Category: Hindi

MUMBAI: Bollywood dominated the 54th National Film Awards with as many as 13 awards.

Rajkumar Hirani‘s Lage Raho Munnabhai swept the National Film Awards for 2006, bagging four prizes. The Sanjay Dutt starrer which brought to fore ‘Gandhigiri‘ by invoking the values of Mahatma Gandhi, won the best popular film “for providing wholesome entertainment”, best screenplay, best lyrics.

Lage Raho also brought the best supporting actor award to Dilip Prabhavalkar. Konkona Sen Sharma was declared the best supporting actress for Omkara.

The best feature film award, however, went to Malayalam film Pulijanmam. Malayalam and Bengali feature films, in fact, got five awards each. Three awards each went to films in Kannada, Telugu, and Tamil.

While the best feature film award in Hindi was given away by Khosla Ka Ghosla, the best feature film award in English went to Quest.

While Bengali film Podokkhep brought veteran actor Soumitra Chatterjee award for the best actor, Tamil cinema‘s Priyamani was honoured with the best actress title for Paruthi Veeran.

The award for the best animation feature film, introduced this year, went to the Telugu film Kittu, directed by B Satya and animated by Kodavanti Bharaj. Another award introduced this year, best make-up artist, went to Anil Motiram Palande for Traffic Signal.

Additionally, Madhur Bhandarkar was named the best director for Traffic Signal. Anthony Joseph and Aditya Chopra received the best producer award for Eakantham and Kabul Express respectively.

Divya Chahadkar was given the best child artist award for Antarnad, a Konkani film. Also, the best children‘s film went to Kannada film Care of Footpath, made by nine-year old Kishan S and produced by his mother Shylaja Shrikanth.

All the four awards for Punjabi films went to the same film Waris Shah – Ishq da Waaris, directed by the late Manoj Punj and starring pop star Gurdas Mann.

The best male playback singer was Gurdas Mann for the same. The best female playback singer was Aarti Anklekar Tikekar for Antarnad, which bagged all the four prizes for Konkani.

The best non-feature award went to Bishar Blues by Amitabh Chakraborty. The film also received the audiograohy (Partha Barman) and editing (Amitabh Chakraborty and Amit Debnath) awards.

The first non-feature film of a director went to Andhiyum by Jacob Varghese. The renowned Aribam Syam Sarma, who has won numerous awards, shared the best biographical film award for Guru Laimayum Thambalnagoubi Devi with Minukku by M R Rajan.

The children‘s film Nokpokliba, directed and animated by Meren Imchen, won the best animation award for non-feature film while the best short fiction film award went to Ek Aadesh – Command for Choti by Ramesh Asher who also won the best director award.

Also, the Indira Gandhi award for best first film was taken home by Malayalam film Eakantham and Hindi film Kabul Express.

The best book on cinema award was given to Helen: the life and times of an H-Bomb by Jerry Pinto, published by Penguin Books.

Assamese, Marathi, Oriya, English and Tulu films won one award each.

The feature film jury was chaired by renowned filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta with 13 other members, while the non-feature jury was headed by K Bikram Singh with five other members. The book jury, with three members, was headed by Madhu Jain.

The decision of the awards had been delayed because of a court case by a member of the jury of the 53rd National Film Awards for 2005, but the High Court had vacated the stay last year. Directorate of Film Festival sources told indiantelevision.com that the selection of awards for 2007 were expected to be set in motion within the next few days, and the award-ceremony would be fixed depending upon the convenience of the President.

MUMBAI: NDTV Lumi?re is set to showcase five “select” films to the Indian audiences that did well at the recently concluded Cannes Film Festival 2008.

NDTV Lumi?re, the initiative of NDTV Imagine to bring world cinema to Indian audiences, will present these films in the coming months across multiple platforms ranging from theatrical releases to home video and television.

The films include The Class, Three Monkeys, Delta, and A Christmas Tale.

While Laurent Cantent‘s The Class won the Palme d’Or (Best Film) award at Cannes this year, Nuri Bilge Ceylan won the best director award for Three Monkeys.

Delta won the International Federation of Film Critics award. This award is given by independent entities to movies “that are beyond excellence.”

The critic’s award, which is given away to the best film in the International Critics Week Competition (a sidebar competition at Cannes), was bagged by Bosnian director Aida Begic’s Snow.

Catherine Deneuve, who stars in A Christmas Tale, won the special prize at festival.

MUMBAI: The high-voltage Idea IIFA 2008 concluded in Bangkok with Chak De India notching awards for best film (Yashraj Films), best actor (Shah Rukh Khan) and best director (Shimit Amin).

The film also bagged the award for best story (Jaideep Sahini). Kareena Kapoor got the best actress award for Jab We Met.

Amitabh Bachchan -IIFA brand ambassador

Konkana Sen Sharma and Irrfan Khan won the best actor in supporting role female and male respectively, for Life in a Metro.

Best actor in a negative role went to Vivek Oberoi for Shootout at Lokhandwala while Govinda got the IIFA trophy for best actor in a comic role for Partner.

AR Rahman got three awards which includes best music director (Guru), best background score and outstanding contribution to international cinema.

Akshay Kumar performing at IIFA 2008

The grand finale of Idea IIFA awards 2008 witnessed performances from Govinda, Katrina Kaif, Kareena Kapoor and Akshay Kumar.

The night also saw acts from the team of upcoming film Mission Istaanbul and Love Story 2050.

The finale was hosted by Boman Irani and Ritesh Deshmukh with Urmilla Matondkar.

Star Plus will air the awards presentation ceremony on 29 June at 8 pm.

Sr No.	Category	Winner
1	Best Female Playback Singer	Shreya Ghosal for Barson Re, Guru
2	Best Male Playback Singer	Shaan for Jabse Tere Naina, Saawariya
3	Best Lyrics	Javed Akhtar for Agar Main Kahoon, Om Shanti Om
4	Best Music Director	A R Rahman for Guru
5	Star TV debut female	Deepika Padukone
6	Star TV debut Male	Ranbir Kapoor
7	Idea Style Icon of the Year	Abhishek Bachchan
8	Idea Glamour Diva of the Year	Katrina Kaif
9	Idea Fresh Face of the Year	Neil Nitin Mukesh
10	Best Dialogue	Imtiaz Ali for Jab We Met
11	Best Screenplay	Anurag Basu for Life in a Metro
12	Best Performance in Comic Role	Govinda for Partner
13	Best Performance in Negative Role	Vivek Oberoi for Shootout at Lokhandwala
14	Idea IIFA Award for Outstanding contribution to Indian Cinema	Shyam Benegal and Mumtaz
15	Idea IIFA Award for outstanding achievement by an Indian in International Cinema	A R Rahman
16	Best Actress in a Supporting Role	Konkana Sen Sharma for Life in a Metro
17	Best Actor in a supporting Role	Irrfan Khan for Life in a Metro
18	Best Director	Shimit Amin for Chak de India
19	Best Actress	Kareena Kapoor for Jab We Met
20	Best Actor	Shahrukh Khan for Chak De India
21	Best Movie	Chak De India

MUMBAI: Columbia Pictures has entered into an agreement with CBS Films to do a remake of the classic musical My Fair Lady.

The film will be produced by Duncan Kenworthy and Cameron Mackintosh. The announcement was made by Doug Belgrad
and Matt Tolmach, presidents of Columbia Pictures. CBS Films will be actively involved in the development of the new film.

The new film will use the original songs of the Broadway show, and will not alter its 1912 setting. But Kenworthy and Mackintosh intend where possible to shoot the film on location in the original London settings of Covent Garden, Drury Lane, Tottenham Court Road, Wimpole Street, and Ascot racecourse.

The filmmaking team will also look to adapt Alan Jay Lerner‘s book more fully for the screen by drawing additional material from Pygmalion — George Bernard Shaw‘s play that served as the source material for the musical — in order to dramatise as believably as possible for present-day audiences the emotional highs and lows of Eliza Doolittle as she undergoes the ultimate makeover, transforming under the tutelage of Professor Henry Higgins from a Cockney flower girl to a lady.

Belgrad said, “My Fair Lady is not just the quintessential stage musical and classic film, but a fantastic story. We‘re thrilled to have the opportunity to bring it to the screen once again. There is no one alive who knows this material better than Cameron Mackintosh.

“He has staged two revivals of My Fair Lady, the first in 1979 directed by Alan Jay Lerner himself, and the second the award-winning adaptation that‘s now touring the United States. He and Duncan Kenworthy have already set out on the long journey of bringing a new version to the screen and we feel very lucky to be a part of it.

“This update will preserve the magic of the musical while fleshing out the characters and bringing 1912 London to life in an authentic and exciting way for contemporary audiences.”

Mackintosh says, “My Fair Lady‘s extraordinary tale of a man turning a flower girl into a lady, and then falling for her, combines one of the most powerful narratives in world literature with some of the wittiest and most winning songs ever written for the stage.

“People everywhere will fall in love again with Lerner and Loewe‘s miraculous songs set in a big, gorgeous film with contemporary stars, a more realistically achieved vision of Edwardian London, and a touch more Pygmalion at the heart of this powerfully emotional story of a girl‘s transformation. The classic story of a flower girl transformed into an instant sensation couldn‘t be more timely in a contemporary world obsessed with overnight celebrity.”

Kenworthy said, “When George Cukor shot his wonderful film entirely on sets inside Warner‘s Burbank soundstages, Lerner and Loewe‘s smash hit musical had been running on Broadway for seven years, and the film was appropriately reverential and inevitably theatrical.

“With 40 years of hindsight, we‘re confident that by setting these wonderful characters and brilliant songs in a more realistic context, and by exploring Eliza‘s emotional journey more fully, we will honor both Shaw and Lerner at the same time as engaging and entertaining contemporary audiences the world over. The casting of Eliza is crucial, and we are currently in discussion with a major international star to play the role.”

The musical in 1956 starred Julie Andrews, rocketing her to stardom, and won the Tony Award for Best Musical. It was then adapted for the screen in 1963, directed by George Cukor, with Audrey Hepburn as Eliza and Rex Harrison as Higgins. The film won eight Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor.

MUMBAI: AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) national committee has voted in favour of the uncertain primetime/TV agreement reached with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers last month. The contract has now been sent to 70,000 members for ratification.

Meanwhile, SAG (Screen Actors Guild) is planning to launch an anti-AFTRA deal campaign because SAG‘s plea “to delay the ratification until SAG negotiates its own feature-primetime deal was rejected by AFTRA”. SAG finds itself in an awry situation as it has to negotiate a new contract before its current one expires in June.

SAG‘s national executive committee voted with 13 members favouring and 10 against the launch of a campaign to oppose the AFTRA deal. SAG is the dominant actors‘ union with 122,000 members as compared to AFTRA which consists of 70,000 members. But AFTRA consists of recording artists, radio announcers and actors who work in the less-glamorous arenas of daytime and cable television.

There are around 44,000 members who belong to both unions and SAG will seek to target these dual members in the campaign that will cost the association more than $100,000. SAG Executive Director Doug Allen said in a statement that the union “will be educating SAG members about the impact of the AFTRA deal on our negotiations and on our effort to secure the best possible contract for actors.”

SAG believes that the AFTRA deal does not address key demands, including a boost in residuals that actors earn from the sale of DVDs and having consent over how products are pitched in TV shows and movies. SAG and AFTRA are negotiating separately for the first time in three decades due to bitter jurisdictional disputes for cable TV shows.

MUMBAI: The music of Apoorva Lakhia’s upcoming film Mission Istaanbul was launched at the ongoing International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) awards in Bangkok.

The music of this muliti-starrer film, launched under the T-Series label, has been scored by four music directors namely Annu Mallik, Shameer Tandon, Mika, and debutante Chirantan Bhatt.

The audio CD of the film is priced at Rs 160 containing seven tracks, six of which are originals and one remix.

Mission Istaanbul features Viveik Oberoi, Zayed Khan, Shriya Saran, Shabbir Ahluwalia, Nikitin Dheer, Suniel Shetty and Shwetta Bharadwaj.

MUMBAI: Pritish Nandy Communications (PNC) is tapping the niche segment of viewers with a rollout plan of 50 movies over five years.

The films will be made under the Guerrilla Flicks brand. The series will be produced by Arindam Mitra (producer of Black Friday).

PNC believes the genre will attract young emerging audiences and has the potential to travel overseas.

The first eight films from the series will go on floors immediately. They will be directed by Abhijit Chaudhuri, Nikhil Bhatt (director and ad film maker), Shiv Subramanium (scriptwriter and playwriter), Somnath Sen (filmmaker) and Arindam Mitra. The project also includes first time directors like Debalaya Bhattacharya and Arjun Bagga.

The genres will vary from comedy and action to detective fiction and drama. “This is our way of staying one step ahead of market trends. We are anticipating the expectations of the new generation of movie viewers who are tired of Bollywood’s formula movies,” said PNC chairman Pritish Nandy.

Recently, PNC had inked a five film deal with actor-director Rajat Kapoor, three of which are currently under production stage. While Raat Gayi Baat Gayi is being directed by Saurabh Shukla, Saeed Mirza is directing Ek Tho Chance. A Rectangular Love Story is being directed by Rajat Kapoor. All the three films will be released this year.

PNC had also entered into two separate co-production deals with DQ Entertainment (DQE) and Sony Pictures.

While the deal between PNC and DQE states that the two companies will be co-developing and co-producing six movies within four years, the deal with Sony Pictures is for three films.

MUMBAI: National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) is releasing Ashim Ahluwalia‘s John and Jane on 6 June. As part of the distribution programme ‘Cinemas in India‘, NFDC will release John and Jane in PVR Mumbai and Gurgaon.

National award winning documentary John and Jane is a film that follows the real life stories of six young call agents who work in a Mumbai call center.

The film has also won a European Media Award last year and has been screened at Toronto, Berlin and other major festivals.

In association with PVR Cinemas, the ‘Cinemas of India‘ programme is a distribution initiative by NFDC to deliver to the multiplex audience original, compelling, award-winning works of Indian filmmakers from across the nation on diverse subjects and in diverse languages with one new release a month.

Upcoming titles include Camera D’Or winner Murali Nair’s sociopolitical horror Arimpara or A Story that Begins at the End, Bipin Nadkarni’s Marathi film the effect of divorce and remarriage on a young boy A Home in the Sky, and a NFDC production about the birth of cinema in India Bioscope.

MUMBAI: Paramount Pictures has downsized its art-house division Paramount Vantage (formerly known Paramount Classics). Paramount seeks to combine the marketing, distribution and physical production operations.

Paramount Vantage has been responsible for benchmark releases like Babel, No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood. Paramount Vantage will continue as a production label under the administration of president Nick Meyer.

The move of combining the operations is to boost the strengths and resources and thereby reducing possibility of errors. The consolidation will eliminate three senior executive positions including distribution executive VP Rob Schulze.

Paramount also seeks to save $5 million to $10 million in expenses and will allow Vantage to produce about six to eight movies a year. The merged marketing department will be led by Paramount worldwide picture marketing president Gerry Rich.

Megan Colligan and Josh Greenstein will hold the post of co-presidents of marketing. The distribution operation will be led by Jim Tharp, and physical distribution will be supervised by Georgia Kacandes. Vantage employs about 80 people.

Last month, Warner Bros. announced that it would close Warner Independent Pictures, its specialty film division, and Picturehouse, the independent movie arm of New Line Cinema.

MUMBAI: Sahara One Motion Pictures has inked a five-film deal with producer Boney Kapoor, out of which three are already under production.

While Wanted (a tentative title), a remake of South Indian blockbuster Pokhri, is being directed by Prabhudeva, Anees Bazmi will be directing Its My Life and a sequel to No Entry.

On being contacted, Sahara One Motion Pictures distribution head Sharath Pal said, “The other two films include Mr India’s sequel and another small budget film.”

Also, Wanted, which has Salman Khan and Ayesha Takia, will release in October this year while Its My Life, starring Harman Baweja, is slated to release by February 2009.

Pal confirmed that the rest of the three films will hit the screens by 2009. However, they have not yet zeroed upon the distribution of these films.

This apart, Sahara will be distributing Mere Baap Pehle Aap in Rajasthan, central province and central India. Sarkar Raj will be distributed in Rajasthan and central India and Chronicles of Narnia in Rajasthan alone.

Furthermore, Sahara has also acquired the pan India distribution rights of De Taali along with the world theatrical and satellite rights of Mumbai Cutting and Kacha Limbu.