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Beginning …..

When you get a chance of a weekend where you get to watch an anticipated movie release on night and an opportunity to meet and reminiscence more on movies with fellow cinephiles, you don’t blink.

So I packed my bags and drove to an undisclosed location that Striker had passed on to me MI style braving the thunderstorm on my way. My hope was on the movie of the night and offcourse the afternoon to follow. Once there I got the glimpse of the striker and that was strike 1. After a Mexican dinner we were off to the theatre to watch Kamal’s 10 avatars.

What followed was something of calamitous proportions as far as movie watching is concerned. After the movie, there were two angry young( taking a bit of liberty) men freaking out at the keyboards. With Catharsis complete, curtains fell on day 1.

Day …

It’s been almost three months since I have been in Mumbai. I was called in by Sudhir Mishra to edit a 90 minute international version of his new film, Tera Kya Hoga Johnny! It was a very interesting experience to take a film and reconstruct it in a different way. The Indian version is about 130 minutes long and one could not just throw away 40 minutes of the film. So the narration had to change and the story had to be told in a different way. As the film was made up of multiple characters and their stories, I tried to find a situation in the original film which would become the pivotal point of the new narrative structure. Once I had found that, I reworked the different stories from that pivotal point in a non linear narration. It was quite fun. I dismantled the rough cut and …

MOVIES AND REAL LIFE

Some days back, I saw an interview of Sudhir Mishra on Sahara Filmy by Mayank Shekhar. Mishraji told “Today’s film makers watch movies, not life” They are engaged in watching movies, discussing movies but they do not devote their time to watching, analyzing life. 100% correct.

Some so called biggest filmmakers claim their film’s connectivity to real life. They give very stylish, larger than life films. Making is stylish, larger than life films is not a bad thing. But their films do not connect with common man. Why?

Because…..
- They do not research properly for their films. They do not know minor rules of Indian culture like in Hindus, women do not go to shamshan for Agnisanskar. I have seen in many films by so called biggest filmmakers that women were present in shamshaan in a white cotton sarees.

- Human behavior (physical, mental, biological) is not properly analyzed. …