10 Important incidents of Tollywood in 2010

10 Important incidents of Tollywood in 2010:

Telangana agitation, stalling movie screenings, attacks on film shoots:

Telangana agitation that spilled over to the first half of this year had an impact on movies like 'Adurs' that released in January this year. Shooting sets of Mahesh Babu's 'Khaleja' were burnt, slogans were raised at ' Brindavanam' shoot of NTR, shoots of a few films abrupted across the region. The release of NTR's 'Adurs' was in dilema owing to the producer's support to anti Telangana agitation.A few film makers accused agitators of blackmailing them for money and a few others silently 'discussed' the matter with the agitators.

Navdeep goes to jail:

All party and no work made Navdeep a bad boy. Drunk at a party in a night club on 9th May, the actor drove his car in the wrong direction and abused cops who tried to stop him in a filmi style. IPS officer Stephen Ravindra arrested the actor after chasing him and sent him to police station late in the night and that too in an auto. Eeeeks!! Whats more, TV media covered it live. Navdeep whose hangover died the next morning realised the blunder and apologised but it was too late. The actor was in the news for wrong reasons yet again when he and his friends went boating in Nagarjuna Sagar and were alleged of boating in the river bed without permission.

Small Vs Big films:

T-town's favourite dispute topic-big movie makers acting like mafia, continued to hog news print this year too.Small budget film makers accused the President of Telugu film producers' council , Shyam Prasad Reddy of being biased towards big shots like Allu Aravind and Suresh babu and carried an aggresive SMS and email campaiign against him, forcing him to resign. A blog campaign against Sureshbabu and Allu Aravind accusing them of killing cinema, by holding hundreds of theatres in their hands sustained a cold war environ in Filmnagar.

Veturi Sundara Rama Murthy Died:

One of the legendry writers , Veturi ,who could write on any genre and emotion and considered one of the biggest assets of Telugu cinema passed away in May this year. His death is the biggest loss to the creative quotient of Telugu cinema.He penned songs for hundreds of movies that went on to become the blockbusters. He had a great art for writing lyrics for dubbing songs for the original tunes of the song.

Fight for titles:

As if titles matter in the success, of our films, Telugu film makers spent more time this year in fighting for titles than use their creativity in making watchable movies.First it was amatuer film maker Vijayabhaskar Reddy who filed a case against Mahesh Babu's movie Khaleja for using the title he had already registered. However, the court allowed Mahesh to use the title Khaleja prefixing 'Mahesh' to it. Another film maker Gunasekhar accused actor Nandamuri Kalyanram of encroaching his title 'Kathi' for his movie through series of press conferences. T-activists also hogged limelight demanding Pawan Kalyan to remove 'Komaram' from his movie title 'Komaram Puli'.Title war this year offered better entertainment than the films this time, must say.

Drug arrests:

This is the biggest of all controversies that shattered the image of Tollywood.City cops nabbed actor Ravi Teja's brothers Bharath and Raghu, red handed while purchasing cocaine from a Ugandan on August 20 in Banjara Hills .In the next two days, cops leaked a few names of star party animals whose contact details were reportedly found in that Ugandan's phone.Stars were seen barging into TV stations to give explanations, rushing with rejoinders and 'ready for blood test' slogans for the next few days until the issue mysteriously subsided.Cops have been repeating what has now become the most popular TRP getter for channels, with their once every month statement' we are investigating the involvement of actors in the drug case'. !!

Big movies, bigger flops:

Fans waited three years for Mahesh Babu to do 'Khaleja' and two years for Pawan Kalyan's 'Puli'. The movies released and left the producers in tears and fans distressed.The screenplay and story line in 'Khaleja' made the movie a flop and Puli was awful. Multiplexes saw people returning their tickets of these movies or reselling them to less informed souls. And films like 'Marocharitra' starring Varun Sandesh made audience scream and rush out of theatres as if they were escaping from a haunted house.Ditto with Ramcharan's 'Orange' too didn't meet expectations.Big movies made the the industry bleed a loss of Rs 100 crore this year.

Nandi awards controversy:

When 65 something year old director turned actor turned MP, Dasari Narayana Rao was declared the state government Nandi award best actor this year for his performance in 'Mestri', everyone in Tollywood jaw dropped. Ramcharan Tej was expected to bag the award for 'Magadheera'.Street talk was Dasari influenced the Nandi jury to name him the best actor. Fuelling the controversy, Chiranjeevi in his speech at a filmi do said his son doesn't crave for awards. Ouch!!The war of words from both the sides proved a popular perception that Nandi awards like every other awards are about influence and not talent.

Ramanaidu wins Dadasaheb Phalke:

A stalwart in Indian cinema production, Daggubati Ramanaidu won the Dadasaheb Phalke award this year for his contribution to Indian cinema. Before him, Nagireddy, Akkineni Nageswara Rao, LV Prasad et al won the award in Telugu.Naidu produced about 130 films in about a dozen languages and continues to produce films even today. His award was celebrated by Tollywood.

Nagababu raises budget issues:

Chiranjeevi's brother Nagababu dropped bomb shells and almost wept at an audio launch. We are sure anyone who loses Rs 6.5 cr on a movie, thanks to terrible direction and heroine tantrums will do the same.'Orange' starring Ramcharan Tej and Genelia bombed badly at box office making its producer Nagababu spit fire on the director Bhaskar for taking an year to make an unwatchable and complicated movie.Nagababu accused Genny of blackmailing him of walking out of the movie if Rs 10 lakh was not paid in excess to her remuneration. His outbursts sparked off a debate in Tollywood on minimising movie budgets.

T'wood strike against piracy:

Telugu film industry came together in unity to support film producer Yalamanchili Ravi Chand who sat in for a surprise hunger strike on March 17, demanding the government to bring in stricter law against video piracy. Tollywood unanimously decided to go on strike in support to Ravi's cause. Actors lined up infront of Ravichand's hunger strike camp to pledge support and the government decided topunish bring video pirates under goonda act. The act however is yet to be passed in the legislature.

Film federation and Producers' council strike:

For the first time, Tollywood shut down for more than a week. Producers demand increase in working hours for stars and lesser number of shooting days, employees demand producers to pay more, actors refuse to take pay cuts-mocktailed to occur the biggest logjam in history of Telugu cinema. With crores of rupees at stakes and bloated egos on all sides, shootings came to a halt, schedules went haywire, releases put on hold, making it a worst ever phase for Telugu film industry.Thanks to the strike, the industry which is already in deep losses has suffered more due to shooting delays.Shootings resumed on December 30.

(Published in Times of India on 28-12-2010)