An early review of Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, from its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival 2010. Written by Wide Screen editorial board member, Kartik Nair. Click here to read.

Saba Naqvi of Outlook asserts:

My more earnest/ideological friends and relatives grumble that Shahrukh inhabits a no-man’s bubble gum land on celluloid and has played a role in divesting movies of all social context. I say, hey, get a life! Movies are for fun and there are others who make gritty realistic movies (that are no fun for kids). My own sociological research of tiny tots at birthday parties has led me to conclude that little girls in particular are die-hard Shahrukh fans because most of his films are free of violence and even the romance is so unrealistic that it could be straight out of a fairy tale. Little boys on the other hand are often fans of action heroes like Akshay Kumar, Salman Khan (must be the muscles). (link)

Groan, cringe!

After demolishing the “established fact” that Electric theatre was the first permanent theatre in India in his May 2003 Seminar article “Pride of Place,” Stephen Hughes, a well known SOAS (University of London) scholar working on early Indian cinema history, came down heavily on the damage caused by the wrong “chronology of firsts” in Indian film historiography at a seminar entitled “Searching for the Origins of Cinema in Colonial Madras” on Feb.03,2010 at University of Madras. [Read more →]

An appropriately dramatic beginning for this would be, ‘There was once an actor who embodied rebellion, middle-class anger and anguish in popular Hindi cinema.’ Amitabh Bachchan who made the unlawful, illegitimate rogue figure so attractive in the cinema of the 1970s has turned his face away from anything even remotely oblique. [Read more →]

Despite several volumes on the varied dimensions of Indian cinemas by numerous Indian, non-resident Indian and foreign scholars, film historiography remains a patchy area of study in India. In the absence of dependable archival sources on the early attempts by film pioneers in different parts of the country and their silent films, what circulates are accounts woven around the mainstreaming practices of the histories woven by inaccurate and ethnocentric accounts of film historians taking a peek at the fairly distant past and its fluid and unverified circumstances, particularly of the first four decades of India’s tryst with the moving images. [Read more →]

Just over thirty years after it came into existence, Miramax  studio that gave the world films like Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Chicago to name a few, was shut down by Disney. Click here to access the entire report.

Nominations, predictions, surprises and catfights are usual fare in the run up to the most popular award show hosted by the Academy for Motion Pictures and Sciences. An interesting list was drawn up by the guys at TIME, that made early predictions about what film, director and actors would be honoured by the Academy if the awards were decided by critics.

I’ve linked the list of Best Picture and the votes it got here.

For the complete list, click here.

Here’s an interesting article on the politics of Bollywood. Refreshing to be seen in mainstream media.

The questions to ask about a Bollywood film are not whether they are aesthetically good or bad, but how  effective they are socially and politically. Do they add strength to caste society and its institutions? Or do they promote sexual freedom and social anarchy? Artistically, Bollywood films are meaningless.

(Link)

Embedding is disallowed by our friends at Eros Entertainment. But do watch this and be amazed (link).

2009 was indeed a bleak year for Hollywood, not so much in terms of box office returns, but when it comes to innovative, fresh work, definitely. The awards season is upon us, and the Golden Globes were truly dismal, predicting a similar fate for the Oscars that nearly always take fewer risks and are mostly quite predictable.

One of the films that has attracted what to me seems undue attention is Lee Daniel’s Precious Based on the Novel by Sapphire. I didn’t want to give in to the ominous feelings that came up when I saw the promos, but sadly, the film remains a collage of characters, moments and situations we have seen endlessly. It fails to move out of its self congratulatory sense of greatness, and is all too aware of its project of depicting a dark American reality. The fact, however, is that this reality has been depicted many many times before, and Precious does nothing new at all. In fact, I would say the carving out of characters is at times embarrassingly naive.

The film, however, has generated many positive reviews, because as always to speak out against a film about an African American character is perceived more as a socio-political stand rather than the aesthetic one that it is. Jim Emerson has however lashed out against the film, and has written a meticulous piece on the shortcomings of the film. I don’t agree with him on the film’s comic potential, but I do endorse his critique.

Click here to read it.