The Magic of the Movies

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The whole world knows going to the cinema is our national pastime. And that Hollywood hasn’t been able to dent our box-office or our tastes because of the kind of emotional grip our own cinema’s aesthetic has had — and will continue to have — on our imagination and our purses. We know too that the pan Indian Hindi movie is a myth, and that its hold on us is only a small part (too deracinated to take hold, really) of the larger, deeper seduction of South Indian movies which is far more vibrant and rooted than Bollywood. (And now we are hearing of wonderful things happening in the new Marathi cinema). It’s true that movies were even more of an obsession with us before the multiplex, but even so, most weekday evening shows and all weekend shows today still go houseful. Not all magic movies are lighthearted. Some, like Richard Attenborough's 1978 movie Magic (starring Anthony Hopkins), are actually quite creepy. The life of a magician isn't always a happy one. Making a living selling illusions to the world can lead to madness, and deadly competition. I do not contribute much to the box office collection now. Unless pestered too much by someone , I do not go to the multiplexes. The reason being I do not think much about the current productions. Too much violence and bloodletting makes me nauseated. Movies have come to our drawing rooms and are available on the smartphones. That suffices my needs. Keep it light and playful. Don’t take things too seriously. Watch with playful curiosity and enjoyment as it comes naturally to you. If you feel you’re stressing out, you’re over-thinking. This defeats the purpose. The main goal is to have fun—consciously. A Separation is a realistic movie that might be expected to make us think of life and shake us up, while something like Scorsese’s Hugo, a fantasy — a richly entertaining 3D fantasy — is as far away from true life as we can get, and yet they both fill our senses and touch us deeply. In different ways, yes, but both, a story about a boy’s adventure in a Parisian train station and an intimate, complex moral drama of two families in modern Tehran become in our hearts, in our imagination, one indelible emotional, aesthetic experience. It’s not the high level of realism in one and the delirious sense of fantasy in the other that get at us, but their art — cinematic art.

Laurence Olivier was offered the role of the agent but was unable to do it, and then Burgess Meredith was cast. [5] Meredith landed the role after walking into the 21 Club one night when Levine was there – Levine cast him on the spot. Meredith modelled his performance on the agent Swifty Lazar, even shaving his head to look like Lazar. "I tried to get his cool, understated manner, his sharp clothes, and most of all, his way of speaking softly so that you've got to lean over to hear what he's saying", said Meredith. [7] Goldman later wrote about the film that "Burgess Meredith was perfect and Tony Hopkins...was so wonderful here. But running stride for stride with him was Miss Olsson. I think Ann-Margret is the least appreciated emotional actress anywhere." [8] Last summer I had a fun experiment with my family. We started watching the movies that won the Academy Awards for best picture. Through movies we fulfill our need to connect with, and understand each other. With stories that bridge the gap and remind us of our shared needs and aspirations we enrich our lives and accentuate our humanity.Read My Lips", a 1993 episode of Batman: The Animated Series, features a villain called the Ventriloquist, who leads a group of criminals through the persona of his dummy Scarface.

Movies have immense soft power. They can greatly influence one’s ideas and opinions. The movie makers can make a large chunk of populace toe their line of thinking and feed the minds with distorted facts of history. Such trends are dangerous. Movies, I feel should be produced to entertain and not to provide education on history, science etc. Let education be left to the educators in the know of the subject. Entertainment with some simple message for the good of society should be the buzzword. In his lifetime, Ed Wood was dubbed the "worst director ever" for making movies like Plan 9 from Outer Space or Glen or Glenda. Any sense of production value was nonexistent in these films, the dialogue was laughable, and there was no sense of continuity from one scene to the next. But there was passion on the screen. Wood’s clear affinity for his works and his embracing of idiosyncratic yet strangely personal plotlines make his movie the very definition of the Anton Ego line from Ratatouille, "the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so." Méliès wrote, directed, produced, distributed, built the sets for and performed in his films himself. Despite this artisanal mode of production, his was for a time France's leading film studio. Only on the eve of the first world war was he driven out of business by better capitalised corporations like Pathé – an economic lesson fudged in Hugo, which ascribes Méliès's business failure to the war itself. He was rediscovered in the 1930s operating a candy store in the Montparnasse railway station – belatedly decorated by the French government and lionised by cinephiles and Surrealists.

5. Stranger In Paradise (Kismet)

Movies bring the story—in vivid detail—to life and transport us to a magical world. We escape, we laugh, we cry, we think and we learn through movies. Right now we’re watching movies with Marilyn Monroe. It is so much fun to experience the stories from the perspective of the storytellers—the humor, the drama, the futility of most of our struggles, and the impermanence of everything as we know it in this life. I have wondered if one screen in multiplexes could be earmarked exclusively for classics. This idea of exclusivity was laughed at as an absurd business thinking. But, everything in life is not commerce.