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If timing was any kind of a horse, this one would be first past the finishing line. There would be no better time for a film like ‘Jannat’ to hit the screens than now when our nights and evenings are reeling with the spectacle of cricket at its most decadent. To call it ‘rife with possibilities’ is an understatement. Conceptually, this is a loaded gun. And it arrives with one helluva big bang metaphor. Cricket commentary plays on a radio. Emraan Hashmi’s voice cuts through asking to cut out the noise and concentrate on the game of cards. Big Badda Boom! Maximum Impact Metaphor! And Kunal Deshmukh makes his debut and he couldn’t have gotten a louder coconut to crack.

The people who will be going for a movie like ‘Jannat’ could be broadly classified as- the ‘Emraans’ and the ‘non-Emraans’. …

Volkswagen boy walks out of the apple-red phone booth onto the empty noon road. He rests his elbows by the window of his ride and peruses his hair in the side mirror- James Dean stares back. Satisfied, he winks and then stares at his watch- in a half hour he’ll be picking up Miss Daisy Daffodil and they have a date at the picture house. He switches on the radio. The Archies are playing on the box.

‘I only eat Candy”- legend has it these words were said by Andy Warhol in a cocky attempt to cover up his own short-comings when dealing with fancy cutlery in an upscale restaurant.

The picture house is showing- ‘Speed Racer’. Volkswagen Boy and Miss Daisy Daffodil …

Just where does the Great Disco Under the Lungi that Krishnan Iyer MA, nariyalpaniwallah sings about in all dhinchak swagger and gibberish aandu-gundu accent exist? How does one decipher the Ku-Ku-Ku-Ku that allegedly exists behind the choli? What branch of physics, meta or otherwise can explain the never-ending ammunition in Chunkey Pandey’s six-shooter as he somersaults into the villain’s den ready to blow the jaan and saans out of anybody who dares mess with him? What strange vibrations connect the heroine’s father’s nazuk dil to the chaukat that diya that goes kaput as soon as the dil collapses under so much dard?

The Vijay Krishna Acharya would like to present a hypothesis via ‘the coefficient of the linear is just a position by the haemoglobin of the atmospheric pressure in the …

I. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust… the journey of the flesh. If there is indeed a soul or an immortal being it will pass on perhaps into another vessel of flesh, perhaps oblivion. But it is a realm still unknown. What is known is the body and that it will perish and rot. The flesh is a witness and victim of time. It is young and supple at birth. As it ages, it bears the experience of the world- it wrinkles, scars, portions of it drop off, rigor mortis and then dust. Such is the way of the flesh. For all the cosmetics in the world, man is still animal.

II. William S. Burroughs calls it ‘the cellular equation’, the insatiable cravings of the flesh that bring out the savage within. David Cronenberg who adapted Burroughs’ seminal “Naked …

How do you create division among people? Etch a line with the tip of your shoe in the dust between them and give them opposite sides to belong to. The rift may not be immediate but gradually across time there will be category and classification. There will be further division, conflicting systems of belief and later, fanaticism and dogma. Before long the dust line you drew will be blown away by winds but it doesn’t matter, they will probably have barbed wire walls up by then. All history and past will begin at the moment the line was etched. What existed before that is to be disregarded or is in the context of science. Few will talk of unity and a past where all was one. The tragedy of it will be that there will be no one to hear …

Miles from home, miles to go. Miles spent dozing in uncomfortable recline, in queues, eating out of sterile plastic containers, shuffling among strange faces in strange places, eyes open just till the laptop battery holds through. Continuous transit through a hyperreality where the sun never shines enough to out-bright the plastic white daze of the corridors of passage. Being awake or dreaming is a state of mind. Like jet lag. A strange world where rush hour follows rush hour and then yet another. Hurtled through the gray blur it is possible that one may lose oneself. Dissolve. Blend. Yet another plaster face starring at the signs. Follow the arrow. Up. Down. Left. Right. Newton’s Law number one. Miles to go and no time on hand. Walk forward-onward towards the light till the buzzing synthetic halo sucks you in.

And somewhere …

Civilization and progress has its own flotsam-jetsam buried away and forgotten like old Ghost Towns. Hollow mines, empty wells, overgrown graveyards, hotels with broken windows, a junkyard carnival gathering rust and time ending up as faded black and white curios that grace the archives. Or they are woven into the ballad of a weary traveler. Original soldiers of fortune caught in a time of hope and upheaval, who traveled afar in search of opportunity only to be disillusioned, not just by the alien land but by fellow men. It is not the body alone that hangs weary but the spirit of man. Naïve adventurous souls battered by savagery and those that survive the battering emerge not just as abominations of humankind but ironically, the pioneers of progress and civilization.

A movie …

They were the ones who knew that underneath the decency, the manners, the calm and order of everyday society lurked something diabolical- an ugly past, a fiendish urge, undying grudges and a freaky boilpot of guilt and fear. Hark that thudding heart of the dead, the bottomless hypnotic pit in the eyes of the snake who isn’t there, a creeping shadow of whose only footsteps are heard by night and by day all that remains is a trail of innocent… and not so innocent blood. Poe, Bierce, Hoffman, Le Fanu, Lovecraft, Stoker and the likes, masters all, they chronicled the deviance and deceit in the darkness and behind closed and respectable doors, doors that opened to hell itself where you may expect to find a bearded red scaled fiend but instead realized that the …

‘Wow them in the end,’ is the sage advice screen-writing guru McKee gives Charlie Kaufmann in ‘Adaptation’. No matter what, wow them in the end. Reserve your best for the lag end and just before the public is ready to pack up and head home, sock it to them, hook line sinker. Give the crowds something to cheer about, to exult, to weep, to scratch their heads, to linger in as the lights come back on. Give them something that will bring back the last 100 odd minutes in a perspective that is pure head rush.

With ‘Mithya’ director Rajat Kapoor gives not one but two absolute ‘wow’ endings. First, a tantalizing twist, disruptive, abrupt, darkly funny, open for interpretation, pulpy, a turn of pure destiny which would cause Chabrol to smirk approvingly. And then there is the second, absolute antithesis. …

A landscape no man could tame, the geography of nature’s wrath. Barren miles blasted by sun and lacerated by sandstorms, heathen lands cursed off even the most basic of nature’s bounties and claimed by the wild. Apocalypse acres where men and beast have perished of thirst and scorch, home to bandits and scorpions, where atoms are split in an experiment in holocaust, where Mad Max and other motorheads scourged and pillaged for petroleum and continued existence, where Riddley Walker came of age.

Survival is in raw instinct. The more animal the better.

Where then is God- the one who blesses and provides? What in the forsaken landscape inspires the idea of divine benevolence? What then is justice? What is morality?

Piercing existential questions chant in the soundtrack as a knife-wielding behemoth of a man gives chase to his heavily pregnant wife in the godforsaken terrain in jealous fury. In grave danger she runs …

J’ACCUSE’,(I Accuse) screamed the old man at the audience exuding an impotent violence as he watched both the world and fate swoop down vulture-like on his hardworking, self-sacrificing daughter’s plight. It is a scene of tremendous provocation causing the audience, till then sitting comfortably in the auditorium ‘watching’ Ritwik Ghatak’s classic ballad of womanhood and sacrifice to reach out for their hearts and souls in panic. A scramble for emotions. An existential dilemma. How human are you? What can you do? There is an overawing claustrophobic misery as the audience comes to terms with its own helplessness. Then on, as the movie proceeds, one either harbors delusions of some kind of hope, nothing short of a miracle or has given in to the inevitable bleakness at the end.

With ‘Naal Pennungal’(Four Women) only his eleventh feature film in a career …

A grenade tossed into the sherry party of English fiction’
- sci-fi messiah J.G. Ballard on William Burroughs’ ‘Naked Lunch’

‘Maybe we should call Dr. Burroughs’
- Performance (1970)

Naked Lunch:———- arch anarchist William Burroughs’ depraved junkie howl from the land of the damned. A miserable soul- senses deranged, displaced, screaming obscenities as he sets a monkey-wrench to the very foundations of modern society. Mocking social reality with the glee of a naked perverse madman. The personal hell of a modern outlaw. Winston Smith with Klashnikov in hand and junk in the blood stream up at arms against an unknown fascism. Big Brother dressed up marquee style, flashing his grin from fifteen feet high canvas informing that you could be so suave, so popular, so hip if only you could buy that one brand of bathroom soap. How about a car? Then a fairness cream …

One had a lanky blonde young guy suffering from a sudden bout of asthmatic asphyxiation during an early morning jog being let in by a lonely house wife. Then there was a particularly supercharged episode of a couple of female CEOs of global conglomerates who run into each other in a ladies room. The more adventurous one had intrepid travelers off into the deepest jungles of the Amazon, the red plains of Mars or the castles of gothic Transylvania. The most common of all, which deserves a sub-genre of its own, is the ‘utility and services’ sector- the nurses, bell boys, waiters, cops, maids, pizza delivery boys, plumbers, telephone repairmen, piano teachers, psychiatrists etc.

As the awkward tableaus of common-place are staged, one is aware that the suburban/corporate/intergalactic reality is having a febrile slip into fantasy. The cardinal rule is, after all, it must end in sex- one-on-one, orgies, …

Director Georges Franju casts his seminal 1960 horror classic ‘Eyes without a Face’ in the fear of frailty. The fear that grips you when you accidentally bump into a rare Ming vase of extraordinary beauty and value, the string of images flashing through your head as the vase wobbles threatening any moment to be reduced to nothingness, to blank out a moment of history and beauty, the implications of a single moment of heedlessness. There is uncommon exquisiteness in every frame of the movie eschewing the shock value norms of horror but present throughout are lurking undercurrents of terrifying violence. Nothing good will ever come of it. The brittle and the delicate will shatter and bleed. The horror of it all…

The movie begins starts on an ambiguous note as the camera passes across unending rows of trees planted on the corners of the roads while a strangely innocuous tune plays …

Reality. Is it the material of the senses? Then what about the sub-conscience, the soul, the cryptic patterns of the sensory world locked deep inside that dictate the manner in which one experiences the world around. One man’s darkness is another’s light. Then what infact does one call it- darkness or light? What is reality then? The senses, the soul or somewhere in the sum total of it all.

Anurag Kashyap’s enigmatic mindbender ‘No Smoking’ opens with a panorama of an icy blue where the endless horizon blurs the difference between the earth and the sky. A telephone rings and protagonist K awakens to answer a phone call from his wife. He’s in a decrepit wooden cabin with a bottle of vodka and a flickering TV alternating between static and news. The newsreader on the television has her lips pursed …

Just what is the point of it all.

When veteran ad film and music video director Pradeep Sarkar made his foray into Bollywood with ‘Parineeta’ the words that found itself being repeated in every review were ‘auspicious debut’ and there was no doubt about it. But sophomore slump afflicts Sarkar in ‘Laaga Chunari Main Daag’ and most inauspiciously. It was a film that should never have been made. And even when it has been made, throughout the span of the narrative keeps negating itself as if leading into a black hole governed by the principles of logic that function in a Balaji Teleserial.

The start is symptomatic of what is to follow but hardly an indication of the travesty. Sarkar opens with austere frames of Benares and before one can say ‘Bubbly’, slips on a banana peel into a bubblier-than-bubbly, bouncier-than-bouncy, unbearably psuedo-sacchrine song the camera rushing through lil lanes. Howzzat!

The …

The last day of school. Alice Cooper’s trashy anthem ‘School’s out’ sets rhythm and vibe for the juvenile anarchy played out in what would otherwise be corridors of strict rules and discipline. Notebook confetti and thumping jubilation fill the air as students ransack their private lockers. One locker door pops open to reveal a cut out of Jack Nicholson grinning his trademark wild wolf grin. Etched below, with much passion, is the word ‘REBEL’.

The film is Richard Linklater’s seminal classic ‘Dazed and Confused’. Set in the 70s, a nostalgic and uber-hip chronicle of the auteur’s days of being carefree and wild, the film was part two of Linklater’s continuing efforts to define his generation- the one that came in a little too late for the great sixties lovefest, the one that got caught up in the ebb of the magnificent …

Shriram Raghavan’s electric caper ‘Johnny Gaddar’ begins in reverential silence as it doffs its hat to the pulpmeisters- Vijay Anand and James Hadley Chase, black and white photographs accompanying the written tribute.

Thus, begins its no-holds-barred obsession with images- pulp and kinky washed over with the electric tangerine and sound- retro Rafi by way of pure spin jhankaar.

Glance at the posters. Imagine the colors leaking out the posters. Imagine the charcters come to life. Imagine a low-life world of neon and intrigue. That is Johnny Gadar. Popculture overdrive. From the insane title-credits that implode with fury and the smudgy color of dime-store novels like you bend a comic in your hands …

One of Conan Doyle’s classic Sherlock Holmes capers, I can’t remember which one, has the inimitable private eye and sidekick Dr. Watson on their way to the English countryside to solve a crime most foul. Enamored with the pastoral beauty, the impressionable doctor compulsively breaks into trite adulations on life in the country while Holmes, impossibly rational to a schizoid degree, alerts his friend to the warps in the seemingly serene. Lonely expanses with no one to hear your scream, no one to stumble on a freshly dug grave, no one to turn to help- a dark, opaque silence like the depths of an ocean where evil could hide and thrive. With ‘Manorama 6 Feet Under’, Director Navdeep Singh locates Doyle’s heart of darkness in the barren desert expanses of Lakhot, Rajasthan.

Navdeep Singh’s tale of detection, deceit and decay, begins in true noir style, with the camera working itself …

“Close your eyes… imagine you’re walking down a lonely path in the middle of a dense forest at around midnight. You’re entering the banyan grove- the residence of the evil spirits. You walk quietly, dragging your rubber soles through the mud, careful, so that you do not receive any attention that can turn out unpleasant. The banyan trees crowd over you. Everytime a skeletal root brushes your skin, your eyes make a quick circle to check if anything has moved. The wind picks up. Maybe it’s about to rain. White flashes and thunder. You can feel the dark omens in your gut, your mind reads them and goes in denial but the heart beats hard. You’re afraid to turn behind. Footsteps? No, can’t be. Denial. The wind gets colder but the forehead breaks out in sweat. Don’t look behind. Suddenly, a light in the distance, a tiny flame in an …