Stay for Kamal Hassan's Film Dasavatharam

The Madras High Court has put a stay on the release of Kamal Hassan’s magnum opus Dasavatharam directed by K.S.Ravikumar and produced by Oscar Films. The court has stayed the release of the film for four weeks, though the shooting of the film can go on.
It is a major embarrassment for Kamal Hassan, that he is being accused of plagiarism. A wanna- be story writer Senthil Kumar has alleged a few months back that the script of Dasavatharam was based on a story written by him and submitted to the actor some time back!

Senthil had accused Dasavatharam as being plagiarized version of his story in which the hero plays 10 different roles and had warned that he would take legal action at the time when the film was launched. And now he has managed to get a stay on the film.

Platinum Jubilee Celebrations at Tollywood

For three days in January, Tollywood will come to a standstill.

No shoots, dubbing or any other work related to a Telugu movie anywhere in the world will go on as the entire Telugu film fraternity is likely to attend the 75 years of Telugu film industry in the city from January 26.

For three more days, Tollywood will be rejoicing in its 75th year celebrations, which are a result of the first film ever made in Telugu, Bhatka Prahalada, way back in 1931.

The Telugu film industry moved from Kolkata to Rajamundry in 1936-37, but soon shifted to Madras (now Chennai) where it remained for several decades.

With the setting up of the Sarathi Studios here in 1955, the shifting of the industry from Madras to Hyderabad started, said noted film-maker and member of the organising committee, Tammareddy Bharadwaja.

But it was not until 1994-95 that the entire Telugu movie-making business moved to Hyderabad. Even now, about 10 per cent of the music for Telugu films is made in Chennai.

The logo for these platinum jubilee celebrations was unveiled in the city on Sunday along with the formal inauguration of the website, www.teluguchalanachitravajrotsav.com.

On the three days of the festivities, which will be held at the Hyderabad International Convention Centre, Hitex, an exhibition of photos and posters of movies made in the past 75 years will be organised.

Special seminars and workshops on film-making, which might help budding film-makers, will also be held. Special movies will be screened to pay tribute to Telugu film greats.

Except the exhibition, entry for all other events will be through tickets.

Individual tributes will be held with comperes like S P Balasubramanyam, Chiranjeevi, Venkatesh, Nagarjuna and Mahesh Babu.

Popular music directors will trace the film industry's music, Bollywood dancers are expected to jive with Telugu heroes showcasing the dancing moves of Telugu films.


Source: Times of India

Pokiri - Action all the way

"Pokiri" is a Tamil remake of this year's biggest Telugu hit of the same title which featured Mahesh Babu in the lead. Some changes have been made in the Tamil re-make to suit the Tamil Nadu audiences. The strength of the story lies in maintaining the suspense of the true identity of the hero till the end. It is a mix of action and romance with a message about the duty and responsibility of the police force.

The hero (Vijay), a young IPS officer, acts as an undercover cop to weed out the anti-socials who are ruling the roost. A gang controlled by underworld don, Prakash Raj, operates with impunity. Vijay makes "Fight evil with evil" as his credo and is out to eliminate the gang outside the pale of law with indomitable courage and ingenuity.

Asin works as an instructor at an aerobic centre run by Nasser, a retired circle inspector, who is proud of being a sincere and straightforward member of the police force. The girl falls in love with Vijay.

How the don comes to know the identity of Vijay and how the mafia perishes form the climax.

This is the first Tamil film to be directed by choreographer-cum-actor Prabhu Deva. He has earlier directed two Telugu films - "Neevuvastanantae Nenodantana" and "Pournami".

"Pokiri" has all the commercial elements in the right mix. Asin, after Sivakasi, teams up with Vijay again.

Mani Sharma has scored seven songs in "Pokiri." One of them is a remix of yesteryear hit 'Vasanthamullai Polae.' Nirav Shah handles the camera. Some song sequences were filmed in Australia.



Tamil Sydney

Secrets of Yash Raj Films Box Office Hits

How do most Yash Raj Films movies manage to succeed at the box office? Is it because they are great scripts? Or is it because Yash Raj Films spend a fortune on marketing their movies?

They sure know how to smartly package a movie. The result? An otherwise average movie opens to great weekend collections all over the world thanks to the initial hype created by the excellent promotions. In fact around 40 to 50% of the total budget of the movie is actually spent on promoting the movie.

This is a very good tactic because it ensures that the producer (or Distributors as the case may be) recovers his or her investment by the time the talk spreads about how good or bad the movie is.

These movies depend solely on the first weekend collections. In nine of ten cases, the opening weekend tickets are sold out well in advance. This is because by the time the movie hits the marquee every Tom Dick and Harry in any corner of the country know even the minutest details about the movie.

Switch on the TV and you see an interview with the lead actor in one channel, a Page 3 report on something related to the movie in the next channel and a staple diet of the movie’s songs in the third. Enough about the idiot box. Grab your newspaper – You see reports after reports on how this movie is made.

Interestingly, there is this “Est” factor. People talk about their movie and use words ending with “Est” liberally. (Best movie, Scariest time of my life, Funniest experiences…) This superlative “performance” of the media partners works big time for the movie.

Recently while watching a Hindi movie, I was amazed to see the number of media partners the movie had. The titles flashed at least twenty partners!

Compare this with the Telugu movie industry. Most of the movies in Telugu suffer from inefficient publicity. The professional approach Hindi movies adopt is missing in Telugu. While some movies are bogged down by over publicity, others have practically zero publicity.

When I mentioned this to a friend, he opined that perhaps the Telugu movie makers were scared of creating a hype – which might work against the movie.

What differentiates Hype from Publicity? You can’t hype a movie but you can publicize it. Smart packaging of the movie’s prerelease media exposure is called “Publicity” while elevating the movie to the zenith purely based on the actors/technicians involved amounts to creating Hype.

The differentiation aforesaid is off my hat. I am sure the line dividing these two is very thin and quite fuzzy. Clear definition of Hype and Publicity maybe not possible. However we can very well tilt the equation heavily towards smart publicity – by taking a leaf or two from the marketing cookbooks used in Bollywood… especially by Yash Raj Films.

Source: India FM

Reward for Shabana Azmi

Shabana Azmi will receive the second ANR award. This was announced by Akkineni Nageshwar Rao’s son Venkat recently..

The first award was given away to Dev Anand for the year 2005. ANR has established the Akkineni International Foundation in 1991 and pooled in resources and ever since he has been awarding some amount for outstanding actors for their contribution to humanity and art and entertainment. The award will be given away on Jan 13. ANR has lauded her as an excellent human being.


Source: Andhra Cafe