At the time of a film's release, there are two emerging indicators which are used to determine the eventual success or failure of the film. The first is the opening, or the collections. This is a fairly tangible pointer, as it is the summary of the box-office figures, the money collected by the film at all the various theatres around India and the world. This is either expressed in rupee terms or as a percentage of capacity (the total possible collection).

The other, less tangible indicator is the report. It is an indication as to how people have liked the film. It is the buzz, the word of mouth that theatre owners pick up at the end of the shows on the opening weekend, and pass on to distributors and the trade. It is the pointer as to what kind of business the film will settle down to.

The two are like body and soul, manifestation and essence. What the report predicts is which direction the collections will go in -- whether they will drop after the opening weekend(bad report), or build up, as is the case with superhit movies (very good report), or settle to a comfortable plateau (good report).

The report is what they call in the West ``the legs.'' So it is not unusual for the opening and the report to be contrary -- in the sense that a film may have, thanks to a large star cast and a massive publicity campaign, taken a huge opening, but with a disappointing report, the collections will drop like a stone from Monday onwards.

And on the flip side, a film which has had a moderate opening but is carrying very good reports will keep growing, opening in more and more theatres every week (like Sooraj Barjatya did with Hum Aapke Hain Kaun. He had enough confidence that the report of the film would carry it through, so he took the risk of releasing just 36 prints -- and the word of mouth was so strong that eventually more than 500 prints were released).

There is also one more kind of report -- the mixed report. It is the term that is used when conflicting opinionsemerge on a film. A number of big films have released this year to mixed reports -- some good reactions clouded by ominous rumblings that the film doesn't have the legs to recover its high cost. And a number of times these reports get murkier days after the release, with reactions more extreme in both directions.

One of the reasons for the mixed reactions is that a large number of the sources who provide negative reactions are ``well-wishers'' within the industry itself. They selectively pick up on any negative feedback for the film, and ignore or downplay any positive reaction, creating a counter-opinion to the genuine report.

But perhaps the most significant reason is related to who the films are now being made for. Meaning, over the last five years there have been a large number of films made for big-city audiences, because with the increase in the price of admission, an increasingly large proportion of the business is found in these centres. This coupled with the explosion in business in the overseasmarket for Hindi films has meant that it is not unusual for films to now target this urban audience as their primary audience.

It also means that there currently seems to be less scope for an pan-Indian hit, the film that worked as well in the heartland as in the cities. One of the year's biggest hits has, in fact, lost a substantial sum of money in Bihar and Bengal. On the other hand Sooryavansham is the year's biggest hit there, a film that did only average business elsewhere.

And so it seems that the theory for 1999 is that the mixed report is the only report -- having seemingly reached its zenith with Taal, where the only consensus so far seems to be on the fact that the reports are mixed. Until, of course, Sooraj Barjatya brings Hum Saath Saath Hain to the screens this Diwali, and redefines the heights of the pan-Indian hit.