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Playing it Cool
Justin Reardon’s debut film Convention started in 2011, but has yet to reach cinemas. His second effort, A Many Splintered Thing, began shooting in 2012, and we now have it released as Playing It Cool. If I were to choose between the two titles, I would find A Many Splintered Thing more interesting and cool, in spite of the obvious pun on Splendoured. Incidentally, the splintered line is actually used in the film. Playing it Cool is a drab title.
Chris Evans’ char...
Gabbar is Back, review: No, he’s not
In his first incarnation, he was called Ramana. When the Tamil film was remade in Telugu, they called it Tagore. Then came the Kannada version, called Vishnu Sena (deriving its title from the lead actor, the late VishnuVardhan). Now, 13 years after the first film, we have a fourth version, called Gabbar is Back, starring Akshay Kumar, and hitting cinemas 40 years after Sholay, which starred late Amjad Khan as Gabbar Singh, the ultimate villain. Gabba...
While We’re Young, Review: Means and ends
Documentary film-maker and lecturer Josh (Ben Stiller) and his wife Cornelia (Naomi Watts) are a middle-aged New York couple who befriend a free-spirited, liberal younger couple, Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried). The young couple claim to be fans of his, and Jamie is an aspiring documentary-maker himself. Josh is struggling on the post-production of his new documentary film about leftist intellectual Ira Mandelstam (Peter Yarrow) ...
Avengers: Age of Ultron, Review: Fan-fare
Overloaded, campy and ‘fancentric’, Avengers: Age of Ultron is the Marvel Comics and Studios’ counterpart of the Justice League of America, the other array of comic book heroes that have thrilled young readers for several decades now. Just as readers were thrilled to find Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, Cyborg, Firestorm and Element Woman (current line-up, different from original members) between th...
CommunicAsia2015, III: Creative Content and Film Production Zone
CommunicAsia2015, from 2 - 5 June 2015, at Marina Bay Sands, Singapore, incorporates BroadcastAsia2015, SatComm2015 and EntepriseIT2015.
What can be expected at CommunicAsia2015 and EnterpriseIT2015:
SatComm2015, the strategic platform for the satellite communication industry, will see the gathering of over 160 satellite-based companies to address key issues within Asia-Pacific’s mobile ecosystem. Representatives includ...
CommunicAsia2015, II: Andrew Milroy on IoT and SDx
Andrew Milroy, Senior Vice President, ICT Practice, Asia Pacific, at Frost & Sullivan, is billed a summit speaker at CommunicAsia2015. Andrew has spent 20 years in the ICT industry. Besides holding held senior management positions at Frost & Sullivan and IDC, he co-founded NelsonHall, a BPO advisory firm, in the United States. More recently, he has led research and consulting projects in cloud computing, 'The Internet of Things...
CommunicAsia 2015, I: What NXT?
Marina Bay Sands Hotel, among the top attractions in Singapore, is the venue for this year’s four-in-one event, CommunicAsia2015, BroadcastAsia2015, EnterpriseIT2015 and SatComm2015. It is the same venue where the 2014 event was held. The dates are June 02-05. Even content-wise, there is a triple focus: three themes, separated into clusters: NXT Cities, NXT Enterprises and, for the very first time, NXT Connected Lifestyle. NXT Connected Lifestyle will cov...
Margarita, With a Straw, Review: Heady Cocktail of Passions Raw
Earlier titled Chhoone Chali Aasman (she’s reaching for the sky), the film settles for an even more abstract title. Margarita, as a drink, might be known only to the club/bar circuit among the upper middle class and upper class of Indian society. Moreover, a large part of the dialogue is in English, often-sub-titled. Then to discover that it is the story of a young woman struck with cerebral palsy, who wants to be a creati...
Ek Paheli Leela, Review: ‘Porn’ again?
Sunny Leone plays Meera, the pseudo-Italian model/performer who sets England ablaze with her hot numbers and even hotter anatomy. (Italy is the favourite real-life destination of the 34 year-old Canada-born porn-star, whose real name is Karenjit Kaur Vohra). A long and high profile assignment in the desert of Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India, follows the London extravaganza, but Meera has a mental condition that makes her terrified of flying, so ...
It Follows, Review: STD (Sexually Transmitted Death)
Some Detroit teenagers have pre-marital sex, and, in the process, get cursed with visions of stalkers, who appear as young and old, strangers and family members, clothed or naked—but with one definite aim: killing the latest in the chain of promiscuous youngsters. The target can buy time by having sex again, with another person, who will then be killed first, but the thing—IT—will get to you in the end. You can run, you ca...
Home, Review: Me & Oh
DreamWorks Animation's Home is a 3D computer-animated feature film set in the future, which is based on Adam Rex's children's book, The True Meaning of Smekday. It stars Rihanna, Jennifer Lopez, Jim Parsons, and Steve Martin, as the voices of its main characters.
When Earth is taken over by the overly-confident Boov, an alien race on the run from its enemies, the Gorg, and in search of a new place to call home, all humans are promptly relocated to other ...
Kaay Raav Tumhi, Review: Come off it, you three
Three here means three old men, out to have one sexual encounter with a young woman as vindication of their ‘old is gold’ brand of virility. Sounds bold for an Indian film, and bolder for a film made in the regional Marathi language, spoken mainly in Maharashtra. Roughly translated, the title would read ‘Come off it, Sir’. Can’t help it if it sounds like a double-meaning line. Incidentally, the film is full of doubl...
Nanda’s first death anniversary: One Nanda-less year, plentiful legacy, nonetheless
March has its Ides in Shakespeare. In the life of the Karnataki family, it has two significant dates. Jayprakash Karnataki was born on the 14th. His older sister, Nanda, died on the 25th.
Born Nandini Winayak Karnataki, on 08 January 1941, today is her first anniversary, and the first time Jayprakash did not get her gift of Rs. 5,000 to buy a new shirt, wear it and show it to his loving sister on the oc...
Insurgent, Review: Prior knowledge
Metaphors, here, metaphors there, metaphors everywhere. Besides metaphors, there’s a lot of pain and anguish and a large take-away moral in Insurgent: unity in diversity/let a thousand flowers bloom/different does not mean bad or hostile/religion or caste should preach respect and love for others, not hatred. In that milieu, the appropriate title for the second coming, Divergent being the first foray, should have been Convergent. Obviously, that would ...
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Review: Ode to Mari-age and Ageless Love
Title reminds you of the first film in the franchise, released three years ago? Of course it does. It also reminds you of My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines and Oh Dad! Poor Dad! Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin So Sad! There’s something about long titles! No surprise though that most of them are comedies. This one has lots of comedy, while garn...
Cinderella, Review: Kinder Ella and some Branagh courage
Eschewing 3D and confining the classy animation/effects to only relevant scenes, Cinderella is a new take on the fable of the tortured step-daughter and her Prince Charming, with major roles played by animals and objects, led by a dazzling and highly desirable glass slippers that many teenagers would be willing to die for. It is the same old story, with minor cinematic license and major positive shift in logic.
Ella (Eloise Webb) is an...
CHAPPiE, Review: Narcotics and Robotics
South Africa, Canada and the USA come together in this science fiction/crime/human machines saga. To reduce the high crime rate in Johannesburg, the South African police force purchases armour-plated attack robots (Robocops?) from weapons manufacturer Tetravaal (Neill Blomkamp's 2004 short film Tetra Vaal is the basis for this film--not the Transvaal--released 11 years later), which prove highly successful and the company gets repeat orders. The rob...
Focus, Review: Romcom.Concon
Romantic comedy masquerading as sublime love tale pretending to be a confidence trickster story... is about as deFocused as it could get. The title is relevant after you have seen the film, but adds to the complexity of the film’s profile before you decide to watch it. Indeed, it is a highly unlikely romcom involving a pair of con persons (one is a woman). Will Smith is a seasoned pro, while Margot Robbie is a bumbling amateur, whom he takes under his tutela...
In many ways, Dilip Kumar is an enigma, even if part of the enigma is designer stuff. Very little is known about his early life, and he quit films in 1998, so even less is known about the last 17 years of his life. It is in this scenario that we see the publication of his long-awaited autobiography, written with the help of chronicler Udayatara Nayar, among the senior-most film journalists and editors in Mumbai and the daughter of a the well-known S.S. Pillai, who edited Screen (she was to suc...
Against the Sun, Teaser review: Water, water everywhere
Harold Dixon (Garret Dillahunt), Radioman Gene Aldrich (Jake Abel), and Bombardier Tony Pastula (Tom Felton) take off from the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise to search for submarines in the glistening waters of the South Pacific. The three men are strangers, assigned to spend an afternoon together, flying a single-engine torpedo bomber. They should be back on board in time for dinner.
But instead of enjoying dinner on the Enterprise, t...
The Lazarus Effect, Review: Death-act and cataract
Back from the dead. Brought back from the dead. One dog and one woman brought back from the dead. The dog as a guinea pig (after a pig failed to make the grade), the woman because her fiancé cannot bear to live without her. But how? The couple and their team are research scientists working on a serum (Lazarus, the original title of the film) that could revive dead beings. One day, it works: a dog is brought back to earth from what the ...
Coffee Bloom, Review: Going thru the grind
Meet a Coorgi boy who speaks chaste Hindi with everybody, and practically no Coorgi or Kannada with anybody. Also, he in no way looks like his mother or brother. He meets his girl-friend in Bengaluru and she is a local. She speaks chaste Hindi with everybody too. Her husband is of a Coorgi-Keralite (colloquially called a Mallu after their language, Malayalam) mixed parentage. He has lived in the Middle East and in Australia, but it is Hindi a...
Kingsman—The Secret Service, Review: Tinkering tailors, soldiering spies
Opening titles assembled bond-style, prologue in the ‘father’s sacrifice will not go in vain, for the son will step into his shoes, to fight again’ mould, carefully crafted plot that is as contemporary as it could get, a canvas that grows bigger by the minute and a narrative style that is irreverent while paying rich tributes, and preposterous while tickling your ribs as many t...
Oscar Dozen: What this reviewer said about the winners
1.Best supporting actor
WINNER: JK Simmons for Whiplash
“J.K. Simmons (Break Point, JOBS, Dark Skies, The Words, long-running white-supremacist villain on HBO’s Oz) is devilish and supremely sadistic. He too is a musician and has been a conductor, which shows. Watch him terrify you and keep you rivetted in the second half of the film.”
2. Achievement in makeup and hairstyling
WINNER: The Grand Budape...
Whiplash, Review: ‘Cymbalic decapitation’
On the heels of Birdman comes Whiplash, another, much bigger ode to jazz drumming. Confined to four lead actors—a student, his teacher, his father and his girl-friend—Whiplash builds its own legend around itself, not dissimilar to the way in which sports and war films push their protagonists to the brink, before they can reap the fruits of hard labour and either vanquish the enemy or win encomiums for themselves.
Andrew Neyman...
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About Siraj Syed
 Syed Siraj
(Siraj Associates)
Siraj Syed is a film-critic since 1970 and a Former President of the Freelance Film Journalists' Combine of India.
He is the India Correspondent of FilmFestivals.com and a member of FIPRESCI, the international Federation of Film Critics, Munich, Germany
Siraj Syed has contributed over 1,015 articles on cinema, international film festivals, conventions, exhibitions, etc., most recently, at IFFI (Goa), MIFF (Mumbai), MFF/MAMI (Mumbai) and CommunicAsia (Singapore). He often edits film festival daily bulletins.
He is also an actor and a dubbing artiste. Further, he has been teaching media, acting and dubbing at over 30 institutes in India and Singapore, since 1984.
Bandra West, Mumbai India View my profileSend me a message
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