IFFI 50: Media creates movie genres, says Takashi Miike Movies are not originally made in specific genres, but when the information about a movie gets transmitted, the media portrays it as belonging to a particular genre, said renowned film-maker Takashi Miike. He was participating in a media conference organised on the sidelines of 50th International Film Festival of India. Takashi Miike, one of the most outstanding film-makers from Asia and around the world, with a cult status, was the &lsq...

Blue Mountains, Review by Siraj Syed: Colourless Molehills Used as a metaphor for distance, apparently unattainable goals, the Blue Mountains of the title prove as elusive and illusory as the real ones the makers project on screen. Lots of colour, lots of singing, lots of dancing, lots of melodrama, and lots of snow do not help Blue Mountains attain any height. Instead, we find ourselves in a cave, at best, or, rather, a gorge. Som (Yatharth Rastogi), a hill-town boy, and part of a gang of f...

Aamir, Nasir, Tahir, Tariq, Mansoor, Amjad: Movies, Masti, Modernity, Flashback 3 To remind you, Aamir is indeed Aamir Khan, Amjad is definitely Gabbar Singh, and the triple M above is to acknowledge that it was Akshay Manwani’s biographical book on the cinema of Nasir Hussain that got me delving into the period of about 15 years, when I interacted with the Hussain Khans (first five) and the bare Khan (last, but the most imposing personality). Actually, Mansoor did not use his middle na...

She’s Funny That Way, Review: Screwball sex comedy, the Bogdanovich way In Ernst Lubitsch’s Cluny Brown (1946), Charles Boyer, playing Adam Belinski, says to Jennifer Jones, “In Hyde Park, some people like to feed nuts to the squirrels. But if it makes you happy to feed squirrels to the nuts, who am I to say nuts to the squirrels?” Writer-director Peter Bogdanovich liked this phrase so much, that he made it the title for his latest film, included an acknowledged clip ...