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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Manu Warrier’s debut feature Coffee Bloom is having its India premiere at the Mumbai Film Festival 2014 in the ‘New Faces of Indian Cinema’ section. Coffee Bloom stars Arjun Mathur, Sugandha Garg and Mohan Kapoor among others. We have the debut trailer for the film right here, take a look:
Here is the synopsis of the film, along with information on the cast and crew:
SYNOPSIS:
Dev sells his family coffee estate as a statement underlining his renunciation of the world. When his mother dies heartbroken, he vows to prove worthy of her before scattering her ashes, little realizing that that involves confronting the world he shunned and his turbulent past.
Co-Producers: Sharath Parvathavani, Rajeev Acharya, Nitin Chandrachud, Tess Joseph
Music and BG score: Prasad Ruparel
Cinematography: Yogesh Jaan
Editor: Anand Subaya
Casting By: Tess Joseph
Sound Design: David Stevens
If you are attending MFF 2014, you can catch the film at 3:30 pm on Monday, October 20th at Cinemax Infiniti Mall, Versova and 10 am on Tuesday, October 21st at PVR Citi Mall, Andheri.
The first trailer of Shonali Bose’s film Margarita With A Straw is out. The film will have its premiere in Contemporary World Cinema section at Toronto International Film Festival. Have a look.
From fest site – In this inspirational love story, a Delhi university student and aspiring writer afflicted with cerebral palsy (Kalki Koechlin, Dev.D, That Girl in Yellow Boots) leaves India for New York University, where she falls for a fiery young activist.
Unusual only because it’s so rarely seen on screen, Margarita, with a Straw is an exceptional portrait of a woman discovering what she wants, and how to get it.
Laila (Kalki Koechlin) is a student and aspiring writer, crafting lyrics and electronic sounds for an indie band at her Delhi university. Her cerebral palsy doesn’t much get in the way of her life, although it sometimes does for others. When Laila’s band wins a local contest, the condescending host says to her, “It must have been so hard for you. Can you share something with us?” Laila shares her middle finger.
Always seeking more freedom and new experience, Laila wins a place at New York University and leaves India with her mother (Revathy) for Manhattan. There she meets a fiery activist, Khanum (Sayani Gupta), who challenges her beliefs, sparks her creativity, and, eventually, takes her to bed. For these two women, it’s the beginning of a remarkable love story.
The programme presents the latest works of some of the most provocative and important voices in cinema from around the globe. Bose’s debut film Amu had also been screened at Toronto in 2005.
For cast, credits and other details, click here. Though we noticed a strange thing in the credit roll of the trailer, even the casting director gets a credit (because he is producer, writer and director too? That too three credits in one plate!) but the (Hindi) dialogue writer doesn’t have a credit. How strange? We have never been to able to understand why people become so insecure and chindi when it comes to credits?
Kanu Behl’s Titli is all set to premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. And the makers have just released the poster and the first trailer of the film. It looks so intense, and so unlike any other YRF film ever. Have a look.
And here’s the Offficial Synopsis –
In the badlands of Delhi’s dystopic underbelly, Titli, the youngest member of a violent car-jacking brotherhood plots a desperate bid to escape the ‘family’ business.
His struggle to do so is countered at each stage by his indignant brothers, who finally try marrying him off to ‘settle’ him.
Titli, finds an unlikely ally in his new wife, caught though she is in her own web of warped reality and dysfunctional dreams. They form a strange, beneficial partnership, only to confront their inability to escape the bindings of their family roots. But is escape, the same as freedom?
Cast and Crew
Directed by: Kanu Behl
Produced by: Dibakar Banerjee and Yashraj Films
Music by: Karan Gour
Written by: Sharat Katariya & Kanu Behl
– Starring Ranveer Shorey, Amit Sial and introducing Shashank Arora
– Earlier Varun Grover wrote about Titli in this post.
After Leaving Home and Baavra Mann, filmmaker Jaideep Varma has directed one more documentary – I Am Offended. According to official post, it’s a documentary about stand up comedy in India within the context of Indian humor and growing intolerance in the country today. Featuring some of the brightest talents, in stand up comedy in India.
Two new teasers of Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s new film Anwar Ka Ajab Kissa (Sniffer) has released online. Both the teasers don’t say much about the film but there’s a great mood there. The film stars Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Pankaj Tripathi, Niharika Singh and Ananya Chatterjee. Have a look.
Official synopsis
Master Bengali filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta teams up with India’s hottest indie actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui in this richly textured black comedy, set against a magical, surreal tableaux of the Bengali city and countryside that’s typical of Dasgupta’s eye. Anwar (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) is a well meaning if clumsy private detective, or ‘sniffer’, who can’t help getting personally embroiled with the clients he is spying on. His only true companion is an old dog. His pet and his regular drunkenness put him at odds with the local orthodox Muslim housing block, who want him out. At the same time, Anwar increasingly struggles to cope with his small-time sleuth work that shows him that, in the modern world, even love is for sale. When a case takes Anwar back to his rural homeland, he’s forced to confront his own love tragedy. Siddiqui lights up the screen, displaying a talent for deft comic timing that makes Sniffer a joy to watch.
Duration :132 mins
The film premiered at London Film Festival last year and will be shown at New York Indian Film Festival this year.
Khushboo Ranka and Vinay Shukla have documented one of the most exciting political turn of events in recent times – the making of AAP and the rise of Arvind Kejriwal. They have just released the first look of the documentary titled ‘Proposition For A Revolution’. They are also looking for post-production funds. So do check this out and if you like, do contribute.
– To contribute, you can go to their official site here.
A brand-new teaser for director-cinematographer Santosh Sivan’s new film Ceylon (Inam in Tamil) has launched online. We don’t have details on the plot currently, but the film reportedly revolves around the lives of teenagers in an orphanage against the backdrop of war-torn Sri Lanka.
It’s an interesting, unconventional first look for the film, which doesn’t showcase any of the characters just yet, and instead chooses to show the destruction of war juxtaposed against nature, something Sivan is known to capture beautifully. Take a look:
The film stars Saritha, Karunaas, Sugandha Ram among others. Here are some of the crew details:
And the makers of Ulidavaru Kandante (As Seen By The Rest) have been smart enough to release it with English subs. This comes out just when another Kannada film Lucia was making all the right noise. Click here to read a post on why it became a landmark Kannada film.
A friend also wrote to us and told us more about Ulidavaru Kandante (As Seen By The Rest) – This new Kannada movie looks like Tarantino movie with Rushomon twist.
“It is the first Kannada movie on sync sound, having 5 different stories that happens on Sri Krishna Janmastami day in Udupi, and it’s a story which happens in 1980s.”
Unlike 99% of the Kannada films, it’s set in coastal Karnataka. All the coastal region characters are used only as comic relief in the rest of the films. The trailer is bit long but do watch till the end.
The film is written and directed by debutant Rakshit Shetty, and stars Rakshit Shetty, Kishore, Achuth Kumar, Tara, Rishab Shetty, Sheetal Shetty, Yajna Shetty, Dinesh Mangaluru, B Suresha.
– To know more about the film, click here for its website, click here for its FB page and here is the Twitter feed.
A documentary film titled ‘Beyond All Boundaries’ directed by Sushrut Jain will have its Indian premiere at the Mumbai Film Festival this year. The film is produced by Kunal Nayyar (of Big Bang Theory fame) who also helped Sushrut raise funds for the project.
TRAILER
OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS
This 98 minute documentary tells three true life stories of cricket lovers and fanatics who gave up everything to pursue their passion. Woven through the tale of India’s progress in the 2011 World Cup are three separate story arcs that speak of the roles cricket can play in the lives of ordinary Indians, for whom the game becomes a source of aspiration, desperation and devotion.
DETAILS
Beyond All Boundaries takes a look at the life of three people
1. Sudhir Kumar Gautam, the well known Indian cricket fan who loves his team, his stars, and at the heart of it, eventually the game. He is India’s most recognizable fan who turns up at matches, his torso and face painted in the colours of the Indian flag, and “Tendulkar” and the number 10 on his back.
2. Prithvi Shaw, a 12-year-old batting prodigy from one of Mumbai’s distant suburbs, whose life and career are driven by the prototype sporting parent – a single father obsessed with turning his son into a professional cricketer.
3. Akshaya Surve, an 18-year-old girl trying out for the Mumbai Under-19 team. Cricket is the centre of her existence and a potential exit for her and her mother, trapped in a single room in one of Mumbai’s many narrow bylanes.
– To know more about the film, click here for its website
Anup Singh’s Qissa will have its premiere at the ongoing Toronto International Film Festival. The film stars Irrfan Khan, Tillotama Shome, Rasika Dugal and Tisca Chopra. This Punjabi film is written by Anup Singh and Madhuja Mukherjee.
The first look trailer of the film is just out.
TIFF Note and Synopsis
Set amidst the ethnic cleansing and general chaos that accompanied India’s partition in 1947, this sweeping drama stars Irrfan Khan — also appearing at the Festival in The Lunchbox — as a Sikh attempting to forge a new life for his family while keeping their true identities a secret from their community.
Beautiful, timeless, and touching the deepest of human impulses, Qissa carries the spirit of a great folk tale. Although it’s set in a particular time and place — the Punjab region that straddles India and Pakistan in the years immediately after partition — it is both deeper and broader than any one moment. As this eerie family drama progresses, it cuts to the heart of eternal desires for honour, empathy, and love.
One of India’s best actors, Irrfan Khan (Life of Pi, Festival premiere The Lunchbox, and a feature guest in this year’s Mavericks programme) plays Umber Singh, a Sikh uprooted by the religious violence that came with partition in 1947. He and his family move to a safer locale, and it is here that the story takes a remarkable turn. Having already fathered daughters, Singh now wants a son. When his next child is born he celebrates his wish come true, but there is one problem: the baby is in fact a girl.
“Qissa” is originally an Arabic word meaning folk tale. Both the word and the idea migrated from the Gulf into the Punjab, still connected by the ancient oral narratives handed down in communal settings. Working within this tradition, director Anup Singh gives his film both the grand themes and elemental emotions of classic storytelling. As Umber’s daughter is raised as a boy, the characters are propelled with greater and greater urgency towards their inevitable fates.
Part of a new generation of directors with feet firmly planted in India and far beyond, Singh has delivered a film immediately accessible to anyone sensitive to the conflicts that drive classic stories: fear versus hubris, individual need versus social codes. Qissa is a Punjabi story for the whole world.
Director : Anup Singh
Anup Singh was born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He has written film reviews for Sight & Sound, directed Indian television, and consulted for BBC Two. His features as director are The Name of a River (02) and Qissa (13).
Cast and Crew
Director: Anup Singh
Countries: Germany / India / Netherlands / France
Year: 2013
Language: Punjabi
Runtime: 109 minutes
Rating: 14A
Producer: Johannes Rexin, Bettina Brokemper
Production Co.: Heimatfilm, National Film Development Corporation of India, Augustus Film, Ciné-Sud Promotion
Principal Cast: Irrfan Khan, Tillotama Shome, Rasika Dugal, Tisca Chopra Screenplay: Anup Singh, Madhuja Mukherjee
F.i.g.h.t C.l.u.b 