x FRIDAY, JANUARY 16, 2015
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south cinema EAST COAST EDITION
Playing ghost was exhausting:
Nikki Galrani Nikki Galrani who plays a ghost in her Telegu debut film Darling considers the role as one of the best she has done so far
IANS, CHENNAI
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ctor Nikki Galrani, who didn’t mind playing a ghost in forthcoming Tamil debut Darling, says playing a possessed character left her physically and mentally drained out. “It was extremely challenging because I’m a peace lover and I can’t scream. But this character had me screaming my lungs out every time I get possessed. This role required me to be elevated from the bed and tied to a rope and was left to hang in mid-air. All this was physically exhausting,” Nikki told IANS. “We shot the whole movie in a single schedule in a house for 35 days, mostly during the night. We didn’t sleep in the nights for nearly a month. I ended up with a bad headache We shot the and experiwhole movie in a enced disturbing single schedule images in in a house for my sleep. It 35 days, mostly had a lot of during the night. effect on my psyche as We didn’t sleep well,” she in the nights. added. Nikki still considers the role as one of the best she’s done so far in her career. “I think one should be really fortunate to get such a character. Agreed that I play a ghost and the getup is not pretty but I won’t be seen as a ghost throughout. The ghost, for whom the audience will root for, appears periodically, and I’ll also be seen in my normal looks,” she added.
CHENNAI: The highly intriguing trailer of actor-filmmaker Kamal Haasan-starrer Uttama Villain was unveiled online on January 13 by the film’s producer Linguswamy. Kamal plays an ageing superstar as well as an eighth century theatre artist Kamal Haasan in the film which is directed by his friend and actor Ramesh Aravind. Late legendary filmmaker K. Balachander has essayed an important role in the film, which also features ace Telugu director K. Vishwanath. The film also starred Pooja Kumar, Andrea Jeremiah and Parvathy Nair.
Controlling hunger during shoot was tough: Vikram ctor Vikram, who lost about nearly 50 percent of his original body weight to play one of the roles in forthcoming Tamil magnum opus “I”, found it tough to control his urge to eat. “It was extremely difficult to control hunger. It drove me crazy,” Vikram told IANS. In I, which is directed by Shankar, the 48-year-old actor plays dual role of a body builder and a hunchbacked disfigured man. “For the role of the bodybuilder, I had to beef up and work out extensively in the gym to have a muscular body. I could’ve easily achieved that with the help of steroids, but I avoided it despite being wooed into using it by professionals,” he said. “It was for the role of the disfig-
IANS, CHENNAI
Kamal Haasan’s ‘Uttama Villain’ trailer released
SOUTH CINEMA
ured man that I lost nearly half of my original body weight. Shankar never wanted me to lose weight for this role but I did it anyways. I had to control my hunger to achieve the desired look. I literally survived on fluids,” he added. Vikram admits there were instances he couldn’t control his hunger.
Scripting should be given ample time: filmmaker Jaya CHENNAI: Three years after her successful Telugu directorial debut Lovely, director B. Jaya, who is ready with her next project, says one should not compromise on time when it comes to scripting as it’s a creative process. “One of the reasons why I didn’t immediately make a film after ‘Lovely’ was I was busy scripting my next film. I feel scripting is not a race against time. It’s a creative process and it should be given all the time it requires,” Jaya told IANS. Jaya said she could have easily cashed in on the success of Lovely. “Thanks to the success of my first
film, producers were willing to bet on me. But I didn’t want to make films in a hurry. I took a break and finished working on two scripts. I hope to have both these films released this year,” she said.
FILM REVIEW | TELUGU
‘Gopala Gopala’: A faithful remake sans creativity Film: “Gopala Gopala”; Cast: Daggubati Venkatesh, Pawan Kalyan, Mithun Chakraborty, Shreya Saran, Posani Krishna Murali, Madhu Shalini; Director: Kishore Kumar Pardasani; Rating: **1/2
W
hy should a remake stay true to its original? And this question is applicable to Gopala Gopala, which as the remake of Hindi hit 2012 film OMG: Oh My God! does full justice to the original but doesn’t show any sign of creativity to stand out. Agreed remakes are tested-and-
proven, but it doesn’t stop a filmmaker from throwing in some creativity to give it a personal touch. With a thought-provoking universally appealing subject, there’s so
much one can do with a film like OMG. But sadly director Kishore Kumar Pardasani resorts to merely retelling the story in a different language with
different characters barring Mithun who’s retained from the Hindi version. The film Gopala Gopala is about an atheist Gopala Rao, who takes godmen and people’s blind faith in the almighty head on. He even decides to sue them when his shop is destroyed by an earthquake and the insurance company won’t compensate him because it’s an “act of god”. But you can’t watch Gopala Gopala with such expectations because it successfully reproduces scenes and characters from the original as though remaking is misunderstood as copying frame-to-frame.