what we are reading – EightandHalfThe first look of Anurag Kashyap’s new film, Raman Raghav 2.0, is out. The film stars Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Vicky Kaushal and Sobhita Dhulipala in the lead.
The film will have its world premiere at the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight.
Do check out the poster and the stills.
(click on any image to enlarge and start slide show)
Ashim Ahluwalia’s film Miss Lovely premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 2012 and has been doing the fest rounds since then. Finally, it’s all set to release this friday.
The official synopsis describes the film as follows – Set in the lower depths of Bombay’s “C” grade film industry, MISS LOVELY follows the devastating story of two brothers who produce sex horror films in the mid-1980s. Some of us saw the film at Mumbai Film Festival and loved it. A great atmospheric film which makes you feel claustrophobic and displays great filmmaking craft which is so rare in Indian cinema.
In this post, Ashim takes us behind the scenes of the film and tells the story of making of the film through these 8 images. Do click on any of the pic to start the slide show and do watch the images in full size because even these stills capture the mood of the film so well.
PIC 1 – Nawaz (top left)
I was very lucky to cast Nawaz in his first leading role – he had struggled for ages and nobody would give him a lead, only character parts. I didn’t know who he was, but when he did the screen test he appeared so broken by the industry, so frustrated, with a lot of pent up anger, I was amazed. I realized that he was, in real life, just like my character Sonu Duggal – who is also very unfulfilled, working like a donkey for his dominating elder brother.
PIC 2 – DoP, Horror film set (top right)
My DoP is Mohanan. He shot my first film, John & Jane. We are like brothers separated at birth. He gets me – we discuss stock, processing, colour temperature, texture, framing – and we are almost always on the same page. Miss Lovely is in some ways about the end of celluloid, the end of cinema as we know it – so I didn’t want to shoot digital – it needed to be on film. I wanted Miss Lovely to look like it was shot on the (now unavailable) Indu stock of the 1980s. F**ked up, warm, grainy, with a very particular desi look. He thought I would ruin his career with all the Ramsay Brothers gels that we were using, but I think that he now feels very proud, like this is one of the more beautiful films he has shot.
PIC 3 – Cat fight. Crowd (2nd from top right)
We don’t have enough cat fights in our films anymore and I kind of miss that. This is a scene where two actresses – Poonam and Nadia – get rough with each other. Poonam is from a previous generation, she’s had her time, and Nadia is young and all set to replace her. Nadia is wearing an outfit straight out of a silk smitha film. Unfortunately, they actually started fighting and it got out of hand. Nawaz tried to separate them and got slammed into the mattebox of the camera. He was bleeding – it was stressful to shoot this scene.
PIC 4 – Movie on screen
Everything was shot on location. We were trying to recreate a Bombay of the mid-1980s that is also the Bombay of mid-1980s cinema. You will get it if you’re from a certain kind of background. I wanted quintessential Hindi cinema—the villains by the pool, the cabaret. Miss Lovely is an architectural film—it’s my kind of Bombay film, in a way.
It’s virtually impossible to recreate 1980s Bombay since there’s almost nothing left. Forty per cent of our locations have been knocked down.
The times were flash but also faded. We spent a lot of time dipping costumes into tea and deteriorating them. I wouldn’t let anybody take a shower or wash off make-up. I wanted things to look lived in.
PIC – 5, 6, 7 (Nawaz on bed, Anil George with crowd, Legs on top)
Shooting a fake porn scene at the Darukhana ship breaking yard was not easy. We didn’t have permission and while we were shooting the police raid where Sonu gets arrested, all the dock workers showed up to watch the shoot. They saw cops (who were actors in costume) chasing a woman covered only in a bedsheet and a guy in his underwear and thought that there was something serious going on. They thought we were TV crews covering the real event. I decided to include the actual crowd in the scene without them realizing it – it was total madness, an almost riot-like situation, but I am most happy with this scene.
PIC – 8 (Niharika on the sets)
Both Nawaz and Niharika were frustrated with the industry when I met them. I didn’t know either – I just screen tested them. Niharika had shot two Himesh Reshimmiya films that had been shelved. She was fed up waiting to be a heroine and was ready for something new. Her character Pinky is a struggling actor, who is also very exhausted trying to make it – so like Nawaz her real life overlapped a lot with her character in the film.
– To know more about the film, cast and crew, click here.
Sonali Cable was on our radar because it was selected for Mahindra Sundance Screenwriters Lab in 2012. It’s the debut film of Charudutt Acharya who has been writing for the small screen for a long time.
His bio from Mahindra site – Charudutt Acharya is an award winning writer of Indian TV drama shows like Haqeeqat, Kagaar, Jassi Jaise koi Nahin, Siddhanth, Rajuben &Crime Patrol. He has also co-written Hindi feature films Dum Maro Dum & Vaastushastra. Charudutt is a graduate of FTII, Pune and Royal Holloway, London.
About the film (from release) –
SCIL (Super Cassettes Industries Limited), Ramesh Sippy Entertainment and NextGen Entertainment announces the release of their film ‘Sonali Cable’ on 3rd January 2014.
Sonali Cable is a ‘David versus Goliath’ story, in the thick of the cable internet turf war in Mumbai. An ordinary girl puts her love, life and survival at stake, when she and her ragtag team come in the way of the expansion plans of India’s largest corporation. The film wants to establish the growing corporate crushing small businesses without any scope for co existence.
The film is written and directed by debutant Charudutt Acharya with an ensemble cast that includes Rhea Chakraborty, Ali Fazal, Swanand Kirkire and Raghav Juyal (aka Crockroaxz), supported by accomplished veterans Smita Jayakar and Anupam Kher.
The film features a varied soundtrack showcasing the talents of Devi Shri Prasad, Ankit Tiwari, Mikey McCleary and Falak, with lyrics by Kausar Munir.
For those who have been curious about Ritesh Batra’s Dabba, we have got the first look of the film. Here are some of the stills from the film which look really impressive. We do also have all the cast, credit and official synopsis details.
The film will have its international premiere at Cannes Festival in International Critics Week section.
(Click on any image to start the slide show in hi-res)
Though Nawaz was also in Paan Singh Tomar, but it looks like this film finally brings together two of the finest actors of our generation in full fledged roles. And is Irrfan Khan in Namesake avatar again? Bring it on!
Official Synopsis
A mistaken delivery in Mumbai’s famously efficient lunchbox delivery system connects a young housewife to an old man in the dusk of his life as they build a fantasy world together through notes in the lunchbox. Gradually, this fantasy threatens to overwhelm their reality.
Mumbai, a city of miracles.
One of Mumbai’s miracles is Mumbai’s Dabbawallahs – a community of 5000 dabba (lunchbox) deliverymen. It is a hereditary profession. Every morning the Dabbawallahs deliver hot meals from the kitchens of housewives to the offices of their husbands, and then return the empty lunchboxes back to the homes in the afternoon. For 120 years they have provided Mumbaikars with a taste of home in the office. They navigate through the overcrowded local trains and chaotic streets – that often have a namesake or more than one name. The Dabbahwallahs are illiterate, and instead rely on a complex coding system of colors and symbols to deliver dabbas in the labyrinth that is Mumbai. Harvard University analyzed their delivery system, concluding that just 1 in 8 million lunchboxes is ever delivered to the wrong address. Dabba is the story of that one lunchbox.
A mistakenly delivered lunchbox connects a housewife, Ila Singh, to Saajan Thomas, a lonely man in the dusk of his life. Ila lives in Dadar, the conservative middle class Hindu enclave. And Saajan lives in Ranwar village, Bandra, an old Christian neighborhood that is threatened by the new high rises in Mumbai. Very soon Saajan will retire and bid goodbye to a Mumbai that has crushed his dreams, took away his loved ones one by one, and turned his hair white. Just then Ila comes into his life. In the big city, that crushes dreams and recycles them every day, both find a dream to hold on to. Ila begins a fantastical affair with a mystery suitor, pouring her heart into cooking meals for him. And Saajan looks forward to lunch box deliveries from a mystery woman every day. They exchange notes via the lunchbox and create a fantasy life. As the lunchbox goes back and forth, this fantasy becomes so elaborate that it threatens to overwhelm their reality. The characters of The Lunchbox exist on the line between the Mumbai of reality and the Mumbai of fantasy.
The Lunchbox is the story of the life we dream of versus the life we live in, and of the courage it takes to turn out fantasies into reality.
Credits
director: Ritesh Batra
screenplay: Ritesh Batra
cinematography: Michael Simmonds
editing: John Lyons
sound: Michael Kaczmarek
production design: Shruti Gupte
music: Max Richter
Cast:
Irrfan Khan
Nimrat Kaur
Nawazuddin Siddiqui
Denzil Smith
Bharati Achrekar
Nakul Vaid
Yashvi Puneet Nagar
Lillete Dubey
Sada (Dabbawala)
The film is produced by Sikhya Entertainment (India), Dar Motion Pictures (India), and co-produced by National Film Development Corporation (India), ASAP Films (France) and Roh Films (Germany).
Btw, Michael Simmonds? The DoP of Ramin Bahrani’s films? Chop Shop, Man Push Cart, Goodbye Solo and Plastic Bag. That’s a great talent to have on board.
To know more about the film and the filmmaker, click here to read his interview on DearCinema.
Director
Ritesh Batra is a writer/director based in Mumbai and New York. In 2009, Batra was selected for the Sundance Writers and Directors labs for his feature project “The Story of Ram”. He was also named the Sundance Time Warner Storytelling Fellow and an Annenburg Fellow. He was part of the Graduate Film Program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, from which he dropped out in 2010. His short films have been presented in many international film festivals and fine arts venues. His recent short “Café Regular, Cairo” was featured in the 2012 Inter- national Film Festival of Rotterdam and 2012 Tribeca Film Festival. His upcoming short ‘The State of Siege’ is currently in post-production.
His feature screenplay THE LUNCHBOX was part of the 2011 Binger-NFDC Screenwriting Lab, it won an Honorable Mention from the Jury at the 2012 edition of the Cinemart at the International Film Festival of Rotterdam and was part of the Berlinale Talent Project Market.
(Cast/credit/synopsis/Director’s bio taken from various co-producers’ site)
We have been hearing a lot about Anand Gandhi’s debut feature Ship Of Theseus, and for a long time. Having seen his shorts, Right Here Right Now and Continuum, we can easily bet that he is an exciting talent to watch out for. The film is going to have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this year.
The poster, few stills and official synopsis of the film is out. Read it, have a look and you can decide if it looks/sounds exciting or not.
And here’s the official synopsis…
If the parts of a ship are replaced, bit-by-bit, is it still the same ship?
An unusual photographer, celebrated for her intuitive work, successfully captures the essence of her experience in her photography. However, she also struggles with insecurities over authorship in the context of larger questions about subjectivity and intent in art.
An erudite monk, who is an ideologue and practitioner of non-violence, and involved in animal rights activism, is forced to make a choice between death and medicine – medicine that is either derived from, or tested on animals. As death closes in, he re-questions all the ideas that he has always taken for granted.
A young stockbroker has a frictional relationship with his grandmother, whom he nurses in a hospital. When it is discovered that a neighbouring patient has had his kidney stolen, he starts out on a trail that leads him to a kidney tourism racket. Altruism and concern leads him to confront the recipient of the kidney, eventually making him discover how intricate morality could be.
Following the separate strands of their philosophical journeys, and their eventual convergence, Ship of Theseus explores questions of identity, justice, beauty, meaning and death.
The cast and the credit list…
Director: Anand Gandhi
Language: English, Hindi, Arabic
Runtime: 139 minutes
Exec. Producer: Mitesh Shah, Ruchi Bhimani
Producer: Mukesh Shah
Production Co.: Recyclewala Films
Principal Cast: Neeraj Kabi, Sohum Shah, Aida Elkashef, Faraz Khan, Vinay Shukla, Amba Sanyal
Screenplay: Anand Gandhi
Cinematographer: Pankaj Kumar
Editor: Adesh Prasad, Sanyukta Kaza, Satchit Puranik, Reka Lemhenyi
Sound: Gábor Erdélyi, Tamás Székely
Music: Rohit Sharma, Naren Chandavarkar, Benedict Taylor
Prod. Designer: Rakesh Yadav, Pooja Shetty
Int. Sales Agent: Fortissimo Films
Thanks to TIFF, few stills of Hansal Mehta‘s new film Shahid is finally online. Also, the official synopsis and the cast and crew list. The film is going to have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in its “City To City” programme where “Mumbai” is in focus this year.
The stills look stark and powerful and creates a deadly mood. And now the official synopsis of the film…
Shahid is the remarkable true story of slain human rights activist and lawyer Shahid Azmi, who was killed in 2010 by unidentified assailants in his office. From attempting to become a terrorist, to being wrongly imprisoned under a draconian anti-terrorism law, to becoming a champion of human rights (particularly of the Muslim minorities in India), Shahid traces the inspiring personal journey of a boy who became an unlikely messiah for human rights, while following the rise of communal violence in India. This story of an impoverished Muslim struggling to come to terms with injustice and inequality, whilerising above his circumstances is an inspiring testament to the human spirit. Starring Raj Kumar, Prabhleen Sandhu and Baljinder Kaur.
And here’s the cast and crew list…
Director: Hansal Mehta
Language: Hindi
Runtime: 123 minutes
Exec. Producer: Jai Mehta, Kunal Rohra
Producer: Sunil Bohra, Shailesh Singh, Guneet Monga and Anurag Kashyap
Production Co: Bohra Bros Pvt. Ltd. and Anurag Kashyap Films Pvt. Ltd.
Principal Cast: Raj Kumar, Prabhleen Sandhu, Baljinder Kaur, Tigmanshu Dhulia, K K Menon, Yusuf Husain, Prabal Panjabi, Vinod Rawat, Vipin Sharma, Shalini Vatsa, Paritosh Sand, Pavan Kumar, Vivek Ghamande, Akash Sinha, Mohd Zeeshan Ayyub, Mukesh Chhabra
Screenplay: Sameer Gautam Singh, Apurva Asrani, Hansal Mehta
Cinematographer: Anuj Dhawan
Editor: Apurva Asrani
Sound: Mandar Kulkarni
Prod. Designer: Rabiul Sarkar
– To know more updates about the film, you can follow its FB page here.
What we know – Ashim Ahluwalia’s debut feature Miss Lovely is going to Cannes in Un Certain Regard section this year. The film is set in Bombay’s B/C grade film industry and it stars Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Niharika Singh and Anil George.
What we don’t know – what does the film look like? No stills/clips/trailer available on the net so far. What’s it all about?
And so we have got it all. The official synopsis and some stills from the film.
OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS
Bombay, 1988. Vicky and Sonu are brothers and partners in crime. They produce “C” grade films in the lower depths of Bollywood – lurid horror films, erotic bandit pictures, sleazy social dramas. From a humid one-hour hotel, amidst spilled whisky and bouts of womanizing, Vicky churns out illicit titles like “Dolly Darling” and “Lady James Bond” for India’s small-town picture houses. He leaves the donkey-work to Sonu, his withdrawn, dim-witted younger sibling, who often cleans up after him.
Returning exhausted from a sales trip peddling erotic reels in the hinterland, Sonu encounters a mysterious girl on the train and is drawn to her fragile beauty. She’s only just arrived in Bombay and her vulnerability soothes his own sense of despair. Her name is Pinky and she appears to be a struggling actress.
Vicky dismisses the girl as a gullible piece of flesh but Sonu is desperate, bewitched by Pinky’s silent radiance. He knows that only she can save him; make his emptiness disappear.
As the seasons change, Sonu begins to resent his hard-edged brother. He no longer wants toslave for Vicky’s lawless operation and decides to make a film of his own, with Pinky in the lead. A double debut – producer and star. It’s a reckless, nihilistic venture with no story and no crew in place. But he has a title – the film will be called ‘Miss Lovely’ and Sonu will do whatever it takes to make it.
But nothing is what it seems in this garish underworld of shifting alliances, double dealing, and quivering flesh. Out on the streets three years later, Sonu realizes that his whole world has turned upside down.
A baroque tale of betrayal and doomed love, the animal instincts of the struggling actress prove to be the most cutthroat of all. As paranoia and violence spiral out of control, brother turns on brother, and blood spills like water. Sonu, now alone and abandoned, aimlessly wanders the streets, junkyards and film studios, aching for one last glimpse of Pinky.
Click here to read an interview of Ashim on the making of Miss Lovely.
Trishna and Michael, both the films will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Michael Winterbottom’s latest film Trishna is not only set in India but it was more than one desi connect. The film’s trailer is out and according to official release, it’s an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles set against a contemporary Indian backdrop. Freida Pinto stars as the titular Trishna, a young woman who is seduced by the wealthy son(Riz Ahmed) of a property developer. As the romance develops, their relationship also becomes increasingly sordid and volatile.
Click on the play button to check out the trailer. what a smooth and soothing track! Wow, Amit Trivedi, scores again? Seems so, at least from the trailer.
Michael is the latest production of Anurag Kashyap films. Directed by debutant Ribhu Dasgupta, the film’s trailer or poster is not out yet. But you can check out some of the stills. It stars Naseeruddin Shah, Mahie Gill, Purav Bhandare, Sabyasachi Chakraborty and Irawati Harshe.
According to official release, it’s a character-driven psychological drama. Using intricate camerawork and intimate point of view shooting, Dasgupta tracks one man’s physical and psychological deterioration in the rainy, traffic-filled streets of Kolkata. Check out the stills.
With the mulitiplex-producers strike over, the publicity and promotions of new releases has started in full swing. Imtiaz Ali’s Love Aaj Kal starring Saif Ali Khan and Deepika Padukone is up for release soon. Here are some new pics from the film.
For Love Aaj Kal’s plot/story/synopsis, click here. And for the first promo/trailer of Love Aaj Kal, click here.
Glamsham.com has got new pics of Salman Khan-Kareena Kapoor starrer Main aur Mrs Khanna. Enjoy!
F.i.g.h.t C.l.u.b 