Archive for July 9, 2013

Vikramaditya Motwane responds to our criticism of Lootera

Posted: July 9, 2013 by moifightclub in bollywood, cinema, film, News
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I got to watch the film on Tuesday. This was amidst too much hype, too much expectation, pressure to like/dislike instantly, and too eager to react. By that time reactions from the film fraternity had already started pouring in. And as a member of the crew told me during the screening, honestly, it’s impossible to make out anything from the pre-release screenings. Also, if one has read the script, one might be reacting differently from others.

In terms of reactions, Lootera has turned out to be strangely divisive films. The reaction of critics and audience going in extreme directions is quite obvious for most films these days. But here the critics rating varied from 2.5 to 5 stars. I can only think of Dev D which went further extreme and got ratings from 1 to 5 stars, and everything in between. But strangely, the audience reaction have also been extreme with Lootera. To give an example, as this twitter friend tweeted – “In our theater, about 15 ppl walked out. And about 15 broke into applause at the end. Strange. Didn’t think Lootera would be so polarizing.”

Anyway, after watching the film i told Motwane that i will mail my reaction, all in detail. Can’t react so quickly. And VM has responded to the criticism. Much thanks to him as most filmmakers in B-town run away as soon as their film releases. Also, thanks for agreeing to make the mail public.

Actually we wanted to do a post-release Q and A with him and his DoP Mahendra Shetty. But as the joke goes, Sonakshi is spreading her Lootera disease quite fast. So me and few others have been coughing like her since the film released, and hopefully these few answers are better than having absolutely nothing else.

Lootera

What worked for me

– as i told you i loved the second half. I loved the way it’s shot, so dark ( i hope it’s visible in theatres with bad projection. i remember problems with Kaminey, Gangster), the mood it creates and almost meditative in its space and silence. it’s GORGEOUS!

– as expected from you, it’s very well directed. well mounted, well captured.

– acting across the board is good, from leads to small roles.
– the pace is slow or leisurely which goes well with the mood and setting. good you didn’t hurry anywhere – consistent through out.

– the romantic village portions with so much brightness was looking tacky to me in the trailers. Thankfully it doesn’t feel so in the film. Right rustic touch with a FabIndia colour palette , if i can say so 🙂

– BEST part – you didn’t hit the excess notes for melodrama, perfect balance, didn’t even try to cash in on deaths on screen. That’s GREAT!
i was actually waiting to see if you will go Bhansali way with the father and friend’s death 😉 but you didn’t even go close there. Smart! and smartly handled.

what didnt work for me (and VM’s reply below each point)

– i think people will love the 1st half more but i didn’t feel that romance or passion in the first half. i am not sure why. or was it the heavy  background that you were using to make the point which was distracting me.

VM : It’s the same issue I have with the script in it’s current form. Though when I tried to think back to my original intention when writing the screenplay, it was pretty intentional to make it a love story that wasn’t quite a love story. It’s wasn’t supposed to be the achy type of love story and wasn’t supposed to become that way at all, even towards the end. I always wanted a lightness to the film throughout. So can’t say whether this is better or that. It is a flawed screenplay. Willing to live with that.

– actually the sound design at two places in 1st half was very odd, i felt. when the father starts narrating the story to Sonakshi in the beginning, the music suddenly fades in and goes so high. It was very out of place. i know you might be trying to make the easy connect with the sound so that it can be used in 2nd half with Sonakshi and tree. But it was too loud and so suddenly.

VM : The intention wasn’t to connect the music with the second half. It was a background piece. Maybe it was too loud. Didn’t seem that way when mixing it.

– similarly the use of that old hindi song that goes through all the montage when they are at the site and many such odd things, as in not romantic stuff but the song goes on, and just stops with the news of zamindari over. again very out of place.

VM : It stops with the zamindari news because that’s where the plot changes a little bit. And it feels loud because it’s mono and it cuts through the rest of the dialogue. Something we discovered too late and only at the final mix stage. No matter how soft we had it, it cut through,

– why so much grainy footage in 2nd half?

VM : Aesthetic call that me and (Mahendra) Shetty took. We both like grain and purposely went for a high grain stock. Wanted to give an aged, period feel without making it glossy or sepia tinted. In fact, there is more grain in the injection scene in the first half, which is just an under-lit scene. Mistake on our end.

–  And this might be nitpicking – when he climbs the tree, and the climax sequence – when he is walking, she is coming out of the house – at few places one can see the (VFX) jugaad – foreground and background not in sync especially when Ranveer is walking towards the police, the light, the things you have cheated – i mean it’s nice but not pitch perfect. similarly with snow and when he falls from the tree, you can make out it’s fluff. maybe if you are watching minutely then only.

VM : If you’ve seen the making video, you know what we had to go back to shoot snow sequences in summer with fake snow. Which means VFX work. Work that we have shot on grainy film, without green screen, with handheld camera. It’s the worst kind of situation for a VFX team and under the circumstances, they did an amazing job. The whole tree climbing and shoot out is VFX created. There are shots and mattes and snowflakes that make me cringe every time I see them but it’s just something we have to live with. Will do better next time.

– Basically, overall another good film. But you are so strong at filmmaking aspect, the craft, why tell a bollywood story. I hope you go beyond it now that you have done your conventional part. a more non-conventional/interesting/out of box idea/tale to match up to the talent of your craft.

VM : So the indie world thinks i’m telling a bollywood story. And the bollywood world thinks i’m too indie. You think this is conventional, they think this is too out of the box. So I can’t win…

Fact is, I went to tell a story that I believed in, warts and all. I can make all the excuses in the world about not having enough time to fix the script before shooting because we only had two months of pre-production blah blah but it’s pointless. This is the film I chose to make and I stand by it. Nobody knows and feels and understands the flaws of the film better than I do but that’s a discussion for another day.

I don’t want to get stuck making 4 crore films for the rest of my life because that’s what happens in this industry. It gets very easy for them to slot you into a ‘type’ of filmmaker. For better or for worse, this film was my attempt to break out of that.

– Posted by @CilemaSnob

(Pic courtesy – Lootera FB page)

Jahnu Barua’s Baandhon : A little more than love

Posted: July 9, 2013 by moifightclub in cinema, film, film review, Regional, reviews
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Baandhon is the first Jahnu Barua film to get a multi-city release outside Assam. Thanks to PVR Directors Rare. For cities and show timings, do check the poster below. And here’s Pradeep Menon on the film.

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The media, social and otherwise, has been abuzz with the latest Hindi release; an exciting, talented director’s sophomore feature, one that is making critics and audiences alike gush over gorgeous frames, celebrate the coming of clean cinematic craft, and most importantly, reminisce about romances of the days of old.

Indeed, sometimes one can’t help but feel that, in this day and age, we’ve all forgotten how to fall in love. We’ve forgotten what it is like to drown oneself in that heady rush of a new romance, embrace unbridled passion today like there isn’t a tomorrow and push the limits of rational behaviour in the pursuit of real life moments that make us feel like we’re living a movie.

But here’s the thing about romance – it always dies away. No question about it. So what remains then? What happens when you spend years, or even decades, with a person? Hopefully, once the romance, the passion and the giddy joy of the other’s company gradually ebb away, what you’re left with is respect, stability, comfort, and, if you’re extremely lucky, a lifelong friendship.

That, precisely, is what Jahnu Barua’s ‘Baandhon’ (“Waves of Silence”) is about. On the surface, it appears to be about the complex relationship shared by a married couple; a man and a woman who’ve spent nearly their entire life together. But if you really pause to think about it, it is quite simple. Their love has evaporated perhaps, but they are left with the next best thing – companionship.

Baandhon spends more than half its run-time soaking itself in a single fight between an aged husband and wife; a couple that has already been bereaved of its offspring, and is now solely alive for their grandson, who studies in IIT Mumbai. However, right from the outset, we know that this fight isn’t for real. They’ve done it to death umpteen times before, and it is perhaps the only thing that keeps them going on a daily basis. One ticks because the other is.

But, before we even see the couple for the first time, we are told the date of the fight. 26th of November 2008; a day that sent waves of silence of its own, all around the country. And immediately, you know that this is a story that is always going to end in some sort of a tragedy.

Barua, then, with his decades of filmmaking experience and multiple National Awards, chooses to douse his narrative in such minimalism and sparseness that not only is there never a twist, but there also isn’t even the anticipation of one. The terse inevitability of the path the film traverses is always writ large over the goings-on, and yet, Baandhon gently attempts to reaffirm faith in humanity while admitting that somewhere along the way, humanity has failed.

Reminiscent more than once of Mahesh Bhatt’s ‘Saaransh’, yet largely steering clear of some of the harsh questions and issues that Bhatt’s film raises, ‘Baandhon’ roots itself in economy of craft and storytelling. Even the background score of the film tries its best to camouflage itself behind the visuals; so rare for Indian cinema today, which nearly always attempts to elevate every emotion with over-the-top mood music embellishment.

There isn’t an overt attempt at displaying craft or technique here. Baandhon could easily have been a play. It is set mostly in Guwahati, before the climax, if I can call it that, shifts to Mumbai. Yet, there is no attempt to give the film a texture that sets it in a particular time or place. It could be happening anywhere, at any time. The 26/11 backdrop gives it a real world context perhaps, but even that could just as easily have been a fictional human tragedy that only needed Mumbai to be the place it occurs in. This of course, is clearly intentional on Barua’s part. If you’ve watched ‘Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara’, you know that he’s fully capable of creating a perceptible flavour of place and time.

Baandhon also has no solutions on offer. In fact, it hardly asks any questions. All the film does is give us a brief window of a few days, into the life of a man and woman who, after 73 years of their life, have only each other, even if their journey brings in their path a few kind souls who unselfishly look out for them. It is in these side characters, the ones that attempt to show you that humanity has hope after all, where the film really falters. Our cynical selves will find it hard to swallow the genuine goodness that the peripheral characters go out of their way to shower on our protagonists.

It doesn’t help that most of these side characters aren’t particularly well performed either. Even Bina Patangia, who plays one half of our couple, has an adorable character to fall back on, but her performance itself is mostly functional. Only Bishnu Kharghoria, who plays the husband, truly manages to turn in a memorable performance.

Despite some almost naïve writing and characterization, it is in its silences and pauses that Baandhon’s honesty shines through. This honesty draws you in and makes you want to sit right next to the couple as they deal with loss. Yet, just before your hand reaches out to caress them, you realize that they still have each other. And as you draw your hand back and walk away from them, all you really tell yourself is that perhaps that is all one needs – another person to fall back on, forever.

( To read more posts by Pradeep, you can check out his blog here)

Call For Entries – Rome Film Festival, 2013

Posted: July 9, 2013 by moifightclub in Call For Entries, cinema, Film Festival, News
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Rome_header_Wide_new(from Official release)

WHAT – ROME FILM FESTIVAL
(FESTIVAL INTERNAZIONALE DEL FILM DI ROMA)
Calls for Entries in all categories for 2013.

Fest Dates – The 8th Rome Film Festival will run November 8 – 17, 2013.

Basic Criteria – Only films that will be world premieres at the festival will be considered for selection.

SECTIONS –  The Official Selection will present two competitive sections for International films

1) International Competition (16 films, presented as world premieres)

2) CinemaXXI (21st-century Cinema, a selection of films devoted to new trends in world cinema, which will welcome feature-length and short films presented as world premieres)

– And a choice of Out of Competition screenings (a maximum of 12 titles, presented as world, international and European premieres)

– Last year, ‘Tasher Desh’ by Q and ‘The Museum of Imagination’ by Amit Dutta were the films from India which had their world premieres in the CinemaXXI Competition Section.

AWARDS – The festival will give out more than 12 awards for World Cinema.

– Last year, more than 2500 members of the major press and media and more than 800 professionals from all over the world attended the event, which will take place in the screening venues of the renowned Auditorium Parco della Musica, the multi-functional public complex designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano. CinemaXXI program will be hosted in the nearby MAXXI, the National Museum dedicated to contemporary creativity, designed as a multidisciplinary space by Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid.

– Films will also be offered the possibility to participate in The Business Street (November 13-17), Rome Film Festival program dedicated to the circulation, acquisition and sale of audiovisual products, which will be hosted in the area of Via Veneto, the famous street of Rome that was portrayed in Fellini’s classic “La Dolce Vita” and it is known all over the world for its cafés, restaurants and shops. The Business Street offer includes screenings reserved for industry professionals, buyers and sellers.

Eligibility Criteria: All submitted films must be recent productions completed not prior to Friday, November 29th, 2012. They must not have been presented in any other format or length, not even as works-in-progress, for submission to previous editions of the Festival. Under no circumstances may films that have had prior public screenings, have participated in other international festivals or are available on the Internet, be presented at Rome Film Festival.

– To submit a film to the selection, one has to fill out a pre-selection entry form on the official festival website (www.romacinemafest.org).

– The preview DVDs should be sent to Deepti DCunha, the India Consultant to Artistic Director, Marco Mueller.

– The DVDs should reach her before 1st September 2013. Filmmakers with films in post-production are requested to contact Deepti at the address below.

– All submissions (duly subtitled in English) should be sent to the contact details given below before the 1st of September.

Deepti DCunha, 23 Gautam Niwas, 7 Bungalows, Andheri West, Mumbai 400 053, India

– Email: deepti.dcunha@gmail.com or d.dcunha@romacinemafest.org

– For complete rules and regulations please visit the Festival website at www.romacinemafest.org

– The festival’s Director Marco Mueller will be visiting India at the end of August for the final selection of films.