Tribute to Mahendra Kapoor

Scriptwriting workshop class 1 (Narrative structure in films)

Couple of weeks back, I started this scriptwriting course at continuing education department of Concordia University. I didn’t have much expectations from the course in terms of learning, but I still wanted to do it to meet people and get some industry information. But, till now, course has exceeded my expectations quite a bit even in terms of pure learning. Our instructor is a veteran film school teacher and you get to learn very interesting things in the class from her and also through interactions with other students.

The End of Science?

Are we done with discovering all those profound mysteries of Science/Universe which are there to be discovered? Is it true that advanced applications of already known concepts of pure science is the only thing left to be explored further by man? If you believe John Horgan, answer to the questions above is a disturbing yes . “The End of Science” was written by John Horgan in 1996 and the crux of that book was that there is nothing profound left to be discovered by humanity in terms of pure sciences and that all progress in the future will just be application of existing key concepts of physical and biological sciences.

Recently, he wrote an article in the Search magazine where he raised these points again and defended his book further by arguing that his critics have been proved wrong till now, more than ten years after the book was published. He backs up his analysis with convincing arguments which are hard to put down. I cannot deny his arguments but I wonder about the time factor. I mean It’s true that in the last half a century or so, we havent discovered as profound concepts as electromagnetism or quantum mechanics or DNA based genetics or atomic theory of matter, but, not achieving any profound breakthroughs in the last 50-75 years should not mean much in humungous span of hundreds of thousands of years since man has existed ( If you consider the age of universe, then these 50-100 years look even more insignificant). Isn’t it?

I sincerely hope that Horgan is proved wrong in the future because I’m not very enthusiastic about our existing knowledge. If that’s the most what we are ever going to know in terms of profound theories of universe, it will be very discouraging news for me; I mean, all this existing knowledge and theories havent really gotten us anywhere yet!

Here is the link for that article:

http://www.searchmagazine.org/Archives/full-horgan.html

How to make a low budget film: by Christopher Banks

Christopher Banks, who visited my humble blog few days back and commented on my post on Kubrick, is an accomplished filmmaker, music writer and journalist based in New Zealand. Apart from his successful first feature film “Quiet Night In“, he has also written, directed and presented award winning TV show. His second feature,”Teddy” will be out shortly. Like me, he is a very big fan of both Stanley Kubrick and Woody Allen. He recently wrote a post on his valuable experiences gained while making his first film. Given below is the link to that post , which I think is a very well done honest post & which will be valuable to all first time independent filmmakers.

http://christopherbanks.wordpress.com/2008/08/30/how-to-make-a-low-budget-film/

Thanks Chris and hope to see you around.

The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick

This post contains my notes from the book, “The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick” by Norman Kagan. Here, I have tried to sum up those important plus interesting ideas from the book which concern Kubrick’s overall approach to filmmaking. I will take further references from this book as and when I happen to talk about his individual movies. The bolded parts of this post contain words taken from the book. The non-bolded parts contain my take on ideas expressed in the book, mostly in context of my current knowledge of his films. This post may not seem to be of much value to those readers who havent watched his films yet, but I think it still could provide some introduction to his genius & also perhaps motivate some of you to see his work.

Stanley Kubrick once said that writers or painters or filmmakers dont do what they do because they have something particular to say. Instead, they have something that they feel. And they like the art form; they like words, smell of paint, photographic images or just working with actors. “I dont think that any genuine artist has ever been oriented by some didactic point of view, even if he thought he was”, He said.