Showing newest posts with label movie. Show older posts

Hurt Locker is neither adventurous nor cutting edge, and not much better aesthetically than a TV show like CSI. Ultimately it’s a really boring movie with bad dialogue that poorly fleshes out a series of tension and release sequences that draw on music video and video game aesthetics. It is full of cliches about poor American soldiers who cannot make sense of a chaotic environment not of their choosing as they enter the labyrinth of a surreal war landscape populated by an alien Other. Framed as an “American tragedy,” once again an invaded country becomes a purification drama for Hollywood’s liberal consciousness.

- Mediacology

Watch live video from Oscars: The 2009 Academy Awards! on Justin.tv

'Slumdog Millionaire' dominates the oscars with 8 Awards including best pictures award. A.R. Rahman got two and Danny Boyle, the director got one. With 'Smile Pinky', another short documentary based in India its India's day with nine awards. Here is the complete list.

(First published in Global Voices Online)

Sid of Serious Golmal writes a well informative article on the life of S M Sultan, the master painter of Bangladesh commemorating his 13th death anniversary. Sultan was born in Norail (in Kushtia in the southwest of Bangladesh) in 1923. Born to a mason, he was a natural talent and did not complete his study in the Calcutta College of Arts and Crafts. Later on he created a wave in the West when he visited USA and UK under a cultural exchange program and displayed his paintings. From 1953 to 1976 Sultan lived in virtual obscurity, living the life of a Vaishnava Sanyasi.

"Sultan’s paintings may be sold at Sotheby’s in London today but for the people of rural Norail, the guru entered folk legend more than half a century ago. They tell us that animals were drawn to him, that he could converse with them, that hundreds of his works are scattered all over the world in all manner of places, given away as gifts, that he cared not for fame or material wealth, choosing to travel from village to village, country to country, returning at last to his source.

He lived in three continents but never had a fixed abode, never attached prices to his work, never married. He wore his hair long, chose to live out his days in rural Bengal with his dogs, cats, rabbits, birds and snakes rather than the big international cities that beckoned when recognition of his genius came early in his life."

Kotha Chilo (Stories to tell) blog reviews the movie based on Monica Ali's award winning novel Brick Lane. The filming of Brick Lane caught much media attention because of protests of some members of Bangladeshi communities in UK and the unit had to change location of filming to avoid threats. But Monica Ali maintains that "the 'controversy' was whipped up in the media".

"Monica Ali's 2003 novel Brick Lane was feted for its ability to blend the personal and the political as it recounted the experiences of a young Bangladeshi woman's journey of self-discovery. It was illuminating about the hidden lives of Britain's Bangladeshi community and the growing racism abroad in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The respectable film version heavily compresses the novel into a less complex but still touching, small-scale tale of female empowerment that almost feels like a variation of Shirley Valentine."

Bangla Blogging platform Sachalayatan [bn] boasts of being more of an online writers community rather than collection of some conventional blogs. It has been promoting budding as well as established writers to post their literary works there. And adding more to the task it has already published a few literary E-books in PDF versions and more collaborative projects [bn] at hand. Now users can download their copy of the literature free, print it and read it at ease.

The first publications is a collection of poems of Sunil Saifullah, a notable young poet who prematurely ended his life in 1981. Some of his poems were only once published by the students union of his University (Jahangirnagar University) in 1982. But these few books went into oblivion in course of time and now he is barely known to people of Bangladesh. Bloggers of Sachalayatan first discussed about his works went to the University library to collect a copy of the book and recreate the Book. You can download the book from here [bn].

Some comments on the feat:

সৌরভ: জয় হোক এ উদ্যোগের। এ চেষ্টার মাধ্যমেই জন্ম জন্মান্তরে সজীব থাকুন আমাদের মাঝে কবি সুনীল সাইফুল্লাহ।
Sourav: Bravo to this initiative. With this work let poet Sunil Saifullah live among us for eternity.

সুমন রহমান: বাংলা সাহিত্যে এরকম সারপ্রাইজ আরো কিছু আছে। আমার মনে সচলায়তনের ই-বুক প্রকল্প দিয়ে সেসবের সুরাহা আমরা করতে পারবো।
Suman Rahman: There are more such surprises in the Bangla literature. I think we will able to sort them out with the Sachalayatan E-Book project.

Another recent Bangla E-Book publication “Fele Asha Chelebela” is a 109 page collection of childhood memoirs of twenty one bloggers which portrays the true picture of the lives of Bangladeshi youths, society, their upbringings etc. Its popularity prompted the bloggers to decide to publish it in future as a printed book with more collections of writings. You can download it from here [bn].

You never know some day these collaborative Bangla E-books with the help of New Media will be able to really change the scenario of literature of the country.

And last but not the least please do read the recent writings of the female bloggers of the Nari Joibon project to know about Bangladesh from their view. Nari Jibon is a not-for-profit organization in Bangladesh who is providing education to poor and under-privileged women making them self reliant through different short term education and skill development programs. It has brought these female voices to Blogging with the help of a Rising Voices micro-grant.

Watched Mridul Chowdhury's documentary Deshantori (via Google Video). This is a docu-drama, which portrays the struggles of 26 Bangladeshis to illegally migrate to Spain through the Mediterranean Sea and Sahara desert. It starts with the illusions about the West of the common Bangladeshi youth.

Mezba did a review on this. Some excerpts:

The movie had a couple of quotes that I remember. For example, this girl chides her friend, "You are ready to get up at 6 in the morning and work hard all day once you reach London, yet today in Bangladesh you stay in bed till noon and then decry nothing is getting done in Bangladesh! It's not the country's fault that you are lazy!"

There was another. The professor rants about how Bengalis tend to have an inferiority complex where anything good is foreign and anything bad is homegrown. This same professor also asks "whose fault is it that people choose an uncertain death abroad over a certain life in Bangladesh".

This documentary tries to answer some of the questions.

A week long international film festival is opening tomorrow in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The festival will screen 56 films - 46 foreign and 10 Bangladeshi - in 20 cinema theaters and cultural centers in Dhaka and Narayanganj. The slogan of the festival is "Film for the People".

The films from 31 countries have been divided into eight categories -- Bangladesh Panorama, International Showcase, Classic Showcase, Popular Showcase, Winner of the Don Quixote, International Competition, Focus and Retrospective.

Looking forward to watching some of the movies if I can spare some time from my hectic schedule. This is a great opportunity for the people here, who have otherwise the option to watch only sloppy Bengali movies and a few Hollywood blockbusters in Theaters. No Hindi movies are shown in Theater even though they are immensely popular here. Its depressing that the foreign English movies come to Theater generally after a year from their release (you don't have to wait that long if you rent a DVD/VCD version). You can get the DVD/VCDs of the Hindi and English movies as soon as they are released (most of them pirated).