Anurag Kashyap

Started by Axolotl, January 19, 2014, 12:36:20 PM

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Axolotl

This guy needs a thread here.
Probably the most popular director among the film-aware crowd in India.

His debut feature, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0356982/">Paanch (Five)</a>(2003) was a a very uneven but bold film about a band of amoral college age murderers, predictably the censor board did not allow it to be released. He later uploaded it to torrent sites himself.

<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0400234">Black Friday</a>(2004) was what put him on the map. Powerful without being sensationalist, it examines the most devastating terrorist attack in India and its aftermath without wvweeasy conclusions. Kashyap fought for two years in courts to allow it to be released

<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0995740">No Smoking</a>(2007)
Funny, mad, fundamentally strange Kafka(?) movie. So obviously it was trashed so hard by Indian critics and lost so much money that Kashyap broke down and made a shitty animated movie that I'm not even going to list.

<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1327035">Dev.D</a>(2009)
Based on Devdas, Kashyap turned this classic Bengali novel, the basis of 14 different sappy over-acted melodramas since 1927, into a visually complex, brutal story of self-destruction with the best soundtrack you can find in a Bollywood film. Widely considered his masterpiece till

<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1954470">Gangs of Wasseypur</a>(2012)
Ugh. Just watch it please.

Watching a butchered version of The Wolf of Wall Street was what caused me to wonder how Anurag Kashyap was the only filmmaker in India who is fighting the good fight. Also he's a big supporter of BitTorrent and does hack screenwriting to raise money for his directorial efforts.

Ravi

Kashyap's work is uneven, but he makes some of the most fascinating films in India.

I thought Dev.D sort of went off the rails towards the end, but I'll have to watch it again to see how I feel.

For No Smoking Kashyap must have drawn inspiration/copied from the Stephen King short story Quitters, Inc..

I haven't seen Gangs of Wasseypur yet due to the lack of a decent English-friendly release. The Indian Blu-Ray has English subtitles but the quality is awful. The German Blu-Ray looks great, but only has German subtitles.

Also, here's a picture of him with Scorsese:


Axolotl




I agree that he's pretty uneven, and some of his movies just plain don't work( Gulaal ), but I find something worth admiring in everything he makes.
One of the most distinctive things about his movies is the dialogues. I haven't seen any of them with subtitles, but I think the cadence would be enough to suggest most of what might be lost in translation. He's hired to write dialogue for a lot of other movie, and that is almost always the best things about them.
Do you understand Hindi Ravi?

Ravi

Quote from: Axolotl on January 23, 2014, 01:04:18 AM
Do you understand Hindi Ravi?

I speak Tamil, but I've picked up a little Hindi.

Ravi



http://www.deadline.com/2014/07/gangs-of-wasseypur-anurag-kashyap-north-america-release-cinelicious/

Cinelicious Pics, Adi Shankar Banking On "Tarantino Of Bollywood" With 5 1/2 Hour Crime Epic 'Gangs Of Wasseypur'
By JEN YAMATO | Monday July 7, 2014 @ 2:05pm PDT

EXCLUSIVE: After launching in June, newbie indie/art house distributor Cinelicious Pics has struck a deal to bring acclaimed five-and-a-half-hour Bollywood new wave crime epic Gangs of Wasseypur to North America. The film is the latest from Anurag Kashyap (Black Friday, Dev D, Ugly, and Michael Winterbottom's Trishna), the Indian filmmaker whose bullets 'n' blood-soaked saga has earned him a reputation as the Scorsese/Tarantino of Bollywood.

Kashyap co-wrote, produced, and directed the Godfather-esque pic tracking 70 violent years in the lives of two mafia families battling for control over the coal mining town of Wasseypur, based on the real-life gang wars between two families in the cash-strapped industrial region. Cinelicious will release the film this fall in NY and LA in two parts, to be presented stateside by film producer Adi Shankar (The Grey, Lone Survivor).

So how does a neophyte specialty distributor strategize the release of a 319-minute foreign language picture? One of the film's producers, Guneet Monga, produced The Lunchbox, the Irrfan Khan starrer that's become the most successful foreign-language movie of 2014 in the States. Monga and Kashyap turned to Indian-born Shankar to help bring Gangs to the action-hungry U.S. audiences that connected with his R-rated actioners Dredd, Killing Them Softly, Machine Gun Preacher, and The Grey as well as the viral Marvel superhero fan videos Shankar has produced and released online. Shankar will boost the pic to his fan base online and at events like New York Comic-Con in October, where he's scheduled to appear.

"Gangs is such an important and monumental movie for my people – it marks our emergence as an international cinematic powerhouse," said Shankar. "America has The Godfather, Korea has Oldboy, Japan has Battles Without Honor & Humanity, Hong Kong has Infernal Affairs, Brazil has City of God, and now India has Gangs of Wasseypur."

LA-based Cinelicious Pics, which opened its doors this summer under film restoration expert Paul Korver and former American Cinematheque programmer Dennis Bartok, will take cues from last year's two-parter theatrical release of Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac. Gangs will launch in a platform release in New York and LA with Part I and Part II hitting theaters a week apart, while theaters will have the option to screen both parts in a single five-and-a-half-hour block. Cinelicious is also hoping to draft off buzz for Kashyap's James Ellroy-inspired neo-noir Bombay Velvet, which 20th Century Fox is releasing overseas in November.

Inspired by the multi-generational power struggle between the families of Fahim Khan and Shabir Alam, Gangs begins in the 1940s with the bandit-like career of Shahid Khan (Jaideep Ahlawat) and continues through the ruthless rise of his son Sardar (Manoj Bajpayee) and his offspring, the surreally-named Danish, Perpendicular and Definitive Khans, as well as their numerous wives and girlfriends. Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Tigmanshu Dhulia also star in the sprawling pic which features a Filmfare Awards-nominated score by Sneha Khanwalkar. The film world-premiered in Cannes in 2012 before opening in India, where it was met with protest from local Wasseypur figures, and released in the UK, France, Spain, and other territories.

"Gangs of Wasseypur is definitely India's Great Crime Film and a watershed moment for Indian cinema in general," said Bartok. "I'm an enormous fan of contemporary and classic Indian cinema, which for U.S. audiences is still criminally unknown. Gangs of Wasseypur should change all that. The film combines the best of Scorsese, Leone and Tarantino into an incredibly kinetic saga filled with moments of unexpected tenderness and shocking violence. Even at 5 1/2 hours, you never want it to end."

From Director Kashyup: "I had always wanted to make a film about the parts of India unexplored in cinema, the parts of India where I grew up. When the writer Zeishan Quadri told me about this speck of an industrial town Wasseypur, I was shocked to learn how local families became powerful organized crime syndicates over a period of decades. More than what the mafia did, I became obsessed with why they did it. These family grudges continued for years, often-times with the younger generation not knowing why. I am thrilled that the film continues to find new audiences now in the US, and I look forward to audience reactions to it. "

"When we set out to make Gangs of Wasseypur as a passion project, we had no idea the impact it would have on audiences around the world," adds producer Guneet Monga. "Not only is it a portrait of a small town politics, it's a historical tale of the rough transition from post-colonial India to the privatized and often corruption-filled independent state that perseveres to today."

Cinelicious Pics President Paul Korver, President of Business Affairs Kristine Blumensaadt, EVP Dennis Bartok and India Acquisitions Coordinator Anu Rangachar negotiated the deal with French sales agent Elle Driver on behalf of producers Guneet Monga, Anurag Kashyap and Viacom 18 Motion Pictures, along with consultant Ben Rekhi.