Director Dhanvir's Vijayanagaram talks about how political interference in education affects the future of children. Dhanvir, who has earlier worked as associate to Bhagyaraj, empathises with those students who undergo immense hardship to achieve academic excellence while many others use influence and money power to get degrees. “My film portrays the turmoil hero Sivan goes through when external forces try to upset his academic dreams and how he overcomes all this to emerge a winner. Vijayanagaram also shows how heroine Hasini shares Sivan's anxieties. Vijayanagaram is an action film with a strong message,” says Dhanvir. The film will release by January-end.
Choc-o-bloc schedule
This year director K. S. Ravikumar's megaphone will be in use non-stop. First there is the much-talked about Rajinikanth-starrer Kochadaiyan , followed by a Hindi film starring Amitabh Bachchan and Sanjay Dutt and another Rajini film Rana . That's quite a handful and Ravikumar is gung-ho about his first Bollywood venture. “In Kochadaiyan , I will be supervising the direction of all the relevant scenes required for Soundarya to start the animation work. As of now, Katrina Kaif has almost been confirmed as the heroine. Once this is over and before I start Rana by the year end, I will do the Hindi film in between,” says Ravikumar. Deepika Padukone is the heroine of Rana . As for the Hindi film, which started out as a remake of the Tamil hit Saamy , Ravikumar says that the heroine has not been finalised yet. “The script has changed many times to suit the Hindi audience and now it hardly resembles the original.”
Waves of melody
Tamil film Marina will launch quite a few new talent. To start with, the crisp editing is credited to Shiva who has been an in-house editor for director Shankar for several of his films. With all that experience under his belt, Shiva has gone independent with Marina . Girishh will debut as music director in Marina and the promo song‘Vanakkam Vaazhavaikkum Chennai' featuring several prominent actors from the Tamil film industry, is already a big hit on YouTube. “The only female voice is that of Shilpa. The other two singers are Mukesh and Ramshankar. Marina is actually the second film I signed up as music director; the first one is yet to be released,” informs Girishh, who was till recently an associate conductor with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain (NYOBG). A disciple of violin maestro Lalgudi Jayaraman, Girishh is an accomplished Carnatic vocalist and studied western music before taking up the assignment with the NYOGB.
