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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We have always tried to spread the good word about various crowd-funded projects through our blog. Here’s one more film which looks interesting and you can contribute to its making. In today’s Fund A Film (FaF) initiative, we are putting the spotlight on renowned cinematographer Ranjan Palit’s film, Orphan.
Orphan is a English-Bengali bilingual feature film. It is the story of a family-clan spread over 5 generations and 150 years. Check out the pitch video.
About the project
Orphan – Award winning Cinematographer’s directorial debut that chronicles the lives of members of a clan in West Bengal over the last 100 years. This feature film promises to be a never seen before epic saga. What is Orphan all about?
Orphan is a story of my wacky and historically unique family. It will showcase the lives of my family members through the last century, go on to show my life in the present day and a glimpse of my daughter’s life who is the last member in the Palit clan.
It will take the viewers on a unique journey with a family that has a river pirate, a yogini, a World War soldier, a naxalite and more!
-Ranjan Palit (from wishberry.in)
To read more about it and to contribute, click here.
This is not going to end so soon. We started with this post, Varun wrote this one, and Subrat took the Mir route with this post.
And in this post we are putting out some of the interesting links that we read recently…VB, Ranjan Palit, 7KM, Ismat Chugtai, prosthetics and more.
Time Out’s Nandini Ramnath did an interview with 7 Khoon Maaf’s cinematographer Ranjan Palit. To quote…
In an interview with Time Out in 2009, Palit declared, “I wouldn’t do a Bollywood song and dance film even if I were paid a crore.” Famous last words, it seems.
Pratim Das Gupta of The Telegraph also interviewed Palit after the release, much longer and a better interview….what he shot, how he shot and why he shot it that way….To quote…
I had to try and make sure that the prosthetics couldn’t be seen. I think there were around seven-eight prosthetic parts stuck on her face in the aged avatar. She would be made up for four hours every day. So, I was asked to shoot in such a way that those parts were not seen. But you can do that in an interior night scene, what do you do during the daytime? We had decided that we would correct that with computer graphics but it’s hugely expensive and tough to spend so much money after the shooting is done….
…..You know what, I first saw a two-hour-45-minute version. It was then cut by 25 minutes for the final theatrical version. In that cutting, some of the finesse, some of the moments got lost. Maybe the rhythm has also slightly suffered. That director’s cut was beautifully paced….
….People in Mumbai have shown interest in working with me right from the time the 7 Khoon Maaf trailer came out. Boley na, jaatey uthey gechhi! But there’s no existing filmmaker apart from Vishal with whom I want to work. I am a snob that way. I appreciate what (Anurag) Kashyap does. bolley, hoyto korbo. I am not dying to work with anybody. I am dying to work with Vishal again.
And if you are bored of the long and meandering reviews, then Nisha Susan of Tehelka has packed the Seven Course Meal in short and sassy new way. To quote…
+7 FOR THE ISMAT CHUGHTAI moment when PC and Irrfan make an elephant under their lihaaf. 10 for naming the Russian Vronsky and Susanna reading Anna Karenina.
+8 TO NEIL NITIN MUKESH
for waving a phallic stump at Priyanka. Minus 9 points to Neil for setting our teeth on edge a la Kangana whenever he speaks English.
The film scores 98 invaluable points and the point system follows no convention. Bring it on! Click here to read her piece, point-by-point.
If Tehelka is here, can Open be far behind ? Ajit Duara of Open has thrashed the film completely and rated it just 1 star. To quote…
What substitutes for motive is a dark lighting style; as if to say that if you light a movie dimly enough, depth and hidden meaning will emerge. It never does, and 7 Khoon Maaf ends up as a hothouse of exotic spouses with names scratched off the catalogue at metronomic intervals.
Open also has an interesting article titled – Inside the Mind of Vishal Bhardwaj. His long time associate, co-writer, and the director of Ishqiya, Abhishek Chaubey describes the filmmaker, from his Makdee days to 7 Khoon Maaf. To quote..
After Makdee was made, Vishal called me to a theatre in Juhu. Gulzarsaab and his friend Shivam Nair were also there. Makdee had been made for the Children’s Film Society of India (CFSI). They had rejected it outright, claiming all sorts of problems with it—“Badly directed, badly shot.” He wanted us to see if that was really the case. We all thought their reaction was extreme.
Then Vishal did something courageous, given that he was just a music director then, and not the sort with 20 songs in the bank that he could give producers when they’d come to him. He had worked on very few films. As a producer, he was nobody. And yet, he decided to take the CFSI head on. He told them, “If you don’t like the film, I will buy it off you.” He must have paid Rs 20–30 lakh. He put everything at risk. We completed Makdee and went around town selling it…..
….Vishal had the letter he got from the CFSI framed, and it is still on his wall. It’s right in front of where he sits. Not only was Makdee released, it also won an award at a children’s film festival in Chicago. ‘Courage’ is too goody-two-shoes a term for it. It takes balls.
F.i.g.h.t C.l.u.b 