Shripriya Mahesh | PassionforCinema

Before: VP of Product Marketing & Corp Strat at eBay, loved California. Now: Grad film student @ NYU, startup advisor, love NYC and Madras. I blog about my adventures in film on Tatvam, about technology and everything else at Almost As Good As Chocolate and I twitter when the urge strikes.

Shripriya Mahesh's Blog

15
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Can you imagine a movie comprised almost entirely of close-ups? Would you feel claustrophobic? Want to shove your elbows outward to create some breathing room? Stand up and stretch and take huge, gasping breaths? Or perhaps even hit pause and take a walk outside? Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc made me feel all of those things. And therein lies a...
by Shripriya Mahesh at April 17th, 2009 at 06:04 am
5
Sherlock Jr.
Sherlock Jr. is a Buster Keaton classic. At just 45 minutes, it is short, but packed with action and innovation. The stunts are astounding. At a time before CGI, I have no idea how he did this stuff. So I started digging around to try to understand it better. Sherlock Jr. is about a projectionist who wants to be a detective. He proposes to his lady love but by doing so...
by Shripriya Mahesh at March 13th, 2009 at 06:03 am
8
The Last Laugh
We slide down in the elevator, slip past the opening doors and glide towards the front of the hotel and the revolving doors. Looking out, we see the doorman coordinating guests and luggage, managing arrivals and departures. It is with this incredible camera movement that Murnau opens The Last Laugh. The camera movement doesn’t sound so amazing you say? Well, consider...
by Shripriya Mahesh at January 13th, 2009 at 12:01 am
51
Cavite and Aamir
There’s been a lot of talk about Cavite and Aamir. So I decided to watch them both. First, Cavite. The next day, Aamir. At the end of it, I wanted to dissect both and figure out why I reacted the way I did to each. So here it is. *Warning: This whole article is one big spoiler. Consider yourself alerted.* Both stories are about a regular guy who heads back home...
by Shripriya Mahesh at July 13th, 2008 at 01:07 am
1
Wall-E
5/5 Brilliant animation, layers of messages, romance, adventure – all in one package. Run, don’t walk! IMDB
by Shripriya Mahesh at July 4th, 2008 at 08:07 pm
5
Sex and the City: A movie for the fans
When I lived in California, I didn’t have cable. So I didn’t follow and actually couldn’t watch Sex and the City. Then one day, my friend Amy introduced me to the show. I was instantly hooked. I went and bought the DVDs of all the prior seasons and watched them back-to-back. We’d often get together in her house for dinner and watch the show together. Since...
by Shripriya Mahesh at June 2nd, 2008 at 01:06 pm
3
Pangea Day
In 2006, filmmaker Jehane Noujaim was awarded the TED Prize. Each TED Prize winner is allowed to ask for one wish and TED will leverage the power of the attendees to make the wish come true (pretty cool, huh?) Jehane’s wish – “I wish to bring the world together for one day a year through the power of film.” Ta da – Pangea Day was born. This...
by Shripriya Mahesh at May 8th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
28
Go watch Loins Of Punjab Presents
You’ve may have read a bit about this movie and its director already. But now that it has secured its theatrical release in India (yay!), it is time to encourage you to go see this movie. Because Manish Acharya’s Loins of Punjab Presents is freaking hilarious! Even though I watched it back in May in a screening room in the basement of NYU’s Tisch School,...
by Shripriya Mahesh at September 17th, 2007 at 02:09 pm
5
NYC does a flip-flop
In late May everyone got a touch excited when the City settled its lawsuit with filmmaker Rakesh Sharma. The lawsuit occurred because Rakesh was detained after police officers saw him photographing buildings and held him for several hours. I’ve always been a huge fan of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Film and Television for being very filmmaker friendly and the...
by Shripriya Mahesh at July 4th, 2007 at 01:07 pm
14
Acting for directors
When I was doing my 12-week Film Intensive at NYU SCPS, one of the things I heard a few times was that to be a good director, you should take an acting class. As I made UNTITLED, I realized that understanding what an actor goes through, how he/she prepares, can help a director in ensuring she gets the best performance from her cast. Now, I have acted as a child but as...
by Shripriya Mahesh at April 27th, 2007 at 10:04 am
6
Final cut tussles
The New York Times had a very interesting article on what could happen when a director doesn’t get final cut rights. The final cut of a film refers to the cut/version of the film that is shown to the public. It is a rare privilege when a studio will give a director final cut because the final cut can determine the economics of a film. A few directors do get/have...
by Shripriya Mahesh at March 21st, 2007 at 07:03 pm
1
Wong Kar Wai’s “The Hand”
The Hand is part of a compilation DVD called Eros. It includes three movies/shorts by Wong Kar Wai, Steven Soderbergh, and Michelangelo Antonioni. I’m just going to focus on Wong Kar Wai’s “The Hand”, which kicks off the trio. The Hand is like a lot of Wong Kar Wai movies – it is a sad, sad love story. The Hand is about a prostitute (another...
by Shripriya Mahesh at February 20th, 2007 at 05:02 pm
2
Filmmakers doing good
Being a filmmaker is one of the most amazing jobs – you have the opportunity to make a movie, communicate a message, share a passion, move people, change their lives even. I love it when filmmakers use these amazing skills to do good. When I was a kid growing up in Madras, Mani Ratnam would often donate a print of his movies to our school (and other non-profit organizations)...
by Shripriya Mahesh at January 27th, 2007 at 07:01 am
9
Where we come from
As we watch the films of today, it is great to take a moment and think about where this medium has evolved from. In the 1890s, the Lumiere brothers were hard at work to make a motion picture camera. Their father was a photographer and working for him, the men were introduced to the medium and the materials. These are the guys who invented the sprocket hole – the holes...
by Shripriya Mahesh at December 23rd, 2006 at 01:12 pm
4
Three One-Minute Reviews and a little gem…
Sorry to be MIA this past week. But as way of apology and to make it up to you all, I’ve compressed a lot into this post – First, three quick reviews… One minute review: Royal Tenenbaums Directed by Wes Anderson, I LOVED this movie. I’d heard mixed reviews, but this film really got to me. It is a mix of happy and sad, touching and quirky. It does an...
by Shripriya Mahesh at November 6th, 2006 at 05:11 pm
15
Babel – releases Friday
Babel, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu (for which he won the Best Director award at Cannes) and written by Guillermo Arriaga, has gotten press for the controversies surrounding the director and the screenwriter. But the focus should be on the film itself. The movie that completes the trilogy started by Amores Perros and 21 Grams, Babel intercuts between four...
by Shripriya Mahesh at October 25th, 2006 at 11:10 pm
3
Two movies: one bad, one good
I saw two movies this past week, both in the early stages of releasing in the US. One was quite bad and one, quite good. Running With Scissors, by first-time director, Ryan Murphy, is hard to watch. Based on the best-selling autobiography with the same title, by Augusten Burroughs, it was the first movie in a long time that I wanted to walk out of. There were so many times,...
by Shripriya Mahesh at October 22nd, 2006 at 07:10 pm
31
Film School? Yes or No?
I’ve been struggling with this issue for a while. And with the application deadlines just 5 weeks away, I need to make up my mind and not let the decision be made for me by procrastinating. Background — I have a graduate degree in business. I have a Filmmaking Certificate from NYU where in 12 short weeks, I made two shorts. I live in New York, so there are...
by Shripriya Mahesh at October 18th, 2006 at 02:10 pm
0
Little Children
Little Children, written and directed by Todd Field is a film with a lot of potential. Set in an affluent suburb, it deals with the angst of 30-something folks who’ve seen the death of their youthful aspirations and endure lives confined the mundane. Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet) is married to Richard (Gregg Edelman). She wonders why she didn’t follow her passion for...
by Shripriya Mahesh at October 15th, 2006 at 09:10 am
2
SAIFF Day 5, Sunday
By the time day 5 rolled around, I was quite tired. So, I only managed to go to see just one film, but what a brilliant film! MYSTIC INDIA by Keith Melton is a 45-minute IMAX film. It was the most visually stunning film of the festival. Using the story of Neelkanth, who walked the length and breadth of India for seven years (from 1792 to 1799), the film reveals India’s...
by Shripriya Mahesh at October 10th, 2006 at 12:10 am
2
SAIFF Day 4, Saturday Evening
Saturday evening started off with three movies — UNTITLED (my short), BLACK AND WHITE and MADE IN INDIA. UNTITLED by Shripriya Mahesh is a 9 minute narrative short. It is hard to review your own film. But since I finished it almost six months ago, I’ve had some distance from it. Here’s the synopsis Sanjay and his wife lead a cookie cutter existence in...
by Shripriya Mahesh at October 9th, 2006 at 10:10 pm
3
SAIFF Day 4, Saturday
Day 4 started with lunch for the filmmakers to mingle and get to know each other. It was a very good idea and it was nice to talk to other filmmakers, especially those based in NYC. Then, I dashed off to try to catch some of their films. RED ROSES, a short documentary by Madhuri Mohinder and Vaishali Sinha was their thesis film at The New School. This documentary looks...
by Shripriya Mahesh at October 9th, 2006 at 10:10 pm
1
SAIFF Day 3, Friday
I saw quite a few really good films on day 3 of SAIFF. FIVE GUYS FOUR BULLETS, a documentary directed by Karan Singh, is a travelogue of five buds cruising to the highest motorcycle trail in the world on Enfield Bullets. The five guys bike from Delhi to Ladakh and along the way, face various obstacles like mudslides, rain, flooding and altitude sickness. It was very entertaining...
by Shripriya Mahesh at October 8th, 2006 at 11:10 pm
0
SAIFF Day 2 (cont)
Here’s my take on QUARTER LIFE CRISIS by director Kiran Merchant, which I was too tired to post last night. The theater was packed. Fifty of the seats were reserved for the cast and crew and I was sitting right next to them, so it was amusing to see them laugh at inside jokes (when crew members were in the film etc.) Besides their energy and passion and laughter,...
by Shripriya Mahesh at October 6th, 2006 at 09:10 pm
3
SAIFF Day 2
AADUM KOOTHU, by director T V Chandran started the first full day of SAIFF . This is the Malayalam director’s first Tamil film. At the core, the film has an interesting premise — a director is making a movie about an injustice that occurred in his village when he was a child. A landlord tortured and tonsured a lower-class woman publicly since she refused his...
by Shripriya Mahesh at October 5th, 2006 at 11:10 pm
3
SAIFF in New York City
The South Asian International Film Fetival kicks off in New York today. I’ll be attending as many movies as I can. Will post coverage here. FYI, I have a film in the festival. You can read about it and other SAIFF related things here.
by Shripriya Mahesh at October 4th, 2006 at 11:10 am
1
Little Miss Sunshine
I had the fortune of seeing Little Miss Sunshine before it opened wide and this movie has stayed with me for months! Written by Michael Arndt and directed by the husband and wife pair of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the movie starts off seeming like it may be a standard road trip flick. But before they even get on the road, it does an excellent job of introducing...
by Shripriya Mahesh at October 2nd, 2006 at 08:10 pm