Advertise
(8 votes, average: 4.13 out of 5)
Loading ...
Films 2007: The Alternative List
With year-ends, come lists. Films of 2007 that stick out for honorable and not-so-honorable mention are:
Namesake
Meera Nair’s feted adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri’s book was less than satisfying for me. Devoid of details in the book, the film was a plainer story stitching together the surface stereotypes that NRI families go through. I found Irrfan Khan and Tabu in super form as the Ganguli pair (though wondered if the Bengalis too would agree over their nuances).
Black Friday & No Smoking
Black Friday, on the other hand, was a more satisfying adaptation of the book of the same name. Despite a small production budget, the commentary was able to render pan south Asian feel to the unfolding of the terrorist attacks in Bombay. Whether No Smoking was a good film or a bad film is now a matter of opinion. But it certainly was the most intensely debated – loved and hated with equal passion. Anurag Kashyap unfortunately had to wrap up the year with Hanuman, The return of!
Ek Chaalis Ki Last Local & Manorama Six Feet Under
Take-offs on Hollywood films, these two films have done their best in pulling out the word ‘inspiration’ from the rut it has been consigned to by the nauseating splurge of ‘copies’ that are churned out here in Bollywood. Both these films use enough originality and creativity, so that the use of the original is not an embarrassment but a reference point.
Life in a Metro…
The film’s experiment with multiple narratives was not entirely successful but several stories here stood out for their honest portrayals of city life and held the interest of both audience as well as the reviewers.
Eklavya & Dharm
We certainly love to flaunt our mediocrity. None of the contenders for representing India at the Oscars was good enough, but Eklavya’s mere presence was highly intriguing for many. Eklavya told an incredulous story of an Indian prince falling in love with her mother’s lover and doing social service by marrying a house help. Dharm is a supreme example of our misplaced enthusiasm on secularism. No wonder we can’t cure communalism, we continue popping all the wrong pills. Or are these placebos?
Dil Dosti Etc
In our country where sex embarrasses people and morality is the stuff of public debates and political rants, Dil Dosti Etc made its quiet entry, with its delightfully frank, non-judgmental and original take on these two and other youth issues. The narrative style with its sharp edges and rich sub-text is rare in contemporary Bombay cinema.
Saawariya & Om Shanti Om
Both filmmakers would hate this clubbing together for different reasons. The films released together, had huge budgets, star casts and were also matched in “quality”. One flopped and the other was a huge hit. Such is life!
Yashraj Films
They flunked, they flopped, they bombed, they sunk. Except Shimit Amin’s Chak De. A little before its release there were reports that Chak De’s theatrical promos were withdrawn because of negative response from audience. Such was the production’s confidence in this project! I would have found Chak de more satisfying if the story ended at the girls’ team fight-play with the India’s national men’s team. Their going and taking the world cup in Australia was a tad fantastical.
“Akshay Kumar” Films
One can’t afford to not mention the films that were really doing the business for Bollywood. Despite the churning and chasms that new cinema promises, the old Bollywood ways have remained the mainstay for the film business. Apparently all of four Akshay Kumar’s films released this year are a hit. And then there were Partner, Aap ka Suroor and such!
All the best guys for 2008…
20 Responses to “Films 2007: The Alternative List”
Leave a Reply
Our Comments Policy : The following kinds of comments are troll capped, blocked and/or commenter's identity reported publicly: Verbal abuse, personal attacks, hate statements, spam, trolls, advertising. Please assist us in keeping the comments clean. Use the contact form to let us know if you find unwarranted comments on PFC. Thank you.
- Singh is Kinng… reviews begin….
- 1 year - 1 story - 1 minute
- Films to Watch Out for in 2009
- Announcing PFCOne 2008 : Call for Entries
- AapKe Deewane : Ram and Raheem love Sameera in the debut film of Hritik Roshan
- Announcing PFCOne 2008 : Call for Entries
- Singh is Kinng… reviews begin….
- 1 year - 1 story - 1 minute
- Films to Watch Out for in 2009
Recent Posts:
Hottest Today:
@ Padmaja
I found Namesake to be a disaster. Being a Bengali, I can assure you Irfan & Tabu were way off the mark. In fact if you notice, Irfan loses “in-character focus” many times in the movie. And, what I really cringed at was “bengali” girls wearing “gajra” !!! Madras meets Kolkata ??? I have a very poor opinion of Mira Nair,…but this was the pits ! If you read the companion book to the film you will see that she contradicts her own interpretation of the movie !
Alternative list?
Why? How?
HAPPY NEW YEAR FRIENDS
COOL NEW LOOK FOR PFC!!
well I saw a movie form pakistan this year. It is “Khuda ke Liye”. I have never seen anything from pakistan and never thought that the movie can be a hit there because it was critical of their religion. But it was a hit in pakistan. Watch it if u can. It is a movie with most of them new timers.
….
…
u missed Blue Umbrella.
Why is this “being faithful to its source” philosophy so important while transalating a novel onto celluloid? A director reads a certain book, likes certain aspects of it, filters out the ones that he/she thinks wouldnt make a good cinematic transference and goes ahead with what he/she wants to make.. Why should such a discresion on the part of a filmmaker as to what he/she wishes to take from a novel be held up as a negativity while analysing a movie?
I think once a movie, transalated from a literature source gets made, it shud then be analysed as an independent form of art. Its positivities or negativities ought to be seen as its own.
Devdas to me was a bad movie on its own right.
I loved “The Namesake” and have had conversations with people who believe that it was a wonderful adaptation of a comparitively lesser novel. In the sense that the characters when they moved from the wordly confines to celluloid became a lot more believable..
“Black Friday” too was an honest and wonderful adaptation of the book. But in the end its gr8ness was largely its own.
@ Sreehari…I completely agree that there is no implication at all that a director has to be “faithful” to a literary source. In fact that approach might prove a pitfall more often than not. However, in the case of the Namesake,…the essence of the source was lost. And if one argues that even the essence can be dispensed with, then why call it a source in the first place ?
Playback,
Agree. But I havent read the novel in this case to be knowing what I was missing out on. So the virtues that the movie posessed had to hit me on an independent level.
But I loved the movie as a whole. Some sequence were just so moving. Like the sequence where Gogol at hindsight remenisces about an episode with father admist the splashing waves where Irfan on being hit by the fact he had forgotten to bring his camera says.. “Gogol Beta, I dont have the camera right now. So you just have to remembe this Ok? And remember this always”..
Just a reference to why I loved the movie. It was good on its own right. And even without having given the novel a chance, I would have to say that the movie transcended the level of connection that I expect a movie to for me to appreciate its positivities as a well-made piece of art..
But, again somebody who had read the novel would have better insights maybe..
Too recursive, this discussion:)
@ Sreehari :) I would attribute those moments to Jhumpa’s writing.( Did you know that almost all settings, props and dialogues are lifted off as-it-is from the book ? - So much for being unfaithful to the source !)
Sudheshana Nilanjana (later, Jhumpa Lahiri) leverages on Nikolai V. Gogolovinchy (later, Nikolai Gogol) to take us through an endearing journey of self discovery. Gogol’s journey.
For me, the film lost out on this crucial essence. Read the book to understand what I am saying.
Also, Mira Nair’s vision was to have Abhishek Bachchan to play Ashoke Ganguli ! ( Imagine how bad that would have been,…thank god he couldnt turn up for rehersals !)
Playback,
I think the self-discovery part is depicted in the movie, but there r a lot of implied lessons there. Thats a latitude that movies r provided with and something that literature hardly attempts. Again, most of these statements r mre conjectures. What the hell? I’ll try reading “The Namesake”
And yeah I did read somewhere about Abhishek Bachchan not doing Ashoke Ganguli’s part.. I think has to be his gr8est contribution to cinema so far..
@ Shreehari :D
Good that at least someone included Dil Dosti Etc. Definitely the most underrated film of the year. It was a completely original and extremely intelligent film, which for some goddamn reason was not noticed while overhyped trash like Johnny Gaddar, Parzania and Dharm walked away with the maximum critical applause. And thanks for excluding TZP. Definitely the most overrated film of the year.
I’ve watched only Metro out of all these mentioned movies. And I wonder how I would fare in the PRC Ronin contest :w;
I agree with the author —
Namesake for me was quite diappointing…i haven’t read the book and but i have read interpreter of maladies by jhumpa lahiri…if namesake is anywhere close to that then mira nair has missed the mark by some miles :)…anyways i don’t think of mira nair very highly as a director….
Life in a Metro was a very good collage of a number of interrelated tracks….i have one slight complaint against the film….major chunks of it are sequence by sequence (in some cases dialogue by dialogue) “inspired” from Wilder’s “The Apartment”
I wonder why “Taare Zameen Par” didn’t make the list….was one of the most interesting films of 2007 if not the best…
@P(L)AYBACK
bengali girls wearing gajra…haha I was also shocked at the ignorance of the director (or whoever is responsible for that).
Didn’t like the movie much. I have not read the book but then I didn’t find ‘Interpreter of Maladies’ that good.
@Padmaja
you also missed ‘Johnny Gaddar’
@ Neeraja …Yeah ! Its ridiculous !…If you want more bloopers from Namesake, please read on … :)
When the Ganguli family visits Calcutta in 1977 one of the advertisements on the streets is for the Calcutta based newspaper “Telegraph”. The Telegraph was established in 1982.
During a scene set just after the family has returned from spending the summer in India, the very distinctive bright yellow blooms of forsythias can be seen in their yard. Forsythias do not bloom in the autumn.
The characters say “samosas”, the correct Bengali term for that snack is “shingara”, no Bengali ever says “samosa”.
Several anachronisms show up in the 1977 flashback sequences showing Calcutta (Kolkata); the railway station shows a sign for Indusind Bank which was not established until the late 1990s; there is a building of The Telegraph which was not launched till 1982; and there are shots of several bridges and buildings which are only recent additions to the city.
Early in the film when Gogol’s mother and father are sitting together and one of them is holding a letter that they plan to mail to India, there are 2 U.S. stamps on the envelope. These stamps are current (2007) stamps, yet the letters are being mailed in the late 1970’s or early 1980’s.
When the family is in the airport (leaving the US), they’re in the International Arrivals (not Departures) area of JFK Airport.
While in the International Arrivals area of JFK Airport, Gogol focuses on the holographic photos/art lining the hallway; this is a modern decoration of that area (and that technology wasn’t prevalent ~20 years ago).
When the parents go to New York in 1977, the license plates on the cars are the current blue and white plates (with the state of New York in the middle). The color of the plates in New York in 1977 were orange with dark blue letters and numbers.
@playback, you have quite an eye for detail but these minor slips can be ignored if the movie has its heart in its place. And Namesake definitely had its, atleast for me.
@Amit,…the details are not mine,…they are from imdb. I only contributed the “gajra” blooper,…and thats NOT a “minor slip” !
Its like Al Pacino wearing a “dhoti” in Godfather ! …That bad !
what is called ‘alternative’???
in the list you have given, Dharm and some two / three more films can be called off-beat movies. then how you called this is an ‘alternative movie list’???
verry difficult to understand…!!!
@Amit
I agree with p(l)ayback, the ‘gajra’ blooper is not minor. You except people to at least think/research a little bit before making a movie.
SLB showed Paro and Chandramukhi dancing together…a rich zameendar’s wife dancing in public with a nachnewaali? Has he ever read any book from that era?
all in the name of artistic freedom!