Review: Life of Pi
Life of Pi is a CG dreamboat. The team behind the film needs to be congratulated on recreating a Royal Bengal Tiger with muscles rippling under its fur and a face that is more expressive than many living actors today.
“Author Archive”
Goodbye by Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof
It is one thing to make a film like this in a free world and another to make this film with such admirable camerawork, art direction, sound mixing, and screenplay writing in Iran itself when Rasoulof is being asked not to make films. The brave film presents Iran today that a casual visitor to that country cannot glimpse but merely suspect of the existence of the daily terror that the braver sections of society face. Possibly great cinema is always spurred on by state persecution.
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia by Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Anatolia is an ancient name for much of modern Turkey. It is the name associated with much of Turkey from the days of Alexander the Great. What is important for the viewer to note and reflect on is that Ceylan chose the term Anatolia rather than Turkey, when the tale he presents is of modern day Turkey, of individuals and mindsets that are not historical but contemporary. Perhaps for Ceylan and co-sciptwriters (comprising his wife Ebru Ceylan and Ercan Kasal, the very same team that wrote the brilliant Three Monkeys) the mindset and values have not changed with time and perhaps for them modern Turkey is no different from Anatolia of the ages past.
Elena by Andrei Zvyagintsev
Andrei Zvyagintsev is one of the most interesting among active filmmakers today. He has only made three feature films. Each of those three films is built, to put it in literary terms, on the scale of a novella rather than an epic novel.
Hugo, The Tree of Life shortlisted for Visual Effects Oscar
Martin Scorsese’s Hugo and Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life are among the ten films shortlisted for the Visual Effects category for the 84th Academy Awards. The films are listed below in alphabetical order: “Captain America: The First Avenger” “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2″ “Hugo” “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” “Pirates of [...]
Review: Le Vendeur (The Salesman) by Sébastien Pilote
The Salesman is probably one of the most powerful films from Canada in recent decades that recall the quiet intensity of the works of Canadian directors Claude Jutra and Norman McLaren, some forty or fifty years ago.
The 16th IFFK: Notes on an amazing film festival
The festival that can claim to be one of the finest in India outdid itself in comparison to its previous editions.
Review: The Tree of Life by Terrence Malick
Terrence Malick has made only five feature films to date, all made in the US. None of those five films has won an Oscar although many of his films have made the grade of garnering numerous unsuccessful Oscar nominations. On the other hand, Malick’s The Thin Red Line won the Golden Bear at Berlin Film Festival, Days of Heaven won the Best Director award at Cannes, an
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu by Cristi Puiu (Romania)
This notable Romanian film does not merely rely on the strong script but a bravura acting performance of the entire cast. The flawless performances of each player in the film are astounding. The viewer begins to feel that these are real people–such is the effect of the film.
Vamsha Vriksha: A major Indian cinematic work,often forgotten
Most Indian critics sideline Vamsha Vriksha partly because quality Indian cinema is often associated with three languages—Bengali, Malayalam and Hindi/Urdu—and partly because the better Indian critics and scholars are more comfortable with those afore-mentioned languages. Vamsha Vriksha is forgotten today because it was made in Kannada language and its main actors were the directors themselves.
Recommended
