Category: Movies

MUMBAI: The anti-piracy coalition of Bollywood and Hollywood studios that was formed at this year‘s Ficci will now be known as the ‘Alliance Against Copyright Theft‘ (AACT).

Formed to create a unified voice to fight piracy, AACT has studios like Reliance Big Entertainment, Moser Baer Entertainment, UTV Motion Pictures, Eros International and the Motion Picture Dist. Association (MPDA) as its founding members.

The AACT has launched its toll-free anti-piracy hotline – 1800-103-1919 – on which one can report piracy matters in the Mumbai and Thane districts. The anti-piracy hotline will allow people in Mumbai and Thane to register their piracy complaints by calling the toll free number without revealing their identity.

Upon receiving the complaints, the team that conducts raids will be immediately notified of the unlawful conduct. This year, there has been over 100 anti-piracy raids in Mumbai alone.

Moser Baer CEO Harish Dayani says, “Piracy cannot be eradicated or reduced just by a group of people working within the film industry. The public has to be involved in the fight. With the formation of AACT, we are trying to create awareness about the damage piracy causes to us all.”

Adds MPDA managing director Rajiv Dalal, “AACT provides a platform for our industry to come together and curb piracy. The launch of this toll free number will assist our efforts as it engages consumers, retailers and other responsible citizens.”

MUMBAI: Fox Star Studios‘ The A- Team has bagged the No .1 opening film of the week in India after it surpassed Toy Story 3 and two more Hindi films Krantiveer: The Revolution and Mr Singh Mrs Mehta that released simultaneously on 25 June.

Directed by Joe Carnahan, The A -Team or A Team- Khatron Ke Khiladi in Hindi, is a remake of the popular 1983 television series about four US Army Special Forces soldiers-turned-mercenaries trying to clear their names.

Grossing Rs 46 million from both its English and Hindi versions in its opening weekend, the Liam Neeson starrer got the fourth biggest Hollywood opening of the year after Clash Of The Titans, Prince Of Persia and Iron Man 2. The film‘s opening weekend also happens to be the seventh biggest opening of all time in India for a non-franchise film.

Incidentally, the Hindi version of The A-Team is doing well in all the markets and has contributed to about 50 per cent of the total collections. The collections from North India alone were Rs. 15 million for the opening weekend.

Fox Star Studios India CEO Vijay Singh says, “The exciting blend of action and comedy in A-Team has generated very positive word-of-mouth publicity, in particular from the Hindi-speaking belt. We expect the film to pick up further momentum in the week ahead.”

Fox Star Studios India is now considering releasing the film in Tamil as well.

MUMBAI: Seems nothing is going right for Bollywood right now. All the big ticket movies, including Kites and Raavan, bombed.
Last week‘s releases, Krantiveer – The Revolution and Medient International Holdings‘ Mr Singh Mrs Mehta, fared no better at the box-office.

The Mehul Kumar-directed film could not bring any kind of revolution (kranti) at the box-office. It played average at multiplexes but did fair business at single-screens. The film, though, is doing good business in Punjab, UP and Gujarat.
Mr Singh Mrs. Mehta is also having a miserable life in Mumbai, though it is breathing a lot better in Delhi and parts of North India.

All said and done, the dismal failures of Kites and Raavan and the mediocre opening of the new releases has helped Rajneeti. The Prakash Jha directed film is now officially the biggest hit of the year and has achieved a blockbuster status. With more than Rs 850 million in its kitty, the multi-starrer has benefited most out of the debacle of Raavan and is expected to continue its golden run at the box-office in the days to come.

People now await the release of the Imran Khan, Sonam Kapoor starrer I Hate Luv Storys.
 

MUMBAI: Nilesh Rane, son of Maharashtra revenue Minister Narayan Rane, has signed Soham Shah for a mega budget film Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj.

The film will be in 3D, with special effects done by a Hollywood crew that worked on Gladiator. 

According to the director, the film will be a visual treat… in the genre of 300, Robin Hood and The Prince of Persia.

The filmmaker has started work on his dream project and the final draft is expected to be ready in two months time.

Shah is networking with Bollywood superstars because he wants two big names to play Shivaji and the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb. The director is eyeing Sanjay Dutt to play the role of Shivaji, though nothing is concrete as yet.

Shah, incidentally, has two thrillers to his account in Kaal and Luck.

MUMBAI: Imagine all those black and white films dating back to the early days of Indian cinema gathering dust in climate-controlled vaults of film archives and production houses with no thought of resurrecting them.

It was K L Saigal’s Devdas that instigated filmmakers to take the film restoration route when the movie, stored in vaults of productions houses and archives, deteriorated with time and was lost forever.

Initially, restoration of films would be done by studios abroad for want of expert professionals in India. It was the Australia-based colourisation and restoration of motion pictures company Time-Brush Technologies that restored and coloured V Shataram’s classic Do Ankhen Barah Haath in 2007.

But slowly, as digital technology came at hand and new technique gained ground, many Indian studios like Prasad Film Laboratories (EFX), Film Lab, Shemaroo Entertainment, Reliance MediaWorks and Prime Focus ventured into the film restoration business.

Before Resurrection   After Resurrection   Still from Sadama (1983)

Film Lab, which set up its film restoration plant two years ago, has restored MS Sathyu’s film Garam Hawa . “We have completed the restoration work and are awaiting the release of the film sometime in August,” averred Film Lab Business Associate Rajiv Dwivedi. “The work included full grading, 2K scanning and complete restoration. The audio restoration work was however carried on in the US. The film was then recorded back to 35 mm film. All this was done at a cost of Rs 2 million.”

Film Lab has restored approximately 20 films, mostly those from Hollywood, which involved full restoration and dust-busting work.

Prasad Film Laboratories’ film restoration wing EFX too has restored as many as 200 Hollywood films in a span of three to four years that include 12 Academy Award and 7 Golden Globe Award winners. Recently, EFX restored films like Kabhie Kabhie, Dost and the 1948 English Film The Red Shoes, directed by Michael Powell.

Before   After   Still from Naya Daur (1957)

   
The Mrinal Sen-directed Khandahar had developed scratches and image warps apart from being torn at many places. Its audio quality too had deteriorated and it needed complete restoration. It was Reliance MediaWorks Ltd that took the task on hand and at a cost of Rs 50 the movie was resurrected before being sent to the Cannes Film Festival.

The other prominent films restored by Reliance MediaWorks include the 1899 silent film Panorama of Calcutta and Saraswati Chandra .

“Generally, it takes around 10 to 12 days in an eight hour’s work to restore a film,” says Reliance MediaWorks CEO Anil Arjun. “And, on average, restoring Indian films could cost anywhere up to Rs 5 million.”

According to Dwivedi, the current size of the restoration market is around $2 million and by 2012 it is likely to grow to $15 million at the rate of 200 per cent. “This could be achieved with the restoration of the huge archives of the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) and National Film Archive of India (NFAI),” feels Dwivedi.

According to Arjun, around 500 films are set to be restored by the end of 2010 and the country needs more professionals in the field.
Which is why the Information and broadcasting Ministry recently declared its plans to offer courses in film restoration at various institutes like the Pune Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), the Kolkata-based Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute and many other government-run mass communication colleges.

Says Arjun, “I am happy that the I&B Ministry has declared plans to offer courses in film restoration. In fact, we have very few professionals in the trade and for the industry to reach its zenith, we need a surge in the number of professionals in the trade.”

NEW DELHI: The competition section at the International Film Festival of India in Goa in November this year will be global instead of being confined to Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni has said that though the Committee of Experts to study ways to improve IFFI has not submitted a final report, the Government has decided to accept two of its interim recommendations for the 41st IFFI 2010.

The other recommendation this year will be to introduce a best actor and best actress award at the Festival, slated to be held from 22 November to 2 December.

Soni said that the Committee is expected to take one more month for finalising its report.

IFFI initially had a global competition which was stopped from 1988 IFFI when there was constant criticism of the poor level of entries. The Competition section was re-introduced in 1995 when it featured only Asian women, later being expanded to Asian cinema and ultimately third world cinema. However, the festival has a separate non-competitive section – Cinema of the World – which features global cinema.

Meanwhile, the Minister said the Government had decided to accept two recommendations of the Committee of Experts on the National Film Awards with immediate effect. The first of these is to have a two-tier jury. The films will, thus, be seen by some regional level juries before a short-listed list of films is submitted to the National Jury.

The other recommendation is to increase the award money in some categories. Though Soni did not specify the categories or the amount, she said the present total award money of Rs seven million was expected to go up to Rs 20 million.

She announced that the entries for the 57th National Film Awards for 2009 are expected to be invited within a week.

Soni also announced that a retrospective of the films of renowned actor Kamal Haasan was to be held in Delhi next month.

She said the Directorate of Film Festivals was now holding Festivals of the national award-winning and Indian Panorama films in different parts of the country.
The Expert Committee on National Film Awards headed by eminent filmmaker and Member of Parliament Shyam Benegal had submitted its report last month. It has proposed a Central Jury and five Regional Juries to cover languages in different regions. It has also outlined guidelines for the regional jury composition. Other recommendations are being studied.

The Committee comprised Sharmila Tagore who also heads the Central Board of Film Certification, Rajiv Mehrotra of the Public Service Broadcasting Trust, Sai Paranjpye, Ashoke Vishwanathan, Vishal Bhardwaj, Nagesh Kukunoor, Mohan Agashe, Ms. Waheeda Rehman, Jahnu Baruah and Shaji N Karun. The Ministry is represented by the Joint Secretary (Films) D P Reddy as Member Secretary, and Directorate of Film Festivals Director S M Khan.

The National Film Awards were instituted in 1954 and aim at encouraging the production of films of aesthetic and technical excellence, and social relevance, contributing to the understanding and appreciation of cultures of different regions of the country in cinematic form and thereby promoting integration and unity of the nation.

The IFFI Expert Committee has film personalities Govind Nihalani, Karan Johar, Pritish Nandy, Prasoon Joshi, Kamal Haasan, A K Bir, Laxmikant Shetgaonkar, Ms. Shabana Azmi, Ms Pooja Shetty Deora, Kishwar Desai, mediaperson Maithili Rao, Children’s Film Society, India, Chairperson Nandita Das, and Maharashtra Legislative Council member C S Sapra. The Ministry is represented by Joint Secretary (Films) D P Reddy as Member Secretary, and S M Khan, apart from the Chief Secretary of Goa Sanjeev Srivastava.

India has been holding International Film Festivals since 1952 but it was only in 1974 that these became annual events. A roving festival since its inception, it moved to Goa as a permanent venue in 2004.