Showing posts with label Doosra. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Doosra. Show all posts
Fenil's Bollywood Talk # 957
11:11 PM
RECORD RELEASES THIS FRIDAY; WILL UDTA TEER MANAGE TO GET AN AUDIENCE?
2 weeks are left for Diwali and this is a time when several films try their luck at the box office. This often leads to overcrowding, and this Friday, October 23, is no different. Tomorrow, as many as six Hindi films will try their luck at the box office. These movies are as follows:
1. UDTA TEER: It stars Ayushmann Khurrana and Sara Ali Khan and is produced by Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions and Guneet Monga’s Sikhya Entertainment. The storyline is hilarious – a Pakistani spy infiltrates India and loses his memory, leading to chaos and madness. The trailer has done the trick and has aroused some sort of interest in the film. But the songs haven’t worked and the humour is such that it’ll appeal only to the urban elite. As a result, an opening of Rs. 2.50-3 crores is expected.
2. PEHLA PYAAR DOOSRI BAAR: It is produced by Luv Ranjan and launches six newcomers. The trailer gives the vibe that it would be like a typical Luv Ranjan film, and hence, it’ll find some takers. But the buzz is low and there’s not much excitement for the debutant star cast. The film is expected to open around Rs. 50-60 lakhs and if all goes well, it may cross the Rs. 1 crore mark.
3. TU HAI MERI KIRAN: It stars real-life couple, Sonakshi Sinha and Zaheer Iqbal. Usually, actors who are married or dating for real play conventional lovers on screen. That’s not the case here, as Zaheer plays a stalker who is obsessed with Sonakshi. The trailer is intriguing, but due to limited hype and overcrowding, it’ll open under Rs. 50 lakhs.
4. TUM MERE HO: It stars Gurmeet Choudhary and Isha Malviya, and their casting and extensive promotion have added to the film's awareness. Like Tu Hai Meri Kiran, it should also open under Rs. 50 lakhs.
5. LITTLE THOMAS: It stars Gulshan Devaiah and Rasika Dugal and tells an interesting story of a child who wants to know where babies come from! It has very limited shows and hence, it’ll have an opening of less than Rs. 10 lakhs.
6. DOOSRA: It is partly a documentary about Sourav Ganguly and also has a parallel fictional track. Due to its niche nature, this film, like Little Thomas, would also have a low opening.
2 weeks are left for Diwali and this is a time when several films try their luck at the box office. This often leads to overcrowding, and this Friday, October 23, is no different. Tomorrow, as many as six Hindi films will try their luck at the box office. These movies are as follows:
1. UDTA TEER: It stars Ayushmann Khurrana and Sara Ali Khan and is produced by Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions and Guneet Monga’s Sikhya Entertainment. The storyline is hilarious – a Pakistani spy infiltrates India and loses his memory, leading to chaos and madness. The trailer has done the trick and has aroused some sort of interest in the film. But the songs haven’t worked and the humour is such that it’ll appeal only to the urban elite. As a result, an opening of Rs. 2.50-3 crores is expected.
2. PEHLA PYAAR DOOSRI BAAR: It is produced by Luv Ranjan and launches six newcomers. The trailer gives the vibe that it would be like a typical Luv Ranjan film, and hence, it’ll find some takers. But the buzz is low and there’s not much excitement for the debutant star cast. The film is expected to open around Rs. 50-60 lakhs and if all goes well, it may cross the Rs. 1 crore mark.
3. TU HAI MERI KIRAN: It stars real-life couple, Sonakshi Sinha and Zaheer Iqbal. Usually, actors who are married or dating for real play conventional lovers on screen. That’s not the case here, as Zaheer plays a stalker who is obsessed with Sonakshi. The trailer is intriguing, but due to limited hype and overcrowding, it’ll open under Rs. 50 lakhs.
4. TUM MERE HO: It stars Gurmeet Choudhary and Isha Malviya, and their casting and extensive promotion have added to the film's awareness. Like Tu Hai Meri Kiran, it should also open under Rs. 50 lakhs.
5. LITTLE THOMAS: It stars Gulshan Devaiah and Rasika Dugal and tells an interesting story of a child who wants to know where babies come from! It has very limited shows and hence, it’ll have an opening of less than Rs. 10 lakhs.
6. DOOSRA: It is partly a documentary about Sourav Ganguly and also has a parallel fictional track. Due to its niche nature, this film, like Little Thomas, would also have a low opening.
Karisma Kapoor gets more and more surprised about herself every day-Abhinay Deo
8:20 AM
Chandrima Pal (BOMBAY TIMES; May 28, 2022)
It’s been more than a decade since Abhinay Deo gave us the cult hit, Delhi Belly. Since then, the ad filmmaker has been experimenting with genres as diverse as black comedy (Blackmail) and spy thrillers (Force 2), before he got Karisma Kapoor, Helen, Soni Razdan, Jisshu U Sengupta and Surya Sharma in a casting coup of sorts for Brown, a crime drama set in the underbelly of Kolkata.
In between experiencing his first Norwester on the banks of the Hooghly and shooting in the skinny alleys of the city, Abhinay settled down for a free-wheeling chat with us. Excerpts:
How did the idea of doing Brown come about?
We got on to this project a year and a half back. It is a lovely, intense and interesting idea and we decided to put together the story line, get the actors on board and start filming and see where it goes. This story does not have a beginning, middle and end — but it’s a fantastically written character study about broken people in a broken system with all their nuances. It talks about how people are not black and white as generally portrayed in our cinema. It’s a very interesting milieu for me to explore, and that’s where Kolkata comes in as a character in the film.
When shooting in a city of a certain vintage and character, filmmakers often go for familiar frames, visual tropes. For instance, the Victoria Memorial, Howrah bridge, the slatted windows in the old houses. Are you doing things differently?
As a filmmaker, I hate to run with clichés. Our story is about the underbelly of the city and its different layers — not so much the part which the aam janta knows. In the 10 days that we have been shooting there, we have not shot a single monument or tourist spot in the city. That’s how we intend to keep it. We are trying to capture the different textures of Kolkata — from the rich and big Marwari families to the smallest boatman — and the unhurried pace at which everything moves.
With Karisma Kapoor playing a complex central character in your ‘neo noir crime story’, the Mare Of Easttown comes to mind. Is that the space you are looking to explore?
Mare Of Easttown is a great example, but we are also about those dark, intense and jovial vignettes of the Anglo Indians, Biharis, Marwaris, bhodrolok Bengalis — communities that actually bring their cultures into the city and carry the city with them at the same time. The whodunit part is a thread that binds these people together and gives us an opportunity to talk about where they come from, how broken and ‘baggaged’ they are.
For the past few years, there has been a lot of discussion about what works for OTT and what’s made for the big screen experience. Now that both formats are running neck and neck, what is your take on the debate?
I think the new platforms have finally given us an opportunity to tell stories that are not bound by the star system. Imagine trying to do a character study 10 years back! Who would buy that? It is high time we went beyond the 20 people we can count on our fingertips, who you had to approach if you wanted anything to see the light of day. If things did not work out, you tried to get together some people from NSD and show your film on 10 screens.
We had great filmmakers such as Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalani, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen and Satyajit Ray, making documentaries and features with intense character studies. But their work got branded as parallel cinema instead. Imagine what would have happened if they had access to the new mediums and platforms that we do today!
These lines are blurred, the star system is being dismantled. While we have not come to terms with it yet, the process has started. You simply cannot take a big actor and make it work. People have access to so much that they would rather watch something else than any mediocre stuff that comes their way.
Speaking about the star system, OTT has given many stars from the ’90s a chance to reinvent themselves. How has it been working with Karisma Kapoor on her first OTT project?
I think for many of these ’90s actors, initially there’s a sense of shock because of the change that is happening. After that comes the requirement of involvement, which is intense and immense. Earlier films were made differently; your story was written on the sets. Now it is about adapting to a very different way of life and delivering to the brief. And hats off to the way they are reinventing themselves. Initially, we were a bit skeptical and so was Karisma. She was facing the camera after a long time after all. But she has been delivering, and how! In fact, she gets more and more surprised about herself every day and we pat ourselves on our back a little harder for having stuck to our gut feeling about casting her in the project.
And then there’s Helen as well. What was her first day on the set like?
Helen is 80-plus, comes from a completely different era. We had a tough scene where she was supposed to hold her own in a room with many people. We were wondering how it would pan out. But Helen not only held her own, but was spectacular in the way she made her presence felt. But more than the first day of shoot she had a child-like fascination about the very idea of reading from a script — apparently it was her first time! But how absolutely professional she has been and so hard working. In fact, everyone from Soni Razdan to Jisshu to Surya, the young actors from Bengal and Mumbai — for me, it is fun to be able to bring the experience that the seasoned actors bring with them and combine it with contemporary filmmaking style and try to make something out of it.
What happened to Doosra, your film about cricket that was inspired by India’s momentous victory in the NatWest series?
Doosra is part fiction-part documentary about Indian cricket and a young girl. I have pushed my creative boundaries in a completely different direction with the film. Unfortunately, many of the festivals, where we wanted to take the film, did not know how to slot it. And then Covid also delayed the process. But it is too poignant and special a story not to be told and I hope the audiences will be able to see it soon.
Abhinay Deo to use first-of-its-kind mixed-narrative format for cricket drama Doosra
8:28 AM
MUMBAI MIRROR (June 27, 2019)
At a time when the country is reeling under the World Cup fever, acclaimed director Abhinay Deo is back with a socio-sports drama titled Doosra. The film traces how cricket has changed modern India, through the eyes of a young girl’s coming-of-age story. The film progresses from 1992 to 2002—a seminal decade in India’s contemporary history. Using a first-of-its-kind mixed-narrative format, Deo weaves archival events in a fictional tale to present a unique hybrid of cinematic story-telling.Doosra meshes two stories of courage and identity. One focusses on a maverick cricket captain, Sourav Ganguly and his defiant young team, and the other chronicles the life of a young girl growing up in an orthodox North-Indian social structure. What brings the two narratives to a head is a single event: when Captain Sourav Ganguly pulls off his T-shirt and waves it bare-chested from the balcony at Lords after the 2002 NatWest final. It was a victory celebration that suddenly transformed into an iconic symbol of national assertiveness for a new generation of Indians.
Director Abhinay Deo says, “We secured our political freedom from the British in 1947. But it was not until July 13, 2002, when Sourav Ganguly stood bare-chested, pumping fists defiantly on that balcony at Lords, that the whole nation and I felt truly comfortable with who we are and with being unapologetically Indian. It’s perhaps because nothing galvanises this country more than cricket. This film presented me with a unique opportunity to chronicle this untold chapter in India’s modern history.”
The idea for Doosra came from Chicago-based executive producers, Masha and Rohan Saideh, which was then developed into a story and screenplay by India’s first advertising Grand Prix winner at Cannes—Agnello Dias. Actors Plabita Borthakur (PK, Lipstick Under My Burkha) and Ankur Vikal (Slumdog Millionaire) play the principal characters.
I want viewers to relive the era of the ’90s-Abhinay Deo
9:03 AM
Abhinay Deo on why he's shooting portions of his film on cricket, on celluloid
Sonia Lulla (MID-DAY; September 22, 2018)
Set to chronicle the cultural changes that India has witnessed over the decades - with a special focus on how cricket has played a role in its evolution - Abhinay Deo is set to go back in time with his filming methods. In order to do justice to the manner in which the sport was enjoyed in the '90s, Deo will shoot the portions depicting cricket in that decade, on celluloid.
Talking about filming for the scenes of Doosra, he says, "One part of the film, showcasing [cricket in] the '90s, is shot on [celluloid]. The latter part will be shot [using] digital [technology]. That will depict the [game in the] 21st century. Shooting on film has a different [effect]. It needs more precision and planning. Nothing beats the authenticity and realism [of the product] when done so."
In a bid to make viewers nostalgic, Deo says he needed the portions to be reminiscent of films from the era. "I want the audiences to relive the '90s, and many of them still associate a certain cinematic feel to films from that era, because those movies were shot on film [celluloid]."
While little is known about the cast members of the docu-fictional film, mid-day learns that it hopes to capture the cultural change in India by putting the spotlight on various aspects of society - including politics, business and the arts.
Having recently commenced shooting for the venture, Deo had previously travelled to London's Lords stadium to meet cricket greats as part of his research. The film is set for a theatrical release next year.
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