As I was reading my previous post yesterday, it occurred to me that I had written about something that I understood little. Through years of experience watching movies I might be able to comment on various departments of cinema, but areas like editing remain vague. Stunt men and even costume or set designers are visible [...]
Posts from ‘May, 2008’
Sloppy Editing
Last week, I sat through several minutes of bad movie making. Most of us can’t escape those moments. When I also had to edit a long ill-written essay, it got me thinking. I confess my ignorance about film editing, but I believe that the underlying intentions of editing are the same in books and movies. [...]
Telugu Cinema in the 70s – 2
Continued from Telugu Cinema in the 70s – 1. Until then we had a healthy share of social, period/historic, and mythological movies. The filmmakers seemed to have regarded education and moderation above entertainment. Close-ups of the antagonists reproaching and songs of the protagonists preaching had been common. Language, costumes, fights were all taken care to [...]
Death of a Language
Every language has a life. Like yours and mine, but only enormously more significant. It has a present, a past and a future that transcends all the lives of its speakers. It forgets some words and traits, and develops new ones. Making their lives even more dynamic, languages influence each other every day. The importance [...]
Film Censorship
The CBFC doesn’t seem to have caught up with the Indian lifestyle, at least in terms of ratings. The board still gives the useless ‘U’, ‘UA’ and ‘A’ ratings. Why are they useless? To my understanding, CBFC’s mission is to categorize movies based on what categories of the Indian society each movie is suitable for. [...]