Category: Movies

MUMBAI: Days after Riteish Deshmukh announced his decision to turn producer, another Marathi actor Shreyas Talpade has decided to produce Hindi films. He is co-producing a film titled Chemistry with Ajay Jhunjhunwala.

Written by Sai Kabir, Talpade plays the lead role in Chemistry. Talks are in the final stages to finalise the female lead as well.

A romantic comedy of an underdog, the film will begin shooting in Paris in September.

Interestingly, the film also marks writer Kabir’s directorial debut who has earlier written films like Lamhaa and Kismat Konnection.

Earlier Talpade had produced a Marathi film titled Sanai Chaughade that went on to become a hit.
 

MUMBAI: Filmmaker Anjan Das is set to helm an international project titled Cactus Flower to be made in English and Bengali.

The project will be partially funded and produced by an UK-based production house.

Bengali film actress Chandni Dey who has done films like Rahasya in the recent past has been roped in to play an important role in this project.

Cactus Flower revolves around four generations of women – Durga, Sukanya, Dolly and Sujata – all belonging to the same family. The story takes off with Durga, married to an old man who suffers a paralytic attack on his wedding night. She is being forced to enter into a physical relationship with her brother-in-law. She eventually gives birth to a girl child tentatively named Sukanya.

Sukanya’s child, Dolly, is sent to London and grows up to be a VJ. Dolly has a live-in relationship with two men and in due course becomes a mother to a girl called Sujata. She comes to India to meet her great grandmother and find her roots. She then decides to pursue her education in Kolkata and becomes actively involved with the cause of Adivasis. The story takes a turn when she goes missing. What happens next forms the crux of the film.

Avers Das, “It is interesting to deal with four women who have different perceptions of life. It leaves a lot of room for experimentation.”

Das is looking to rope in actresses like Sharmila Tagore or Waheeda Rehman to play the role of the grandmother. “But things are at a very preliminary stage now,” says the film-maker. “I am planning to have some English actors too for the project.”
 

MUMBAI: Warner Bros. Pictures‘ Inception, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, has grossed Rs 75 million in its opening weekend, making it a rare occasion when Bollywood is trailing behind a Hollywood product.

Inception became the number one film to open this week. The other films that released during the week like Lamhaa, Udaan and Tere Bin Laden put up a moderate performance at the box office.

Says Big Cinemas chief operating officer Ashish Saksena, “Inception, one of the most awaited films of 2010, has lived up to all the hype that it had generated. The combination of Christopher Nolan as the director and Leonardo DiCaprio as the lead actor only added to the pre-release buzz. Across Big Cinemas, the weekend occupancies were very strong, ranging from as high as 94 per cent at some of the cinemas to close at an average of 50 per cent for all language versions.”

The Christopher Nolan-directed film released in India with 300 prints in four languages that include English (120 prints), Hindi (90 prints), Tamil (45 prints) and Telugu (45 prints).

Warner Bros. Pictures India deputy managing director (theatrical) Denzil Dias notes that given the complexity of the film, marketing and the distribution was crucial. “Therefore, it was essential that we handle the marketing and the distribution with the same passion with which the film was made. The weekend results are evident to the fact that we have pulled this off. With the buzz going around on the film, this is just the beginning and it’s on its way of becoming the biggest cult film ever,” Dias said.

While the Sanjay Dutt-Bipasha Basu starrer Lamhaa opened to occupancy of between 15 to 20 per cent and collected Rs 57.50 million over the weekend, nothing can be foretold of its future yet.

Tere Bin Laden grossed over Rs 35 million in its opening weekend from 344 screens all over India. Encouraged by the strong response, the distributor of the film, BSK Network and Entertainment, has now planned to widen the film’s release by additional 40 to 50 prints in the second week.

Debutant director Vikramaditya Motwane’s Udaan opened to occupancy of between 35 to 40 per cent and promises to go well with the elite audience in the coming days. The film managed to collect Rs 11.50 million.

Says Cinemax India president – sales, marketing and operations Devang Sampat, “Inception has definitely opened better than the three Hindi films. It opened well at our locations and almost everybody had praised the film. I got inputs from celebs and regular cinegoers who are raving about this amazing Christopher Nolan film. Udaan and Tere Bin Laden should pick up in the coming days but as for Lamhaa we have to wait and watch since it has got mixed reviews.”
 

MUMBAI: Multiplex chain operators Cinemax and Inox Leisure found new life on the bourses as they jumped over 10 per cent today on the back of rumours that they were attracting equity deals.

As the market speculated of a private equity deal, shares of Cinemax rose 11.73 per cent to close Monday at Rs 62.85 on the BSE. A total of 0.79 million shares were traded on BSE worth Rs 49.41 million.

“The market reacted to a speculation that Cinemax would raise capital through a PIPE (private investment in public equity) deal,” a media analyst at a leading broking firm said.

Cinemax, however, denied such rumours. “There is no private equity deal happening now,” said Cinemax CEO Sunil Punjabi.

Meanwhile, Inox Leisure stock jumped 14.65 per cent to close the day at Rs 74.75. A total of 2.81 million shares were traded on BSE worth Rs 207.04 million.

“The market buzz is that Reliance ADAG is buying out Inox. The scrip gathered steam,” said a fund manager.

Reliance MediaWorks CEO Anil Arjun, however, said he had no knowledge of a buyout deal.

MUMBAI: A retrospective on the late Indian actress Smita Patil titled ‘Bhumika – The Roles of Smita Patil‘ has been planned for the Tenth Annual Mahindra Indo-American Arts Council (MIAAC) Film Festival scheduled to be held in theatres across New York from 10 to 14 November.

As in the past, the MIAAC Film Festival this year will feature a mix of film screenings, discussions on Indian cinema, industry panels geared specifically to film production in India, special events, nightly networking parties, an award ceremony and gala red-carpet opening and closing night events.

Last year, the festival included the New York premieres of Danny Boyle‘s Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire and filmmaker Deepa Mehta‘s Heaven on Earth among other events.

Said Mahindra & Mahindra vice chaiman and managing director Anand Mahindra “MIAAC is yet another way of giving back to the communities we operate in. Bringing thought provoking, independent Indian cinema to New York also provides a global platform to Indian talent so that they can rise and get international acclaim.”

Co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, The MIAAC Film Festival is the destination for feature films, documentaries and shorts from the Indian subcontinent.
 

NEW DELHI: ‘I am – Megha’, a film touching upon the lives of Kashmiri Pandits forced to flee Kashmir and starting their lives anew in a new place and environment, has been selected as the opening film at the “Engendered Film Festival” in New York on 21 September.

Directed by Onir, it is one of the four films made on protagonists who share a common dream – a desire to regain their lives.

The series ‘I am’ is an initiative of film director-producer Onir and actor-producer Sanjay Suri to make films addressing certain issues in society, and a vision to use the medium of mainstream films to spread awareness while popularising the culture of watching content oriented cinema.

Says Onir, “With this project, we hope to bring in another dimension to independent cinema in India. This project offers scope to different co-producers to partly co-produce any of the stories along with the main producers. We believe that independent cinema exists to give a voice to those working against the tide and outside the system.”

‘I am Megha’ is a story of two friends – a Kashmiri Pandit woman and a Muslim woman – separated by conflict. Against the backdrop of the ethnic cleansing in Kashmir in the late 80’s and early 90’s, this story tells of loss of home and identity.

Megha, enacted by Juhi Chawla, returns to the Valley after 16 years to sell her old home, and is reminded of the life she spent with her best friend Rubina, a Muslim, enacted by Manisha Koirala. The film has been partially inspired by the assassination of the father of Sanjay Suri, who also plays a role in the film.

‘I am Afia’ is the story of a single woman who wants to experience motherhood, but is afraid of the ticking clock. Unable to trust or even wait for a man, she decides to find that perfect donor who can give her the perfect child. Her search takes her through the underbelly of desire- desperation.

‘I am Omar’ with Rahul Bose is a horrific tale of sexual discrimination; blackmail and prejudice is part of the torrid fabric. It reveals how the police use Article 377 (law under Indian Penal code which criminalizes homosexuality) to harass and blackmail gay men. ‘I am Abhimanyu,’ starring Anurag Kashyap, is the story of a child sexual abuse survivor.

Beginning as a documentary filmmaker, Onir has made three feature films before this series, all with Suri: ‘My brother Nikhil’, ‘Bas Ek Pal’ and ‘Sorry Bhai’. Suri has acted in around 25 films beginning with ‘Pyar mein kabhi kabhi’ in 1999.

NEW DELHI: Four films from India are being screened as part of the Travelling Film South Asia programme being held simultaneously in Kathmandu and New Delhi.

Films from Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan will also be screened in the Festival being held in Kathmandu from 16 to 18 July and in Delhi from 16 to 21 July.

However, the programme organised in Delhi in collaboration with the India International Centre also includes a panel discussion on ‘Who Watches the Documentary?’ to be moderated by wellknown telecaster and filmmaker Jai Chandiram.

Participants include filmmaker Pankaj Butalia, Gunjan Jain of NDTV who selects the documentary films for her channel; filmmaker Sameena Mishra, and Gargi Sen of the Magic Lantern Foundation who promotes new filmmakers.
 

There will also be a talk on ‘The Documentary in South Asia’ by Upasana Shrestha, Co-Director, Film South Asia, Kathmandu

The Indian films include Lalit Vachani’s ‘The Salt Stories – Following Gandhi’s salt march in our time’ which was the joint Winner of the Second Best Film Award at FSA ’09

The other three Indian films are: ‘Come to My Country: Journeys with Kabir and Friends’ by Shabnam Virmani; ‘Saamam (The Music)’ by Ramachandran K which is a homage to Carnatic music and M D Ramanathan; and ‘Out of Thin Air’ by Samreen Farooqui & Shabani Hassanwalia showing the high energy of Ladakhi cinema.