The flavour of Kolkata

The flavour of Kolkata
The city is known for its old alleys. One such is shot by Atanu Pal.

Saturday, April 18, 2015

Prosenjit's Ananda Plus interview and a counterview

Read up Prosenjit's interview in Ananda Plus (of Anandabazar Patrika) yesterday which came after a pretty long gap (Read it here). The Bangla film industry is going through one of its worst crises ever as mainstream movies, including those by the biggest of stars are regularly failing at the box office. He came up with a few recommendations, which I could not be in agreement with. I posted it in response to the Facebook post by Indranil Roy who took the interview (where he shared the link to it and solicited feedback). Here it is:

At the outset, I salute his concern (he's always showed it), intention and spirit for Bangla film industry. No doubt, we need successful mainstream movies for the industry to survive. Multiplex successes can contribute little as the majority of roughly 250+ theatres are single screen.

I couldn’t make sense of his main recommendation. He wants Dev and Jeet to do 2-3 movies a year for the industry to survive. But they’re doing exactly that! Each of them has had 2 mainstream releases every year at least for the last two years (I’m not counting Buno Hansh and Royal Bengal Tiger). This year Dev has already had one. Isn’t Prosenjit keeping tabs? The point is: the movies have to run at the box office for the industry to survive. Dev’s movies are bombing one after another (the last one being this year’s Herogiri) and Jeet is not much better off either. Bachchan grossed well, but it did not happen as smoothly as Boss. And Game (2014) had bombed before that. He isn’t doing a single movie now and the apparent reason is that he doesn't have a worthwhile offer.

Also a statement that an actor’s stardom suffers heavily due to wide exposure through commercial appearances merits a debate. Abir (Chatterjee) is the one of the most exposed stars today. Every other day he is seen in some brand promotion/ inauguration or the other. Rather than his stardom taking a dip dive, it has risen notches after his Feluda and Byomkesh movies released simultaneously last December. Stardom is largely determined by box office success and if it’s in order, commercial exposure probably does little damage to it.

Would like to come back and add to this post if there's an interesting exchange of notes on the Facebook post.

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