First Poster: Django Unchained

To call an upcoming Quentin Trantino movie ‘highly anticipated’ is to still somehow manage to undersell it a little. The film doesn’t open until much later but here–in the style of legendary designer Saul Bass– here is the first teaser poster of Qt’s new movie Django Unchained.  Read More

Rickshaw Ride

“So I took a handheld camera on a autorickshaw ride in Mumbai…” I know that sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. But I did, and I brought the footage into After Effects to stabilize the footage in post. What you see here is the extent to which my Flip camera must have been bouncing around as I attempted to ‘go with the flow’ on that rickshaw... Read More

Should I Quit?

This is a time of shrinking resources. Even big Hollywood studio projects have to reach far and wide for the final funding on their hundred-million-dollar films. So what can one struggling filmmaker do? Make friends, lots of them. There are aspiring actors, musicians and even producers all around you. Go out, meet people, find the ones you think you could imagine working with.... Read More

Ollie Klublershturf vs. The Nazis

Today’s post features a short film yet again. But this time it is not so much a Stellar Short as it is a ‘this is what they did to get that first job that went on to make them famous’ short. In fact this short film didn’t even start out as a short. It began life as a 24-page one-act play written by Damon Lindelof. Yes Lost fans, the very same Damon Lindelof.... Read More

Die Hard is awesome. Still.

Here is a fun little fact I learnt today: In an action movie the protagonist is reactive. It is the antagonist who has the plan, the one who has thought of everything, and the one who is prepared for all (or at least most) contingencies that might stand between him and his goal. So it goes without saying that a good action movie needs a very good villain. Which is where the brilliance... Read More

How do screenwriters live with themselves?

I am unclear about the idea of a ‘screenwriter’. And I say this as someone who is a screenwriter. A novelist, a poet, an essayist, a journalist, even a playwright – those are easy jobs to define. We know what they do, because we experience their work. As a finished whole. sure editors, proof-readers, sub-editors and PR executives are involved, but we do read a version of... Read More

Cover No. 1: Bhaag DK Bose from Delhi Belly

The song Bhaag DK Bose from the film Delhi Belly is a superhit or, in Bollywood parlance, “souprhit”. Say it fast and as if it were one word – “souprhit, souprhit!!!” Yup that’s kind of the excitement that surrounds this massive song, and after it was stuck in my head in a constant loop, I just had to cover it. Elvis was excited enough by my version to make a very... Read More