Interviews & Audience Reactions to the film
Post Film Q&A Session at the South Asian International Film Festival
Pics from the trip are at Memories – South Asian International Film Festival
Posts By sudhishkamath
Good Night | Good Morning
If I have not been regular, that’s because I have been losing sleep
over my new film Good Night | Good Morning about an all-night phone
call between two strangers on New Year’s night in New York City. The
film stars Manu Narayan (Bombay Dreams, Love Guru), Seema Rahmani (Loins of Punjab, Missed Call, Sins), Vasanth Santosham (Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain) and Raja Sen (writer/critic – the one from Rediff/Mumbai Mirror).
It is quite an experimental independent film because the entire movie
is just a long phone call and there’s very little going on apart from
that phone conversation. Sort of Before Sunrise on the phone. The
story and the plot are a little different though. We did a few tests
with friends, strangers and critics and I am happy to report that we
are getting very good buzz.
The film’s already selected into three film festivals – Mumbai Film
Festival organised by MAMI, the South Asian International Film
Festival in New York and the Chennai International Film Festival in
December.
So make a note of these dates:
The World Premiere of my film Good Night | Good Morning is on October
24, 3.30 p.m. at PVR Juhu, Mumbai.
How to get a pass: Since this premiere is part of the Mumbai Film
Festival, you need to register as a delegate and once you do that, you
can watch not just my film about also choose from another 200 films
between October 21-28.
The International Premiere of Good Night | Good Morning is on October
28, 10 p.m. at SVA Theatre, New York
How to get a pass: The ticket costs $15 and you can buy online from by registering with the festival
The seating is limited at both venues (only about 250 seats for Mumbai
and about 500 for New York) and since the free seats we are getting is
just about adequate to accommodate our cast and crew and family, you
need to get a ticket.
Do call me if you are coming or send me an email a day before the show
so that I can look for you after the film or try to smuggle you in if
you can prove you are as broke as I am. 🙂
What I also need you to do is to spread the word and let your friends
in Bombay and New York know about the film.
I am sure you don’t need any further convincing to come and see my
film but your friends might.
So I am attaching everything that will help them make up their mind
about whether or not they want to watch it… with pictures, with
videos of our good scenes and our not-so-good to bad-scenes that we
deleted from the final film.
Basically, all the info you are going to need to spread the word to
your friends. Send it only to people you are sure would enjoy
independent films because like I said, the entire film is just one
phone call (The film is about 73 minutes long).
I can promise you great actors – Manu Narayan and Seema Rahmani are
fantastic!! And there’s some decent writing (I co-wrote this film with
Shilpa Rathnam and I think you know who that is!) and fun moments.
You’ll get an idea as you watch the videos below. I like the film I’ve
made if I can say so myself. 🙂
Also, one final request: If you know journalists who write on films,
send them this email please. We need to generate all the buzz we can
since we have no money left for anything. Who knows they may pitch it
with a larger trend story on independent films or technology-based
romance films or write about this film once they’ve seen it. For
which, we need them to come and watch. All pictures from the Publicity
Albums on Facebook can be used to promote the film.
Website:
http://goodnightgoodmorningthefilm.com (Also, if you or anyone has
time to maintain or redesign this thing we did in a hurry, please
help!)
Videos:
Promo 1 – Melons:
Deleted Scene – When Geeky Met Sassy:
Deleted Scene – Kuch Kuch Hota Hai:
Deleted Scene – Pocketful of Rainbows:
Photos:
For more, ping me on Facebook, Twitter or Blog.
Enthiran: Superstar Wars: Man versus Machines
Twenty years later, the robotic avatar of Superstar is dismantled and kept in a museum. When a school kid on excursion wants to know why, the robot answers: “Naan Sinthikka Arambichitten” (“I started thinking”)
We can say the same for the changing mindset of the increasingly discerning audience.
Also, the man does not have the agility he once had but makes up with grace as he tries flipping his sunglasses realising he can’t do them right anymore before placing them on Robot – his Avatar, his creation. In many ways, the Robot is a metaphor for Rajnikant’s legacy – he has always executed tasks expected out of him as a superhero, no matter how impossible and ridiculous they sound on paper with great amount of earnestness. Simply because that’s what his creators – the fans – want.
And Shankar is smart enough to realise that and he gives us back the Rajnikant of yore, the guy who wasn’t scared to play the man who runs away from a fight or even the villain – Rajnikant, the actor – in India’s best attempt ever in crafting a legitimate sci-fi action spectacle.
We aren’t talking about superhero cock-and-bull here. Not Krissh, not Koi Mil Gaya, not Prince. We are talking about hardcore science fiction rooted in consequences of a scientific possibility of the near or distant future.
What makes the task of an Indian sci-fi filmmaker doubly difficult is that unlike Hollywood films that stick to a specialised genre with focus, people here expect a wholesome blend of various genres – romance, comedy, thriller, musical, action, adventure, in addition to science fiction – all in one movie. Now, imagine the expectations if this also needs to be a Rajnikant film?
Obviously, sci-fi fans are not wholly satisfied.
“In terms of special effects, it was a giant leap for Indian cinema. We haven’t seen special effects like this in our films… certainly not like the last 20 minutes in Enthiran,” swears Sandeep Makam, a movie geek who also runs an ad agency. “The flip side is that it is predictable science fiction. When you watch Star Wars or The Matrix, you don’t see what’s coming.”
While Hollywood films keep their focus on the sci-fi narrative, Shankar has taken a sci-fi plot, moulded it within the trappings of his already complex mixed masala genre. The end product is a fascinating blend – Enthiran is simultaneously a superhero film, a sci-fi adventure, a triangular love story with a hint of the Ramayana (the villain even compares the abducted heroine Sana to Sita) and the message movie Shankar is known to churn out.
Movie buff Naveen Varadarajan, a budding cinematographer who recently trained for 3D in Hollywood, blown by the visual effects is willing to ignore the predictability. “You may be able to find faults with the script but not the visual effects. The effects in Enthiran are not LIKE a Hollywood film, they ARE as good as Hollywood does them,” says Naveen.
That is true. At no point does the film look like a cheap imitation. Either Shankar or the late Sujatha or probably the art director Sabu Cyril must be a Star Wars fan to begin the movie with a very similar visual for a opening scene. Two robots – a tall one and a short fat one, called C3PO and R2D2 respectively – in a passage way. But the similarity ends there, the robots are running for cover in A New Hope and in Enthiran, they are bringing flowers to the scientist busy giving the final touches to his obsession. Probably as a tongue in cheek tribute, scientist Vaseegaran calls one R2. Later in the course of ‘Arima Arima,’ Superstar weilds a lightsaber.
The film is replete with touches and influences from many sci-fi films.
As Vijay Venkataramanan, a film editor and post production specialist, observes cryptically, “In the 1930s, “Frankenstein” got together with “King Kong” and had a baby. Many years later, that baby got together with “The Terminator” and made another baby. A decade later this baby got together with “Bicentennial Man” and had yet another baby called “Enthiran”. The lineage is not to be taken lightly!”
The Terminator reference is more than obvious. Not just visually – where we see the Superstar with one human eye and one scarred metallic eye but also intentionally spelt out when the bad robot announces that he has created “Terminators”.
Given the geek community’s exposure to Hollywood’s big budget sci-fi entertainers, technology-savvy movie buffs like social media guru Kiruba had very low expectations. “Honestly when I first heard about Enthiran, I expected hotch potch, low grade work. After all, I hadn’t seen any Tamil movie with effects that came close to Hollywood. Enthiran completely and totally beat my expectations,” admits Kiruba.
A lot of this has to do with Shankar’s narrative structure that first educates the audience about the genre by showcasing potential of robotic technology in its robot-as-superhero first act before going on to show us its destructive application that could wreck havoc on our lives – the form only substantiating the content.
Shankar is clever enough to use every opportunity to plug his “Issued in public interest” messages into the robot-as-superhero first act of the film. Sample: A train passenger about to spit paan gets stamped on his face, Hooligans blasting devotional music over permissible noise levels get to see Superstar in his avatar as Kali, the destroyer and men who sexually harass women, across different strata of society and different nationalities, will get a taste of the Robot’s newly acquired martial arts. The filmmaker also spends quite a bit of the first act simplifying computer-based concepts for the mass. (See box below).
The robot-as-human-in-love second act is where the screenplay loosens up a little and gets into escapist fantasy mode, the songs only slowing down the narrative further. This is the most torturous part of the film – silly comic gag that waters down the sci fi quotient and then Superstar running away from a fight.
Despite going all out to make the source of the Robot’s superpower plausible (electro-magnetic energy), Shankar packs up all that tightly-reined-in logic for a silly comedy scene that not just sticks out as a sore thumb in any sci-fi film that demands to be taken seriously but also reduces Rajnikant to a silly Chuck Norris joke (To add to all those ones that North Indians have been circulating around, now Rajnikant can also make a mosquito apologise.)
But thankfully, the Robot-as-supervillain third act of Enthiran more than makes up for the lost time unleashing multiple Rajnikants (like Agent Smiths in The Matrix), making you root for the badass robot Chitti Version 2 whose overpowering style and flamboyant presence prove no match for the hero. (We must forget that horrendous, juvenile 2.0 rap if we need to respect Rahman’s rich, grand thriller score.)
The protagonist is left in the lurch, failing again and again in every single attempt to outsmart the robot and that’s probably the message of the film – that man may never be able to beat the machine if artificial intelligence is equipped with the ability to think and want.
But this is not the Rajnikant we are used to seeing – he gets flung on to the top of the chandelier, gets busted by the villain after infiltrating his den, his attempts to send worms are met with deworming commands and it’s just a De-Magnetise command that helps him save the day. The world saving act in a Rajnikant film turns out to be a simple geeky gesture!
And that’s the part we need to embrace with mixed feelings. Enthiran isn’t the conventional Superstar film.
Superstar has dismantled his image. For we have started thinking.
Box:
What type of a robot is Chitti? A humanoid
What can he do? Execute commands based on artificial intelligence. He scans, processes, replicates and transmits
What are his limitations? Interprets commands literally. It’s an inference engine.
How can it fight? It’s programmed for combat and military applications.
How can it exactly help the military? Applications like Mine-Sweeper saves human life.
How does it fly? It cannot. It can merely use its Electro magnetic force to attract itself to metallic objects.
How can it be taught to feel human emotions? Extensive qualitative inputs on social practices, human behaviour and needs, literature on philosophy, etc.
How To: Be a mass hero in the South
1. Not everyone can be a mass hero. Before you even think of enrolling in an acting school or training to be an actor, ask yourself this and answer it as honestly as you can: Are you God? If you want to be a mass hero, you know the answer to that has got to be “Yes, I am Him.”. Or quit right away, you will never make it.
2. Even before you sign your first film, make sure the city is flooded with larger than life cutouts of you, ideally in white, smiling with your arms folded, greeting your subjects with great humility from up above there. These must contain the title you have conferred upon yourself, preferably in Tamizh. Everything from Top Star to Little Star to Ultimate Star have been taken and most combinations of Puratchi, Makkal, Tamizhan, Kalaignan, Thalapathy, Nayagan have been done to death. Hint: Acquire any of the Sun derivatives or hit other planets for inspiration… Eg. Mercury Nayagan or Jupiter Samy.
3. Remember Thou Shalt Not Sign any film where you will be slapped by any other character in the film. Thou Shalt Not Play a role that requires you to play second fiddle to anyone. Thou Shalt Only Portray the invincible and your contract must entitle you to 30 per cent of your screen time dedicated to walking in slow motion, 30 per cent of it towards dispatching 10 stuntmen (all heavier than you) miles away with just one kick, 30 per cent of it dedicated to heroines dancing around you, singing your praises or people showering petals as you walk by and another 110 per cent of the film will be set aside for an appropriate build up and introduction of Your Majesty… Cameras ought to do their rounds on the circular trolley around you for at least a hundred times in the film.
4. Ensure that your worshippers have started work on building a temple for you and if you have not been able to convince them to do that, issue a press release announcing that you have requested the confederation of all your fan clubs and welfare associations to contribute that amount to charity instead. And that you have no intentions of entering politics FOR NOW. Simultaneously, your films must lash out against the establishment and showcase yourself as the messiah of the masses. It goes without saying that your movie title has to be named after you (ideally some avatar of God) and all characters in the film should refer to you by that revered God-like name.
5. You need to brand yourself with a Mudra – some sort of finger gesticulation that would be easy to replicate by the stupidest guy in the crowd. Use this in all your films and in reality and this Mudra will help you blur the lines between your real self and the reel avatar. The day the first guy on the road greets you with that Mudra, your transition from Human to Divine is complete. Tip: Avoid the little finger, since it has other connotations. All other fingers including the Thumb are good and if you can pull of the Vulcan salute, live long and prosper. And you know who to sign up as your Advisor.
(The author is an expert in dishing out useless advice to aspiring icons and assorted idiots. This column originally appeared here)
How To: Make Excuses
1. Keep a notebook to jot down memories of every single unpleasant incident/accident that’s out of the ordinary with all the details. You never know when you may need to tell that story. You could use this to explain everything from why you were late or why you couldn’t make the deadline at a later date. Given all the rich details, people are most likely to believe you. Because lies usually don’t have depth.
Sample: The day your car/bike hit a stray mongrel, stopped, were almost beaten up by the mob, called Just Dial to find the nearest vet, went through a One way street, hoping you would make it on time before the clinic closed, how consumed you were by guilt and finally, how relieved you were that you were able to save it.
2. Make yourself the butt of the joke. This is absolutely essential. Your excuse should make you look like an idiot which is what makes the person you are telling the story to, believe that it happened to you.
Sample: The pigeon dropping landed right on my mouth just when I was looking up to read the name of the building. And I wiped it off with an instant reflex action on the sleeve of my shirt. Had to go home to change.
3. No problem if you don’t have an incident from your memory you can use or any funny incident involving you. Think about the most interesting story you have heard… that happened to someone else outside the circle you are about to use this on. Now when you are narrating this story as an excuse, adapt it well by adding some quirk people generally associate with you to the original protagonist of the story.
Sample: “So you know how forgetful I am, I locked the keys inside the car. And then we tried to break open the window but it just wouldn’t break. We tried bricks, we tried this huge spear. People around tried finding stuff they can contribute to break the window and I worked my charm and kept people entertained and amused, that finally a policeman helped us to open the lock without breaking the window with a simple trick he picked up from a car thief.” People like a great story, they like to believe it really happened so that they can share it with someone else.
4. Whatever be your excuse, the most important thing is the person you are telling this to should have never ever heard anything like it before. So don’t use the obvious ones: Flat tyre, It was raining, Granny died, Accident, etc… That’s plain amateur. Instead go for: Donated blood for emergency, Scuffle with traffic policeman over fine imposed on you wrongfully, Had to bail out your best friend who eloped, bumped into Shah Rukh Khan/Sachin Tendulkar/Rajnikant when you went to drop off a friend at the airport and had a long chat because his flight was late…
5. If you can’t think of anything, use this blanket excuse. “No Excuses. I am really sorry. But maybe I will tell you another day what happened. Just too shaken up with a personal crisis. I am really sorry.”
Oh, and you’re welcome!
(The author is a veteran of making excuses. This story, for example, was due a few months ago. This column originally appeared here.)
Raavan/Raavanan: Epic Vacuity
It’s interesting to see how reviews and responses to Raavan/ Raavanan are so polarized and mixed. Most people either hate it or love it. Most people have either ripped it apart or raved about it.
I don’t understand the fuss or noise over a not so bad predictable film salvaged by inspired bouts of technical finesse and some performances (except the heavily made-up Aishwarya Rai who was over the top in both with randomly pulled down off-shoulder designer blouses, screaming and overacting all through – I was not the only guy laughing at her jump from the waterfall as she does a sprinting action in slow motion during the fall).
Good to see Vikram feast on one of his best roles in recent times (though I wish he had toned it down a notch during the animated bits) but I am not sure if the actors got two different briefs from the director.
While Abhishek as Raavan was trying to make the character more likeable – he was charming and likeable but not even remotely intimidating because every time he smiled boyishly, you knew the kidnapped screamer was in very safe hands. Vikram as Raavanan was menacing and intense, and with his broad shoulders, clearly seemed like the man more suited to play the tough forest badass and his credible accent instantly made him a part of the rural landscape.
Yet, the lines seemed far powerful in Hindi – there was brevity (“Raavan or Robinhood?”), there was style, rhythm and flavour (and Abhishek does sparkle in at least two of the monologues – the Galat one and the Jalan one) and certainly more effective for the meaning intended (Sample the climax where Raavanan tells Dev hanging from the bridge how they kept the man’s Pure Gold – sokka thangam wife safe in their yechchakkai hands. It just seems to translate better in Hindi where he says Humare Haath Gandhey Hai Lekin Humne Isse Sambhalke Rakha Hai and you realise dirty hands is more effective than yechchakkai is something everyone has, not just the poor).
I was very disappointed by the writing in Tamil because that’s usually one of the best parts of a Mani Ratnam film (Dialogues here are by Suhasini) but overall, purely because of the choice of lead and choice of dubbing artiste for Aishwarya (Rohini), Raavanan seems to be a slightly better film than Raavan.
Even Prithviraj speaks better Mallu-flavoured Tamil as Dev Pratap (why not name him Devan or something more Mallu?) than Vikram as Dev Pratap Singh (kidding me? The man says Ka for Kha… Katam karoonga) speaking Hindi. I wish, that like Ram Gopal Varma, Mani Ratnam too adapted his characters to suit the ethnicity of the actors playing them especially since the accent is obvious (like Mohanlal in Company or Suriya in Rakta Charitra)…
These are amateur casting mistakes if you just think for a second if a Mani Ratnam equivalent in Hollywood would ever cast a guy with a strong Italian accent and try to pass him off as Black American? But yes, there, actors are formally trained and put through accent training and here we work with whatever we get.
But I must admit that these are minor quibbles I have and ONLY because it’s Mani Ratnam we are talking about – arguably one of the best filmmakers we have. The issues I had the film are more basic.
Raavan/Raavanan is supposed to be the enemy’s perspective and the story, as insisted the maker, is based on one of the oldest Indian epics when it actually isn’t simply because the central conflict here happens in a very different context.
Even if you were to assume that Surphanaka’s pride and honour mean the same thing, the difference here is the ambiguity/vacuity or lack of characterization of Ram’s moral standpoint on the incident (the gang-rape of the protagonist’s sister). If he supported or justified the incident, we can safely assume Ram is evil. If he pulled up the people and got justice for the victim, we can say Ram is good. If he does not even know about it and never has to make his stand clear about it during the film, he is bloody irrelevant to the film.
I am not sure if Mani Ratnam chickened out to avoid getting his hands dirty or in the interest of national security or riots (but if you are saying Ram’s men are rapists, you owe Ram a chance to say “Yes, I know and I am sorry” or “No, I didn’t know about it and I am sorry” or “I don’t care” just so that we know how good, evil or grey he is.)
I was hoping the characters were grey as publicized by the actors. But, nope. The characters are not just black and white, they are cardboard cutouts.
Dev/Ram is never shown doing anything good (feeding a man tied up water during questioning does not count as a good deed) and Beera/Veera/Raavanan is never shown doing anything remotely evil (killing rapist cops doesn’t seem like evil after you’ve insisted they gang-raped a bride on the night of her wedding)
Ram lies and kills people on the sly consistently in the film, Ragini/Sita dances then screams and then has a monologue with a statue (where she spells out through character expository dialogue how she is going through a change – ha! Who would’ve thought Mani Ratnam would stoop to this) before realising than Ram is a liar and Raavan is a good man. And Raavan on paper and as per the character expository dialogue in the first half hour of the film comes across like a multiple-personality disorder patient but Mani Ratnam is too scared to manifest this personality literally and we are left with Vikram’s manic interpretations to see some shade of darkness in him.
Call it clever or safe, we never learn if Ram really suspected his wife or if his questioning was just to lead him to his enemy. Manipulating your wife to lead him to a criminal is a cheap shot all right but certainly a notch above suspecting her fidelity but Mani Ratnam is in no mood whatsoever to give Ram a chance to explain a thing.
According to his film/s, Ram is a cheating, conniving, diabolic, trigger-happy dirty cop who leads a team of gang-rapists, not to find his wife but to kill the men who took his wife. And Raavanan is just an uncouth screaming protector of the downtrodden who dies after avenging his sister’s honour because a dumb, confused woman battling Stockholm Syndrome led an army to his hideout (which, by the way, only she could find despite being left blindfolded).
The biggest piss-off point for me was if Mani Ratnam, the most respected, celebrated of filmmakers in the country, cannot get rid of Aishwarya’s water proof make-up, who the hell can?
Despite these basic issues, there’s a lot to like in the film (like Govinda’s Hanuman or Prabhu’s Kumbhakaran), some of the stunt choreography is mind-blowingly credible (but some of it – especially during Aishwarya’s fall is lame though), the cinematography and production in extreme conditions raises the bar for film production in India and hats off to Mani Ratnam for that.
If this wasn’t a Mani Ratnam film, I may have rated it a little higher (say 6.5/10) but given that I expect nothing short of brilliance from the best we have (and I hope I never have to say that in past tense), I’m going with 5.5/10 for both versions (will probably give the Hindi version 5.4/10 if you insist on knowing which I liked better).
But yes, was with all 5/10 films, watch it with absolutely no expectations, be entertained. There’s nothing in it to hate or love intensely simply because it’s not a film worth either of these intense emotions.
Hands Up: Suriya – The Season Finale
Episode 15, Part 1
Episode 15, Part 2
Episode 15, Part 3
Hands Up: Krishna & Vijayalakshmi
Episode 14, Part 1
Episode 14, Part 2
Episode 14, Part 3
Hands Up: Karthik Kumar & Madhumita Vijay
Episode 12, Part 1
Episode 12, Part 2
Episode 12, Part 3
MADRAS INK. 