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Off late, I’ve been party to a short film shoot and a mute spectator to a lot of other shorts around me. It’s refreshing to see so many new ideas and concepts – ranging from worst to interesting. The whole concept of ‘short films’ is still primitive in this part of the globe. There are numerous ‘aspirants’ – the so-called intellectual ‘film makers’ who have visualized their ‘dream short’ in their dreams, but when it comes to making one, they fall back.
The other day I was standing at the bus stop and I over heard two college students talking about a short film concept that they were planning to upload for some online competition. I guess I caught them in the midst of an argument they were having on which camera to use. One of them was a staunch SONY supporter while the …

Ram Gopal Verma, predictably, disappoints big time in this one. This film might create a history of sorts. Reviewers might run out of synonyms for the word ‘bad’.

The film begins almost quietly, as if scared to exist amidst all the voices of dissent around. You kind of like it. The now historic events happen without any whimper, and you feel you are watching any other B grade film. There is no laughs, no cries, no reactions. Soon you hear names that you couldn’t have escaped in your childhood Doordarshan days. And you wonder, is that so? No, I must be mistaken. And you see Raj and Bheeru/Heeru/Hero (whatever is correct as per numerology or IPR) trying to pitch in a contemporary version of the classic narrative. You begin to squirm at the atrocity, and a pretty expensive one at that. It keeps getting worse, the character sketches that could beat …

“Close your eyes… imagine you’re walking down a lonely path in the middle of a dense forest at around midnight. You’re entering the banyan grove- the residence of the evil spirits. You walk quietly, dragging your rubber soles through the mud, careful, so that you do not receive any attention that can turn out unpleasant. The banyan trees crowd over you. Everytime a skeletal root brushes your skin, your eyes make a quick circle to check if anything has moved. The wind picks up. Maybe it’s about to rain. White flashes and thunder. You can feel the dark omens in your gut, your mind reads them and goes in denial but the heart beats hard. You’re afraid to turn behind. Footsteps? No, can’t be. Denial. The wind gets colder but the forehead breaks out in sweat. Don’t look behind. Suddenly, a light in the distance, a tiny flame in an …

Best Read Plays in India

The Parliament Library is one of the richest repositories of books in India, and was established in the year 1921 to assist members of the Indian Legislature. These days, with the number of adjournments and walk-outs, it seems our MPs have nothing to do. So they make a dash to the Parliamentary Library and instead of autobiographies, biographies or monographs, they are reading plays.

According to “unconfirmed, totally basless reports”, this is what they are reading.

Absolute Hell as read by Manmohan Singh

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as read by Somnath Chatterjee

Happy Days as read by Pratibha Patil

Endgame as read by Prakash Karat (since he is not a member, he borrowed the play on Sharad Yadav’s membership card)

Look Back in Anger as read by George Fernandes

Much Ado About Nothing as read by Pranab Mukherjee and Arjun Singh

The Caretaker as read by Sonia Gandhi

Waiting for …

Rajat Kapoor is flush with Rs 20 crores from PNC..The deal to make six films.

Farhan Akhtar inks a deal with Studio 18 for Rs 230 crores..The deal is to make six films.

Indian Film Company to invest the money raised upto 50million pounds to make 40-50 films.Six of them have been announced.

Planman motion pictures is accelerating its film production business and ready to roll out its six projects.

The number six is coincidental..

What is essential is the announcement of so many projects by these production houses..There is nothing new in films being treated as a project..Because film is not only creative inputs, it requires so many other elements to be put together and tied up properly to bring it to the screens,monitors, LCDs, or mobile screens(in near future).

If ever there was any doubt about Bollywood being business, it is scotched with entry of corporate production houses,makeover of indie producers into …

It is the first step of getting a chance to make their dreams come true. And for fulfilling it, they prepare themselves as “the typical Indian cinema hero”.

Now how exactly does our “actor” prepare himself? He wears good filmy (ZATAK; JHATAK or whatever you call it) shirt, or ‘Eastman’ colored t-shirts; Six pocket denim with Nike, Adidas & Reebok look-alikes (‘Nikkei’, ‘addidass’ or ‘readbook’); Big branded watches (Look-alike is the keyword)

And how does he come to know about the audition? The answer is - the coordinator, (“Agent” as they refer themselves), calls or SMSes the ‘actors’ for the location of the studio & time of the audition. Most of the time he/she does this to save himself/herself from the wrath of the director for insufficient ‘actors’ for the audition.

Excited that he’s got THE CALL, our man leaves his residence (usually a rented one) a few hours in advance in …

iView Author:

SUBRAT
(Bangalore, India)

EMAIL:
withheld

I am often proved wrong with my hypotheses and it could well be the case
here. But when has that ever stopped me from grandstanding on them? I am
aware of only two spheres of activity where the foreplay and the after-play
(to coin a term) draw as much attention as the event itself. Since one of
them nestles itself securely at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
(along with hunger), it is the other one that will be possibly found
suitable for PFC audience.

What is it about movie trailers – the thrill of a discovery, the eternal
desire for clairvoyance; a glimpse into the future? Or about reviews – the
vicarious pleasure of watching others being evaluated, the satisfaction of
finding your own thoughts being articulated publicly to trash or praise
others? With that little tip of the hat to behavioural scientists, let’s
proceed.

It was tough for …

[putting the trailer up again, since we lost the last post due to the downtime]

Here’s the single Johnny Gaddaar track that was released yesterday. Listen, enjoy and go buy the whole track… Interesting to note that Sriram (Raghavan) gives the whole 70s retro look and feel to Johnny Gaddaar. References to the James Hadley Chase novel that Neil’s reading, the way the trailer starts, even the way Johnny Gaddaar the title on the poster is designed… The Johnny Gaddaar title track has this crazy weird energy to it…

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There are some directors in bollywood who were tired of the same old ghisa pita stories and decided to give audiences some new movies like Khosla ga Ghosla, EK Hasina Thi, Black Friday, Blue Umbrella, Ek Chalis ki last local etc., here are five movies from down south which I would like to *Introduce* — I chose the word introduce because, sadly, the main stream media avoided talking about most of these movies — that were, irrespective of their box office earnings, successful in their attempt to be different.

Mogudu, Pellam, O Dongodu (Husband, Wife, and a Thief)

Mogudu Pellam O Dongodu (MPOD) is a unique movie, probably the first of it’s kind in Telugu. It’s a movie with only 3 characters who, for different reasons, end up spending time confined to a one room.

Raja (Anand in Anand) and Shriya (the lass who saves Sivaji’s ass by waving her …

Greetings PFCites.

If you’re prone to uttering things like Civil Liberty, Freedom of Expression and Constitutional Right then you must take the following test.

To begin at the beginning, we celebrate 60 years of Independence by ruminating …

- The Rupee is on a new high vis a vis the US Dollar. So the Rupee calls the Dollar; and enquires, Are you peeved? Will you Nuke me?
- Speaking of being Nuked, the Iraqis were expected to rebuild their country in record time; and create a New Constitution (inclusive of wherefore, whereas and nevertheless). So they did the honourable thing. They used the un-used American Constitution
- UK had a high voter turnout of 95% for their local elections. The 5% who didnt vote were rich, wealthy Indians who are settled in the UK
- Schools and colleges will motivate students to set their mind free; although it is the one thing the brain …

iView Author:
SANTOSH (Bombay, India)

EMAIL:
withheld

I guess I would be among the first voices of dissent against the great maverick RGV, but bear with me till the end of the post and correct me if I am genuinely wrong. Satya floored me like so many others, which is undoubtedly one of the most groundbreaking films in recent memory. Kaun, a nice attempt to deviate from conventions and a few years later Company, followed the masterpiece. But sometime later I started losing my awe of the man.

Now let me admit by saying I know nothing of films or it’s making, this post is purely a viewpoint of a lay audience, but which RGV himself would agree is also surely one that matters. I am not among the people who buy the argument, “I don’t make films for anyone but myself”. I think it’s a …

Some directors are editors also. Hrishikesh Mukharjee always enjoyed editing more than the direction. Tight editing is reflected in his films. Tight editing is the demand of the time also especially when film belongs to low budget category and there is no money to waste.
But there are very few directors who are editors also. Shekhar Kapur believes that he should have a woman editor so that her post shooting works can bring a balance in the footage he has shot from a male director’s point of view. He had liked immensely the editing work of Late Renu Saluja in Bandit Queen.

I have got this curiosity that what is better situation.

(1) A director is a good editor also Ala Hriskhesh Mukharjee. As Then he has full command on post shooting work also as he knows story well and the mood of the film he wanted to make so he can …

Recently I had interviewed Neville Tuli, the founder chairman of the Osian’s Connoisseurs of Art, which organizes the Osian’s Cinefan Festival of Asian (& Arab - from this year) Cinema, in New Delhi. While some parts of the interview have been carried in my paper Deccan Herald, I am reproducing the whole text of the interview for PFC readers, for I am sure Tuli’s comments would provoke interesting responses. For information, Aruna Vasudev, the lady who built the Cinefan festival, has parted ways from it recently. Unconfirmed reports say Mani Kaul, who was the Creative Director of the Film House of Osian’s, has also quit. It remains to be seen how Tuli steers the festival without Vasudev, who built the festival brick by brick using her wide contacts in the film festival circuit and her reputation as a film critic / historian. So here it goes:

Arab Cinema have already been …

Who could have thought that an umbrella would turn out to be one of the most compelling characters seen on the Indian cinema screen in 2007? Who could have thought that a charming Blue Umbrella would gently cast its shadow over all the other movies of the year- that this ’small’ film, much delayed before its release, would stand inches tall above the best of Hindi films seen this year till now?

But then, when the filmmaker in question is a master craftsman called Vishal Bhardwaj, pretty much anything is possible. The music director turned filmmaker is a force to reckon with- one of the finest directors seen in a long time- churning out masterpieces with alarming versatility and consistency. This man simply does not cease to amaze, and The Blue Umbrella is yet another stunning film from him- and personally, my favourite Vishal Bhardwaj film so far.

Words do …

Warning: This post contains content that may be found objectionable by some sensitive souls.

It was late 90’s. I was a grad student - and I had a car and the cable TV… HBO, Sundance, USA, Showtime, Comedy Central, and… hold your breath… Playboy.

During then, this one time, we (my gang and I) saw this movie called Prison Heat or something like that.

It’s about a group of innocent female travelers who go on a vacation to one of those police states, somewhere in the Middle East, play innocent mules to drug smugglers, get arrested by the corrupt army officials and get exploited by the prison guards - especially this angel faced babe named Lori Jo Hendrix (can never forget that name) who plays an uncorrupted american girl - she wears powder pink night gowns in the prison as a protection from …

He was reclining on his chair with the confidence of an auteur and the poise of a pro. He was speaking eloquently under the single-slit illumination of a globe-shaped light source. Time had done to him, what success would do to anybody. Three movies, all of which were smashing commercial successes.
The cinema illiterates stooped to their own levels, confining all his movies under the “gangster flicks” label but he resented their claims.

But today, he wasn’t talking genres; just discussing the characters that made his movies so special. BBC had floated a one-hour retrospective on Siddharth Ranjan’s work titled ‘My movies, my characters’. Siddharth was just trying to stay true to the commitment he had made.

“People say my movies sell because, they are so Indian. I think the classification is not complete when they say that. I would for sure expand on the perceived make-up of my movies, would …

And it’s here… the first trailer of No Smoking… watch and give us your first thoughts
[link tip: Premal]

[youtube]53D_Qs1C6k4[/youtube]

First, a lot of firsts. The first teaser of Saawariya (saawariyafilm.com) is out. This is the first Indian co-production of Sony Pictures. This is the first film of Rishi Kapoor’s son Ranvir Kapoor and Anil Kapoor’s daughter Sonam Kapoor. And it is being billed the first international film from India.

Oh, I forgot – it’s a Sanjay Leela Bhansali film. The man who debuted with Khamoshi, went on to make Hum Dil De Chuka Sanam, Devdas and Black. Bhansali means a lot of things to a lot of people. For some he is modern Indian cinema’s only auteur, the only cinematic progeny of Guru Dutt, the only star director of our times. For others, he is a big ball of shit who disguises everything in grandiose but fake sets and copy-pastes other cinematic treatments calling them his own.

Well, the way I look at him, and the entire purpose of this …

This post is in continuation with my previous post

Before I can write more on this war-revolution-cause-feeling thing, I will write a poem a writer friend of mine Varun has written. He wrote this after watching Hazaron Khwaishein Aisi

To The Revolution..

Hey…did you kill me…

in the name of the revolution?

Did you tell me,

The name of the revolution..?

I was a boy, growing up easy,

It was a world, simple and rosy…

“Rosy?”, you said, “rosy my foot,”

“Nothing’s rosy anymore, life’s a brute”

Yeah, life’s a brute, ‘cos I was dead,

in the name of the revolution.

But….did you tell me,

The name of the revolution..?

And did you tell them,

I am a martyr…?

Did you tell them,

What’s a martyr?

Did you tell them,

How I am one?

Did you tell them,

Their own son….

…picked up the gun, and killed two,

In the name of the revolution..?

And did they ask,

The name of the revolution?

To heaven, I would go…

I heard it …

I am not only writing a review in this post of the Movie by the same name done by the GREATEST (Its Sarcastic) Director of all time - Sajid Khan but also a condolence write-up for the death of cinema and the sad growth of Crap.

Yes, this movie in a nutshell is all about Crap. It starts off about crap being hit on Akshay, there is a kid that craps all along and the story is CRAP. What the Fuck was Sajid thinking when he DID this movie? Was he thinking he will collectively DO the audience also. I mean if he has a mid life crisis and cannot pull a girl, then at least let him go and sort out things personally but he cannot really thrust all his views on all of us.

The story revolves around 3 men who have had too much of a good …