Haider is at once the strongest and weakest of Vishal Bhardwaj’s Shakespeare adaptations. It doesn’t help illuminate Hamlet for us, but it does serve to shed some light over Kashmir.
Yes, Gangs of Wasseypur is clearly the best film of the year so far, despite its second half that evades genuine boldness and manages to disappoint after the promise of the fantastic first
Scattered thoughts on the Samajwadi Party’s win in Uttar Pradesh (the best performance by a single party in that state since 1985; the previous contemporary benchmark was set by the BSP in 2007)
Enough talk about talks. It is time the people of India and Pakistan learned to listen to each other. Peace, with or without quotation marks, cannot be achieved by talking past each other.
Since the 2009 polls, there's been lot of talk that the politics of caste, religion and regionalism is outdated. But let’s not kid ourselves about the “new” focus on governance and “development”.
So Gujarat has enacted legislation making voting compulsory in local body polls. 'Defaulter voters' will face consequences. As the Stalinists used to say, punishment is necessary...
We blame only the politicians. Everyone else -- the corporations, the consumers, the military, the judiciary, the entertainment industry -- gets a free pass.
The film industry has changed, pitching its wares to an ever-narrower (and wealthier) group of people, excluding entire demographics and social groups that, until quite recently, constituted a staple of its audience.
Democracy threatens to become our morphine, dulling our sensitivity to the world around us. Add to that another catch-word: “Development” - the one being used for framing the current debate over Maoism.
