[by Keerthy Ramachandran, Deccan Chronicle]
Most of the youngsters in Kerala are euphoric about the techno-marvels from Hollywood, the slick offerings from Bollywood and the innovative flicks from Kollywood.
Many of them also denounce Malayalam cinema, which they think are caught in a time warp.
Vinayan, the filmmaker who loves to experiment with themes and techniques, perhaps has this crowd in mind as he makes the second ever Malayalam film in 3D, the horror-packed Dracula. The question is, will this be a one-off or will it trigger techno-mania?
Ironically, Malayalam cinema was the first among the film industries of India to come up with a 3D movie, the hugely-successful My Dear Kuttichathan, not long after the first three dimensional film was released in America. My Dear Kuttichathan was dubbed into various languages and remains one of the biggest box office hits of the country.
“The long gap after the first 3D film in Malayalam cinema is not because the Malayali brain is incapable of making a technically perfect movie. The blame should go to the multi-starrer fixation of Malayalis and the filmmakers’ technological ignorance which make us stick to stereotypical films,” says Vinayan. He criticises our megastars who even have a say in their movies’ cinematography.
“I have been isolated from the film industry because of my intense passion for technology and graphics which are hardly encouraged in the industry, though the audiences would love to see them,” he says.
The award-winning cinematographer, K.G. Jayan considers cinema an art form that is meant to be played in a two-dimensional platform and all the additional graphics are only a transient attraction. He says, “It’s not that Malayalam cinema is not capable of making such movies. We haven’t made many technical movies because most of our films have plots that are family-oriented. If we haven’t come up with many movies with 3D effects and high-level graphics, it is because we didn’t need them.”
The young filmmaker Rajesh Pillai, who made one of the best technical movies in recent times, Traffic, is all praise for the technical brilliance of our editors.
“If you take the list of the best 10 editors or technicians in the world, I am sure there will definitely be a Malayali in it. You go to any Hollywood studio and you can see a Malayali coming up with the best animation. Budget is the only constraint we face in Malayalam today. Still, we are sure to make some of the best 3D movies of all time, after all we are the pioneers,” he says.
The young film editor Jiju Murugan says, “You can see some of the best special effects in a Shaji Kailas movie, but coming to graphics and animation, it will take years for Malayalam cinema to make a good 3D film.”
Says Lasleelan, a software engineer at Technopark, “I am looking forward to watch Transformers 3 next week. But I am a little sceptical about Vinayan’s Dracula. Though I have heard that the director was pooling young brains to put together a good technical team, I still wonder whether it will reach anywhere near the first Malayalam 3D movie in quality.”
See the original post here: http://www.deccanchronicle.com/tabloid/kochi/3d’s-new-avatar-483