KAUFMAN - "Or cramming in sex, or car chases, or guns. Or characters learning profound life lessons. Or characters growing or characters changing or characters learning to like each other or characters overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end. Y'know ? Movie shit."
Kaufman is sweating like crazy now. Valerie is quiet for a moment - from "Adaptation".
We are all about CINEMA. That movie shit.
NOTHING is sacred.
NOBODY is spared.
Because we talk about films, dammit.
Not your sex life.
Films, fests, unsung, indies, undiscovered - all that and some fun. If you have dope on anything related to cinema or you would like to share something, do write to us at moifightclub@gmail.com.
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Gitanjali Rao’s new animation film ‘True Love Story’ bagged the Golden Conch Award for Best Animation Film at the recently concluded Mumbai International Film Festival. This 18 minute animation, set in the streets of Mumbai explores what happens when the ultimate Bollywood fantasy is applied in reality. It gives glimpse into the influence of Bollywood on real life in Mumbai, told through puppet animation.
Here’s the trailer of the film
More about the film from Scroll – It’s a frame by frame painted 19-minute film about love, told from the eyes of two migrants who come to Mumbai and fall in love with each other. The boy in the film is hugely influenced by Bollywood and he falls in love with the girl across the street. Who will teach him how to woo her? This is a boy-meets-girl story, from the perspective of people who find themselves adrift in the big city.
As we have said million times in the past, and still keep repeating ourselves, if you have not seen Rao’s work, you have not seen the best animation that this country has produced. So we are embedding one of her popular animation films here. Do watch.
From her official website –
‘Printed Rainbow’ describes the loneliness of an old woman and her cat, who escape into the fantastical world of match box covers.
Gitanjali painted the entire film frame by frame over three years as a labour of love dedicated to her mother and cat. The film went on to premier in Cannes in 2006 and won her the first set of laurels with three Awards for the Best Short film in Critic’s Week, Cannes 2006. Then followed 22 international awards and screenings in over a hundred international festivals.
– She also did the delicious opening credits of Stanley Ka Dabba. To know more about her work and films, click here.
Still haven’t seen Om Dar-B-Dar? Want more reasons? Well, listen to Anurag Kashyap, Imtiaz Ali, Amole Gupte, Kiran Rao and Resul Pookutty to understand what the film means to them and why.
Are you done with watching Om Dar-B-Dar? No? what are you doing here? Go, watch the film and then come back to this post. If you have seen the film, you can read this post by Varun Grover to clarify all your doubts. Read? Got it? Your mind has opened up a bit? Great. Now watch these 3 videos where Kamal Swaroop talks about the film and his idea of sense and nonsense.
Thanks to Deepti DCunha, she recorded these videos when the restored version of the film had its premiere at Rome Film Festival in November, 2013.
The video quality is not great but the audio is clear and we can promise that it’s worth it. So do watch.
Initially it was the title of the film that made us curious. And strangely, nobody knew the meaning because though it seems like a Marathi word, it isn’t. And then we saw the film at Mumbai Film Festival and loved it. It even featured in our best scenes of the year list.
The film has been written and directed by Nagraj Manjule. The makers have just released the official first trailer of the film. It perfectly captures the mood and the essence of the film. Have a look. And thankfully, it’s with English subtitles.
Official Synopsis
A mesmeric force pulls Jabya onto the other side. The rarest of rare Black Sparrow, he is told, is the cure to his problem. The hypnotic spell of the sparrow makes him wander relentlessly. Completely away from the magical world of Jabya, exists the callous reality of his parents who are working at the most oppressed level of the Indian Class Structure and assume him to do the same work which they have done all their life. The protagonist Jabya has to now struggle between his quest to find the magical sparrow and his parents’ expectations. Will Jabya be successful in his pursuit of the Black Sparrow? Will the magnetic power surpass the class differences between Jabya and Shalu created by centuries of customs.? Will Jabya break the fences and pass onto the other side?
Kamal Swaroop’s cult classic Om Dar B Dar has been restored and will have a release on 17th January, 2014. PVR Director’s Rare in association with NFDC is doing the release. Don’t miss this film. A new trailer of the film is just out.
Official Synopsis:
As Om rides a bicycle, scissor-legged, the landscape (Pushkar-Ajmer) resounds with distinctive voices: his father’s rebellions against the world, his ‘bold’ sister, her gentle suitor, the searching eyes of the runaway actress, the local businessman trying to protect the diamonds he has shat…the rebellion of the tadpoles. The filmmaker takes on the frightening, beautiful energy of adolescence – to joyfully shake open the landscapes of his own childhood, unearthing, and mixing politics with mythology and techno music with biology for Alchemy.
Director’s statement:
I was assistant on Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi. The scale of production had made extras of large sections of the population of Delhi: the whole exercise had become an army operation, and we the big general’s lieutenants, the ring master’s sidekicks, arranging those masses on the sides of the roads so that the story of Gandhi could walk and blossom forth. The tear in the upholstery of my hotel room chair became a glad reminder of human life as I knew it. Inspired by the missing piece of cloth, I began spinning a parallel story about a town I grew up in and an adolescent who rode his bicycle scissor legged. The story grew and wanted to take on the larger production within which it was incubated. The boy therefore had to be called Om.
Or for that matter any bollywood film? Spoofing is a serious art and a good one needs much more than the combined acting talent of Uday Chopra, Abhishek Bachchan and Katrina Kaif. That’s a big problem with bolllywood – they don’t know how to take a joke. As me and many of my friends have faced similar situation many times in the past because of our tweets or blog posts, it’s hardly surprising anymore. Here’s the latest story. This one is about YRF and Dhoom3.
It’s not every day that a new writer gets to write a film for Sanjay Leela Bhansali, and even manages to deliver a big blockbuster hit. But exactly that’s what happened with Garima and Siddharth. In this video, the writer duo talk about the film RamLeela, their writing process and working with SLB.
Was I worried?” Cuarón says. “Yeah!” He and Lubezki would watch their footage, “and depending on the day, you’re just in a room laughing, like, What the heck are we doing? Chivo’s (Lubezki) favorite phrase was, ‘This is a disaster.’ Some days you’d just have bits and pieces of Sandra Bullock in a box, floating around, surrounded by robots with cameras and lights on them, and you’d think, This is going to be a disaster.
James Cameron said he was stunned, absolutely floored. He called it the best space photography ever done, best space film ever done, and it’s the movie he has been hungry to see for an awful long time.
Well, watch it. To see, feel, float, and experience.
And it’s entirely possible that even after watching the film you might not get its brilliance – why and how. Twitter has made me realise that. And i am not going to try – argue and make you understand. There are many things that many pea-sized brains might not grasp and understand, and i have made peace with it. This post is for those who were blown by it. If you watch movies like i do, can bet that you will come back home and start googling about it. So i am going to make your life easy and putting all the best articles/features/videos on Cuaron and Gravity here. The links are divided into two parts – filmmaking and sci-fi.
FILMMAKING – How and Why
I have to say that I was a bit naïve; I thought making the film would be a lot simpler…
– Digital Trends has got an interesting feature titled “Before Alfonso Cuarón could make ‘Gravity,’ he had to overcome it”. It tells you all about the problems they faced and what they did to find new technology. Click here to read.
– Cuaron is known for his magical long uncut takes. And as we all know Gravity has some 17-minute long jaw-dropping opening sequence. Here’s a video essay on his “Cinematic Canvas”.
Has voice-over by Cuaron.
I’m going to tell you something, the reality is that the movie was so new that when we finished a shot we would get so excited people would scream on set—probably me before anybody else. There were moments when we were shooting and Alfonso said ‘cut’ we would all just jump and scream out of happiness because we’d achieved something that we knew was very special.
– The Credits have done a feature titled “One of the Greatest Cinematographers Ever: Gravity‘s Emmanuel Lubezki”. This one is an interview with Lubezki. Click here to read.
Both of them—along with a number of other Mexicans who would go on to achieve success in Hollywood—were expelled before graduation. “In Mexico, there are a lot of conspiracy theories” about why, Cuarón told me, “and I’m sure that a lot of them are true. The truth of the matter is that I think we were pains in the asses. We disagreed with the ways of the school.” He laughed. “Even if they had their reasons, we were right.
– Vulture has posted a great piece on Cuaron’s career and filmography. It’s titled “The Camera’s Cusp: Alfonso Cuarón Takes Filmmaking to a New Extreme With Gravity”, and this one is a must read. The story of “a Mexican auteur who’d just made a tiny foreign erotic comedy-drama being handed the biggest, most fantastical franchise in movie history.” Click here.
– Cuarón sat down with George Stroumboulopoulos to talk directing, George Clooney and Sandra Bullock, and new voices in world cinema. This one is a funny interview.
Experiencing this film in 2-D is only getting about 20 percent of the experience of Gravity,” says Cuarón.
– The Daily Beast has also done a feature on Cuaron and his film. It took four and a half years to bring the magnificent 3-D film to the screen. The director retraces the journey for Marlow Stern, from Robert Downey Jr. and Angelina Jolie’s departures to creating the most groundbreaking cinematic voyage ever put to film. Click here to read it.
Still, it was a massive culture shock. “I had more toys to play with, but the crew was three times bigger than my Mexican film, with producers giving me notes, which I never had before.
– DGA has also covered Cuaron’s entire career – from Mexico to big Hollywood studios. Click here to read.
Did even this historically auteur-friendly studio (Kubrick, Eastwood, Nolan, et al.) wonder if they’d just gambled away $100 million on the most expensive avant-garde art movie ever made?
– Variety has done an interesting piece saying Gravity’ could be the world’s biggest avant-garde movie and drawn comparisons with Michael Snow’s films. Click here to read.
– And to know how the sound masters of ‘Gravity’ broke the rules to make noise in a vacuum, click here. Another must read.
SCI-FI – Science or Fiction
From my perspective, this movie couldn’t have come at a better time to really stimulate the public. I was very, very impressed with it.
– The Hollywood Reporter has got Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, to review the film. Click here to read.
George Clooney’s character, in a rare and fleeting quiet moment says to Sandra’s character, “Beautiful, don’t you think?” And the scene is the sunrise in space. Hold on to that.
– The Time got another astronaut, Marsha Ivins, a veteran of five shuttle flights, with a total of 1,318 hours—or 55 days—in space, to review the film. Click here to read what she thought – how much is real and what all looked fake.
– And there are some rants too. If they can float, can’t they rant? Vanity Fair has put it all together. Click here.
– So how Realistic is the movie? The Atlantic has interviewed the film’s science advisor. Click here to read.
In India, the film has currently released only on IMAX 3D screens. It should be out in normal 3D screens from this friday. And do remember what Mister Moore said.
If you are in Mumbai, i would suggest you watch it at PVR IMAX screen in Lower Parel. No, they haven’t paid me. This is from my experience across various 3D screens in the city. The glasses at PVR, Lower Parel don’t make the screen dark. Also, they are bigger, better and light in weight. So if you already wear one set of glass, this is the best possible option. Rest, as they say, haath kangan and all that jazz.
If you have read or seen any interesting feature, interview, or video related to Gravity or Cuaron’s film, do post in the comments section.
If you want to know more about it before clicking the play button, here’s the official synopsis –
In a story that plays out entirely on a teenager’s computer screen, Noah follows its eponymous protagonist as his relationship takes a rapid turn for the worse in this fascinating study of behaviour (and romance) in the digital age.
It’s directed by Canadian film students Walter Woodman and Patrick Cederberg.
The film was screened at TIFF recently.
To know more about the filmmakers and the film, click here.
In the last few years, Bengali cinema has been trying and delivering some really out of the box gems. Films which don’t follow the conventional rules. If you follow the blog regularly, we try to put the spotlight on those films whenever we can.
A new film titled “Phoring” caught our attention. Have a look at its trailer. It has English subs.
Though the topic is not new but the setting and the detailing makes it really look good. Have never heard this description of Coca Cola. The film is directed by Indranil Roychowdhury and is releasing on September 27, 2013.
It was also in NFDC’s Film-In-Progress Lab and had won The Prasad Lab Award for DI and Colour correction.
Official Synopsis
Phoring is a story of adolescence that most adults deny they ever had. In fact, we all prefer to believe that we jumped straight from the flowery innocence of childhood to the informed maturity of adulthood. The mid-greys of awkwardness, lack of direction, gawkiness, lack of identity are the themes that we prefer not to associate with ourselves. Phoring is a sweet reminder of a film in that sense. It’s a children’s story for adults.
– To know more about the film, you can follow its FB page here. And can read a Business Standard piece on the film here.
F.i.g.h.t C.l.u.b 