2009 – so far so good
I was recently having a conversation with a friend who is a reviewer and he was in the midst of picking his best films of 2008. That’s when I started thinking about it. I suppose the norm is to pick 10 best films. I fell way short of this number.
Well, now I’m being a little unfair – there are a couple of films I did like. Aamir and Oye Lucky stand out from the lot. But the year belonged to all the uninspiring biggies which went on to set the box office on fire.
Then came 2009!
And with it came, first, Slumdog Millionaire.
Exceptionally good film! I still don’t believe it deserves the loads of Oscar nominations. I felt this film was just an excuse to string together breathtaking visuals. Having watched scores of Oscar films year after year, I’ve started believing they’re supposed to be perfect. Flawless. And they usually don’t try to overtly impress you. Slumdog fell short in these areas. Add to that the fact that every Indian who saw the film is aware that the protagonist sounds anything but Indian, while the rest of the world is blissfully oblivious to the fact and showering awards on the film. Don’t get me wrong, such niggles aside, it was a brilliant film.
Then came Luck By Chance. With that has arrived a new kind of sensibility to Indian cinema. In many ways it paves the way for more sensible cinema to come. Never mind the fact that it had SRK, Aamir, Hrithik and everyone else in the industry lending their names to lure audiences. I’d have gone anyway.
And then Indian cinema came of age! With Dev D. It oozes with style, with art, with wit, with color… You name it, it’s got it. Music, performances. Did I say humor? (In Devdas, of all stories!) Just reading PFC, I can see the bloggers going gaga over the film.
And we’re only in Feb! We have almost 11 more months to go. If the start is any indication, the year looks promising!
Cheers to that!
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
What about president is coming? A solid satire and India’s first mocumentary to boot. How come its getting such short thrift here?
Yes I would not count Slumdog as an Indian Movie.
But Luck By Chance ,Dev.d has Definitely has raise hopes.
Looking forward for Gulaal next month.
I feel 2009 is going to be a year on the lines of 2006 when we had a lot of good films.Waiting for Vishal’s Ishqiya and Kameenay(I love the title!!),Karan’s Wake Up Sid,Three idiots,Delhi 6,Jail and many more this year.