English
Well, now that Slumdog have won eight Oscars, and the whole world knows everything about it, I do not need to write again how great the photography is, or how realistic the shots are. I have just two points to discuss. Firstly, the film reminded me of the 2002 Argentinitian film City of God, in terms of editing and story telling. If you get a chance, watch City of Gods.
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I was about to switch off my television after the telecast of the 81st Annual Academy Awards, when the film started. I was not very sure whether I would watch it. It was around 10:30 a.m in the morning, I had lots of pending household chores waiting for me. The glimpse of a pair of dilapidated pink girl's shoes on the screen, caught my attention. The illegible scripts informing about the film's cast and crew indicated it was a film from the middle-east. Could be one from Israel or Iran? My interest grew and I stuck back to my chair. I thank myself that I decided to watch the film. It was a sublime journey through the realms of innocence. The film was Children of Heaven ( Bacheha Ye Aseman ), made in 1997, written and directed by the acclaimed film director from Iran, Majid Majidi. I got these last information from IMDB.
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Slumdog Millionaire won eight Oscars in the 81st Annual Academy Awards. And I am yet to watch the movie!! Hoping to catch up with the movie soon. After watching the telecast of the Academy Awards in Star Movies, I rather saw a different movie....I'll discuss it in the following post.Meanwhile, seeing all the flow of Oscars to India, I felt critically inspired enough and drafted this rhyme:)
কেড়ে নিয়ে ডলার
দিচ্ছে খালি অস্কার
বড় দাদার চাল বুঝতে
বাকি নেই আর।
অস্কারের মত যদি
কাজও প্রচুর আসে,
আমরা সবাই হতে পারি
Middleclass Millionaire!!
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After a hiatus of nine years, I went back to enjoy the thrills of the Kolkata Film Festival this year. It was almost like going back to university days, hopping from one hall to another in the Nandan-Rabindra Sadan complex, sipping sugar- infested tea and munching popcorns in between. I skipped the morning shows. I went in the afternoon, and most of the days, I watched three consecutive shows. I watched some really good new international films. I am enlisting here the films which I watched. I will write about them more in my next posts:1. Three Women -Manijeh Hekmat-Iran
2. I served the King of England-Jiri Menzel-Czech Republic
3. Dinner for four [short]
4. Made in USA- Claudio Llosa-Peru
5. Run -[short]
6. Blind- Tamar Van Den Dop- Netherlands
7. Firaaq- Nandita Das- India
8. Aboard the Pater Noster [short]
9. The Pope's Toilet - Enrique Fernandez and Cesar Charlone- Uruguay
10. Sparrows- Abhaya Simha- India
11. Three Monkeys- Nuri Bilge Ceyalan-Turkey
12. Love It Like It Is [Short]
13. Iska's Journey -Csaba Bollock-Hungary
14. The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks Around The Corner- Stephan Komandarev-Bulgaria
15. Tricks- Andrzej Jakimowski-Poland
16. Sleepwalking Land- Teresa Prata- Mozambique
17. The Green Ray- Eric Rohmer-France
18. El Camino-Ishtar Yasin-Costarica
19. Gulabi Talkies-Girish Kasaravalli-Kannada
20. The Edge Of The Heaven- Fatih Akin-Germany
21. Chaturanga- Suman Mukhopadhyay-India
22. Killing Time [ short]-Haritz Zubillaga- Spain
23. Taxi? [short]- Telmo Esnal- SpainI watched a few more Spanish short films, the names of which all I don't remember.More on the festival in my next posts.
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Last Monday I, along with my cousin, went to watch The Last Lear at Nandan. Starring Amitabh Bachchan, Preity Zinta, Arjun Rampal, Shefali Shah , Divya Dutta and Jishu Sengupta, The Last Lear is director by Rituparno Ghosh. The story is adapted from veteran actor and director Utpal Dutt's drama "Ajker Shahjahan". I missed out the first couple of minutes of the title scroll; I later found this information on imdb.Harish Mishra aka Harry [Amitabh Bachchan] is a retired Shakespearean actor, who comes in contact with Siddharth [Arjun Rampal], who is a film director. Siddharth wants Harry to perform in a role in his upcoming film.
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Last Sunday I watched another much famed movie "Welcome" on star plus. It starred Akshay Kumar,Katrina Kaif, Paresh Rawal, Nana Patekar, Anil Kapoor and Mallika Sherawat in main roles. The film was a huge hit when it released. I have read about the capabilities of Anees Baazmee as a comedy writer in some magazines too. So I had sat to watch the film with a bit of expectation. You may ask, expectation of what? Well, expectation of some sense. But as usual, I was disappointed to find the same old gags and farcical elements so much used in Hindi films nowadays and often proclaimed to be high comedy!!
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I managed to see quite a few films in the last two months- a couple of them quite olf, but never seen before, and a few new ones. Let's summarise them one by one.Bachna Ai HaseenoCast: Ranbir Kapoor, Minissha Lamba, Bipasha Basu, Deepika PadukoneLots of babes, skins, exotic locations and unnecessary punjabi songs. The film could have done away with atleast three of the songs. But the director was perhaps under pressure from the producer to allott atleast two songs to each of the heroines. So, in the film, one song started even before the other could leave any impression.
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It could have been one of the masterpieces in the history of Indian Cinema. It could have woven a never ending magical web of narration. It could have been eulogised as an work of art. But no such things hapenned. Sanjay Leela Bhansali's much hyped film Saawariya failed miserably to achieve the height it was aimed for.It has been almost a year that Saawariya was released, but I had not got the chance to view it earlier. Only last week, I found the time to go through the film, and after the completion, I felt a great sense of loss- loss of integrity, loss of coherence.
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Somehow I did not like Sarkarraj as much as I like the previous film. It lacked the crispness and cutting edge flow of Sarkar. I felt uncomfortable about the camera work in various scenes, especially crowd scenes, where the continuously moving and sweeping camera was creating a nauseating effect - I am not sure whether it was intended or not, surely the director had something in mind, when he decided to take such weeping shots, but I did not like them. And finally somehow, Aishwarya Rai failed to convince me of her character, however much she tried.
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A few days back, in some tv programme, I had seen a viewer who had come just out of the hall, to say that the film has turned him into a better father. I think he spoke out his heart. The film teaches you so many things about life and parenthood.Here I must write a few lines about Aamir Khan. I never was a great fan of his chocolate kid look:) until I watched Sarfarosh.
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