Monday, December 15, 2008

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Monday, May 19, 2008

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Radiohead - All I Need

Awesome video. To know more, visit MTV EXIT. Thanks K.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Cannes 2008

The festival starts today and here are some of the films I want to watch (and hopefully will get a copy of).

Atom Egoyan's Adoration. Liked Where the Truth Lies and am always looking forward to his work. Blindness by Fernando Meirelles has an interesting plot. A sudden plague of blindness devastates a city. A small group of the afflicted band together to overcome the horrific conditions of their imposed quarantine. Stars Julianne Moore, Gael García Bernal, Mark Ruffalo, Sandra Oh and Danny Glover. Adapted from Nobel Laureate José Saramago’s masterwork. Should be delicious. Steven Soderbergh is back to edgier (familiar) territory with Che, his two-part biopic on the Argentine revolutionary.

Clint Eastwood's got Changeling. Angelina Jolie stars as the mother whose prayer for her kidnapped son to return home is answered, though it doesn't take long for her to suspect the boy who comes back is not hers. Do I hear Oscar buzz?

The Motorcycle Diaries helmer Walter Salles comes back with Linha de Passe. A story about four brothers set in Sao Paulo. Dutch auteur Wim Wenders presents Palermo Shooting. A famous photographer's life suddenly spins out of control,. He takes off and leaves everything behind. His journey leads him from Düsseldorf to Palermo. where he finds himself persecuted by a mysterious shooter who’s after him with a vengeance. At the same time a whole new life is beginning. And love. Interesting.

Charlie Kaufman finally directs his own. Synedoche, New York. Theater director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is mounting a new play. Fresh off of a successful production of Death of a Salesman, he has traded in the suburban blue-hairs and regional theater of Schenectady for the cultured audiences and bright footlights of Broadway. Armed with a MacArthur grant and determined to create a piece of brutal realism and honesty, something into which he can put his whole self, he gathers an ensemble cast into a warehouse in Manhattan's theater district. He directs them in a celebration of the mundane, instructing each to live out their constructed lives in a small mockup of the city outside. As the city inside the warehouse grows, Caden's own life veers wildly off the tracks. The shadow of his ex-wife Adele (Catherine Keener), a celebrated painter who left him years ago for Germany's art scene, sneers at him from every corner. Somewhere in Berlin, his daughter Olive is growing up under the questionable guidance of Adele's friend, Maria (Jennifer Jason Leigh). He's helplessly driving his marriage to actress Claire (Michelle Williams) into the ground. Sammy Barnathan (Tom Noonan), the actor Caden has hired to play himself within the play, is a bit too perfect for the part, and is making it difficult for Caden to revive his relationship with the alluringly candid Hazel (Samantha Morton). Meanwhile, his therapist, Madeline Gravis (Hope Davis), is better at plugging her best-seller than she is at counseling him. His is second daughter, Ariel, is retarded. And a mysterious condition is systematically shutting down each of his autonomic functions, one by one. As the years rapidly pass, Caden buries himself deeper into his masterpiece. Populating the cast and crew with doppelgangers, he steadily blurs the line between the world of the play and that of his own deteriorating reality. As he pushes the limits of his relationships, both personally and professionally, a change in creative direction arrives in Millicent Weems, a celebrated theater actress who may offer Caden the break he needs. By seamlessly blending together subjective point-of-views with traditional narrative structures, writer/director Charlie Kaufman has created a world of superbly unsteady footing. His richly developed cast of characters flutter between moments of warm intimacy and frightful insecurity, creating a script that brings to life all the complex and beautiful nuances of shared life and artistic creation. Synecdoche, New York is as its definition states: a part of the whole or the whole used for the part, the general for the specific, the specific for the general. Verdict: can't wait.

And now for some movies which I will probably watch: James Toback's Tyson, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Kung Fu Panda...ah, here's an interesting one...a Maradona bio-docu directed by none other than Emir Kusturica. Then there's Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona and this film by Barry Levinson called What Just Happened with an interesting plot. A fading movie producer (DeNiro) tries to revitalize his career while dealing with a teenage daughter who’s growing up too fast, a variety of ex-wives, and several Hollywood personalities who seem to want nothing more than to make his life difficult.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Love these illustrations


Isssh!



Charu ne kaha Dhoni ko chorh do

Rahul ne kaha McCullum ko chorh do

‘Advisors’ ne kaha Charu ko chorh do

Aur tum keh raahe ho ki ab IPL chorh do?

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Three Tintin books that should be made into movies

I think the one Tintin book that's a prime candidate for cinematic adaptation is 'The Calculus Affair'. It's a classic thriller with all the genre elements.

Second one is my favourite Tintin adventure, 'The Seven Crystal Balls-Prisoners of the Sun'. It starts of as a whodunit and morphs into a classic adventure with pop history and supernatural elements like an Indiana Jones film. Come to think of it, the Indiana Jones genre follows the 'The Seven Crystal Balls-Prisoners of the Sun' story style quite closely. Hats off to Herge.

The third one...difficult one to chose.

One could choose one of the Middle East/Africa adventures...The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Land of Black Gold, The Red Sea Sharks. Could have an interesting resonance with the current political situation.

Could be a story with socio-political overtones...Tintin in America (the Big Business-Mob nexus), The Blue Lotus (colonialism, fascism, China, but probably too politically incendiary).

Or would it be a sci-fi adventure like Flight 714 or The Shooting Star?

It could be his political adventures in Latin America...Tintin and the Broken Ear, Tintin and the Picaros.

But I would choose Tintin in Tibet.

Because it is the best concoction of the very elements we love about Tintin. A great adventure, a distant exotic place, a deep connection with another human being, adversity, hope, humor, I can go on. Tintin in Tibet was the second Tintin book that I possessed. (Castafiore Emerald was the first). It was the one that hooked me into owning each and every Tintin ever published. I think it would make a great film.

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Biting wit

A gem from the blogger who also cycles:

Last evening a young B-School type (Andheria More, not Ahmedabad) stopped me and asked “Sir, what is time?” “It’s a concept, very confusing concept, don’t bother,” I replied.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Inane...

Random Bong tourist describes his first visit to the Taj Mahal:

"Two bedroom. Full marble!"

Watch out for me...

You Should Be a Science Fiction Writer

Your ideas are very strange, and people often wonder what planet you're from.
And while you may have some problems being "normal," you'll have no problems writing sci-fi.
Whether it's epic films, important novels, or vivid comics...
Your own little universe could leave an important mark on the world!

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Making A Film in Bhopal: Random Trivia

In Bhopal, you will meet an auto-rickshaw driver who will refuse to switch on the ignition of his auto on downhill stretches because he wants to save on fuel! Hurrah for Al Gore!
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