Bollywood

  What’s common between Shimit Amin and Sriram Raghavan? Well, both All the good things of the world are no further good to us than as they are of use; and of all we may heap up we enjoy only as much as we can use, and no more.
debuted in a film coming from the house of Ram Gopal Varma, (Shimit with Ab Tak Chappan and Sriram I cannot talk with civet in the room, A fine puss-gentleman that ’s all perfume.
with Ek Haseena Thi) and have their second film releasing this year. While Shimit has made everyone Extinction is the beginning of the path: it is traveling to God Most High. Guidance comes afterwards. What I mean by guidance is the guidance of God, as described by the Friend of God, Abraham: “Lo! I am going unto my Lord Who will guide me.”
stand up and take notice of his craft with an all-around appreciated Chak De India; followers of Ek Despise not any man, and do not spurn anything; for there is no man that has not his hour, nor is there anything that has not its place.
Haseena Thi, a film that has achieved cult status over the years, are also waiting for this yet There are people who can talk sensibly about a controversial issue; they’re called humorists.
another rocking thriller Johnny Gaddaar from Sriram Raghavan.After all the acclaim you got for Ek The antithesis between death and life is not so stark for the Christian as it is for the atheist. Life is a process of becoming, and the moment of death is the transition from one life to another. Thus it is possible for a Christian to succumb to his own kind of death-wish, to seek that extreme of other-worldliness to which the faith has always been liable, especially in periods of stress and uncertainty. There may appear a marked preoccupation with death and a rejection of all temporal things. To say that this world is in a fallen state and that not too much value must be set upon it, is very far from the Manichaean error of supposing it to be evil throughout. The Christian hope finds ambivalence in death: that which destroys, also redeems.
Haseena Thi, you must be raring to start with your next film? Didn’t the wait tire you? The bright Kiss of the sun for pardon. Song of the birds for mirth. You’re closer to God’s heart in a garden than any place else on earth.
side is that I had time to work on some scripts, watch lots of movies, read etc….Right now I am so For rhyme the rudder is of verses, With which, like ships, they steer their courses.
busy that I’ve missed movies on the big screen. Each film comes with its own challenges. What were Everything passes, everything wears out, everything breaks. (tout passe, tout lasse, tout casse)
the challenges posed by Johnny Gaddaar? The biggest challenge was when the film got stuck. I had to When you do something, you should burn yourself up completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.
decide whether to wait it out and complete it, or just shelve it and move on. Thankfully my team What with our hooks, snares, nets, and dogs, we are at war with all living creatures, and nothing comes amiss but that which is either too cheap or too common; and all this is to gratify a fantastical palate.
stood by me. Otherwise it was great fun all the way. There were tough sequences like an action The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don’t know what to do.
sequence on a moving train at night. We had no idea how to crack it but my cameraman, Murali came up Muddy the water.
with some innovative ideas. It’s one of the highlights of the movie, even if I say so myself. The average man takes life as a trouble. He is in a chronic state of irritation at the whole performance. He does not learn to differentiate between troubles and difficulties, usually, until some real trouble bowls him over. He fusses about pin-pricks until a mule kicks him. Then he learns the difference.
I had to decide whether to wait it out and complete it, or just shelve it and move on What Gladstone speaking of Disraeli: A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.
exactly does Johnny Gaddaar stand for? If you don’t mind, I’ll quote the synopsis…. The story War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military.
revolves around a gang of five men, the eldest (Dharmendra) over 60, the youngest (Neil) in his I’m still an atheist, thank God.
twenties, who face the bright prospect of making a fortune through what seems to be a simple I became a feminist as an alternative to becoming a masochist.
exchange of contraband for money on a train. However, this caper goes wrong badly. Then follows a Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in? I think that is how dogs spend their lives.
ruthless search for the traitor amongst them, for who else could have known about the heist? Greed, There are souls in this world which have the gift of finding joy everywhere and of leaving it behind them when they go.
betrayal, corruption, love, murder… they’re all part of the tingling tale; that is Johnny Gaddaar. When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
Clichéd as it may sound but how ‘different’ is it from other heist thrillers? Sergio Leone (or Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. KJV
Godard, I forgot) once said that it’s not the story but how you say it. I think the difference would By sports like these are all their cares beguil’d; The sports of children satisfy the child.
come from the treatment. Given the same story, five directors would do it differently. Someone would Do not condemn the judgement of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong.
treat it darkly; someone would give it an extra glossy look. Someone else would put in songs and It might be said of psychoanalysis that if you give it your little finger, it will soon have your whole hand.
comedy tracks. Someone would make it boringly realistic. And so on. I’ve tried to make it like the To be amiable is most certainly a duty but it is not to be exercised at the expense of any virtue. He who seeks to always do the amiable thing can at times be successful only by the sacrifice of his manhood.
70s Hindi movies that I enjoyed as a kid. I’ve tried to make it like the 70s Hindi movies So Funny, the Pekin duck, lies between Thurber [the golden retriever], the birch, and the Chinese stationary bamboo, and has made me remember that my garden has always included dead pets, and most likely always will. One way or another – even in New York City
that I enjoyed as a kid Technically, do you feel that you have super ceded your own effort A happy youth, and their old age Is beautiful and free.
when compared to your last film? You just try to make every film as good as you can. One actually Life, according to Zen, ought to be lived as a bird flies through the air, or as a fish swims in the water.
hears that JG is a reverse thriller in the making. Can you shed some light on that? Reverse Thriller Every fault but a debt will be forgiven to a martyr.
sounds profound!! I must use this phrase in other interviews!! Actually, in India the bulk of It is futile to do with more what can be done with fewer.
audiences and even producers, usually confuse Suspense for whodunit. ‘Arre suspense maloom pad A bachelor is a man who comes to work each morning from a different direction.
gaya…isne kiya hai…etc’. SUSPENSE is not about who is the culprit. Suspense actually means Mankind owes to the child the best it has to give.
anticipation, tension…. ‘what happens next’. So in Johnny Gaddaar, the audiences will know the False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it. . . The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
identity of the culprit from the very beginning. But the other characters don’t know….and the How slow the shadow creeps: but when ’tis past How fast the shadows fall. How fast! How fast!
tension and excitement stems from ….when and how they will find out and what happens next. So I Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing.
guess it is reverse suspense. In Johnny Gaddaar, the audiences will know the identity of the There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.
culprit from the very beginning What else are you working on? Another thriller or some shift Immanuel Kant, one of the most influential philosophers of the modern era, also presaged the feasibility of an evolutionary theory: The agreement of so many kinds of animals in a certain common structure, which seems to be fundamental not only in their skeletons, but also in the arrangement of the other parts — so that a wonderfully simple typical form, by the shortening and lengthening of some parts, and by the suppression and development of others, might be able to produce an immense variety of species — allows a ray of hope, however faint, to enter our minds, that here perhaps some result may be obtained, by the application of the principle of the mechanism of nature (without which there can be no natural science in general). This analogy of forms, which with all their differences seem to have been produced in accordance with a common prototype, strengthens our suspicions of an actual blood-relationship between them in their derivation from a common parent through the gradual approximation of one class of animals to another — beginning with the one in which the principle of purposiveness seems to be best authenticated, ie. man, and extending down to the polyps, and from these even down to mosses and lichens, and arriving finally at raw matter, the lowest stage of nature observable by us.
in genre? Must shift genres or else will find myself repeating shots and ideas. My next film is not The test of an author is not to be found merely in the number of his phrases that pass current in the corner of newspapers . . . but in the number of passages that have really taken root in younger minds.
a thriller and that scares me more than THE EXORCIST did.  

Original post by kapil