Happy times

There is news for Khushboo’s fans. The actress has delivered a baby girl at a private hospital in Chennai. An excited hubby Sunder C distributed sweets around. This is the couple’s second baby. Their first child Avantika’s all of 3 years old, is attending a play-school in Adyar. With unanimously rare reviews for his directorial effort in ‘Anbe Sivam’, and with the new addition to the family, it is celebration time for the celebrity couple!

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Taking a risk!

We’ve heard of actors jumping from heights and doing risky stunt scenes to make them look authentic. Particularly, Vijaykant and Vijay are known for their risky stunt scenes. The latest in the list is Silambarasan. For his new film ‘Dum’, the young actor jumped down from a four-storyed building, despite advise by the stunt-master to use to double for the shot. Fortunately for the actor nothing untoward happened, and at the end of it all, he had the stunt master hugging him for his dare-devilry.

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In the limelight!

She donned make-up when she was in high school itself. It was veteran comedy actress of Malayalam film Srilata who passed on Shruti Raj’s photos which found her way to director K George, who was on the look-out for a fresh teenager to co-star with Mammootty and Khushboo in his off-beat Malayalam film ‘Elavangodu Desam’. Her next Malayalam film after she finished school was the Dilip-Preeta Vijayakumar-starrer ‘Udayapuram Sultan’. Her next film ‘Priyam’, directed by Sanal, the Kunjacko Boban-starrer, also had her sharing the frames with another heroine Deepa. Meanwhile director EVV Satyanarayana introduced her in Telugu with the film ‘Veedekkada Mugudandi’ with Venu as hero, and ‘O Chinna Daana’ with Srikant, the latter film directed by Satyababu having a 150 days run at the theaters. Now, this young heroine Shruti Raj has signed her first Tamil film as a solo heroine. Titled ‘Kadhal.com’ it has Prasanna (‘5 Star’ fame) playing her hero, and is written and directed by S R Selvaraj. On the anvil are a Malayalam film with director Sibi Malayalil, titled ‘Kisan’ with Biju Menon, Kalabhavan Mani and Bhavana; a film with director Krishna Reddy titled ‘Sannajaji’ with Sai Kiran as her hero; and two more Telugu films where she is the solo heroine. Shruti Raj sure seems to be moving up fast!

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Fitting the role

Sharat Kumar is once again busy with his film assignments. And challenging roles as in ‘Diwan’. In the film, Sharat plays the dual character of both the grandfather and the grandson. An old and a young get-up. A huge set of a palace was erected at Rajaji Hall, Chennai, and shots of Sharat Kumar as the grandfather were canned. Those watching the shooting were taken in by the trouble the actor took to get his look and body language correct for the scene.

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Crossing the seas?

He is a seasoned actor by now, more than a decade since he began his acting career in Tamil films with a K Balachander-directed film. But Murali has never gone abroad for his shooting. While most of the actors, and even the comedians and character actors, make a trip abroad by the time they do a couple of films, it’s Murali’s bad luck that a foreign trip had evaded him all along. One reason may be that most of his films had rural-based subjects. But then there are those dream-songs where actors manage to shoot abroad. But for some reason Murali missed out on this chance too. But that’s all changed now, and Murali is all set to shoot abroad for the first time. The film is ‘Toss’, the producer is Nagaraj Aythaal, and the director debutant Arjun. This romance-action film has Murali paired with Poonam who had disappeared from the Tamil scene after doing a couple of films. Some crucial scenes in the story needs to be shot abroad, and Murali will soon be on his foreign jaunt.

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