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Talking about Cannes, reminds me of Chetan Anand's Neecha Nagar, the Indian film which won the grand prize in the very first year of this film fest in 1946. Recently the film was screened in Mumbai. The print has its own story. A film personality found the print lying with the bhangarwala (junk dealer). He brought it for dirt. I guess there is no other print and doubt even our prestigious film archives have it. The person then telecined it and made a dvd, which was screened at the venue. I missed the screening. But few friends, who saw the film were raving about it. I so very much want to see the film. If anyone has it please let me know! It is ridiculous how poor we are at documenting our gems. Its not so easy to find films of masters our country has produced. The other winners I …

It started with Hassan Jehangir, Salma Agha, then later went on to Ali Haider. Ofcourse, Ustad was always there. But we are not talking about Ustad here. Our focus is the pages of memory that got fader through the years. The music from sarhad ke us paar that knew no barriers. And never will. Lets go over few pages of past and come to where we stand now.

Late 80’s
Hassan Jehangir is what I call ‘salad days’ memory.
The song that made Hassan Jehangir a household name across the 2 countries - Hawa hawa.

Hawa Hawa was a revolution of sorts for reasons best known to the late 70’s/80’s borns.

This song was followed by aaja aaja dil hai deewana. And the only image that comes to my mind is a shoddy album cover with a guy …

There are ways in which one follows a different culture, a different set of values, beliefs and mannerisms. It’s all highly subjective, but you do grow to be more inclined towards a particular way of life and less inclined towards the other. Your beliefs keep changing as you move through life. Lessons learnt, and stories heard.

Similar is the case with me. I see Bengali culture as an assortment of colors. Good bad ugly unforgettable, and like that.
Films make sense to me for the most or least weird reasons in the world. But sometimes, films are fun even if they have to scream to reach you. This entire hurdle to the screaming bit sometimes gets more visible while one is reacting to a medium. In cinema, that part manifests in the look of a film, the camera and the likes.

A film works on multiple levels. The story, the way the …

A fidayeen attack is a suicide tactic used by militants. Such attacks are especially common in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. In a fidayeen, an extremist equips himself (most fidayeens are men) with weapons and a sizeable amount of ammunition. He then proceeds to gain entrance into a public gathering or other crowded area and proceeds to open fire on law-enforcement personnel and the general public. He continues his attack until he runs out of ammunition, at which point he is either gunned down by security forces or committs suicide. Fidayeen militants sometimes do attempt to escape but are almost always shot by anti-terrorist squads shortly afterward due to the fact that the militants rarely have a “getaway” plan chalked out. These militants, like suicide bombers plan on being killed during the execution of the attack.

-from Wikipedia

Cinema is a rewarding experience for the world it creates when …

 
I have always been a huge fan of horror flicks. I still remember as child I used to watch the zee horror show.The first few episodes were quite good, infact I remember a episode called “saaya” in which the ghost of rapist named vikranta was shown……i was so scared that vikranta haunted me for almost a week then. Later on, that show became more of a comedy show with zombies walking (but still will chase down anyone running),amavasya where actually moon was shown, dog barking rather crying in a very familiar voice…….In my growing up days I got my hands on everything which seemed remotely horror. The Ramsay brothers churned out many number of zee-horror kind of movies. be it purana mandir, purani haveli, darwaza, veerana, sannata, dahshat and many more…..i never liked these movies because they were not able to scare me barring a …

Its time of the year for the International Film Festival of Mumbai popularly known as Mumbai Academy of Moving Images (MAMI) Fest. The opening ceremony will be held on the eve of 6th March, whose entry is by invitation only. The movie screenings will start from 7th of March. The people who want to register can pay 500rs for the pass and should not forget to bring a passport size photograph. The students and people belonging to cinema fraternity can get the passes for 300rs (guess will have to produce the membership of various associations.)
The best place to see the films is at Imax Wadala.With 4 screens to choose from at a time and best movies playing at this venue. The only problem is the location, which is least accessible by train, bus and even auto. But once you are there its a good outing. You are cut off …

……the words stayed with me, for long. Does it happen like this ? Emotionally troubled while mixing the film…do you get so much involved…even during mixing the film…..i had heard something like this for the first time. Could not believe it. And was he talking about the same film ? Gandhi My Father. When i met Resul Pookutty (do check out his filmography here to know his range), he was busy mixing saawariya for the dvd. He told me that generally people take the film print copy for the dvd as well. But there are only few who take the trouble to change things for the dvd so that you get the best sound even in your home theatre. you change some technical specifications also, i dont remember now. He did the same for Black’s dvd and now for saawariya. Because Sanjay Leela Bhansali wants it. He is …

I have not met a single soul as yet who has not liked this movie.It’s unarguably the cutest,most adorable,simplistic,charming,delightful love story coming out of Indian Cinema.Adi chopra hit the right cord with people across all the classes and generations.He rejuvenated the magic of Indian commercial cinema.Still today after watching DDLJ,i have hope that one day Adi chopra will find that lost magic for Yashraj films and make another classic.It’s hard to imagine he is the same guy who messed up Dead poet’s society by making Mohhabatein and is the producer of all the nonsensical movies coming out of yashraj films.

DDLJ is a class apart.Period.

Raj may not be the guy next door but you can relate to him in every sense. SRK plays this character with flamboyance and not once in this movie does he …

iView Author:
Ramesh Ramaswamy
(PA/USA)

Email:
cdrakenc [at] gmail[dot] com

Khoya Khoya Chand

The half movie that showed up rocked. Khoya Khoya Chand is a classic . Sudhir Mishra needs to be congratulated.

The zeitgeist of Indian cinema – the timeless and self replicating organism that produces Bollywood-is captured perfectly in the first half.

What saves the movie from becoming an exercise either in idiosyncratic grand theories on one hand and depersonalized docudramas about fatal attractions on the other, is the narrative sense the director shows in leaving the party to spend a few moments lost in the moonlight, doing a love letter to the idealized, unachievable virginal pixie that dust cannot touch (Nikhat, the actress, played somewhat lukewarmly by Soha Ali Khan) through the eyes of an urdu playwright-poet from a broken …

Three characters, a wild bull, a reluctant forest officer and a village deep in the interior of Maharahstra. The wild bull goes on a rampage destroying a lot in the village and to stop it, a forest officer is called to catch the bull. The Marathi film “Valu” directed by debutant director Umesh Kulkarni has this one line story which forms the skeleton of a interesting two hour movie.

Valu is a village tradition in Maharahstra where a bull is let loose in the village in god’s name. The bull is free to roam anywhere in the small village of Kusavade until it goes berserk and starts destroying crops and the village. To counter the menace, a forest officer is called from the government forest department. What happens after that is what the story about.

Valu is not as much of a story as in having a start or a …

iView Author:
NIREN BHATT
Mumbai, India

EMAIL:
nirenbhatt [at] yahoo.com

2007 : A Lyrical Summary

2007 had some interesting & enjoyable songs written, tops the list is the Album of “No Smoking”, there can be difference of opinions about film but not about the songs, particularly lyrics. I think its one of Gulzar’s best works in recent times, lyrics actually conveys more about the film than the film itself, it surpasses material strata of meaning and transcends to a different high.

“upale jaise sulagata hoon, kambakht dhue mein jalta hoon.” ,
“Jab nasha toot ta hai, kitne tukde gire hain”,
“ye jahaan faani hai, bulbula hai paani hai,
bulbulo pe rukna kya,
paani o pe behta ja, behta ja…”,

“pag dandio pe milna do din ki yaariya hain”…
“ye ashtray bharti jaa rahi hai”…

each and every song, each and every word…They don’t get any better than …

iView Author:
SAAD NAWAB
Vadodara, India

EMAIL:
saadnawab [at] gmail.com

Title of the article - John Rambo: A toast to the 80’s

Oh My God! Oh My God! Woohoo! Kill them all!!!

That was me shouting and cheering in the theater as I was watching John Rambo, the fourth and possibly final chapter in the Rambo franchise. I was seven or eight years old when I first got to watch First Blood. Hell, my life consisted of watching Rambo, Robocop and Predator. Ah, those were the days. I guess the 80’s was a time period for such mindless fun. I can still remember that line, “They drew first blood….”. This review will clearly be a dumbed down fan boy reaction…

After numerous scripts and delays and further delays due to MGM saying yes to Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone finally landed up in the writers and directors chair …

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 …

It was the alluring cover that first attracts the attention – of a young monk dressed in ochre robes with his back to the camera and a football balanced on his round, bald head. The mood of the photograph is overwhelmingly orange, with some yellow – it looks like early morning time, and the monk is standing at the edge of a mountain, with three pagodas struggling to appear from behind the fog. The photograph is from the poster of Bhutan’s first full-length feature film, Phorpa (The Cup), made in 1999 by director Khyentse Norbu, himself a Buddhist monk. When I was walking into the theatre in one of the film festivals in in Delhi around 2000-2001, with the info about the director being a monk, the expectation was to get to see something on the screen that would be heavy on philosophy. His next film, Travellers and Magicians, a …

Some of the most memorable moments of Taare Zameen Par are the ones that just flash you by, they will never be shown on those award screens, they will die a silent death…

A sulking Ishaan in the blue bed of the dark night, making images in the dark, his rabbit eyes piercing through the darkness, while another morning comes and brings in new stories, both in the narrative and his screen life….

Ishaan standing outside the classroom and discovering a world of his own in the empty, dusty corridor, looking at his favorite part of the school, outside. The windows which bring him the sun in full measure. He talks to the dead painting on the wall, makes conversations will the still walls, while a bunch of nagging school kids do their on-screen duties to acceptable imperfection, he stands there, on the fence between fact and fiction.

A sleepy Ishaan runs …

I have climbed the highest mountains
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you

I have run I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
Only to be with you
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for

I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing in her fingertips
It burned like fire
This burning desire
I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for

As I was digging deeper and deeper into the rabbit-hole trap of MB’s soulful voyage of a music album, I felt like going back to the eternal U2 song. The same quest, that leads to more great things in art as time goes by.

The songs just work like a …

[I thought to start my posting at PFC with a review of No Smoking – Kashyap is a well-known figure here; but also because in a recent post he bemoans how people don’t get his film].
[display_podcast]
The protagonist of No Smoking, K (John Abraham, in a namesake role as Franz Kafka’s protagonist in The Trial) is a smoker who refuses to give up. His family and friends try every means to get him off it while he cannot see what the fuss is all about. However, when his wife (Ayesha Takia) threatens to leave him for good, he agrees to get help from one Baba Bengali (Paresh Rawal), referred to him by his best friend (Ranvir Shorey). Baba Bengali runs an underground quit smoking laboratory, and once caught in his scheme of things, life becomes a nightmare for K. K’s surreal journey from there on defies logic, and the world, with …

There are some films up to the brim with so much self-belief they include you in entirety in their flawed existence. Films which take a risk so big you wonder what inspires such degree of madness or obsession to put it mildly. The film language gets the prime importance and all the imperfections merely act as check points for a dream to be alluded as reality. Such a film creates images that entice and appease you into the fake world it paints with much dignity and poise.

On the outset, Saawariya declares the dreamscape it throws at you in the name of drama is all part of a dream. So you drop any further arguments into the plausibility of the setting. You move on to what the director wants you to watch, listen or ponder over- a wind-chiming ambient sound all through, glittering streets where no one but the protagonists …

Khoya Khoya Chand is Shantanu Moitra in all his possibilities, a rich multi-dimensional score, yet not losing any bit on perfection. Listen on, and you will know that it just might be his best accomplishment in film till now…

Chale aao saiyyaan
Chale aao saiyaan
Padoo main tore paiyaan

This song has the mujra tone with its soul in place

Diye ki main baati
Jal jal main mariaa

Chale aao saiyaan

The arrangement is very Umrao Jaan, as real as it could get…

Humko raja ji saiyyaan ji ajee neend nahi aaye
Tum baithe kothi pe bangle pe mehfil sajaaye

Meri sautan pe gaaj gir jaaye
Mere saiyyaan pe aanch nahi aaye
Salwat dar salwat dar salwat sejariya naa bhaaye
Karwat dar karwat haan karwat birhaa sataaye

Birhaa sataaye
Birhaa sataaye

Chale aao saiyyaan

Jhumka mera teeka mera kangna sautaniya ko bhaaye
Meri choonar meri moondar meri paayal bairan liye jaaye

Meri sautan pe gaaz gir jaaye
Mere saiyyaan aanch nahi …

For three years in Amsterdam, I watched many movies on my computer. Movies I had never heard about. For the first one and half year, the only movie I saw in the theatres was Spiderman 2. Then one and half year later everything changed.

Amsterdam is rich in terms of art. It has many music halls, small theatres and huge multiplex. The biggest multiplex group is Pathe. It has 4 multiplex in Amsterdam alone with almost more than 35 screens between them but most of them running to absent audience. A ticket to a show costs 9 Euros, 4:50 Euros on a Saturday morning and 6:25 Euros for all Tuesday shows.

So if I watched 4 movies a month, my spending on movies would be 36 euros a month. If I wait a couple of months, renting the DVD for the same movie would cost me 3:50 Euros per …