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Director Ameer's Raam, which was selected for the screening at the famous Cyprus International Film Festival, won the admiration of cine aficionados gathered from world over. Among 11 movies screened for awards from over 140 countries, Raam won for actor Jeeva, the award for the best actor and for Yuvan Shankar Raja, the best music director. A thrilled Ameer,says, 'It is a rare honor for the Tamil film industry .The festival committee at Cyprus Film Fest appreciated my movie'. 'Ram was never made keeping in mind these awards. Now, the recognition has made me more responsible and I should live up to expectation', he adds. Ameer is currently working on Paruthi Veeran starring Karthik, son of veteran actor Sivakumar and brother of Suriya, in the lead role.
Ramu explains the difference between stars and actors
His star-less and song-less film PHOONK has turned into a success. No wonder he is in a euphoric mood as he celebrates the success of his horror flick. Here, he talks about how exactly do stars and actors differ from each other. "People when told to see a particular film, the first question they will ask is 'who is in it?' This is how a star is born. Because they cannot know how the film is, the least they can depend on making up their mind to see the film is the presence of a certain star. The primary difference between a star and an actor is that the star is a personality. One prime example of this is Shahrukh Khan. Whether he is in a commercial or doing a show or acting in a film or just being himself, he has the same charisma. From personal interactions that I had with him, I found him much more effective, entertaining and charming in person than in his umpteen blockbusters. On the other hand an actor is playing a character and it is the character which people connect to. At an Awards function post Satya release when Manoj Bajpai came on stage people were screaming out Bhikku Bhai in spite of Sharukh's presence which obviously thrilled Manoj. I cautioned Manoj after the event not to get carried away as he should realize that they are calling him by his character's name and not his personal name. Sharukh by that time might have given 25 super hits but nobody remembers what his character's name was in any of those films. That is the power of a star. Actors die along with their characters and stars live on. Lot of people complain that Sharukh does the same kind of acting all the time meaning that he is repetitive. I believe it's precisely because of that he is such a big star. In fact the moment anyone tries to make him do something other than being himself they will fail. Some examples being Paheli and Swades. I think it works like this on a psychological level. If you meet a person and you like him why the hell would you want him to change every time you meet him? At best you will want him to be in different situations and in different backgrounds or interacting with different people. But he himself should never change. The prime examples of this are Sharukh and Rajnikant. On the other hand when you are making a film which has a subject matter revolving around extremely believable characters, a star can become an impediment because he along with him gets his own baggage of image and expectations and this cuts into the believability of the film. For example, if John Abraham's stardom is due to his deadly looks in Dhoom why spoil it by making a film like 'No Smoking' with him. The Director might have gotten out a performance out of him and he also might have done very well but the question is whether people want to see him act or just look good. So conversely in a situation like this the very star who is supposed to pull the people in can become an excess baggage to the film. When you go to a DVD store and look around at the choice of films, many times you will catch yourself picking up a film not so much for the stars but because you liked the title or the poster design or what is written in 3 or 4 lines on the back of the cover. So if who is in the film can be a pulling factor, what is it about also can be a pulling factor. Phoonk belongs to this category. I cast everyone in Phoonk with the intention of making everyone sitting in the theatre to feel that it is his family or his neighbour's family which is going through the proceedings. It is common knowledge that many a time stars are signed by Directors not because they fit the characters but because the Distributors and trade pundits demand them. The tremendous opening of Phoonk all over the country proves that instead of Crores charging Mallika, Paresh etc you can pull audience with a 500 Rupees-per-shift charging crow also. I am taking this example because stars are what we put on the posters to attract crowds into theatres, and the star we put on the posters of Phoonk is the crow."
Ramu is the last man laughing
The wait and watch approach adopted by the producers of the 'Phoonk' has paid off. The movie was not released anywhere outside India, but now as it has been declared a thumping success here, the financiers are sure of its success in other countries also. The low budget movie has set the cash registers ringing all over India due to a great opening and good response from the film lovers and thus making it sure that now itself the financiers have got more than double of the actual budget. Now the producers of the project are taking the film to foreign countries as now it can be marketed banking on its success in India. To attract the film lovers of Europe the movie will be dubbed into Spanish, German and French. So in this way the film will be able to reach out not only to the non resident Indians living in countries in the Middle East, UK, Australia and America where the English dubbed version will be shown, but also to a larger part of the globe. The Telugu dubbed version will be released titled as 'Raksha' and it will also be dubbed in Tamil and Malayalm. Ram Gopal Varma has shown again that it does not take much time for him to bounce back and in the end what matters the most is the box office collection of a film and nothing else.
Ramu talks about logical loopholes in his films
On being questioned, how did Ramu conceive the scene at the railway crossing in Shiva where Nagarjuna rescues Amala, Ramu replied: "Obviously from my imagination. An interesting thing happened at location when I was shooting that scene. My assistant director walked up to me and said it's very illogical that there are no other vehicles near the crossing. The kidnapping has happened in the city and there is no reason that the goons will be taking her out of the city. Also since Nagarjuna is on the other side of the gate, he could not have been coming from out of city. So for all practical purposes the incident was happening in the city. Conveniently during the entire built up of Nagarjuna watching them and slowly walking around and delivering his lines, there are neither the railway guards nor any people or vehicles in the vicinity. I told him that the audience will be hooked on to what is happening with Nagarjuna and Amala and with the music and his expressions and the situation their mind won't go to those things. He was not convinced and was quite shocked that nobody brought it up after the release. This is a classic case of illustrating the strength of Alfred Hitchcock's line 'where drama begins logic ends'. He is supposed to have come up with this line while he was filming 'North by Northwest', where there is a scene when the hero is being chased by the baddies. As he is running to escape he gets onto a train. Just when the audience thinks he has escaped there are baddies on the train too. Here his assistant asked him that how will the baddies know that he will get onto the train to which Hitchcock replied that the audience will be driven by the emotion whether he will escape and hence will not think. That's the difference between a book and a movie. In a book you can stop reading and think whereas in a movie its pace that controls your thinking. Also an example of this is in Satya when Khandilker closes the doors of the movie theatre and walks into the theatre and announces to the crowd that there is a dangerous gangster among them which is logically very stupid. Realistically, in a situation like that they would come in plain clothes and ask the informants to point him out as the audiences are coming out so that they can nab him unaware. Why would they forewarn a dangerous gangster who is in the crowd so that he can take anybody hostage there. Here my thrust was to manipulate the audience into thinking in the direction of how Satya will escape without Urmila coming to know his identity and hence in the drama they will miss the larger picture of logic. When Sandeep Chowta started doing background, he and his musicians felt that the scene was ridiculous because of the same reasons. I thought maybe I stretched the drama versus logic too far this time but it was too late to do anything about it. I couldn't come up with a solution so I had no choice but to release the film as it is. After the release and 10 years since, I have not met a single guy who had a problem with that. Now why Sandeep and his team felt and nobody else did after that is anybody's guess. I would think that Sandeep's team was watching the film in parts as he was doing the music and hence they were emotionally not involved. Yet another example is the climax of Rangeela. If the premiere ended at presumably 12:30 in the night, Jackie and Urmila come to Pakya. Jackie just asks him where is Munna and I cut to shot of Munna lying on top of a truck. Now whose tempo is that, I never established a vehicle for Munna in the film, so either it is being driven by a friend of his who is going somewhere or he is just taking a random ride. If it is a random vehicle how will Pakya know how he is going? Were Jackie and Urmila driving for 6 hours in the night since 12:30 and looking for what? Conveniently for them to spot him, I made Munna lie on the top. If he was inside and Jackie stopped it, it would have raised unnecessary questions in the audience's mind or whose vehicle is it, on the other hand if the driver is a known guy to Munna, who is he? To escape that logic I just simply applied the oldest trick in the trade 'out of sight is out of mind'. After Aamir gets out and the long drama starts between the three, I composed all the frames in such a way that both the truck and the driver were out of the frame not letting the audience mind wonder from the point of the scene. If you look at it, the climax scene could have happened in the night too if Pakya said Munna just left and maybe he can catch him walking around the corner of the road but I strongly felt that the climax scene for a film like Rangeela should not happen in the night. It should be a picturesque location to give a feel good finishing. Max logic I applied was to treat the scene as early morning light so as not to give a visual jump. Anyways to cut a long story short very frequently whenever I get into such above predicaments I just say 'Jai Alfred Hitchcock' and go ahead."
Ramu to release ‘Rakta Charitra II’ Nov 19
After posting a nasty comment on Twitter on Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s “Guzaarish”, Ram Gopal Varma has apologized to his fellow filmmaker and, as a “peace offering”, decided to release his “Rakta Charitra II” on the same day, Nov 19. “If anything so enamoured of hatred can be called a peace offering, then yes I’m releasing ‘Rakta Charitra II’ on the same day (Nov 19) as Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s ‘Guzaarish’,” chuckles Ramu. For the first time in his entire career as an outspoken critique of the Bollywood denizens, Ram Gopal Varma has apologized to a filmmaker for offending him. Ramu realised he had gone too far with his Twitter comment and profusely apologised to Bhansali. Ramu’s SMS to Bhansali reads: “I’m sorry if I offended you. I just have this habit of constantly saying something funny on Twitter about every happening out there. Most of the comments are on me. I make more comments on my own films than anybody else’s. I’ll take back my remark publicly asap. Sorry again.” Bhansali immediately chose to forgive and forget and move on. One wonders what brought this generous spirit out of Ramu! Says the director: “I guess it’s the nervousness of my own release. I’ve never been more anxious about any of my films than ‘Rakta Charitra’.”
Ramu’s sarcastic wish on Karan Johar’s birthday
It is well known to entire Bollywood film fraternity that directors Ram Gopal Varma and Karan Johar had tussles over numerous issues regarding their films. And Ramu after knowing that Wednesday was K Jo’s birthday once again took a dig at him by sending a birthday message to him in a sarcastic way. Ramu tweeted that, “"Hey Karan wishing that even your Ghums will turn into your Khushis. Have a Hundred Happy Birthdays!". It is noteworthy to mention that Ramu hated some of Karan’s films and vice-versa. Ramu once said that, “Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna was the scariest film that he had ever watched”. This new banter comes into limelight after Ramu recently, according to some sources intentionally asked Puri Jagganath, the director of Bbuddah-Hoga Terra Baap to name Amitabh’s charter as Vijay Dinanath Chauhan in the film to irk Karan Johar. Mind you Karan is on the verge of finishing off remaking Agneepath with Hrithik Roshan in the lead. Karan is yet to respond to Ramu’s tweet provided he has a twitter account. Well, Karan must be in celebrations mood [on account of his birthday] but sure expect a fitting reply from him pretty soon.