Category: Hindi

MUMBAI: Debutant filmmaker Nila Madhab Panda‘s I am Kalam has won the Best Feature Film Award at the Lucas International Film Festival in Germany.

The movie has also won the Don Quixote Prize of the International Federation of Ciné-Clubs (FICC) awards.

Set in Rajasthan, I am Kalam relates the story of Chhotu‘s hunger for education, something which he cannot aspire to have because of his family‘s poverty-stricken status.

Through an engaging, entertaining and fast-paced narrative, the film takes the viewer to the world of Chhotu, who at one point starts referring himself as Kalam after watching ex-president APJ Kalam speak about how he got his education fighting several odds on TV.

Naming himself as Kalam has more than a symbolic meaning for Chhotu (a name thrust upon him by people at the Dhaba, who, like most of us, care two hoots for the identity of little kids working at eateries, shops and other establishments, and insensitively calling all of them as ‘Chhotu‘ (the small one).

Chhotu‘s life takes an unexpected turn as he befriends Prince Ranvijay, whose father, an erstwhile “king” of a princely state, is running a heritage hotel at his ancestral palace across the street, where Chhotu goes to deliver tea to the guests. What follows forms the crux of the film.

A sensitive film on the plight of the underprivileged, I am Kalam is also about how the privileged class can play a role in the uplift of the less-privileged millions.

Panda, who has made over 60 short films, documentaries and television drama for Doordarshan, the BBC, Discovery Channel, NGC and private producers across the globe, says, “I believe in telling stories that have a universal appeal and a sense of purpose to the art that I create. I believe that the more local you get, the more global your access will be; and so here is one such local story.”

In all my films, I have explored the people‘s basic needs and problem of the marginalized. I find such stories purposeful and exciting. I am also interested in making cinema for children and family; a genre that is much neglected in world cinema and more specifically in Asia.”

The film‘s cast that has Delhi slum boy Harsh Mayar in the title also includes veteran actor Gulshan Grover (as Bhati the dhaba owner), child actor Hussan Saad of Delhi 6 fame (as Prince Ranvijay), French actress Beatrice Ordeix, FTII-trained Pitobash Tripathy and Meena Mir.

MUMBAI: In an initiative to save the film trade from rampant piracy and multiple taxes at various levels, the government of Chattisgarh has exempted all cinema halls from payment of entertainment tax on tickets priced up to Rs 50.

The move will result in a significant rise in the final net collections of cinema halls despite the rate of admission being reduced to Rs 50.

Chattisgarh was among the first states to exempt cinemas from payment of taxes in towns with population up to 25, 000. This was further extended to towns of population up to one 100,000

State governments must realise that the cinema exhibition trade will die a miserable death if similar relief is not provided, since in today‘s times, films are available on satellite TV, cable TV, internet and pirated DVDs almost free that makes it tough for cinema halls to survive by paying entertainment and other taxes.

MUMBAI: To pay tribute to eight decades of Japanese cinema with a special section in its eight-day programme, the 12th Mumbai Film Festival (MFF) has collaborated with the Japanese consulate in Mumbai and The Japan Foundation to organize a film festival that will show 44 films, both classic and contemporary.

The films cover eight decades of Japanese cinema from the early 1930s till date with a variety of genres and styles like traditional family drama, samurai epic and yakuza thriller amongst others.

Some of the other films to be screened at the fest are Akira Kurosawa‘s No Regrets For Our Youth and Ran, Masaki Kobayashi‘s three-part magnum opus The Human Condition, Mikio Naruse‘s When A Woman Ascends The Stairs and also works of acknowledged masters like Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi apart from recent films by Shuji Terayama and Takashi Miike.

The section will be inaugurated with the all-India premiere of veteran director Yoji Yamada‘s melodrama, About Her Brother (2010). Popular Japanese contemporary director Takashi Koizumi and several international film historians and scholars are expected to attend the festival.

MUMBAI: Multiplex operator PVR Ltd is evaluating proposals to acquire a cinema chain to speed up its growth.

PVR CEO Pramod Arora has officially stated that his company was “evaluating proposals.” The talks were at an exploratory stage and “nothing concrete” had happened. 

Arora also clarified that talks with DT Cinemas, owned by India‘s top realtor DLF, have yet not been revived yet.

Earlier this year, PVR and DT Cinemas had mutually agreed to end a deal struck in November to buy DLF‘s cinema exhibition business.
 

NEW DELHI: The animation film ‘Crackers,’ based on the 26/11 Mumbai Terror attack, is now being re-released as a 3D film, making it the first animation film to be made in 3D with indigenous technology.

Director Anil Goyal said he had made the film as an animation film since people had accepted his earlier animation film ‘Icy-N-Spicy’. He claimed that 3D animation films so far have been made outside India or with foreign technology.

The film will be released by the end of the year. The songs in the film have been sung by veteran singers Hariharan, Shaan and Shreya Ghoshal. Dilip Sen has composed the music of the film.

The film contains special effects that are used in Hollywood movies. The lead actress of the film has been created keeping in mind the image of Katrina Kaif. Goyal justifies this saying “Katrina Kaif is equally popular among kids and adults and this is why we have tried to give Katrina’s look to the lead actress”.

NEW DELHI: In its quest to increase its market share, Moser Baer India has launched pre-loaded Bollywood movies on pen drives.

Said Moser Baer India senior vice president, domestic sales and marketing Deepak Shetty, “We plan to launch around one lakh units per month of this USB (univeral serial bus) drive which will enable us to capture an additional 4-5 per cent of the market share in the solid state media.”

Says G Dhanajayan Moser Baer Entertainment Ltd Chief Executive, ” This exercise is nothing but a value-addition to the existing hardware. If the consumer likes this concept, we can look at increasing the manufacture of such pen drives.

As an introductory offer, the company has priced a 4 GB drive stick at Rs 850. It will be followed by more new exciting offerings in higher end 8 GB and 16 GB drives shortly.

Said a source in the company, “The pre-loaded content can be erased by customers as and when required and the device can be used as a normal USB drive.”

In January this year, the company had launched content- loaded Micro-SD cards for mobile handsets, containing movies and songs.

MUMBAI: UK-based Swipe Films has bagged the worldwide distribution rights of Anurag Kashyap‘s That Girl in Yellow Boots.

Written by Kalki Koechlin and Kashyap, the film stars Kalki Koechlin as Ruth along with Naseeruddin Shah, Prashant Prakash, Gulshan Devaiya, Shivkumar Subramaniam, Divya Jagdale, Kumud Mishra and Kartik Krishnan.

The film is a thriller tracing Ruth‘s search for her father, a man she hardly knew but cannot forget. Desperation drives her to work without a permit at a massage parlour in Mumbai. Torn between several schisms, the city becomes an alien but yet strangely turns out to be a familiar backdrop for Ruth‘s quest. 

The film had its world premiere in ‘Out of Competition‘ at the Venice Film Festival on 9 September and will be screened at the Toronto International Film Fest next week.
NFDC has also joined hands with Kashyap by pulling out the project of post production limbo and completing it.

Swipe Films, a production, sales and distribution company, has produced films like Grand Theft Parsons and Osama, the winner of a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film.

MUMBAI: Dabangg has set all time new weekend opening records registering the biggest opening response in this decade. The opening weekend ended at approximately Rs 470 million from around 2000 screens with Friday accounting for Rs 146 million and Saturday raking in Rs 158 million.

While the film is a personal triumph for the Khan Brothers on professional front, it is also a financial windfall for them as four circuits- Delhi-UP, Punjab, CI and Rajasthan have been released by the family.

The distributors of all small and medium circuits have sailed safe in the very first weekend, recovering all or almost all their investment.

The film is holding strong even today (Monday) and with an unopposed run of a fortnight in the offing, should carry on conquering the box office.

“Very strong even today”, says Delhi distributor and cinema chain holder Brajesh Tandon. For Jharkhand distributor Sunil Boobna, this was a gamble. He had paid Rs 60 lakh to acquire the rights of Dabangg for Jharkhand. Considering the highest business done in the region by the hits is- Rajneeti Rs 500 million and Wanted Rs 540 million, the basic price of 60 itself exceeded all benchmarks and expectations. Sunil is a happy man today as he says, “ My three day collections are Rs 410 million and the way the film is doing, it would be safe to expect another 30 in next four days, if not more.”

We Are Family finds no takers, not even the ladies audience it was aimed at and goes on to complete its first week run with a meagre Rs 186 million from over 800 screens. Besides resources, it also wastes Kajol’s talents on a mundane story routinely executed. The trade, which wrote off the film on day one, had nothing to say about it.
 

NEW DELHI: Well-known film society enthusiast H N Narahari Rao has been elected President of the Federation of Film Societies of India while R Mani is the General Secretary and Siddharth Pillai is the Treasurer in the Central Office.

The election was held recently for the years 2010-12 and the Central Office has shifted to Bangalore.

Renowned award-winning author Gautam Kaul, and film society activists Dilip Bapat, Premendra Mazumdar and V T Subramanian are the Vice-Presidents for the Northern, Western and Southern regions. The Kerala Sub-Region has V K Joseph as the Vice-President.

The Regional Secretaries are Northern Region – Ashok Chakraborty; Western Region – Subhash Desai; Eastern Region – Sankar Pal; and Southern Region – Bh. S S Prakash Reddy.

The Secretaries are Northern Region – Anil Jain; Western Region – Viren Chitrev; Eastern Region – Bijan Sen Sarma; and Southern Region – Varala Anand.
 

Producers: Arbaaz Khan, Malaika Arora Khan , Dhilin Mehta Director: Abhinav Singh Kashyap Cast: Salman Khan, Sonakshi Sinha, Arbaaz Khan, Sonu Sood, Vinod Khanna, Dimple Kapadia

MUMBAI: Dabangg lives every common man’s fantasy; an invincible hunk, police man, Chulbul Pandey, who can fell any evildoer. What is more, unlike the 70s’ angry young man with sullen expressions, Chulbul loves to enjoy and have fun out of his acts of cleansing the society, which adds entertainment and humour to this, otherwise mindless, action movie.

In a typical UP semi urban scenario, Chulbul grows up to be a sour man who becomes fearless and a defiant policeman. Bearing total disregard for his step father, Vinod Khanna, and disdain for his step brother, Arbaaz Khan, he sticks around with them because of his mother, Dimple Kapadia. These surroundings, he has not learnt to respect much. So he is just the hero to be pitted against politicians, bad ones on one side and less bad on the other. Chulbul is a corrupt policeman for no apparent reason, or maybe to make him more identifiable with a UP cop or for that matter any cop!

Dabangg is a Salman Khan vehicle all the way, a one man entertainment show. Almost all action, comedy, dance and music and some namesake emotions are designed around him in this film, which has no solid story or cause for the hero’s crusade and to his credit, Salman Khan carries the film through with flying colours. There have been post-Wanted expectations, which the film’s content does not live up to, but Salman Khan more than lives up to it and hence the film’s collections will also excel. 

The film introduces Sonakshi Sinha in a role she can’t be rejected for even if it does not propel her to the stardom overnight. She is presented as a simple village potter’s daughter; no glamour, no exposure nor great demands to display histrionics. Arbaaz Khan is okay. Sonu Sood, judged individually, does well for himself. However, Salman Khan’s character has been built so larger than life, his is not the villain equipped to take him on. Vinod Khanna, Dimple Kapadia, Anupam Kher, Om Puri, Vishwajeet Pradhan and Tinnu Anand fit the bill.

The major asset that boosts the prospects for Dabangg is its music. While the item number, Munni Badnam hui….. is already a rage, other numbers are also good and choreographed to entertain. While the credit should go to the writers for making Dabangg a good watch despite lack of a coherent story, director Abhinav Singh Kashyap needs to be praised for being part of the writer duo and then adding to the entertainment quotient with his execution. Dialogue is funny.

Dabangg built huge expectations before its release, a rare occurrence in recent times, and has gone on to live up to it by drawing full houses all over, at single screens and multiplexes alike. It is all set to create new opening day as well as opening weekend box office records.