Dalton

Dalton is quintessentially a film critic /essayist /festival advisor. Additionally, he’s the editor of Cinematic Illusions and the Journal of Indian Cinema; founder of the Cinema Society of India, which screens films; CEO of House of Illusions, a film studio that creates meaningful cinema; chief advisory board member of the Kautik International Film Festival; and artistic director of the Chalachitram National Film Festival. He has served on the music jury of Mahatma Gandhi University and on the film jury (west zone panel) of the 67th National Film Awards of India.
  • Njangalude Veettile Athidhikal (The Guests in Our House)

    Schizophrenia. That’s perhaps the most fashionable term these days that ‘artists’, ‘intellects’, et al, love to throw around for effect whenever the talk is about madness. You’ll hear it being pronounced too in Njangalude Veettile Athidhikal (The Guests in Our House), a film that has nothing whatsoever to do...
  • The Darjeeling Limited

    Welcome to India, beautiful India. Sit back, and let The Darjeeling Limited show you around a place that exists mostly in the imagination. The package contains the usual fare of this genre: scenes of poojas, and other exotic Hindu ceremonies; loud, glaring colors; and foreigners arriving in India in...
  • Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

    Spielberg is an educationist; and always teaches us something unique, in his Indiana movies. In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, he tells us that one of the coolest places to take your family for a summer holiday is down a gigantic triple waterfall in a...
  • Money Rathnam

    What can you do if you’re totally broke and a bag of cash, say, of around one crore rupees, literally falls into your lap and refuses to leave you? Well, the first thought that runs in your mind may be to either keep it for yourself or to find...
  • Shortcut to Happiness

    What does success mean to you, and how much are you willing to pay for it? This is the all-important question that Shortcut to Happiness poses. Are you prepared to go the whole distance following the ethical route? Or, at some point, will you trade your ethics for a...
  • Munnariyippu (Early Warning)

    Characters sometimes have this rather unpleasant habit of being unreal. In such a scene, as exists in Munnariyippu, there isn’t really much that an actor can do. Mammootty dons the role of a real, classic case. He is Raghavan, an ex-convict who has served twenty years for a double...
  • Angels and Demons

    There’s a hell lot of bucks that can be made through blasphemy. Angels and Demons, the sequel by the opportunists who created The Da Vinci Code, is a fictitious take on the Illuminati. This sixteenth-century secret sect places a canister of antimatter particles in the papacy and threatens to...
  • Journey to the Center of the Earth

    If you ever reach a few meters away the center of the earth, your body will explode with the high pressure. It should have been mandatory to state that fact before the beginning of the film. After all, kids tend to believe a lot that they see and hear,...
  • Hellboy II – The Golden Army

    Strange that the Catholic church has not reacted to Hellboy II: The Golden Army, starring the Beast of the Apocalypse (Ron Perlman) wearing a cross around his wrist; carrying a gun made from a melted cross and church bells, and bullets comprising holy water; and fighting on the side...