Mumbai ka King kaun????

the world is full of great films.. major chunk is lifted by Hollywood and most 'junk' is dumped through Bollywood.. the name itself shows the lack of urge to create something new! there are great films made in Japan( one and only/ all time great- Akira Kurosawa- abt whom i will write later), Korea, some very talented directors are producing masterpieces in Iran, in Europe also small small countries are making some of the best movies. talking abt hollywood, they produce many many movies, honestly many are as bad as b'wood films but still the number of good movies they make is just creditable. though Money plays a major role, it is still not the necessity to make a good film.
after talking so much abt the incompetence of B'wood films you must be thinking that my most favorite film will be a non desi.. .... you guessed wrong. in my opinion, the best film i v ever seen comes from the very own stables/(factory- more appropriate). the film was made in 1998, it had a very unseen starcast- Urmila being the most recognized one.. the film was made by a very talented Ram Gopal Verma( who later/ now a days, has lost his mind making stupid films)..
you guessed correctly the film was "Satya".
the film was abt Satya lashing out at the garb of civilization man wears, unveiled him to be seen in raw flesh and blood.The film is the story of Satya (Chakravarthy), who chases a dream to Mumbai and ends up in the underworld.
It is the story of men for whom killing is just another job. It lights flashbulbs in the underworld, a world that is dark, murky and unpredictable. There is also a human aspect to these blunt things of life. There' a girl who walks into Satya's life and shows him a world that's softer, a world that has love and the light of hope. There is the helpless police commissioner who is unable to tackle the relentless onslaught of crime. Satya also shows the camaraderie existing between friends who play with death as their profession. And finally Satya is the story of Bhiku Mhatre, the quintessential don.
The film ends as it begins - violently. In the process it leaves the viewer shaken, forced to face a truth he rather not. He leaves the theatre, not with an inane smile, but in thought. Perhaps this is what the director, Ram Gopal Verma intended.
the strongest point of the film is the involvement of the Audience. the viewer can identify himself in the film.. not really in the likes of bhiku, satya or even as one of his gang members but in the background, buying vegetables or crossing road, watching sunset at the chaupati. which is very disturbing.. we all intend to oversee the sickness in the society, the film forces you to stare hard at the sharp contrast of the actual situation..

the strength of the film lies in the simplicity of the charactors, and the story. i v realized that, all the great films have very natural cast, characters. very simple but flawless scripts. in the films like the Godfather I, II the story and the script was very complicated, but the characters in the film are so true and natural. which makes it one of the best movies made from a book. even in our own 'Lagaan' the characters are very simple n most imp natural.

in the next blog will be talking abt a master piece which scared the sh*t out of me.

regards
Shirish Madhav Ganu

Film- extreme Architecture

first of all, what is a film???
i see at it as the most extreme form of 'Architecture'
what is Architecture? --- simply, it is 'designing a space'
then why is a film most exteme architecture??
here i can only try my best to explain it... pls don't ask any questions abt it pls pls
conventional architecture is restricted to three dimentions l/b/h. at the most one can say it has a fourth dim. of 'Time', but this case is only applicable to 'timeless' buildings like the Pyramids or the Angakor Wat. they take you straight back to their times... but as i say, these buildings are very few, so i can not make a general statement abt the factor of fourth dimention in conventional Architecture.. the complexity of films start right here.
Film is restricted to a strictly 2D form, (iMAX is also a 2D image projected on a 3D surface). but what it shows is all three dimentional. it is only restricted by the length of the reel and the patience of the audience. the film is very irrespective of time, one can show you a scene of 30 seconds taking you back to the times of Roman empire and on the 31st second take you to a modern day Barista in Rome... the best thing about it is that it takes you to the places where you can only dream of going like the close-ups of various actresses, etc. most important thing is that the films are 'dynamic' so i take Motion as the fifth dim. are you getting me ?? e.g. when i see Mr. Bachchan walking from point A to point B in a film, it is actually an image showing at 30 frames per second shot at X location at Y time.. and we can only see his angry eyes-thanx to closeup- for 4 seconds then there is also some kind of music increasing the tension or creating mood for the shot.. i m just fascinated with the concept of Films.

Movies! Films! Cinema!

Movie! Film! Cinema! i dont know the difference between them, but have you noticed that we subconsciously use these three words for different kinds of "motion pictures".. i don't know the reason( and not in the mood to find out) it was just an observation...
any ways, what i m going to write in this blog n forthcoming blogs are my observations, comments and general opinion abt various films..

• it was i think third year and first semester of my architectural studies, when i met this wonderful person through my elective subject- visual communication. the name was Samar Nakhate.. he is very well known ( for various reasons) in Pune's social circuit. you will find him around anything related to film.. the most remarkable thing abt him is the man's honesty towards his passion for films and his social awareness.

before meeting him i was viewing films through a very layman's approach. just checking the entertainment content of the film, his lectures changed all that. i started analyzing them through a different dimention, so i got a "perspective" view of the insight.

in the forthcoming blogs i'll try to write down abt my general approach towards a film, how i 'see' it. i will also try to write down abt some of my all time great movies, directors, actors, scriptwriters and also music composers.