“The Girl with a Pearl Earring” , which is also known as the Mona Lisa of the North, or the Dutch Mona Lisa motivated the making of a chart-topping novel and cerebral film that goes by the same name. Based on Tracy Chevalier’s best-selling novel, Peter Webber’s 2003 UK Film Girl with a Pearl Earring is a story that speculates the events that led to the spectacular painting’s creation. Set in the 17th century, the film shows Vermeer (Colin Firth) as the passionate artist who puts his heart and soul into his work..

Love is rarely worthy of a chronicle if it is not cheeky, blasphemous, unexpected, life-altering, I wrote in my review of Memories of my melancholy whores. I guess I should have reserved that judgment for it probably holds true more for a book that is far more engaging, stirring, and famous, (or notorious, depending on which school of psychology you subscribe to). A book that has been discussed by every critic, psychologist and reader who has loved it or hated it, but couldn’t ignore it. A book called Lolita…

Adichie’s Half of a yellow Sun is a story about war, and of love. Chidamamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote her second novel based on the Igbo people at the time of the Nigerian-Biafran war. Half of A Yellow Sun won the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction in Britain and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A humanity in print, the book is treasured wealth for the absent country; a precious inheritance of the deceased nation and its departed generation. The book starts with the early 1960’s at a reasonably peaceful time…

22 Nov, 2008, Goa (India): The 39th International Film festival opened today evening in Goa with the screening of the period Chinese film, Warlords, directed by renowned HongKong film-maker Peter Chan. The festival was inaugurated by veteran actress Rekha and upcoming Bollywood Amrita Rao. Renowned Indian actor Kamal Hassan is to be Chief Guest at [...]

The prolific career of German wunderkind Rainer Werner Fassbinder has been marked by decidedly minimal and vital films that have almost single-handedly defined German cinema during that period, with no credits taken away from Schlöndorff and Herzog. His mastery over the melodrama genre and understanding of the medium have consistently placed him on par with world cinema giants. But Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) forms the core of his cinematic achievements with the sheer length of the film capable of accommodating ten of his other films.

On the Road is considered the greatest book of the Beat movement and Jack Kerouac its unofficial spokesperson. Its tale of lost souls who dared to be free is timeless. Through its fascinating depictions of friendship, experiences on the road and the longing for ‘It’ – an expression that could signify anything from frenzy and exhilaration to salvation and bliss, the novel was way ahead of its time. The enormous impact of the book is as relevant today as it was groundbreaking then. Its tale of lost souls who dared to be free…

Chrisophe Barratier’s directorial debut The Chorus became an acclaimed masterstroke worldwide. About an inspirational music teacher who comes to teach at a boarding school for rebellious children, Les Choristes, was inspired by a little known French film La Cage aux Rossignols (The Cage of Nightingales). A deeply moving psychological film on childhood, The film is about the early feelings of injustice and abandon; the inbuilt sense of fright together with those rebellious impulses that lurk…

Vanaja (2006) is a quiet little film that has conquered its own domain, won its own set of hearts with its sheer brilliance in thematic and visual execution and perhaps gained an entry to the list of best films of that year. Mamatha Bhukya’s stellar performance elevates the film to extraordinary levels and it is evident that she can teach any so-called-veteran mainstream actresses a thing or two. The film carefully avoids all clichés and shows us that one need not treat independent films condescendingly.

For The Cleft, Lessing was inspired by a scientific report claiming that women were the first human species, and that men came along much later. In a story where she depicts our early ancestors, she draws a lazy picture of the first females, the “Clefts” who idle around the seashore, swim through the waves and loll about the rocks living languid days doing nothing. Their lives are perfectly harmonious, until the day the boy children began to be born. Doris Lessing was announced as the winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Nada+ is “Cuba’s answer to Amelie”, commented Miami Herald, and that’s the best way to sum up the movie from a review point of view. So what’s common between Amelie and Nada+ – they are both stories about girls on a mission to straighten up people’s lives when their own lives are a bit chaotic. But to think of Nada+ as a replica of Amelie would be a mistake. Every film has its own soul, even though it may appear similar to another on the surface, and Nada+ has its own…