by Alex Deleon
Marathi Biopic by director Ananth Narayan Mahadevan
The real doctor left, and actress Chatterjee at right
This is a Marathi language biopic spotlighting the life and career of Rukhmabai Raut India's first practicing lady doctor, social rebel and medical pioneer who paved the way for a fight against gender discrimination.
The movie was a revelation at the Jaipur minifilm festival (Four days only).
It was a lat...
Rajasthan film festival is the biggest film festival in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. It gives a new level of platform to filmmakers, artists and technicians of Rajasthani cinema to motivate them, so that they work harder and take Rajasthan Cinema to a new level altogether. From the last four years this festival has brought an amazing change in the Rajasthani cinema and has been appreciated by all the people nationally. After a roaring success in 2016, the fifth ed...
by A. Sikandar Deleon, Jaipur
Padukone Bhansali
"Padmavat", an historical costume drama directed by Bollywood's leading film director, Sanjay Leela Bhansali (54) and starring the currently most...
Sommendra Harsh at initial festival press conference
The fourth installment of the Rajasthani Int'l Film Festival, RIFF, will take place in the colorful pink city Jaipur, capital ofoo the historically rich Indian province of Rajasthan. Jaipur is famed for its many old palaces in a walled off old town in which all buildings are uniformly painted in a color somewhere between pink and pale orange. One is reminded of the beautiful city of Marrakech in Morocco, also referred to affe...
Spielberg, streep and hanks at promotional event
Viewed at INOC Nariman Point cinemas, Bombay, Monday afternoon 15 January 2018..
Awesome and awe inspiring. Amazing that Spielberg has been able to take an old newspaper story, now nearly fifty years old --and largely forgotten, and pumped it up into a thriller that feels like it happened last week. My major complaint is the title POST. .It should have been called The Pentagon Papers! -- not an innocuous one...
by Alex Deleon <filmfestivals.com>
The 22nd International Film Festival of Kerala, IFFK, held in the southmost Indian city of India, Trivandarum, from December 8th to 15th with its highly eclectic and discerning programming was a treasure c...
by Alex Deleon
Local newspapers are loaded with reports on upcoming events in Bollywood as the year 2018 wheels into it...
22nd KERALA IFF reviews, Trivandarum Dec. 2017
by Alex Deleon, <filmfestivals.com>
Nayinte Hrudayam" (Heart of a Dog) 120', -- a Malayalam language film not to be confused with the 2015 American film of the same name by Laurie Anderson -- cunningly directed by Sreekrishnan, is based on a surrealistic 1926 Russian novel by Mikhail Bulgakov that fits the category "impossible to film".
...
Alex C. Deleon, Bombay
Bollywood A-list star Ranbir Kapoor, co-star Alia Bhatt and director Ayan Mukerji spent new years eve partying in Tel Aviv where they are getting ready to shoot the first Bollywood film ever to be made on location in Israel. Set in modern day India "Brahmasta" the first part of a planned trilogy revolves around wisdom and powers drawn from ancient Indian culture and will be shot in the old city of Jaffa, in Jerusalem, and parts of neighboring J...
by Alex Deleon
13:43 (Il y a 23 heures)
Resting at the Royal Bombay Yacht Club next to the fabulous Taj Mahal Hotel -- the...
Removing an offensive dotted Eye, by Alex Deleon, Pune, Maharashtra
The big film news at the year end here in India is the ongoing controversy over the release of the new historical drama "Padmavati" by top senior director Sanjay Leela Bhansali starring top star Deepika Padukone in the title title role as a real queen of yore.
The big joke (seriously) is that the film will get gover...
The year 2018 in Bollywood has seen a dearth of box-office blockbuster and the industry has been counting on Salma Khan's
latest, "Tiger Zinda Hai" (The tiger is still alive) a giant actioner co-starring his former girl friend Katrina Kaif. This is the follow up to his megahit "Tiger Hai" of 2012 also costarring zoftic curvy Katrina who, although only half Indian is the leading sex symbol of the Bollywood.
The story this tim...
ADVENTURES ON THE FILM FESTIVAL CIRCUIT by Alex Deleon (Herman Pevner) (filmfestivals.com)
The very first film festival I ever attended was the San Francisco Festival of 1975. I had by then begun to publish articles about Japanese films in San Francisco and was invited by former festival director Albert Johnson, whom I knew from hanging out at the fabled Mediterraneum Caffe in Berkeley, and Albert used his influence to arrange a pass for me. To this day I must say it was one of...
KERALA 2017 REPORTS
THE BLACK JEW -- Karutha Joothan -- INDIA
by Alex Chaim Deleon-Sinha
<filmfestivals.com>
Karutha Joothan (The Black Jew) is a 2017 Malayalam film written, directed and produced by the National Award winning actor Salim Kumar in which Salim Kumar himself essays the lead character.
A major new Indian from the Deep Dravidian South. Director, Scenario and leading role, Salim Kuma...
ALEX Calling from Kerala
Namaskor.
Best film festival ever.
Tops. Adipowli !!!! Awesome. The Best.
Top Prize film Wajib, from Palestine, was Awesome
But overall best film and Audience prize favorite was
"A mon age je me cache encore pour fumer " ... / At my age I still have to hide to smoke ...
The film is a smoking gun in the face of Islamic oppression of women and is as only to be expected, banned in all Arab countries ~~ wallapalooza smackeroo -...
My Top Seven from the festival were:
1. A mon âge je me cache toujours pour fumer -- ALGERIA
2. Newton --HINDI
3. Two Persons, Malayalam
4. Heart of a Dog --Malayalam
5. Black Jew, Malayalam
6. The Butcher, The Whore, and the One-eyed Man,
Another Hungarian chef d'oeuvre from János Szász
7. WAJIB, Palestine
Details on these films to follow later
Alex,
Trivandarum
Nayinye Hrudayam, (The Heart of Dog) Is a can...
by Alex Deleon
<filmfestivals.com>
BUDAPEST NOIR is a murder mystery set in the German influenced Budapest of 1936 with Antisemitism on the rise. Superbly directed, acted, and beautifully lensed by master cinematographer Elemér Ragály. This is by far the Best Hungarian film of the year in what has been a very good year for Magyar cinema generally. In terms of genre the very first film of its kind from this country and an eye opener...
"To Be or Not To Be", Lubitsch, 1942.
by Alex Deleon
This film came out at the height of German conquest in Europe when it looked like Germany under Hitler was well on the way to winning the war and conquering the world. It was a very dark comedy designed to buck up people's spirits at a very dark time by poking fun at the Hitler regime and showing that they were not as invincible as they seemed to be. (In a far different vein than Chaplin's Great Dictator tw...
Highlights of Films seen at Festival of Restored Classics, Budapest by Alex Deleon
Moszkva Tér 2001 ~ Hungarian rebels without a cause
Moszkva Tér, (Moscow Square) is the busiest transportation hub on the Buda side of the Danube. Since the fall of Communism it has been renamed Széll Kálmán tér but the Communist era name by which it is still referred to by many people is a kind of latent symbol of the forty years of Coldwar Com...
By Alex Delon-Oroszlányi
Commemorating the 60th Anniversary of the establishment of the Hungarian Film Archive an important part of whose work is the restoration of classic films, forty two digitally restored films from here and abroad were screened in a three day marathon from Friday Nov. 4 through Sunday Nov. 6, at the stately old Corvina Mozi, itself a landmark of cinema architecture.
Among the...
The Weinstein Revelations: I'm shocked -- shocked -- to find that sexual harassment has been going on around there ...
...
By Alex Deleon
Deepika Padukone as Mastani in "Bijirao-Mastani"
This was the prestige opening film of the Budapest Bollywood Film Week.
Sanjay Leela Bhansali, known as the author of grand-scale, epic motion pictures, has adapted the love story of two historical figures to make Bajirao Mastani, his biggest film yet. The story is set in the early 1700s in Rajasthan and the hero, Bajirao, the Peshwa (Governor) of the Maratha Empire, is regarded as one of the most prominent w...
MY VENICE 74 HIGHLIGHTS
Alex Deleon
Annette Bening jury president was regal at the closing ceremony
In a sense everybody sees a different festival depending on choices made and the vicissitudes of the daily agenda.
My festival started out slowly but picked up steam toward the end. Arriving late I missed a number of films I wanted to see and didn't see any of the eventual winners, however I did ...
by Alex Deleon
The 2017 Venice Film Festival was so overwhelmingly dominated by Hollywood films and personalities that it was to all intents and purposes an American festival that happened to be taking place in Italy. First of all the career awards. Tandem career Lions were presented to senior Hollywood icons, Robert Redford (81) and one time First Lady of Protest Jane Fonda (79) on the second night of the fest. Both still looking good in spite of their de...
