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I had just finished my Class VIII examinations and was enjoying a break - not entirely well deserved as it turned out later when the results were declared. While I was revelling in, what I would later look back to and refer to as, my salad days (as Shakespeare almost stole my lines and wrote “when I was green in judgment, cold in blood”), the nation was going through, what an average writer would call, tumultuous times.

Mandal, till then the surname of that girl living next block with allegedly malleable morals, suddenly came to mean more to us. That a lot of young men fought over Mandal remained common between the girl and the Report. Mandir was no longer where Amitabh went to vent his spleen at the end of the movie. It now had terms like shilanyas and kar seva tagged with it. All in all, the kind …

At times some dialogues have a weird sense of irony in them..In Love 2050 Harman Baweja is made to say at least four times “ I don’t need luck, I have love”..And to justify his conviction he goes into future to bring back his lady love Priyanka Chopra.

In Jane Tu Ya Jaane Na (JTYJN) Imran Khan and Genelia D’souza are not even sure what love is all about and whom to love etc.etc.

To be fair Harman Baweja in Love 2050 did a good job..He is is earnest, enthusiastic, camera friendly..Ditto for Imran Khan in JTYJN.. He is earnest, enthusiastic, camera friendly..Both are cute..Ok Imran Khan is more cute.

Harman Baweja is tom tommed as clone of Hrithik Roshan..Imran Khan of his illustrious uncle Aamir Khan..Harman Baweja is touted as next super-star..Imran Khan is brazenly written about as next super-star by many reviewers..

So what’s the problem man?

Have some …

9 july ko Guru Dutt ka janmadin hai.mumkin hai patra-patrikaon,news chaneels aur filmy channels par unke sambandh mein apne-apne anaz mein har koi kuchh na kuchh likhe,bole aur bataye.aaj unhen aur unki filmon ko yaad karte hue sabhi ek hi raag alap rahe honge.bagair unki films dekhe,samjhe aur niji taur par aatmasaat kiye hi har koi tarif kar raha hota hai.waqt aa gaya hai ki ham Guru Dutt ka sahi moolyankan karen aur aaj ke sandarbh mein dekhen ki woh kitne prasangik aur mahtvapoorn hain.

main yahan unka likha ek lekh post kar raha hoon.yah lekh unhonne Screen ke liye likha tha.yah lekh mujhe Shashikant Kinikar ki pustak ‘Guru Dutt 1925-1964′ mein mila.pustak mein koi tarikh nahin di gayi hai,lekin lekh mein aaye dev anand aur geeta bali ke zikra se lagta hai ki 1955-56 ke aaspaas likha gaya hoga.is pustak mein unke aur bhi do lekh hain.agar koi unhen yahan …

Frisbeetarianism: The philosophy that when you die, your soul goes up on a roof and gets stuck.

Interes(h)ting! The varied uses of Frisbee! I learnt of this tongue-in-cheek term, variously attributed to George Carlin or Jim Stafford, quite recently. And it helped me with a single word description of what I have been seeking for a long time. What is it, you ask?

Let’s go back to Chitralekha (1964), the film adaptation of Bhagwati Charan Verma’s literary classic of the same name. Verma enquires about the notions of value judgment, what determines right or wrong and contrasts desire with sacrifice. The central tenet is similar to Schopenhauer’s attributing the primacy of will/desire over intellect in what drives man to be unreasonable. Chitralekha is a fascinating story set during the reign of Chandragupta where the life of the central protagonist, Chitralekha, is intertwined with the lives of two men on opposite …

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 …

Recently I have revelled in the close encounters with the forgotten art of close-ups in couple of movies.

Before I talk of these movies up close let me just share some masala and trivia with you on these close-ups..

The old cameramen who have gone to seed or become inactive don’t leave an opportunity to narrate how they used to relish lighting up for a close-up especially the heroine’s..And how they used to take hours together to light it up..And few of them brag that heroines literally used to lagao maska to them to light up their faces in close-ups..Have you ever heard of close-up couch..Well few of the cameramen boasted of laying the heroines for giving them a close-up that lighted up the marquee..It was like fulfilling their wish to be a diva or a Cleopetra whose face is supposed to have launched thousand ships!

The modern technology is …

I arrived at the location a full 37 minutes after the witching hour, figuring I’ll still be the first. IST and all. But no, Badmash and Evelyn were standing outside the bar. From their unbridled disappointment at seeing me, I figured they were PFC.

We air kissed our hellos (Not), got a round of drinks and headed to the patio, It was Evelyn’s wedding anniversary, yet she said husband can wait. A PFC Meetup is more important, and hung out with us for most of the evening, while waiting on her husband to pick her up.

It was a small and intimate group and PFC author Shripriya put in a cameo.

I would be lying if I said that I was disappointed with the turn out. Not the folks that came(they were fun, and charming) …

A few days ago I realized that my life is on a trajectory that I can’t change. I don’t control the trajectory; rather, it controls me. It’s like being hurled off a canon early in life and following a predetermined path since. What’s all the melancholia for? Well, to establish the philosophical underpinnings of what I am going to do here.

I have realized that I can’t be a professional writer. In fact, I can’t be a professional anything except what I am today. So, what do I do with all the stories that I have with me? Those written over the years, some published, others transferred from one laptop to the other every few years. Do they just die away? The answer is no. Instead of spoofing other filmmakers and their storylines (like I did here), I have decided to put out 3 story ideas here on PFC. …

There’s a shot in Kill Bill when The Bride meets Hattori Hanzo in Okinawa to get his steel and learn the art of using a HH sword from him. They do not discuss Bill, another Hanzo associate, but talk about The Bride’s vermin. Vermin of revenge. Finally as part of a guessing game, in quite a lengthy shot Hanzo writes Bill on the glass window with his finger and then walks off. There’s a cut and The Bride comes and wipes off the letters B I L L from the window. She does it in one go, looks at the window and then wipes of the little residue of BILL in the corner.
I can’t get over this shot. Every time I watch Quentin Tarantino’s 4th film, and I have watched it more number of times than MF Hussain has seen Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, I am totally fascinated. If Uma …

There are movies you walk out of, never to return back. And there are movies you just keep popping out, and flying in to catch a few scenes before ejecting right out.

And then, there are movies which hold you tight from the start to end. And keep bringing you back to it, and there you are… each re-watch of the movie brings to light new meanings, hidden in the corner subtlety, a new wow in the 46th minute you missed the first time.

In short, you’ve been enslaved by the movie. And in order of hypnotic impact - it begins with the story, visuals, performances, dialogue, music - all blanketed in the directors intelligent handling of his writer’s screenplay.

Inside Man is one such movie that keeps pounding me again and again.

Now to begin with it’s made by Spike Lee, who’s filmography as a director consisted of films that are quite political …

I’m sorry to follow up my post PFC 6 with another one. But this is important. It proves my power of clairvoyance. This is going to be short.

About 4 months back I had written a post but abandoned it thinking it wasn’t relevant. It was short story of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva coming down to earth for a state of the world survey. In Mumbai, the run short of cash and find the best way to make some quick money is to act in an Ekta Kapoor Saas-Bahu saga. They get hold of a casting director who finds their costumes in total alignment with their latest series ‘Koi Patthar Se Na Maare Mere Saas Ko’. So he sends them to meet Ekta. The Trinity is ready for the audition but find they are taken into a room which has Sanjay B Jumaani (numerologist) and Sunita Menon (new age spiritualist). …

I am a sucker for intelligent cinema. Therefore, I watch Hindi films. I like my life to be predictable. The virtues of stillness – that constancy of the truant variables in life – they give me the appetite to take intellectual risks (like watching Salman on telly) in other fields. Once you have got the emotional elements anchored right, you are free to spread your wings elsewhere is my dictum.

Therefore, I love them all – YRF, VF, RGV, White Feathers et al. What predictability! The more things change, the more they remain same. After Jannat and Sarkar Raj, I can hardly wait for the YRF summer release, the homicidal-instincts-arousing title of which goes ‘Thoda Pyar, Thoda Magic’. And I am fervently hoping it doesn’t disappoint me. I hope that every frame of it screams the stultifying formula YRF seems to have discovered to draw family audience in. …

I was once stumped in an interview when the interviewer referred to my three strong interests in life, reading, old Hindi film music and cricket as trivial. My trivial mind thought that in a way he’s right since the etymological origin of the word ‘trivia’ is from Latin ‘tri’ (three) and ‘via’ (way). I relayed that thought back to him. He knew he was being had. So he dug in his heels and remarked about how most Hindi film songs portrayed the same emotions and situations. I was about to extol the virtues of constancy in life to him when he asked the key question “when have Hindi film songs been a reflection of times that we have lived in?” My first reaction was to ask “sir, ek bechaare se gaane pe aur kitna pressure daaloge?” Fortunately, better sense prevailed and I gave him a dose of Sahir’s Phir Subah …

Well I hope so!! LaBeouf’s rather innocuous line in the movie, appears significantly prophetic in the end.

SPOILER ALERT!!!

Unless you are in some weird parallel universe with no media or internet, you already know - the whip cracking archaeologist is back! And the premise is we are supposed to be happy and lap it all up. I was all for it, lapping up the whole platter about an hour back. I am however left with an uneasiness. I don’t feel like retching after the meal, but i just don’t have the fulfillment of a tasty one either. Part nauseous and part filling, my quandary is topped up by the incessant raves I hear about this sumptuously bland installment.

I heard the Spielberg-Lucas-Ford triumvirate say over and over again that Indy wont be back unless they come up with that perfect gem of …

Two recent obits brought back a question that I often get asked outside of India – “why does Hindi cinema continue to purvey the same formula with minimal changes to its audience and why does the audience not tire of it?” It’s a question asked on PFC on many occasions.

The answer is….Wait. May be I am getting ahead of myself.

First the obits:

Albert Hofmann, Swiss pharmacist and the man best known for being the first to have synthesized LSD and tasted it, passed away on April 29, 2008. He was 102.

Vijay Tendulkar, playwright, social observer and commentator best known for his plays and scripts in early 70s which exposed political and social hypocrisy prevalent in Indian society, died in a Pune hospital on May 19, 2008. He was 80.

So, what’s the connection between them and the original question posed?

The counterculture movement of the 60s has a lot to …

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 …

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 …

What Karishma Kapoor,Aishwarya Rai, Rekha, Shabana Azmi, Sharmila Tagore, Maduhri Dixit, Vyajantimala have in common.

With commercial success they want critical acclaim and an award worthy of their self perceived mettle.

As such in our Bollywood there are hardly movies that do justice to an actress’s versatility ..Rare is Erina Brokovich showcasing Julia Roberts acting prowess…Shabana Azmi does that in her social service ad campaigns.

Since critical acclaim and a national award can raise the actresses’ market value, they clamour to go all out for it..And one of the shortest routes to fame and fortune is through professin of prostitution..don’t get me wrong..i mean a screen role depicting profession of prostitution..And somehow it jells very well with the audience and makes an instant connect.

Shabana did it with Mandi..Sharmila Tagore in Mausam..Priya Rajvansh in Hanste …