Entries Tagged 'malayalam cinema' ↓

Now a days, its very common to have polls in internet for film awards, but it might be a sub part of some channel voting. Here, its exclusively for the internet users only. Vote for your favorite films in internet movie awards.

Our film industry has many crooked people who go to any extent for their personal gains. One such nasty activity is the pre planned booing or howling in theaters for expelling films. From one of the assistant directors in Malayalam, I came to know about an incident which happened a couple of years ago.

In the year 2006,  Speed Track was under production and in the final stage. Theaters had charted the film. But due to many technical reasons, the film’s release got delayed. By that time the same theaters sheduled “Notebook” and released it for 2006 Christmas, eventhough Speed got completed by that time.  Inspector Garud was sheduled for 2007 Jan 26th. For avoiding clash with Garud, either Speed had to be postponed for some months, or released during Christmas itself. But it was not possible to release in December since the pre sheduled theaters have released Notebook.

It was not favorable for the makers or the hero to postpone Speed Track, as it was postponed many times earlier. Then came the third rate underplay. Pre planned booing happened in theatres playing Notebook, for creating bad word of mouth for the film. The people behind this nasty play calculated it would be an easy task as the film had new faces. There were hired guys who stood infront of Calicut Apsara theatre to spread bad opinion about Notebook to people who were arriving for the matinee show. This forced Notebook’s director Roshan Andrews to appear in the media for criticizing these anti-social elements and defending his film. Grihalakshmi films had sought police protection and two police men were appointed in 2 or 3 major centres. This rented degrading was a major factor in denying Notebook its deserved success at the box office.

During 2006 Onam, something similar had happened against Classmates during its opening days(at Ernakulam), but the powerful producer Lal’s intervention had forced the “The Don” to withdraw from the booing activity. It had led to a split between Lal and “favorite hero” who had worked together for many hit films like Kalyanaraman, Chanthupottu etc.

Now the latest victim is Lollipop which had to face this pre planned booing starting from when the titles appear on screen. Some magazines also reported indirectly about the unhealthy interests of “Crazy Gopalan” to bash Lollipop by intentional booing. But Lollipop did not have the quality to survive such degrading like in the case of Classmates. Though Lollipop didn’t deserve a success, this rented howling made the film’s case even worse.

Earlier, Kamal had casted Prithviraj for the role of “Akbar” in Perumazhakkalam. But later “the janapriyan” had ended up doing the role of Akbar. Its a known factor that he was Kamal’s assistant earlier. In the same year 2005, when Joshi announced a film with Prithviraj, there came up Lion as a Joshi project. In 2007, Fazil announced a film with Prithviraj & Mamtha Mohandas as a Vishu 2008 release with the lead character name as Mosses. Now, Mosses D Samuel is “priyanayakan”’s 2009 release. Kavya was forced to withdraw from Priyanandanan’s “Athu Mandarapoovalla” announced with Prithviraj in lead.

Majority of such behind-the-scene plays and back-stabbing never come out in media. People have to recognize the evil behind some smiling faces.

Today’s malayalam cinema industry is completely different from the early times when Mohanlal and Mammootty started their career. That time the industry was not doing crores’ business based on one or two stars. Business was happening in some lakhs based on number of films. Eventhough Sathyan, Nazeer were big stars, lot more others’ films were also getting made there in the last days of their era and after that. Even after the debut of Mohanlal and Mammooty, the business was not surrounding them completely.

In the initial stages of their career, Mammooty and Mohanlal got the chance to act continuously in master film makers like Bharathan, Padmarajan, IV Sasi, MT, Priyadarshan etc. Both of them were getting films about 34-36 each per year, and majority of these films were from the above mentioned talented film makers. This has helped a lot to shape up their acting skills and star value way better than any other actors in malayalam cinema history. No current or upcoming new comers wont get that chance. They get atmost 3 or 4 films per year may be 1 or 2 will be from good directors.

Today’s industry is doing business of crores based on two stars. Big caucuses exist surrounding the stars who utilize their market value for their profit. They control all the business regarding the satellite, over seas, video rights etc. These people make hurdles for small films in all the way. Banning the paper ads is the latest move from them which adversely affect the small films.

The above mentioned situation makes even the very few good film makers of today to write stories and make films based on the big stars. They may not get much needed support from the business controlling producers for making films based on youngsters and newcomers. And it automatically affect the number films based on youngsters. When a new comer like Prithviraj criticise this situation, the fans read it as against their stars and stamp him as arrogant. When majority of the scripts were getting written for stars, youngsters lack films. Recently Naren and Jayasurya mentioned about the lack of films for them and the existence of the caucuses against new comers.

Two films were planned with Naren last year named “Orange” and “Venal” which were dropped on the caucus’s play. Naren told this to many media but majority of his words were cut down when the interviews were published. The heading of Naren’s interview in oneindia.com was “Naren against super stars”. But the content didnt have even single word “super star”. Young talents are not getting the chances behind the camera, as the associations’ “terms and conditions” are hard for them to overcome. For a new writer or editor, the membership is reserved only for the “favored” people. Without membership one cannot do anything.

How long can our industry survive depending only on Mammooty and Mohanlal? If youngsters are not supported here, will there be malayalam cinema after Mammooty and Mohanlal?