Legends
An Evening With Jeffrey Archer
Had a great opportunity to meet Jeffrey Archer, the great ‘story teller’, on the occasion of his latest book launch ” Only Time Will Tell; The family saga of the Clifton Chronicles.
All set for a grand evening with master story teller. Good display of Jeffrey Archer’s books
On 8 March, Jeffrey Archer was at Odyssey, Express Avenue. As soon as he arrived, Archer thanked the crowd for the warm welcome. Archer is the only author ever to have been a number one bestseller in fiction (14 times), short stories (4 times) and non fiction.
Archer spoke about the latest book. How he manages the busy schedule (this time in India, he is covering 5 cities in 6 days, in Chennai alone 11 interviews in a day!). Got to know lot of interesting trivia about the author. He can’t use any of the latest technologies while writing, so he literally writes all his books, takes almost 50 days to finish the manuscript. Take 2 hours of break after every 2 hours of writing. He spends almost 10 hours for the first page of the book and 15 hours for the last page, shows how important to have a great beginning and a fantastic end.
Jeffrey Archer was full of energy at this age of 70. He stressed the importance to be physically fit. His talk was a great mix of wit and wisdom. Archer talked about the authors that inspired him, about the ongoing Cricket World Cup (he predicted, ofcourse he was not serious, an England Vs Ireland final but said An India Vs South Africa final would be great). He was little bit worried about the book piracy. Archer joked that the day is not far away when a kid would knock his door and ask whether he wants ‘the latest Jeffrey Archer’.
But the most cherished moment was when I got the opportunity to meet Jeffrey Archer, interact with him and get his books autographed!
Meeting Matthew Hayden
Meeting the legendary Australian cricketer Matthew Hayden was worth waiting for. He was at Landmark, on the occasion of launch his Bio, ” Standing My Ground”.
He talked about wonderful times he had while playing in Australian national team and later in Chennai Super Kings at IPL.
Hayden credited his mother for making him extremely competitive and aggressive, two qualities associated with him when ever he was on field.
He talked about the IPL days that broadened his understanding of India and appreciate the so called melting pot of various cultures. IPL also helped in clearing so many past doubts or misconceptions, especially about the infamous “Monkey-gate” episode. IPL in a way helped in bringing various countries culture together
Rated Dhoni as a great individual and Captain
He was overwhelmed when heard that Usain Bolt consider him as a role model. Hayden’s role model quite was not from Cricket but from surfing, Kelly Slater, a 10 times surfing World Champion.
His views on sledging : Sledging is all about body language
According to him the three most favourities in ICC World Cup 2011 will be Australia, India and Sri Lanka
Famous for meditating on the wicket before the match, Matthew Hayden said what he will dearly miss is those peaceful place, that 22 yards, in midst of all chaos.
TiECon Chennai 2010: Ajith Balakrishnan, Rediff
Ajith Balakrishnan of Rediff spoke about “Changing face of Entrepreneurship”
3 Paradoxes
we see Indian programmer everywhere, but not in the computer science journals
$40 billion IT industry no local VC Industry
$1 Billion people but only 10 million Broadband connections, China has 150 million
Entrepreneurs who stayed on the game in the last 15 years succeed
Every 3-4 years we are hit by a recession, the trick is to stay and come out of that as quickly as possible
If you are a good entrepreneur you will know how to fail cheapily
There is an emerging trend for original content
Time spent and page views in mobile devices in Japan is several times higher than in laptops or desktops
Every week some tablet like devices appearing in the market
In a sense these devices are closing the internet to various compartments
Problem of seed funding in India is more to do with tax and legal issues
Some times your ideas can be ahead of time, some times you will not be knowing how to carry out of the idea
Sustainability of Entrepreneurs is all about nurturing, patience
It will take a minimum of 10 years to set up a company
Indian IT companies were extremely innovative till late 1980s
Then bodyshop started and Indian programmers became very cheap, thanks to financial turmoil
Innovation happens when customers bring out problems
TiECon Chennai 2010: Gurcharan Das Best-selling Author & Management Guru
China is rising because of the state, India is rising despite of the state
India’s is a people success, driven by Entrepreneurs
GURU according to him: Good at Understanding but Relatively Useless
Narrated the wonderful story of how overnight he transformed from Ashok Kumar to Gurucharan Das
Dharma of the leader is to speak when you are faced with wrong doing
People who work hate their work, that’s why we have restaurants like TGIF and they call Blue Monday
But Entrepreneurs gets their high from actually working and loving your work
Nishkanth Karma mentioned by Shri Krishna in Mahabharata, get immersed in the work you are doing
Attitude is another dharma of an Entrepreneurs,Recruit people for the attitude and train them the skills
I act because I must, is also dharma, quoted the Yudhishtira
The market is moral, so always study it
Endhiran Release: Rajnimania Gripped Chennai
It is happening after 3 years, last time it was in the year 2007, Chennai saw a celebration like this and this happens everytime A Rajnikanth movie is released. This time its the much awaited Magnum Opus “Endhiran- the robot” movie. Endhiran is the costliest Indian film made till date, a budget of Rs 160 crores. The movie is directed by Shankar, music by A R Rahman. The film is releasing on Oct 1, it’s a Worldwide release.
Sometime back I had blogged about the Endhiran popcorn bag branding
Ticket for the Endhiran is sold out. This was the scene infront of the theatres when tickets started selling
Enthiran Booking at Satyam cinemas for first day show and Udhayam cinemas for 4th day show.
Now what is so special about Rajnikanth? an article by Grady Hendrix in slate magazine describes Rajnikanth as “ If a tiger had sex with a tornado and then their tiger-nado baby got married to an earthquake, their offspring would be Rajinikanth and he is no mere actor—he is a force of nature.” read the full article titled Superstar Rajinikanth!The biggest movie star you’ve probably never heard of.
Rajnikanth Can’t
There is nothing called Rajnikanth can not do, here is the list
So Chennai is ready for the D day. Everywhere you see huge banners
Banners infront of various cinemas where the film Endhiran is set to release on Oct 1
Planning to take some more pics of banneers in Chennai city. so let us wait for Oct 1, friday for the Endhiran
To be continued….
Priyadarshan: The remake King Of Indian Cinema- Part V
Now it’s not that Priyan has done successful Malayalam and Hindi films. He directed almost half a dozen of Tamil films and couple of Telugu films
Let’s look at priyan’s remake in Tamil and Telugu
Priyadarshan: The remake King Of Indian Cinema- Part IV
If you look at the other directors’ films remade by Priyan, you can see that he has remade almost all the films of hit makers of Malayalam cinema Siddique- Lal. All their films are based on humour. Priyan remade their 4 films, Ramjirao speaking, In harihar nagar, Godfather and Mannar mathai speaking
To be continued…
Priyadarshan: The remake King Of Indian Cinema- Part III
One of the greatness of Priyan is that he has helped so many actors to come out of their stereotype roles. He made so many villains and character role actors into comedians, Paresh Rawal, Om Puri, Sunil Shetty and Akshay Kumar are some examples.
In Malayalam he started this trend of breaking so many actors’ stereotypes.
Aesthetics of song sequence is another specialty in Priyan’s film. In one of the interviews, Priyan says there are two ways in which songs decide the course of the movie.
- For a relief and,
- For taking the story forward
His Malayalam movies like Thenmavin Kombathu and Kilichudan mambazham are great examples of this.
Now we look at movies remade by Priyan in Hindi but originally directed by others in Malayalam
To be continued…
Priyadarshan: The remake King Of Indian Cinema- Part II
Now if you look at Priyan’s Hindi films, you can see two types of remakes,
1. Film that was originally made in Malayalam by Priyan himself and later he remade in Hindi
2. Film that was originally made in Malayalam by others and Priyan remade in Hindi
So in this part let us look at the first instance i.e
Film that was originally made in Malayalam by Priyan himself and later he remade in Hindi, his first film in Hindi was in 1992, a remake of his 1991 super hit Malayalam film, Kilukkam.
To be continued….
Priyadarshan: The remake King Of Indian Cinema
Priyadarshan’s one more remake hit cinemas today (23 July 2010). This time it is Khatta Meetta, remake of his own Malayalam film, Vellanakalude Nadu
Priyan, as he is fondly called, brought rich cinematography and music to Malayalam cinema. Most of his films are a treat to watch, to name a few Theenmavin Kombathu and Kaalapani. His films with Mohan Lal were instrumental in making Lal a super star in Malayalam cinema. Now, after venturing in to Bollywood, he has become one of the much sort after directors of the Indian film industry. He is regarded as one of the most successful directors (first and continues to be the only from Malayalam film industry) from south India to make it big in Bollywood.
He has one more unique distinction. Most of the remakes he has made are blockbusters. Having made remakes in four Indian languages, he makes sure that the the situation and texture of the film is in complete gell with the local culture. I would say Priyan is the only Indian film director who has made these many successful remakes (almost 35 films). It is quite interesting if we analyse the filmography of Priyan and we will be doing that in the next few posts.
Priyan’s film started with Malayalam so let’s start from Malayalam
We can analyse Priyan’s remakes in four parts
Hollywood to Mollywood
Hollywood to Bollywood
to To be continued…….
