Maddy where did u hear this? about Mani lokin for someone else. I hope tis oesnt happen. I need more Rojas and Alaipayutheys and Guru and eveytig else they have given us.
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Maddy where did u hear this? about Mani lokin for someone else. I hope tis oesnt happen. I need more Rojas and Alaipayutheys and Guru and eveytig else they have given us.
Man, for a change let Mani try with Dhina and bring the best out of him too. Then start your hyping/dehyping process here.
u please get out from this tread :oops:Quote:
Originally Posted by Fliflo
u mean to say ARR is riding on Mani's talent or Mani is riding on ARR's talent????Quote:
Originally Posted by Fliflo
ARR has proven beyond doubt that, he is not likely to depend on a single director for hits......he has given blockbusters with new directors like Raykesh Mehra too......
and if u meant Mani - well, with all respects to ARR, if Maniratnam can bring a ARR, then wat not he can do.... 8-)
Top 5: 'Guru' overtakes 'S-E-I', 'Traffic Signal'!
http://www.indiafm.com/trade/top5/index.html
awesome! hows the audio coming along.
'Guru' back on top, 'Black Friday' debuts
http://www.indiafm.com/features/2007...238/index.html
hi guys
just now saw guru tamil version.one word "awsome".mani has again come up with a scintilating job.not sure if the story is inspired from any hollywood movie but no issues mani has dealt the film in his own way.his dealing with emotions of each and every character in the movie is the highlight and has always been the uniqueness of his.abishek wow!! i didn know this guy can act like kamalhasan.first time ishwaria rai has done full justice to her acting potential..maddy looked thin and smart.vidyas role was superb and her scenes with maddy were absolutely cute.
arr was stunning esp with grand bgms he plays an important role in the movie.the chanting of gurubahai gurubahi vandhachu is perfectly apt considering the situation a man coming up in life slowly and powerfully.the song "barsore" provides one of the best intro for the heroine .rajiv menon as usual has done a neat commendable job.the only cons i find in this movie is dubbing could have been better if the movie was remade in tamil.not sure if the movie will become hit in tamil cos of casting.no doubts abhishek was just superb but still to attract crowds in tamilnadu tamil actors could have been casted.overall the movie is majestic and inspiring.kudos to mani!!:clap:
Another fifty for Maniratnam!
By Behindwoods News Bureau.
March 05, 2007
This news is sponsored by www.behindbikes.com
Its happy days for Maniratnam and Madras Talkies. Guru is set to complete 50 days in theaters later this week and it is still looking good for a few more. It has been quite a while after a Maniratnam film has been declared a major hit in almost all release stations.Yuva, his previous film had managed to please the critics and connoisseurs of cinema but had not been a hit in trade terms. This time however Mani and his team got it right. From a powerhouse cast (Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai) with good star value being added by the support cast as well (Madhavan, Vidya Balan, Mithun Chakravarthy), a sizzling item number by Mallika Sherawat and some beautiful music by A.R.Rahman, the film had everything to bring people to theaters and if you go into a theater to watch a Mani film you never come out disappointed. The challenge is to get the people into theaters and Guru has managed fabulously in this respect.
The revenue collected has already touched the 40 crore mark and with competition being very dim, it seems capable of stretching things quite a bit. So that is another 50 for Maniratnam, the hit maker. Trade pundits doubt the prowess of the film to get to the 100 mark. Let's hope it does so.
Mani Ratnam would never get a role in the movies he makes. Bespectacled, comfortably burly and disarmingly modest, he might have stepped out of an R.K.Lakshman cartoon. But large as life, he's seated behind a table in a sparsely furnished room, in his Alwarpet office in Madras. "Mani is a very simple guy. He's the same person he was 10 years ago," says P.C.Sriram, a childhood friend and the cameraman of five Mani films. But this regular guy is the director of the moment.
One reason for that is 'Roja', Mani's film about a simple village girl who fights to free her husband from the clutches of Kashmiri militants who have taken him hostage. The film's success has given new life to the exhausted cliche, "from Kashmir to Kanyakumari" by actually bridging that mythic stretch. As people flock to see the film, even in the troubled Valley, it has become one of the few things Indians are unanimous about.
The national scale of this triumph took many people, including Mani himself, by surprise. But in the south, he's long been a well-established household name. "India's Spielberg", as he's known here, spices his movies with a sophistication that sets them apart from the usual melodramas. In the process he has even won over MTV and Hollyqood-struck youngsters who thought that Tamil cinema was infra dig. And with 11 films behind him in as many years, Mani has acquired a certain mystique. A popular legend about the director even hints at a divine hand in his origin: In Madurai in 1955, so the story goes, the wife of a struggling film distributor, pregnant with her second child, circled the famous Meenakshi temple four times a day, fervently praying that the infant would not materialise. The family could not afford another baby. But the goddess would have none of it. At any rate Mani Ratnam was born in June that year. The tale may be apocryphal, but it is firmly entrenched in Tamil filmlore today.
Even as Mani is being mythologised, he is, to his credit, shattering another myth : that commercial cinema has to be crude, loud, luridly colourful and brimming with big stars to be popular. In its place, he incorporates all the more appealing elements of popular cinema - romance, action, songs and dazzling locations, then wraps them up in a novel and visually exhilarating package that has now become his hallmark.
"The wrappings", as Mani himself terms them, are spectacular cinematography, dramatic choreography, sharp dialogue and crisp editing. But while these elements may be the essence of film craft for Mani and his enthusiasts, his detractors, and he has a few, dismiss it as mere gloss. "Other films launch stars, Mani's films launch technicians," says one critic, referring to Mani's reliance on art and music directors. Mani himself could be chortling all the way to the box-office, but he is clearly irked by insinuations that he is all technique and no substance. "It doesn't affect me, but it bothers me. People put you in a pigeon-hole and want to keep you there." Perhaps for the same reason, he is reluctant to speak of his own cinematic canon or any major influences. When pressed, he concedes a high regard for Kurosawa and Guru Dutt. The admiration for Dutt is telling. "He was a master of all aspects of film making," says Mani, who considers himself only "fairly competent".
Some fellow film makers are more generous. "He is a true devotee of the craft. You can see it in every frame," says Bharatiraja, a path-breaker in Tamil cinema himself. But Mani can be a ruthless taskmaster too, as his cast and crew would attest. His cameraman describes him as a Jekyll and Hyde character: mild and affable off the sets but a raging bull once shooting starts. On the sets of 'Roja', the cast began to faint from the cold but Mani did not flag. And on location near Pollachi for his latest 'Thiruda, Thiruda' (Thief, Thief) the entire unit was feasted on by leeches but, encouraged by Mani, they just plucked them off and soldiered on. "I try to get the best I can from myself and those working with me," says the unrepentant director.
Mani's cinematic drive clearly runs deep, but his path to film making was not straightforward. Despite a background in the industry, the young Mani did not set out to work in films. "As a youngster, films seemed like a waste of time," he says. Instead he did an MBA at the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management in Bombay and returned to Madras to work as a management consultant. But he was soon disillusioned with the work. Meanwhile the cinematic urge was at work. "I didn't want to get to 40 and feel I hadn't made the jump (into films) when i should have," he says. So he wrote a script and chased people around trying to peddle it, with no success.
His luck turned when his uncle, Venus Krishnamurty, a film producer, gave him some script editing work for which he was widely praised. But his trials were not over. When he completed his first film 'Pallavi Anupallavi' in 1983, his father Gopalratnam dismissed it with a backhanded compliment: "It's got class, it won't run." The elder Ratnam was right and the film won critical acclaim but flopped at the box-office. Mani's next films, 'Unaru' and 'Pagal Nilavu' suffered the same fate, and it wasn't until he made 'Mouna Raagam' (Tune of Silence) in 1986 that he got it right. That film found the perfect formula of a strong storyline and great music, presented in a fresh visual style that caught the audience by surprise. Mani hasn't looked back since.
But success has hardly blunted his hunger for commercial and popular success. 'Nayakan' may have won him critical praise and an entree to the Oscars, but Mani remains emphatic that does not want to be an art film maker. "If the theatres are not full, it hurts me. A film should be commercially viable. People who put money into my films should get it back," says the conscientous MBA. His real obsession, however, is to communicate with his audience. Mani is still rankled by an incident in 1986 when he went to a theatre 50 km from Madras to observe the reaction to 'Mouna Raagam', a sensitive film about a girl who is married off after a tragic romance and refuses to go to bed with her husband. As the film ended, Mani heard a man say: "Why the hell couldn't the guy have got himself another woman if this one was being so difficult?" He recalls hs dismay: "If I couldn't relate to a guy 50km from here, how was I going to get across to a wider audience? I can't forget that guy."
His disappointment pushed him to obsessive labours. He complains about his slow progress with scripts and screenplays, confessing he is not a natural writer. He takes four months to complete this work and goes about his research with all the zeal of a documentary film maker, reading and travelling to meet and talk to people. Meticulous in his method, he has to have the complete screenplay ready before he begins shooting. And even before he begins a script, he must have his team - cinematographer, art director and music director - ready.
The success of 'Roja' may have answered some if his apprehensions about getting across to a wider audience but Mani has no illusions about his mission. "Let's be honest. In this format, you have to dilute what you want to say to get it across." His objective remains "to dilute less and less, until I come to a point where I don't have to dilute at all, and it still remains a commercial film."
Nursing his private obsessions in this public art, Mani is publicity-shy to the point of being a recluse. He guards his privacy jealously: "I don't want to be a star. I want my freedom to go and sit in a theatre, to ride a bike." And he has dodged the spoltight so nimbly that even today, not many people recognise him on the streets of Madras. "Unless I am with Haasini!" he quips. Haasini is Suhasini, the noted Tamil actress whom Mani married in the conventional arranged fashion. Mani still remembers that when he was struggling to make his first film, Suhasini refused to accept a role in it. The couple haev a fifteen-year-old son Nandan who sometimes calls his father "Gundu Mani" (fat Mani).
Modest about the success he has found, Mani brushes it off. "I wouldn't say I've been successful, and I hope I never get there," he says. The height of his ambition remains to have a new film to work on at the end of each project. But others certainly expect greater things. Mani's brother, G.Venkateeswaran, believes he is destined for international fame: "He will go to Hollywood." As for Mani himself: "That man in the theatre 50 km from here is still bothering me.
by Kavitha Shetty - India Today
Posted by Balan Ji at 10:09 AM