Superstition Or Superscience?
Amid accusations of having saffronised higher education of the country, the Centre approves the teaching of astrology in universities.
Is the Government promoting a
science or a sham?

Science Or Sham?
Even as stargazers claim their knowledge has an empirical basis, scientists debunk it as mumbo-jumbo.

PM's Point Man
Sidelined two years ago, he has bounced back to become one of the most powerful ministers in the NDA.

Diverging Tracks
The Gormu-Lhasa railway line will significantly improve China's military logistics capability and exert strategic pressure on India.

Plane Pique
The Gujarat Government resents the CAG indictment for the purchase of an aircraft.

CINEMA: ACTION FILMS

Tech Tonic

Indian films promise new thrills as filmmakers import special-effects directors and state-of-the-art gizmos from Hollywood

By Sandeep Unnithan

	Awara Paagal Deewana Action Director: Dion Lam Cost of Production: Undisclosed SFX+ Action budget: Undisclosed

Keanu Reeves flaps open his greatcoat to reveal a deadly arsenal. A fusillade of bullets is unleashed, marble pillars are pulverised, and shells rain down as Reeves, defying the laws of gravity, runs on the walls. Like molten mercury, the bullets inch forward from every angle, and you see Reeves moving in super-slow motion to avoid each one. That was from The Matrix, the action sequences amazing even by Hollywood standards. Now Bollywood wants a piece of this action.

Producer Firoz A. Nadiadwala has snapped up Dion Lam, one of the action directors of The Matrix, to choreograph his forthcoming movie Awara Paagal Deewana. Nadiadwala was inspired by the innovative Wachowski brothers’ spectacular bullet-time photography—where action is frozen and the scene is viewed from every angle, made possible by an array of cameras. Lam, an alumni of the Hong Kong action industry that churned out stars like Jackie Chan and Jet Li, has also worked on path-breaking martial arts films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Charlie’s Angels.

Juggling his work on The Matrix sequel with his maiden Bollywood flick, Lam has begun rehearsals of its sequences at his studio in Los Angeles. Lead stars Sunil Shetty, Akshay Kumar and Rahul Dev will undergo a crash course in Kung Fu and wirework before shooting begins later this year. They will have to get used to being strung up to enable them to do gravity-defying stunts. The wires are erased from film in post-production processing. “The results will be like Hindi cinema’s transition from black and white to colour,” claims Nadiadwala, who has signed up the stunt team of The Fast and the Furious for his next two films.

Nadiadwala, of course, isn’t the first on a hunting spree for foreign action directors; Ramesh Sippy had hired British action director Jim Allen and his crew for Sholay’s action sequences. But the industry is once again spending heavily on stunts and pyrotechnics, having realised that this is what the audience wants. Hiring second unit directors (as foreign action directors are called in Hollywood) is the new theme in Bollywood.

Along with the Chennai-based action director Vikram Dharma, Kamal Haasan planned and executed stunts that cost Rs 5 crore for Kalaipulli S. Thanu’s Rs 32-crore bilingual Abhay—a record budget for an Indian film. Of this, Rs 3 crore was spent on a single sequence, the motor-psycho nightmare—a seven-minute car chase shot in Delhi and Chennai, in which more than 20 vehicles, including three Mercedes, were trashed. Australian action director Grant Page, a veteran of the Mad Max films, was called in for his expertise and to provide specialised equipment like air rams that toss cars and people into the air and air bags that cushion the falls.

But merely bringing in foreign talent and equipment is not the answer, as Haasan points out. “Our obsession for imitating foreign stunts far exceeds our safety preparations and training,” he says about the decision to hire foreign hands. “I wanted to learn their new techniques and make our stuff look classy. For me, it is more a question of buying techniques than technicians.”
In Abhay, a film about a commando battling his evil twin—both played by Haasan—a sequence required Haasan to go bungee jumping off the roof of a 26-storeyed hotel. The West again came to the rescue. Australian fx firm Cutting Edge which did the effects for The Matrix and Hollywood visual-effects producer George Merkert, who rendered the effects for films like Cliffhanger, Starship Troopers and Die Hard III, were called in to assist Chennai-based Til Studios. The bill? Rs 2.5 crore. But Haasan insists that “it is money well spent”.

MetroScape

Looking Glass

Chennai Restaurant:
Beijing Blues

Delhi Contemporary Crafts: The Craft Workshop

Delhi Restro-bar: 4S