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 evolution. Survival of the fittest. On …
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?
Santa Singh
Yes, Dev D is a very good movie. I wonder why it is being appreciated by many people; seems odd when other light-weight feather-type films make so much money in India. But as the popular saying goes in Hindi.
“time time ki baat hai pyaare”
(it’s all a play of time)
In time, we will know more about good films that were ignored by movie lovers.
Dev. D fans are talking about the movie breaking taboos and bringing a ‘new wave’ in Hindi cinema. Well, there have been movies that have done that before with respect to women liberation. I guess most fans have not been tuned to films of Amol Palekar. Of course, he is a low budget, art film-walla. So many people won’t go to theatres to see his movies. But they will recognise the liberated woman when they see her on screen, embellished with music and songs. Women liberation is not to be searched. It is to be waited for and then when given, it is to be applauded. Till the next time.
Kartikey Sehgal
Modern office cubicles are defined by strong walls, sound-proof glass doors and hushed conversations. Amidst the reigning modern discipline there are specimens of creative power in the form of the Laughing Buddha, cartoon sketches on walls and casual attires.
Starting from the collar, snake-like curvaceous patterns dominated his shirt-design. My interviewer announced.
“Seven percent”
Santa Singh
Outside a cinema hall, when the audience had finished braving another terrible Hindi movie, I walked towards a water cooler and found a young man, clad in a plain white shirt and faded jeans, reading some lines aloud.
These were not ordinary lines. They sounded like typical Hindi film dialogues. I wondered if this man would go on to become an actor and subject us to more atrocities. I felt like smashing his head then and there.
Kartikey Sehgal
[The author met actor Joy Sengupta who talked about his vision for Indian cinema.]
Joy Sengupta wants to develop films that cater to an international audience and the local Indian masses.
Movies should have fierce locality and a global vision. Movie watching should be an experience. It should make you grow from within.
That’s subject to movie-making…
That too should be an experience. Otherwise we’ll have masala films like *** and *** and ***. I am tired of Indian cinema that has been run over by Bollywood
Kartikey Sehgal
My mother and I made fun of Chinese babies while watching the film ‘Christmas in August’. Then we discovered that the film is Korean and we promptly implied all Chinese jokes to Koreans.
In this film, actor Suk-kyu Han plays the role of Jung-won, a terminally ill photographer who owns and manages a photo studio. We laughed whenever Jung-won smiled; he smiled almost all the time. We laughed when his father, who knows about the illness, stared passively or solemnly at people and things.
Santa Singh
“Just because modern physics doesn’t say so, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”
–Vikram Bhatt (director of 1920) with his deep insight on ghosts
The following story is probably better than all those films you’ll watch in plush multiplexes.
With this confidence, I present some films that you think would try to aim high and achieve some milestone. But I have a feeling that you’ll still have to rely on the popcorn for that ultimate movie experience.