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With year-ends, come lists. Films of 2007 that stick out for honorable and not-so-honorable mention are:

Namesake
Meera Nair’s feted adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri’s book was less than satisfying for me. Devoid of details in the book, the film was a plainer story stitching together the surface stereotypes that NRI families go through. I found Irrfan Khan and Tabu in super form as the Ganguli pair (though wondered if the Bengalis too would agree over their nuances).

Black Friday & No Smoking
Black Friday, on the other hand, was a more satisfying adaptation of the book of the same name. Despite a small production budget, the commentary was able to render pan south Asian feel to the unfolding of the terrorist attacks in Bombay. Whether No Smoking was a good film or a bad film is now a matter of opinion. But it certainly was the most intensely debated – loved and …

Jean-Pierre Melville was there. A full decade before the ‘there’ would be christened La Nouvelle Vague [French New Wave Cinema]. Though released on April 22nd 1949, Melville was filming his debut feature Le Silence de la Mer in 1947 in methods that he himself later enthusiastically acceded as the New Wave aesthetics - “…natural location, non-synchronized shooting, fast film stock, small crew and Henri Decae”, a year before Alexandre Astruc’s ‘The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: The Camera-Stylo’ appeared in L’Ecran Francais on March 30th 1948. Few years before Andre Bazin brought out the inaugural issue of Cahiers du Cinema in 1951. Much before two pioneering, seminal rant-of-articles published in the same issue #31 of Cahiers du Cinema by future-filmmakers – Francois Truffaut’s ‘A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema’ and Jacques Rivette’s ‘The Age of Directors’.

Melville quietly, & independently, continued making his trend-setting films, while …

Pina Bausch in India

German choreographer Pina Bausch has dubbed her new, Asian-inspired dance to be performed next month in India the “Bamboo Blues,”.

The Wuppertal Dance Theatre is set to visit India January 7-19, playing in New Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai.

New Delhi: 7.01.07
Mumbai: 12.01.07
Kolkata: 18.01.07 & 19.01.07

Please nb: both in Delhi and in Mumbai, the performance will take place within the Festival of the National School of Drama!

Bausch, 67, had decided on the “inspiring” title after a visit to Kyoto, Japan. The piece was devised in 2006 in consultation with the Goethe Institute, the German cultural agency, in India, and was premiered in Germany in May this year without any name as the company’s “new work.”

As part of its golden jubilee celebrations The National School of Drama presents Bamboo Blues: a dance theatre production by Pina Bausch and the Tanztheater Wuppertal and a co-production with the Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavans …

iView Author: SimplySami
(Toronto, Canada)

Email: simply.sami [at] gmail [dot] com

A Chapter From Life

Taare Zameen Par: Stars found on earth.

Stars! Stars found on earth? A normal individual walking down the street would find this idea absurd!! Would call the person crazy? How can stars be found on earth? If for once we step back and realize not objectively but through the vision of the writer, Stars are indeed found on earth. Stars that shine above our heads, that illuminate our small dark world can be found on earth. Those stars represent every child that is born on this earth. Children are like small twinkling stars who spread their love towards us adults. They light your world, their innocence would make you forget your troubles, their tears would wrench your heart and their smile would melt your heart. Taare Zameen Par takes us into a world which transports …

A story, some questions and a lot of Home Work for 2008!

Once upon a time in the Washington DC Area…
I was in Thai Corner Bethesda having a quick lunch, before catching a film at the Landmark Theatre and in my hand was “The Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide”.
I was yet to make a foray into films, even my shorts or documentaries were a long ways off but that did not deter me from sprinting before I learnt to crawl!
My waiter kept throwing curious glances at me. He was Thai and I sighed.
What is it about Asian Men; can’t they leave a woman alone?
He comes upto me
“Are you in the movies?”
“I wish!”
“I am reading something really interesting too”
Abay khaana la [insert thought bubble] / GET THE FOOD man.
Some waiters have no sense of etiquette,this was too forward of him.No tip.
“Really. How nice”
It is not everyday …

 
“The reels roll.
Colors of yesteryears
bloom again!”

It’s that time of the year again! Bidding adios to the old while you usher the new year in — sure, we’ve stopped having new year’s and have been having recycled years instead, but that’s a different post though — and getting reminiscent about the best of the movies during the year that’s gone by.

Boilerplate Smallprint: In lieu of BF & NS, this is definitely NOT a definitive list - and having not watched *all* the movies of 2007, I am not in a position to make any claims as such. 

300

What happens when you take a group of artistes, give them a digital canvas and a box of CGI paints with multiple hues of crimson thrown in? A comic book comes alive — Togas, Sandals, Swords, Battles — an epic is unveiled. Kudos to the unflinching storytelling aptly supported by …

Simply because it has to pave the way for bigger better animation movies that can compete on the international level. Return Of Hanuman can’t, because it falls way below the mark. It has got great reviews but largely because the way it unfolds, it entertains , but when you talk quality, it’s lacking. Whose fault is it other than mine? What does it take to make a great animation movie? Time.. the money, because that buys us time, if not time then it buys us more manpower.. Who do we blame for the quality of animation.. You can not blame the animators..Certainly not TOONZ who did the animation, they have done far better work and if you see closely there are bits in ROH that are brilliant.. those are the bits that were done earlier, they took there own time before things were hurried up..We can not compare our level …

Michael Winterbottom’s A Mighty Heart can be an illuminating study of how a director can use his talent to project his worldview and create something subtly different from his source material, and, also how cinema today is dominated by commercial concerns and often gets beaten into flatter and sanitized versions from what was held as its potential.

Michael Winterbottom has made close to thirty films in less than 20 years of his career. His eclectic and often praiseworthy output includes literary adaptations (A Cock and Bull Story), docu-drama (The Road to Guantanamo), biopic (24-hour Party People), war film (Welcome to Sarajevo), thriller (Butterfly Kiss) , sci-fi (Code 46), Western (The Claim) and something close to pornography (9 Songs). He himself has said that his films are largely about ‘people and places’, and where he combines social realism with stylistic experiments.

A Mighty Heart is based on the book with the same …

The greatest virtue that creative individuals ought to be endowed with is this belief …..”I was a stupid kid two years back…. I think I have grown”..
If you divide your life-span into sectors of two years each and if you believe that every new segment instills in you the belief that your preceding life-segment was lived in inferior taste you are doing just about fine..

Its weird when you advertise a solitiary commodity by holding it responsible for your personal growth in any way…
It might seem like you are re-doing one of those soda commercials where soda companies hold their brand as being the one singular thing responsible for every personal ammendment your life has seen since you had that first sip of their brand of soda..

And even at the risk of tracing that path of sounding overtly one-dimensional in my outlook I have to confess, Seinfeld to me is …

iView Author: P(L)AYBACK (Mumbai, India)

Email: playback2007 [at] gmail [dot] com

Return of Hanuman - An Animated Stance

A cauldron full of fun ! A light hearted, breezy yarn which demystifies and delights ! Sitting in an audience full of restless children, I couldnt help but notice how Anurag directly connected with them. They relished the irreverence and guffawed at the tounge-in-cheek humour.

“The little birdie with a crush on Hanuman”,…”Menaka.com”,…”Shukra TV”,…”Narad doing an impromptu rock guitar lead”,…Anurag’s imagination runs wild, giving TZP’s Ishaan a run for his money ! ( kiddin ! ) :)

( Catch my critiue on TZP at http://passionforcinema.com/taare-zameen-par-a-tale-of-two-ditties )

The true critics of this film are the children and their verdict is unanimous as we jostle out of the theater. Three cheers for AK !!!

However, this being an animation film, I feel compelled to address the animation as such. Evidently we …

A tale of an Artist.

Starring: Darsheel Safary, Amir Khan.
Screenplay by: Amol Gupte.
Directed by: Amir Khan.

A drop of a red paint falls on a canvas. Then a finger comes and adds some yellow color to that drop. The drop shows some light turbulent mixing of smaller pigments of yellow and red, then that same finger starts mixing those colors. Then appears a creation of color on canvas as seen by Ishaan (Darsheel Safary), an 8-year old kid who just destroyed his graded exam solution of non-art subjects. Well, because he failed in those. There is something that drives Ishaan away from the books and exams to painting, to catching fishes in the gutter, to jigsaw puzzles, to almost anything that catches his eyes. He mentions his teacher that the letters in the book are dancing. That would make him dyslexic. But not dumb. Perhaps his vision is different than an average …

It’s kind of a ritual for critics in the West to pick the Top 10 films of the year gone by and even here in Bollywood newspapers and news channels are pouncing on the habit. But sadly, most of the papers and channels pick the Top 10 based on box office collections. While that to me is a great barometer to judge the quality of the film, it is not necessarily the best one. The paper I write for, they too, are going by the box office profits as a basis for zeroing on the best films of the year 2007. Which gives me complete liberty to pick my favourite 10 Bollywood films of this year. Here they are in no particular order with a couple of lines on why I think they should be on the list.

1. Chak De! India - Formula story reaching great heights for the choice …

WELCOME -full of nonsense

Overall grading: B-
Director: Anees Bazmee

Pehaps after success of No Entry director Anees Bazmee thought “chalo No Entry hit hui hai to usi type ki ek aur comedy banate hai”. Let’s take love story of Gangster’s sister and an average boy. OK concept is good but then what? How to develop script? OK… add some songs picturised in Dubai, South Africa, Take big star cast Add illogical comedy sequences, poor jokes …. And most important constatnt TV campaning…. Ek baar public ne ticket kharid li to wapas to nahin karegi… aur.film dekhke medical store waalon (Asprin) ko bhi thodi kamaai ho jaaye to thoda bahot commission bhi pakka… So he made WELCOME.

Yes I know we should not try to find any logic in a comedy movie….but welcome is illogical as well as full of nonsense. Welcome has that kind of nonsense that can not be tolerated …

iView Author:Wise Desi (Fremont, USA)

Email:withheld

A Cine-fan’s Journey from Bollywood to Hollywood and Back

I consider myself a cine-buff in an average cine goer way, the one who enjoys all kind of movies. As I have stated earlier I don’t like the term Bollywood, but using it anyway for this post it fits the title.

Being born in a small conservative town of India and growing up during the terrible (in every which way) 80’s India, my early exposure to cinema was limited to the Sunday 5:45 pm show on Doordarshan. And those of you who have seen this era might remember the kind of movies DD used to inflict upon us. Most of the times, these used to be flop movies at least 15-20 years old, lying in some dust bin that somebody forgot to clean-up for years and years. I am …

Since Its that time of the year when everyone looks back & gives their list of things. I’m gonna do a do a series on them. I’ll start with the best things I discovered this year but which may not necessarily belong to this year. These are books i loved, movies I discovered, music I loved, youtube videos that entertained me.

Books -

1) Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone - Rajiv Chandrasekaran
http://tinyurl.com/2as35t
This is a must read for anyone who wants to know what & how things went wrong in the 1st 3 years of the war. Chandrasekaran was the Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post. The reason this book tops my list is because its a very objective account of what happened. Its not a leftist journalists rants against the stupidity of this administration. Infact Paul Greengrass(Bourne Ultimatum, United 93) is going to make …

We all know the hit numbers and the shit numbers. But with so many music channels and fm stations playing music all the time, the hit numbers starts hammering after a point. The only reason why i could never enjoy chal chaiyaa chaiyya (dil Se) and kajrare kajrare ( Bunty aur Babli). Overplay always does this for me. It kills the song.

This year it was bahut-zyada-dard-e-disco song that made me insane. The joy lies in discovering the unknown gem. One that your friends still havent heard and when you make them hear they want a copy or play it in infinite loop then and there. And whenever i discover a new song or a new voice that people havent heard much, am always on seventh heaven. Feel like shouting from there to tell everyone about that voice/song. So, here’s my list of songs that i loved, played in infinte …

One fine day I noticed that I have around 20-odd films lying with me that I am yet to watch. So, I rummaged through them and randomly started selecting. Hence, over the past three days, I have watched “Turistas’ (USA), followed by ‘Wolf Creek’ (Australia), and “Spoorloos” (Netherlands/France).

Films watched in such a random order almost always entails serendipity. For example, I remember watching ‘Vertigo’ and ‘Basic Instinct’ back to back and I can vouch for it that the change of color of dresses worn by Kim Novak’s character in the former has an eerie similarity to that of Sharon Stone’s character in the latter! Now, can that be true?

This time, the common thread between the aforementioned films was ‘disappearance’. While ‘Turistas’ deals with disappearance of tourists in Brazil; ‘Wolf Creek’ is concerned with the same in the Australian outback. As I was watching those two, I was thinking how …

iView Author: Srinivas N(Mumbai , India)
Email: Withheld

Creativity at Its Best - 2007

Another year goes by and we are left wondering if we were any better than the last. In terms of fresh ideas and unique concepts, we seem to be totally bankrupt. Our Hindi film industry seems to look no further than love, comedy and action. Most of these ideas are anyway copied from foreign language movies. Let’s take a look at some of both Hollywood and Hindi movies released this year and calculate our creative ruin. (Not necessarily in the order of release dates)

Coming in early this year in Hollywood was “Happily N’Ever After”, a story about an alliance of evil fairy tale-doers, who wants to take control over Fairy tale land.

Well, sometimes I wonder how the heck those guys think about such fascinating ideas. Our Indian …

2nd plug in a row.

Sincere apologies to do this. But in desperate times, one resorts to desperate means.

The thing is, we had a show of MEDHA & ZOOMBISH II, today, 26th December @ Prithvi House. AND we had a poor house.

So please HELP the cause. Those of you who have the time (and inclination), to see a fun play, PLEASE drop in tomorrow for:

MEDHA & ZOOMBISH II
(Education + Nonsensification = Something Ookie)

27th December (Thurs) - 11 am
PRITHVI THEATRE. Janki Kutir. Juhu.
Tickets: Rs 50/-
STRICTLY, NO LATE ENTRY!
Tel No: 26149546!

Hmm.

MEDHA & ZOOMBISH II is a musical.

The twenty odd cast members consist of very talented college students. And most of them play, themselves.

The students have helped me script, and design and direct the show.

MEDHA & ZOOMBISH II been co-directed by PFCite: Chaitanya Tamhane along with Sudeep Modak. The music has been designed two very young people: Akshata Sawant & Swapnil Ajgaonkar

WHAT THE MEDIA …

iView Author:Wise Desi (Fremont, USA)

Email:withheld

Tribute (and a kick) to Oz

I consider myself a cine-buff, not in a cine-snob way but more in the ways of an average fan who likes and enjoys all sorts of movies. I love Yashraj or Karan Johar films, at the same time also loved RGV and his brilliance in ‘Satya’ and ‘Company’.

I also watch lot of Hollywood movies in a similar manner . I enjoy westerners as much as sc-fi films such as Star Wars series or comic hero movies such as ‘Spiderman’. I have also enjoyed a ‘Memento’, ‘Mulholland Dr’ a ‘Blue Velvet’ and all sorts of weird movies as my wife calls them. I also feast on horror flicks such as ‘The Ring’, ‘Omen, ‘Nightmare series ‘ etc. It’s hard to confess but I have enjoyed romantic comedies such as ‘Sleepless …