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iView Author: Njudo-E-Dara (Nagpur, India)
Email: withheld

A Big Con : Marketing of the Bollywood Blockbuster

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How people are fooled and blockbuster are churned out.

You call it con or marketing strategy or not matured market (market of moviegoers); there is a mathematical and marketing formula exists which determines how much your movie is going to earn it in the first week. And it is the first week, which decides whether the film is blockbuster or not.

Let’s understand the business first

Henceforth all the calculations will be made pertaining to first week, unless and otherwise stated

NG = Nett Gross = the total collection across India in the first week
T = Theaters = Number of theaters in which film is shown in first week
N = Number of shows per day = a constant 4
D = week days= …

 /** Spoiler Alerts*/ 

The 60’s  and  70’s  was the age of  counter culture, rebellion against authority,  and  a sort of  insistence on human rights, freedom.  As people  rebelled  against  existing attitudes and beliefs,  a new breed of  movie makers,  began to take their place under the sun.  Movie makers  influenced  by  the  European New Wave and  counter culture  ideals,  thus  began to translate their ideas into movies.  Movies that were not  big budget,  huge canvas affairs,  but more personal stories,  more  grittier, more realistic.   This  was the era of directors  like  Martin Scorcese,  Francis Ford Copolla, Robert Altman whose created a new grammar of  movie making.   It  was also the age  of   Robert De Niro,  Al  Pacino,  Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson.  Through their movies,  they expressed their angst against society, and their desire for  individual freedom.  One  Flew Over The Cuckoo’s  …

iView Author: SETHUMADHAVAN (Chennai/Vijayawada, India)

Email: sethumadhavan.n@gmail.com

Movie Marketing - The Telugu Cinema Way

I’m just back home after watching a recently released, successfully running Telugu movie called Nachchavule. On the way home I kept thinking again & again about the movie. Well yes the movie is certainly decent enough to be thinking about, but more than the movie I was thinking more from the angle of the movie’s marketing. As a keen follower of Telugu cinema that’s when I realized that while at large Telugu movies are still caught in the trap of the so called stars and the big producers & directors with some few small film makers trying to also keep themselves afloat, but in terms of movie marketing, Telugu cinema seems to be heading in the right track.

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When India gained independence in 1947, the generation of the 50’s were imbued with a spirit of optimism, hope inspired by Pandit Nehru’s call for a tryst with destiny. For the most part the 50’s was a decade of peace and optimism in India. We were not a rich nation, but the optimism was there in every Indian that we would soon take achieve our tryst. But the defeat in the 1962 War to China, shattered the Indian morale. There was a sense of disquiet whether the lofty ideals propounded by Nehru, would have any relevance in the modern world. Nehru’s death was followed by Lal Bahadur Shastri, who managed to rally the people with his clarion call of “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan”. And victory in the 1965 war, with Pakistan, somewhat restored the national spirit. But it …

iView Author: BIPIN VADDI (Boston, U.S.A)

Email: bvaddi@gmail.com

Mickey Rourke & “The Wrestler”

The Wrestler is a dark little film about a broken-down professional wrestler whose glory days are far behind him.

Randy “The Ram” Robinson was once young, strong, famous, successful and wildly popular and as time goes by and decades later, he is actually a lost, disillusion resident of a trailer park in one of the more trashier parts of new Jersey. He works in community centers and grocery stores to hardly get by with rent and usually has to sleep in his van and spend the cold jersey nights.

From his tan to his muscles, everything about The Ram is fake, and with the passage …

Ye dosti hum nahi chhodenge… the happy-senti song from Sholay, that is ingrained deep in the psyche of Indian cine-lovers, also has great significance as far as film-makers, their kast & krew are koncerned. This post is about filmi dosti / kollaborations & how they have added or sometimes taken away from Indian cinema. A post also provoked by my own potent filmi dosti which was called off, a few days ago.

Research (don’t ask me who’s) has it that one of the few best / most produktive (recent) filmi-dosti to happen was Farhan-Ritesh, which led to the formation of Excel Entertainment. Another one sitting proudly on the list is the Vishal Bharadwaj-Kumar Mangat kollaboration. These 2 instances have given Indian cinema much to brag about & I think ‘Ye dosti’ lyrix should be a part of their professional kontracts! One notable instance from the past being Salim-Javed. (Feel free to …

iView Author: Njudo-E-Dara (Nagpur, India)
Email: withheld

Defining Cinema of Indian New Wave

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Disclaimers :

I think English language is better way communication to large audience, hence this post is in English. Otherwise I have no Shakespearean reason to be grammatically correct. But I have reason to communicate better. Rest; blame it on my English Teacher
I am no critic, but I appreciate cinema in its various forms, whether with musical docudrama, three act narrative or non linear.
I right now live away from Mumbai and am a long distant observer of the industry
Now I can’t write whole post in disclaimers, so those who think I offended them please assume respective disclaimers

So do you think Indian new wave arrived?
Before moving to Indian new wave, a little bit about “Yash Raj Chopra.
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Yash Chopra’ism

He made different films at the …

Once you are done with your board exams, and the laundry-list of competitive exams which follow, there is a lull-period of almost three months before you actually join college. People do all kinds of stuff during that time: some learn how to drive(and then proceed to channelize messrs Schumacher, Hamilton and Raikkonen), some take to uselessly useful stuff like the odd fag or the infrequent tipple. A few smart alecks actually manage, God forbid, to get laid(assuming they haven’t already). Some foolishly starving autodidact losers like me bummed around the house, nose buried among yellowed pages, vacant expression in place.

It was during this time that I read Richard Yates’s cruel gift to mankind…. “Revolutionary Road” was bleak, bold and brilliant. I remember my first reaction at finishing the book was “Thank God it’s over….” , and I mean that in the best possible way. Seldom does one come across such …

iView Author: SRIDHAR MAYUR (Hyderabad, India)

Email: With Held

” The Underrated Series - H Sridhar(Master of Sound Mixing and Audiography)”

First my condolences to the family of H Sridhar. He passed away on 01 Dec’08 due to cardiac arrest. This article is a tribute to the master of sound mixing and audiography. He engineered the correct sound equilibrium to the songs and hence made sound eloquent. His contribution and work in Audiography is commendable and has set standards which are unmatched.

H. Sridhar, (Sridhar Hariharan/H.Padmanabh) was a sound engineer famous for his works which garnered acclaim across the nation and won him pretigious awards for his incredible work. He had pioneered the use of Digital Sound for Indian films in the DTS format. He was the Chief Audio Engineer at Media Artists(India’s …

Holy cow! Is it about the movie anymore?
Cannot blame Aamir as he does what should be done, so he grows muscles, makes those lovely intriguing posters, talks about his diet, his trainer (we know his name too, “Satya”) also talks about his diet, we are also told that Kiran Rao, the missus told somewhere during the training “Bas Karo, Maar daaloge kya??”, some lady in Bangalore frets as it is her number flashed on Aamir’s tricep(or was it the upper left 4th pack), then the music and even ARR comes into answer stuff about how Guzaarish was conceived, how Javed Ali sang that and all that.
So what, if we are not so enamoured after seeing the movie. They shall always say that …

iView Author: Sethumadhavan (Vijaywada, India)
Email: sethumadhavan.n (at) gmail (dot)com

The Friday Phenomena

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While Saturday has always been the day to chill out and unwind & with Wednesday being the new Saturday not many people have realized that there is a completely different tribe that exists. The tribe to which people like me belong.

For us Friday is the most important day of the week. Every week Friday’s are eagerly looked forward to. The countdown starts from Tuesday & the excitement actually pours from Wednesday as Friday is just around the corner. Friends if you are wondering what I’m talking about then let me end the suspense here. I’m talking about Friday because that’s the day of the week when movies release usually.

Never really realized why Friday is usually the day of the release when …

Non-state actors. That’s the term that wins the prize for the most innovative use of English for the year 2008 for me. If I were on a film festival jury, they (non-state actors) would have won my vote for the ‘Best Acting Performance (by an ensemble cast)’ by a wide margin. However, I am worried, as well, by their emergence and the possible fallouts. Yes, there has already been war-of-words between India and Pakistan, escalation and de-escalation of tensions, troops yo-yoing into and away from borders and the usual reading between the lines of what American diplomats are saying or not saying. But what worries me the most (and since this is a cinema site) is what the masters of Bollywood patriotic brigade are spinning based on all of this at this moment.

Partition, 1947-  An event that is  destined to go down in utter infamy,   as  one  of  the darkest  periods   in  Indian history.  It  was a time,  when  humanity  touched  its  lowest  depths.  A  nation  was divided,   families  torn apart,  and  a horiffying  dance of death and destruction,  rained  on  the people.   It  was an age  when your religion   became  your  only means of  survival.  Where  Hindus,  Muslims  and  Sikhs,  had  earlier  lived  as neighbours  for centuries,  they  now  turned  against  each  other.   Neighbours  became enemies,   while  friends fell  upon  each other.  It  was  the  time  when  humanity  had  lost its meaning  in the  vicious throes  of  hatred.    There  have been many outstanding movies  and  novels  on Partition,    A  Train to Pakistan,  Garam Hawa,  Tamas  to name a few.   One  such  movie  is  Chandraprakash  Dwivedi’s   2003  movie   Pinjar,  based on  Amrita  Pritam’s  …

/** Spoiler Alert*/

When the title credits of Vertigo roll on screen, the title itself, comes from the pupils of a woman’s eyes. And then we have animated designs, spiralling in different directions, and the eye fading away, and then finally the woman’s eye comes back to screen, and we have the final credit. Even if we take the overall promos for Vertigo, we have a man in the center of many loops, and spirals. In a way that itself is an indicator of the movie’s central premise. On surface a thriller like most of Alfred …

The language of the post is Non-English.. only the script is in english. sorry for them,who cant read and understand it.

for reading in hindi log on to…http://chavannichap.blogspot.com
(YAH BAATCHEET GHAJINI KEE RELEASE KE PAHLE KEE GAYI THI)

apni nayi film ghajini ke bare mein aamir khan kahate hain ki yah action thriller film hai, jo audience ko bilkul alag tarah ka anubhav degi. aamir kahate hain ki audience ko meri filmon ko lekar khas jigyasha rahti hai,isliye unhen hamari film se ummid bhi adhik rahti hai. aamir ne ghajini sahit apne filmi jeevan aur nayi yojanaon par khulakar udgar vyakt kiye.

-kaha ja raha hai ki aamir khan ne ‘ghajini’ ke prachar men baji mar li hai. yah kitana sachet prayas hai?
-jahan tak baji marane ki baat hai to usake liye film release hone dijiye. han, hype zaroor hai. woh shayad isliye hai ki meri filmen sal men ek dafa aati hain …

The ‘Godfather of American Independent Cinema’, John Sayles brings the birth of rock ‘n’ roll to life with an electrifying effect in Honeydripper – releasing today at PVR Cinemas.

Sayles continues his extraordinary examination of the complexities and shifting identities of American sub-cultures. The film is a fable about the birth of rock ‘n’ roll – a quintessentially American subject.
Winner of the award for Best Screenplay at the 2007 San Sebastián Film Festival, it has a stunning soundtrack and a stellar cast, including Danny Glover, Charles S. Dutton, Stacey Keach and Mary Steenburgen, as well as performances by Motown legend Dr. Mable John and Keb’ Mo’.

Click here to check the show-timings.
For more features on world cinema, click here.

Below is an exclusive statement from the director
A lot of ink has been spilled …

A lot of questions came forth about how we shot Dev.d. Well, I didn’t know how to go about it either, like i always do, with every film. It’s the film that always decides the shooting style. Style is always a happenstance. It’s never predecided. Locations, where i am shooting always plays a major role, what i am shooting, the subject, it’s soul decides how i have to go about it. The film was set in various places, various moods, cities and areas. The film begins in Punjab, and i wanted to capture punjab. The question i asked myself is what punjab is all about. It is the richest state in India, reason- farming, and land which is so rich. Most of the people in punjab are farmers and family memebers who are in either UK or other parts of the world. I wanted to capture punjab like it is, …

Civilization. Sanity. Peace. Brotherhood. Throw these words out of the window. Because, with respect to the City of God,  they are not only an aberration and theoretical, but also, fantastic.  A city where every unarmed person is equivalent to a eunuch, a city where anarchy is the only form of order. A city where massacre is a rule, peace an exception. A city thriving on the fringes of insanity and its people clinging on to the feeble dim of shallow hope.

Adapted from Paulo Lins’s novel, the movie is a gut wrenching account of the people living in the City of God( Rio-di-Jenerio’s slum).  Narrated by Rocket, a wannabe photographer, who unlike his brothers, and the majority of the people of the city of Gods is not obsessed with guns. Or, taking life. He admits he is not cut out for that stuff. The movie is a first hand story about an ordinary guy who grew up in the …

2008 was the year I finally said goodbye to arena rock and heavy metal forever….ok maybe forever is too strong a word but for a long time at least. Instead I started listening to almost exclusively alternative music with the favored subgenres being post rock, shoegaze, electropop and garage rock. The list below is my pick for the best albums released this year.

Of course it doesn’t contain all the amazing bands I started to listening to for the simple reason that they didn’t release records this year with the most notable examples being The Strokes, Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem, The National, Matisyahu, Interpol, The Knife etc etc.

The list also doesn’t contain albums not officially released yet like Franz Ferdinand’s new record which has a smashing single in “Ulyssyes”. There was also some big letdowns from some of my fav bands like Shiny Toy Guns and Snow Patrol. I guess …

Slumdog Millionaire has been marketed/promoted as “The Feel-Good Film of The Decade” because one of the critic used that phrase in his review to describe the film And here we have announced the film as “The Masala Fillum of The Decade” or something like that, but we mean same. However……

Surely, in last decade we must have churned out at least dozens of feel-good or masala films, which are ten times better than Slumdog Millionaire. After all we have invented Masala genre.

So let’s look at Hindi films released in last decade and try to find a better Feel-Good or/& Masala film that challenges the statement.

1999

I didn’t follow Hindi films back then - not as much as I do now. I saw films when some TV channels showed it and on rare occasions I went to cinema. We relied on TV channels to show the films.

I believe 90s …

iView Author: scriptlarva
Email: turn360degree@hotmail.com
City/Country: New Delhi/ India

The role of restraint in a good screenplay

Subtlety is a word that we hear often. When we go through our screenplays we often face the question- Should I put that extra line of dialogue just to make it more clear? Should I make the character a little more prototypal so that audience identify with him more easily? Should I make the situation more comical though unbelievable because I will be able to hold audience attention more? The temptation to add something extra is often too much.

I will give you an example: Consider this situation in a movie. Two commandos are escorting terrorists in a bus to a point of transfer. Terrorists realise that one of the commandos is a …

iView Author: PRERNA (Mumbai, India)

Email: prerna_9585@yahoo.co.in

Dev.D Music….

AK has done it again. He is back in the hot and happening discussion rooms everywhere with his upcoming film Dev.D. And whether you love him or hate him… you just can’t ignore him! This time he is back with mindboggling trailers and incredible music album.

The trailers and posters of Dev.D are raising curiosity day by day. I was excited to see the first theatrical trailer of the film and since then I have been impatiently waiting for the music and the film release. Finally, the wait for the music is over as the songs are now available to hook on to on the net. I would call the music of the film ‘aphrodisiac’. The more you listen, the …

iView Author: SETHUMADHAVAN (Chennai/Vijayawada, India)

Email: sethumadhavan.n@ gmail.com

Why I look forward to Billu Barber

Before I left home for office today, I was just customarily watching Channel V & MTV and I happened to see the first song of Billu Barber on MTV- “Marjaani”. That set me thinking a lot about the movie & then I realized that sitting 6 weeks from the release of the movie (Feb 13th is the release date as of now), I am actually looking forward to Billu Barber and hence this write-up is to explain why I’m looking forward to it.

The Obvious Details

Before I get on with the reasons for looking forward to the film there are a few obvious details about the movie to be mentioned & dispensed away with. Billu Barber, produced by SRK & …

iView Author: BIPIN VADDI (BOSTON, U.S.A)

Email: bvaddi@gmail.com

David Fincher & “ The Curious case of Benjamin Button”

When someone’s resume starts with some rock video’s for the MTV generation, then takes on a super franchise like Aliens and then delivering a disillusioned sequel, you would imagine, that they would go back to making music videos.

The director then comes up a supremely and immaculately made movie called “Se7en” and stuck the then poster boy Brad Pitt in a grimly set, depressing setting – along with the magnificent Morgan Freeman and Kevin Spacey. Yes, I am talking about one of my very favorite contemporary directors, who have developed a cult like following in the present times. – Mr. David Fincher. Everything from the credits rolling backwards to the BGM, and …

It has been 2 days since the songs of Dev D ‘hit us’, and there is no better way to describe the effect. Normally I write music reviews and the hysteria looms for some time, I get panned for wrongly interpreting many things and get lauded for getting few things right, sometimes I fight, sometimes I feel too lazy or simply incapable of facing all the questions thrown at me. And soon it gets over.
Dev D is different. The response is mind numbing, the music is not yet out officially and still the whole nation is going ga-ga. The kind of enthusiasm and excitement shown by every music lover in the endless comments and elsewhere is unprecedented. And this shows that it is no fluke, or a one week wonder. These songs will grow, and grow more.
There are so many questions that everyone has, may be we soon …

Got a call from my cousin Titu in Amritsar..And I braced myself up for some fundoo gyan from him.. “ Oye ki haal hai Yaara”, his first words to me as I answered with a tentative sounding Hello.. I said I am fine but what is this Yaara business..What happened to good old Paapey or Boss? He said Yaara is the new flavor of the season courtesy RNBDJ.. “ Oh, so you are hooked on to the movie,” I asked, peeved by his taste in movies..This time he surprised me by panning the movie saying it is too regressive even for the feudal sensibilities of North Indian Punjablis ! Then he went on to surprise me more..He commented that the movie was just like a cheap Chinese shoe..Good upper with no sturdy sole.. Then he asked me “ Oye Yaara, name five instances in Hindi Cinema where shoe …

There’s a moment in Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona” when the tension between the lead actors (Bibi Andersson the nurse and Liv Ullman the actress) reaches its zenith, leading to a rupture of the film. The film-reel then catches fire. We see it dissolving on the screen. A total blackout follows, the film-bits come together and the film starts all over again.

A defining sequence in the film, it throws open innumerable interpretations. One significant explanation for the moment could be the power that Cinema carries with itself to seduce us based on the drama it throws up on screen. Cinema truly is the most seductive form of art to have ever been created and Bergman all through the film keeps us in close contact with that sensuality.
But then at this telling moment, he decides to hold the drama back and remind us that what’s happening on screen is not actually real. …

Disklaimer: Long post. Read at your own peril. Wink. Roughly an year after I became a PFC regular, I got an email. The mail was from the author of a post that I had commented upon. I was hyper thrilled and all that. For sake of security (mine) I won’t divulge who it was, but that’s not the point anyways. After exchanging a few emails, the ice broke and the credit goes to… yes, you guessed it… DARU!

So coming to the point, the author, made me an offer. An offer that happens in the wet-dreams of all filmis, especially when they are not lokated in Bbay. I was required to read a skript (that the author was to direct), reakt, komment, suggest changes and hold your breath - become an AD for the film! This couldn’t be happening to me I said, but then it was. Really.

So one fine …

 The  best  thing  to happen to me in 2008,  was becomming a  full flegded  author  of  PFC.   And in the course making  some wonderful  friends out here.  This  would be my  last  post  for 2008,  and am hoping that in 2009,  i would still  contribute to PFC  in  whatever way i can.   Telugu movie  industry  saw some significant   events  happening,  Chiranjeevi   getting into politics,  small movies doing well,  big blockbusters  crashing at  box office,  and usual  quota  of  scandals,  backbiting and  gossip.  So here  is  a brief   overview.

For  over close to 25  years,  he  has been  the    darling  of  the  Telugu  audiences,  distributors  and  movie producers.  Even  his  flop movies  were  assured  of a decent return.  Chiru  has  been to Andhra,   what  Rajnikanth  has been to Tamil Nadu, an  actor  with a wide ranging appeal.  For   years  his  movies  have entertained  the  Telugu audiences,  and  he has starred in some of  …

iView Author: Dr.MANDAR V. BICHU (Sharjah, UAE )

Email: With held

Classic Revisited - Chashme Baddur - 1981

Chashme Baddur

Year: 1981

Dir: Sai Paranjape

Cast: Farooque Shaikh, Dipti Naval, Ravi Baswani, Rakesh Bedi

In the 1980s, the mainstream Hindi cinema was rapidly going downhill. Amitabh’s best years were gone and his career was largely going through the rut of ‘Angry Young Vijay meets Funny Guy Anthony’ repetition. His only real contender Jeetendra was dishing out his terrible ‘Ta Thaiya Ta Thaiya Ho Ho’ hits like Himmatwala, Mawali and Tohfa. Even though I was still not old (or mature) enough to understand or analyze ‘Why’, I had started to get disenchanted with Bollywood. (It hadn’t even got that sobriquet back then!) I was slowly …