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Browsing All Posts filed under »Cinema: Foreign«
Lights, Camera, Conversation… “Pictures for posterity”
A fascinating new documentary throws the spotlight on an indefatigable preserver of Indian cinema. Who is PK Nair? The release of Shivendra Singh Dungarpur’s Celluloid Man should answer this question for a general audience – at least, the audience that gets around to watching two-and-a-half hour documentaries. A word about the form, first. Thanks to […]
Lights, Camera, Conversation… “The home and the world”
February 15, 2013
Making the case that a certain kind of “good cinema” can be made without adhering to the aesthetic traditions of what’s traditionally accepted as “good cinema.” A few days ago, at a dinner conversation, I was asked: “How come there’s been no ‘world cinema’ from the Tamil film industry?” The person asking this question – […]
Lights, Camera, Conversation… “The slow death of a romance”
January 11, 2013
From watching David Lean movies on your laptop to watching a brand-new film on your TV set is, I suppose, just another step in the evolutionary ladder of cinema. Before the announcement of the postponement of Viswaroopam, a message on my mobile phone said, with blithe disregard about the rules of language, “Watch Kamal Haasan […]
Lights, Camera, Conversation… “The amour for art cinema”
December 28, 2012
Why define “great movies” based on a cold and clinical foreign ideal of greatness, especially when so many foreign filmmakers are already making those kinds of great movies? One question I’m routinely asked when interviewed or at a casual dinner discussion is when our cinema will grow up, become more like “foreign cinema.” And by […]
Lights, Camera, Conversation… “First among the many, many equals”
August 10, 2012
If you’ve been following the fuss about the ‘Sight & Sound’ poll, there’s a new greatest movie of all time. However do they do it every decade? How do you choose the world’s best restaurant? For starters, you’d ask what kind of cuisine. (Indian? Italian? Chinese? A bit of everything that comes under that suspicious […]
Lights, Camera, Conversation… “The abyss of passion”
August 3, 2012
Finally, an adaptation of ‘Wuthering Heights’ that’s every bit as disturbing to movie audiences as the book must have been for the readers of its time. On a flight recently, I watched the most unsettling adaptation of Wuthering Heights, directed by Andrea Arnold. I’ve seen, a long time ago, the much-revered William Wyler version with […]
Lights, Camera, Conversation… “A bit of critical thinking”
June 29, 2012
The demise of Andrew Sarris, like that of Pauline Kael, is really the demise of a certain kind of cultural climate where films mattered, really mattered. “Andrew Sarris, one of the nation’s most influential film critics and a champion of auteur theory, which holds that a director’s voice is central to great filmmaking, died on […]
Lights, Camera, Conversation… “A festival of the times”
June 8, 2012
Foreign cinema, these days, is no longer about big-name directors and acknowledged classics. And thank Dieu for that. I am not a fan of speeches. I don’t like listening to them. I don’t like giving them. It has something to do – I think – with the sense of elevation of the speaker to a […]
Showcase: Cannes job
April 28, 2012
Isn’t it strange that the directors competing for the Palme d’Or are always those of entrenched repute? Who makes the world’s best films, at least the ones fit enough to fight it out in the competition section of film festivals? If this year’s Cannes lineup is to be believed, it’s the same contenders. The festival […]
Lights, Camera, Conversation… “A different kind of odd”
April 6, 2012
How will an audience new to both the foreign art film and the full-length musical react to a film that’s both? Here’s where we attempt to find out. How do you recommend a foreign film? (For the sake of this discussion, let’s restrict our purview to the foreign art film. About the other kind, the […]
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April 26, 2013
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