I think, the engagement news played a role in GURU's box office performance during the weekend.

Well any thing working in Mani Sir's favor

BTW, in Guru I was best impressed with Mitun Da's performance.
No offence to Abhishek and Aish; they were excellent too.
Madhvan and Vidya Balan didn't have much chance to impress as their
roles were short and straightforward.

More Box Office reports:

rana, despite ur insistence people even indiafm r taking u turn to declare mani sir another flop!! worth 30 crore a hard to digest option and guess what?



HDDCS minus Salman!!

amazing that adarsh who calls dhoom 2, and PHP as

is giving 2 thumbs up to Bhagam Bhag too, just as guru! lol where is this man's nose?

Midweek Top 5: 'Guru' is strong at multiplexes!


Film Cast Plusses Minusses Verdict 2 thums up, one right, one left

Guru Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Mithun Chakraborty, Madhavan, Vidya Balan Everything Difficult to find

Bhagam Bhag Akshay Kumar, Govinda, Lara Dutta, Paresh Rawal Excellent comedy in first hour Dull post-interval portions
verdict..2 thumbs up one right/one left

Dhoom 2 Hrithik Roshan, Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Bipasha Basu, Uday Chopra Hrithik Roshan-Aishwarya Rai, terrific stunts, dazzling visuals, taut script and admirable direction… Escapist cinema at its best! Pritam's music [blockbuster]
verdict 1 thumb up blockbuster

Vivah Shahid Kapoor, Amrita Rao, Anupam Kher, Alok Nath Excellent performances, strong emotional appeal and gripping second half Thin storyline, drab first hour and listless music [super-hit; blockbuster in Bihar]

Kabul Express John Abraham, Arshad Warsi, Hanif Hum Ghum, Linda Arsenio, Salman Shahid Truly different plotline, Arshad-Salman's performances, great visuals and solid direction Caters to a niche audience


(Ratings are based on the box office collections and the cost of the film)

1 thumb up- Hit
1 thumb down- Flop
1 thumb to right Average
1 thumb to left Above Average
1 up one down Average to Flop

http://indiafm.com/trade/top5/index.html

I've heard rumours that the Tamil films Pokiri and Aalwar did better then Guru at the UK box office (per screen average) during last weekend. Could someone confirm this?

I saw Guru and felt that Mani Ratnam has taken another step back after Yuva. Guru has decent production values (which all Ratnam film has), but the overall story and main character was somewhat uninteresting. Maybe I'll have a change of heart on its second viewing, when I'll recieve a DVD copy.

At present I feel the film is only worth watching for the excellent background score by A.R. Rahman and Mithun's performance. Both evoked effective emotions, which had a touch of the Ratnam magic.

Poriki, A loose remake of Infernal Affairs 1, was just a mess from start to finish. There was no suspense (as we all know who the mole is) and Prabhu Deva has yet to master the art of film direction. Vijay, who I admired in his previous films (e.g. Vassegara, Ghili, Friends) does have excellent screen presence, which most Indian actors would kill for. But it is overused with typical south Indian heroic conventions, and you suddenly find yourself becoming bored by his antics. I don’t mind the intro ganna song or the intro slow-mo walk. But don’t infringe the whole duration of the film with it!!

Credit to the editor for making the film short and to-the-point. There is no time-wasting (since there is no plot), and the songs are well shot.

The less I say about Aalwar, the better it sounds. The only good thing was the end credits!

Now the fat lady sang!! thanks!

I never doubted excellent production values of Mani's fil;ms myself along with brilliant sense of taking shots!

No rumours. Pokiri and Aalwar got better per screen average
than Guru in the first weekend in UK. But, total collection was way higher
for Guru. Obviously Guru did not start well. But, it's going to change
as everywhere elsewhere. In US, Canada, Guru had excellent
weekend collections.


http://www.indiafm.com/trade/top5/index.html

Rank: 1 Guru Mani Ratnam, G. Srinivasan
Picked up after a slow start. Is fantastic at multiplexes. Sold
for reasonable prices in several circuits, the distributors are already
in comfort zone. Mumbai is the best, followed by Delhi and
South

Per Screen: Rs 7,02,881

Producer: Mani Ratnam
Director: Mani Ratnam
Starring: Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Mithun Chakraborty, Madhavan, John Abraham, Vidya Balan, Kunal Kapoor and Arya Babbar
Music: A.R. Rahman
Lyrics: Gulzar
Genre: Drama
Recommended Audience: Parental Guidance
Approximate Running Time: 2 hours 45 minutes
Film Released on: 12 January 2007

Reviewed by: Amodini Sharma
Reviewer's Rating: 7.0 / 10
Music Review Posters


Public Rating Average: 8.31 / 10 (rated by 39 viewers) Give your Rating: 1 / 10 2 / 10 3 / 10 4 / 10 5 / 10 6 / 10 7 / 10 8 / 10 9 / 10 10 / 10
Opinion Poll: Did GURU live upto all the hype?

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ALMOST BIOGRAPHICAL
GURU is the story of a man who wants to make money. He has the gumption and the smarts to do it too; what I would call a jugaadu person. How he does what he does, and how he progresses from a village lad to a rich mill-owning tycoon, is the movie. The film is fairly biographical, bears a striking resemblance to Dhirubhai Ambani’s life, and appears almost documentar-ish, except for the fact that the director actually takes sides, and chooses to paint the protagonist in heroic and altruistic colors.

Gurukant Desai (Abhishek) is the ambitious son of a small-time school teacher (Rajendra Gupta). After failing at school and earning his pessimistic father’s displeasure he travels to Turkey for work. There he does well, but opts to return home to work for himself. Home, and lacking enough capital to start his own business, he marries his best friend Jignesh’s (Arya Babbar) elder sister for her dowry money. The lady in question, Sujata (Aishwarya) has a tainted reputation, since she has attempted previously to run-away with a lover. Now, “saved” by Guru, she becomes his loving and devoted wife. Guru embarks in his new business venture in the city with his wife and her brother (who is his partner), and thus starts his journey . . .

The movie faithfully follows Guru’s trials, tribulations and successes, portraying Guru has a hard-working, industrious and extremely enterprising man. He succeeds by, as he puts it himself, the bribe and the kick philosophy. Where he can get work done through a “kick”, he lets loose, and where people want salaams, he salutes. He gets work done anyway he can, caring not about his many detractors but concentrating instead on forging ahead. Guru truly embodies the visionary, taking risks, and reading needs and markets correctly when other go astray. Abhishek does a sterling job as Guru, ebullient as the young Guru, and growing convincingly into the middle-aged, sport-a-paunch industrialist.

I’m not Aishwarya’s biggest fan, considering the fact that the lady has minimal acting skills. However, those that she does possess, Mani Ratnam has managed to put to good use, since she gives, what is possibly, the best performance of her career. Abhishek/impending nuptials doing her good, what ? Playing the devoted (and I mean DEVOTED) wife to the hilt, Aishwarya displays a subtlety which left me dumb-founded. Well, wonders never cease ! And since this one actually works to the benefit of the viewer, I hope these acting lessons stick !Then there’s Mithunda, making a comeback to the acting skills (Mrigaya, Sitara) I was sure he’d forgotten after he donned those Disco dancing shoes. As newspaperman Manik Dasgupta, he looks old and quite the Bengali babu (which is what he’s playing) who, with his journalistic second-in-command Shyam Saxena (a thinned-down Madhavan) is for doing things by the book and thus against Guru’s devious ways. Quite the communist foil to Guru’s capitalist dreams. The duo, through their newspaper “The Independent” expose and malign Guru’s methods. Vidya Balan plays Meenu, Manik’s ailing grand-daughter, who marries Shyam.

The film isn’t boring, and I’m not too keen on bio-pics, but it does lack the oomph, because one can’t really get behind Guru’s cause. I mean I’m all for making money. Money is a good thing. But let’s call a spade a spade, and not hide all our lets-get-rich schemes under the guise of doing “world-good”. I would be happy championing Guru’s cause if he declared that he did it because that was the way to make money, money he wanted for his family and for himself. That’s not a bad thing to want. However, when Guru runs into trouble with the government for resorting to unethical practices, he justifies it as doing it for the people - “My company benefited but so did my shareholders”. Oh please ! No one does it for the share-holders; that is but a side-effect. We know why Guru resorts to bribes. It’s because you cannot be an honest cog in the wheel of a corrupt system. So I would forgive Guru all his misdemeanors , and nod my head in empathy, if he told it like it is. Does Guru really believe he's altruistic ? If yes, that’s a bit pompous and hard to believe. If not, then Guru is presenting the “altruism” theory as a part of his conniving persona, which doesn’t jell well when you’re trying to believe that he’s a do-gooder with a heart of gold.

I do see director Ratnam addressing societal changes; Yuva dealt with youth action, and “Dil se” dealt with terrorists. So when he develops Guru’s story into a case against the government for throttling enterprising entrepreneurs, you can sort of see where he’s going, and sympathise. When Guru berates the government bureaucracy as working only when oiled with money, you nod your head in agreement. Yes, government rules may be archaic and stupid, but they must be amended and made to work not only for people like the devious Guru, but for the common man on the street.

The direction is good, the screen shots are composed beautifully and Ratnam handles the emotional aspects of the film with an ease only a master possesses. The music provided by Rehman is OK, although Rehman displays a flair for butchering Urdu words when he sings. The one number which was sheer torture was “Ek lo, ek muft”.

So, overall this film was good, definitely watchable. Without the pomposity and the self-righteousness, I’d have enjoyed it a whole lot more.



Copyright © 1995-2007 IN
7.5/10

Another strong weekend in US.
Collected $523,000 US in the 2nd weekend (just a 31% drop)
totalling to $1,524,000 in 10 days.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/

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Indiafm upgrades its Box Office rating from "Average/ Above Average" from 1st weekend to "HIT" after 2nd weekend.

Boxofficeindia upgrades it's US Boxoffice verdict to "HIT" after 2nd weekend.

Let's see if it makes it to "Super Hit" and then to "Blockbuster" ??
Don't think it'll make it to "All Time Blockbuster".

MIGHT BE LATE INFO



dragun ?any one? any idea? Now we have to look for this with water?

First version of Tere Bina, sung by Qadir Khan- Mani Ratnam wanted to have it sung in ARR's voice, which was what was included on the CD and the film. ARR's version is better, though his diction is not as good.

Shauk Hai- Beautiful song. I wish it was on the Guru soundtrack CD. I haven't heard anything about a new release of the CD, though maybe there is one. Can someone in India confirm?