It has been quite a while since the red wine beauty Parvathi Melton has been seen onscreen. Barring the item song in ‘Dookudu’, Parvathi was not around. But now she is back and that too with a bang it appears. This is through the film ‘Srimannarayana’.

Now, what is catching the attention of many is the new look of Parvathi. She has put on few pounds and inside talk is that she has done that on the behest of Nandamuri Balakrishna, the hero of the film. As such, the cine folks say Balayya likes his heroines to be voluptuous.

Given Parvathi’s tall frame, she would be a vision of beauty if she has few extra pounds. Ironically, Parvathi is one of those rare beauties who never got her due despite having the right sex appeal and natural beauty. With the new look of ‘Srimannarayana’ it remains to be seen if she can prove her mettle or not. Let us hope she does.

Irrespective of the mixed reviews and average talk, Karthi’s Shakuni is making a merry at AP and Tamil Nadu box office. The movie has reportedly collected 10 Crores net in both the versions combined on the first day. And the collections of the first weekend is still rock steady. There are no big movies lined up in both the languages in the next two weeks in both the languages, Trade analysts are predicting that with good promotion, the movie might be able to recover its costs in worst case.

If it happens, the market of Karthi will rapidly improve in Andhra Pradesh.

Veerabhadram Chowdary who is on a high with the success of Poolarangadu was on cloud nine when Nagarjuna immensely liked the script he narrated. The movie titled ‘Bhai’ was to be produced by ML Kumar Chowdary who even gave some advance to Nagarjuna and the director. However, ML Kumar Chowdary ran in to severe financial problems and his previous movie Adhinayakudu release was delayed by more than 6 months. Hence Nagarjuna had decided to not to work in his production.

However, he was very interested in Bhai. Therefore, he had returned the advances with interest to Kumar Chowdary and will now be producing the movie himself. The movie will go on to sets some time in September. More details of the project are awaited.

Nandamuri Balakrishna’s Adhinayakudu was released earlier this month and his next movie, Uu Kodathara Ulikki Padathara is gearing up for release in July. And on the other side, The shooting of his next movie, Srimannarayana is nearing completion and will be releasing in August.

His Srimannarayana is shot in under 70 days. The entire shooting will be wrapped up on 28th of this month with the songs shoot in Italy and the movie will enter in to extensive post production phase.

Parvati Melton and Isha Chawla are playing the female leads. ‘Samanyudu’ fame Ravi Chawali is the director. Ramesh Puppala is producing the movie under Yellow Flowers banner. Chakri is composing the music.

Goan beauty Ileana, who recently wrapped up the shoot for her Telugu film “Devudu Chesina Manushulu”, broke down in tears on the last day of the film’s shooting it seems. Sources say that the actress was reportedly emotional with the film’s crew after working with the lot of bonding. Now this gesture from Ileana comes in as a complete contrast to her behavior during her early days in the film industry.

It was reported that when Ileana was new to the industry, she hardly used to get into conversation with others. The actress used to walk back to her caravan and leave the sets silently. But all that is passe, as the actress started getting emotional these days. Well, after all, Ileana is also one among “Devudu Chesina Manushulu”.

In a movie-crazy city like Hyderabad, the acid test for any Telugu film is to win the audiences’ hearts. And the first-ever Hyderabad Times Film Awards instituted by The Times of India gave readers a platform to make their verdict loud and clear!

The nominations who deserved to win top honours were announced in Hyderabad Times and readers voted . After over a month of voting, the winners were selected based on our vote and 7.9 lakh online votes.

After the disastrous flop of ‘Nandiswarudu’ Nandamuri Taraka Ratna has changed his route and doing films in a row. His quest for a successful movie is still on and is now looking to explore new genres to bag his first hit. Now Tarak is doing a comedy film title ‘Mike Testting…1 4 3 !’ under Veeru K direction.

On other hand Tarak is getting ready to do a romantic love story. Vijetha is the title of the movie. Sanjana and Sweta basu are roped in as female leads. This movie is touted to be a romantic comedy entertainer . P Udaya Bhaskar directing this movie while V Dorasami Raju producing this movie on VMC productions banner.

Currently songs recording of the movie is going on under the supervision of music director Arjun. Krishnudu, Chandra Mohan, M S Narayana , Shayaji Shinde, and Jansi are acting in prominent roles in this movie. Vijetha is expected to hit the sets in the month of July.

The essence of music and the love that many have for it need not be explained. And the key reason for that are few gifted musicians whose compositions have struck the chords of many hearts. A legend in that area is Ilaiyaraja. Aptly titled as ‘Isai Gnani’ in Tamil, the musical maestro has got phenomenal achievements.

Now, he is adding another feather onto his cap. News is that Ilaiyaraja’s old song has been chosen to be played during the grand opening ceremony of the International Olympics 2012 at London. This is being orchestrated by the famous Danny Boyle of ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ fame.

This is going to be part of the world music which would be played during the opening. The song happens to be from the Tamil movie ‘Ram Lakshman’ which came in 1981 starring Kamal Haasan. The track goes ‘Nanthaan Ungappanda…’ ironically it is heard that Ilaiyaraja was surprised that this number was chosen as it was not one of his popular ones.

With the mega-knot made, there seems to be a scanner over the hot acts of Ramcharan in the future ventures. It is heard that Upasna is all set to monitor Charan now.

Apparently, Charan is heading straight to the shooting of his upcoming flick with VV Vinayak after finishing his Europe tour with Upasna. He will be filming some red hot duets with big eyed Kajal Agarwal in some exotic locales. An inside bird revealed that Upsi is going to accompany Cherry to this shoot. Though acting is a profession, there will some sort of discomfort when a hero is romancing his heroine before family members. Irrespective of the maturities and brought ups, no girl can take it simple.

We have to see how Charan will manage Upasna when he is acting ‘hot’ with Kajal. However, sources are saying that hot moves will be tinted down to simple as the Mega-Kodalu is present on sets. 

Producer MS Raju was once called as Mega Maker and Sankranthi Raju as he had massive hits during the Pongal season. All his films used to have that positive vibe around them and he seemed like a man who will never get the taste of a failure. But things changed quickly for this ‘big’ producer as a row of flops took a toll upon him.

Failures like Pournami, Aata and Vaana forced him to take a break and ever since he has been trying to find a way out of the hole that he had fallen in to. Big stars used to dream about starring in MS Raju’s film in the past. But after a series of failures no one showed interest to team up with him. His only hope has been his son Sumanth Ashwin, who was then waiting to face the camera. Raju tried to rope in star directors for his son’s debut, but that didn’t materialize.

Finally he has donned the director’s cap for Sumanth’s debut Tooneega Tooneega. This film has taken so long in the pre production and production stage. When Raju felt that it is completely ready to have a go at the box office, in came a shock in the form of Rajamouli. With Eega release being announced on July 6, Raju had to postpone Tuneega to another date. A-big-film-a-week lineup at the Tollywood box office is not allowing Raju to find a ‘safe space’ for his film. Eega’s blow proved deadly for the Tooneega and we have to wait and watch if MS Raju is confident enough to pit his film against the heavyweights or not.

Gone are the days when high end remunerations were meant only for heroes and directors. Today, even heroines are demanding quite a bit. Though this culture is yet to spread fully in Tollywood, it must be said that the likes of Tamannah, Kajal Agarwal and others are already touching Rs 1.5 crores.

Amidst this, one sexy siren who has received Rs 50 lakhs is considered the costliest heroine. She is none other than Shriya Saran. It is heard that Shriya got this amount for her bilingual venture titled ‘Chandra’ which is being made in Kannada and Tamil. With this, she is the most expensive actress of Sandalwood.

While that is a great achievement there, it may not be so for Shriya personally. For someone who has worked with the likes of Rajnikanth, Chiranjeevi, Nagarjuna etc, Shriya’s profile is far higher but when bad time is running nothing much can be done. Her receding opportunities and lack of offers landed her with ‘Chandra’ and Shriya is making the most of it now.

Perhaps the only family in the entire Indian film fraternity where the father-in-law and daughter-in-law are still working in films is the Bachchan family. The duo of Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Bachchan is the hottest and sought after stars in tinsel town.

But recently Amitabh seems to have escaped from a delicate situation, that of seeing Aishwarya smoking. Well, Ash was the first choice for the film ‘Heroine’ being directed by the hard hitting Madhur Bhandarkar. But Ash’s pregnancy came in and the role went to the hot beauty Kareena Kapoor.

Now, it is heard that Big B is sighing a breath of relief after watching the teasers and stills of the film. Apparently, there are lot of smoking and drinking scenes along with some raunchy skin show. If his ‘Bahurani’ was part of the project then Amitabh would have faced a barrage of questions from his fans.Lucky you Big B!