Notes on 'Talaash'

1. I think even a bad film is tolerable when you watch it on DVD, in the comforts of your home, not that ‘Talaash’ is a bad film. It is not. It’s another thing that it doesn’t live up to the expectations of an average movie-goer. I am not an average movie-goer and I liked it. Though, like everyone else, I too am tad disappointed how the ending unfolded. The second car accident was unnecessary, at least the way it was presented. I guess the underwater scene was important. There are so few underwater scenes available in Hindi films, a scene like this is always welcome.

2. …Despite the fact that the scene reminded me of the climax of the Hollywood blockbuster ‘What Lies Beneath.’ One film always reminds you of another film, not that the current film is a copy or even an inspiration; just that there’s a symbiotic relationships among films. Like a reader commenting on a web review of the movie, I too thought of other films, but they were not ‘Insomnia’, (the reader mentions the Chris Nolan version; the original Norwegian film is even better), or ‘The Sixth Sense’, and ‘Shutter Island’. I thought of Nicolas Roeg’s marvellous ‘Don’t Look Back’, minus the red leather jacket, the scary blind woman and the sexiest love scene ever filmed. And then, there’s ‘Shaan’; I have always maintained that ‘Shaan’ is a great thriller, if you can get past the tomfoolery by the Amitabh Bachchan-Shashi Kapoor duo in the first hour of the film. And, the cart chase scene with Mazhar Khan’s legless beggar-informer itself is stuff of legend.

3. I love the name for Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s character — Taimur, after history’s Timur the Lame. It’s ironic that a pimp’s helper should be named so; it’s not really, he is called so because of his lameness. As usual, Siddiqui steals his scenes right under everyone’s noses. Sad, he was bumped off; he deserves to have his own movie. Another irony is in an Aamir Khan movie, it’s Siddiqui who gets the film’s best scene, or shall we say, the thriller’s only action sequence, jumping on and off on the railway overbridge. It was exhilarating.

4. It’s interesting to see how film by film, from ‘Saitan’ to ‘Gangs of Wasseypur II’ to the recent ‘Kai Po Che’, this young actor, Rajkumar Yadav, continues to showcase what a talent he is. Here he matches strides with the perfectionist Khan, at time overshadowing the protagonist himself. There is scene in the middle of ‘Talaash’ where his sub-inspector character becomes the unwilling witness between an unpleasant fight between his superior and his grieving wife. He doesn’t have anything to do here, but to stand uncomfortably, and mouth an uncomfortable dialogue: “I will see you later.” The way he does it, with body language, nuances — he’s young, he’s a police officer, but he is also a husband — it’s good acting.

5. Talking about nuances, there are several instances, very rare in Hindi films, which love to over-explain everything. Okay, the whole ghost business was little over-explained (or under-explained!). There is a scene where the grieving father thinks about the last moment before the tragedy and thinks of various possibilities, which could have averted the tragedy. Of course, it did not. Hence, it makes it more tragic. And, how the editing plays it!

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a 2009 fantasy film directed by Terry Gilliam and written by Gilliam and Charles McKeown. The film follows a travelling theatre troupe whose leader, having made a bet with the Devil, takes audience members through a magical mirror to explore their imaginations and present them with a choice between self-fulfilling enlightenment or gratifying ignorance. Heath Ledger, Christopher Plummer, Andrew Garfield, Lily Cole, and Tom Waits star in the film, though Ledger's death one-third of the way through filming caused production to be temporarily suspended. Ledger's role was recast with Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell portraying transformations of Ledger's character as he travels through a dream world. The film made its world premiere during the 62nd Cannes Film Festival, out of competition. Afterward, this $30 million-budgeted film went on grossing more than $60 million in worldwide theatrical release. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus was nominated for two Academy Awards in the categories Best Art Direction (art directed by Dave Warren and Anastasia Masaro, and set decorated by Caroline Smith; lost to Avatar) and Best Costume Design (costumes designed by Monique Prudhomme; lost to The Young Victoria).
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The Hobbit

The Hobbit

The Simpsons

The Rock

"And then went down to the ship,
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, so winds from sternward
Bore us out onward with bellying canvas,
Circe's this craft, the trim-coiffed goddess.
Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,
Thus with stretched sail, we went over sea till day's end.
Sun to his slumber, shadows o'er all the ocean."
-- Canto I, Ezra Pound

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Life of Pi

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey / 2012 165 minutes rated PG-13 // By Scott Mendelson: //
I don't know if seeing The Hobbit part 1 of 3 in the much-discussed 48-frames-per-second diminished the viewing experience, but it certainly didn't help. Since it's the way Peter Jackson intended the film to be seen, it very much counts when judging the overall motion picture. It's neither the great savior of cinema that the likes of Peter Jackson or James Cameron would have you believe, but nor is it a bellwether of the 'death of cinema.' It is different, that's for sure. You get an unparalleled clarity of vision and a certain lifelike presentation, akin to looking at a window at 'real life.' The various CGI creatures look arguably more lifelike and the 3D is pretty flawless (although the screen looked even more vibrant when I took off the glasses, making me wish there had been a 48 fps 2D option). But for that clarity you lose a certain cinematic grandeur. Yes, certain introductory scenes look like live theater and yes, there is an inconsistency of speed, as any number of moments will make one wonder if they're watching the film on 1.5x speed on their Playstation 3. Moreover, even the action sequences, a few of which are indeed still impressive, resemble not so much epic struggles but rather watching a staged recreation akin to Civil War reenactors. Especially during battle scenes set in open fields, it feels more like the finale of Role Models than a tent-pole action sequence. Ironically, it's a technology that may actually be better suited to character dramas that big-scale action. Your eyes do indeed adjust to the whole 'speed play' issue pretty quickly, but you never do become 'used' to the effect during the entire 165-minute running time.
This first film, shamefully bloated and lacking in any justification for its padding, plays less like a theatrical cut, or even like an extended edition DVD version, and more like an assembly edit, with everything tossed in and nothing pruned. Yes, I know Jackson is adding additional material from the Appendices and elsewhere, but the end result is a bloated and often quite-dull would-be adventure that has little of the wide-eyed wonder and emotional pull of the original trilogy. The irony is, much of the extra material seems intended to better tie this new trilogy into the prior one. Say what you will about the Star Wars prequels, but they stand on their own. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey uses the prior trilogy and our fond memories of it as an emotional cheat. As someone who found the prior trilogy incredibly moving, the only emotion I felt this time around were the moments where Jackson and composer Howard Shore use the original themes, that music being so powerful that I found myself caring despite myself. Imagine if Star Wars prequels used the 'Force Theme' every time Lucas wanted to get a lump in your throat and you get the general idea.
More here.

By Jenny McCartney// Dir: Peter Jackson. Starring: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Andy Serkis, Cate Blanchett, Ken Stott, James Nesbitt. // 12A cert, 169 min //
I remember, aged five, being given a copy of The Hobbit. I knew I wasn’t old enough yet to read it myself, so I put it carefully to one side until I was, and when I did, I wasn’t sorry.
It was a perfect combination of cosiness and danger, and there was something neatly rounded about Bilbo Baggins’s circular journey from his comfortable, well-stocked hobbit-hole in Bag End to a world of treacherous, nerve-shredding sorcery, and back again.
Neat, however, is not a word to apply to Peter Jackson’s take on J.R.R. Tolkien’s book, which has now been split up into three sprawling films. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey begins not with the austerely promising words “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit”, but with a tangled and grandiose CGI evocation of the fall of the Dwarf kingdom of Erebor. And thence to the musings of an older, nostalgic Bilbo (Ian Holm), in advance of entering the house of young Bilbo (Martin Freeman), where Tolkien himself begins.
Before Bilbo has even put one speculative, hairy foot out of Bag End, then, the cinema audience has already waded thigh-deep through blood, treasure and several intervening decades. Why not let Tolkien’s tale unfurl in its own time?
Jackson’s clock, however, is different and more erratic: although rushing to jump back and forth, it can also move at an achingly slow pace (the initial meeting of the riotous dwarves at Bilbo’s house, artfully arranged by Gandalf [Ian McKellen], seems to last forever).
Jackson has the instinct to rework the beloved Tolkien original until the narrative tapestry bulges and sags in unpredictable places. Where Tolkien kept a cool head as a storyteller, Jackson loses his. I was unconvinced, too, by the decision to shoot the film in 48 frames per second rather than the usual 24, a high-definition trick which evaporates atmosphere and even makes some props look rather fake (the tell-tale crinkle on one dwarf’s bald-wig particularly bothered me).
More here.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey/ Review / As Bilbo Baggins, Martin Freeman brings an endearing spirit to the first part of Peter Jackson's epic new Tolkien trilogy / Philip French...
In last Sunday's Film of the Week, the protagonist, a Hollywood screenwriter played by Colin Farrell, had a title for his drama, "Seven Psychopaths", but no plot. This week's principal film, The Hobbit, began life in a not dissimilar fashion. Back in the early 1930s, when he was an Oxford don, JRR Tolkien was marking exam papers for the now defunct School Certificate when he came across a blank sheet. For some reason he wrote on it: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." The line isn't exactly "Call me Ishmael" or "Happy families are all alike", but this first line of what was published in 1937 as a children's book began what has proved to be a literary phenomenon, an alternative religion, an endless invitation to exegesis and a major industry that has led to an immensely successful trilogy of books and films about life in Middle-earth. Now the New Zealand screenwriter Peter Jackson, who followed up the Lord of the Rings trilogy with King Kong and The Lovely Bones, has returned to his old hobbits, and in collaboration with Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Guillermo del Toro, has turned the initially modest The Hobbit into a full-scale trilogy of its own.
Given three films, each presumably close to three hours long, Jackson and co have plenty of time on their hands, and 20 minutes of the film has passed before the immortal "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit" is spoken. What we get at first is a back story from a posthumously published Tolkien work explaining how a blight fell on the underground city of Erebor when fire-breathing dragons, hungry for gold, attacked it, driving its dwarf inhabitants into exile. This extremely violent event, involving much death and destruction, warns the audience that it's a film for extremely hardy kids. It sets up an invitation to Bilbo Baggins to take part in an adventurous quest proposed by the wizard Gandalf (the splendidly authoritative Ian McKellen). It involves him in joining a party of dwarves as the team's "burglar" on a mission to regain their ancestral lands and wealth from Smaug, the dragon guarding them beneath the Lonely Mountain. A quiet, peace-loving hobbit, Bilbo is happily installed in his cosy subterranean home in the Shires, an idyllic corner of Merrie England inhabited by contented peasants who look like people in the background of paintings by Fragonard or Constable. Bilbo (Ian Holm, reprising his role from The Lord of the Rings) is seemingly writing his memoirs, puffing on his churchwarden pipe and blowing out smoke rings as big as haloes and eating regular meals. As he contemplates the past he's replaced by his equally pacifist younger self, to which part Martin Freeman brings the same decent, commonsensical, very English qualities that informed his excellent Dr Watson on TV.
His first challenge is provided by the bald, bearded, beaky-nosed, unkempt dwarves, six pairs of them with rhyming names and all constantly brawling, eating and singing. They resemble tramps auditioning for the role of Magwitch in a musical of Great Expectations. The 13th dwarf is altogether more serious. He's their leader, the handsome, tragedy-tinged Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage). These knockabout scenes go on far too long, but eventually the quest begins and the dwarves, Gandalf and an initially reluctant Bilbo embark on their epic journey to the Lonely Mountain, encountering orcs, trolls, elves and goblins along the way and facing endless perils. There are echoes of the Old and New Testament, of similar journeys from Homer's Odyssey through Morte d'Arthur to Gulliver's Travels, and there are all the essential mythic elements: all-conquering swords, magical rings, mysterious maps, giant eagles and dangerous riddling contests such as the one engaged in by Bilbo and Gollum (Andy Serkis).
More here.

An Arab Melancholia

Acclaimed as the first openly homosexual author from Morocco, Abdellah Taïa has spent the better part of a decade exploring the difficult topic of queerness in the Arab world. Mimicking the work of other Moroccan expatriates like Abdelkebir Khatibi and Tahar Ben Jelloun, Taïa has also exposed the contentious and violent ideological dialogue between the postmodern West and postcolonial North Africa. Implicit in much of his prose—a medley of epistles, diary entries, cinematic and musical allusions, and medieval poetic citations—is the promise of writing as a means of speaking homosexual love from within and outside of the Arabic language and the law of Islam. The fourth entry in Taïa’s autobiographical cycle, An Arab Melancholia is a slender bildungsroman that marries transgressive sexual confessions to laconic spiritual poetry, and is an intriguing meditation on whether silenced desires can find liberation through more-mystical forms of expression.
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Proclaimed as the first openly gay writer to be published in Morocco, Abdellah Taïa by writing this autobiographical novel , An Arab Melancholia (Semiotext(e)/MIT Press), might be the unsuspected voice of a subculture. An Arab Melancholia is not likely to be described as a political manifesto, yet it is a radical piece of writing that will likely be referenced in political discourse related to homosexuality and gay civil rights. ... An Arab Melancholia, as the title suggests, is a sorrowful lament of a young Arab man. It is a deeply personal reveal of how a young Arab boy traverses through a world connected by tradition; a male whose femininity threatens his safety in his Arab community and whose Arab ethnicity disconnects him from his adopted home, Paris. Arab tradition disallows his homosexuality as Paris disavows his Arab presence. ...The author begins his story: “It was a second chance at life. I had just found out what it meant to die. I had passed on. Then I came back.” On the surface Taïa’s novel is akin to many gay adolescent coming of age stories. The isolation and alienation that besieges a child dealing with his or her sexuality is apparent in his story. However, Taïa’s story is unique in that it is the story of an Arab man, the unveiling of what it means to be an effeminate man, a zamel (passive faggot) in Arab culture. His is an unapologetic telling of what is to be gay and Arab. The author “came back” a few times in the book after seemingly having “passed on” or descended into the darkness of despair. There is the notion of a miracle at work or some otherworldly force or spirit.
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Yet Taïa’s lyrical, intimate prose—gently moving from his early adolescence in Morocco to his Parisian years as an aspiring filmmaker, to his escapades in Cairo while often returning, in body or spirit, to Morocco—needs to be read as representing how homosexual desire and political Islam intersect, not how they clash. Taïa’s achievement lies in the surprising, even courageous, way he manages to recast this volatile sexual-political matrix. The novel does not carry the flag of liberation against the forces of religious backwardness; instead, it casts a gay coming-of-age story as a constant negotiation with Islam—its beliefs, modes of understanding the world, and pious language. Abdellah’s first sexual experience is narrated as a violent encounter interrupted only by the muezzin’s call, “when God stepped in ... when God saved me.” A long agony over a lost lover results in Abdellah’s plane almost crashing, saved by the hidden force of a miracle. Indeed, the novel is filled with miracles, near-death experiences, a sense of apocalypse, the hovering spirits of ex-lovers, and the persistent presence of possessed people. Religious language is not negated in this book in the face of sexuality; it is further disseminated. ...One could claim that this is all ironic—a Westernized, secular subject describing a world he no longer inhabits, using an idiom he no longer possesses. Yet, standing in front of a mirror in his small Parisian apartment, Taïa understands his own coming-into-writing from this very world and idiom: “He was already writing, writing like a man possessed, a man whose madness came from his mother, from his country. He spoke with his jinns, begged them to help him survive, to find the courage to live differently in reality.” The challenge set by Taïa’s novel is therefore how to take its religious language seriously. Doing so, we may recognize a mode of homosexual experience not preconditioned on leaving behind, and then standing against, the Islamic world, but rather one thoroughly—even if uncomfortably—intertwined with it. This may even lead to a deeper understanding of both.
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Spanning a formative twenty years, Melancholia is a flitting autobiographical sketch that makes contact only now and again with the life of its author. At first the skips are broad and graceful, but the distances between each touch point come sooner and more abruptly, and the story eventually sinks into a passionate, cathartic, revelatory deep. ...The book begins with an emotionally secure ephebe in Salé, Morocco who has already embraced his homosexuality. Even at the tender age of twelve, the boy yearns for love and carnal passions. He also realizes that life will not be easy: "From now on, people would only see me one way. I’d come with a warning label. A tag: effeminate guy. Sissy. They wouldn’t take me seriously. People would take advantage of me every day, abuse me more and more. In their own small way, people would kill me. Slay me alive." ...The novel moves briskly between Morocco, Paris, and Cairo. Along the way there are emotional lows and exhilarating highs. Consistently, Abdellah’s desperate (but sincere) search for love is tripped up by his maddening naïveté. Be it with Ali, Javier, or Slimane—objects of his affection at various times in his life—Abdellah is a man who willingly (and easily) falls in love, despite a lack of reciprocity. As a boy, Abdellah is entranced by Ali, a young man who only wants to force himself onto Abdellah. “I was in love, or to put it in other words,” Abdellah says, “I was going to have a fight on my hands.” In this instance, the fight is literal (as well as erotic). ... Later in life, however, it is emotions—not bodies—with which Abdellah must battle.
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Irresistibly charming, angry, and wry, this autobiographical novel traces the emergence of Abdellah Taïa’s identity as an openly gay Arab man living between cultures. The book spans twenty years, moving from Salé, to Paris, to Cairo. Part incantation, part polemic, and part love letter, this extraordinary novel creates a new world where the self is effaced by desire and love, and writing is always an act of discovery.
More here.

Oscar, Os...

Here is the list of Oscar 2013 winners, along with the other nominees. Just like that, despite that I really don't care about them awards anymore. [I like J.Law. though...]

BEST PICTURE
“Amour”
WINNER: “Argo”
“Beasts of the Southern Wild”
“Django Unchained”
“Les Misérables”
“Life of Pi”
“Lincoln”
“Silver Linings Playbook”
“Zero Dark Thirty”

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Bradley Cooper, “Silver Linings Playbook”
WINNER: Daniel Day-Lewis, “Lincoln”
Hugh Jackman, “Les Misérables”
Joaquin Phoenix, “The Master”
Denzel Washington, “Flight”

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Alan Arkin, “Argo”
Robert De Niro, Silver Linings Playbook”
Philip Seymour Hoffman, “The Master”
Tommy Lee Jones, “Lincoln”
WINNER: Christoph Waltz, “Django Unchained”

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Jessica Chastain, “Zero Dark Thirty”
WINNER: Jennifer Lawrence, ”Silver Linings Playbook”
Emmanuelle Riva, “Amour”
Quvenzhané Wallis, “Beasts of the Southern Wild”
Naomi Watts, “The Impossible”

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Amy Adams, “The Master”
Sally Field, “Lincoln”
WINNER: Anne Hathaway, “Les Misérables”
Helen Hunt, “The Sessions”
Jacki Weaver, “Silver Linings Playbook”

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
WINNER: “Brave”
“Frankenweenie”
“ParaNorman”
“The Pirates! Band of Misfits”
“Wreck-It Ralph”

CINEMATOGRAPHY
“Anna Karenina,” Seamus McGarvey
“Django Unchained,” Robert Richardson
WINNER: “Life of Pi,” Claudio Miranda
“Lincoln,” Janusz Kaminski
“Skyfall,” Roger Deakins

COSTUME DESIGN
WINNER: “Anna Karenina,” Jacqueline Durran
“Les Misérables,” Paco Delgado
“Lincoln,” Joanna Johnston
“Mirror Mirror,” Eiko ishioka
“Snow White and the Huntsman,” Colleen Atwood

DIRECTING
“Amour,” Michael Haneke
“Beasts of the Southern Wild,” Benh Zeitlin
WINNER: “Life of Pi,” Ang Lee
“Lincoln,” Steven Spielberg
“Silver Linings Playbook,” David O. Russell

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
“5 Broken Cameras,” Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi
“The Gatekeepers,” Dror Moreh, Philippa Kowarsky and Estelle Fialon
“How to Survive a Plague,” David France and Howard Gertler
“The Invisible War,” Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering
WINNER: “Searching for Sugar Man,” Malik Bendjelloul and Simon Chinn

DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT
WINNER: “Inocente,” Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine
“Kings Point,” Sari Gilman and Jedd Wider
“Mondays at Racine,” Cynthia Wade and Robin Honan
“Open Heart,” Kief Davidson and Cori Shepherd Stern
“Redemption,” Jon Alpert and Matthew o’Neill

FILM EDITING
“Argo,” William Goldenberg
“Life of Pi,” Tim Squyres
“Lincoln,” Michael Kahn
“Silver Linings Playbook,” Jay Cassidy and Crispin Struthers
“Zero Dark Thirty,” Dylan Tichenor and William Goldenberg

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
WINNER: “Amour,” Austria
“Kon-Tiki,” Norway
“No,” Chile
“A Royal Affair,” Denmark
“War Witch,” Canada

MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING
“Hitchcock,” Howard Berger, Peter Montagna and Martin Samuel
“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” Peter Swords King, Rick Findlater and Tami Lane
WINNER: “Les Misérables,” Lisa Westcott and Julie Dartnell

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)
“Anna Karenina,” Dario Marianelli
“Argo,” Alexandre Desplat
WINNER: “Life of Pi,” Mychael Danna
“Lincoln,” John Williams
“Skyfall,” Thomas Newman

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)
“Before My Time,” from CHASING ICE, Music and Lyric by J. Ralph
“Everybody Needs a Best Friend,” from TED, Music by Walter Murphy, Lyric by Seth MacFarlane
“Pi’s Lullaby,” from LIFE of PI, Music by Mychael Danna, Lyric by Bombay Jayashri
WINNER: “Skyfall,” from SKYFALL, Music and Lyric by Adele Adkins and Paul Epworth
“Suddenly,” from LES MISÉRABLES, Music by Claude-Michel Schönberg, Lyric by Herbert Kretzmer and Alain Boublil

PRODUCTION DESIGN
“Anna Karenina,” Production Design: Sarah Greenwood, Set Decoration: Katie Spencer
“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” Production Design: Dan Hennah, Set Decoration: Ra Vincent and Simon Bright
“Les Misérables,” Production Design: Eve Stewart, Set Decoration: Anna Lynch-Robinson
“Life of Pi,” Production Design: David Gropman, Set Decoration: Anna Pinnock
WINNER: “Lincoln,” Production Design: Rick Carter, Set Decoration: Jim Erickson

SHORT FILM (ANIMATED)
“Adam and Dog,” Minkyu Lee
“Fresh Guacamole,” PES
“Head Over Heels,” Timothy Reckart and Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly
“Maggie Simpson in ‘The Longest Daycare’,” David Silverman
WINNER: “Paperman,” John Kahrs

SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION)
“Asad,” Bryan Buckley and Mino Jarjoura
“Buzkashi Boys,” Sam French and Ariel Nasr
WINNER: “Curfew,” Shawn Christensen
“Death of a Shadow (Dood van een Schaduw),” Tom Van Avermaet and Ellen De Waele
“Henry,” Yan England

SOUND EDITING: A TIE!!!!
“Argo,” Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn
“Django Unchained,” Wylie Stateman
“Life of Pi,” Eugene Gearty and Philip Stockton
WINNER: “Skyfall,” Per Hallberg and Karen Baker Landers
WINNER: “Zero Dark Thirty,” Paul N.J. Ottosson

SOUND MIXING
“Argo,” John Reitz, Gregg Rudloff and Jose Antonio Garcia
WINNER: “Les Misérables,” Andy Nelson, Mark Paterson and Simon Hayes
“Life of Pi,” Ron Bartlett, D.M. Hemphill and Drew Kunin
“Lincoln,” Andy Nelson, Gary Rydstrom and Ronald Judkins
“Skyfall,” Scott Millan, Greg P. Russell and Stuart Wilson

VISUAL EFFECTS
“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” Joe Letteri, Eric Saindon, David Clayton and R. Christopher White
WINNER: “Life of Pi,” Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik-Jan De Boer and Donald R. Elliott
“Marvel’s the Avengers,” Janek Sirrs, Jeff White, Guy Williams and Dan Sudick
“Prometheus,” Richard Stammers, Trevor Wood, Charley Henley and Martin Hill
“Snow White and the Huntsman,” Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, Philip Brennan, Neil Corbould and Michael Dawson

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
WINNER: “Argo,” Screenplay by Chris Terrio
“Beasts of the Southern Wild,” Screenplay by Lucy Alibar & Benh Zeitlin
“Life of Pi,” Screenplay by David Magee
“Lincoln,” Screenplay by Tony Kushner
“Silver Linings Playbook,” Screenplay by David O. Russell

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
“Amour,” Written by Michael Haneke
WINNER: “Django Unchained,” Written by Quentin Tarantino
“Flight,” Written by John Gatins
“Moonrise Kingdom,” Written by Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola
“Zero Dark Thirty,” Written by Mark Boal

The original post here.

An Unfinished Tale

Despite what the old man promised, the tale he was to tell wasn’t short. There were numerous digressions, there was a lot of history lessons, of the freedom movement, of Mahatma Gandhi’s arrival in Pandu port, of the partition, of river navigation, of this British officer called Northbrook, of LLB courses at Oxford, of a Irish girl named Kathleen, of hunting rabbits…

Sitting on the corner of the empty restaurant, sipping the sweet tea, Mihir would later repeat the story to Aminur, this time without the frills, just the basics.

It involved a 27-year-old, a ‘foreign-returned’, bilat pherot as they were called, just back in the country after four years in Oxford, England, a scion of landed gentry. And he was ready to leave for England again, this time for good. He had a job waiting for him, and someone who loved him dearly. He had made up his mind. Tonight was the night, as he sat there in the far corner of Pandu port, looking at the placid waters of the mighty river, like a giant fast asleep, and the steamboat floating in the fog, which will take him away from this land which was his home. The port was dark, without a hint of life. He remembered another port, faraway in Liverpool, which he will see again in a month’s time — always buzzing with people, always inviting.

He was so engrossed with his thoughts he had no idea that an old man had arrived there and sat next to him.

“Grandfather, not sleeping? You’ll have to get up early tomorrow. The boat leaves at seven,” he said.

“And what if you don’t want to get into the boat?”

“Then you shouldn’t be here. You should be at your home,” the young man said.

“My home is a wreck. It’s been destroyed and I cannot fix it on my own.”

The young man wanted to say something comforting, something like don’t worry, everything will be all right. He choked. Something inside him had started a rebellion against his very judgment. He was leaving in a few hours, and as the time inched closer, his doubts began to mount.

“So, what are you planning to do?”

“I’m looking for someone to help me. Someone like you.”

“Someone like me?”

“Yes, someone who is intelligent and educated; someone, who can help and willing to do so.”

[Part of a story I was working on; I wanted to tell a small digression, which threatened to become a tale on its own. So I had to stop. Someday, hopefully, I will pickup the thread and finish the tale.]

The Story of India

This is a computer-generated birth-chart of Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great, as shown in Michael Wood’s landmark six-part BBC documentary ‘The Story of India.’ According to the chart, Akbar was a Leo, and he was destined to rule and acquire his own wealth and so on and so forth.

I personally have made no bones about the fact that I am suspicious of foreigner coming to India and tell the story of India from a decidedly Western point-of-view (this include William Dalrymple as well, though everyone I know and their cousins love this guy.). But, Michael Wood, wide-eyed and in a crumpled Fab India shirt, manages to convince me to listen to him, and in most parts he makes sense.

What works for Michael Wood and the series? First, the enthusiasm. Wood travels the length and breath of the country, and instead of doing this journey chronologically or geography, he does it thematically. Each of the six episodes is arranged under a broad theme. These are, ‘beginnings’, ‘the power of ideas’, ‘spice routes and silk roads’, ‘the meeting of two oceans’ and ‘freedom’. Wood’s narration has a child-like enthusiasm that persuades you to follow him, even if you are a skeptic. Okay, there are elements of exoticism, but Woods always strives to go beyond that.

Second, research. It’s a monumental task to tell the story of India in six hours. Wood does a fairly good job. For this, credit goes to his research it and how Wood finally wrote the show. Wood narrates history, but instead of making it drab, he goes inside the tale. He goes to the location, like, Kushinagar where Gautam Buddha achieved his Nirvana, and tells the story for inside. The background around him gives his tales a sense of authenticity, which is incredible.

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The Story of India is a BBC TV documentary series, written and presented by historian Michael Wood, about the 10,000-year history of the Indian subcontinent in six episodes. It was originally aired on the BBC in six episodes in August and September 2007 as part of the BBC season "India and Pakistan 07", which marked the 60 years independence of India and Pakistan. In the United States, PBS broadcast the series on three consecutive Mondays, 5 January to 19 January 2009, from 9pm to 11pm. In Australia, the series was broadcast on ABC1 each Sunday at 7:30pm from 29 March until 3 May 2009. An accompanying text was published by BBC Books. As in most of his documentaries, Wood explains historical events by travelling to the places where they took place, examining archeological and historical evidence at first hand and interviewing historians and archaeologists, as well as chatting with local people.
The Story of India in Wikipedia.

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