100TPC In Pune

I am surely losing my grip on reality. I don’t know where my days are disappearing. I wake up every morning with this blind hope that today would be different. Today, I’d do something worth remembering. And, the next thing I know, it’s midnight. I am back from my job, and I am in no mood to do anything.

Things have become so bad that this year I did not even realise when did the Ganesh Festival come and go. I am a big fan of these 10-days of celebration that the city puts up, year after year, with the same amount of enthusiasm. Every year, I make it a point to at least be there on Laxmi Road on the day of visarjan; it’s fun, the music, and the sheer energy is quite contagious.

This year the night disappeared somewhere; and I have no memory of it.

However, I spend the morning quite fruitfully, and read a poem, in Assamese and then in English translation, not my own, but a poet I admire— Abani Chakravarty.

It was an honour to attend the Pune version of the 100 Thousand Poets for Change (100TPC) event on Saturday, September 29 at Kala Chaya in Patrakar Nagar, for which all the credits must go to the tireless coordination of the one and only Dipalle Parmar, and her superheroic managerial skills, who not only organised this event, in association with Open Space, but did so in the last whole month, every Saturday, and at different venues each time. I had attended the first event on September 1, and then this one.

It was an eclectic mix of four invited poets, Dipalle herself, and the audience, each one literally inclined. There was R Raj Rao and Max Babi, both from the city, Marathi-English poet Sachin Ketkar from Vadodara, and Georgina Maddox from Delhi. It was great to hear Ketkar, about whom I had heard about a lot but never had the chance to read him or meet him.

And there were the up-and-coming ones, like yours truely, Huzaifa Pandit, the Kashmiri student at the University of Pune, and Chandrakant Redican, another UoP student, from Jejuri who is experimenting with Marathi rap, which I found quite fascinating. I told him, he must cut an album.

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The photograph is stolen from Georgina Maddox’s Facebook album HERE.

Moonrise Kingdom

Saw Wes Anderson's new 'Moonrise Kingdom'. Twice in two days. Yet, I am yet to form an opinion. It's difficult to coherently react to a Wes Anderson film. He and the world his creates in his films are so clinical, so fastidious, and so emotionally palpable, that it creates a different version of a reality:

Here's what Roger Ebert has to say:

Wes Anderson's mind must be an exciting place for a story idea to be born. It immediately becomes more than a series of events and is transformed into a world with its own rules, in which everything is driven by emotions and desires as convincing as they are magical. "Moonrise Kingdom" creates such a world and takes place on an island that might as well be ruled by Prospero. It's set in 1965, though it might as well be set at any time.

On this island no one seems to live except for those involved in the story. There is a lighthouse in which the heroine, Suzy, lives with her family, and a Scout camp where the hero, Sam, stirs restlessly under what seem to him childish restrictions. Sam and Suzy met the previous summer and have been pen pals ever since, plotting a sort of jailbreak from their lives during which they could have an adventure out from under the thumbs of adults, if only for a week.

More Here.

MIB3

The time travel log from Men in Black 3.

Time travel seems to be the new Hollywood fad, what with ‘Looper’, a film where the younger self of the hero must kill the older self; and then, wait for, ‘Cloud Atlas’, which is something else altogether...

Thodasa Roomani

A very bad screenshot from the Amol Palekar film ‘Thodasa Roomani Ho Jaayen.’ I wish they’d work on the print and release the film in DVD. There was an odd charm about the film, an old-world charm, and it was a musical in the true Hollywood style. Those days...

Saw the film recently in Youtube. The link HERE, if it's still working.

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‘Thodasa Roomani Ho Jaayen’ is a Hindi movie directed by Amol Palekar and released in 1990. It features Anita Kanwar, Nana Patekar and Vikram Gokhale as major actors. This movie has become a part of management courses and study pertaining to human behaviour... The movie has a lot of poetry within itself. Anita Kanwar is an unconventional girl lacking confidence. All people around her including her father and brothers keep advising her 'how she should be'. Then, a magician who can bring rain comes to their lives. He helps her to realize the potential of believing. He brings back beauty and confidence to Anita Kanwar. Now, she realizes altogether a different life, just because of believing or changing perception.
More here.

You know the cliché; if life gives you a lemon, make a lemonade. Here’s a twist: As a vast region of Assam, including Guwahati, the capital, continues to be submerged in flood, my father had a practical advise — If your house is under water, sit on the bed, and learn to fish — with fishhooks. My mother is not too happy with the idea though. She’ll have to cook those blasted fish.

Victor/ Victoria

As a academic in the field of queer studies, and queer cinema in particular, I must be suspicious of the Blake Edwards-Julie Andrews madcap ‘Victor/Victoria’, where a woman dresses up a man and presents herself to the world as a female impersonator, a transvestite, or cross-dresser and whatever, a woman posing as a man dressing up as a woman. The idea is so preposterous, Julie Andrews’ Victoria screems in the beginning of the film, that no one would believe it. But, they do, and the film proceeds, from one song to another, from one gag to another, until an American Mafia falls in love with Victoria as Victor and vice-versa.

It’s not a classic queer text. Here, queerness is used purely for the laughs; though there are two queer characters in the film, both incidentally are the confidante of the lead pair, they are at best minor characters, and their love lives are not really an issue here. Yet, the film itself, is boisterous fun; anyone who’ve grown up seeing ‘Sound of Music’ cannot find fault in Ms Andrews, ever. I had actually more problems with another Blake Edwards film, ‘The Party’ (1968) where the inimitable Peter Sellers plays a clueless Indian.

Victor Victoria is a 1982 musical comedy film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer that involves homosexuality, transvestism and sexual identity as central themes. It stars Julie Andrews, James Garner, Robert Preston, Lesley Ann Warren, Alex Karras, and John Rhys-Davies. The film was produced by Tony Adams, directed by Blake Edwards, and scored by Henry Mancini, with lyrics by Leslie Bricusse. It was adapted in 1995 as a Broadway musical. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won the Academy Award for Original Music Score. It is a remake of Viktor und Viktoria, a German film of 1933.
More here.

Barfi!

The other day, I had gone to see ‘Barfi!’ at the neighbourhood multiplex; because everybody has seen it and are gushing about it, because the film is announced to represent India at the Oscars, because the reviews are unanimously good, and because the trailer on youtube looks so inviting, and because I liked the soundtrack.

Then I had an epiphany! What’s the point in paying my hard-earned money to see other people having fun. Instead, I must have fun myself. So, I left the multiplex and went straight to the nearby sweats shop, and got a barfi for myself. A big one. It was good.

Prayers for the Entity without Genitalia

1.
Therefore, you are cold, without desire
Therefore, you can be alone, and not lonely.

2.
And this, my body, is a magnet, of perpetual attraction, I cannot
Sustain alone. The prayers or the prasads cannot appease me.

3.
And this, my body, wants another, similar, not the same, which
The magnet of this body will hold together, until...

4.
This body, I can denounce it, if you want, right now, again, I
Can denounce my body and the long list of its expansive demands.

5.
And this, my body, this machinery of flesh, skin, and blood
Of fairness cream and hair gel and pedicure, entraps me. I cannot leave.

6.
My body, this, is the slave to these expansive desires, and my reward —
This wholesome visage, on the mirror...

7.
... Or on my Facebook page, “liked” by all my “friends”, who do not
Know me because I’m not the same person who crawls the cyberspace.

8.
This face, the memory of this face, doesn’t let me sleep, and I’m
Forced to go through that long list of my body’s expansive demands.

9.
And this, my body, goes through the motions of the drills so that I
May continue to wear this handsome visage, which is not my own.

10.
Therefore, you are cold, without desire
Therefore, you can be alone, and not lonely.

Joseph Anton

A new book by Salman Rushdie is always an event, not because he’s controversial, which he is, but because he’s a genuinely good writer, despite the fact that his recent books were not as great as the earlier ones, like, the Luka book is nothing like ‘Haroun and the Sea of Stories’, or the Enchantress book is nothing like ‘The Moor’s Last Sigh’. And, I couldn’t even read ‘Fury’; yet, a bad Rushdie book is better than those abysmal “bestsellers.”

And, ‘Joseph Anton’ is a special case. It’s not a novel, but a memoir, especially of the time when Rushdie went on a hiding following the death threat, the infamous fatwa. Joseph Anton is the alias he assumed during those dark days.

The issue becomes all the more pronounced when Islamic Fundamentalism continues to dominate headlines. Recently, there was a riot in Mumbai, and then, riots everything, when a trailer for a alleged ‘anti-prophet film went viral.

[Update]
Meanwhile, Mr Rushdie continues to dominate the headlines, especially in the context of India. While, in ‘Joshep Anton’, Rushdie mentions how an early India Today review, “the match that lit the fire” that started the whole thing, culminating in the fatwa, Indian novelist Manu Joseph asks in a The New York Times write-up: “Is Rushdie the voice of the billion?” Joseph writes:

India, where the protests against the book began, was the first country to act against the book. This was done not through an official ban, but through a government order making it illegal to import copies of the book.

As Indians could not read “The Satanic Verses,” they bought or borrowed “Midnight’s Children.” The impact of this novel on a generation of young writers was extraordinary. In Madras, now Chennai, where boys were preordained to become engineers and literature was considered the refuge of the handicapped or the effeminate, the news of a rock star “Indian” writer made literature suddenly look respectable.

The first burst of Indian pride in response to the fame and infamy of an Indian-born writer erupted in a simpler age. Over the years, even though Mr. Rushdie has said several times that he does not need a visa to visit India, the writer, who continues to create political storms and needs state protection whenever he visits the country, has come to be considered a high-maintenance foreigner by the very people who once claimed him as their own. He has also become a reminder of that uncomfortable question: Among migrant artists, is identity actually a euphemism for branding?

More Here.

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The 'Salman Rushdie' website describes the book:

On 14 February 1989, Valentine’s Day, Salman Rushdie was telephoned by a BBC journalist and told that he had been ’sentenced to death’ by the Ayatollah Khomeini. For the first time he heard the word fatwa. His crime? To have written a novel called The Satanic Verses, which was accused of being ‘against Islam, the Prophet and the Quran’.

So begins the extraordinary story of how a writer was forced underground, moving from house to house, with the constant presence of an armed police protection team. He was asked to choose an alias that the police could call him by. He thought of writers he loved and combinations of their names; then it came to him: Conrad and Chekhov – Joseph Anton.

How do a writer and his family live with the threat of murder for over nine years? How does he go on working? How does he fall in and out of love? How does despair shape his thoughts and actions, how and why does he stumble, how does he learn to fight back? In this remarkable memoir Rushdie tells that story for the first time; the story of one of the crucial battles, in our time, for freedom of speech. He talks about the sometimes grim, sometimes comic realities of living with armed policemen, and of the close bonds he formed with his protectors; of his struggle for support and understanding from governments, intelligence chiefs, publishers, journalists, and fellow writers; and of how he regained his freedom.

It is a book of exceptional frankness and honesty, compelling, provocative, moving, and of vital importance. Because what happened to Salman Rushdie was the first act of a drama that is still unfolding somewhere in the world every day.

More here.

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Salman Rushdie speaks to India Today:

Joseph Anton ( Jonathan Cape; 636pp; Rs.799) , perhaps the only memoir written in the third person, is the story of a novelist banished by the extraterritorial tyranny of religion, a price tag hanging from his neck. And it is a memoir that uses the art and architecture of fiction. It could not have been otherwise, for the memoirist here is a writer who has challenged the limits of fiction, a writer who has translated the big whirl of an interconnected world into words resonant with the joys and sorrows, the magic and madness, the passions and pathologies of a merciless history. Joseph Anton is a different Rushdie at work: An overpopulated thriller based on true events, but powered by ideas and emotions, and as combustible and expansive as a vintage Russian novel. The Rushdie who animates the pages is a writer playing out his multiple roles, the script often being ghostwritten by a pitiless outsider. So we have Rushdie the son in an intimate, posthumous conversation with his father; a young failed novelist struggling for that breakthrough moment; a writer on the run in the shadow land where the clock is frozen and solitude is invasive; a storyteller who regains the lost word through a promise he made to his son; an incorrigible romantic rebuilding his life on the wreckage of failed marriages; an endangered fabulist who is eternally indebted to the kindness and solidarity of friends. "Until this episode of The Satanic Verses happened, I had no interest in writing an autobiography. The reason I became a writer was to write fiction, not about myself," he says.

More here.

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Indrajit Hazra reviews 'Joseph Anton' in Hindustan Times:
Reading Salman Rushdie’s memoir – 636 pages long and without any index to facilitate matters – and then batting out a coherent, moderately informed review in 72 hours was not going to be easy
for the reviewer. But then, there was already a heavy downpour of information about the book and the author’s views in the media. Even before he lovingly touched the purple cover with its title etched on the hardcover, the buzz around Joseph Anton had been louder than words.

Instead of trying to conjure up a supra-narrative around what was being said about the book and what Rushdie himself was saying, the reviewer decided to heed Rushdie’s own words from the book: “When friends asked me what they could do to help, he pleaded, ‘Defend the text.’” So he set out to judge the text that was Joseph Anton: A Memoir, and not go into the non-existent Salman-namas that fluttered outside as ‘current affairs’.
More here. http://www.hindustantimes.com/Books/Chunk-HT-UI-BooksSectionPage-Reviews/Review-Joseph-Anton-A-Memoir/Article1-933799.aspx

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Margaret Drabble says Salman Rushdie's account of surviving a fatwa is brutally honest and profound:

One of the heroes of Rushdie's memoir is a handsome, tennis-playing, gun-carrying police protection officer called Stan, which may or may not be his real name. His first reaction to the fatwa was simple. "It can't be allowed… threatening a British citizen. It's not on. It'll get sorted." As we know, it took years to sort and arguments against the dying ayatollah's death sentence span out of control into impassioned and often intemperate debates about the blasphemy laws, freedom of speech, the nature of fiction, cultural relativism, Islam, the narrowing of national identities and the alleged cost to the British nation of Stan, his colleagues and Operation Malachite. Rushdie's bold, complex and literary novel, The Satanic Verses, was hijacked by the exterminating angels of wrath, a wrath that still flames around us. Some were killed, many were threatened. It continues.

Rushdie has now told his version of events and it is more gripping than any spy story. Having resisted commercial attempts to fictionalise his life, he has attempted to tell his own truth. It cannot have been easy. He kept a journal, but, being a clever and would-be honest man, he knows we deceive and bowdlerise even in our journals and admits it. Doris Lessing urged him to tell the whole truth, like Rousseau, but he failed, as she did.

For his double life, he was obliged to turn himself into a fictional character and he became Joseph Anton, after Conrad and Chekhov. The former he describes as "the trans-lingual creator of wanderers… of secret agents in a world of killers and bombs, and of at least one immortal coward, hiding from his shame". The reference to Lord Jim (which could also apply to Razumov, in Conrad's novel of anarchy and terrorism, Under Western Eyes) is suggestive and Rushdie (an authority on Shame) is not afraid to show himself as a coward and a clown, hiding from a sheep farmer behind a kitchen dresser in Wales, shutting himself into bathrooms in north London to avoid a plumber or a cleaner. He turns himself into an almost Falstaffian figure, shabby and overweight, letting himself go, smoking, at times drinking too much and quarrelling with a succession of wives.

More here.

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A N Wilson on Salman Rushdie's memoir, 'Joseph Anton'

Even as this book appears, the Islamic world is once again in a fever of violence, with mobs being encouraged to take offence – this time at the making of some tenth-rate amateur film vilifying their Prophet. Salman Rushdie is in a position to give us some interesting reflections on the extraordinary condition of the Islamic world, but clearly he needed to get this memoir off his chest first.

It really is a most peculiar book, written like the works of Julius Caesar or General de Gaulle, in the third person. If this comparison seems grandiose to you, it would not necessarily do so to the author, who in the first 20 pages has compared himself to King Charles I – who, like Rushdie, did not acknowledge the legitimacy of the judges who condemned him – and Voltaire. At a Hampstead dinner party, held at the house of Michael Foot during Rushdie’s years of seclusion, he is introduced to John Mortimer, Neil Kinnock and Tony Harrison, who compares Rushdie’s plight with that of Socrates, Jesus Christ and Galileo. The title refers to the nom de guerre he adopted while in captivity, taken from the first names of Conrad and Chekhov. Alas, Rushdie possesses neither Conrad’s sense of moral irony, nor Chekhov’s gift of brevity.

As the book galumphingly unfolds, the cast of characters becomes enormous. Special Branch men, politicians and famous writers crowd its pages, yet very few of them come to life. One notable exception is Margaret Thatcher, met at a party, and her caressing of his forearm as she says, “Hello, dear, how are you getting along?”, does somehow convey what it was like to meet her. (It is followed by a diatribe against Thatcher for not doing more to get the Tehran government to lift the fatwa.)

More here.

Ship of Theseus

From the trailer of Anand Gandhi’s acclaimed film, ‘Ship of Theseus’. The full trailer here.

Barfi!

Just heard. Anurag Basu’s Barfi!, which features the current Indian heartthrob Ranbir Kapoor as a deaf-mute boy in love, has been nominated as India’s entry to the Oscars. It’s a no-brainer anyway. The film is not going to make to the shotlist, of course not. ‘Lagaan’ was the last film to do so, and you cannot count ‘Water’; that was Canada’s entry. That said, Barfi! is good choice. For one thing, there’s a handful of dialogue, so foreign delegates wouldn’t have to worry about missing the film in subtitles. And, it’s a film about a disabled person, something that the Oscars love (everything from ‘My Left Foot’ to ‘Forrest Gump’...), and the film is a tribute to the great Charlie Chaplin, although I believe, the film was more of a tribute to the lead actor’s own grandfather, Raj Kapoor. And, the film is as colourful as Bollywood can make, including a traditional Bengali wedding sequence, and it’s not as melodramatic as feared by the western audience. So, why not!

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The shortlisted films comprised Milan Luthria’s The Dirty Picture, Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Paan Singh Tomar, Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani, Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs Of Wasseypur Parts I and II, Rajan Khosa’s Gattu, Gurvinder Singh’s Anhey Ghore Da Daan, Umesh Kulkarni’s Deool and Madhur Bhandarkar’s Heroine, among others.

Barfi! beat 19 other films to represent India at the Oscars.
More Here.

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And, here's one criticism:
The film appears much too crafted and self-consciously gorgeous, and feels eminently facile and plastic. It isn’t just the lifting of two memorable scenes from The Notebook. The sequence involving a statue made me revisit my Citylights DVD. What’s more, the emotions seem designed and dressed up in an alien coating. Barfi! tries way too hard to please. It’s like being wooed by a man who is extremely charming yet makes you wary of his intentions. He attracts, but does not inspire faith or trust. I was enchanted in parts, but largely exasperated.
More here.

Heroine

Is anyone surprised that the Kareena Kapoor magnum opus ‘Heroine’ is a disaster? I guess not. People have been hearing about the film for such a long time, since Aishwarya Rai Bachchan signed to do the film, and then walked out and so on. After a while, you stop caring. This is exactly what happened to ‘Heroine’. Over-exposure! This, and the fact that it’s a Madhur Bhandarkar film; you can sell an idea, a concept or a style only this much. ‘Corporate’ was perhaps the last good film Bhandarkar made. This, and the fact that we recently saw a similar rags-to-riches-to-rags story of an actress in ‘Dirty Picture’. This, and the fact that the promos of the film looked like a rehash of Bhandarkar’s earlier ‘Fashion’. This, and the fact that we have seen movies like this; two off-the-cuff example would be Shyam Benegal’s ‘Bhumika’ and Sudhir Mishra’s ‘Khoya Khoya Chand.’ But, ‘Heroine’ has more affinity with Aparna Sen’s Bangla film, ‘Iti Mrinalini’.

Anyway, while penning the film, rediff.com critic, the acerbic Raja Sen imagines how the director may have convinced the ever-wonderful Kareena Kapoor to do the film... (Observe how every critic has only words of praise for the Kapoor girl.)

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It isn't hard to picture just how Madhur Bhandarkar pitched this film to Kareena Kapoor, India's highest paid actress. (I naturally assume a script wasn't involved.) 'Kareenaji,' I speculate the director would have said, 'this film will make you Meryl Strip.'

'You mean Streep?' Kareena perhaps interjects.

'Yes, same only, just with more skin show. So we can show off not just how good an actress you are but also how tiptop your body is. We'll make you do everything, from playing insecure to bipolar to furious to arty. Matlab Kangana plus Priyanka, madam.'

At this point Kapoor, weary (as one gets) of all those hundred-crore moneyspinners that have featured her merely as arm-candy, sighs, and looks over above the fireplace in front of that Asian Paints emulsified wall. On the mantelpiece she spots a gap, a gap just large enough for a National Award. She smiles but hesitates. (She might have watched Jail, you see.)

The director lays out his trump card: 'The former number one heroine was to do it, but now it's you.'

Film as coronation, as it were, the ultimate endorsement. She giddily signs on, and Bhandarkar, armed with three years of Stardust back-issues, starts to write what we might as well call a script.

See what I did there?
The full review here.

Devil Baby

The first time I heard Mark knopfler’s haunting voice was in his third solo album, ‘The Ragpicker’s Dream,’ even before I knew who he was, even before I had heard of Dire Straits.

A friend had purchased an audio CD of the album in a sale, and he was very excited about it; he was a huge fan of Knopfler! I’m talking about the days when audio CD is just invented; cassettes still ruled the roost, we hadn’t heard of mp3 or any other kind of song download system via the net; we hadn’t heard of internet, forget about Youtube. So, my friend got the CD, but did not have an instrument to play the damn thing. Those days I had a desktop computer; one of the first among my friends. So, he gave me the CD, and I played it, for years, so much so that I could sing through the entire album.

All this was before I discovered Dire Straits and their masterpiece ‘Romeo and Juliet’.

The other day, I listened to ‘The Ragpicker’s Dream’ again after a long time, and I was struck by how much I love Knopfler’s voice, and this song, ‘Devil Baby’.

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Devil Baby

The freaks'll stay together
They're a tight old crew
You look at them
And they look at you
I love the ballyhoo girl
But she don't care
It's hard to find love anywhere
Hard to find love anywhere

The professor is the talker
He's the talking man
And if he can't clean a midway
Nobody can
He'll get the tip on in
From the midway mud
You gotta have the sawdust in the blood
Gotta have the sawdust in the blood

See the pig-faced man and the monkey girl
Come see the big fat lady
'Gator slim with the alligator skin
Come see the devil baby

Springer is the talker
He's the talking man
He's got the whole studio
Eating out of his hand
You can be on too
With the nuts and the geeks
Call 1-800-IMA FREAK
1-800-IMA FREAK

Be the pig-faced man or the monkey girl
Come be the big fat lady
'Gator slim with the alligator skin
Come be the devil baby

Be the pig-faced man or the monkey girl
Come be the big fat lady
'Gator slim with the alligator skin
Come be the devil baby


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Mark Knopfler sings ‘Devil Baby’ at the Edison Music Awards in Heineken Music Hall Amsterdam, Holland, March 6, 2003. In YouTube.

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The Ragpicker's Dream is the third solo album by Mark Knopfler. Released on September 30, 2002, the album is a collection of songs written from the point of view of poor but dignified itinerant men, struggling to get by in life, often enjoying small triumphs. Knopfler gives a folk imprint to the whole album without relying too heavily on the acoustic guitar. The first song, "Why Aye Man", was used as the theme tune for the third series of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet which first aired in 2002. The album contains numerous other references to North East England, including the village of Tow Law on "Hill Farmer's Blues". The cover image is taken from a photo by Elliott Erwitt.
More here.

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Dire Straits was a British rock band, formed in 1977 by former journalist and teacher Mark Knopfler, initially composed of Knopfler (lead vocals and lead guitar), his younger brother David Knopfler (rhythm guitar and backing vocals), John Illsley (bass guitar and backing vocals), and Pick Withers (drums and percussion).

Dire Straits' sound drew from a variety of musical influences, including jazz, folk, blues, and came closest to beat music within the context of rock and roll. Despite the prominence of punk rock during the band's early years, the band's stripped-down sound contrasted with punk, demonstrating a more "rootsy" influence that emerged out of pub rock. Many of Dire Straits' compositions were melancholic.

Dire Straits' biggest selling album, Brothers in Arms, has sold over 30 million copies. They also became one of the world's most commercially successful bands, with worldwide album sales of over 120 million. Dire Straits won numerous music awards during their career, including four Grammy Awards, three Brit Awards—winning Best British Group twice, and two MTV Video Music Awards. The band's most popular songs include "Sultans of Swing", "Romeo and Juliet", "Tunnel of Love", "Private Investigations", "Money for Nothing", "Walk of Life", "So Far Away", "Your Latest Trick" and "Brothers in Arms".

Dire Straits' career spanned 18 years. There were several changes in personnel over that period, leaving Mark Knopfler and John Illsley as the only two original bandmates who had remained throughout the band's career. Dire Straits disbanded in 1995 when Mark Knopfler launched his career full time as a solo artist.
More here.

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Mark Freuder Knopfler, OBE (born 12 August 1949) is a British guitarist, singer, songwriter, record producer and film score composer. He is best known as the lead guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter for the British rock band Dire Straits, which he co-founded in 1977. After Dire Straits disbanded in 1995, Knopfler went on to record and produce seven solo albums, including Golden Heart (1996), Sailing to Philadelphia (2000), and Get Lucky (2009). He has composed and produced film scores for eight films, including Local Hero (1983), Cal (1984), The Princess Bride (1987), and Wag the Dog (1997) . In addition to his work with Dire Straits and as a solo artist and composer, Knopfler has recorded and performed with many prominent musicians, including Phil Lynott, Chet Atkins, The Chieftains, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Jools Holland, Steely Dan, Bryan Ferry, Sonny Landreth, and Van Morrison. He has produced albums for Tina Turner, Bob Dylan, and Randy Newman.

Knopfler is one of the most respected fingerstyle guitarists of the modern rock era, and was ranked 27th on Rolling Stone magazine's list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. Knopfler and Dire Straits have sold in excess of 120 million albums to date. A four-time Grammy Award winner, Knopfler is the recipient of the Edison Award and the Steiger Award, and holds three honorary doctorate degrees in music from universities in the United Kingdom.
More here.

Tyeb Mehta

Renown artist Tyeb Mehta is in news again. Making money. A lot of them, as his oil painting ‘Falling figure with Bird’ fetches Rs 9.63 crore (USD 1.8 million) at the online Saffronart Autumn art auction, becoming the most expensive artwork to be sold this season.

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Reports Press Trust of India [PTI]:

MUMBAI: Modernist painter Tyeb Mehta notched up another record when his oil painting fetched Rs 9.63 crore (USD 1.8 million) at the recent online Saffronart Autumn art auction, becoming the most expensive artwork to be sold this season.
The 1988 oil on canvas " Falling figure with Bird" is the fourth highest price achieved amongst Mehta's other paintings sold across the world.
The late master's work was among 53 sold works out of a total of 75 works in Saffronart's annual online Autumn auction that featured 35 modern and contemporary Indian artists and raked up a total sales of 21.04 crores (USD 3.9 million).
Said to be one of the most important ones from Mehta's suite of falling figures, the painting draws on both Indian and Western myths and legends depicting an androgynous human figure entangled with that of a bird.
The figures, locked together in endless free fall, convey not only the anxiety and disquiet that the Mumbai -born Mehta carried with him following his experiences of the horrors of Partition and war, but also his engagement with modernist concepts like existentialism and "Universal Man".
Before the sale Saffronart had said they expected the work to fetch between Rs 8.1 crores- Rs 10.8 crores.
Mehta who died in 2009 was the first Indian artist to break the Rs 1 crore barrier. In the year 2002 at a Christie's auction Mehta's "Celebration" fetched Rs 1.5 crore. In the year 2005 his work "Mahishasura" again crossed the USD 1 million mark. In 2008 one of his paintings sold for USD 2 million. In December 2005, Mehta's painting "Gesture" was sold for 3.1 crores at the Osian's auction.
Previously, in the 2011 Saffronart Autumn Art auction, Tyeb Mehta's "Untitled" was the top lot and sold for Rs 7.19 crores.
Another top attraction in the recently concluded Saffronart auction was a rare work by Amrita Sher Gill.
The rare 1931 painting "Untitled (Zebegeny Landscape)" fetched Rs 3.24 crore falling within the estimated Rs 3.24 -Rs 4.32 crores. The canvas was one of only five paintings by the artist to have ever come up for public auction.
The landscape portrays a grassy path meandering along a thatched wall. While the light in the foreground is dappled, passing through a stand of tall trees on the right, the sky beyond them is a bright, clear blue.
Meanwhile acclaimed modernist painter M F Husain's "That Obscure Object of Desire - Eight" fetched Rs 1.17 crores. One untitled work of his went under the hammer for Rs 71.64 lakhs while another was sold at Rs 31.59 lakhs.
Francis Newton Souza's "Figure on Red & Green Background fetched Rs 65.19 lakhs, N S Bendre's "Untitled" won the bid at Rs 51.6 lakhs.
An untitled Ramkumar work fetched Rs 48.72 lakhs while another of his untitled works went for Rs 27.03 lakhs. Contemporary artist Bharti Kher Bharti Kher's "Indra's Net(6)" fetched Rs 47.7 lakhs.

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The 1988 oil on canvas “Falling figure with Bird” by Tyeb Mehta, is estimated to fetch Rs 8,10,00,000- Rs 10,80,00,000 in the Saffronart Autumn sale. (Photo Credit- Saffronart Autumn Art Auction Official Website)

Tayyab Mehta
Born: 26 July 1925/ Kapadvanj, Gujarat, India
Died: 2 July 2009 (aged 83) / Mumbai, India
Nationality: Indian
Field: Painting
Training: Sir J.J. School of Art (1952)
Works: Celebration/ Kali

Tayyabb Mehta (25 July 1925 – 2 July 2009) was a noted Indian painter. He was part of the noted Bombay Progressive Artists' Group, which included greats like F.N. Souza, S.H. Raza and M.F. Husain, and the first post-colonial generation of artists in India, like John Wilkins who also broke free from the nationalist Bengal school and embraced Modernism instead, with its Post-Impressionist colors, Cubist forms and brusque, Expressionistic styles.

Among his most noted later paintings were his triptych Celebration, which when sold for Rs 1.5 crore ($317,500) at a Christie’s auction in 2002, was not only the highest sum for an Indian painting at an international auction, but also triggered the subsequent great Indian art boom; his other noted works were the 'Diagonal Series', Santiniketan triptych series, Kali, Mahishasura (1996). He stayed and worked in Mumbai for much of his life, except for three spells at London, New York, and Santiniketan, each having a distinct impact upon his work. He received several awards during his career including the Padma Bhushan by Govt. of India in 2007.
More here.

Skyfall

Bond is back. Next month.

Directed by Sam Mendes
Produced by Michael G. Wilson/ Barbara Broccoli
Written by John Logan/ Neal Purvis/ Robert Wade/
Based on James Bond by Ian Fleming
Starring Daniel Craig/ Javier Bardem / Ralph Fiennes / Naomie Harris/ Bérénice Marlohe/ Albert Finney/ Judi Dench
Running time 145 minutes
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Budget $150 million

Skyfall is the upcoming twenty-third spy film in the James Bond series, produced by Eon Productions for MGM, Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Entertainment. It features Daniel Craig's third performance as James Bond and Javier Bardem as Raoul Silva, the film's villain. The film was directed by Sam Mendes and written by John Logan, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade.

Mendes was approached after the release of Quantum of Solace. During development of the film, production was suspended and original screenwriter Peter Morgan left the project due to MGM's financial troubles. Pre-production resumed in December 2010. Logan, Purvis and Wade wrote the final version of the script, incorporating Morgan's ideas in it. Filming began in November 2011, and primarily took place in England, China, Scotland and Turkey.

Skyfall is due to have its premiere on 23 October 2012 and be released in the United Kingdom on 26 October 2012; it will be the first James Bond film to be released in IMAX venues. The film's release will coincide with the franchise's 50th anniversary, which began with Dr. No in 1962.

More here.

Byzantium

Last week, I had lunch with a Frenchman from Ireland who knows Neil Jordan. And I was excited beyond reason. I am a die-hard Jordan fan, since ‘The Crying Game’, of course. And, I’ve seen most of his films, even lesser-known ‘Angel’, and his underwhelming ‘Ondine’. Understandably, I am looking forward to seeing ‘Byzantium’, Jordan’s return to the vampire genre after ‘Interview with the Vampire’. And, I don’t want to believe the early bad reviews.

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The Guardian does not have much nice things to say about it. Henry Barnes says Neil Jordan's return to the land of the undead doesn't raise the stakes on the vampire genre:

... Gemma Arterton plays Clara, a single mum supporting her daughter, Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan), by working as a prostitute in the amusement arcade of a rundown seaside town. Occasionally, when the mood is right, Clara will pick a special someone and bite them to bits. She's a vampire you see, re-born in the early 19th century after contracting tuberculosis, and looking pretty smoking for a 200-year-old consumptive.

Clara is a survivor – brassy and hard-hearted, happy to chomp on the clientele. Eleanor is more conflicted. She's troubled by their secret and unwilling to lie for much longer. But it's only when the pair move into the rundown Byzantium guest house and falls for a young leukemia patient who's considering ending his life, that she's really tempted to give everything up.

Jordan strikes an uneasy balance between Blade's fountains of blood (represented by Clara) and the tortured souls of Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In (Eleanor). The quieter moments, marked by some touching scenes between Ronan and relative newcomer Caleb Landry Jones, are almost always sacrificed to Clara's bloodlust. There's no time to dwell on an interesting subplot involving Eleanor's decision to feed only on the town's willing sick and elderly (a veiled statement on the right-to-die movement perhaps?) because Clara's got another couple of heads to lop off.

Similarly unbalanced is the film's gender politics. We're lead to believe that prostitution is Clara's destiny, bestowed on her at a young age by a boggle-eyed nemesis (Johnny Lee Miller) and reinforced by her hounding by a group of vampires known as the Brotherhood. They're a downright sexist bunch. Women can't be biters, so they're here to clear out Clara and Eleanor and keep it boys only. It's another stab at originality, but it would have hit home a lot harder if Arterton didn't spend much of the film sprinting around in her underwear.

More here.

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More about Neil Jordan here.

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And how can you utter the name Byzantium without remembering the poem by Irish poet William Butler Yeats. Following is the poem:

Byzantium
William Butler Yeats

The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.

Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.

Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,
More miraclc than bird or handiwork,
Planted on the star-lit golden bough,
Can like the cocks of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud
In glory of changeless metal
Common bird or petal
And all complexities of mire or blood.

At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.

Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood,
Spirit after Spirit! The smithies break the flood.
The golden smithies of the Emperor!
Marbles of the dancing floor
Break bitter furies of complexity,
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.

Gangor

Has anyone heard of this film?

It’s an Italian film called ‘Gangor’, directed by Italo Spinelli, which has a English name, ‘Behind the Bodice’ and a really sleazy Hindi title, ‘Choli Ke Peeche’. Really. The film is directed by an Italian guy, but features an all-Indian cast, including Adil Hussain and Priyanka Bose in the lead. The film is inspired by a Mahasweta Devi story, also titled in English as ‘Behind the Bodice’. The film deals with Devi’s pet theme of subaltern rights and tells the story of a tribal girl who is gang raped, and how she is manipulated and how she manipulates. Hussain plays a photographer who travels to Purulia in rural Bengal and finds the story and much more. The film was shot digitally and was premiered at the Rome International Film Festival in 2010 to much acclaim.

What happened after that? No clue.

This is how The Hollywood Reporter reviews the film: ... Shot on digital, the images are sometimes clean, sometimes crude, but the uneven look of the Italian-Indian co-production shouldn’t hurt its art-house life in the West, where festival play is a given after the thundering audience reaction in Rome. Yet while the cast comprises all Indian, U.K. and U.S. actors of Indian descent, it remains to be seen whether this independent exposé of a very real problem can find an off-Bollywood niche... Shot on digital, the images are sometimes clean, sometimes crude, but the uneven look of the Italian-Indian co-production shouldn’t hurt its art-house life in the West, where festival play is a given after the thundering audience reaction in Rome. Yet while the cast comprises all Indian, U.K. and U.S. actors of Indian descent, it remains to be seen whether this independent exposé of a very real problem can find an off-Bollywood niche... In the film, seasoned photo-journalist Upin (Adil Hussain) is sent to Purulia, West Bengal, to report on the violence against the tribal women in the impoverished region. There he meets Gangor (Priyanka Bose). ... Upin’s interest in the beautiful young woman is ambivalent from the start, though definitely not just professional. For her part, Gangor is not above manipulating or stealing to get what she wants. She makes Upin pay to photograph her as she breast-feeds her child, though neither is aware of the consequences this will have when he uses one of the pictures for his front-page article.

More here.

More on the film and direcor Italo Spinelli here.

Italian director Italo Spinelli speaks with Utpal Borpujari on how he chose Mahasweta Devi’s story “Choli Ke Peeche” for his debut feature Gangor. In Dear Cinema.

Mahasweta Devi reads an extract from ‘Behind the Bodice’, a short story from ‘Breast Stories’ published by Seagull Books, in Youtube here.

meri duniya loot rahi thi

Meri Duniya Loot Rahi Thi
Movie: Mr & Mrs. 55
Music Director: O P Nayyar
Singers: Mohammad Rafi & Chorus

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

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My world was being robbed and I couldn’t even be alert
To collect the pieces of my broken heart, too, I was inert.

No tears on my eyes, but my heart and kidney were on fire
My desires were all crying and I was unmindful, ready to retire
How could I come to senses as I was already in a world of hurt
To collect the pieces of my broken heart, too, I was inert.

The caravan of my heart, just close to destination I’ve lost
And I myself drowned my swinging boat just near the coast
This earth did not say anything, and the sky was too quiet
To collect the pieces of my broken heart, too, I was inert.

The Song in Youtube.

Ship of Theseus

The first time I heard about it, I had no idea that ‘Ship of Theseus’ is an Indian film. I mean, look at the name. Then I was informed about it by Assem Chhabra’s column on the Toronto International Film Festival, in Pune Mirror. In the piece, Chhabra talked about the 15 Indian films showcased at the TIFF this year.

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About ‘Ship of Theseus’ Assem Chhabra writes: “Last week I saw Ship of Theseus at a press screening of the Toronto International Film Festival, ahead of the film’s premiere, and I was blown away! I watched the film stunned by the power of the imagery and the three stories that the first-time director Anand Gandhi narrates, and the beautiful, heartwarming way in which he ties up the details. One can understand why the buzz was so strong. Ship of Theseus is sparse, quiet, and yet it is one of the most beautiful films made in India in the recent years. There is so much humanity and goodness in the characters that Gandhi has created. It is a rare kind of cinema that I hope will find an audience in India and abroad.

More here.

Then I saw the trailers in Youtube, and I was blown away, such is the assured mastery of the first-time director.

What attracted me to the film in the first place is the title. ‘Ship of Theseus’, also known as Theseus’ Paradox is a philosophical concept that questions the concept of authenticity, and the measure and extent of reality.

In Greek mythology, Theseus was a mighty hero who travelled from Athens to Crete in a ship to conquer the golden fleece, or something like that. Anyway, according to legend, the ship Theseus travelled in was preserved in ancient Greece much after the hero was dead. As time passed, the ship began to decay and its older, moth-eaten wooden planks were replaced by newer, sturdier ones, so much so that as time passed, everything in the ship had been replaced; while the shape and design of the ship remained the same, the material with which the original ship was build was no longer the same. Now, philosophers ask whether this ship in its current reality is the same as the original ship which Theseus used. It’s a question for which there’s no ready answer.

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The Ship of Theseus, also known as Theseus' paradox, or various variants, notably grandfather's axe and (in the UK) Trigger's Broom (based upon the BBC sitcom Only Fools and Horses) is a paradox that raises the question of whether an object which has had all its component parts replaced remains fundamentally the same object. The paradox is most notably recorded by Plutarch in Life of Theseus from the late 1st century. Plutarch asked whether a ship which was restored by replacing all its wooden parts remained the same ship. The paradox had been discussed by more ancient philosophers such as Heraclitus, Socrates, and Plato prior to Plutarch's writings; and more recently by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. This problem is "a model for the philosophers"; some say "it remained the same, some saying it did not remain the same".

The paradox was first raised in Greek legend as reported by Plutarch: "The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned [from Crete] had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same."

Plutarch thus questions whether the ship would remain the same if it were entirely replaced, piece by piece. Centuries later, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes introduced a further puzzle, wondering: what would happen if the original planks were gathered up after they were replaced, and used to build a second ship. Which ship, if either, is the original Ship of Theseus?

More here.

Starting with this premise, Anand Gandhi’s film tells three distinct stories which raise several pertinent questions without easy answers.

The first story is about a blind photographer who eventually regains her vision, and in the process loses are sense of art, as she was used to visualisation with the help of other senses like sound and smell. But, the ability to see restricts these senses.

The second story is about a Jain monk who is faced with the dilemma of taking care of his health by taking medicine or adhere to his religious beliefs, which forbids killing/hurting animals. You see, all medicines use animals in some way or other.

The third story is about a stockbroker who undergoes a kidney transplant before realising that the organ was sourced illegally, or rather ‘stolen’ from someone else. Now, he must journey to find the man from whom the kidney was ‘stolen’, to understandably disastrous consequences.

I am not sure when the film is being released in India; I doubt it would find audience in theatres. What I am hoping that the film is released in DVD, and find its own discerning audience.

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Anand Gandhi (born 26 September 1980 in Mumbai, India) is an independent filmmaker and screenwriter based in Mumbai. He was initially involved in parallel theatre, where he wrote and directed several critically acclaimed plays. He is also a visiting lecturer at many mass media colleges.

More here.

The director Anand Gandhi’s blog, Handbags and Lingo.

The ‘Ship of Theseus’ trailer here.

‘Ship of Theseus’ in IMDb.

The Master

Veteran American film critic Roger Ebert gives Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest ‘The Master’ two-and-a-half star, which is measly, to say the least, especially when the film has been hailed as almost-masterpiece elsewhere. It won awards for the director and the actors Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix at the recently concluded Venice Film Festival.

Now, it would be nice to see how the world reacts to this review, especially when Anderson has been hailed as a genius following his last film, 'There Will Be Blood.'

Ebert begins his review: Paul Thomas Anderson's "The Master" is fabulously well-acted and crafted, but when I reach for it, my hand closes on air. It has rich material and isn't clear what it thinks about it. It has two performances of Oscar caliber, but do they connect? Its title character is transparently inspired by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, but it sidesteps any firm vision of the cult religion itself — or what it grew into.

And Ends: This is the first movie filmed in 65mm (and projected in 70mm, in select markets) since Kenneth Branagh's "Hamlet" (1996). It's a spectacular visual experience. You notice that in particular when Dodd mounts a motorcycle on a huge flat plain and roars into the distance. Then he returns, just as Vincent Gallo did in "The Brown Bunny," although I doubt this is intended as a homage. "Now you do it," Dodd tells Quell. Quell roars off. Eventually Dodd and companions trudge off under the desert sun in search of him. Whether they find him, I won't say. What the motorcycle demonstrates, I can't say.

Paul Thomas Anderson is one of our great directors. "The Master" shows invention and curiosity. It is often spellbinding. But what does it intend to communicate?
More here.

Another American film critic I greatly admire, Andrew O’Hehir of Salon.com, is more indulgent. He writes: “The Master” is more like an abstract, ominous tone poem about male loneliness in postwar America than a docudrama about Scientology founder and best-selling author L. Ron Hubbard, even if he’s clearly the inspiration for Lancaster Dodd, the character played here by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Whether or not that’s a good thing I cannot yet be sure; “The Master” is very much the kind of intentionally difficult film that will inspire repeat viewings and heated arguments, at least among a small cadre of adherents. (In this respect and others, Anderson may feel some kinship with Hubbard.) But I can tell you that if you’re expecting a sweeping social portrait of a Hubbard-esque prophet and/or a charlatan and his life and times – something like what French director Olivier Assayas delivered for the 1970s terrorist Carlos the Jackal – you won’t find that here.
More Here.

And, Calum Marsh is another unhappy critic. He writes: One of Paul Thomas Anderson's best qualities as a dramatist is that he knows the value of a minor gesture. His style is measured and deliberate, but it's also true that he's less overtly meticulous or detail-oriented than, say, Stanley Kubrick, to whom he's increasingly compared. Anderson's sensibility hovers a few degrees above the minutia: In his films, the focus is on the repetition of a phrase, a trickle of blood down a forehead, a tracking shot into a club. These gestures carry all the weight. In his underrated Punch-Drunk Love, the "big" moments—Adam Sandler's sudden explosions of rage, for instance—had a gravity at odds with their otherwise largely comic surroundings, and that dissonance proved dynamic and interesting. His major follow-up, There Will Be Blood, dived headlong in the other direction, swung like an iron fist away from dynamism and toward an unwavering, one-note brutalism equal parts exhilarating and exhausting. Anderson's characteristic gestures oscillated there between depressing and alarming (often very unexpectedly, as when a long piece of drilling machinery falls and crushes a rig worker suddenly), each horror stacked upon the last like a mounting tower of pain and suffering. The ultimate effect was substantial: There Will Be Blood remains something of a high-water mark for a cinema of blistering miserablism, and, now that The Master has arrived and proved disappointing, it's still P.T. Anderson's best film.
More here.

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The Master is a drama film written, directed, and co-produced by Paul Thomas Anderson. It was given the green-light in May 2011, and began filming in June 2011. The film stars Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Laura Dern. The Master was released on September 14, 2012, by The Weinstein Company in the United States and Canada. The film had its premiere at the 69th Venice International Film Festival in September 2012.
More here.

The Grandmasters

In the previous post, I uploaded a picture of film and stage actor from Assam, Adil Hussain, poised for mainstream recognition he so understandably deserves, with the arrival of Sridevi comeback vehicle ‘English Vinglish’. I was checking the Facebook page of the film, which had a link to Hussain’s Facebook page, and there, in his photo album, I saw this picture of him in a hat and a trench coat in the snow, looking directly at the camera.

I totally, totally loved the picture, not just because Adil Hussain looks so dapper. How many Indian men can carry a hat or a trench coat with such aplomb? But, there was something oddly familiar about the picture... as if I had seen the picture before... I raked my brain for a day and viola, I got it.

That picture reminded me of this picture, of Tony Leung as Yip Man in Wonk Kar-wai’s yet to be released but eagerly awaited ‘The Grandmasters’. This is one film I am really looking forward to catch, for the simple reason that it’s a Wonk Kar-wai film featuring Tony Leung. Period.

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The Grandmasters is an upcoming Hong Kong action drama film based on the life story of the Wing Chun grandmaster Yip Man. The film is directed and written by Wong Kar-wai and stars Tony Leung as Yip Man. It is set to be released in Hong Kong and Mainland China on December 18, 2012.
More Here.

Adil Hussain

Is it just me who finds Adil Hussain just so handsome? Seriously, I do find him freakishly handsome. Since I saw ‘Agent Vinod’. He was the best thing about the film. And I did not know anything about him before. Not much, anyway. My maternal uncle would talk about him because Adil Hussain is from the same district where he works. Local hero! And I had heard from others in the know that he’s a fantastic actor, who hasn’t yet gotten his due credit.

Adil Hussain is around for a while, whether we know or not, and it looks like finally, it’s his time to shine, just like Nawazuddin Siddiqui did this year. This is another great actor languishing in obscurity till a series of plum roles in the span of one year or so catapults him to stardom; look at the roll call of film, Kahaani’, ‘Gangs of Wesseypur’, ‘Patang’, Miss Lovely’, ‘Dekh Indian Circus’… the future is only brighter.

This can be Adil Hussain’s year as well, despite ‘Agent Vinod’ biting the dust in box office, what with the Sridevi comeback vehicle ‘English Vinglish’ making all the right noises. It premiered in Toronto film festival to very positive reviews. Here Adil Hussain plays the roles of the diva’s husband, and understandably, he wouldn’t get much screen time, but if the film manages to be a hit, the actor will surely grab some eyeball. It’s all this guy needs, some notice.

And, if you haven’t notice him, you must be blind.

Am I proud of him because he’s a fellow Assamese? Of course, I am.

[Thanks to Facebook, following a few click, I was in Adil Hussain’s page, and into his photo album. This picture is from THERE.]

the ‘coda’ of ‘un conte de noel’, A Christmas Tale, a film directed by Arnaud Desplechin… with ever wonderful, ever dependable Mathieu Amalric..