UTV World Movies in its constant attempt to present the best of movies from the legends of world cinema brings the Gods of Cinema to television exclusively through its unique on-air property In –Focus. Every month, the channel will focus on one iconic filmmaker and present his work along with information, trivia, contests and online [...]

Perfume – The Story of a Murderer shouldn’t work. For so many reasons, it shouldn’t work.

Reason #1. Character Formation-101 tells you that your lead should either be someone your audience can relate to, root for or like. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, the protagonist of Perfume is none of those things. He doesn’t even fulfil the criteria for the villain of the piece – he’s not inherently evil even though he does evil things, and your feelings for him remain ambiguous – you don’t know whether to fear him..

Dangerous Liaisons is a story about people with too much money, too much time, too much intelligence, and too great a capacity for cruelty. The manipulations which take place within it are so masterful that the story has survived multiple adaptations (as a play, an opera, and several films) without losing any of its edge. Directed by Stephen Frears, this Christopher Hampton penned adaptation is one of the best page to screen (or, rather, page to stage to screen) transitions ever made. The masters of the plot are the Marquise de Merteuil..

I.O.U.S.A. aims to be “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Economics,” though I think I might need “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Economics’ for Dummies.” It tries to explain more than two centuries of economic policy in 85 minutes, which is like trying to fit the Atlantic Ocean in a teacup; it needs a sequel, a prequel, a spinoff, and a weekly TV series, and even all that might only be enough to cover the George W. Bush presidency, which, we learn, was both more catastrophic and less catastrophic than we thought it was.

The Reader is a complex film in many ways. Films of this genre often find it formidable to capture the essence of the story, characters and events in a manner that stay with you much after you’ve watched them. It is no surprise really that sensitive stories are hard to tell and sell. And it doesn’t help the case of The Reader, since the events it attempts to chronicle raise more controversies than sympathies. The film revolves around an unusual and brief love affair between a 15 year old boy, and a much older woman..

The 400 Blows is something of a strange case. It’s hailed as being one of the most groundbreaking films ever made, yet watching it what remains the more astonishing is its simplicity. Francois Truffaut’s debut feature length was based on his own experiences as a child and focuses on the experiences of Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), a French boy in his early teens who is always getting in trouble in school and at home. His mother Gilberte (Claire Maurier) is a young looking woman tired with the routine of her life..

Ralph Ellison always insisted that his classic protest novel Invisible Man was neither a protest novel nor autobiographical. Still, it’s difficult to miss the parallels of the narrator’s and Ellison’s lives, and it’s even more difficult to miss that Invisible Man is clearly a protest novel. The question isn’t whether the book is a protest, rather; it’s what the book is protesting. The story’s narrator, who is never referred to by name, is a young man that begins by telling us his story from his subterranean home. Originally from the South…

The Great Gatsby is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third novel and is also his most well known novel. It’s a snapshot of an era Fitzgerald coined as the “Jazz Age”, the brief window of the 1920’s between the end of World War I and the great stock market crash of 1929, and in this snapshot Fitzgerald reveals a society obsessed with material wealth while simultaneously devoid of basic morals and good character. The story, as recalled by Nick Carraway, revolves around several failed romances—both legitimate and extra-marital—but focuses mainly on the affair..

The Arts Council England announced the shortlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize earlier in the month.
The £10,000 prize (£5,000 for the author and £5,000 for the translator) celebrates a work of fiction by a living author, which has been translated into English and published in the UK in the last year. The winner will [...]

Anger gets a lot done, they say. The impotent, helpless kind, especially. When it reaches its threshold, it is supposed to overthrow the status quo, burn the corruption to a crisp and roll out a fiery red carpet for all that is just and sane. But one cannot depend on supposed to’s as much as the olden days. These days, helpless rage is just sound and fury signifying nothing. At its worst, it breeds despair. At its best, it gives birth to a film like Gulaal. Never before a film born out of white-hot anger of a director so successfully..