Siddharth Pillai
It all happened with Arnold's raised Austrian finger gently descendin into a pool of molten iron.. then there was Ben Hur's chariot race, the ghost by the stairs in Evil Dead, Sreenivasan's guy next door, shilpa shetty giving to UP- Bihar, Mumbai ka Bhai kaun.... I was in. Suckered. Seduced.

 

Siddharth Pillai's Blog

  • 13
    Primer: Here and Now
    On the surface Shane Carruth’s sci-fi mindbender ‘Primer’ is a film of the most modest means, executed with austerity, intelligence, confidence and the labor of love and one that never muddles into camp, whimsy or gore, as is so often the norm when science fiction meets the lowest of budgets. For all the inventiveness of its shot-in-the-family-backyard production...
    by Siddharth Pillai at May 9th, 2010 at 05:05 pm
  • 10
    The Man Who Fell To Earth: Plastic Human Syndrome
    “I said Hello to the grief bird, Hello grief bird, what’s happening, Ashes, Pits of ashes.” - The Fugs, Coming Down If the strange room in which astronaut Dave finds himself in the beguiling denouement of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ had a television, the feed would have undoubtedly resembled a Nicolas Roeg film. A Roeg film at its best unfolds like a rogue transmission...
    by Siddharth Pillai at April 8th, 2010 at 04:04 pm
  • 29
    Road, Movie: Call Me The Breeze
    ‘Please, don’t spoil my day, I’m miles away And after all I’m only sleeping Keeping an eye on the world going by my window Taking my time’ – Lennon & McCartney, I’m Only Sleeping, Director Dev Benegal’s first full length directorial venture in 10years ‘Road, Movie’ is as one of Richard Linklater’s iconic slackers ‘The...
    by Siddharth Pillai at April 6th, 2010 at 03:04 pm
  • 5
    Blast of Silence: Scream went the Night that Nobody Heard
    A fully-loaded .38 can go off 6 times. All fatal, depending of course, on the hand that wields it. The seventh time it inevitably gives a harmless little click. Now it’s just a cigarette lighter run out of fuel. Just a kid’s toy that looks like a .38. Lokhand ka Paperweight. ‘Click’ goes the hollow cylinder. The gun did not hush up; it did not so much as go quiet....
    by Siddharth Pillai at February 26th, 2010 at 01:02 pm
  • 5
    IFFK 2009 (5th and Final Day): The Blow-Out
    Today at around 5pm, as Raul Ruiz’s ‘Nucingen House’, a fantasy filled with the fluid that makes time-space of memories and experiences, ended with ruminations on journeys against a black screen, the curtains went down on IFFK 2009 and all the faithful that had gathered and stayed till the lag end called it with wolf whistles and loud applause. And that was it....
    by Siddharth Pillai at December 18th, 2009 at 03:12 pm
  • 0
    IFFK 2009 (Day 3 & 4): Alcoholous Anonymics
    Dr. Fu Man Chu got on the boat today. He received a brief message in the morning underlining that it was most imperative for him to return to his laboratory at once. The message was simple- ‘The albino gorilla has given birth (stop) It is a boy (stop).’ His time was up. His time had just begun. Next stop: Genetic modification, anarchy and world conquest. This unholy...
    by Siddharth Pillai at December 17th, 2009 at 05:12 pm
  • 7
    IFFK 2009 (Day 2): Sickness in the Quiet Kingdom
    The Indian Coffee House has all the acoustics of a wind chime. Everything inside seems to go ‘clang’. The waiter serves the water with one, brush against a neighbors table and ‘clangg clang’, and from the kitchen, a continuous tumble of clang, clang, clang and yet another, clang. The redoubtable Doctor and yours truly sit across a table amidst so much cling-clang...
    by Siddharth Pillai at December 15th, 2009 at 04:12 pm
  • 7
    IFFK 2009 (Day 1):Amphibians and Aviators
    The sun is out and she’s shining one hell of a scorcher on this particular Trivandrum December. Reptilian heat- one that crawls out your pores and creeps down the spine. The eyes declare fever- blurry narcotic colors, blind flashes, silver streaks, orange and green flares. The Swiss army knife Trivandrum edition comes equipped with a pair of cool green aviators. Screw...
    by Siddharth Pillai at December 14th, 2009 at 04:12 pm
  • 8
    9: 8-7-6-5-4-3-2-PTOOF!
    Shane Acker, all said and done, sure got one thing right. If you’re going to make an addendum to one of the most beloved artifacts in the pop culture universe and if you don’t want to commit a McG-sized (Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Terminator Salvation) motion picture embarrassment, the guy you take notes from is the one and only Mr. James Cameron. When faced...
    by Siddharth Pillai at September 9th, 2009 at 08:09 am
  • 21
    Plan 9 from Dimension X
    The delusional is our only hope.’ – Chairman Mick Farren If you’re looking for reality in the cinema (whatever that may be), if your delicate senses are offended by the grotesque pageantry of the human imagination, if you like to strut around all-goody-two-shoes trying to uphold the merits of practicality… well, take a hike honey....
    by Siddharth Pillai at September 2nd, 2009 at 12:09 am
  • 22
    Khopadi ke Antariksh Ki Devi: Patala Bhairavi
    Captain’s Log: 2.2.2201 The Command and crew of Explopod 9 finds itself in a unique position commonly referred to by gin’d up gumshoes as ‘nothing to lose’. If the crew were any more than a peg-legged scarecrow remains of a man and a fresh-faced beardless stripling, one could expect a mutiny. But as bad karma or plain good old bad luck would have it, Explopod...
    by Siddharth Pillai at August 29th, 2009 at 01:08 am
  • 28
    The Bone Carnival Blues
    Gene Loomis: Y’know, it’s hard to believe you’re a grown-up. Ruth Corday: No kidding. Lawrence Woolsey: You think grown-ups have it all figured out? That’s just a hustle, kid. Grown-ups are making it up as they go along, just like you. You remember that, and you’ll do fine. – Joe...
    by Siddharth Pillai at August 20th, 2009 at 12:08 am
  • 26
    Maps from Beyond Dark Corners
    As to why one embarks on making a habit of alcohol consumption, I do suppose there are reasons. In the beginning you can pretty much get it down to a face or two- women, boss, co-workers, friends- sometimes all of it rolled up into one face fatale but as the months and years swim by, the reasons pretty much cease to matter. Or more accurately, they change. The pub, the...
    by Siddharth Pillai at August 13th, 2009 at 07:08 am
  • 12
    Spirits of the Laboratory: Bela Lugosi
    Eureka! He screamed and fanciful Archimedes ran buck naked through the markets of Athens. Unfortunately, modern science and modern society offer no such avenues for sheer unadulterated giddy celebration. All it offered me was a pat in the back by my trusty man-servant Lug (formerly Jeanine) who with one final lobotomy still pending (we’re still awaiting an appropriate...
    by Siddharth Pillai at August 6th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
  • 9
    The Naked Kiss: Exploits of a Heart Torn Out The Chest
    The body accounts for no sin. Between life and death, it is merely a soft machine on which we’ve hitched a ride. What lies beyond those two known constants is the stuff of debates on the grand revelation- paradise, hell, reincarnation, darkness or the great ecstasy. What lies tucked in between, the soft stuff, is the stuff of life. “I really believe that it’s the...
    by Siddharth Pillai at July 17th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
  • 27
    I Love You: Positively Disturbing Scenes from the Mall
    “So you know the words by heart. You can play the tune blindfolded. You can even wear that black leather jacket, chew a cigar, sharp shoes…. keep your hat on. But the question remains- Can you feel the blues? Do you have the soul for it?” - Toots Sweet Life can be one helluva drag. We all live with that. Or there’s that gun under the pillow. Too messy,...
    by Siddharth Pillai at May 8th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
  • 10
    Naan Kadavul: Exterminate All the Brutes!
    Before I descend into the maddening chaos of Naan Kadavul and try to put into so many words the twisted, discordant scapes it evoked in my head, and lest I lose myself again somewhere between the nightmare and the ecstasy, I would like to declare the enigmatic Bala’s latest opus to be not just an instance of powerful even revolutionary cinema but of cinema itself...
    by Siddharth Pillai at March 6th, 2009 at 06:03 pm
  • 11
    Dead Man: On the Horizon or In your Head
    They would like you to believe in a world that is ‘flat’. No, it is not even such a wondrous idea as that of an immense intergalactic road-roller flattening our planet into a double-spread. No, it is not the idea of our planet floating thin and weightless in outer space ether like a discarded spectral love-letter blown by strong melancholy gusts of wind. They...
    by Siddharth Pillai at January 13th, 2009 at 02:01 am
  • 18
    Burn After Reading: Wise Men say,”Fools Rush In”
    I hate every ape I see, From chimpan-A to chimpanzee, No, you’ll never make a monkey out of me! - Planet of the Apes: The Musical, A Fish Called Selma, Simpsons Season 7 The Art of Foolishness. Sure it took integrity, painstaking, back breaking, gravity defying work to paint the Glory of God and his creation up on the sprawling roof of the Sistine Chapel but it...
    by Siddharth Pillai at December 24th, 2008 at 03:12 am
  • 13
    Maharathi: Murder is in the Details (Zero Spoiler Review)
    Rarely have I seen Bollywood dole out such measured doses. Deft execution, a perfect pitch and in a low key. Shivam Nair’s sophomore flick ‘Maharathi’ hardly qualifies as great or even memorable but it packs in moments of perfection, moments where all the elements in a frame come together and achieve an impossibly low-key crescendo that is the hallmark...
    by Siddharth Pillai at December 5th, 2008 at 03:12 am
  • 5
    Turkish Delight: Only For Adults or Those in the Grip of Mad Love or Those who have once been and now Remember Vividly
    Young, mad love is some kind of a veritable monster. To hold her by the waist turn her full circle dizzy in the head intense surge through the viens your six senses overload with an electric pulse reality dissolves into your being you into her and she into yours the moment, the now is within the two of you. The universe gone bonkers. Lips smash into each other with a...
    by Siddharth Pillai at December 4th, 2008 at 04:12 am
  • 5
    Hey Ram: Sanity, Love, Pretty Eyes & a Better Tomorrow
    The first reaction is an implosion of the senses. The ugliness of the news flash assaults you like a charged bolt of lightning and the fever-pitch commentary fills your head, cramming in like a high tide of so many disjointed fragments. Shock-awe-reality-unreality-fear-disbelief. The calculation is quick, an almost frantic juggling, as your mortal human head reels in...
    by Siddharth Pillai at November 28th, 2008 at 09:11 pm
  • 7
    Un Flic (A Cop): Dirty Mouth don’t care about the Truth but tells Beautiful Lies
    Chapter 1 The Truth about Bob Dylan “All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie” An essential quandary of the world delivered with an impossibly terse memorable elliptical paradoxical swing at the big void that asserts and negates itself at one and the same time. In other words, Typical Dylan. (shrugs) He further underscores the impossibility improbability...
    by Siddharth Pillai at November 13th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
  • 19
    Down by Law: The Loneliness of Jim Jarmusch
    Not that it would make any difference. But if only for the sake of morale, you are willing to admit that it’s a welcome shade of orange that breaks east at the horizon of what has been a roughandtumble one hell of fucked up night. A dull weariness works on your bones, your mind swirls in and out of a strange daze that threatens to rot you from within, and frankly,...
    by Siddharth Pillai at October 23rd, 2008 at 05:10 am
  • 13
    Samsara: Boner Nirvana
    It could have been a simple, minimalistic, resonating fable on the nature of human desire and renunciation, something out of a slightly perverse Jataka Tale (one hidden by a secret society of megalomaniac monks?? The Buddha Code anyone?), with even a smarter-than-your-average animal thrown in for a not-so-subtle-metaphor. But Director Pan Nalin seems more inclined to peddle...
    by Siddharth Pillai at August 30th, 2008 at 05:08 am
  • 5
    From Beyond: Gods, Monsters and That Sexual Feeling
    ‘It’s running itself’ Jeffery Comb playing the poor and unfortunate Crawford Tillinghast channels from the high camp of the horror classics of Hammer, Castle and Whale pedigree as he unleashes a scream of pure terror into Stuart Gordon’s astutely judged close up. ‘Something’s Coming’ Ted Sorrel’s Dr. Pretorius, grins a malicious grin in reply that only...
    by Siddharth Pillai at July 16th, 2008 at 12:07 am
  • 8
    Zabriskie Point: She Looks a River when She Talks of Rain
    The night before was the one everyone had feared they had coming for quite sometime now. Global warming, atomic holocaust, communal violence, civil strife… the reasons had multiplied and there was some awareness and intuitions but nobody wants to the spoil the show when the going’s great. “Look here,” said the clown,” How would you like a hamburger?”...
    by Siddharth Pillai at July 2nd, 2008 at 07:07 am
  • 8
    The Ruling Class: Love Freedom Schizophrenia Fear Loathing
    It was one of those schools that managed to tick about just enough boxes that’ll get them a license/grant/sanction to keep the institution running, teachers and staff employed and kids educated enough to sign their names, recite ‘Babes in the Wood’, do the origami, know their Gandhis, Nehrus and noble gases and pass out of the standard 10 with (as the school...
    by Siddharth Pillai at June 26th, 2008 at 01:06 am
  • 18
    The Happening: A Place Called Hokum
    This one’s for ‘The Birds’, Hitchcock’s Daphne Du Maurier adaptation about a svelte blonde terrifically essayed by the director’s muse and sometime tempestuous obsession Tippi Hedren who visits a small sealocked town which suddenly finds itself under siege from the local birds who inexplicably go on a blind and murderous rampage. Under its apocalyptic nature’s...
    by Siddharth Pillai at June 13th, 2008 at 11:06 am
  • 22
    Sarkar Raj: Get Him While He’s Down Cause He’s Gonna Come Back with a Magnum and then You Gotta Ask Yourself:’Do I Feel Lucky?’ Well Do Ya, PUNK
    A typical Ram Gopal Varma interview is always banal. Even as the media taxes its imagination trying to serve it up with choice tabloid bits, it is at best a politically correct, uneventful even lazy drawl lit up only when a glimmer of arrogance slips in or an apology or when he mentions a forthcoming project (another remake of Sholay!). However as opposed to Mahesh Bhatt...
    by Siddharth Pillai at June 8th, 2008 at 02:06 pm
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