Dr Strange. 2016.
To fit into the smug wit and light entertainment of the Marvel Universe, the mystic weirdness of the comics have been tamed. This could have been a horror film. Instead we have action sequences where space is bent and time in reversed- spectacular- but yawn.
Out of the Past. Jacques Tourneur. 1947
Ae Dil Hai Mushkil
The unrequited love chain leads from ShahRukh to Fawad Khan via two hot muslim women and one sweet little punjabi boy right in the middle. Is Lucknow meant to be Lahore? Was this meant to be a film about love across borders? There is still all that exotic otherness- muslimness, urdu (badly pronounced, even to my ears, especially by Aishwarya who almost sucks the film dry like a vampire); and then there the love of bollywood (nudge nudge, wink wink.) Enjoyable.
Escape from LA. John Carpenter. 1996.
The pleasure is in watching LA landmarks be reconfigured as a safe haven for the free, outside America- where anarchy devolves into fascism. Caught between the two realms, our hero chooses neither- and disappears into darkness, like the modern day cowboy he is. Meanwhile exactly the same film as 15 years later is the plot, with the same iconography and images, only played up for camp.
Escape from New York. John Carpenter. 1981.
The pleasure is in watching the New York landmarks be reconfigured as dens of vice- the library, Central Park, World Trade Centre as landing point for the glider(!?
Suicide Squad. David Ayer. 2016.
When even super villains are made human beings with sentimental sad backstories and the soundtrack flags greatest hits, the desperation of the studio executive to have a hit is all that you see. Awful.
Khoya. In the valley of the watershed, the mirror settlement of Mohana, where some of the villagers migrate to every winter.
Shawra and Sushou
One on the ‘stomach’ of the mountain. The other is on a ridge.
Mohana
The largest of the three settlements around the town of Chakrata in Uttarakhand that we were documenting as part of the Second Year Documentation Project. At the top of a watershed in a U-Shaped valley, the village has a winter time settlement in the lowlands called Khoya
