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This post has no political or ideological aspirations. It is simple and evocative, that is this hopes to evoke a smile in you. BAS! Thats it!

As the drum rolls are revving up for a historic clash come November (one could argue that the historic clash is already over but still), we will be hit multiple times by messages, arguments, vilifications and so on. I would like to share, a few really nice and KIcKAss 30 sec shorts of the obama campaign which i discovered over the course of this campaign. Please feel free to add to this list, with better ones, good ones, republican ones or even lame ones if you really need to, but make it something worth your effort though.

Obama in 30…

If timing was any kind of a horse, this one would be first past the finishing line. There would be no better time for a film like ‘Jannat’ to hit the screens than now when our nights and evenings are reeling with the spectacle of cricket at its most decadent. To call it ‘rife with possibilities’ is an understatement. Conceptually, this is a loaded gun. And it arrives with one helluva big bang metaphor. Cricket commentary plays on a radio. Emraan Hashmi’s voice cuts through asking to cut out the noise and concentrate on the game of cards. Big Badda Boom! Maximum Impact Metaphor! And Kunal Deshmukh makes his debut and he couldn’t have gotten a louder coconut to crack.

The people who will be going for a movie like ‘Jannat’ could be broadly classified as- the ‘Emraans’ and the ‘non-Emraans’. …

The authors of PFC have been discussing this brilliant topic at the backend, which we thought would be great to bring it out in the open, so the whole world can have inputs on it.

The Topic: Out Of the Box Filmmakers

I am just copy pasting all the dialogs in block Quotes with the authors name

Phoenixnu :

anyone seen a mallu film Albhuthadweep….how was it ? anything new n intersting…something thats not done b4 ? was it out of box ?

Imsai Arasan 23am Pulikesi …anyone seen this ? how ? can u call it out of box ?

if there is nothing new in these two films, then plz suggest some films/filmmakers who r doing something new….experiments…radical..not done before.
out of box in various domian…..art,design,books,films,food….for films..so far its..shashank ghosh (waisa bhi, quickgun n his tv work), Anurag Kashyap (u guys know the reasons)…short films(anand gandhi - right here,right now n continuum….and …

There was no-show of three recent releases at one of the multiplexes..The culprits for keeping the audience away from the multiplex were Anamika, MrWhite& Mr.Black & Pranali..I happened to be one such brave soul who had ventured to watch one of these movies but was turned away..I was informed , that the theatre management requires perhaps minimum of five people to run the show.. I waited for the remaining four to trudge in..Those absentees disappointed me..As I got up to leave I heard a voice ‘Play with me Twenty 20’!

I looked around to find out wherefrom the voice emanated..There was nobody in sight..I shrugged and ventured for the …

I had originally started this post as a rant against the misconceptions, and misrepresentations against the classic 70’s Hindi Cinema we grew up watching. If I could sum up that rant in a one-liner, it would go something like this:

“Films like Tashan and Om Shanti Om may claim to be odes to 70’s masala films, but all they truly amount to be are wanna be films trying to cash in on our nostalgia”.

What made me decide to change the direction of this post was a great masala film I saw tonight, which reminded me of the many reasons why those films were so good. This will remain, however, still a late night rant :)

The film I’m referring to is “Dostana“. Now Dostana wasn’t a great film because it was path-breaking, realistic, or because it had complex, flesh-and-blood characters. Actually, it was full of all kinds of cliches, it …

Scene 1: This Film Found its Makers

I want to, in all humility, assert upfront that Mahayoddha Rama isnt just an idea. ‘Different’ as the film makers cliche goes, its actually a deliverance in the way it formed itself. From Abhimanyu Singh’s mouth, to my head, from something less sublime and subtle to being more rooted. ‘A film on Rama versus Ravana. Cutting all other things out’, said Manyu, rolling his eyes and jumping on his seat, seeming to get visibly excited. That really was a magic moment for both of us. Where others would beg to differ, believing that it’ll be the Ramayana re rendered and wonder what the hell was the excitement about, he and I felt, ‘Yeah, there was immense possibility in this way of rendition!’ At least on paper. And that’s how Mahayoddha Rama, The warrior Prince, was born.

The next few weeks was a flurry of …

“I wasn’t feeling too well this time around. Maybe it was the California sun or the moisturizer that I applied to get away from it - but this time I wasn’t feeling too well. Being housed up in a small room at the “Orchid house” (aka Directors’ house), I was the youngest among the other legends that I shared the space with.”

It is not apparent as to what the author is saying here, so we read further -

“So I wake up on one of the mornings - mind you we used to sleep at 4 am , while the others finally used to vacate at around 6am; and I hear sounds in the kitchen. As I make my way to the dining table, Sriram Raghavan is heating ‘parathas’ on the pan. Opposite to me, Shivajee Chandrabhushan is trying to work his skype on his laptop while Sanjay Routray offers me …

[Editor Note] : George Mao, the producer of Aduri, which stars our very own Striker sent this post.

The Producer
Introduction
In the Summer of 2006, I joined a project called “Aduri”. Chances are that you haven’t heard about Aduri, since it is an independently funded project, so I’ll start with a little background information.

Aduri is a feature length film written, funded, and directed by a group of film enthusiasts from the East Coast. I won’t go into detail about the film itself; you can visit the website at http://www.adurithemovie.com for a preview & trailer. Instead, I am the Producer on the project and I wanted to share some of my experiences in Pre Production and Production, as well as some lessons learned.

Pre-production began in the Summer of 2006 when my close friend Riyadh Mahmood (Executive Producer, Director) and I met Fahd Habeeb …

Last fall as me and the gang of desis from Bombay were winding up our NY adventure we suddenly realised that we needed to do some heavy duty shopping. I wasn’t as concerned as the rest coz I had gotten admission to my place of study in LA and knew I’d be returning soon but for the others it was au revoir time.

So me and my buddy (code name Enigma) land up at Macy’s to ravish and pillage during one of their frequent sales. I for one never shop there coz I find the clothes too expensive and not really suited to my style of dressing. More about me later.

So anyways Enigma is eying a $200 pair of sunglasses and I’m trying to talk him out of it saying the money would be better spent buying some fancy electronic gizmo. He looks at my pityingly and says “Chutiya tu bahut …

There are five Indian films in one of the sections of Cannes this time, after all. All in the Short Film Corner section, which is one of the side-bar sections of the festival.

This, apart from Vijay Anand’s Guide which is being screened in the Classic section.

The five films, to be screened in the Short Film Corner section. are Hum Panchhi Ek Daal Ke (Of Haves and Havenots, 9 mins) in the Experimental Documentary sub-section, written & directed by Manoj Srivastava (currently a deputy director with the Directorate of Film Festivals in New Delhi), In the Land of the Nagas (30:05 mins) in the Documentary sub-setion, directed by Jaishankar Singh, Akela (Alone, 7:13 mins) in the experimental fiction sub-section (It’s an India-France-Singapore co-production), directed by Alka Mehta, Retirement (5:30 mins) by Tushar Joshi, and Viva Sunita! (3:45 mins) by Amitabh Sinha and Lolita Sarkar, in the fiction sub-section.

The Cannes …

A NOTE ON WHY IN BLACK & WHITE

The question has been often asked to me about the reasons behind doing this film in black and white. I hope this helps explain our stance.

Let me say something about the setting. The landscape of Ladakh is very stark. The colours are predominantly shades of amber. In the winters there is not a speck of green to be seen. The foliage is reduced to skeletons. The northern sky is a deep blue, in contrast to the deep black shadows the sun casts. The Indus is frozen at the banks and trickles in the middle – dark under a thin sheet of ice. The outside temperature ranges from -15 to -30 depending on the time of the day.

The story is set against the backdrop of these extreme conditions. For the characters, this is part of their daily life. This terrain and landscape was chosen …

Mumbai Cutting

A city that tells thousands of stories each day, a city that weaves the magic for a million people everyday and a city that creates as much as it destroys each day – it was logical that something would pay tribute to its various layers and shades in typical Bollywood fashion but with a hint of betrayal – replace the glitz and the pseudonyms with gleams of passion and realism.

Sitting in Arch lights for the closing gala, I had but one apprehension – will the collective genius of al those makers fail the intelligent and glamor seeking audience in the congregation – c’on, the pick of junta there was either uber rich or over eager in their own endeavors…

Promod Bhai…23: Anurag Kashyap

What a find! The kid playing the protagonist is a true find. If Darsheel floored you with his dreamy …

The film society movement in India has a glorious history, but it had gone into a slumber for quite some time before the DVD revolution happened, making it possible for film societies in far-flung areas to get films for screenings easily. It is the film society movement through which many cine lovers got their first taste of cinema from other languages.

I know for myself. It was in 1993 that I first got to watch a Mani Rathnam film – Roja, the original Tamil version and not the dubbed Hindi version that became a rage a few months later – at a festival of films in various Indian languages (I think the Indian Panorama package) organized by the Assam Cine Art Society in Guwahati. In those days when DVDs had not yet invented, and video cassettes at the local library only gave access to Hindi and English films, such festivals …

“Probably done this before” - Christopher Nolan - HOW DOES HE DO THAT ???

EVERY TIME ???

Every time he conjures up a brilliant,twisted,convoluted,serpentine script which doesn’t indulge itself, entertains, doesn’t take the EASY way out … doesn’t give u a deja-vu feel .. doesn’t give u a “i could see that coming” feeling…is novel everytime …dark .. MAD MAD screenwriting ..MAD MAD direction .. and absolute mad sense of editing.

FOLLOWING
How did he make this film spanned over a year ?
Was it really an “indi” film ? Doesn’t look like it…
Hopeless people put in awkward sometimes sympathetic situations…. often reaching a tragic conclusion …
Was really the budget of the film 5000 pounds ??
The use of VO .. documentary feel … eventually blending into fiction …. HOW the hell does he come up with that ?
Repeated close ups of hand movements … small …

SCENE 1: The Idea.
What I remember at the outset is that it was a really frustrating day. Television production, for the uninformed is the only thing that compares to hitting yourself against a sturdy wall. Day after day. Occasionally the wall budges, but mostly, your head and body gets stronger.

Manyu ( aka, Abhimanyu Singh, CEO Contiloe Films, CEO Contiloe Pictures, Owner and Boss) had been toying with the idea of making a film ever since we had pulled off a fairly nice job on the packaging of Sssssh… Phir Koi Hai, a horror series, all done using the green backlot technique, using tremendous CG and VFX work, a la SIN CITY, 300, etc. Unfortunately(for me!) we had just shelved and shut down a very frustrating 5 weeks of script development for our ‘to be first film’ Samudri Lootere! So I was in Manyu’s office and his never …