Santa Singh
One
Have a look at this lady [photo top: right]. She has acted in renowned and mostly-art-house filmmaker Shyam Benegal’s ‘Well Done Abba’. You would say that she is in the movie because she is pretty, graceful or beautiful. But then you learn that she has had a nose surgery done to rectify the nose that Mr. God gave her. While there may be something or nothing wrong in that (I find her pretty), it means that she…
Kartikey Sehgal
Part One
Part Two
Another theatre writer, Vikram Kapadia, whose play is undergoing adaptation for film, thinks that “there is no fixed formula as to what makes a film work”.
Vikram’s play ‘Black With Equal’ is a black comedy in English about the trials and tribulations of a housing society and has been staged more than a hundred times.
Like Aatish, he is comfortable with placing an item song in the film but his concern is…
Kartikey Sehgal
Role of songs in a film’s success and a filmmaker talking about his film losing out to an item song and marketing.
Part One here.
…continued
But Sanjay feels that though an item number does not define a film, “there is at least a chance that more people will go to theatres. Because of the item song and any marketing ploy, the film is not going to lose out on audience”.
This logic, however, does…
Kartikey Sehgal
Written first for DNA
Director Shyam Benegal, who has captured myriad expressions of life in his various films, had to free himself from the clutches of the item-number when he was making ‘Welcome to Sajjanpur’.
“He did not want to include songs in the film. He did so on the behest of the producers”, says writer Atul Tiwari who has worked with the director.
In one of the songs, that was probably required to be the item song of the…
Kartikey Sehgal
Not the camera but the actors move aplenty and intone and tell us about the epic victory of theatre actors over film actors.
You’d imagine that the director had fun making this movie. Then you’d read about his hardships and how he had to mortgage or sell property to obtain some money. Then you’d think that this was a difficult movie to make, full of sacrifices. But let me tell you, the director had fun and so did the actors.…
Kartikey Sehgal
Despite the presence of several journalists at the recently concluded Mumbai Film Festival (MAMI ) certain ‘disturbances’ have not been brought out well in the newspapers.
Since it is being talked about for its ‘seventy percent growth in delegate registration’, the behaviour of the delegates (more like a representative than a common movie watcher) must be brought out publically too.
For instance, Iranian director Saman Estereki came to the premiere of his film ‘Empty Chair’ with big…
Kartikey Sehgal
We come on earth to live and yet we prepare for a living.
We like to claim love and lust and longing while we live but what runs parallel is murder, bombs and destruction. Does the end justify the means. Is a nuclear catastrophe important so that the survivors do not make weapons again.
Japan suffered a nuclear catastrophe and is least likely to use nuclear force today. They make the best robots and cars. Is this…
Kartikey Sehgal
At the premiere show of the movie Dashavatar
The premiere show of the Hindi movie ‘Dashavatar’ was among the better organised movie screenings I have attended. Atul Tiwari, who has penned the Hindi dialogues for the film, was polite and patient with the invitees and happy over the release of the movie. Some months back he had remarked that he was very eagerly waiting for the movie to reach across to the Hindi speaking audience.
Nimesh Advani and
Ipsita Bandyopadhyay
“Snapshot of memories” or simply an awry screenplay? Nimesh Advani and Ipsita Bandyopadhyay think differently about the movie ‘Delhi-6‘.
Nimesh [1 out of 4] writes that “…there are so many characters and so many sub plots that I was confused where to look next…”
Ipsita [3 out of 4] writes that “Do we remember dreams/childhood memories clearly? But some events, images, sights, sounds, smells stand out.”
Santa Singh
Cinema should inspire new thoughts and discourage blind adherence to custom. Right?
If you accept the compliments of somebody, then you must also accept their abuses. Fair.
When a critic tells you that you are a non-understandable movie-maker, you take offence and abuse and rant about the critic, in this case a well-known film-critic. But then he tells you that your latest film is amazing and you thank him!
Something is amiss. Aren’t you, then, directly telling the film-critic that he must praise your films or else you will abuse his thoughts?