My Requiem for Test Cricket

It’s best to begin with a series that isn’t taking place right now, and on a note you’ve heard before: a few months ago, Australia canceled a home test series against Bangladesh  on the grounds that it wasn’t “commercially viable” out of season.  (The ACB’s logic is nothing if not circular, since the country isn’t exactly falling over itself to host Bangladesh during the regular cricket season either; Australia has company, of course: India and England, to name the two other wealthiest cricket boards, barely host tests against Bangladesh either.)  Coming on the heels of England’s recent announcement of a 100-ball format, Australia’s undisguised cynicism is merely the latest reminder that international cricket boards are doing their best to hasten the demise of test cricket: the newest entrants, Afghanistan and Ireland, cannot count on more than occasional one-off tests for the foreseeable future, irrespective of how many spirited performances they might put up (indeed, Ireland pushed Pakistan far more than England did in the recent Lords test between the two countries). In fact, the extent to which test series today do not account for the quality of the match-ups is striking…

Read the complete piece HERE

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How Superheroes Made Movie Stars Expendable (New Yorker, May 28, 2018)

[A thought-provoking and informative piece (with far broader implications than its title might suggest), that ties into several themes that have been the subject of discussion on this site over the years — Qalandar]

LINK

Excerpts: “…When movies were mostly one-offs—and not spinoffs, sequels, reboots, or remakes—they had to be good. A little blunt, too, maybe. Conjuring a universe out of nothing, bringing it to crisis and back again, all in under two hours, required, if nothing else, craftsmanship on a level admired even by European snobs.

Why Indian films’ box-office figures do not add up (Caravan)

thanks to Jeeves…
LINK

” “Fudging” of box-office collections is an age-old practice in India. The reported box-office figures of Bollywood have long been dispiritingly unreliable. Inflation of figures is rampant, as creating an impression that a film has been successful not only helps everyone involved with it, but it can also facilitate money laundering. At other times, figures are deflated in order to evade taxes. As a result, a true picture of the business side of the Indian film industry never quite emerges.”

follow the link for the complete story

An Jo on Sanju

So Hirani finally writes and directs a movie post his successful Aamir-phase and works with an actor who’s is still relevant, but’s coming off of a slew of flops and on the verge of being passed off as another side-effect of ‘nepotism’ in the Hindi film industry. He goes back to the story of the actor with whom he tasted success first, Sanjay Dutt, and tries to portray his life in a reverse mode; reel versus real versus reel. He also attempts to visit the Roshoman effect, in a very diluted way of course, via narratives from different folks, be they the media, his bio-grapher, or a newspaper editor or his father and finally, Sanjay Dutt’s current wife Manyata Dutt. And in the process, inspite of the known fact and that needle pricking at the brain of the audience’s mind that this movie is being helmed by a guy who’s close to the protagonist, Hirani does prove what everyone wished to be the truth in their hearts, but were skeptical owing to his association with Aamir; that Hirani is, basically, a fine story-teller and that his association with Aamir’s audiences’ pulse-grabbing instincts and respect to the real heart and art of movie-making, that of holding the viewers with the art of marrying story-telling to the visual, only added to Hirani’s innate strengths, and not hid any weaknesses.

An Jo on ‘SAIRAT’

Observations’ on ‘SAIRAT’

In SAIRAT, Nagaraj Manjule is all over the place – but in a damn good way. He gives homage to almost every style of craft exploited through the medium of cinema in the genre of romance and societal/parental opposition; in the milieu of Romeo & Juliet: And he does that at different points in his 2 hour 53 minute ode; as an audience one might get a bit frustrated at the rhythm with which his almost-operatic film operates, but the end result as one walks out of a cinema-hall or when one switches off a TV, is the enormity of emotions that are a result of a wedding between the screen and one’s personal experience of life.

An Jo on 102 Not Out : Amitabh as Anand

102 Not Out: Amitabh as Anand…

That is what this film is; Amitabh reprising the role of Rajesh Khanna; albeit at a more exorbitant and extraneous level. He takes the soul of Anand and elevates the physicality to a higher plane, which is again, a subjective judgement.

It’s a plain, simple story but not simplistic in regard to the plight of aged parents/elders. One has seen such things in AVATAR [not James Cameron’s, but Rajesh’s], BAGHBAAN, and umpteen other movies. But the striking difference here is the presence of a female character to lend it a sort of, should I say, ‘weight’? All the weight is borne by the male characters. And that’s actually what struck me as a member of the audience: To have such a kind of film and such a theme and having a female character as just a ‘memory’ but having that memory so strong that it flows through the veins of the films is a great achievement. When have you last seen a film that has its heart a female, that’s the soulful vessel of a film but physically absent? I request you to correct me if I am wrong.

Salim’s Viewing! (updated)

Jaani Dushman 1979

Mom
I skipped this at the time of release but ended up watching it on the day of Sridevi’s funeral. That meant I was only really watching it for her, and that was okay because the film is built around her. Actually the rest of the cast is really good too (when the film came out I hadn’t heard of Sejal Aly but having since watched Yakeen Ka Safar it was nice to see her here). The film itself is nothing special though not unwatchable (mainly for the performances). And what to say about Sridevi. I never rated her as an actress (a fantastic dancer of course but I genuinely don’t think she could act) but was floored by her magnificent comeback in English Vinglish. I’ve been far more impacted by her death than I would have expected – have watched lots of interviews since then and had the soundtracks of Lamhe and Chandni playing on loop. It doesn’t make any sense.