Our new critic, Upperstall’s flyingrodent heroically volunteered to review YRF’s latest Pyaar Impossible. Five minutes into the movie he called me and after a bucketful of incomprehensible insults, stated that he’s going to be continually texting me through the film. It seemed I had to endure it as well.

Except for some cussword starring and [...]

I’m recently returned from Goa, where I was at IFFI for a few days, doing mostly non-IFFI things, hedonistic and aimless. I saw a couple films, but that’s not what this post is about.
I was at IFFI because I’d been on the Panorama non-fiction jury. Did I want to take on this onerous task? Not [...]

I spent the last four days in Goa. It wasn’t a holiday of sand, sea and sangria, but a workshop held by Video Volunteers. On the other hand it did turn into a holiday of a different sort – of hard work, total immersion in an earnest experience, a genuine feeling of both giving and [...]

Once upon a time, many years back, I had made a short film that was budgeted to around three hundred rupees - the then cost of a digital video tape. The shooting location was my ex-180 square foot house and my camera assistant was a crumpled Sony PD 150 manual.  
There was a struggling actor living close [...]

‘The audience does not want to see your images. It shells out money because it wants to see faces’, declared the elderly colorist from a film laboratory in Mumbai, in an almost godly tone. His voice had a – I have seen it all, kid – kind of feel to it.  
Our film which neither had [...]

It is quite a job to be judging someone or a film or a work of art; leave alone adjudicating one among many as the best. I have been involved in quite a few situations where either someone has judged my work or I have judged someone’s. 
Scanning other people’s work to evaluate it gives you [...]

A few days back, when I had just finished the shooting of a project, the children who were with us for a whole month or so acting in it, felt sad that it was all getting over. One little child even had uncontrollable tears pouring from her eyes. It triggered the memories of two seemingly [...]

It’s that time of the year again when we pick our favorite Hindi (that is to say, Bollywood) films of the last 12 months (and before farcical award shows begin dumping everything on Ghajini). A couple of us here at Upperstall have compiled this list. Feel free to agree or disagree and also pick your [...]

Film trade magazines usually have a ‘this day in history’ sorta section full of useless interviews, facts, and box office figures that have no meaning any more. Some of the scribbling under a section titled ‘Tit Bits’ of 1983 includes: Himmatwala is tipped to be the quickest film to collect 1 crore in under a [...]

It’s been five weeks since Neeraj Pandey’s A Wednesday released. It’s gone from being perceived as a well-crafted thriller to Oscar contention to seeding the hot new debate: is vigilante action against terrorists justified?
Clearly, with the film’s collections of 45 lacs in the 4th week in Mumbai alone gives box-office credence that people are enjoying [...]