Talk of the town

GET SET for yet another epic recreated on the big screen. Hollywood repeating history yet again. Disaster movies are here to stay and hardly have they been disasters at the box-office.

On Friday, Touchstone Pictures brings to Chennai, the love-and- war saga `Pearl Harbour'. If you are wondering how did love creep into a war epic, rewind time a bit more and you will remember how James Cameron touched your heart with `Titanic'.

Pearl Harbour is more than one love story. It's about two love stories. About two best friends in the U.S. Army in love with the same girl in the U.S. Navy. Though the promoters call it an `epic saga of love and war', it certainly is one of the most powerful tales of friendship as well.

Trust director Michael Bay to come up with that. Don't you remember? It's the same director-producer duo of Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer that gave us the all-black version of `Lethal Weapon', the Will Smith-Martin Lawrence starrer `Bad Boys'.

Pearl Harbour stars Ben Affleck, Kate Benkinsale, Josh Hartnett, Cuba Gooding Junior, Jon Voight (as President Roosevelt) and Alec Baldwin with intense dialogues on American patriotism.

Warning: What `epic saga' means, is that you got to sit through patiently for three hours. Game?

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IT WILL be curtains for ``Chitti'' on Sun TV on September 30, when the 407th episode airs, and then it will be time for another mega soap serial titled ``Kalki'' to begin in October.

``The shooting of Kalki featuring Radhika will begin in down South and it will be yet another major venture for the Radaan TV Group,'' says Radhika Sarath Kumar, even as she was busy finalising the schedules of Koteeswaran.

Radhika also says that she has signed up with Director Bharathiraaja for his new Tamil movie, which is incidentally her 275th film. Radhika recalls that her first movie was also by Bharathiraaja.

Apparently, she is confident that she has the right answer this time, though everyone is staring into the crystal ball for the future of Koteeswaran and its clones in other languages.

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THE GOLLAPUDI Srinivas National Award for 2000 has been bagged by Subrata Sen, a Bengali director, for his debut effort ``Ek Je Aache Kanya''.

If his work has not been noticed big-time already, it will be now.

Sharing the platform with him at the awards presentation will be Jaya Bachchan, Bharathiraaja, Mukhopadhyay and Dr. Dasari Narayana Rao.

That's not all, Nandita Das will be compering the show on August 12 at the Music Academy.

``Kanya'' might be his first film, but Subrata's association with films goes a long way: A journalist, he used to write for `Sandesh', a children's magazine edited by Satyajit Ray.

The function on Sunday will present a short film on Subrata Sen and his work.

It will also feature ``Samarpan'', a music ensemble by O.S. Arun.

But Sen would prize the award itself, which comes with a cash component of Rs.one lakh.

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All materials must be classified by appearance, colour, smell and taste. One mistake and it can cause problems.

Ask the Union Minister, Dr. Murali Manohar Joshi who drank water mixed with some chemicals while in Tamil Nadu and felt sick.

Soon after he arrived he went straight to Melmaruvathur, for an audience with Bangaru Adigalar, accompanied by the Chairman of the U.P. Housing Board.

Apart from prayers, the Adiparasakthi Siddhar Peetam says the Minister had a long discussion with the Adigalar and departed only after dinner, at 11.30 p.m.

The Peetam has a regular line of visitors from Delhi and their visits are meticulously documented and released.

By Sudhish Kamath, T.S. Shankar and Feroze Ahmed

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