Why Bahubali did not make it to Oscars

My post on how "Bahubali" got edged out...

http://www.telugu360.com/why-bahubali-did-not-make-it-to-oscars/

"The Theory of Everything" (English) Movie Review

A biopic on the life and times of Stephen Hawking is a baffling attempt by any stretch. The man wearing an out-of-shape pair of spectacles with a withdrawn gaze dripping saliva even if in a state-of-the-art wheel chair and communicating something just by blinking his eyes is a familiar visual to people around the world. What can his life offer? How interesting has it been? What are the most thrilling moments, his saddest and happiest days and what were the high-points of his remarkable life? What made him pulsate to live life as if nothing changed after the doctors gave him just two years to live? What is egging him on for so many years that even at age 72, after presenting scientific papers and authoring a book that sold over a 10 million copies "A Brief History of Time", he still wants to push himself to write that one theory that strings everything together on how the universe came to being? Universal studios brings another authentic replay of a life that is still inspiring millions to throb to liveliness instead of resigning to fate and wimping out like a vegetable.

"The Theory of Everything" takes us through a recount of Stephen Hawking's life as written by his wife Jane Hawling in her autobiography of her ex-husband - now separated after three children. Directed by James Marsh with an exceptional screenplay that uses the narrative befitting a film with scientific theories and expositions, the leading pair is played with vividness and intensity that stuns you. Eddie Redmayne plays Stephen Hawking and Felicity Jones plays the first love and better half of Stephen. Unlike most films of this genre which bamboozle you with intellectual largesse and concepts that leave you dazed, the film sprinkles the essence of the science and cosmology that grew in Hawking's mind since he set foot in Cambridge with an arresting humility and then builds the romance between Stephen and Jane majestically - making it as evocative and beautiful as films like "A Beautiful Mind" or "Mr Holland's Opus". There are distractions, but by admission, honest admissions as the romance goes into unchartered territories for both the Hawkings towards the second half but the controls vest with the screenplay writer and the director throughout in the 123 minute visual. You don't get bored even once.

Irrespective of whether you regard Hawking as a scientist or not, his resilience and approach to cosmology have provoked people into investigating the unknowns of the universe, be it black holes, string theory or the debate between Quantum theory and the theory of Relativity and of course, space-time singularity. God has been extremely kind to this man who was given not more than two years to live when attacked by pneumonia - and his wife had two choices - either let Stephen lapse into coma forever or let the doctor drill a hole in the neck bypassing the throat that will silence him forever. She chose life over coma. From that point, Stephen experiences unsurpassed love and affection from his wife, his parents, his esteemed colleagues who enthused him to greatness. He coudn't utter a word but gives his denouements on the universe through a voice synthesizer specially designed for him. Eventually, his famous companion leaves him but he feels her around just as his theory on black holes. In 1974, a big blackhole called Sagittarius A-Star was discovered and the same year, Stephen combined everything we knew about black holes with what we knew about quantum theory - and proposed the surprising truth that black holes that suck light and energy have to evaporate away to nothing because they shrink and shrink. In a way, the film's climactic scene brilliantly captures the essence of quantum theory and the proposition made by Hawking. Someone asks if he believes in God. Hawking looks at the girl in the front row who drops her pen on the floor. You see the pen but what if the floor is not there any more - a plausible event in a quantum world - and the visuals cross his mind as if he walks out of his deathly chair to lift the pen from the floor. Actually, he does nothing of that sort,  he remains seated on the chair. And then he answers with effect of words that mean as if the universe is created without boundaries unlike what we knew before as bounded world - and this can only be the work of some creator we can't seem to know.

On the whole, "The Theory of Everything" leaves you with a trance-like experience and tickles your imagination with lines that ask the right questions in physics with relevance in space and time - the two dimensions where searchlights are still on and cosmologists like Stephen Hawking are grappling with linkages to the Big Bang theory. Despite such heavy content, the film's creatives ensured the simplest language and analogies like potato and peas to explain the divergence between Quantum theory and Relativity. The film's heart of the matter, however is the many-layered romance and the friendships that endured Hawking to live a meaningful life. According to a recent cover story in Outlook magazine, Hollywood has made outstanding films based on  93 out of the 100  best-selling books of all time. This film is another feather in that direction. What else can we do but applaud and salute a film that receives eight Oscar nominations. Watch out also for John Jahnson's music score - evokes emotions out of everywhere. Hawking would raise a toast to the director and Eddie Redmayne for playing it so truer with a boisterous blink of an eye.

And the Oscar doesn't go to...

And the Oscar doesn't go to...

So even the Oscars couldn't defy "Gravity" its anti-gravity moment. The mexican director would have lived out his space in  trance as his film bagged seven oscars out of ten. Predictable? Not so much. Or maybe. Because over the years, the awards have a degree of giving out max to those films which generate the maximum adulation from the global audience. This could be because the Hollywood Studios and their gargantuan think-tanks are hitting  a dry run when it comes to big markets like China, HongKong, India, and the MiddleEast where cultural dissimilarities are making their films come a cropper. "Gravity" collected Rs.62 crores in Indian theatres despite the hoopla. "Dookudu" and "Gabbar Singh" generated a higher RoI than that film.

On that count, you can see why films like "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Gravity" sweep the awards even if with  diluted standards and dumbing down of English for the global audience. It is like a Miss World contest or Miss Universe contest - Hollywood which represents the apogee of American Culture wants  and crowns film-makers who strike gold with more eyeballs rather than film-makers who are altruistic (Oliver Stone), brazenly American (Martin Sorcerese), uncompromising (Steven Spielberg) or self-obsessed and controversial (Woody Allen).

 If the trend continues, 20 years down the lane, I think there will be more foreign language films competing for the Oscars or film-makers with the American sensibilities but a global pulse like Eduardo. That leaves the Indians with a terrific opportunity - don't make films for the Oscars, try to beat them in sensibilities and cultural opulence and larger-than-life sliceness. One day, with SFX a "Bahubali" or a "Hanuman" or a "Mahabharat" will gross as much as a Spidey or a Batman. Americans have killed more film industries since the 1920s by their clinical imperialism of the culture of Americana which has a distinct closeness with most Western cultures except the Koreans, the Chinese and the Indians. Watching the Oscars this time became more boring than a Pogo channel where the anchor hustles with a masked face. No wonder, the Oscars are now looked down by those who covet the BAFTAs, the Golden Globes, the Cannes or now the Sundance where unconventional yardsticks of measuring success are bringing out such exciting films like "Boyhood" and "Wajdah" (2012). 

On the contrary, Oscars are still stuck on  criteria that the critics and the audiences don't seem to agree often but are determined by quixotic whims and messages from the masters who call the shots at the industry. Any idea why Sandra Bullock didn't get the best actress award? Any thoughts why Leonardo Dicaprio continues to be at the non-receiving end of the awards? Despite a uni-dimensional way of judging the films, the Oscars get the maximum mileage but still lesser than what the Superbowl or FIFA World Cup command. 

Today, close to seven billion people are watching films and a fraction of them are wanting to make films in as many unique way as their sensibilities and paradigms motivate them to. The Oscars can go to anybody who is trained to give a well-rehearsed elevator speech. But lets not think that their success is a benchmark - don't be misled by the UNESCO heritage-type statements going out when the Oscar goes to a film that talks about slavery in Africa, a war waged in Afghanistan or Iraq or a legend in South Africa. There are more ways to watch a film, make a film and even review a film. Remember tonite that Oscars may be more anti-diluvian in ways you haven't  yet realised.

"The Lunch Box" (Hindi Film Review)

Some films are born great, some films have greatness thrust on them and some films attain greatness, to borrow a bard's phrase. "The Lunch Box" is a film that is earmarked for greatness because of a mesmerising story, bewitching script, almost flawless execution and a starcast that comes tailor-made. It has already been premierred on most film festivals from Toronto to Cannes and has won rave reviews before being showcased in India.  Director Ritesh Batra has given one of India's finest film in years with a story that is as improbable as a six sigma error in the delivery system of the famed "Dabbawallahs". 

The six sigma error is  what changes life for a middle-aged wife Ila (Nimrat Kaur) when the lunch box that she packs with utmost affection and consummate culinary skills gets swapped by the Dabbawallahs with a box that reaches one Mr Fernandez (Irrfan Khan) who is on the verge of retiring as a Senior Accountant in an Insurance Company. He has a new under-study Nawazudding Siddiqui who is deputed by the owner to learn the ropes quickly. A subtle romantic track develops between the exchange of the "Dabba" between Irrfan Khan and Nimrat Kaur every day, appendixed with handwritten letters inserted in the box. "The food was tasty but salty" and other inane messages soon develop into gut-level communication between two adults caught in their own worlds of loneliness and desperation; Nimrat has a happy home with a school-going girl and a workaholic husband who is insensitive to her, her sole refuge is an elderly neighbour Aunty who stays one floor above her flat but helps her with all the recipes and the sage counsel she needs. Irrfan, on the other hand, is a loner (lost his wife) who is good at work but unfriendly coach to over-enthusiastic Nawaz. His zest for life and empathy for others including kids who ball around in his home environs were inscrutable, until  both Nimrat through her tasty cooking and Nawaz through his simplicity and cheerleading enthusiasm  mend Irrfan's mental makeup for better. 

The film builds up in 110 minutes of pacy narrative with sharp characterisations. Ritesh Batra has earlier made a documentary on "Daabwallahs"; now he creates a story of a lunch box mistakenly delivered by them. That could be a reason to fuss and file defamation charges from the gangs of dedicated workers who were invited for Prince Charles's wedding and etched into a Harvard case study. But the film stands out for transmitting the DNA of the times, for telling a story with a freshly different pair of Director's eyes, without pretensions, different values and uninhibited by the compulsions of cinema. Entirely shot in Mumbai's local trains and the nerve-center of Mumbai's concrete jungles of Malad and Dongri, there must be around 350 picture shots that make you live in the office and residential spaces of a society that thrives on chaos, packed with people like swarms of bees yet friendly and humane. Soundtrack of the film is by some foreigner, makes a point with regular musical instruments at just three to four instances in the film but by and large relies on the natural sounds of the deafening dins of moving locals, orchestral nature of an office canteen bustle. Occasionally, the kids on the moving locals break into a hit Kumar Sanu song and that becomes a lead sound track for the next few scenes. 

Personally, I felt a cute connect between visual and verbal literacy in this film. At a time when the biases of the film-makers are mostly towards song-and-dance and surrealistic and loud entertainment, Ritesh Batra re-creates a story that gives out as much from the imagery as from the words spoken by the three main characters - Irrfan Khan gives his best messages to Ila only in English and he gives almost a Thoreau-like commentary on issues of happiness and misery, Nimrat Kaur (that Cadbury girl caught in traffic jam with a mouthful of Five Star) is innocent, adventurous and vulnerable at the same time. Nawazuddin Siddiqui is at his entertaining best rubbing shoulders with an elegant Irrfan but has occasionally stolen the thunder; all three characters speak as much with words spoken as with their body language. In that sense, the verbal literacy is probably taken to newer highs than the visual literacy of the film. References to the 80s TV classic, "Yeh Jo Hai Jindagi" and old victorian values of diligence and restraint are messages the director wants the audience to take home despite an ending that is not so poetic. There are references to Bhutan's Gross National Happiness as opposed to our own GDP fixation.

When a film's reputation darts faster than the buying interest in India, you have to expect the Goliaths of the industry to rally behind it. No wonder, "The Lunch Box" is now a collaboration of Indo-German-French productions and the two Goliaths here are Karan Johar and Ronnie Screwala. That must give all the push needed to qualify this as India's sole entry to the Oscars. Because of the screenplay and the pacy narrative, you wouldn't feel bored even for a second. But there are flaws in this notable experiment, mostly loose ends the director forgot to tie in his stickiness to the main storyline. When Ila's husband tells her why she is making Aloo Gob every day for lunch, we don't get that. When the Dabbawallah refuses to accept the mistake of  swapping of boxes, he doesn't give a credible answer but a Harvard student might know what the director concealed. Again, not once does it occur to the two characters corresponding over lunch box to connect with the new modes of mobiles and emails. One more, Ila discovers she is trapped in a sex-less marriage because her husband is having an affair, but that is left unconfronted till the end. Obviously, there are quite a few gaffes in a film that seeks to break new ground in story-telling. But as the line in the film goes, sometimes, " A wrong train also can take you to the right destination." Ritesh Batra and team deserve a thumping watch for "The Lunch Box". My rating is 4.75 out of 5. 

BAFTA Awards - What a fine show!

• Bafta Awards was short, stylish and elegant - done with in two hours. No frills, no elaborate song-and-dance ballads, no dreary drags on stage - just an unbridled celebration of the best talent in Cinema with under-statedness. Stephen Fry was sheer class, sophisticated, positive without being too pointy and dignified. He made jokes on all the five films but the best was a mathematical one - sequel to "life of pi" is "life of pi.r^2". Good to see the right awards go to "Argo" (best film and best director)' "Lincoln" (best actor). Worth getting up in wee hours on Monday to watch jokes and puns by Stephen Cry ("I want to see "Lincoln" but I got spammed by invitations for "linked-in"!). Now, over to Oscars.

The Artist - Movie Review

"The Artist" directed by Michael Hazanavicius (Oscar winner), produced by Thomas Langman (Oscar winner) and starring Jean Dujardin (again Oscar Best Actor) is a visual silent treat in the era of noisy films. Its a story of two characters - George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) and Pepppy Miller (Bernice Bejo) in the era of silent films before "talkie" technology took the charm away. George is the ruling superstar of silent era films and he encourages Peppy to get introduced as a Fred and Ginger foot-tapping dancer in his movie. George has all the opulence that stardom can buy and the vanity that he doesn't need to ever "talk" ; even when the studio which catapults him to fame demands they should now make movies with "spoken" dialogues.

By contrast, Peppy Miller is fast on the update, she starts getting meaty roles and eventually stars in talkie films and becomes a superstar. George, meanwhile sulks into a manic depression as both his wife and stardom both desert him. He sells his car, his bungalow, his wares and even destroys his movies in a fit of rage. His dog (feted at the Oscars for a stunning performance) remains the sole companion.

There are other quirky twists in this tale of reversal of fortunes of two different stars besides the subtle romance thats always in the air. A thoroughly enchanting movie with so many first-time experiments that have not only won the top honours at the BAFTA and the Oscars (five in all) that you wonder why they stoppped making silent films since the times of Charlie Chaplin. Of course, Chaplin's movies had a slapstick comedy and uneasy pathos with less intrusions by layers of characterisations that underpin this film. In flat 98 minutes, the movie is a feast of unbridled exhibition of cinematic genius sans dialogues (except for moments in the end). Will we see more movies of this kind? Will we see silent movies (last attempted by Kamal Hasan in "Pushpak")? Time will tell.

There is a scene where the Artist (sorry for the pun) wakes up to a nightmare where everything around him - the dog, the microphone, the phone all produce Bose-quality sounds and yet when he tries to speak and shout and yell, there's uneasy silence. A highlight scene in which the director shows how the hero's silence has turned against him. For most of the movie, Ludovic Bource scores loud and orchestral soundtrack that defines the emotional undercurrents in the story. Even though the director uses the same format of the old B&W films with the motions, the interludes and the mega font exclamationary quotes circling the dialogues between the characters, there is no noise in the film except the music.

But the pace of the movie never slackens and the atttention to detail doesn't show signs of laziness. Because this is the only movie that celebrates the struggle of an actor on the brink of sunset by sunrise technologies since whatever must have come in the 50s, and because the audience is not color-blind anymore - the director takes close and comfortable shots that get you glimpse the emotional highs and lows more effectively than the old movies made with a constrained technology. So you see the greenback, the speck of a black dot planted by George on Peppy's face to give her a star-turn, the dog's sudden energy burst to save his master from getting incinerated - all these are captured in ensnaring detail.

Just before the End, when the stars get re-aligned to shoot for another foot-tapping dance, and the camera rolls on, the director plays out his last trick - the music syncronises with the couple in their moves but you hear the words - "Cut" and still the magic of the dance continues and you doubt still that the silent march is over - you are yet to get out of that stupor of charmed silence. Its a memorable movie thats worth all the honors that greeted. The magic of movies will continue even if you make silent movies that don't talk or movies that silence you. "The Artist" has been a moving experience and suddenly my count of better movies has gotten the better of my love for mediocre dishum-and-dance movies in 2012. You will not come out of the movie hall with just one feeling.

And the Oscar goes to...

3.5 inches high, 6.75 pounds, tin and copper, with gold plating. A rough sketch of  a figure holding a sword hanging on the reel of a film. Not the best of designs but since 1927, its the hallmark of recognition and respect. It is probably the best-known statue in the world, known as the Oscar, because Margaret Herrick, the Motion Picture Academy of Arts (MPAA)'s first Librarian, named it as Oscar because it resembled a lot like her uncle Oscar. Monday mornings in India on 27th Feb-1st March are something to look forward to  - Its the night of Oscars telecast live in this part of the world, thanks to Star Movies. An awards ceremony that celebrates the achievements of cinema the Hollywood way, the night of limited dance and song, of solemn remembrances, of a brief snapshot of the non-Hollywood cinema seen through the prisms of "Foreign Language" category. The night of all-colour men and women dressed in Black and White and Red array of shining, coal-black, shining costumes. The night which has epic commentary on how Hollywood breathes life into the annals of society through its movies of the year.
I always admired the preciseness, grand scale of executions, class and charishma that underlines the Oscar awards. Only the best talent who usually vie with one another - screenwriters, costume designers, animators, editors, sound recordists, stage and setting designers, actors and actresses, playwrights and lyricists, writers and comedians - all of them get together, give their best flat foot forward, lend their voice, pen, nerve and sinew to make it the spectacle that counts. Somehow, the humor that comes out of this one night, according to me, is enough to drive you to raptures of laughter. Its like the night when the wit and received wisdom of PG.Wodehouse, Groucho Marx,  Erma Bombeck and  Woody Allen pillorie the pale lines off your face.
Talk about the comperes, I grew up catching up of the best comedians and standup-champions chaperone the Awards nights - from Bob Hope to Woody Allen, Billy Crystal to Eddie Murphy to Robert Downey Jr. Over the years, the Awards represent an assemblage of talents coming together to give the best glimpse of the Industry' united strength - although it is never the case because all folks can't be satisfied. I remember Bob Hope the great humorian who lived till the age of 100 - he started the whole tradition of hosting the funny side up. He never won an Oscar and rubbed it in at one of the Awards Ceremonies: "Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Academy Awards, or as it's known in our house, Passover."
Tonight (or tomorrow morning for us in India), you have some of the best contemporary actors competing for the top honours - the likes of Brad Pitt ("Moneyball") and George Clooney ("The Descendants") and the classic legends like Merryll Streep. Sophistication and class, subtety and style  - you can expect to see a harvest of all of these in the Awards ceremony especially with Billy Crystal - Oscar Awards Host for the ninth time - replacing Eddie Murphy. Contrast this with the crassness of the Filmfare Awards - OMG! Come on, Oscars, lights on!

"Inside Job": Award-winning documentary on how Wall Street brought the world down to the Road

Now that the sub-prime crisis is well behind us, and we are not really looking forward to the next one sooner, public memory is as short-sighted as ever. In order to jog the public memory about the crisis that rattled governments, public and societies equally the world over, you have choices - of reading about the books that brought the worst crisis since '30s. In no pecking order of importance, you can read the books like "13 Bankers", "Too Big to Fail", "Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown", "Sub-prime Solution", "Fool's Gold", "The End of WalStreet as we know it", "Faultlines", "BlackSwan", "Crisis Economics", "A Colossal Failure of Common sense" or any other Wiley classics or Penguin books coming still by dime a dozen. I suggest a more time-saving choice - grab a seat to watch Charles Ferguson's "INSIDE JOB" which won the Oscar for the best documentary. The man has written, directed and produced a pulsatingly educative documentary which will break the glass ceiling of understanding the real issues that brought the world economies to a grinding halt during those years of 2007-2010 from US to Iceland to Greece to UK. Charles Ferguson gives in one hour forty eight minutes all the dope and lowdown that has led to the crisis of 2008 and gives a crisp background of the years leading to the fat years before greed, chicanery, and blatant selfishness of a few "bad" men of Wall Street colluding with Washington led to blood on the streets. The documentary is as gripping any movie because it uses narration and interview technique to give an overview of the nexus between few big banks and Government, between Academic Economists and their linkages with Hedge Funds, between Rating Agencies and the Ratees, between Fed and Other Bankers. Truth is tougher to tell and even tougher to swallow and they say pride goes before the fall  - but watching this documentary brought out the hard truth that Wall  Street and some of the biggest names riding on its masthead do not have the grace to accept what price the world has paid for their follies - in the testimony, in their brazen pursuit of profits and the shameless lack of guilt for taking compensation even when investor's monies have vaporised. The documentary shows during the narration that the following people have declined to give interviews for the film (which should tell all) - Goldman Sach's  Henry Paulson, Alan Greenspan, Lawrence Summers, Robert Rubin, Timothy Geitner, Glenn Hubbard and Ben Bernanke. Don't miss the film - INSIDE JOB - its more than a documentary.

Finally, an E-Book Reader which works in India

I am not a big fan of Kindle or E-Books for reasons we'll know later, but over the last three days, I am smitten by this reading device called "Pi"  - India's first reading device with a battery life of 30 hours, which can download over a lakh books in pdf format. Ordered for just Rs.10,000, Pi is light and eminently readable, with USB port for importing files with even .jpeg, .doc, .txt extension as well as mp3 files (with earphones). As I begun downloading files and started my first E-Book experience, my Geek brother promptly pinpointed the gaps in Pi which a technologically-challenged person like me couldn't notice - no back-light, night-light, only B & W colors, were some of the drawbacks. But for now, this is just fine - the memory card also has 1 GB+ capacity. So, now I am one of the few (or am I the first) Hyderabadis to have an E-Book Reader. More later as I explore further...Right now, its E-books and in a few hours whether Oscars night belongs to Avatar movie or not.