the women . pitfall . the big sleep .max payne . dong

an all woman cast in new york high society calls for a bunch of stars playing type with glee. suffering divorcee, strong independent woman and husband stealing bitch by joan crawford. and the thing that they all discuss the most is men- how to please them, how to keep them, how to ditch them.

the pitfall in the insurance man’s suburban boredom with wife and child happens when in search for adventure he has a one night stand with the girlfriend of convict. turns out that the real bad man here is the ex-cop who now scans potential insurance beneficiaries who also lusts after the same woman. ‘stay in the suburbs!’ the film screams out- american men don’t have the intelligence to understand the complexities of the city.

then there was howards hawks fantastic version of the raymond chandler 'the big sleep'. lauren bacall plays the sexy seductress to humphrey bogart's philp marlowe. she is smarter one of the two daughters of a rich biollionaire being blackmailed. The twists go on forever and so do the one-liners.

another noir, but recent, takes off from a self conscious noir graphic novel- whose central character is a snarling detective with dead wife looking for revenge. a banned drug makes victims see black bird fly through the sky before they tear your body to pieces. this one is very forgettable.

jia zhang ke’s documentary ‘dong’ made parallel with the gorgeous ‘still life’ pales in comparison. the staged long pans over the ruins of cities in the three gorges valley are intercut with a narrative of a neorealist painter trying to paint laborers in the landscape. this is the first half which ends with a cringe inducing sequence when the painter goes with photographs and toys for the wife and children of the laborers he has painted in the their distant home town. the second half follows the painter as he goes up and down bangkok’s various transportation systems and tries to paint an array of women who are probably sex workers.

laura .. a single man . an education . paranoid park . the day the earth stood still .10 things i hate about you .

on the noir trip that i am on, otto premingers ‘laura’. a mysterious murder of a top advertising executive leads to suspicions flying all round, including her fiance and her much older mentor. most of the action takes place in the apartment of the dead woman and the central character is a snarling detective complete with crush on said victim. really not that mysterious but fun to watch.

it is apparent that a fashion designer was behind the very stylish visuals of the gorgeously shot ‘a single man’. carefully recreating the chirstopher isherwood novel the film follows a day in the life of an english professor in los angeles as he reminisces about the lover he lost a few years back. as he contemplates suicide the world reaches out to him to love and cherish in precise detail, colour and texture.

a romance with an older man offers a bored exceptionally bright girl in britain a chance to really experience life- as defined by restaurants, concerts and a trip to paris. too bad that it turns out that he is married. a straightforward coming of age period drama. straightforwardly and smartly made.

but ‘paranoid park’ is something else. below a bridge young men ride skateboards rolling, swaying, swinging- freedom on the edge. they all seem to be escaping from something. our hero- young wide eyed innocent – from a family that is breaking up and a girlfriend he does not care for, and his own shyness. an accident where he kills a security guard forms the basic plotline of the film- but really that does not matter too much. the long slow motion skateboarding scenes, the muddled complex soundscape, and the gentle boys who are playing at being men, all reminded me so much of gus van sants earlier american suburbs and violence epic- ‘elephant’. loved that too.

i am supposed ot like ‘the day the earth stood still’ a sci fi special effects extravaganza where aliens invade the earth yet again- and destroy it- yet again- all because the human race is incapable to keeping the greenhouse gases under control. so keanu reeves arrives with a single expression on his face accompanied by a gigantic cyclops like figure in the middle of central park (where else?) the films tries to get all profound and philosophical and fails spectacularly. if only they had embraced more wholeheartedly the silly hollywood fluff it could have been.

a run of the mill prom king / queen high school comedy in ’10 things i hate about you’. the only real highlight is heath ledger and julia stiles as the guy and girl that everyone is afraid of in the school. the rest is bubblegum.

vixen . cradle 2 the grave . how to murder your wife . suspicion . fury . gilda . the conformist . the name of a river

tongue in cheek almost porn from russ meyer. vixen, the big busted heroine sleeps with absolutely everyone on screen- and that is the story- until a ridiculously silly discussion regarding racism and marx on a flight kidnapped to cuba from canada.

i feel sorry for jet li in every american film. the man is so out of sorts. he scowls one dimensionally and kicks butt like a robot. surrounding him in this flat crime drama are generic black types involved in some caper involving black diamonds.

jack lemmons apartment in 'how to murder your wife' is transformed from designer bachelor pad to girly kitsch when he marries a hot italian woman who jumps out of a cake. his misogynistic butler threatens to leave him over the woman and guess whose side lemmon takes. very sexist, fairly funny.

the hitchcock mystery 'suspicion' wasnt very suspenseful. a wife suspects her dandy of a husband of a possible murder- and that is the only thing that is scary. cary grant is smooth as the husband though.

'fury' was fritz langs noir. for a change the city was the place of civilization and sanity. spencer tracy plays a good guy suspected of being a kidnapper by a bunch of idiot villagers looking for a fight. when, in a mindless rage the burn down the jail they think tracy is dead- but tracy is still alive and looking for revenge. good film, i thought.

in 'gilda' rita hayworth is all glam in the lead role. her big boned all american-ness is foil for the complicated seductress she plays. she is in a complex love-hate relationship with her husbands right hand man - set in argentina. both the men in her life work in a casino that's a front for smuggling tungsten. (?)

in 'the conformist' bertolucci's film on italian fascism and its politics (and aesthetics) of order and fear, the reason for the lead characters self-effacement and lack of courage seems to be placed on an incident that occurred when the man was merely a child. a chauffeur almost seduces the boy and is believed to be killed by him. is this the scar that leaves him with a perpetual fear making him conform to all the unreasonable violence of the party. he follows his orders even when he is asked to betray his teacher and the woman he probably loves. but really, the film is really about the way it is staged. elaborate and cold styling in italy- the offices of the bureaucracy, or the streets of paris- all blue and cold with only the light from the shops selling the latest fashion giving warmth or the brilliant assassination sequence in the forest.

and last night we saw 'the name of a river' a tribute to ghatak that name-checked so many films and incidents in his life. the images were stunning- calcutta from the river and the sky, rivers and boats, the airfield from suvarnarekha; and osme of the music. but finally at the end of it the relentless inside references, the perpetual, very bengali, angst was a little too much to take.

robot

the film is beyond brilliant. expecting a rollercoaster star vehicle like sivaji, i was taken in by the first half's mad over the top jokiness. so you can imagine how stunned i was by the dark oedipal drama of the second half.

rajni the scientist ignores his lover in the quest for making a machine in his image- his child, born from him, and carrying in his metallic body all of whom rajni wants to be. except that 'one thing'- 'feelings' is what we are told but really we all know it is the phallus. this inability for a robot to reproduce is mirrored in a sequence when danny's rival robot humps the ground in a useless gesture of failure and ends up shooting the groin of an outline of a man used as a target.

the girlfriend of the scientist adores this harmless de-masculinised version of her lover who follows her every wish and saves her from being raped. these infantile antics are mistaken for much more by the robot when he develops human emotions as love. the father and the son fall for the same woman. a competiton between them leads ot the father destroying the son in an act of spectacular violence.

all this while we believe that the film is, like so many other science fiction films, a love hate relationship with technology and its possibilities and dangers- the danger of super rationality and the irrationality of our desires. and this is a theme through the film- in many a dialogue and scene. man against machine. the power of man's mind and the fear of uncontrollable technology.

in the second half the robot reappears in a violent form- corrupted by danny's jealousy. danny is now a foster father. faced with his own extinction the robot begins to reproduce. multiple versions of himself form an army of him- without that one missing part- feelings / phallus. the girl is kidnapped and kept in a sexless imprisonment until she agrees to make robosapiens with the villain- more sexless reproduction. the only difference between machine and man is sexuality.

in a superb climactic fight, the multiple robots come together, merge all their identities to become one overpowering machine.. they form and reform into spheres and walls, snakes and screws, joined together by one brain in multiple centers- a rhizome that can only be destroyed through a virus that penetrates through all defences. it is only apt that this sequence is filmed in the disconnected half built mind-spaces of chennai and mumbai. here glass clad building overlook these mad machines escaped from the call cnters on desolate streets with half built infrastructure everywhere, buildings under construction and flyovers leading into the sky. the internal sequences are in lab like antiseptic chrome and glass.

so well done- and so much darker than i had thought it would be. even the music seems to come out of some strange fusion of machine and man. the song sequences and dances are cyborg dreams. there is no real happy ending here. even at the end when the son dismantles himself to save his father, he is still in love with his mother.

long overdue photopost

oberoi mall in the rain

juhu gally high rise

sanaa and me

oberoi mall under renovation

mill land / phoenix

dadar dadar dadar

farewell to neelima, dipti, aditya and rewathi

bandra skywalk

edward theater and the cinema city screenings

billboards in the rain

sndt, juhu

joanna's birthday

ganpati at home

ruin at opera house

gulshan sonal hussaina

bharat nagar biryani party in college (in celebration of id and the registration of the society)

workers at avon

moms birthday at prego

bharat nagar community meeting

choudhary farms, umargaon- family party

usha maushis factory at umargaon

antichrist . pierrot le fou . the quiet american . the italian job . the fountainhead

another suffering heroine in a lars von trier film. here after losing her son in an accident her psychoanalyst husband takes her deep in the woods to 'eden' where she is to confront her fear of nature. nature is the garden of death. but it is also woman- and herself. evil resides in her as passion as she rebels against reason and the phallus; and her own womanhood in gruesome scenes of genital mutilation. gratuitous violence that i could not bear to watch. incredibly well made with all kinds of biblical allusions thrown in. not that i figured out most of them. but nowhere as complex as dogville.

a similar conversation that pits male rationality against female romanticism occurs in the middle of pierrot le fou, jean luc godard's wild ride with ferdinand or pierrot and anna karina- the wild child that leads him away from his stultifying bourgeois life- wife and kids and parties where the latest commodity is discussed in detail through coloured filters. pop culture and cultural references pop up everywhere- from proust and james joyce to film noir. film genres switch in staccato rhythms. seemed like a pop art film with its in-jokes about film making, its palette of primary colours and its set design with posters o art reproductions and designer chairs. lenin and coke are discussed in the sun drenched south of france; in the genteel sun and sand american culture is lampooned and loved, the vietnam war becomes a game.

graham greene's hero in 'the quiet american' is a world weary british reporter in love with a beautiful vietnamese woman, when a young american arrives in saigon with visions of a different future for the country. this white man's burden is to save the vietnamese from the evils of communism and the ineffectual colonial rule of the french; no matter what the cost in human lives. after all it is the larger ideological battle that must be won. echoes of every american war since. iraq especially.

'the italian job' is good american pulp. mark walberg and a huge bunch of stars including donald sutherland and edward norton in a oceans eleven style crime caper. something about gold bricks and a double crossing partner. with all the cool gadgets and lines this really should be much better.

in the film version of ayn rand's 'the fountainhead' gary cooper as howard roark is the first laugh. and then there is the dominique francon who gets an orgasm everytime she sees his sweat drenched shirt- or when she sees him drill the limestone with his strong arms; or the 'radical' architecture that roark is supposed to have built which all look like bad renderings of modern architecture that you find in every architecture magazine even today. the film manages to stay true to the book and brings out its inherent silliness. the 'inspiring' speech at the end when roark justifies his individuality over the collective is hilarious especially since he has just blown up a low income housing settlement because the evil mediocrities have prettied it up. the howlers in the dialogue make this a must watch for all architects.

high noon . the searchers . things to come . el topo . dabangg . raja babu . hum dono. once upon a time in mumbaai . vincere

so many films to review. i am falling behind every week. maybe i should start off with the westerns- two of them- the first one 'high noon' in which gary cooper plays a lawman recently married waiting for two hours for a train to arrive that carries his nemesis. as he goes from house to pub to church to enlist deputy sheriffs to help him fight the villain, all of them desert him, cursing him instead for the violence that is sure to follow. the two women in his life- his mexican ex-girlfriend and his very white and blonde wife also desert him until one of them has a change of heart at the end. no prises for guessing which one. the stereotypes are all there. what really works is the tension of the impending arrival through the whole film. the climax at the end ends up being a let down. john ford's 'the searchers' places a few twists in the typical western. far from being a white washed hero, john wayne plays a racist cowboy who snarls his contempt for anything red indian. his companion is a 'half breed' as they travel the gorgeous utah deserts in search of a young girl kidnapped by avenging tribes of ululating, horse riding, teepee living indians. when she is found she is a squaw of the tribe leader, which leads to our hero wanting to kill her for miscegenation. the final reunion at the end is lovely in spite of the cringe inducing racism that underlies the whole film- in spite of its relatively progressive stance.

i finally got down to seeing 'el topo'- the mole- a western of sorts but packed to the brim with allegories and symbols that i assumed to have profound importance but could not for the life of me understand. not that it mattered. the film seemed to be divided in three parts. in the first 'el topo' rescues a community from a murdering tribe and leaves his son in their care. in the second he travles with a woman through the desert to defeat 4 people, each with their own powers and geometric symbols; and in the third he helps a band of deformed underground people dig a tunnel to the world above. mesmerising and completely obscure.

thank god for 'dabanng'. i am sick and tired of the smooth over produced chic of multiplex films- those that dont aim for more than a smooth surface finish, or (even worse) those that claim to have a social conscience - think 'peepli live'. dabanng has no such pretentions. i was afraid with the image of salman's sunglasses reflecting the lighted heart, that the film might be too self conscious about its own masalagiri to really go out and enjoy it. always keeping a respectful distance from getting down and dirty in the genre and instead 'appreciating' it as a clever 'take'. 'wanted' had no such inhibitions and 'dabanng' had only a few. salman khan is salman khan, no matter if you call his chulbul- and he is great- especially in the action sequences- a closed warehouse with a bunch of goondas where he flexes his muscles to get out of the clutches of the villains or the way in which his shirt comes off in the final scene. sonakshi sinha is stunning but had little to do. and the story... i cant remember. on a whim i also saw david dhawan's 'raja babu' yesterday. entertaining if you can carry your brain with you and pretend to read too much in everything- otherwise it can simply be shrill and hackneyed. govinda's comic timing is fantastic and so are the dance sequences- the sari lifting in 'aa aa ee' being a highlight and of course the multiple and complex pelvic thrusts. the groin is the centre of the film - whether that is the phallus/candle that karisma burns for govinda or the nadas- in stiff and limp state that shjakti kapoor fights with.

i have always loved the songs in 'hum dono' but had never seen it (ages ago on doordarshan does not count) what struck me in the film were long silences and the gentle ease y which the story is told from the very first scene where an entire silent flirtation leads into 'abhi na jaao'. in fact all the songs are placed beautifully. as a weepy it is totally successful; i sobbed away. partly becasue the music - especially 'allah tero naam' is just simply divine.

'once upon a time in mumbaai' tries so hard to be cool. the narrator speaks in a decorous monotone, so do all the actors - no one screams, ajay devgan mumbles and scowls, the photography is lush period homage and very tasteful. everything is so smooth that the film is completely flat. it plods along from incident to incident. the only one who tries to fight the eternal smoothness is emraan hashmi who manages for some time to look human enough to be petulant and vulnerable. prachi desai as his girlfriend benefits from this, but poor kangna ranaut is submerged under the perpetual good taste of the film. boring.

'vincere' follows an affair that Mussolini had with a woman who he later discarded and declared insane along with the son they had together. high on production design and operatic staging. every moment is pushed to the extremes of high tension through stylized photography and sound design. i did not hate the film- but it did not leave me with much either.

inkheart . high school musical 3 . savage planet . antonio gaudi. force of evil . the band wagon . khel khel mein

i should really have liked 'inkheart'. i fall for most films where fantasy is an excuse for some really spectacular special effects. in this case brandan fraser plays a man gifted with the power to make what he reads come true. a fairy tale called inkheart comes alive and takes his wife in leaving a band of murdering villains instead. fraser wants his wife back and some mummy-like action follows. not nearly as lovely as it could have been. brain dead disney silliness is 'high school musical 3' so forgettable. at least the music could have been less annoying.

the french fantasy animation film ' fantastic planet' pits humans against a race of blue giants on a strange planet. the humans are kept as pets while the wild ones live free in an abandoned garden. when one domesticated animal escapes with all the knowledge of the blue people there is a revolution. scientific thought can save the world. a similar sentiment is seen in 'things to come' a 1936 science fiction fantasy. written by h g wells as a polemic of sorts against irrationality and its dangers. the film is set in everytown, where a war breaks out on christmas eve and over a few years the world is plunged into a dark age where tribes battle with one another headed by a chieftain like figure. but somewhere around the Mediterranean scientists, teachers and professionals have evolved an idyllic bastion against this madness. a grey haired wise man arrives in this devastated town as a beacon of a better life spreading his peace gas over the population. everytown then is transformed into a perfect city with a baroque inspired plan and futuristic white high rise living. but as the scientists reach for even greater heights, a sculptor rues the loss of the 'human' and creates a propaganda war against progress. as a rocket shoots towards the sky mad mobs invade the launch pad. good film for my theory of design modernism class.

hiroshi teshigahara's antonio gaudi is a relief. unlike 'my architect' that aims for some profound psychlogical insight from louis kahns work, in this film the buildings speak for themselves by intercutting what might have been gaudis sources with the voluptuous sensuality of gaudis buildings. not having a voiceover telling us what to see was a great help.

i love the moral ambiguity of film noir. in 'force of evil' a brother who has sold his soul to the devil to make a million overnight is confronted by his morally upright, but weak brother who runs a gambling joint. as the lawyer brother tries to make amends for being the black sheep he is consistently snubbed by the older brother. who is good and evil is debateable. the sequences in new york are beautifully shot- wall street deserted in morning light and especially, at the end' the descent to the banks of the river where the body of his brother lies.

more new york sequences (and lovely ones) are in 'the band wagon'. the first being the shoe shine song in the penny arcade on 42nd street where a black man shines fred astaires shoes like a happy slave; and the second the lovely romantic dance in central park with fred astiare and cyd charise. astaire plays a has-been Hollywood star trying to make it big again in a stage version of 'faust' by playing opposite a ballet dancer. the show fails because it is serious. the message being that nothing should be taken seriously- all is airheaded happiness- 'that's entertainment' the world is a stage and the stage is a world.

more airheaded happiness leads to a multiple murders in 'khel khel mein'. rishi kapoor, neetu singh and rakesh roshan play teenagers who love to flirt with danger. one day a prank goes wrong and they are implicated in a crime involving the murder of a jeweller and the evil 'black cobra'. poor aruna irani plays the suffering vamp- 'sherri'- she had to be christian.

police story. once upon a time in china 1-6 steamboy. the best days of our lives . bride wars .

it is the opening of police story and that incredible chase down the hill through the slums that most sticks in my mind. no stunt compares to that one through the rest of the story about a policeman assigned to guard a potential witness. jackie chang is fantastic fun. the other hong kong kung fu king whose films i have been watching back to back is jet li.

while chang plays the action for comedy, jet li makes it ballet. and it is not as if his characters are all tension like bruce lee. instead there is a gentle sweetness and often a sort of buffoonery that offsets his seriousness. in fact when he plays wong fei-hung his self-seriousness is often what is funny as he surrounded by his girlfriend and disciples who seem instead to have a better understanding of the world. ji is the distanced slightly eccentric pure soul. he is the star of only 4 of the six films and when he is not around the films suffer terribly. his charisma more than makes up for the interminable lion and dragon dances in the third film and the pseudo cowboy and indian story in the sixth. every film has a white man to hate- the first being american, then the russians, then the germans.. the list goes on. these white people are conniving through business to take over the china. wong fei-hung westernizes just enough to be able to fight them on their terms- but only in the later films. in the first two it is good old fashioned kung-fu that helps win all the battles.

i love the way that space is used in these films. it serves as both obstacle and prop for the body. while containing the action it also becomes something that can be used against the opponent. the body traces out the space in all dimensions and maps the structure and material of the building. the scale of the spaces, their strong and weak joints, the way that they come together are all unravelled the the action proceeds. some of my favourite sequences happen again in the first two films when cgi and wire tricks have not completely made the body weightless.

the action in the anime 'steamboy' occurs during the london exhibition of 1866. across from the crystal palace an enormous steam castle is built which is going to change the world. superb animation includes brilliantly designed steam engines that run off tracks and gorgeous visuals when the steam castle runs out of control over the city of london. the story involves the grandson of a family of inventors and a rivalry between his father and grandfather over science and its relationship with rampant capitalism.

'the best days of our lives' begins with three war veterans meeting in an airport trying to get back home to boone city where the women wait to care for them. the men have trouble fitting in again- one drinks too much, the other is ashamed of his disability and disfigurement and the third comes back to find himself jobless. . the women that they come back to are strong and supportive as they are supposed to be- and if they are not- as one veterans wife is portrayed, she very quicly in villianized. a propoganda film like no other- beautifully made and acted. for me the most beautiful sequence involves the airfield with the discarded carcasses of planes. i am a sucker for ruins.

and 'bride wars'.. if it wasn't for anne hathaway and kate hudson, who really are too lovely for this film, it would be completely unwatchable. like two bridezilla episodes rolled into one. the best of friends vying over each other to have the most perfect wedding which involves every cliché in the book. vera wang wedding clothes and a location to die for. after a while you cant care less about these women and their annoying tiffs.

chandramukhi . public housing. this film is not yet rated. terminator- salvation

in a fantastic entry sequence that begins with the sole of his shoe rajnikanth enters the film as a psychoanalyst who has made up his mind to debunk the myth of the ghost of a dancer that haunts the rooms of the palace. from a room to the rear of the building she is said to look down at her lover's house who was killed mercilessly by the tyrant husband. in the climax an easy solution is found to the tamilian schizophernia that pits science (all those iit-ians) against the mystical/religious (tirupati/ rajnikant) by making the yogi and analyst work together to rid the heroine of her poltergeist. whether it was a real spirit infestation or only a manifestation of internally repressed feelings is never resolved.

frederick wiseman's 'public housing' is a curious film. almost three hours of fly-on-the-wall gazing at everyday life in a housing scheme in chicago. except that the everyday life he has access to comes from the chicago housing authority which also has a special police squad for the colony. so we spend most of the time watching the poor, drug infested, dysfunctional neighbourhood on its best behaviour under the gaze of figures of authority- whether that is the social worker, the policeman or the plumber. the film is strangely un-self-conscious about the camera and its power to transform the object that i looks upon.

'this film is not yet rated' is an expose of the film rating system in the usa which is controlled by a secretive group of parents who work as a moral police for the nation. the premise to expose these people to the general public and he hires a lesbian couple as a private detective agency to help him. pretty straightforward with a michael moore kind of humour where the filmmaker submits his own film for rating.

the latest of the terminator series was damp and vapid compared to the others. in fact, i think after 2 the films have gone downhill very fast. some great action sequences and sets. the world i now almost completely run over by machines and a revolutionary army is trying to overthrow them. nothing to remember except for the thrill of two or three chases in gorges and river beds.

son of india . mandi . bhumika . le million. follow the fleet . los angeles plays itself

mehboob khans mega nationalistic epic gets its metaphors mixed up- i think. the 'son of india' leaves dehradun and traipses through new delhi monuments singing and gets to the evil city of bombay to find the father who has abandoned his mother and him. while two street songs catalogue Bombay's postcard images- gateway of india, marine drive, etc; it is the set piece that really explores the darkness of the evil empire with the degrading conditions of living in slums/ villages -a brilliant rooftop chase sequence to a bridge below which the homeless father lives, to the huge elephanta statue just off a village street where god delivers his protection and judgement. but for me the images that really stay in my head are the action scenes in the sewers below the city that lead directly from the warehouse of the villain.

the brothel in mandi reminded me of another house of women in beijing in 'raise the red lantern'. but here the rules are made by the doyenne played brilliantly by shabana azmi. under her protection are a collection of terrific women actors- smita patil plays the virgin illegitimate child of a local powerbroker, soni razdan a brazen prostitute, neena gupta a childlike dancer- and the list goes on. it is a relief to say the least that the film does not make complete victims of these women, even when they are asked to be removed from the city by the moral police of the town, by keeping the tone tragi-comic rather than out and out melodrama. that cant be said about 'bhumika' though. based on a real life, i guess it does not have a choice. smita patil plays an actress caught in a marriage with a gold digger husband who controls her every move. his jealousies and manipulations drive her to other men who each creates a prison for her in their own way. the tragedies and disappointments do not end. naseeruddin shah and amrish puri play love interests. but if there is anything that makes the film constantly watchable it is smite patil who looks searingly beautiful throughout.

the first shot of 'le million' is a pan across the roofs of paris until we look through a dormer into a large hall where celebrations are on. the early french musical plays like a p g wodehouse comedy of errors when a lottery ticket is won by a down-on-his-luck artist- and then is lost by his fiance. through the rest of the film the jacket with the ticket is chased through town with a group of underground thieves and an opera singer. one beautiful sequence is the love song in the opera where the real love story and the operatic love story intertwine. the false setting and paper flowers are loved and adored for their artificiality and their fakeness.

no such moments of magic in the american musical 'follow the fleet' with fred astaire and ginger rogers although some terrific dancing. two sailors come into town and fall for two sisters; and then leave. one particularly memorable dance sequence is the sailors performance for the guests on the ship who are longing for some american music.

'los angeles plays itself' was a perfect cinema city film looking at locations in the city made mythological through cinema and the history of those real spaces, all underpinned by an anger emerging out of a belief that the movie industry has disrespected and lied about the city that it claims to represent and live within.

my architect . breakfast at tiffany's . hedwig and the angry inch. south park - bigger, longer, uncut . the weathering continent. phoenix 2772 .

it has been a long list of films since i last posted; and that is mainly because being at home all day i end up watching all kinds of nonsense back to back until they all dissolve into one giant mess of a image mash up at night when i sleep. so here i try to sift some of these images out into their proper slots.

'my architect' displayed a remarkable facility for ickiness throughout the film. i cant remember the last time a film made me cringe so much. maybe it was the very premise of the film where an illegitimate son tries ot rediscover his absent father through his legacy so every stone or shaft of light in louis kahns work signifies some profound psychological insight into kahns very soul; or maybe it is the fact that the son so shamelessly in the bald confessional tone of an oprah winfrey show asks his mother intimate details about her relationship with his father on camera; or the mystic indian yoginess thrust upon kahn by his devotees in india who make him into a seer; or the bengali architect at the end of the film who simpers and sobs away in the dhaka assembly and credits kahn the american for bringing democracy to his underdeveloped country. at the end of the film the son stares at the son setting behind kahn's monumental tomb like assembly and 'listens to the silence' and finds his father. if this was television it would be a rendezvous with simi garewal. meanwhile kahn's architecture which i so admired for their clarity and monumental sublime become merely enormous phallic replacements for a man desperate to leave a legacy to the world and could only find them in the mute ruins of a classical past. all his buildings become tombs to him.

in new york two loners try and find their selves both by selling their bodies and their youth. the man, a wannabe writer, finds an older woman emntor who takes care of his every need while the girl has escaped from her past to reinvent herself in an permanent nomadic mode wearing fanciful costumes and scouring the city for a rich man to get married to. her only companion is a cat with no name and an obsession with a jewellery store. true happiness lies in this landmark of a capitalist paradise. here even the clerks who know you cant afford any of their wares do not condemn your desire. a similar paradise existed in 'modern times' where in one night of pleasure chaplin and the tramp roam free and play out suburban fantasies inside the shopping mall. in 'breakfast at tiffany's audrey hepburn lives a perpetual fantasy of a richer future until clear and present love reigns at the end. it is a happy ending - of sorts.

hedwig and the angry inch is a movie based on a broadway musical whose central protagonist is a transgendered rock singer who came to america just before the berlin wall fell from east germany. she fell in love with an american marine and lost most of her penis in a botched up surgery leaving her with an angry inch. in america she is betrayed by her teenage lover who uses her songs to top the charts without giving her any credit. the film follows hedwig as she follows this cheat across his tour of america. fantastic over the top fun, and although some of the songs are a little corny the film more than easily carries it along with its flair for fantasy and melodrama.

i am not really so much of a 'south park' fan. i dont really get the humour. i understand it but i dont laugh. in the feature film a tv show is to blame for the spread of cuss words and bad language thorughout the youth of america and the americans blame canada leading to a war between the two nations. the films targets everybody liberals, conservatives, war mongers and peaceniks but much of the jokes are predictable. but then they would say- that's the point. ok i get it, but so what? now if only they had managed to lampoon themselves..

'the weathering continent' feels like a short story for a feature length anime. a boy, a warrior and a gender unspecific mystic are journeying to a town looking for water on a continent buried under sand. on the way they come to a city whose inhabitants have recreated a world of pleasure in death. all the bodies are like wax statues in position performing theatre or dance, but their faces are hollowed out masks. bandits are raiding this city and are going to be cursed. great premise for some fantastic set pieces but the animation is basic and so is the story.

'phoenix 2772' has a typical tale to tale of environmental destruction against technological progress. a shape shifting robot in love with her master is merely one of the many cute osamu tezuka style characters in the film which include a dice with arms and a head, a walking accordion, etc. our hero is to save the world by bringing back the firebird 2772 from a galaxy far far away.

mr blandings builds his dream home . peepli live. ghajini. bheema. a better tomorrow. im a cyborg but thats ok. ten

jim blandings is cary grant, an advertising executive trying to do his best coming up with slogans to sell the american dream, when disgruntled with the daily turmoil of living in the bog city, he decides to buy a home out in connecticut where he and the three women in his life can live the 'blueberry pie' american dream. the house turns out to be a dump that has to be torn down. of building a new home drives his almost completely broke and is full of endless discussions and diatribes against his architect, his contractors and his wife. at the end of i all though all is stable and satisfied in that ideal suburban getaway from it all. he sits in an armchair in the garden surrounded by his loving family and friends inviting us to drop in if we are in the neighbourhood.

if you have seen the trailer of 'peepli live' you've seen the film. nothing in the film surprises you- for a incisive take on the 24 hour news network industry, its insights are pedestrian; and as far as narrative and characters go, they don't rise beyond the one dimensional- innocent villager, corrupt politician, cold hearted media.

now, this is not the aamir khan 'ghajini' but the original one in tamil with surya as the man who loses his memory every fifteen minutes. based on memento, this film does not bother with the logic of the backward storytelling, the piece by piece mental puzzle of that film. instead it goes for revenge drama. asin plays the wife and like most women in these films she is relentlessly happy and jolly. the man broods and stares intensely, he patronizes her eccentricities and when she is killed for stopping an evil marwadi from smuggling 'good tamil girls' to mumbai to be sold- she is killed. but these are all incidental- because the film is about nothing much but the making of a hero. a soft tough man.

like 'bheema'. in the beginning the very hard and tough, perpetually macho guy puts you off; until the back story and bheema's obsession for the small time robin hood in his hometown is introduced. from that point on the love story is of these two men- the young protégé and the older mentor. the women come and go and eventually become one of the reasons for the grand tragedy at the end. this is the real thing about gangster films- the male-male love stories, from 'once upon a time in america' to 'bheema' and john woo's 'a better tomorrow'. in this film a gangster tries to go straight but is pulled into his earlier life because of his love for his brother and his friend. again the girl here is incidental as she tries to make peace between the warring brothers (one is a thief and the other a policeman) and mostly fails.

a young woman believes she is a cyborg and in the beginning sequence tries to recharge herself by plugging her own body into a socket. the rest of the film takes place in a mental hospital filled with other deranged individuals played up for so-called comedy. because she believes she is a machine she refuses to take any food until a co-inmate who is in love with her fits a convertor in her that makes the food into a electrical energy. trying to be profound by using the hospital as some kind of allegory the film merely ends up appearing pretentious and silly. 'oldboy' was so much better.

another film with a conceit was 'ten'- but in this case it did seem tow work. made of ten segments all shot by a stationary camera placed in a car sometimes looking at the woman driver and sometimes at the person sitting besides her. the life of the driver of the car and her relationship with her ex-hsband and her son are explored in long dialogue bits interrupted by trivial discussion regarding directions or the nature of the roads or arguments with other drivers on the roads.

once . raise the red lantern . koolhaas houselife . sleeper . the trial . the house of usher. The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne. velu . baraka .

a new age musical love story, where easygoing laidback likeable characters trying to make a living in contemporary dublin meet- and almost fall in love. he sings songs with a guitar on the street and she sells flowers. very sweet and with some generic singer-songwriter music. it is just unusual to hear this kind of music on screen. its like they belong to two different worlds.

the house in 'raise the red lantern' stands outside time. a prison/labyrinth of roofs and courtyards and cleanliness; there are domains and rituals marking every space. three wives compete for the attention of the man of the house. red lanterns are lit every night in the house which he favours. the roof seems like the only space for accidental encounters outside ritual.

we follow the housekeeper through the day as she tries to make sense of and clean rem koolhaas' much loved and analysed recent (relatively) 'masterpiece' - the house in bordeaux . the odd openings, the strange juxtapositions of spaces, the too clever by half discourse so far removed from the space of domesticity seems to be the theme- and there is a 'mon oncle' reference in there too; but the critique does not seem to be that vicious. the house makes for some unusual beauty and the film maker seems to love it too.

in the 1973 woody allen futuristic 'sleeper' a man wakes up 200 years after he checked into a hospital for a small operation. the architecture of the future it would seem is all high modern blankness for the office/factory which seems like an i m pei building and the 'safe house' is retro-futuristic streamlined curves from the 1970's- which is in reality a house by charles deaton. meanwhile in the forest a revolution is rising.

almost the whole of orson welles version of kafka's 'the trial' was shot inside an abandoned railway station in paris. and as a set it works incredible well. enormous floor plates as far as the eye can see where men sit in repetitive cubicles; or the new classical grandeur of large vaulted spaces and dark shadows- the building is a labyrinth of doors and darkness. outside this madness is the housing colony where he lives- modernist slabs relentlessly marching on in a desolate blankness. anthony perkins plays josef k. incredibly well made- but a difficult book to make into a film.

i wasn't much taken by 'the fall of the house of usher' an early silent based on a poe story. here there are strange goings on at the house of usher- a mansion far away in the woods. the husband is painting a portrait of his wife and as the portrait gets more precise it steals life away from the real woman until she dies. anyway, i am not one for horror films, but in this one the special effects and the story were dated and plain silly.

robert bresson's early film The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne is nowhere as brilliant as some of the later films- but is still very watchable. a jilted high society lady hatches a plan to take revenge on her ex-lover by making him fall head over heels in love with an innocent poor girl who was once a prostitute.

'baraka' reminded me of koyaanisqatsi- another film of images that makes sublime nature and civilization. beginning with the himalayas and religion to industry and dereliction it returns to religion and death in varanasi. not much to recommend in terms of any serious philosophising- in fact it makes all the ridiculous orientalist clichés in the way it treats other cultures. its amazing how dated the gaze seems ot be. some jaw dropping locations in long slow exposures though.

if 'velu' is any indication tamil films seem to be in a time warp for us who have gotten used to the new avatar of bollywood. while here the audience seems to be a world of airheaded fashion conscious yuppies or nri's the tamil films continues to address what it sees as core issues of a rural hinterland. and the film seems uncannily dated t the 1980s. twins seperated at birth- one a policeman (of sorts- he actually works in a detective agency) and the other a goon in a village being held to ransom by an evil landlord. it might have all been quite passé if it wasn't for surya who is the centre of all action- as velu and as vasu. extremely good looking in a macho kind of way, it is difficult to take your eyes off him. he is a real star. forget the effete dandies of bombay/mumbai- all their six packs are merely lipstick and nail-polish- this is manhood in an old fashioned- pre-metrosexual, misogynistic way, that no longer exists when aamir khan wants to save the world single handedly and shah rukh flirts and peddles his sophistication everywhere; lets not even talk about ranir kapoor and imran khan. thank god for salman khan.

once upon a time in america . equus . the city of lost children . modern times . brutality in stone . red cliff . moolaade

‘once upon a time in america’ is enormous epic saga set in new york spanning decades. lovingly detailed and almost four hours long. comfortable with long silences and very long takes; the film follows the friendship of two hoods turned gangsters through three time zones in flashbacks and forwards. i wonder whether the title of ‘once upon a time in mumbai’ plays homage to this film. robber de niro and james caan play the friends. fantastic production design.

the silly parallels being made between masculinity and horse, religion, repression and deviancy might be ludicrous- especially when played with such gravitas by all concerned. richard burton as the classicist psychoanalyst is terrific and maybe if i was not in such an irreverent mood the film with its trite observations on freedom and normality might have felt less pretentious. the sex scene with the horse in particular was hilarious- but then how in the world is one to stage that without raising giggles?

in ‘the city of lost children’ production design again rules. somewhere in an alternate universe children are being kidnapped and taken to a tower far away to steal their dreams. the raiders are blind men who having one artificial eye are called the cyclops. the city is a three dimensional dickensian nightmare- criss crossing bridges over the overflowing drains, brick clad warehouses in a perpetual night. the clones stealing the dreams include six nitwits and one brain in a fish tank with a camera for an eye.

i saw a charlie chaplin film after a very long time and loved ‘the beginning sequence of ‘modern times’ where chaplin becomes apart of the machine. more fantastic sequences include the skateboarding at night in the mall and the house on the edge of the city where he ad the girl-tramp try and make a home.

although we would like to believe in the seamless connection between culture and architecture- like the buildings in themselves are testimonies to a certain historical fact; very often this is difficult to establish. buildings are far more slippery than that. they refuse to be one liners. they, in so many ways, speak also for themselves. perhaps ideology and th form through which it is made tangible are not so esily connected. unfortunately, based on the film ‘brutality in stone’ where black and white shots of the monuments of the third reich are intercut with party speeches and patriotic songs, with nazi architecture this connections seems unbroken. enormous frightening monuments to ideas of purity, nostalgia and supermen make diminutive all things human.

john woo takes his swashbuckling action film drama and splices it with ‘crouching tiger hidden dragon’. china exotica complete with armies that move in choreographed unison, flying coloured robes and a enormous war epic about a smaller kingdom standing up to a much larger juggernaut. in the middle of this is a love triangle. the battle sequences are jaw dropping- the first with the tortoise formation – like something out of the mahabharat; and the finale with fire.

it must be something that eagerness to do something useful that comes from being educated and therefore privileged in the ‘third’ world; but this self imposed morality to make sure the film (in the case) has an important ‘message’. in ‘moolaade’ this message is very clear- ‘stop female circumcision!’ the second wife of a man, in an idyllic and very pretty village, takes a few girls under her wing for protection against the wishes of the red robed women performing the operation and the men of the village who hold her responsible for corrupting the women of the village. it is her and the radio that bring the corruption of the city to the village and the latter are burnt in a pile of screaming voices in front of the village mosque. she is beaten up but does not relent.

reassemblage . heavy metal . family viewing . summer wars . touch of evil.

trinh t minha's still incredible 'reassemblage' takes the national geographic anthropological film and deconstructs it to place on the mat the expectations of the gaze and the performance of the subject as subject. the camera lingers on exposed breasts daring us to continue seeing, it pans is jerky motions and every cut slices any remnants of comfort we might settle into.

there are no apologies for the male gaze in the animated 'heavy metal'. like the music it is blatantly sexist and violent. an green globe spreads evil across the universe in episodes that each recall one hollywood genre film after another- from alien film to war film to sex film. actually all of it is really a sex film, especially when in the final episode when the very sexy saviour strips of her old clothes to wear the fetish leather and wields a sword.

family viewing was atom egoyan's 1980s take on north american obsessions with television and cameras. the film's narrative about a boy and his love for his grandmother- and the affair he has with his fathers misteress seems like an excuse to play with the images and image making as fetish, as fifteen minutes of fame, as memory keepers, as surveillance. little check-list like, and felt forced.

'summer wars' was a recent anime in which the cyberworld of oz is taken over by an evil virus making chaos across the world. parallel to this fantastical landscape is the real world where the battle is fought- a traditional japanese extended family in an idyllic home complete with kindly grandmother and eccentric uncles. terrific drawings.

from the first long take swooping across the border from mexico to the united states, 'touch of evil' does not let go. when a bomb goes off on the american side suspicions fly about who is responsible for the murder. charlton heston plays the mexican upstanding cop and orson welles the (possibly) corrupt american one. in the madness of the bordertowns, jurisdictions overlap and nationalism and racism are exaggerated. crazy light and shadow play and mad expressionist shots, great dialogue- i loved the film.

berlin alexanderplatz . breathless . criminal lovers . upkar . architecture of doom . the flight of the red balloon .

completionist that i am, i had to sit through all of the 14 episodes of the fassbinder mega film set in berlin betwene the wars. franz biberkopf is the innocent, pimp, burglar, lover trying to go straight after he spent 4 years in a jail for murdering his girlfriend. melodramatically staged, most of the film takes place in dingy apartment interior bathed in a perpetual golden light; or if it is night the flashing lights from the neon signs outside the window. biberkopf gradually becomes more and more implicated in complications emerging from sexuality and survival. along the way he loses his hand when hsi best friend throws him out of a running car. franz is such an innocent that he even forgives the villain that. it is only when the man kills his true love that franz finally realised what a dog the man he trusted was. it all ends with a massive epilogue in which franz's delirium collages pieces of his past through the city of berlin- sometimes as stage, sometimes as projection. the music sources everyone from strauss to janis joplin.

the cinema city screenings at edward are quite the rage. we trudged there on a rainy thursday and saw godard's breathless. the first time i had seen the film i was pretty underwhelmed; but this time, perhaps because i finally got the film noir references- like a love song to those films; i loved it. the everyday landscape and people of paris trying to become american through costume and gesture- the cool dude and the sweet innocent girl who ends up being the femme fatale.

another french femme fatale is the teenager in a french school who seduces her boyfriend to kill another student with algerian background who she lusts after and hates equally- or maybe she hate the fact that she lusts after him. when on the run they in turn are kidnapped and molested by a stranger as the boyfriend struggles with own sexuality. nasty violent fun.

upkar is unbearable mostly. in spite of the few flairs in image making- the high perspetive and deep focus, the temple in the barren ground around which the film revolves, even (in an amusing way) the diptych song picturization of gulaabi raatein/ kaali raatein that makes horribly juvenile dichotomies. as far as ideology goes it can't get any more one dimensional than this- jai jawan - second half / jai kisan - first half. manoj kumar plays both.

'the architecture of doom' systematically and carefully described the relationship of culture to national socialism from the degenerate art shows to the paintings that hitler thought represented the german ideal to the grand plans for berlin as spectacle. so efficiently told and so informative- but i am more than a little tired of the nazis as documentary material.

a single mother finds a chinese nanny for her child; and has difficulties with her tenant. nothing much happens really except a red balloon floats aimlessly over paris as hope or as a dream. on the streets the film is shot as if one is standing on the edge of a pavement seeing reflections on shop windows and eavesdropping on conversations. as much as breathless imagines an america in paris, this film plays with the imaginations about paris from faraway, perhaps in the film makers head after watching the city in so many other french classic films.