HUM DONO RANGEEN

HUM DONO RANGEEN had a grand premiere in Mumbai, but will the coloured classic be rage? We find out. In a star studded evening in Mumbai, the colour version of Dev Anand's classic 'Hum Dono', premiered as 'Hum Dono-Rangeen', on Feb 3, even as the response to such efforts evoke mixed reactions from cineastes. While Bollywood will come out with more such coloured classics, the art house movie connoisseurs are against the move to colour path-breaking films like Satyajit Ray's PANTHER PANCHALI. Leading B-town actors- Ranbir Kapoor, Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Govinda attended the premiere of the film in a Mumbai theatre and they were effusive in praise of the film. "Just returned home from the hum dono premiere and I am deeply touched to see the love of my fans, I would like to thank Goldie my brother for making such a brilliant filmm [sic]," tweeted Dev Anand. "I thank aamir, kiran, salman, ranbir, govinda, imtiyaz, Faisal, sunny, dharam, shatru, jaaved, shabana, ashutosh, aditya kapoor, Sanjay khan, naseer, Also uddhav thackrey his family, adnan, Ketan Desai and all my friends and sorry if I missed any names but love you all [sic]," he tweeted earlier. Salman Khan tweeted after watching the colour version of the popular 1961 film: "Must must must watch hum dono." Released in 1961, HUM DONO was produced by Dev Anand and Navketan films. The now-in-colour film released on Friday. Earlier, iconic Indian Hindi films like MUGHL-E-AZAM and NAYA DAUR were released in colour format and they were appreciated by the viewers though the response was never too overwhelming. However, colouring a film is no less a herculean task. According to Ravi Chopra, who re-released his father B R Chopra's NAYA DAUR in colour, earlier said in interviews that one of the technical challenges is to ensure that the colour is perfect and looks good since the original colour is not known. He said modern softwares help in colour selection. He said he chose to colour the film since many among the young people had not seen the film, a classic according to him, since it was not in colour. It took nearly two and half years to colour the film in the course of which the sound quality was also improved. However, a poll conducted by a Bengali channel showed that 96 percent of the viewers do not want to see path-breaking Bengali movie PATHER PACHALI directed by Satyajjit Ray to be released in colour version. The opinion was PATHER PACHALI needs no support of colour to improve its quality or make it appear more attractive to contemporary viewers. According to Satyajit Ray Society, a Mumbai-based organisation, that worked on MUGHL-E-AZAM and NAYA DAUR, had shown willingness to colour Ray's PATHER PANCHALI. But the maestro's son Sandip Ray called the project 'atrocious�. Mrinal Sen, Pradip Mukhopadhyay, Barun Chanda, Buddhadeb Dasgupta and Gautam Ghosh are leading names from Bengali film industry who had come out and expressed their shock at the very idea of colouring PATHER PANCHALI, though they are not at all against colour in cinema per se.