These days, it’s all about how well a movie is packaged, promoted and showcased that matters. And so you have audio releases that are planned in a grand manner. Innovation is the key.
Just the other day, the music of Neelakanta’s Maaya , produced by ‘Madhura’ Sridhar, was unveiled in what was admittedly a different way. There were original singers crooning their lines live but with background tracks, while the stars themselves – hero Harshavardhan Rane and the heroines Avantika and Sushma, shook a leg to Shekhar Chandra’s melodious music.
For a film-loving audience at a five-star hotel here that evening, it was fun watching a dhoti-clad hero dancing with the sari-clad heroines, to Pokkiri Raja, eela vesinaade .. ., the lyrics of which were penned for the first time by Rama Devi Nalla, better known for being a production designer, associate writer-director.
Also, it was funnier as most of the cast and crew ragged the hero for doing a ‘dhoti’ dance, instead of the hugely-popular ‘lungi dance’ by ‘King’ Khan. The genial star that Rane is, he took it all with a smile.
After a two-year wait
It’s out. With director Deva Katta’s much-delayed Autonagar Surya hitting the screens this Friday, the cast and crew, and most film-lovers too, heaved a sigh of relief.
Interestingly, while the director took a mere 100 days to wrap up shoot, the producers of the Samantha-Naga Chaitanya starrer, RR Movie Makers and Max India Productions, had run into financial trouble, stret-ching the movie to almost over a couple of years.
When those closely monitoring ‘first-day talk’ and ‘openings’ received feedback that audiences found certain scenes in the second half unnecessary, distributor ‘Dil’ Raju saw to it that at least 12 minutes of footage in the 159-minute film was chopped off!
