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  • About GNGM

    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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Browsing Tags dongala muta

Dongala Muta: The Curious Case of Ram Gopal Varma

March 19, 2011 · by sudhishkamath

Genre: Action

Director: Ram Gopal Varma

Cast: Ravi Teja, Charmi, Lakshmi Manchu, Prakash Raj

Storyline: A couple check-in at a suspicious resort that seems to have been taken over by thieves and now, they can’t leave.

Bottomline: Shot in just five days, this is RGV’s silliest and most amateur film till date.

Like Benjamin Button, Ram Gopal Varma seems to be aging in reverse as a filmmaker. The proof lies in the fact that his most polished and refined films are the ones he made at the beginning of his career and the most amateur, the ones he has made over the last few years.

From the reinvention of the angry young man (the nice guy in college who graduated in inhumanities, as the posters of Shiva told us back then) to staging action-set-pieces (Kshana Kshanam and similar films) to effortlessly shifting gear to musicals and romance (with Rangeela and Naach) and then to gangsters (Satya, Company and Sarkar) and ghosts (Bhooth) to low-brow exploitation films (Phoonk, Agyaat and now, Dongala Muta), RGV sure has straddled many worlds but what’s alarming is the depletion of his filmmaking aesthetic over the years. You know how young filmmakers would go to any extent to just make that debut film?

Even if it means keeping the entire story to a single location, asking friends to help out, being unable to afford quality technicians, resorting to digital hand-held cameras and hurrying up the shoot because every single day of shoot means extra money.

Dongala Muta, shot in five days, with five Canon 5D cameras and no director of photography, begins looking unbelievably homemade with goons in bright costumes looking absolutely silly, thanks to the handycam feel that instantly disconnects you from the larger than life proceedings. That kidnapping sequence looks like it’s from a low budget ‘sweded’ film someone shot as an April Fool prank to make fun of his friends for their acting ambitions, after watching Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind.

Thanks to the silly dialogue, the exaggerated close-ups, the lack of a plot, the space constraints and the video-feel, the entire film looks like a spoof shot today for tomorrow’s cultural fest, especially if you really don’t know who the actors are. The lack of a cinematographer hurts the film further as unflattering voyeuristic close-ups of the leading ladies from the ground level assault your senses every few minutes and make you wonder if those jeans have something to do with the mystery or the resolution.

Reminiscent of RGV’s Daud in its inanely silly sensibility and of Kaun with its space limitations (if Kaun was entirely indoors and just three characters, this one works with the entire resort), this experiment does not prove anything apart from convincing producers that they cannot possibly make a movie with no money and in five days. If they do, it would look like this. Bad. Even if it has Ravi Teja in it and a Brahmanandam comedy track.

It does not inspire and convince film students either that they can make a movie with just a camera because they know that the reason people went to watch the film is because it’s an RGV film with a star-studded cast. Which student will ever be able to convince Ravi Teja to do a film?

But yes, it does prove one thing. If a filmmaker as talented as RGV comes up with a film like this, they surely can do better. If the idea of a film is to entertain, irrespective of merit, then the film works as one big inside joke. It’s so bad that it’s good.

Rumour has it that RGV is shooting his next film using a mobile phone. It may just be a short. Maybe it is good news that RGV is reverse-aging like Benjamin Button. For he may soon enroll in a film school. At least, he’ll learn the basics.

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