It’s been three weeks since the Tamil film industry called off the strike and all those films that were supposed to have released during the month of March and early April are now jostling for the next available slot. While Mercury released two weeks ago and last week’s Diya released amid a lot of excitement despite turning out to be a damp squib, this week’s solo Tamil release – Iruttu Arayil Murattu Kuthu – is hoping to uplift the sombre mood that’s currently set in at Tamil Nadu’s theatres.
Apart from that, the release of Malayalam film Theevandi has been postponed, so that makes it a total of three films battling it out at the box-office this Friday including the two Hindi releases – Omerta and 102 Not Out.
Iruttu Arayil Murattu Kuthu (Tamil)
The film’s teaser gives enough warnings that it’s a horror sex comedy, strictly for those above 18. Starring Gautham Karthik, Vaibhavi Shandilya, Chandrika Ravi, Mota Rajendran, Karunakaran, and others, the teaser’s disclaimer and subsequent scenes show that the film is laden with innuendos, suggestive jokes, and nothing different from director Santhosh P Jayakumar’s first film – the adult-comedy Hara Hara Mahadevaki.
Activities under the sheets, monstrous faces poking out of nowhere, shadows that resemble women giving oral sex to men, and a haunted doll that appears to be alive, the teaser encapsulates the entire premise of the film in a minute, along with the famous ‘Blue Sattai’ YouTube film critic on screen. The film is based on some incidents that happen in a house in Thailand, and has extensively been shot there, Chennai, and other foreign locations.
Produced by KE Gnanavel Raja of Studio Green, GK Prasanna is the editor while Balamurali Bala is in charge of the music.
Omerta (Hindi)
omerta
Omerta marks the return of the actor-director team of Rajkummar Rao and Hansal Mehta, who have worked together in films like Aligarh, CityLights and Shahid. Rajkummar sports a bespectacled and heavily bearded look in the film and the trailer threatens to expose the dangerous terrorism nexus.
Recommended
Based on the real-life story of British terrorist of Pakistani descent, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, this Hansal Mehta directorial looks like a spine-chilling exploration of the makings of a terrorist. The movie will take us into the ghettos, sleeper cells of ISIS, focus on state-sponsored terrorism and how it manipulates young minds into believing a sordid interpretation of jihad.
Mehta said at the trailer launch said: “Omerta takes a look at this complex paradox of a man called Omar Saeed Sheikh. It was a difficult subject to choose and a challenge to make. The film looks at what it means to be a fundamentalist and for someone to pick up a gun with the intent of killing in return for an afterlife in paradise. Omerta is among the most researched films that I have worked on till date. We actually visited some of the places frequented by Omar in London during his transformation from a LSE graduate to becoming a deadly terrorist.”
The film is shot in real locations across London and India while recreating Pakistan and Afghanistan.
102 Not Out (Hindi)
102 Not Out
After three decades, Amitabh Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor will be seen together on the big screen, this time as a dysfunctional father and son duo.
The film 102 Not Out is about a 75-year-old man and his 102-year-old father. The father-son duo share a bittersweet relationship, bickering and making up. For once we witness a role-reversal of sorts – the older generation taking a backseat from all the worries while the younger generation fretting over the littlest of things, just like a parent.
Billed as an ‘ageless comedy’, the film is directed by Umesh Shukla and is based on playwright Saumya Joshi’s well-known Gujarati play of the same name. The film is bankrolled by Sony Pictures International Productions.
The two actors, who are in reality just 10 years apart, last starred in the fantasy superhero film Ajooba in 1991. The two, in the past, have played friends and brothers on screen.