Maestro Ilayaraja News and Tidbits 2014

[rajsekar]

RSubras - I don't want to discuss Kaaviya Thalaivan's fiasco in Raaja's thread. Some of Rahman's hard core fans took objection to my earlier comment about his poor performance for KV. One of Vasantha Balan's main objective was to screen KV at Cannes Film festival besides other European film circuits - foreigners would sleep off after 60 minutes. For this exposure VB certainly required an international stamp recognition for his film and Rahman perfectly fit the role. Rahman's Oscar basket is the best way to enter international film festivals. Vasantha Balan had a hard time to convince Rahman to score the music for KV. Rahman and VB worked nearly 7 months (mostly remote) to finalize the songs and the tune. All this is public information.

Motte_dhasan - As I keep reminding our fan base, don't expect Kamal and Rajini to sign up with Raaja anymore. Those golden days are gone. As I mentioned earlier, Lingaa was basically a quick fix band-aid to put some money back into distributors and theatre owners' pockets who lost their shirt & pant for Kochaadaiyaan's massive flop. Ravikumar is a quick fix director who could patch a movie within 9 months. Of course, Rahman's stamp brings in more money when the movie is auctioned to distributors. Rajini's Swamy "Ilayaraaja" (how he addresses him) is used during visits to Director Panju Arunachalam's house. Gasolina seem to have been inspired by the Puerto Rican Reggae artist, Daddy Yankee's album by the same name. Imagine a 63 year old hero romancing in a song with a female half his age. Raaja gave a memorable romantic number when Sivaji danced with Ambika in Vaazhkai. Finally Kamal seemed to have liked Ghibran's style of working and he would probably score all his remaining movies. Maybe Ghibran's fees could be much lower than Raaja.