Movies

[:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Castle|A prison turned hotel]. Isn't that a remarkable thing? Of course, it could become a little spooky sleeping in jail cells turned rooms, but this hotel seems to be different even there. [:http://www.oxfordprison.co.uk/|The hotel website] advertises the [:http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/travel/where_to_stay/middle_england/article766505.ece|Times Online review] they got:

"Oxford Prison.... Is an architectural
triumph".

It often is outrageous to see well respected artists making generalized comments about Indian Cinema without actually even considering the impact of it. Beeb [:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6369621.stm|has a story] quoting a criticism from the very respected actor Naseeruddin Shah.

Quote:

He was speaking after the Bollywood film, Rang de Basanti (Colour Me Saffron) failed to pick up an award at this month's British Academy of Film and Television Awards (Baftas). It was nominated in the Best Foreign Film category.

"I really don't think we make films that can match those from other parts of the world. And I am not referring to Hollywood - we make copies of Hollywood," he added.

What people fail to realize is that Indian Cinema is not necessarily all about Bollywood. There's Cinema in India beyond Bollywood. There are bunch of good films coming out of Southern states and also the Marathi ones. Not that their ain't experiments being carried out in Bengal and other places. There are, probably even in plenty. Good Cinema might just be going without grabbing attention of the scale Bollywood films usually do.

Can't get myself to believe that [:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shyam_Benegal|Shyam Benegal] actually liked the film [:http://don.indiatimes.com/|Don]. In the outlook article, he mentions,

Don was extremely well made, used technology with a great deal of sophistication. SRK was superb. I think Farhan Akhtar is one of our shining stars. It was the film I enjoyed the most.

Don was not as special in any way, and looked sort of messed-up movie. Farhan Akthar, in my opinion, did a better job on his last two movies with a downward gradient on his performance, elegance graph. :)

No wonder Shyam Benegal has lost his old touch with films he came up with, like [:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0255713/|Zubeidaa] and [:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0349878/|Netaji Subash Chandra Bose].

There's also an epilogue piece (might well be an editing time jumble for Outlook standards) which says:

"I don’t see the bad films."

I'm smelling irony here. :P

Suchitra film society is organizing a unique film festival (its first ever) in Bangalore during Christmas (22 - 28th of December). There would be more than [:http://www.suchitra.org/pages/Biff-list.htm|80 films from all over the world] screened in a span of a week.

Passes priced at Rs 600/- can be collected at [:http://www.suchitra.org|Suchitra], B V Karanth Road, Banashankari II Stage, Bangalore.

No, its not just 'mmm....' as we usually hum about, but its that tune from the latest Bollywood Movie, 'Salaam Namaste' that I'm talking about. I don't really know how good this movie is, or whether its become a box office blockbuster. But this particular song is astoundingly beautiful and has a cleverly woven lyrics. Even the music is more than just good. Listen to it, and there are heavy chances of you finding yourself humming this tune all day :)

For me, this is one of the best songs of Bollywood in last few years that has been so touching with beautifully scored music. The first one after 'Ori Chori' of Lagaan.
Read its lyrics. Here's its review on yahoo! India.

Quite a lot has appeared about this on newspapers and magazines that we all know very well about it :) So, I'll just keep this to mentioning the URL to reach the video of the show (for those who missed it):
Aishwarya on David Letterman show - Video (Opens in a new window)

(Aishwarya talks, and manages to dodge some boulders of words thrown at her by David Letterman. Watch out for the part where Aishwarya shoots back at David asking him "How did you get into doing this?", for the question on how aish got into movies)

(via Sanjay).

Veteran actress Aarathi is directing films now ;)

She's directed a movie called 'Mitaayi mane'.
The interesting part is that the whole film was finished, all hush-hush. Then came the news in News papers and magazines about it. Viggi.com has an article on it.