As I have few recommendations of each, I'm bundling the music and film recommendations together. For further recommendations on Kannada culture, check out my post on Kannada literature.
Music
I spent a few weeks listening to Kannada music and though I liked what I heard, none of it really jumped out at me. I can only cover so much ground with a few weeks listening at random without anyone guiding me, but I also think the problem is I've spent many months of my life listening to Tamil and Telugu music and all of the Kannada music I heard basically sounded the same to me. In some cases it was the same singer (SPB). To me that meant it wasn't that interesting, but obviously the equation is different for speakers of the language, and there's reason to believe that Kannada music has made an impact on the music of the other South Indian music that I like, but I don't know enough to draw any conclusions.
Anyway, I liked what I heard from searching "Kannada carnatic/devotional/folk music" on youtube.
Of the film music, the standout for me was music director G. K. Venkatesh, who is of Telugu origin but is known for his Kannada work. I didn't listen closely enough to make a list of great albums or songs. One day. For now, here's one great album. I liked what I heard from Rajan-Nagendra as well. All of this sounded like it could have been Ilaiyaraaja, which is a compliment since I'm a big fan, but I was searching for new sounds and didn't find any.
Worth noting, from Ilaiyaraaja's Wikipedia: After being hired as the musical assistant to Kannada film composer G. K. Venkatesh, he worked on 200 film projects, mostly in Kannada cinema. As Venkatesh's assistant, Ilaiyaraaja would orchestrate the melodic outlines developed by Venkatesh, learning about composing under Venkatesh's guidance. During this period, Ilaiyaraaja also began writing his own scores. To listen to his compositions, he used to persuade Venkatesh's session musicians to play excerpts from his scores during their leisure times.
And of course Ilaiyaraaja has some good Kannada work, though it feels like cheating to mention it. Shankar Nag's films stand out, as does Mani Ratnam's debut which was in Kannada for some odd reason, starring Anil Kapoor for some odder reason. These kinds of things are always amusing to me.
I'll listen to more one day, until then I invite your recommendations.
Film
I haven't seen much Kannada cinema, but my to-watch list is fairly large at this point. For a while I never spotted any decent looking Kannada films coming out, but that's changed a lot in recent years. I unfortunately always miss them in theaters either because I'm traveling or because the movies I want to see only play in one random theater in Mumbai with a single 9am showtime that disappears after opening weekend. I hope to catch up and expand this soon.
In my Mangalore post I wrote about some of the exciting new filmmakers from the coastal Karnataka region. Though I haven't seen their works, they remain the most promising modern Kannada filmmakers to me:
Raj B. Shetty’s Ondu Motteya Kathe and Garuda Gamana Vrishabha Vahana both look great, as do Rishab Shetty’s Kantara, which was a huge hit, and Rakshit Shetty’s Ulidavaru Kandanthe, and all of these films seem very rooted in the region and are highly regarded. The series Ekam looks good too. All of these are on my list, I would love to watch them. Since they’re all pretty recent I’m sure they are easy to find on streaming.
I also really want to catch up on the classic Kannada "parallel cinema" filmmakers, namely Girish Kasaravalli and Girish Karnad. I'm not sure what, if anything, is available in good quality prints with good subtitles though.
To the best of my knowledge, there are no good Kannada filmmakers other than those who have the first name Girish or the surname Shetty. That's just the way the idli crumbles.
Okay I'm joking. But it's mostly true.
The only good Kannada movie I've seen is Thithi, a great village set dramedy. Feels real and is very funny. Recommended! The director Raam Reddy has only made one film since, though not in Kannada, but Thithi's writer Ere Gowda wrote and directed the good looking Balekempa.
I've heard lots of praise for the two-part romantic drama Sapta Sagaradaache Ello. It looks like Capital-M Melodrama but classily done. I dig the melodramatic Kannada pop soundtrack too. I'm in. Director Hemanth Rao's earlier films, both thrillers, look pretty cool too.
U-Turn was an indisputably bad movie and I'm stunned it got good reviews. Director Pawan Kumar's earlier film Lucia also got good reviews, I'm skeptical and feel I won't like it but it looks much better to me, with some indie film verve to it.
I haven't seen the hugely popular KGF movies (the second film is the industry's top grosser by a long shot), but I have seen director Prashanth Neel's Telugu movie and it did not inspire me to watch more of his work. I'll try them one day, though. I do kinda like the over the top aesthetic. Old school masala meets post-Zack Snyder digital filmmaking.
I don't follow any Kannada films critics, but it seems like the good Kannada films get some national attention. Baradwaj Rangan reviews a fair amount of them. The no-longer-active Film Companion has reviews and lists.
Though I hear now and then of Kannada parallel cinema classics and new mainstream Kannada films, I've never heard anyone recommend a classic mainstream Kannada film.
I believe Karnataka's cinemas can now program and charge whatever they want, but like most of South India, Karnataka had regulated ticket pricing for many years. They also had a ban on films being dubbed into Kannada, a rule I don't think any other states ever had. The reasoning, apparently, is that dubbing is an artistic desecration and robs the viewer of witnessing the actors' performances as intended and, er, wait, no, that's why I am against dubbing. The Kannada film industry was against dubbing because if they allow dubbed movies, people will go see the bigger budget movies from other industries dubbed into Kannada and would no longer support the local cinema which can't otherwise compete. This wasn't a law, but it was enforced by mob rule with activists threatening to burn down theaters that showed dubbed movies.
There was an enjoyable podcast on the subject that had some interesting ideas about the impacts of this, with claims that it hurt the film industry because bi-lingual audiences in Karnataka just gave up on Kannada films in general and watched the superior films coming out of other industries. There were also suggestions in the above links that not facing competition meant Kannada films didn't have to innovate and audiences didn't get exposed to good cinema and thus didn't demand greater quality. Personally I'm not convinced by such conclusions, though I'm obviously against the protectionism. But in any case, I guess I'm happy to see that theaters now show dubbed films, and I'm also happy that there seems to be a Kannada cinema renaissance going on, though I don't think the former led to the latter in any way (the opposite seems more likely).