The first one

Because Art is an imitation of life and not life itself. So, I would like to work for the betterment of the quality of life rather than merely portraying it in some form or the other.

Why am I drawn to the movies? Why do I flock to the various theaters spread across the city week after week? What do I get in those 2 hours that I can shun the real world with all happiness? Who are those other people filling up the rest of the seats in the theater? These questions, every now and then, pop up from nowhere and make me wonder. so, I'll jot down a few things that have occurred to me over the past few years. 1. Life and movies: I find movies reflecting the life around me in some way or the other. Sometimes they are a saga of the triumph of the Human Spirit. Sometimes they depict the complex interplay between Man and Woman. Another time they paint the picture of humungous imagination (All those sci-fi flicks). Still another time, they paint human misery in such realistic colours that one is forced to take stock and realize how lucky one is not facing that same situation (war flicks, Black??). 2. The Craft: I am intrigued by the craft - the camerawork, the direction, the

Oops...I lost all that I had written because of some curious mix of key presses. :-( Ah! Well... Audience, of course, is the parameter of success. And for a filmmaker, it definitely is. And by that paramater, Sanjay Leela Bhansali has surely succeeded. At least in my book. He made the audience go blank. After the movie. Generally, the noise, the clatter, the laughter, the chit-chat after the movie will give you an idea about how the movie has fared in terms of audience acceptance/rejection. In the case of BLACK, I found the audience curiously quiet. Were all of them affected by the movie? Were they moved? I would not know for sure. But I certainly was. Probably, the people were too. Or, somebody in there would have screamed when an already aged Amitabh touched(or at least gave an impression of) the lips of a young, in all its glory, Rani. Somebody would have whistled. It made me uncomfortable. I was afraid of the people reaction. The scene passed. And the director, too. Nobody m