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Farah Khan’s blockbuster Om Shanti Om, Aamir Khan’s directorial debut Taare Zameen Par and Kranti Kanade’s Mahek have been nominated for top awards at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, 2008.

In the individual categories, actor-director Rajat Kapoor has been nominated in the Best Actor category for his performance in Pryas Gupte’s The Prisoner (he won the best actor award at the 10th Osian’s Cinefan this year for this film), while Kiiran Deohans has been nominated in the Achievement in Cinematography category for his work in Jodhaa Akbar.

Here are all the nominations - and as one goes through them, one realises the formidable competition OSO is up against! - Three Monkeys (Nuri Bilge Ceylan), Sparrow (Johnnie To) and Tulpan (Sergei Dvortsevoy).

BEST FEATURE FILM

“The Red Awn” (Hong Se Kang Bai Yin) Cai Shangjun (China)

“Sparrow” (Man Jeuk) Johnnie To (Hong Kong)

“Om Shanti Om” Farah Khan (India)

“Tulpan” Sergei …

iView Author: Amit Singh (Fremont, CA, USA)

Email: withheld

When the extras shined a bit extra

Remember Rangeela! One of the great musical entertainers of the 90s! It will always be remembered as the swan song of Urmila and for probably the greatest ever tapori performance by Amir Khan. Right after the movie was released, RGV, the director of the movie created a big controversy. In an interview while discussing the movie, he praised the acting of an unknown extra that played the role of a waiter in a scene where Amir Khan, takes Urmila for a treat. RGV said something along the lines of “How this guy made Amir look great in that scene..”. RGV’s point was that this extra didn’t have an author backed role, didn’t have the backing of any quirks in his character …

iView Author: A. Singh

(Fremont, CA, USA)

Email: Witheld

TZP and JTYJN: Overhyped ‘yes’,great movies ‘No’

Bollywood hype machine has got smarter and slicker in last 3-4 years. The quality of the movies hasn’t improved a whole lot but the ability to market and hype average fares to present them classics has certainly gone up.

Otherwise, how else you explain the great commercial and critical success of 2 Amir Khan movies – Tare Zameen Par and Jane Tu Ya Jane Na or whatever, the second produced by him. Let me concede up front that both were well presented and were better than the run of the mill stuff thrown at us every week. But that doesn’t make them classics and Amir Khan the genious. Come on people, what’s wrong with you?

First TZP, it has a wafer thin plot, a very …

iView Author:Shashank Walia
(Delhi, India)
EMAIL: shashankwalia [at] live [dot] com

Title: Jaane Tu……..I found myself!

Well am I a film lover or a film reviewer? This question flashed into my mind when I was fifteen minutes in to Abbas Tyrewala�s Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na. I don�t know why this question crashed in to my mind, maybe I was trying to review the film rather than just sit and enjoy. Thinking about it after I finished watching the film I found myself again � a true film lover who got lost in over-analyzing every single frame of the film he used to watch. Well why do we expect a Lagaan or a Taare Zameen Par or 400 blows in every film that promises us to provide something in it? We had expectations from Jaane Tu �but then Aamir Khan himself knows the very fact that every film he produces can�t be …

iView Author:Azad
(Bangalore, India)
EMAIL:azad.ksingh [at] gmail [dot] com

Title: Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na - Too Many film makers spoil the movie

Imagine Aamir Khan making his debut with Andaz Apna Apna!!! And what if the director of the same is Mansoor Khan and not Raj Kumar Santoshi! This is the kind of feeling I had after watching Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na. This is a movie gone wrong, primarily because it had too many film makers in the crew. The movie is meant to be a spoof of the romantic films made in the Hindi Film Industry, or so it seemed to me. But at the same time it tries too hard to be innocent.

And its not that the film is without its moments. This is one of those rare films where I was waiting anxiously for the scenes involving the khan duo(Arbaaz and Sohail). …

iView Author:Rusted Rick
(Kolkata, India)
EMAIL:ritchick.mozumdar [at] gmail [dot] com

Title: THE CUTEST FILM OF THE YEAR!! - Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na…

Who goes in to see a movie 9.30 am in the morning? Quite a few apparently.
I, amongst them, treaded into the line outside the ticket counter�.god what are so many people doing here this early! I thought am going to be the only hapless person to come over to a theater this early�..they must be for LOVE STORY 2050, stupid people!! Why would anyone pay money to see a hrithik clone dance with robots! But then again, am sure the hall for jaane tu ya jaane na is going to be half empty�..I need to stretch my legs! So I reach the counter, “one ticket for jaane tu, current show please”, and then comes the shock, “sir is 3rd row from …

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 …

In continuation with the first part of the interview( Ashutosh Gowarikar : I missed the Prem’s role in Maine Pyar Kiya ) of Director Ashutosh Gowarikar, taken by Ajay Brahmatmaj , second and concluding part is presented here.

AB: If you had become a successful actor then we could not have got film like Lagaan and we could have missed the director Ashutosh Gowarikar also.

AG: Yes Yes�I have thought on this many a times. I am not certain about what actor Ashutsoh Gowarikar could have done after becoming successful? But if my early two films Pehla Nasha and Baazi had worked even then also Lagaan could not have been made. It was possible then that in my old age perhaps I could have tried to make such a film. Perhaps there would not have been existed any need to do so. My producers may feel …

As informed in the post Director is like a God walking on earth : Shyam Benegal a new series “Initial Steps” is started with this interview of Director Ashutosh Gowarikar.

Thanks a lot to Ajay Brahmatmaj who provided his detailed Interview with
Ashutosh Gowarikar to PFC.

Here is the first part of the interview.

From now onwards Ajay Bramatmaj will be represented by AB and Ashutosh Gowarikar by AG.

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[Following is the translation of the Hindi Interview and may not do full justice to the original interview so to read the exact sayings of Ashutosh Gowarikar, one should go through the original interview. This is simply a trial to expose the interview to those readers who can not read Hindi]
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AB: Where you spent your childhood. You belong to Mumbai or came here from outside. When you were introduced …

Mansoor suddenly surfacing after being in oblivion for so many years, brought in this huge flood of memories this Tuesday morning. Here was this guy who made four movies, two I loved and the rest two I didn’t care about. In fact I’d walked out halfway through his third (Akele Hum Akele Tum)… I was hurt.

How could he? How could a guy who gave me some of the best moments of my life via his stories do this to me? How could he simply give me a Hindi translation of Kramer v/s Kramer with some of his stale inputs. In fact how could he, who I loved more amongst the kiddo duo (the other being Sooraj Barjatya) give me a copied story which had one of it’s threads depicting musician copying others’ work.

Then by the time his Josh came in… I gave up. Till today I haven’t had …

Don ka Intzaar to 11 mulkon kee police kar rahee hai
par Don ko pakadna mushkil hee nahin namumkin bhee hai

Amitabh Bachchan , the owner of baritone, had won the hearts of the audiences when he had delivered above mentioned dialogue in old Don, using pauses at most appropriate places to make it more impressive .

And this is not about his screen persona Don in the film, the real person AB has also been elusive and it was KBC through which ordinary people knew and saw him more.
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Shekhar Kapur could be said as one of the early birds in this forest of bloggers and he has been interacting with people since years through his homepage based blog.

Shekhar writes not only on cinema related topics but whatever appeals to him. His social, political, spiritual views can be read through his blog. His creative writings, both …

Bura na mano holi hai .. holi hai bhai holi hai .. Bura na maano holi hai

The aforementioned used to be our (i.e me and my aawara delhi lodi colony waalas’) slogan during holi, while under this pretext we would apply colour to all the females of the locality who normally wouldn’t even bother to acknowledge us as human beings let alone Dudes/Guys/date-able etc etc ..

So we always used to do ghost-dating (HELLO !!! IF Ghost direction and Kamal Hassan can exist, why not GHOST DATING ??)

Why am i reminded of the same after reading this (and I must confess, after drinking two big glasses of BHAANG)???

“So what really went wrong between Aamir and Robert? “Why Robert is no longer part of the film, I would not know the back-story,” says Abhinay. He has just started casting for the film, which has been written by Los Angeles-based …

There has been discussions here before on Movies, their marketing and challenges we face in dealing with piracy - i say ‘we’ here for convenience sake (devlish-eheh). India Today organised a conclave with different entrepreneurs and main speakers Aamir Khan, Shekhar Kapur (moderator) and Ashok Amritraj recently (i believe they do it ever year) and aamirkhan.org has put up videos of the event on Youtube for all of us to see.

Aamir had this to say in an interview at the Conclave

Q: Taare Zameen Par touched many hearts. Do you think you have been successful in integrating commercial and art cinema?
Firstly, I don’t believe in the concept of art and commercial cinema. I have never distinguished them. For me, the main aim is make popular films which cater to the popular market, to the masses. To me, the audience is the one that decides. Cinema is an art form in itself. …

at least one of the parties….

After quite a few months solemn silence from both Aamir and Amol, the latter lets it rip in an interview posted on
AllBollywood

Thus spoketh Amol

It’s misreported that I didn’t like the edited version of TZP. There was no question of not liking the edited version because my wife Deepa was editing the material in Panchgani as we were shooting. We were all very proud of the film. Then we had a wrap-up party. And that’s when Aamir announced he was the director of the film. That’s when I got to know of his intentions.

I’m trying to put it behind me… Let me just say, right from choosing all the kids for the parts to the final editing, I was right there on board… I wanted to preserve the kids’ natural innocence. So I never auditioned them. I used to engage them in discussions and …

SARFAROSH (1999) - ORIGINAL AND AWESOME

Perhaps all of PFC guys have shown this superb film but I want to discuss this film as this film has impressed me lot with respect to story telling, griping script, dialogues, characters, performances and music.

Sarfarosh was John Mathew Mathan�s first film after making ads and in his first film he seems to be prominent director of hindi cinema. Let�s discuss this film by its qualities

Story: The first rule of cinema is it should be entertaining. The good message attached with it is secondary thing. Sarfarosh is entertaining as well it conveys the message of patriotism which writer and director want to say. The story has superb balance of qualities of commercial cinema as well as off beat cinema.

Story deals with exposure of weapons racket supported by ISI and our in-house terrorists. Film starts with mass killing and loot of passengers by some south …