Badshaah Pahelwan, Review: There’s a brown wrestler in the boxing ring, tra la la la la When director of photography S. Krishna turned producer just over two years ago, vicariously, through his wife, Swapna, having directed two action genre films, he decided to make his third film in nine Indian languages. Down the line, he settled for five, with the original in his native Kannada, and dubbed versions in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam. Rather ambitious of Krishna, considering the fi...

Bangistan, Review: Citizen Wong Kar-Wai meets Raging Bull at FcDonald’s If references, allusions and name-dropping could make a film watchable, Bangistan would have arrived with a bang. Sadly for debutant director Karan Anshuman, that récipé fails to tickle the taste-buds, and the film turns out be a dish that is half un-cooked and half over-cooked. Why he chose to use crutches like parodying the title of Orson Welles’ all-time masterpiece, Citizen Kane, poking fun a...

Southpaw, Review: Loses on points South is to left what north is to right, and paw stands for hand, in boxing parlance. So, a ‘southpaw’ is a boxer who takes a right side on stance, but leverages his left-hand to telling effect. In other sports, southpaw is often used to describe a person who is left-handed, as a left-handed batsman in the game of cricket. Southpaw, the film, derives its title from this terminology. In the film, the protagonist makes very little use of his left, a...

Martin Scorsese was honored Monday night at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Sir Ben Kingsley was in attendance as well, to award Scorsese with the American Riviera Award. Here are some tidbits from the gentle evening in Santa Barbara paradise, 90 miles outside of Los Angeles. Upon the stage before Scorsese came on moderator Leonard Maltin said,  "I like to talk to a man who likes to talk." Soon enough I realized how TRUE this is about the greatest living ...