(3/5) Lack of momentum and sharpness often make it tedious, but it’s also incredibly perceptive, intelligent and relatable with excellent performances and a haunting end.
Silence On The Floor
More competent people than me have spoken about the cinematic merits of Hulla and I have little desire to add to the cacophony. However, the response to Hulla only corroborated a trend of polarized opinions that we seem to be engendering especially when it’s about appreciating popular arts and cinema. It’s either unquestioning acceptance or outright rejection. There isn’t a middle ground nor is there a balance.
This only proves the academic belief that media explosion doesn’t lead to a cornucopia of ideas and wider acceptance of divergent views. Rather, people start simplifying their world and stick only to tried and tested outlets that give them their preferred version of reality. So, you have the paradox – a proliferation of information sources but a narrowing of outlooks.
Therefore, the view that I go to a cinema hall for entertainment and I won’t appreciate anything that remotely differs from my view of …
Why the blazes are people giving 2/2.5 ratings to Hulla? For me, it was an 8/10 movie. Hulla had me and even my NRI buddy laughing from start to finish, and it did so without insulting my intelligence, which is all I bloody ask of a movie. So why the bally hell are critics on their high horses and their ivory towers and their glass houses dishing out merely average ratings to such an entertaining film? If people can give Om Shanti Om four star ratings for sheer entertainment value, what keeps them from doing the same for Hulla, which had the whole audience I watched it with laughing throughout? I’m sure the ratings would have been higher if this movie had a big name attached to it. Films about the middle class are about as rare as moments of privacy on Big Boss, and …
Have you ever woken up, from a deep slumber at the dead of the night, thanks to sound of the whistle or the “thak, thak” of the wooden stick of the locality / housing society guard? This was the topic Jaideep Varma dealt with in one of his write ups for a well-known English magazine some years ago. And in it lay the germ of an idea for a film, a film for which – in his own words – he had approached “20-25” producers, all unsuccessfully. That was the reason it took him several years to make Hulla (Uproar). The producers rejected his idea because some of them found it “flippant, too small a subject”, some wanted a star to be the protagonist, as against Jaideep’s choice of Sushant Singh in the role of a stockbroker who wants to sleep peacefully at night, and some said it the end …
iView Author:
Neil Patel (India)
Email: NPatelBollywood[at] Gmail [dot] com
What’s in a name? (Part II)
The saying “Don’t Judge a Book by its cover” is great saying and it would be nice if everybody followed it.
Hence the need for good marketing. It is important. A title plus the package, it all matters. I should not judge a book by its cover. But I do. I guarantee I am not alone. Actually I think I may a part of the majority. This is why the “cover” is important. Film making is a passion, it is also a business. If XYZ(your average film goers) decide this Friday that they want to go watch a film, and there are 5 releases, I believe they will pick the film the go see by the “cover.”
Again …
