Sreehari Nair wishes to write about that which is in the cultural air but absent from trending lists. You can e-mail the author at sreeharin@rediff-inc.com
The key to every Daniel Day-Lewis performance was a big theme and a thousand details. And in the final phase of his acting career, says Sreehari Nair, America became his big theme, and the details... well, he just popped them out like waffles.
'How can you blame poor Kabir Khan for the Tubelight fiasco?' 'We know that his Job Description expects him to work below full capacity, to sell his soul, and we know his SOP-sheet has the title: Design the next Salman Khan Project.' Sreehari Nair sees through Kabir Khan's cunning.
Chaitanya Tamhane's National Award-winning film seems more relevant today than when it released, says Sreehari Nair.
'2 hours and 20 minutes later, I walked out of Sachin: A Billion Dreams learning not one additional thing about Tendulkar: Not one factoid, not one statistic.' 'Maybe it's convenient filmmaking, or maybe just the essence of God,' says Sreehari Nair.
Hindi Medium works because it manages to stretch itself beyond its scrubby elements, easy half-baked jokes, lessons about consumerism and our love for English, into a simple story about a boy who would do anything to see his girl smile, feels Sreehari Nair.
Ram Gopal Varma is back with Part Three of that series, which presented to us the first clear evidence that the great man was slipping, rues Sreehari Nair.
Baahubali: The Conclusion doesn't enlarge the scope of the first picture or deepen its meaning, feels Sreehari Nair.
Begum Jaan makes a lot of noise, cuts a lot of throats, but sucks up to kiddie-ideas of history and revolution, feels Sreehari Nair.
Despite its many problems, A Death in the Gunj is an important work says Sreehari Nair.
Laali Ki Shaadi Mein Laaddoo Deewana is insipid, terribly made, and yet a Warm Enterprise, feels Sreehari Nair.
'In Udaan and in Lootera, the initial sensations that drove Vikramaditya Motwane to make those pictures never quite travelled beyond the walls that contained them.' 'Here, in Trapped, this sensations-strangled-by-the-walls feeling becomes the movie's real tune,' says Sreehari Nair.
There is no escaping Rahul Bose's compassion. He wears it like a name tag in Poorna, feels Sreehari Nair.
'In Angamaly Diaries, dreams, kinks, small corruptions, cheap lives, and hopes are all given their due and that attitude frees us up to believe that perhaps there is more good than bad in the sum total of us.' 'This is a coming-of-age tale taken straight out of a diary written in blood,' says Sreehari Nair.
'In Vishal Bhardwaj's now fully set world of manufactured poetry, characters wear their emotions at their most prescribed anatomical positions -- courage on their chins, pride over their chests, and innocence in their faces,' observes Sreehari Nair.
Sreehari Nair explains why Haraamkhor may just be the most liberating Hindi movie made since Hazaaron Khwaishen Aisi.
'2016 was the age of convenience for Hindi movies; of down pat effrontery and planned feeling triumphing over attempts to discern something complexly beautiful,' says Sreehari Nair.
'As citizens of this country, we often expect sweeping changes here, but find the smallest of abdications that we may ourselves be called upon to make far too inconveniencing.' 'Think about it deeply -- about the move and the reactions it has gathered -- and we will actually learn a lot about ourselves,' says Sreehari Nair.
'Pink a movie that's assembled especially for that section of prejudice-free Indians who are all on this side of the screen.' 'Look...there's virtuosity staring at you, 24 Frames per Second.' 'Soak it in; more power to the revolution, more wax to the candlelight vigils,' says Sreehari Nair.
'It took a 75-year-old director to teach the reformist set of Facebook users that Evil is not an aberration, but something that resides in the most regular seeming of human beings,' says Sreehari Nair.
'Cynics don't make it big in advertising.' 'Often, the medium calls for a rock-like commitment to puny, easily digestible ideas.' 'Here's a text that understands this facet of advertising and one that keeps its tone breezy and reporter-like; that's set across a wide canvas but one that never overstates its own importance,' says Sreehari Nair.
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