Paramasivam Pillai, a city-based industrialist, purchased a landmark cinema multiplex here through public auction for over Rs.80 crore, its auctioneers said Friday.

“With four cinemas and a seating capacity of over 2,300 per show, the Udhayam complex is one of the biggest multiplexes in Asia in the heart of the city. To our knowledge, the property’s new owners intend continuing with its present business,” a spokesman of Jones Lang Lasalle Meghraj said so.

“When the whole world is talking of global meltdown affecting real estate business, it is heartening to see that the property was purchased at almost three times of its guideline value of Rs.29 crore,” he added.

The auction of the 1.31 acre property was completed Thursday under the supervision of Madras High Court Judge K.P. Sivasubramanian.

Veteran movie director Bharathiraja Friday said that his attempt to chase all “Tamil traitors” from the state would begin May 4 from the temple town of Kanchipuram.

“All those who are Tamil traitors, supporting the intentions of the Sinhalese chauvinists against the Tamil ethnic minority in Sri Lanka have no place in Tamil Nadu,” Raja told reporters here.

Reacting to questions on his itinerary focusing only on Congress nominees’ constituencies, Raja said: “We are focusing against all those contestants whose parties have stabbed Tamils in the back and forced them to suffer a fate worse than those of Jews earlier in the Middle-East.”

Raja described Union Minister E.V.K.S. Elangovan as an “alien residing in the state purely as an economic refugee”.

Elangovan is the grandson of late Tamil social reformer Periyar E.V. Ramaswami Naicker.

Directors Seeman (presently on bail after being detained under the National Security Act for anti-national speeches), Sunderrajan and R.K. Selvamani besides a number sympathizers of the banned Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) also addressed the journalists.

Oscar winning music director AR Rahman of Slumdog Millionaire fame, his Sri Lankan co-performer MIA of the hit O Saya song and Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani have made it to the Time’s 100 list of the World’s Most Influential People.

The new list to be published in the May 11 annual Time 100 issue is the pick of the magazine’s editors and may not be confused with the popular choice in TIME.com’s online poll that “just happened to be” won on Monday by “moot – the mysterious 21-year-old creator of the influential Web message board 4chan.or”.

“In our annual TIME 100 issue, we do the impossible: name the people who most affect our world,” said the editors as they relegated moot to the 35th position and instead chose ailing Democratic senator Edward Kennedy for the top spot.

British premier Gordon Brown makes it to the second spot, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in the eighth place, Pakistan army chief Ashfaq Kayani is sitting pretty at the 19th position, just a spot ahead of President Barack Obama.

AR Rahman, who gets the 59th position in the editors list, “won two Oscars, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for giving Slumdog Millionaire its frenetic sound”, notes Padma Lakshmi actress, author and the host of Bravo’s Top Chef, in an accompanying piece.

“In India, a country of a billion inhabitants, where film and pop music are one, AR Rahman, 43, dominates the music industry so totally that he has supplied the sound track for a whole generation,” she writes.

“A veritable Pied Piper, he has shaped modern India’s music for more than a decade. Now the ‘Mozart of Madras’ has the world’s foot tapping along with him,” adds Lakshmi, noting the award winning Jai Ho is now the campaign song for India’s Congress Party.

Vikas Swarup, the author of the novel Q&A that became the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire, describes Nandan Nilekani, placed 31, “as a middle-class kid from a small town, (who) rose to become a co-founder and co-chairman of Infosys Technologies and a key player in India’s growth story”.

“In a blog post about Slumdog Millionaire, Nandan Nilekani alluded to the film’s valuable subtext – that it doesn’t matter where you come from, only where you are headed,” he writes. “That could serve equally as an epigraph for Nandan’s own life.”

“As the new India, fuelled by its robust democracy and favorable demographics, seeks to make the transition from a developing nation to a developed one, it will need the vision and talent of people like Nandan Nilekani,” Swarup adds.

The great thing about MIA, as Maya Arulpragasam placed 43rd is known, “is that she doesn’t have some global plan”, writes producer director Spike Jonze.

“She just has things she cares about and is interested in, from all over the world… She reacts to whatever is in front of her: ‘Those are booming Indian drums’, ‘That is a dope producer’, ‘Those kids are making sick beats’.”

“And she has great taste. Anyone can hear all this stuff, but to be able to curate it, you have to have taste, and Maya Arulpragasam, 33, has it,” he adds.

He is Kollywood’s answer to the proverbial phoenix. A hero in his own right, he is the darling for many fans, some of whom have literally laid their lives for thala’s film in the past

Actres karthika will enter wed-lock on May 18

Unnaipol Oruvan, Kamal Haasan’s current project, is n’t special simply because he is teaming up with Mohanlal for the first time in a Tamil film. The film also marks 50 years of the actor-director-producer-writer in tinsel town.

Synonymous with International Workers Day, or Labour Day, May Day aims to acknowledge the social and economic achievements of the labour movement.

Actor Karan, who is currently working on Kanakavel Kaaka and Kanda, is waiting for the release of his village flick, Malayan, whose audio was launched yesterday.

Trust an actress who has strayed into even English cinema to say this! Actress Shriya might be on a roll, splashing her name in all cinemas beyond geographical barriers, but the actress says she is in her comfort zone best in Tamil.

Here’s an actress who is firm and rooted in what she believes in.