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    Reviews

    “A cerebral joyride”
    Karan Johar, filmmaker on REDIFF

    “Among the most charming and creative Indian independent films”
    J Hurtado, TWITCH

    ★★★★✩
    “You don’t really need a big star cast… you don’t even need a big budget to get the techniques of filmmaking bang on…”
    Allen O Brien, TIMES OF INDIA

    ★★★★✩
    “An outstanding experience that doesn’t come by too often out of Indian cinema!”
    Shakti Salgaokar, DNA

    ★★★
    “This film can reach out the young, urban, upwardly mobile, but lonely, disconnected souls living anywhere in the world, not just India.”
    Namrata Joshi, OUTLOOK

    “I was blown away!”
    Aseem Chhabra, MUMBAI MIRROR

    “Good Night Good Morning is brilliant!”
    Rohit Vats, IBN-LIVE

    ★★★✩✩
    “Watch it because it’s a smart film.”
    Shubha Shetty Saha, MIDDAY

    ★★★✩✩
    “A small gem of a movie.”
    Sonia Chopra, SIFY

    ★★★✩✩
    “A charming flirtation to watch.”
    Shalini Langer, INDIAN EXPRESS

    “Interesting, intelligent & innovative”
    Pragya Tiwari, TEHELKA

    “Beyond good. Original, engrossing and entertaining”
    Roshni Mulchandani, BOLLYSPICE

    * * * * *
    Synopsis

    ‘Good Night Good Morning’ is a black and white, split-screen, conversation film about two strangers sharing an all-night phone call on New Year's night.

    Writer-Director Sudhish Kamath attempts to discover good old-fashioned romance in a technology-driven mobile world as the boy Turiya, driving from New York to Philadelphia with buddies, calls the enigmatic girl staying alone in her hotel room, after a brief encounter at the bar earlier in the night.

    The boy has his baggage of an eight-year-old failed relationship and the girl has her own demons to fight. Scarred by unpleasant memories, she prefers to travel on New Year's Eve.

    Anonymity could be comforting and such a situation could lead to an almost romance as two strangers go through the eight stages of a relationship – The Icebreaker, The Honeymoon, The Reality Check, The Break-up, The Patch-up, The Confiding, The Great Friendship, The Killing Confusion - all over one phone conversation.

    As they get closer to each other over the phone, they find themselves miles apart geographically when the film ends and it is time for her to board her flight. Will they just let it be a night they would cherish for the rest of their lives or do they want more?

    Good Night | Good Morning, starring Manu Narayan (Bombay Dreams, The Love Guru, Quarter Life Crisis) and Seema Rahmani (Loins of Punjab, Sins and Missed Call) also features New York based theatre actor Vasanth Santosham (Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain), screenwriter and film critic Raja Sen and adman Abhishek D Shah.

    Shot in black and white as a tribute to the era of talkies of the fifties, the film set to a jazzy score by musicians from UK (Jazz composer Ray Guntrip and singer Tina May collaborated for the song ‘Out of the Blue), the US (Manu Narayan and his creative partner Radovan scored two songs for the film – All That’s Beautiful Must Die and Fire while Gregory Generet provided his versions of two popular jazz standards – Once You’ve Been In Love and Moon Dance) and India (Sudeep and Jerry came up with a new live version of Strangers in the Night) was met with rave reviews from leading film critics.

    The film was released under the PVR Director’s Rare banner on January 20, 2012.

    Festivals & Screenings

    Mumbai Film Festival (MAMI), Mumbai 2010 World Premiere
    South Asian Intl Film Festival, New York, 2010 Intl Premiere
    Goa Film Alliance-IFFI, Goa, 2010 Spl Screening
    Chennai Intl Film Festival, Chennai, 2010 Official Selection
    Habitat Film Festival, New Delhi, 2011 Official Selection
    Transilvania Intl Film Festival, Cluj, 2011 Official Selection, 3.97/5 Audience Barometer
    International Film Festival, Delhi, 2011 Official Selection
    Noordelijk Film Festival, Netherlands, 2011 Official Selection, 7.11/10 Audience Barometer
    Mumbai Film Mart, Mumbai 2011, Market Screening
    Film Bazaar, IFFI-Goa, 2011, Market Screening
    Saarang Film Festival, IIT-Madras, 2012, Official Selection, 7.7/10 Audience Barometer

    Theatrical Release, January 20, 2012 through PVR

    Mumbai
    Delhi
    Gurgaon
    Ahmedabad
    Bangalore
    Chennai
    Hyderabad (January 27)

    * * * * *

    More information: IMDB | Facebook | Youtube | Wikipedia | Website

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Archive For June, 2009

The Hangover: Hang out with the boys

June 26, 2009 · by sudhishkamath

Genre: Comedy
Director: Todd Philips
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Heather Graham
Storyline: Three friends get wasted in Vegas and it’s Dude, Where’s My Car all over again. Here, they have also lost their best friend who’s getting married the next day.
Bottomline: The funniest film this year. Period.

Over the last few years, Hollywood has tasted quite a bit of success with this genre though it never perfected it. Until now.

Drunken revelry, Freudian irreverence, celebration of bachelorhood and the dream wishlist: Everything a guy ever wanted to do but never got to a chance to.

The Hangover is as perfect as it gets as far as Boys Night Out entertainment goes. Like chick flicks, the antithetic genre of Dick flicks plays out like every Tom, Dick and Harry’s fantasy.

So, what you have in The Hangover is loads of male bonding, politically incorrect jokes, situations and characters, sloshed and creating havoc in Vegas during one hell of a wild night they will never forget. Or remember.

When we say wild, we literally mean wild life – from tigers to strippers in their room to a barely year-old baby who becomes the youngest male ever seen onscreen doing something you’ve seen only in porno movies.

Though it seems to derive this inanely bizarre from the whacko Dude, Where’s My Car, this one seems funnier because unlike the Ashton Kutcher film that went all out as a science fiction spoof, The Hangover, is quite grounded with a reality… at least reality that can be aspired for.

You can steal Mike Tyson’s tiger, trash a five-star hotel, make a killing at the casinos, marry a stripper or jack a cop car you know… it’s not still as unrealistically fantasy-like as Dude, Where’s My Car where hot babe aliens are willing to give you erotic pleasure if you can hand them the “continuum transfunctioner.”

Still, why did ‘Dude, Where’s My Car’ get only a five on ten rating while this averages over 8.4 on ten around the world with both critics and audiences loving it despite it smacking of political incorrectness of every kind?

That’s probably because The Hangover goes deeper into the male psyche and Dude, Where’s my car was superficially flakey. Here, the tapes of what they do when they are totally wasted actually can be sent to their shrinks who can spend hours psycho-analysing the boys and be further deconstructed to understand fears, insecurities, dreams and aspirations of the Average Joe. Or Dick.

But the beauty of The Hangover is that director Todd Philips decides to pretend that of all that is purely incidental.

The focus of this film is on three drunk guys trying to piece together all that they did during a night they cannot remember and hence, the screenplay too has plenty of licence to run riot between the blanks.

We never get to see what they did, only the aftermath and a few fragments (now, stay till the very end if you want every thread tied up)

The actors are a prize catch and you can’t wait for the boys to return. (Yes, they will return for a sequel next year)

Ed Helms (Andy from The Office), finally you get a role you can sink your teeth into.

Bradley Cooper, welcome to the Men’s club – here, you get to atone for your sins during the time you spent doing silly chick flicks (he was last seen grabbing Scarlett Johansson in He’s Just Not That Into You).

Zach Galifianakis – you are a Dude, man. Pour me a drink, will you.

And Heather Graham, this film’s just one of those reasons the boys will always love you and cherish you for – the other two films being Austin Powers and Bowfinger. Keep doing that thing you do.

And the rest of you boys reading this, what the hell are you waiting for? Go hang with them now.

Paying Guests: Desi dick flick (Uncut)

June 26, 2009 · by sudhishkamath

Genre: Comedy
Director: Paritosh Painter
Cast: Javed Jaffrey, Shreyas Talpade, Aashish Chaudhary, Vatsal Seth, Celina Jaitley, Riya Sen, Sayali Bhagat, Neha Dhupia, Asrani, Johnny Lever
Storyline: Out of work buddies pretend to be married couples for a roof over their heads
Bottomline: Front bencher’s delight.

If you’re a girl, you will sound like a bird by the end of the film, going “Cheap,” “Cheap,” “Cheap” every few moments. The film’s so “Cheap” that most boys wouldn’t find a better bargain in the movie halls this season (at least till The Hangover releases).

Right from the posters (Javed Jaffrey is seen pinching bottoms), you know what to expect. It’s unabashedly male in its approach, thoroughly sexist and completely sexed up, Paying Guests is the definitive anti-thesis to the chick flick genre – what Hollywood and American film studies today refer to as the dick flick – popularised by Judd Apatow, Mike Myers, Kevin Smith, Sacha Baron Cohen and the likes.

By no means can Paying Guests be called good cinema. But it’s great entertainment nonetheless, a gloriously cheap celebration of political incorrectness.

Paritosh Painter adapts his play to the big screen with all the clichés you can find in silly Bollywood comedies over the decades.

Out of work guys who can’t pay rent. Check.

Men in drag, equipped with Tennis balls. Check.

Clown with a lisp. Check.

Character who unwittingly uses wrong English words (like Welding instead of

Wedding, Infection instead of Introduction). Check.

Speaking Hindi in a Tamil accent. Check.

Slip-and-fall routines. Check.

Walking-into-a-glass-door comedy. Check.

Walking-into-a-pole humour. Check.

Bitching-only-to-find-the-person-behind-their-back laughs. Check.

Caught-without-pants gags. Check.
Also, everyone speaks as if Hindi is the new national language of Thailand and there’s a full-blown “Dude Where’s My Car” rip-off. Remember the two guys with tattoos on their back that say “Dude” and “Sweet” respectively sparking off an endless loopy scene with the duo quizzing each other on what the other one’s tattoo says?
Here, the trio live in a house called Kisska House and someone ultimately has to come and ask the tenants who owns the house. If you can laugh at that joke, you will survive till the end.
However stale the jokes are, they work and only because of the fantastic actors that Shreyas Talpade, Javed Jaffrey and Aashish Chaudhary are. Their comic timing is impeccable, whether it is physical comedy, the bad puns or the casual quips and the gang makes these series of gags you’ve seen before immensely watchable.
Liked Apna Sapna Money Money?
Well, this one unfolds like a fanboy tribute to that film as Javed Jaffrey’s ringtone goes “Dekha Jo Tujhe Yaar Dil Main Baji Guitar” and later, Ritiesh Deshmukh in drag on TV gives one of them the brainwave – to make their friends dress in drag since the landlord would rent out portions only to married couples.
Soon, Shreyas and Javed become Karisma and Kareena.  Try as hard as you may not to be amused, you will fail.
The guys are a blast and the girls have nothing else to do apart from prancing around wearing the shortest clothes ever made and going over the top. Come on, when you know a film that casts both Riya Sen and Celina Jaitley… and Neha Dhupia for a bonus, you ought to know what’s in store. Miss Sayali Bhagat, please don’t ever try to act. You’re scaring the kids away.
When Riya Sen sporting the skimpiest top she can find, sobs and asks for a hanky, you wonder if she’s asking for a change of clothes. It’s that kind of a movie.
The climax itself is a decent reprisal of Kundan Shah’s Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron and as corny and cheesy as it gets, you will find it impossible to stifle a grin. The film’s peppered with comic talents – Paintal, Johnny Lever, Chunky Pandey, Delnaaz Paul and the volume of laughs make up for the quality.
So it’s easier to simply surrender to this madness and have a good time with the boys. Go sloshed for better results.

Kamal Haasan’s Project Chennai

June 23, 2009 · by sudhishkamath

“This was a little dream we had in Madras many years ago in a hotel. We were feeding each other with stories and the mosquitoes were feeding on us,” Kamal Haasan remembers that fateful chat he had with veteran French writer Jean Claude Carriere and Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami when they first discussed their plans of mentoring the next generation of writer-filmmakers.

“They had bigger ideas and I have tried to sculpt it down to a palpable size. The Chennai International Screenwriting Workshop we held recently was just the tip of the iceberg,” he reveals, when Academy award winner and Luis Bunuel’s old ally, Jean Claude Carriere (he worked with Bunuel for 19 years), flew down to kick off the mentoring process and the launch of Kamal Haasan’s ambitious short-film project.

The actor-writer-filmmaker plans to produce 30 short films on Chennai written by students from the workshop. “The idea is to get the short film movement moving in Tamil Nadu. It’s not an institute, it’s a movement.”

Kamal Haasan had first met Carriere when he went to seek his advice on Marudhanayagam. He not only got advice, he also found a “young and affordable co-writer who did it for the love of writing” in the veteran. “That was the time I lost my mentor and friend Ananthu. I was missing him when I found Carriere who gave me the courage.”

Film and the City

“There’s an ancient, intimate, deep, secret relationship between cities and cinema,” says Jean Claude Carriere. “It’s like a love-affair since the beginning of cinema. Some of my director friends talk about cities they want to shoot a film in and some cities they will never shoot at a film in.”

The temptation, for most filmmakers, is to go to the streets and make a documentary on the city but he believes fiction often turns out to be more insightful than documentaries.

“Sometimes fiction goes more deeper into reality than a documentary. Fiction is not the enemy of reality. On the contrary, fiction reaches another level of the same reality. That level is sometimes deeper than the other. Don’t hesitate to invent even impossible situations, or explore dreams or science fiction situations taking place in a city that can reveal different aspects of the city. A documentary filmmaker can never use these tools. So don’t hesitate to work with actors. Don’t hesitate to explore,” explains Carriere.

“Imagine your children and your grand children when they watch it, it will be like a treasure. A gift. A moment of life in the city. It has to be made freely, without thinking about money or success. Give the city something what nobody else can give it. Give the city what vision you have, what you have seen, heard, dreamed, imagined about the city,” is his advice to young writers.

“We have to teach the new generation how to do, but never try to teach them what to do,” Carriere believes. “We have to explain how we did and stop on that borderline and never try to impose our ideas, our views, our stories to the newcomers.”

“We were all born in the only century that invented a new language. If we were born 125 years ago, we could only talk about writing books or theatre. So let’s use the film language and not try to compete with novels or theatre. Let’s use this priceless new language that the masters have developed, refined and even perverted and transmitted to us. Try to find your own way, a story situation that touches you deeply and use what you know and what you want to learn and what one day, you will invent.”

Carriere rarely uses the word screenwriter.

“The screenwriter is a filmmaker. Screenwriting is not the end of a literary exercise but the beginning of a cinematographic adventure,” he explains.

The writer of the Peter Brook play, Mahabharata, drew a parallel between how Dushasana tried and tried to disrobe Draupadi but failed and his own attempts in seeing the real India. “I could never see India naked as much as I try,” he says, wishing the young writers luck.

Carriere would mentor some of these writers when 30 of them will be shortlisted ahead of the International Film Festival in Trivandrum in December.

On-hands experience

“Let our minds let loose on Chennai as a concept,” says K Hariharan, director of the LV Prasad Film and TV Academy, outlining the rules.  “Since Chennai boasts of a variety of ethnic and linguistic diversity, the language of the film would be the writer’s preference.”

The writers have four weeks to submit their proposal and 60 entries would be shortlisted for further development and 30 would be fine-tuned during the mentoring process and subsequently produced.

“If all goes well, we will go on floors by March 2010. Writers will be invited to the location to see their scripts transform into butterflies.”

For more, go to the official site.

Kal Kissne Dekha: Future tense for producer kid?

June 20, 2009 · by sudhishkamath

Genre: Masala
Director: Vivek Sharma
Cast: Jackky Bhagnani, Vaishalee Desai, Rishi Kapoor, Rahul Dev, Archana Puran Singh
Storyline: Soothsaying love child of Uday Chopra and Bugs Bunny comes to Mumbai and finds a bomb standing above a bomb kept by evil villains
Bottomline: Even if this were the last movie released before an apocalypse… Actually, especially if it’s the last film you’ll ever see, don’t!

An ancient Tamil saying approximately translates to: “For a crow, its baby is a golden baby.” But alas, Vashu Bhagnani, born in a different culture, never got this valuable insight.

So, he errs by repeating an old Bollywood mistake, throwing good money after bad.

Instead of cutting losses after taking a good look at his kid, he has actually invested more in really launching his old production. Maybe the word is unleashing.

Jackky (spelt with two Ks) Bhagnani who looks like the love child of Uday Chopra and Bugs Bunny is the latest to join the “Mere Paas Baap Hai” club and the only good thing about this film is his co-star and grand niece of Manmohan Desai, Vaishalee (spelt with two Es) Desai, who will make you hunt for her Kingfisher calendar picture online.

Kal Kissne Dekha is set in a typical Bollywood college. The type where Hip-hop dancers rehearse their somersaults 24×7. It’s that kind of college where students always that turn up to cheer any stupid contest and seniors mess with the newcomer hero by testing his gym skills. And yes, it’s that sort of classroom where juniors and seniors then sit in the same class almost next to each other and are introduced to Newton and gravity… only at the college level.

Sitcom ‘Friends’ fans may remember Joey Tribbiani toast during the Monica-Chandler wedding (his an excuse to demonstrate his “acting” skills to the Broadway producer in the audience). Joey recalls that he was first “angry” (Oh! Why God Why?), then, he remembered some happy memories (he “laughs”), some sad memories (he “sobs”) and some scared memories (he “jumps in fright”)  –  and he realized he will always be their friend: “A friend who can speak in many dialects, has training in stage combat and is willing to do partial nudity.”

That’s exactly what Jackky does in this film.

Director Vivek Sharma sets it up an excuse for Jackky to show us that he can feel at home in a village like Chandigarh (!) or a city like Mumbai… He can lift weights, he can kick ball, race on dirt bikes and has a heart big enough to save the bad guys. He can dance with bikini babes at beachside foam parties or stage shows, drink like a fish, save a girl from drowning and do mouth to mouth (but won’t because of his upbringing) and is dutiful enough to drop her back, even if he’s drunk and can win over her parents.

All so bad that Sanjay Dutt disappears after giving a single shot, Juhi Chawla scoots abruptly, thanks to a bomb scare and Rishi Kapoor hides under a hideous wig. Poor Riteish Deshmukh decides to give karma its due and consents to do a comedy track to launch a VIP son.

But poor Riteish is wasted really because the real laughs come from Rishi Kapoor and later, Dalip Tahil when he reacts to Jackky’s admission that he can see the future. The police chief is just waiting to believe this cock and bull tale of soothsaying, jumps in delight and says: “This is fantastic. Tell me more.”

The biggest laugh comes in the climax when Jackky does a John McLane approved Die Hard stunt. Remember how John killed a chopper using a car in the last edition of the franchise? Well, this one beats that. By a mile.

If Uday Chopra, Tusshar Kapoor, Fardeen Khan and Harman Baweja can all find work even today, chances are that Jackky too would.

Kal Kissne Dekha? Well, the movie isn’t going to be that lucky. It won’t see tomorrow.

Olivier Lorelle: Making the writer’s voice heard

June 18, 2009 · by sudhishkamath

When the writer of the 2006 Oscar-nominated film Days of Glory (Indigenes) and President of the Screenwriters Guild in France, Olivier Lorelle, walked into the Indian Embassy in Paris for his visa to attend the screenwriting seminar in India, the officials nearly rejected his conference visa on the grounds that he must apply for a journalist visa since he’s a writer.

“But I am not a journalist, I am a screenwriter. I write films,” he insisted. They didn’t quite understand until Kamal Haasan called the Embassy to explain that Lorelle was coming to India to participate in a workshop organised specifically to address that need: to bring the writer’s role in cinema back into focus.

The screenwriter and Professor at the reputed film school La Femis, Paris, was in India for a week to interact with students at theChennai International Screenwriting Workshopand at L.V. Prasad Film and TV Academy.

“Students here are more receptive and enthusiastic. Students in Paris sit back and say: Show me what you can do. They are afraid of betraying who they are by learning from someone. Students here are like: Give me all that you have. They have so many questions and they want answers.”

Lorelle used to teach Philosophy and write for theatre before he was a screenwriter.

“But I could not earn my living with theatre. After a while, we theatre writers got together around the late eighties and formed a banner called McGuffin and started writing for TV and films,” he recalls.

Soon, he met Rachid Bouchareb with whom he collaborated on ‘Little Senegal’ that won a few awards. “One day, Rachid showed me a newspaper article about the African soldiers who fought the war. The French didn’t give them anything,” he says, recounting how ‘Days of Glory’ started. “We just wanted to make it a popular film. So the awards were a bonus.” He won a Cesar for Best Screenplay and the film was nominated to the Oscars.
Lorelle has finished writing ‘Outlaw,’ a sequel to ‘Days of Glory’ set in 1945, based on the massacre on the Day of the Armistice when 35,000 soldiers were killed. “It has at the same actors but it is not a continuation of the old story. The film goes on floors next month.”

He’s also working on his directorial debut ‘Red Sky.’ “It’s a love and war film. Set during the Vietnam war, it’s about a French soldier and a Vietnamese girl in love and on the run in the forest. A psychological thriller.”

“Screenwriting is not recognised enough. The French have a tradition of associating films with the director – like Godard, Truffaut. But it does not work like that anymore. Journalists don’t credit music to the director but they always seem to associate and credit the story to the director,” says Lorelle.

The screenplay acquires more importance in the modern day context when there are about 15-20 films fighting for attention every Wednesday, he explains.

“You cannot compete with Hollywood on budgets, so we need to rely on word of mouth and make sure that the film is good. You must tell what you want to tell, but don’t betray yourself. You must work harder and harder, simplify it and make it universal.”

“We have something in common. We have to fight against the supremacy of American films. We must not let Hollywood dictate what our children will see. The Americans work hard on how to tell a story.”

He takes the example of ‘Thoranai’ to explain what’s wrong with the commercial cinema of today. “There were three story arcs – the love affair, the psychological drama of the brother in search of his brother and the third – the thriller. They were not held together, completely disjointed. You need to have one story and not try to put all in one film. At the other extreme, we have American films that are too mechanical – where everything falls into place in perfect rhythm.”

“It’s good to see a big star like Kamal Haasan pay so much importance to scripts. We have to work together and take this forward to develop writers,” Lorelle adds.

“Please also write that I am in love with Indian movie star Shriya. I am searching for a story for her,” smiles the man in love.

What hit Showbiz?

June 17, 2009 · by sudhishkamath

First, the facts. The first half of 2008 saw as many as 62 Tamil releases. This year, there have been only 48 so far. Box office collections have been lower than last year. All big releases have been pushed to the second half of the year and there have been no big summer releases this year, barring Ayan.

What is happening? The traditional explanation is that the Tamil film industry is the midst of a recession, and is suffering in pretty much the same manner as Bollywood is. But scratch the economic surface, and you find a slew of other reasons for the gloomy state of affairs in Kodambakkam.

This summer, cinema has found itself with direct competition with the elections, the IPL and the Twenty20 World Cup. Although their impact cannot be exactly estimated, there is no doubt they have been responsible for lower box office collections.  Another factor is that big films are finding it difficult to recover production costs because distributors are not keen to pay a Minimum Guarantee post-Kuselan.

Kuselan was sold for Rs.65 crores and distributors claimed they lost 75 per cent of the Minimum Guarantee and Superstar Rajnikant refunded Rs. seven crores to compensate the losses.

Trade analysts believe that the recession factor is exaggerated and fails to explain what is happening. Many attribute this to lack of variety in fare, viewer fatigue and change in audience taste. With the exception of Ayan, all star-based six-song-six-fight-formula films have failed to deliver.

Abhirami Ramanathan, Managing Director of Abhirami Mega Mall, admits that the “collections have been average and lower than last summer” but adds that this is certainly not because fewer films have been released during the season: “If the trade was hit by recession, Ayan would not have been a super duper hit. In fact, such collections have never been seen.”

“I am unable to say the collections for other films are average because of recession. It is probably because of change in public taste,” he adds.

Clearly, the sensibility of the audience seems to have changed as low-budget, earthy, neo-realistic films like Subramaniapuram, Vennila Kabbadi Kuzhu and the recent Pasanga continue to flourish.

“The recession has had some effect,” Dilip Shah, Honarary Secretary of the Film and TV Producers Guild, believes. “But the bigger reason is that the lack of quality scripts and content. Also, the admission rate is very high and the tax exemption is not passed on to the consumer. Women audiences are not coming to the cinemas because they are finding better content on TV.”

Today, the audience is discerning and has become unforgiving.

Nationally, the strike seems to have hit the trade more than recession.

“There were 1325 Hindi films that were produced in 2008 out of which 1000 films released last year. This year, because of the stand-off between multiplexes and producers, there have been only 80 releases,” explains Shah.

“No matter what, films, education and prostitution will never go out of business,” says Kamal Haasan emphatically. “How do you explain Ghajini becoming the highest grosser when the market was at its lowest? People may not buy an automobile during recession but they will always have that five hundred rupees to spend on a movie.”

Quiz him about Marma Yogi and he clarifies. “Marma Yogi is on hold not because of recession. It’s because of thievery.” (The company he partnered with, Pyramid Saimira, is in the middle of a controversy for alleged fraud.)

Apparently, producers have not been cutting corners or compromising on the scale of their films – a typical fall out of recession. Susi Ganesan’s superhero film ‘Kandasamy’ and Selvaraghavan’s ‘Aayirathil Oruvan,’ awaiting release, are two of the most expensive films made in recent times. Gautham Menon just returned from Malta after shooting songs at a budget of one crore.

“Producers haven’t asked us to cut costs. I have a couple of big films this year starting July – one with Mahesh Babu for his home production and one for Sondarya Rajnikant and Warner,” he says.

Content is king
“If there is a good movie in the cinemas, I’m sure it would work,” believes Swaroop Reddy, Director of Sathyam Cinemas. “Ayan did it in Tamil Nadu and Arundhati did it in Andhra. Even in the US, the movie industry does really well doing recession. Movies depend on content rather than market situation.”

Sathyam Cinemas recently got into film production in association with Real Image when it launched “Thiru Thiru Thuru Thuru” last week.

Editor of Galatta Magazine, Shakti Girish, however takes a radically different position. She says that the industry simply does not want to acknowledge this given the sensitive nature of distribution business. “Actors are willing to negotiate, producers have cut budgets and only actresses have hiked their fees and that’s because currently, there are no great scripts,” says Shakti.

Everybody seems to agree that it’s lack of quality scripts that’s responsible for flops.

Trade experts estimate that no film can recover more than Rs. 40 crores in the present climate. Distributors are not keen to pay Minimum Guarantee and the audience won’t take run-of-the-mill. Big budget films are treading on thin ice and there is tremendous pressure to recover costs. The increasing risk factor has discouraged independent producers from venturing into films.

“The number of conventional producers have reduced,” says Arya, currently shooting for Vijay’s period love story ‘Madrasapatnam’. “The film industry depends on individual producers more than studios and a lot of producers have backed out over the last few months.”

While the debate about what has caused the downturn continues, the industry badly needs a few hits to be back on its feet. The trade believes that all it requires is for the content to be fixed to put the glow back on the face of the industry once again.

No. of Tamil Releases
January – December 2008: 119
January – June 2008: 62
January – June 2009: 48

No. of Hindi Releases
January – December 2008: 1000 (out of 1325 completed films)
January – June 2009: 80

(Source: Film and TV Producers Guild of South India)

Detective Naani: Granny Smarty Pants

June 13, 2009 · by sudhishkamath

Genre: Thriller
Director: Romilla Mukherjee
Cast: Ava Mukherjee, Master Zain Khan, Ankur Nayyar, Simran Singh, Shweta Gulati
Storyline: A granny, a cheerfully divorced daughter, her two brats, a dog and a young couple are the freaky neighbourhood’s Secret Seven.
Bottomline: Elementary, my dear Watson. This one’s made for TV.

Some mysteries can’t be solved. We can only hazard a guess.
1. What’s common to Sherlock Holmes and Detective Naani?
Holmes is a product of Baker Street. Naani is a half-baked product.

2. Why does the film feature a 70-something heroine?
Blame it on the pace. Apparently Ava Mukherjee was seven years old when she sat for a narration. By the time, the makers finished telling her the story, she was seventy-something.

3. What’s the best kept secret in Granny Smarty Pants a.k.a. Detective Naani?
As per the original ending, the camera actually zooms out of the apartment set as it morphs into an old haunted building. The camera does a slow reveal… It’s Nurse Ratched straight out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest giving Naani her medication. No kids, no cheery divorced daughter, no dog eating biscuits she’s been tossing, no corpses, no men in hoods getting killed while trying to tip her off. It was all in A Beautiful Mind of a schizophrenic retired librarian who had an overdose of the detective novels in the kids section. This scene was deleted on grounds that Indian Cinema wasn’t ready for Awesomeness.

4. So, is this film for kids?
That’s part of the mystery. There are kids in the film. But, there are also at least three corpses. There’s also mention of drug use. And Viagra. One minute, there’s an animated song sequence with a girl post-make-over dancing in a mini in the middle of a “You’ve Got Yahoo” subplot and the next, you have an eerie Piano-based background score associated with B-grade Hollywood thrillers. It tries to be light like a comic book, it tries to be dark and moody like a thriller and realises it has to be cute because it has kids and realistic because it has a Granny and scary because it has bad guys.

5. What’s a good time to watch this?
To be fair to the sincerity of effort and the core idea behind the film, maybe it’s best seen on TV on a lazy afternoon. But if you don’t care much for cutesy detective stories or kids and dogs, you could still catch it on TV with drunk friends.

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