The Pot that Broke Below a Hundred Other Pots
Towards the middle of Aaraam Thampuran, a 1997 movie with Malayali actor Mohanlal in the lead, the hostile villagers are steadily awakened to the true ‘noble’ roots of the bad man who has bought the big house. The villagers – and the audience – are given broad hints that he isn’t just the goonda from Bombay they thought...
The Bangalore Queer Film Festival
A decade ago my friend Nithin tried to make me watch cinema. He had this way of saying, “You must have seen it” with confidence. If you mumbled no, he’d follow up with “you must watch it, you will love it.” He was entirely in denial, like an alcoholic’s lover. I hadn’t watched anything and...
Closing the Universe
My TBIP column. This time on Midnight’s Children. Moderating a panel on sports writing in January clearly fired some neurons I didn’t know I had. *** On the 6th of May, 1954, a young doctor took a train from London to Oxford and ran a mile in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds. He had trained for...
The Rape Kit
This winter it was hard to think through the fog around the Delhi rape case. I made an attempt here in my monthly column and another when I gave a long talk at the Mahindra United World College in Pune. Writing and speaking both helped clarify my ideas in different ways. *** 1. Words make our world....
What I Learnt By Watching 50 Tamil Short Films in One Weekend
Perhaps the best movie weekend ever. And the wonderful TBIP people let me write about it. *** 1. No one can eat just one. Two filmmaker friends recently told me they’re addicted to the Facebook page Short Film Factory run by Chennai-based assistant director Charles Rishar, and warned me that soon (hollow laugh) I’d be...
Eat, Drink, Shoot, Cycle
Writing this column was a blast because it allowed me to make all kinds of connections between foodie movies, revolution movies, high school movies. And it allowed me to rage a little about the letdown that was Ustad Hotel. *** Should any movie take its own McGuffins seriously? If it does, you could end...
The Cheek of Sridevi, and Bringing Up Other Bodies
Image via the glorious sridevi the empress What happened to Manju of Chaalbaaz after the credits rolled and she married the stubbly suitable boy Suraj, aka Sunny Deol? Sure he loved her, certainly he was happy he married her rather than the terrified little Anju. But in a decade after they had two children did...
I Will Never Heil Again
The Plot Mahatma Gandhi wrote two letters to Adolf Hitler addressing him as “My Dear Friend”, suggesting he mend his ways. All manner of narratives could have addressed this historical Ripley’s Believe it or Not item. The one chosen is college-circuit drawing room tragedy. Gandhi walks about. Hitler rants as the Reich collapses. Indian National...
Well played Zoya, well played
You understand that we don’t think women can only make ladies-type films. Understand also that we don’t have problems with ladies-type films. Ah, so now all that hedging has been done let us ask this question. Why didn’t anyone tell us Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara is a chick-flick? This is a movie that has all...
Pirates have feelings, you know
IN ALAN Bennett’s novella The Uncommon Reader, Queen Elizabeth becomes an obsessive reader when her beloved corgis wander by a mobile library near the palace. She’s transformed from a bored, frankly amoral monarch into a sentient being. In one episode, she flummoxes the visiting French president by asking him about Jean Genet. Recently, Bollywood too...
Ekta Kapoor will see you now
THE INTERN is sniffy. When she was hired, she’d thought Ekta ma’m was going to ask her for ‘creative inputs’ into the TV shows. She isn’t at Balaji Telefilms to do “just this”, she gestures vaguely at the office around her with Facebook-weary hands. Does she watch the shows? No! She is horrified. “I keep...
Murder on the Wannabe Express
The PlotBillionaire Kabir Malhotra (Anupam Kher) summons a drug dealer, a Thai prime ministerial candidate, a British journalist and a Bollywood star to his Greek island for mysterious reasons. He knows something about each of them. High jinks ensue. + 10 for creating bollywood’s first malayali protagonist neil menon (Abhishek Bachchan). This following Bollywood’s first...
