Sreehari. | PassionforCinema

Three quarters of pretence and a quarter of pure ecstasy

Sreehari.'s Blog

8
My Mother’s Sisters…
Dedicated to: People who have faded away in time, fragrances we no longer relate to, imageries that don’t linger anymore, tastes that have changed… Or, something like that. Ideas rejected last week: 1) Story of a hit-man who loves solving crossword puzzles 2) Story of a foot fetishist who falls in love with an author’s footnotes. “The first thing I need...
by Sreehari. at August 16th, 2009 at 05:08 am
28
Blocked
14th January 2009: A dog once barked at me. I barked back it. It was a long time back. I used to tell people this story and almost always got laughs. And then one day suddenly, somebody chose not to laugh at it. It was humiliating. I stopped telling people about it. Just like I stopped telling them about a lot of other experiences I had. Because I was afraid they might...
by Sreehari. at May 3rd, 2009 at 10:05 pm
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Kill the cinephile in you… Let us start all over again
There’s a moment in Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona” when the tension between the lead actors (Bibi Andersson the nurse and Liv Ullman the actress) reaches its zenith, leading to a rupture of the film. The film-reel then catches fire. We see it dissolving on the screen. A total blackout follows, the film-bits come together and the film starts all over...
by Sreehari. at December 31st, 2008 at 03:12 am
36
The death of a director…
The morning breeze, he referred to as his ‘muse’ and the daytime sunshine was his ‘faithful mistress’. He thought of the ‘zebra crossing’ as a social impediment. He had problems with getting the spellings of words right. Many believed that it was a medical issue but he would flatly deny any claims of such order. “It’s just...
by Sreehari. at November 2nd, 2008 at 06:11 pm
18
The wallet renovation(A short)
An excerpt from Nikhil’s Personal Diary: ‘A lost Saturday Evening’ I had just finished doing what I had set out to do, but wasn’t happy. This feeling of being outdone by things totally out of my control. I did not know what it was or why was it so pricking; just this feeling of utter despair. Maybe retracing an evening that had clawed into closure would do the...
by Sreehari. at March 31st, 2008 at 12:03 am
14
Fargo – Crime and Us
Jerry Lundegaard is a car salesman. He is conditioned to be polite with his customers and display a certain degree of benignity. His moments of desperation and anger are therefore spent in spontaneous outbursts guided through the smashing of inanimate objects around him for momentary relief, an action, which thanks to the nature of his profession he isn’t supposed to...
by Sreehari. at February 21st, 2008 at 07:02 am
25
The peeping mother..
Dedicated to my soul, that’s part Freudian and part unexplored… Prologue: Savitri kept looking at her only son. Teary-eyed and almost pale, she enquired out of the blue, “You are a leftist, aren’t you?” She was attaching herself to the glass partition that separated the airport’s internal rooms from its primary exterior. She tried focusing in one direction...
by Sreehari. at January 13th, 2008 at 06:01 am
36
So said Seinfeld..
The greatest virtue that creative individuals ought to be endowed with is this belief …..”I was a stupid kid two years back…. I think I have grown”.. If you divide your life-span into sectors of two years each and if you believe that every new segment instills in you the belief that your preceding life-segment was lived in inferior taste you are...
by Sreehari. at December 30th, 2007 at 03:12 am
15
Perceptible poverty aint the only issue here..
Plato refers to them as the two lowest rungs in judgment; judgement based on imagination and judgement based on third-party opinion. But, to me they are recurring ailmets. Maybe I sound presumptuous when I am saying this and all my circumspection I sincerely hope are strangled in time, but for now I choose the peephole over an open-view. I was browsing through this article...
by Sreehari. at December 6th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
46
Character Revelations – Padmarajan and Scorsese..
There is this quiet passage in Padmarajan’s Thoovanathumbikal, where Jayakrishnan ,the film’s protagonist seats himself, and quips gently to Thangal (a more benign version of the “archetypical pimp” in movies) , “You guys don’t know me. There was this one woman I loved and she left me. If I loose Clara too I would end up ruining myself”.. It...
by Sreehari. at November 29th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
4
Kurosawa- Intent and Interpretations..
I was reading this article by Kartik, a very detailed review of Akira Kurosawa’s Ran. It drew to a closure with the following query.. //Why can’t we have a similar adaptation of King Lear in bollywood, given India’s history of kings and sultans??? // At the risk of sounding outlandish, I dont think it works that way. I find that statement to be a lame end to...
by Sreehari. at November 27th, 2007 at 01:11 am
25
This isn’t personal cinema… That isn’t a great virtue
I want to visit Fellini’s room, his writing table, his spa and almost every place he visited to write his screenplays.. You see everywhere Fellini sat down to write his films are as important as his films because that is the only reference point for his movies. His life. That is what you call a personal film. A director facing a creative block retreats back to his...
by Sreehari. at November 9th, 2007 at 10:11 pm
12
Tom, Dick and Ramakrishnan..
THIS IS ESSENTIALLY A STORY ABOUT THREE GUYS.. THREE GUYS, AND ONE OF WHOM DECIDED TO REBEL.. WELL, HE ALMOST DID.. “You know what?? This….This is why I emphasize on the fact that it is important to be famous…I mean we are sitting here, the three of us, sipping this coffee that has been served to us cold and bad”… “Well Ramu”, Dick argues with...
by Sreehari. at October 16th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
10
Time to introspect and move ahead..
Hi Oz, I hope I don’t sound like a high priest of morality or anything. Just wanted to propose something… Its been an year or more since our site has started functioning. I have enjoyed writing over here and will continue on my own terms till of course you guys decide to chuck me out.. I think, now is the time to introspect. Coz, if we don’t now, we might...
by Sreehari. at October 13th, 2007 at 12:10 am
1
The ant and the elephant..
So what relevance does this insignificant insipid post of sorts hold in a site that is supposed to promote cinema? Nothing absolutely… But its a fable. Part of a heritage we all grew up listening to… A fable told exactly the way it should be…… Long before it was theorized that the universe actually consisted of layers of amorphous solids floating...
by Sreehari. at September 28th, 2007 at 01:09 am
7
The sidekick who became a director…
He was reclining on his chair with the confidence of an auteur and the poise of a pro. He was speaking eloquently under the single-slit illumination of a globe-shaped light source. Time had done to him, what success would do to anybody. Three movies, all of which were smashing commercial successes. The cinema illiterates stooped to their own levels, confining all his...
by Sreehari. at August 26th, 2007 at 08:08 am
10
The ‘Nirma Girl’ retires..
2007, April: The mirror inside the hotel bathroom was providing just the true reflection of her exterior. Tara had twice washed her face clean and stood in front of the mirror adjusting her Sari, forcing in a smile in the interim. She breathed in and breathed out, started to mumble something but stopped mid-way. Closing her eyes, she picked her thoughts up...
by Sreehari. at August 16th, 2007 at 05:08 am
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Black Friday- Revisiting the “selfish me”
Just got to watch Black Friday after months of intense efforts, constant pestering by close friends and incurring some taste of Media Piracy. I have been recommending the movie to everybody I see since then, hoping they would be able to share my fascination for the movie. But, as I stood before the mirror yesterday, I asked myself a question,”‘So, Mr. Recommender,...
by Sreehari. at July 11th, 2007 at 03:07 am
8
Realism is all bullshit..
There are reasons probably why they refer to Sunday as “God’s day”. Its Sundays like the last one that reaffrims my belief in such universal connotations and references. Sony Pix had two Scorsese movies on offer. Its been a while since i have visited them, and revisiting them was definetely an experience to say the least. “Raging Bull” and...
by Sreehari. at May 16th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
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The death of a movie critic..
The brilliant thing about ‘The inevitable’ is that you can’t stop it from happening. You can try, but you wont be successful. That’s probably why they term it ‘the inevitable’. You cant put the brakes on ‘the inevitable’ by raising a show-cause notice or prolong it for the fear of a rise in excise duty or simply the presence of a callous attitude. ‘The...
by Sreehari. at February 18th, 2007 at 04:02 am
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When Amitabh Faked it…
There is this scene in RGV’s Sarkar where Mr. Bachchan aks his wife for some pickles (in Marathi). That scene for me quite simply epitomised the shoddy piece of work that “SARKAR” was. There was this actor trying hard to infuse in his character a sense of a cultural belonging, which he quite obviously didnt connect with. if i were to generalise the entire...
by Sreehari. at January 16th, 2007 at 07:01 pm
1
A superstar goes jogging..
I am not one to understand how stardom works. Infact i would totally stand by what nasser had once stated..”An actor is probably the least important part of a film”… But for me a smart director is one who despite endorsing the above opinion never lets it loose in front of the star he is working with. Despite my numerous failed attempts to understand...
by Sreehari. at January 12th, 2007 at 07:01 am