‘The British Film Institute presents ImagineAsia: A Celebration of South Asian Film.’slrs

A survey of ‘Contemporary Malayalam Cinema’ on the bfi website—by Dr C S Venkiteswaran, who is faculty at the Centre for Taxation Studies (!), Thiruvananthapuram. I remember reading his articles in The Indian Express. This article is intended for a forthcoming bfi publication titled Contemporary South Asian Film and Television: A Survey.

One of the most enigmatic figures in Malayalam cinema during the period was John Abraham (1937-1987), in whom Ritwik Ghatak (the great Bengali filmmaker and his teacher), saw 'the future of Indian cinema'. As erratic and unpredictable in life as in his films, John's works are imbued with a deep humanity. In a way, they dealt with the very impossibility of being human and creative.

Good to hear from Fobbin that there are interesting things being done in Malayalam films even in the commercial mode.

The first review of a Malayalam film posted on Salon got me started on a web search on Malayalam films. Found some interesting sites and articles.

Violence

This is an entirely different movie as far as Malayalam movies are concerned. It provides enough clues to new directors, about the trends that are going to be dominating popular Malayalam movies in the near future. I am not going to list the shortcomings of this film, which are plenty. Everything about this film is new. New actors, new theme, new approach to situations.

The story is about a young goonda who once raped a novitiate nun, who in turn is rejected by the order when she is found pregnant. To escape ridicule from the locals she is staying with her lawyer’s friend in Cochin, who happens to be a famous soap actress. The heroine somehow had to use the help of the young goonda, but both of them do not recognize each other. By the end of the film he realises that she is the one whom he had raped and also that his son is alive in an orphanage. Now the goonda wants to change but he can’t because all such movies say so. In the end he dies (?) trying to save her.

Actor Vijayaraghavan is good as a corrupt police officer, but tends to overact occasionally. Casting of hero and heroine is good, but that of most of the other characters are below average. Gangster characters are presented almost naturally. But they tend to act in a way that is not improving the movie in any way. Like I always believe, never leave your movie to the actors. Don’t let them go solo. If you do so, what you get is a compilation of clippings, of good acting from your actors, but not the movie that you planned to make.

I don’t know whether the director of this movie really understood Tarantino properly. Because some of the characters and subplots in this film are not at all necessary. The truth is that the director doesn’t know how to use that method, of plot within the plot and charactors crashing into the scenes used brilliantly by Tarantino.

As I said earlier despite all the shortcomings I liked the film. It will definitely set certain trends in future Malayalam films. It is not a great film, but it will certainly inspire young moviemakers to try and experiment with form and content in cinema.slfr

Margaret is an American studying in Pune. She is very pleased with her India experience. The following passage from her blog is testimony to that:

"Margaret, why did you not want to take a 30-hour train ride?" you ask. Seek and ye shall receive. Trains in India are kinda dirty and broken, sort of like everything else. We were riding second class non-a.c., which is only a small step above cargo. The seats are '70s era vinyl, and they're bench seats, so you're pretty much cheek to cheek with the people next to you. Now, this would be uncomfortable enough. But to add an extra dimension of fun, the entire ride smells like poop. Why? Because people shit on the train tracks. The entire ride, back and forth, I never went more than seven or eight minutes without seeing someone outside dropping trou with their feet on the track to use this nationwide toilet. It's disgusting. Like, I'm sort of getting used to the whole idea that there's poop all over the place here, but I'm still having a hard time with actually having to see the people shit on the railroad. Yeech. If these close quarters and the all-India poopfest weren't enough, people wander up and down the aisle begging and hocking stuff. I can understand selling food and drinks and crap. But socks? OK, maybe your feet get cold on the train...even though it's 90 degrees. Key chains? OK, maybe you, uh, need a key chain. But whips? Who the fuck buys a whip? Who buys whips in general is one question, but who buys whips on a train? Then cue the 9 jillion beggars. I just couldn't take 30 hours of it.

Flattering. No?

saw malayalam film called violence, in the line of sathya.
tell you about it later

indiabike is a good resource for info on Indian two-wheelers. They also reproduce reviews and comparison tests from the Indian car & bike press.slrs

My earlier object of desire: the Enfield Lightning 535. Haunted my daydreams ever since I spotted her on a Fort Cochin street one evening. Now I hear Enfield has stopped production of the model.

By the way, Royal Enfield has a good website.

I need no one to tell me which looks better, but there is more to life, isn’t there? Or is there? Which has got to be my brand of Zen?





Enfield Thunderbird; Yamaha Enticer; Bajaj Pulsar

Now here’s a surfeit of film lists: the Village Voice’s Take One poll of 50-plus critics at the end of 1999 to select not only the best films of the year, but also of the century and of the decade, as well as the best directors of the decade. The individual critics’ selections are also listed.

Take 2 (2000)
Take 3 (2001)sll

Rather late in the year for this, but what the heck? Time’s Best of 2001: in cinema, tv/ads, books, design, sports, music, theatre and comics.sll

Time magazine made a selection of America’s best people in different fields at present. Here is the Artists & Entertainers section. Best actor: Sean Penn; novelist: Philip Roth; movie director: Ang Lee; movie star: Julia Roberts; rock band: Sleater-Kinney; songwriter: Lucinda Williams; singer: Cassandra Wilson; artist: Martin Puryear; and more.sll slrs

Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s top ten Indian films.sll

In association with the ImagineAsia festival, the British Film Institute have compiled a list of the top 20 Indian films ‘from the views of experts, critics, academics and practitioners’. Topping the list is Sholay—but what I can’t figure out is how a list that has John Abraham’s Amma Ariyan at no 9 have Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge at 12. Other undeserved inclusions in my opinion are Bombay and Lagaan—all the more so when there is no mention of Mrinal Sen, Aravindan or Adoor. I would even go so far as to say that Pather Panchali and Mother India are rated too highly. Yes, that’s what I said.

The long list of Indian films that were considered but failed to make the final cut.

On the Pakistani top ten list, you’ll spot this intriguing name: Haseena Atom Bomb. Not quite the type of bomb the Indian defence establishment need lose sleep over.sll

André Bazin: the French critic who practically invented film studies.

It's no exaggeration to say that Bazin is the single thinker most responsible for bestowing on cinema the prestige both of an artform and of an object of knowledge. While scattered attempts had been made before to define the "essence" of cinema..., Bazin's ideas were to prove the decisive ones in establishing its credentials as a separate and legitimate field of intellectual enquiry. In one of his essays from the 40s Bazin projected that distant day when film studies would enter the university curriculum – and it was Bazin more than anyone else who played the role of midwife.

Which are the finest documentary films of all time? Peter Matthews selects the following in Sight and Sound:

Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North (1922)
Luis Buñuel's Land without Bread (1933)
Alain Resnais' Night and Fog (1955)
Jean Rouch's Chronicle of a Summer (1960)
Abbas Kiarostami's Homework (Mashq-e Shab, 1990)sll

The archive of online features from Sight and Sound magazine: read a case for an Abel Ferrara film to be considered as one of the best in cinema of the last three decades; another one for Kieslowski’s Blue; and one for Kiarostami’s docu Homework; J Hoberman’s take on one of my favourite films of the last few years—Three Kings; Spielberg confirming his status as ‘the greatest cinematic orchestrator of our time’ with Minority Report; and much more.slrs

From the British film Trainspotting:

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit crushing game shows, stuffing junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself. Choose a future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that?

slq

Bright Lights Film Journal's Banned Words.

MEDITATION, n. This is in some ways the most insidious of these terms. It is the most sentimental, pretentious, fanciful, and misleading of this little group. Example: "Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch is a meditation on violence." Translation: "Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch is an extremely violent movie, filled with bullet-riddled bodies, women beaten to the ground by grunge-faced old cowpokes, Mexicans massacred in churchyards," etc. This concept of meditation is a way of disingenuously stating a concept — most often, violence — while sidestepping its implications and of course the authors' (both critic of the piece and director of the film) involvement, even complicity in it...

Walking with the Wind: Poems by Abbas Kiarostami

How merciful
That the turtle doesn't see
The little bird's effortless flight.

Photograph by Kiarostami