Archive For March, 2007
Following: No wonder he has one!
You wouldn’t believe this is a first film and a no-budget film at that. Shot with about $6000, Christopher Nolan foxes us with an intriguing Hitchcockian thriller. Following (1998) so well-written, intelligently structured and smartly directed.
I wish we played this film at the Roof Top Film Festival. It is a must watch for film students and indie filmmakers. I don’t want to give away anything, just get yourself a copy and watch this first.
Roof Top Film Festival – First Edition
We had such an awesome time at the Roof Top Film Festival.
We watched four movies in all. And there were a few entertaining short films, including one called ‘Hi Dad’ made young local talent, Krishna and T.U.Dinesh. I hope the future editions of the festival features more short films by local filmmakers.
The choice of films for the first edition was made keeping in mind the nature of the audience and people who had registered. Most of them wanted to make films. So the focus was to screen films that were made by people with little or no experience, by people with little or no money.
Hard Candy (2005): I had recommended this film after having watched it, thanks my buddy Karthik who gave me the DVD. It’s such a brilliant independent film that manages to hold you by the balls with just two characters for about 100 minutes. Absolutely riveting stuff. The best part about the movie marathon was the discussion that followed these movies. It was such an enriching experience to see how different people perceived a film they had all seen together. I learnt a lot from these observations.
Blood Simple (1985): Sagaro managed to download this rare film exclusively for the movie marathon. I’m indeed grateful to him for that. The first thing that strikes you about Blood Simple is how the Coen Brothers first introduced the elements that we have now come to associate with them. Ordinary, real, small-town characters caught in the most absurd situations. You can also see that the Brothers’ obsession with kidnapping and adultery started right from the first film. Frances McDormand… Whoa! What an actress. And what a long way she’s come from Blood Simple to Fargo (1996) to The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001). All these three films incidentally are about a husband hiring/kidnapping/blackmailing his wife and how things go out of control.
Annie Hall (1977): I’ve been meaning to watch this for years now. Since I recently managed to buy my own copy, I brought it along to the movie marathon, just in case we needed a different genre. And after the first two thrillers, everybody wanted to watch something funny. So we figured we were going to go with the movie that made Woody Allen. I really wish I had seen this before I made That Four Letter Word. There’s a lot I could’ve learnt from this movie, especially the way he reminds people very often that it is a story. This movie demonstrates most efficient use of alienation techniques. The stuff text-books are made of. Also, this was a largely autobiographical movie. And so was mine. At least at the surface level.
As the discussion into how I, in my own way, had tried to differentiate between fact and fiction, reality and fantasy, and life and film, some of those in the audience wanted to watch That Four Letter Word (2007). Personally, I thought it was a very bad choice for a film at the crack of dawn. Let’s see how many survive, I said. I was quite surprised only five were out at the end of it. And most of these boys had already seen it at least once.
So then, since I had an audience, I showed them deleted scenes and exclusive glimpses of the first version of That Four Letter Word — something I hadn’t shown anyone apart from my cast and crew.
Sid has the most amazing rooftop with sea breeze providing the airconditioning. Ganesh, Hats off to you and the rest of the gang. We must do this more often.
P.S: Personally, I think you ought to keep the booze out of it lest it becomes an occasion to drink than watch films. Maybe you guys should keep in mind that you are not going to get too many women from this city attending a fest with strange boys drinking into the night. 🙂
It happened one night!
In case you missed the first edition of the Roof Top Film Festival, here’s the report on Sudermovies.
Feeling miserable? Here’s the prescription.
It’s right up there among my favourite films of all-time. Feel good at its best. This is strictly only for those who have the time. I guarantee no matter how depressed you are, at the end of this film, you are bound to feel great. About you and about life.
I’m not sure I’ve said this before. Cameron Crowe is my idol. If you’ve seen That Four Letter Word and if you are a Cameron Crowe fan, you just might be able to catch the internal references. The direct and the indirect.
It’s been a while since I last saw ‘Elizabethtown’. It was so good to watch this for the umpteenth time. I hadn’t watched it in a long while because I was saving up for the day people would call TFLW a fiasco. Since that didn’t quite happen, I couldn’t stay away from the film anymore.
😀
Director’s Cut at Roof Top Film Festival, Chennai
Maybe it was the laid back setting and I mustered courage to show the survivors of the night clips from the old version of That Four Letter Word. The version we had trashed. I didn’t half expect the crowd to be awake for the film we played at 4 a.m. Thank you guys.
Here’s my own post on the Roof Top experience.
One helluva summer!
Life has turned upside down already and we’re hardly through with the first phase of the That Four Letter Word rollout. The summer heat is only making things all the more hectic.
And, that’s because I’ve decided to stay indoors during the day and work nights. So please don’t bother calling me anytime before lunch. The only time I get to sleep is between six a.m. and noon.
We’ve had trade enquiries from around the world, proposals for two other films this year, one of which we’re scheduled to shoot this summer. Thankfully, a friend’s chipping in to handle distribution.
I desperately need a holiday to go finish the script. I think I will manage to take the next week off under the pretext of doing a travel feature.
But before I take off, there’s so much temptation all around. There’s World Cup cricket, there are a dozen new DVDs lying around waiting to be watched, there’s ‘Heroes,’ ‘Lost,’ ‘Prison Break,’ (second season) and ‘My Name is Earl’ to catch up on, there’s the Roof Top Film Festival this weekend, there are meetings lined up with investment consultants this being the year end and all, a couple of other script-discussion meetings and I need to do all of this without reducing the time I spend with my darling girlfriend. So even if the personal blog isn’t updated too often, do drop in at Sudermovies. Given the volume of movies I watch and the nature of my job, I don’t have a choice but to discuss films.
I’m looking forward to the Roof Top Film Festival. From what I heard from Sagaro, we had an interesting line-up of films — a couple of low budget indie films from America (Primer and Hard Candy have been shortlisted) and at least a couple of first low-budget films by master directors (there’s a choice between George Lucas’s THX 1138, Christopher Nolan’s ‘Following,’ Roman Polanski’s ‘Knife in the Water,’ Steven Spielberg’s ‘Duel‘.
Would be good to watch these again and discuss them with an enthusiastic bunch of movie buffs who have signed up for the all-nighter movie marathon. Given that most of those who have registered are young movie buffs and aspiring filmmakers, I think films like these will go a long way to inspire them to make films.
It’s seven in the morning, already an hour into my bedtime. Pardon the rambling.
Chenquieh!
Just Married: Sequel to Vivah?
What is otherwise a barely bearable trip, goes off the road when Meghna Gulzar loses her balance between realism and willing suspension of disbelief. Though she does present a sensitive, realistic take on newly wed couples on their honeymoon, the filmmaker betrays her sensibility by forcing a rather filmy, gravity-defying cliffhanger on her multiplex audience.
It is not just the climax that is symptomatic of the director’s struggle to marry two sensibilities – the urban and the small-town – maybe because her central characters are the epitome of modern day sensitivity and small town conservatism respectively.
But then, how dramatic can a conflict between sensitivity and conservatism get? The foreign-bred Abhay (Fardeen Khan) understands his bride’s predicament. He knows his small town-raised wife Ritika (Esha Deol) needs time before she would let him touch her, let alone share the bed. He’s willing to wait. She’s happy that he understands her. So far, so good.
To her credit, Meghna Gulzar fleshes out the first act with ease, punctuating the interludes of the newly married couple with a breezy song or two (Pritam does full justice to Gulzar’s lyrics) while exploring the distance and dynamics between the strangers bound by matrimony. Also during the first act, she also introduces us to the other couples on a holiday, and though this juxtaposition initially seems like a good idea, the sub-plots slow down the central one. By the time we get through with the second and get into the third, the bride does test our patience. Or maybe it’s the actress.
To be fair to her, though miscast, Esha Deol delivers a well-nuanced career-best and Fardeen Khan banks on natural charm with restrained underplaying.
Of the other four couples, Satish Shah and Kirron Kher are adorable with their everyday quibbles. Perizaad Zorabian is once again typecast as the free-spirited girl opposite the hunky Bikram Saluja, while Sadia Siddique and Mukul Dev as the platonic childhood sweethearts manage to bring a smile to your face. Raj Zutshi buries himself under Lonely Planet for most of his screen time as his companion rattles of lines in fake American accent.
Though you connect to some of these characters instantly, the sub-plots here, compared to ‘Honeymoon Travels,’ hardly spring any surprises.
If ‘Honeymoon Travels’ was a macro-level look at relationships, ‘Just Married’ is a more intimate, microscopic look at the space shared between man and woman under the institution of marriage.
Comparisons are inevitable not only because of the timing of release of these two films but also because the sensitivity lent to the plot by two different woman filmmakers. The difference emerges in the sensibility employed.
If Reema drove ‘Honeymoon Travels’ with a classy, urban, romantic-comedy sensibility and stopped for a brief lecture (Shabhana Azmi challenging the sanctity of marriage), Meghna drives all the way to the edge of the cliff to force some melodrama to please the masses and swear by its sanctity (as discoursed by the senior couple, Kirron Kher and Sathish Shah).
If Reema’s cinema branches out of Farhan Akhtar’s, Meghna’s seems like an ode to Sooraj Barjatya.
Bob Woolmer’s blog
This was the last post Bob Woolmer made on his blog.
There were 15 comments when I checked. The last one — the one asking him to resign — was posted this morning, maybe a few hours before he was found unconscious and subsequently, declared dead.
Water: Packaging takes away the freshness
There are films that aim to be hard-hitting with their portrayal of graphic violence against women, their no-holds barred accounts of numerous cases of abuse unleashed upon the innocent by evil, perverted villains. Films like ‘Matrubhoomi,’ for instance.
And there’s ‘Water,’ which in spite of its subtlety and calmness, reflects how disturbingly dirty the pond can get.
No doubt then, that films like Deepa Mehta’s ‘Water’ hit you harder and right at the gut.
The casting may not be perfect. The milieu isn’t authentic either. But we can’t really blame the filmmaker for that. She was refused permission to shoot in India. Besides, we know how Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das had shaved their heads in vain.
So, Mehta transports Varanasi to Sri Lanka, but just calls it India. She uses a largely South-Indian looking cast (most of them Sri Lankans) and indicates that the story is set in a South Indian village, with some of the characters calling the mothers ‘Amma,’ and yet, they all talk in Hindi. So right there, we can say that this is hardly a film that deserves an Oscar nomination. But it is certainly a film that we in India need to watch.
It is almost impossible to imagine this story set anywhere else but in Varanasi. It is indeed a shame that Deepa didn’t get to tell her story the way she originally wanted to. Especially, because the film examines issues that are still alive – widow-remarriage, gender roles, superstition and blind-faith.
The film unfolds as a series of events that examine the plight of widows, as seen and discovered by the latest entrant to the house – a child widow.
The mischievous Chuhia (Sarala) is at the centre of all action. There’s Madhumati (Manorama), the strict fat old widow who runs the house that Chuhia never gets along with, there’s Shakunthala, who’s like the mother-figure to her (Seema Biswas) and there’s the law-breaking angelic Kalyani (Lisa Ray) who becomes her best friend. When Gandhian Narayan (John Abraham) visits his village, he falls in love with Kalyani, woos her reciting poetry from Kalidas’ Meghdooth, and seems on the verge of a breakthrough before the complexity of the larger picture emerges.
Seema Biswas breathes so much credibility into her role, completely overshadowing the rest of the pack, but for little Sarala, who with her vulnerability, zest and playful demeanour makes Chuhia immensely likeable. Lisa Ray seems a little miscast but lends the role radiance and charm, acquitting herself as Kalyani creditably. The surprise is John Abraham, who though miscast, manages not to embarrass himself. In fact, he delivers the underplaying that the role requires with great sincerity. If he still looks like a star doing an experimental role, it’s probably that long hair. A close-crop would have not only made him unrecognisable, but also helped him shed his image and reinvent his onscreen persona.
Mehta keeps the mood light for most parts, using humour to address serious issues, and employs water as the visual leitmotif all through the story, quite comfortable with the other associate metaphors, given that this is her third in her trilogy. This is certainly not the best despite being the best-looking film of the three. ‘1947:Earth’ continues to be the best of the three, with superlative casting, a haunting score running through the compelling yet credible narrative that captured the angst of the bloodiest separation in the history of world geography.
‘Water’ seems a little watered down with an eye on the international market but it still manages to drown you in its drama.
MADRAS INK. 