|
Posted on 03.28.07 by Jeff @ 7:47 am
Vishal Bharadwaj, the brilliant director of Maqbool and Omkara (see CSB review here), is directing a short film featuring the cinematography of Guillermo Navarro, who won an academy award for his outstanding work on Pan’s Labyrinth.  We are greatly looking forward to this collaboration between two world-class filmmakers, and hope that it will lead to more international recognition for both of their bodies of work. Rediff has an excellent interview with both of these gentlemen that can be found here. Filed under: Movie News and Movie News: India and People: Vishal Bharadwaj and People: Guillermo Navarro Comments: None |
|
Posted on 07.31.06 by David @ 7:33 am
Country and Year: India (2006) Review By: David Austin and Jeff  Omkara, Vishal Bharadwaj’s long-awaited transplantation of Othello to the violent world of rural Indian politics, is finally here. And while Omkara does not quite reach the heights of Maqbool (Bharadwaj’s prior Shakespeare adaptation), it is an outstanding, exciting production that solidifies Bharadwaj’s place in the pantheon of India’s finest directors. Intense, clever, sexy and well-acted, this film single-handedly restored our faith in the contemporary Bollywood musical following a seemingly endless spate of drecky Hollywood rip-offs. Filed under: General and Movie Reviews: India and People: Vishal Bharadwaj and Movie Reviews and Contributors: David and Contributors: Jeff and Rating: Good ★★★ and Movies: Omkara Comments: 11 Comments |
|
Posted on 07.28.06 by Jeff @ 7:09 am
It is a travesty that Vishal Bharadwaj, one of the world’s most promising writer/directors, is practically unknown in Western film circles. His film Maqbool, a retelling of Macbeth in the milieu of Mumbai gangsterdom, was one of 2004’s very best movies. A completely different creature from the hard-hitting, Hong Kong-influenced crime films of Ram Gopal Varma, Maqbool has a timeless feel to it, placing the viewer in a world that is simultaneously gritty and poetic, tense and languorous, haunted and enchanted. In a perfect world, it would be the subject of a three-disc Criterion box set, and not just a crummy import DVD with a cropped aspect ratio. The multi-talented Bharadwaj actually made his name as a composer for Hindi films, starting with Varma’s seminal film Satya. Indeed, at an appearance at the Museum of the Moving Image in 2004, Bharadwaj explained that he only started directing films to provide an outlet for his songs! It is obvious that he takes songwriting as seriously as filmmaking; the haunting songs from Maqbool have been a staple on my iPod for the past couple of years. His new film is called Omkara, and it is a retelling of Othello as a crime story, but this time with a village setting. The official website, www.omkarathefilm.com, describes the film thusly: Filed under: Movie News and Movie News: Bollywood and Movie News: India and Contributors: Jeff and People: Vishal Bharadwaj and Movies: Omkara Comments: None |
* 
