Ginger drafts...

Movie opens with an innocuous nude beach scene with Meinhof and her family spending the day out. Meinhof, a lady of great temper is shown to exhibit kind heartedness in the opening scene followed by stately appeal of revolution in the party conducted in her backyard. Brief interludes of students staging a protest and the police lining up before them; it is still innocuous at this point in time. Meinhof is shy, but as she reads through to the passage where the reference to fooling German pride is extolled, she is flushed red in her face, the interludes gradually turn violent. In fact, before you realise, the protest, which was only a gathering with placards turns into a pandemonium with the police beating up the innocent and the ladies. This scene is the evidence of what the viewer is up for. If you are not exposed to foreign language movies, you will find it very refreshing, for the movie is anything but Hollywood. Too many Hollywood action movies preserve the action for a moment to le...

Who would have thought that travelling could be so benumbing and delightful? We rented two honda activas to get to Auroville. I was not prepared for what we were about to witness. On the way to Auroville, you will find the motorists turning friendlier as you get closer. Trees on either side of the road stood in steadfast harmony as if in a wedlock. Through the mystic shade- slightly daze, for the last night's Black Label was still not worn off- we drove into one of the by lanes that seemed deserted at first notice. If not for the powerful 2 stroke engine, we would have found it difficult to ascertain our minds of the silence. We were out in the open; we drove in and out of the broad shadows cast by 200 metres long tall trees, but were gasping to make a grasp on the nature's irony. We felt claustrophobic in the forest, the thick and dense forest, so dark, it blithe fully stayed calm. Not a whiff of air entered the thick forest. We pulled over, made futile attempts at apprehendin...

Cronenberg's M. Butterfly is a masterpiece of intrigue. It is as if you have been thrown into China and have to find your way back home. Who would have expected that Cronenberg would muddle the minds of his audience to such proportions. A french aristocrat is seduced by a Chinese singer who sings a version of madame Butterfly that elevates our protagonist to the plateau of love. Decidedly, he follows her to her abode and is stately denied permission, for she is too shy and her culture is buried deep beneath the floor of the current time. 'The french have extolled the virtues of progressive societies to the point of apotheosis, from where they glance at the floor beneath them' the Chinese singer observes. The French man falls for the Chinese woman, the man of heresy finds himself amazed at the shy and restrained love that the Chinese woman orchestrates. So blinded by the platonic love of madame butterfly, he unconsciously confesses the french and US army strategies to the Ch...

"Bright star" is more of an epic poem that is evocative of John Keats, although it is misunderstood as a biography of the poet. In his last days, poet Keats is put up at a cottage that is surrounded with beautiful gardens around it. And, in it, is a rather lonely girl, in her twenties and is fond of sewing. Movie is a lucid play of fractured emotions playing out on the characters until such time that the plump looking Fanny falls for Keats while his friend feels neglected. The closer fanny gets to Keats, more strained the friendship becomes. All the locations are strewn with blissful springtime flowers; a scene in which fanny sits up in the middle of the garden full of blue flowers is at once enchanting. Towards the end though, it is all too melancholic; keats has to leave, for he is not salaried and is terribly ill. Fanny's reaction to the news of Keats' death is one of the best scenes in the movie. Although it’s a poignant tale of love, the mood of the time wrap...

“Have you ever seen anything like this on celluloid?” I kept asking myself this question throughout the runtime of the movie. Terry Gilliam’s Tideland is an elegy to the art; it is something of the director’s mortal brilliance. The movie is the product of his brilliance gagging at him to the point of breakdown, and it appears that Gilliam has stripped all of the virtues of his previous movies and presented what was minimal. The art of minimal is what you get in Tideland. The movie is about a child who is fascinated with Alice from the wonderland, and so, paints her reality with wonderland brushes. She loses her father, meets a rather eccentric woman and her deranged brother. The woman with one blind eye disembowels the father’s body, stitches it up later to preserve the skeleton. Now this is an odd movie. There are shades of “fear and loathing” in this movie. Although the movie is frighteningly absurd, it is enchanting at times, for the viewer is expectant. You will stay expectant, ...

Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” is a rare piece of cinematic excellence where wonder and power of imagination meet at the gates of fantasy. If you have seen “Brazil” and have since then, ensconced it up on your all time best charts, then you will acknowledge thismovie’s authoritative step into the wilderness. If Monty python’s Holy Grail is lying somewhere in your DVD collection, and instead of plugging in Scifi metadata on reviews of Brazil and Twelve Monkeys, you have plugged in Terry Gilliam, then you would cherish this movie for a long time. If Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was a movie that even the Gonzo journalists passed contentions, that the movie was virtually undoable, but somehow Gilliam and Depp made it possible. Then perhaps, Imaginarium is a frighteningly undoable project and has been, I believe given due credit for the accomplishment. Coming in 4 years after the vertiginous Tideland, Imaginarium sweeps the carpet under your floor, chair under your ...

Chapter 1 “Behind the pool, by the short valley between the thick bushes on either side is a green milestone” she paused, and with great tremulous voice continued “beneath the milestone, is a key hidden under the red slate” with those words, Nupur’s grandmother threw her head into the soft pillows “could you climb up?” yes grandma, Nupur obliged and patiently lent her weight to the sixty year old’s listless back. Grandma slept with her head down; nupur nibbled with her feet across the freckled blood rid white skin of her grandma, she observed “granny, your spine is curved near the shoulders”. Grandma was lost in her reveries. Cold breeze unfurled the drawn curtains and the yellow rose bush stalk was beating against the window sash; fog had lain its bare chest over the garden. At eight in the morning, one could only see eight feet beyond the nose. “Grandma, the key; tell me more” Nupur implored. She was nine years old, and had spent her summers with the granny for as long as she coul...