Thought

What is it about Slumdog Millionaire that stirs up extreme reactions! From cravings such as ‘˜why can't an Indian filmmaker make such a film" to snide remarks like "Slumdog Millionaire could only have been made by a westerner", reactions to the film encompasses a entire rainbow of emotions. ....

Think of Meena Kumari and Sahib Biwi Ghulam's melancholic Chhoti Bahu comes to mind first. Can we think of Nutan's films and not think of the golden hearted prisoner of Bimal Roy's Bandini? Or remember the glamorous Dimple Kapadia without her award-winning performance as the deglamorised rustic Sanichari in Kalpana Lajmi's Rudaali? Dream girl Hema Malini minus all her fancy costumes and hairdo, plays a simple sari-clad village girl who exudes confidence and conviction in Gulzar's Khushboo - clearly one of her best performances.

Tendulkar found solace, and even escape, in his works, as he writes, "There was no thought of tomorrow. Everyday began and ended with work." And he provided that solace to other creative souls around as writers, directors, playwrights, theatre directors... flocked to him and were born from the womb of his work and his honesty. Examples can be given of film directors like Shyam Benegal (Nishant, Manthan), Govind Nihalani (Aakrosh, Ardh Satya), Jabbar Patel (Saamna, Umbertha and Sinhasan), Amol Palekar (Akriet), Nachiket Patwardan, Satyadev Dubey and many more.

Tendulkar was such a man, who like the ideal teacher for Gandhi, did not just preach lessons, but became the lesson himself. And that is where the greatest contribution of his lay. In the deletion of hypocrisy in his life. In the striving for ‘˜satyagraha' - the steadfastness in truth, despite repeated failures. Purists may scoff at this comparison between Gandhian ideals and Ten, who was preoccupied with violence. But to me, there was no greater Gandhian than him, for he not only believed in truth, but lived by the truth, fought for truth and wrote the truth. And violence was the truth he discovered in the times and the society he lived in.

All within the space of a traditional nuts-and-bolts studio summer picture, the area in which Jon Favreau's Marvel adaptation succeeds most broadly is its barely-hidden subtext deliberately de-politicized in favor of more a more universally guided moral compass. We have the summer's first blockbuster action-hero movie, and it's a damn good one, raising expectations from The Dark Knight (the soon to be released Batman movie)

Ah, the joy of watching a Rivette film is pure exultation for the senses.

But contrary to what might be construed, most of Rivette's works have a very raw nature to it - kind of like a strange distant quality, as not in the plot, per se, but more in the mise-en-scene, which makes one initially uncomfortable about Rivette, but, not long, finding delectation for his methods. To qualify the distant aspect with being surrealist (an exception, one might say, being "Céline et Julie vont en bateau"), per se, or Dogma95-ish would be going off the track. Rivette's films are like reading a novel chaptered into distinct plots intangibly shaping out like an undulating curve - you are "in" the plot but the discreteness is felt.

Hitesh Joshi reflects on Matrix Reloaded

The Wachowski brothers fascinated the world with their 1999 classic The Matrix, with its unprecedented visual effects & refreshingly original screenplay. And if you thought the first one was a mindbender, the sequel has so much more complexity to deal with. So much so, that I had to literally rewind many of the scenes to get a sense of the dialogues, some of which are downright mind-boggling.

The all-star includes Keanu Reaves (Neo), Laurence Fishburne (Morpheus), Carrie-Anne Moss (Trinity), Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith), & Gloria Foster (The Oracle) — who are the mainstay of the original flick — and many new faces, including Helmut Bakaitis (The Architect), Harry J. Lennix (Commander Lock), Jada Pinkett Smith (Niobe), and some eye candy in the form of Monica Bellucci (Persephone). There are many more characters, aptly personifying the complex plot and storyline.

Has the world cinema really arrived in India, Bikas Mishra ponders in the wake of initiatives such as Palador DVD releases and the launch of NDTV Lumiere

Watching 13 Tzameti, a Georgian film, in Metro Adlabs theatre of Mumbai, I felt that world cinema has finally arrived in India. From elite groups of film clubs or ideologically inclined film societies, people now have a chance to watch films the way they are watched - visit a theatre, buy a ticket and enjoy.

My optimism saw it's peak soon when I got to see Paris, je t'aime in another Mumbai theatre. However sooner than I could develop a habit to visit old Mumbai's glossy theatres in the hopes of catching glimpse of contemporary world cinema, the screening stopped because of business disputes between UTV and Palador pictures.

Bikas Mishra looks back at the goneby year 2007  

It was sheer coincidence that I met Bubloo, a young body builder with a feminine and husky voice like Rani Mukherjee. He got his hair done every week keeping the latest Bollywood release in mind. His latest obsession was a six pack, though it's not that he didn't think about having one earlier but six years of working out (that he called "gheesna") didn't seem to be enough. Om Shanti Om made him impatient.

The multiplex phenomenon in it's initial years saw the crowd puller "heros" and characters suddenly disappear from the big screen. Probably the saddest was the exit of Govinda, a star who celebrated his imperfection on screen. The changed economics of cinema sent the small town India out of the big screen focus and we were inundated with stories about sophisticated urban characters.

Rice Plate reminded me after a long time how a small film, with that small twist in tale could satiate a moviegoer's appetite to fullest, writes Smriti Mudgal 

One good thing that happened after watching Dus Kahaniyaan was that one of the stories pleasantly surprised us - Rice Plate. Director Rohit Roy's work cannot be under estimated at any point but his cast took the story to another level.

Shabana and Naseer have always been so good together. My favorite of their films is Masoom. Masoom is a brilliant film in itself. The director is the hero. Its just a coincidence that Shabana and Naseer act in it. Had it been Dimple Kapadia and Shekhar Kapoor also, it would have been good nevertheless.