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The present decade has been the best for Hindi cinema in a long while. Nandita Das’ Firaaq joins the list of outstanding d'©buts made in the period.

Firaaq is a day in the life of Ahmedabad in the aftermath of the Gujarat carnage of 2002. An ensemble narrative, Firaaq is peopled with stories that happen to converge on a particular day, of the ones who return from what they presumed was an escape from the violence, and of the ones who prepare to forsake a city that has become unbearably persecutory.

An exploration of a sub-culture of survivors, and a prescribed indictment, Firaaq weaves intertwining tales of victims, mostly, and of their perpetrators;
A young Muslim couple, Muneera (Shahana Goswami) and Hanif (Nawazuddin) returning to their ransacked home obsesses itself with attaching faces to a mob that might’ve gutted their home.

A 6 yrs old boy sheltered in a refugee camp desperately searches for …

Every filmmaker seems to have a Devdas in him. Emir Kusturica has made two Devdases back to back, in 1989 (Time of the Gypsies) and 1993 (Arizona Dream). While Time of the Gypsies could be described as a (sort of) Devdas sans Chanda, Arizona Dream is a full-blooded recasting of the Devdas affezione, where Johnny Depp is torn between his love for Faye Dunaway’s Paro and Lili Taylor’s Chanda. What’s even more interesting is that Paro and Chanda live-out their loves under the same roof, as mother & step-daughter respectively.

Films conjure their own reviews, unbearably enslaved, by default, to the reviewer’s viewing experience. Dev.D seems to have proved the influence it’s had on its reviewers, and more importantly, on its audience. With the choice of this present film, Anurag Kashyap has liberated film reviewing from having to be about …

Rajkumar Gupta: “Kaun kehta hain ki aadmi apni kismat khud likhta hain?”

thani: “Kismat agar khud likh sakte, to usey kismat kyon kehte!”

Anurag Kashyap is India’s most provocative filmmaker. With his filmmaking, he creates avenues for scores of cinephiles to dream their cinematic dreams, and when that’s not satisfactorily accomplished he angers them enough to want to better his offending efforts. That is, when the said cinephile does not resort to the shortest possible route to his directorial debut – namely the remake.

It is to Rajkumar Gupta’s credit, and to the film’s superior craftmanship, that i refer to his debut feature Aamir as cinema. Nevertheless, a COUNTERFEIT one, if you know what i mean. The password is Cavite. I might as well review Cavite, and nobody would recognize the difference. To be fair to the nobody, in as many words, Aamir is a copy of Cavite [pronounced 'ka-vi-th-ey].

Of course, …

“India embraces the cinema of the whole world…In a future issue, I shall show why India is the creation of the whole world.”
Jean-Luc Godard

It has been 14 long years since an Indian Film has made the Competition Selection of the Cannes International Film Festival. And that particular Competition Selection, Shaji Karun’s second feature Swaham (1994), happens to be the only instance for the decade of the 90s. Around the time, some of Shaji Karun’s well wishers, prompted by Andrew Robinson’s comparison of the debut features, pompously declared that “there are only two Indian films – Pather Panchali (1955) & Piravi (1988). Period.” What is common to both the films, & the probable reason for the latter film’s exaltation, is a certain institution that has consistently, for the last six decades, managed to play world cinema’s official conscience-keeper & harbinger of the evolution of cinema itself – the Cannes International …

Friday April 11th 2008. Fame Adlabs Multiplex, Andheri, Mumbai – The 11.15 p.m. show.

Dan In Real Life is essentially a romantic comedy (romcom), albeit of the much-abused feel-good variety, a genre who’s abuser & the abused is ironically the very same entity – Hollywood.

Television’s Steve Carell & French thespian Juliette Binoche star in this film about a widowed-father-of-three-daughters, & a good-parenting columnist, finding love in a least likely source – his younger brother’s girlfriend Marie (Binoche). The first indicator of this love, you’ll notice, happens to be an unlikely one too.

Film opens with Steve Carell’s Dan shaking his morning l’ennui off the bed, & starting the day with sorting clothes for/from wash. One particular curious piece of clothing, belonging to one of his daughters, seems to disturb Dan no end, considering his being a responsible single parent &, …

RGV announced the making of Darna Zaroori Hai on the morning of the Darna Mana Hai release day in August 2003, not waiting for the Box Office to determine the making of the sequel. To refresh memories, Darna Mana Hai & Darna Zaroori Hai are RGV’s compilation films consisting of 6-7 segments each, helmed by a proportionate number of directors, releasing 3 years apart from one another.

I’m not going to warn the reader about this review containing spoilers. My contention being exactly this – that Darna Zaroori Hai delivers its chills despite knowing any number of plot twists and scary scenes from the film. Most often than not, like any good horror film must, Darna Zaroori Hai lets you know when the horror is coming. And still scares you.

Who wouldn’t have conjectured Norman Bates’ hand behind the mystery in Hitchcock’s Psycho? Nevertheless one’s fear is all …

Thanks to Oprah Winfrey’s Therepautic Magic on the Tube, ‘Me Time’ has become an emancipator for stressed souls all over. ‘Me Time’ is prescribed as remedy for people who think they are “endlessly fulfilling every obligation except the one to themselves”. Maybe all RGV needed was to do what he needed to do to keep himself going. Which partly explains the recent spate of disasters RGV has indulged-in. RGV was a Director, Interrupted! RGV definitely required taking his ‘Me Time’ away from what he’s been churning endlessly (& self-destructively). I would like to believe that making his recent duds acted as ‘Me Time’ for RGV. That, or the self-reflexive period, immediately after the much-mocked & sullied films, that has arrived an introspective RGV when he admits today

When I took Manoj Bajpai in Satya or Vivek Oberoi in Company I wasn’t launching stars. I used them because they …

[This is a re-posting of a review originally posted here, on PFC, on January 21, 2008 at 7:38 pm]

No make happy?
Yes make happy?
No happy, no money!

As bizarre as it may sound, it has to be said that this is an excerpt of an important interaction between the leads in Nagesh Kukunoor’s Bombay to Bangkok, the making happy standing-in for copulation in Thai-English. While it could be presumed that a customer (Shreyas Talpade) is ensuring his money buy Sex from the Service (Thai actress Lena Christensen), it is the latter that mouths the aforementioned profundity. Honesty? Let’s wait some.

The very next sequence in the film reverses the roles where Shreyas Talpade’s con-man-doctor now embodies Service that prescribes Sex (Viagra) to his Customers. The Sexologist that he’s supposed to be is requested treatment to make happy their erection on old males’ Jeevan Dhara Ki Jwalamukhi. …

[This is a re-posting of a review originally posted elsewhere, on PFC, on January 14, 2008 at 8:04 pm]

Street Theatre practitioner, & Cinema-Hero-aspirant, Ashfaque (AjayDevgan) has just managed to get the go-ahead from his father, to chase his heroic dream in Bombay. He meets the ladylove of his life, Sneha (VidyaBalan), in a farewell-walk in the environs of a Goregaoned small-town India (a Cinecitta-like abode of Bollywood filmmaking called FilmCity). While Sneha has been fully supportive of Ashfaque’s dreams, she still doesn’t resist herself from asking the unfair question of what he would choose if he were to, between her and his acting career. Ashfaque relents honesty, with the fair reply of choosing his acting career. The Ashfaques have become even more endearing to the Snehas, & Shalinis, of the world. Sneha has just elected herself an Amoural Martyr, an equivalent of the much-celebrated male of the species – …

Jean-Pierre Melville was there. A full decade before the ‘there’ would be christened La Nouvelle Vague [French New Wave Cinema]. Though released on April 22nd 1949, Melville was filming his debut feature Le Silence de la Mer in 1947 in methods that he himself later enthusiastically acceded as the New Wave aesthetics – “…natural location, non-synchronized shooting, fast film stock, small crew and Henri Decae”, a year before Alexandre Astruc’s ‘The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: The Camera-Stylo’ appeared in L’Ecran Francais on March 30th 1948. Few years before Andre Bazin brought out the inaugural issue of Cahiers du Cinema in 1951. Much before two pioneering, seminal rant-of-articles published in the same issue #31 of Cahiers du Cinema by future-filmmakers – Francois Truffaut’s ‘A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema’ and Jacques Rivette’s ‘The Age of Directors’.

Melville quietly, & independently, continued making his trend-setting films, while …

Every human life, in the way it’s lived, holds, & makes for, at least one feature-length film. While Brando popularized Method Acting, Tarantino the Method Writing, Novelists/Filmmakers living their book/film (much before it becomes the final work) has been in vogue through the entire course of both the disciplines. In that sense could we term this phenomenon Method Filmmaking? Not Quite, & Not Just Yet. Because the Method about it would be to imagine being that other life while directing; it would be about summoning that other while inhabiting the distanced, present self.

In all my film-viewing years i have never ever come across applause for a film (in its theatrical release) at its intermission. It was not one of those sarcastic applauses that we witness during political speeches. It indeed was a heartfelt-one appreciating what the film & its director have managed to set-up, & one that was looking-forward …

Life seems to have come a full-circle for Sudhir Mishra’s protagonists Zafar & Nikhat, for Sudhir Mishra’s producer Prakash Jha, & for Sudhir Mishra himself.

I’ll start with the producer. Prakash Jha in January 2005, very rightly & vocally, expressed his disappointment with Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s ‘Black’ employing Rani’s Mukherji’s Voice-Over (VO) narrating the film (Rani was playing the character of a girl who happens to be blind & mute). Prakash Jha’s second film in the sole role of a producer, Sudhir Mishra’s ‘Khoya Khoya Chand’ all of a sudden breaks into a false-noted sutradhar hung-over VO of an unlikely narrator. The owner of the voice, Vinay Pathak, plays an assistant director turned producer in the film. The problem is not at all in the character being less significant but in the VO’s amnesiac disappearances & convenient re-appearances. A voice that doesn’t even bother returning as an epilogue, but only as …

Veri in Tamil can be loosely translated as Passion-for/ Obsession-for etc. If this website, PassionForCinema, were to be in Tamil it would be called what i have titled this piece – Cinema Veri. And Cinema Veri can also be translated as Trippy Cinema which ‘Tamil M.A’ totally is.

Few films stay with you irrevocably for a particular impact. Like a certain expression, gesture or action. Every needle held by a girl would be an embarrassed recollection of a scary situation such as the one in Takashi Miike’s ‘Audition’. Or Belmondo’s lip-swagger in ‘Breathless’, Forest Whitaker’s SamuraiSword-like panache with his gun in ‘Ghost Dog’ etc. ‘Tamil M.A’ would be remembered for it’s oft-repeated, a measured honest-to-goodness-question posed to the protagonist by the love of his life – Nijamaa dhan sollariya? translating into ‘do you truthfully mean it?’. With its frequency as we proceed in the film we figure it to …

Everybody wants to be heard. Evidently, i do too when calling attention to this post with the concoction of a title i’ve come up with.

Owing to our own biases (for & against), we tend to be determined to Love or Hate the film we bought a ticket for. Having done that to our heart’s fill let us not deny ourselves the experience that’s entirely ours when engaging with the screen in a cinema-hall that is a flickering temple for us cinephiles. It is true for filmmakers – worldover a filmmaker ends up watching more films than he can ever dream of making. We too, as film-lovers, would watch more films than we can ever aspire/wish to make. As it should be! None of us would want to trade places with the twain’s disproportionate ratio. What plays on the screen, flickering between light & dark, is what we make out …

Anurag Kashyap’s 4th feature ‘No Smoking’ opens with John Abraham’s K finding himself in an apartment in an unfamiliar environ of pristine blues & whites. There’s a Russian newsreader on TV, talking about a curfew that has marching soldiers ensuring upkeep. John looks out of the window – it is the same scene from TV, & he is in Siberia! This information he shares with the caller on the phone (Ayesha Takia) who John seems to know & asks for a cigarette while she reprimands him for his persistance with his craving for cigarettes. John puts-on a trench coat before stepping out for cigarettes, only he doesn’t know how to get out of this place. John breaks the French window & jumps out to land right into the hands of Russian soldiers whose army camp is based right here. John spots a bathtub in the far far distance lying all …

A Son’s been studying in Delhi while his parents live in the small-town of Kaanti in Bihar. The Son’s presumably no dilettante, preparing for the much sought-after [& competitive] Civil Services. Son has only-recently impregnated his girlfriend of 4 years, meant as an accident or as a Freudian slip. The couple broaches the topic of Abortion but consent to settle with marriage. “But what about your parents?” asks the girlfriend. “I’ll talk to them.” says the Son. Talking to his parents is what brings about the opening of ‘Antardwand’.

Son gets home, greeted by two fathers – One his own, & the other a father of a daughter. Father #2 is here to seek Father #1’s Son as his Daughter’s husband. Father #1 wouldn’t undersell. He has higher aspirations for himself. Flatly rejects Father #2, & his offer of a 30% increase in the dowry.

News of Son …

iView Author :
Thani(from Project i View)

Email :
thanikachalam [at] gmail.com

City/Country:
Mumbai, India

Manorama – an Addendum & a Re-View :

Star Comics, in the 80’s, used to run a series of titles around Sunny Gavaskar & his myriad adventures. There Sunil Gavaskar would tackle his villains with great aplomb & still make it in time to lead India at the cricket stadium where Sunny would take on different kind of monsters in plotting victory for India. Sunny was a detective too but a cricketer first. And he, in the Comics, didn’t have to hide/moonlight his detective side. Most of these adventures would culminate in Sunny saving the World from the baddies & be ready for the toss at the Brabourne with his opposite numbers Ian Botham or Viv Richards. Fans of other prominent members of the then Indian Cricket team were hopeful of …