Images from ‘I’ (updated)
Malayalam poster..
thanks to Saurabh…
thanks to Saurabh…
thanks to Shetty..
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SATYAMSHOT 
July 15, 2012 at 1:17 AM
The film should have been title ‘Ai’ or ‘Aai’ (the letter on the poster) but looks like Shankar has chosen the English homophone ‘I’ because this is the title mentioned in all the pieces.
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July 15, 2012 at 8:11 AM
Can’t wait for this. Among other things, I can’t recall an ARR soundtrack for Vikram (Anniyan really should have been by Rahman, but, oh well), and the Shankar/ARR albums are generally enjoyable, even if very few moments in them touch greatness.
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July 15, 2012 at 8:29 AM
…Egad. Apart from “Raavanan/Raavan”, of course…
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July 15, 2012 at 8:46 AM
Actually think the best of Shankar and Rahman’s collaborations are second only to the Ratnam soundtracks.
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July 15, 2012 at 8:54 AM
I like Muthalvan a lot, but don’t find the others at the same level.
In general, I’d take the best of ARR/Bhartiraj over ARR/Shankar (although the former is more about songs than albums)…
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July 15, 2012 at 8:56 AM
…That being said, there is a compulsive “fun” element to Kaadhalan (and Usilambatti is one of the greats for sure), and even as late as Enthiran that aspect survives…
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July 15, 2012 at 9:07 AM
I’d take Karuthamma over many Rahman soundtracks. Just consider Gentleman, Kadhalan, Muthalvan, and Indian some of the more foundational, important moments in Rahman’s career. And more recently Enthiran is one of his most underrated soundtracks.
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July 15, 2012 at 9:12 AM
Ah yes, Karuthamma has such a wonderful, mellow vibe — perhaps the closest ARR has come (maybe Anthimandaarai as well) to the music of the Malayalam films of the 1980s that I’ve seen (admittedly, not very many)…
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July 15, 2012 at 9:12 AM
Absolutely!
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July 15, 2012 at 8:48 AM
Hope this in some way extends the sci-fi chapter Shankar began with Enthiran.
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July 15, 2012 at 9:14 AM
yes exactly.. I’m looking for something from him which even if not sci-fi extends his interests in ‘fantasy’ and makes possible something as definitive as Enthiran with Vikram. Easily my most awaited Indian film without exception.
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July 15, 2012 at 9:34 AM
Yes this one and Kadal I’ll be awaiting most…certainly will be catching these on the big screen.
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July 15, 2012 at 9:35 AM
of course I forgot about Kadal!
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July 15, 2012 at 9:30 PM
Fantastic! Imagination drips from the poster..not necessarily in the “postural” sense but mainly in the colour it uses and the effect it produces!
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August 27, 2014 at 11:14 AM
Vikram as Wolf Man in ‘Ai’?
http://www.indiaglitz.com/Vikram-as-wolf-man-in-ai-tamil-news-112805
IndiaGlitz
[Wednesday, August 27, 2014]
There isn’t a day passing without any surprises from team ‘AI’, the latest one is, the producer has revealed that; Vikram has undergone lots of trouble to sport the look of a Wolf Man. In order to sport this look, Vikram has put on 50+ kgs and shed 70kgs later to finish the rest of the portions.
The picture of Wolf Man was already on the net, but the picture does not reveal the face of Vikram. It shows the left wrist and the makeup man is busy doing his work. Now, after the press meet of Aascar Ravichandran we are getting some sort of idea about the look and the photo which is already doing its rounds.
Su Ba, the dialogue writer for ‘Ai’ has posted saying, the letter ‘Ai’ carries different meanings such as, King, Leader, Soft, Beauty, Teacher, and Poison. If we go by the synonym of the letter ‘Ai’, the story could be a mixture of all the above and the movie buffs will be assured of a feast!
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August 27, 2014 at 11:24 AM
very interesting! Looks to be another one of those ‘ultimate’ films from Shankar. Notice by the way how and despite all the Ajith, Vijay pretenders, and despite all of Surya’s masala success and also accepting Vikram’s own missteps and in general mysterious angst about his career since Anniyan.. despite all of this Shankar has done his last four films with either Vikram or Rajni! ‘Nuff said!
Leaving this aside it’s interesting how between Anniyan and then Robot and now if this news is true Shankar seems to have crossed over into a different realm of the ‘heroic’. Now it is no longer just the hero with the superhero-like secret or a hero with a kind of comic book alter ego. It is in fact a hero who can only become one by delving into a darker ‘beastly’ side. With Rajni it was the machine, a kind of compromise on Shankar’s part perhaps because Rajni is now too old to do this sort of thing (I could easily see a younger Rajni doing exactly this). But with Vikram there is the sense in which (and looking at his larger history) in which the hero has quite often been marked by the ‘repressed anthropological elemental man’ other. In Anniyan Shankar took it to a certain extreme by making him the figure from hell. This still operated within the bounds of a comic book/graphic novel archive. I’m not saying the Wolfman is original by any means but within Vikram’s history it acquires a certain charge.
In any case easily my most awaited Indian film of any kind.
And I must finally thank you for getting me away from that other absurd debate!
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August 27, 2014 at 11:30 AM
Shankar did Nanban with Vijay. I am not sure why but I find Vikram quite uninteresting of late. Infact I dont recollect anything after Anniyan where I truly liked him. I mean he is a very good actor surely but like Suriya has become disillusioned on the kind of roles that he should be doing. Both of them should undergo a crash course of ‘How to select a movie’ from Aamir urgently or else we are going to be robbed of two serious talents in Tamil cinema.
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August 27, 2014 at 3:13 PM
yeah that was a bit of a quickie for him, a way to cash in on 3I. It wasn’t an ambitious project in any sense.
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August 28, 2014 at 6:53 AM
Satyam: You might want to put up a post on Rajni’s upcoming “Lingaa”. Also has Sonakshi and Anushka Shetty with K. S. Ravikumar directing. Releases on Diwali alongwith Ai
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August 28, 2014 at 10:29 AM
somehow neglected to put up a post on this earlier. will probably wait for the motion poster now. Didn’t know they were both releasing on Diwali. Odd!
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August 28, 2014 at 6:46 AM
This is going to be my Diwali film-
http://www.behindwoods.com/tamil-movies-cinema-news-14/the-unimaginable-50-second-ai-teaser-an-exclusive-review.html
“This being the case, a few of us at Behindwoods recently met the maverick producer for an extensive interaction and also joined the lucky select few to get a glimpse at the 50 seconds rough cut teaser. This teaser carried a ‘dummy music score’ and not Rahman’s, it must be noted. Ravichandran reiterated that the Vikram which we were going to see was a result of extensive make-up and not computer generated imagery by any means. What we saw left us speechless and absolutely stunned!
The teaser packs visuals of Vikram in various makeovers
– as a cool and handsome dude romancing Amy Jackson in exotic visuals in typical Shankar style.
– as an intense body builder sporting a fabulous physique and a thick moustache
– as a growling beastly creature (werewolf / gorilla-man) with hair all over the body, wild teeth and horns above. The presence of Vikram in this make-over is really intriguing and one wonders if this is just for a dream song sequence or for some actual scenes too.
– as a deformed, crippled person (sporting a hood) with a heavily disfigured face and limbs, due to some sort of allergic skin reaction. Seeing Vikram in this avatar, the 1980 Hollywood movie ‘Elephant Man’ might come to mind for those who have seen it.
It took some time for us to fathom what we saw and we asked for a repeat of the teaser, which the producer happily obliged. The visuals of Vikram first working out in a room packed with mirrors and then standing in the same room in the aforementioned disfigured, crippled form, gives us a little idea of the film’s plot.
The action sequences are grand and along the lines of what Shankar has envisaged in his glorious career till date. The exotic locations and the visual of Vikram riding a bike which keeps ‘transforming’, again screams SHANKAR and his brand of grandeur.
Anyone who sees this remarkably impactful teaser would keep rewinding what he / she saw, to relive the experience over and over again. If a rough 50 second teaser could leave such a long-lasting impact, what will the actual movie result in? The prospects are endless.
Shankar, Aascar Films, Chiyaan Vikram and the whole crew have taken a major step to take Indian cinema to the next level and make the world stop and take notice of our movie industry. Ravichandran’s pride and satisfaction at Shankar’s end product seems totally justified.
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August 28, 2014 at 6:50 AM
I too think the Wolfman look might only be for a song (the song might be on the lines of Kilimanjaro)-
http://www.timesofindia.com/entertainment/tamil/movies/news/Sneak-peak-Vikrams-Ai-50-second-teaser/articleshow/41071693.cms
“And the song, Ennodu Nee Irundhaal, a fantasy number on the lines of The Beauty and the Beast picturized on the lead pair, is shot like an international music video. Vikram appears as a Wolfman-like creature with horns while Amy Jackson is the damsel in distress. The huge set, resembling a creepy cavern, and the makeup and costumes of the supporting dancers resemble something you would see in a Guillermo del Toro film.
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September 2, 2014 at 6:43 PM
Satyam: Thank you for that very informative second para. I think Vikram has his own intervention between the 2 Shankar created mythic-masala modes (Anniyan and Endhiran) in the form of Kanthasamy where you have the true Masala (super)hero which itself is ‘parodied’ by the cock character. In some ways this tells us that there is no road ahead for either the Masala hero or the superhero. I bring the latter bit, because notice how even in Hollywood, apart from Nolan’s Batman Trilogy (though one should take note that atleast as far as his villains are concerned, Nolan continues to make them less mythic and more ‘realistic’/human like. Even Gotham becomes far less mythic in Nolan’s world. Now compare that to Burton’s “Batman Returns” where there is a terrific DeVito’s Penguin goes to visit the grave of his parents with Elfman’s hauntic score playing- you would never find a scene similar to this in Nolan’s Batman films), most of the the recent superhero films which have been really liked by critics are the ones where the ‘superhero’ part of the equation has been toned in favour if “lighter, fun and more human moments” or whatever- so something like Avengers which trended very strongly and got rave reviews by the critics focused on the ‘fun’ element a lot, which is to say that a lot of critics praised it because inspite of having some iconic superheroes, the film never took the superhero angle very seriously. The best example here is the recent Guardian of Galaxy- every critic who liked (and there were lots of them) kept focusing this is so unlike the boring by-the-numbers Marvel superhero film because it is not all self-serious or whatever (in fact Guardians is the ‘lightest’ Marvel film ever). So people don’t want a straight-superhero film anymore (X-Men if course is a different deal, but here selling point are the ‘existential themes’ etc. Of course First Class was hardly similar to another Superhero Team film).
BTW not sure if you are aware but Ai is written by the famous Tamil pulp writer-duo “Subba/Subha” (you of course must have read their works. But for someone like me who doesn’t follow Tamil at all, I am extremely thankful to this Chennai based Blaft Publications who brought out a superb English translation of some of the stories of famous Tamil pulp writers, including Subba, in a collection called “Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction”…anyway that’s how I became acquainted with the works of this duo). I am pointing this out because one of the reasons why Ai might contain so many elements and plot-strands (almost like a kitchen-sink of things) is not just because Shankar is helming it but because Subba are also involved; the previous film for which they wrote- K. V. Anand’s “Maattrraan”- had elements as diverse as conjoined twins, scientists experimenting with multi-DNA genomes, Barcelona Olympic Games atheletes, a memory-booster energy-drink, a runaway rollercoaster, a lot of globe-trotting by the hero and the girl, auction of Saroja Devi’s hairpiece, a bhoomi-pooja conducted under the auspices if Gujarat’s Chief Minister etc all wrapped around the theme of a cross-border conspiracy thriller which involves a ‘huge experiment gone horribly wrong’ (from the looks of it Ai too might have this ‘experiment’ bit). These folks have one helluva of an imagination. And what really impresses me is the sort of intellectual curiousity of these guys- they are so acquainted of international topics which will all be there in their and yet it would all centre around very local central-theme. Even Hindi has a very strong history (and some of the writers are still very active) of pulp-writing, but the Bollywood writers and directors are simply not interested in tapping into this very rich pop-cultural archive (they should take the example of Enthiran- where the plot had mentions of Newton and Asimov, was far more scientifically accurate than a lot of Hollywood sci-fi films, and yet sonehow Shankar was able to make a “Tamil” out of this sort of subject).
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August 28, 2014 at 5:07 PM
This thing has been in production for eons!
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September 11, 2014 at 12:24 PM
Terrific! Can’t wait for the trailer-
[added to post]
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September 11, 2014 at 8:44 PM
yeah this is one film it’s getting impossibly hard to wait for!
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September 11, 2014 at 12:33 PM
Ha! This is damn cool-
https://mobile.twitter.com/shankarshanmugh/status/510085858871873537/photo/1
And with both Schwarzenegger and Rajni attending the music launch, Shankar has turned this into the ‘film event’ of the year.
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September 12, 2014 at 5:57 PM
Intrigued. But the ugly side is The Elephant Man. Definitely Elephant Man.
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September 13, 2014 at 12:47 AM
WOW!!!
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September 13, 2014 at 3:35 AM
I might be missing something in between, but the last mainstream Indian film which had such terrific posters was Mangal Pandey (though I did enjoy the desi oil-painted Rowdy Rathore ones. Also the Jigarthanda ones from this year were pretty cool).
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September 13, 2014 at 8:54 AM
I might also be missing something because the posters actually feel a bit less than polished to me. But I’m equally hopeful that the trailers will put any concerns to rest. And having said all this, I’ll of course still take something from Shankar that’s not got the latest greatest sfx if it shows Enthiran-level imagination. Really looking forward to this.
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September 13, 2014 at 10:33 AM
these aren’t the best posters ever by any means but I was very intrigued by the second one. And these are probably ‘work in progress’ posters in any case.
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September 13, 2014 at 11:13 AM
I should have framed my sentence better, what I meant to say was that purely at the concept level (and with regards to “creativity”) itself these posters beat everything else in sight as far mainstream Indian cinema is concerned. I do of course agree that the 2nd poster from the top looks “less than polished”. But I don’t have a problem with the top one. In any case GF I am happy that this poorly thought-out comment of mine got you to comment on the blog 🙂 . Atleast you should put up your thoughts on the films you have seen of late (Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam…anything- not sure if you have seen it yet, but Shaji Karun’s “Swapaanam” was out earlier this year and the DVD has been out for quite sometime now) as and when you get time.
I don’t think “imagination” is going to be an issue here not just because it is Shankar, but also because Subba have scripted this and they have a habit of throwing everything in the plot (Maattrraan!). In any case I am sure that the film will be very rich on thematic and conceptual elements (even Maattrraan seemed to have all of this, just that it was so poorly directed that it turned out to be a hot mess)- hopefully since Shankar is not K. V. Anand, he should be able to blend these elements into a cohesive whole.
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September 13, 2014 at 11:14 AM
on that note really excited about the soundtrack release..
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September 13, 2014 at 11:20 AM
LOL, Shankar has got a separate poster for the track list as well- https://twitter.com/shankarshanmugh/status/510751834311389185/photo/1
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September 13, 2014 at 11:35 AM
5 tracks here.. sounds about right for Shankar though some of his older soundtracks had more songs.
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October 19, 2014 at 4:41 AM
The latest buzz is that Vikram’s “I” will not be released on 14 November as the post-productions works of the multiple versions are taking more time than expected. Along with it, they have planned a mega-event for the audio launch function of the Telugu version of the film.
Aascar Ravichandran has roped in Hollywood actor Jackie Chan for the music release. It takes a lot of preparations for the event and the team will not get sufficient time to promote the film. So, they have reportedly pushed the release. The forthcoming Tamil film might now hit the screens on 28 November.
Sources say that “I” will not be delayed further as Rajinikanth’s “Lingaa” is scheduled for 12 December release. The latest date 14 November ensures that both the films have a good gap to avoid clash at the Kollywood box office.
Meanwhile, the “I” team is fully busy with the post-production works. The team is also getting ready for the audio launch function of its Telugu version, which will happen soon. On the other end, the producer has also planned international premieres for the film. For the US premiere, he has invited Hollywood actor Sylvester Stallone, who has agreed to watch the Tamil film.
http://www.ibtimes.co.in/vikrams-i-release-date-delayed-further-611594
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December 23, 2014 at 1:23 AM
Have a look at this poster. “Striking” would be a huge understatement.
[added to post]
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December 24, 2014 at 7:02 PM
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December 24, 2014 at 7:05 PM
somehow I doubt that’s reflective of the box office reality in each case!
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December 24, 2014 at 7:09 PM
Shankar is the I in I, Ajith is the ‘Yennai’ in ‘Yennai Arinthal’.
2 mega clashes.
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December 24, 2014 at 7:12 PM
Ha, this Vikram debate (even if he has lost ground in recent years) is an old and stale one. for some very strange reason Shankar decided to cast Vikram in this massive project of his. This after Anniyan. This after two Rajini films. Anyway I’m not going to get into a Vikram v Vijay/Ajith debate all over again!
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December 24, 2014 at 7:22 PM
Ajith does not need a Shankar to give 100C films (Mankatha, Arambam, Yennai arinthal). I don’t doubt Shankar’s capability to do it without Ajith. Shankar’s films have become an ‘Event’. Even with Arjun, he churned out the year’s bigger blockbuster in Mudhalvan. He pushes the boundaries of Tamil cinema. Shankar had approached Ajith for Enthiran after Kamal, Shahrukh, before doing double deal with Sivaji/Enthiran. I hope they join hands once. I know Shankar did a Nanban, but for Ajith, it’d be a different scale of film.
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December 31, 2014 at 6:38 AM
The first trailer of I (Tamil) was the best, but the recent song video I saw (dubbed in Hindi) was atrocious. In general, I have not been impressed by ARR’s music here — I’ve only heard it once, but nothing has compelled me to re-visit it yet… so far Kaaviyathalaivan has been the better ARR album for me (haven’t yet received my copy of Lingaa).
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January 14, 2015 at 1:16 PM
Speaking to CNN-IBN’s Entertainment Editor Rajeev Masand, Tamil actor Vikram, Writer Shankar, Music Director AR Rahman and Cinematographer PC Sreeram share their experiences behind the scenes of their upcoming Tamil romantic thriller ‘I’. The movie is set to be released on January 14.
http://ibnlive.in.com/videos/522289/between-takes-vikram-shankar-rahman-and-sreeram-talk-about-i.html
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