Friday Film Screening Friday March 26, '10 at 9:00 pm

Film:

Vanaprastham

Director: Shaji N. Karun

Music: Zakir Hussain

Cinematographer: Santosh Sivan, Renato Berta

Language: Malayalam

Runtime: 119 min

Venue: IDC

Time: 9:00 pm

Won National Award 2000

Plot:

Kunhikuttan (Mohanlal) is a respected Kathakali dancer but a member of lower caste. His birth was questionable as his wealthy father had a fling with a lower caste woman. Being brought up in a poor family his dreams of becoming a master are halted due to an arranged marriage. One night, while performing as Arjuna from Mahabharata, his dance amuses Subhadra (Suhasini), a well educated member of upper caste family. She falls in love with “Arjuna” on the stage but not Kunhikuttan the dancer. Subhadra rejects him and he is not privileged to see his son as well. He leaves his heroic roles on the stage and takes up demonic characters to expressing his dark side of the heart. The story ends with Kunhikuttan’s stunning performance from the Mahabharata demonstrating a man who essentially has no father and no son.

Trivia:

The title stems from Sanskrit and alludes to the place where all artists need to be, free of all emotional attachments and material possessions.

Poster:

Friday Film Screening Friday March 12, '10 at 9:00 pm

Film: Okuribito (Departures)
Director: Yojiro Takita
Language: Japanese
Runtime: 130 min

Venue: IDC
Time: 9:00 pm

Won Oscar for Best Foreign Language  Film.

Plot:
Daigo Kobayashi is a devoted cellist in an orchestra that has just been dissolved and now finds himself without a job. Daigo decides to move back to his old hometown with his wife to look for work and start over. He answers a classified ad entitled "Departures" thinking it is an advertisement for a travel agency only to discover that the job is actually for a "Nokanshi" or "encoffineer," a funeral professional who prepares deceased bodies for burial and entry into the next life. While his wife and others despise the job, Daigo takes a certain pride in his work and begins to perfect the art of "Nokanshi," acting as a gentle gatekeeper between life and death, between the departed and the family of the departed. The film follows his profound and sometimes comical journey with death as he uncovers the wonder, joy and meaning of life and living. [ditto from www.imdb.com]

Trailer


Poster:

Friday Film Screening March 5, 2010 at 9:00 pm

Hi all,

This Friday,

Film: A Serious Man
Directed by: Coen brothers
Language: English
Runtime: 106 min

Venue: IDC Auditorium
Time: 9:00 pm

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Awards: Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 7 wins & 27 nominations
IMDB Rating 7.4/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 84%
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Synopsis:

So you have a taste for scathing humor? You love biting satires slyly ridiculing quotidian mindsets and their search for the meaning of life? I present to you "A Serious Man".

A Physics professor struggles to cope up in a life of uncalled for complications- his wife leaving him for one of his overblown colleagues, a son who is a slacker at school, an unemployed brother, a daughter who is snitching on his money for a nose job! With a tinge of the Coen spice of humor, the film raises many relevant questions on life and what it means to be and do good!
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Rollingstone review:

The Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, are getting personal. They shot their new film in suburban Minnesota, where they grew up as sons of Jewish academics. But if you're expecting something warm and fuzzy, circa 1967, you don't know the Coens, and A Serious Man is no country for you. This seriously funny movie, artfully photographed by the great Roger Deakins, is spiritual in nature, barbed in tone, and, oh, yeah, it stings like hell.

Michael Phillips from Chicago Tribune:

A tart, brilliantly acted fable of life’s little cosmic difficulties, a Coen brothers comedy with a darker philosophical outlook than “No Country for Old Men” but with a script rich in verbal wit.

Other reads:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/movies/reviews/stories/DN-seriousman_1009gd.ART.State.Edition1.23e770c.html

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/reviews/2009-10-01-serious-man_N.htm
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Quotes:

Rabbi Nachtner: Sure! We all want the answer! But Hashem doesn't owe us the answer, Larry. Hashem doesn't owe us anything. The obligation runs the other way.

Sy Ableman: I fucked your wife, Larry! I seriously fucked her!

Larry Gopnik: We're sitting shiva here.
Cop #1: You're *what*?
Larry Gopnik: A religious observance. We're... bereaved.
Cop #2: Who died?
Larry Gopnik: My wife's...
[breaks off]
Larry Gopnik: It's a long story.  [courtesy: www.imdb.com]
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Trivia:

1. As with all Coen brothers movies, there are many allusions in the film. In A Serious Man many of the allusions are Biblical. Larry is a Job-like figure, a good man to whom many bad things happen with no explanation. When he is on his roof, he sees over his neighbor's fence and looks at his neighbor's beautiful wife naked in her yard, just as King David saw Bathsheba. His son Danny's looking at the oncoming tornado recalls God speaking to Job from out of the whirlwind, saying He will not explain why these bad things have happened to him.

2. The Coen Brothers' original idea for the picture was as a short film about Danny's stoned bar mitzvah and his meeting with Rabbi Marshak. All of the other content in the movie grew out of that sequence.  [courtesy: www.imdb.com]





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Poster:

 

Trailer: