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Many of us must have experienced the deep ecstasies and depressions that music can induce. By depression I mean the immense sadness one can be moved to by soul-stirring music.

I have a habit of constantly singing. Whatever comes to my mind. The other day I was specially enjoying singing ‘Tu mera hero hain’ from Subhash Ghai’s Hero. Didn’t know all the words so smashits.com zindabad. Suddenly I was listening to everything from ‘Ding Dong’ to ‘Lambi Judaai’. All songs I had grown up with yet today was bringing me some other satisfaction. ‘Nindiya se jaagi bahaar’ was making me feel 17 and all dreamy all over again and ‘Lambi Judaai’ was driving me to tears and goosebumps again.

There is something about teen love songs. Listen to ‘Nindiya se jaagi bahaar’ for example. It’s not a love song as such but so evocative in its mood of a young, teen …

So it finally happened! When I’d first chhedofied the idea of a meet-up it was quite tentatively. You see, this was my first official Pfc meet (well, so it was for Pfc as well, hehehe) and till then I had met only Karthik Krishnan who is as scary in person as he sounds on the site so was wondering how would it be meeting others who just might be like him. Jokes apart, well, it was cool! Quite cool infact. :) And the others ain’t like him!

Prastut hain ek vistrit report apki samvaadaata Fatema Kagalwala se.

15th June, 5 pm Juhu Mocha it was and Karthik, Phoenixnu, Vasan, Kenny and yours truly kicked off the historic meet-up with cheering over glasses of water, well, in our hearts and minds. (I did. And guys, if you didn’t, then shame on you!) And we also did something that we kept doing …

Sort of in between a rant and musings…

Was at the Sarkar Raj press show at Famous yesterday. Well, as expected was house full. The sixty-seater was exploding with around hundred people from the press (we have SO many reviewers amongst us and not ONE to be proud of???) with so many sitting on the floor, including yours truly.

Well, this is not the first time this has happened. I remember once last year some movie evoked a similar response. And it is when the preview halls are jam-packed that they become the best opportunity to learn something about the cult of our hallowed film journalists/reviewers. That, I felt the same vibes I felt the last time I was among the ‘intellectual elite’ of Bbay’s film-dom and media, I felt an urge to share thoughts on it.

Everyone from Taran Adarsh to Khalid Mohammed to Mayank Shekhar to, I assume, Raja Sen (I …

I have been at a strange phase of movie-watching since quite some time now. The natural curiosity to watch a story unfold is lost. I remember this began early this millennium when the Hindi film industry was at its all-time low in terms of stories and presentation. Not much of a Hollywood fan and back in the college days, access to world cinema was a thing almost unheard of and the Hindi movies around weren’t anything to perk up the slightest of interest. A cool time-pass was all that was expected but no, not happening.

I remember watching old movies with mum on Saturday evenings and random afternoons and relishing the experience like no other. And even today those (or select foreign movies) are the only one’s that can raise any kind of interest. Is this got to do with some kind of over-exposure? No. There is real long way to …

As we stand on the threshold of PfC Ronin’s first round, perhaps this is the best time to discuss film criticism and reviewing. And then again, the subject needs no opportune time as it is one of the biggest banes of our industry and the art of film-making in India, needing most urgent attention.

The purpose of this article is to stress upon the need of a defining school of film criticism and try and assess what (our) film criticism should ideally be like.

More often than not film criticism is confused with ‘reviewing’. Both though overlapping, are not the same however. Film criticism analyzes, theorizes and scientifically critiques the film. A review explains superficially, it also advises a viewer on how watchable or not the film is if at all along with perceiving the effect it will have on its audience, its motive and the purpose. The former does not make …