Sivaji, Dasavatharam and their skyrocketing budget

Movie making is no child’s play. Tamil movie making is reaching new turns these days owing to their exorbitant budgets and mega star casts. What plays a significant role in deciding a mega movie? The hefty paycheck of the actors followed by the paycheck of directors and heroine of the movie.

While these aspects devour the lion’s share of the movie’s budget, the rest of the budget is spent on extravagant sets, ostentatious costumes, and exotic locales, which fulfills the budget. Interestingly, crores have become no matter of concern these days. Even a movie with a shoestring budget and not-a-star-thing-cast costs more than a crore in Tamil cinema and if the returns are satisfactory, producers resort to those kinds of movies in large numbers to try their luck at the box office. Many have managed to make money though that way. Rajini’s Sivaji and Kamal’s Dasavatharam are the two upcoming movies with out of the ordinary budget.


While Rajini’s movies are always meant to be flamboyant costing close to 40 crores, Kamal’s movies are nothing far behind. Kamal’s Dasavatharam is expected to touch a 35 crore budget mark owing to its added attractions like Himesh Reshmmiya, Mallika Sherawat, and Kamal himself in 10 different roles. Out of Sivaji’s budget, Rajini takes home close to 20 crore which is more than just half of the budget. Next comes Shankar with a paycheck of 3 crores. Rahman’s paycheck is two crores and the heroine Shreya is paid 30 lakhs.

Other expenses like special effects, technicians’ wages, outdoor shooting expenses – especially in locations outside India contribute to the rest of the budget. Luckily, and to the benefit of the producer, Rajini’s movies have a minimum guarantee all over the world. His flicks will be sold at a minimum of 30 lakhs per print, which almost covers up the entire budget that was spent on the moviemaking. If that is not enough, the movies promisingly make a huge profit almost all the time. In rare instances as in case of Baba, if the movie fails to make profits, Rajini calls on the distributors and disburses the loss incurred thereby equating the earning and the expenditure. While this is the case of Sivaji, Dasavatharam remunerates Kamal with a 7 crore paycheck. KS Ravikumar is next in the line with a crore’s pay check.

Himesh Reshmmiya is paid 50 lakh followed by Asin with a 45 lakh. Mallika Sherawat receives a whopping 40 lakh for her flicker of an appearance and Ravivarman, the cinematographer is paid 40 lakh as well. The rest of the budget is shared by the special effects, wages of technicians, and shooting abroad. Though Kamal’s movies are a safe bet for the producer, they do not have a minimum guarantee in all distributing areas and only have a say at the box office in metros. At the same time, Kamal’s movies manage to churn out huge expectations, where its run is based on the first report of the public – word of mouth precisely.. Under these circumstances, what remains to be seen is whether the movies are meeting the budget standards and proving to be monstrous hits. If the movies manage to pull off blockbusters at the box office, the producers and the distributors will definitely be in high spirits.

Perfect Length For Sex is 7,3 Minutes

Maybe men had it right all along: It doesn't take long to satisfy a woman in bed. A survey of sex therapists concluded the optimal amount of time for sexual intercourse was 3 to 13 minutes. The findings, to be published in the May issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine, strike at the notion that endurance is the key to a great sex life.

If that sounds like good news to you, don't cheer too loudly. The time does not count foreplay, and the therapists did rate sexual intercourse that lasts from 1 to 2 minutes as "too short."

Researcher Eric Corty said he hoped to ease the minds of those who believe that "more of something good is better, and if you really want to satisfy your partner, you should last forever."

The questions were not gender-specific, said Corty (who, it must be noted, is male). But he said prior research has shown that both men and women want foreplay and sexual intercourse to last longer.

Dr. Irwin Goldstein, editor of the Journal of Sexual Medicine, cited a four-week study of 1,500 couples in 2005 that found the median time for sexual intercourse was 7.3 minutes. (Women were armed with stopwatches.)

It's difficult for both older men and young men to make sexual intercourse last much longer, said Marianne Brandon, a clinical psychologist and director of Wellminds Wellbodies in Annapolis, Md.

"There are so many myths in our culture of what other people are doing sexually," Brandon said. "Most people's sex lives are not as exciting as other people think they are."

Fifty members of the Society for Sex Therapy and Research in the U.S. and Canada were surveyed by Corty, an associate professor of psychology at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, and student Jenay Guardiani. Thirty-four members, or 68 percent, responded, although some said the optimal time depended on the couple.

Corty said he hoped to give an idea of what therapists find to be normal and satisfactory among the couples they see.

"People who read this will say, 'I last five minutes or my partner lasts 8 minutes,' and say, 'That's OK,'" he said. "They will relax a little bit."

Happiest Americans are the oldest

Newsflash for rock stars and teenagers: It turns out everything doesn't go downhill as we age — the golden years really are golden.

That's according to eye-opening research that found the happiest Americans are the oldest, and older adults are more socially active than the stereotype of the lonely senior suggests.

The two go hand-in-hand — being social can help keep away the blues.

"The good news is that with age comes happiness," said study author Yang Yang, a University of Chicago sociologist. "Life gets better in one's perception as one ages."

Learning to be content
A certain amount of distress in old age is inevitable, including aches, pains and deaths of loved ones and friends. But older people generally have learned to be more content with what they have than younger adults, Yang said.

This is partly because older people have learned to lower their expectations and accept their achievements, said Duke University aging expert Linda George. An older person may realize "it's fine that I was a schoolteacher and not a Nobel prize winner."

George, who was not involved in the new study, believes the research is important because the general public continues to think that "late life is far from the best stage of life and they don't look forward to it."

Yang's findings are based on periodic face-to-face interviews with a nationally representative sample of Americans from 1972 to 2004. About 28,000 people aged 18 to 88 took part.

There were ups and downs in overall happiness levels during the study, generally corresponding with good and bad economic times. But at every stage, older Americans were the happiest.

While younger blacks and poor people tended to be less happy than whites and wealthier people, those differences faded as people aged.

In general, the odds of being happy increased 5 percent with every 10 years of age.

Overall, about 33 percent of Americans reported being very happy at age 88, versus about 24 percent of those age 18 to their early 20s. And throughout the study years, most Americans reported being very happy or pretty happy; less than 20 percent said they were not too happy.

A separate University of Chicago study found that about 75 percent of people aged 57 to 85 engage in one or more social activities at least every week. Those include socializing with neighbors, attending religious services, volunteering or going to group meetings.

Those in their 80s were twice as likely as those in their 50s to do at least one of these activities.

Both studies appear in April's American Sociological Review.

Myth of the isolated senior
"People's social circles do tend to shrink a little as they age — that is mainly where that stereotype comes from, but that image of the isolated elderly really falls apart when we broaden our definition of what social connection is," said study co-author Benjamin Cornwell, also a University of Chicago researcher.

The research rings true for 81-year-old George O'Hare, a retired Sears manager in Willowbrook, Ill. He's active with church, AARP and does motivational speaking, too. His wife is still living, and he's close to his three sons and four grandchildren.

"I'm very happy because I've made friends that are still living," O'Hare said. "I like to go out and speak in schools about motivation."

"Happiness is getting out and being with people, and that's why I recommend it," he said.

Ilse Siegler, an 84-year-old retired nurse manager in Chicago, has a slightly different perspective. Her husband died 35 years ago; she still misses him everyday.

She has vision problems and has slowed down with age. Yet, she still swims, runs a social group in her condo building, volunteers in a retirement home and is active with her temple. These all help "make life more enjoyable," she said.

While Siegler said these aren't the happiest years of her life, she's content.

"Contentment as far as I'm concerned comes with old age ... because you accept things the way they are," she said. "You know that nothing is perfect."

Cornwell's nationally representative study was based on in-home interviews with 3,005 people in 2005-06. While it didn't include nursing home residents, only about 4 percent of Americans aged 75 to 84 are in nursing homes, Cornwell said.

It's all good news for the aging population. However, Yang's study also found that baby boomers were the least happy. They could end up living the unfortunate old-age stereotype if they can't let go of their achievement-driven mind-set, said George, the Duke aging expert.

So far, baby boomers aren't lowering their aspirations at the same rate earlier generations did. "They still seem to believe that they should have it all," George said. "They're still thinking about having a retirement that's going to let them do everything they haven't done yet."

Previous research also has shown that mid-life tends to be the most stressful time, said Cornell University sociologist Elaine Wethington. "Everyone's asking you to do things and you have a lot to do. You're less happy because you feel hassled."

The new studies show "if you can make it through that," there's light at the end of the tunnel, Wethington said.

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Macho men don't always get the girl

Being an aggressive macho male doesn’t mean that you will always get the girl, for according to a new study, the fainthearted do also have a good chance of winning the heart of the fair damsel.

Researchers have for long been puzzled by the knowledge that if aggression makes men more likely to father kids, then all males should be selected to be very aggressive. However, this is not the case.

In a study on fruit flies, the boffins carrying out the study noted that the females of the species sometimes choose males who do not fight, and sometimes choose males for no obvious reason.

This, they say, may help explain the large variation in aggressiveness in most species, including humans.

One reason for this variation, they added, could be that no fighting strategy works all the time.

“We showed in fruit flies that even the most genetically aggressive flies can have an Achilles heel, and lose against males who are (for the most part) wimps,” study leader Brad Foley, from the University of Southern California.

“There’s no single way to win a fight, or win mates. Females didn’t necessarily prefer aggressive males -- some males mated less when they lost fights, but some males mated more if they didn’t fight. Moreover, different females preferred different males.

“Unexpected interactions between individuals can define winners and losers (so-called ‘chemistry’). In order to understand why flies, and humans, and other animals, are so genetically different from each other, we need to stop imagining there's a ‘best’ kind of strategy,” he added.

The research team also included Larry Cabral of Cal State Sacramento (co-corresponding author with Foley), and Foley’s supervisor Sergey Nuzhdin, professor of molecular and computational biology at USC.

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Nude Bruni photo sells for $91,000 in NY auction (See Pic)

A nude photo of French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, standing in a pigeon-toed pose and covering her modesty with her hands, was sold on Thursday in New York for $91,000, more than 20 times its expected price. A buyer for a Chinese art collector bought the black-and-white image, taken by photographer Michel Comte in 1993 during her modeling days, Christie's auction house said. The sale of the photo has attracted attention since Bruni married French President Nicolas Sarkozy in February.

The photo had been expected to fetch between $3,000 and $4,000. It was auctioned as part of a sale of 140 photos from German collector Gert Elfering, which also features work by Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton and Peter Beard. An Avedon portrait of 1950s and 1960s French screen siren Brigitte Bardot sold for $181,000. It had been expected to garner between $80,000 and $120,000.

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Attractive people prefer one-night stands

Attractive women and square-jawed, masculine men are more likely to be interested in short-term sexual relationships or one-night stands, a new study has found. The study, by Durham University researchers, ties in with research carried out by the same team that found that women see masculine men as more likely to be unfaithful and be bad parents. Based on a survey of 700 heterosexuals, the study also found that when it comes to sex, young men and women have perspectives that are completely opposed to each other, reinforcing the Mars and Venus stereotype. Men prefer women who seem to be open to short-term sexual relationships, while women seem more interested in men who are potentially long-term relationship material. Findings of the study have been published in the latest issue of the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour. Participants in the study were shown pairs of photographs or "averaged" facial images of men and women in their early 20s with two opposing attitudes to relationships.

They were asked to choose the face that they felt would be more open to short-term sexual relationships, one-night stands and the idea of sex without love. They were also asked which face they thought was the most attractive for a long- or short-term relationship, who was more masculine or feminine, and who they thought was generally attractive. Women open to short-term sexual relationships were found to be more attractive, while men most open to casual sex were generally perceived as being more masculine-looking, with facial features including squarer jaws, larger nose and smaller eyes.

The study shows people can use their perceptions to make more informed partner selection depending on the type of relationship they are pursuing. It is a significant step in further understanding the evolution of partner choice. "Our results suggest that although some people can judge the sexual strategy of others simply from looking at their face, people are not always sure about their judgments possibly because the cues are very subtle," said co-author Lynda Boothroyd.

newby: ibnlive

It's a miracle: Pregnant man tells Oprah

A transgender man who is six months pregnant said in an interview aired by Oprah Winfrey on Thursday that he always wanted to have a child and considers it a miracle.

"It's not a male or female desire to have a child. It's a human desire," a thinly bearded Thomas Beatie said. "I have a very stable male identity," he added, saying that pregnancy neither defines him nor makes him feel feminine.

Beatie, 34, who lives in Oregon, was born a woman but decided to become a man 10 years ago. He began taking testosterone treatments and had breast surgery to remove glands and flatten his chest.

"I opted not to do anything with my reproductive organs because I wanted to have a child one day," he told the talk show host. Beatie's wife Nancy said she inseminated him with a syringe using sperm purchased from a bank.

Now, he said, his size 32 jeans are getting a bit tight and his shirts are a bit stretched. Nancy, to whom he has been married for five years and who has two grown daughters by a previous marriage, also appeared on the show, saying the couple's roles will not change once the baby is born.

"He's going to be the father and I'm going to be the mother," she said. Their marriage is legal and he is recognized under state law as a man. The couple was shown on video provided by People Magazine, which collaborated with Winfrey on the show, showing the room that will be the baby's nursery.

Beatie said the little girl was going to be "daddy's little princess." The couple was also filmed in their hometown of Bend, Oregon, where he underwent an ultrasound showing the baby in his womb.

"I can't believe it. I can't believe she's inside me," Beatie said while watching the ultrasound image. "We see her as our little miracle." His obstetrician, Dr Kimberly James, who practices in the Oregon town, told Winfrey, "This is a normal pregnancy."

She said Beatie stopped taking testosterone two years ago and his levels of the hormone are normal. "This baby is totally healthy," she said. "This is what I consider a normal pregnancy."

The couple said they had been turned down by a number of other doctors before James agreed to take him as a patient. The couple said an earlier attempt at pregnancy failed when he developed a tubal pregnancy, resulting in surgery that removed his Fallopian tubes.

The couple said they decided to go public with the pregnancy because they wanted to control the way the news got out. "We're just going to have the baby now," Nancy said. "If we have to, we'll go hide."

The couple runs a small business in Bend and has some savings, she said. In addition, Beatie is working on a book about his childhood, his mother's suicide and his life growing in Hawaii where, as a girl, he was a teen beauty pageant contestant and earned a martial arts black belt.

Winfrey called the development "a new definition of what diversity means for everybody."

newsby: ibnlive

Preity injured at IPL launch, gets a black eye

Actress Preity Zinta, co-owner of the Indian Premier League's Mohali team, suffered a minor injury during its formal launch in Mohali, on the outskirts of Chandigarh.

"I don't know how it happened," Preity said. "But in the melee at the launch (Monday), an elbow came and hit me straight in the eye. I had to go through the event with a black eye wearing dark glasses."

Eyewitnesses said there was a huge rush at the launch, and somebody appeared to have thrown something at Preity. As one of her bodyguards lunged to catch whatever had been thrown, his elbow appeared to have hit Preity in the eye.

After the event, the actress spent the evening nursing her eye with ice packs.

"It will swell a bit. I guess it's bound to happen when one is in such situations," she said.

The IPL Mohali team is led by Yuvraj Singh. The tournament starts April 18.