Latest in: Features

Remembering Tinnu Anand’s Shahenshah (1988), written by Inder Raj Anand, Jaya Bachchan, & Santosh Saroj; starring Amitabh Bachchan, Meenakshi Sheshadri, & Aruna Irani; & released on this day 37 years ago.   “Shahenshah jahaan khade ho jaate hain, wahin darbaarein lag jaati hain”. Perhaps these words best describe the...

Kannada’s other, in familiar parlance – art house cinema – has never really scaled up to its glorious past of the 70s when Girish Kasarvalli, B V Karanth, Girish Karnad, and their proteges and the like, ruled the roost ensuring their regionally rooted films became part of the larger...

“Holi kab hain, kab hain Holi!” Gabbar Singh screams in Sholay . The next frame, instilling fear in the audience, is a color palette in “out of focus.” There was a sprinkle of Holi colors on the ground, and ornament-clad hands quickly picked up powder from dishes left on...

In the contemporary time, Shakespeare has been carried across languages and cultures to such an extent that his motifs have become truly universal—they no longer belong to the west alone. A few Assamese filmmakers too have drawn on the immortal characters of Shakespeare in some of their films, but those...

Why are we encouraging our children/teens to view bloody, violent films? Are we attempting to breed a violent race? The Film Street Journal has been raising this all important issue in the reviews section, in the last few months, appalled at the lavish spectacle of blood and mass destruction...

The cinema of Malayalam, having since its alpha days attracted intellectual artists, has essentially been a canvas on which conscientious thinkers imaged the struggles of the individual. Of realism. It is notable that the cinema of this region/language, unlike many others all over the world—this assertion of course omits...

A few years back, when we were moving into a frenzy celebrating the centenary of cinema, noted Czech novelist Milan Kundera voiced his strong denial against such observance stating that “we have come to the era of post-art in a world where art is dying because the need for...

It was an era where everything was being phallocentric, including women. Women started to think like man, see like man and even perceive like man. Language and literature was also being male centred. Women started to lode their identity as a gender of its own. It was during this...

The mind and body of Hindi cinema may have changed drastically over time, but its soul remains the very same. “Screen mothers still make gaajar ka halwa ‘apne haathon se’ for their sons” trade analyst Komal Nahata once tweeted. For, (in the words of ‘The Newsweek’) “In spite of...