‘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...

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...

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...

Read More........ → January 05, 2014