Category: Hindi

MUMBAI: Everyone knows how possesive is evergreen actor Dev Anand about his possessions. For years, he has being denying producers the rights to remake any of his films nor was he parting with any of his super hit songs.

But shedding this image, Anand is showing a new side of himself. He has finally agreed to give his blessings to the Rohan Sippy directed film Dum Maro Dum. 

Sippy was desperately trying to get the rights of the song ‘Dum Maaro Dum’ from the 1970 film Hare Krishna Hare Ram in which Dev Anand and Zeenat Aman grooved to the song. The film was a huge craze then.

Sippy personally met Anand at his office and took with him an extensive plan of what he wanted to do with the song. Once the legendary actor understood the director‘s plan, he was more than happy to give him the rights to remake his song without charging a penny for parting with the rights.

The film will be young and contemporary so that today‘s generation, too, can relate to it. The Sippy film will now have a remixed version of the cult classic by Pritam. A hot video is also being planned with a top Bollywood actress.
 

PANAJI: Actor-turned filmmaker Amol Palekar, whose film ‘Dhoosar’ has been premiered at the ongoing IFFI 2010, praised regional cinema for coming out with intense and content rich cinema. He also said that Hindi filmmakers cannot take the risk for experimentation with the type of money riding on them.

Giving credit for his film to his crew, he said: “I follow a simple trick of getting a team of fine actors and dedicated assistants and my task is done”. 

Talking about the non-linear treatment given to the film, he said, “The script demanded such a treatment as the film goes back and forth to revive the images and memory of a woman suffering from Alzheimer’s disease”.

‘Dhoosar’ (Blur) explores different shades of human bonds while the story unfolds the starkness of dementia. It is the second film to be premiered at IFFI after Subhash Ghai’s Nauka Dubi.

Sandhya Gokhale on whose story the film is based said, “In life there is nothing in black and white and there are lots of grey areas. The film is an attempt to explore these grey areas”.

MUMBAI: Beyond Dreams’ Kaalo, produced by Yash Patnaik and directed by Wilson Louis, is set to release on 17 December.

Kaalo recently won two awards at the SA Horrorfest where it was declared the best film. It also annexed the best cinematography award.
About his assumption on the kind of reponse his film would get, Louis said, “Hits and flops do matter a lot but since I am on the path of evolving the horror genre in India, things won’t be so easy. But with Kaalo, my experiment with different genres of horror will be successful. All I can say on the box-office prospects is that the film is releasing ahead of Christmas holidays and will pay good dividend to the makers and distributors.”

The film is presented by Jayantilal Gada‘s Pen India which has also bought the satellite as well as home video rights.

The film stars Aditya Shrivastav, Swini Khara, Paintal and Abhijit Satam among others.

PANAJI: Taiwan ambassador Wenchyi Ong said India and his country had similar cultural values and, therefore, could collaborate in co-productions.

Ong said he had held discussions with filmmaker Vidhu Vinod Chopra in this connection as both countries can work together in the cultural field.

Joy Yen, Director for Information in the Taipei Economic and Culture Centre in New Delhi, said talks were also being held with filmmakers in Bangalore for both that city and Taipei to work as sister cities and produce films.

Speaking at the Open Forum on the New Wave in Taiwan cinema, she said there are two film commissions in Taiwan which offer tax benefits and concessions for filmmakers who want to shoot in that country.

A package titled ‘Taiwanese New Wave Cinema’ is being presented at the Festival with eight films including those of Ang Lee, Edward Yang, Stan Lai and Hou Shiao-Hsien with films like ‘Taipei Exchanges’, (1985), ‘In Our Time’ (1982), ‘Vive l’Amour’ (1994), ‘Eat Drink Man Woman’ (1994, ‘Growing Up’ (1983), ‘The City of Sadness’ (1989, ‘The Sandwich Man’ (1983) and ‘Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land’ (1992).

‘The Sandwich Man’ director Jen Wan said the package has films from the eighties and nineties expect for one film ‘Juliets’ which is recent. He said Taiwan cinema had fallen from 230 films a year to just 10 to 12 films. He said that cinema had become very commercialised after the eighties and, therefore, very few new wave films were being made. There are just two types of cinema: either the kung fu variety or the romantic, which were akin to Bollywood films. The fall of the kung fu films helped the new wave to thrive.

He said even Satyajit Ray had affected filmmakers of the new wave in his country, and made films that were closer to the real life of the people. The revival of the new wave in his country was like the revival of the art cinema in India.

He also linked the present new wave in his country to the fact that China no longer controlled content in his country. But he regretted that there had been strong influences of Hong Kong cinema for many years. He claimed that Chinese cinema was presently being influenced by Taiwanese cinema.

‘Juliets’ producer Khan Lee said Taiwan society was very controlled in the eighties but was more liberal today than Chinese society. The new wave cinema is very personal, though it deals with subjects like romance. He said in reply to a question that there was no censorship of films in his country despite the Censor Board being there. This was not so in China. Much depended on how filmmakers branded their films.

Yu-lin Wang, director of ‘Seven days in Heaven,’ said the new wave had begun to disappear in the mid-nineties but had seen resurgence recently.

MUMBAI: A leading Hollywood studio has awarded a multi-picture order worth approximately Rs 2 billion for 2D to 3D stereoscopic conversion work to be executed in the next 30-36 months.

The jobs will be carried out between its facilities in the North America, UK and India.

The order has been placed after Prime Focus’ success in noted Hollywood films like Avatar, Clash of the Titans, Cats & Dogs, My Soul to Take and Chronicles of Narnia amongst others.

Says a Prime Focus official, “As of now we are neither declaring the name of the studios nor the films we will be working upon for some confidentality clause.”

View-D is a proprietary system from Prime Focus for the conversion of 2D moving images to stereo 3D images. It offers many advantages over alternative conversion methods, including superior quality of converted imagery, significantly shorter production timeframes, more iterations and control over virtually every pixel in the frame.

For new productions, View-D gives filmmakers a viable alternative to shoot with twin cameras, offering the flexibility to shoot film or digital, to move the camera as they wish, and to work with Prime Focus artistes between the cut and the stereo conversion to make the 3D viewing experience as rich as possible.

Prime Focus North America, a 100 per cent subsidiary of the group, has filed an application for patenting its trademark technology ‘View D’ that converts 2D images to 3D.

Prime Focus employs more than 2,250 people with facilities throughout the key markets of North America, the UK and India.

MUMBAI: This week’s release, Break Ke Baad, fares poor in all respects. A poor story with poorer execution, it has no back up from music either with mostly background songs. There is no chemistry between leads Imran and Deepika.

The whole effort looks very juvenile. The first weekend collections reflect this with a below par Rs 125 million in kitty. While it sustained in Metros, in interiors it could not and there was no audience to conduct shows.

‘Allah Ke Bande went generally unnoticed with shows being cancelled for lack of audience almost all over.

The story of a quadriplegic Hrithik Roshan consigned to bed for 14 years, Guzaarish was a subject unpalatable to moviegoers and the rejection was from day one; it did not matter if it was the Hrithik Roshan-Sanjay Leela Bhansali team. With a very, very poor opening and no improvement thereafter, the film completed its first week with a lowly Rs 144 million. Considering its budget, the film will prove to be a major blow to its backers.

The trade, on its part, had no hopes on either Break Ke Baad or Guzaarish and, hence, had little to say on the outcome.
 

MUMBAI: In a joint venture, Anurag Kashyap, Sunil Bohra and Studio18 are set to co-produce a film titled Gangs Of Wasseypur, based on the coal mine mafia. It is said to be Kashyap‘s adaptation of Mario Puzo‘s Godfather.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who will play a role inspired by Al Pacino‘s Michael Corleone in the original, says, “It has been my secret desire to play Al Pacino‘s role someday. It‘s a fantasy come true.”

The film, to be made on a budget of Rs 450 million, has Manoj Bajpai and Raima Sen in the lead. It is going to be shot in UP, Bihar and Orissa for the next three and a half months.

The film will go on the floors on 3 December.

MUMBAI: Tamil film Sanikizhamai Sayangalam 5 Mani is in the news for the technology used by the producer-cum-cinematographer SPS Gugan to shoot the film.

The cinematographer whose earlier film was Theni Vazhi Andipatti wanted to do something different in his next. He had two things on his mind. Firstly, he wanted to better the quality than his earlier film that was shot with an HDV camera and secondly, it should be cost-effective. 

After a lot of search, Gugan zeroed in on the HDSLR (High Definition Single-Lens Reflex) Camera. Once he had his hands on one, he did test shoots and then saw the test print in Mumbai.

“The result was satisfying and that‘s how we decided to shoot Sanikizhamai Sayangalam 5 Mani using an HDSLR camera. It‘s a first, not only in Tamil cinema but in Indian cinema as well,” says the producer-director.

Explaining the new technology, Gugan says, “The camera is very cheap compared to the ordinary film camera. A few shots of Slumdog Millionaire were shot using this camera. Even in Hollywood, this camera has not been used to shoot a full-length feature film.”

The main advantage, he points out, is the high resolution output. “It‘s a one-time investment of Rs 7-10 lakh. Along with the camera, there‘re a number of lenses available. For a small budget film, the HDSLR camera is apt. It‘s not designed for movies but there‘s a video-mode option and the quality has come out well,” says Gugan.

The digital chip of the camera can be used to shoot another film. The producer has applied for the Limca Book of Records as this is the first full-length feature film shot with the HDSLR camera.
 

MUMBAI: Eros International Media Ltd (Eros International) has announced the release dates of Excel Entertainment‘s forthcoming films, Abhinay Deo‘s Game and Zoya Akhtar‘s Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. While Game will release on 18 March, Zindagi Milegi Na Dobara will hit theatres on 27 May next year.

Game, starring Abhishek Bachchan, Kangna Ranaut, Sarah Jane Dias, Jimmy Sheirgill, Shahana Goswami, Gauhar Khan, Boman Irani and Anupam Kher, is a slick edge-of-the-seat thriller directed by Abhinay Deo.

The second, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, is a young fun-filled road film shot largely across Spain by director Zoya Akhtar. The film boasts of Hrithik Roshan, Farhan Akhtar, Abhay Deol, Katrina Kaif and Kalki Koechlin.

Said Eros International Media managing director Sunil Lulla, “We will treat the movie-goers with a great cinematic experience at the most appropriate time, since Game will be released around the festival of Holi and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara after the IPL season.”

Eros International had recently acquired the worldwide rights of these two films.