In 1979, Basu Chatterjee made Baaton Baaton Mein and unobtrusively brought to us the dating and courtship rituals of a community that was till then either caricatured or just overlooked in Hindi cinema. Nancy Perreira and Tony Braganza…
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Matriarchal manipulation in a patriarchal world is depicted unsparingly in Usha Priyamwada’s Pachpan Khambe Laal Deewarein (Now playing on Prasar Bharti). The mother resentful of her lecturer daughter’s comfortable life in her college residence because the younger daughters…
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“Start with hope..always start with hope. We went from being a shitty team to become one of the biggest dynasties in the sport and all it needed was one match to light this fire,” says Michael Jordan at…
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In 1947, my grandparents brought three children and the remains of an uprooted life from Pakistan to India in a train. One of those children was my mother. I grew up hearing a lot of stories about the…
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Three documentaries streaming right now show the ultimate culmination of the Bois Locker Room culture. And what happens when one gender is taught to mistrust its instincts of self-preservation and the other does not even learn something as…
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In Sudip Sharma’s Paatal Lok (Now streaming on Amazon. Co written by Sharma, Sagar Haveli, Hardik Mehta and Gunjit Chopra. Directed by Avinash Arun and Prosit Roy), India’s disowned inhabit the headlines we turn away from. A young…
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It’s a well known fact that Ray was a master film maker who was revered, practically worshipped, in the West – especially Hollywood (list of his admirers include Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, James Ivory, Elia Kazan, Danny Boyle, Wes Anderson…). What’s little known is the fact that this man (arguably) had a hand in the making […]
Satyajit Ray, as a rule, visited the movies every Saturday afternoon. In this he was accompanied by a handful of like-minded ‘film-buffs’ he met and befriended. One of them was Bansi Chandragupta, who was destined to be Ray’s Art Director [a relationship that went on to collaborate on the most remarkable of Ray’s works upto Pratidwandi/The Adversary […]
Like all great endeavours, the timeless Pather Panchali by the legendary Satyajit Ray faced many obstacles on the way to immortality.Well, how this excellent story by Bibhutibhushan Bannerjee made its way onto the celluloid is an engrossing, fascinating tale in itself. Here goes…. As most of us know, Ray started off as an advertising professional. In June, 1943, he joined D.J. Keymer & Co. as a Junior […]
Enter the crime scene: Oscars 2012. The sleuths: the audience. The perp unmasked: Angelina Jolie. After years of wondering whether the lady’s People’s Champion banner was just a tad exaggerated, with one out-thrust leg, a husky laugh and speaking dialogue as though instead of presenting an award she was in a soft porn movie, Ms […]
I did not want to write about Whitney Houston’s death because like Amy Winehouse, she too has been turned into a cautionary tale about the failure to deal with success, wealth, adulation and fulfilled dreams. When a glistening firefly crashes and burns..it is the done thing to perform an autopsy upon a life story. Oh, […]
Before I plunge headlong in this piece..a few questions.. What was Angelina Jolie’s leg doing on the Oscar stage? What? What? What ? Did it mistake the podium for the set of a Mr and Mrs Smith sequel ? Was it trying to distract attention from her emaciated arms? And that husk? Inexplicable. I almost […]
This letter was published on the author’s blog a few days ago and subsequently Mr Shyam Benegal has distanced himself from Vedanta..we publish this piece here to inform more readers why it is important to see through Vedanta’s attempt to mislead the masses with its advertising clout. Dear Mr Shyam Benegal Greetings ! I met you first […]
Though it was a night of glitz, glamor, and chutzpah crowded by the who’s who of filmdom, the underdogs clambered up the throne of entertainment at the recently concluded Filmfare Awards. And the biggies humbly accepted their defeat and made way for the path-breakers. Vidya Balan, who played a sex-bomb in a no-holds-barred performance in the Dirty […]
George Clooney has one of those faces that you trust. He could have gone in another direction and become your friendly neighbourhood axe murderer where the next day’s newspaper would have led with: “He was such a nice man, always had a kind word, we would never have believed….” Fortunately for both him and us, […]
Surrounded by the eternal sunshine sold over the counters this time of the year, I often remember a few writers, film makers, song writers who tapped into the deep, dark, swirling complexity of human relationships and showed us stuff that does not come wrapped in golden paper with a bow on top. One of the […]
A journalist friend says she feels murderous, well almost, when she receives press releases around Valentine’s Day with the opening pitch,”Its that time of the year again!” And am sure if the PR companies could afford it, the invites to various pink champagne events would come with heart shaped cakes, a cupid blowing kisses and […]
So faint strains of Along Came Polly and possibly Forces Of Nature and the memory of Salman Khan’s “Shit, I love her” from Hum Aapke Hain Kaun and SRK’s jubilant cry of Koi Mil Gaya (A Karan Johar film without a Kuch Kuch Hota Hai reference? Unlikely!) and a lot of slickly packaged moments turn Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu into a […]