Archive for the ‘Thoughts’ Category

“Why you should hate love stories” advises Subrat

Posted: January 28, 2011 by moifightclub in cinema, film review, Movie Recco, Thoughts
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“This is how a working class love story should be”, Subrat messaged after watching Blue Valentine. “Wow! Post ?” I replied back. And here it is. If you have seen it, read the post to fall in love with it, all over again. If you haven’t, do watch it. Was also wondering how in the last few years there has been a constant flow of good cinema thats exploring the “couples’ code” – all about man, woman and child. Away We Go, Revolutionary Road, Blue Valentine, Rabbit Hole and The Kids Are All Right. Where’s our code ?

Read on…

You are left stranded at the end. Fireworks go up in the sky. The closing credits come on with a tune that sounds familiar. It takes you a while to figure it’s the same tune that Dean (Ryan Gosling) played on his ukulele years ago while serenading Cindy (Michelle Williams) who dances at the doorway of a shop. And, you return to Apollinaire’s query – does joy always come after pain? Or, as you have just discovered in Blue Valentine, does pain inevitably follow joy? The title places ‘Valentine’ after ‘Blue’ which suggests the filmmaker nodding in assent to Apollinaire. But that’s deceiving.

On the surface, you see two stories in Blue Valentine. These are stories you’ve seen often. Of falling in love and falling out of it. Yet, in examining this over familiar terrain, in twisting and turning it under a steady unemotional gaze, Blue Valentine succeeds in creating compelling cinema.

There’s the present day story of Dean and Cindy. Seemingly, of everyday domesticity on an early summer morning. Their daughter is searching for their pet dog which has run off. You notice the house, the instant breakfast that Cindy rustles up and you sense indifference. Soon, you find the dog dead and Dean doesn’t have the heart to break the truth to his daughter. ‘She must have moved to Hollywood to become a movie dog. She had the looks’, he says.

You are then transported 6 years back in time. There is no reference though to this switching back. With the screen brightening up a touch more, you see a younger Dean looking for a job in a house-moving company. You are in the familiar boy-meets-girl-and-they-fall-in-love territory now. From here on, the film moves back and forth between these two stories of love blossoming and souring, the sweet to the tart without showing us anything that happened in the intervening years.

How does love seep away from a relationship? There’s never a single reason for it. It’s natural erosion. When you see Dean and Cindy falling in love, you might spot the seeds of future discord. Cindy’s desire to study and move up in life is in contrast to the slacker Dean who seems to be good at things but is bereft of ambition. There’s undeniable chemistry between the two but there’s something uncomfortable as you watch them. As the film flips between the two stories, you conclude that all the old adages about love are exactly the reasons why love sours. That love makes you a better person, that love can reform, that love conquers all – each one of them bites the dust. These are all predicated on a colossal lie – of people being made for each other. The film helps you with the benefit of hindsight to see through this lie. But leaves it for the protagonists to discover it as they live through it. That’s the beauty of this script.

As you watch Dean winning his daughter’s love and trust, you see the lie being played all over again. And you can’t help but pity the human impulse. Of deceit forming the premise for all love. We have all lived through it yet when the opportunity presents itself again, we willingly submit ourselves to another lie. Why, come to think of it, even that anthem of first love in Hindi cinema, ‘Pehla Nasha’, is a charade. Nothing is quite as it seems for the three characters in that song.

What aids this clinical exposition of love is the way the characters are etched in Blue Valentine. There’s a visible streak of misogyny that runs through the film. The emotional stack is loaded in favor of Dean. He marries Cindy despite knowing the truth at the abortion clinic. it’s Dean who is shown to be perfectly in sync with his daughter’s hopes and desires. And, he is expressly demonstrative about making the marriage work. You are emotionally invested in Dean from the very beginning. The artless way he admits to not being good enough for Cindy when he proposes to her at her home to his helplessness at the end when he asks Cindy – ‘how should I be’? The story ends too with a definite sense of loss for Dean that tugs at your heartstrings. This is a departure from how a typical marital discord story unspools where the emotional cards are equally dealt to make sure both the protagonists have a good hand (take Kramer vs Kramer as an example). However, if you look closer, you will find the prime mover through the entire film is Cindy. She is the one who makes all the choices in the film. She is willing to live through the consequences of those choices and is unafraid of confronting the truth. While on one hand it’s a subtle inversion of roles, on the other, it’s very clever scripting.

Blue Valentine is a film of deft touches. You almost feel there’s deliberate foolish manner in which love is depicted through the film. The scene of Dean strumming on his ukulele and singing while Cindy dances is not romantic for the viewers. The singing is bad and the dancing pedestrian. You almost feel embarassed to watch the silly couple falling in love there. The motel sequence with its space age suite where Dean and Cindy go to reignite the sparks in their marriage is clumsy and makes you squirm. There’s nothing grand about love and you are constantly reminded about it. The irony of the relationship between Dean and their daughter while you know of Cindy’s backstory is again never once brought up. The playing up of the father-daughter relationship is done so naturally that you forget the truth about their daughter in the last scene of the film.

You will find a similar trick played on you in Rabbit Hole, another film this year that had a beautiful subtle ending. You also sense the way fate mocks at Cindy – from wanting to study medicine, to making that life changing choice at the abortion clinic to ending up as a nurse at a maternity center.

It’s easy to call Blue Valentine a film that’s rich in subtext. That would, however, be simplifying things. Blue Valentine is not an ambitious film. Our ambitions are always an imagined superlative form of what we actually are. Instead, Blue Valentine, is a introspective film. It chooses to pose uncomfortable questions about our normal selves. It shows you the truth once the varnish wears off.

“Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.” You will find that line in Kundera’s ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’. You can read that line many times over today and still not get what he meant there. Then one day you find yourself in a old Mumbai home on Napean Sea Road. You see two sepia tinted photographs of a couple. Both shot at the same location – the now closed Cafe Naaz with the iconic Queen’s Necklace as the backdrop. May be ten years apart. You look closely at the two pictures. And, you understand what Kundera meant.

Or, you can watch Blue Valentine.

(Ed – Click here to read all about the making of the film. It’s a must read!)

“127 Hours – why it makes me want to make movies. And why not !” questions Fatema Kagalwala

Posted: January 27, 2011 by moifightclub in cinema, Hollywood, movie reviews, Thoughts
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Until very recently I was quite unaware of a concept called creative diffidence. Or let’s say creative insignificance. I always thought talent was immeasurable. Everyone had their own share and it’s really upto you to do what you will with it. And even if you had been passed up your share then passion, intellect, skill or some such thing made up for it. Then one day I was speaking to a copywriter friend who is an ardently devoted worshipper (notice the redundancy, its purposeful) of Frank Zappa. This friend plays the guitar, composes and also has set up this small studio at his place to further his passion for music. That night along with waxing eloquent on his studio he was going on about Zappa too and he caught my breath (yes, note that disjunct too) when he said that listening to Zappa makes him feel totally disheartened. Why? The bewildered me asked. He replied, ‘Because I feel so inconsequential as an artist when I listen to his genius. I mean, here is Zappa who is a genius and here I am, doing what I am doing which doesn’t even compare. So why I am doing it at all?’

The stubbornly optimistic, idealistic girl inside me refused to understand what he said then. But those very words and that drowning sort of sentiment in his voice kept coming back to me as I watched 127 hours.

I knew Boyle is a genius. And so is Rahman. I like Franco and loved the premise. It had got spirit, adventure, optimism, fight, survival written all over it, things that make me go very smack-my-lips even in real life. In all truth I went to watch the story of Aron Ralston, not a Danny Boyle film. What I got threw me off with a 50,000 mph force of a meteorite, probably the same ancestor of Ralston’s boulder…

I went in with the expectation to be ‘inspired’ by the story but kept getting awe-struck at the shot-taking. All throughout, right till the end I kept thinking, ‘How the fuck did he shoot that? How the fuck did he execute that? But before execution comes thinking. Imagination. Every time I am bowled over by genius I always ask myself this bewildered question, ‘How did he even think of this?’ Ralston’s story has courage, human spirit, and all elements that have the 100% potential of the drama kind of romance. But Boyle chooses to tell the story just how it happened. Or must’ve happened (I’m not googling now, you do it.) No yarn about spirit, no yawn about courage, no senti about spirituality, no unnecessary emotion. When I first heard of the story and the digital medium and the approach I told myself, ‘Documentary-ish! No, I don’t think I am gonna watch this.’ Oh, dear meteorite in heaven, am I glad I did?

As soon as Ralston gets stuck, I was like aaah, now he is gonna get heroic. He didn’t. Then I thought now he is gonna get emotional, he did a bit but so not hysterical. Then I thought now, its just time for him to get all super-human. In a sense he did otherwise he couldn’t have done what he did, but that was so loaded with sheer desperation and that very vulnerably human wish to live that it all fit in so beautifully. Actually it was a revelation…of realism. At every step my melodrama/drama-fed/trained mind kept getting pleasantly surprised at being second-guessed and being told, ‘Wait, THIS is how a young man trapped by a boulder in a crack in a canyon without a hope for survival would react.’ And yes I agree, that was indeed how a man would react…Funny how a film can take you closer to real life.

While Boyle was keeping me enthralled with the brilliant character disclosure layer by layer he was also doing his own thing on the sly. Ace-gimmicker (I know that’s no word but you know what I mean and its all GOOD!) his aces in his sleeves kept falling out one after the other like Ralston’s hope. His dreams, his hallucinations and his attempts to rescue himself. To completely cliché myself I have to say those are set-pieces of cinematic brilliance that we don’t see often. With the razor-sharp editing Boyle blends the reality, unreality and surreality of Ralston’s situation such that all one is left with is a breath caught in one’s throat. Like when he blends Ralston’s dreams of being rescued by the rain and the other brilliant illusions he sets up for that catch of breath. How did he even think of those?

Like everyone, I had tons of issues with Slumdog and it wasn’t all to do with the portrayal of India. That’s why when I read, Screenplay – Danny Boyle and Simon Beafuoy, I was like, ‘ahem’. But this time it is sheer brilliance. The character arcs, plot points, drama and suspense are perfectly poised. At the same time retaining the essence of the story and telling it with complete honesty and respect.

I am no encyclopedia on film-making but I’ve never watched an exposition of the film as brilliant as this one. Tight, concise and full of adrenaline. And unlike most films who bother a little too much about story or experience this one was all about character. He did not need to but he did. We know Ralston as a carefree, sanguine young man in love with his expeditions. Canyon is his world he has been here many many times. Watching his exuberance at doing what he loves doing we feel, ‘Yes, this is how a man in love should be like. Happy.’ And it is this sense of security that is shattered but without shattering the man behind it. Was it that Ralston had genes from Krypton? Maybe. But what Boyle shows us is clearly a psychological study of a young human with, well, a very vulnerably human wish to live.

I thought I’d come out all blushed about the spirit of survival and all that but in fact I came out gushing about the sheer artistry with which this has been crafted. There is no mood to evoke, just the starkness of events as they happen. Not documentary re-telling but sharp, precise and edgy narrative. Not soft at the edges but yet blurred with the in-n-out surreality to suck us deep into Aron’s desperately befuddled senses.

It is tempered throughout by Rahman’s music like a perfectly matched couple doing a tango and then ballroom and then ballet. And the use of silences was almost post-coital bliss-like…He doesn’t miss a beat like Franco doesn’t. It’s unimaginable to believe he is acting or he is being filmed…the tenseness, the fatigue, the pain and the desperation, it’s palpable without a false note.

The film ends on a soft note of Aron living a happy and fulfilled life today, still doing what he loves that is adventure sports. But again, it is the part-quirky, part tongue-in-cheek, part-sentimental note it ends on that showed me Boyle for the genius that he is. It could have easily ended dead-pan or dramatically. Or it could suddenly put a sentimental spin given the climax is quite cathartic. But Boyle chooses a lighter tone yet conveys so much more! For all those who have watched it you know what I am talking of. For all those who haven’t, please watch it and experience it for yourself.

To come back to my opening para and heading. The film made me dazzlingly optimistic about human genius and the explosive talent that we as a race are so capable of. You know the kind that totally makes you proud to say you are a homo-sapien if you met an alien from Mars? It made me believe that its so possible! There IS vision, there is talent, there is imagination and there is skill and there are also those rare moments in history when all of these come together in all the men/women working with you and you make something like this. Maybe someday even I will discover this dazzling genius inside me and the product of my creative imagination will be my nirvana because if I made a film like this I’d happily die and go to heaven. But then I look at our geniuses again and think, ‘Here they are, these geniuses and here I am, doing what I am doing which doesn’t even compare. So why I am doing it at all?’

FC Ed – Click here to see the real Aron Ralston narrating his story.

“Mumbai Diaries pierced through my gut & took a bit of me in every beat” confesses Sunayana Prabhu

Posted: January 26, 2011 by moifightclub in cinema, life, movie reviews, Thoughts
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Not sure when was the last time it happened – so many extreme reactions to a film. From pretentious, fuck boring to one of the best debuts, even best thing that happened to Indian Cinema in recent years.  They said it all. And the critics’ ratings varied from 2.5 to 4 stars. Click here for all the ratings.

Sunayna Prabhu loved every bit of it. When she did cinema journalism in Bombay, she bothered least about films. And when she had nothing much to do after moving to USA, she got so interested in films that she surprised us all. And when she decided to go for screenwriting course at UCLA, it was hard to believe that she was the same ‘dihadi‘ colleague we knew. Now she just loves her everyday struggle with words. She saw Mumbai Diaries ( Note – its not Dhobi Ghat there) recently and blames Kiran Rao for making her so nostalgic about the city. Read on…scattered thoughts from her diary….

Any one with an aversion to evocative text can stop right here. This post is as much an intellectual masturbation as the movie that sent me out groaning to my husband “I’m leaving you for Pratiek Babber”. ‘Mumbai Diaries’ released in Hollywood this Friday and I ran to see it merely for nostalgia but it pierced through my gut and took a bit of me in every beat.

The movie seduced me despite the desolation it portrays. I yearn to return to my city against the threat that I might never have a real friend on speed dial and chances are I’ll empty my heart to a rickshaw driver. I even had a heated argument with a roommate who called it dark, depressing and disjointed! The moment I learnt her favorite movie is ‘Yaadein’, I pushed her out and slammed the door. “Movie whore” she yelled at me.

Character is You

Once I had locked myself in my studio apartment for two months. No cellphones, no radio, no TV, just writing a story that wrapped my whole existence. When I wrote like a reclusive creep, I literally became that woman in my story. I wore reds, smudged more kohl in my eyes and spoke in a husky voice that wasn’t mine. I lived her! When Aamir’s character Arun, wears Yasmin’s silver chain and ring, I get it! When he goes to the beach and writes on the sand, I get it. When she dies, a part of her that he’s been living, dies. He becomes his own muse and that’s why the storm in his stomach! He bursts out the door to seek someone, but cringes and mourns like a baby in front of a neighbor who won’t even blink.

Mumbai is not Madhubala

So many times I’ve walked the streets of Mumbai after a fight with a bare face to the world “No one cares.” Yet, there’s always the flower girl at the traffic light who’ll stare into your eyes like she knows, the Eunuchs who’ll bless you without a penny, and the rickshaw driver will play Burman in the rain. The city has it’s own morphine. Just like the movie, scattered with images of people that make it livable. Whoever says the filmmaker should have shown a bit of Mumbai’s beauty, go take a flying fuck because Mumbai is not Madhubala. Mumbai is that dirty, raunchy, intoxicating temptress who’ll whip you to tears of ecstasy.

“Mumbai my love, my whore!” Don’t all artists ejaculate their inspiration and breathe like they’ve had an orgasm? I do!

Aah Aamir, Ooh Prateik

Also loved Kiran’s choices, except Aamir Khan. Why does he arch those eyebrows and bulge pupils into the camera to prove he’s intense? Leech. He sucked the flesh and blood of his own character. Oh the long drags, perfect rings of smoke, the pompous Marc Jacobs and Calvin Klein’s and that cocky grey hair. A twit- stuck-in-Ghajini murdered a delicious, fragile, sensitive character! Aah Aamir – You give men blue-balls and the reason why women never hit the big O! Exhale honey, will you?

Few, very few, snippets of Yasmin Noor’s dialogue through her ‘Mumbai darshan’ videos were corny, but they were true to her character. Yasmin, an immigrant like me, tries to introduce the beauty of a foreign land eagerly to her family that probably has taken her absence for granted. She’s that “outsider” within many of us. I often get philosophical while saying the most trivial things about America. I’ve recorded the streets of Hollywood and Miami while ‘Des mera rangeela babu’ played the background score in my car. Yasmin’s background score is her ‘voice’ “Yeh samunder sab kuch apne aap  mein samet leta hai’ although cringe-worthy, it’s real! Perhaps the director nailed it! My heart flipped out when she talks about the taste of mangoes in the city versus her hometown. Agreed it’s not poetry, but I get it. When I walk into the aisles of American grocery stores and find hormone-injected produce everywhere, I lose my appetite. “yahan ke aam mein wahan jaise taste kahan” That voice is real.

Munna! I don’t care who he bangs – rats, clothes or hideous women. Pratiek is my “bitter-chocolate boy.” Irresistible. Unstoppable. A guy I’d love to remake ‘9 ½ weeks’ with. He’s not just going to eat up those blue-blooded run-of-the-mill kapoors and stone-faced Imran’s, he’ll hopefully force great writers and talented filmmakers to surface. Hope he won’t drink n drive and kill people on the sidewalks, rest assured, in all my dreams I’ll have his babies.

Shai is an Indian-American like me. She doesn’t rely on subtext; she just knows her shit too well. She’s just being a true friend to Munna hoping not to polarize him like her maid Agnes who brings tea in a separate cup for him. Shai connects with Arun but doesn’t ever impose herself into his life. I saw a typical liberal woman, confident of her sexuality. That’s not as rare in Mumbai these days, or is it ?

Loving Strangers

Loved the neighbor. Such a strong metaphor for the people who live next door. None, I mean it, none of my neighbors in Mumbai ever spoke to me. I saw them only in the mornings putting garbage bins out the door. I didn’t care. There are nosey neighbors, but who is committed to your daily life? No one! The mute neighbor runs like an understated theme throughout the timeline of the movie. Gorgeous.

‘Mumbai Diaries’ is a rare mood piece to indulge in. Like the gooey, viscous chocolate lava that makes your hands dirty and leaves a flavor in your mouth that keeps you drooling for days!! Here’s last few words for those who hate this movie like my roommate who called me a movie whore–aahhh aaahhh aaaahhhh yes yes yessss…OMG that was so good! Suck it bitches.

(PS – Just plugged in the “Lovely Strangers” song once more)

Dear Bhansali, wake up, smell the coffee, look outside and fire the fluffers. Because big is NOT always Biutiful!

Posted: November 21, 2010 by moifightclub in bollywood, cinema, plagiarism, Special, Thoughts
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As the opening credits of the film rolled, a plate appears on screen, of you dedicating the film to your father.  My mind quickly went back to another film, and easily this year’s best so far, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Biutiful. And strange as it may sound, the actor of the film is Javier Bardem. You may not have seen his film, The Sea Inside, or may be it’s difficult to remember what all films you saw before you decided to make Guzaarish, but whoever told you that making the canvas BIGGER creates all the magic, needs to see the film Biutiful.

Workman 1: Hey, you can’t go down there!
Alfred Borden: I’m part of the bloody act you fool!

Black wasn’t The Miracle Worker, Saawariya wasn’t White Nights, and of course, Guzaarish isn’t The Sea Inside. I remember a friend telling me that after he interviewed you and left, you called him up and asked him to describe you as an “auteur” in the piece that he is going to write. Over the years, those who have access to you, or say those who are granted access to you, including a certain famous fluffer of Patna, and his tribe, they don’t spare the opportunity to put you into that “Auteur” category. But if possible, look outside, get out of your cocoon, take your film outside and ask any film lover, what do they think of it? No, not the star lovers. Not the production designers. Not the cinematographers. Only those who love film.

Sarah: Alfred I can’t live like this!
Alfred Borden: Well, what do you want from me?
Sarah: I want… I want you to be honest with me. No tricks, no lies, no secrets.
[pause]
Sarah: Do you… do you love me?
Alfred Borden: Not today. No

Not sure if you will ever read this post, or even if you get to read, one of your fluffer will surely dismiss it as another smear campaign, by someone who belongs to blah and blah camp, one who has no sense of aesthetics. But if you are happy with all the love and respect of all your fluffers who surround you, who nod all their heads in every word that you utter, only because they are all there to gain something from you, then, sir, the artist in you is dead.

Cutter: Take a minute to consider your achievement. I once told you about a sailor who drowned.
Robert Angier: Yes, he said it was like going home.
Cutter: I lied. He said it was agony.

The same happened with another filmmaker. The man who came with his explosive brand of cinema. Bollywood hadn’t seen something like that before. We worshipped him. And then, came the fluffers. He said yes, they agreed. He said no, they agreed. He says anything, they agree. And those who agree, are those who matter to him. Earlier we used to think, he will deliver with his next one. Now, we don’t bother. We will never. Because Ramu is RIP. More than once. Long live the fluffers!

[after showing a little boy how to do a coin trick]
Alfred Borden: Never show anyone. They’ll beg you and they’ll flatter you for the secret, but as soon as you give it up… you’ll be nothing to them.

And you know whats the worst part, your character wants to die. And I don’t feel anything. Because it seems synthetic, its seems just a wish, because you don’t dare to go close to him. To show us how ugly he is.  How ugly his life is. In the opening scene, when Ethan is lying on the bed with just a bedcover on him, the camera goes far away from him, almost scared that he might appear ugly. Or is he really ugly ? He is still the Hrithik Roshan, looks well maintained, body all covered. Now see this picture.

Ackerman: We’ll have to dress it up a little. Disguise it. Give them enough reason to doubt it.

Difficult to stare? Eh? Well, still can’t figure out? Now, imagine if i tell you that he is one of the hottest hunks around, the heart throb of millions. Its hard to believe, right? That’s what daring is all about. Shouting out from rooftop that my film doesn’t have an item number doesn’t make it any different or daring. If your memory is still failing you, here is another one to complete the picture…

Yes, its Javier Bardem, easily one of the best actors of our generation. In one of the sequence in The Sea Inside, the camera moves over his body, from toe to head, and nothing is Biutiful there, but unlike your film it doesn’t shy away to get close to him.

You stay far away, making the frames bigger with every film, lighting up million candles, illuminating your canvas from every angle and making it as soulless as possible. Do they have blood in their veins? Are they just mannequins who can emote? Since you rarely watch films by other directors, as you claim in every interview, let me introduce you to a small marathi film called Vihir. It also deals with death, almost in a meditative way. As a character tries to understand it, everything goes silent for about 15-20mins. No dialogues. Nothing big. No drapes. No candles. No coffins. Thats Biutiful.

Robert Angier: He lives his act.

Even the one by Innaritu. Biutiful. It also deals with love, loss and death. It moves in breathless and dingy spaces, not a single prop that makes you go wow at the talent of the production designer. But when the lead character is about to die, you want to hold his hand, want to make him believe that this will not happen, and you forget that its just cinema. Innaritu is also accused of  telling an intimate tale, being over indulgent, spending millions but when you stare at the screen in that dark room, nothing else matters. There is no shaft of light. Its still gut-wrenching, and yes, its not even dressed in any designer attire.

And the magic tricks? On screen? Well, ask the Harry Potter fans. Special effects make it look like nursery kids homework. Even if its a flying flame. The beauty is always in the story, the ones that lead to the tricks.

Alfred Borden : A real magician tries to invent something new, that other magicians are gonna scratch their heads over.

And is Guzaarish again set in timeless and spaceless zone? The court is all smoky. Or is it magic realism? News channels, discussions, campaigns, where are you heading SLB? Does it feels like a scary thought, to go out in the sun and shoot? And so even the court comes home soon. Yes, we have all read about your bad childhood days and how that has inspired the way you work.  Now you don’t want to see anything ugly, you want to control everything, you are the master of every frame, you will beautify the way you want it, the revenge of the childhood scars. But now that the claustrophobic trilogy is complete, can you please step out? Perhaps inhale some fresh and ugly air. Remember the joy of aaj main upar, aasman neeche? Wasn’t that Goa too?

Sullen Warder: How did you get so famous then, eh?
Alfred Borden: Magic.

And those who have worked closely with you have a theory to offer. Since Khamoshi was all soul and it didn’t work at the box office, you decided to go for all possible decorations to make it bigger and better, and it worked! The obsession continued. To make it bigger than the previous one! The fluffers made sure that you went in that direction, with more vengeance.  Yes sir, that looks just WOW! They must have said with every move of yours. But since fluffing is a physical act, I wonder if they could trace the soul anywhere. And may be its high time to  report a ‘Lost & Found’ case for that battered soul.

Nikola Tesla: You’re familiar with the phrase “man’s reach exceeds his grasp”? It’s a lie: man’s grasp exceeds his nerve.

Or, it will remain what it looks like, a big boring pretentious fuck. Much like what google seems to offer as i typed your name and selected the “Images” option. Its all just poses. Here, there, see i am thinking, see i am seriously thinking, see i am making a film! And  some more! Where are you, Mr Bhansali? Still in the cocoon. May be you can’t control everything but the world is not so bad. Come out. We will applaud.

Or hail the fluffers! May be they only make your life worth living. We will move to the next epitaph.

– cilemasnob

(P S – Please leave the tangible-meet-intangible words for Gulzarsaab. Because everything else sounds like nursery rhyme. Yeh coffee gadhi kaali hai is pure pedestrian, which is trying too hard to belong, and is not really getting any help from Kunal Ganjawala’s voice dipped in sugary syrup. Its making it more synthetic)

.Robert Angier: Which hat is mine?
Nikola Tesla: They are all your hat, Mr. Angier

I-Day Special – Top 10 Twitteraties who blocked us and for some damn good reasons!

Posted: August 15, 2010 by moifightclub in Bolly Jokes, bollywood, gossipmongers, life, Special, Thoughts
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In yesterday’s Mint Lounge I-Day Special Edition Sidin Vadukut had a piece where he argued that Twitter is better than blog. Just 140 characters, say it, over and out. But we don’t agree. What do you do when you have to make a list ? So, we are back to a post which was in drafts for long time. And what better day than I-Day to put it out.

So, here is our list of Top 10 Twitteraties who blocked us in the last one year or so. And some, for damn fcuk funny reasons. Its time to celebrate our gag order and do tell us who blocked you and for what ? In no particular order…the new members of Fight Club Hall Of Shame…read on…

1. Mahesh Bhatt – He makes us feel that Itchgaurd will never make a loss till he is alive. But he gave us some brillant movies too. He is the biggest importer of talent from across the border, at the cheapest possible rate. But we loved his book A Taste Of Life too.

This time he was tweeting about how the Copyright Bill is not good for Bollywood. We decided to burst his tweets, retweeted them with the correct facts, that how its going to stop the exploitation of lyricists, singers, composers and how they will finally be able to retain the copyright of their compositions. With no straight arguements in hand (ok, may be he was busy itching), he clicked the BLOCKED button.

2. Vikram Bhatt – If Uncle is here, can the nephew be far behind! The director delivered more than dozen duds, all in a row. But we loved the HT Cafe covers that he wrote when Khalid Mohamed was the editor there. Aha, that love story also went kaput. Back to our story.

He tweeted – Mahakshay Chakraborty is the next big thing. Whoever disagrees has something coming! And we dared to disagree. Which sane person wouldn’t ? BTW, Mahakshay is MIMOH reloaded! And when we reacted in the nasty possible way, he told us – don’t be in too much of a hurry to write someone’s obituary. You are not even what he is.

But as Arnab Goswami would put it The country wants to know, who wants to be Mimoh or Mahaskahy and why ? Tell us NOW! Not us and we don’t know anyone with such  a wish. But we have to thank him, he made us bit more (in)famous!

3. Shirish Kunder – This is our favourite story! It seems he discovered Adaptation quite late and tweeted that its a brillant film written by Charlie & Donald Kaufman. We corrected him. There is nobody called Donald. He again tweeted that how Charlie & Donald Kaufman were nominated for the Oscar Award for Adaptation. We again corrected him and retweeted that Donald Kaufman doesn’t exist. And don’t expect us to be sober when we are telling you something about someone whom we consider to be the God of screenwriting. And then boom..Blocked.

BTW, we think he shot some of the songs in Jaaneman superbly. His next is JOKER with Akshay Kumar. #JGrin. Get ready for all the puns, Mr. Donald Duck!

4. Sajid Khan – Aha, the gasbag! What do you call someone who made supershits like Heyy Potty and Housedull ? Not Filmmaker for sure. We call him Pottymaker. You need some talent to make such expensive potties and make people eat it too!

The last nail in our  BLOCK coffin – he tweeted that Up In The Air was boring. He could not finish the film and stopped it midway. Ooh la la. Reaction and his action! Last heard, he is MIA on Twitterverse. We have started following the fake one.

5. Suhel Seth – Nobody knows about his day job. But we all know  that he is a fuckall actor (Courtesy Pooja Bhatt). Does he sleep in tv studios ? How come he is such an authoritative voice on everything…from Arundhati to Arunachal and Commonwealth Games to Chinese Cuisine ? Does he have a twin brother ? Because sometimes he is on air at 2-3 channels at the same time. HOW ? Plus, he writes Agony Uncle columns too!

Can’t find the piece now but someone wrote a feature on him and enlightened us about his day job. We retweeted it with all our genuine concerns. The Agony Uncle went BANG! We like his Agony Uncle pose though! Check out the pic here,  on the top left-hand corner of the website.

6. Shatrughan Sinha – Can’t locate him on Twitter now but swear, he was there. Was tweeting about his son Luv Sinha’s Saddiyaan. Guess it was the beta tweeting on behalf of daddy dearest. Ok, so we can cover both the Sinhas together. Go check No. 7.

7. Luv Sinha – Who ? Yes, that should be the first question. But then, thats how Bollylalaland operate. Ok, here is the joke of the century. Luv Sinha has two fan clubs on twitter. Here & here. But then, he can reply in another joke – Even Uday Chopra has a fan club. Aur bolo ?Can we please have one too ? Hands up ?

As we were busy cracking Sadiyaan jokes, the baap-beta duo shouted KHAMOSH!

8. Jitesh Pillaai – Bus naam hi kaafi hai ? Ok, Test your Bolly Quotient – Tell us the name of one editor who calls Sonam Kapoor as My Shona Chona  or something like that ? Well, if you edit the most expensive and glossy  toilet paper in the country, guess you can do so. We were cribbing about the toilet paper for a long time and finally one day he woke up and did the good tweed of the day!

BTW, did Kalmadi order the same toilet paper  from filmUNfare office for CWG? It needs lot of talent to fill so many pages, issue after issue, with so much shit! Oh yeah, finally after ages they did a nice feature recently where they got Dibakar Bannerjee, Zoya Akhtar, Shimit Amin, Anurag Kashyap and Madhur Bhandarkar together for a delicious chat. But Madhur ????

9. Sarita Tanwar – We love Mid Day for all the sleaze and the goss. But she edits the Hit List. We loved the fact that its editor Abhijit Majumder didn’t compromise his stand after his famous altercation with Amitabh Bachchan.

But how can you let anyone to rate Once Upon A Time In Mumbai 4.5/5 stars!!!?? Even more than Peepli Live and many other such films. We happily crowned her the Jackass Critic Of The Week. And there she went…chore ko toh dikhte hai sab chor!

BTW, a bitchy actress called up to say that by the weekend she was celebrating the success of OUATIM at her best friend and producer Ekta Kapoor’s party. And she makes it to our sHIT List!

10. Like all those morons who dedicate their tweets to Anupam Kher, this one is dedicated to all those nameless and faceless creatures who blocked as for all the right reasons. Go kiddos, make your list and make us more famous. We Love Hate Storys and We Are Family for sure! Aha, KJo always comes so handy! Even on I-Day!

TIFF’s Cameron Bailey on Anurag Kashyap’s That Girl In Yellow Boots

Posted: August 14, 2010 by moifightclub in bollywood, cinema, Film Festival, News, pics, Thoughts
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We posted this one earlier….Cameron Bailey on Kiran Rao’s Dhobi Ghat. And then got to know that he has written about Anurag Kashyap’s That Girl In Yellow Booots too. For those who are still wondering who is Cameron, well, he is the Co-director of Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

We should have put both his notes on a single post but since Dhobi Ghat is already out, this one is on That Girl In Yellow Boots. Read on…

As India’s independent film movement surges, Anurag Kashyap is at the forefront of the action. His Dev D. stripped away Bollywood’s commercial sheen to reveal a generation of urban Indians as they are today: ambitious, exciting and international. That Girl in Yellow Boots takes a hard look at those South Asians who live in between worlds. A portrait of a biracial woman trying to find her place in Bombay, it is exactly the brand of urgent, passionate filmmaking that is transforming how we think about Indian cinema.

Ruth has spent enough time in India to know how to work the system, including how to manipulate the sleazy bureaucrat at the immigration office. With her visa extended, she returns to “studying massage,” which is really a soul-squandering job servicing men at a backroom parlour. Her boyfriend, Prashant, offers no rescue from the dangers of her work. In fact, his drug use, money problems and brushes with violent criminals put her in the way of ever-present harm. But Ruth puts on a tough face and braves the risks of her challenging, urban life for one deeply personal reason: her estranged father lives somewhere in the city. As she searches for her last remaining link with her family, she falls deeper into Bombay’s underworld. But a part of Ruth seems to embrace the danger. That girl in yellow boots is a complex character: brash but sensitive, numbed to men but desperately needing to connect.

Kashyap shot the film in a mere thirteen days and it carries that anything-goes spirit. At the same time, it boasts sophisticated widescreen cinematography that pushes its characters together in the frame, compressing them against Bombay’s humid mass of concrete and people. This is an enormously stylish film, crafting intimate pockets within the city where layered performances can unfold. In both style and subject, Kashyap defines the pulse of today’s Hindi independent cinema – Hindie, if you like.

And click here for the link to the original piece.

TIFF’s Cameron Bailey on Kiran Rao’s Dhobi Ghat

Posted: August 13, 2010 by moifightclub in bollywood, cinema, Film Festival, News, pics, Story / Plot / Synopsis, Thoughts
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This friday belongs to Producer Aamir Khan. Just back from the directorial debut of Anusha Rizvi’s Peepli Live. Wow! Goes straight up in our list of Top 5 films of the year. And its a tough competition there  for the films to release in the next four months. The rest four are LSD, Vihir, Udaan and Ishqiya.

Back to Kiran Rao’s directorial debut Dhobi Ghat. The film is having its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and here is a write up by Cameron Bailey, the Co-director of the TIFF. Read on..

The rains in Mumbai are a beautiful curse. Sheets of water fall over the city, drenching and cleansing and casting vast millions in the same grey, glistening hue. Kiran Rao sets her impressive debut feature during Mumbai’s monsoon season, using the sound and visuals of the rains to bridge the divides between her characters. This is a love letter to her city, most of all to the work and art that drives Mumbai, rain or shine.

Indian superstar Aamir Khan plays Arun, a brooding painter introduced at a gallery launch of his work. Uninterested in small talk, he strikes up a flirtation with Shai, an Indian American woman visiting her family in the city. The next morning, awkwardness descends and he practically shoves her out the door. But, in the way of the Maximum City, Shai and Arun find themselves inextricably linked. They share a laundry man, a dhobi, who picks up and delivers their clothes. One of the millions of workers who keep Mumbai humming, Zohaib maintains a friendly but formal relationship with Arun. Shai, however, becomes fascinated with Zohaib and wants to follow him to the dhobi ghat, the city’s sprawling laundry district, where she hopes to indulge her photography hobby by capturing him at work.

Informed by Wong Kar-wai and Tsai Ming Liang, but directing with her own intimate sensibility, Rao draws her three characters together against the backdrop of a city that gives and takes in equal measure. In a subplot that illuminates the film’s themes, Arun discovers a series of video diaries left by the previous tenant of his apartment. In them, a young woman recounts her impressions of the city and reveals a tragedy in brief glimpses.

It took years for American independent cinema to develop its own narrative voices in contrast to Hollywood storytelling. In India, the emergence of a contemporary indie style is happening right now. Dhobi Ghat marks a major step forward for Indian filmmaking. It’s exciting that Aamir Khan and Kiran Rao are taking that step together.

And click here for the link to the original piece.

PS – Tip by Umar.

The arithematics of Vikramaditya Motwane’s Udaan – Anurag Kashyap dissects it for us!

Posted: July 24, 2010 by moifightclub in bollywood, cast & crew, cinema, film, Thoughts, Xclusive
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Will Udaan survive ? Will it manage to fly ? Cannes is great, and that too after so many years, but,  can We, The (Dumb) People, give the film its due ?  Will the bitch called box office be on our side for a change ? And how many bums does it require to get that elusive “hit” tag ?  Do we count ? And if we do, how much ? Since the time we saw the film, all of us had the same questions and doubts but nobody knew the answers. Only one thing was common – we all LOVED the film.

By now, am sure lot many have seen Udaan.  Its easily one of the best rated films of the year so far. So, it seems some people out there are writing good scripts, making uncompromised films too, though far and few in between, but have we been able to crack the “budget” ? And  even after doing so, how will the film reach the theatre ? And if it does so, will it manage to get those valuable bums who turn “shit” into “hit” ? Aah life. Ooh cinema! So, here it is all……after the art & craft of cinema…the arithematics of Udaan….. by someone who has been there, done that and seen it all.  Anurag Kashyap. Am sure, he doesnt need any introduction. And if he does, you are on the wrong page. Read on….

Udaan has finally been declared a success. It was the only film amongst others in the week which garnered the same box-office on Monday to Thursday, as it did on the first weekend.

Faith, in the end, has won.

There was no-way a film like Udaan could have got this kind of a release. Amidst the speculations and accusations on Twitter and Facebook that the marketing of Udaan was bad, it has survived.

Well, Udaan was not an easy film to sell. We racked our brains on it, Shikha and her team at UTV, Vikram, all of us tried coming up with every idea we could to sell it. Most of them had nothing to do with the film, so were rejected. The pressure on the team was so much, because of what they did with Dev.D. But the idea was not to do anything that would give the wrong perception of Udaan.

We also wanted to release the film the way it was cut. For once we had a film that everyone thought was poetic and had its own pace. All those decisions became a big no no for exhibitors. No one wanted to give many shows to Udaan, because the film smelled strange.

Hard negotiations followed. Gaurav from UTV armed with biggies like “Thank You” and “Tees Maar Khan” negotiated with theatre owners, got us two to three shows.

UTV similarily negotiated the TV rights. Who knew the fate of Udaan, but we had faith on good old word of mouth. In the second week, our number of shows have reduced to one or two shows but on Friday night in some theatres, it  was packed yesterday.

Here is hoping it continues its silent march through the theatres. For all the people screaming bad marketing, the truth is we just did’nt have the budget, we had to make do with what we had.

The fact is Udaan could very well have been “Firaaq“. A good film that got lost. But it isn’t. Today we sold our TV rights for 3.5 crores, film is released on Warner’s VOD , which has access to 20 million homes in the US. The same site where most of the indies and international arthouse films are releasing in the US today. Disney has got the homevideo rights for around 75lakhs (Plus T-Series has the music rights). And our first week net is 2.5 cr. It makes us profitable by around 25% of the investment and makes a film like Udaan a viability in the future.

If the film continues like this and just the box office starts to show us that so far elusive ‘Profit Margin”.. we are here to stay.

Today, I can say, after seeing him struggle with the industry, the market, himself and fate.. that Vikramaditya Motwane has truly arrived, and thank you Sanjay Singh and UTV for that.

Pic Courtesy – Making Of Udaan

PS – If you can read hindi, click here and read the post by Mihir Pandya…a different perspective and one of the best pieces on Udaan.

Inception – I call it the Charlie Kaufman Action Movie declares Vasan Bala & we bow down to him for dissecting “Being Christopher Nolan” so well!

Posted: July 17, 2010 by moifightclub in cinema, film review, Hollywood, reviews, Thoughts
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We all have been INCEPTED! Ok, except few here and there. And few who belong to U-25! Guys, go easy on that age factor, seriously. Am going all cerebral here. Deep down, three levels. #JGrin

Lot of us, including Vasan Bala worship Charlie Kaufman. So, to compare anyone else with him is itself a big compliment. But Christopher Nolan is not “anyone”. Oops.

Vasan is the third musketeer in our group whom we ditched and went to see Inception before it hit the theatres today. But seems like for the next Nolan movie, I have to give him the preference because he has dethroned the old fanboy Kartik Krishnan. Vasan has nailed it and how! In short, simple and crisper way and much like one of the central thoughts of the film – you don’t remember where you start dreaming from, rite ? Its “Being Christopher Nolan“. Read on. For Kartik Krishnan’s post click here and for my orgamsic non-stop twitter post, click here.

Some people are calling it the Cerebral Blockbuster.

Some say it’s all mind and detached from the heart.

I call it the Charlie Kaufman Action Movie.

Or was it the GREAT NOLAN RETROSPECTIVE.

Then again something in me says the seeds of Inception were thrown in when Sammy Jankis was born or was it the insulin, or was it when the search for John.G began…it never ended…did it…ok…where was I ?

Or when Will Dormer could not sleep in the endless daylight of Alaska ?

Or was it when Angier’s wife drowned.

Or was it Bowden’s arrogance in pushing his devotion for magic too far which led to a lot of blood shed, scarred egos, tons of accumulated guilt. Were we watching closely?

But then wait wait wait…Cobb….was always there, right from the start FOLLOWING the young man. A serial burglar….a thief getting into the mind of the YOUNG MAN.

As Cobb said in the Following “You take it away, and show them what they had.”

Cobb here in Inception just takes a HUGE ‘LEAP OF FAITH’ and digs into some three more layers.

The art, the craft, the obsession, the love, the loss, the guilt, the anger, the redemption, was it all worth it…was it for real…are you willing to put a bullet to your head to know ?

INCEPTION is one of those Kaufman moments where the genius lies in telling a simple story in a seemingly complex way yet with plenty of leads to find your way, almost spoon feeding you and making you feel cerebral enough to decipher HIS creation…..and all this with Nolan’s blockbuster vision. Where Kaufman failed at his SY^&%%$%^$ NEW Y$%^ maze Nolan builds it ever so complex yet so effortless, ever to explanatory yet so discreet. LET GO.

Am still quite dumbstruck by this illusionary cerebral elevation in my created by Nolan.

Fuck all that…..go watch it THRICE. Am already geared for level 2.

What last for 5 minutes will last for an hour in LEVEL 2….and the third???? Go figure!

It never stopped spinning….hahahahahahahahhahahahhahahahahahahha!!!

(PS – Lets ditch the old fanboy this time and go for Level 2 soon)

Inception – baffling, confounding, brilliant and/or flawed wonders Nolan fanboy Kartik Krishnan

Posted: July 16, 2010 by moifightclub in cinema, film review, Hollywood, reviews, Thoughts
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He is the biggest Nolan fanboy whom we know. He has googled and read, youtubed and seen , everything thats possibly available on Christopher Nolan and his films. Add to that, the books, philosophies, theories and every possible meaning of anything that Nolan ever said or shot. We saw the film together (and ditched the third musketeer of our group because had only two tickets & fanboy should get the first prefernce) but seems  the fanboy wasn’t as impressed as I was.  Click here to read my orgasmic non-stop tweets on Inception and read on to know Kartik Krishnan’s views.

At the very start itself I will confess that I’m as big a Nolan fan as anyone else. Loved all his films from Inception to Following/doodlebug

The concept, idea, premise behind Inception is intriguing and like one of the good old sci-fi films. A group of ‘dream stealers’ who get into a subject’s dream and steal the secrets in his mind. And of course Nolan being Nolan, there will be a dream within a dream setup-possibility which will be explored. Corporate espionage, a heist & con which is truly psychological, special effects which cannot be identified as so, adequate performances from all & sundry including Leo, & the massice ‘scale’. Just about everything you think should be there is there. Including a Shutter Island meets Memento track.

It’s all in there. Exposition which doesn’t look like exposition. Twists keep happening. The pledge, the turn & the prestige – all there. The magic tricks are shown first and then much later subtle reasoning is provided which takes you by surprise. The question is when do u know that the trick has ended ? Is there an overkill ?

My single basic grouse with the film is – the inability to suck me in. It didn’t suck me in unlike the equally long Dark Knight, Batman Begins. Or may be it was my fault that I didn’t get sucked into it.

The reaction I had was similar to what my friends had to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Full marks for scale, production design, idea etc but somewhere it left them cold. Overwhelming yes. Cold – may be I was the only one.

No one is debating the greatness of the film. But the emotional connect/feeling of tied down a lot. There are too many ideas for a 148 mins film. Too many strands.

May be I do need to watch Inception again. Let me know if you felt the same.

( Our recco – KK – Please go and watch it again. You feel the “attachment” better when you pay for the tickets. Bet! ;-))

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