‘A director never finishes a film, he abandons it’

He likes to drive his characters mad and make his audience uncomfortable. But in persona, film-maker Darren Aronofsky, the mind behind intense and tough films like Black Swan is funny and easy. At a roundtable chat organised at the just concluded 12th International Marrakech Film Festival, he was full of quips and quotes. He also spoke at length about his forthcoming Russell Crowe film Noah. Excerpts: On hurricane Sandy’s impact on the filming of Noah: We actually were quite okay. We built a sea worthy vessel —the actual Ark was built in Long Island — which got wrecked since the impact of the Hurricane on Long Island was a lot. We couldn’t reach the sets for weeks. There was no electricity in that area for four days. But the emotional and human toll was much more than physical toll. On tweeting details about Noah: I’m a pretty private person. Agreed that Twitter is a pretty strange thing for me to get involved with, but I feel that we are in the New World so if one hasn’t got on to social media then one can feel left out. I’ve observed the great comedian Louis C.K. over the years. That guy has made millions by talking to his fanbase! I still don’t know how filmmakers will benefit from Twitter, but personally I like talking to young filmmakers, enjoy participating in Q & A and teasing people a bit so I kind of like Twitter. The studio was a bit unsure but being on Twitter allowed me the chance to let out the first image of the film. Doing this on our own is way better, it restricts a big crane sitting on the set. So I guess, it works well. On the story of Noah and his Ark: I’ve been working on Noah forever. In fact this was the first film after Pi that I pitched. I’ve had all these ideas way before I became a filmmaker. Even Black Swan and The Wrestler were ideas I had way back when I was in college. In fact this is my fear—I feel I'm running out of ideas! Now that we are making Noah, they are saying making a Bible picture is the new trend but when we set out we got a lot of No’s and passes before finally we got our studios Paramount Pictures and New Regency interested in it. On his experiments with Indian films: I know Bollywood is kind of a bad word here. Is there a better word? (PS: On my prodding that we call it the Hindi Film Industry, so he can call it Hi Fi, he immediately caught on to the word). Yeah, Hi Fi is better! So I got into Hi Fi a long time ago — it was the same time when my interest in Chinese and Hong Kong films was beginning. I checked out quite a few Hindi movies. I love that one about the Great Bandit — Sholay. I also saw Bandit Queen which was kind of an art film. I like how Baz Luhrmann has taken up the ingredients of Hi Fi films and the way he utilises them. In my neighbourhood in Manhattan, there is a cinema place dedicated to Hi Fi so I keep checking out the stuff that’s playing there. On whether Noah is similar to Life of Pi: I saw Life of Pi and I liked it. There are some visual similarities in terms of the animals and water, but let's see how we do our VFX. On his jinx with superhero films like Batman, Wolverine: I'd like to think Noah was a superhero. He might not have a super power, but what he does is much like a super hero. It's been my dream to do this — to bring my original take on an old story. On the storylines of his films and their uncomfortable quotient: When people say my films make them uncomfortable, I say ‘Very Good!’ I think The Fountain had a kind of a happy ending. Even in Black Swan, she was kinda happy. The Wrestler too. I don’t know. The idea is to start of a character and lead on their conflict. I do agree that sometimes I tend to drive my characters mad, but then that’s okay, I guess. I like the tightrope walk between sanity and insanity that my characters take. It’s just a good story device — when people go slightly over the edge, you can look back and see what was before it. On whether he has it in him to ever make a comedy: As a student I made four shorts and a comedy. Comedian Chris Rock says there is a thin line between laughing and crying — in the former you laugh out the breath and in the latter, you take the breath in. Comedy is a scary genre because if you miss, then you miss. On whether he believes in the classical Hollywood happy ending: It never made sense to me even as a kid. I’m of the opinion that a happy ending is never always a good thing. I grew up in New York, where it wasn’t like that. Life comes with a lot of complications. You never know, who is happy or sad. Guess it is something to do with my big science background. Being trained as a biologist for a few years, I have an environmental take to life which alters my perspective. On if he’d like to change anything in any of his films: I never look back at films. If you look back in a film, you kind of get lost in it. When they were coming up with the DVD of Requiem for a Dream, I stayed out of it, but on the insistence of my sound guy, I watched it and I couldn’t recognise the person, who had made it. It was surely a different person, I could remember myself but I don’t think you can ever recreate the same kind of passion that you had for a film when you are really making it. After a while, you gotta let go. I believe a director never finishes a film, he abandons it. On the status of his HBO series Hobgoblin: It’s been a while I got on the project, but then when I’m making a movie, it’s like I’m in a submarine. I’ll get to it now. Hobgoblin is about a group of magicians and con artists, who use their powers of deception to defeat Hitler during WWII. On whether he believes in magic: Magic? It’s a loaded question? Do I believe in magic that makes a Tiger disappear from a box? Or the simple things? I get touched by magic. I love magicians. David Blaine is a dear friend. I can watch the little tricks these magicians come up with all day. Magical realism is my favourite genre by the way.‘director never finishes a film, he abandons it’ , Image: flickr.com

Read More........ → August 23, 2014

Equities big winner of FY14, gold loses sheen

By Amit Mudgill: The financial year that ended on Monday belonged to equities. Powered by a relentless rally over the last two months, stocks outperformed all other asset classes in terms of returns on year-end values. Gold had a disastrous year among popular asset classes, ending with negative returns for the first time in eight years. The tapering of quantitative easing by the US Federal Reserve and India’s curbs on gold imports took away much of the shine from the yellow metal, while improving economic indicators pro­mpted investors to desert the ‘safe haven’ of bullion to flock to equities. Sensex notched up 18.85 per cent gain from the end of FY13 to the end of FY14. This was the highest year-on-year return on Sensex after a record 80.54 per cent gain in FY10, and more than double the 8.23 per cent gain it had seen in FY09. In line with direct equity, 96 largecap and multicap open-ended equity diversified mutual fund schemes with a track record of at least five years generated an average return of 20.06 per cent on a year-on-year (YoY) basis, following tepid performance in the three previous years. FY14 marked many highs and lows for both equities and commodities, as weak emerging market currencies, high fiscal deficit and a cut in US’ bond buying programme led to a shift in focus from one asset class to the other. A drop in inflation and current account deficit in India, however, sparked heavy inflows into equities, which not only helped the equity benchmarks hit new highs, but improved the performance of mutual fund schemes as well. “We expect equities to outperform in FY15 too, not only in India but globally. The stock market generally discounts future growth, and if the US Fed starts raising policy rates in FY16, its impact would be seen on gold price in FY15 due to its inverse relationship with interest rate,” said DK Aggarwal, CMD at SMC Investments and Advisors. The MCX spot gold closed FY14 with a 2.74 per cent YoY decline in price, on the back of 4.18 per cent return for FY13, 35.23 per cent for FY12 and 27.36 per cent for FY11. It was the first yearly loss for the yellow metal since MCX started disseminating spot gold data in October 2005, Bloomberg data showed. Among other commodities agrocommodities, as represented by NCDEX benchmark Dhaanya,  clocked 10.42 per cent gain for FY14 after flat growth in the preceding year. Dhaanya represents 10 agro-commodities, including castor seed, chana, soyabean and turmeric. The base metal pack as represented by the LME metal index continued to remain under pressure in FY14, amid talks of slowdown in the largest metal consumer, China. The LME metal index that tracks six base metals — including aluminium, zinc and copper — declined 8.24 per cent in FY14 after witnessing a similar decline in the preceding year. SMC Investments’ Aggarwal is bearish on agrocommodities but expects that a drop in interest rates would boost fixed income products. Fixed income assets, represented by the 10-year government bond yield, saw gains swing between 7.11 per cent and 9.24 per cent through FY14, but quoted at 8.80 per cent on Monday. The bond yield stood at 7.96 per cent at the end of previous financial year. Forty-two long-term debt fund schemes lagged bond yields, offering an average return of just 5.18 per cent for FY14 compared with 10.22 per cent gain in FY13. Phani Shekar, a fund manager for portfolio management services at Angel Broking, said investors should scale their risk appetite carefully before building a portfolio, as terms like ‘fair’ and ‘safe’ returns can have different meaning for different investors. “If you are a low risk-taker, you can invest 70 per cent of your corpus in fixed income products and the rest in equities. An extremely high risk-taking investor can invest up to 100 per cent in equities. We see gold as a hedge against volatility in various asset classes. A small investment in gold is always advisable,” Shekar said. “We believe a moderate risk-taking investor should invest 40 per cent in equities, 40 per cent in fixed income products, 10 per cent in commodities and keep the remaining 10 per cent liquid for FY15. A high risk-taker may invest 60 per cent in equities and 40 per cent in fixed income products,” said SMC’s Aggarwal. Source: mydigitalfc.com,

Read More........ → April 01, 2014

US-China challenges beyond 2015

By Dan Steinbock: In the near-term, Washington must manage austerity with pro-growth policies, even amid secular stagnation. In turn, Beijing seeks to manage local debt challenges with subdued but solid growth. In both the United States and China, policy outcomes have far-reaching, global implications. The U.S. budget deal: avoiding downside risks in 2014 After weeks of private talks, House and Senate negotiators, led by Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), struck a budget agreement. The latter would replace $63 billion of the sequestration cuts slated for 2014-15 with alternative savings measures. The bipartisan objective was to surpass the 2011 budget-cutting law, particularly the automatic spending cuts (the so-called ‘sequester’), to avoid still another government shutdown and to ensure some stability to fiscal policy-making over the next two years. In contrast to the once-hoped for “grand bargain,” the new plan is modest. While it was designed not to redesign the tax code and not to touch federal entitlement programs, it seeks to ensure more spending for domestic and defense programs in the short-term. The costs will be offset by embracing deficit-reduction measures over a decade. But although the budget deal was promoted as a rare bipartisan breakthrough, it was neither rare nor a breakthrough. To defer the next debt crisis, Washington is resorting to still another timeout. While 203,000 jobs were created in November, a robust recovery would require 200,000-300,000 new jobs per month. Further, unemployment rate remains 7 percent, while alternative unemployment, which includes both the unemployed and the under-employed, is still 13.2 percent. Despite 45 months of private-sector job growth and half a decade of quantitative easing (QE), the labor force participation rate – those aged 16 and over who are working or

Tying the knots [By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn]

actively looking for work – is 63 percent, the lowest since 1978. Concurrently, the share of the population with a job has collapsed to 58.6 percent. Most importantly, the budget deal, in its original form, leaves unaddressed the renewal of expanded unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed. Indeed, the deal could cause 1.3 million Americans now receiving these benefits to receive none after Christmas, while 5 million jobless workers could be left in the lurch in 2014. While Washington hopes that economic growth should quicken, annualized growth is likely to remain less than 2 percent in 2013 and at best around or above 2.5 percent in 2014-15. Further, any premature tapering in the next 3-4 months could accelerate downside risks. Indeed, the Fed may not consider hiking rates until unemployment rate plunges to 6.5 percent, which is not likely to occur until late 2014. Consequently, the Fed may continue its third round of QE until March 2014, while record-low policy-rates could prevail well until the end of 2015. The bipartisan budget deal is designed to avoid the downside risks – not to realize the upside potential. The Chinese reforms: ensuring upside potential in 2014 When the budget deal was announced in Washington, the annual Central Economic Work Conference began in Beijing, only a month after the Chinese leadership officially launched the reform plans during the Party’s Third Plenum. During the Chinese leadership transition, most analysts in the West argued that reformers had lost in Beijing. In reality, China opted for tough leaders who could implement broad reforms. In particular, President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang are decisive economic reformers. If the Third Plenum outlined the official broad contours of China’s economic policies for 5-10 years ahead, the Work Conference shall determine the objectives in the near-term. At the Plenum, the reform proposals focused on tripartite reforms comprising the market, government and corporations. The eight core sectors include finance, taxation, state assets, social welfare, land, foreign investment, innovation and good governance. Further, the reform blueprint seeks to relax control over market access, establish a basic social security package and allow sales of collectively-owned rural land. With new urbanization, the old household registration system (hukou), which continues to discourage migration, will be gradually phased out. The reform plans are moving in parallel with increasing financial deregulation, which, in turn, is supported by the recent launch of Shanghai’s free-trade zone (FTZ). While the FTZ advocates seek to make the renminbi fully convertible in the next few years, Beijing’s reformers hope to make the Chinese currency into a major international currency and a reserve currency, in the next few years. The Work Conference, too, reflects the ongoing shift away from extensive growth, which relied on investments and net exports for three long decades, toward intensive growth, which will be built on consumption, innovation and sustainability in the medium-term. However, even the new reforms are predicated on adequate economic growth, which is deemed to require 7.5 percent growth in the next two years. Nonetheless, Premier Li Keqiang’s 7 percent bottom-line target in 2014 is likely to require stronger than anticipated credit and investment growth. Elusive calm through 2014-15: Thanks to the House and Senate negotiators, the budget deal has the potential to ensure stability until the mid-decade in the United States. In order to deliver their compromise, however, mainstream constituencies in each party must keep their vocal and extremist minorities in line. This will not be easy because the mid-term elections are no longer and the end of the Obama era is looming. Instead of a sustained solution, the bipartisan negotiators have set aside the critical debt-reduction objectives, even though U.S. debt amounts to $17.3 trillion and U.S. total debt already exceeds $60.2 trillion. Total interest for 2013 alone amounts to $2.6 trillion, which is more than all three largest budget items combined – that is, Medicare/Medicaid, social security, plus defense expenditures. China, too, remains haunted by difficult challenges. In particular, Beijing must manage its growth transition, even as it seeks to contain local debt that soared as collateral damage from the 2009 stimulus package. While probabilities for hard landing are fading for 2014-15, deleveraging challenges loom thereafter. Further, if local government deleveraging, along with legacy debts, begins already in late 2014, the potential for downside risks could increase after mid-decade. What Washington has not achieved is an accord on a sustainable, long-term blueprint for tax and spending policies over the next decade. That would require credible, bipartisan cooperation over a medium-term debt/deficit plan. What China has not achieved yet is a detailed blueprint for local debt management over the next few years. That requires decisive consensus in Beijing, which does exist, but also tough implementation at local level and across Chinese provinces, which is more challenging to achieve. The last thing the ailing Europe and Japan, and the slowing large emerging economies need is still another U.S. debt debacle, or a protracted slowdown in China. However, if the looming post-2014-15 challenges can be overcome, global prospects could be blessed by another period of slower, though more sustainable growth and increasing prosperity. Dr. Dan Steinbock is Research Director of International Business at India China and America Institute (USA) and Visiting Fellow at Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). See also www.differencegroup.net. Source: China.org.cn

Read More........ → January 05, 2014