Film Impressions

REVIEW: Bullett Raja

HOLE IN THE HEAD

It would be easy to dismiss Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Bullett Raja as a lazy studio-funded collaboration between a reasonably talented director-star duo. Sadly, it doesn’t seem a mere aberration. More likely Dhulia and Saif Ali Khan have run out of ideas and are desperate to cash in their chips. Worth noting here that the filmmaker’s best work, Paan Singh Tomar (2010), came at the end of a seven-year drought. Similarly, Saif reinvented himself in Dil Chahta Hai (2001), only after his career had floundered for nearly a decade.

DOCUMENTARY: An American In Madras

A PEEK INTO HISTORY

India doesn’t have a particularly good record at preserving film history. Shivendra Singh Dungarpur’s insightful biography of legendary archivist P K Nair, Celluloid Man (2012) chronicles how Ardeshir Irani’s son sold the film negative of the first Hindi talkie Alam Ara (1931) as scrap. In one of the film’s most dramatic moments, neglected reels of old films cry out in the vein of that anguished climactic call by Meghe Dhaka Tara’s Neeta—“I want to live”!

Fortunately when FTII-trained writer-filmmaker Karan Bali stumbled upon a man called Ellis R Dungan who came from America in the 1930s and worked in the Tamil film industry for 15 years, there was enough archival material at hand to piece together his fascinating journey. Thanks to Dungan’s American roots­ Bali could trace his autobiography, photographs and documentary footage from material he’d donated to the West Virginia State Archives.

A poster for the new documentary in the style of the vintage cinema Dungan was associated with.

REVIEW: Goliyon Ki Rasleela-Ram Leela

JAB V SHANTARAM MET DADA KONDKE AT THE DESIGNER VILLAGE NAUTANKI

When you walk into a Sanjay Leela Bhansali film you have to leave your inhibitions at the door. The guy expects unconditional surrender to his grandiose vision, wound up characters, over-wrought emotions, and operatic sets and costumes. You can’t do Bhansali without a million candles, humungous chandeliers, wall-to-wall murals, orgiastic colours, picture-perfect lighting and people who scream their feelings out and wring each other’s necks in love.

To paraphrase, he makes Mahesh Bhatt’s self-indulgence seem understated.

REVIEW: Krrish 3

THE JADOO HAS LEFT THIS FRANCHISE

First the good news. Krrish 3 has by far the best special effects one has seen in an Indian film; Dhoom 3 better pack enough fire-power to outdo the mind-boggling wizardry of chameleons morphing into human forms, gravity-defying spins through Mumbai's streets and a couple of breathtaking action sequences. Not to mention the villain’s den atop a Swiss mountain that James Bond would’ve been proud to decimate—the very idea of a lunatic sitting in a snazzy dome-shaped palace in the middle of nowhere is straight out of Bond.