Saturday, September 26, 2015

Lights, Camera, and Action!

I would love to, but I do not have time to write. Blame it on work or girlfriend or life as such. I simple cannot take time out for writing. Ironically, writing is one of the disciplines that brings money to my table. I should write, maybe scribble a bit but do it with a sense of regularity, with a purpose, and with a smile. So here I aim trying to write. But what can I write on?

At a glance, I see that my wardboard shelf throws a list of DVDs that I managed to procure from different parts of the world. I am a movie buff unashamedly. I watch movies as random people do random things. I was not born in an arts and literature family , and so it is surprising that I managed to pick up this habit. The closest relation to movies were my eldest and arguably the most talented brother plays in colleges and another elder brother listening to songs.

I have DVD collections close to 100. Most of these are in English with an occasional Bengali and Hindi movie to throw.




I am surprised that I have not seen any of these movies for a long time. You have Satyajit Ray's Aparajita somewhere coated in dust while Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver finds buckle in another corner. It is Saturday and a strike in Karnataka has left the city and I paralyzed. There is no other choice for me but to pick up a cloth, and start the dusting. As I managed to do this one by one, I remember the thrill I had when I picked up the DVDs.

Nostalgia creeps in as I remember the first time I came to Bangalore. One of the first dates that I could manage with a paltry allowance was watching Pearl Harbor in Symphony, Brigades. I was taken aback by the movie. What thrill! what  joy watching a story unfolding in front of your eyes in a 36 mm cinemascope screen! I remember looking up to see those giant Dolby speakers more noticeable for the buzz created by the airplanes in the screen.

My fantasy for movie's technicalities grew when I started watching Tarantino's movies. Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction have a major impact on a lot of avid movie watchers, and I cannot express in words how it impacted me. I watched every angle with possible interest, tried to decipher why a long camera shot was required and so on. Do I need to mention Tarantino's dialogues writing? he has won two Oscars for Best Script. My secret confession:I watched Pulp Fiction close to 50 times.

Martin Scorsese has given me such a delight of the gangster world. These are bad people, but people with some dignity, some respect and of course a lot of glam. His movies from Mean Streets to Taxi Driver to Goodfellas to Departed have shown the rise of Italian and Irish Mafias and his style of putting it up with delightful music is a bliss. Watching Scorcese movie is like living a dream!

Ofcourse, Francis Coppolla needs a mention: I watched Godfather close to 30 times.

Hitchcock also left a positive impression on me. I marveled to watch Birds, Pyscho and Murder and could never understand the impression that was leaving it on my mind.

Then the days of Bollywood movies taking a U turn appeared. New age directors appeared on the scene with scripts never told before. Anurag Kashyap's Dev D and Black Friday had a massive appeal to the art lovers. For the first time, you witnessed Bollywood trying to embrace new artifices. Do you remember the scene in Black Friday where KK conducts a police interrogation, and the entire room has a bloodish red twinge in it?

These days I do not get chance to something that regular. There is an HBO series called Game of Thrones. I downloaded, watched couple of  the episodes, and it looks great. I had to pen something today, and maybe I can do it more often.

It is simply that I do not have time. I wish I had more. I wish I could make movies. Maybe someday.