Tuesday, January 29, 2008

HAPPY REPUBLIC DAY

Better late than never:)

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

NETAJI

Today is January 23, 2008 the 111th birth anniversary of Subash Chandra Bose, India's unsung hero, one man who has not received his due as an icon of the Indian freedom struggle. His death and the investigations surrounding it are still shrouded in mystery.

A salute to the martyr.

THE FINAL TEST

The fourth and final test between India and Australia begins tomorrow at Adelaide. The BCCI announced the ODI squad early this wek and Dravid, Ganguly and Laxman have been left out. Perhaps the BCCI could have waited for the end of the final test before announcing the squad. Let us see what happens.....The test promises to be a cracker with Hayden back in the Oz camp. India might go in with five full-time bowlers, the first three days might decide the outcome of the match. Waiting for the match to start.

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Cinema from the Perspective of the Director's Gender

This is one of the most raging topics of debate in media schools and the entertainment industry. Does the execution of a plot idea into celluloid get affected by the gender of the director? Personally I feel it is got to do more with the sensitivity of the director than his/her gender.

In this post I choose two directors, Mira Nair and Ketan Mehta.

Mira Nair entered the limelight with her debut movie "Salaam Bombay" in 1988. Some of her other popular movies are "Mississipi Masala," "Monsoon Wedding," and "The Namesake." An Indian born director settled in New York, her movies show the wide framework of human emotions and the different types of people who live in India. Her movies can neither be called commercial or art-house, she strikes a fine balance between the two and has achieved success with all her movies. Her last release "The Namesake" based on the novel by Jhumpa Lahiri with the same name is an excellent adaptation of the book and remains faithful to the original plot and idea. Brilliant performances by Tabu, Kal Penn and Irrfan Khan and excellent cinematography were an asset for the movie. The story shows the problems of immigration, conflicts of Indians who have settled abroad and the perennial problem of cross cultural identity conflict.

Ketan Mehta is a popular Indian director whose fame rests on two excellent movies "Bhavani Bhavai" and "Mirch Masala." His other movies have been commercial failures though his period drama "Mangal Pandey-The Rising" was critically acclaimed.

Mirch Masala titled as Spices for its international release starred Smitha Patil and Nassirudin Shah two of the finest artistes India has ever produced. A despotic tax collector, Subedar (Naseeruddin Shah), imposes his rule on a village. All the villagers except a protesting schoolteacher, try to make him happy by satisfying all his whims. The drama starts when the beautiful Sonbai (Smita Patil) is to be surrendered to the lecherous Subedar. She takes refuge in the courtyard of a spice factory run entirely by women. She is protected by an aged watchman who closes the gates to Subedar's men.

The ensuing conflict where Subedar attacks the factory and tries to rape Sonbai and how Sonbai fights him is excellently portrayed. The scene where everyone throws chilli powder on the Subedar is brilliantly shot and the raw emotions of fear, anger and lust are brilliantly portrayed.

Suppose Mira Nair had made "Spices" or Ketan Mehta had made"The Namesake" we can just imagine how the final product would be; but we can be certain that the final movie would be different. A woman director might perhaps not show a lot of violence on screen and use subdued shots to convey their ideas. A male director might show violence on screen directly or might examine the intricacies of the human mind in added detail and show it on screen in a different manner.

Gurudutt India's finest director who took his own life created poetry on screen with his classic "Pyassa." The lighting scheme the wide angle shots, zoom and fade on Waheeda Rehman, choice of songs; no woman director can do justice to the portrayal of a man who has lost his love or has been rejected by his lover.

So instead of arguing on the gender of the director it is better to appreciate good cinema.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Friday, January 11, 2008

Chennai Book Fair

I visited the Chennai Book Fair on Saturday and again on Tuesday, I was not impressed, strange but true, the selection of English books is the same that you can spot in Higginbothams/Landmark. It is a goldmine for Tamil booklovers with lots of publishing houses offering various books on a variety of topics, including translations of Russian classics by Tolstoy and Chekov.

The entry fee is rupees five which is reasonable. The shops have been arranged in stalls and the entire area is carpeted and roofed, with tubelights and fans. Lots of stalls are devoted to multimedia stuff(educational CDs and DVDs). A 10% discount has been offered on all purchases.

Lots of schoolkids are there, I think the government has offered free tickets to school students. Translated works of Jayakanthan are available, unfortunately they are steeply priced.

I shall visit the fair again this weekend, might spot some good books.

Shall keep you posted.

Take care folks.

Monday, January 07, 2008

FEMINIST FILM THEORY

Feminist film theory is theoretical work within film criticism that is derived from feminist politics and feminist theory. The portrayal of women, the behaviour of men towards women, their sensitivity, emotions, etc… all form a major component of feminism in cinema.

Before we venture into the topic of feminism in cinema, we should understand how feminism grew as a movement. Primarily feminism is divided into three phases:

1-First-wave feminism,

2-Second-wave feminism, and

3-Third-wave feminism.

First-wave feminism refers to the period of feminist activity in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century. The primarily goal of the movement was to fight inequality and seek rights to vote in parliamentary elections.

Second-wave feminism is generally identified with a period beginning in the early nineteen sixties. Second Wave Feminism has existed continuously since then, and continues to coexist with what some people call Third Wave Feminism. The movement encouraged women to understand aspects of their own personal lives as deeply politicized, and reflective of a sexist structure of power. The Second Wave also saw the beginning of streams of feminist thought which were critical or hostile to transgender and transsexual women.

Third-wave feminism is a term identified with several diverse strains of feminist activity and study beginning in the early 1990s. It was also a response to the backlash against initiatives and movements created by the second-wave.

The representation of women in cinema has always been a subject of analysis and controversy among critics and feminists. Women are used as tools to attract the audiences to the cinema theatre. A recent trend in Indian cinema especially Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu cinema is the use of “item-numbers.” An item-number is essentially a song and dance number where lots of scantily clad women dance to fast paced music and contort their bodies into various poses in the name of choreography. Such songs are cosmetic additions and very rarely affect the story or plot of the movie. It is just a tactic by the producers to ensure that some money is made. Such titillating numbers with suggestive lyrics and choreography are demeaning and an outrage on the sensitivity of the general public. The public has no option but to endure such torture in the name of commercial cinema.

Pornography is another issue that keeps rearing its ugly head; gone are the days when such movies were shown in select seedy theatres. The advent of technology and digital cinema has ensured that pirated DVDs are available in the market for prices as low as thirty rupees. The porn-industry is a full flowing no holds barred win-win situation. Low production costs, no outdoor shooting required, just a bungalow or a flat a bunch of men and women ready to stoop down to any amount of vulgarity for money, a guy with a movie camera, a computer, and blank CDs/DVDs and hey you are in the business. Quality of cinema has come down to such a level that stars of the porn world are acting in commercial cinema and the producers use them as a ploy to generate interest and revenue.

Women are stereotyped into two categories; either they act as eye candy appearing to romance the hero, sing songs, a couple of comedy scenes and then marry the hero/ get killed by the villain. The second category is where the woman is portrayed as an evil scheming vamp all set to destroy the peace and calm of the hero and the hero’s family. This mentality is not just restricted to Indian cinema. Take any Hollywood movie for instance, what do you get- a couple of high octane car/boat/bike/plane chase sequence, lots of special effects, shootouts, some bland humor, two or three steamy sex scenes and or shots of women taking a bath. We have terrorists plotting to destroy cities or sexual predators killing young women or aliens invading the earth or some strange prehistoric creature creating chaos, it is as if the movies are put into pre-designed templates with different actors and actresses.

Slowly the spirit of feminism appeared in European cinema heralded by Italian filmmakers. In Hollywood Roger Corman gave strong roles to his heroines.

In his early, 1950s films, Corman revamped various worn-down genres with a strong streak of feminism. In Gunslinger (1956), the first scene depicts the brutal shotgun murder of frontier Marshal Scott Hood (William Schallert). But as Hood's body hits the floor, his wife Rose (Beverly Garland) instinctively grabs her own rifle, and mercilessly guns down two of the men responsible for his death. At his funeral, Rose takes over her late husband's job, and begins dispensing “gun law”, cleaning up the town. The astoundingly titled epic The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent (1957) deals with the quest of a group of amazons for their missing men; and Sorority Girl (1957) deals with betrayal and social ambition in a college sorority house. Corman tasted success with , Five Guns West (1955), a ten-day western. This was followed in rapid succession by Swamp Women (1955), Apache Woman (1955) and The Oklahoma Woman (1956), all low-budget films that demonstrated Corman's early feminist leanings, as he assigned the major action roles in all three films to a series of self-sufficient female protagonists, rather than the typically generic leading man. In 1956 and 1957, Corman turned to science fiction, horror and teen exploitation films, directing It Conquered the World and The Day the World Ended (both 1956), along with Not of This Earth, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Doll, The Undead, Sorority Girl, Rock All Night, Naked Paradise and Carnival Rock (all 1957). All of these films, shot on budgets hovering around the $100,000 range, were substantial hits for AIP and Woolner, a New Orleans distributor who also bankrolled some of Corman's early projects. With lurid posters and aggressive advertising campaigns, Corman's films soon found acceptance with AIP's target audience, teenagers, and Corman's directorial style displayed a verve and vigour that many other low-budget films lacked. Corman kept creating films at a frantic pace, directing War of the Satellites, Teenage Cave Man (with a young Robert Vaughn), She Gods of Shark Reef, The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent, Machine Gun Kelly (with Charles Bronson in an early leading role) and I, Mobster, all in 1958.

Jane Campion’s “The Piano,” is a study in feminism. With “The Piano” (1993), Campion traded intellectual evolution for sexual and erotic development. A beautifully told, deceptively simple story, it had as its protagonist Ada (Holly Hunter), a willfully mute Scottish widow who travels with her nine-year-old daughter (Anna Paquin) to New Zealand, where she enters into an arranged marriage with a taciturn, emotionally distant farmer (Sam Neill). Her subsequent affair with her neighbor (Harvey Keitel), which is carried out under the guise of piano lessons, was depicted with scorching yet understated passion, and ably underscored Ada's own multifaceted emotional and erotic development. One of the year's most celebrated films, “The Piano” put Campion at the forefront of contemporary cinema.

Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s “Naal Pennungal,”(Four Women) is one of the few movies made in India in recent years portraying feminism through the eyes of its different characters. The helplessness and vulnerability of the fairer sex, the inherent strength they have, and the vicissitudes of Fate to which women often fall prey in a male dominated society are some of the issues that get discussed in Naalu Pennungal. A very important aspect of the film is that even seemingly minor characters are portrayed with due importance given to them.

Really hope to see better cinema, what else can I say.

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Taare Zammen Par and dyslexia....

Taare Zameen Par is getting rave reviews in cinema halls all around the world. The story is written by Amole Gupte and it shows the trial and tribulations faced by school children in India. The pressures they are subjected to: excel in studies, excel in sports, excel in extracurricular activities; life becomes a survival game. Parents and teachers need to change their outlook on how children should be moulded.

I suffered from dyslexia when I was in school. It was called learning disorder by the school psychologist. We were a batch of seven kids in third and fourth standard and all of us had problems with mathematics. They called our parents held meetings and organised special classes for us on Saturdays. Slowly I overcame my fear of maths, I did not score 100% in maths in high-school, but I managed to get decent marks and survive the pressures of the educational rat-race.

We need more child psychologists who should work with academicians to create a better tomorrow for today's young ones.

The first post of 2008. Let me write something positive, something that spreads joy and brings a cheer to everyone. What shall it be? A short story, some jokes, a spoof, a poem, let me think....

This is something that I received a couple of years back as a forwarded e-mail. I found it interesting, hope you like it too.

Pickup in the Rain

One night, at 11:30 PM, an older African American woman was standing on the side of an Alabama highway trying to endure a lashing rain storm. Her car had broken down and she desperately needed a ride. Soaking wet, she decided to flag down the next car. A young white man stopped to help her - generally unheard of in those conflict-filled 1960s. The man took her to safety, helped her get assistance and put her into a taxi cab. She seemed to be in a big hurry! She wrote down his address, thanked him and drove away.

Seven days went by and a knock came on the man's door. To his surprise, a giant console color TV was delivered to his home. A special note was attached. It read: "Thank you so much for assisting me on the highway the other night. The rain drenched not only my clothes but my spirits. Then you came along. Because of you, I was able to make it to my dying husband's bedside just before he passed away. God bless you for helping me and unselfishly serving others."

Lessons:

  • Offer help to anyone who needs it

  • Thank others for helping you.

  • If you help someone. Someone will help you.

If everyone does just these, the whole world will live in happiness.

Keep smiling and make others smile too.

Cheers......:)

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