Gautham Vasudev Menon's next film “Neethane En Ponvasantham” is back in the limelight. The director and Ilaiyaraja are in London, recording live music for the film. The work on the songs is almost done, and they are scheduled to return soon.
The trailer of the film had Jiiva singing Ilaiyaraja's yesteryear hit, ‘Neethane En Ponvasantham…' to Samantha, sparking off speculation that the film might feature some of the maestro's yesteryear hits. But it looks like that might not be the case at all, going by what Na. Muthukumar says.
The lyricist who has penned all the songs, informs, “The film has six songs and each is special to me. The lyrics are fresh and based on love. I am a big fan of both Ilaiyaraja and Gautham Menon and I stayed in Mumbai for a week to complete the lyrics. Gautham gave me an outline of the script and then a detailed idea of the situations for the songs.”
What is interesting is Gautham Menon is teaming up with Ilaiyaraja for the first time in “Neethane En Ponvasantham.”
Meanwhile, Gautham, who has been posting pictures of him and Ilaiyaraja working together in London, has tweeted, “So many people are out there building a better world for the future. We are here to entertain them. And hopefully contributing too.”
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Keeping it short
In what is definitely a welcome change, Tamil film directors are slowly but surely becoming aware of the shrinking attention span of the audience. They are trying to keep their films short and crisp. The latest to join this list of directors is Bandi Saroj Kumar of “Porkalam” fame. His next film “Asthamanam” has a running time of just one-and-a-half hours.
Says Bandi, “There are no songs or commercial elements. My film is a thriller. Six college students go trekking in a forest. The film revolves around incidents that happen there.”
On his decision to keep the film short, he says, “People are becoming impatient and this is the right time for a change.” Six newcomers Rajesh, Sharan, Kanagasabai, Vidya, Victoria and Raghu play the lead roles in the film which has been granted a U/A certificate.
Another interesting aspect about “Asthamanam,” set for release on April 6, is the story of the film is based on a nightmare the director had during his school days.
“It was intense. There are some Hollywood movies that echo my nightmare. One of the incidents portrayed in the film has, in fact, happened in real life.”
