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Random thoughts on “NAMKEEN” (1982)

Caution: Spoilers Ahead

This is not a review kind of article but describes my random feelings and thoughts while and after watching Namkeen. Kartik has written an article on Namkeen but I must share my thoughts about this gem, - you have to tolerate this. Pardon me if some lines match with kartik’s article but this would be genuine as we all have same feelings about cinema.

So Namkeen is a story about a truck driver and his relation with four women residing in a remote Himachal village. Truck driver Gerulal (Sanjeev Kumar) decides to rent a house in a village where house owner is a family consisting of an old woman (Waheeda Rehman) and her three daughters(Nimki-Sharmila Tagore, Mithu-Shaban Azmi, Chinki-Kiran Vairale). Then their relation develops and Gerulal is thinking to marry elder sister Nimki. But as his work contract expires he has to go …

iView Author: Prabhu Jhingran
(Lucknow, India)

Email :
mediamantra2000 [at] gmail [dot] com

The Practical Illustrated Media Handbook : Film & Cinematography

At the outset, we should not hesitate to admit that in several regions of our country, the standard of imparting media education is far from being satisfactory. The rush of young people towards the media-print or electronic, has led to the mushroom growth of institutes of journalism and mass communication. Their brochures make big claims and the fee is even bigger. Most of these institutes not only lack the basic infrastructure but also the faculty of teachers with professional background and practical experience. The show limps on with the help of part timers the result is that when the students find a job, they are also surprised to find that they were not told things which they should have been told for smoothly performing the day to day professional …

1971- Simply Superb!

When I was a kid; I used to like watching Ramayan, Alif Laila, Krishna and all those stuff made by Sagar brothers. But at the same time; I did not like their terrible technical ignorance and over over over the top acting. Can you imagine a camel cart with rubber tyres in age of Alif Laila or that typical hindi filmy back ground music in Ramayan. In 60s and 70s, Ramanad Sagar made some good movies like Geet, Charas and Aankhein. But after that Sagar brothers made aweful movies and serials with pathetic technicalities, over the top dramatic performances and cheap budget. They made a film on Bhagat singh and the opening sequence was of a jail. And can u believe they show animated version of jail in a live action film.

But new generation of Sagar Family seems to be more knowledgeable than their previous. 1971 is …

I chanced upon this site a few weeks back and to say its been a great find would be an understatement, especially after what i found today…

Thanks to wonderdude Mike Goedecko..

Everything you have ever wanted to know about the RED ONE CAMERA. We try to answer the questions before you end up on the set wasting valuable production time. Many thanks to Indie Rentals, the best place to rent the RED CAMERA.

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Click here for your knowing everything there is to know about the RED ONE

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54. That is the number of films that I and two of my co-jury members watched in just five days at the 10th Mumbai International Film Festival for Documentary, Short & Animation films (MIFF). The festival was held over seven days, from February 3 to 9, but the films in the Indian competition section (in which I served on the critics jury chosen by the Indian chapter of the International Federation of Film Critics – FIPRESCI - along with Uma da Cunha from Mumbai and M K Raghabendra from Bangalore) were screened from the 4th to the 8th. Of these 40 were documentaries, nine short fiction films and five animation films. We had a tough task at hand, since we were mandated to give out only one award – I personally felt it was a great injustice to the films as we had to select the winner from among three …

iView Author:
MITHUN GANGOPADHYAY
(Los Angeles, USA)

Email:
mithun.gang [at] gmail [dot] com

The Changing face of Cinematic Beauty

One of the greatest works of art to celebrate the female form in my opinion is Goya’s masterpiece “The Naked Maja”. Scores of art critics as well as art aficionados have been totally bewitched by the comely lady in the years past and with good reason for it is an absolute triumph of form and content. On closer inspection though, you will probably note an incongruous aspect to it as I did when I was studying Goya’s works. In his time the lovely lady must have been considered to possess the perfect figure but by today’s standards she does look a bit….well….plump.

All art is a reflection of it’s time and what makes it so amazing is that it inherently influences what it seeks …

Movie making is not easy, man. Making the PFCOne movie is a big lesson to many armchair critics here including me who wax eloquently on where a movie worked, where it didn’t, blah blah blah…I made a couple of movies which are now listed among the entries. It was my first time that I ever attempted making a movie of any kind (excluding random home movies) and it was great fun.

Writing the script is the easy part. That is, once you have the idea or the inspiration for it. Otherwise it’s tough as hell. And writing a script is not something that you can will yourself to do, especially for me, even if it had to last only a minute. If it doesn’t come to you, you can’t help it. Agree?

But how does one write for a minute? I wrote a page of stuff and then tried to imagine all …

In the hype surrounding the controversies relating to the 53rd National Film Awards, the mention of a special jury award to FTII graduate Vibhu Puri’s Chabi Wali Pocket Watch in the Non-Feature category almost went unnoticed. Well, the fact of the matter is, most of the awards in the Non-Feature section go unnoticed by the media these days, as both channels and newspapers concentrate on the top awards in the Feature section.

But Puri’s film, coming after his earlier film Chauras Chand, shows the definite growth of a young filmmaker who is sooner than latter going to be a sensitive director in the Hindi film industry if he holds on to the ideals he has exhibited in both his films.

Chauras Chand, which was part of the Non-Feature Section of the Indian Panorama at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) a few years ago, was on Avtaar Singh …

Way of seeing

Francois Truffaut once said, “Every subject is a subject for cinema. It is only a matter of choice which subject suits which director.” It’s same with photography too.
Everything that lies before my eyes is a possible subject of photography. I pick and choose what suits me. What is suitable for me may not be suitable for any other person. What suits me best is in essence what I photograph. What I photograph in turn expresses what I am. In spite of the rigid technical parameters there is always a way for me. And that’s what is known as ‘way of seeing’.

The way we see things is always affected by what we know or believe. We only see what we look at. That’s our first choice. An image (Static or moving) is a replica, which has been detached from the place and time in which it made …

At the heart of the human condition lies a vast emptiness. An emptiness that we try to fill with the things of life….actions,events,people,memories…. Here on the physical plane, the closest manifestation of that endless expanse is the desert, where shamans, mystics and truth seekers of all persuasions have gone since the beginning of time to be one with all that is and all that will be. Somehow the desert has an uncanny power to merge all vestiges of the past, present and future until it is simply beheld as an absolute. ‘The Sheltering Sky’ manages to capture this ephemeral and intangible quality in a way that has seldom been seen before.

The legendary director-cinematographer team that gave us seminal and historic works like ‘Il Conformista’, ‘Last Tango in Paris’ and ‘The Last Emperor’ , in the early nineties created a lush Moroccan dreamscape adapted from a …

NAQAAB-DISGUISED INTENTIONS

Director: Abbas Mustan

Karan(Bobby Deol) and Sophia (Urvashi Sharma) live together as friends and lovers in big house of Karan. After a song with bambaiyaa romance, Sophiya falls in love with Vicky(Akshay Khanna). Vicky is working for a man called Rohit who forces him to be in love with Sophia. During whole film somebody catching romance of Sophia and Vicky through cameras. When karan knows about their affair he becomes angry and instead of killing Sophia / Vicky, he kills himself. Then what happens? For whom Vicky was working? Why Karan kills himself? For these answers you should see NAQAAB.

In past, Abbas Mustan had succeeded to create suspense thriller in pure hindi films style (of course inspired from some English flick like Daraar- sleeping with enemy, Aetraaz- Disclosure etc..) They give entertaining thrillers for both mass and class.

Naqaab is abbas mustan’s latest thriller. The promos and poster claims the …

I read santosh Sivan’s post on PFC and read comments from PFCers on how his frames invoked nostalgia. In my memory if there is one movie maker and cinematographer who could evoke such strong nostalgia, it would be , without a doubt Balu Mahendra. The camera movements and the frame composition in the movies he cranked would speak volumes of the mood and setting than a million lines of descriptive writing. I would like to take the liberty of being a member of PFC and recount the glorious days of Balu Mahendra, a man who loves cinema next only to his life.
Balu - the God of lens
Balu as cinephiles in south call him, is an FTII Pune graduate in cinematography, close pal of Amol Palekar and other Marathi film legends. He rapidly established his name as a cinematographer par excellence. While his contemporaries captured backdrop, colours and went for enormous …

Mcdonalds, Pizza Hut, Dominoes,Barista, Subway,Cafe Coffe Day–When these brands looked for franchise partners in India what was their main criteria for selection? Not the financial muscle,relevant experience,related expertise–nothing of that sort. In hospitality and leisure industry when five star or even budget properties are planned what is foremost on planners mind?And now when the retail chains like Walmart and homegrown ones like Pantaloon and Reliance are on the threshold of establishing and expanding their identity what are they actually looking for?

Giving due weightage to various financial,political,environmental and other risk parameters(that are generally taken care of ), all of them basically have three major conditions to set up their bases.. location,location and location. In ‘Where The Stars Shine Down’, Sidney Sheldon has woven a triangle love story against the backdrop of real estate business, and he talks of the most important part of any real estate investment …

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 …

Iranian filmmakers for long have thrived on their unmatched ability to reflect upon their times through the eyes of their children. Majidi is perhaps the finest examples of exploring the issue through the viewpoint of the children who live it, because they are perhaps the only ones who see the world for what it is. They don’t judge, they observe. They see it, and tell it like it is. In the same vein, “Turtles Can Fly” matches if not betters the precedent set by Iranian masters.

Set in the Iraqi-Turkish border, Bahman Ghobadi showcases the lives of Kurdish refugees during the days leading up to the US invasion and the removal of Saddam Hussein from power. A young boy known across all the surrounding villages as Satellite (because of his ability to install satellite dishes), holds himself responsible for the well-being of all the orphaned children in the …

German expessionism that gave rise to Film Noir, Horror and Detective genre.

About a month ago I checked out a movie from my university’s library collection. This was a German movie that was released in 1931. It’s protagonist was a male serial killer and a “hinted” pedophile. Hinted for obvious reasons of the taboo of discussing Pedophilia that still exist today. The name of the movie was “M” directed by Fritz Lang, one of the pioneers of the German expressionist cinema that emerged and lasted through 1920s and 1930s. Right from the subject of the movie to its execution and production stunned me enough to check out all the silent and Noir genre movies that my library held. I must say that though Wikipedia gave me a better introduction and a lot more information about the Expressionist movement in cinema but my shocking experience of watching stories similar to what I …

Orwell’s prediction of the horrors of 1984 would seem mellow compared to what humanity really saw. In Delhi at least, thousands were massacred, families destroyed forever, the scum of humanity exposed, as justice still remains to be served. It’s a disgusting piece of our history that our government, which still employs many of those directly responsible, chooses to conveniently bury. In that context, it is of utmost importance for us Indian’s to look at ourselves through our own personal stories, to re-live the horror we allowed into our society, and hopefully prevent that from happening in the future. “Amu” tells one such personal story.

Kaju (Konkona Sensharma) arrives in India, appearing to be the stereotypical Indian-American in search of her roots, doing the rounds of the exotic side of the country with her camcorder. Adopted at the age of three and raised in Los Angeles by her foster …

I guess this post is going to be a slightly intriguing one for me to think, write, read and digest.
All so because, I had a little conversation with someone(I wouldn’t reveal the name) connected to Films and Theatre and I am registering this here. Some aspects are not acceptable to me as a cinema viewer, however I am going ahead and posting them as they are coming from someone who has acted in dramas and acted in some films and has “real” experience of what happens behind the scenes in drama and film world of Kollywood - The thamizh film world.
There were three aspects that this gentleman revealed.

1. From time immemorial in south india, films in south india have to connect to the audience. They should not be made for an eclectic set of people. The best talents(and of course , money) would come …

“Will this survive the Kingfisher litmus test?” asked Oz as we inebriated ourselves while hogging on some butter chicken at Ambala Dhaba. I was hesitant to respond because Vijay Mallya’s concoction has a tendency to strip your tolerance levels considerably. The last film we saw under the influence (Nishabd) had us running to save our tender brains from deterioration within 30 minutes. Fortunately, and finally, this time the hops have met their match!

Mallya ain’t got nothin’ on Anurag…Anurag Basu that is! “Anurag who?” you say? The Anurag previously known for xeroxing firang flicks for the ever so original Bhatts (Murder, Saaya). The Anurag who hinted at his ability to pack a punch with Gangster. If only he hadn’t succumbed to the producer’s safety net! But beware, for this time, there are no ifs, and no Bhatts, as the writer/director nails the bull’s eye with a film that is refreshingly …

Today’s technology is breaking new grounds. Cinema is just another field witnessing the winds of change. Films or rather movies (How can we call them films, when they are shot digitally :) ) like Collateral, Apacalypto, Star Wars, Sin City, 300…..being shot digitally. But is the present technology cheap? The above mentioned films used professional high end digital cameras to meet a particular purpose, mainly to get the ambient light effects, shooting in low light or for the ease of computer graphics. These films (can’t stop myself from using the same word, please do not mind if I use it again) were not cheap, infact much more expensive than the conventional ones shot on film medium. Wouldn’t it be great if we got a digital camera, which would give similar results as the above mentioned films at a fraction of the cost. It would be relatively easier for aspiring film …