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Strange are the ways of Bollywood. Fair enough. Argument taken. It doesn’t take a genius to guess it’s been a bad year. Post Delhi-6/Gulaal/Dev D that is. And the thing about bad times is that it kills one’s senses to acknowledge something minutely good that comes on the way further. I do not remember which was the last hindi film I saw and enjoyed. I guess 13B or CC2C (had written a review on it but now even I can’t find it). Both were wholesome experiences, with their fair share of music and moods to munch on. There is some fun in exploring a tune lesser heard, and embracing it and gracing it with your own Grammy(s).

CC2C had Tere Naina, one of the most soothing tracks heard in the better parts of this year. Shankar sounded fresh as ever, and the song had a ‘khanak’ rarely heard off late. …

Dear MJ
It was the summer of 92. Dangerous times. If you know what I mean. Everyone was talking about the 3 ‘foreign’ channels that had us dumbstruck. So I ran home with a prospective demand in my head. As I rushed in, I saw someone dancing on the Statue of Liberty, and as Statue of Liberty turned to the Eiffel Tower, the someone changed into someone, and someone, and so on…
That moment in my life, two ironies entered at once. And what better song for it – Black or White. I didn’t know about the world stats, but you soon became world famous in our society. All our poor unentertained souls had seen was the Indian trilogy of disco, make it four if you count Bappida, but here were you, rocking my world. Jam followed suit. You were teaching some moonwalking tricks to Magic Johnson if memory and history serve …

Logan: Do I look like a man who exaggerates?

Wolverine has been one of my recent addictions. The comic book. I never saw X-Men films. Neither did I pick up their comic books earlier. “Too complex”, I said to both. Much later, quite recently, when the streets were done with all the Batman and Spiderman that they could think of, did I turn towards them. “This guy looks OK”, I murmured to myself, and picked up few Wolverine comic books, mostly because of their inspired artwork and versions.

Soon I was inducted into the cult adamantium planet, going through the agonies of the well-haired and well-adrenalined superhero. The books kept revealing one dimension after the other, as Loganman moved from oriental orbs to citystreet gangsters to jungle jamborees. I always thought of him as a superhero who would take to his destiny reluctant and lazy, and then weighing things as …

Full name?
Raj Puri
Arey middal name, baap ka naam
Shiv Puri
Haan to tera full name Raj Shiv Puri hai..
Kitne saal se Mumbai mein rehta hai?
6 saal se
6 Saal!! 6 saal se Mumbai mein reh raha……

BEGINNERS LUCK

Common place irritations..bad jokes…

Hulla is a delight, quite simply, away from all the noises that it created. Commonplace loud neighbours, the ones who shy away from society meetings, apartment aspirations, that office co-worker who hitches a ride for a day and repeats it till eternity for ‘goodwill’, and the society secretaries and the reluctant funny cops and you….

koee ummeed bar naheeN aatee
koee soorat nazar naheeN aatee

maut ka ek din mu’ayyan hai
neeNd kyoN raat bhar naheeN aatee ? [ mu'ayyan = definite ]
I do not see any hope now
Nor do I see any face
When the day of departure is fixed,
Why is it that I still do not get sleep the whole night?

Long back I had …

Continuing from where we left…

BETAABI
There was something about Vishal’s music in all lesser significant films.
Betaabi was one such score. Raw. Instinctive. Full of beans. It was music with attitude, songs that would make you sit up.

Tum mere ho would never leave me, it was a healer of sorts, loved the slowly-building-up sense of rhythm, the violent symphony, the never-say-die all-at-stake emotion embedded in the lyrics and so on. I went to see the film just for this one song. And like it happens, the song and that desire truly made me pay for it.
The yeah-yeah routine by KK (I suspect)that opens the track was reminiscent of the high-pitched male-vocal-opening of Chhod aaye hum from Maachis.

(Female version)
Main tumko mehsoos karoon
Ban jaao tum ehsaas

Poochh lo khayaalon se
Baadalon ki shaalon se
Khwaahishon se sapno se
Poochho gairon ya apno se

Tum mere ho…

Lata Ji sounded like a dream as usual but the …

Sagar Alias Jacky Reloaded – Prodigy in the Living Room

Heard about this film mid-week, got sold out on the Mohanlal factor. Couldn’t help it. Have always wanted to catch a masala potboiler in the theater where I can’t understand the dialogs for the love of me, but still enjoy the fun cus’ it really wouldn’t matter in the masala state of affairs. Then the talk about the film being expensive, all style no substance et al got me even more excited. I mean who the hell wants to make sense on weekends anyways!

So there I was. Watching a Mohanlal big-budgeter, gathering all the excitement I could. Superb opening titles, the music got me again. It did get me the night before though, but I didn’t expect to be this blown. I mean what more you want – they have put …

This is an attempt to revive some of the lost songs and albums that have got me hooked, at some point or the other, for some reason or the other…

1. More saiyyaan – BANDIT QUEEN
Kuch maheene pehle ki baat hai….I was in a taxi. The taxi was shockingly slow. It was around sunrise time. I was tired. I could use a faster taxi. The songs were not any help either. Jazz. OST’s. Film Classic Themes et al. Annoyed, and having had enough, I turned to the taxi driver who was all eager to break the news.
So I learnt that there had been a terrible accident half an hour ago in the surrounding area, and some on the spot casualties.
“Oh ok”, I said, searching for an expression to put on my face, and went back to the song.
Like some divine prank, Ustad’s haunting aalaap caught me, and it just …

So it’s back to the hysteria of running crazy and getting psyched out, a world gone crazy the epic/disaster movie(not them nauseous ’spoofs’)way. Emmerich, the man behind Disaster fests such as Independence Day, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow and the more recent 10,000 B.C. is back to the game with this run-for-your-life tale set in the immediate future starring John Cusack, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover, Amanda Peet & Woody Harrelson.

So, ready to run yet, anyone?

Youtube Trailer Link

Synopsis:

An academic researcher leads a group of people in a fight to counteract the apocalyptic events that were predicted by the ancient Mayan calendar.

Apple.com
Never before has a date in history been so significant to so many cultures, so many religions, scientists, and governments. 2012 is an epic adventure about a global cataclysm that brings an end to the world and tells of the heroic struggle of the survivors.

Firstshowing.net

Discover

Thanks …

Variety talks about one of the most anticipated films this side of 2009, The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, while our prolific author, Kenny can’t stop gushing about it…

The two films I’m most excited about in the post-Dark Knight era are James Cameron’s Avatar and …Tintin! And in a nice coincidence, the story being filmed is The Secret of the Unicorn, the first Tintin book I bought.

I’m drooling over the voice cast! Couldn’t be better! Daniel Craig as Red Rackham, Andy Serkis as Captain Haddock (Perfect!!!!) and as Thomson and Thompson – Simon Pegg and Nick Frost!!!! A match made in heaven!

Excerpts from the article:
Steven Spielberg this week will quietly wrap 32 days of performance-capture lensing on “Tintin,” then hand the project to producer Peter Jackson, who will focus on the film’s special effects …

(This post is co-authored by Siddharth Pillai & Tushar Shukla)

Not to mince any words, Director Vikram K. Kumar’s psychological creep-fest, 13 B is the GREATEST HORROR FILM to come out from the country. Period.

Now that we have set the tone, allow us to go GAGA.

A good movie is a rare occurrence, you can’t plan it; and it is better sometimes more often than not, that you don’t. Who expected a 13 B out of all the films off late to take one with a surprise, and quite a literal one at that. A Madhavan film, a bi-lingual, a psycho-social-horror drama about a family adjusting to their newly inhabited urban apartment flat, two brothers, TV soap shit, may be a little more than an urban dysfunction of a small family- two happily co-existing brothers, a little sister who fails to make the grades, a loving mom (Poonam Dhillon), and …

“Can you believe it? We just ended up being like everybody else?!”

John Givings: Hopeless emptiness. Now you’ve said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.

Some films relish in the aftertaste of the moments not captured in their entirety, unsettling yet no good reason to be so, poised and in-their-moment and that, yet no way outwards. Revolutionary Road is such a film.

Not that we haven’t seen suppression of emotional outburst as a result of years of ambition gone waste, or a domestic conflict providing the premise for a proof-by-contradiction narrative of a conflict being viewed as a norm as opposed to an anomaly in the larger scheme before, but this film takes us inside the head of The Wheelers, both as on a name plate and the real thing, unsurprising …

(This music review is co-authored by Amanda Sodhi & Tushar Shukla)
(DISCLAIMER : The reviewers have attempted to quote the lyrics from the album to the best of their efforts, however there might be errors, and any suggested rectifications are welcome.)

Two things are always guaranteed with Anurag Kashyap’s films—innovation and excellent music. While Dev D’s OST boasted of 18 “baap of music genre” tracks, Gulaal’s OST, consisting of 8 thought-provoking compositions by Piyush Mishra, really lives up to the “O” in OST.

Set to release on March 13, Gulaal, starring Kay Kay Menon, Aditya Srivastav, Piyush Mishra, Raj Singh Chaudhary(Raja Chaudhary), Ayesha Mohan, Abhimanyu Singh, Deepak Dobriyal, Mahi Gill, Pankaj Jha, Jessie Randhawa and Mukesh Bhatt, started in 2001 after Anurag was inspired by Sahir Ludhianvi’s lyrics to “Yeh mehlon, yeh takhton, yeh taajon ki duniya’” from Pyaasa. …

Few weeks back, I discovered the whole legend thing, the whole monkey thing, one fine morning. And I went where was I when all this happened? Sat over it, read some articles, wrote an article, moved on.
Delhi 6. The music was all over…jab teri gali aaya….sach tabhi nazar aayaa…
We went berserk. I took pleasure in dust. All things un-beautiful. All tales un-told. A weird obsession for Mughlai.

Rakesh Omprakash Mehra. Rang de basanti. Revolution. In more senses than one. A new way to look at the craft. The formula of writing. Screenplay laws. What would work. What would not. Rang de basanti again. A film that went wherever it could. All around. That was around 2006. We didn’t have many options. The film, predictably, went beyond being a film, and Mehra gained recognition here and beyond.

Cut to 2009. Mehra goes to Chandni Chowk. And we again …

(Warning: This review might contain spoilers)

What a film! First reaction. Rest assured. No bakwaas. Lovely film. Right from the first shots of Punjab to the drug and sex infested underground, it is a buoyant ride all along. From spoken words to unspoken emotions, from eyes that meet to eyes that shy away, from outbursts to guilt trips, from lost causes to lazy strolls, Dev D is quite an ode, to the road, to the after hour walks, to the very joy of aftertaste.

There will be enough talks for many days, as it happens for every Anurag Kashyap film, on this and that, on drugs, on sex, on literal fuck-ups, on wtf’s, and so on. And that’s a signature. A cinematic one.
(OK I can’t do without bakwaas)

It begins somewhere in a village, young kids talk nonsense, cut to a self-convinced spoilt young brat munching to glory. You see the …

It happened somewhere this week. I have given up riding the bike for quite some time now. I love taking the red bus. Putting on the i-Pod, taking a walk, the dust, the village now intruded by urbanity, the stares, the shades, the town appears slowly on the highway, and somewhere along all this PAAYALIYA kicks in, and I become DEV D!
So ya, in other words, WHY DO YOU WANNA WATCH DEV D??

Butt in…

1. It is an ANURAG KASHYAP FILM.
2. It is intriguing from the day I heard about it, I hated the idea at first, at second, at third…
3. It has a kick-ass soundtrack.
4. It takes the theme of cyber sex, pornography, urban-rural-development-divide.
5. Looking at all the hype, I wanted to push it to the weekdays, but for some strange reason, I can’t feel any more ecstatic now that …

The woman next door
Truffaut’s Silsila. Fanny Ardant. Infidelity. His penultimate film. What more reasons to watch it?! A lazy-paced idyllic film, with regular Truffaut indulgences, masterful handling of the sexual tension between the lead couple is one of the many strengths of the film. The twist of the guy-can’t-take-it-anymore elevates the tension so as you would expect something dire pretty soon. Not here but. Truffaut dries it down, and punches you back with a numbing finale.

Two English Girls
Truffaut again. The classic English-French debate given a idyllic twist by the master. Almost like going on a French vacation.

Eastern Promises
Sid was right in called it The Way of the Flesh. a more than meets the eye film. But what meets the eye is a cruel image, piercing just like, oh well, the blades hit the tattoos.

In Bruges
Saw it again the second week. What a film! Dares …

Introduction:

Siva – the creator!…. Creates magic with just about anything from his conventional cymbals to the timbale to the batajon to the vastly unconventional shells and conches and “Biryani Kadai”.

Siva’s style is deceptive for the uninitiated. Deeply profound and mysterious at one moment; tantalizing and exuberant at the next. However, augmenting the brute power, are his rhythmic style and harmony, which surrounds the discerning listener with warmth, joy and bliss.

Looking at the heritage and the training that has gone behind this rare phenomenon in the world of rhythm… is the exposure at home with his father S M Ananan, a well-known drummer in the South Indian Film Industry. Siva was adept with his drumsticks even at the tender age of 7 and went on to give his first stage performance at the age of 12. His first studio break was playing for South Indian Master Creator K V …

It has been over a month since I saw Avakai Biryani. A lot has been written, in fact had been written about the film by the time I caught it in Hyderabad. As it happens for most first-time watches, in a new language I mean, I had a special affection for the film, and this is what I thought, of the film….

The mutually agreed upon confession of eternal love, as it transcends the barriers of the screen, songs, characters.
An emotion hitertho realized in films, divine love. You see the heroine and for a moment sex doesn’t occur to you. Yes, that rare moment of trifled serendipity.
The film begins with wide village roads, that meander and wind and find their own way as the …

3rd Bangalore International Film Festival
16-22 Jan 2009

BIFFES’09 is on, in full swing. This was day two for me, quite a nice and varied collection, nice retrospectives(Resnais, Kim Ki Duk, Kaurismaki, Dan Wolman), Homages(Chahine, Ichikawa, Vijay Tendulkar), Jewels from the archives, Cinema of the World, Country Focus(Italy, Norway, Poland), Summer 2007(no this is no category. You guessed it right ‘That film is in the festival!’. So I thought it deserves a mention) and Documentaries.

BLIND MAN’S BLUFF/A CAIXA(1994)
Portuguese
Dir: Manoel de Oliveira
Saw this in a broken down old theatre, and it couldn’t get any better. Oliveira, over 100 yrs old, is the oldest filmmaker in the world. So I was presumably expecting something ‘old’. The film was anything but that. The film explores the society, through all possible eyes. So many characters living close-walled lives, fighting cribbing loving beating shouting playing selling. The lives as in this falling neighbourhood atmosphere are saturated …

A definitive Rahman album, goes beyond anything he has done before, usually the case with ALL his films.

Interesting times these, overwhelming at times, but intriguing on the whole. Films have taken every possible commoditized space. Film songs were never more instant. Yet the perfect irony plays its wishful role quite consistently, and it might all be a game of chance, a mere coincidence, for every overwhelming film or song there are 20 bad ones. So happy and lucky as we might feel, there is room for worse.
Creativity is going through another instantification. Think of the one thing you like doing, or would like doing, and you become ‘it’ the next moment. Scriptwriter. Film maker. Your wish is your command.
Buzz of films. Promos. Teasers. First looks. Previews. They are all there. In all possible spheres. I often pride myself at the fact that I catch film gossip and inside stories young. Not after yesterday, when I saw a running-out-of-breath VJ spelling it all out in one …

It has been 2 days since the songs of Dev D ‘hit us’, and there is no better way to describe the effect. Normally I write music reviews and the hysteria looms for some time, I get panned for wrongly interpreting many things and get lauded for getting few things right, sometimes I fight, sometimes I feel too lazy or simply incapable of facing all the questions thrown at me. And soon it gets over.
Dev D is different. The response is mind numbing, the music is not yet out officially and still the whole nation is going ga-ga. The kind of enthusiasm and excitement shown by every music lover in the endless comments and elsewhere is unprecedented. And this shows that it is no fluke, or a one week wonder. These songs will grow, and grow more.
There are so many questions that everyone has, may be we soon …

Dev.D Music Album Soundtrack and Review

04 November 2008
Late afternoon in Bangalore. Cloudy outside. The world has just woken up to the sound of ‘Emosanal Atyachar’ and the buzz can’t get any bigger with Pintoo Meena from Sikar, Rajasthan, Animesh Pandey from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh and R.V. Natarajan from Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu all resorting to incessant, tax-free use of the phrase, on/in reference to all forms of humanity surrounding them – parents, girlfriends, relatives, nobodies, random passers-by/passer-byes/passers-byes on the street, the random guy at the cyber caf'©, the sexy elder sister of the kitaabi keeda in class, bade papaji, college warden, and the friendly neighborhood paanwaala.
EA, as analysts on NDTV Profit suggest, will soon replace all other similar sounding EA’s. Jeeye to jeeye kaise soon to be replaced by EA to EA kaise, all cool kids in college highly suspected of using EA to maximum benefit, the focus …

End of the year comes a film that brings so many necessary evils of the medium back to the fore –garishly mounted song sequences, elaborate dramatic confrontations, formulaic storytelling structure, yet Ghajini does all these with an approach that is not wholly commercial in the crude sense of the word. A film that takes off with so many baggages, remake and copy and shit like that, and works its way up to a film that would be well off without these connections in a different film-world, a different story, a different point of view. The film takes no time in establishing its intentions- with a real-looking normal sequence(the hero boards an auto with minimum fuss, drops a cool line(ye mera address hai) and leaves, and an explosive outburst in the very next sequence. This is one scene where the movie screams out loud, fuck you.

What follows is well, very …

Kurz und schmerzlos – Short Sharp Shock(1998)

Gabriel, Costa, and Bobby. Three Turkish, Serbian & Greek friends meet again after Gabriel gets out of prison( I could associate this to Spike Lee’s brilliant and lesser talked about 25th Hour). They experience their changing relationship in the darker alleys of Hamburg, Germany. Bobby, the babyface blazer-clad young gangster hopeful has to prove his mettle at in organized crime and treats every chance encounter as a possible link/event to his larger and deeply desired ambition, of gaining the respect that comes with being a gangster, he idolizes Tony Montana. He even has a girlfriend to try all them Scarface girlfriend-bashing scenes with. A rather tough scene where he takes out his girlfriend for a dinner with his immediate boss(an Albanian mafiosa) and mentor here is executed with utmost ease by Akin. The girl and the men are having Italian food, she asks …

3.5/5
Quite a good attempt, has flashes of good comic-book sensibility and well staged action sequences.

Note : This post does not contain any reference/digs/mentions of Rab ne whatever….

Note 2: This post contains the combined creative energies of two world-cinema-depraved junkies creating a historical blogging event.Taaliyaan.

Note 3: Please read this post for sake of world cinema, Kerala Tourism & as KK would say, Baaaaaaa…

0930 AM
Boarding Gate : I walked in to this film, and thought it was cool, not like a festival festival film but a nice coolly aggressive Michael Madsen playout, and then I see this hot actress. The film moves on, and I begin liking it, it is a normal franco-american tale of deception, deceit, betrayal, Mahesh bhatt, S&M, and arthouse devices. I think, the hot actress is too postcard for a film festival selection, and I hear that she is in fact the one called ASIA ARGENTO.

She of the tattoos. She of …

The 13th International Film Festival of Kerala promises unlimited trips at the movies. From retrospectives to contemporary world cinema to 50 years old films to a special series on Reels and Music, it has hardly left any possible option to showcase films of all genre and time.

Here is a brief account of the Day One films:

He who must die
This was my second Jules Dassin film, after Night & the city. Though Night has its own classic appeal of presenting film noir in a human/personal manner, it is He who must die that truly caught me unawares. The story moves around a passion play against a backdrop of generational land conflict between the Greeks & Turks. One village, hypnotized by the Patriarch, chooses actors amongst shepherds, saddlers, butchers, to play …

It has been a crazy year at the movies. While Bollywood has mostly found it tough to spring any surprise, in the real sense, and there are hardly any films which impressed me out of the league (when compared to the last year – examples are aplenty, it had films either so good which made one shout from the rooftop or films that made you cringe and rethink about spending your money on a multiplex ticket), Hollywood was not much different.
The only few films that I thought did create a dent somewhere were Tashan, Sarkar Raj, Aamir, Jodha Akbar, Rock On, Dasvidaniya, Jaane tu ya jaane na, Mithya and probably, Welcome to Sajjanpur. I won’t bring in my guilty pleasure/antisocial-exercise films to ruin the post (in other words I won’t be talking about Contract & Phoonk). And then there were the disappointments – commercial and parallel. Commercial disasters …

Vaaranam Aayiram Movie Review

There is a sequence in Gautham Vasudev Menon’s mostly autobiographical Vaaranam Aayiram, where Krishnan(Suriya) goes to meet his son, Surya(Suriya) in the engineering college hostel. The son looks up to the father, ‘my dad, my hero’ are the almost recurring emotions through the film. In this particular scene, Krishnan comforts his son, pats him on the back, gives him some money, and walks off saying, “we are both grown-ups now, son”. And Surya can’t hold his tears as the daily rush of hostel life surrounds him in the face…

One of the many poignant sequences in the film which underlines the joie de vivre or ‘life goes on’ theme emotion that Gautham has chosen to structure this film around.

Vaaranam Aayiram, one of the most anticipated films this year, for more reasons than one (big …

Michel Gondry. Intriguing cinema. Intriguing art. Intriguing person. It is tough to classify him in one art form. The man has many faces. He remembers his dreams, or so his art suggests. He makes sure you see his dreams too, how they fall in or out of one place, in all their shattering glory.

A no-holds barred explosion of an innocently wild imagination, BE KIND REWIND gives a key-holed viewer all the reasons to not only absorb the world it creates, but wallow in its oft-dramatic, oft-personal trajectory. It takes a while, may be a little less, to tune into the world it creates – VHS tapes, old school film rental shops, video libraries with dust proudly adorning some corners, on the edge of extinction, kept alive only by the trite humor of cinema; the magical illusion of crude but unjustified belief of the film lover. The one …

There are so many reference points for ‘Punjabi’ in films. You tend to go about it stereotypically. Dhaba. Butter Chicken. Lassi. Aloo da paratha. Truck drivers. Jalandhar. Patiala. Phagwada. And so on.

The question is, what defines it? The culture, the language, the mannerisms, the way of life… and the music and dance that finds itself in an exhortation of life. We have seen umpteen films on Punjabi culture, mostly taking Punjabi as a fallback and moving on with whatever story they got, with a modest dose of naach-gaana, bhangra et al. sometimes the film goes awry and the director thinks ‘Punjabi!’ and lo and behold you get yourself a dhamaka item number. Universally acceptable oft-pointless song and dance. Oye balle oye. Bhangra paao ji paaji, giddha paao ni kudiyon.

Let’s take the discussion further. Punjabi pop. Daler Mehndi. Malkit Singh. London Brigade. You think of the words Billo, Jugni, …

If blogging was prevalent in the 90’s, there would be so many things I would write about – all the dubbbed films mesmerizing an alien audience in a way they never imagined, song dance and more, Gopi Kishan, Mohra, that oddball which changed the way I looked at Indian films called Dil Se, mid-90’s action wave, all the newbies vying for a sustainable career option in films, Mukul Anand films, and so on. If we would move a little ahead post millennium, there would be few more entries and revelations – the changing face of film music, some people making ‘NRI’ films whatever that meant, the almost death of story and innovation in Hindi cinema, and the predictable trends.

And somewhere along the early decade, I would buy a cassette of a film weirdly titled Taal, and I would log …

The original bad-ass ‘dangerously in love’ classic, baap of Natural Born Killers and Bunty aur Babli, in varying degrees.
4/5
IMDb

A must-watch for lovers of Urdu, Shashi Kapoor in a memorable turn and the bygone small-town India that graces may be few archives now.
4/5
IMDb

After covering the festival last year, I had greater expectations this time around. And rightly so, I stood vindicated. The films that were covered as a part of this year’s festival not only satisfied an avid film-viewer, but went beyond the essential duties of an event of such stature – the selection of films, the issues that it touches upon, the domains it explores, and more importantly the ambitions it aspires at, make the whole effort worthwhile.

There is always going to be a huge number of films that might look intimidating if you are looking at covering all of them in a festival or event like this. But you slowly settle down with the plan, and look at the films not as an objective but as a wholesome entity, each existing in its broader existential sense, breathing and sprawling in their own individualistic entirety, and an acute …

RGV wields the royal finger instead of the much-touted indulgence in what-could-be the Aag trip of the year.
3.5/5
IMDb

A contemporary companion from Shyam Babu in the streak of Mandi & Hari Bhari, nice to see the master break the divides we put so comfortably on cinema.
4/5
IMDb

Gulabi Talkies, a film in Kannada with English subtitles is an important film recommended for anyone who appreciates cinema in its pure form. Another masterstroke from Girish Kasaravalli, the film is a telling depiction of Gulabi, an independent mid-wife who lives by her choices and it is in her context that the director paints a larger and powerfully poignant portrayal of coastal life in an early nineties India.

Some Background Bakwaas

Wednesday
1130 AM
CALL FROM THE OFFICE
“Shit, meeting at 1 PM!”
“See if you can make well before time, as it might rain soon”
“Ya sure, I was anyways half ready”
OK, let’s work it this way. Somehow finish everything up and try and catch the Gulabi Talkies film for the evening show at 7:30. Hmmm. Anyways who is gonna turn up for it. Will get the tickets even if I land up 5-10 mins aage peechhe.

5:30 PM Office
REGULAR OFFICE …

“Obie Trice, real name no gimmicks” – Obie Trice

[Intro]
Two trailer park girls go round the outside;
round the outside, round the outside
{*scratches*
Two trailer park girls go round the outside;
round the outside, round the outside
{*scratches*

Guess who’s back
Back again
Shady’s back
Tell a friend

Guess who’s back, guess who’s back, guess who’s back, guess who’s back
guess who’s back, guess who’s back, guess who’s back.. {*Eminem hums*)

From ‘Without Me’ by Eminem.

So we are back to the water film festival, officially called Voices from the Waters 2008- The Third International Film Festival on Water, the biggest film festival on water in the world.
I had a ball in last year’s festival, meeting film makers, eating samosas, watching films, drinking beer(not in the fest though since it’s a ‘water’ fest and not a ‘beer’ fest), …

Maathi Maay is a Marathi film directed by Chitra Palekar.

(It took me a week to actually attempt writing about the film. The reasons are aplenty. It is a Marathi film. And considering my track record with writing on films of other languages(I once attempted a Tamil film review and got blasted on many accounts – not writing Tamil as Tamizh, not understanding the ‘nuances’, mentioning all the impertinent things that you would expect in a review, and moreover, celebrate a not-to-be-celebrated film), I would rather tread familiar path with a socio-economic dissection of Singh is king or a public-is-superstitious-reading of Phoonk(I might still do it soon, by the way) or a why-good-cinema-should-be-supported-on-all-accounts-review-of-Mumbai meri Jaan, and hell yeah! Rock on! How can I miss that! The forgiven not forgotten stage dream of the Peter England variety. So ignorant of me. But leaving the pertinence or eligibility aside, I …

Himesh Reshammiya has been doing a world of good to the Hindi film music scene for some time now. When I look at his films, more than anything, he has done immense contribution to bringing the unannounced bathroom singing genre back to the fore. His songs really made singing cool, irrespective of whether it sounds good or not, one can launch into an extempore crooning session at any time of the day, anywhere.
I heard his name first through TV serials, then in Salman Khan films, and I quickly put him in a slot – light melodic compositions with some cheap trick or the other. He kept delivering on the hit parameter year after year – kahin pyar ho na jaaye(Pardesi is still as fresh), Dulhan hum le jayenge, Hello Brother, Humraaz, Kurukshetra, Kyaa Dil ne kahaa…

If I see his career as a film composer, I can broadly divide it …

Harry Callahan: Where’s the girl?
The Killer: You tried to kill me!
Harry Callahan: If I tried to do that your head would be splattered all over this field – now where’s the girl?

As we move from the opening telescopic view of a psychopath killer eyeing a PYT bathing in the rooftop sun set against a brilliantly sparse, sexed-up Lalo Schifrin jazz, blood slowly brings in the elements of crime so smoothly in the City by the Bay perfection and serenity. In enters an iconic cop, call him a detective if you will, the frame and moment he enters you know he will satisfy all theories of ‘exception’ that you know of in context of cinema. Adding the much needed spice to a 70’s classic narrative, set-piece grandeur, Inspector Harry Callahan walks the sun like he is gracing the moon bathed coastline of North Beach, his cool coefficient doesn’t need …

4/5 A grand nod to bad taste from Michel supercool Gondry.
IMDb

4/5 Wonderfully brings together so many diverse themes in a who-else-but Jarmusch film.
IMDb

4/5 I was pleasantly surprised by the film’s colorfully lonely world.
IMDb

This is how you recreate an age and time, with a touch of reality.
4/5
IMDb

Not quite a superhero film, not quite a Will Smith film either.
2.5/5
IMDb

Surrealism. Check. Magic realism. Check.
An infirmary with its One flew over the cuckoo’s nest environment. Check. Check again. Or may be not. An infirmary in WWI times. No money. No Rajesh Khanna for optimism. No O’ Henry either. A disproportioned Pan’s Labyrinth kid girl with dysfunction and dreams.
Exotica. Ya right. Go on.
Americana Exotica.
Blood Brothers. Separated by blood.

“My father is dead”.
Grief has gone. Enter smile. Pirates. Correction bandits. Four corners of the earth. Wherever they are.
Governor Odious. Good name for a villain. Otta Benga. Even better. Go on. Alexandria. Oh, that reminds me of…yes I know. Alexander. Alexander The Great. Stranded in magnanimity. The water episode. Stupid? Exemplary? Stupid.
Maps. Human maps. Maps on a human. Let’s navigate now.
Wallace the Monkey. Darwin the Charles. The Tashan.
Mystic. Nature man. Birds in the belly. Trees in the heart. He hates Odious too.
The …

Once starts off as a self-confessed song on the street.

The healing has begun…

The song picks up, and the apparent admirer of the said song picks up the jhola of our street-singer protagonist instead. As the camera soon establishes it’s an indie film, we feel a little eased off, of the commercial hangovers. You know, all the discounts that come along with an indie film. What’s good here, though, is that you never think about it again. The film moves on, along the smooth strained guitar and the bearded hero.

Titles
Glen Hansard
Marketa Irglova

C from top
O from left
N from bottom
E from right

Scratching out the surface now
And I am tryin’ hard to work it out
So much is gone misunderstood
And this mystery only leads to doubt
And I didn’t understand

When you reached out to take my hand
And if you have something to say

You better say it now

‘cus this is what I’ve waited for…

In …