Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Tootsie: Comic drama with a touch of class



I remember one scene in Tootsie, when on a New York street, a man is trying to shepherd two or three dogs. Or was it four? Point: That had no relevance in the movie's script or story, but the scene remains etched in my memory as a moment of cinematic excellence, where, to add a shade of realism, director Sydney Pollack introduces a detail of extraordinary imagination.
Dustin Hoffman playing a woman, with a climax linked to a soap opera's live scene. What a lovely script!

Monday, August 4, 2008

Woodstock: Peace, rock, nostalgia....and youth power




What was it about Woodstock?
The movie that made a rock festival come alive for some of us who were toddlers when it happened?
A movie that scandalised us with its F words and huddling free-sex teens?
The sheer, raw power of great rock music?
The strange anti-war idealism that was so fashionable?

In those days, Chanakya and Archana were the two movie halls in Delhi that usually showed English movies, and I caught Woodstock in a morning show one working day while in college. It was the kind of movie you watched after a rare day bunked from college, so you could mix a strange kind of bluster and nostalgia in recalling that day.
I am doing that now.