Category: Articles
Hollywood and Societal Problems: Inflated, Created or Unrelated?
One day, film critic of tomorrow, you will be able to say you were there at the dawn of the #WOMTAY. But you will have to read until the final paragraph to know what that means. Ann Hornaday caused a bit of an internet stir with her column in Sunday’s Washington Post in which, among…
Edge of Tomorrow: Resorting to Repetition
Let’s retire the genre of movies that repeat scenes or plotlines over and over again with slight variations. That’s right, Edge of Tomorrow (2014). You don’t get props from me. I blame Rashomon (1950) for this. It’s never been my favourite Kurosawa film – despite its vaunted status – owing to its repetition. And I…
Unresolved Endings on Screen: The Art of the Lingering Question
In his book Cinema and Soviet Society, Russian scholar Peter Kenez notes this fascinating piece of artistic anthropology: In pre-revolutionary Russia, it was not uncommon for silent film directors to shoot two separate endings for a movie. A happy ending would be marketed specifically toward the USA and Western Europe, while at home in Russia,…
Black-and-White Movies: Meditating on Monochrome
In the days before DVDs, when my sister and I were kids, our parents would often stage movie nights, a post-homework foray during which we’d all watch a film of their choice on VHS in their bedroom. On one such occasion – and much to our dismay – they picked North by Northwest (1959), leading…
Mainstream Masala: 5 Off-Beat Bollywood Movies to Get You Started
Movies are an integral part of India. There are a range of filmmaking centres across the country, the most famous being Bollywood, which is focused primarily on the production of Hindi movies. But there are other regional “woods”, like Tollywood (Bengali), Kollywood (Tamil) and Mollywood (Malayalam) amongst others, all of which produce movies in their…