Sukanya Verma shares her exciting filmi week with us.
Aseem Chhabra is impressed by Rima Das's Bulbul Can Sing, Ritesh Batra's Photograph and eight other outstanding films.
'I realised I didn't have to wait for a spectacular event or a character to emerge. All stories of ordinary people, of your family, are extraordinary,' novelist Yasmeen Premji tells Aseem Chhabra/Rediff.com
'You can't take your eyes off him.'
Civil rights activist Lakshmi Sridaran argues why South Asians must stand on the right side of history and resist the Trump administration's "systematic attack on the entire spectrum of the US immigration system."
Jeremy Irons considered maths 'very boring' till he read G H Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology. The actor, who plays the British mathematician in The Man Who Knew Infinity, talks numbers, acting and his legacy with Aseem Chhabra/Rediff.com.
P K Nair dedicated his life to restoring and archiving films.
'Her greatest strength is not her acting or her dancing abilities, but that she has an incredible number of fans.'
'In our film industry, there are not many opportunities for actors... Our films are not character based, they are hero and heroine based. The only roles we have for character actors are to play the girl's or boy's dad or a police officer...'
How many of the 319 films Aseem Chhabra watched in 2018 have you seen?
'We want to provide data, we want to provide consultation, but we don't want to lecture.' 'The consciousness about this issue in India is starting to get quite high and if we can help contribute to solving this air quality issue in a spirit of partnership with the Indians, it would be a big achievement.'
Aseem Chhabra lists the movies that taught him about the Idea of India.
Aseem Chhabra picks the scenes that left him impressed this year.
'The nicest thing is that it is not my film.' 'People bring their own stories and life histories to the film.'
Martin Scorsese's The Wolf Of Wall Street could set a bad precedent, feels Aseem Chhabra.
'When we make these action machismo films, the stupidest thing is to show that the hero sails through a thousand people. It's a tradition we have grown up with.' 'We don't have the basis of creating a Bruce Lee or a Jackie Chan.'
'I believe politics was imposed on it by the censor board, when it gave the film's trailer an A certificate, hoping to deny children, teenagers the opportunity to watch it during prime time television shows,' says Aseem Chhabra.
'We look and say their life is so tragic.' 'But there are hundreds of millions of people in these circumstances and what can they do but to carry on.'
'The city was never the same after the attack. It was scarred,' says Nicolas Saada whose movie Taj Mahal offers a unique view of the Mumbai attacks.
Why has a nation created on strong secular principles slowly chipped away those essential values? Why are so many Indians willing to compromise their freedoms and those of their compatriots for the cause of economic progress and to see a shining India,' asks Aseem Chhabra.
Aseem Chhabra looks at the year's best Non-Hindi Indian movies.
'We have used Arvind Kejriwal and Aam Aadmi Party as characters in the story of Indian democracy.'
Aseem Chhabra lists the top 10 films at the recent Toronto International Film Festival.
Actor Kumar Pallana, 94, who passed away on October 10, has acted in films like in Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Darjeeling Limited. Aseem Chhabra pays tribute.
Arjun Mathur recounts his journey as an actor in Bollywood.
'In 2015 I watched films in so many places. I attended several film festivals around the world -- Berlin, Tribeca (New York), Telluride, Toronto, Zurich, Mumbai, Dharamsala and Goa,' says Aseem Chhabra, author of a forthcoming book on Shashi Kapoor.
'Even in its unmistakably masala tone, Bajrangi Bhaijaan firmly believes the desire for peace is universal and recommends being a hero. Or just human,' says Sukanya Verma.
Aseem Chhabra lists the elements that he loved and was pleasantly surprised by in the movies.
'There are a lot of things to make the series The Night Of relevant.' 'The decision to make it -- not only South Asian, but Pakistani Muslim -- is intensively relevant with what's going on today.'
'He cooked chicken curry and so because of him, curries entered the British royal kitchens.' 'Eventually, he became a political advisor to the queen.' 'This guy was disrupting the royal household. It sent shockwaves...' Ali Fazal on his character Abdul Karim and working with acting legend Judi Dench.
Here are Aseem Chhabra's picks -- 'films that mattered to me, entertained me and will stay with me through the year.'
'I know many actors living outside India put on accents in films because they think that is how Indians talk. I avoid that.' 'I don't have to prove anything through my accent. My psyche is Indian.' Anupam Kher gives us his 500th film!
Aseem Chhabra spots 10 must-see movies at the Berlin Film Festival.
Aseem Chhabra's recommendations for the Mumbai film festival.
'One of the director's primary jobs is to make sure that all the actors perform as if they are in the same movie, playing in the same band -- one is not acting in a different band than the other.'
'If you look at peacekeeping right now, it is fraught with accusations of sexual abuse or peacekeepers involved in deals that are outside their purview, human trafficking.' 'When a contingent of women walk through a camp, the women in the camp and the children respond to them, talk to them. Women are more open to talking about sexual violence and domestic violence to other women.'
Aseem Chhabra tell us how he watched 302 films in 365 days on airplanes, on Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Google, Hulu, DVDs and even on YouTube.
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