Oscar winning makeup artist Greg Cannom did the amazing prosthetics and makeup for Gaurav’s look in Fan. He worked with Brad Pitt on Benjamin Button, and took the mold of Brad’s cheeks to make prosthetics for Gaurav’s face. He also did the age makeup for Rishi Kapoor in Kapoor and Sons.
YRF released this behind the scenes Making of Gaurav video for the movie Fan. I had so many questions after watching the film a second time, and really looking at how different Gaurav is from Shahrukh. Besides the big cheeks, the eyebrows are different, and he just looked slimmer and smaller over all.
This 14 minute video answered a lot — it was prosthetics and lots of VFX on top. This is the same special effects makeup artist who worked with Brad Pitt on Benjamin Button. So he looked up in his work shop and saw a mold of Brad Pitt’s face, and decided to use those unique cheekbones to make Gaurav’s look. Fascinating!
One of the little Easter eggs in the film Fan is that they used scenes and music from Shahrukh’s own past films. In one scene he’s rehearsing for a stadium concert in London, and this is the music Aryan’s dancing to — Ishq Dance by A. R. Rahman in Jab Tak Hai Jaan. Because this scene from JTHJ was in London! I loved that attention to detail. Now, if only SRK had had the same VFX and makeup team to make him look 25 in Jab Tak Hai Jaan. My husband (who is Shahrukh’s age) and I have a private joke because he has a plaid hoodie like Shahrukh’s in this scene that he likes to wear ALL the time. It’s not my favorite, and he just says, “I’m just trying to look 25 like SRK.”
God willing, this will be next year’s Oscar Best Picture Winner. I saw it at Sundance, and it is searing and phenomenal. Nate Parker teared up at the standing ovation crowd at our screening talking about how difficult it was to get this film made. Deservedly the Audience and Grand Jury prize winner at Sundance.
Scheduled for an October Oscar season release.
This article in Vulture by Mark Harris on the persistent disrespect for Melissa McCarthy is a must read:
No other woman or man unaided by a franchise in the last five years has emerged from nowhere to become such a completely dependable movie star, appearing in one successful film after another and regularly creating product that turns a profit, while maintaining a successful foothold in TV as well.
So why are so many people eager to suggest it’s all a mirage?
Critics can like or dislike these movies and her work in them, but to survey them in toto and perceive uniformity feels like a willful refusal to see her at all, an insistence that the difference between her various performances matters less than the sameness of her strange determination to continue to be Melissa McCarthy while starring in movies. Is it because she looks so different than other movie stars that some people have convinced themselves she’s always the same?
When I first saw the trailer for Fan, I was frankly creeped out by the look of the character Gaurav (the Fan). Through the use of prosthetics and major CGI, the filmmakers have made Shahrukh look just similar enough, and just different enough that it’s eerie. The eyebrows are straightened out of their normal “S” shape. The cheeks are too wide and the teeth different, and mostly, he looks so young!
But once you watch the film, it’s great, because Shahrukh Khan the actor has been able to create two distinct characters in this film. Aryan Khanna is for the most part the real SRK, a little more arrogant and less warm maybe. And Gaurav is the young obsessed fan from Delhi. The prosthetics and CGI let you see them as two different people immediately.
I was fortunate to see Fan before I really read any reviews or saw anything about the plot. Of course, I had my suspicions that this would be a darker psychological thriller, and it most definitely is. I was traveling for a conference in Las Vegas on Friday, and asked at an Indian restaurant which of the total two theaters in town showing Fan would be a safer neighborhood to take an Uber. Totally worth it to see it the first night! I knew a bit what I was getting into, that there would be no songs, but I think the audience I was seeing it with really didn’t know. As the end credits started, the guys behind me said out loud, “What, no song?” The tone and moment that the film ends with, I’m glad that we didn’t have that peppy Fan Anthem song over the credits. It would have been jarring. (Like the credit song was for Badlapur!)
I don’t want to spoiler the movie at all. I’m just going to tell you that you should really see this film. It is a return to Shahrukh the actor, which I had been hoping for! This is acting of a level with Darr, with Swades, or Chak De! Yes, it really is that good. It’s up with all the great performances. I’ve already seen the film twice and I plan on seeing it again in a few days with a friend. For a Shahrukh Khan fan, there is so much to delight in references to real past movies of SRK’s. Real old interview footage, footage from his SLAM! Tour in the US in big stadiums – they even filmed at his home Mannat on his birthday to capture the craziness.
You can guess from the trailer that it’s about a super star, and an obsessed fan, and things are going to get crazy. I’m giving it four and a half stars out of five, because I loved it that much, but there were a few logical leaps in the second half. I’m not sure the logic of the thriller completely worked, but I just loved watching it unfold before my eyes anyway. The action set pieces are really good, and Dubrovnic is gorgeous!! (That’s the rooftop chase from the trailer.)
I’ve seen people say this is a copy of the Robert DeNiro/Wesley Snipes film The Fan, and it really isn’t. Yes, you have an obsessed fan in both thrillers, but that’s where the similarity really ends.
None of the other actors in the movie are big names. There’s another rival “star” in the film named Sid Kapoor that I think is supposed to be a take on Hrithik. I recognized the character actors playing Gaurav’s parents, but really the movie is Shahrukh vs. Shahrukh. I also admire Shahrukh for poking a little fun at his own stardom. There’s a scene where Aryan is performing for a wedding for a huge fee, and even him punching the star Sid Kapoor at a party could be reference to real dustups that Shahrukh has had in his own life. Aryan is an aging star, who has declining box office for his films, and Gaurav at first won’t stand for any rival to take his God, HIS star’s place.
What is fantastic in this double character study is that your sympathies go from one character to the other and back and forth again. There are shades of gray to both characters, and I loved that. This was writer/director Manesh Sharma’s dream project for years. Yash Raj had him prove himself with a few other films first, and he started with Band Baaja Baaraat, and what a debut that was! He had to wait fot the timing to be right for Shahrukh to be involved — really I don’t know if I can think of any other Bollywood actor more perfect for this dual role. It’s a triumph for Shahrukh, Manesh Sharma and the VFX team.
I’m so excited for Raees now!
Here are some of my favorites, in no particular order, although number one is my top favorite.
2. Jab We Met
7. Khoobsurat — Fawad Khan Fever!
10. Queen
11. Bunty Aur Babli
12. Dostana
13. Bang Bang
16. Main Tera Hero
Does DDLJ count? 🙂
And if you’re willing to go outside Hindi cinema, I have a few South Indian films that are great rom coms:
OK Kanmani – 2015 Tamil Mani Ratnam film (currently on US Netflix streaming)
Bangalore Days (Malayalam) – Multi-starrer about three cousins and their romantic adventures
Ohm Shanti Oshaana (Malayalam) – A fantastic female centric coming of age romantic story.
And a Telugu film- Mr. Perfect, a rom com with Prabhas of Baahubali fame:
Fandry was my first Marathi film. It was recommended by several people on my Quora post about why I love Indian cinema. I foolishly asked for recommended films of the commenters, and the list is well over 300 films long now.
I was delighted to discover that Fandry, a film festival favorite, was available on Netflix streaming.
Jabya is an untouchable. He’s the sweetest, most adorable intelligent 7th grade boy who is in love with a fair-skinned higher caste girl. He can’t even bring himself to speak to her. His family are the poorest in the village, and his father and the rest of the family are expected to do all the menial work in the village that no one else will do. The title means “pig” because chasing and killing the wild pigs that live around the village is something no one else will do. Anyone else who is even touched by one of the pigs is defiled.
Your heart bleeds for this boy, and his dreams. His father doesn’t want him to go to school, just wants him to help earn money for the family. Jabya is mortified that his classmates see him having to do horrible jobs, and in the end climax, the verbal abuse piled on him by other men and boys in the village becomes overwhelming rage in Jabya. The final moments of the film left me stunned with my hands over my mouth. So powerful, so heartbreaking.
This is the director’s debut film. No one else was telling his story, so he made this film to tell it. I highly recommend Fandry. It is an incredible parallel cinema film giving you the perspective of an untouchable young boy.
4 1/2 stars out of 5.
Fandry is currently available to watch on Netflix Streaming.
On my Quora post, over and over again, the Kannada commenters listed Lucia by Pawan Kumar as a recommended film. I watched the trailer here and the film is a total mind f*ck kind of trip. Watch the trailer, and you’ll get a taste of what I mean!
First, the way the film got made is totally interesting on its own It was crowdfunded! One of the production thingies at the beginning is “Audience” films, and then they show a grid of like 100 youtube videos of people holding signs. 110 people contributed to make the film, for like $70,000. It won the audience award at the London Indian film festival, where it premiered, and was short listed for the Oscars film from India.
YES, it’s that good!!
It’s a micro-budget film, but one of those indie feeling films where they were super creative and did a LOT with very little. It would totally fit in at Sundance.
So, what’s it about? Lucia is the name of the Lucid dream drug. The movie starts with policemen investigating why a certain patient is in a coma — and news TV debates whether euthanasia should be allowed.
The movie is very non-linear. We flash from color scenes of Nikki, a “torch-shiner” or usher in a tiny little theater in Bangalore, who lives in a shack with 4 other guys. He’s an insomniac, and a local drug-peddler gives him a sleeping pill, Lucia, that will give him dreams so real, he’ll feel that he lived them. But if he stops taking the pills, the dreams become nightmares.
The dreams are in black and white, and suddenly Nikki is Nikhil, a movie star! It’s like Wizard of Oz in reverse, as all the people in his humble life are in the movie star life, which is black and white. His uncle the little theater owner, is now his trusted manager. The pizza parlor waitress girl he’s crushing on as Nikki, is his item number girl in the movie he’s filming.
Lots of meta commentary on the value of the little tiny one screen theaters. And life as a movie star in India, etc.
The main actor, Sathish Ninasam, who plays Nikki/Nikhil is amazing. He is this humble sweet poor schlub Nikki, who doesn’t even think he deserves a cute pizza parlor girl and then he has this amazing confident movie star air as Nikhil. The main actress who plays the pizza parlor girl and the item number girl, the love interest in both worlds, is pretty good. I especially love her as the spunky pizza parlor girl. She tries to get Nikki to learn English and get a job at a multiplex, which leads to some very humorous scenes.
The film has sweetness, and a very filmi romance while also being a near Matrix level psychological — which-world-is-real kind of sci-fi plot. This is an Indian film where the script is truly king. It is quite the story — certainly not like anything else in Indian film, and yet, with the dual role, so very filmi at the same time!
I now feel like I have to go back and thank each of those people who recommended this on the Quora post. So good and so interesting! I really enjoyed the roller coaster ride. The director’s next film, U-Turn, is evidently about to come out. Lucia got rave tweets from Irrfan Khan and Anurag Kashyap tweeted “My birthday gift to myself would be lucia…”
Highly recommend this quirky strange wonderful Kannada film. 4 1/2 stars out of 5.
YES!!! Is there anyone more perfect to inhabit J. K. Rowling’s magical universe than Eddie Redmayne? He’s always seemed like an actor from another time, so a period film like this is just spot on for him. Super excited to see Colin Farrell as a wizard, too!
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