Mayank's Blog

The only horror movie which scared me to my shits and left me disturbed for a week was " The Blair Witch Project ". The use of scenes shot through handycam throughout the movie gave it a very real feel and was its major USP for me. Then " Paranormal Activity " came along. It was a very good movie but failed to impress. But one thing that stood out again was the use of camera. When will we see such camera work in Bollywood, I wondered. Well, my wait was about to be over.

Interviews, particularly job interviews, are periods full of tension for the people facing it; much like taking a competitive exam. Till now I have only been an interviewee, cursing the interviewer for asking irrelevant questions, for showing his arrogance and stuff. Never before have I been an interviewer and had no idea what it is to interview a candidate. All that was about to change in the last ten days.

Two persons go for a job interview. One is a normal, average Joe-looking man, who is very good at this work. The other is a smoking hot blonde who barely knows what she is doing. No prizes for guessing who gets the job. The Constitution (108th Amendment) Bill, popularly known as the Women's Reservation Bill, seeks to provide thirty three per cent reservation of seats in the Lower house of Parliament (Lok Sabha) and state legislative assemblies for women. If after reading the above story, you jump to the conclusion that I am in the same league as Lalu Yadav and Mulayam Singh Yadav in opposition to this bill, please hear me out.

Abhay Deol, with movies like Dev D , Manorama Six Feet Under and Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! to his credit, was a champion in bridging the divide between the so-called "art movies" (the ones characterised by likes of Smita Patil)  and the mainstream hindi cinema. Little did we know that he would come up with a movie like Road, Movie which will pull apart the two genres to eternity. Road, Movie is a perfect example of why we don't like art movies and why they are just meant for being displayed at film festivals and nothing more. Road, Movie , directed by Dev Benegal, starts with a sluggish pace, slows down in the middle, and finally sputters and huffs and puffs to reach its end - just like the vintage monster truck that Vishnu (Abhay Deol) drives throughout the movie. Vishnu does not want to sell the hair-oil that his father makes, so offers to drive the truck, together with the heavy-duty movie projectors that it carries to the museum. He journeys through the heat and du

A lot of water has flowed down the Thames since I last blogged. In the last two weeks, India-Pakistan "peace talks" began, Sachin broke the world records by scoring an ODI double century, Pranab Da presented the budget and Karthik Calling Karthik got released. Against better judgement and the reviews of critics, I decided to take the plunge and watch it. Q. If the producers of Karthik Calling Karthik ran out of money, what will be the movie called? A. Karthik Missed Calling Karthik. Pathetic joke, I know. But it seems the producers ran out of the ingredient which is so less used in Hindi movies - Story . If I would dare say, the movie was reduced to Karthik Blank Calling Karthik for the writer-director Vijay Lalwani seems to have lost the script half-way through the movie.