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Tag: Ram Gopal Varma

  • Ram Gopal Varma to recreate lobby of Taj Mahal Hotel for film based on 26/11 terror attacks

    Ram Gopal Varma to recreate lobby of Taj Mahal Hotel for film based on 26/11 terror attacks

    MUMBAI: After being granted limited access to the CST railway station to shoot his ambitious project based on the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai, Ram Gopal Varma‘s request to film at the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel, Colaba has been turned down.

    The reason behind the non-clearance of the filmmaker‘s request is the fact that the authorities are not willing to revisit the unfortunate incident, even through a film. The hotel became the venue for a lot of bloodbath during the terrorists‘ siege on the city.

    The disappointed director has revealed that after shooting some sequences at CST, he will shoot the rest of the gory and firing scenes on another set. 

    It may be interesting to know that Varma has instead recreated the entire lobby of the Colaba hotel at another suburban hotel in Juhu, which is currently being rented for shootings. The entire set has been created by art director Uday Singh and has cost the filmmaker Rs 2.5 crore.

    “It could be traumatic for many to see the recreation of that horrible tragedy. For me, in the context of the attacks, a five-star hotel is the symbol of human achievement in terms of splendour. To see blood flowing on its polished floors and its pristine walls and artifacts there to be riddled with bullets are living testimony of the ultimate barbarism Man is capable of doing,” said Mr Varma.

  • Vivek Oberoi hopes his two films will not release together

    Vivek Oberoi hopes his two films will not release together

    MUMBAI: A few days ago it was reported that the makers of Vivek Oberoi‘s two upcoming films, Jayanta Bhai Ki Luv Story and Kismet Love Paisa Dilli (KLPD), are at loggerheads because both the films were set for 5 October release.

    Though the makers Kumar Taurani and Amit Chndra have not resolved the clash yet, the actor hopes one of the producers will move ahead while the other’s film would release. The 35-year-old actor is hopeful that there will be an amicable solution.

    Promotion of KLPD is on while that of Jayanta Bhai is set to begin soon. “They (Amit Chandra) may have started their promotions but we too would be beginning by the month end. We just need a few weeks of some really intense promotion to get us going. We are not backing out for sure. Our posters are ready, the first cut of the film is in place as well. If there is going to be a clash on 5 October, so be it,” said Taurani in a statement.

    Oberoi, last had a release two years back, when Ram Gopal Varma‘s Rakht Charitra Part I and II released in quick succession but both failed at the box office.

    Amit Chandra understands the situation and empathises with Vivek. “It is not great for two films to release on the same day; it is not going to benefit either Kumarji or me. I have requested him that he moves on and hopefully he would.”

    However, Taurani feels that since he announced the film‘s completion first, it was his right to arrive in theatres first. “We were just about to start the publicity of our film when out of nowhere I heard Amit announcing his film‘s completion. However, he didn‘t even talk to me and just said that I should move ahead. It has to be seen who amongst the two of us would budge from the stand.”

    Chandra is firm on the release date as he thinks 5 October is the perfect date for him.

  • CR officials direct RGV to contact Railway Board for permission to shoot at CST

    CR officials direct RGV to contact Railway Board for permission to shoot at CST

    MUMBAI: In his quest to stay afloat given the washout of his latest film Department, Ram Gopal Varma is making a film based on the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai.

    Recently, Varma went to the Central Railway (CR) headquarters at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) to seek permission from the public relations department to shoot some scenes at the station.

    It is said that the CR authorities denied any permission and asked the filmmaker to approach the Railway Board in Delhi. Reportedly the authorities didn‘t want any gory images or blood to be shown as the incident wasn‘t one to be glorified. “So, we have asked the production to send the proposal in writing and we will be permitting them to shoot the scenes only if we feel that it will not affect the railways‘ image,” said a CR official.

    Varma‘s team is also scouting other locations and strategic places like Cama Hospital and the vehicle by which the terrorists had entered and gone on a rampage around the city. They are also trying to rope in the railway announcer who saved many lives on the night of the attacks.

    Varma had initially courted controversy when he visited the terror-ravaged hotels (Taj Mahal and the Oberoi) soon after the terror strike along with the then chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and his son Riteish Deshmukh.

  • Ram Gopal Varma opens dud ‘Department’

    Ram Gopal Varma opens dud ‘Department’

    MUMBAI: Ram Gopal Varma has delivered one more dud with Department as the movie failed to draw a decent opening day crowd and accounted for a poor weekend collection of Rs 71 million.

    Ishqzaade has proved to be a small film with big potential. It ended its first week with a healthy collection of Rs 257.5 million and has remained steady over its second weekend to collect Rs 74 million. The first 10 days total collections stood at Rs 331.5 million.

    Dangerous Ishq proved a debacle. With an outlay of Rs 210 million, the film managed a meagre Rs 59 million in its first week. Despite hugely cutting down on the number of screens from 1,060 to just 180 screens, the film netted only Rs 1 million in its second weekend.

    Jannat 2 collected Rs 68 million in its second week, taking its two-week total to Rs 424 million.

    Tezz scrapped the bottom with Rs 2 million in its third week.

    Vicky Donour continued to hold its own irrespective of IPL matches and other new releases. The film collected a Rs 41 million in its fourth week, taking its tally to Rs 355 million.

    Housefull2 netted Rs 9.5 million in its sixth week. The movie has so far collected Rs 1.18 billion.

  • Yet another disappointment from RGV

    Yet another disappointment from RGV

    MUMBAI: When Ram Gopal Varma makes a film, one is a bit sceptical. He has not made a sensible film in a long time after all! When you go to a movie expecting nothing, you do usually come out happier than if you expected a masterpiece.

    Producer: Viacom 18 Motion Pictures, Uberoi Line Productions.
    Director: Ram Gopal Varma.
    Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjay Dutt, Rana Daggubati, Deepak Tijori, Vijay Raaz, Abhimanyu Singh,Anjana Sukhani, Laxmi Manchu, Madhu Shalini.

    This, however, is not the case with Department, the latest Ram Gopal Varma film. One does go in expecting nothing but one comes out exasperated and mentally fatigued. Department is an exercise in senility: it tries your patience, it tests your nerves and it challenges your sensibilities. After a run time of 2 hours 13 minutes, you come out not knowing who was who in the film, what his motives were and, to top it all, you are threatened with a sequel!

    There are some cops on a killing spree in order to get the better of the underworld. Rana Daggubati, one of them, is singled out for suspension for being trigger-happy. The other one, Sanjay Dutt, knows to hide his tracks well. Since there is too much of underworld, some unknown and unexplained face decides to form a special task force called Department, which will not be answerable to anyone and which will not exist on paper.

    But, this being a Ram Gopal Varma film, all and sundry know of its existence the moment it is formed. That includes a crazy looking Mumbai don, Vijay Raaz, and a secretive Dubai-based kingpin, Ghouri Mohammed. Rana and Dutt both embark on a shooting spree killing some random faces to reach Vijay Raaz. The charade goes on until a little before the interval, when Amitabh Bachchan makes his entry. He is an idiosyncratic character who ties a small bell to his wrist and has a weird story to tell about it which he never really tells. He is some sort of a minister who pulls all the strings even as he behaves like he is off his rocker. He is a don turned politician after attaining sakashtkar under Dharavi Bridge.

    The Department, which is a small band of shooters, soon has different sponsors. Sanjay Dutt obeys the faceless don in Dubai, Rana listens to Amitabh Bachchan and the rest, including Deepak Tijori are incidental.

    Having killed most of the Mumbai underworld, the Department heroes end up killing each other: long live the Don in Dubai; he is spared for Department 2 if you care.

    Department has a sequence of events but no cohesive script. Ram Gopal Varma grossly misuses his artistes and takes the audience for granted. He makes this narration into a perfect torture device. Dialogue is pedestrian. Music is irrelevant and forced. Ram Gopal’s experiment with student cinematographers becomes a joke as he goes overboard. Editing is nonexistent.

    As for performances, only Rana Daggubati looks sincere. Amitabh Bachchan’s character and getup are designed to make an impact; all they do is make him look like a psycho. Sanjay Dutt is his usual self. Vijay Raaz is unlike any don one has known or heard of. The characters of Abhimanyu Singh and his girl, Madhu Shalini, border on insane. This bunch shows the maker’s taste for the macabre.

    Department is a rank bad film with poor box office prospects.

     

    Lacklustre scripting, doomed to go unnoticed

     

    Producer: Chandra Pemmaraju.
    Director: Chandra Pemmaraju.
    Cast: Melanie Kannokada, Arjun Gupta, Levrenti Lopes, Michael Derek, Rob Byrnes, Ryan Vigilant, Aaron Katter, Leah Kavita, Carolyn Korale.

    Love Lies And Seeta (English with few Hindi dialogue) is directed by Chandra Pemmaraju, who clearly has a passion for filmmaking. An Indian-American, his two earlier shorts have been a part of various film festivals. The film is a shoestring-budget love story about an Indian-origin girl, Seeta (Melanie Kannokada, a former Miss India America), and three boys who fall in love with her.

    The boys, Arjun Gupta, Levrenti Lopes and Michael Derek, are all students who vie with each other to win Seeta’s love and attention. They get into a silent war of deception amongst them, which verges on violence. Seeta dates all three simultaneously which further adds to the misunderstandings among the boys.

    Seeta, who was adopted as a child by an American couple, seeks counsel from her father, Rob Byrnes, after which she decides to tell all three boys that she likes them as friends but is not in love with any of them. She also discovers her true love in Ryan Vigilant, with whom she had played in her childhood and who has been in love with her since then. Seeta also has her two close friends who are nursing a silent love for two of the boys but can’t open up since the boys are in love with Seeta. Eventually, all end up getting their partners.

    Chandra Pemmaraju chooses the New York summer as the backdrop of his narration and presents some pleasant visuals of the New York landscape. The drawback is with his scripting which is like oral storytelling and is slow without dramatics. Music is apt and soothing.

    Love Lies And Seeta, released without any sort of promotion, is fated to pass unnoticed.

     
  • Bollywood takes IPL head on

    Bollywood takes IPL head on

    MUMBAI: Bollywood is refusing to take evasive action from the mighty attack of the Indian Premier League (IPL). Having learnt the hard way with films falling right, left and centre in the last four seasons of the IPL, Bollywood has decided to take the most popular and extensive annual cricketing event head on by releasing 24 films.

    Of the 24, ten are big-ticket films from banners like Viacom 18, Reliance Motion Pictures, Yash Raj Films, UTV Spot Boy, Nadiadwala Grandsons and Ram Gopal Varma’s RGV Films.

    The first film released on 5 April is Sajid Nadiadwala’s Housefull 2. This is to be followed by Kumar Mangat and Viacom 18’s Bittoo Boss (13 April), Life Ki Toh Lag Gayi and John Abraham’s Vicky Donor (20 April), Venus Records and Tapes’ Priyadarshan-directed Tezz (27 April), Mukesh Bhatt’s Jannat 2 (4 May), BVG Films, DAR Motion Pictures and Reliance Entertainment’s Karisma Kapur-starrer Dangerous Ishq (11 May) and Ram Gopal Varma’s Department, YRF’s Ishaqzaade and UTV Spotboy and Anurag Kashyap’s Love Suv Te Chicken Khurana (all on 18 May).


    Opines UTV Motion Pictures CEO Siddharth Roy Kapoor, “The IPL has now become a regular part of the annual calendar and producers and distributors have realised that movie releases and cricket can co-exist since audiences watching cricket don’t stop going to cinema. Hence, we are seeing many big-ticket releases during the IPL. The general opinion is that if a film is good, it will run despite the IPL happening concurrently.”

    Last year the only big-ticket films to release during the IPL were Dum Maro Dum and Thank You. Incidentally, both proved duds at the box office while a string of smaller productions like Shor In The City, Chalo Dilli, I Am, Love Ka The End, Ragini MMS, Stanley Ka Dabba and Pyar Ka Punchnama managed to find a release window during the IPL.

    Industry officials expect the first quarter of this fiscal to be better in terms of revenue than the previous year due to a stronger lineup of films.

    Explains producer Mukesh Bhatt, “The IPL has lost its shine. Now we are confident to take it head on. After lying low for four years in
    a row, Bollywood has decided to release many ‘A’ ticket films. Both cricket and films are a religion in India. People who are aficionados of cricket will see the IPL while those who love films will definitely go to see a film. All said and done, our revenue during the IPL tournament is poised for a big jump.”

    Will not the IPL harm his upcoming film Jannat 2? “When IPL came for the first time, we were not afraid to release our film Jannat, then why should we be afraid this time? We are sure that our film will captivate the audience. We will storm the theatres, whatever be the match. Jannat 2 will prove to be a match-winning venture,” he says.


    Exhibitors are also unanimous with the view that the IPL can‘t scare away big movies from releasing. Says Cinemax India CEO Sunil Punjabi, “April to June has traditionally been the best movie months till IPL hit us. This is the period that is large on entertainment time since kids and teens have holidays. Last year we saw a shift in cinema consumption trends. This year too, it is going to be the same. This shift in consumption is showing signs of the movie market maturing to take on any challenge.”

    So will IPL matches be screened in multiplexes? “The screening rights of IPL are being held back by the BCCI. Hence, like last year, there won‘t be screenings in multiplexes unless the rights are released,” avers Punjabi.

    It is not just Bollywood but also foreign films like James Cameron‘s Titanic (3D), Men in Black-3 and The Avengers that are opening up their release pipeline during the IPL.

    “Bollywood has realised that it can‘t stay shut for 45 days in a year without the release of big movies. They will have to bat along with the IPL and prove that they can score even in a tough wicket. That is why we are seeing more number of big releases this year,” says a media analyst.

    Film producers, however, are weary of releasing their big-ticket movies during crunch matches. Which is why Yash Raj Films has decided to release Ishaqzaade, a story about love brewing in a small town burning with hatred, on 11 May and not a week later as was originally planned.

    “With Ferrari ki Sawaari moving to a later date and the IPL crunch matches kicking in from 18 May, this shift will give Ishaqzaade a better window for release,” YRF says. Vidhu Vinod Chopra‘s Ferrari Ki Sawaari was to release on 11 May but has been delayed.

    “These kind of shuffles and strategies will take place, but the bigger truth is that Bollywood has woken up to the challenge,” says the head of a film production company who did not want his name to be revealed.

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  • Ram Gopal Varma mulls film on post-YSR’s death

    Ram Gopal Varma mulls film on post-YSR’s death

    MUMBAI: Inspired by the political developments in the aftermath of former Andhra Pradesh CM Y S Rajasekhara Reddy‘s death in September 2009, Ram Gopal Varma is readying to make a Telugu film Reddy Garu Poyaru (Reddy is Dead).

    “The unprecedented political developments in Andhra Pradesh as well as the many scandals that came to light, and the intense war between television news channels, have inspired me immensely. I have decided to make a feature film exposing these happenings through a fictitious story,” Varma said in a statement.

    It has been reported that the script of the proposed film was under preparation and shooting would start next year soon after Varma completes his current venture, Department.

    “I was never interested in politics but I always had a tremendous urge to study the psychology of political leaders. A small stone when thrown into still water will cause ripples but the same stone when thrown into political waters will cause a tsunami,” Varma observed.

    Elaborating on the story, the 49-year-old producer- director said a struggle for political existence begins with the death of a tall leader. “The leader‘s own men will seek to use his death as an investment for their political existence, while those on the other side will try to use the opportunity to regain their existence. As a whole, the film will expose the bizarre political game that is played in the aftermath of the tall leader‘s death,” he averred.

  • Ram Gopal Varma to make ‘The Businessman’ in Hindi

    Ram Gopal Varma to make ‘The Businessman’ in Hindi

    MUMBAI: The Hindi remake of the Telugu hit, The Businessman, will be produced and directed by Ram Gopal Varma.

    The project is now being given a Hindi touch and is being planned on a far bigger scale than the original.

    The Businessman featured Mahesh Babu and was directed by Puri Jagannadh who had earlier directed the Amitabh Bachchan-starrer Buddha Hoga Tera Baap.

    “Ramu is producing the Hindi version of The Businessman and directing it too. Have already done whatever I could with plot and screenplay of The Businessman. Would be interesting to see what Ramu does to the story in Hindi,” said Jagannadh.

    In fact it was Puri who had asked Varma to take over the project that was accepted by the latter. The Businessman had turned out to be a Telugu blockbuster.

  • Nana Patekar to direct Ab Tak Chhapan sequel

    Nana Patekar to direct Ab Tak Chhapan sequel

    MUMBAI: After having a fallout with director Sahil Saple who later quit the scene, Ram Gopal Varma has entrusted directorial duties of his sequel of Ab Tak Chappan to lead actor Nana Patekar.

    Confirming the news, Varma said, “Yes, now Nana is directing the sequel. Sahil had some other script that he wanted to do. So, we decided to hand it over to Nana.”

    It was earlier reported that Patekar was ghost directing the project. It is now learnt that Saple opted out of the film as he was against taking fake credit for the film. So he opted out of the project.

    It may be remembered that Varma‘s sequel had been embroiled in controversies for some reason or the other.

  • Ram Gopal Varma making film on 26/11 attacks

    Ram Gopal Varma making film on 26/11 attacks

    MUMBAI: Three years after his infamous visit to the Taj Mahal Hotel along with the then chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and his son Riteish soon after the assault of the terrorists on 26/11, that cost the CM his job, Ram Gopal Varma has started working on the film based on the terrorist attacks.

    Varma has reportedly confided that the film tentatively titled 26/11 will not only cover the attack but also the behind-the-scenes action.

    ‘‘Everyone, more or less, has seen on TV or heard of what happened then. My attempt will be to capture everything from the time Kasab and the rest of the team landed on Mumbai‘s shore on Amar Singh Solanki‘s trawler to the National Security Guard‘s operation that eliminated all of them except Kasab who was captured,” Varma observed.

    According to the director, a large part of the film‘s focus will be on the police officer who died fighting the terrorists. “It will be completely based on the flush out operation at the Taj.” According to sources, major part of the film would be shot on the high seas. Varma is also trying to tie up with an international production house for the film.

    Varma and his team have already had a few sittings with Rommel Rodrigues, the author of the book ‘Kasab the face of 26/11‘. The author is assisting Varma in the fim. “He has an extensive knowledge of the event,” observed Varma.

    The film would be made for both national as well as the international audiences. It will have completely new cast to create a heightened sense of reality.