Inner Metamorphosis

Author Stephen King, the master of the macabre, to demonstrate his ease with variety wrote “ Different Seasons ” – a collection of four novellas, probably in an effort to avoid being pigeonholed into his forte of horror genre.  Yet, when a young film-director Frank Darabont approached him for rights to adapt one of its novellas “ Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption ” into a movie, he didn’t think much of it. The rest, as they say, is history; with some alterations the movie “ The   Shawshank Redemption ” turned out to be the best-ranked movies in IMDb, surpassing even the cult-film “ The Godfather ”. Plot A banker Andy Dufresne is sentenced to life at Shawshank State prison for murder of his wife and her lover, despite his claims of innocence. At prison, he befriends Ellis Boyd “Red”, the prison entrepreneur, and turns out to be the most unconventional prisoner. Meanwhile, the ruthless prison warden is eager to exploit Andy’s financial skills for his selfish e...

I remember a cinema-crazy friend remarking almost a decade back, that all Indian movies can be reduced to a handful of basic storylines which when appropriately tweaked at suitable positions yield a wide spectrum of diverse stories. Telugu movies, since Gundamma Katha, have tinkered with the concept of protagonist(s) entering a household (mostly antagonist’s) in disguise to bring about a change in their hearts. In Hindi we have DDLJ in recent memory. It’s a time-tested storyline, which if executed deftly, with judicious mix of déjà vu and novel elements, has nearly always produced good results. So what freshness does Trivikram-Pawan Kalyan’s latest flick “Attarintiki Daredi” bring to a much overused basic storyline? If its spectacular box-office performance is any indication, the movie has indeed struck a chord with the masses. Studying what makes a cinema click would bog down the best; any industry-observer’s speculation is probably only as scientific as modern day computer-emp...

The popular cinema in India generally indulges in mindless plots punctuated by songs, action & comic sequences which cling to the narrative simply because they are put on.  Such movies, irrespective of their commercial outcome, lack the harmony and connection to forcefully create an impression among audience. K. Viswanath , a pan-Indian filmmaker whose (major) works incidentally happen to be in Telugu, is among the handful of Indian directors whose works (less than 25 films) created memorable characters that would stand the test of time. Weaving stories centred on a passionate protagonist against the larger context of preserving Indian arts and culture, Viswanath churned out masterpieces year after year until, much like Sankara Sastry’s story, his era was eclipsed by rise of “commercial cinema”. Born in generation that never saw his movies in theatres, my introduction to his movies was with explicit knowledge about his repute. But expectations notwithstanding, I w...

Three words are sufficient to sum up Ramgopal Varma's The Attacks of 26/11 : Brutal, Barbaric & Brilliant. But I'll prattle along. What transpired on that fateful day when 10 men terrorized a metropolis populated by more than 20 million? How did commoners react? How did the security forces respond? What inspired these men to perform such an heinous homocide in which even children, woman and elderly weren't spared? RGV answers these best within the cinematic constraints and leaves us thoroughly disturbed by the end. The mood is however uplifted as we recollect the exceptional bravery exhibited by our police-forces and the humanity displayed by Mumbai-people amid such a crises. The gruesome cold-blooded murder of the captain of the fishing trawler [which was hijacked in sea and used subsequently to enter Mumbai] sets the tone for the movie. The clinical precision with which the plan is executed leaves us spellbound. The machine-like mentality o...

Truth & beauty: these comprise the goal of art. Few works of art do justice to either. Rarer still do justice to both. Sekhar Kammula is one among the finest directors in Telugu with the penchant for weaving ordinary incidents in middle-class people’s life with extraordinary finesse and sensibility – combining truth & beauty. He is the directorial equivalent of R.K. Narayan. Telugu movies by and large do not trust audiences’ intelligence. Experimenting is a taboo and the advertised novelty is confined to bringing in freshness to the routine formula stories. It is in this context, Kammula stands apart from the rest in truthfully portraying the middle-class sentiments and life and sketching them in detail. The underlying theme of Kammula’s movies has always been – Life is Beautiful – despite the problems, failures, disappointments, rejections, humiliations etc. “Life is Beautiful” (LIB) is a nostalgic tour down the memory lane and will surely evoke the beautiful memories...

{ This entry presupposes a reasonable familiarity with telugu, tamil and hindi film industry. Yet, the theme is pretty general and can be read even otherwise. } Superstardom is a very magnificent phenomenon. This phenomenon has been extremely fascinating to me and I had often thought much about the subject. In very simple terms a superstar can be defined as the person unchained by the character he enacts and it’s him that shines from the character he enacts throughout. There is a very clear difference between the person and the superstar. And its very much apparent if we tend to look at the personal life of these people. The rebel and angry young man of yesteryears Amitabh Bacchan is seen to be very polite and soft spoken person. The flamboyant and serious looking Chiranjeevi is quite humble and of jovial disposition outside. And of course Rajnikanth the flashy star with his trademark punch-lines and frequently dreamlike fight sequences is very modest and simple in his real life and s...