By Ratnakar Tripathy Talking eyes: cinema sync To start with a warning, please do not expect me to recount the 100 year tale in any detail. All I know is I turned cinema-crazy quite early, had my first black and white crushes on Nutan, Mala Sinha and a few other aunties at the age of eight and found myself among the milling masses of devotees. This was a sure contrast with how it went with my literary-minded friends during adolescence in school. It was a small tight club of boys in a boarding school who shared a mystic bond – the bond of the written word and also the malicious joys generated... 

By Ratnakar Tripathy More and more awesome: on the pocket? Every time I hear from a young or old friend they watched a ‘great’ film on their laptops, I react with pity not envy. Like a great part of humanity, I feel that the big screen experience, whether 35 mm or 70 mm is something very special. It enables you to see the world within and without to depths that a small screen ranging between a gigantic TV screen to a mobile phone display will never match. The reasons are just too visceral and related to the way the human senses and the brain work, although it is possible to enumerate... 

मिहिर पंडया ” बड़ी प्रार्थना होती है। जमाखोर अौर मुना़फाखोर साल-भर अनुष्ठान कराते हैं। स्मगलर महाकाल को नरमुण्ड भेंट करता है। इंजीनियर की पत्नी भजन गाती हैं – ‘प्रभु कष्ट हरो सबका’। भगवन्‌, पिछले साल अकाल पड़ा था तब सक्सेना अौर राठौर... 

James Bond: it’s the same through the ages! James Bond is a cultural package of a complex kind but with a charm that simply captivates. The playboy, the patriot, the adventurer, the world-saviour, the suave socialite at home in parties, he is also a misfit, ill at home in his own intelligence service. This complex icon lives on without aging, just as he never had a childhood like us mortals. A festival like ‘Bond with Bond’ will allow you to see the many Bonds indeed. Each great actor who succeeded in settling in Bond’s skin gave him a new dimension, and the character is indeed now... 

 By Prashant Kumar  Ranvir and priyanka in ‘Barfi’ The plot: Since mamma wanted her baby to be like the Murphy radio advertisement boy, he is named Murphy. But he is born deaf and dumb and people start calling him Barfi.  He falls in love with a Bengali girl Shruti, ( Ileana D’Cruz ) only to find out she is already engaged. Love blossoms regardless. But Shruti has some serious decisions to make and an autistic girl Jhilmil ( Priyanka chopra ) comes into the boy’s life, because of his father’s illness. The relationship develops between Barfi and Jhilmil and they are forced... 

  ‘Ek Bihari Sau Par Bhari’ poster Dinesh Lal Yadav Nirahua, the most successful star of cinema Bhojpuri, continues to charm his fans. Recently his latest film ‘Ek Bihari Sau Par Bhari’ was released in Bihar at 55 cinema halls at one go and the film got a record opening everywhere. The film has to compete with Hindi blockbuster ‘Ek Tha Tiger’ and though the opening day happened to be the last Friday of Ramazan it got tremendous support at the box offices. Nirahua plays the role of a Bihari youth in this film and many of his dialogues like ‘Bihari... 

Omung Kumar Mumbai: Mumbai is home to the best and the worst culturally. There are the forever leaky poison taps called the Shivsena, MNS et al. and there is Bollywood that despite all its crassness offers the nation a wider embrace in so far as possible [commercially]. According to several reports, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s next production will be a film based on the life of Olympic medal winner, boxer MC Mary Kom. Art director Omung Kumar who worked with Bhansali on Black and Saawariya will direct the film. Omung approached Bhansali with a detailed script based on the life of the boxer after... 

  Dashrath Manjhi: the icon! Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who impressed one and all by his fiery act as Faisal Khan in Gangs of Wasseypur, has been signed to play the main lead role in Ketan Mehta’s next film titled Mountain Main. Mountain Man is the soul stirring story of the amazingly inspiring Dashrath Manjhi-famous for being the man who broke a mountain for love. The film was announced earlier today in Mumbai on the occasion of the ‘Punyatithi’ of this noble man. Mountain Man is a humble tribute to the power of the human will. It is the untold story of a hero, who achieved the... 

Ratnakar Sadasyula Seeti Maar Rajesh Khanna’s Kudrat(1981) By Ratnakar Sadasyula Among the Anand brothers, Chetan Anand had his own distinct identity. Not a flamboyant superstar like Dev nor a very popular director like Vijay , Chetan neverthless managed to carve out his own distinctive identity. His very first debut as a director was with an offbeat movie called Neecha Nagar( 1946) scripted by K.A.Abbas. In 1954 he directed brother Dev in a noirish crime flick Taxi Driver, which also had some great songs, following it up with Funtoosh in 1956 kind of a black comedy. He also came up with... 

हिन्दी फ़िल्म अध्ययन: ‘माधुरी’ का राष्ट्रीय राजमार्ग रविकांत फिल्मी पत्रकारिता और निखरती हिंदी – I बहुतेरे लोगों को याद होगा कि टाइम्स ऑफ़ इंडिया समूह की फ़िल्म पत्रिका माधुरी हिन्दी में निकलने वाली अपने क़िस्म की अनूठी लोकप्रिय...