Kamal continued his mission of honouring artistes of various fields by participating in a book release function a few days ago. Azhiyaa Kodugal was the biography of the renowned artist KM Aadimoolam, who coincidentally passed away last month. Hence, the function also turned out to be a homage meeting. Many famous personalities including Jayakanthan and Sivakumar also participated.

IndiaGlitz has more photos and a nice video, featuring Kamal’s full speech. Kamal revealed that the angry Gandhi drawing featured in Hey Ram was done by Aadimoolam.

Check out more photos at Behindwoods too.

Tamil reports: Dinathanthi | Satrumun

[With inputs from Ananth]

[Picture courtesy: BehindWoods]

It seems like it just happened a short while ago. But it’s already a year since Kamal had an open meet with fans. On Sunday morning, Kamal felicitated 35 women and 8 disabled people who donated blood during the November drive. This was followed by a photo session. Around 5000 gathered in Savitri Ammal Oriental School, in the campus of Sanskrit College in Chennai.

Check out more photos from Behindwoods and IndiaGlitz.

Photos with fans are just trickling in. Hope to do a separate post with some of them soon.

[With input from Ananth]

[Picture courtesy: BehindWoods]

Here’s a superb piece by Geetika Sudip, a reporter of The Hindu who is also a mad Kamal fan. She recounts her efforts to meet Kamal during his trip to Thiruvananthapuram to inaugurate IFFK in December. Here are a few interesting snippets, but you really have to read the whole article which covers the time over 32 hours or so.

Curtains were finally drawn on the IFFK 2007 to reveal Men-in-Black Mohanlal and Kamal Haasan rubbing shoulders at Nishagandhi. My moment of truth had arrived, there was no denying it. There he was, in flesh and blood! As I savoured the moment, my phone blinked: Madame S, my boss. “Kamal’s going to be in town all of tomorrow. Can you do his interview?”
Like, would you like to inherit the Kohinoor?

Enough was enough. I thumbed down the first vehicle in sight and hot-wheeled it to Kovalam. You might do a lot of things, but you can’t give up on Kamal without a fight. Ennal mudiyum thambi.

I sank into the swamplands of despair. One last hope led to one last note:
“Ten minutes of your time
That’s all I truly ask for
Being asked to wait is no crime
But I need to leave at four!”
The Big K is unmoved.

It took me a while to spot the dapper, handsome man among the tables. Then he stood up – Nayakan’s Shaktivelu, Pathinaaru Vayathinile’s Chappani, Indian’s Chandra Bose, Michael Madana Kamarajan’s Michael, Madan, Kameshwaran and Rajan.

[Inputs from Karthikeyan, Sridhar]

This time around, it was comedian Senthil’s son. If my memory serves me right, Senthil has acted with Kamal only once, in Nammavar.

Check out more photos at Behindwoods. IndiaGlitz has photos and video too, as usual.

[Picture courtesy: BehindWoods]

Kamal was seen at the wedding reception of producer Mohan Natarajan’s daughter.

Check out more photos at Behindwoods. IndiaGlitz has even more.

[Picture courtesy: BehindWoods]

After first getting out the photos of the Hridaya Ragam launch function, it’s now time to move onto the details of this much-publicised event. As a bonus, we have some confirmation on Dasavatharam too.

Hridaya Ragam is a project to conduct open-heart surgeries for children (each costing 100,000 Rupees) from the lower strata of society. While the original target was 100, it has increased by 25% due to generous donation from the Malayala Manorama group. The requisite money will be collected by means of a music programme at Chennai, featuring folks from the Malayalam film industry and to be inaugurated by Illaiyaraaja. Kamal has associated himself as project ambassador. In the function / press conference held a few days ago, Kamal launched the ticket sales.

On the sidelines, he confirmed what we already have been hearing: the audio of Dasavatharam will be released in March and the movie itself in April. He also said that Jackie Chan gracing the former was indeed in the works. He had praise for Himesh Reshammiya’s music. There was confirmation of talks with Walt Disney too.

Watch a video and go through an extensive set of photographs from IndiaGlitz. Read reports from Yahoo, Rediff.com, Sify.com, IndiaGlitz and Behindwoods. If you can read Tamil, go for TamilCinema.com, CineSouth or ThatsTamil.

[Picture courtesy: BehindWoods]