(This article by
Anna MM Vetticad was first published on January 7, 2014, on aljazeera.com)
INDIAN
CINEMA’S NEW MOVES FOR 2014
Indian
cinema clocked 100 years in 2013, but the year ahead promises more fun from
Bollywood and south Indian cinema
By
Anna MM Vetticad
It’s been around
for a century now, but Indian cinema is more active than any 100-year-old you
know.
Bollywood – the Mumbai-based,
primarily-Hindi-language film industry – crossed several milestones in the year
gone by.
The earlier
benchmark for box-office success – net collections of Rs 100 crore ($16m) –
became passé in 2013 as three films
each earned double that figure within India according to trade reports: Chennai Express, Krrish 3 and Dhoom 3 (A Blast: Part 3).
In this
hero-dominated industry, the star who raked in the most money at the turnstiles
in 2013 was a heroine: Deepika Padukone was an equal partner to her leading men
in critically acclaimed roles in three money-spinners, Chennai Express, Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (This Youth Is Crazy) and Goliyon Ki Raasleela:
Ram-leela (A Love Dance With Bullets: Ram-leela).
And independent
cinema uncharacteristically made big news when the art-house English-Hindi film
Ship of Theseus was marketed nationwide more heavily than any Indian
indie before.
Crowd-funded production
Despite these
landmarks, arguably the most ground-breaking cinematic development of last year
came not from Bollywood, but from Kannada language cinema in southern India.
The Kannada film
industry created history with its first crowd-funded production, Lucia,
the story of a cinema theatre attendant addicted to a mind-altering drug.
Writer-director
Pawan Kumar approached the public through a blog post to raise approximately Rs
50 lakh ($81,000) to make the film.
India's
independent films (those not made by production majors, and most often on a low budget) are usually confined to the
festival circuit and are rarely released in mainstream theatres.
Lucia bucked this trend, and by the
end of its 105-day theatrical run across India, the film's net collections had
touched Rs 1.6 crore ($259,000), which is unprecedented for an Indian indie.
Kumar is now
planning his next independent project while preparing to direct the Hindi
remake of Lucia for Fox Star India
with a budget “minimum 10 times higher than the original”.
Southern cinema
sets trends
The Telugu film
industry of Andhra Pradesh state and the cinema of Tamil Nadu rival Bollywood
in scale and volume, but are rarely given their due by the Indian national
media.
In 2014, though,
Bollywood is likely to get stiff competition for the national spotlight from
63-year-old Tamil film icon Rajinikanth who stars in Kochadaiiyaan, the
first Indian film ever to use 3D performance capture technology.
This animation
technique – in which characters are modelled on live actors who are performing
– has been used most extensively so far by Hollywood in Avatar and The Adventures of Tintin.
From among the
1,000-plus films that India produces every year, the emotional high point of
2014 too is likely to come from southern India.
Manam (We) will star three
generations of Telugu cinema’s legendary Akkineni family of actors: 90-year-old
Akkineni Nageswara Rao, his son Nagarjuna (now in his 50s) and grandson, the
20-something Naga Chaitanya.
Khan magic
Bollywood’s
longest-reigning superstars – Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Salman Khan – are headed
for major milestones in the coming months.
Salman completes
25 years as a leading man in Hindi films this year.
His silver jubilee
year will be marked by the release of Jai Ho (Let There Be Victory, a
remake of the Telugu film Stalin) coming to theatres on January 24, Kick
(another remake of a Telugu film) which is likely to be out in July, and an
untitled film he is producing.
Aamir will star in
P.K. helmed by Rajkumar Hirani who earlier directed him in the
record-breaking smash hit 3 Idiots.
Shah Rukh too is
reuniting with a tried-and-tested team for his next film: Happy New Year
to be directed by Farah Khan and co-starring Deepika with whom he earlier
created box-office magic in Om Shanti Om.
The Khans’ most serious
competition from the new generation, Ranbir Kapoor has a string of films coming
up including Bombay Velvet with auteur Anurag Kashyap and Jagga
Jasoos (Detective Jagga) directed by Anurag Basu with whom he delivered the
2012 hit Barfi.
Bollywood’s leading ladies
The year 2014
could be a watershed year for heroines depending particularly on the fate of
two Bollywood films starring Madhuri Dixit-Nene.
Vishal Bhardwaj’s
production Dedh Ishqiya
(One-and-a-half times Love) in January will mark the return of the former
marquee queen as a leading lady after a seven-year gap.
This will be
followed in March by Gulaab Gang (The Rose Gang), a film inspired by the
true story of a group of women vigilantes who fight social injustice in
northern India.
If either makes
good money, it could marginally influence the way the industry views the
box-office potential of female stars.
After a couple of
insubstantial roles in big-budget films in 2013, National award-winning actress
Priyanka Chopra will headline the biopic of Olympian boxer MC Mary Kom that’s
being released in July.
Another National award
winner Vidya Balan – that rare female Bollywood star who is acknowledged by the
industry as a box-office draw in her own right – will be seen in February in
the romantic comedy Shaadi ke Side Effects (The Side Effects of
Marriage).
Actress Shilpa
Shetty will make her debut as a producer with Dishkiyaaon this year.
Of remakes and
adaptions
In recent years Bollywood has
churned out unimaginative remakes of Telugu and Tamil blockbusters, and struck
the financial bull’s eye with most of them.
In 2014,
box-office Midas and director AR Murugadoss will remake his Tamil hit Thuppakki (The Gun) in Hindi with Akshay Kumar and Sonakshi Sinha.
Among the few to
reverse the trend, Bollywood major Yash Raj Films will release the Tamil and
Telugu versions of its critically and commercially successful Hindi film Band
Baaja Baaraat (Bands, Music and Wedding Revelry) on February 7. Both are
called Aaha Kalyanam (Wow! Wedding!).
Bollywood actor
and fashion icon Sonam Kapoor is reprising Rekha’s iconic role in a retelling
of legendary director Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Hindi film Khubsoorat
(Beautiful).
Contemporary
Bollywood has been accused of rarely adapting literary works.
Some of that
criticism will be countered this December with the release of Dibakar
Banerjee’s Detective Byomkesh Bakshi.
This period
thriller stars young heartthrob Sushant Singh Rajput as the sleuth of the title
created by Bengali writer Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay.
Director Abhishek
Kapoor is adapting Charles Dickens’ classic Great
Expectations as Fitoor (Obsessive Passion) starring Katrina Kaif and
Aditya Roy Kapoor.
And contemporary
Indian English bestseller Chetan Bhagat’s novel Two States is being made
into a film of the same name starring newcomers Alia Bhatt and Arjun Kapoor.
(Anna
MM Vetticad is a Delhi-based journalist, teacher and author of The Adventures
of an Intrepid Film Critic. Follow her on Twitter @annavetticad.)
Photograph
courtesy: Raindrop Media
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