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It started with Hassan Jehangir, Salma Agha, then later went on to Ali Haider. Ofcourse, Ustad was always there. But we are not talking about Ustad here. Our focus is the pages of memory that got fader through the years. The music from sarhad ke us paar that knew no barriers. And never will. Lets go over few pages of past and come to where we stand now.

Late 80’s
Hassan Jehangir is what I call ‘salad days’ memory.
The song that made Hassan Jehangir a household name across the 2 countries - Hawa hawa.

Hawa Hawa was a revolution of sorts for reasons best known to the late 70’s/80’s borns.

This song was followed by aaja aaja dil hai deewana. And the only image that comes to my mind is a shoddy album cover with a guy …

There are ways in which one follows a different culture, a different set of values, beliefs and mannerisms. It’s all highly subjective, but you do grow to be more inclined towards a particular way of life and less inclined towards the other. Your beliefs keep changing as you move through life. Lessons learnt, and stories heard.

Similar is the case with me. I see Bengali culture as an assortment of colors. Good bad ugly unforgettable, and like that.
Films make sense to me for the most or least weird reasons in the world. But sometimes, films are fun even if they have to scream to reach you. This entire hurdle to the screaming bit sometimes gets more visible while one is reacting to a medium. In cinema, that part manifests in the look of a film, the camera and the likes.

A film works on multiple levels. The story, the way the …

Narration: A message that tells the particulars of an act or occurrence or course of events; presented in writing or drama or cinema or as a radio or television program.

I see movies like “thirupachi” “thimiru” “madurai” etc and wonder … did the director even have a story to tell … if not what did he tell the producer?
Lets club such movies in a separate genre “koothu”! “THE KOOTHU MOVIES”

But I love this language and still follow all the movies that get released … may it be the amazing “paruthiveeran” or the honest “mozhi” or even the filthy “palani” … I always keep track of the Friday births, to gauge the quality of cinema in my foster land. And in one such attempt I hit upon Vetrimaran’s “Polladhavan” last Diwali.

The promos of that movie appeared cheap. It even gave me a feeling that the movie is more like the …

A fidayeen attack is a suicide tactic used by militants. Such attacks are especially common in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. In a fidayeen, an extremist equips himself (most fidayeens are men) with weapons and a sizeable amount of ammunition. He then proceeds to gain entrance into a public gathering or other crowded area and proceeds to open fire on law-enforcement personnel and the general public. He continues his attack until he runs out of ammunition, at which point he is either gunned down by security forces or committs suicide. Fidayeen militants sometimes do attempt to escape but are almost always shot by anti-terrorist squads shortly afterward due to the fact that the militants rarely have a “getaway” plan chalked out. These militants, like suicide bombers plan on being killed during the execution of the attack.

-from Wikipedia

Cinema is a rewarding experience for the world it creates when …

……the words stayed with me, for long. Does it happen like this ? Emotionally troubled while mixing the film…do you get so much involved…even during mixing the film…..i had heard something like this for the first time. Could not believe it. And was he talking about the same film ? Gandhi My Father. When i met Resul Pookutty (do check out his filmography here to know his range), he was busy mixing saawariya for the dvd. He told me that generally people take the film print copy for the dvd as well. But there are only few who take the trouble to change things for the dvd so that you get the best sound even in your home theatre. you change some technical specifications also, i dont remember now. He did the same for Black’s dvd and now for saawariya. Because Sanjay Leela Bhansali wants it. He is …

29th Jan 1:30 pm… I was out with my friends and Amma called me up to inform me about the demise of Bharath Gopi. The news gave me a shock and its strange that I feel this deep sadness nowadays when I hear such news …may be the closer i get to movies the more it hurts… I almost feel as if I have lost someone dear to me!!! I enquired immediately if it was his Paralysis that could have resurfaced and caused it !! No it was an attack she said.
I have lived most part of my life outside my home state of kerala, and never had a chance to actually see many of Gopi sir’s movies. I wish I could write and discuss extensively about him and give him the rightly deserved ode in PFC. But I know his work only superficially
So what I present here is …

I have been mildly excited about some nice music that I have procured and have been trying to procure off late. 2008 seems to have begun on a melodic note indeed. May be it’s the Rahman effect. May be it’s the wonderful possibilities of the online world that benefits the one field that couldn’t do with all the restrictions – music. Music is truly breathing, mushrooming, sprawling and singing in this dangerously limitless domain.

Through all these voluntary and directed excursions, I have realized one thing – the best music is always out there, and you still haven’t heard it. This fantastic impossibility makes it a high that it is. You look at some news article or some old picture and are reminded of a song, you want to hear it NOW, you google it and in the next 2 minutes, you are transported to that very time period you …

iView Author:
Ramesh Ramaswamy
(PA/USA)

Email:
cdrakenc [at] gmail[dot] com

Khoya Khoya Chand

The half movie that showed up rocked. Khoya Khoya Chand is a classic . Sudhir Mishra needs to be congratulated.

The zeitgeist of Indian cinema – the timeless and self replicating organism that produces Bollywood-is captured perfectly in the first half.

What saves the movie from becoming an exercise either in idiosyncratic grand theories on one hand and depersonalized docudramas about fatal attractions on the other, is the narrative sense the director shows in leaving the party to spend a few moments lost in the moonlight, doing a love letter to the idealized, unachievable virginal pixie that dust cannot touch (Nikhat, the actress, played somewhat lukewarmly by Soha Ali Khan) through the eyes of an urdu playwright-poet from a broken …

Three characters, a wild bull, a reluctant forest officer and a village deep in the interior of Maharahstra. The wild bull goes on a rampage destroying a lot in the village and to stop it, a forest officer is called to catch the bull. The Marathi film “Valu” directed by debutant director Umesh Kulkarni has this one line story which forms the skeleton of a interesting two hour movie.

Valu is a village tradition in Maharahstra where a bull is let loose in the village in god’s name. The bull is free to roam anywhere in the small village of Kusavade until it goes berserk and starts destroying crops and the village. To counter the menace, a forest officer is called from the government forest department. What happens after that is what the story about.

Valu is not as much of a story as in having a start or a …

iView Author:
NIREN BHATT
Mumbai, India

EMAIL:
nirenbhatt [at] yahoo.com

2007 : A Lyrical Summary

2007 had some interesting & enjoyable songs written, tops the list is the Album of “No Smoking”, there can be difference of opinions about film but not about the songs, particularly lyrics. I think its one of Gulzar’s best works in recent times, lyrics actually conveys more about the film than the film itself, it surpasses material strata of meaning and transcends to a different high.

“upale jaise sulagata hoon, kambakht dhue mein jalta hoon.” ,
“Jab nasha toot ta hai, kitne tukde gire hain”,
“ye jahaan faani hai, bulbula hai paani hai,
bulbulo pe rukna kya,
paani o pe behta ja, behta ja…”,

“pag dandio pe milna do din ki yaariya hain”…
“ye ashtray bharti jaa rahi hai”…

each and every song, each and every word…They don’t get any better than …

iView Author:
SAAD NAWAB
Vadodara, India

EMAIL:
saadnawab [at] gmail.com

Title of the article - John Rambo: A toast to the 80’s

Oh My God! Oh My God! Woohoo! Kill them all!!!

That was me shouting and cheering in the theater as I was watching John Rambo, the fourth and possibly final chapter in the Rambo franchise. I was seven or eight years old when I first got to watch First Blood. Hell, my life consisted of watching Rambo, Robocop and Predator. Ah, those were the days. I guess the 80’s was a time period for such mindless fun. I can still remember that line, “They drew first blood….”. This review will clearly be a dumbed down fan boy reaction…

After numerous scripts and delays and further delays due to MGM saying yes to Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone finally landed up in the writers and directors chair …

AR Rahman: The Maestro
In a world of chaos and endless insanity, there are a few things one wishes always keep coming….
Morning steaming cup of tea and untouched newsprint, the unruffled texture of Scotch, an astonishing book you feel blessed to lay your hands on, good cinema and of course, good music.

They restore your faith in life, in that after all the grilling, you will be treated to your 15 some day. AR Rahman’s music constitutes one of those healers for me. And it not only remains intact in its untainted form, it gets better by the day. Here is one guy who refuses to look back. And thank God for that.

Jodha Akbar is the final period film composition from Rahman, or so we are told. So I would like to give the score what it deserves, an …

Somehow it looks cluttered, with too much….

The grandeur is missing….

The balance between mythology and contemporary elements misses a few plot/reference points….

The modern references are understandable to a certain extent, but at the end of the day, it is based on a central character who demands that glitter in the eye reverence, which is seen only in a ‘well shot’ sequence in the climax….

I took my 4-year old nephew out for watching Return of Hanuman today. It was a first for me, I had never ventured out with this mature an audience for a film from one of my favorite contemporary film makers. And that too after the recent glycerin assault of stars. Watching the film has been an experience for me, for many a reasons. I realized we might have a million why’s and how’s for every film, for kids its quite literally a different ball game. They care a …

Some of the most memorable moments of Taare Zameen Par are the ones that just flash you by, they will never be shown on those award screens, they will die a silent death…

A sulking Ishaan in the blue bed of the dark night, making images in the dark, his rabbit eyes piercing through the darkness, while another morning comes and brings in new stories, both in the narrative and his screen life….

Ishaan standing outside the classroom and discovering a world of his own in the empty, dusty corridor, looking at his favorite part of the school, outside. The windows which bring him the sun in full measure. He talks to the dead painting on the wall, makes conversations will the still walls, while a bunch of nagging school kids do their on-screen duties to acceptable imperfection, he stands there, on the fence between fact and fiction.

A sleepy Ishaan runs …

Francis: [spotting some children crossing a river] Look at these assholes.

Wes Anderson’s beautifully flawed The Darjeeling Limited is an ode to his own cinema, a wronged melody, swaying in its ignominious existence. It is some sort of a sequel to the perfect portrayal of an imperfect family that The Royal Tennenbaums was. I would also include The Squid and the whale, another quirky classic in his oeuvre, something Scorsese seems to like too. While the other two play around more with the family in its visible form, this one, more like few bits of Life Aquatic, deals with its aftermaths.

Anderson gives you a fantastically painted envelope of exotica, in Louis Vuitton ‘attachies’, in a painfully postcard rural India, with its stereotypes comfortably seated in their places. The whites and the satrangis, the cartwheels and pagdis, and the …

This Unni could have been named Murali. And why not, as Murali Nair – the one who had debuted with a Cannes Camera d’Or-winning Marana Simhasanam (The Death’s Throne) in 1999 – draws from his own childhood to come up with this delectable mix of innocent storytelling and subtle comments on the societal prejudices as seen through a child’s eyes.

Yes, Nair makes it more tantalizing by telling his audiences - as he did following a screening of his latest film at the 29th Festival of 3 Continents film festival in Nantes in France to an audience comprising yours truly as one of the minority adults amidst a gaggle of highly-curious French school children who seemed overawed after viewing this tale set in rural Kerala – that yes, there are autobiographical elements in his film, but they come with a generous doze of fictional elements. “Which one of the kids …

[I thought to start my posting at PFC with a review of No Smoking – Kashyap is a well-known figure here; but also because in a recent post he bemoans how people don’t get his film].
[display_podcast]
The protagonist of No Smoking, K (John Abraham, in a namesake role as Franz Kafka’s protagonist in The Trial) is a smoker who refuses to give up. His family and friends try every means to get him off it while he cannot see what the fuss is all about. However, when his wife (Ayesha Takia) threatens to leave him for good, he agrees to get help from one Baba Bengali (Paresh Rawal), referred to him by his best friend (Ranvir Shorey). Baba Bengali runs an underground quit smoking laboratory, and once caught in his scheme of things, life becomes a nightmare for K. K’s surreal journey from there on defies logic, and the world, with …

It is said that “Psycho” (1960) gave birth to this new genre called “slasher” flicks. And with slashers was born the concept of the relentless, merciless killing machine, a la Leatherface (From Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Jason Voorhes (from Friday the 13th), Michael Myers (from Halloween), Freddy Krueger (from A Nightmare on Elm Street), to name just a few. Even the T1000 from Terminator 2; the eponymous Predator and Alien fall under the same category, though they did not feature in films which can be termed slashers.

What interests me most about these characters is the weapons they use: Leatherface uses a chainsaw; Jason a machete; Freddy has needles for fingers; Predator has an arsenal at his disposal, while the alien’s biggest weapon is its intelligence. The other similarity I have noticed among these …

Khoya Khoya Chand is Shantanu Moitra in all his possibilities, a rich multi-dimensional score, yet not losing any bit on perfection. Listen on, and you will know that it just might be his best accomplishment in film till now…

Chale aao saiyyaan
Chale aao saiyaan
Padoo main tore paiyaan

This song has the mujra tone with its soul in place

Diye ki main baati
Jal jal main mariaa

Chale aao saiyaan

The arrangement is very Umrao Jaan, as real as it could get…

Humko raja ji saiyyaan ji ajee neend nahi aaye
Tum baithe kothi pe bangle pe mehfil sajaaye

Meri sautan pe gaaj gir jaaye
Mere saiyyaan pe aanch nahi aaye
Salwat dar salwat dar salwat sejariya naa bhaaye
Karwat dar karwat haan karwat birhaa sataaye

Birhaa sataaye
Birhaa sataaye

Chale aao saiyyaan

Jhumka mera teeka mera kangna sautaniya ko bhaaye
Meri choonar meri moondar meri paayal bairan liye jaaye

Meri sautan pe gaaz gir jaaye
Mere saiyyaan aanch nahi …

iView Author:
Srinivas N (Bombay, India)

Email:
srinivasn77 [at] gmail [dot] com

Padamati Sandhya Ragam, which means The Western Sunset Song or Sandhya’s western song is one of those movies that remains very close to my heart. A very simple but a sweet film, released in 1986, Padamati Sandhya Ragam is a milestone in Telugu Cinema, directed by the talented director “Jandhyala”.

Jandhyala directed many great comedies and also some excellent socially relevant movies. More to come on Jandhyala on a different post as this article is more about Padamati Sandhya Ragam”.

Starring a very young Vijayshanti and the american “cute” actor Thomas Jane, this is a story about a young girl Sandhya from a small town in India, who arrives in America along with her parents.

Even though her father was not keen to shift to a new country, he was …