All kinds of media have been scampering to report about Dasavathaaram — be it in a positive angle and sometimes negative. The hype increased as the movie was making its way to the theatres. Yahoo, Sify.com, Dinamalar, Thatstamil, Galatta.com, Chennai 365, Chennai Online and KollywoodToday.com were among the contributors, sometimes exaggerating numbers and facts. Web-sites like IndiaGlitz featured photos of posters and banners around the city. and fans’ celebrations. The Hindu carried a couple of snippets on theatre happenings.

A news item on NDTV featured prominent fans, Muscat Kannan and Dr. Chandrasekar. The latter was featured in an article in The Hindu too. This piece also had a photo of Gautami celebrating the release with fans.

IndiaGlitz put up a videos of audience responses from Chennai, Hyderabad and Kerala (Thiruvanathapuram?). In Hyderabad, most of the coverage was at Prasad’s Multiplex. Some of the people who spoke seem to be VIPs. For Chennai, the action was at Mayajaal. The verdict is almost unanimous — “Adipoli“, “Chaala baagundhi“, “Super”!

Box-office results are also coming in slowly. The response has been superlative from Chennai ( Webdunia | Yahoo | Sify.com ) to UK and Malaysia to USA — basically everywhere (The Economic Times | Behindwoods). A report from Box Office Mojo seems to indicate that Dasavathaaram even made it to the top 10 movies in terms of overseas collections all over the world. Below is the weekly box-office report from CNN-IBN, which confirms the above.

There was also a report on KollywoodToday.com of many industry insiders being disappointed by the success of the movie.

[With extensive inputs from Ananth]

First, let’s get my disclaimer out. I do not think I can do justice to a review of Dasavathaaram without watching it 2-3 times. Anyway, I decided to put out my thoughts, bowing to reader requests and to counter the slew of negative feedback that has been flowing all over the information superhighway.

The movie moves at break-neck speed most of the time. This is the fastest I’ve ever seen in any movie — in any language, from any country. While I was bit disappointed to not catch everything in one viewing, I was immersed in the entertainment value. (I’m amazed by some of the analyses by fans around the world — maybe, they watched it more than once.)

The really impressive aspect of the movie for me was the screenplay, the same role that Kamal himself admitted to have enjoyed the most. As a person learning screen-writing, I see what a great job it is to beautifully blend so many complex concepts like Chaos Theory and atheism into the script. For an audience wanting pure entertainment, it doesn’t burden them with any sermons that they don’t want to hear. From the days of Michael Madana Kama Rajan, I always believed that Kamal was one of the masters of screenplay in India and this movie probably put him right at the top. Sadly, Kamal has always been viewed as an actor and hence underrated in such areas. (Another digression: it’s amusing to hear people heap Bhagyaraj with such praise, just for making successful and never-boring movies.)

Yes, a couple of characters were probably not required for the story. But with the movie being called what it is, why would we assume that it’s not about the actor? Here, conveniently, some people look beyond the actor. When you go to see a man perform 10 roles in a movie, don’t you need to appreciate his effort in that aspect first? I agree that some of the make-up was overdone and prevented facial expressions. But what about body language and voice-acting? Wasn’t it terrific? Even as the protagonist Govind, did we notice Kamal drop his usual mannerisms?

Special effects were suprisingly tacky in some key scenes. As Brian Jennings admitted, they probably ran out of time and money. Nevertheless, the many scenes involving multiple Kamal characters were wonderfully done.

Rangaraja Nambi showed some difference, Vincent Poovaragan was amazing, Fletcher was uber-cool, Avtaar was goody-goody, Kalifullah was amusing and endearing, Balaram Naidu had us in splits, Krishnaveni Paatti was amusing, George Bush was caricaturish fun and Narahashi quietly made a mark. The supporting cast was adequate, with Asin topping effortlessly as Andaal.

The comedy was mostly refreshing, but fell flat in a couple of places where Kamal attempted slapstick and wordplay like his long-time associate Crazy Mohan.

Songs were quite average, maybe even below that — something we knew several weeks ago. But the screenplay hardly halted for them. The background score was strictly okay; atleast, it wasn’t jarring.

Finally, I am really disappointed with people who claim to be real Kamal fans and compare Dasavathaaram to Nayagan or Mahanadhi or Anbe Sivam. What were they expecting with Aascar Ravichandran as producer and KS Ravikumar as director? Let me clarify that I’m not shifting the blame to these two individuals even one bit. As Kamal fans, we should have understood what we were in for. We should be happy that Kamal was able to put forth great ideas in a commercial format, something which has potential to become a big success, instead of making a movie like Hey Ram (which I worship, by the way) that made its way out of theatres and into university curriculum in no time.

I will write more after watching the movie more times and in other languages. I would love to hear from you in the Comments section.

Have Dasavathaaram ticket in hand? If you’ve come here to get the last pieces of news before watching the much-awaited movie, here you go, with all that was left out till now and the latest.

• A widely reported rumour was that US President George W Bush might be watching the movie! Finally, it has been quashed by The Times of India, which reports that it was the handiwork of US distributors and also about a new rumour involving Presidential candidate Barack Obama. Another involved UN delegates!
• There is talk of a car chase sequence featuring 5 characters played by Kamal and Vincent Poovaragan (Tirunelveli Dalit character) providing comic relief.
• There were rumours that certain portions of the “Ka…karuppanakkum” song featuring Mallika Sherawat had some cuts. That’s not too bad considering the movie received a ‘U’ certificate.
• Ayngaran distributes the movie in UK, Europe, Gulf countries and Singapore. The Hindi version is delayed by 2 weeks apparently due to deals not being finalised.
• It is said that rates (distribution / ticket?) have been slashed in ‘C’ centres to enable more people to watch the movie.
• Aascar (note the name change) Ravichandran handed over a print of the movie to Kamal a while ago.
• Web-sites like Sify.com and IndiaGlitz have been running news items daily to whet the appetite of readers. Here are a couple from the latter, talking about the Tsunami sequence, how Kamal has achieved authenticity for the 12th century portion, the action sequences and finally proclaiming the movie a magnum opus even before release. Sify.com threw light on the excitement and expectation among Kamal’s colleagues and provided other updates.
• There was a reported clash with an animated Hindi movie named Dashavatar. Not sure what’s happening with that.
• KollywoodToday.com put up a list of movies featuring the same actor in many roles.
• We had news of how Dasavathaaram is being insured.
• Finally, let’s check out some interviews: Kamal in The Hindu, NDTV and News Today | Asin in Rediff.com | KS Ravikumar in Sify.com | Brian Jennings (visual effects supervisor) in Rediff.com.

[With inputs from Ananth & A1]

The question mark in the title of this post is because we can never be sure.

After a whole lot of speculation, it seems like Oscar Films has finally announced the release date as June 6. Oscar Ravichandran, exuding confidence, talks about 1000 prints for the worldwide release and thanks Kamal for the opportunity to work on such a movie. Also, he mentions that he has the practice of feeding 1000 needy children prior to every release of his. Read reports from Rediff.com, MSN, Chennai365, The Times of India and Adhikaalai.com.

Of course, we need to keep our fingers crossed that the latest case doesn’t derail this plan. But anyway Dasavathaaram seems to be truly ready, with publicity hitting top gear on national Web-sites like Rediff.com and Sify.com. The former even published a “Best of kamal” slideshow.

News about censor cuts, U certification and brisk sales have also been coming in.

[With extensive inputs from Ananth]

As we await the release of Dasavatharam, here are some details that have trickled in:

• Anil Pemgirikar, one of the make-up artistes involved in the movie, talks about the pains undertaken by Kamal and the crew. Check out the IndiaGlitz article for more, including information about re-recording by Devi Sri Prasad.
  

  Each and every role demanded a lot of hard work and pain to the actor, informs Anil Pemgirikar, the co-make up artist. “For example, for the role of a 98 year old lady, the makeup process consumed eight hours per day. We shot for 45 days for this scene. But, you know, the scene runs only for fifteen minutes in the film”, says Anil.

  Similarly, informs Anil, Kamal watched all possible clippings of President George W. Bush for the scene featuring him and the unit shot the scene for 60 days. The screen time for the scene is just seven minutes.

• KS Ravikumar talks about his joy of working on the movie, special effects, Tsunami sequence, etc.
• Galatta.com reports that Brian Jennings, who has worked on movies like Scary Movie and Mortal Kombat, has designed the special effects for Dasavatharam.
• One of the Tamil magazines has published portions of the lyrics of a song, possibly picturised on Avtar Singh, as seen in a recent still.

After the many murmurs, it seems like the news is true — Kamal will be part of a bevy of stars featuring in Kuchelan. The news seems believable, considering that the movie is produced by his mentor, K Balachander’s production house. Kamal has provided guest appearances in many of his movies from Thillu Mullu to Paarthaale Paravasam. Speculation though ranges from Kamal shaking a leg with Rajni to presenting an award to the latter.

[With inputs from Ananth]

Kamal will take part in the fast organized by the Tamil film industry on April 4. This is a protest to condemn the violence against Tamils in Karnataka, on the Cauvery-Hogenakkal issue. He is said to be returning from the USA around noon. We remember that Kamal participated in a similar protest in 2002 too.

We knew that he had gone to Mumbai. That was probably en route to the Land of Opportunities. We are also eager to know what he news he brings from there.

See reports from The Hindu, Sify.com, Thatstamil, Tamilcinema.com and Webdunia.

[With inputs from Ananth]

With the release of this new still and the audio release pretty much confirmed for April 25, the Dasavatharam blitzkrieg seems to have begun. We have a new interview with KS Ravikumar in the Madras Plus section of Economic Times:

• He attributes the delay to the need for compressing huge amount of material to around 3 hours, including about two and half hours with computer graphics.
• He says that he has never before worked so hard on a movie.
• He clarifies that politicians have not really ‘acted’ in the movie, but that clippings featuring them have been used.
• He confirms that there are no duet songs between Asin and Kamal.

Various reports in MSN, Thatstamil, Galatta.com, Behindwoods and IndiaGlitz talk about the grand audio release function featuring a set resembling the Oscar awards ceremony. Surpassing all earlier estimates, it is also said that the number of prints that will get released may touch 1500!

The storm is arriving shortly at the coast.

[With inputs from Ananth]

As unbelievable as it may sound, there have been widespread reporting by the media that Karunanidhi, Jayalalitha and Thol. Thirumavalavan (politicians of Tamil Nadu) are set to feature in Dasavatharam in various capacities. What happens in the Telugu and Hindi versions is anybody’s guess. Read reports from Times of India, CineSouth, IndiaGlitz, Maalai Malar and ThatsTamil.

More than such news, fans like us await the release of the movie itself, preceded by the audio launch and the trailer.

[With inputs from Ananth]

[Picture courtesy: BehindWoods]

Here are few updates on Dasavatharam, some of them pending for a while now.

• Dasavatharam is sold for distribution in Kerala, for Rs. 2.25 crores.
• SPB will dub for Kamal in Telugu.
• Special effects seem to be receiving final touches in Hong Kong.
• There is talk of heroines having “meaty roles” in Dasavatharam. Also, read some comments on the music.

[With input from Ananth]

[Picture courtesy: BehindWoods]