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Four Frames
Hindi
This week’s four frames is the yearly round-up of Hindi and three southern regional language movies and their box-office performances and the trends.
The Khans — Shah Rukh, Aamir and Salman — continue to rule Bollywood, with Akshay Kumar giving them stiff competition. Making star-packed comedies and packaging them with music video type of songs seems to be the trend. The industry has become corporatised, a film like SRK’s home production “Om Shanti Om” has been sold before release to Eros entertainment for a whopping Rs. 75 crore, creating a new benchmark. The top five grossers at the box office are “Om Shanti Om”, “Partner”, “Heyy Babyy”, “Bhool Bhulaiya” and “Jab We Met”.
Kannada
In Kannada too, all superstar films made on huge budgets collapsed at the box office. Today, Kannada with the highest number of releases in South is the sunrise industry in the country, as corporates are queuing up to make films with innovative young directors.
Hence, stars do not matter.
Ganesh, better known as the ‘Golden Star’, continued to lead the race with “Cheluvina Chittara” (a remake of the Tamil “Kaadhal”) that has completed 25 weeks and garnered over Rs.30 crore.
The year 2007 saw the rise of another young star Vijay with “Duniya” and “Chanda”. The top five films at the Kannada box-office are “Cheluvina Chittara”, “Duniya”, “Milana”, “Hudugaata” and “Chanda”. Larger-than-life heroes and formula films seem to have become outdated and the highlights of all these films were innovative presentation and packaging that appealed to the youth.
Telugu
The year 2007 saw the decline of the superstars. Today, in Andhra Pradesh, it is content that matters, as has been proved by the success of films such as Shekar Kammulla’s “Happy Days”. And, the audience goes for films with a new theme and presentation. The superstar syndrome is on the wane, though stars command huge openings. And films with stars have to be different. Take, for example, S.S Rajamouli’s “Yamadonga”, featuring NTR and Mohanbabu, which turned out to be the number one grosser. The top five films in Tollywood are “Yamadonga”, “Desamuduru”, “Happy Days”, “Aadavari Maatalaku Arthaale Verule” and “Dhee”.
Malayalam
Malayalam cinema saw a decline in box office collections, as young audiences seemed to prefer Tamil superstar films, Telugu films dubbed into Malayalam and Bollywood films. After 17 years at the top, the hold of superstars Mammootty and Mohanlal decl
ined, as their films started failing. Pritviraj is emerging as a big star, especially after the success of “Chocolate”.
The top five hits this year are “Chocolate”, “Maayavi”, “Hello”, “Vinodayatra” and “Kathaparayumbol”.
SREEDHAR PILLAI
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