Slumdog wins three awards at BIFAS

London (PTI): Slumdog Millionaire, an English movie based on the award-winning novel of Indian Diplomat Vikas Swarup, won three awards at the British Independent Film Awards (BIFAS) ceremony here.

The story of the Danny Boyle's film featuring Anil Kapoor revolves around a Mumbai teenage boy who astounds all by doing well on 'Kaun Banega Karorpati', Indian version of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire quiz show.

The film won the award in the category of best film, best director and best newcomer (for its British lead actor).

The former artistic director of the Royal Court theatre, Boyle, was talk of the night and is already on many pundits' Oscar prediction lists.

Earlier, he has directed films like Trainspotting showing Edinburgh heroin addicts and The Beach in which Leonardo DiCaprio played the main role.

The young lead actor of Slumdog Millionaire, Harrow-born Dev Patel, best known to British audiences as Anwar in E4's Skins, won the best newcomer award.

The film tells the story of a Mumbai street child. As he does well on the quiz show, flashbacks chronicle his life, the realities of which Danny Boyle does not flinch from showing.

Boyle's film, a third of which is spoken in Hindi opens in the UK on January 9 but has already down well on the festival circuit and opened to fantastic reviews in the US.
Source: http://www.hindu.com/

Music release of 'Chandni Chowk...' on Dec 9

In the aftermath of the recent terrorist attacks, a lot of filmmakers have shifted/postponed their film releases keeping in mind the grim situation in the city and across the nation. Last week's two new releases ‘Sorry Bhai’ and ‘Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!’ despite fetching decent reviews, failed to attract the footfalls at the cineplexes, as people just didn't seem to be in a mood to go and catch a film.

The first Friday of December (Dec 5) was initially supposed to see as many as seven new releases but two of them- ‘Khallballi- Fun Unlimited’ and ‘Kaashh...Mere Hote’ have now been shifted ahead for obvious reasons.

Producer-director Rohan Sippy's English language film, ‘The President Is Coming’, was supposed to hit the cinema halls last Friday (Nov 28) but owing to the grim situation in the city, he decided to postpone the release. Bollywood Hungama got in touch with Rohan's spokesperson to get the latest update on the release status of ‘The President Is Coming’, "The President Is Coming will now release in January of 2009. Rohan obviously thought this was not the right time for his film to release. Moreover, the promos have been getting a very encouraging feedback and hence he feels a later date will only benefit the film."

Not just his film release, Rohan has even shifted the music release of his forthcoming Akshay Kumar- Deepika Padukone starrer ‘Chandni Chowk To China’. The music launch was scheduled to take place today evening (Dec 2) but has now been pushed to Dec 9 owing to the situation in the city.
Source: http://www.screenindia.com/news