As the saying goes, its difficult to make an effective comedy. Its even more difficult to make a effective horror film. Ram Gopal Verma has certainly achieved the latter in past with spine tingling efforts like Raat and Bhoot. In Phoonk however he displays a wholly unintentional flair for the comic. And the prepostero

What do you expect from a film which has the following names in its credit roll-

Paresh Rawal, Rahul Bose, Kay Kay Menon and Mallika Sherawat ? I know you will say the film has to be at least a good ‘timepass flick’ because not even a trainee filmmaker can completely waste such talented actors and make a terrible film. I thought the same before entering the theatre to watch the first day first show of Maan Gaye Mughal-e-Azam.

Indian filmmaker Partho Sen-Gupta’s film “Arunodaya” (Sunrise) has been selected for Pusan Promotion Plan (PPP) project market. Organized on the sidelines of Pusan International Film Festival in the South Korean port city of Busan, PPP provides a platform to selected filmmakers to find co producers and financiers for their films.

This has to be the best film of the year 2007. That it wasn’t nominated at the Academy Awards is their loss. Just a reflection of the fact that award shows are at best, only indicators of good cinema; they cannot sit in judgment over what is or what is not the best.

Filmmakers openly acknowledge the contribution to world cinema by Russian directors as monumental. Eisenstein, along with his peers, introduced the concept of “montage” in film editing, where two or more scenes in sequence provide symbiotic intellectual value for the viewer. Today this is the grammar that makes all our film viewing interesting.

One would expect Eisenstein to have been lionized in his own country. Unfortunately, in Stalin’s USSR, even Eisenstein had to face the brunt of state censorship.

Two Indian films have been selected to receive funding from prestigious Pusan International Film Festival. Pusan International Film Festival which is held every year in South Korea is considered to be one of the biggest in the continent. Pusan is especially known for supporting Independent Asian filmmakers.

In an era where just about anyone with a camera phone can make a film, or more likely a short film, it’s an achievement to make a film so good it gets nominated for the Oscars. And that too from a country whose poor Oscar record is second only to its current status at the Olympics!

The film is about a young Pakistani boy who strays onto Indian terrain. Mistaken for a possible terrorist, he is forced to take refuge in a neighboring village…..

The story of Bande A Part could belong to any other film, but the way Godard has used the Dolores Hitchen crime novel and adapted the structure by forming a tapestry of Godardian magic that translates the film into a poetic aphorism, and gives the movie a breath of life. While it’s the trajectory of such moments being patched together, that allows the character, the surrounding and the atmosphere to sublime and become one, meaning, not seeming discreet and at the same time being attuned to life.