Arrietty

Directed by: Hiromasa Yonebayashi
Produced by: Toshio Suzuki
Screenplay by: Hayao Miyazaki; Keiko Niwa;
Based on: The Borrowers by Mary Norton
Studio: Studio Ghibli
Release date: July 17, 2010
Running time: 94 minutes
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese
Budget $23 million

A Studio Ghibli film is always an occasion. It is Japan’s most popular animation studio, and it is associated with Hayao Miyazaki, the greatest animation filmmaker, shall we say, ever. Miyazaki, who gave us such wonderful films like Spirited Away, My Neighbour Totoro and Princess Mononoke, is often called the Walt Disney of the East, which is really an understatement, for Miyazaki is much more. His films are not kids’ stuff, they are more nuanced and more complex than the candyfloss sweetness of Disney films.

Studio Ghibli has so far released 18 films, not all of them directed by Miyazaki (for example, the devastating anti-war masterpiece Grave of the Fireflies), but has overseen most of the productions. His last film was the wonderful Ponyo (2008), the story of a goldfish who wants to be a human girl, and a study of climate change.

Not all Studio Ghibli films are in the same league. For example, Tales from Earthsea (2006), based on Ursula K LeGuin fantasy novels was a letdown. Yet, it a far better film than so many animation films made in Hollywood. For one thing, the animations are always 2D hand-drawn, filled with glorious colours, unlike the CGI-powered 3D animation used in all current Hollywood films. The films have an old-world charm, which is quite fascinating.

Apart from Tales from Earthsea, Studio Ghibli has done several films where the source material is not Japanese, but British. For example, Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) based on Diana Wynne Jones’ novel of the same name, and Arrietty (2010).

Directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi, Arrietty is an adaptation of British writer Mary Norton’s classic The Borrowers (1952), which won a Carengie medal, had several sequels and adapted to film on several occasions. Yet, Arrietty is a typical Japanese Studio Ghibli film, with its plucky heroine, its rural setting, its understanding of family values, its colourful rendition of the scenery and an unhurried pace of narration.

So, we know about the Lilliputs. We have heard stories of Tom Thumb and Thumbelina, Now, here they are, the Borrowers. They are the tiny people who live beneath the houses of big people they call Human Beans (corruption of human beings). They are borrowers because they take stuff from the big people, stuff that the big people won’t miss, like a cube of sugar, or a tissue paper. While they are scared of mice, they have one irrevocable rule, they cannot be seen by the big people.

Arrietty lives with her parents beneath a country house in Japan. While her father goes on borrowing expeditions, her mother is a housewife, and they have a happy existence, only that they may be the only ones of their kind. One day, a sickly boy comes to live in the house, and he sees Arrietty. Then he hears about the myth of little people from his aunt, and strikes a friendship with Arrietty. The 14-year-old little girl is curious about the world outside and about the big people, yet, her father forbids her to show herself to human beans.

Things become complicated when the maid who takes care of the boy also comes to know about the existence of the little people and becomes quite determined to catch them. She actually does catch Arrietty’s mother. Now, the young girl must team up with the sickly boy to save her family before moving out. In the process, they also learns about friendship and love and so on an so forth.

Unlike the clunky, action-packed presentation of the regular Hollywood anime movies, Arrietty is quiet, like a summer breeze. It is even quieter than Ponyo, which had raging storms as plot-points, and it this serious tone of the narrative that elevates the film from being a mere anime, a mere fantasy; it becomes a complete movie experience, far, far better than last year’s disastrous Gulliver’s Travels. I mean, this is not even a comparison.

More on The Borrowers Here.
More on Arrietty Here.

Black Narcissus

British cinematographer Jack Cardiff received an Oscar for his work in the film, and it was a deserving gong for an extraordinary achievement. Black Narcissus (1947), by the director-writer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, is about a group of nuns in a remote monastery in the Himalayas during the British Raj, and also features an Indian prince (Sabu), a nautch girl and a white hero material, among other people, and a stone palace next to a cliff overlooking the snow-covered mountain, and a huge bell in the courtyard.

The film is photographed with such astute minuteness that the background — the palace, the hills, the bell — becomes the part of the narrative, where the nuns are confronted with their own psycho-sexual desires leading to a violence climax, involving the bell.

And to learn that the entire film was shot in a soundstage in London’s Pinewood studios is something of a revelation, for when you see the film you cannot imagine the scenery other than the real location; every prop in the film is so tangible, and yet, it was all staged. It was Cardiff’s camera that achieved the trick. We are talking about a time when computer animation was not even a dream.

The film centres around Deborah Kerr as Sister Clodagh, a devout nun haunted by her past love affair, in charge of a monastery to teach the locals, who begins to fall for the local British agent, Dean. Things go out of hand when her mentally-unstable colleague Sister Ruth also falls for the same man. As the sisters fight the temptations of the flesh, a young prince who visits the palace for his education fall for a dancing girl, played by beautiful Jean Simmons.

Last Tango In Paris

Recently, I saw a Mexican film directed by an Australian, Michael Rowe, called Ano Bisiesto (Leap Year). The film won Camera D’Or at the Cannes in 2010, given to the best first film of a director. The story involves a woman, Laura, who goes through a series of casual sex in her apartment in Mexico city, before meeting Arturo, with whom she develops a sadomasochistic affair. The film may sound explicit, extreme and controversial, which it is (there are scenes of graphic sex, both male and female frontal nudity, and so on), but if you know your cinema, you know the template on which Ano Bisiesto works — sex and violence as a release to personal discontent, leading to a violent and disastrous end, and this happening between two complete strangers, in a closed enclosure, preferably a flat...

Did Last Tango in Paris (1972) started the trend? Not really, but it was indeed a strong influence for the future movies on similar theme. What makes the movie more controversial is the involvement of a mainstream American actor to play a character who is not really nice. Yet, when it’s Marlon Brando, he can draw out your sympathies, even if he plays a brute (Remember Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)). Yet, he could not do it in Hollywood. He had to go to Paris and find an Italian director, Bernardo Bertolucci to tell the story of a recent American widower who begins an anonymous sexual relationship with a young Parisian woman, the wonderful Maria Schneider.

France and its open attitude towards sex and sexuality also helped materialise Nagisha Oshima’s masterpiece on the same subject, In the Realm of Senses (1976), an obsessive affair between a nobleman and prostitute in mediaeval Japan, which ends with the woman strangling her lover to death and (okay, I am not saying it.)...

It was again a French director, Patrice Chéreau, who tackled Intimacy (2001), a film based on the stories of Hanif Kureshi, about a down-and-out divorcee who starts an anonymous sexual relationship with a married woman and part-time actress before becoming obsessed with her.

And, did I mention Pedro Almodovar’s Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990)?

Doing

Here’s a torn page among the waste.

I smoother its egg-shell skin, and
It invites me to desecrate its surface.

My pen is dry, the pencil broken,
No sharpener.

I bite my nails, sharpen it.
I scratch my skin, dig a fountain of blood.

With my nails on the torn page,
I write. My name.

To give the page a reason for its existence.
To give me a reason.

We both pollute the world.

The Last Picture Show

Writes Roger Ebert: The best scene in "The Last Picture Show" takes place outside town at the "tank," an unlovely pond that briefly breaks the monotony of the flat Texas prairie. Sam the Lion has taken Sonny and the retarded boy Billy fishing there, even though, as Sonny observes, there ain't nothing in the tank but turtles. That's all right with Sam: He doesn't like fish, doesn't like to clean them, doesn't like to smell them. He goes fishing for the scenery.

"Try one?" he says, offering Sonny the makings of a hand-rolled cigarette. And then he begins an wistful monologue, about a time 20 years ago when he brought a girl out to the tank and they swam in it and rode their horses across it and were in love on its banks. The girl had life and fire, but she was already married, and Sam even then was no longer young. As he tells the story, we realize we are listening to the sustaining myth of Sam's life, the vision of beauty that keeps him going in the dying town of Anarene, Texas.

The scene has a direct inspiration, I believe, for the writer-director, Peter Bogdanovich. I'm sure he was thinking of the monologue in "Citizen Kane" where old Mr. Bernstein remembers a girl with a parasol who he saw once, 50 years ago, and still cherishes in his memory as a beacon of what could have been.

Sam, played by the veteran Western actor Ben Johnson, is the soul of Anarene. He owns the diner, the pool hall, and the Royal theater, and without those three places, there is no place to go in Anarene except to bed, which explains the desperate and lonely adulteries and teenage fumblings that pass for sex. Among those who treasure Sam the Lion are Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane Jackson (Jeff Bridges), co-captains of the local football team, which is so bad the local men look at them in disgust and shake their heads.

Bogdanovich's 1971 film, based on the novel by Larry McMurtry, opens on Saturday, Nov. 12, 1951 -- the eve of the Korean War, and the beginning of the end for movie houses like the Royal, where Sonny grapples in the back row with his plump girlfriend Charlene (Sharon Taggart), while enviously watching Duane kiss the town beauty, Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd). On the screen are classics like "Red River" and "Wagonmaster," which speak to the legends of this land, but already the ugly little black and white sets in local living rooms are hypnotizing the locals with "Strike It Rich!" and other banal trivialities that have nothing to do with their lives, or anyone's lives.

The Complete Review Here.

JULIET:
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1600)

The Housemaid

Myth, Religion and the Body

Why is it that only the men have the rights to be the priests? In the recent times, some religions and rituals have started accepting women as religious, cultural figureheads, but it has been a man’s domain for a long time. If you consider religion as a source of power, you can explain the phenomenon as politics of power.

And, how about coming of age rituals...? While circumcision is an important coming of age ritual in Judaism and Islam, it’s missing in Christianity and Hinduism. While there are no such rituals for women in post-Judiasm religions, there has been wide-spread cult of female circumcision among the nomadic tribes of East Africa (For details, refer to the book, ‘Desert Flower: The Extraordinary Journey of a Desert Nomad’, published in 1998 about the life of Somali model, Waris Dirie.).

In North-East India, especially in Assam, a young girl reaching puberty is a major ritual. The rationale behind the ritual is to let the community know that the girl is ready for marriage. Earlier, a girl would be married off by the time she was 10 or 12; yet she would continue to live in her mother’s house till she had attained puberty.

For the male child in India, especially among upper caste Hindus, especially among Brahmins, ‘upanayan’, or the sacred thread ceremony is a major event. It is after this ceremony that a man becomes Brahmin, the Dijwa, the twice-born...

Talking about body in mythology, I am fascinated by the story of Princess Amba.

After she and her sisters were abducted by Bhisma, to be married off to his cousins, Amba confessed that she was actually in love with someone else. At this, Bhisma released her and escorted her to the kingdom of her lover. But, the lover, being an Indian male as he was, considered Amba used good, as she was already won by Bhisma and sent her away. Amba then came back to Bhisma and requested him to marry her. But Bhisma had vowed celibacy and could marry Amba. At this the princess was enraged and vowed to take revenge on Bhisma. Now, she could not take revenge on Bhisma as a woman, because the great warrior would never fight with a woman. Then, she went to the forests and prayed to god.

The gods gave Amba the boon to be reborn as a man. Now, there’s issue here. According to Hindi, and later Buddist theories of reincarnation and rebirth, being born as a man is the last level on the road to Moksha. In the cycle of life and death, one is born as tree and insect and slowly climb the evolutionary ladder following every rebirth, the last of which is being a man, and the ultimate of it is being a Brahmin. This cannot be attained easily

But Amba was reborn as Kshatriya, the warrior, as a son of Drupad, Dronacharya’s arch-enemy, and sibling of Draupadi and Dhristadumnya, now called Shikhandi. During the war, when it was time that Bhisma should be killed, Krishna asked Shikhandi to ride to Arjuna. Seeing Shikhandi in front of him, Bhisma laid down his weapons as he knew who Shikhandi really was and did not want to fight a woman. Seeing the opportunity, Arjuna wounded him and Amba got her revenge.

In some retellings of the story, it is said that Shikhandi, like Amba, was born a woman, but became a man later after she appeased the gods, while there are stories where she remains and woman who wears man’s cloths and fights like a man. (There’s a complication here: In the Mahbharata time, the men did not wear upper garment, the concept of shirts were not there, so how did Shikhandi, if she was a woman, represented herself as man?)

The story is both important and interesting in the sense that gender plays a role narrating a traditional story of revenge.

Queer (ing) Cinema

Whereas the word gay acquired a new meaning in the recent times and stopped there (earlier, the meaning was being happy, now ironically it means being some who loves the person of his own sex, and it’s certainly not a happy situation, given the rampant homophobia in society), the word queer is still hasn’t lost its sheen and mystery. Earlier, queer meant everything not normal, then the gay right movement appropriated the term and made it an umbrella term for any kind of sexual situations which are not normal or mainstream.

The key word here is normal, or more precisely normative. There are things normative and everything that’s not normative is queer. Normative refers to structures which are mainstream and given, structures which feed the basic functioning of a certain social situation. Therefore, marriage between a man and woman is normative, because, as Marx said, family is the key unit in running the mechanisms of a capitalist society. Marriage also signify distribution of power, where the male, breadwinner dominates the other. When two male, breadwinner decide to live together, they upset the balance.

Cinema is queered when it deliberately moves away from the classic blockbuster formula. Cinema, as a source of entertainment, has constructed a structure for itself over the ages, and when a film deliberately decides to disrupt this structure, it can be called queering; it has nothing to do with alternative sexualities per se, through the representation of alternative sexualites play a major role in queering cinema.

To Catch A Thief

For me, Carry Grant is not the ideal choice to play Robie the Cat, the famed jewel thief in pre-war France. Humphrey Bogart is the go-to man to play a man with a murky past. I think, Peter O’Toole would have suited the role of a cat burglar better with his tall lean frame.

Grant was the ultimate hero material, the man who sweeps girls off their feet (An Affair to Remember). And, To Catch a Thief works not because of its mystery and Grant’s skills as the thief in question, but his chemistry with Grace Kelly.

Kelly is wondrous to behold, and there is a scene where she walks in the hotel lobby with a black and white dress and a big hat and everyone turns their heads to look at her. Yet, the film objectifies Grant as the sexual object, not Kelly. Franci’s mother immediately falls for him, and Danielle Foussard is after him from the beginning, so much so that when we finally realise the identity of the thief, it sort of makes sense.

Interestingly, the Grant character does not commit any theft in the film.

Masculinity

In 1999, Children Now, a California-based organization that examines the impact of media on children and youth, released a report entitled Boys to Men: Media Messages About Masculinity. The report argues that the media’s portrayal of men tends to reinforce men’s social dominance.

The report observes that:
the majority of male characters in media are heterosexual male characters are more often associated with the public sphere of work, rather than the private sphere of the home, and issues and problems related to work are more significant than personal issues
non-white male characters are more likely to experience personal problems and are more likely to use physical aggression or violence to solve those problems.
Children Now conclude that these dominant trends in the media’s portrayal of men reinforce and support social attitudes that link masculinity to power, dominance and control

In Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity, Jackson Katz and Jeremy Earp argue that the media provide an important perspective on social attitudes—and that while the media are not the cause of violent behaviour in men and boys, they do portray male violence as a normal expression of masculinity.

These portrayals are of particular concern when it comes to young boys, who may be more influenced by media images than girls. In the 2008 study Media and the Make-Believe Worlds of Boys and Girls, Maya Götz and Dafna Lemish note that girls generally pick and choose what media content to integrate into their imaginary worlds – an approach the authors summarize as “Leave something out, take something in and dissociate from it.” Boys, on the other hand, tend to incorporate media content into their own imaginations wholesale, “taking it in, assimilating it, and then taking the story further.” According to Götz and Lemish, “boys… dream themselves into the position of their heroes and experience a story similar to the one in the original medium.”

The portrayal and acceptance of men by the media as socially powerful and physically violent serve to reinforce assumptions about how men and boys should act in society, how they should treat each other, as well as how they should treat women and children.

More Here.

Women & Patriarchy

Writes Lindsey German in International Socialism:

The joy of the patriarchy theory is that it can be all things to all people. It thrives on the “vague feelings” so beloved by sections of the women’s movement, rather than on a materialist analysis. Consequently, even searching for a definition of the term can be difficult, since there are so many to choose from.

Patriarchy can for instance refer to a specific society where the father (the “patriarch”) ruled not only the women in the family but also the younger men. Such a society depended on peasant or artisan production based at least partly in the home. The patriarch’s power derived from his possession of the wealth produced and his ownership of land. But in most cases such an historically specific society is not what is meant by the term. Even the vaguest of patriarchy theorists can see that we do not live in such a peasant society today, and their concern is to deal with present day women’s oppression.

The prevalent versions of the theory take two forms.

First there are those who see patriarchy purely in ideological terms. Juliet Mitchell for instance, sees a strict demarcation: “We are dealing with two autonomous areas, the economic mode of capitalism and the ideological mode of patriarchy.”1 Sally Alexander and Barbara Taylor put similar arguments in In Defence of Patriarchy.2

Such a separation of the economic and ideological has to be queried. There is always a connection between the economic basis of a society and the ideas which arise within that society. The two cannot be seen as autonomous spheres. As Marx long ago pointed out, if you see history as just the result of the dominance of ideas or of a succession of ideas, then you cannot explain anything about the development of society. For why do some ideas dominate? And why do dominating ideas change?

If we reject the religious notion of women’s position as being ordained by a (male chauvinist) god, then we have to look for the material conditions that have led human beings to act in certain ways in relationship to the world and therefore to each other. The origins of women’s oppression have to be sought in these, just as the origins of any other social phenomenon. Then we can understand the way in which the ideas that justify that oppression have arisen and engage in a meaningful fightback.

The Complete article Theories of Patriarchy here.

Feminist Theories

Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, or philosophical discourse, it aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's social roles and lived experience, and feminist politics in a variety of fields, such as anthropology and sociology, communication, psychoanalysis, economics, literary criticism, education, and philosophy. While generally providing a critique of social relations, much of feminist theory also focuses on analyzing gender inequality and the promotion of women's rights, interests, and issues. Themes explored in feminism include art history and contemporary art, aesthetics, discrimination, stereotyping, objectification (especially sexual objectification), oppression, and patriarchy.

More Here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_theory

Why Gender Studies?

At the Indiana University Department of Gender Studies

Gender Studies (GNDR) offers interdisciplinary courses that explore the making and meaning of gender - femininity and masculinity - across cultures and social formations, past and present.

Gender influences human options, conditions, and experiences. The legal, political, economic, and cultural systems are all profoundly gendered. Deep understanding of gender patterns, dynamics, and biases can enhance the accuracy and scope of work in many fields. Gender awareness benefits individuals, communities, and organizations.

Our professors are collectively engaged in original, cutting-edge research which they often discuss in class. This makes any course you take well worth it.

Some questions investigated in Gender Studies include:

•What is 'gender'?
•When and why was the concept first used?
•How is gender different from sex?
•Are human gender divisions the product of biology, cultural construction, both, or neither?
•How does gender interact with other "identity markers", such as ethnicity, sexuality, class, and culture?
•How does popular culture shape experiences of gender?
•How do gender concepts influence mass media?
•How has gender influenced the development of technology, science, research, and medicine?
•How are concepts of beauty, sexuality, and pornography shaped by gender prescriptions?
•How have debates about gender varied historically and cross-culturally?

Finally, Identity

The other day, I got myself registered for the UID-Aadhaar programme. I did not think and still don’t that it’s a good idea. I mean, I am not comfortable that my fingerprints are with the government and it can be used against me, like they do in all those Hollywood thrillers — you know, they just log onto a computer and all your personal information, down to the nose job you did 15 years ago, are up for everyone to see. It’s not a nice situation. Anyway, I did give my fingerprints to the government, willingly... When it is a just cause, you must support it. (I take consolation in the fact that I’m just a small fry for anyone to take interest in me!)

The Scent of the Green Papaya

Writes JANET MASLIN in NY Times: "The Scent of the Green Papaya" is Tran Anh Hung's tranquilly beautiful film about a lost Vietnam, a peaceful, orderly place not yet touched by wartime. The film begins in Saigon in 1951, in a household safely insulated from the first rumblings of trouble. The family in question has more personal problems, since these people are still mourning the death of a young daughter several years earlier, and since the husband (Tran Ngoc Trung) has a history of disappearing for long periods with his family's money. The wife (Truong Thi Loc) endures these desertions with the stoicism the film generally ascribes to Vietnamese women.

Into this family comes Mui (Lu Man San), a lovely 10-year-old servant girl and a contemporary of the daughter who died. The camera watches Mui contemplatively as she learns her new duties and does her hard-working best to keep her masters happy. Mui is someone who smiles knowingly at the sight of ants lifting heavy burdens, and who communes effortlessly with the natural forces all around her. The film works hypnotically as it gazes upon the leaves, birds, frogs and insects that are welcome parts of Mui's world.

Despite Mui's status as a servant, she manages to enjoy a life of more constancy and quiet joy than do those around her. The film chronicles the series of small changes that rearrange the life of the family, all the while sustaining the rhythm of womanly work that shapes Mui's existence. Mr. Hung's view of placid, spiritually elevated Vietnamese womanhood poses its problems, since Mui is so often seen scrubbing floors or shining shoes. Fortunately, this misplaced romanticism is well outweighed by the film's haunting visual loveliness.

The Complete Review Here. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9F0CE1D9113EF932A25753C1A965958260

They call him "Svet-ake" ("Mr. Light"). The electrician is responsible for bringing more than just light to the people around him. Like moths, everybody is drawn to his kindness: those with short circuits in their electricity, and those with short circuits in their marriage, those who have taken all the power in the city, and those who have given up the will to live. He helps everyone and is everywhere. He doesn't even shy from breaking the law, rewinding an old and lonely pensioner's electricity meter so that he doesn't owe the State, but rather the State owes him.

The economic devastation of the country has had an enormous impact on the working people and yet despite the upheaval they have not lost the ability to love, to suffer, to share their lives with friends, and enjoy what they have... in particular our resilient electrician who possesses a wonderful and open heart. He not only brings electric light (which is often out) to the lives of the inhabitants of this village, but he also spreads the light of love, loyalty, life, and most of all, lots of laughter.

He only has two dreams: to someday have a son and to provide people with cheaper energy through wind power.

The country is the midst of a revolution. Power lies in the hands of greed-driven people, obsessed with their personal enrichment. "Svet-ake" is a resistance against this dark madness. He who brings the light, takes it away, leaving the darkness in the dark. Only the light of the dream remains glowing in the night; a candle of a very delicate hope.

More at The Match Factory.

The Burmese Harp

The Burmese Harp (ビルマの竪琴, Biruma no tategoto?, a.k.a. Harp of Burma) is a 1956 black-and-white Japanese film directed by Kon Ichikawa. It was based on a children's novel of the same name written by Michio Takeyama. It was Ichikawa's first film to be shown outside Japan,] and is "one of the first films to portray the decimating effects of World War II from the point of view of the Japanese army." The film was nominated for the 1957 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, during the first year that such a category existed.

In 1985, Ichikawa remade the film in color with different actors.

More Here.

Cross Of Iron

Cross of Iron is a 1977 war film directed by Sam Peckinpah, featuring James Coburn, Maximilian Schell, James Mason and David Warner. The film is set on the Eastern Front in World War II during the Soviet's Caucasus operations that forced the Wehrmacht to retreat from the Taman Peninsula on the Black Sea in late 1943.

The film focuses on the class conflict between a newly-arrived, aristocratic Prussian officer who covets winning the Iron Cross and a cynical, battled-hardened infantry NCO. The screenplay was based on the 1956 novel The Willing Flesh by Willi Heinrich, a fictional work that may be loosely based on the true story of Johann Schwerdfeger, a highly-decorated World War II Wehrmacht Oberfeldwebel.

Exteriors were shot on location in the former Yugoslavia. They are notable for using a significant number of authentic tanks and equipment.

Cross of Iron, Sam Peckinpah's only war film, "is a forgotten masterpiece that has never really managed to overcome its troubled and expensive production." While Peckinpah had directed "many films about battles between groups of armed men...this was the first in which both sides wear uniforms."

In the opinion of Filmcritic.com, "Peckinpah indulges in endless combat scenes (this was his only war movie), which try the patience of viewers who came for the real story." Critical opinion has since improved and Cross of Iron was voted the greatest film ever made by Cinemag and is generally seen as one of the last remnants of Peckinpah's once great talent. Fans of the film include Quentin Tarantino, who used it as inspiration for Inglourious Basterds

According to Variety magazine, "the production [from the book by Willi Heinrich] is well but conventionally cast, technically impressive, but ultimately violence-fixated.

(From Wikipedia.)

More Here.

Sleeping Beauty

Writes Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian: A whiff of creepiness perfumes every scene of this film, a distinct eau de perv. It's a very bizarre drama about erotic ritual and male obsession: ridiculous in some ways, and naïve about bought sex, but very watchable and eerie. This is an Australian picture, written and directed by the novelist and first-time film-maker Julia Leigh (mentored by Jane Campion), but it has a distinctly European sheen, a feel for rectilinear compositions, deep focus and receding perspective lines in brightly lit interiors – and all with a sense of impending horror or disgust. Leigh is distantly influenced by Luis Buñuel, but more by contemporaries like Ulrich Seidl and Michael Haneke. When the characters speak, it is a big surprise to hear Australian-accented English, and not Austrian-accented German.

The action – as preposterous and deadly serious as a recounted dream – concerns Lucy, played by Emily Browning, a beautiful young student. To make some cash, she holds down various part-time jobs, in a bar, an office, and a medical lab where she is a volunteer, and submits to a thin plastic tube being inserted down her throat. This opening scene is the film's most disturbing sequence, a harrowing display of penetration that will test any audience's gag reflex and which sets up the rest of her freelance portfolio nicely. Lucy has got into the high-end escort scene, sitting in upscale bars, doing a little coke with people she meets, having sex for money with creepy guys, before going back to her scuzzy student house.

Then Lucy hits the big time: making real money from a quasi-necrophiliac cult for rich people, presided over by Clara (Rachael Blake), an elegant madame. All she has to do is lie drugged and naked on a bed in a mansion, while a wealthy old client disports himself with her lovely body however he wishes – but he is forbidden to penetrate. In the morning, she will remember nothing. Eventually, Lucy becomes obsessed with finding out what is being done to her and increasingly agonised by a tender, private friendship which in its twisted way is the nearest she gets to a normal life. Is all this sex work a way of cauterising secret fear and guilt?

The Complete Review Here.

Tender Mercies

From Roger Ebert's Great Movies Review.

"Tender Mercies" won Robert Duvall his only Academy Award in six nominations. It contains one of his most understated performances. It's mostly done with his eyes. The actor who shouted, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning!" here plays a character who wants to be rid of shouting. The film itself never shouts. Its title evokes its mood, although this is not a story about happiness. "I don't trust happiness. I never did, I never will," Mac Sledge tells Rosa Lee, in a scene framed entirely in a medium-long shot that possibly won him the Oscar.

… Horton Foote won his second Academy Award for this screenplay. His first was for "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962), for which he recommended Duvall for his first screen role, and he also wrote their wonderful "Tomorrow" in 1972. He died at 92 in March 2009. Above all a great playwright, he could hardly write a false note. The down-to-earth quality of his characters drew attention away from his minimalist storytelling; all the frills were stripped away. When interesting people have little to say, we watch the body language, listen to the notes in their voices. Rarely does a movie elaborate less and explain more than "Tender Mercies."

Bruce Beresford, born in Australia in 1940, had great success with "Breaker Morant" (1980). "Tender Mercies" (1983) was his first American film, and its five nominations included best director, picture, and original song. He room a chance on casting Tess Harper in her first movie, after discovering her at an open audition in Texas. As Janet Maslin pointed out, the movie's "endless and barren prairie" could be in Australia. Even the country singing would fit there. With the cinematographer Russell Boyd, Beresford maintains a certain tactful distance from some scenes, such as the marriage proposal. There are alternating close-ups, but the movie isn't punched up that way and prefers to see these people in the context of where they live.

…

I Come With The Rain

Writes by Eight Rooks in Twitchfilm: It's about suffering, appropriately enough, given for many viewers Tran Anh Hung's I Come With The Rain will be up there as two of the most punishing hours of cinema they're ever likely to sit through. Graced with a relatively high-profile pan-asian cast, the noted Vietnamese arthouse director's first English-language project (after earlier successes with Cyclo and The Scent of Green Papaya) was eagerly awaited for quite some time, then suddenly and
unceremoniously glossed over after a disappointing spin on the festival circuit.

Why? On paper, at least, the premise starts out by making some kind of logical sense; Josh Hartnett (yes, really) plays Kline, an American PI dismissed from the force after becoming a little too immersed in the hunt for a notorious serial killer (Elias Koteas). He's contacted out of the blue by a pharmaceutical tycoon whose adopted son Shitao (Kimura Takuya, Love and Honour, 2046) has gone missing while running an orphanage in Mindanao.

Hartnett tracks Shitao to Hong Kong, assisted by Shawn Yue's debonair police officer, where things get progressively stranger - with the runaway living rough and healing the poor and destitute by literally absorbing their pain (manifesting stigmata in the process, in case anyone didn't get the parallels). Cut to Korean gangster Su Dong-Po, newly in town looking to network (Lee Byung-Hun, recycling his villainous leading role in The Good, The Bad, The Weird). When one of his underlings rebels and makes off with Su's lover Lili (Tran Nu Yên-Khê, the director's wife) the chase that follows sees Shitao rescue Lili, with Su and Kline racing to see who can track him down first.

But what sounds vaguely sane on paper ends up spectacularly derailed for a variety of reasons. Cinematic train-wrecks are not necessarily wholly bad; it's arguably better to be a spectacular failure than a flat-out mediocrity. But most people involved in, say, Chen Kaige's misfiring wuxia pian The Promise were either clearly in on the joke or determined to make the most of it, making that film a guilty pleasure at the very least and even something genuinely, quietly moving for all its frantic histrionics.

The Complete Review Here.

Things You Can Do

Things You Can Do With Your Lover’s Wedding Card

You can roll the card and tell your lover to shove it down his a**
(I’m being vulgar; that won’t do!) You can
Fold the card and make an origami boat or
A plane and tell your lover go fly it. You can
Scratch out the other name with a similar green pen
And write your own instead and see how it rhymed better. You can
Hold the card close to your heart and cry your heart out and
Wipe those green letters to find a blank orange paper, where you can
Write whatever you want — about that perfect life
You had with your lover (the impressions of it, anyway) till
That b**** came along (I’m being vulgar; that won’t do!). You can
Burn the card and scatter the ashes from your kitchen window, or
Keep them safe in that copper urn picked up from Juna Bazaar. You can
Keep the card between the pages of your diary as bookmark. You can,
If you are an emotional fool, write a suicide note on the back of the card with
The same green pen and implicate him for your death (Ha! You can
Have the last laugh, though you won’t be there to see it). You can
Actually rejoice, say “good riddance,” and plan your next move. You can
Check the date and plan to attend the wedding anyway (minus the
Gift); the food would be good, and you know
Though you are hurt, you can
Suffer only this much, and you can
Always stop thinking about him.

>>>>
I’m not sure if these lines have any poetic qualities, but I had immense satisfaction jotting them down, on an orange wedding card with a green pen.

Dial M For Murder

The other day, a woman, wife of a Nepali watchman in a construction site, killed her husband by hitting him on the head with a stone.

The next morning, she went to the police station and told the police that last night someone tried to rob the couple and killed her husband.

The police, who are naturally the suspicious lot and never very considerate, even to women, interrogated the woman, and the poor woman blurted out that her husband used to abuse her and beat her everyday. The reason: He suspected that she was having an affair with someone else.

So, tired of this continued and incessant abuse, she decided end it once and for all. And she did it.

The final analysis: The poor watchman husband was right after all. The woman would not have the courage to kill her husband unless instigated by someone else, — with the promise for a better future, perhaps. (in the prison?)

"Love Is A Losing Game"

For you I was a flame
Love is a losing game
Five story fire as you came
Love is a losing game

One I wish I never played
Oh what a mess we made
And now the final frame
Love is a losing game

Played out by the band
Love is a losing hand
More than I could stand
Love is a losing hand

Self professed... profound
Till the chips were down
...know you're a gambling man
Love is a losing hand

Though I'd bet on blind
Love is a faith resign
Memories mar my mind
Love is a faith resign

Over futile odds
And laughed at by the gods
And now the final frame
Love is a losing game

— Amy Winehouse

Amy Jade Winehouse (14 September 1983 – 23 July 2011) was an English singer-songwriter known for her powerful contralto vocals and her eclectic mix of musical genres including R&B, soul and jazz.

Winehouse's 2003 debut album, Frank, was critically successful in the UK and was nominated for the Mercury Prize. Her 2006 follow-up album, Back to Black, led to six Grammy Award nominations and five wins, tying the then record for the most wins by a female artist in a single night, and made Winehouse the first British female to win five Grammys, including three of the "Big Four": Best New Artist, Record of the Year and Song of the Year. On 14 February 2007, she won a BRIT Award for Best British Female Artist; she had also been nominated for Best British Album. She won the Ivor Novello Award three times, one in 2004 for Best Contemporary Song (musically and lyrically) for "Stronger Than Me", one in 2007 for Best Contemporary Song for "Rehab", and one in 2008 for Best Song Musically and Lyrically for "Love Is a Losing Game", among other distinctions. The album was the third biggest seller of the 2000s in the United Kingdom.

Winehouse was credited as an influence in the rise in popularity of female musicians and soul music, and also for revitalising British music. Winehouse's distinctive style made her a muse for fashion designers such as Karl Lagerfeld. Winehouse's problems with drug and alcohol abuse, violence, and her self-destructive behaviours were regular tabloid news from 2007 until her death. She and her former husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, were plagued by legal troubles that left him serving prison time. In 2008, Winehouse faced a series of health complications that threatened both her career and her life.

Winehouse died at the age of 27 on 23 July 2011, at her home in London; police have said that the cause of her death is "as yet unexplained".

More Here.

Always a playground instructor,
never a killer. Always a bridesmaid
on the verge of fame, or over,
he maneuvered two girls into his
hotel room. One, a friend,
and a newer stranger, vaguely
Mexican or Puerto Rican.

Poor boy’s thighs and buttocks, scarred
by a father’s belt. She’s trying
to rise. Story of her boyfriend
And teen-age stone death games.
Handsome cat, dead in a car.

Come here
I love you.
Peace on earth
Will you die for me
eat me
this way
the end

-I’m surprised you could get it up.
He whips her lightly, sardonically
with a belt.
-Haven’t I been through enough? she asks.

The dark girl begins to bleed.
It’s Catholic heaven. I have an
ancient Indian crucifix around
my neck. My chest is hard
And brown. Lying on stained and
wretched sheets with a bleeding Virgin.
We could plan a murder, or
Start a religion.

— Jim Morrison, An American Prayer, "Angels and Sailors"

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.

Guru Dutt For My Ears

“Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaye To Kya Hai”

Yeh Mehlon,Yeh Takhton,Yeh Taajon Ki Duniya,
Yeh Insaan Key Dushman Samaajon Ki Duniya,
Yeh Doulat Key Bhookhey Riwajon Ki Duniya,
Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaye To Kya Hai.

Har Ek Jism Ghayal, Har Ek Rooh Pyaasi,
Nigahon Mein Uljhan, Dilon Mein Udaasi,
Yeh Duniya Hai Ya Aalam-e-Badhawasi,
Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaye To Kya Hai.

Yahaan Eik Khilona Hai Insaan Ki Hasti,
Yeh Basti Hai Murda Paraston Ki Basti,
Yahaan To Jeevan Sey Hai Maut Sasti,
Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaye To Kya Hai.

Jawaani Bhatakti Hai Badkaar Ban Kar,
Jawaan Jism Sajtey Hein Bazaar Ban Kar,
Yahaan Pyaar Hota Hai Byopaar Ban Kar,
Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaye To Kya Hai.

Yeh Duniya Jahaan Aadmi Kuch Nahi Hai,
Wafa Kuch Nahi, Dosti Kuch Nahi Hai,
Yahaan Pyaar Ki Qadr Hi Kuch Nahi Hai,
Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaye To Kya Hai.

Jala Do Isey, Phoonk Dalo Yeh Duniya.
Mere Saamne Se Hata Lo Yeh Duniya,
Tumhari Hai Tum Hi Sambhalo Yeh Duniya,
Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaye To Kya Hai?

From Pyaasa.

Meri duniya loot rahi thi, aur main khaamosh tha
Tukade tukade dil ke chunata, kis ko itana hosh tha

Aankh men aansu na the, aur jal raha tha dil jigar
Ro rahi thi hasaraten chup-chaap tha main bekhabar
Kaise aata hosh men jo pahale hi behosh tha
Tukade tukade dil ke chunata, kis ko itana hosh tha

Karavaan dil ka loota baitha hun, manzil ke qarib
Main ne khud kashti dubo di, jaa ke saahil ke qarib
Ye zamin chup-chaap thi, aur aasamaan khaamosh tha
Tukade tukade dil ke chunata, kis ko itana hosh tha

From Mr & Mrs 55

Little Big Soldier

Little Big Soldier is a 2010 action comedy film directed by Ding Sheng and produced and written by Jackie Chan, also starring Chan and Leehom Wang. The film was produced with a budget of US$25 million[1] and filmed between January 2009 and April 2009 in filming spots of Yunnan, China. According to Chan, the film has been stuck in development hell for over 20 years.

Little Big Soldier takes place during the Warring States Period of China, and tells the story of three men and a horse. An old foot soldier (Chan) and a young high-ranking general from a rival state (Wang) become the only survivors of a ruthless battle. The soldier decides to kidnap the general and brings him back to his own state in hopes for a reward in return.

Synopsis: It was the darkest of times in China, when ruthless warlords waged battles to satiate their endless aggression. Millions of lives perished, and those who survived had only two choices – kill or be killed. The battalions of warring states Liang and Wei collided in a bloodbath that lasted from dawn until dusk. Only two men were left standing – a foot soldier from Liang and the rival General from Wei. The Soldier survived because he is an expert in playing dead, with a device strapped on his body which protruded like an arrowhead for added realism.

The Soldier captured the wounded General, hoping to use the enemy as his ticket to freedom – by handing the General to the Liang warlord, the Soldier could be honorably discharged and return home to his peaceful life. The young General, though taken captive, was condescending towards the Soldier. The two men were often at loggerheads during the long and winding journey.

More Here.

Jumping the Broom

“Jumping [over] the broom symbolised various things depending on the culture. In the American south, the custom determined who ran the household. Whoever jumped highest over the broom was the decision maker of the household.

Among southern Africans, who were largely not a part of the Atlantic slave trade, it represented the wife's commitment or willingness to clean the courtyard of the new home she had joined.

In England, jumping over the broom (or sometimes walking over a broom), became nominally synonymous (i.e. "Married over the besom", "living over the brush") with irregular or non-church unions while in America the phrase could be used as a slang expression to describe the act of getting married legally, rather than as one specifying an informal union not recognised by church or state.

Little form of marriage was recognised for enslaved blacks during American slavery. In its absence, the ceremonial jumping of the broom served as an open declaration of settling down in a marriage-like relationship within the slave community. Jumping the broom was always done before witnesses as a public ceremonial announcement to other members of the slave community that a couple chose to become as close to married as was then allowed.

Jumping the broom also fell out of practice due to the stigma it carried, and in some cases still carries, among black Americans wishing to forget the horrors of slavery. Once slavery had ended, many blacks wanted nothing to do with anything associated with that era and discarded the broom jumping practice altogether.[citation needed] The practice did survive in some communities, however, and made a resurgence after the publication of Alex Haley's Roots.

From Wikipedia.
More on Noah's ARC: Jumping the Broom here.

Jumping the Broom

Writes Roger Ebert: The groom's mother is a postal worker in Brooklyn. The bride's family lives in a seaside compound on Martha's Vineyard so spacious, no neighbors are visible. The bride and groom are in love, but their families are not. That was good enough for "Romeo and Juliet," and it still sorta works with "Jumping the Broom."

This is one of those films during which I notice things I simply decide to disregard. It's a good time at the movies, and an excellent demonstration of why I dislike the word "flawed," which critics use as if they were gazing through jewelers' eyepieces. It's not a perfect movie. The mothers are exaggerated to the point of easy sitcommery. So, OK: We're not going for the sociology. We're going for fun, and if characters are too broad, that, too, can be fun. There's such a thing as being picky, picky, picky, and in this case, Angela Bassett and Loretta Devine have such good timing with their performances that to hell with nuance.

The marriage takes place across the class divide between two African-American families. The Taylors are working class. The Watsons are members of the ruling elite; Mr. Watson basically just stands around posing like a sleek Master of the Universe.

The Complete Review Here.

The Big Sleep

The Big Sleep is known for its convoluted plot. During filming, allegedly neither the director nor the screenwriters knew whether chauffeur Owen Taylor was murdered or had killed himself. They sent a cable to Chandler, who told a friend in a later letter: "They sent me a wire ... asking me, and dammit I didn't know either".

After its completion, Warner Bros. did not release The Big Sleep until they had turned out a backlog of war-related films. Because the war was ending, the studio feared the public might lose interest in the films, while The Big Sleep's subject was not time-sensitive. Attentive observers will note indications of the film's wartime production, such as ration stamps (including references to dead bodies as "red points," referring to wartime meat rationing), period dialogue, pictures of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and a woman taxi driver who says to Bogart: "I'm your girl."

The "Bogie and Bacall" phenomenon, which had begun with To Have and Have Not and their marriage, was in full swing by the end of the war. Bacall's agent, Charles K. Feldman, asked that portions of the film be reshot to capitalize on their chemistry and counteract the negative press Bacall had received for her 1945 performance in Confidential Agent. Producer Jack Warner agreed, and new scenes, such as the sexually suggestive racehorse dialogue, were added.

The reshot ending featured Peggy Knudsen as "Mona Mars" because Pat Clark, the originally cast actress, was unavailable. Because of the two versions created by the reshooting, there is a substantial difference in content of some twenty minutes between them, although the difference in running time is two minutes. The reshot, revised The Big Sleep was released on 23 August 1946.

The cinematic release of The Big Sleep is regarded as more successful than the pre-release version, although some complain it is confusing and difficult to follow. This may be due in part to the omission of a long conversation between Marlowe and the Los Angeles District Attorney where facts of the case, thus far, are laid out. Yet movie-star aficionados prefer it to the film noir version because they consider the Bogart-Bacall appearances more important than a well-told story.
(From Wikipedia)

More Here.

The Battle Of Algiers

Writes Roger Ebert: Gillo Pontecorvo's "The Battle of Algiers," filmed in 1965, released in late 1967, is the crucial film about this new kind of warfare. It involves the proving-ground of the emerging tactics in Algeria from 1954 to 1962, as France tried and failed to contain a nationalist uprising. Methods that were successful in Algeria would be adapted by Castro and Guevara in Cuba, by the Viet Cong, the Palestinians, the IRA and South African militants, and are currently being employed in Iraq. One conventional response has been the capture, interrogation and sometimes torture of the fighters, who are pressured to betray the names and plans of their co-conspirators.

This theory is described by a French military commander in "The Battle of Algiers": Terrorist groups are like tapeworms -- they keep reviving unless you destroy the head. That's not easy, because the groups are broken up into cells so that no member knows the names of more than a few others. As a consequence, neither side can really know how many (or how few) insurgents are involved.

"The Battle of Algiers" is "a training film for urban guerrillas," Jimmy Breslin declared on TV in 1968. Certainly it was shown by the Black Panthers and the IRA to their members, and in September 2003 the New York Times reported that the movie was being shown in the Pentagon to military and civilian experts. Times reporter Michael Kaufman wrote that Pentagon audiences were "urged to consider and discuss the implicit issues at the core of the film -- the problematic but alluring efficacy of brutal and repressive means in fighting clandestine terrorists in places like Algeria and Iraq." In short, the possibilities of torture.

The Complete Review Here.

The Man Who Cried

Directed by: Sally Potter
Produced by: Christopher Sheppard
Written by: Sally Potter
Starring: Christina Ricci/ Cate Blanchett/ Johnny Depp/ John Turturro/ Harry Dean Stanton
Music by: Osvaldo Golijov
Cinematography: Sacha Vierny
Release date(s): 2 September 2000 (Venice)
Running time: 100 minutes
Country: United Kingdom/ France
Language: English/ Yiddish/ Russian/ French/ Italian/ Romani/ Romanian

The Man Who Cried reminds me of another film, Map of the Human Heart (1993). Both the films are about finding love while travelling around the world under the looming shadows of the World War II. Yet, while I would call the Vincent Ward film a masterpiece, I am not sure how to react to The Man..

The Man Who Cried is an ambitious film, looks very good, so much so that you wish Emir Kusturica would have directed it. It is directed by Sally Potter and stars a marvellous cast of Christina Ricci, Johnny Depp and Cate Blanchett, among others. It is gorgeously photographed, and the soundtrack is perfect. Everything in their right places, yet...

As Roger Ebert pointed out, the film refuses to follow the law of probability and leads its heroine through a series of events from Russia to England, to Paris to Hollywood, in search of her father. And she actually meets him at the end. These all are very good. But the road is fraught with mis-steps: First, the casting. Depp is such a fantastic actor, especially in dramatic scenes, that it’s a crime to give him a role that requires him to sit on a horse and look bewildered. He looks maddeningly handsome and he is a pleasure to look at, but his Cesar remains an one-note character.

Then, there is the title. The title should have been, The Women Who Did Not Cry. Who’s is the man who cried? Is it the Depp character, who actually cries in a later scene or is it the heroine’s father, who, in his deathbed, actually cries as the film ends. And he’s there for a few seconds.

Anyways, the visuals help you sail through the gritty tale of Susan, who had another name, another language and another home. But before she could talk, her Jewish father from somewhere in Russia travels to America for a better future, as the daughter is left in the care of her grandmother. Then, the clouds of anti-Semitism thicken and her grandmother packs the girl and a few gold coins and a picture of her father, in search of a safe passage. She wants to go to American, instead lands in England, to be adopted, and to be sternly told not to speak in Yiddish.

So, she grows up, with just one dream in her eyes, to go to America to find her father. But, going to American costs money and to earn money, Suzie (now played by Ricci with her trademark nonchalance) travels to Paris, where she befriends beautiful Lola (a radiant Blachett), you know those cabaret girls who dream of marriage to a rich man. The rich man for Lola happens to be an Italian opera singer Dante (John Turturro, another case of miscast, though Turturro ties his best), whereas Dante has an eye for Suzie, and Suzie momentarily forgets the goal of her life and falls for a laconic gypsy, Cesar. Then, the Nazis come to power and Paris is under seize, and what not, if you are still interested in the fate of the characters.

>>>>>
Peter Bradshaw review in The Guardian
Neil Smith review in BBC
Elvis Mitchell review in The New York Times

Singham

The only reason I’m even talking about the new Ajay Devgn-Rohit Shetty Singham is certain posters that shows a near-naked Devgn displaying his assets. I mean, what the hell! You expect Salman Khan to do that. When the other Khan joined the bandwagon and developed all those numbered abs, it became the tabloid fodder, and you understand the phenomenon. But Ajay Devgn as a sex symbol? There’s something very weird about that.

Ajay Devgn has certain stature and charisma. He is awesome as a serious angry, young man. He was the Indian husband, not the aggressive lover. He was the perfect foil to Salman Khan’s character in Hum Dil De... But to be like Salman Khan? In a Salman Khan-like film (read, Dabangg)?

Ajay Devgn had more going for him, and he needed not remove his shirt.

On an average day, I wouldn’t seek out Raja Sen’s opinion as film critic. This time around, however, he is spot-on about the idea of Devgn in nude:

>>>>>>>>>>>
Excerpts from Raj Sen review:

.... “It's star-porn, really.

Or even Devgnporn, if you will. The hero might not show off his privates in Rohit Shetty's new film, but a testosterone version of him strips off all pride to flaunt every ounce of his celebrity status. So we see shots that originate from Ajay Devgn's crotch and shots that linger blatantly on his khaki-clad bottom; we see him peel off his cop shirt in slow, slow motion, either to assault us with rippling biceps or alarmingly prominent nipples poking through a vest.

Irony, like sharm, has no room in this picture. If Devgn was a woman, this would be one helluva exploitation flick. One can't quite say the same when the actor is one of the producers. We've seen it all before, and Singham's another time machine set up to take us back into the 1980s, Hindi cinema's most ghastly decade. Devgn's a tough, superheroic small-town policeman with a heart of gold and a near-permanent scowl, and he's come to the big city to take on a villain so vile he chokes children he kidnaps with his bare hands.

... All I can personally say about this trend of remaking one-note Southern hits as a viewer is that it's an exhausting one. It is in the tiny victories that we must seek refuge after a film like this: I'm just glad the hero, so eager to peel off his uniform, left his pants on.

Raja Sen feels Singham is a tiresome film but it will appeal to all Ajay Devgn fans.


>>>>>
Here’s another review:...

Singham cashes in on the current scarcity of the once-popular hardcore action movie genre, which never relied much on the story but more on the constant clash between the hero and the villain. And like its genre, the film also brings back the vicious villain that has presently gone missing in most films. It's the revival of the age-old formula! So it's left up to Prakash Raj to firm up the film as a worthy opponent to the hero. And though the actor hams hysterically and repeats exactly the same act and character that he played in recent films like Wanted,Bbuddah Hoga Tera Baap or the original Tamil Singam , he is perhaps the only villain with an intentional humourous streak to him, which he brings out effectively every time in the climax. His unusual comic confrontation with the cops in the climax makes you laugh more than Rohit Shetty's entire Golmaal series.

Read the complete Gaurav Malani review.

>>>>

By the way, do you find Ajay Devgn sexy in any case? I do.

Ironclad

After enjoying and criticising all those Robin Hood movies, where the historic King John plays a fictitious villain, do you really want to see him again, especially when Robin and his merrymen are not around? Especially when the film is not even based on history. It mentions Magna Carta before the narrative begins, and then plunges headlong into action, sword, sandal and horses, and muscular men in iron mails (because the film is called Ironclad, you see)... Especially when Paul Giamatti plays the villain. Now, Giamatti is a good actor. But, he is really suited for dramatic comedy, not action, not really, especially when his adversaries include Derek Jacobi and Brian Cox.

Okay, the story has some history; it chronicles the siege of Rochester Castle by King John in the year 1215. But that’s just an excuse to set-up battle sequences between the king’s army and the Knight Templers. At stake is, as always, that allusive thing called ‘Freedom.’

If you like sword-and-sandal action fare, you’d like Ironclad.

Hallows & Horcruxes

It All Ends. With Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2. The ultimate pop-culture phenomenon of our time comes to an end. And in 3D, not that the new technology helps enhance the picture in any way. It reflects the change the film franchise has gone through, in the last 10 years, in eight films.

I remember seeing the first film, The Philosopher’s Stone, in a pirated VCD, in a desktop computer in my hostel room at the University of Pune, with my roommate sniggering at me for wasting time watching a children’s film. It was indeed a children’s film. But, the current film is not, not remotely.

Talking about Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, someone said, there are two kinds of people in the world, those who have read the book and those who haven’t. Borrowing the statement, one can say that the world is divided by two kinds of people, those who are the fans of Harry Potter and those who are not.

Harry Potter is not just the books and the movies; its a cultural phenomenon, very much like what The Beatles were in the ’70. You cannot really rationalise why the series have been so successful among, not only the young adults, but even the grown-ups.

Personally, I don’t think Rowling’s writing is anything great. They are plain and at times repetitive, and at times, full of clichés. However, if you compare her with Stephanie Mayers of the Twilight series, Rowling is vastly superior.

Again, her mythology is nothing original. She borrows heavily from Tolkien, Ursula K Le Guin, H P Lovecroft and other assorted masters. She follows all the archetypes of a heroic fantasy — despicable villain, clueless hero with an unbearable burden, selfless friends, sacrifices and so on.

Yet, yes, yet, the concoction she brews with the material she has is nothing short of a miracle. How does she do it?

I read the first book around two years after the first film was out. I was not really interested. And, then I finished the book and the next day acquired the other two available books, Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban. I devoured them and waited with bated breathe for the next one. I had become a fan. Since then I have read the books several thousand times, especially Prisoner of Azkaban and The Deathly Hallows. How does she do that? It’s inexplicable.

The one thing that permeates all through the series is Rowling unwavering faith in love. It was love that saved Harry in the first place. It was love, or the lack of it, that destroyed Lord Voldermort. And how she tops her message of love by giving Professor Snape the glorious chance of redemption.

Till The Half-Blood Prince who would be guessed that Snape is not just a villain? I am sure Rowling too had no idea how Snape’s character would turn up, and when she got the chance, she created a backstory so wonderful and so full of pathos that it demands a novel of its own. Professor Snape and his love for Lily demands a novel of its own.

Whenever I read these passages towards the end of The Deathly Hallows, when Harry revisits Snape’s memories in the pensieve, I’m moved. These passages are some of the best scenes Rowling has ever written, and she succeeds because the dominating motif of these scenes is love.

When Dumbledore finally reveals that Harry has to die, Snape is angry. Dumbledore asks him mockingly if after all these years of hatred he has finally grown to care for Harry. Snape whips his wand and a petronus glides along. It’s a doe. The same petronus Lily had. “After all these years?” Dumbledore asks. Snape utters just one word: “Always.” And, your heart breaks.

In the film, the scene is there for a fraction of a second, and yet the effect is tremendous. For this, you have to give it to Alan Rickman. He utters just one word, “always,” and you understand. I wish they give him the Oscar of best support actor next year. It’s not an easy task to maintain such mystery in eight films, in over 10 years.

And this is another thing that’s so wonderful about the Harry Potter series of films, how all the actors struck to the film in the last 10 years. Yes, Richard Harris died and Michael Gambon took over. Other than that, and perhaps the actors who played Harry’s parents, all the actors remained the same. Daniel Radcliff, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson grew up with the films, and became household names. Look especially at Watson. In the early films, she couldn’t even act in the dramatic scenes, and then, in the last three films, she became the soul of the narrative, and how she stole the scenes. I still remember when she climbed down the stairs for the Yule ball in The Goblet of Fire. She had grown up before our very eyes. It doesn’t happen often in films.

I am sure, years from now, cinema students will study the series as a textbook case of adapting a book to film. Adapting a book to films is a tricky business. You have to walk a fine line. It is especially trough when the most of your target audience knows the original source by heart, and expect them to be translated into the screen, especially when the books are tomes and you cannot depict everything on screen. (And sometime, a ‘faithful’ adaptation can backfire, like it did in The Da Vinci Code. The film was bad because of its over-reliance on the book.) The Harry potter films achieve this fine balance. There are scenes in the film which are lifted from the pages, line by line, for example the meeting with Aberforth, Dumbledore’s brother. And then, there are scenes, which are dramatised. In the book, we don’t see Ron and Hermione visiting the chamber to collect the Basilisk fangs, as the novel is narrated from Harry’s point of view. But here, we see them at the chamber and share a hurried kiss, and instead of being an intrusion, the scene becomes a special moment.

The same way, in the book, Nagini is killed in a less dramatic fashion. But on screen, especially in 3D, the snake is a fantastic action prop. So, we have Ron and Hermione fighting the snake; yet the film remains true to the book in the sense that finally it is Neville who kills the python with the sword of Godric Griffindor.

White Material

Claire Denis has always been a poet of mood and moment, and here succeeds in linking these skills to the creation of a story with oppressive tension and atmosphere. White Material could be her best film since Beau Travail: a disturbing piece of work whose power and grip increase, almost imperceptibly, as the film progresses to its awful and inevitable conclusion. Isabelle Huppert plays Maria Vial, a coffee farmer in an unnamed African state – Francophone, and presumably a former French colony – which is in meltdown. There is lawlessness on the streets and, as in Rwanda, radio DJs pour out inflammatory broadcasts. The colonial whites are being blamed. Every day is more dangerous for Maria, but she stubbornly refuses to leave, perhaps because she cannot imagine a life back in France, perhaps because decades of facing down quasi-insurrectionary threats from the indigenous workforce have left her unable to distinguish this grave crisis from all the other temporary mutinies.

With a bold disregard for traditional Hollywood-screenplay templates, Denis leaves it until quite late in the movie before introducing the other people in Maria's life: her ravaged and leonine husband André – an intriguing performance from Christopher Lambert – and her son, Manuel (Nicolas Duvauchelle). Feckless Manuel is the imperious Maria's Achilles heel. So effortlessly authoritative and demanding in every other area of her life, Maria cannot control Manuel, who lies around in bed all day; he declines to help with the plantation and Maria cannot bring herself to order him.

Read the complete Peter Bradshaw review here.

Michael Collins

Michael "Mick" Collins (16 October 1890 – 22 August 1922) was an Irish revolutionary leader, Minister for Finance and Teachta Dála (TD) for Cork South in the First Dáil of 1919, Director of Intelligence for the IRA, and member of the Irish delegation during the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations. Subsequently, he was both Chairman of the Provisional Government and Commander-in-chief of the National Army. Throughout this time, at least as of 1919, he was also President of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and, therefore, under the bylaws of the Brotherhood, President of the Irish Republic. Collins was shot and killed in August 1922, during the Irish Civil War.

Although most Irish political parties recognise his contribution to the foundation of the modern Irish state, supporters of Fine Gael hold his memory in particular esteem, regarding him as their movement's founding father, through his link to their precursor Cumann na nGaedheal.

More on Michael Collins here.

Writes Roger Ebert: ``Michael Collins'' paints a heroic picture of the Irish Republican Army's inspired strategist and military leader, who fought the British Empire to a standstill and invented the techniques of urban guerrilla warfare that shaped revolutionary struggles all over the world. Played by Liam Neeson in a performance charged with zest and conviction, Collins comes across as a clear.sighted innovator who took the IRA as far as it could reasonably hope to go, and then signed a treaty with the British that was, he argued ``the best we can hope for at this moment in time.'' The treaty established an Irish Free State, but it preserved the division of Ireland into north and south, and it fell short of the independent republic the IRA had been fighting for. Collins felt that additional negotiations over a period of years could eventually produce those gains; he and his comrades were weary of bloodshed.

…The movie moves confidently when it focuses on Collins and his best friend and co-strategist Harry Boland (Aidan Quinn). But it falters with the unnecessary character of Kitty Kiernan (Julia Roberts), who is in love with both men, and they with her. ``I was ahead by a length,'' Harry tells her in one scene. ``Now where am I?'' She shakes her head: ``It's not a race, Harry. You without him . . . him without you . . . I can't imagine it.'' The movie uses the scenes with Kitty to provide obligatory romantic interludes between war and strategy, but even though Kitty was a historical character, we never feel the scenes are necessary; they function as a sop to the audience, not as additional drama.

...Collins, who died at 31, was arguably the key figure in the struggles that led to the separation of Ireland and Britain. He was also, on the basis of this film, a man able to use violence without becoming intoxicated by it. The film argues that if he had prevailed Ireland might eventually have been united, and many lives might have been saved. We will never know.

The complete review here.

Kes

Wrote Roger Ebert on January 16, 1973: "Kes" was directed by Ken Loach, a young British filmmaker who has now made three movies of high quality and disappointing commercial performance. His "Poor Cow," with Carol White, was an ambitious but somewhat confusing movie about a barmaid who becomes pregnant; it would have fared better, I think, in these latter days of women's lib. After "Kes," he made "Family Life," which got good notices at the 1972 Cannes festival and opened in New York last fall as "Wednesdays Child." This was the story of a misfit adolescent girl and her uptight parents, and it was effective in a grim, slice-of-life way.

But "Kes" is Loach at his best. He shot it on a very low budget, on location, using most local nonprofessionals as his leads. His story is about a boy who's caught in England's class-biased educational system. He reaches school-leaving age and decides to leave, but doesn't have anything else he much cares about. He's the butt of jokes and hostility at home (where his older brother rules), and inarticulate with his contemporaries.

One day he finds a small kestrel hawk, and trains it to hunt. The bird becomes his avenue to a free and natural state - the state his soul needs, and that his home and school deny him. And then the system, alarmed or offended by his freedom, counterattacks. The film has a heartbreaking humanity.

More Here.