logo

Has anyone visited the Yash Raj Films website recently?

They’ve unveiled the first look for Aditya Chopra’s upcoming directional venture “Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi“. Below the poster, which by the way is quite interesting, there is the following “Film Overview”:

Aditya Chopra’s third directorial venture after eight years, “Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi” starring Shah Rukh Khan, will remind audiences of the magic touch that has made “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” the longest running motion picture in Indian cinema history. Indeed the jodi of Adi and SRK will once again be a treat for film audiences and the romantic confection of “Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi” looks set to capture hearts across the globe all over again.

That’s quite the hefty promise there, wouldn’t you say? After all, it’s a well-known fact that DDLJ has been running in at least one cinema hall for 13 years now. In …

I’ve always been of the opinion that our Hindi film culture, or film lineage so to speak, is so strong that remakes are very risky ventures going in. I mean, there’s always the usual debates on whether the original screenplay should be kept in tact to appease us “purists” or whether the film should be “updated” with new twists and sometimes even new characters. Then there are the debates about who should, and should not, play those iconic characters, who should direct the film, etc etc. The debates create a great deal of publicity for sure, great for any film, but then with, umm, great publicity comes, err, great responsibility? How about pressure? Great pressure is put on the team of the remake to, you know, get it right.

I for one would never want to be put in that position. Better to take the risk, and the potential rewards, …

I’m currently writing a film entitled “The Golden Road”. It’s a project that, over the past 8 months or so, has grown very near and dear to me. I’d like to believe that I’ve grown and matured with this film, at least in the capacity of a screenwriter. During this time the film has continued to evolve, almost taking on a life of its own.

It started off as a seemingly brilliant idea to merge a few stories that we had been toying around with; a Father/Son drama, a realistic portrayal of the struggles faced by people migrating from India to Canada, and a story chronicling a man’s life in a crime syndicate. Of course all these stories had to be altered when blended together, with the biggest change being that the crimes were no longer “street level” but rather of the white-collar, corporate variety. From there I worked …

Disclaimer: This is NOT a post about Love-Story 2050.

I haven’t seen that film, and won’t until maybe when it releases on DVD.

But I must admit, there was one thing about the film which intrigued me a great deal. And no, its not the special effects. Those I think we’ve got a good idea of from the trailers (and films like The 5th Element, I-Robot, AI and others).

What I found exciting was the concept, and what a good director could do with it in an Indian film.

Think about this. An Indian film merging sci-fi with mythology. A film which dares to simultaneously tread the paths of the paranormal, supernatural, religion, advanced technology and quantum mechanics, all complete with commercial film trappings like romance, suspense, and the thrill of discovering the unknown. This could have been classic Yash Chopra meets Dr. Deepak Chopra meets Stephen William Hawking. This …

As an avid, loyal fan of hindi films, as well as being a lifelong student of cinema, I’ve wondered for several years why the most basic elements of narrative and storytelling are missing from so many prolific commercial hindi movies.

Barardwaj Ranjan had alluded to this topic in one of his recent, insightfully entertaining “between reviews” blogs. Here he quite accurately points out that hindi film songs, for the most part, have lost all situational value. They’ve lost their meaning, or as he puts it, their “motivation”. I’d like to take this argument a few steps further by applying this theory to many a scene and sequence, sometimes almost the entire film. The priority of writing strong scenes has quite apparently been replaced with gimickry, gratuitous gags, and senseless plot twists all in the name of entertainment. Oh, and they try way way to hard to “be cool” and …

Normally I take the train to work in downtown Vancouver. Parking is, as you can guess, a bitch. So I never take my car. Today, however, was an altogether different story. Today I had to go a lot farther out, to the mountain town of Squamish for a product launch. It’s just outside of Whistler BC, and about a 2 hour drive from my home. I had to leave early in the morning and drive all by my lonesome, so I took some CD’s along for some company.

And for the first time in who knows how long, I really enjoyed listening to Hindi music. It was awesome!

First up was Jaane Tu.. Ya Jaane Na. I had heard the songs before online and in the films trailers. But, as you can gather, today was the first time I really got into the music. Fun stuff! Very refreshing, especially since A.R. …

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 …

Earlier tonight I had a very strange urge to put on the DVD of Farhan Akhtar’s version of “Don”. I can’t quite pinpoint what it was that brought me to do it… I think it may a lot to do with all this talk around plagiarism and originality.

So I sat there watching, thinking to myself “if it were anyone else, I might even be offended. But his father co-conceptualized and co-wrote the original. Who knows how many of these famous lines, these scenes, were his brainchild. If anyone has the right to remake this film, its Javed Akhtar’s son”

As hard as I tried that Diwali weekend, and as hard as I tried tonight, I just could not allow myself to be entertained. I was constantly bothered by watching the same scenes I had been thrilled by so many times over, in a newer, modernized format. It bored the shit …

It’s been a long time coming.

Just read an article on IndiaFM.com that Dibakar Banerjee, Director of the critically acclaimed, immensely likeable film “Khosla Ka Ghosla” has finally announced his next film.

Titled “Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye” (kickass title IMHO) the film stars the talented Mr. Abhay Deol as a thief who, as per Banerjee himself, “starts a normal thief and then later climbs up the status graph and becomes a very rich and well known crook.”

The film also co-stars Neetu Chandra (of Traffic Signal… we’ll conviently forget that Garam Masala was infact her debut film) and, what seems to be the ace up Banerjee’s sleeve, Paresh Rawal in an interesting Triple Role.

If Anupam Kher, Ranvir Shoery, Parvid Dabas, Navin Nischol and even Tara Sharma put in some stellar performances, one looks forward to even more from “Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye” (which I’m guessing will be referred to …

I know I’m stating the obvious, going in circles and just plain ranting. To be, a perfect world would be one in which a great screenplay is backed by a good budget, gets a marketable starcast, is helmed by a good director, turns out to be a great film and goes on to become a blockbuster. Wasn’t that the Hindi cinema of the 60’s and 70’s? Shouldn’t things progress and get better over time? Why isn’t that the case now??

The more I think about it, the more perplexed I become. As obvious as it may seem, there’s still a fascinating conundrum filmmakers face over balancing a GREAT SCRIPT and a saleable STARCAST. The fact remains that even the greatest of scripts/stories still need an audience, and a starcast ropes them in.

There are a few rare examples where a film has managed to attain that elusive “Hit” status (and …

I guess a lot of things can knock you on your ass. The real test is how you get back on your feet.

The last few months for me have been quite the introspective journey. You see, a few months back my public service contract had expired leaving me unemployed. I had all the time in the world to do what the one thing I’ve been complaining I never had enough time to do: write. Stories, treatments, screenplays. The thing is, I didn’t really have a subject or story that I really wanted to write about.

The last story cultivating in my head, I had already written, revised & re-drafted to the point where I really don’t to touch it anymore. This process also used up much of my “creative juices”, leaving me almost dry.

A director friend of mine wanted me to develop a concept for him. So while the …

You know, there’s something that’s been on my mind for some time now, but I’ve managed to keep it to myself. Today, in the words of Popeye the Sailorman “That’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more!” So now let me say this.

Who the hell gives a flying fuck about what Hollywood, or the rest of the world thinks about our cinema?! Seriously, who gives a damn what they think? Why should we care? Do the French, the Chinese, the Koreans, the Iranians, the Russians, Italians, Germans or Americans care about what Indians, or anyone else for that matter, think about the way they make films? Who are they to judge us? They makes films for they’re people, we make them for our people.

It’s about time we come to terms with a reality: Our films may not be 100% realistic, and they may not completely represent …

With Saawariya introducing the world to the acting talents of Ranbir Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor, and Om Shanti Om rocket launching the career of Deepika Padukone, I got to thinking about the major stars of Hindi cinema who were introduced in the new millenium… Though many an actor made his/her debut since Y2K, only a few have had the kind of impact which could earn them the title of bona fide stars…

This is not a list or even an analysis, but rather an observation… in this post I’ll only be analyzing the new “Heros”, saving the launch of heroines for a later post.

Hindi Cinema has attempted to launch many an acting career these past 8 years, however how many saleable stars has it created? How many of the many new faces we’ve been introduced to really have the power to pull in audiences, even with a few films under …

Lately there’s been a lot of talk on PFC about film reviewers. Most of it is not so nice, which is fine I suppose. If you’re willing to dish out criticism you should be ready to take it. Right?

Whenever iffy about watching a film, most of us head online and read a few reviews. I know I do. Of course it’s always good to read a few reviews after you watch a film to see what others thought of it and if your thoughts agree with theirs.

There are 3 in particular whose views, though diametrically different from each other, I’ll read even if they don’t tend to coincide with the reasons I personally go to watch a film:

The Rediff Team:

I especially like Raja Sen as I love his style of writing and even if I don’t agree with him, I’m quite entertained. If he doesn’t like a film, …

pla·gia·rism (n) - something copied from somebody else’s work, or somebody else’s idea that somebody presents as his or her own

Oh, and its illegal. Did you know you can actually get your ass sued for it? Or better yet, sue the pants off someone who plagiarized your hard work and creativity!

That’s what Sony Pictures Entertainment and Overbrook Entertainment are doing. The two Hollywood studios are rumored to be filing a $30 Million USD copyright infringement suit against Hindi film producers Eros Entertainment and K Sera Sera! Yup, bloody $30 million.

Could’ve gotten 3,000 original scripts for that much!

The film is question is David Dhawan’s recent superhit “Partner”, which as we all know is, to put in mildly, an unofficial adaptation of “Hitch”. Overbook produced Hitch for Sony, and as the rumour goes they’re now pissed right off.

Rumours also have it that this is may not be an isolated incident. …

I’m writing this strictly from an audience perspective, from a fan of everything from big budget masala films, to those great small budget films which thankfully we’re seeing more and more of, and everything in between.

2007 has thus far been one of the worst years in recent memory. There’s been very little in the way of entertaining, memorable films. For audiences, it’s been one big disappointment after another. The big films we were waiting for, even the ones we were cautiously weary of, all were much worse in terms of content and box office performance than most of us could’ve imagined.

The almighty box office is, like it or not, an essential bottom line. It’s not about what might’ve been, could’ve …

Lately I’ve had 2 dominant emotions: elation and pride. I’m excited to share some good news with PFC, because I consider this place to be my film community.

In Oct. 2005 I wrote & my good friend Manny Parmar produced and directed a short comedy film called “Cash On Delivery”. The film was first screened in Vancouver in May 2006.

Since then we’ve been working on other scripts and projects and Cash On Delivery was sort of put to the back of our minds until about a month ago when just sitting around Manny’s we put it on. You know, we really enjoyed it

Well, that short comedy film has now been selected to participate in competition at the Edmonton International Film Festival! It’s a Canadian film festival which hosts films from all over the world. If you’d like you can check out details on the festival below. It runs …

Disclaimer - This will be a shorter post mainly because I just had throat surgery on Friday the 13th and am still drugged up on anti-biotics and T-3s. I hope I can remain coherent

LINK

We all know its a YashRaj Films Production and Aditya Chopra is Producing. As one would expect he’s also added his creative inputs: the film is jointly written by him… and these two other guys.

One of them is Shimit Amin, the man in the directors seat. A quick IMDB.com search (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0024912) will make clear that this man has worked his way up the ladder. An L.A. editor invited to Mumbai by a friend who introduced him to RGV. Impressive editing in RGV’s Bhoot followed up by a powerful directoral debut in acclaimed Nana Patekar *er Ab Tak Chhappan. I have a feeling Mr. Amin will impress us once again, especially considering he himself has …

Disclaimer: This rant is restricted to mainstream films and in particular their stars. I am aware of brilliant actors the calibre of Irfan Khan, Kay Kay Menon, Arshad Warsi, Ranvir Shoery who’ve proven their abilities in both lead and supporting roles. But I’m in the mood to rant and rant about “popular” cinema, so here I go…

I find that I’m rarely drawn into a hindi film, or its protagonist, through an actors interpretation and presentation of the character. Most of the performances are just that, performances, not portrayals. All too often the actor outshines the character, as opposed to the character shining through.

I’m not placing the blame entirely on the actors here. Weak characterizations, sub-par direction, and other factors obviously contribute to the overall impact a performance, or character, makes. In any event, there are certain big stars which one can’t help but analyze and realize that their star …

With Saawariya introducing the world to the acting talent of Ranbir Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor, and Om Shanti Om rocket launching the career of Deepika Padukone, I got to thinking about the major stars of Hindi cinema who were introduced in the new millenium… and many an actor made his debut since Y2K, only a few have had the kind of impact which could earn them the title of bona fide stars…

This is not a list or even an analysis, but rather an observation… Hindi Cinema has attempted to launch many an acting career these past 8 years, however how many saleable stars has it created? How many of the many new faces we’ve been introduced to really have the power to pull in audiences, even with a few films under their belt? I can, unfortunately, only think of a few…

Of course there’s Hrithik Roshan, the quintessential new superstar of …

Last weekend my wife and I had dinner over at my friend Manny’s. We decided to watch a short film he and I had collaborated on called “Cash on Delivery”, moreso since my wife hadn’t seen it. It was screened just 2 days before our wedding…just over a year ago, I hadn’t seen it since.

It was a buddy comedy about how these two guys accidently mail an full of cash - $6000 belonging to the father of one of the boys. If they didn’t get it back the kid was gonna get his ass kicked. You know, a real down to earth, silly film which wasn’t meant to be taken too seriously.

Manny had a different concept in mind which we couldnt quite put together in time for his alloted shooting dates (it was his final year student film). So we ended up writing this film in just …

Progression in hindi cinema is a lot like the race track in TRP: Filmmakers think their moving in the right direction, going full speed, but the farther they go in the name of progression, the faster they end up going back to cliche’d and regressive filmmaking.

A few disclaimers:

1) I do enjoy escapist cinema, as long as its good. From the YRF camp I’ve liked films like Shaad Ali’s Saathiya and B&B, Veer Zaara, Dhoom, Hum Tum and Siddharth Raj Anand’s Salaam Namaste. If you view these as candyfloss entertainment and don’t indulge too much in cinematic analysis, these films were quite entertaining.

2) This isn’t intented to be a review of Tara Rara Rum Pum Pum (I can NEVER get than name right!) as much as using TRP to reflect upaon regressive filmmaking.

3) I’m pissed off.

Ok, so I watched TRP. Yes, I admit that I ignored the warnings. …

I got an interesting email from a non-filmy chinese friend. I say “non-filmy” as in he is not associated with the film industry, has no desire to be a writer or actor or what not. He just thought of an interesting story and passed it on to me to develop on. I’ve re-written it below.

It’s different than the type of stuff that I usually like to write. But its interesting, so I figured I would take advantage of all the creative minds and talent here at PFC and workshop the idea with all of you.

Lets all try to have fun with this idea, everyone pitch in your thoughts, let me know what you find mundane or predictable, what you think we should add to spice it up and twists we could throw in to throw our audiences off a little.

“Vince and the Magnetic Hottie” (Short film/comedy)

Vince and his …

This started off as a reply to Shitji’s thought-provoking post “Each One Help None”. Then I realized it does precious little to contribute to that string, so it might serve better as a post unto itself. Afterall, I spent an hour pouring my heart out here. Oh, and as a disclaimer, I name names.

Let me share an anecdote of my struggles with you all…

A friend of mine, who worked as a Production Manager and Events Coordinator in Mumbai was back in Vancouver for a while. As I don’t want to reveal her real name, lets call her “Sita”.

While here Sita got the opportunity to coordinate a fashion show for “Crossover”, an Indian fashion boutique here in Vancouver co-owned by Suniel Shetty and a family out here (which by sheer coincidence happen to be old family friends of my father).

As Sita is an old friend she is well-aware …

As fans of hindi cinema, it’s far too often that we find ourselves watching what could have been a good, even great film, but somehow its found a way to disapoint us. 99% of the time its due to poor scripting. And what a damn shame that is.

I’ve always believed that you don’t necessarily need a brilliant or even unique story to make a good film. It’s all in how you tell it. Many great films over the years haven’t had complex stories at all. What they had were believable, relatable characters, whose motivations were made clear and understandable. What they had were well thought out, well executed plots, giving us just the right amounts of details in the right spots. What they had were strong emotions, which would carry through and resonate with audiences.

Then there’s the issue of filmmakers lifting scripts from Hollywood and world cinema rather …