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Being an Aquarian, I am guilty of a bad road sense. I don’t know the Sun-sign (or should I say, Tashan-sign?) of debutant director Vijay Krishna Acharya, but let me tell you, this guy gave me a huge ego boost. Think about this - you go from Mumbai to Haridwar, via Ladakh and if that is not enough, you travel from Haridwar to Rajastan via Ladakh again!

I am not quite sure what the word ‘Tashan’ actually stands for. Some say, it means ’style’, according to others, it means ‘attitude’. However, the most apt description was found in the film itself, mouthed by Ibrahim, the real life son of Saif Ali Khan - ‘Bull shit…with a cherry on top’.

So, what is the cherry, one might ask. It is a red convertible which, changes during a seesaw ride that ultimately lands itself into deep water. No, nothing Bond-ish happens. It is just …

There’s a certain euphoria involved when one, as a viewer, realizes that one of your childhood heroes has actually brought back a character one eulogized as a kid, and has made a film for all those fans out there.

That’s precisely what ‘John Rambo’ is all about - a film for the fans of a character which has crossed the threshold and entered the realm of an icon.

Like many others, I also can’t believe that it has been twenty years since the bow-wielding, machine-gun toting, bandanna wearing Rambo made its last appearance. Yes, it made me feel old, because I still remember watching Rambo III on a VHS. I also remember watching First Blood Part II in a small movie theater in Calcutta, called ‘Elite’. Don’t know if the hall is still there, considering the plethora of multiplexes mushrooming in the city I was born and brought up in.

I …

In a scene in Satyajit Ray’s ‘Nayak’ (The Hero), the protagonist arrives at a pre-determined location, at his old friend’s request. When he reaches there, he sees that what his friend wants him to do is to be a part of a protest being held in front of a factory. The obviously uncomfortable, to the point of being embarrassed, protagonist backs out in his car, as he puts on his dark glasses, unable to meet the eye of his friend.

In the words of Fred Allen, “A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well-known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.” The dark glasses appear on the faces of both the protagonists in ‘Nayak’ and ‘Halla Bol’ - not as a protection from being recognized, but as a means to hide their own conscience. And both films deal a lot about conscience.

While Ray’s …

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 …

When the tagline of a film reads “An elite FBI team sent to find a killer in Saudi Arabia. Now they have become the target.”, one knows before setting foot inside the theater that the silver screen will be laced with dollops of jingoism.

This statement, however, takes nothing away from films such as Gaghan’s Syriana, or Greengrass’ United 93. In fact, of late, at least some filmmakers belonging to mainstream Hollywood have tried to break the shackles, while attempting cinema with political undertones - Stephen Gaghan (mainstream Hollywood film: Abandon), for example, or Paul Greengrass (made The Bourne Ultimatum). To be very frank, I had not heard of either of these directors when I watched their ‘political’ films but was, on both occasions, pleasantly surprised. I did not have much clue about Peter Berg, either, whose The Kingdom released here in Delhi two days ago.

But the opening credits …

It is said that “Psycho” (1960) gave birth to this new genre called “slasher” flicks. And with slashers was born the concept of the relentless, merciless killing machine, a la Leatherface (From Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Jason Voorhes (from Friday the 13th), Michael Myers (from Halloween), Freddy Krueger (from A Nightmare on Elm Street), to name just a few. Even the T1000 from Terminator 2; the eponymous Predator and Alien fall under the same category, though they did not feature in films which can be termed slashers.

What interests me most about these characters is the weapons they use: Leatherface uses a chainsaw; Jason a machete; Freddy has needles for fingers; Predator has an arsenal at his disposal, while the alien’s biggest weapon is its intelligence. The other similarity I have noticed among these …