Baiskoaf

Let's talk about Hitchcock

2011-07-12T20:23:00.000+05:00

This post was originally posted on Nuances.

Shall we?

Well, if I really must have a reason to talk about Hitchcock I'm going to have to rewind and fast forward quite a bit...

Too often the excuse for silly, immature, by the numbers cinema is passed on to the audience.

It shouldn't be.

See the argument goes that the audience can't, or won't be bothered, to work out "complex" ideas in a film. And someone who's new to the medium, or who hasn't checked out cinema going back a few decades or more, might be forgiven for thinking as such.

Actually, no. If you're a "movie lover" and haven't checked out at least some "old" movies/films by the likes of Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, François Truffaut and other such masters, then shame on you.

Well... not really shame on you... more like your loss... your serious loss.

Trailer for Akira Kurosawa's 'Rashomon'

So, let's talk about Hitchcock. Still no?

I see.

I might have been a tad vague in my reasoning for talking about Hitchcock. Hmmm... how to put it?

Okay.

You hear about how everyone... well a few people... well... maybe just a few critics are deriding that little film about robots in disguise? I mean it's the most recent picture in a trilogy of sorts... You know... the one with the giant robots and huge explosions and other... you know... explosive situations? Yea. That movie.

A lot of the times that sort of thing, because of the fact that maybe it's taking in boat loads of money, is justified, with "audiences really prefer not to think through a movie" - I'm just paraphrasing here mind. And recent, slightly skewed "research" might lead one to justify that...

Hence my want to talk about Hitchcock. Errr... no? Why? Cos we can talk about all those other guys I mentioned before you say?

Trailer for François Truffaut's 'Les Quatre cents coups' (400 Blows)

Yea. You should really go check those guys out. Their work is beautiful, evocative and thought provoking - even when they're working with black and white and no explosions. But while they may have had mainstream appeal in their own right I wouldn't go so far as to say they had global appeal in their time... alas, they seem to have trouble with global appeal even in our time.

So.

Really.

Let's talk about Hitchcock.

Yes?

Good. Great!

He proved that you could make money with "high concept" films while not alienating the audience and still garner critical acclaim and global fame... although initially, he may have had a tough time getting some American critics to see the value in his work.

I see you pulling away now... a few more minutes? I promise I'll make it worth your while.

Trailer for 'Psycho'

Heard of 'Psycho' (1960)? No. Not that 1998 version - which I hear was a travesty... No I really didn't watch it. There was no need to. Go see Hitchcock's original Psycho you'll see what I mean - it was shot in black and white but even with that "handicap" it does so well in eliciting a visceral reaction out of you.

If you've heard somebody describe any story as a "modern, psychological yarn" you will be surprised to see how much of that you see here in a film made in 1960 - and how much faith, unlike most modern mainstream directors, Hitchcock had in his audience.

So you think that Psycho is not that hard to follow compared to "modern" standards?

You should check out 'Vertigo' (1958).

Trailer for 'Vertigo'

Technical innovation aside, the story telling is intense, complicated and riveting. And I would argue that its complexity holds up even by modern "intellectual" standards.

That's all well and good you say? You want a pop-corn movie? One that you can sit back and enjoy? One that takes you through exciting chases, chills, thrills and a few laughs?

You don't mind all that and a little bit of intelligence and humour do you?

Try 'North by Northwest' (1959) on for size. But be warned - it's more than a bit intelligent and it has a brilliant sense of humour. You get chases, mistaken identities, spies, damsels who are decidedly not in distress (Who'd have thunk?!?! In the 50s?!?!), killer crop-duster planes... KILLER CROP-DUSTER PLANES DAMMIT!!!

Trailer for 'North by Northwest'

And those are just some of the highlights of his career.

Some of his work has inspired, and keeps inspiring, some of our greatest filmmakers today.

Take a look at Christopher Nolan's work and I can't help but see a Hitchcockian sense of humour and a sense of the same crisp, lean narrative.

Does 'Memento' (2000) not have a wicked sense of humour while making your mind do summersaults? That's kind of what Hitchcock does with North by Northwest although with a much lesser degree of a mental workout - that he leaves for Vertigo.

You know that thing that David Fincher keeps trying to do ever so often with the long, uninterrupted shots? He tried it a couple of times with 'Fight Club' (1999) and 'Panic Room'(2002)? I'd go so far as to argue that that was pure Hitchcock inspired - see 'Rope' (1948) and you'll get where I'm coming from.

Tailer for 'Rope' - like a few of Hitchcock's trailers
contains little from the actual film.

So yea.

That's why we needed to talk about Hitchcock.

Also, remember the other guys I told you about? Well... Hitchcock was my stepping stone to those guys. No. He's not less important than they are - if anything, for me, he might be slightly more important.

So what it comes down to... what I guess I am saying is...

It's okay if you make "crappy" movies - just don't justify it by saying that the audience won't get it. Yea... what I'm saying is... the audience are intelligent enough to grasp almost anything you can throw at them.

Seriously.

If they weren't David Lynch and a few other directors you might have heard of wouldn't have careers.

Edit; July 12, 2011:

I consider myself not adequately chastised for missing out on naming Ingmar Bergman in my original post - that is one name which should not have been missed. I've attempted to fix this inexcusable oversight by adding a link to the original post - I felt it might be cheating to edit the text afterwards. Thanks to shaari for bringing this to my attention.

Winter is coming… brrrr

2011-06-13T20:01:00.003+05:00

REVIEW BY HILATH

This is one time where I cannot reveal anything lest I spoil this one damned gem I recently found from among the thousands of media trash churned out by profit-oriented studios.

Suffice to say that, right when I thought that there was nothing for me here in this meaningless universe, I’ve been suddenly forced to reconsider my earlier aspirations for committing suicide because here is one universe created by George R. R. Martin which, for me, is like a wake-up call -- for a person like me who am constantly dazed and confused because I have to keep one leg in a Conservative but vocal society while keeping another leg in the Liberal but silent society, living side by side in a small island capital.

Sometimes, because it’s the Conservative society that is most visible and for which you feel pressured to belong, I get lost in the fake (Kasauti) reality they have created, seeing everything through religion-tinted spectacles. So ever since Game of Thrones began to air this year, it has served as a fan to cool down the continuous psychological assault on my Liberal values by the Conservative Maldivians.

Based on Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, it hits you like a fresh breath of air, and having watched Season 1’s 9th episode today, I thought I should share my liking for this as I await the season finale next Monday which I am sure will be as breathtaking and heartstopping as the rest of the episodes.

Not to spoil anything, I would simply and shortly say that Game of Thrones is a “realistic fantasy” in that, basically you are treated to a world where raw nature rules. Yes, it’s the jungle. The indifferent, unemotional universe. And the drama that takes there -- a clash of egos, and its interesting outcomes, when sentient beings purse their self-interest in a world where everyone, including children, know the meaning of “survival of the fittest” and perhaps also, the strongest.

And as Martin’s universe does not know yet what democracy and Liberalism are, you can expect violence and sex -- coming no less from HBO itself -- on a scale that is unprecedented and as a result has left many a Kasauti American viewer shocked and nauseous. But all the better for me! :)

The title of this blogpost I choose because, when the first season grows on you, it becomes one of the coolest catchy phrases ever heard from a media production -- and unsurprisingly it's the opening lines of the above video trailer I came across YouTube.

Perhaps I have fallen in love with this series because I'm such a pessimist and I don't see anything improving for Maldivians within the next 15 years - the time I hope it will take for all the conscience-challenged Maldivians above 35 years of age to die out so that the new generations of current young Maldivians can finally get the breathing space they need to usher in true Liberalism and Democratic Ideals to Maldives.

I have read from Winter-is-coming.net that Martin will write the rest of the books (total seven books) and that HBO will produce each book as a season, meaning that finally I will, for the next 7 years of my life, have something to look forward to.

And after that? Well, hopefully Maldives would have become Liberal to the extent that euthanasia will be legal. Cheers.

Tangled: Deconstructing a realistic fantasy

2011-04-20T23:51:00.004+05:00

REVIEW BY HILATH

What is a "realistic fantasy"? My friends mean it in different ways but my general understanding is that though the setting is based in a fantasy realm, characters behave and emote in realistic ways.

And when it comes to Tangled, the modern take on the Rapunzel story, I was surprised that an animated film could capture human emotions at an existential level. And you get to say that particularly about animated films in a very few instances.

And see how long I have “reviewed” an animated film - since writing a short halfhearted “review” of The Princess and the Frog more than a year back.

But when I watched Disney’s Tangled this week, it really surprised me – to the extent that I had to divert some time to write even a short "review" of it – because I felt that this was a film worthy to be recommended to any film-lover and I would be doing a disservice if I didn’t let all my friends know that here indeed was a film (animated or not) which is not to be missed at all.

Realism, ironically, is written all over this fantasy.

If you never gave a thought to how serious the crime of baby-stealing is, something which happens in the modern world, too, Tangled will give you a full blast on the heinous nature of this crime and the psychologically devastating consequences it would have on the parents.

The film captures this realistically by showing the King and Queen, in the few instances they are shown, as utterly silent and almost motionless. You can imagine: after so many years passed with no sign of their daughter, will such grieving parents have anything more to say in words? And towards the end, when the guard opens the door to the King and Queen’s chambers to announce that their daughter has indeed been found after 17 long years, even the guard remains silent and a subtle nod of his head with a ghost of a smile, says it all.

Such scenes touched me deeply and I have to congratulate the team behind Tangled for getting almost everything right.

And in the case of Rapunzel herself, observe the sensitive way how the film deals with her first venture out into the open world after she turned 17: the camera focusing on the grass as she was about to touch her feet on the ground for the first time; and how she sticks her toes into the sand to get that first feeling of the Earth. And then, in a comedic sort of way from her rescuer the thief’s viewpoint, the mixture of conflicting emotions she gives out, feeling both giddy and excited at the same time to be out in the open world for the first time, and also guilty and regretful because she has been “disobedient” to her “mother” for the first time - by leaving the tower in search of her dream.

The film starts with the thief, Flynn Rider, narrating that, unlike other fantasies, this story was about how he died. It grabs your attention right from the start and towards the end, the viewer is rewarded by that lasting selfless act he carries out in order to save Rapunzel: Flynn knows for sure that he will not survive but he carries out the act any way to save another human being from slavery and ultimately it is this humane act – coming no less from a thief himself – which leaves you humbled.

And, well, here’s a part I would rather have avoided. But before coming to that, perhaps I should mention here that I don’t know what’s wrong with me now but over the past two years since I have been coming into close contact with the Maldives' underprivileged class, and becoming disturbed by seeing and experiencing firsthand the subhuman conditions they live in, I have been avoiding realism cinema because it somehow disturbs me now.

In fact, I have not even watched half of the 10 Oscar nominated films of last year although I have all those films on my hard disk. So, I actually diverted time to watch Tangled after seeing its somewhat playful trailer thinking that since it was an animated fantasy, there would be no disturbing aftertastes lingering on my mind for days, like how it happened when I watched Black Swan and 127 Hours after preparing myself mentally for several days! If you should know I watched Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire a year after it was released and to date I still have been keeping Anti-Christ on my hard disk, too afraid to watch it but too cowardly either to delete that Lars Von Trier classic without watching it first! Perhaps I have become a softie now but if that is the result of witnessing the sick things that goes on in this small Maldivian society, then so be it.

So as I was saying, the first shock to my system came that Tangled was really a “realistic fantasy” during the psychologically twisted “interaction” the woman who stole Rapunzel (when she was a baby) later has with her while posing as her “mother.” In my life I have seen real Maldivians who are as psychologically twisted as this fake mother. So it really disturbed me to see how she plays with Rapunzel’s emotions and feelings to make sure that Rapunzel remains her slave in the tower forever.

This scene made me sick to my stomach but now that a film which belongs to the category of “realism cinema” had “tricked” me into watching it, I kept watching the film towards its very end. So although it was disturbing, Tangled was ultimately rewarding, because it is not every day that you come across such a cinematic gem, especially in these times when Hollywood is only concerned about making money-earning, brainless visual-effects laden films for testosterone-filled adolescent male teenagers.

5 recent movies worth catching

2010-03-09T01:52:00.009+05:00

REVIEWS by Hilath

I should mention my views on some movies, including Avatar in 3D, which I saw in Bangalore, India, last week:

THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG:If they put their minds to it, Disney can make a traditional 2D animation classic and again they have proved it. Wonderful sets aside, the only drawback now for me is that I begin to realize that I am somewhat now not too comfortable with blatant sentimentality (such as Rose declaring to Jack “You jump, I jump” in Titanic which was nothing quite like the “I see you, You see me” concept offered by Neytiri to Jake Sully in Avatar).

KARTHIK CALLING KARTHIK:
If you don’t raise your expectations too high, this Farhan Akhtar-Deepika Padukone vehicle is quite engaging considering the schizophrenic nature of the movie. Don’t scold me now because it wasn’t me who spoiled the movie for you. It’s the title of the movie in case you didn’t notice it. So even though I am only giving it 2.5 stars (above average), the film is so unusually presented I think it’s worth a watch if nothing else is showing at a cinema near you right now (if there is a cinema near you in the first place).

IT’S COMPLICATED:Coming from writer and director Nancy Meyers (who made that hilarious romantic comedy for the oldies Something’s Gotta Give), what more can we expect. Alec Baldwin has re-invented himself as a comedian from “30Rock” and Meryl Streep delivers an equally sensitive and comedic performance. The premise offered by “Divorced…with benefits” is just outrageous.

3 IDIOTS:Easily the best Hindi film to date.

And when I say that, it is quite the compliment because this is the first time that I comfortably sat through a 3-hour Hindi film, WITHOUT lowering my high expectations, and even when it ended I wanted it to go on.

I wanted that EXPERIENCE like when I watched the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire: I wanted to feel India… to feel Ladakh … to feel the mixture of pain and joy that define the Indian – and the Indian way of life… In fact me and another friend now planning to go to Ladakh at least within the next two years after seeing 3 Idiots :)

Writer and director Rajkumar Hirani has perfected what I call a tight and taught screenplay (instead of tricking the audience into staying for three hours to make their perception of ‘value for money’ delivered by putting in unnecessary, dragging scenes) and from this film, I finally came to recognize him as one of those few humans who has managed to wake up and see life and the world from purely a philosophical and existential level.

And when I say that about a mainstream, commercial Hindi film, I’m saying a lot. No wonder many of my friends and relatives now say that for them too 3 Idiots, starring Aamir Khan, the most versatile actor for me in Bollywood, is the best Hindi film ever. They watch it repeatedly they claim. One of my friends on the Bangalore trip watched it three times at the cinema and if we had more time I would have gone a couple of times as well because it’s the kind of satisfying experience you want to go on and on.

And finally,…

MY NAME IS KHAN:It is surprising that 20th Century Fox logo appears when presenting the film but the Hurricane Katrina set in Georgia, USA, looked so childish and fake. Now compare that to the flooding scene in 3 Idiots which look most real.

The only reason why I gave this Shah Rukh vehicle 1.5 stars (above worse) instead of just 1 star (the worst) was because (aside from its big budget), Karan Johar as a director fails to handle new terroristic material as he has been all his life usually more comfortable handling more straightforward and romantic material. Heck, even his produced comedies like Dostana (even if that film hadn’t been his subtle coming-out movie) was more enjoyable.

And in My Name is Khan, Karan pulls out the Ultimate Twist. I say the ultimate, if you can understand that what happened next will be the most shocking thing for a serial follower of Bollywood Hindi film industry like me :P

[SPOILER ALERT BIG TIME]

When Kajol finally appears but SRK was only a little too late before she manages to drive off in a taxi without seeing him, which was quite the devastating emotional high-point of the movie, I was totally expecting for the calming and soothing theme of (Karan’s first, and also closeted-homo-film, if there’s such a thing) Kuch Kuch Hota Hai to settle in: “A-aa-aa-a-aa-aa… A-aa-aa-a-aa-aa… (repeat many times)”…

Karan has obviously lost focus if he forgot his signature, no.

Sad to say, in order not to climb into bed disappointed that night, I had a listen to (before sobbing off into a disturbed sleep) the recurring sad theme from the DVD of Karan’s second but first bi-movie Khabi Pussy, Khabi Bum (Hindi title: Khabi Khushi, Khabi Ghum which in Na’vi language literally translates into “Sometimes Happy, Sometimes (Great) Sorrow”. I had to insert that ‘Great’ because the Na’vi people only experience eras of Great Sorrows whenever some Sky People invade their planet.

The only reason why I recommend people, who may have a cinema near you, to still go see this movie is because (for the first time) a star of such power as SRK has openly declared his support for Co-Existence among religions. And he declares himself a moderate Muslim who hates Taliban and what they stand for. This is a good message for humanity at this time as countries like Maldives are being slaughtered by the invisible conspiratorial force of Wahhabism and it’s totally legitimate child, the Taliban.

So, hail to Karan, SRK and Kajol for telling us this powerful story.

REVIEW: Enter the 3D world of “Avatar”

2010-03-09T01:48:00.002+05:00

by Hilath

On MG Road in Bangalore, India, there is a traditional single-cinema theater, complete with Gold Class. It offers the opportunity to experience a shared community spirit and joy in loving the adrenaline- and emotion-evoking qualities offered by pure cinema — that is, before TV killed the theater. Read more

The Hurt Locker: realism cinema at peak art form

2010-01-08T18:19:00.006+05:00

REVIEW BY HILATH

NOTE: Though I haven’t described any scenes in detail, some references I made hint at some shocking incidences which it’s better to check out without reading about it first!

There’s a scene towards the end of the film where SSGT William James (played with character by Jeremy Renner who excellently carries the film to a satisfying conclusion) tells his kid that as you grow older, the things you are interested in becomes few, and perhaps one day there might be just one or two things left in life you are really interested in and passionate about.

Some critics take this scene as an excuse for Renner, part of a United States Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team, to go back to the Iraq war, and therefore, ultimately leading to a predictable end to an otherwise great movie.

But I beg to differ.

Renner’s decision is predictable in that it is consistent with his quirky character -- who in his right mind will decide on his own to go back to the Iraq war? Yet having disarmed more than 800 explosives must have taken something deep inside him -- that even he may be not aware of -- to make him almost addicted to this dangerous “pastime”?

So I cannot say that Bigelow was going against the general international opposition towards the Iraq war purely for provocative value at the risk of being labeled a misguided patriot.

I can hardly disagree with Renner’s philosophical and existential look at life because I myself have found fewer and fewer things of interest as with age I am now more and more able to separate the many junk from the few gems that are found in life -- even when it comes to cinema itself.

Predictably, I haven’t written this long a review for several months because, well, I myself have become disillusioned with one of the few things I am passionate about now: movies.

The short reviews I had put up on this website and my official blog were just passing references to some movies that are mostly watchable and not necessarily pure forms of art.

Over the past few years I have become disillusioned with both Bollywood and Hollywood and even with European cinema which recently has become Hollywood-crazed, spewing out Hollywood-type movies but with an accent -- and also an aura of European exoticism -- what I call pseudo art posing as real art to cheat audiences (For example, if you think David Fincher’s Seven is a work of art, well, what can I say…)

So you really appreciate when once in a blue moon you are treated to pure cinematic art like Crash, United 93, Sideways, Little Miss Sunshine, Rachel Getting Married, Bridge to Terabithia, or in the case of documentaries, works like Man on Wire, Bus 174 or Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.

I had been wondering what film could beat District 9 to take the place of my favorite film of 2009. As realism cinema is so rare I mostly dare not hope for more in order not to end up disappointed. So, it was with some apprehension that I started watching The Hurt Locker.

But what a reward it turned out to be!

When the film opened with Chris Hedges' words on the screen, “The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction; for war is a drug” I had a feeling I was on to something and I was right: Bigelow has got everything right -- from cinematography to score to character development and pace of editing.

From start to finish, you feel the tension of not knowing your surroundings, or even the nature of the Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) that Renner is forced to disarm on streets, vehicles, buildings, anywhere imaginable, even inside the bodies of humans -- an instance which also sets the platform for one of the most gruesome and disturbing scenes, which ironically box office pundits in fact blame for having kept audiences away from the film resulting in its poor revenue. But I bet Bigelow wasn’t concerned about box office rewards and made this uncompromising film for sheer movie buffs like me. Thank you Kathryn!

This gruesome scene also allows Bigelow to play around with uncritical audiences’ sense of predicting the plot (hint: involving an Iraqi boy called “Beckham”) -- and then giving us the opposite, making you feel silly for having made that prediction in the first place! Or was she just been naughtily playful with her audiences? Somebody like Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed perhaps?

To describe in musical terms, The Hurt Locker is like a masterpiece composition, a rare achievement even for any auteur.

I like films that appeal to me regardless of critical appreciation and awards. But I would like to make an interesting predication that Bigelow could beat ex-husband James Cameron’s Avatar to take the top honors at the Oscars this March.

Cameron already holds an Oscar record for Titanic and the industry may feel that Cameron deserves recognition more in technical achievement than aesthetic cinema. I am more for Cameron winning a lifetime achievement award this time for his exhaustive and innovative 12-year work on Avatar and Bigelow winning Best Director and Best Picture for The Hurt Locker.

Who knows, the Academy may. After all they elected Obama. So why not set yet another precedent by giving the Best Director and Best Picture Oscar for a woman for the first time by the 82-year-old Academy? America is a country that sets the trend, right?

5 Recent movies worth a watch

2009-11-21T19:35:00.001+05:00

Reviewed by Island Chic

Here are some movies on my ‘Recommended watch list’ of random movies I have recently seen. These are not of any specific genre. These just happen to be some favourites among the lot I’ve watched in the last few weeks. Thought it might be worth a mention. Read more

The Wrestler

2009-11-21T19:31:00.001+05:00

REVIEW by Yusuf Abdulla Shunan

I am not much of a fan of Wrestling, or more importantly tear-jerky movies. And by the title, "The Wrestler (2008)" I wasn't expecting that, but this movie really made my eyes wet. Mickey, (also seen in Sin City) did great acting, really commendable... Read full review

The Man from Earth

2009-09-20T16:16:00.002+05:00

Review by SIMON SHAREEF

It is seldom that movie is able to intrigue me in such a way as to wish it all to be true. The Man from Earth had me glued, unblinking, to the end. And at the end I was thoroughly satisfied, almost gleefully happy and childishly excited.

Here is a movie that asks a rather interesting question, one that would keep your imagination going wild and hungry and your coffee table discussions going long into the night. The Man from Earth asks the question, “What if a man from upper-paleolithic survived until the present day?” Read full review from Simon's blog

“District 9” – the best film of the year so far

2009-09-09T22:26:00.001+05:00

Review by Hilath

Racism, in all its forms, is something all humans have to overcome if we are to ensure the survival of our species and others as well.

Whether it is one religion’s superiority over another; or one language’s superiority over another; or one ethnicity’s superiority over another; or one species’ superiority over another, racism is racism. Period.

Racism is against humanity. Racism is against the very essence of being human, of being an intelligent creature. Anybody who supports racism, seek psychiatric help first before you start speaking to me.

When a film gets an average of more than 8 points out of 10 on IMDB.com and when critics rave about it so much, not to mention one critic calling it the most unusual sci-fi film in recent history, you tend to wonder whether it really lives up to the hype and what could be so unusual about it to leave you stunned.

But here is one film which actually went beyond my expectations and one of the few films in recent memory that actually left me in a depressed mood hours after watching it. In fact, even as I write this, I am still in a quiet mood.

District 9 is one of those few films which can actually make you go emotionally haywire. I can only describe it as a social commentary disguised as a science fiction film. Its premise strikes uncomfortably close to home one of the most basal characteristics about us human beings; racism, hostility and wanton violence towards the unknown -- whether it’s another species different from our own, or whether it is another people ethnically, culturally or religious-wise different from us.

One of the greatest ironies in the film is how easily we tend to forget our own suffering and let our inherent racial bias and prejudice loose when black Africans, who themselves have suffered so much under Apartheid in South Africa, treat the aliens in the Johannesburg ghetto as subhuman. Is it then a wonder that the Israeli army routinely unleashes its violence against helpless Palestinians in Gaza though the Jews themselves suffered worse at the hands of Nazi Germany?

Throughout the film I sat stunned and towards the end, a lump formed in my throat as director Neill Blomkamp crafted his masterpiece of a movie weaving into it the very melancholic sadness I felt when I watched Steven Spielberg’s misunderstood alien in E.T. The Extraterrestrial and Brad Bird’s misunderstood alien in The Iron Giant. I am glad Jorge Blanco and Javier Abad are releasing their animated Planet 51 on November 20; that film should demonstrate to any human what it feels like to be misunderstood as an alien "invader" among an alien species; sort of an ironic reversal of fortune (see the below YouTube trailer).

When District 9 ended, I felt so strongly for a sequel to deliver justice that had been denied, and felt utterly disgusted with the word “alien” itself. Who are we humans to think we are a superior species? And who are we humans to think that a certain ethnicity is superior to all others based on religion, language or anything else? Living things are living things. Life is life.

“Twilight”: abstinence from eating your food/lover

2009-08-19T19:25:00.000+05:00

The above YouTube “trailer” titled “Twilight with Cheeseburgers” for me sums up the cheesy conceptual silliness of the premise on which Stephanie Meyer bases her story “Twilight.”

The pointless concepts like “vampires who sparkle like diamonds” and “vegetarian vampires” and the lame dialogues ranging from Edward’s comments to Bella like “The lion have fallen in love with the lamb” and “You are like my own personal brand of heroin” is the worst kind of screenwriting ever.

Needless to say, “Twilight” is my worst film of 2008.

It also brings to my mind my worst film of 2002 “Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones” which was based on a romantic premise that would put Bollywood’s Yash Chopra to shame because it had the worst movie romantic dialogue ever. Case in point: when Anakin touches Padme’s hands and back and compares the softness of her skin to the desert’s tough structure: “I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is soft and smooth.” See YouTube video below:

Where we all call ‘Home’ …

2009-08-01T15:15:00.002+05:00

REVIEW BY SUBCORPUS

Hello …
Few days back … on recommendation from some of my friends …
I downloaded and watched a documentary called ‘Home’ …
And I tell you … it was awesome … it totally blew my mind …
Home by Yann Arthus-Bertrand is a beautifully shot panorama …
Planet Earth and the damage done to it by modern humanity …
The film has breathtaking aerial footage from 54 countries …
Showing the pure beauty of our planet with amazing facts …
Glenn Close narrates the journey with very good original music …
We are shown the history of Earth how everything came about …
And how everything is interconnected and balance maintained …

Read the rest of the review from subcorpus blog

Transform this … transform that …

2009-07-20T15:23:00.002+05:00

REVIEW BY SUBCORPUS

Hello …
I was in KL a few days back …
I had the chance to watch Transformers 2 on big screen …
I was all excited waiting in line for an hour to get tickets …
But it seems my excitement was short lived …
The moment the movie began … after 20 mins of ads …
It went downhill from that point onwards …
Let me tell you …I really liked the first Transformers movie …
But this Revenge of the Fallen could not have sucked more …

Read the rest of the review from Subcorpus' blog

Warped hilarity in Will Ferrell's "Land of the Lost"

2009-07-11T00:09:00.003+05:00

REVIEW BY HILATH

It may not be as smart as Anchor Man but Will Ferrell’s Land of the Lost, based on the 1974 TV series, has its own originality and hilarity.

From Brad Silberling, director of the excellent City of Angels, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events and Casper comes science mixed with humor, irony and even slapstick, which might put off some people.

In this literally warped setting, Ferrell and Co. get stuck in a place (a singularity like a black hole or Big Bang?) where the past, present and even the future are found together! So don’t be surprised if you find humans together with barely evolved Neanderthals, dinosaurs and even aliens with mindboggling technology! Not to mention collapsed bridges, ice cream trucks, a motel, a swimming pool and even a Narcotic Tree oasis all together in a combined land of desert, cave, forest and even a volcano!

And I was thinking “Wtf?” when I saw a “monkey boy” about to be sacrificed on a slab of stone by a “monkey man” with a dagger! This monkey boy is supposed to have a “harem” of 7,000 (not so virgin) gals, whom we get to see towards the end of the movie…

I have not seen the 1974 TV series on which this film is based but am wondering whether the filmmakers have taken vast liberties on this one because I can’t imagine all this mind-fucked shit in the 1974 series which was supposed to be a children’s TV series!

So I guess this is as twisted as a Will Ferrell comedy can get! kekeke

Original link on Hilath's blog

Stiller has more fun with history in “Battle of the Smithsonian”

2009-07-06T22:33:00.002+05:00

REVIEW BY HILATH

It’s difficult to compare Night at the Museum with its sequel Battle of the Smithsonian because while the former was more emotionally touching, the latter is more fun and action!

So much animation and visual effects must have gone into Battle but what is enjoyable (and made me watch the movie with a smile on my face) is Ben Stiller’s own take on world and American history! I’m saying this because Stiller is such a big shot in Hollywood he really does have a say in shaping the projects he is involved in, and though he does not have a producer or writer credit to this movie, some of the fun in the movie is pure Stiller. Read the rest of the review from Hilath's blog

The Hell with Martyrs

2009-07-04T19:19:00.002+05:00

REVIEW BY SIMON

Would you believe it I am actually writing this 2 weeks after watching the movie and still my heart starts a heavy pounding when I think about it.

Yes, Martyrs, the French horror flick by director Pascal Laugier has left a permanent feeling of discomfort within me. It is not so much your average fear as in Friday the 13th kind of fear. No, this was a perversely darker fear. When I watched it I actually felt breathless and like a child I yearned to be held, comforted and for morning to arrive and light up the world and for birds to sing. Read the rest of the review from Simon's blog

“Confessions of a Shopaholic” is light-hearted entertainment dealing with addiction

2009-07-01T01:28:00.001+05:00

Review by Hilath

“Confessions of a Shopaholic” is a good starting point for those who want to understand the psychology of addiction -– whether you are addicted to sex, sports, Kasauti, God or even drugs and alcohol. And the moral of the story is that, any obsession, whatever it is you are obsessed with, is not a healthy thing, either for your emotional stability, or your credit card. Read the rest of the review from Hilath's blog

“X-Men Origins: Wolverine” works as a good action movie

2009-06-25T18:32:00.002+05:00

Review by Hilath

I wasn’t much into comics as a kid and not even now. So my “reception” of movies based on comic characters and stories may be different from those who are fans of comics and most often end up disappointed with the movie version of comics (and books).

I think the same can be said with regard to X-Men Origins: Wolverine, because ironically, though it was made purely for fans, some fans ended up disappointed with the film — when I really enjoyed it. Read the rest of the review from Hilath's blog

Oscars expanding best film category not about snubbing "Dark Knight": Academy

2009-06-25T15:45:00.002+05:00

The best film shortlist at the 2010 Oscars will be 10 films instead of the customary five, it has been announced but BBC quoted Academy president Sid Ganis saying The Dark Knight "did not come up" in discussions about expanding the category.

"Audiences and many critics felt that the latest Batman epic, which won a posthumous best supporting actor award for Heath Ledger, should have been included among this year's best picture nominees", writes BBC. Read the full BBC report

“Angels and Demons” satisfying at many levels

2009-06-23T23:58:00.001+05:00

Review by Hilath

... Unlike "The Da Vinci Code", "Angels and Demons" is, how should I say, more “movie material”: the plot is a mixture of serial killer, suspense, mystery, detective, and action thriller all wrapped into one, which makes it conventional, but in the hands of a gifted director like Howard, he manages to pull it off beautifully with balance! ... Read Hilath's full review

12 Rounds of Stupidity

2009-06-20T19:29:00.004+05:00

Review by Simon Shareef

I consider myself pretty good at selecting good movies but after last night’s movie I realized I was taking it for granted and being foolish.

See, last night I went to purchase a movie from one of the hundreds of pirated DVD outfits in town and asked the guys there for suggestions as I didn’t see any instantly recognisable movies on the shelf. So the guy there, who I admit is pretty good at marketing his product, handed over a movie he said was just too good to be missed.

It starred a man who the shop dude really liked very much. I never heard of this actor before. Apparently John Cena is very famous and this movie titled “12 rounds” was the action flick of the year. Now that I think about it, the marketing guy’s next suggestion was a dead giveaway to his taste in movies. I should have known better. Tell you later what I mean.

Anyway, this “12 Rounds”, is by far the worst movie I’ve ever seen. John Cena’s pectorals do more acting than he himself ever could. In fact, his supporting cast did a far better job, doing so almost to the point that it felt like Mr. Cena was constantly stumbling into the set of another, far better movie starring the supporting cast. I think in a couple of scenes the supporting cast were even surprised to see Mr. Cena there at all. Mind you, when I say the supporting cast I do not include the most forgettable villain in all of movie-making historys. I’m serious! Read the rest of the review from Simon's blog

Angels and Demons

2009-06-20T13:55:00.005+05:00

Review by Hassan Ziyau (Student of Mass Communication)

... as I watched the movie, I realized that Catholics from around the globe consider Pope resident in the Vatican City as their leader. Pope is the Bishop of Rome and as such is the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church (that is, all Latin Rite and Eastern Rite churches which are in full communion with the Roman Pontiff). The Pope is also head of state of Vatican City. Popes focus almost exclusively on spiritual matters.

While the movie rolled, thoughts evolved through my mind! For a second I thought what would it be like to have a Muslim leader or authority that commands and guides the whole Muslim world towards the true teachings of Islam? To settle our differences and unite us in one thinking! What would it be like to depend on him for the religious problems that we face? What would it be like to treat him as Leader of Muslims who will protect the religion and who will talk on behalf of about 1.3-1.5 billion people, roughly one-fifth of the world population? Not just on behalf of one’s own country or political thinking... Read the full review from Hassan Ziyau's blog

Horton Hears a Who!

2009-04-30T00:33:00.005+05:00

Here is a film that should be seen by both believers and non-believers. Although it may not convert one camp into the other, it nevertheless hopefully will serve as an enlightening experience to bridge the gap in communication and understanding between the religious and the skeptic mind.

In fact, this film is so relevant to the frightening level of extremism, religious conservatism, intolerance, and narrow-mindedness currently gripping our small society in Maldives, I suggest that no one -- who wants his or her vision of existence expanded and tolerance level increased -- miss this entertaining and yet enlightening film. Read full review from Hilath.com

The night is darkest just before the dawn...

2009-04-26T00:46:00.006+05:00

Adaptations are a tricky business. Just ask Alan Moore or Uwe Boll – though, admittedly, not for the same reasons.

Promotional Art for Frank Miller's 'Batman Year One' Trade Paperback

At the best of times your source material has a rabid following who will, once you've announced your intentions, scrutinize your every move – down to the the colour of underpants your hero may, or may not, wear under, or over, their costumes.

And at the worst of times... well... you should click on the Alan Moore link (above) before you go on to the rest of what I've got to say...

Most times our worst fears are realised (see Uwe Boll for the worst case scenario) but sometimes... sometimes the improbable does actually happen... [full 'story' at Nuances]

Baraka

2009-04-24T00:45:00.003+05:00

[Originally posted at Nuances]

May refer to:

[also berakhah] in Judaism, a blessing usually recited
during a ceremony, OR

[also barakah] in Arabic, Islam and Arab-influenced
languages such as Swahili, Urdu, Persian, Turkish, meaning
spiritual wisdom and blessing transmitted from God;
or in a Sufi context, "breath of life."

Baraka, means 'Blessing' a spiritual power believed to be
possessed by certain persons, objects, tombs, in Arabic,
Swahili, Urdu, Persian and Turkish.

A few months ago I became the proud owner of a Baraka (1992) Blu-ray. I first watched it as part of a college assignment focusing, as I recall, on non-verbal films.

It was enthralling, to say the least. And this was a viewing in standard definition on a 21 inch monitor accompanied by a loud, somewhat agitated, group of college students with a healthy dose of ADD – oh not to worry... I count myself along with the ADD crowd.

Five minutes into the film everyone quieted down – most of us were either trying to figure out where the 'no talking' was headed OR it could have been that the almost serene imagery and music started to resonate with their brain waves... or maybe a bit of both.

Cover art – Baraka [Blu-ray]

In the next 91 minutes we, through no conscious will of our own, found ourselves soothed and calmed to the point where some of us experienced something totally alien – a silence that is never seen (heard?!?! unheard?!?! witnessed?!?! experienced!)... experienced in a college much less a tight screening room packed with students!

Beautiful, peaceful, serene images washed over us – even in the moments where the motion lapse technique was used to show 'herds', repetitions and juxtapositions we were not jarred out of our trance like state... not even when we where shown the 'cruelty' that man, and war, unleash upon nature did we flinch – the 'no blood and gore' philosophy helped... every 'point' that the film made... it made peacefully... serenely... beautifully...

And then we were done... and were faced with the horror of writing about a film with no dialogue... YIKES!

Fast forward five years to two months ago – there I was, holding nostalgia at bay... surely this wouldn't stand up to the first experience ... would it?

In a small-ish room with no natural light, I saw nature unfold and unleashed before me in glorious High Definition...

And I kid you not my friends it DID surpass my first viewing.

A scene from the film

Whether it was the new transfer OR the five year gap that erodes the memory of the first viewings (I saw it multiple times in standard definition that semester in college) I cannot tell...

Oh who am I kidding... it's the HD and the larger TV (36 inches now) AAand the lack of a fidgety, ADD-ish college crowd... and the HD... did I say that already?!?! Well it bears repeating...

Baraka looks AMAZING in High Definition - AM. Ay. ZING!

Filmed at 152 locations in 24 countries which includes several natural wonders of the world (sadly no Maldives) this is a MUST for any film fan AND any human with a cranial space.

I can't wait for Ron Fricke and Co. to unveil Samsara, the sequel to Baraka which is planned to be released around 2009/2010.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)

2009-04-20T13:15:00.000+05:00

...This Keanu Reeves one is not a classic I have to admit. For me, it was just another guilty pleasure (like the surf chick flick Blue Crush :-)). If you passed on this film, you are not missing anything. So I shan’t advise anyone to make an effort to see this.

But for hard core sci-fi fans like me who at least needs to check out the few sci-fi films that come out every year to enjoy the visual and sound effects, I recommend them to at least check this film. I don’t think it will be a great disappointment or that great a waste of time. Full story from hilath.com

A story from the heart

2009-03-20T09:09:00.001+05:00

By Ali Rasheed

"How do I look?" Indian actress, activist and filmmaker Nandita Das asks me.

We're in Film City, Mumbai, in early January 2008, and it's the last day of the principal shoot of Nandita's directorial debut Firaaq...

...Throughout the shoot Nandita has been steadfast and, actor Paresh Rawal commented, "sure-footed", her unflagging energy the admiration of everyone in the 60-odd film crew.

...Some people have criticised the film as pro-Muslim and anti-Hindu, Nandita sees it as "pro-human" film...

Full story from Ali Rasheed's blog

Shyamalan a victim of his own devices?

2009-03-10T17:08:00.003+05:00

By Hilath Rasheed

Note: This article may need a major overhaul as I haven't seen Shyamalan's critically panned most recent The Happening which led to filmcritic.com's Bill Gibron to declare: "It's official: M. Night Shyamalan is no longer the next Spielberg."

Ever since that great Oscar-nominated film The Sixth Sense, which critics thought would make Shyamalan the next Spielberg, Shyamalan seems to be stuck in one formula: delivering a shock or twisted ending at the end of his every film.

Though Shyamalan is an Indian born and raised in Philadelphia, the United States, it seems odd that he should succumb to that unique South Asian mentality where filmmakers like to attach themselves and be known for a preferred genre or formula (e.g. John Woo identifying himself as a director of action movies).

Western filmmakers like to do diverse things in order to master the art of film-making and audiences naturally don't demand that a certain director do only one kind of movies. Hence, Spielberg is equally good at dealing with the subject of racism (The Color People) as he is good at dealing with science fiction (Minority Report) or historical epics (Schindler's List).

What Shyamalan should now realise is that there is only so much he can deliver with shocking and twisted endings and that audiences have tired of his game. If he wants to continue his film career, he should diversify his movie "formulas."

The below article which was published in The Evening Weekly on 11 April 2005 was written at a time when I had high hopes in Shyamalan and was quite fond of his films, even when he faltered with films with so many loopholes like Signs.

So here it is:

Warning: Major spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk if you haven’t seen Shyamalan’s The Village yet.

Manoj Night Shyamalan, the Indian born but Philadelphia resident Hollywood director, has stamped all his films with a prediction of a “big twist” whether it is “The Sixth Sense” or his most recent “The Village.” “The Sixth Sense” is by far his most critically acclaimed and commercially successful film. But even his not-so-acclaimed film “Unbreakable” has won a cult place alongside the immensely popular but flawed “Signs” among his hard-core fans. So what went wrong with Shyamalan’s most recent outing, “The Village”?

Some commentators claim that the main reason why Shyamalan’s fans failed to take to “The Village” was because the big twist at the end did not have any supernatural connections. The big twist in “The Village” is a perfectly logical, though questionable climax. Or anti-climax, depending on how you as an individual happened to receive the film.

Fans were let down because Shyamalan gives a logical answer, and not a supernatural twist, and this was not acceptable to a hardcore Shyamalan fan.

Every Shyamalan film’s trailer is packaged in a way which increases the anticipation of the viewer toward a big twist. The trailer for “The Village” was not different either. And all Shymalan’s films are packaged in such a way that towards the end, we are led to a big supernatural twist.

“Unlike ‘The Sixth Sense,’ however, ‘The Village’s key revelation might be too mild to jolt audiences. Some may even feel cheated. The temptation is to declare the film's main appeal will be to older audiences,” wrote film critic Kirk Honeycutt in the Hollywood Reporter.

“‘The Village’ emerges as a victim of its own ambitions,” film critic Claudia Puig concluded in USA Today.

But this time, the reason why I immensely liked “The Village” is because Shyamalan once again gives us something different -- a logical conclusion instead of a supernatural one. If that is not a departure for Shyamalan, if that is not a big twist by itself, I don’t know what can be.

Though the film still has references to supernatural creatures, “The Village” deals with a more mature social subject. The moral question here is: in these contemporary times where crime is rampant, is the only way to escape from it by caging ourselves in isolation from the rest of the world?

Film critic Wesley Morris from the Boston Globe called “The Village” “a sociology project disguised as a sylvan horror flick.”

“Every minute of ‘The Village’ is the work of a genius and a fool, as each of Shyamalan's last four movies has been. And this, by the filmmaker's standards, is the bravest, craziest one yet, questioning the meaning of magic and the trauma of loss. It springs from a type of defiant immaturity that seems possible only with him -- or Michael Jackson: a Neverland sprung from hurt and paranoia. Both men's art is so otherworldly, grandiose, and disfigured with naivete that you're forever asking whether you share the same planet with them,” he wrote.

What really surprised me this time is, like Shyamalan’s fans, most US critics blasted this film as well. It baffled me why, unlike audiences, critics failed to see into Shyamalan’s creativity. In “The Village”, Shyamalan creates a stirring thriller through superb acting (especially by Bryce Dallas Howard who deserves nothing less than an Oscar nomination for her electrifying performance), eerie cinematography (by Roger Deakins) accompanied to a wonderfully evocative score by James Newton Howard, particularly the work of violinist Hilary Hahn. Not to mention the creepy sound effects which create a more terrifying environment than sometimes even the visuals.

Roger Ebert, one of the most popular film critics of Hollywood, called “The Village” “a colossal miscalculation.”

“A movie based on a premise that cannot support it, a premise so transparent it would be laughable were the movie not so deadly solemn. It's a flimsy excuse for a plot, with characters who move below the one-dimensional and enter Flatland,” he wrote in The Chicago Sun-Times.

Do critics like Ebert go to the movies like us popcorn-eating audiences expecting a big twist? Perhaps.

“Every negative review of ‘The Village’ has been based on the disappointment of the ‘twist’ and the ease of suspecting The Village's true secret so early in the film. These same critics, Ebert included, are so focused on their assumption of Shyamalan's reliance upon a plot twist that they fail to realize that the director purposefully and intelligently chose not to rely solely on a big plot twist like ‘The Sixth Sense’ and the far worse ‘Signs’”, wrote a reviewer identified as Whyz77 on Yahoo movies.

“The surprise is no surprise, but more importantly a purposeful piece to a well crafted puzzle. See ‘The Village’ for a good movie with a thought-provoking message, not for a reinvention of ‘The Sixth Sense.’ The real surprise will be how much you can enjoy a movie if you maintain an open mind,” Whyz77 wrote.

And of course there are those Shyamalan-haters who seem to hate him just because his films, so illogical, are yet so popular. Consider this criticism from Mick LaSalle from the San Francisco Chronicle: “M. Night Shyamalan has nothing to say, but he's going to keep right on saying it until people make him stop.”

Just because people like LaSalle feel cheated, should we make Shyamalan stop making films? I do not think so. People who want to see “logical” films should not spend their money on a Shyamalan film and then complain about it.

In the end, only film critic Peter Travers from Rolling Stone magazine seems to have nailed the reason why “The Village” received a cool reception though it is, in my opinion, Shyamalan’s best film to date.

“It turns out Shyamalan was in on the scam -- a guerrilla marketing campaign gone awry. That would be as butt-stupid as writing off Shyamalan as a trickster to be judged solely on how many rabbits he can pull out of his hat. Know what? Let the film speak for itself. ‘The Village,’ even when its step falters, is on to something more provocative than seeing dead people,” Travers wrote.

"Rachel Getting Married": classic realism cinema at its very best

2009-02-28T15:01:00.012+05:00

REVIEW BY HILATH

Perhaps a lot of people seem to have missed this movie because of its title which most serious cinema-lovers will easily dismiss as "just another romantic pop corn comedy" -- which is actually the polar opposite of what the film is really about (I will come to that).

This is one movie which I will easily dare call a classic that also happens to celebrate humanity in its truest sense. A triumph for not only Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme's illustrious career but for universal cinema as a whole.

With Rachel Getting Married, Demme seems to have undergone a major personal transformation as well, in that he has become more humanist and wide-ranging in his world view.

The blend of so many ethnic groups, Caucasians, Blacks, Chinese, etc, along with unique ethnic features such as the donning of the Indian sari for the wedding ceremony and the incorporation of ethnic music, without any overt justification for its being there, demonstrates how far Demme has grown in his own humanity.

There are two scenes in the film which sent chills down my spine, brought tears to my eyes, and made me realise the wide gap of communication and misunderstanding between addicts and their non-addict family members.

I won't go into details and spoil the movie but that scene is when recovering addict Kym (acted brilliantly by Anne Hathaway) confronts her sister Rachel (another excellent performance by Rosemarie DeWitt) in the presence of their father (superbly played by Bill Irwin).

So many emotions were evoked in me and deep inside I was crying myself.

But perhaps the most disturbing scene in the film is when Hathaway finally confronts her mother (another classic performance by Debra Winger) and asks her the question which still haunts the family to this day; the question why a mother would ever leave an under-aged addict daughter high on drugs to babysit her little brother?

A kaleidoscope of emotions erupted and I think I too openly cried along with Hathaway and her mother.

This is one of the best and most realist films of last year. I am not surprised that it comes from Demme who made that brilliant psychological thriller about a cannibal, The Silence of the Lambs, one of the few films in movie history which won all the top 5 categories' Oscars: Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Actress.

And talking about the title of the film, I think though it might put off serious cinema lovers, when you really think about it, it's just the kind of non-assuming name that a humanist like Demme would give, rather than coming up with profound-sounding and sweeping names like "Pride and Glory" or "Body of Lies"! And even in the context of the movie itself, Rachel Getting Married is an appropriate name because the film shows events of a two-day period all taking place surrounding a wedding.

Rachel Getting Married on IMDB.com

"Heena" and the Maldivian Woman

2009-02-24T18:40:00.003+05:00

What effects (and setbacks?) the popular Indian serial may have on Maldivian women's empowerment movement

By Hilath Rasheed

Some find it an exhilarating experience to watch films or read books that have strong and independent women as central characters. Thank Jane Campion and Sidney Sheldon for that. But others dwell in socially constructed patriarchal societies, infatuated with women characters who are submissive to the extent that they suffer gross injustices at the hands of men, whether physical or emotional.

Where does the Maldivian woman stand? Perhaps, we don't need go further. The Maldivian society is not subtle. The clues are all there to see. A look at Maldivian women's obsession with soaps that have central stories woven around submissive women, such as the likes of the Indian serial Heena, reflects Maldivian women's outlooks on their social roles, and where their sympathies lie.

"The fact that many Maldivian women identify with Heena is because they themselves can identify with the character of Heena--submissive, obedient and very much protective of her husband Sameer, whatever injustices he does to her," said a 28-year-old mother of two.

However, we have to take into account the cultural differences when we relate Heena with Maldivian women. In Indian culture, divorce is very much frowned upon; women and their families will go to great pains to preserve the sanctity of marriage even if it means the woman has to undergo a lifelong suffering in a loveless marriage.

But that is not the case in Maldives. Though divorce is still frowned upon, Maldivian women still have the option of ending a loveless or oppressive marriage without so many social complications as is apparent in Indian culture. But the surprising thing is many Maldivian still try to "stick it out", regardless of unhappy marriages they may have entered into.

Take the case of Aishath (who wouldn't give her last name for personal reasons) who is from an island but came to Male', pursued higher education and got a white-collar job. She then married, got two kids, resigned her job and took up the role of housewife. She later found that her husband had been keeping other lovers but she choose to give a blind eye to her husband's double life. Why?

"For the sake of my children," she said simply.

Give her credit for taking into consideration the sensitivities of her children. But look at how depressing it is for her to live the rest of her life with a husband who is taunting her human dignity--and her self-dignity--by seeking pleasure in other women while he is still married to her. In a Maldives context, Aishath could very well be another Heena--protective of her husband, ready to struggle to save her marriage regardless of the injustices he is doing to her.

Some call such a situation a "silent suffering." Some women argue that women like Heena and Aishath are actually "emotionally strong", the reason being that they are able to take the emotional onslaughts of the husband with calm and quiet.

But women who argue against this doesn't think that being "emotionally strong" necessarily makes a "strong woman." In fact, they take "emotionally strong" as being a kind of weakness--a weakness that disables the woman from standing up to her husband.

"I would describe Aishath as strong if she would really stand up to her husband and demand that he treat her with dignity and equality," a 24-year-old unmarried girl said in relation to Aishath's case.

"We women have to believe that we have a good life ahead of us. We don't have to take sufferings that we don't deserve, tortures that others inflict upon us. In the case of Aishath, I would strongly argue her to end her husband's humiliating treatment of her by going separate ways and seeking someone who really loves her and who will treat her as equal partner. Where's her dignity? Isn't dignity the most valued asset of any human being?"

Perhaps the individuality is lost when a woman gets married?

"Independence and individuality--a lot of this is lost when a woman marries," commented Maryam, a teacher trainee.

"Talk about sexual oppression. Heena was sexually unfulfilled but she stuck it out. Aishath is, too. And so does a lot of others. We're taught that everything other than 'the big picture' is not important, 'the big picture' being that one has to hold the marriage together."

However, divorce can turn out to be messy. You might have to run to court for days. And even then the trauma of laying open your personal life and your emotions to an indifferent judge could turn out emotionally frustrating. At the end, you may be left drained.

"And after a divorce, where will she go?" questioned Maryam.

"We are talking about an average woman with adequate educational background with about a Rf2,000 (about 200 US dollars) salary. Can she go back to her mom's place, where their is hardly any space and where she'll be considered a burden? In most of the cases it is."

Perhaps Heena--and the Maldivian woman--should adopt, to some extent and to suit her own needs, some of the traits of Ruby who seems to be everything that Heena is not--ruthless, independent, ambitious, manupulative.

"Personally, I would want a diluted version of both Heena's and Ruby's qualities," agreed Maryam.

"But if anybody asked me who would be the most happiest of them in the long run I would have to say that it would be Heena because if a person is considerate about others, then she will find happiness, as against Ruby who does everything out of self-interest."

Coming to the root of the problem: why are women--not just Maldivian women--generally submissive? Is it an inborn thing? A biological phenomenon? A natural instinct? A trait of "being a woman"? Some don't think so! And with good reason, too.

"It is not a natural or biological phenomenon," said Aneesa Ahmed, the Deputy Minister of Women's Affairs and Social Security.

"Gender roles have been socially created. From childhood, we have been taught that men are breadwinners and women the dependents. It is only when someone becomes dependent that the person becomes submissive, regardless of whether it is a man or woman. That's why there is a need for women's empowerment movement."

"Think about what girls have been taught from the day they are born: the duties of a daughter, a wife, a mother comes before the individuality of being just a woman with the needs of a woman," echoed Maryam.

Some question the validity of the existence of a women's empowerment movement, claiming that Maldives enjoys gender equality in all walks of life, as it is sanctioned by the Constitution. But the reality is that although the government recognizes equal rights of the sexes, society and tradition do not. And this is why a women's empowerment movement is needed. We need to educate women on their rights, the need for them to be independent and strong, the need for them to demand equal treatment, the need for them to be on an independent and sound economic footing, so that they won't have to be dependent on any one--whether it be their peers, superiors, partners or husbands--in case should they become subject to neglect, suffering and other injustices.

Equal rights are not about a war being fought to determine whether who is physically strong--man or woman. Equal rights are about treating every woman with dignity, the dignity that a human being deserves and has a right to. Equal rights are about loving and caring, about sharing, about treating your partner as your equal, because in a relationship where one partner does not treat the other as his or her equal, love won't bloom.

What a pity! If only men and women could learn to love one another, treat one another with respect and concentrate more on expanding the horizons of their relationships could they discover how fantastic and blissful our short lives here on this earth could otherwise be.

This article was published in The Monday Times

"The Love Guru" "wins" Worst Film

2009-02-24T11:52:00.001+05:00

The 29th Annual Golden Raspberry (Razzie) Award "Winners" were announced just 24 hours before the prestigious Oscars. Below is the full list:

Worst Film: "The Love Guru"
Worst Director: Uwe Boll, "1968: Tunnel Rats", "In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale", "Postal"
Worst Actor: Mike Myers, "The Love Guru"
Worst Actress: Paris Hilton, "The Hottie and the Nottie"
Worst Supporting Actor: Pierce Brosnan, "Mamma Mia!"
Worst Supporting Actress: Paris Hilton, "Repo: The Genetic Opera"
Worst Screenplay: "The Love Guru"
Worst Screen Couple: Paris Hilton and either Christine Lakin or Joel David Moore, "The Hottie and the Nottie"
Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-off or Sequel: "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"
Worst Career Achievement: Uwe Boll

Uwe Boll was said to be "Germany's answer to Ed Wood". *LOL*

The Full List on Razzies Website

"Slumdog Millionaire" wins 8 Oscars including for Best Film

2009-02-23T10:48:00.002+05:00

The Hollywood-Bollywood collaboration "Slumdog Millionaire" won 8 Oscars including for Best Film at today's 81st Academy Awards at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles.

Click here for the full list of winners

The Oscars: Best picture is best bellwether

2009-02-22T18:08:00.003+05:00

Movie people care about the Oscars in part because they understand that when you vote for a best picture candidate, you are voting for more than an individual film. Whether you acknowledge it or not, you are voting for the philosophy of filmmaking, the attitude toward cinema, your particular choice represents. In this day of the disappearing dollar, attitudes that don't earn the respect of Hollywood might be facing the dustbin of history. Though one of the oldest clichés of moviemaking is, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union," sending a message is exactly what voters end up doing.

***

Whichever of the five nominated films walks away with the academy's top prize tonight helps Hollywood gauge which way the biz blows.

By Kenneth Turan / Los Angeles Times film critic

Tonight's Oscar ceremony will be the 81st in the award's venerable history, and like people who've reached an advanced age, the institution has had a hard time getting respect in a contemporary culture that cares mightily about being up to the minute and ahead of the curve.

It's difficult to read anything about the Oscars these days without coming across attitudes that are either blasé or outright dismissive. The awards are derided as meaningless and out of touch, too cut off from the films that real moviegoers (code for those 25 and under) are determined to see. Who could possibly care enough, cynics carp, to so much as turn on the TV and watch this antediluvian event strut its hours upon the stage.

Aside from my house, where the Oscars remain must-see programming, the one place where the Academy Awards continue to mean a great deal is within the movie business. In fact, the prizes, especially the one for best picture, seem to mean more this year than ever.

I say that because it's been another bitter awards, with partisans of the five contenders eager to bad-mouth whomever they saw as competition. When Entertainment Weekly wrote about the race in the Feb. 13 issue, the cover line got right to the point: "Battle For Oscar: Now It's Getting Ugly."

Movie people care about the Oscars in part because they understand that when you vote for a best picture candidate, you are voting for more than an individual film. Whether you acknowledge it or not, you are voting for the philosophy of filmmaking, the attitude toward cinema, your particular choice represents. In this day of the disappearing dollar, attitudes that don't earn the respect of Hollywood might be facing the dustbin of history. Though one of the oldest clichés of moviemaking is, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union," sending a message is exactly what voters end up doing.

I wanted to examine the five best picture candidates from that point of view. Rather than focusing exclusively on personal favorites or trying to predict which nominee might win, I wanted to analyze what it would say about Hollywood values if a particular film came out on top. Here's what I came up with:

'The Reader'

Despite its considerable pedigree, including producing credits for departed filmmakers Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella, this "We're not a Holocaust drama" drama is widely perceived as being the fifth film on the list.

Unlikely though it is, a victory for "The Reader" would be a sign of respect for Pollack and Minghella (both gentlemen passed away in 2008). It would also be a tribute to the persuasive power of Harvey Weinstein, who knows, as few people do, where the buttons are in the academy and how to push them. And finally, it would be a sign that touching on the Holocaust, however tangentially, is still a way into the hearts and minds of academy voters. The old ways die hard, especially in Hollywood.

'Milk'

I was surprised and not surprised when this film made the final five. Sean Penn's remarkable performance aside, "Milk" couldn't be more earnest and conventional. This is not necessarily a bad thing with the academy, but with other, equally conventional films such as "Defiance" falling by the wayside, "Milk" must be benefiting from the power of other factors. And it is.

For one thing, people who were passionately opposed to Proposition 8 and who allow political concerns to influence their votes will feel they are sending a message with this choice. The other factor in "Milk's" favor, frankly, is guilt and the desire to make amends. Actors often get their Oscars years after the film they should have won for, and regret at unjustly bypassing "Brokeback Mountain" three years ago may lead to "buyers' remorse" votes for this film.

'Frost/Nixon'

If there are two things the business appreciates it's impeccable professionalism and longevity, and this film by Ron Howard -- who's remained well liked during his half century on center stage -- epitomizes both qualities.

Working with longtime producing partner Brian Grazer, Howard not only expertly coordinated the work of actors Frank Langella and Michael Sheen, screenwriter Peter Morgan and cinematographer Salvatore Totino, he produced the best classic Hollywood effort to make it into the final five. If he didn't already have a best picture winner in "A Beautiful Mind," this film would have a stronger shot at victory.

'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'

My reader mail on this film has been divided right down the middle, with viewers either transported to higher realms or bored to tears. But like it or loathe it, "Button" presents that rare situation where what it stands for is more valuable than what it is.

"Button" is that almost extinct species, the major studio art film, a piece of cinema where enormous sums of money were spent and the power of the Hollywood machine placed behind a film that was not "Pirates of the Caribbean" or "Harry Potter." To toilers in the studio vineyards who don't want to feel doomed to spending their entire careers making films for people not mature enough to vote, casting your ballot for "Benjamin Button" means casting a ballot for hope and against despair.

'Slumdog Millionaire'

Which is where the favorite, "Slumdog Millionaire," comes in. For though it was not a studio product and nearly didn't get theatrical distribution at all, a vote for this film is really standing up for the best of mass-audience moviemaking, for the notion that cinema with wide appeal can be smartly made as well as popular. It's also a vote for strengthening Hollywood's connection to the most promising trend of the past decades -- the rise of the independent film world that produced director Danny Boyle.

Though its appearance was inevitable, I've been astonished at some of the anti-"Slumdog" backlash, by observers who seem to regret that the film isn't a somber position paper from Human Rights Watch. Demanding that poor people be miserable and rent their garments on screen is as patronizing an attitude in its own way as Samuel Goldwyn's insistence that the sets for his 1937 film "Dead End" be free of trash. "There won't be any dirty slums," biographer Scott Berg reports the mogul declared. "Not in my picture!"

Given that it's basically a delirious fantasy, what's frankly surprising about "Slumdog Millionaire" is how much realism there is in it, not how little. It's an old-fashioned movie, for heaven's sake, a hugely accomplished piece of entertainment that delights audiences across the widest possible spectrum, which is exactly what traditional Hollywood so often lusts for and fails to achieve. If academy members don't recognize and reward that kind of success, there are going to be a lot fewer of them to enjoy in the future.

kenneth.turan@latimes.com

Original link

How to get an Oscar nomination? Here's the science behind it

2009-02-21T00:46:00.003+05:00

By LiveScience.com

Movie star Cate Blanchett’s recent stirring performances may not have been the only reason she got two Oscar nods this week.

Academy Award nominations tend to go to performers in dramas, who are female, who have been nominated in the past and who command a high rank in the movie-credit pecking order, a new study shows.

Sociologists Nicole Esparza of Harvard University and Gabriel Rossman of the University of California, Los Angeles, used records from the Internet Movie Database for every Oscar-eligible film made between the founding of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in 1927 and 2005 to see what conditions might improve a performer's chances of getting a nod.

"A performer's odds of being nominated are largely set before the cameras even start rolling, back when the script was bought, the director was signed and the film was cast," Esparza said. "It's surprising how many variables other than a performer's talent play a role in determining who gets nominated."

The researchers found that the largest predictor of garnering a nomination was to leave the audience in tears instead of in stitches: Actors were nine times more likely to receive a nomination for a dramatic performance than a non-dramatic one.

"In the entertainment industry, there's long been a sense that the nomination process prefers dramas, but I don't think anybody is aware of the magnitude of the effect," Rossman said.

The second strongest predictor in the study, the number of films screened that year, may seem fairly obvious.

"It's better to be nominated in a year when fewer films were screened, because there's less competition come awards time," Rossman said.

Actresses were more than twice as likely to be nominated as actors for any given performance, the findings showed, making being female the third biggest predictor.

"At least in this case, being underrepresented on the job works in women's favor," Esparza said. "Because there are fewer female than male performers in films, and both are eligible for the same number of awards, actresses stand a better chance of being nominated than actors. It's a simple matter of arithmetic, but as far as I know, nobody has ever raised the point."

Actors and actresses were also more likely to receive a nomination if they had a history of being named at the top of the credits, had been nominated for an Oscar before or if they appeared with previously nominated writers and directors.

Blanchett, who received a best actress nomination for the sequel, "Elizabeth: The Golden Age", and a supporting actress nod for "I'm Not There," certainly has many of these factors working in her favor. Nominations for the 80th Academy Awards ceremony were announced Monday morning.

(This article can be found at this link on LiveScience.com)

The very worst in film

2009-02-17T20:21:00.002+05:00

It wasn’t just the American economy that took a disastrous downturn in 2008 — so did the quality of Hollywood movie-making. Of the 573 films released last year a record 75 rated forum discussions on the official RAZZIE® Awards web site.

This plethora of putrid motion pictures proved a double-edged sword — It meant Golden Raspberry Award voters had plenty to choose from — but it also made their task of culling the crud down to a mere five contenders each in nine categories berry complicated.

The eventual “winners” will be unveiled in intentionally tacky ceremonies set for the now traditional Oscar® eve, Saturday night February 21, 2009 at the Barnsdall Gallery Theatre in Hollywood.

Click here for the full list of Razzies nominations:

Parveen Babi: A star is dead

2009-02-15T16:06:00.001+05:00

When police broke into her Juhu home in January they discovered something altogether very different: the rotting corpse of a bloated, gangrene-infected 55-year-old recluse. Ali Rasheed looks back at enigmatic seventies star Parveen Babi, one of the most beautiful actresses to ever have graced Bollywood cinema

Parveen Babi won her first screen role when she was still a student at Ahmedabad University, in an unremarkable film called Charitra (B R Ishara, 1973). The film bombed at the box-office, but Babi’s screen presence did not go unnoticed. Coming from the old royal family of Junagadh, her unconventional looks and aristocratic poise caught the attention of both audiences and producers.

Bollywood saw in Parveen Babi the raw materials that could be transformed into a marketable product. Producers offered her a certain type of role, manipulated media coverage to their advantage, and successfully constructed out of her looks, glamour, and charisma a star image that could be bought and sold at will.

Stars, according to film theory, are found in both the roles they play in films and the media exposure they receive as a consequence, which in turn contributes to the meaning they bring to their next role.

Within the next few years, a string of films were constructing and cashing in on Parveen Babi’s star image. One film in particular presented what would arguably become her most remembered role. The 70s blockbuster Deewar (Yash Chopra) showed Babi lying in bed with the then emerging superstar Amitabh Bachchan, smoking a post-coital cigarette. In a country where female smokers and sex before marriage are still considered taboo the image sent shock waves down its conservative sensibilities.

But there was also an unmistakable fascination with what Parveen Babi was representing. Babi’s co-star Amitabh Bachchan noted: “I did the maximum number of films with Parveen after Jaya. The audience liked us as a pair. She brought in a new, bohemian kind of leading lady to the screen.”

Parveen Babi clearly destabilised established notions about respectable femininity in conservative India. Yet many of her films were phenomenally successful. Babi’s star image thus invites many different meanings, and its study could well lead to a broader exploration of the culture in which it circulated.

It is important that bold and bohemian as Parveen Babi was, she never transgressed the category of femininity itself. For most part, she allowed herself to be displayed as an object of desire for the voyeuristic gaze of a largely male audience. She was certainly different, but not threatening to established patriarchal norms in mainstream cinema. In contrast, Babi’s fellow contemporary Zeenat Aman habitually transgressed gender boundaries in films such as Don (Chandra Barot, 1978).

Star images are also said to embody the fantasies, desires and myths often otherwise repressed in ordinary people.

Parveen Babi may have allowed male audiences to temporarily suspend traditional values, and to project their secret desires onto the bold, sexually-liberated woman she was representing. By the same token, female audiences could identify with her image as what they really wanted to be.

We may never fully understand our fascination with star images. Indeed we may be reluctant to, for the deeper we delve into the voyeuristic pleasure or identification processes at work, the closer we are to uncovering the darker side to our own selves.

In Deewar, Parveen Babi is killed off by the bad guys once she has fulfilled her function as the object of desire. This can be read as the reflection of an unconscious and, should I say, patriarchal desire and willingness to enjoy the forbidden fruit, as long as we can annihilate it afterwards and, by definition, our own guilt. In real life too it appears that the Bollywood that adored Babi at the height of her fame and beauty, left her to die on her own.

Parveen Babi acted in more than 50 films, including Amar Akbar Anthony, Kalia, and Khuddar. She quit films in the 1980s to experiment with alternative philosophies and lifestyles, in India and overseas. In the 90s she returned home, but became a recluse, rarely venturing out of the house. Some people speculated that she also suffered from schizophrenia.

Amitabh Bachchan in an interview after her death sounded almost apologetic: “The nature of her illness was such that she was terrified of people. We felt by associating ourselves with her we were causing her more grief.”

Despite her tragic end, Parveen Babi will go down in history as a cultural icon and someone who paved the way for a new generation of stars like Aishwarya Rai. Rai was recently featured on the cover of Time, three decades after Babi enjoyed the same privilege.

(This article was published in The Evening Weekly on 7 March 2005)

Max Payne

2009-02-13T15:58:00.002+05:00

Mark Wahlberg as Max Payne

What a waste of exquisite photography (by Jonathan Sela) and art direction work (by Daniel T. Dorrance).

It is obvious that someone truly believed in the project and was ready to pour all that finance into the technical brilliance of the film (Dan Zimmerman's film editing, sound and visual effects were superb, too).

Mark Wahlberg was not as bad as some say. Perhaps he put up that stone-faced poise because there is no other choice being in this film!

The former Calvin Klein underwear model, also known earlier as Marky Mark, is a good actor and was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Martin Scorsese's Best Film Oscar winning The Departed in 2006.

Marky will next be seen in The Lovely Bones, based on the book by Alice Sebold and directed by none other than Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson.

Ultimately I think it is a failure of both director John Moore and the screenplay by Beau Thorne which made Max Payne one of the worst films of last year.

FILM REVIEW BY HILATH

Max Payne on IMDB.com

“Cuckoo’s Nest” revisited

2009-02-12T23:42:00.002+05:00

30 years since it came out One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest has lost none of its punch, says Sharif Ali:

“Come on, which one of you nuts has got any guts?” says Jack Nicholson to the patients of the insane asylum when he insists on watching the baseball World Series and the head nurse asks for a show of hands for those in favour of it.

This is one of the many memorable lines of One flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, only the second movie in Oscar history to sweep the top five awards (Best Film, Director -- Milos Forman, Actor -- Jack Nicholson, Actress – Louise Fletcher and Screenplay adapted by Bo Goldman and Laurence Hauben from Ken Kessey’s best-selling 1962 novel).

The film is about a rape convict in jail (Nicholson as Randall McMurphy) who fakes insanity and gets transferred to a mental institution where he inspires the inmates to stand up to the firm head nurse and to explore their horizons.

One Flew shot Nicholson to glory. He did turn in notable performances before in Easy Rider (1969) and Five Easy Pieces (1970) but his role in One Flew as cocky misfit McMurphy confirmed his leading man status in Hollywood then.

The film has a great ensemble cast including a very young, shy and carefree Danny de Vito as Martini, a childish and stuttering Brad Dourif as Billy Bibbit and a host of diverse characters.

Although Nicholson’s performance won the larger share of the praise, Louise Fletcher’s restrained performance opposite him as the no-nonsense, stand-by-the-rules nurse Rachel is remarkable. She fully embodies the character of a stern head who always stands in the way of any attempt by the inmates to cross the line.

Forman does not portray her as a villain though. We all know she is just doing her job and that she cares for the inmates.

The casting of the film is its biggest strength. "I think it was the film people had been waiting for from Jack Nicholson," says producer Michael Douglas. "It fits classically into his non-conformist image." Director Milos Forman specifically praises Louise Fletcher. "She is dangerous," Forman says of the character, "because she really believes in what she is doing."

The movie is essentially a drama but Forman incorporates a great deal of film noir. It has a hopeless protagonist trying to get the inmates under his wings, a femme fatale who determines the run of events, a bleak atmosphere and some highly influential supporting characters.

It also has many amusing moments. Nicholson takes the inmates on a fishing trip, and when questioned by a guard about what they were doing, he introduces all the patients as doctors. A few moments before that a woman asks them whether they are crazy and de Vito nods with a smile.

In fact the movie is full of fine moments. In one scene where all the inmates are gathered around for consultation with the head nurse, a cigarette drops at the feet of one. He starts yelling and hops out of the frame. The focus then is on Nicholson and another patient who argues with the nurse for denying him cigarettes and Nicholson tries to calm him down. While this argument takes place the sound of the previous patient is also heard in the background. Forman effectively uses sound here to build dramatic intensity.

In another scene Nicholson gathers everyone in front of a blank TV screen and relays a commentary on a baseball World Series game after the nurse denies the right to watch it.

The film’s cinematography and art direction help create a bleak atmosphere. The scenes look dreary in both indoors and outdoors. Inside the asylum the walls are white and brown, and the inmates all wear dull greyish robes. It conveys their monotonous lives having to go through the same procedures every day. Besides the four dimensional framing gives a sense of confinement about these characters who are trapped in their own little worlds.

It is rather impossible not to associate the film with the political climate of the time. It was a time of huge failures in the American system. Vietnam war, the only war America lost in its history, just ended and the Watergate scandal had forced President Nixon to resign. The inmates may be representing the American society who were engaged in their own fight for moral freedom.

Forman might have also intended to make a parody of the Cold War through the conflicts between Nicholson and Fletcher. Fletcher is the intolerant, socialist authority that was Russia while Nicholson is the free-spirited man fighting for individual rights and freedom that was America. After all Forman was a victim of Cold War when he had to flee to the States after the Soviet crackdown on his native Czechoslovakia. Maybe that was his message: Eastern Europe’s fight for independence from Russia.

In short One Flew, which won the 20th spot in the American Film Institute’s top 100 films of all time, is a deeply humanistic and intense portrayal of an individual’s rise against authority. One critic puts it nicely: “The awe-inspiring performances by Jack Nicholson and the ward patients remind viewers that freedom is worth the risk of rebellion.”

(This article was published in The Evening Weekly on 28 March 2005)

Farhan Akhtar: the quiet Indian

2009-02-11T23:30:00.001+05:00

Poster of "Lakshya"; director Farhan Akhtar (inset top right)

By Hilath Rasheed

After watching the intensely engaging drama of three friends in his debut film “Dil Chahta Hai”, which I have to say is now my all-time favorite number one Hindi film of all time for the right reasons, I was naturally looking forward to Farhan Akhtar’s next film.

Though I was not fortunate to catch it on the big screen because I was in Male at the time of its release, surprisingly I got hold of an original DVD of “Lakshya” quite soon after its big screen release. But later when I came to think of it, it was no surprise at all that the DVD came out so soon because I found out that “Lakshya” was quite unpopular among even hardcore Bollywood fans (like a few of my friends who saw it on the silver screen in India) and the audiences in India itself. Needless to say, the producers must have released the DVD because they might have wanted to minimize losses before the buzz about “Lakshya” died.

The only positive review I read about “Lakshya” was in British Film Institute’s “Sight and Sound” magazine, a monthly journal which includes film analysis and film reviews written by professors and academics who actually write film theory and various university books about film! In “Sight and Sound” the film reviewer had stated that “Lakshya” was among his top three Hindi war movies; the others were “Border” and “Haqeeqat.”

It was only after seeing the film did I come to realize why only a few liked “Lakshya.” It was not Akhtar’s fault of course. Audiences and his fans had been wanting another “Dil Chahta Hai” and “Lakshya” simply was something altogether different.

After watching Indian-born but America-based director M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film “The Village” (which I am going to talk about in a later issue), I almost fell sympathy for Shyamalan because like Akhtar’s fans (and his critics), almost everyone was wanting another Shymalan “signature”, a film with a supernatural twist at its climax, and when Shyamalan did “something out of character,” both his fans and critics trashed what could be Shyamalan’s best film to date.

It is natural that a director gets a hardcore almost cult-like fan base because he has developed a certain style of filmmaking which his or her fans and critics expect from him. For instance, fans and critics are drawn to David Lynch because of his particular type of mind-boggling films like “Mulholland Drive” and “Twin Peaks.”

While this holds true for many audiences, personally I prefer films which are different in its own but for the right reasons and which can engage me. Perhaps, it was due to this discerning and discriminating nature of mine that I came to appreciate the masterpiece that is “Lakshya.”

It is difficult and not even fair to compare “Dil Chahta Hai” and “Lakshya” because both films are too different to be compared, in subject matter as well. However, on a technical and film-making level, “Lakshya” surpasses any Hindi film I have so far watched.

Hrithik Roshan’s excellent performance as an idling youth transformed into responsibility-bearing maturity is commendable while Preity Zinta’s understated performance matches and complements his performance. (Preity Zinta’s underrated performance in “Dil Chahta Hai” and Madhuri Dixit’s quiet performance in “Dil To Pagal Hai” remains my favorite female performances in a Hindi film to date).

But while much has been harped on Roshan’s transformation, which seems to be of a much more concern for audiences and critics who are concerned only with story or narrative-driven films, for me this seems dwarfed in comparison to the almost religious experience one is treated to in Christopher Ropp’s excellently cinematographed sparse, harsh landscapes that is Kargil, the battleground between Indian and Pakistan troops.

And herein lies my problem in how to review the film; I originally intended to write a review of the film but for once, I do not have the adequate vocabulary to describe what I felt after watching “Lakshya.”

“But perhaps readers might be more interested in checking out ‘Lakshya’ because you cannot quantify or describe in words how engaging the film was to you,” one of my friends told me in encouragement, which is why I have settled down to commenting about Akhtar and “Lakshya” rather than reviewing the film.

Like Ridley Scott’s “Black Hawk Down,” watching “Lakshya” is almost a spiritual experience, not to mention that “Lakshya” has war scenes that could almost rival “Black Hawk Down” and that are almost as engaging as Scott’s Somalia drama.

There is a sense of desolate and haunting mood and atmosphere evoked in my mind much like the way when I was watching “The English Patient.” Which is why I suggested, to my friends who wanted to watch the film, to make it a personal and private viewing. Indeed, like “The English Patient,” “Lakshya” seems to evoke the right mood only when you watch alone, without any company to distract you. And the poignancy you feel also seems to be something that you would like to enjoy privately rather than sharing with anyone else. Which is quite a paradox when you come to think of it; I still cannot grasp why a cinematic film like “Lakshya”, which is obviously intended for the big screen with its sprawling landscapes, evokes so much thought when I watch it alone, in a darkened room.

Much has been debated about the relevance of songs in Hindi films but in “Lakshya,” the songs are catchy and could have a life of their own. In fact, Roshan’s “Main Esa Kyun” and his duet with Zinta, “Agar Main Kahoon,” are quite a visual-fest; the former demonstrating Roshan’s slippery-as-a-snake (not in the negative sense) dance steps with an “I-Robot” like troupe, and the latter, fun-driven and playful.

Though it is hard to find similarities between “Dil Chahta Hai”, which was a poignant yet bubbly film about friendships and love, and “Lakshya” which is grandeur and epic in scale, some of Akhtar’s trademark signatures are still obvious in “Lakshya.” In addition to great visuals and imagery, Akthar’s films are sparse in dialogue, yet the lines delivered are punchy and funny at the same time. It is quite a welcome to watch a film where characters talk quietly rather than the loud rattling we hear in most Bollywood films.

And like “Dil Chahta Hai,” in “Lakshya” what is left unsaid seems to give more dimension to characters, their relationships and the overall narrative of the film. It also serves to increase the poignancy of the story and instills in the viewer a sense of sadness, loneliness and longing as seen in the quiet tension when Zinta, who after college has become a news anchor, are at a loss for words when she finally meets Roshan who has become a soldier stationed at Kargil. The musical and poetic quality of the film is at its most pronounced here, especially in the scene where a song quietly plays in the background unobtrusively while Zinta and Roshan sits quietly looking at each other without any spoken words and halfway through, the barracks are bombed and they are seen together hand-in-hand running for safety, with the song still playing in the background along with the sounds of the loud explosions.

(This article was published in The Evening Weekly on 31 January 2005)

Swades: three-hour brain drain

2009-02-08T18:32:00.001+05:00

Although certain critics and non-resident Indians may have loved it, Swades is predictable, preachy, and pretentious, argues Ali Rasheed:

Two months before the release of his latest film Swades, Ashutosh Gowariker was almost dismissive about its central message.

“I have nothing against people who go abroad to study and earn money” the director, whose Lagaan was nominated for an Oscar, told IndiaFM. “But what I am trying to say is that somewhere we need to pause and think about the country too.”

His film is anything but coy about its subject matter. Overtly preachy and sentimental about the issue of India’s brain drain, the film reeks of its own self-importance in everything from the tagline “we the people” in the poster to endless dialogues reinforcing its position.

Mohan (Shah Rukh Khan), a scientist working at NASA, takes time off to return to India to make up to his neglected foster-mum Kaveriamma (Kishori Ballal). He discovers her in the remote village of Charanpur, where she has made a home with a single, young teacher Gita (Gayatri Joshi) and her brother Chikku (Master Smith Seth). Predictably, Mohan reconciles with Kaveriamma, falls in love with Gita, builds a hydro-electrical power system for Charanpur, and then leaves for the US amidst much tears, mostly his own. But the pukar or call of the village and its inhabitants is more than a match for the penthouse lifestyle he has found in the West, and he soon returns to India, this time for good.

Clearly calculated to appeal to the nationalistic tug in the hearts of resident as well as non-resident Indians, an important market for Bollywood films, the narrative, nevertheless, abounds in gaps and fissures. For instance, quite why a country, which has so many engineers and scientists, needs to re-import a NASA scientist to build an HEP system is never made clear.

Gowariker also takes liberties with location. Charanpur, the fictional village of the story is supposed to be in Uttar Pradesh, a state consisting of plains, hills, mountains, and valleys, and peopled by a wide mix of ethnic groups. But the film was actually shot in Bahai, between Maharashtra and Panchgani, not too far away from Bombay.

“Gowariker’s village -- given its home-architecture, absence of law and order chaos, unsure accents --doesn’t seem to belong to UP to me at least,” an internet poster noted.

For whatever reason, Gowariker prefers to forgo the rich, dramatic physical and ethnic possibilities of Uttar Pradesh to construct a mundane village inhabited by stereotypical country bumpkins, few of who are anything more than caricatures.

These rural simpletons enable the film to draw cheap laughs and cheap tears at will. At one point, Mohan takes journey via a train and sailing boat to collect rent off a farming family living some way off. While cinematographer Mahesh Aney’s work here is breathtaking, it never rises above the picture-postcard level. Moreover, the poverty-stricken farming family is represented as little more than objects of pity designed to squeeze a few tears out of the hero’s eyes, and a few rupees out of his wallet.

As Mohan travels through India, the audience should believe that he is slowly falling in love with the country itself. But the passing images and the star’s performance fail to establish any meaningful connection, and Gowariker’s central premise remains unrealised, at least cinematically.

Instead, we see Khan struggling to rise above the particular brand of his star-persona manufactured with director Karan Johar in such films as Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. The same distanced, tongue-in-cheek, self-parodying performance surfaces occasionally, especially in the early sequences involving a visit by Gita’s prospective in-laws. Not surprisingly, the performances of the other actors, notably newcomer Gayatri Joshi, easily outshine the ageing superstar’s tired tactics.

Gowariker primarily relies on dialogues to state and restate his nationalistic agenda, as different characters take turns to preach it. The film occasionally even dips into clichéd Bollywood dialogues. When Gita asks Mohan to explain why he thinks she’s in love with him he says: “Your eyes tell me so.” Hindi films have time and again expounded the myth that when a woman says “no” she really means “yes”, an ideology that has also been used to legitimate rape and sexual harassment of women.

This seems out of place for a film, which in certain scenes appears to be trying to impart progressive social messages, including gender equality. “I was keen to make a film that had a message,” Gowariker told rediff.com. “Mohan is confronted with several social ailments: caste system, illiteracy, child labour.”

But the film does not really explore these issues; they are merely touched on in the dialogues. The issues seem to have been used to lend an air of importance to the film, rather than to genuinely critique convention.

A R Rahman’s music and Javed Akhthar’s lyrics are also subservient to the conveying of Gowriker’s ideology. The sentimental song “Yeh jo desh hai tera” a fine example of this, states in the most mundane and verbose way possible what the film has failed to convey cinematically: that the bond between the protagonist and his country outweighs everything else.

A large segment of Indian audiences, the most discerning in the world, has found Swades lacking in entertainment value. An internet poster summed the film up thus: “The story of Swades would’ve been ideal for a documentary, but for a feature film with a running time of 3 hour plus and starring the country’s biggest star, it just doesn’t work.”

Indeed the hydro-electrical power “success-story” in the film does seem an ideal pitch for an Azimuths documentary.

Even supposedly more upmarket, intelligent audiences are unlikely to take kindly to the film. One of the evils of filmmaking is to undermine the intelligence of its audience; by repeatedly preaching morality to them like a schoolmarm, Gowariker’s film may well end up alienating all sections of cinemagoers.

I watched the film at a Bombay multiplex only days after it was released (I was able to get tickets) and, to my surprise, found a few empty seats in the cinema. As the film played on the big screen and in Dolby Digital sound, the people sitting next to me spent most of the three hours sending text messages on their mobiles and chatting.

The only time they showed any enthusiasm was during the film-within-a-film sequence, when an extract of Nasir Hussain’s 70s cult classic Yaadon Ki Baraat came up.

(This article was published in The Evening Weekly on 17 January 2005)

Batman: the Dark Knight begins?

2009-02-07T19:33:00.001+05:00

This summer director Christopher Nolan & writer David S. Goyer bring us their version of the Dark Knight. Is a prequel really the answer to the Bat franchise, asks Ibrahim Hussain Shihab:

I wish I could say I was a true Batman fan from the beginning but I can’t. I had read comics off and on when I was in my pre-teens, teens, early twenties… you get the picture, BUT I was never truly a fan. Don’t get me wrong, I was, and still am, a fan of the first two Batman films by Tim Burton. I mean, let me put it to you this way, when a 5’9” Michael Keaton, wearing platforms and a rubber suit said “I’m Batman” I believed him, Tim Burton made me believe.

Following up to the first “Batman” (1989), Tim Burton and the soon-to-be-released film in general were dissed by a lot of fans because they didn’t believe Keaton had the stature to pull it off but the both of them pulled it off, with no lesser a contribution, in terms of the musical score, from Danny Elfman. They got Gotham. It was dark alleys, fog, crime around every corner and dirty cops lining their pockets with mob money. It was dank, depressing and devoid of colour except for that partly yellow logo on Batman’s chest.

But they didn’t really nail down Batman -- I mean he did have the angst, he did brood but he also slept upside down and was a wee bit chattier then I would eventually know him to be. And if you think I am nitpicking, you may be right but this one will be the kicker -- he shot people and the real Batman… well we’ll get to that later.

Batman returned in “Batman Returns” (1992) and I have to say, I loved him more. I could not put my finger on why most of my friends didn’t like “Batman Returns” more than “Batman”, but their tastes aside, “Returns” would truly be the defining moment on my path to true Batfandom. The story, the characters and the themes were darker and Batman was more relentless yet also forgiving at the same time; that is, he did not kill. On the down side, ok I DO realise why some of my friends hated it, the plot had a few *coughs* holes and, while I admit Keaton was at his best in this film as the title character, Bats was still chatty -- still not really Batman.

Then came the forgettable “Batman Forever” (1995) and the regrettable “Batman & Robin” (1997), which should have been titled “Batman: How to kill a franchise”. I was mortified and considering I had only Tim Burton’s Batman for comparison. (Words don’t really fail me but I’d like to think of myself as a better man so I won’t go there).

At this point let me give you an inkling of how royally pissed I was with “Batman: How to kill a franchise”; its writer (Akiva “never leave the cave without it” Goldsman received an Oscar for “A Beautiful Mind” in 2001) -- if Batman was gunning for Goldsman, I’d provide Bats with a map and a GPS locator beacon AND mark the map with a huge X on where Goldsman was located. For further impact please note the following: I LOVE good writers and I would admit that there’s some good writing in “Mind”. “Phone Booth” (2002) and “Tigerland” (2000) are not bad films and I’d think twice about doing the same to Joel Schumacher but I’d still do it to the director as well.

All hope for a good comic book movie, much less a good Batman, seemed lost. Then this little movie called “Blade” (1998) came out and got me to thinking otherwise. In the meantime, due to an honest to God university assignment, I chanced upon Batman again, but this time in the form of the purest comic book incarnation and I defected to the dark side.

While walking down a dark alley on their way home from the theatre, little Bruce Wayne sees his parents gunned down by a thief. He survives and blames himself, it was his idea to see the movie, and it was at his suggestion that his mother wore the pearls which was seemingly the target of the attack. As he stands at their graves, he swears that he will do everything in his power to prevent this from happening again. He’s rich, he has the means and he vows to acquire the skills to fulfil his promise. He travels the world, building himself physically and mentally and when he comes back to Gotham he will come full circle -- because all his travels and all his skills are just tools. It is a creature of the night that will define him, in his weakest hour, in Gotham.

Here is a man driven by the death of his parents, a death he blames himself for, to right the injustices of the world, to fight crime and to bring criminals to justice. He doesn’t use guns, but he uses other “weapons” in his arsenal to extremely good effect AND he does not kill, although sometimes those he goes after would have wished death rather than the Dark Knight. Oh and about being chatty -- he hardly ever speaks, the dude has a monopoly on monosyllables and that too when he absolutely has to.

Switching back to “reality”: in 2002 another little film called “Blade II” caught my attention and I remember thinking “this is how Batman should be filmed”. Fast-forward a few months and I’d have to view “Memento” (2000) in a class screening and as I was watching, I revelled in the pure noir of the film, I mean Chris Nolan handles darkness like David Lynch handles weirdness.

I know some of you think you see where I’m going with this but if you expect me to come away applauding, saying this is the Batman I want to see you’d be wrong. “Blade Trinity” was a travesty and Nolan is so adapt at filming morally grey characters that if he trips up, I’d be twice disappointed.

Comic’s greats the likes of Dennis O’Neal, Jeph Leob and most significantly Frank Miller have defined and moulded this Bob Kane creation to a knife’s edge. You touch this thing the wrong way…

Batman has never been done true to his purest incarnation and so far the best thing about this has been that an origins story has never been attempted; I’m dreading “Batman Begins” while at the same time giddy as a comic book freak with anticipation.

(This article was published in The Evening Weekly on 21 March 2005)

The Summer of Trek?

2009-02-04T15:17:00.002+05:00

After watching the Super Bowl trailer for some of the "2009 summer movies" I'd have to say, based on 30 seconds of flash cuts mind you, that "Star Trek" might be the one to beat.

Trailer for the rebooted/reimagine "Star Trek" - courtesy of Trailer Addict

Why?

Because, I thought it had a decent enough story, even in the 30 seconds, compared to the other trailers AND it's being put together by a team that has a cult following... granted that the cult following is mainly based around their TV work (Just in case you've been living under a rock and haven't heard, I'm talking about team Abrams/Orci/Kurtzman who brought us "Alias", "Fringe" and "Mission: Impossible III" just to name a few)!

"Star Trek" stars Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Eric Bana, Winona Ryder, John Cho, Zoe Saldana, Anton Yelchin and, among others, Leonard Nimoy

Most "Star Trek" fans have been itching to see this (I assume) since this was originally scheduled for December 2008 and has been delayed a tad... AND also since it is set to change (for the best/worse) established Trek lore in ways that... well we'll have to wait and see won't we?

Trailer for "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" - courtesy of Trailer Addict

Apparently "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" was the highest rated amongst the Super Bowl trailers. I must say, that I wasn't that impressed with the first (the Michael Bay version not the animated) Transformers movie - it was all right, wasn't blown away. And I'm not all that impressed with the trailer for Revenge of the Fallen either.

Interestingly though, both Transformer movies were also written by Orci and Kurtzman!

And is it just me or does the trailer for "G.I Joe: The Rise of Cobra" look a tad like a trailer for a bad video game inspired movie?!!?!?

Trailer for "UP" - courtesy of Trailer Addict

Aaand, although the "Monster vs. Aliens" trailer was rated above "Up" I'd have to say that the latter seems to be a better bet in terms of striking the right humour chord...

BUT who am I kidding... judging a movie by a 30 to 45 second trailer is probably worse than judging a book by its cover... So we'll have to see how good/bad the movies are when they're out.

What's the point of this post you ask... I dunno... I kinda lost my train of thought there...

For those who will be near a decent cinema during the summer - have fun at the movies!

I'll be swimming in the beautiful lagoons of the Maldives banging my head against a coral reef!!

What's length got to do with it?

2009-02-02T14:51:00.002+05:00

Maldives' most successful filmmaker Fathimath Nahula,
director of Kalaayaa Nulaa, Zuleikha and Yoosuf

by Hilath Rasheed

A recent Dhivehi film to hit the Maldives’ screen was three and a half hours long. Moviegoers who viewed it claimed that the events portrayed did not justify the movie’s lengthy running time.

There were unnecessary scenes that the director could have cut, in order to hold on to viewers’ interest, streamline the movie, and not lose its tone and mood. The director’s lame excuse for the movie’s lengthiness: give the audience "value for money".

The movie was like those first-time essays that we write in school. Too much diversion from the topic. Too much unnecessary information. Of course, it then served our objectives; make our essays as lengthy as possible, regardless of what we wrote, our purpose being to deceive our teachers, and get good marks from a half-hearted effort.

But most students now know that teachers are intelligent, and that they are not to be deceived. Likewise, film producers and directors should know that nowadays, there actually is an intellectual and intelligent audience out there. (Blame it on awareness, if you like). And these intelligent and critical movie viewers do not like to be duped. They are not concerned with the length of the movies, but by the quality of them. Remember, all our lives, we have been asked to believe that "quality matters, not quantity"? Similarly, in the case of movies, it is the quality of the movie that matters, not its running time.

Of course, Titanic was an exception. It is a good example of a lengthy movie that actually delivers. Even at three and a quarter hours, the audience held onto the very end. Until the final blissful dream Rose had of a reunion with Jack on the grand staircase of Titanic. USA Today hailed: "Titanic is the only long movie in recent history that you can actually sail through with minimum wrist watch checks."

The reason? The movie had scenes that were in harmony with themselves, despite Titanic’s cheesy (tin-eared?) dialogue.

A segment of the intelligent audience admitted that the Hindi film Khamoshi was something unique, but only in contrast to the hundreds of mainstream, commercial Hindi movies that hit the regional and international market each year. While this was so, they also admitted that one reason why Khamoshi—critically acclaimed by Indian standards—failed to create a stir among audiences, was its unnecessary length that could not actually justify its plot. The beginning and end of the movie was gripping, but the body lacked evidence of intelligent movie-making. Filmgoers drowsed off towards the middle of the movie, and only woke up to see the ending.

A movie’s success depends not on its length, but by the creativity and wits of the director in holding onto viewers’ interest and ending the movie on the same tone it began, without losing track of the movie’s moods. It is like writing an essay without diverting from the topic.

Serious moviegoers likewise could not appreciate Khamoshi director Sanjay Leela Bansali’s most recent effort Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam; those who watched it would know that only the latter half of the movie after the ‘interval’ was what really mattered. Salman Khan’s fussy attempts at comedy, before the ‘interval’, was purely intimidating, if not irritating. It may have satisfied the cravings of those die-hards fans of his whose only reason to buy a 25 Rufiya ticket was to see Salman Khan, not the movie. Those who went to see the movie, and not Salman Khan, left the cinema, regretting on the better consumer choices they could have made with 25 Rufiyas.

Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace was a recent Hollywood version of a movie gone awry. Except for its gripping pod-racing scenes, the movie was completely off the track in the middle. Some viewers claimed that immediately after the Ben Hur-like pod-racing scene, they drowsed off towards the lengthy, eventless period where the Jedis debated on whether to take on Anakin Skywalker for Jedi training. The sleeping audience was jerked back to their feet only towards the climactic multiple-battle end.

The Phantom Menace was two and a half hours long—long by Hollywood standards, with nothing much to deliver, except the pod-racing scene, the underwater world of Jar Jar Binks, and a final light saber clash with Darth Maul and a galactic battle at the end, to wrap it all up. The Phantom Menace’s only saving grace was that Star Wars had die-hard fans like us who were willing to contribute to the 400 million US dollar worldwide box office gross.

Journalists are not the only ones responsible for sensationalism. Film producers and directors are guilty of this act, too. Which is why most of the Dhivehi films, and Hindi films from neighbouring India, are overwrought productions of underlining melodrama and farfetched-ness.

Producers and directors seem not to know the meaning of restraint. Small wonder that local movies are of stories that surround so much on emotional outbursts, weeping and crying. All that the actresses —and actors—can do, seems to be, cry, cry, cry. Outbursts occur even for trivial things. Few, if any, Dhivehi movies show restraint.

Some Hindi films do show restraint, such as the recent commercial hit Dil Kya Kare, which showed some elements of good movie-making: running time was two and a half hours (short by Bollywood standards), songs were not intimidating, and actors and actresses, quite surprisingly, showed restraint. There is only one outburst throughout the whole film, even though the movie was a highly emotional drama. The only outburst is at the climactic end, and the situation justifies it; for anyone who has watched Dil Kya Kare, one can actually understand the emotional abyss Kajol and Mahima had fallen into. Dil Kya Kare had intelligently shown restraint, unlike any recent Hindi film.

No matter how much weeping and crying there is in a movie, if those outbursts are not justified by the script, no audience will feel any emotion towards the movie. Viewers will not identify themselves with the actors. They will only feel intimidated.

For those producers and directors who do not understand what restraint is, they have a wide variety of choices to watch from. If you want to watch a movie with restrained humour, Notting Hill and Four Weddings and a Funeral will do. In Jeet, Amrish Puri shows restrained humour. He won a Best Supporting Actor Filmfare Award for the role. Dil Kya Kare shows restrained emotion.

The director of the three-and-a-half-hour long Dhivehi movie that hit the Maldives cinema this year—let’s call the movie, Movie X—had a lame excuse to cover up whatever loopholes could be found in her script (which she herself wrote) and her effort at movie-making. She said that audience should be given "value for money" for their spending on to see the movie. Since the price of tickets, at 40 Rufiya each, were deemed reasonably high by Maldivian standards, viewers had the right to see a movie that were of "satisfactory length (or running time)", she claimed. This maybe a marketable argument for the gullible, but thinking people are not to be deluded. If the producer and director of Movie X were sincerely concerned in giving "value for money" for their moviegoers, they should have offered a "quality" movie, not a movie of unnecessary "quantity". Her argument can be sold to those people who are actually concerned with the length of movies.

This may come as surprising, but there are some people who seem to have more than enough time in their hands, and treat movies as a form of entertainment to while away boredom. This segment of the audience cannot be termed as "serious moviegoers". What they need is long hours of entertainment—movies, serials, soap operas—to while away their carefree lives. No wonder that some people can sit in front of TV round-the-clock, channel-hopping, sipping whatever crappy programmes offered.

To cite an actual incident that proved that this audience exists: two friends who were recently in Malaysia went to a shopping mall. The male friend checked cinema listings, and saw that most-wanted recent movies were on play, such as the likes of The Haunting and Deep Blue Sea. The female friend looked at the cinema timings and commented that she didn’t want to watch any of those movies, however good they were, but that instead she wanted to go home. The male friend asked her what was wrong, and she replied: "All of the movies that are playing are too short. I don’t like when movies end too fast. Let’s go home. We can rent and watch something that is long." Perhaps a three-hour long Hindi movie? Quality didn’t matter to her. Quantity did.

A recent trend in Maldivian cinema is to put out movies of record running time. Maybe to cater to that certain breed of cinema-goers who like their movies long, however crappy they are. There was a movie (‘epic’ they called it) that was of three hours and 45 minutes running time— half an hour longer than even Titanic. Should these movies be run on cinema as serials? Or should producers and directors start making ‘made-for-TV’ movies or soaps that can fill the empty slots of air time on television channels?

Such trends leads us to question: Is the purpose of producers and directors to make a half-hearted effort in order to make profit in our consumer society? What happened to the element of artistic value? Did it get buried by prevailing popular culture or the pressures of our market-oriented society? Isn’t there anyone, anyone who will be bold enough to stand up for art?

(This article was published in Haveeru Daily on 18 Nov 1999)

Notting Hill

2009-02-02T01:46:00.002+05:00

This is actually quite a touching movie which is about the personal sacrifices you have to make in exchange for fame.

Hilarious dialogue. A much subdued Julia Roberts. A likeable Hugh Grant.

With a great cast, this a smooth, flowing, and a truly romantic comedy.

REVIEW BY HILATH

Notting Hill on IMDB.com

The Matrix

2009-02-02T01:38:00.004+05:00

This film revolutionised the way I had previously thought about my existence, spirituality and religion. I have never been the same again. Thus this is the film that changed my life forever and transformed me for all times to come -- the key turning point in my life.

Like for many others as well, it was on my second viewing that I really got the gist of the film.

I went to see the film 7 times when it was showing on cinemas in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and even then it was not enough.

I also distinctly remember one of my friends, who is an air steward, who visited me that time and when he had to choose between two films to see at the cinema as he had to fly off again, he choose to see the lame Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace which put me to sleep.

The Matrix is revolutionary epic science fiction fantasy with revolutionary visual effects which won it 4 Oscars including for visual effects, beating Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace which must have really pissed off George Lucas (I actually feel sympathy for him after his own revolutionary amazing digital animation work which but somehow never raises his film to level of art).

Time Magazine chose The Matrix as its best film of 1999 though the Oscar for Best Film that year went to American Beauty.

Although Keanu Reeves cannot act, once again he shows that he just being there in an action movie is enough!

Directed by the Wachoski brothers who made the highly acclaimed Bound -- with a lesbian twist.

REVIEW BY HILATH

The Matrix on IMDB.com

The Iron Giant

2009-02-02T01:18:00.001+05:00

Based on Ted Hughes' book The Iron Man, The Iron Giant is the unusual story of an alien steel-eating giant robot who literally has no business being on earth and thus has no place in the hearts of the planet's inhabitants, except for a small town boy who discovers him, with whom he develops an unlikely yet devoted friendship.

The movie tragically underscores one of the greatest human truths -- that we seek to destroy that which we do not understand and in the process unwittingly destroys the humanity that is inside us.

Funny, sad and touching at times, with characters you cannot help but fall in love with, if I am ever required to choose my all-time best animated feature film, this will be it. Not surprising because it comes from Brad Bird, that great director who made some of the greatest animated films ever like The Incredibles and Ratatouille both of which won the Best Animated Feature Film Oscars in their respective years.

REVIEW BY HILATH

The Iron Giant on IMDB.com

The Thin Red Line

2009-02-02T01:03:00.003+05:00

The 1998 film is auteur Terence Malick's first film in two decades (his earlier film being 1978's Days of Heaven) and it was like a nightmarish psychedelic dream sequence, much like the director's latest film The New World starring Colin Ferrell and Christian Bale based on the true version of the Pocahontas story.

The Thin Red Line tries to show us how soldiers from all walks of life are affected psychologically during longs periods of war.

Great cinematography, heart-stopping action and suspense and great sound effects make this film a really cinematic experience.

Malick's devotion to re-creating the atmosphere and a deliberate slow pace to really involve us and make us come close to what the soldiers are truly feeling during those long horrifying war years make this a rewarding masterpiece.

Malick remains one of my favorite directors ever.

REVIEW BY HILATH

The Thin Red Line on IMDB.com

Titanic

2009-02-02T00:54:00.003+05:00

In a less cynical world, James Cameron's romantic epic would need no defences, yet its extraordinary popularity doomed it to underrated status.

A rare and unique cinematic experience, Titanic remains a haunting spectacle of young and selfless love, the kind we all dream about but seldom get in life, made timeless by technological doom.

Winner of 11 Oscar awards including Best Film and the world's highest grossing movie of all time at 1.86 billion US dollars in Box Office ticket sales.

REVIEW BY HILATH

Titanic on IMDB.com

The English Patient

2009-02-02T00:48:00.002+05:00

"The heart knows no boundaries. In memory, love lives forever." Tragic, but true. A theme I have always been obsessed with for my whole life. Words cannot describe the sorrowful rendition of this haunting theme in one of the best love stories ever told on the big screen.

Winner of 9 Oscar awards including Best Film and based on the Booker Prize winning book by Sri Lankan-Canadian-Netherlands author Michael Ondaatje, author of Atonement, the film of which was nominated last year for the Best Film Oscar.

REVIEW BY HILATH

The English Patient on IMDB.com

Mission Impossible

2009-02-02T00:43:00.003+05:00

Brian de Palma who directed that masterfully crafted movie The Untouchables does it again here.

The cast, the cinematography, the score and above all how the complex plot unravels with the film's pace all combine for another masterpiece of movie-making.

And Tom Cruise is so watchable.

If only action films were this stylish and this good.

REVIEW BY HILATH

Mission Impossible on IMDB.com

White Squall

2009-02-02T00:37:00.004+05:00

Maybe it is because I come from a sea-faring nation, this movie really identifies with my soul and character--and my obsession with that concept of man's relations with nature.

Director Ridley Scott's obsession with landscapes--I am happy it's the sea this time--combined with a cast of young guys like us, haunting score, heart-stopping climax, based on a true tragic story, touched a chord deep in my heart.

REVIEW BY HILATH

White Squall on IMDB.com

While You Were Sleeping

2009-02-02T00:32:00.002+05:00

A sweet, romantic and feel-good movie where once again everything has the right combination. Sandra Bullock is sensational. Music is touching. Locations really homely. And great cast, especially Peter Gallagher and Bill Pullman's family members.

REVIEW BY HILATH

While You Were Sleeping on IMDB.com

Speed

2009-02-02T00:26:00.002+05:00

Speed brings out the true meaning of what we term action movies.

From start to finish, it's action, action, action.

This is the only movie that kept me on the edge of my seat, that kept me in suspense for the full duration of the movie.

Surprisingly, it was the only movie where I was really concerned about how it will end.

Speed is truly my favorite action movie of all time.

And it's another of those masterfully crafted movies where everything--cinematography, score and editing--is just right.

REVIEW BY HILATH

Speed on IMDB.com

The Piano

2009-02-02T00:21:00.003+05:00

Haunting, tragic story about a strong, spirited woman who will get what she wants no matter how disadvantaged she is, no matter how hopeless it is.

Oscar-winner Holly Hunter has acted in this one movie more with her eyes than any other actress has ever acted with their whole body in their whole career. My best female acting of all time.

Breathtaking cinematography, haunting score, slick editing and superb direction by Jane Campion makes this a masterpiece and one of my favorite films of all time.

REVIEW BY HILATH

The Piano on IMDB.com

Jurassic Park

2009-02-02T00:18:00.001+05:00

Another artfully crafted movie where every ingredient is the right mix. Cinematography, cast (Sam Neil, Richard Attenborough, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum), their interaction, suspense, action, even light-hearted comedy, score, film editing and direction all combine to make a superb and thoroughly entertaining movie experience by Steven Spielberg.

REVIEW BY HILATH

Jurassic Park on IMDB.com

The Last of the Mohicans

2009-02-02T00:15:00.003+05:00

Masterfully crafted, edited, with attention to landscapes, Oscar-winning sound, slick film editing and great direction by Michael Mann makes this another cinematic masterpiece.

REVIEW BY HILATH

The Last of the Mohicans on IMDB.com

Beauty and the Beast

2009-02-02T00:08:00.003+05:00

The animation, especially the characters are superb and involving. The art direction is visually stunning especially that ballroom.

But it is great direction, film editing, and the score that brings out the scenes and the characters' interaction that makes this animated movie a bittersweet masterpiece of a movie.

Moreover, it is so sweeping and epic in scale as to be compared to a Broadway musical and was the first ever animated feature film to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. (The Best Animated Feature Film category at the Oscars were created much later).

REVIEW BY HILATH

Beauty and the Beast on IMDB.com

The Little Mermaid

2009-02-02T00:00:00.002+05:00

The animation may be poor compared to what we see today but great characters, their interaction, songs, music, and the way the story unveiled really delivered and lived up to our childhood expectations of what we want to see in a fantasy like The Little Mermaid.

A sad, touching yet lively manifestation of the Hans Christian Anderson story--with a twist, and consequently a happy ending.

REVIEW BY HILATH

The Little Mermaid on IMDB.com

A.I.: Artificial Intelligence

2009-02-01T23:49:00.002+05:00

Like James Cameron's Titanic or Spielberg's Schindler's List, Spielberg's thought-provoking film about an intelligent robot-child's quest to become a "real" boy is unprecedented in cinematic style and hence unlike any movie I ever saw before.

The chills and the effect the film had in reaching down to the very depths of my emotional being is testimony to the unique pole that this film deserves to stand on.

Whatever controversies the film stirred, it is the juxtaposition of optimism and pessimism, and of hope and doom, and the engaging pace and unexpected twists in the plot that bring about this unique effect on me.

Haley Joel Osment's performance as David, the robot who seeks to become a real boy in Pinocchio-esque story-telling, is one of the best I've ever seen literally on celluloid.

REVIEW BY HILATH

A.I.: Artificial Intelligence on IMDB.com

Shrek

2009-02-01T23:44:00.003+05:00

Not since Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid and The Iron Giant has an animated movie given me such a sweet "feel good" feeling as did Shrek.

Like most moviegoers, I was humored by the poking fun at Disney's favorite fairy tales and the talkative donkey (excellently voiced by Eddie Murphy), but it was the moving love story, combined with the almost-human expressions of the characters (including the wonderfully "acted" Shrek character who was voiced as humanly as possible by Mike Myers), and the right combination of other characters, animation, film's pace, editing and the rock soundtrack, which made Shrek one of the most enjoyable movies in a long long time.

REVIEW BY HILATH

Shrek on IMDB.com

Black Hawk Down

2009-02-01T23:38:00.002+05:00

It is unfair to compare this movie with Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg's enduring classic which deserves to stand on a pole of its own.

Ridley Scott deserves credit for enacting a movie that is both a cinematic adrenaline rush and an enduring epic drama where human emotions run deep, where the nobility of the human spirit is once again laid bare in dire circumstances.

Film editing, cinematography, and Hans Zimmer's haunting score all make up to give one hell of a cinematic time that is sure to last on the viewer's mind far far longer than its somewhat short two-hour running time.

Shot in nightmarish tones and hues, the film is like one hell of a lucid dream sequence which makes it one of my all-time favorite films.

REVIEW BY HILATH

Black Hawk Down on IMDB.com

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

2009-02-01T23:29:00.002+05:00

The cinematography, art direction, sound, sound editing, Howard Shore's moving score, and of course the sheer scale of The Fellowship of the Ring cinematically elevates the film to heights which make it look even more epic and larger than Titanic.

And the fact that the film moves like visual poetry makes it almost like one huge musical that dwarfs its sequels The Two Towers and The Return of the King. Hence, I can watch it over and over again even now.

REVIEW BY HILATH

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring on IMDB.com

The Mummy Returns

2009-02-01T23:25:00.003+05:00

The Mummy Returns, the sequel to The Mummy, qualifies to the best standards that I can expect from a fantasy; mummies, pygmies, and that lovely sight of the floating dirigible just made my day! Director Stephen Sommers seems to have finally reached the pinnacle of directing what with the furious pace, slick editing, and non-stop action that quite almost matched with that of Speed.

REVIEW BY HILATH

The Mummy Returns on IMDB.com

Captain Corelli's Mandolin

2009-02-01T23:20:00.004+05:00

Forbidden love, cultures at odds, dying traditions, betrayal, treachery, and a host of other numerous themes that haunt my soul make this film one of the most moving films I've seen.

Penelope Cruz's strong performance, a haunting score, an engaging slow pace, and the lovely cinematography by John Toll (who earlier won Oscars for his cinematographic work on Braveheart and Legends of the Fall) make this film one of the most enduring movies of 2001.

REVIEW BY HILATH

Captain Corelli's Mandolin on IMDB.com

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

2009-02-01T23:13:00.001+05:00

Whatever faults lay with the animation of the characters in failing to make them look realistically human, it more than made up from the wonderful art direction which made this film to have one of the most haunting atmospheres in any film I have ever seen.

I loved the pace of the film, the sound effects, and the way the film was carried.

And like that moment when Jack and Rose "flew" on the bow of the Titanic, the scene where Aki and her Ben-Affleck-like ex-lover, floating in zero gravity, kissed near the window of the spaceship with the dark sky and glittering stars in the background to a soft haunting music is one of the most enduring romantic moments I have ever seen on the big screen.

The film's mood of impending doom juxtaposed with hope stirs the kind of fantastic emotions that only a movie of this nature can offer.

REVIEW BY HILATH

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within on IMDB.com

Crazy/beautiful

2009-02-01T23:10:00.003+05:00

One of the best love stories ever. A realistic look at the gulf between cultures and how it overshadows human love and relationships. A haunting movie that creates genuine feelings and emotes sincere concern for the two young leads as they fight the world--and themselves--to be together at whatever cost.

REVIEW BY HILATH

Crazy/beautiful on IMDB.com

Comments on The 81st Academy Awards Nominations

2009-01-29T20:00:00.002+05:00

[Originally posted at Nuances]

Kudos to the Academy for Recognising "Slumdog Millionaire" for the cinematic gem that it is;

Promotional art for Slumdog Millionaire

In particular, the nominations for;

Danny Boyle - Achievement in directing,

Anthony Dod Mantle - Achievement in cinematography,

A.R. Rahman - Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score)

and

A.R. Rahman (Music) & Gulzar (Lyric) - Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song)

Kudos ALSO for recognising the cinematic vision of David Fincher and Co. for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button";

Promotional art for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

In particular, the nominations for;

David Fincher - Achievement in directing,

Eric Roth and Robin Swicord - Adapted screenplay

and

Brad Pitt - Performance by an actor in a leading role

And for "The Dark Knight" there were categories that, try as they might, the Academy could NOT have gotten away with had they ignored them;

Promotional art for The Dark Knight

In particular, the nominations for;

Wally Pfister - Achievement in cinematography (if only for making IMAX cool again)

and

Heath Ledger - Performance by an actor in a supporting role (if only for making Jack Nicholson's performance merely a memory and defining the true cinematic Joker)

However...

All the nominations combined do NOT make up for that fact that Christopher Nolan SHOULDhave been nominated for the cinematic marvel (no irony intended) that is "The Dark Knight"!

Christopher Nolan - overcame the bat nipples but not the Academy!

Nominations for The Dark Knight should have included (at the least);

Christopher Nolan - Achievement in directing

and

Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer - Adapted screenplay

Heck I'd even say that a nomination was even due for;

Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard - Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score)

I am truly torn... Fincher and Co., along with Boyle and Co., are masters at what they do...

BUT the Academy should quit whatever the heck they're smoking and ALSO recognise that Nolan is the MAIN reason why The Dark Knight was nominated for all the technical awards...

Too late now...

Note to the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: You tried to look like you tried... BUT you failed... miserably!

We WON'T be won over by a sympathy nomination, for Nolan, in the years to follow for a none comic book related nomination - at least I won't!

Unless it's a really good film... which knowing Nolan it probably will be... DAMN!

"Slumdog Millionaire" now at Athena Cinema in Male'

2009-01-19T09:31:00.001+05:00

The award-winning "Slumdog Millionaire", my best film of 2008, a film which has been gathering many trophies during this awards season, is now at Athena Cinema in Male' every night at 9:00pm.
The film will run upto and on Thursday night. It's an unmissable movie, very inspiring and moving.
I will soon write my own review of it for this blog. Stay tuned.

"Slumdog Millionaire" could only have been made by a westerner

2009-01-18T19:29:00.001+05:00

Slumdog spat ... Danny Boyle and Amitabh Bachchan.

Danny Boyle's Bafta-nominated crowd-pleaser shows how blind Bollywood producers are to the reality of India:

After its rapturous reception in Britain and America, knives are being sharpened for Slumdog Millionaire. "Vile," is how Alice Miles described the movie in The Times. "Slumdog Millionaire is poverty porn" that invites the viewer to enjoy the miseries it depicts, she adds.

Even that old iconic Bollywood blusterer, Amitabh Bachchan, has thrown his empty-headed two rupees' worth into the mix. "If Slumdog Millionaire projects India as a third-world, dirty, underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations," he bellowed. "It's just that the Slumdog Millionaire idea, authored by an Indian and conceived and cinematically put together by a westerner, gets creative global recognition," he added.

Bachchan is no doubt riled, as many other Bollwood no-talents will be, about the fact that the best film to be made about India in recent times has been made by a white man, Danny Boyle. Just as Spike Lee got hissy with Quentin Tarantino after he proved he could make hipper films about black people than Lee could (Lee ostentatiously criticised Tarantino's use of the word "nigger" while littering his own films with the same language), so many Indians will be upset about a westerner having a better understanding of their country than they do. Bachchan gave one of the worst English-language performances in cinematic history with his embarrassingly stupid portrayal of an ageing thespian in The Last Lear. Having failed miserably at cultivating a western audience, it must hurt him to be so monumentally upstaged by white folk on his home turf.

The bitter truth is, Slumdog Millionaire could only have been made by westerners. The talent exists in India for such movies: much of it, like the brilliant actor Irrfan Khan, contributed to this film. But Bollywood producers, fixated with making flimsy films about the lives of the middle class, will never throw their weight behind such projects. Like Bachchan, they are too blind to what India really is to deal with it. Poor Indians, like those in Slumdog, do not constitute India's "murky underbelly" as Bachchan moronically describes them. They, in fact, are the nation. Over 80% of Indians live on less than $2.50 (£1.70) a day; 40% on less than $1.25. A third of the world's poorest people are Indian, as are 40% of all malnourished children. In Mumbai alone, 2.6 million children live on the street or in slums, and 400,000 work in prostitution. But these people are absent from mainstream Bollywood cinema.

Bachchan's blinkered comments prove how hopelessly blind he and most of Bollywood are to the reality of India and how wholly incapable they are of making films that can address it. Instead, they produce worthless trash like Jaane Tu, Rock On!! and Love Story 2050, full of affluent young Indians desperately, and mostly idiotically, trying to look cool and modern.

Slumdog Millionaire is based on the novel, Q&A, by Vikas Swarup. I know Vikas – an Indian diplomat, he loves his country as much as anyone and did it the service of telling its truth with great warmth and humanity. And Danny Boyle's film continues in precisely the same vein. His innovative brilliance, fresh perspective and foreign money was vital. As an outsider, he saw the truth that middle-class Indians are too often inured to: that countless people exist in conditions close to hell yet maintain a breath-taking exuberance, dignity and decency. These people embody the tremendous spirit and strength of India and its civilisation. They deserve the attention of its film-makers. I have no doubt that Slumdog Millionaire will encourage many more honest films to be produced in India. But they should be ashamed that it took a white man to show India how to do it.

This article has been reproduced from The Guardian, UK. It can be found at the link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/jan/15/danny-boyle-shows

Alejandro González Iñárritu is a genius!

2009-01-16T16:01:00.001+05:00

[Originally posted at Nuances on Wednesday, January 14, 2009]

Alejandro González Iñárritu behind the lens

He's proven himself a master storyteller with the likes of Amores perros (2000), Powder Keg[part of the BMW Films - The Hire] (2001) and 21 Grams (2003).

The man is an artist - an auteur in the truest sense of the word.

Promotional art for Babel

I know I'm a tad late to the party BUT I have to say this. I need to say it;

In Babel (2006) Iñárritu gives us an almost lyrical story born of a masterful script (Guillermo Arriaga) supported by sublime music (Gustavo Santaolalla) and emotive cinematography(Rodrigo Prieto) - to say nothing of the subdued, exceptional, performances by a brilliant cast.

True to his style, there are still the consistent, more-bitter-than-sweet, seemingly-unrelated-at-first interconnecting, storylines... but truer still, is the manner in which he presents this - an exquisite masterpiece.

If you are a fan of any of Iñárritu's previous efforts, or of film in general, and you've still not seen this - you're in for a treat when you do...

John Abraham voted Asia's sexiest man alive...really?

2008-12-15T00:12:00.004+05:00

by Hilath Rasheed

I have nothing against Bollywood star John Abraham being voted as Asia's sexiest man alive. I guess beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.
But upon closer scrutiny of the news article (read the original article here from SantaBanta.com), so many questions have arisen in my mind. I tried finding out more details of this weekly magazine called "Eastern Eye" without success so I am raising my objections based on the SantaBanta.com article.
The Eastern Eye is described as a leading "British Asian" weekly and the judges of the 'top ten' men were said to be "Brianna Ragel, editor of Asian Woman Magazine, Che Kurrien, editor of GQ India and the former editor of FHM India, Farhad Dadyburjor."
"The top ten sexiest male includes, John Abraham, Hrithik Roshan, Shah Rukh Khan, Ali Zafar, Upen Patel, Ranbir Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan, Imran Khan (actor), Jay Sean and boxer Amir Khan."
This list looks more like an "Indian" list than an assortment of Asian handsomeness.
One of my friends on Facebook was right to comment, not derogatorily, why doesn't Bangladeshis ever make such a list?
Yeah, why not?
There are so many countries to choose from Asia and this Eastern Eye despite being a "British Asian" weekly chose judges with so many India links "GQ India", "FHM India", and apparently extremely India-centric ones at that if their 'top ten' choices speak for itself.
This India-centric attitude is not uncommon among some high profile Indians as well. Bollywood star Madhuri Dixit once sparked protests in Kathmandu after she commented during a visit that "I thought that Nepal was once part of India."
And during my own travels to India, I have come across many Indians who ask me where I am from and when I reply that I am from Maldives, they tend to say something to the effect that Maldives is some islands under Indian dominion!
Apparently, everything revolves around India, and perhaps we may need some sort of consciousness-raising to change this view just like we needed modern scientific evidence to change the ancient view that the Sun and the Universe itself revolved around the Earth! Obviously, our human-centric-ness and ego-centric-ness may be proving to be contributing to our xenophobia, and the perception of "others" as being "foreign" -- with "us" only the ones who matter, who are the only thing beautiful in our eyes.
Of course, one can always hide behind the claim that beauty is subjective, and therefore, it lies in the eyes of the beholder. But it's sad when one's vision, appreciation and taste are limited to only one's favored ethnicity or races, not the rest of the humanity at large. Where did our humanity go?

Karan Johar "rab"-ing Shah Rukh Khan the wrong way again?

2008-12-13T21:04:00.004+05:00

The best reaction to "Rab Ne Banayi Jodi"'s opening came from film's director Aditya Chopra and leading man Shah Rukh Khan's best friend Karan Johar in New York:

"Rab... will prove once and for all that the Adi-Shah Rukh jodi is godsent."

Don't 'Rab' that combo the wrong way. Read full story from SantaBanta.com

"See what your friends have done"

2008-12-01T13:01:00.002+05:00

Just because "Firaaq", my film, deals with how Muslims 'also' get affected by violence, the terrorists are supposed to be my friends! Today a common young Muslim man around town is probably the most vulnerable. I got many messages from my Muslim friends who feel the need to condemn it more than anyone else, who feel the need to prove their national allegiance in every possible way. They are begging to be not clubbed with the terrorists, a fear not unfounded. Read full story from Haveeru Daily

Taare Zameen Par Review - Sensitive yet powerful!

2008-11-11T09:01:00.002+05:00

REVIEW by Island Chic
Originally posted on Island Chic's blog

Just like the Hindi movie Chak De India I posted about recently, Amir Khan’s Taare Zameen Par was not the mainstream Bollywood movie that leaves you just with the warm fuzzy feeling after the movie. It gives you more! I watched Taare Zameen Par last night and cried myself to dehydration! It was by far one of the most sensitive, enlightening and silently powerful movies I’ve ever seen. My tears weren’t caused by just what I saw in the movie. It was also the sentiments the movie brought with it. Having seen the sufferings of children in many parts of the world especially during my travels in India, this movie really struck a chord deep within. It reminded me of how ignorant we are of the way our actions may compromise the destiny of innocent beings, who may have no control whatsoever over the things that define them.

Taare Zameen Par was not merely entertaining but also enlightening. It was a sensitive story brought live to the audience brilliantly. After it has won several awards in India, Taare Zameen Par has now been selected as India's entry for the Oscar 2009 in the best foreign film category.

Taare Zameen Par is produced and directed by Amir Khan and he also acts in the movie though the main focus of the story is on an eight year old dyslexic kid. Here’s a short version of the story as recited in Taare Zameen Par’s official website.

“Ishaan Awasthi [Darsheel Safary] is an eight-year-old whose world is filled with wonders that no one else seems to appreciate; colors, fish, dogs and kites are just not important in the world of adults, who are much more interested in things like homework, marks and neatness. And Ishaan just cannot seem to get anything right in class.

When he gets into far more trouble than his parents can handle, he is packed off to a boarding school to 'be disciplined'. Things are no different at his new school and Ishaan has to contend with the added trauma of separation from his family.

One day a new art teacher bursts onto the scene, Ram Shankar Nikumbh [Aamir Khan], who infects the students with joy and optimism. He breaks all the rules of 'how things are done' by asking them to think, dream and imagine, and all the children respond with enthusiasm, all except Ishaan.

Nikumbh soon realizes that Ishaan is very unhappy and he sets out to discover why. With time, patience and care, he ultimately helps Ishaan find himself.”

Taare Zameen Par forces us to understand a child's mind and gives us a strong message not to compromise the unique and untapped talent of each child in our pursuit of academic excellence and what we think is better for the child.

It is definitely a must watch which will make you re-think the way you look at life and what it expects of you… and well done Amir Khan for the enlightenment you brought to many!

"Phoenix": does it really fly?

2008-09-19T02:29:00.001+05:00

Forgot to mention that along with "Pirates 3", I had started watching a 2-disc version of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix". After reading that "Phoenix" is the second highest grossing of the "Potter" films after "Sorcerer's Stone", I had high hopes.
But it took me more than a week to finish off the film. Once again should I blame my moody-ness for the fact that I took so long in finishing off "Phoenix"?
It seemed well-directed and quite adult-ish I have to admit.
But so far my best "Potter" book and also my best "Potter" film is "Prizoner of Azkaban".
Though Phoenix had a lot of magic in it too, "Azkaban" was more magical I have to say. Perhaps it's the golden touch of Mexican art film director Alfonso Cuaron ("Y Tu Mama Tambien") that was responsible for "Azkaban" to be truly artistic and magical.

Pirates 3: Adventure-ful but...

2008-09-18T14:42:00.001+05:00

Finally watched an original 2-Disc version of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.
But I have to admit it took me more than 10 days to finish watching the more than 2-hour film. Don't know what's wrong. Perhaps it's because of Ramadan and my biological clock has been upset.
Or perhaps Pirates 3 is not engaging or interesting enough.
But I still like the idea of fantasy crossed with legend, fiction and of course adventure. So in that sense, I guess I can say the movie was enjoyable, especially the climactic fight with all those visual effects.
Next in line for me to watch is another Johnny Depp movie "Sweeney Todd." Hope the experience will be better.

A disturbing thing about Brad Pitt

2008-09-16T23:00:00.002+05:00

I was watching "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" yesterday and there was this scene where the husband and wife engages in a violent confrontation and immediately after that, violent sex. Now I have read about Angelina Jolie's unusual life and perceptions and attitudes but what disturbed me about that scene was, we see Brad Pitt standing and possibly kicking Jolie in the stomach or the back (though Jolie's view is hidden because of a sofa in the foreground). As far as I understand, this kind of kicking the body is usually done by people who are in an almost insane violent rage, with no care if his victim is killed. I have seen scenes like this on the streets of Male' and believe me, such a scene cannot be used even for its style or entertainment value. And I was shocked that Pitt, who is now touring the world as a humanist (with films like "Babel" which has humanist themes), had agreed to be shown unleashing violence of this nature against a person, not to mention the opposite sex. I am not sure about you people but my analytical mind tells me that Pitt has a very violent streak in him which is unconsciously surfacing in his "creative" works.

Nueve reinas

2007-10-31T10:26:00.000+05:00

Think Hollywood is the place where caper movies come alive? Far from it – especially if you're looking for a smart caper movie... Okay, I'll grant you this; I haven't heard of a lot of foreign or independent filmmakers doing an exceptional job at a caper flick...

All the more reason why 'Nueve reinas' (Nine Queens) stands out...

Promotional artwork (English) for Nueve reinas

Oh and if the plot seems a tad familiar to you... remember this... 'Bluffmaster' came out in 2005... Nueve reinas was released in 2000!

‘Cherry’ gives a taste of what simple, beautiful cinema is like

2007-09-12T20:13:00.000+05:00

Al just reviewed "Gabbeh" from notable Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf. I’m following up the Iranian cinema discussion by looking at another remarkable film “Taste of Cherry” by Abbas Kiarostami. This review was published in Evening Weekly but since it’s very much Baiskoaf material why not put it here as well.

Mr. Badii has a plan. A dangerous plan. A plan that would strike anyone as shocking.

He drives around the outskirts of Tehran to find someone to bury him the next morning after he commits suicide. Knowing how reluctant one would be to fulfill his request he has money to offer.

The question now is simple: Will he kill himself in the end?

That was all I knew about Taste of Cherry when I first heard of it. It fascinated me. It sounded like something I had not heard before. And it turned out to be unlike anything I had seen before.

Coming out of the new Iranian cinema, and from one of its pioneers Abbas Kiarostami it made perfect sense the film landed joint top prize in 1997 at Cannes, the most prestigious international film festival.

The film’s protagonist Badii, a middle-aged Iranian man, drives through the streets and witnesses unemployed people. He gets to the outskirts where he meets three potential “candidates”, different in age and status but similar in their response to his request: unwilling.

He first offers a ride to a young recruit walking to the camp. The kid’s initial suspicion about Badii attempting a homosexual pick up translates into horror when Badii finally spills his quest.

He then approaches a seminarian who tries to convince him to reconsider the decision and appreciate life on religious grounds.

Finally he encounters an old taxidermist who himself had retracted suicidal tendencies after beginning to admire the little pleasures of life.

This does not give away anything though. In fact it is just the gist of this haunting meditation on life.

Cherry does not provide any explanation to why he wants to end it all. It avoids being preachy and pretentious. In other words Badii does not look high at the sky, lift his arms and lash out his life’s miseries. That would definitely defeat the whole purpose of the film.

His expression-less face alone says it. He is lifeless and alienated from the world. He does not say much and listens to what others have to say about his fate. The irony here is the main character remains vague and the supporting characters are fleshed out. Kiarostami gets away with it because that I believe is why the film works so well.

Although everyone Badii meets react to his situation with disagreement they approach the matter differently. The dialogues that take place between them are eloquent and understated. The final conversation, or the taxidermist’s monologue rather, is particularly charming. He shares his own attempt at suicide and that the taste of cherry revived his faith in life. Listening to his experience itself is an inspirational moment in a film which basically questions the human existence.

Famous film critic Leonard Maltin points out Taste of Cherry is “A contemplation of humanity quite unlike any other captured on film.”

Humanity and simplicity are indeed the trademarks of Iranian cinema. Only a filmmaker like Majid Majidi could pull off a film worthy of international acclaim out of a story as straightforward as two kids coping with the loss of a pair of shoes (Children of Heaven), while Mohsen Makhmalbaf proves special effects and big budgets are needless to make a visually stunning film (Gabbeh).

Hence, Iranian cinema is testimony to cinema’s infinite possibilities. Given the limited resources available and the existing political suppression, the country yet brings out some of the most realistic and thought-provoking films in world cinema.

Taste of Cherry is indeed thought-provoking. Bittersweet and lyrical, it will stay with you for a long time.

It is the sort of film that inspires budding filmmakers: primarily three conversations with three different perspectives thrown in, a minimal plotline with a challenging theme, and a shoestring budget production with non-professional actors.

I really hope it gets seen and, hopefully, be appreciated by as many cinema-lovers as possible.

By Shaari

The colours of cinema

2007-09-05T11:28:00.000+05:00

A gabbeh is a Persian carpet woven in exquisite colours and designs that tell a story. In the film of the same name by Iran’s premiere auteur Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the carpet becomes a central metaphor not only for depicting the harsh but picturesque life lead by hardy Iranian nomads but, indeed, cinema itself. As wisps of their lives are etched lovingly onto the gabbeh, so unfolds a lyrical saga of extraordinary beauty and depth.

A young woman, also called Gabbeh, longs to unite with a mysterious horseman, a stranger who follows her clan in the distance and howls in the full moon. But Gabbeh’s authoritarian father tells her that she cannot marry until her ageing uncle, a teacher and a poet, ties the knot first. This is not a condition to be taken lightly, since he has a very specific mate in mind: one who can sing like a canary. In the event, the lovable bachelor does find an exact match, but daily strife continues to delay Gabbeh’s own marriage. Her mother gives birth, her sister dies, and a baby goat is born to their livestock. In the end, the young woman and her horseman can’t wait any longer; they elope, with Gabbeh’s father following the rebellious couple with a gun.

This tale of forbidden love takes shape through a series of unforgettable images. Against the backdrop of stark landscapes, women and children go about their daily lives in intricately embroidered costumes, as they dye the wool for their carpets from the rich hues of wild exotic flowers and tall grasses. The long focus cinematography captures every detail as these nomads camp out in lush valleys, cross muddy, overflowing rivers, and trek through the barren snowfields of southeastern Iran.

As with other notable Iranian films of the 1990s, especially the works of Abbas Kiorastami, Gabbeh plays with the categories of documentary and fiction. While the elaborate composition of Makhmalbaf’s cinematography evokes painterly traditions, the use of mainly non-actors in the film recalls Italian neo-realism. In fact the director began Gabbeh as a documentary on carpet makers but, along the way, apparently changed his mind. What we are left with is a rich tapestry of realism, fiction and fantasy, and what are surely some of the most endearing images in the history of cinema since the invention of colour filmstock.

Iranian cinema has captured the hearts of film theorists and art film festivals throughout the world. One of the reasons for this might be the rejection by Iranian filmmakers of the Bollywood model to develop, instead, a unique cultural aesthetic, something directors in South Asia, including the Maldives, seem unwilling to try. Indeed, I’ve heard an influential film “expert” in this country openly declaring Iranian cinema as “meaningless”. I also understand another film “consultant” rubbished Iranian films in front of a group of young Maldivian film novices. Prevailing film sensibilities in this country, then, seem to discourage people from enjoying alternative cinemas developed by artists of exceptional vision.

I first saw Gabbeh in a cold, grubby film theatre in 1996. It was the second Iranian film I had seen and I came out of the building, with a small group of film-lovers, in a state of exhilaration. Gabbeh was proof that art cinema was very much alive, and that films could touch us at an aethetic, intellectual and human level.

In one of the scenes from the film, a characters shouts: “Life is colour!” With a seemingly simple but deft stroke of artistic genius, Makhmalbaf appears to have captured that colour in Gabbeh, which to me is the equivalent of a live painting, a passionate love song to cinema itself.

Note: More on the works of Makhmalbaf and his family of filmmakers on: http://www.makhmalbaf.com

By Al

“Lost” season 2 – an allegory to current human conditions

2007-09-03T16:08:00.000+05:00

Have you read about the story where someone spent the whole of his/her life in a cave but did not even have a clue that the outside was more beautiful because he/she was afraid of venturing out into the unknown?
Lost season 2 is something like that. If you don’t want spoilers ahead, then don’t read after this line though I am not going into specific details. I would just like to raise two key allegorical points which captured my interest:
1) The fact that we humans will continue to do something for how long it takes as far as we have a notion or belief that we have to do that thing for our survival, even though there is no evidence or proof to support that notion. This factor is reflected in the button-pushing in the hatch.

2) The fact that a human being who has been subject to suffering all his life and grows old this way will have no human sympathy or empathy for the younger protégés and will not stop at making your protégé suffer the same just because you grew old suffering that way and you feel that anybody else do not deserve to live happily when you had wasted your own life. This factor emerges when the guy is kept in the dark and goes on pushing the button for three years, at the end of which the elder guy plans to leave the younger guy behind even though he will be left pushing the button forever.
I think this particular mentality is very much evident in our parents’ and grandparents’ generation.
One of my friends told me that during the heyday in the hippy 1970s his mother wore short skirts that would have put the Pussycat Dolls to shame and used to hang out at the “Ice ge” (our local pub and disco in Male’ at the time of former President Ibrahim Nasir’s liberal and secular era, damn Gayoom), but that she has now worn the buruga and joined the Adaalath Party and now doesn’t want him to have fun.
He says that though he is 18 years of age, his parents have refused to give him a private room in his home because his parents feel that they will go to hell if he has sex outside marriage because they provided him the opportunity (the room) to commit extra-marital sex in the first place!
How hypocritical can that be. After enjoying all the pleasures they could, his parents do not want him to enjoy the same. It’s like how most extremists’ minds work: if you are miserable, then all others must remain miserable, too.
Some of my friends say that “Lost” season 1 is better because the “picking up the pieces” and “coping with the situation” was more interesting than season 2 which concentrates on the mysteries surrounding all aspects of life on the island.
I can see their point. I am not sure which season is my favorite but am very much looking forward to season 3 but Hursheed has already warned me there’s a dragging love story part in the middle of season 3 before the pace picks up again towards the end.

- Hilath

“Surf’s up” stays true to surf culture and spirit

2007-09-03T15:44:00.000+05:00

Another animated film involving penguins? Yes, at first, I also thought of skipping this film. And the fact that Surf's Up was about surfing did not initially grab my interest because penguins seemed to be so exhaustively used by recent films such as March of the Penguins and Happy Feet (both of which I haven't seen yet). However, right from the start, it was obvious that real life surfers were behind this effort. This includes six-time world surfing champion Kelly Slater and Rob Machado providing voice overs for some of the characters. Though the plot is formulaic (little guy takes on the arrogant champ), the film was engaging for me as a surfer because the film very much reflects the spirit and culture among the surfing community, and the filmmakers even poke fun at themselves and their “dumb culture.” I wouldn’t mind watching the film again as it was funny and humorous throughout.
- Hilath

"Disturbia": engaging premise but…

2007-09-03T15:37:00.001+05:00

Like Jeepers Creepers, Disturbia has an engaging beginning, with skillful direction, to create a most suspenseful atmosphere. However, what begins as a dissection of human psychology, soon becomes yet just another formulaic horror film.

- Hilath

If you make it, will they come?

2007-09-02T12:48:00.000+05:00

I had a heated discussion with a close friend of mine (Ya) a few nights ago... the point of contention was "If you make a genre breaking Maldivian (Dhivehi) Film, would you be able to make a profit - even break even?".

My response was a resounding 'NO'.

Ya had a different opinion though.

According to Ya, IF the film had a decent story, decent acting and was put together by (even) a half decent director, then it would gain an audience and could even stand the chance to become a 'blockbuster'... a runaway hit! This could be done with just ONE such film Ya argued.

Wouldn't that be something?

Are we ever likely to see a (figurative) Maldivian 'Trainspotting'? If so, would it be popular? A Box Office hit?

I disagreed with Ya - I think that, while current films are popular-ish (arguably), if you break the mold, then you're making a film for a different audience altogether.

THAT audience has been let down SO many times - it'll take much more than one decent film to get them back in theaters... it's going to take a lot more more-than-decent, alternate genre films with consistently improving quality, AND a conducive/comfortable/high-quality environment to enjoy the said films in, to build their faith and bring then (back?!?!?) in to cinemas.

That's my opinion...

Bed wetting music: are we afraid of our soft side?

2007-08-28T11:30:00.000+05:00

A friend once told me that he came across a review which said that Coldplay’s music was “music for bed wetters.”

I told this to another friend and his interpretation was this: “Coldplay seems to be afraid to go to the dark side. And since bed wetters are children and people who are afraid of the dark, I guess that’s what’s the reviewer meant. In fact, I also think Coldplay’s music is bed wetting music.”

Another friend then commented that like Coldplay, Hindi music is also bed wetting music.

“Hindi music is soft and sentimental. Not at all like Cradle of Filth and Slipknot,” he said.

I don’t know why but I keep wondering whether these people are too afraid of their soft side! They want to be or at least appear to be tough!

I think what’s tougher and braver is actually accepting and coming to terms with your soft side.

I love Coldplay because their music is melancholic. And like Slipknot and Cradle of Filth, I believe Coldplay is equally talented too though they choose not to indulge in metal because I guess it is only through melancholic music that the feeling of songs like “Speed of Sound” and “Hardest Part” can be conveyed.

- Hilath

Lauding "The Old Man and the Sea"

2007-08-28T01:48:00.000+05:00

The old man and the marlin

Courtesy of my associate I.Y. (who some refer to as ‘the devil’, which I believe he doesn’t really mind) I finally watched Russian master animator Aleksandr Petrov’s oscar-winning animated short The Old Man and the Sea. I was mighty impressed. This 20-minute short, which also won a host of other animation awards, is a remarkable blend of style and substance.

Based on Ernest Hemingway’s classic novella it was the first animated film to burst into Imax screens and suffice it to say it was a pity I had to watch it on my pc. Nonetheless it was an awe-inspiring experience.

The Old Man and the Sea was launched as part of a tribute to Hemingway who we all know is one of the most celebrated authors of the 20th century.

The film is a simple, moving tale of an aging fisherman who is past his proud, adventurous life. He is now a victim of ill fortune and comes back home from the sea empty-handed. He feels he should hang up his fishing rod whilst seeking solace in the company of a little boy who encourages him to keep going.

One day he sails out into the sea with renewed determination to turn around his luck, resulting in a battle reminiscent of the defining moments in his life.

Petrov's ordeal

A comment on this film will be unjust without admiring the painstaking effort Petrov made to create it. It took more than two years for him to complete it. Why? 29,000 frames with his own hands! He made every frame using slow-drying oil paints on glass sheets. He altered the oils between frames with his fingers, photographed the outcomes, and moulded the oils for the next frame and so forth.

In explaining why he used his fingers to paint instead of brushes he said it was the “closest way from the heart to the cartoon."

To add insult to injury, though he normally works on an A4 sized canvass the size had to be enlarged four times for Imax!

In the end it was worth the wait and effort. It is a product of beauty and depth. It possesses a dream-like quality unseen in today’s 3-D animation and the non-refined look of the animation with stutters in movement creates a gritty, dramatic effect.

Ofcourse one would invest such energy into a production only with high passion for the material. Petrov read the book as a child and it left a strong imprint on him. He wrote the script years ago and after much struggle for funding Imax took it up.

He said he drew inspiration from the old man’s character: "The story is special to me as is the inspiring central character. His struggle resembles the struggle, the patience and determination needed as an animator. You have to love what you do."

Indeed.

To sum up, The Old Man takes on universal themes of courage, defiance in the face of adversity, and self-identity in refreshing fashion.
________
Shaari

Music vs. Film: How Bollywood can never match the poetry of Indian music

2007-08-23T12:42:00.000+05:00

Some months back, at Juwey’s Café in Male’, Narco and I were having a conversation. We were reminiscing the days when Hindi music was original. That is when Hindi music used its local and traditional and original instruments like sitar. For me, Hindi music died after “1942: A Love Story”. Yash Chopra’s efforts at reviving it with Madan Mohan’s music in “Veer-Zara” wasn’t a too successful attempt in my view.

Though I loved the music of “Fanaa”, for me, the Hindi music era was pre-“1942: A Love Story.” Now mostly Western instruments are used. And as a family member once commented to me, the use of Western instruments have resulted in the loss of the rustic and sentimental mood of Hindi music, which actually defines it (I listen to heavy metal too but that’s no excuse to ignore the creativity of other cultures as some of my friends seem to do by making racist comments about Hindi music).

I long for the days when I could hear songs like “Ek Rasta Hai Zindagi” from “Kala Pattar” or “Tere Chehre Se” from “Kabhi Kabhie”.

The only person who has been able to still preserve the Hindi feel of Hindi music with Western instruments is, ironically, Mahesh Bhatt and co. Though I hate his plagiarizing of Hollywood films, I cannot help but like the music of Bhatt productions such as “Jaanam” (“Dil Kyon Dadak Ta Hai”, “Mera Dil Ka Pathaa” etc) and “Paap” (“Lagan Lagi Tumse”, etc).

The conversation with Narco centered around the fact that while Hindi music composers were great masters, their counterpart filmmakers don’t have a clue about the art of filmmaking. In fact, Bollywood, like our local Muhamma Kalo, are abusers of the art form we call film, “filmmakers” who want to squeeze every dime out of our pockets with their sorry productions.

I told Narco that while I like listening to Hindi music, the videos and the films’ songs that go with it, don’t go with it at all. I think the problem is that Bollywood filmmakers don’t have a clue about film as an art form. Even Sri Lanka, which has a mostly video industry that is even poor compared to our Dhivehi video industry which consists mostly of plagiarized Hindi productions, won a prestigious Cannes award a few years back.

If anybody disagrees with me, consider this: Bollywood churns out more than 800 films a year, and hardly any of it makes it to an international film festival, save “Lagaan” and “Monsoon Wedding” quite recently. As Al pointed out, you can’t say that films like “Water” and “Bend it Like Beckham” are Bollywood productions because they were made by filmmakers who were raised in other countries. That will be like claiming that films like “The Sixth Sense” by M. Night Shyamalan, who grew up in Philadelphia, are Bollywood films!

But countries like Iran, where filmmakers have to struggle in order to produce less than 20 films a year, almost all the films make it to international film festivals, and even are quite popular and commercially successful. In fact, films like Iran’s “Children of Heaven” is still counted by many of my film-loving friends as one of their top ten favorite films of all time. Bollywood’s much hyped directors like Farhan Akhtar (whose credits include “Dil Chahta Hai,” “Lakshya” and “Don”) should get the message that it is the message of humanity which resonates with audiences and have made Iranian films both popular, commercially successful and at the same time art films. Iranian directors have got it right because they always explore in their films what it means to be human.

Before concluding this post, I would appreciate if anyone can facilitate for me to have access to or get the following songs which I have been desperate to get for several years:

- All the songs of the film “Prem Rog” which stars Rishi Kapoor and Padmini as the unfortunate widow. I especially want the songs “Mohabbat He Kya Cheez,” and that song about the bees which I forgot but you see Rishi running after a white-clad Padmini in it.

- “Mere Liye Zindagi” from the film “Mera Jawab” which I think was Meenakshi and Jackie Shroff’s first film

- “Aathey Mujhe Thu Rulaa Gaee”. I forgot the name of the film but this song stars Sunjay Dutt and Anita Raj (I liked her then and wonder where she is now. She had a nice and modern looking hairstyle even then).

- “Mohabbat Karne Vaalonko Baharo Thum Dhua-eyn Dhoa” from the film “Lovers” starring Kumar Gaurav and Padmini. This film is quite interesting to analyze. It came out in the early 1980s and was directed by Gaurav’s late father Rajendra Kumar. In it, Padmini is a Christian girl who takes singing lessons from a Hindu woman. She falls in love with her teacher’s Hindu son, played by Gaurav. In the climax of the film, both Padmini and Gaurav give up their respective religions so that they could be together. How wonderful. As I’ve always believed, natural feelings like love cannot be overwhelmed with things as fake as religion. One of my family members, who is now quite religious, at that time said that he liked it because he thought it was a very progressive film even at that time. Predictably, it was a flop in Indian box office. There is another lovely song in that film which starts like “Aa Mulagaathoan Ka Mausam Aa Gayaa.”

- Naziya Hassan’s original “Boom” album. Almost all the songs made it to the film “Star” starring once again Gaurav and Padmini and directed by our good Rajendra in the early 1980s.

- All the songs from “Qurbani” starring Zeenat Aman, Vinod Kumar and Feroz Khan.

Thanks,

- Hilath

Why?

2007-08-22T11:39:00.000+05:00

On the 30th of July 2007, we lost two legends of cinema; Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni. In a mere 24 hours the world of cinema was dealt a blow of immeasurable loss – and a lot of us here, in the Maldives, didn’t even notice. A lot more, still, hadn’t seen a single frame of film by either of the two remarkable filmmakers.

Bergman

Those of us who did notice felt that it was time we, as film enthusiasts, did something other than just sit around and discuss our thoughts on great filmmakers. Not to drive home the loss – but to showcase what these maestros, and other such greats, have given us.

Antonioni

We made a few calls and, on the 18th of August 2007 (having already, mostly, cast our votes), took to a coffee and discussed, for a little over two hours, what we could do – interspersed were discussions on our favourite films, filmmakers, etc – but we did manage to come up with one solid, coherent thought… or two.

Cinema Paradisio and Il Postiono, which is better? Does it matter?

Yes, Il Postino is better than Cinema Paradiso – arguably. AND Baiskoaf is a way of taking our ‘coffee conversations’ to a more public, wider setting, thus, allowing us to share our passion and enthusiasm with a group larger than just the *cough* of us – and hopefully change our mindset on cinema from passive entertainment to something that is engaging, captivating and intelligent.

So we begin...