Suriya’s interview with sify.com

I still get considerable hits to my blog on the topic of the recent wedding between Suriya and Jothika, so I decided to post some excerpts of Surya’s interview with sify.com after his return from Europe.

On his recent movie Sillunu Oru Kadhal,

Suriya – “I have great respect for Sify.com but you have reported in Chennai box-office that my film is a flop. I disagree to it as SOK is a hit especially in A centres and overseas. Do you know that it will break my Ghajini record at Sathyam theatre in Chennai? In Coimbatore, the film is doing extremely well and overseas people simply love it.”

On Asin and Trisha’s refusal to do the role performed eventually by Bhoomika,

Suriya – “I don’t want to rake up old issues. Asin had initially agreed to do the film and my producer, director and cameraman had met her in her house at Kochi and given her a huge advance. Later she backed out saying that the script has to be re-written. Will any self respecting director change his script? I’m sure that the Aishu character in SOK is much better than what Asin did in Majaa or Sivakasi.

Let’s not talk about it anymore, as bygones are bygones. I feel that Bhoomika has done an outstanding performance as Aishu. And what Sify.com reported about Trisha and Asin having the last laugh sounds ridiculous to me!”

And finally on actor Vikram not being invited to his wedding,

Suriya – “It was not intentional…. we had even missed out Vijaykanth sir whom I respect a lot. In fact we had invited Vikram and his family personally for my sister’s wedding, but they never turned up or even bothered to call up.”

So for those of you interested in the complete interview please follow this link to sify.com

Seat sharing issues?

Online news portal Chennaionline is reporting that DPI has walked out of the ADMK alliance and instead has joined the UPA alliance in the state. There have been rumors floating around over the reported unhappiness of DPI over the seats allotted to it my the ADMK. Coming out of a meeting with Karunanidhi, Thirumavalavan said,

We were insulted by AIADMK and were allocated seats where we had no chance of winning. In some areas, some of our members were unhappy over the seat allocation. I tried to sort out the issue but I was not even allowed to meet the AIADMK high command by their cadres”

But looks like another ally of the DMK isn’t too happy with its agreement. The CPI(M) is unhappy with the DMK over seat allotments in several places like Chennai, Chidambaram, and Cuddalore. However, the CPI(M) leaders insist that they hold with continue to remain in the UPA alliance and don’t hold any “grudge” against the DMK. So looks like once again seat sharing issues have led to parties changing alliances.

Felicitating the winner!

When it comes to honoring a Chief Minister, Kollywood isn’t usually far off. Yesterday, Chief Minister Karunanidhi was felicitated by the Tamil film industry in a glittering show. The function was held at Nehru stadium where Mr. Karunanidhi was awarded a silver throne and a pen-shaped sceptre. Most of the prominent personalities like Rajnikanth, Kamal Hassan, satyaraj, Vikram, Vijay, Meena, Asin, Sneha, Nila, Kanimozhi, Kushboo and yesteryear actress Padmini attended the function. Even, DMDK chief Vijaykanth was present on the occasion. Maharashtra Governor SM Krishna released a souvenir on the occasion. Film shootings have been cancelled for two days throughout Tamil Nadu in the run-up to the event.

Pictures of the function can be found at Sify.com

Seat Sharing Pact

ADMK alliance finalized its seat sharing agreement for the upcoming local body elections. ADMK supremo Jayalalitha announced that MDMK would get 17.5% of the seats, while DPI would get 4% of the seats. MDMK should be pleased with the agreement since its share has gone up slightly from the assembly election where it got about 15% of the seats (35/200+). The share for DPI has remained roughly about the same. The local body election would be held in 2 phases on October 13th and 15th.

Candidates for Madurai by-election

The Deputy Mayor of the Madurai Municipal Corporation, Gowz Batcha, is the DMK nominee for the by-election. Since the DMK held the seat in the current assembly, he would certainly be favored to win. But its surprising that Chief Minister Karunanidhi didn’t select family members of the late DMK leader PTR Palanivelrajan, since they could have received some sympathy among the electorate.

VV Rajan Chellappa is chosen as the AIADMK candidate for the by-election. Winning will be very difficult, however a second place finish is essential for ADMK to maintain its status as the primary opposition party in the state.

MR Panneerselvam, who had joined DMDK after Raja Kannappan, leader of Makkal Tamil Desam, merged his party with DMK, is the DMDK’s nominee for the Madurai by-election. This election is crucial for the DMDK to see if the party still manages to get a good chunk of the votes as it did in the recently concluded assembly election.

Tale of two companies

Oracle reported its earnings yesterday and the company did exceptionally well with sales up 30%. This was a much anticipated earnings report, since analysts were trying to see how well Oracle has performed since acquiring a number of companies like PeopleSoft, Siebel etc. In almost all areas, Oracle reported strong gains. Oracle’s main competitor in the back office application domain SAP missed last quarter. So Oracle should feel very pleased at capturing market share from SAP. Oracle’s CEO Ellision proclaimed that the companies open standards adoption as opposed to SAP’s proprietary solution was the main reason for this.

On the other hand one company’s stock was at the receiving end. It was none other than online giant Yahoo! which surprisingly said advertising revenues would fall short of analysts expectations. Yahoo’s stock dropped more than 10% yesterday on this news. It’s quite surprising that Yahoo! main competitor Google seemed to hold up pretty good.

Success = Family Connection?

What’s common between Prashant, Vijay, Surya, Dhanush, Silambarasan, ‘Jeyam’ Ravi and Vishal? If you guessed their ‘family connections’ to the film industry then you are spot on. News Today, a popular on-line portal, carried an interesting article which claims that success in today’s Tamil film industry largely depends on family connection.

In the past decade, this trend has almost become the norm of the industry. While, not everyone with good family connection has made it big (ex. Arun Kumar, Sibiraj, Manoj K Bharathy), its certainly made the life of many of these upcoming stars a lot easier. Vishal, son of prominent Telugu producer GK Reddy, says,

‘I owe my existence in the industry to my family. Because it is they who inspired me to enter filmdom. Doing films in home production give us some breather and leverage. However at the end of the day one has to be aware that only quality films with right values succeed. They helped me get my momentum going’ – News Today

So that begs the question – is this a good trend for the Tamil film industry? Will the industry benefit from such a trend? or will this lead to any negative or disastrous consequences? Your comments.

Karunanidhi keeps promise?

If there was one promise that excited the voters during the last election, it was DMK’s promise for free color TVs. While, critics lashed out at the promise, it was well received by the voters. So with DMK winning the election, everyone was keen to see if the government could implement such a promise.

Yesterday, Karunanidhi set all doubts to rest by distributing the first batch of free color TVs to the poor at Padappai near the city on the 98th birth anniversary of DMK founder C N Annadurai. Speaking at the function, in which 25,245 colour TV sets worth about Rs 9 crore were given to the residents of Samathuvapuram (a colony of all communities and creeds) at Thundalkazhani village in Padappai in Kanchipuram district, Karunanidhi said Rs 750 crore had already been allocated in the state budget for distributing 25 lakh colour TV sets.

Perhaps the best part of the speech was when Karunanidhi responded to Jayalalitha’s allegation that funds for the scheme was inadequate,

“Even in marriages, feasts are provided in batches, since it was not possible to feed all the guests at the same time. A person who is invited in the third or fourth batch will wait patiently without complaining. That is how cultured people behave”

Dell to setup plant in TN

Dell Computers today signed a MoU with the Tamil Nadu Government for setting up a manufacturing plant for making desktop PCs. The plant will be setup in the SEZ in Sriperumbadur. The plant, which will employee 1100 workers, has been allotted 50 acres of land. Dell plans to make an initial investment of about 280 crores for setting up the plant.

“Dell had evaluated various states in the country for setting up their manufacturing base and it chose Tamil Nadu due to the “proactive approach of the state government, quality of manpower, good connectivity and logistics and excellent infrastructure” – Dell’s press release courtesy rediff.com

The Hindu launches ePaper edition

The Hindu launched an ePaper edition of the newspaper a few days back. Essentially this will be a scanned version of the daily editions in pdf format. Already a number of newspaper companies like New Indian Express, Deccan Chronicle, Deccan Herald, Indian Express, Financial Express, Economic Times, Times of India, Dinamalar, Dinakaran and Tamizh Murasu already offer this feature. Given the poorly designed and hard to navigate The Hindu website, I expect many people to prefer this change. Presently, the registration is free although that could change in the future.

[article courtesy Kaps]