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All articles by Samakshi
05 July 2009
Barely 45 percent of voters in India’s financial and entertainment capital, Mumbai exercised their right to vote in this year’s General Elections – a number lower than that in most parts of rural and urban India. The people of the city were heavily criticized for their “don’t give a damn” attitude - What happened to all the fervent protests that the denizens of Mumbai carried out following the...
16 February 2009
Debutant Arundhati Roy won the Man Booker Prize for her story of the two egg twins from Ayemenem, a small town in the southern Indian province of Kerala. The precious twins, who went by the name of Rahel and Estha. The two egg twins who thought of themselves together as ME and separately as WE. The children with back-reading habits. ehT nerdlihc ohw devol oot noos, dna tsol oot noos. Roy, who...
04 February 2009
Kristin Scott Thomas was serious Oscar bait for her performance in last year’s very famous French flick, I’ve Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t'aime). And I come to concur - she proved handsomely deserving! The movie marked Philippe Claudel’s debut with direction, after he was widely applauded for his famous French novel Les Âmes grises (Grey Souls). While I’m bashfully ignorant of his...
27 January 2009
Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s The Three Monkeys bagged the best director prize at the Cannes and was Turkey’s submission to the Oscar for the Best Foreign Language Film. The film further went on to pip the much acclaimed Italian film Gomorra in the race and made it to the Academy’s shortlist for the foreign film category. A magnificent knockout by the Turkish auteur indeed! Mr. Bilge Ceylan is...
01 January 2009
Of all the slaves that the world has produced, there lived no such slave as the African American. For these who were stripped and robbed of all their dignity, a burning death was deemed more welcome than a life of servitude. Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Beloved is the story of one such slave and mother who had the willingness to risk everything, for what was to her the necessity...
21 December 2008
In Sebastian Barry’s 2008 Booker Shortlisted piece The Secret Scripture, Barry is engrossed in Ireland’s most chaotic time - when the First World War, the 1916 rebellion, the 1920s War of Independence and Irish Civil War smoked through the skies of the old country. Here we find Roseanne McNulty, an ancient woman stepping close to her 100th birthday. In a mental hospital of Roscommon County, this...
28 November 2008
Very little is known about Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer’s works and his life. The painter, whose most renowned work, “The Girl with a Pearl Earring” , which is also known as the Mona Lisa of the North, or the Dutch Mona Lisa, motivated the making of a top novel and intense film that goes by the same name. Based on Tracy Chevalier’s best-selling novel, Peter Webber's 2003 UK Film Girl with a...
22 November 2008
The Republic of Biafra was a secessionist state in south-eastern Nigeria. Biafra was inhabited mostly by the Igbo people and existed from 30 May 1967, to 15 January 1970
- Wikipedia.
In the late 1960’s, shortly after gaining their independence from Britain, Nigeria was a collection of diverse regional fragments held together in a fragile clasp. All sections of the country were left competing...
16 November 2008
Chrisophe Barratier’s directorial debut The Chorus became an acclaimed masterstroke worldwide. About an inspirational music teacher who comes to teach at a boarding school for rebellious children, Les Choristes, was inspired by a little known French film La Cage aux Rossignols (The Cage of Nightingales). A deeply moving psychological film on childhood, The film is about the early feelings of...
11 November 2008
The Cleft was published only some months before the 88 year old woman author, Doris Lessing was announced as the winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature. Being the 11th woman and the oldest person to win the prize, Lessing’s book was a disappointment to most, and an asset to many. It is The Golden Notebook (1962), her second book that remains to be her most acclaimed piece of literary work...
05 November 2008
It’s monsoon season in Delhi when the extended Verma family reunites from around the world to celebrate the arranged marriage of one of their daughters. And this vibrant wedding turned out to be one that the world of cinema eagerly watched and joyously celebrated. After the universal success of Salaam Bombay and Kamasutra: A Tale of Love, Mira Nair came up with the glamorous Monsoon Wedding and...
01 November 2008
“The reason women don't play football is because eleven of them would never wear the same outfit in public”, goes a famous quote about football and women. But Jafar Panahi’s football based flick Offside is about six women who surely don’t have the luxury of that. The movie is a revelation – it shows an Islam dominated country where women need to conceal their femininity in entirety, to...
18 September 2008
Wouldn’t we feel elated to know that all those dreamy knights and heavenly princesses, eternal lovers and magical soul mates were true and alive? That a life of love filled with adventure, pureness, and celebration can still be found? Many of us, comfortably accustomed to the unexciting, or hopelessly resigned to the mundane, would downright reject this as an intangible ideology. But The Bridge...
30 July 2008
Almodovar the omniscient knower and portrayer of all conjugating human emotions had his first taste of global recognition with the release of the neurotic comedy, Women on the verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios). Starring one of Almodovar’s favorite actress Carmen Maura, this film turned Almodovar into an international cinematic sparkler.
A ludicrous film where...
09 July 2008
Pather Panchali (Song of the road) the first in the pack of Satyajit Ray’s celebrated ‘Apu Trilogy’ is a vividly mellifluent poem come alive in the form of daintily impeccable pictures. Rarely can a film maker capture the substance of every day life, and define it with the niceties of unfortunate domestic circumstances, raw and carefree childhoods, ancestral and rural set ups, charming and...
06 July 2008
There are few masterpieces in classic English literature that are way out wacky, seemingly shallow, funnily defiant and yet emerge as ground-breaking in terms of their impact all the same. J. D Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye is one such terrific book. The book is amongst the first of its kind and time, presenting no rollicking plot or lyrical language to convey its message. Straightforward in a...
27 June 2008
When remorse becomes the fatal venom that rushes through our veins, slowly and silently killing our conscience, shrinking the skeleton of our souls- seeking redemption through goodness remains the only way to recovery. Khaled Hosseini pens his first novel with poignant strokes of brotherly bonding, unconditional love, agonizing betrayal, ingrained guilt and final redemption. “There is a way to...
24 May 2008
“Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird... Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.” This was the advice that the wonderful Atticus gave to his children in a book went down in history. The lesson...
19 May 2008
Summer interlude is a story of longing and unrequited love starring Maj Britt Nilsson. Directed by Swedish film director, Ingmar Bergman
Having watched only two other films by Ingmar Bergman, it is hard for me to evaluate this film in comparison to his others. But going by the regular notions of this renowned film maker, one expects the film to be more somber. This film entails within it those...
16 May 2008
Farewell My Concubine is one of the few rare films that present history, beauty, emotion and art with such outstanding craft and skill. This film qualifies as one of the most unique films I’ve watched in a long time.
The movie is an exposé of the eminent Beijing opera that sprung up in the 18th century and went through a tumultuous fall during the 20th century. The film’s main story line revolves...