Last journey

 Around 8.30am, Suchitra Sen the queen of Bengali cinema suffered a massive heart attack and passed away in Kolkata's Belle Vue Clinic.

Her body was first taken to her Ballygunge Circular Road residence, where the actress had led the life of a recluse for the past 35 years, and then moved on to Keoratala Ghat where she was given a gun salute before being cremated. She wanted to go home and the doctors were planning to discharge her on Saturday. But, it was her mortal remains that left the hospital on Friday morning.

Her daughter, actress Moon Moon Sen, who was accompanied by her husband Bharat Dev Varma and daughters Riya and Raima, performed the last rites. It was all done quietly and away from media glare, just as the fiercely private Suchitra had wanted.
Present at the cremation ground were West Bengal Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee and actors Prosenjit Chatterjee, Dev, June Malia, Roopa Ganguly, Jeet, directors Haranath Chakrabarty and Srijit Mukherjee.

Mahanayika no more

 She'd done a few films before-- Kajri, Atom Bomb, Shesh Kothay--but it was Saat Number Kayedi and Sharey Chuattar, which made her a star. "And she remained a star till the end," says Bengal's matinee idol Prosenjit Chatterjee, who at the age of four got a hug and a wow from her on the sets of his first film, Chhotto Jignasa. "After that we never met or even spoke but she told her granddaughter Raima Sen she'd liked my performance in Chokher Bali and Noukadubi and that I was as good-looking as my dad (Biswajit)."

Biswajit recalls that while filming Hospital he grabbed her hand so hard that her glass bangles broke and she started to bleed. "She was at the peak of her career and I thought my career was over. I tried to slip away quietly, she stopped me saying it was her fault for wearing glass bangles," he says.

For director Buddhadeb Dasgupta her two performances which stand out are Saat Paake Bandha (which bagged her the Best Actress Award at the Moscow fest) and Aandhi (got her a Filmfare nomination) with Ajoy Kar and Gulzar, because they were bereft of her signature mannerisms. "She will be remembered as a great heroine but not as an actress. I wish she had not turned down Satyajit Ray's Devi Chaudrani," he says, admitting he'd never wanted to work with her. "She'd have to surrender to me completely and was too beautiful."  The third daughter of headmaster Karunamoy Dasgupta and Indira Devi, Roma Dasgupta was born in Pabna, now in Bangladesh. The family migrated to Kolkata where she married Debnath Sen, the son of wealthy barrister Adinath Sen, in 1947. A year later, Moon Moon was born and in 1952, filmaker Sukumar Dasgupta ran into her at a Kolkata studio. She'd heard he was scouting for a new face for his film, Saat Number Kayedi, and she wanted an audience. Dasgupta asked if she was interested in acting and she retorted, "That's why I'm here."
Age cannot wither her nor custom stale her infinite variety.'--Shakespeare (Antony and Cleopatra).

The pictures have faded with time but the woman who looks out from them is frozen in a black-and-white era-- ethereal and unforgettable.

Padma Shri Suchitra Sen, Bengal's diva, stepped out of the public eye over three decades ago, before she turned old and grey. She was 83, when around 8.25 am on Friday she succumbed to a massive heart attack. But the thousands who watched the departing Garbo's last journey, remembered her as an ageless 20-year-old with a Madonna-like smile and an icy hauteur which kept her worshippers from getting too close to Mrs Sen or Madam as she liked to be addressed.

Between 63' and 66' she did not sign a single film with Uttam Kumar to silence critics who said she just a "beautiful face" while he was the "actor".

But Bimal Roy's daughter Rinki Bhattacharya remembers her as a simple, homely woman when she was in Mumbai to shoot for Devdas. "She'd drop Moon Moon off at our place on her way to the shoot. With no make-up on, she didn't look like the legendary beauty she was," she recalls.

Suchitra didn't do too many Hindi films but worked twice with Dev Anand in Bambai Ka Babu and Sarhad. "He was captivated by her 'speaking eyes' and later worked with Moon Moon in Love In Times Square while Raima did an item number in Chargesheet," says Mohan Churawala, Dev's friend. 

 Prosenjit whose upcoming film, Jatishwar opened on Friday, cancelled an event to rushto her funeral. He recalls the golden couple of the 60s with a smile and a sigh, "The mahanayak went away too soon, today, Mamta was a hit, Aandhi raked up a controversy over her resemblance to the then PM Indira Gandhi. May be that was how she'd have looked in her twilight years. But after Pronayer Pasha she went into hiding for real. There were talks of a mystery illness and Ramakrishna Mission monk Bharat Maharaj behind her decision to retire. Once a fashionable lady-about-town, who partied every night, she became a recluse after her husband's death in 1970.

But today we still hear her carefree laughter as she rides behind Uttam Kumar in Saptapadi to the tune of 'Ei path jodi na sesh hoi to kemon hoto tumi bolo to'. The song's composer, Hemant Kumar's son Jayanta Mukherjee, recalls it was voted the most romantic Bengali song ever.
even the mahanayika is gone. An era has ended."

Film review: Miss Lovely

Sex, lies and cinema

Set in the gaudy 80's, a time when the country's aesthetic sensibilities - at least as far the visual arts were concerned - were at its nadir, Miss Lovely is a trippy and arresting art-house homage to the C-grade semi-porn, semi-horror filmmaking industry. If this dichotomy of subject and style hasn't got you hooked yet and the fact that it made it to Cannes' Un Certain Regard section, well, read on. 

Director Ashim Ahluwalia makes the story vague and the plot is always in flux, in and out of your grasp. This syntax is intentional and what Ahluwalia is really after is to create mood. Instead of trying to tell you where the story is heading, he is interested in letting the characters evolve (or degenerate in this case) through a series of delicious scenes that focus on how the participants react to the unfamiliar in this murky world. This is a film about sleaze, producers who are in on the game for the money and sex and the notion of glamour, and it is about actors - some satisfied with their success, some struggling and stifled in search of sustenance. Trapped in this dead-end world of false hope, every move they make sends them spiraling south.
 That Ahluwalia is truly an auteur at work is never in question. This film is all about technique. He immerses himself in the period - but it's not production design - as much it is the texture of the film that sets the tone. The seamless use of archival footage of the city merging with the made-up should give you a fair indication of how the film is shot. The stock is grainy, and with most of the movie filmed at night, atmospherics are heightened. Superb locations (I'm guessing there are no sets) - that such nooks still exist in Bombay is heartening - adds to the drama and the retro experience is complete with exceptional sound design. The film does seem overedited, but in such cases is there ever an 'ideal cut' (or should we blame the censors)?

The actors have very little to go on - sparse dialogue, screenplay confusion - and they must work with their raw, visceral instinct. I doubt Ahluwalia has given them too much to work with, and seems to have thrust them into the frame with a situation. This can be stifling for performers but the three leads are rather sure-footed. Nawazuddin Siddique continues to dazzle with his awkwardness, Miss Earth 2005, Niharika Singh plunges heart and soul into her role that must resonate at some level with her own frustrations of not making it in Bollywood and the surprise acting delight - Anil George - has all the makings of a great actor as he anchors the narrative of Miss Lovely. But it's not all dark and gloomy. Not to be missed are the scenes where a quirky-looking director in all his seriousness presides over a scene of woman caught up in a tribal dance, or when monsters molest girls in a shot with a lamp held over their heads for 'lighting'. A producer finds a younger squeeze - one he promises to launch and make into a 'heroine', replacing the furious fading star who decides to take her younger replacement down in an old-fashioned, no-holds barred cat fight. And at the center of this corruption and depravity, the most innocent of romances.

Sure Miss Lovely isn't for everyone, but if you're truly a cinephile, you should have no difficulty in finding merit in this layered, moody piece.

Reasons to watch Om Dar B Dar

Cult. That's the word that sums up Om Dar B Dar, Kamal Swaroop's absurdist drama. Why is this almost incoherent and decidedly surreal satirical intersection of mythology and actuality a favorite title that crops up in conversations that tend towards the relentless and abject commercialization of Hindi films? "We need an Om Dar B Dar," it has been said, "to shake things up - to show that art still abounds in our cinema."

Made in 1988, this is Om Dar B Dar's first outing on big screen. Why now? Why do NFDC, PVR, and scores of its fans want it released? Why should this audience of 2013 watch Om Dar B Dar? Will they even get it? It is even possible to comprehend at one go?

The answer lies in the question. 
No, it's not possible to "understand" the film in a conventional sense. It maybe conceivable to join the dots of the plot together after repeated viewings of the non-linear structure and to make some sense of the utterly random shots between scenes but this exercise would mean missing the point. You will only get out of it what you seek. And this - this need to take your time and reflect - almost entirely missing nowadays from our movie-watching experiences is why you should watch Om Dar B Dar.

The question I keep trying to answer every time I watch (parts of) the film is from where does director Kamal Swaroop's vision originate? The poster sports a rather marketable tagline "The great Indian LSD trip" painting visions of filmmakers on acid and content that resembles the work of Terry Gilliam or Salvador Dali. Swaroop himself may have claimed to an interviewer that his thoughts couldn't be penned down on paper and that abstract images from his mind had to be straight away captured on celluloid; a "ritual" he called it. The film has created its own myth, its own urban legends. It is unlikely that NFDC of the 80's would've financed a film for a struggling director without anything less than a bound script and a hundred meetings. More likely is that Swaroop draws from his own life: his childhood in Ajmer (where the film is set) of limited exposure and hardship and trying to make sense of the contrast the 80s brought using deep-rooted metaphors - many of which he tries to explain over and again unsuccessfully - much to frustration of his followers.

All bioscope (a dated term for film) must derive from biology, he says; "ban all googlies in cricket and generally in life" goes a dialogue in the film. Diamonds in frogs, the art of holding one's breath, the "boldness" of a woman sitting through adult films in a ramshackle theatre, the music and song sequences lampooning all that is going haywire with Hindi films of the time; at the cost of his work looking reckless and dilettantish, and as a deliberate attempt to misdirect the audience, these themes have deep meaning for Swaroop. Can we find our own interpretations? 

Om Dar B Dar also speaks volumes of institutions like the FTII and NFDC that allowed an iconoclast's mind to realize such an avant-garde vision. The work coming out of here retains the spirit of innovation despite strapped conditions and bureaucratic indifference. Some credit is also due to the jury of the 1989 Filmfare who had the foresight to award it the critics' best film.

Releasing on the same day as Miss Lovely, another experimental effort, Om Dar B Dar may even recover its modest 10-lakh production budget. If Miss Lovely is not everybody's cup of tea, Om Dar B Dar is almost certainly no one's cup of tea. And that's what makes it cult and worth experiencing. 

The film will be screened at Cinemax Versova at 5:50 pm, PVR (ECX) Andheri at 9 pm and at PVR Phoenix at 2: 40 pm.

Critics take their pick

 

 

Gravity and 12 Years A Slave were the big winners in the recently held Critics' Choice Movie Awards

Gravity and 12 Years A Slave followed their multiple Oscar nominations by winning big at the Critics' Choice Movie Awards.
Steve McQueen's slavery drama, which bagged nine nominations at the Oscars, followed its good luck y being named the best film of 2013 by Broadcast Film Critics Association.
Lupita Nyong'o defeated Jennifer Lawrence to bag the Critics's trophy in the best supporting actress category while John ridley was honoured for his adapted screen-play. "I'd like to dedicate this to my uncle who came to see me in every play and said, 'You're good. But let's see what Hollywood thinks of you.' He didn't live to see this day but I'm sure he's proud of me," Nyong'o said.
The big winner of the night, however, was Sandra Bullock starrer space drama Gravity, which scooped seven trophies.Alfonso Cuaron won the best director trophy for the film while Bulock won on the best actress in an action movie category. The film also won in sci-fi/horror movie, visual effects, cinematography, score and editing.
"I would first like to thank Jackie Chan, Sylvester Stallone, Jean Claude Van Damme for teaching me everything I know. It's not easy doing what we do, people, it's not easy," said an elated Bullock.
She further thanked her Gravity co-star and said,, "I'd like to thank George Clooney for floating away and not coming back."
The Critics' Choice did not disappoint other best actress Oscar nominees as Cate Blanchett won the best actress gong for Blue Jasmine. American Hustle star Amy Adams walked away with best actress in a comedy trophy.
Blanchett thanked her director Woody Allen for the win. "This is so great. What a great day. I just want to thank first and foremost Woody Allen. I am just the lucky girl that he happened to call for this," he said. 
 

'I never thought I’d live to see the film release in theatres'

  The 61-year-old filmmaker, known best for his 1988-absurdist drama, Om Dar-Ba-Dar, lives modestly in a Mumbai suburb. Discarded furniture, broken wall clocks, a computer straight from the nostalgia shop, a quirky chair and a cup hardstained with tea instantly catch your attention as you settle down for a chat with the eccentric director, who carries the vibe of a creative genius with an air of casual nonchalance.

"I never thought I'd live to see the film release in theatres," he says of Om Dar-Ba-Dar which NFDC is releasing in the theatres today, 25 years after it was made.

The film was almost lost until a few journalists made enquiries after watching it online, and NFDC's Nina Gupta, paved the way for its release. "There have been several talented directors who have died without getting due recognition. It's a terrific moment for me and my film," says Swaroop.

The idea of Om Dar-Ba-Dar came to him on the crowded sets of Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, on which he was an assistant director. "I managed the crowds and told stories to keep them entertained. One of it was about a boy who skips school and runs away from home e when the results are due. He then discovers that he can make a living by holding his breath for a really long time, just like the frogs," he narrates.
Swaroop wanted the film to be a representation of an artistic expression, which is why a lot of the content was improvised by the actors on the set. "It was a crazy ride, but we experimented within a set structure," says the filmmaker who has always defied conventions with a sense of pride.

Born in Kashmir, his father was a teacher and mother, a homemaker. The family moved to Ajmer where he graduated in Biology before moving to Pune to study film direction. He had a brief stint at ISRO, where he used Russian fairytales to teach science to kids, and then took filmmaking classes in a remote village in Maharashtra.Says an elated Kamal Swaroop whose absurdist drama is hitting the theatres today, 25 years after it was made.

I don't believe in sense, but nonsense. I don't want to connect, but rather to disconnect. How can you show death in films? Nobody dies. Everybody lives. It's all pretence." Meeting Kamal Swaroop can be quite a trip.

"I never aspired to be a Manmohan Desai or a Prakash Mehra. I never wanted to make an Amitabh Bachchan-starrer," he admits.

Did he want to make films at all? "I wanted to be niche, hang out at Jehangir Art Gallery, have cutting chai at Fort and do some odd writing jobs. I wasn't very ambitious, I'm still that way," he says.

Presently, the filmmaker is writing screenplays which he intends to publish as books. "I'm too old to run around and make a film now," he points out, adding that lectures on film direction and scriptwriting at institutes like FTI and NID take care of his bills. "I watch new films everyday and enjoy them. I think directors like Imtiaz Ali, Vishal Bhardwaj and Anurag Kashyap are doing a terrific job." 

Balika Vadhu's Shiv in Karan Johar camp

  A source told Mirror that he will make his debut with Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhaniya, starring Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt. "Karan and Shashank Khaitan (the film's director) were really impressed by Siddharth in the reality show Jhalak Dikhla Jaa. Siddharth will play an important role in the film," said the source.
 When contacted, Karan confirmed the news and said, "Yes. Siddharth has been signed up for the film. He is a talented actor and a rage in Balika Vadhu. Dharma Productions plans to continue its professional equation with him."  



Anandi's Shiv is moving to B-town. The TV actor who is best known for his role in the daily soap Balika Vadhu has signed a three-film deal with Karan Johar's production house.

Singham roars again

 Also on the sets was Kareena Kapoor. According to a source close to the film, the actress will play a Maharashtrian mulgi. However, she looked every inch the star on Thursday.

Shooting will start once Rohit finishes the TV reality show Khatron Ke Khiladi which he is hosting. 



Ajay Devgn, who is just back from shooting an action sequence in Wai for Pradbhu Dheva's Action Jackson, was spotted at Mehboob Studio yesterday doing a photoshoot for Rohit Shetty's upcoming film Singham 2. Ajay is all set to bulk up for his role and has already hit the gym with his trainer Prashant.

From Beirut to Gulmarg…

From toting a gun on the streets of Beirut, Saif Ali Khan is now braving the elements in Gulmarg. The famous ski resort is playing host to the cast and crew of Kabir Khan's directorial Phantom, a spy thriller which also stars Katrina Kaif.
A bloodied Saif donned a snow suit to shoot the scenes in the snow-capped mountains and just like in the Lebanese capital, the famous B-town resident was accompanied by a security guard.

Hollywood thrills

 The film, to be co-produced by Sanjay, will be made in Hindi and English.

While Sanjay admitted that he might approach John Abraham, Abhishek Bachchan or Shahid Kapoor for the two male characters as it would be a welcome change for them too to not play the leading man, he was tightlipped about which actress he has in mind for the central role. "It'll be a star but not the ones you are expecting. I'll spring a big surprise," he promised.

When the offer came he was in two minds about accepting it as he had planned to shoot his two big-budget multi-starrers back-to-back this year. But now, lured by the Sanjay Gupta will remake a woman-centric foreign language film for a LA studio.

Sanjay Gupta, who was already juggling two films, Mumbai Saga and Khotey Sikkey, has to clear his schedule for a third. And the offer has come from LA. A Hollywood production house has approached Gupta to direct an official remake of a hit foreign language film.

When Mirrrror called Sanjay, he confirmed the news but refused to divulge the title of the original film or the name of his co-producer.

"I am contractually bound to not reveal the details," he said. "All I can tell you is that it is a thriller like many of my previous films. But while the others were male-centric, this one has a woman protagonist and two important male characters. These guys approached me after seeing my body of work."
fabulous screenplay, he intends to push Khotey Sikkey and wrap this one in-between. 

"I'll finish it in one 35-60 day schedule. The city is important, we can easily film it in Mumbai. In fact, after struggling with the Mumbai of the 80s and 90s in Mumbai Saga, I would be happy to shoot the city as it is today," he said.  

He went on to add: "It is a universal theme with a taut screenplay that can be easily adapted to the Indian scenario. It won't take me long to write it. I just need to work on the dialogue. It's such a thrill to be finally doing a woman centric subject in Hollywood. Wow!"

Kapoors rally around ailing Ritu

Ranbir, Rishi and Neetu have flown down to New York to keep her company.

A few days ago, the Kapoor family gathered at Shashi Kapoor's residence to celebrate a big, fat Christmas with the 75-year-old veteran. Now, the khandaan is rallying around another family member, Ritu Nanda.

Randhir, Rishi and Rajiv Kapoor's sister has been ailing for the past two years. Ritu, the second born Kapoor girl is just a few years younger than Randhir. She wrote a book on her father showman Raj Kapoor, which went on to be translated into many languages.

 

She was recently shifted to New York for treatment.

A source close to the family told Mirror, "Ritu's condition has been delicate over the past few weeks and family members have taken turns to keep her company and boost her spirit."

A few days ago, Ranbir Kapoor who was in New York to bring in the New Year with girlfriend Katrina Kaif visited his aunt. Now Mirror has learnt that Rishi and Neetu have flown down to the Big Apple. Added the source, "Ritu was really happy to see Rishi and Neetu." 
Buzz is that during the trip Rishi who has been was nursing a sore shoulder for a while now also consulted a Manhattan doctor. "He had a film shoot in the US and he decided to take a second opinion on his shoulder. He is feeling much better now," said the source.

When contacted, Randhir Kapoor confirmed the news and said, "Ritu is feeling much better now. The family has been visiting her in New York but now we expect her to be back in Delhi next month."