Cinema

Any film slugged "based on a true story" never fails to kindle one's interest. And if it is a film about armed conflict where journalists are the protagonists, you know it is going to be a political thriller. So it is with Balibo. But writer-director Robert Connolly's ambitious work fails. Miserably. It is a true story that is largely fictitious. Anyone who does not have the background knowledge will fall for it. Balibo is a 2009 Australian feature film that follows the story of the Balibo Five...

Sometime back I chanced upon a moth-eaten book at a relative’s place. The author’s name on the spine had caught my eye and I was sure I had struck gold as I gingerly pulled the paperback out from under a pile of books that were meant, quite possibly, to be disposed of. The writer was, to me, one of the greatest names in Indian cinema. His repertoirSometime back I chanced upon a moth-eaten book at a relative’s place. The author’s name on the spine had caught my eye and I was sure I had struck...

With a title as seemingly trite as The Bank Job and a cast spearheaded by B-films action hero Jason Statham, one might have expected this to be a routine bank caper involving a Transporter pulling off something of an Italian Job. But it isn’t – it is a film that goes far beyond your simplistic expectations. You would have seen scores, even hundreds, of bank heist films, but this one seems real. It does, because it is a fictionalised account of a real event. But there have been others too of the...

As he, almost silently, parted the curtains and glided into the living room, it was for me as if the curtains had lifted and the show had begun. Cinemar manush (the man from the films) was how I would refer to him as whenever I saw a picture of his anywhere, as a five-year-old. The man I had loved and loathed in Tapan Sinha’s cinematic adaptation of ‘The Prisoner of Zenda’ ( Jhinder Bandi) . Ray’s actor. Charulata’s Amal. The original Bengali rock ‘n roll star, you would have known had you seen...

After every Oscar announcement, there are the perfunctory exchanges between those who think the best picture award ought to have gone to this film, and those who reckon it should not to have gone to that. Splitting cinematic hairs makes for good debate. So, that is what we will do this day out. But, we will take only two films into consideration for this blog post – Crash and Munich. Not because one happened to like one and not the other. But, because cinematically the two films throw up a lot...

The roots of Indian cinema are almost as old as those of the medium itself. Within eight months of taking Paris by storm, the touring agents of Lumiere brothers' Cinematographer landed on the shores of India. On July 7, 1896, The Times of India carried an advertisement heralding the arrival of "the marvel of the century" and "wonder of the world". Four screenings took place that historic evening at Watson's Hotel in Bombay (now Mumbai). The entry fee was one Rupee. The show received an...

“We have reached a time when we must open warfare on mediocrity, greyness and lack of expressiveness and make creative inquiry a rule in cinema.” His oeuvre rests on this simple rule, which lies framed in his study. On the wall opposite is a poster with a pigeon nesting on tangled strips of film. And for Buddhadeb Dasgupta, too, his concerns zoom through the mesh of life to explore the inexorable truth of life and living. But, as Dasgupta himself says, “If creative inquiry is a rule for cinema...

From guns to roses, it has been one long haul for the flint-hearted man. His on-screen, granite-faced, monosyllabic tough guy persona once prompted a critic to assign him to the Mount Rushmore school of acting. As a producer-director, they said, he could not think beyond his guns. So when he mused aloud, “I just do my thing… eventually you do something that someone thinks is okay,” cinema savants did not give it a penny’s thought. But this turned out to be one Cassandra’s prophecy when the US...