Tag Archives: Arts

” I’m kind of a contrarian filmmaker” – Doug Liman Director of Edge Of Tomorrow

  What was the draw for you with this project, and what were your initial thoughts about how to bring it to life?

DOUG LIMAN:  Well, first of all, this is not a film with two concepts, where there’s an alien invasion and there’s Tom Cruise, who keeps repeating the same day every time he dies.  It’s a film of one concept, which is that the aliens are beating us, and the reason they’re beating us is because they can repeat the day and they keep redoing a battle until they win.  There’s no way humanity can beat an adversary like that, until Tom Cruise gets infected with their power and suddenly we have a chance.

I had no interest whatsoever in making an alien invasion film, but what really drew me to it was the journey that Tom Cruise’s character, Bill Cage, would go on.  I’m a storyteller—I like being at dinner parties and telling stories that entertain people; I’m not ashamed of that [Laughs].  I’m committed to making movies that are massively entertaining, but I’m also committed to making movies that are smart and thought-provoking. Continue reading “” I’m kind of a contrarian filmmaker” – Doug Liman Director of Edge Of Tomorrow”

The Movie Club’ by Sony DADC to screen ‘Man of Steel’ at O15’s Cafe on 8th June 2014

Movie enthusiasts can now be a part of ‘The Movie Club’, a Blu-ray movie screening initiative by Sony DADC. As a part of the club, fans can enjoy a free screening of Man of Steel this Sunday at O15’s Cafe, Andheri West. Superman fans can also catch the exciting unseen footage of the movie in high definition.Continue reading “The Movie Club’ by Sony DADC to screen ‘Man of Steel’ at O15’s Cafe on 8th June 2014”

Maleficent Movie Review- Staggeringly Underwhelming

To take a wildly popular fairy tale and retell it is always a challenge. It gets tougher if one intends to recast the tale, tell it out in a new point of view, contrary to what is popularly known and liked. With Maleficent, Disney attempts a live action retelling of its own classic Sleeping Beauty through the eyes of the Evil witch Maleficent. In the process, we have the evil witch who curses an infant girl out of jealousy recast as an empathetic sensitive vulnerable woman wronged by a scheming king. We are also given a new meaning to the “true love’s kiss” that brings Sleeping beauty back to her senses, in effect continuing with the Frozen trend of correcting gender imagery in children’s stories.Continue reading “Maleficent Movie Review- Staggeringly Underwhelming”

In conversation with Frank Coraci -Director of Blended & The Wedding Singer

What was it like to direct Adam and Drew again, almost fifteen years later?

Frank Coraci-It was like getting the band back together. You always see those movies. “Get the band back together.” It was great, because Adam is a dear friend, Drew has been a dear friend. Been waiting for the right one. The Wedding Singer, we set the bar high. When we made it, we had no idea how the world was going to embrace it. It was a little movie. And it’s a great feeling when people always go, “Oh, I love Adam and Drew in The Wedding Singer.” So this script came along, and I was like, “This one feels like it’s different.” The Wedding Singer was young, innocent love, and now we’ve all lived our lives. Adam and Drew have had kids. “What can we bring to the table that’s different?” And this script had that challenge. It’s adults going through life, hardships. Widowed, divorced. All the things that happen. Kids, without the other parent. And this one felt great. So when the idea to put them back together came up, I thought, “This is going to be really fun. And this is the one, because this is the right time to do this.” And the two of them brought so much to the table. Now that they know each other so well, they’re sort of comedically fearless. And it was fun, because they got to go toe-to-toe, ripping on each other. But no matter what, when you have Adam and Drew together, there’s always this undertow of sweetness that has to come through. So it was exciting, it was fun, it was nostalgic. It was all the things you want it to be. It really felt– It felt like family.Continue reading “In conversation with Frank Coraci -Director of Blended & The Wedding Singer”

In Conversation With Gauri Bapat: “Screenwriting is a craft”

Gauri Bapat,the screenplay writer of Ajoba is someone that we at MAM had been wanting to talk to.And after watching the movie that’s exactly what I ended up doing.Here’s an excerpt from the interview where she talks about career changes, screenplay writing, writing for Ajoba, and also her thoughts on what you need to do if you want to be a screen play writer.

You are a jack of many trades, you have worked in marketing, you are a painter and now a film screenplay writer? How do you manage all these role effortlessly?

In the last ten years I have been through a lot of stages and phases. Be it my career or my home,it is quite an interesting journey. I wanted to get back to work right after my son could be looked after well at a day care centre. He was two and got adjusted to the day care routine. Now I had to work. I had two things with me – a degree in commerce and a post graduation in early child education and unconditional support of my husband. I hated the tax and the accounts work and teaching at a school was already over. So the search operation began.Continue reading “In Conversation With Gauri Bapat: “Screenwriting is a craft””

Blue Ruin (2014): Redefining Revenge Thriller

Stories about revenge have been told since time immemorial, one of the appeals lies in the fact that most of us can not set right the wrongs done by higher authorities to us in our life time.  Be it Mahabharata, Ramayana, Batman etc revenge has played an important role in all these stories. Blue Ruin is a revenge story, but actually it has redefined this genre.Continue reading “Blue Ruin (2014): Redefining Revenge Thriller”

Punch-Drunk Love : Character arc of Barry Egan

This is not a review of Punch-Drunk Love, but an articulation of the character arc of Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) in the film. This write-up also became a quest to understand the character more truly, deeply and clearly.None of the reviews that I read fully understood the premise and the character of Adam Sandler in the film Punch-Drunk Love. So I just felt like articulating what’s the whole thing actually about. So here it goes. (Major Spoilers ahead. If you haven’t seen Punch-Drunk Love, refrain from reading further. But please be sure to watch it, and then read the following)Continue reading “Punch-Drunk Love : Character arc of Barry Egan”

In Conversation with Goodloe Byron

I interviewed   Goodloe Byron earlier this week regarding his role in A Public Ransom and given below  is an excerpt from our online conversation.

What was your approach to your role as Bryant in the film?

I have been familiar with this story of Pablo’s since I was sixteen, I think, though he didn’t write the one thousand word short story until nearly a decade later. But I remember the spot where he discussed the idea of A Public Ransom very well, as it is a few blocks from my current apartment. But there were never any characters, there was just the idea of some sinister creep who kidnaps people and ransoms them out to the public via graffiti.

So years later when Pablo said that we were going to make a movie out of the thing, I already had an idea in mind—not for the character per se, but of the gravitas of such an act. Pablo was taking a different tact with the script, so that the focus would be on the person who finds the ransom rather than the kidnapper. As it was written the character of Bryant (the creep) is more of a tool to investigate the primary character.  Steven (the “protagonist”, for lack of a better word) is full of energy and talk, but at the core he is just very empty and inert. The Bryant character was written to have an energy and vivaciousness to match this, but to be someone who just had more “follow-through”.

But originally, the story he told me when we were sixteen, was about the kidnapper, a kind of Leopold-Loeb figure, except without the trace of innocence that marked those two little monsters. So I wanted to play it this later way. I wanted to strip out all of the energy, and really much of the familiarity of Bryant, and turn him from a counterpoint to Steven, make him a monster that was sitting just off to the side of the film.    Continue reading “In Conversation with Goodloe Byron”

In Conversation with Carlyle Edwards

I interviewed Carlyle Edwards earlier this week regarding his role in A Public Ransom and given below  is an excerpt from our online conversation.

What was your approach and preparations for the role?

I suppose I should have had more specific preparations for playing the role, as this was my first time in front of a camera—but then, I was rather type-cast, in a way, so that helped a lot, haha. The role was to be, though the central character, basically the actual villain of the piece—the arc of the character best described as someone who goes from “very, very disagreeable to absolutely reprehensible” during the course of the film’s run time.  Basically, once I settled in to portraying someone who was, for all intents and purposes, ME, circa the year 2007, it was just a matter of memorizing the dense runs of dialogue (often telephone monologue) and the blocking. Even the theatricality the role called for—Steven was basically less a human-being than a “perpetual performance, a put on”—was more or less my normal way of speaking and moving. It’s funny, because reviewers point out the “theater style” of the performance (often in a derogatory way) but even in addition to it being what the role specifically calls for…that’s just how I talk and move! Haha. I sometimes don’t know what to make of the critiques, it’s made me rather self-conscious, truth be told.  I suppose the short answer is, I found a way to enjoy being an out-and-out asshole (some of it is gallows humor, true, but much of it has to be full on “Steven is not someone any one will like”) and then just ran with it, decided to take it as far as I could without (though some would argue I did) hamming it up, too much.Continue reading “In Conversation with Carlyle Edwards”