logo

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.
————-
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 …

Loong Loong ago Martin Scorcese before he became the ‘rage’ that he did eventually became, he came to bollywood.

He had a terrible hand written script of what was to be called as Mumbai Taxi. It was a half decent script, and was based on the taxidrivers in mumbai..the haftawaalas, the traffic police constables, the prostitutes on the streets of mumbai, the eunuchs, the call center females and other “shift working people”…

He had it all story boarded with his equally bad drawing capabilities and had illustrated it with Crayons and Colour Pencils.

He took this script to Swastik Creations production office in andheri west, to meet the creative director.

The creative director didn’t read it … but wanted a narration.

Scorcese startled … but recovered and narrated the script in a span of 15 mins and 35 seconds.

“Brilliant effort” was the reaction ….

Scorcese seemed pleased. All the efforts …

Supriyo Sen is someone whose name is familiar to only die-hard documentary lovers in India. But make no mistake – he is one young filmmaker in India whom we will hear a lot more about in the years to come. Let’s get introduced to him here on PFC:

Sen’s can be expected to be an oft-heard name in next year’s Berlin International Film Festival. His project Wagah, which will seek to interpret the ritual of every evening’s closure of the gates on the India-Pakistan border crossing in a larger context, has been selected by the festival as one of the five concepts selected from 180 entries from across the world for cinematic celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The Kolkata-based Sen’s film, to be shot in the second half of 2008, will be premiered under the special section called My Wall at the festival next year, …

Awful Awful Awful.

Beyond terrible.

This is going to be a quick and dirty post.

At 90 mins, the movie feels padded, what with half the movie shot at 48fps.

Kar Wai explores new lows in acting, exposition, storylessness, general wankery, and the ancient philosophy of keys and doors. Also, Jude Law douchebaggery is really explored.

Norah, don’t act. Ever. Again.

Jude Law should only act in movies where someone takes a nice oar to the backside of his head in the middle of the Mediterranean.

Accents up the wazoo. Brit Rachel Weisz phoning in a Cliff’s notes southern accent (that’s all drawl, without consistency or nuance) when she’s supposed to be from Memphis. I think I could see her dialect coach in the corner of the frame, reciting the lines and guiding the inunciation.

Same with Natalie. I will do anything for you love but I won’t do that!
Felt like she walked off the set of …

The following are, in no particular order, a few hopefully good super hero movies that I anticipate will make my/our mainstream movie watching experience worth its buck!

HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY

Guillermo del Toro returns, with the dark horse of this year’s comic-book movie, bolder bigger and better than its 2004 predecessor, to give the other superheroes a run for their money.

THE DARK KNIGHT

Nolan and all his key cast members are back (except for Mrs.Cruise, who, thankfully, has been replaced by Maggie Gyllenhall). Heath Ledger’s unfortunate passing, sadly, makes this his final farewell gift to the moviegoers. His reinvented joker is one scary psycho and is the darkest of them all. Can’t wait to see him beat (almost) our brooding superhero.

BABYLON A.D.

Vin D dropped out of windy s/Hitman to essay the lead role in this scifi …

Shantaram may bring an OSCAR to Amitabh Bachchan in the category of best supporting actor. If Khader Bhai’s character is given same importance in the film as it has been given by Gregory David Roberts in his book then this character provides a solid ground to AB to play the role in a wonderful manner and perhaps he grabs an OSCAR for this powerful supporting role.

David might have created character of Khader Bhai , the Mafia boss, on the basis of some real life mafia dons of Bombay but he certainly had kept personality (may be on screen persona) of Amitabh Bachchan in his mind while defining traits of this character. While reading the book, it seems at so many places that Amitabh is present in the book in the form of Khader Bhai.

This can be a life time role for Amitabh Bachchan. Film can put …

In 2006, my Indian co-worker’s 8 year old son came into the office for “bring your kids to work day.” The boy was precocious, and for some reason I took a liking to him (may be I was projecting my id). I conjured up an image of him in a chocolate brown Fedora, and brown overcoat with a magnifying lens in his hand. He was solving some kind of case. The whole story for my film arrived fully formed. I went home that night and wrote it as a one page outline, and a week later, I was still kicked by the idea, and wrote a 10 page screenplay and a few re-writes for readability.

Film: The Gumshoe
Genre: Family Comedy
Logline:
A precocious 10 year old must solve the case of “the cookies and milk” before time runs out.

I read my script and was surprised that I wrote it. This was my …

It is a pleasure to reach out to genuine lovers of cinema through PFC. If our cinema had the same vitality and the independence of thought that PFC displays every day, perhaps it would speak for our times much more meaningfully than it does now.

My reason for writing for PFC is to interact and listen to genuine cinema viewers and enrich myself, besides sharing my experiences that can hopefully be of value to others attempting projects which shouldn’t logically have any takers.

A strange set of circumstances have put me in a situation where I have two full length feature films ready at the same time. One is a fiction feature film (called Hulla), produced by Sunil Doshi (the producer of Bheja Fry) to be released in a few weeks hopefully. The other is a non fiction feature (called Leaving Home) on the music band Indian Ocean, produced by …

Seems times are changing at last - for the better, and fast. After all these years of scouring the film festivals and pirated DVD shops (unless we have deep pockets to splurge on the highly-priced original DVDs of foreign films), it seems 2008 is bringing some happy tidings for us, the lovers of world cinema (that is, anything that comes from outside the country minus Hollywood).

Suddenly, Indian companies have started taking marketing rights for a large number of world cinema and at least two dedicated channels to telecast cinema of that kind are readying for launch. And, trust the French to do it - more and more French films are being screened, at least in Delhi and Mumbai, screened mostly free of cost through tie ups with multiplex chains, to introduce the casual moviegoer to the variety that rides with their cinema (hope other countries would also have as …

iView Author:
SARANG (Honolulu, USA)

E-mail:
Withheld

3:10 to Yuma: What Westerns Have Become

3:10 to YUMA (3TY) was the movie I was eagerly waiting to watch last year. After all it is a western. I have always had a ‘love-affair’ with westerns. From my parents to my relatives, all always had praises for them. DJango, was the first western I saw ever. I still remember that I had watched it in a Black and White television ( ECTV I think). The cassette was taken for rent along with the VCP (NOT a VCR) and along with DJango , I had also seen Sinbad and the eye of the tiger. (More on that movie in another post).

The quick draws and dying men, the background scores, the dirt gave my imagination enough fodder to travel to a world completely different, where I could …

Life officially stinks. I really mean it. The day job I do is hardly an enriching experience and the only thing other than my passions for making movies that kept me getting up every working day was the fact that there used to be a sitcom line-up in the morning in Star World(English Channel in India and part of Murdoch’s empire). The thing I loved about this line-up was Simpsons coming on at 8:30 and I would always catch up some bits of it or all of it, depending on what shitty schedule I had. This used to make my day really good.

I do not know how many of you love the Simpsons but I have been a hard-core fan of the same for many many years now. Although I have watched almost all of the episodes that come in Star World now, it always used to give me a good start to see the same in the morning. Now Star World has gone and changed their program schedule and moved some Crappy talk shows & soaps into this slot. Do we not have enough soaps already coming out of our ears that they now need to be everywhere? Hence the bloody Withdrawals and the Morning Sickness are rampant in my body now. Do not be too surprised if the Stork visits me in a few months’ time :-)

Its Oscar time again and most of the usual suspects have gone through as expected. A few do raise eyebrows for their inclusions in some major categories while some big omissions in the best picture/screenplay categories will be up for debate.

Here’s how the final list looks…

Performance by an actor in a leading role

George Clooney in “Michael Clayton” (Warner Bros.)
Daniel Day-Lewis in “There Will Be Blood” (Paramount Vantage and Miramax)
Johnny Depp in “Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” (DreamWorks and Warner Bros., Distributed by DreamWorks/Paramount)
Tommy Lee Jones in “In the Valley of Elah” (Warner Independent)
Viggo Mortensen in “Eastern Promises” (Focus Features)

Performance by an actor in a supporting role

Casey Affleck in “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” (Warner Bros.)
Javier Bardem in “No Country for Old Men” (Miramax and Paramount Vantage)
Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Charlie Wilson’s War” (Universal)
Hal Holbrook in “Into the Wild” (Paramount Vantage and River …

“Agantuk” is the last “cinematic discourse” of the Satyajit Ray, who got realisation in the medium of cinema. His cinema is never superficial and even his lightest film carries several levels of undertone. He was a fantastic writer also and its not a somewhat strange fact that he created his cinema on the pattern of a good literature only. The satisfaction and deep meaning we get through good literature, same meanings and learning we find in/through Satyajit Ray’s films.

He is not only a technical director who knows how to mix up 1 and 99 to make a film having 100 departments rather he was master in every department of film making. His films work on psychological levels. They dig human being, humanity, evolution of humanity, relationships and in that way they help in understanding the human life as anthropology does.

What a way he chose to say good bye to …

I have a love-hate relationship with mob movies. At a level they are cool, but some kind of uncmfortable feel is always there when a mob movie ends. The connection is always not made like I would at the end of a movie like say Parenthood for example. The reason being a constant feeling of separation from the layer of society at which these movies are based on. Me being a typical middle class “good guy” always shunning away contacts with anyone even remotely tied to “politics” or “police”(my father who was in state judiciary always imploring me to stay away from both) - India’s answer to “American mob” (Offcourse the mafia is all but silent now in US while our mob is always active and always controlling). This disconnection meant I was always cold to mob movies and if at all I appreciated them, it was purely for their …

Michael Winterbottom’s A Mighty Heart can be an illuminating study of how a director can use his talent to project his worldview and create something subtly different from his source material, and, also how cinema today is dominated by commercial concerns and often gets beaten into flatter and sanitized versions from what was held as its potential.

Michael Winterbottom has made close to thirty films in less than 20 years of his career. His eclectic and often praiseworthy output includes literary adaptations (A Cock and Bull Story), docu-drama (The Road to Guantanamo), biopic (24-hour Party People), war film (Welcome to Sarajevo), thriller (Butterfly Kiss) , sci-fi (Code 46), Western (The Claim) and something close to pornography (9 Songs). He himself has said that his films are largely about ‘people and places’, and where he combines social realism with stylistic experiments.

A Mighty Heart is based on the book with the same …

“A film is a one night stand but television is a love affair”. That’s Aaron Sorkin when quizzed why he chose to make a television series after having written brilliant movies like A Few Good Men and The American president. This coming from a man who wrote the scene of poetic outburst of Michael J. Fox in the oval office when debating how it is important for a man of immense power to do the right thing - political ramifications and international treaties be dammed!

In the last seven years, if there was one indulgence that I let on unhindered when facing a dilemma or being in a stupor over the morally correct, West Wing was a series that I turned to day in and day out. Books were a refuge but my time of growing up gave me access to much more visual form of ideological exchange that would impress …

Methinks I have to start a coconut breaking session each time I venture out into the snow/rain/sleet and thus dangerous roads for a hat-kay movie.
It happened with No Smoking and it has happened yet again.
Rahu Kalam emo? ‘Iron Leg’ anukunta.
The Gults will get that but you get the gist right?

So I finish a rushed edit with Amina and offer her Pakistan-say-visiting
Khaala, Maamoo, Aapa , saara Khan Khandaan a treat, to watch KKC with moi.
“Ji, 50s kay Film Industry pay bani hai…..
Soha Ali Khan bhi hain…..”
[As an afterthought and bait, they are related in a longwinded Nawabi way]
“Hum nay suna ki Aaja Nachle is good…Madhuri ko daykhay bahuth saal ho gaye”
They must be very very Very distantly related to the Pataudis. No loyalty here.

Good thing they did NOT take up my offer coz as often happens in baday baday shahars:
My ticket counter man unhappy. Yet again. Portending …

Hi PFCians. Can you please help me resolve this dilemma? I am often left wondering - What is a ‘crossover’ film? This came to my mind recently, when “Loins of Punjab” got released and many reviews described it as a ‘crossover’ film.

If we go by the commonly-held perception (created by the media that is ever-eager to create a label), a crossover film usually will be one (or mix of more than one) of the following:

1. Its characters speak in ‘Hinglish’ (maybe with a smattering of a regional language).
2. It’s made by an NRI director, with Indian/NRI/mixed caste.
3. It portrays stories of the NRI community.
4. It’s an NRI/Indian film in English.
5. It’s low-budget (big budget films by big names of Bollywood, even if set completely abroad, would never call themselves a crossover film).
6. It’s a low-budget English film made by some foreigner (sometimes by some Desi too) with a part-Desi part-Firangi cast, and shot partly in India

But …

The Indian Panorama for the 38th IFFI (Goa, Nov 23-Dec 3) has been just announced.

Lenin Rajendran’s “Ratri Mazha” (Night Rain) in Malayalam and Samir Chanda’s “Ek Nadir Galpo” (Story of a River) will represent India in the Asian-African-Latin American Competition section. The Panorama section will open with another Malayalam film, Shyamaprasad’s “Ore Kadal”.

The other films in Indian Panorama are B S Lingadevaru’s “Kada Beladingalu”, P R Ramdas Naidu’s “Moggina Jade” K Shivarudraiah’s “Daatu” (all Kannada), Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s “Naalu Pennungal”, Renjith’s “Kayyoppu”,
Babu Thiruvalla’s “Thaniye” (all Malayalam), Bhavna Talwar’s “Dharm”, Sameer Hanchate’s “Gafla” (both Hindi), Sanib Sabhapandit’s “Jaatingaa Ityadi” (Assamese), Mangesh Hadawale’s “Tingya”, Gajendra Ahire’s “Maai Baap”, Bipin Nadkarni’s “Aevdhe Se Aabhaal” and Vishal Bhandari’s “Kaalchakra” (all Marathi), Gnana Rajasekaran’s “Periyar” and Padma Magan’s “Ammuvagiya Naan” (both Tamil), Anjan Das’ “Jaara Brishtite Bhijechilo”, Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s “Ami, Yasin Aar Amaar Madhubala” (both Bengali), Makhonmani Mongsaba’s “Yenning Amadi Likia” (Manipuri).

The jury was headed by veteran …

Continued from Part 1…

Having bagged the role, it was now time for me to flesh out the character. The producers and the director had already decided on the look for Ravichandran - they wanted the quintessential elements of a Kollywood hero: the big hair, the mustache, the paunch, the south yindian yenglish accent. If Mohanlal had been in their budget, he would’ve been my first recommendation, since Srinivasan from Company was the first thing to come to my mind. Then again, if Vasan, Kartik, or even Vijay had been here, I would’ve suggested them instead of myself. I remain wondering to this day if they’re disappointed I couldn’t bring in the paunch.

Knowing further that my character would be the main comedic element in the script, I was determined, and pretty adamant about not making Ravichandran a caricature. Sure, he …