It’s surreal how New Delhi, the messy capital of modern Indian, wraps within itself its myriad pasts, to be revealed at will, and if you are at the right spot at the right time, you can almost do an impromptu time-travel. The other day, while returning from Sarai Kale Khan after dropping a friend at the Nizammuddin railway station, an autorickshaw driver hails at you and asks: “Bhayya, Yamuna-paar jaana hai?” (Brother, looking to cross the Yamuna River?) In an instant you are in the days of the Mahabharata, when Yamuna was the fearsome, life-giving force (not a glorified nullah), and you are a wayward traveller and he, your brother, is the lone boatman on the river’s deserted shore. For a while, you forget the heat.

The Impossible

In the House

In the House (French: Dans la maison) is a French film directed by François Ozon. It is based on the play The Boy in the Last Row by Juan Mayorga. The film was awarded the main prize at the 2012 San Sebastián International Film Festival, the Golden Shell, as well as the Jury Prize for Best Screenplay.
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Holy Motors

Holy Motors is a 2012 Franco-German fantasy drama film written and directed by Leos Carax, starring Denis Lavant and Édith Scob. Lavant plays a man who travels between multiple parallel lives. It is Carax's first feature film since 1999. The film competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.
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Zorba the Greek

Zorba the Greek (Βίος και Πολιτεία του Αλέξη Ζορμπά, Life and Adventures of Alexis Zorbas) is a novel written by the Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis, first published in 1946. It is the tale of a young Greek intellectual who ventures to escape his bookish life with the aid of the boisterous and mysterious Alexis Zorba. The novel was adapted into a successful 1964 film of the same name as well as a 1968 musical, Zorba.
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Zorba the Greek is a 1964 film based on the novel Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis. The film was directed by Cypriot Michael Cacoyannis and the title character was played by Anthony Quinn. The supporting cast includes Alan Bates, Lila Kedrova, Irene Papas, and Sotiris Moustakas.
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The Skinny

Writes Armond White: The title of The Skinny refers to gossip–the low-down between friends–but read another way (in the credit sequence’s colorful graphics) it also refers to sexual opportunities in New York City. Writer-director Patrik-Ian Polk is interested in the erotic possibilities found by five young black gays, recent Brown University graduates, who reunite during New York’s Pride Week celebrations. Gorgeous, young, educated black gays like these don’t appear in movies by Gus Van Sant, Todd Haynes nor in mainstream Hollywood films. They hail from a society that only Polk puts on screen–a world recognizably his own vision like Wes Anderson’s and equally as affecting.

By placing them in New York, Polk gives his characters a cultural coming-out (in the debutante sense) which also means advancing upon the bourgeois mainstream already so well represented by media-empowered white gays that these characters seem new–in fact, almost alien to the New York Times whose dismissive review linked Polk‘s characters to “an invisible demographic.” Nothing could be more clueless–or so tragically revealing of mainstream media’s self-important blindness.

Fact is, as Polk casts and photographs his characters, they are visualized quite handsomely. Joey‘s joking lament “Who knew an Ivy League degree in semiotics would be so useful!” turns out to perfectly define the film’s success. These good-looking black folk are living signs–of black, gay social progress and arrival–although the mainstream media might label them “minorities”.

Magnus (Jussie Smollett, a Prince-look-alike but with dimples) breaks up with his thug-hot boyfriend Ryan (Dustin Ross), while virginal Sebastian (Blake Young-Fountain) hankers after his studly best friend Kyle (Anthony Burrell). Beautiful British dyke Langston (Shanika Warren-Markland) and the elegantly masculine Southern queen Joey (Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman) watch from the sides, nervous about making their own hook-ups. This group resembles the ensemble of Polk’s trailblazing LOGO-TV series Noah’s Arc, but he’s refined the stereotypes into more subtly-performed archetypes. These actors represent the range of urban black males less realistically than were the women in Pariah but more idealistically, like the co-eds in Whit Stillman’s Damsels in Distress. Their rom-com search for love is also a quest for self-acceptance (infatuated Magnus opens the film kissing and grinning with emotional satisfaction) despite New York pressures of class, disease and insecurity that keep them from being carefree.
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The film was written and directed by Patrik-Ian Polk, who endeared himself to this largely invisible demographic with the Logo television series “Noah’s Arc,” a relationships-in-the-city show centered on four gay, black characters. In “The Skinny,” though, he uses the trappings of soft-core pornography to dress up awkward messages about sexual responsibility and abiding friendship, with uneven results.

The friends — four men and one woman — are Brown University alumni who a year after graduating are reuniting in New York during Gay Pride Week. Their version of catching up consists disproportionately of talking about and looking for sex, so the characters end up being defined largely by their promiscuity level, perhaps not the best stereotype to reinforce. The gamut is represented, from the wanton Kyle (Anthony Burrell) to the innocent Sebastian (Blake Young-Fountain).
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The profusion of characters and subplots proves overwhelming at times, with writer/director (and virtually everything else on the film) Polk apparently not terribly interested in keeping up the pace. He does, however, seem intent on providing a primer on virtually every aspect of being gay, including detailed discussions about such issues as sexual violence, sexually transmitted diseases, and picking the right condom size. There’s also no shortage of torrid encounters featuring the hunky, frequently unclothed actors.
On the plus side, the irreverently graphic dialogue is frequently amusing (during a pilgrimage to author Langston Hughes’ townhouse, one character remarks, “Can you imagine all the dick he must have gotten up here in Harlem?”), the large ensemble deliver mainly endearing performances and the tech elements are solid despite the obvious budget.
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The Skinny is a great film that does, upon occasion, creeps into TMI territory. But remember, Patrik did make this film to celebrate and educate about the experience of being a Black gay men. For the rest of us, Polk crafts a beautifully shot film, which is both hilarious and poignant, with a centerpiece message being the power of love, acceptance and enduring friendships. Look for cameo appearances from Polk project alums Wilson Cruz and Darryl Stephens.
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The film begins with all actors arriving in New York City to stay with Smollett's character, Magnus. In the beginning we understand that since graduation, these friends have come to live in very different places around the world. Polk paints the characters as truly dynamic individuals who are very different from characters we have seen in previous works, and through this he helps cultivate a cinematic environment that is ripe for hard topics and tough decisions that are relevant in all black, gay, and black/gay communities. As the movie progresses, we are given intimate looks into the dynamics of this long friendship between five people, and how their Pride weekend unravels in the backdrop of New York City -- of course giving us some steamy scenes that I am sure will keep this film rated R, at least.

To avoid giving anything away, I will only slightly discuss a pinnacle moment in the film that deals with an HIV scare and a sexual assault after a character takes Ecstasy for the first time. This HIV scare happens through circumstances that will make your stomach turn and could very well be triggering to many, but it is something that happens, and many are afraid to talk about it. I truly applaud Polk for writing this topic into his script. This instance deals with sexual violence, HIV, and friendship in a way that is real and understanding of the complexities around these issues, acknowledging that sexual assault is not always black-and-white but sits in a gray area that makes one uncomfortable. This pinnacle point will make many people uncomfortable, and will spark many debates in communities around consent and drug use, but it is important because it will connect with many gay men, black or of any other race. Drug use, HIV, and consent during sex are real issues that are kept under the rug in our community, and Polk is pulling up that rug, giving us a space to take notice and begin to do work.

In the end, The Skinny will leave the viewer with that satisfaction that we all desire at the end of films. However, don't get me wrong: there were moments in the film where I turned in my seat and had to shake my head, but that may be revealing too much, so the best advice is to see the film. Polk is part of a very small minority of black gay filmmakers in the world who are really pushing the envelope and creating projects that are not only progressive but gaining lots of attention. The Skinny is a film that is not skinny in substance or importance: it pushes at our waistlines and fills our minds with more questions to ask and lives to consider. It is a film about who is around you and how they care about you. Because that is what friendship is about: caring for one another.
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Man Of Steel

On the new Superman blockbuster: Man of Steel:

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Man of Steel combines the origin story from Richard Donner’s iconic 1978 film version with the Zod storyline in that film’s sequel, but it sacrifices many of those films’ most important elements in the process. Superman doesn’t moonlight as a journalist at the Daily Planet, and Lois Lane uncovers his otherworldly origins early on, so there’s no intrigue concerning his secret identity, which added to the duality of his character. Also, since there’s not much flirtation between Lois and Clark before she finds him out, their relationship is nonexistent; you have no idea why these two are drawn to each other. In the original films, Clark was a bumbling journalist who overcompensated for his inherent lack of human DNA by acting like a klutz, while Lois was a cagey journo who viewed him as a lovable goof, and the opposites attracted. Here, Superman isn’t human at all. Not only is the relationship with Lois MIA, but he also has precious few friendly interactions—or dialogue, period—with the people he’s sacrificing himself for. The comic-book Superman—and Christopher Reeve’s famous portrayal—saw him saving folks with a wink and a smile. A part of Superman always got off on being the hero, the protector, the “god” to these people. In Man of Steel, there’s no clue as to why this brooding, relatively humorless alien wants to save these people, aside from the fact that his daddy told him to.

It’s also become readily apparent that Snyder, known for the CGI fantasies 300, Watchmen, and Sucker Punch, has become a bit blinded by the wonders of CGI. Man of Steel’s final third is almost exclusively high-octane action sequences of buildings being destroyed—usually by having someone hurled through them (I can’t stress this enough, it’s constant). We’ve seen this footage countless times before, in the Transformers films and, most recently, The Avengers.
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To say that Man Of Steel wastes no time setting things up would be no exaggeration. We're straight into a really high-tech Krypton, with a surprisingly low-tech delivery room, as the latest take on the son of Jor-El is born into the world. Jor-El this time is Russell Crowe, a more agile man than Marlon Brando was, and thus Snyder has him swimming, jumping and looking stern in double quick time.

In fact, it feels as if Snyder's foot is rammed against the accelerator for the first chunk of the film. It's basically the same story that Richard Donner filmed that we're being told for the most part, albeit louder and with more crayons available to its director. Furthermore, in the early stages, Snyder's Man Of Steel quickly suggests a much darker, more sombre tone than we've seen from big screen Superman before, and that proves indicative of what's to follow. Those Dark Knight influences are not hard to spot.

Make no mistake: this is a serious take on the character, with the lightness and humour of previous movies long gone. You almost end up overcompensating with a guffaw when the few hints of humour are allowed to shine through. Even characters previously toyed with a little for fun, such as Daily Planet editor Perry White (now in the guise of Laurence Fishburne), are now part of the darker world that's put across here. If it all feels a bit un-Superman in that regard (certainly in the big screen sense, although comics are a different story), then that's clearly very much the intention.

Much of the darkness comes from the villanous acts of General Zod, and here's where Snyder and writer David S Goyer firmly plot their own path. They invest a lot in Zod, keen to put across the reason why he's the nasty, unflinching man we meet at the start of the film. As with lots of Man Of Steel, the character development comes in dribs and drabs, and not in chronological order (Kevin Costner's underused Jonathan Kent is the biggest casualty of this decision), but it's firmly there. And in the shape of Michael Shannon, Man Of Steel has a villain who you genuinely believe has real conviction. You'll struggle to name a single one of his cohorts by the time the credits roll, but Shannon's Zod is very clearly a force to be reckoned with.
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Here’s a superhero who almost dares not speak his name: the “S” inscribed on his chest doesn’t stand for Superman after all, it’s the Krypton symbol for “hope”. That is the messianic burden by which this overlong but not disagreeable reboot defines itself.

The man of steel will save the earth, but first he must bide his time. Just as Christopher Nolan (who produces here) did with Batman, Zack Snyder (300) presides over a creation myth: Superman is sent into space by his father, played by Russell Crowe as if he were God Himself, and thus escapes the environmental cataclysm that destroys his home planet Krypton.

He also narrowly avoids the clutches of the rebel general Zod (Michael Shannon), who will return with a vengeance for the story’s finale. It’s in the flashbacks of the long middle section that the film makes its mark.

Clark Kent, played with square-jawed introspection by Brit Henry Cavill, drifts from job to job, trying to keep a lid on his awesome powers out of respect for his adoptive father (Kevin Costner), who believes they will make him a target for evil.

When Clark’s hand is forced and he does save earthlings - drowning schoolkids, oil-riggers trapped by fire - the combination of shock and wonder is impressively handled.

His anonymity is finally blown by Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane, played by Amy Adams with a pert sexiness and no little self-esteem (“I’m a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter”, she reminds her editor, non-endearingly).

The film loses itself in the last 45 minutes, with fist-fights between Superman and his foes that destroy half the skyscrapers in Manhattan, and half the hearing in my ears. Snyder flouts a simple rule: one explosion can be exciting; one hundred will be quite boring.
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Fast forward 35 years and Superman is a very different beast: a lone voice for truth, justice and the American way with an expensive, uninspired attempt at a reboot – 2006's Superman Returns – behind it, and a cinematic universe currently overrun by Marvel's pop art team movies.

Well, hopes are high for Man of Steel. Directed by Watchmen's Zack Snyder, and produced and conceived by The Dark Knight Rises' Christopher Nolan, Man of Steel treads a familiar route at first: Superman – as he is almost never called in this film – is born as his home planet Krypton is disintegrating into civil war and environmental catastrophe, and is sent into space by his father Jor-El just ahead of Krypton's destruction.

Russell Crowe, with a plummy English accent as thick as a cupboard, plays the self-sacrificing father; he does rather well in the complicated opening scenes, which simultaneously introduce the rebellious General Zod (Michael Shannon), Krypton's rather zany liquid-metal communication-devices, and a visual style that smothers everything in a kind of irradiated backlit CGI.

It's when we get to Earth that Man of Steel starts to take on its distinctive shape. Clark Kent – played by Henry Cavill with a permanent little worry-frown in the middle of his forehead – is revealed as a rootless drifter, blundering from one low-paid job to another in a frustrating battle to keep his taunters unbattered, his rescuees oblivious, and his inner demons placated.

A series of sharp flashbacks show the roots of his emotional malaise: an adoptive father (Kevin Costner) who is pre-emptively convinced his boy will be hated and feared for his gifts.

This, it would seem, is Nolan's principal innovation for this Superman: reminiscent, perhaps, of Batman Begins, this is superheroism as a burden, and a burden transformed into neurosis.

The scenes where little Clark begins to discover his special powers are rather impressive to behold – he's baffled, and traumatised by the unwelcome intrusion of x-ray vision or laser-like heat beams from his eyes.

It's this early part of the film that is most successful; Nolan and Snyder, along with scriptwriter David S Goyer, have created a plausible context for the introspection and self-doubt that dogs the adult version of their costumed warrior.
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Aadukalam

This is unprecedented.

These Hindi movies copy plot-points, at times even frame-to-frame sequences from foreign films and even fail to acknowledge the source. When someone points out the similarities, they’d simply say, they not copies; they were inspired by the original.

In this context, here is a film and here is a filmmaker, who puts boldly his inspirations on the front of the end credit of his film. Not that his film was inspired by the films mentioned, or by the two books he mentions in the end credit, but it is heartening to see a filmmaker acknowledging the works of other filmmakers, and if Michel Haneke is in the list, you know, it’s something special.

The filmmaker in question is Vetrimaran and the film is the Tamil film ‘Aadukalam’ for which Dhanush won the national award for Best Actor.

As the film ends (which is a riveting watch by the way), we see a list of seven films under the title ‘Filmography’ and two books under the heading ‘Bibliography’. It beats me why these lists are here. But the content of the list is impressive. It contains Haneke’s ‘Cache’, also known as ‘Hidden’ in the English-speaking world. It is considered to be the Austrian director’s most inscrutable work, and considering it’s Haneke, it’s saying a lot.

The list also contains three films by Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu — ‘Amores perros’ (2000) and ‘Babel’ (2006) and the short film ‘Powder Keg’ (2001) (part of the "The Hire" series for BMW) . Someone told me a long time back that Indian filmmakers have a special love for Iñárritu’s fractured narratives and almost-pessimistic worldview. I did not know there was this much love.

There’s also three Tamil films — ‘Devar Magan’, ‘Virumaandi’, and ‘Paruthi Veeran’. Now, ‘Paruthi Veeran’ is a film I really, really love. It’s a film that makes it’s hero a villain and keeps him a villain for the length of the film and yet let us root for him. And, it’s so much fun!

I did not see any apparent ‘inspiration’ of these films with Aadukalam, which tells the story of illegal rooster fights and its fighters in Madurai, and what happens to the unsuspecting protagonist who is one of the fighters.

Like Paruthi Veeran, Aadukalam is also set in Madurai.

Like in Iñárritu movies, Aadukalam begins with various scrambled scenes in the future till it finds the track for a linear narrative in the present.

Other than that, I found Aadukalam to be an extraordinary work of art.

Among the books mentioned, I agree with Alex Haley’s ‘Roots’, it’s a great work. The same I cannot say about the other book mentioned, Gregory David Robert’s ‘Shantaram’.

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Aadukalam (English: Arena) is a 2011 Indian Tamil drama film written and directed by Vetrimaran. The film stars Dhanush, Taapsee Pannu, V. I. S. Jayabalan, and Kishore. The film was released on 14 January 2011 to highly positive reviews. The film won six awards at the 58th National Film Awards, including the awards for Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actor. It was also felicitated with 5 awards in 59th Filmfare Awards South which includes Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Music Director and Best Cinematography.
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Elephant Bathing

My review of Anand Thakore’s collection of poems ‘Elephant Bathing’ (Poetrywala, Mumbai, 2012, Pp 80, Rs 150), in Indian Literature: Sahitya Akademi’s Bi-Monthly Journal, March-April 2013



An excerpt:

Coming back to Indian poetry in English, the favourite poet of my undergraduate English teacher was Dom Moraes. It was a curious choice, as Moraes is the most "un-Indian" of all Indian English poets. Moraes' poems are poems; there's nothing inherently Indian about it, unlike other celebrated poets, say, Nissim Ezekiel, whose poetry is seeped into his real-life experiences; we cannot understand Ezekiel without an understanding of the place he belonged to, Bombay. For Moraes, however, a poem itself is a means to an end.

In this context, Thakore is perhaps a worthy descendant of Moraes' poetic vision. For Thakore too, the main concern is the poems themselves, not their meanings. Thakore is more concerned about how the poetry is achieved than what the poems convey. More than a literary tradition, perhaps this comes from his background in music, where it is the tune that's supreme, not the verse. Similarly, Thakore tries to create poems as artifacts, complete unto themselves, the metaphorical "well wrought urn" so to speak, to borrow the expression from Cleanth Brooks.

This becomes more than obvious in the third section of the collection, titled, 'Make me a Symbol if you Must', where he not only communicates with a number of objects like punching bag, dream catcher, wind chime, a fondue pot, and ostrich egg, but also finds his structure of things though the objects. He writes: "Or call me a mere object if you prefer,/ A mindless tool, the unwitting/ Instrument of a self-wrought deliverance,/ A tragic knot, a magic knot,/ A veritable miracle of a knot,/ Or the one certain, undeniable knot/That can untie the thousand you cannot see:/The great knot of memory interwoven with desire…" ('Hangman's Knot', p 60)

The Dress

The dress itself is parrot-blue and covered in abstract leaves of red, gold and orange; it’s eye-catching enough for a summer frock, but it’s not going to be the star of any woman’s wardrobe. The design is conceived in a moment of desperation and despair, inspired by a street argument; the prototype is created by a pervert. The women who buy it hope that it might brighten their lives for a brief moment, but it only leads them to sorrow instead. The plot wanders off Phantom of Liberty style to each new owner of the dress, but perhaps one of the weirdest things about the movie is that it feels neither unified nor fragmented. From segment to segment, the tone of downbeat drama alternating with bittersweet comedy remains the same, and characters even recur, but there isn’t a strong thread holding the tales together—other than, perhaps, the way they all illustrate the futility of the pursuit of erotic happiness. Writer/director van Warmerdam gives himself the best role, as a train conductor who becomes obsessed with the wearer of the dress.
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