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Tapan Sinha, the man who has given some beautifully-crafted films like Kabuliwalla, Khudito Pashan, Sagina Mahato and Ek Doctor Ki Maut, is the Dada Saheb Phalke Award winner for the year 2006.

A committee comprising Shyam Benegal , Gautam Ghosh, A Nageshwar Rao, Sharmila Tagore and Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia recommended Sinha’s name for the top cinematic honour of the country to the Government. The award comes at a time when Sinha has been bedridden for quite some time due to old-age ailments.

The government announced that Sinha will receive a cash price of Rs ten lakh (one million), a Swarna Kamal (Golden Lotus) and a shawl. The award will be given away at the function, likely to be latter this month, in which the National Awards for 2006 (announced earlier) will be given to the winners.

Another highly-deserving stalwart from Bengal, Saumitra Chatterjee, was also in the running for the honour …

Asian-Arab Competition:

Best Film: Tokyo Sonata (dir: Kyoshi Kurosawa (Japan-Netherlands-Hong Kong)

Best Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Three Monkeys, Turkey-France-Italy)

Best Actor: Ammor Hakkar (The Yellow House, France-Algeria)

Best Actress: Hiam Abbas & Rona Laipaz Michael (Lemon Tree, Israel-France)

Special Jury Award: Salt of the Sea (dir: Annemarie Jacir, Palestine-Belgium-France)

Indian Competition:

Best Film: Gulabi Talkies (dir: Girish Kasaravalli, Kannada)

Best Director: Remo (Lal Paharer Katha / A Story of Red Hills, Bengali)

Best Actor: Rajat Kapoor (The Prisoner, Hindi) & Govind Namdeo (Kabootar, Hindi)

Best Actress: Umashree (Gulabi Talkies, Kannada)

First Features Award:

Best Film: Confessional (dir: Jerrold Tarog & Ruel Dahis Antipuesto, The Philippines)

In-Tolerance Award:

Best Film: Hidden Faces (dir: Handen Ipekci, Turkey-Germany)

Audience Award:

Best Film: The Band’s Visit (dir: Eran Kolirin, Israel-France)

FIPRESCI Award:

Best Film: Ramchand Pakistani (dir: Mehreen Jabbar, Pakistan) & Salt of the Sea

NETPAC Award:

Best Film: Bioscope (dir: K M Madhusudhanan, Malayalam-Tamil)

The six juries were:

Asian Arab Competition:

Christine Hakim (Indonesia), Chantal Akerman (Belgium), Wu Nien-jen (Taiwan), Kais al Zubaidi (Palestine) and …

Govinda……… govinda…… govinda……… govinda………… goooooovindaaaaaaaa.

I have hearing problem. Left side is almost dead, some medical complication. And now I feel so lucky that after watching Contract, right side is still working. Or I would have no option but to sue the filmmaker.

Had a hard time convincing myself to watch Sarkar Raj. Recently saw it on the net and concluded that “the man has lost his craft”. And I can’t figure out how. I understand if your art doesn’t connect with your fans and audiences or fans and audiences are dumb enough not to understand your art but how do you lose your craft ? Like VVC’s Eklavya, SLB’s Saawariya or AK’s No Smoking. All these films are well crafted, brilliantly mounted. Anyway, being an old Ramu fan, I could not stop myself from watching Contract. Third film of his underworld triology.

Since it was a special screening, when we entered the …

TV is a bitch. It seriousy is. For anyone wanting to get into media, it’s the first choice. Firstly, because it offers easy money. And secondly, because there are so many idiots around that you get to make your mark easily. That is if you can inspire yourself enough to give the best in an atmosphere which has loads of sleaze and internal politics. Yes, it’s a big magnetic field. It does attract a lot of good talent but immense amount of junk too. For me, i always wanted to make movies and saw television as a stepping stone towards that. Extremely stupid. Now, this could hold true in the west where a lot of the content created for television is top notch. There is
loads of creativity. The crew works as a professional unit. Moreover, a lot of stuff still is shot on 16/35mm so graduating to films is not …

Just returned back from the sets of Gulal.. For more than a week, I was so heavily occupied in the work, the I could not manage to visit the location (currently filming at Chaumu Palace, about 40 kms from Jaipur city).. and then came July 4th, the Independence day of US, became a day of freedom for me as most of my clients were busy spending time at a holiday… So I left early (9.30PM) from the office and directed my car on to the highway. It was an adventurous ride to the location.. I was so heavily engaged in my projects in last few days, that I forgot Vasan told me its Chaumu Palace and I took it for Chaksu (Near Chokhi Dhani, I remember Chokhi Dhani reference in the film so I did not even cared to confirm back) and I set off in a wrong …

Love Story 2050 ya Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na ? Me and KK were not confused about making the choice. Its Harry Baweja vs Abbas Tyrewala. But KK had some other reason. At Love Story 2050 screening, booze would be there. May be we can sit through the film then. No, lets vote for the writer. Afterall he co-wrote one of our all time favourite film, Maqbool. We compromised on the booze factor.

Mummy I want panipuri. A squeaky voice from the row behind us.
Must be kid.
Beta panipuri bahar jaake khayenge.
Ahhhh…naaaaiiiii…papa….panipuriiiiii…mummy.
Ok, we are fucked.
Beta, dekho papu cant dance aayega…abhi jaldi aayega.
KK looked around…Koi aur seat khali bhi to nahi hai.
In theatres, the message on the screen should be changed – switch off your mobiles and KIDS!! OR please go and watch thoda pyaar thoda magic with your kids.

Kk – the credit roll looks nice.
Me – ya, love all around …

Is it a first-of-its-kind study? I got this in the form of a press release. I feel the sample size is too, too small. The release does not give details of the “40 questions” that comprised the questionnaire.

Of interest to PFC writers and readers would be this sentence, “NRIs/PIOs consult….PassionForCinema.com (32.2%) on a regular basis”.

Here is what the release said the study has found:

Quote:

The Results Are Out!

We have heard that there are differences in the preferences of Indians and NRIs/PIOs when it comes to Bollywood. Well, how many statistics do we have to back up some of our basic assumptions regarding Bollywood and Bollywood’s target audiences? Now that the results of an international Bollywood research study conducted by Amanda Sodhi, a graduate of Marymount University, are out, we do have some numbers to work with!

According to the recent Bollywood research study Amanda administered on 93 NRIs/PIOs …

I had just quit whatever I was doing till then and had taken a solemn oath of eternal poverty and struggle. Cinema…..Was writing for someone those days…..donno what happened to that script. We were having a narration…..half way thru we had a sutta brake. The person whom we were narrating was a reputed editor…..he mentioned “Gulaal ruk gayee…..this was Anurag’s last hope…”…Did not know him then…and never imagined I would ever be writing this…..

There are many films you wished you were a part of. Like I always wished I was a part of Dil Se.. donno why…the feeling for Gulaal was the same….when it was launched…..when it was stalled….always wished…I wanted to be a part of it. June 28, 2008 am in Jaipur, already into the 4th day of shoot.

Gulaal for me was the beginning of the most exciting Director-DOP combo in the industry…maybe after Guru Dutt – …

Leaving in two hours for Jaipur to finally complete Gulaal. The film I have been trying to do for last six years. All these years before ZEE motion pictures came in , no body wanted to do Gulaal because of lack of star cast. Finally I meet producers who insist on seeing the product than asking for who is starring in it.

Am I happy, or am I ecstatic. I don’t know. This is the film that has meant the most to me. It’s personal, it’s universal, it’s political and it is real. Finally it is happening. I have been away from PFC because of various reasons. I had nothing to write about, i wanted to stay away, I just wanted to work.

No Smoking was the film closest to me that i made. I never got over the way it was rejected. I still feel bitter about it. The success of …

iView Author : V.Bharadwaj

Email : vinaybar@hotmail.com

Before I start talking about the film, first a few things about Chaos theory:

Basically a chaotic system is one wherein long term predictions are impossible. Like for example,if I push a car, I know that it is going to move and it will continue to do so if I go on pushing it on and on. However,in a chaotic system,this situation cannot be predicted over a long period of time. Weather for example is a chaotic system. No matter how good your instruments are,you simply cannot predict the weather with 100% accuracy over a long term basis and forecast it. This is put forward by the butterfly effect which is the most important component of a chaotic system. Basically,small perturbations results in amplifications which completely destroys the original nature of the system and makes prediction impossible. …

What’s in a name? (Part III)

It’s that time again. Let’s play the marketing game!!! Has your film marketed well, does your title appeal to me, and most importantly will I pay to watch your film?

Again I will throw my disclaimers out. These are mini capsules on what I know about films that are coming out this year. I am not looking up any information for these films, but merely going by what I already know or is obvious from the title, and if I know nothing, I take a wild guess based on the title. The purpose of this is to show the power of marketing in its many facets. All the links are looked up after I say what I gots to say about the film in question. (I only disclaim to save my own ass from being accused of ignorance about …

The 54th National Film Awards for the year 2006 were announced today. The whole awards & entries list is here:

http://pib.nic.in/archieve/others/2008/jun/54th_nfa.pdf.

However, some salient features:

1. At last, Soumitra Chatterjee has won a national award for the best actor - for the Bengali film Podokkhep. In 2001, he had won a special jury award for Goutam Ghose’s Dekha, but he had declined it. That year Anil Kapoor had got the award for Pukar. The best actress award goes to Priyamani for Paruthi Veeran (Tamil).

2. Priyanandan’s Malayalam film Pulijanmam has got the best feature film award.

3. Kabir Khan’s Kabul Express (Hindi) and Madhu Kaithapuram’s Eakantham (Malayalam) share the Indira Gandhi Award for the Best First Film of a Director.

4. Lage Raho Munnabhai has won the Best Popular Film Award, best screenplay (Abhijat Joshi, Raj Kumar Hirani & Vidhu Vinod Chopra), best lyrics (Swanand Kirkire for Bande Mein Tha Dum).

5. Care of …

This man makes movies as if he was making jalebis..ek ke baad ek…His Sarkar Raj releases this weekend. I will surely watch it, no doubt, afterall its a freaking RGV movie, however bad it might be..it still is RGV movie.

While on that note of Aamir getting splendid reviews from Raja Sen of Rediff, i chanced upon this trailer of Phoonk from RGV. Well the trailer says it all. Its about Black Magic. Its starts off with the camera going mighty close to a broomstick, to a woman cooking in the kitchen to a man shaving in his bathroom..and then the shrill…we have seen it all in RGV trailer, but for some odd reason, this one did excite me.

It has all the trademark RGV in it..ajeeb camera angles, the suspense building formula, et al. But, one thing that i liked about this trailer was …

Some time ago a famous Director who has earned his reputation as an intellectual director also, said, during a private talk with someone, while asked to give his take on two actresses, that he can not have a conversation with a certain famous actress as she is too dumb for that.

Its immaterial who he was and about whom he had said but important thing is this that a wise director thought in those terms.

Nevertheless his sayings gave push to an interesting topic.

Being a director he needed an intellectual actress on sets, who could talk on any topic under the sun with a good wisdom but who could not bring life and true justice to the character given to her or he needed an actress who might not be thoroughly intellectual in real life but who could make her character alive on screen?

What a director demands and what …

The Trailer is out!
I caught it along during Indy and it looks EPIC (kindly overlook the malnourished, pale Kidman if u wish)
its Baz’s AUSTRALIA. Enough said! Take a look

AUSTRALIA is an epic and romantic action adventure, set in that country on the explosive brink of World War II. In it, an English aristocrat (Nicole Kidman) travels to the faraway continent, where she meets a rough-hewn local (Hugh Jackman) and reluctantly agrees to join forces with him to save the land she inherited. Together, they embark upon a transforming journey across hundreds of miles of the world’s most beautiful yet unforgiving terrain, only to still face the bombing of the city of Darwin by the Japanese forces that attacked Pearl Harbor. With his new film, Luhrmann is painting on …

He was trembling, no shivering– no, no quivering– no,no shaking !..“Moss, I am leaving ! Moley toh, idhar bahut risk ho gaya hai!! Mete, ye shahar ab rehne kay liye theek nahin!!!”

I was wondering at his nervousness but wondered more about the gibberish he was mumbling..And then he expressed his real fears..He was earlier scared by Raj Thackeray’s tirade against North Indians especially UPites and Biharis..But now he was completely terrorized after Uddhav Thackeray joined in the turf war by blasting anything and everything pronounced with letter B ! Then it dawned upon me what he meant actually ( Boss, I am leaving! Boley toh, idhar bahut risk ho gaya hai!! Bete, ye shehar ab rehne kay liye theek nahin !!!) .

Though he was from Punjab he was paranoid..He had this nagging feeling that the virus could spread..I tried to allay his apprehensions but he was unmoved.

Like a subprime …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Just finished watching the trailer and it really pisses me of what a few idiotic fucks come up with? The whole nation goes ballistic over DaVinci Code being banned! National Treasure goes full houses in India and it is hardly talked about here in the US but when finally one guy with some ballz and creativity makes a movie that basis thousands of years of Hindu history as a back-drop to tell a story, make it with unindian professionalism and dream to take huge risks through a medium that he rules, the narrow-minded mediocre politically motivated sleazy voluptuous heroine gazers who know nothing but to booze in crowd and hoot who don’t have the courage for open dialogue go on rampage on calling the movie dividing Hindus based on Shivites and Vishavites, a fabric so old and mutually existent that it would feel insulted being spoken about???…