I want to do glam roles, too. I don’t want to restrict myself when it comes to doing good cinema.
Although for some people cinema means something superficial and glamorous, it is something else. I think it is the mirror of the world.
My opinion is that you cannot really blame cinema for the result of what is somebody’s mindset. I think it’s just entertainment. For me, I’ve always believed in doing things that I can sit and watch with my family. So far I think I’ve stuck to that, and I will also in the future.
I’m an international actor, but at the same time, I’m also a Bollywood actor, even though most of my career has been abroad. However, I’ve always kept in touch with Hindi cinema.
I like films to be pure cinema, but I also like them to provide a snapshot of a family, a society or a character – something that can nourish you as a human being as well as an actor.
Art reflects society. Cinema doesn’t dictate – you portray what the society demands.
For me and my films, I want my audience to experience cinema in its full glory. It’s not just visual, it’s audio as well. It’s emotional, and I want you to be engaged with not just the scene but with the characters.
I think it’s a great pity in the Anglophone world that we conflate cinema verite and Direct Cinema; they’re, in fact, ontological opposites. In Direct Cinema, we create a fictional reality with characters and pretend we’re not that.
Music is the only passion I shamelessly indulge in. However, for recreation I enjoy watching movies. ‘Wizard of Oz’ was the first film I ever saw, followed by the ‘Bond’ movies. I also watch a lot of World cinema through DVDs mostly brought by one of my best friends who’s now based in Toronto.
I’m in the early stages of a film called ‘Freezing Time’ about Eadweard Muybridge, the Victorian photographer who was really the forefather of cinema. Digital animators still treat his images like the Bible. He was a very obsessed man.
The thing is, making movies as an actress, you learn so many things. Like when you’re making a movie with Quentin Tarantino you’re just at the best cinema school ever.
Sex appeal is a good thing for commercial cinema. Though I can’t sit at home and consider myself a sex symbol, it is for people to do so. I want to be known as an interesting actor.
I hate that people think going to the theatre is a special occasion. I wish people would treat it as normally as going to the cinema.
I love going to the cinema. Whenever I get time off, that’s where I go.
I like one nice man because he gets three tickets for the cinema so we’ve got somewhere to put our coats. He passes the test. I’ve been quite surprised because I really didn’t expect to be wined and dined, and it’s quite nice.
The problem in cinema is that you can never predict what will happen.
I remember going to see Billy Graham in a cinema in Glasgow, and he was down in London. I used to go and hear preachers, and then we always went to church and Sunday school. That mattered a lot to me.
I do not want to be a part of Hindi cinema’s rat race. But yes, if I get offers and characters which I feel would suit me as well as make some difference to me, I will do a Hindi film.
I also wanted to express the strength of cinema to hide reality, while being entertaining. Cinema can fill in the empty spaces of your life and your loneliness.
My first memory of cinema is my mother taking me to see ‘Silkwood,’ which is about a whistleblower at a nuclear power plant.
To me, the thing love and cinema have in common is that they are about seeing. The greatest act of love you can give to anyone is to see them exactly as they are. That’s the greatest act of love because you wash away imperfections.
I think the novel is at one end of the art-entertainment continuum – the play in the middle – while TV and cinema veer a bit more towards entertainment.
In the ’80s, when I was watching Bond films in the cinemas, Roger Moore was the man. I’ll always have a soft spot for him. His Bond films were light-hearted and silly as well as action-packed. For me, this spoke volumes. It meant that, someday, maybe someone like me with a whacky sense of humour could be James Bond.
When I was starting a small printing shop in Wembley, I vividly remember coming out of the cinema, realising I had spent the two hours worrying about that month’s payroll, rather than focusing on the film.
The power of the story sheds a light and great perspective on well known facts. The power of cinema draws on that collective history.
Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second, and you can hop from one place to another. It’s a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream.
Cinema is a great binding force for a nation.
Harrison Ford was pretty content as a carpenter who thought it would be nice to work on TV and ended up being the biggest film star in the history of cinema.
Having a movie that lasts and makes your image imprinted into the history of cinema, it’s very positive.
Anybody who comes to the cinema is bringing they’re whole sexual history, their literary history, their movie literacy, their culture, their language, their religion, whatever they’ve got. I can’t possibly manipulate all of that, nor do I want to.
For example, in painting the form arises from abstract elements of line and color, while in cinema the material concreteness of the image within the frame presents – as an element – the greatest difficulty in manipulation.
Going international is my game. I’ve always wanted to do it, and after ‘Aadukalam,’ I got to meet Anurag Kashyap, the face of alternate Indian cinema to the world.
I like the idea that cinema is a spectacle.
I like cinema audiences. I respect them, and I talk to them just like I would anybody I know.
I’m delighted at the warm reception in Tamil and Hindi cinema despite the fact that I am from Karnataka.
Being a musician, people ask you a lot about what musicians inspire you, and there’s plenty of musicians that I love and respect, but I think that I’m the most inspired by cinema.
Cinema is made to film material: the body. By filming the material, the mechanical, the worker, we arrive at the spiritual.
I don’t go out a lot, as I like to stay in. I often go for dinners with my girlfriend, and I love to see movies at the cinema, but I don’t understand them.
We spend more time at cinemas, theaters, art galleries and theme parks than we do at churches, and they have become our new cathedrals. We can spend hours at any of these places of entertainment but if church service goes on too long we get impatient.
A lot of dumb pictures have made a lot of money, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to be anything cinema students will revel over in the future.
I did not make this a long film for its own sake. I wanted to make an entertaining film and offer it out there for those who want to see it. If word of mouth suggests there is an audience out there, hopefully their cinema will show it.
Cinema is my religion. It is a way to make people sensitive, through emotions. To make them feel, experience empathy. People are touched and act ethically when they are emotionally touched.
I prefer watching people on a screen, and I’ve had the most pleasurable people-watching experiences at the Palace Cinema in Balwyn.
By the nature of cinema and how it literalizes what we envision, movies can have difficulty replicating that connection we make with a classic book.
I wasn’t attracted to American cinema, but I fell in love with Los Angeles the minute I arrived.
The British cinema had been very dull and conformist.
Cinema is about people, and we are a very emotional people. That is why you see those ups and those downs and those colours. That is what Indian cinema is about.
I think that in the realm of commercial, popcorn cinema, the amount of message or smuggling of ideas you can get in there is quite limited. Like, if you think you’re going to make a difference or change anything, you’re on pretty dangerous thin ice.
I was introduced to cinema by C-grade films that played in my village, Budhana, in UP. Only films by Dada Kondke, Mahendra Sandhu, and Kanti Shah were available.
I’ve the highest respect and regards for Shankar sir. He has taken Tamil cinema to a new level. I would have loved to work with him, but there are some date hassles.
I was always told that films were evil and such, but I started to realise what a load of crap it was that something this good should be forbidden. I had been allowed to read as much as I wanted when I was younger, so I recognised great art when I saw it; I just didn’t realise it would be at the cinema as well.
The best cinema is about ethics.
In cinema, you can see an actor but he can’t see you. On stage, there’s a one-to-one and an eye-to-eye connection.
I’m a student of cinema in general, not just of one particular genre. So it was very important to me and to my soul to go out and do something different.
I love silent cinema but don’t hold it sacred. Like any branch of film there are some very boring films alongside the masterpieces.
As soon as I get my car I think I’ll be going to the cinema more. Since I don’t go very often, there are no films that are a must see at the moment. I usually wait till they come out on DVD.
