Browsing All Posts filed under »Cinema: English«

Readers Write In #241: When Lord Krishna and Woody Allen met on my account!

August 11, 2020

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(by G Waugh) Arjuna, the warrior felt deeply uncomfortable about taking on his rivals, the Gauravas who were his siblings after all. He was much worried about fighting is own Guru Dronacharya who treated him like a son. It was a deep dilemma for Arjuna. He simply couldn’t pick his bow and begin fighting the […]

Readers Write In #240: ‘Motherless Brooklyn’, Edward Norton’s passion project that lost out to Martin Scorsese’s

August 9, 2020

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(by Madan Mohan) In 2019, two filmmakers finally presented before the audience their respective labours of love, long gestation projects that had remained in the works for years and years. Both were set way back in the past and dabbled in crime. The first one – Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman – you know about even […]

Little Fires Everywhere, on Disney+Hotstar… A fascinating drama about two very different, yet two very similar mothers

July 27, 2020

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One of my favourite sub-genres in the television/streaming space is “whatever has Reese Witherspoon in it”. She’s done the most amazing thing actresses who are no longer the It Thing can do: she’s become a producer and has begun making things that are far more interesting and satisfying than the things she made when she […]

Readers Write In #227: Kubrick ends on a high!

July 24, 2020

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(by G Waugh) Stanley Kubrick’s last film before his death, Eyes Wide Shut released 21 years ago. It struck a deep chord inside many audiences then, even though it is still not rated as one of his best. But just like every other work of him, even if it works on and off at the […]

Mrs. America, on Disney+Hotstar… A riveting story about women fighting for and against the Equal Rights Amendment

July 18, 2020

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T his lockdown has been a very busy time for us at work. I wasn’t actively looking for a new series to watch, because I didn’t know if I had the time and energy to commit to endless episodes. But on Facebook, I stumbled on a small video promo — a snatch of a “conservative” […]

Ennio Morricone (1928 – 2020)

July 6, 2020

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Whistling + solo trumpet + guitar + snare drums + chorus + dialogue from pulp heaven = wowza! The great arena scene from Sergio Corbucci’s THE MERCENARY (score by #EnnioMoricone and Bruno Nicolai). From when movies were not apologetic about swagger. Watching the opening scene of Roland Joffe’s THE MISSION on Devi theatre’s 70mm screen […]

In these COVID times, the mind has begun to seek lighter fare over heavy-duty, “difficult” cinema

July 4, 2020

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The pandemic has made us seek optimism and joy, which is not usually a quality you find with “difficult” films. When life has become The Seventh Seal, with many of us playing games with Death each time we step out, the last thing we may want is more gloom and doom on screen. Sight & […]

Interview: A chat with fellow blog-era critic, Jai Arjun Singh

June 25, 2020

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Readers Write In #202: Of Cinema, television and depression

June 7, 2020

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(by Amit Joki) Cinema and television are such wonderful artistic expressions, no? They make you laugh, they make you cry, they astonish you, they make you feel alive, they make you feel included, they make you feel love, all the wonderful things. But one thing that doesn’t get talked about much is, how they cause […]

Readers Write In #201: How the Indian family film meets Hitchcock in Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhaan

June 7, 2020

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(by Ankit Sinha) Of all the ingredients that make up a scene, ‘tension’ has to be the most ubiquitous, the most essential, the most common. It is tension that glues a scene about the meeting of two lovers just as much as a scene about the meeting of two warring ganglords. It is what the […]

The Cannes 2020 lineup is here, and Wes Anderson is the sole“star director”

June 4, 2020

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High-profile directors matter at film festivals, because here, they are the real stars. Because they have oeuvres we already know, and the excitement is about ‘what next’! The first foreign film I watched on a big screen — that is, apart from  the rare ones Doordarshan used to screen at night — is Federico Fellini’s […]

Readers Write In #199: Mysskin and Kamal Haasan walk into a bar…

June 4, 2020

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(by Marsant Gerephio) After running out of topics to discuss (trying everything from becoming Dalgona connoisseurs to Experts on Quantum Mechanics) we finally decided to hit on cinema and committed the blasphemy of recommending movies to one another! It’s endlessly perplexing to me how people project their likings, tastes, preferences onto others and think they’ll […]

Santosh Sivan’s Masterclass, Journey Of Light: On Thuppakki, Iruvar, Dil Se, Roja

June 1, 2020

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Ten takeaways from Canon India Digital’s webinar, where the cinematographer and filmmaker took questions and explained his art, his philosophy. 1. As a child, you remember photographs. In my case, it was a very scary photograph — a black-and-white picture in my ancestral home in Kerala. These structures are generally dark, with a shaft of […]

Readers Write In #198: Will the Snyder… Cut?

May 30, 2020

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(by KayKay) So…I was recently watching Gautham Menon’s follow up to the lovely and bittersweet Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya on YouTube and it reminded me about Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Wait, wait, you say. What does a short film sequel to a Tamil movie released in 2010 have to do with an infamously mishandled 2017 Hollywood Tentpole […]

Readers Write In #196: Cinephilic Meltdown: Peeping Tom

May 30, 2020

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(by Anand Sudha) https://contentiouscriticism.wordpress.com/ It’s strange how a film devoid of blood-splattered gore and pornographic cheap thrills evoked so much moral condemnation upon release, a reaction all the more surprising since the film came on the heels of Hitchcock’s Psycho, which was arguably more graphic and shocking. Even the subsequent films from that decade, with […]

The late Michel Piccoli in the role of his lifetime, as an artist in Jacques Rivette’s ‘La Belle Noiseuse’

May 28, 2020

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It’s not about the product. It’s about the process. If you romanticise art, this film is a kid-in-a-candy store experience. The French actor Michel Piccoli died on May 12, and when I looked at his filmography — filled with great works like Godard’s Contempt and Buñuel’s Belle de Jour — one film stood out. It’s […]

Readers Write In #193: The Boy Who Continues To Live

May 25, 2020

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(by Abishek Balaji) Revisiting the pop culture phenomenon of our generation Corona virus made me do, as RandeepHooda said, the one thing I thought I’d never do – clean my room. While navigating through mountains of clothes,gadgets,question papers and books, I had a near-Imtiaz Ali moment- I made shelf discovery. In it was 4 of […]

Devi Complex turns 50: Here’s to theatre love, which is different from movie love

May 25, 2020

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The theatre right at the top was Devi Paradise, with that winding walkway. While coming down, you’d feel like you were in an anti-gravity amusement park ride. When the 23C bus began its ascent on the Gemini flyover, it was time to close the book I was reading, get up from my seat and walk […]

Readers Write In #189: A look at Greta Gerwig’s Little Women (on Prime) through the prism of the book it is based on

May 23, 2020

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(by Aparna Namboodiripad, who comments here as tonks) I’ve often asked myself why I am so fond of 19th century novels. I never get tired of re- reading them, and find myself repeatedly moved when I do. One reason probably is that classics are stories that have withstood the test of time, so there are […]

Readers Write In #188: Blind on the Boulevard : Decoding Mulholland Dr. from David Lynch’s ten clues

May 22, 2020

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(by Piyush Pratik) In Blue Velvet, David Lynch chopped out an ear. With Mulholland Dr., he chopped up an entire narrative. Widely renowned for making no sense at all, this classic lacks any officially ‘approved’ interpretation (any work of art worth its salt would). Now, since there is no fear of the filmmaker ever dismissing […]

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