by M9

Sam Moore, who as half of the 1960s R&B duo Sam & Dave sang gritty but hook-filled hits including “Soul Man” and “Hold On, I’m Coming,” died Friday in Coral Gables, Fla. He was 89.

His death was confirmed by his publicist, Jeremy Westby, who said the cause was complications from an unspecified surgery. Dave Prater, Moore’s partner in Sam & Dave, died in a car accident at age 50 in 1988.

With Moore as the tenor and Prater as the baritone, Sam & Dave were one of the signature acts at Memphis’ Stax Records, which offered a tougher, sweatier alternative to the more polished R&B sound that Detroit’s Motown had turned into pop gold.

Yet Sam & Dave were no strangers to the charts: In 1965, they kicked off a four-year run in which they reached the top 40 of Billboard’s R&B chart a dozen times and hit No. 2 on the all-genre Hot 100 with “Soul Man,” which was written and produced by Isaac Hayes and David Porter and featured backing by Stax’s crackerjack house band, Booker T. & the M.G.’s. “Soul Man” won a Grammy Award in 1968, beating Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles’ “I Second That Emotion” to be named best R&B performance by a duo or group with vocals.

Among Sam & Dave’s other hits were “I Thank You,” “You Don’t Know Like I Know,” “Said I Wasn’t Gonna Tell Nobody,” “Something Is Wrong with My Baby” and “You Got Me Hummin’,” which a teenage Billy Joel went on to cover with his group the Hassles.

“Most bands … could get away with doing a lousy version of a Sam & Dave record and still get an incredible reaction to it,” Joel said when he inducted the duo into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. “But they all suffer when you compare them to the original.”

For all they accomplished in the studio, Sam & Dave were perhaps most highly regarded as an explosive live act, one known as both Double Dynamite and the Sultans of Sweat.

Samuel David Moore was born in Miami on Oct. 12, 1935, and grew up singing in the church. He met Prater at Miami’s King of Hearts nightclub in the early ’60s when Prater performed at an amateur night that Moore was hosting. The two formed Sam & Dave and toiled mostly in obscurity until Ahmet Ertegun, Jerry Wexler and Tom Dowd — the creative braintrust behind Atlantic Records — caught their show and signed the duo to a deal that had them recording for Stax, which Atlantic was distributing.

Moore and Prater, whose relationship was always more professional than friendly, broke up in 1970 but reunited after each man’s solo career fizzled. In 1978, the Blues Brothers — comedians John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd — released a cover of “Soul Man” that went to No. 14 on the Hot 100; the renewed attention propelled Sam & Dave for a few more years until they played their final gig together in San Francisco on New Year’s Eve in 1981. (To Moore’s chagrin, Prater later toured as Sam & Dave with a different singer, Sam Daniels.)

In 1982, Moore married Joyce McRae, who also began managing his career and helped him overcome an addiction to heroin. He went on to sing on albums by Don Henley and Bruce Springsteen and received a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy in 2019. Moore’s survivors include his wife, their daughter and two grandchildren.