ITV

Category: Movies

  • Sachin Tendulkar to embrace Bollywood

    MUMBAI: The switching over from the gentleman’s game of cricket to Bollywood, which started with Salim Durrani teaming up with Praveen Babi in Charitra in the seventies, got a new boost. Master blaster Sachin Tendulkar is set to make his Bollywood debut with Vidhu Vinod Chopra‘s Ferrari Ki Sawari.


    The story of the film revolves around a boy who is inspired by a cricket legend‘s Ferrari to play at the Lord‘s cricket ground.


    The film, to be directed by Rajesh Mapuskar, will have Tendulkar act alongside Sharman Joshi and Boman Irani. The script is being jointly written by Chopra and Mapuskar while the dialogues will be written by Raj Kumar Hirani.


    It must be noted that Tendulkar is the only Indian cricketer who owns a Ferarri.


    Many other cricketers like Vinod Kambli, Ajay Jadeja, Salil Ankola, Sunil Gavaskar and Sandeep Patil tried their luck in films but achieved minimal success.

  • Paan Singh Tomar to premiere at Dubai film fest

    NEW DELHI: UTV‘s upcoming venture Paan Singh Tomar, a story about the soldier-athlete who went on to become a bandit, will have its world premiere on 14 October at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival.


    While Randall Wallace‘s Secretariat, starring Diane Lane and John Malkovich, will open the festival, Murli Nair‘s Virgin Goat will be screened in the competition section.


    “The Festival as a whole has three big competitions for features. When I say big, I mean they have 14 or 15 films each with very generous prizes of $100,000 for all the major awards. They are for narrative features, documentary features and a new competition called New Horizons, which is open to fiction and non-fiction features by first- and second-time directors from all over the world,” said executive director of the Abu Dhabi Film Festival executive director Peter Scarlet in a statement. 


    Iranian films – Orion by Zamani Esmati and Gesher by Vahid Vakilifar – and two New York-based films – Furious Force of Rhymes by Joshua Atesh Litle and Bill Cunningham New York by Richard Press – will fight for a place in the New Horizons section.


    The festival will also see an equally impressive line-up of films by new talents from Egypt, France, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey and the UAE. The selection also includes one of the most surprising and unexpected new films we‘ve seen all year, Slackistan by Hammad Khan, a Pakistan-UK co-production.


    The Feature competition, titled Narrative Competition, will have films such as director Wang Bing‘s Chinese film The Ditch, Olivier Assayas‘ Carlos, In a Better World, French film Potiche by Francois Ozon and Russian film Silent Souls.

  • John Travolta wins GQ Man of the Year award

    MUMBAI: John Travolta, who enthralled us in films like Saturday Night Fever, Grease and Pulp Fiction, is in India with his daughter Ella to launch a model of Breitling Navitimer Caliber 01 Limited Edition watch in Mumbai. He was yesterday handed out the GQ Man of the Year award.


    His counterparts in Bollywood, Aamir Khan and Arjun Rampal, also laid their hand on two other GQ awards. While Khan was awarded the GQ Cinematic Icon of the Year, Rampal annexed the GQ Most Stylish Person trophy.


    Others who won awards were: Naseeruddin Shah (Lifetime Achievement Award), Abhishek Bachchan (Ultimate GQ Man Award), Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (Excellence Award), Ranbir Kapoor (Actor of the year) and Priyanka Chopra (Woman of the year). Karan Johar won the Producer of the year award.


    Travolta, who is on a two-day visit to India, is likely to fly out to Russia on Monday.
     

  • Ramesh Sippy to head Film and TV Producers Guild

    NEW DELHI: Eminent filmmaker Ramesh Sippy has been unanimously elected as President of The Film & Television Producers Guild of India Ltd.


    The election took place at the meeting of Guild Council of Management held immediately after the 56th Annual General Meeting on 25 September in Mumbai.


    Five vice presidents were elected: Mukesh Bhatt; Rakesh Roshan; Karan Johar; Vipul Shah; and Siddharth Roy Kapur. Manish Goswami and Ashim Samanta were elected Treasurer.


    Bobby Bedi is Chairman of the Delhi Chapter, while Goutam Ghose heads the Kolkata Chapter and D Suresh Babu will head the Hyderabad Chapter.


    Other members of the newly elected Council of Management of Guild are:


    1. Dr. Yash Chopra
    2. Manmohan Shetty
    3. Kamal Kumar Barjatya
    4. Ravi Chopra
    5. Amit Khanna
    6. Raj Tilak
    7. Dheeraj Kumar
    8. Sushilkumar Agrawal
    9. Rajkumar Kohli
    10. A G Nadiadwala
    11. Subhash Ghai
    12. Ashutosh Gowariker
    13. Vishal Bharadwaj
    14. Farhan Akhtar; and
    15. Prosenjit Chatterjee


    Kiran Shantaram and Randhir Kapoor are permanent invitees.

  • Academy approaches Prakash Jha for Raajneeti screenplay

    MUMBAI: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has approached Prakash Jha for the screenplay of his latest political thriller Raajneeti for its permanent core collection.


    “I‘m very happy and honoured that the Academy has requested me for the screenplay of Raajneeti. Though Hindi cinema has its own tradition and form, it is always nice to be recognised internationally,‘ said Jha in statement. ‘The script is the fulcrum of a film and I hope in the coming years in India, we further strengthen this aspect of filmmaking.” 


    Inspired by Mahabharata, Raajneeti is a political saga on northern India‘s murky electoral politics which gives a rare insight to the power equation and strained relationship within a political family.


    Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is the world‘s premier movie-related organization and is best known for its annual Oscar awards celebration. Scripts that they get are made available to all for research purposes only and in the premises of their reading room.


    Other Indian screenplays that have made it to the Oscar library include films like Rock On!!, Heroes, Lagaan, Devdas, Munnabhai M.B.B.S.‘ Kal Ho Naa Ho, Chak De! India, Sarkar Raj and Gandhi My Father.

  • Resident’s Evil leading at overseas b-o with $150 million haul in week three

    MUMBAI: 3D film Resident Evil: Afterlife maintained its lead for the third consecutive weekend on the foreign theatrical circuit after it grossed $24 million from more than 5,200 theatres in 48 territories. This put the film‘s overseas gross total to $150.8 million so far.


    Oliver Stone‘s sequel to his 1987 film Wall Street premiered day-and-date with its No. 1 domestic debut and took the fourth spot on the weekend overseas with it drawing $9.13 million from 1,723 screens in 41 markets.


    Fox said it was “thrilled by these early market results,” adding that the “Money‘” overseas rollout included only two of the top 10 foreign markets.


    Best territory was Australia where the weekend registered $1.65 million from 283 locales. No. 1 introductions were tallied in Sweden, Taiwan, Holland and Belgium. Money‘s foreign openings this week include France, Russia and Mexico.


    Also opening day-and-date in the overseas territory with its US and Canada bow was Touchstone/Disney‘s You Again director Andy Fickman‘s female-centric comedy costarring Kristen Bell, Jamie Lee Curtis, Sigourney Weaver and Betty White.
     

  • del Toro to write, direct film for Dreamworks Animation

    MUMBAI: Guillermo del Toro will write and direct DreamWorks Animation‘s Trollhunters.


    After visiting DWA‘s campus in Glendale, California, del Toro has decided to make DWA his animation home. He will serve as a consultant and executive producer of several projects including Kung Fu Panda 2, Puss in Boots and a yet-to-be-revealed project all under development. He will also have a say in DWA‘s next feature Megamind that is scheduled to release on 5 November.


    del Toro feels that animation has caught his eye because he believes that during the next 10 years, the entertainment landscape will shift into a transmedia world — a confluence of films, TV, books, video and online, while artistes will need to be educated in all aspects of media.


    Trollhunters is based on a young-adult book del Toro wrote and submitted to publisher Hyperion two weeks ago. He originally came up with the idea around the time he sold The Strain the vampire book trilogy he is writing with Chuck Hogan.


    Due to the evolutionary process of animated filmmaking, the script will be written and rewritten over a period of time, including during production. Del Toro has already started writing Trollhunters and plans to finish it before he shoots At the Mountains of Madness.
     

  • Shekhar Kapoor to shoot Paani in China

    MUMBAI: Shekhar Kapoor has decided to shoot his futuristic film, Paani, in China.


    Intially, the film was to have been shot in Mumbai. But filming in the city is now ruled out since the film’s plot requires the filmmaker to construct a futuristic city with two sharply demarcated sections: The Upper City (for the elite with abundant water supply) and The Lower City (for the poor). Love and conflict ensue when the boy from the Lower City sneaks into the forbidden Upper City. 


    Creating such a big set in Mumbai seemed difficult and hence Kapoor chose China. He has already visited China thrice this year. Said Kapoor, “I‘d shoot Paani anywhere where I‘d get the intellectual and geographical space to build my city of a water-challenged future.”


    Spain had also opened its doors to Shekhar for Paani, but the visionary in the director has taken a liking to China in toto.


    The last Hindi film to be shot in China was Nikhil Advani‘s Chandni Chowk To China.

  • Deaf and dumb film Amir Garib to release on 9 October

    MUMBAI: The deaf and dumb have some hidden qualities. To prove this, some deaf and dumb people have made a movie, Amir Garib, that is set for release on 9 October.


    The movie has all the ingrediants of a Bollywood film except sound.


    The two-hour long film in sign language has been made by members of the Ahmedabad Behra Munga Mitra Mandal, the association of deaf and dumb. The organisation has been working for the deaf and dumb people in Ahmedabad for the last 45 years.


    Says Vice-President of the association and the director of the film GNA Munshi, “As kids, we never enjoyed watching television the way others did. This movie is an attempt to give the deaf and dumb community a chance to have a wholesome entertainment without any external help.”


    Adds Karishma Kishorekumar Lamba, the lead actress of Amir Garib: “Through the movie, we are trying to make a point that one should never give up. One should never sit idle.”


    Lamba has been to Las Vegas to participate in an international deaf and dumb beauty paegeant.


    “We want to make bigger movies for the all-India deaf and dumb community,” says Yasin Chippa, the comedian in the movie who got his inspiration from Kader Khan.
     

  • MGM rejects Sahara’s $2 billion bid

    MUMBAI: Sahara India Pariwar’s dream of a takeover of the cash-strapped Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Inc, which some critics say was a publicity stunt, has evaporated with the studio rejecting its $2 billion bid.


    The studio’s creditors are now working on alternative plans to bail out the struggling Hollywood studio.


    The company‘s chairman Subrata Roy Sahara had a conference call with the studio’s creditors on Tuesday. He later said that his offer was rejected within hours of his talk with creditors.


    MGM’s creditors who need to recover around $4 billion are now negotiating a restructuring plan for the studio that could include a prepackaged bankruptcy, Roy added.


    MGM has rights to the James Bond franchise and owns half of the upcoming movies based on J.R.R. Tolkien‘s The Hobbit.