“You think I’m an ignorant “savage” and you’ve been so many places; I guess it must be so, but still I cannot see if the savage one is me. How can there be so much that you don’t know? You don’t know.”
With the 1995 movie Pocahontas, the artists at Disney once again proved that when it comes to animation, no can hold a candle to them.
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That fool of a fairy Lucinda did not intend to lay a curse on me. She meant to bestow a gift. When I cried inconsolably through my first hour of life, my tears were her inspiration. Shaking her head sympathetically at Mother, the fairy touched my nose. “My gift is obedience. Ella will always be obedient. Now stop crying, child.” I stopped.
The 1998 Newberry Honor Book, Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine is the engaging story of a girl named Ella of Frell, who at birth receives a fateful gift of obedience from the fairy Lucinda. Ella has to obey an order, any order, be it to hop on one foot all day, or even to chop off her own head, a fact her scheming stepmother, Dame Olga, and her dimwitted and unattractive stepsisters, Hattie and Olive, make ample use of at every opportunity.
The 2004 movie “Morning Raga”, starring Shabana Azmi, Prakash Rao, Lillette Dubey and Perizaad Zorabian, explores the polemics and passions that segregate today’s generations from the Indian classical heritage in the past.
The film spans two generations of families who lived and lost. Swarnalatha, a Carnatic music singer from a South Indian village, blames herself for the death of her son and her violinist-accompanist friend Vaishnavi in a bus accident, when they were on the way to the city to fulfill Swarnalatha’s lifelong dream by participating in a music concert. Shattered by guilt and remorse, she goes into a self imposed exile never to sing again.
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“Dollar Bahu” is the English translation of one of Sudha Murty’s most popular novels “Dollar Sose”, originally written in Kannada and earlier translated into four other Indian languages. It even ran as TV-Series between 2001-2004.
Like most other novels of Sudha Murty, this novel too dwells on the aspirations, dreams and struggles of traditional middle–class Indian families — this time vividly portraying the promise of plenty that the US dollar holds for the Indian steeped in middle–class mundane living.
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As a rendition of the bestseller by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Mistress of Spices is a bitter disappointment.
To begin with, it is a foregone conclusion that any movie in which Aishwarya Rai has the pivotal role is bound to bomb at the box office. In addition, the intricate detail which makes the book so enthralling is totally absent from the movie, making it seem incomplete to those who have been fortunate enough to read the book, and thoroughly confusing to those who haven’t.
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When Madan Vasishta signs his lessons in American Sign Language to his mixed class of hearing and hearing impaired graduates at Gallaudet University, Washington DC, the students are amazed by the power of his words. Vasishta has 120 db bilateral hearing loss and “cannot hear even jet planes”.
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Competition at its best!
The skirmish in the skies is now turning into a war of words in a game of advertising one upmanship. After Jet Airways came out with their campaign to “celebrate the changes which are taking place across the product, from delivery, to uniforms, to services”, it took rival airlines exactly two days to come back with tongue in cheek retorts to their tagline.
While Kingfisher was the first to ambush them, GoAir went one step further in doing their bit in surpassing both taglines. Carry on folks, in these times of high costs and imminent disasters, we could all certainly do with a hearty laugh!
Watched a Malayalam short film on gender rights made in 1993 by KP Sasi called Ilayum Mullum, which literally translates into “The Thorn And The Leaf”. Basic concept behind the title is that whether the leaf falls on the thorn, or the thorn falls on the leaf, it’s the leaf that gets harmed. Based on a true story, the film depicts the mental turmoil faced by women forced to submit to the laws formulated by a patriarchal society that denies them the right to live life on their terms.
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“You see, Pige, when you’re footloose and collar free, you take nothing but the best.”
Disney’s 1955 cartoon, Lady and the Tramp, is not only one of Disney’s most engaging films, it’s also one of their most exquisitely done. The movie proves as endearing today as the first time it appeared so many years ago. The moviemakers preface the film with a remark from nineteenth-century American humorist Josh Billings: “In the whole history of the world there is but one thing that money can not buy … to wit – the wag of a dog’s tale.”
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