Saket on Nil Battey Sannata

(Mild Spoilers inside)

From the onset, Nil Battey Sannata picks a less travelled route in Hindi Cinema. In a patriarchal society like India, and within a male-dominated Bollywood, the movie focusses its attention on a mother-daughter story. There is a bigger, more empowering message in the film and its import is so heavy that we tend to lose track of this small detail – there just aren’t too many Hindi films exploring this particular relationship. One can find father-son movies in Bollywood or even father-daughter ones, but try searching for a mother-daughter film and one immediately draws a blank. It’s a crying shame, really, and I for one am quite happy to finally see a film explore this beautiful familial bonding in a nice, thoughtful manner.

An Jo on Pink

Spoiler Alert: Mild spoilers ahead

One of the cleverest twists in the grammar of cinematic-craft is housed in the end credits of PINK. It is an extremely thoughtful depiction of causality that actually turns the definition of causality on its head! When any individual traverses through what the protagonists of this movie endure emotionally, ‘the principle that nothing can happen without being caused,’ starts sounding a little shaky. The end-credits reveal what actually ‘happened’ that triggered a chain of events causing emotional upheaval in the lives of three young ‘normal working-girls’ (as mentioned by one of the girls), and translated as ‘easy-going’ by society. By that time, however, a LOT has happened, and a stark question faces us: Is the actual ‘incident’ even really rendered important at this point in time? It is almost as if the film-maker is mocking the audience: Is this scene really important for you to see? Will you empathize more with the trauma that these women went through if you finally see the causal incident? After what you witnessed in the last 130 minutes, does this ‘fact’ really twitch your conscientious nerves with even more vigor? What is your sensitivity index? It is only if one sits through the end-credits that one realizes the truth behind this cinematic ‘trick.’

A note on the Rio Olympics and India

The no-good idiotic loudmouths of the Shobha De variety notwithstanding, and equally those ignorantly bemoaning the lack of medals… this has actually been one of the more improved outings for India at the Olympics and a harbinger of better times to come. The Indian delegation at Rio is its largest ever at Olympics, comprising of 117 athletes spread across various individual and team disciplines. This itself is a sign of a growing culture of sports, of greater interest and hope for improved infrastructure. And though we won 6 medals at the 2012 Olympics, our results this time are markedly better even if we may not have as many medals to show. This time around we have made a mark in events where one doesn’t even think of India participating in, let alone coming close to a medal by such close margins. The media has displayed its ignorance in these matters, and its desire to feed into the simplistic narrative of competitive sports and events such as the multilevelled Olympics as merely about the gold-silver-&-bronze, by not reporting or highlighting the many other achievements of the Indian contingent at Rio. This when we lap up 1-run victories over minnows like Bangladesh in cricket T20 internationals!

• The women’s team in Archery comprising of Deepika Kumari, Bombayla Devi and Laxmirani Majhi reached till the quarterfinals, and lost to 2nd ranked Russia.
• Srikanth Kidambi in the men’s singles Badminton also went till the quarterfinals where he lost to 3rd seeded Lin Dan of China.
• The 18 year old Aditi Ashok from Bengaluru is currently in the 8th position out of 60 players after 2 rounds in the women’s Golf event, with 2 more rounds left to go. She currently has a score of 6 under par, with the board leader just 4 shots away at 10 under par.

The 40 most memorable Hindi film cameos

thanks to Rocky..
LINK

Gulzar in ‘Griha Pravesh’ and ‘Raincoat’, 1979 & 2004

Gulzar did his most sustained piece of screen-acting in ‘Jallianwala Bagh’—in fact, it’s long enough to qualify as a supporting part. In its place, we’ll include the poet’s cameos—one silent, the other just his voice—in ‘Griha Pravesh’ and ‘Raincoat’. In the former, he appears as an appreciative listener during the ‘Logon Ke Ghar Main Rehta Hoon’ sequence —a mini-masterpiece of side glances. And in Rituparno Ghosh’s film, his voice recites the poem that forms part of the haunting ‘Piya Tora Kaisa Abhimaan’.

Frank Worrell in ‘Around The World’, 1967

Sir Frank Worrell was one of the great West Indian cricketers of his day, an elegant batsman and the nation’s first black captain. The Indian public at the time would have known that he donated blood after Nari Contractor was hit on the head in a 1961 match and taken to hospital. So it’s not that strange that Worrell would make a minute-long appearance in the Caribbean segment of ‘Around The World’, one of those globe-trotting films that came into vogue in the 1960s. A drunk Om Prakash introduces Worrell to Mehmood and proceeds to quiz him about Milkha Singh (“India’s fastest bowler”), Shammi Kapoor (“India’s greatest wicketkeeper”) and Mohammed Rafi (“India’s opening bat who’s always not out”). True to form, the cricketer handles this nonsense with equanimity. Sadly, he died away before the film released, which is why it opens with the intertitle “Dedicated to the loving memory of Sir Frank Worrell”.

for more follow the link..

An Jo on Kabali

Handling a super-star beast like Rajnikanth isn’t an easy task. You tame this beast, and it can do some great things. The ‘actor’ in Rajnikanth might have had branches in the form of excellent K Balachander’s movies or even the remakes of Amitabh Bachchan’s super-hits that adorn his super-stardom down south but the roots that make him what he is to his fans are and will continue to be his insane fan-fare thanks to his, in today’s lingo, ‘SWAG.’ . If he tries to break-away from the carefully cultivated image his fans have of him, he is actually cutting off his roots. And that, no super-star, however big — or however powerful an actor might lie within [read Amitabh Bachchan] – can afford – at least in this country. Shankar successfully capitalized and extracted what-ever was needed out of Rajnikanth’s stardom and made a cunningly smart film in ROBOT, where, he ensured the stardom served the film’s greater interests while still garnishing the film with Rajnikanth’s mannerisms and antics that form the magnet to his multitude of Tamil fans. Pa. Ranjith, who gave us the superior MADRAS [a film all about Dalits without ever mentioning the D-word], alas, struggles and fails massively at this soul-struggle of a film. He surely has lost the battle between Rajnikanth the super-star or/and Kabali the film – HIS film.

X Files Reviewed

Having read that the X Files was returning to the screen on the blog, I was very surprised & excited to start to watch the new series. I watched the first episode & as my partner enjoyed it to my surprise (as I think Series 10 has turned out to be a bit meh), I suggested to her to start at the beginning.
To novices of this show, which I hold in high regard, a good place to start are the writers. Before Breaking Bad, Homeland, American Horror Story, 24, Fringe, Intruders, The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural to name just a few (none of which I have seen but some I hear good things about) there was a TV show in the 90’s that started the career of most these writers – The X Files.

Eye in the Sky and the Good Soul…

In light go An Jo’s thoughts on Eye in the Sky I tried to respond elsewhere but then decided to just make a post out of the comment..

LINK

I liked both your writeup and the one I’ve referenced here. However I do think the film is ambiguous in a more problematic sense as well or in ways that go beyond the ‘ethical’ stakes raised in the film. The very ‘staging’ of such ethical concerns in a film, the degree to which so many of the principal characters seem tortured by the decision they’re about to make, not just on ‘humanitarian’ grounds but also legal ones (citizenship.. British, US), finally the sense that ‘ordinary’ people in these parts of the world are just going about their daily lives and they too are threatened by ‘fanatics’ all the time (the father chides the girl for playing in front of others who are as he calls them “fanatics”) and who in a sense wouldn’t mind being ‘rescued’ from this hellish existence (not of course at the cost of their children but even those who order the Drone strikes seem to agree on this point, more or less, which makes the decision a somewhat ‘impossible’ one)… this entire framework serves what is precisely the ideological justification for the strikes.