One of the charges most often levelled at detailed film criticism is that of &ldquo;over-analysis&rdquo;. You&rsquo;re reading too much into this scene, the critic is often told. Or more gently: yes, I get your point, but did the director really intend that? The easy answer to the latter remark is to quote D H Lawrence&rsquo;s famous line &ldquo;Never trust the teller &mdash; trust the tale&rdquo;, which basically means a critic is under no obligation to consider what an artist consciously intended (or claims he intended). But this line of defence can sometimes be misleading: it can be a way of ignoring how much deliberate thought often does go into the making of a film &mdash; even into the use of &ldquo;technique&rdquo; in scenes that on the face of it have nothing flashy about them.

Chance and intention

Business Standard

Descriptions like &ldquo;alternate film&rdquo; and &ldquo;experimental film&rdquo; are relative terms &mdash; one man&rsquo;s &ldquo;alternate&rdquo; being another man&rsquo;s &ldquo;practically mainstream&rdquo; &mdash; but there are some filmmakers whose position on the continuum is beyond argument. One of them is the American Stan Brakhage, whose work I have been recently watching with equal parts trepidation and fascination. Brakhage, who made nearly 400 films &mdash; most of them under 10 minutes long &mdash; is routinely described as a non-narrative director, but that doesn&rsquo;t begin to convey what he actually did &mdash; how he set out to overturn conventional ideas about how a film should be watched, and even what a film is.

Moth, grass, film, living

In another few days, every town and street corner will be hosting a Big Literature Festival. It is natural then, around this time of year, to hear murmurings about smug, back-patting, liquor-guzzling intellectuals. Along with some less-than-tasteful suggestions: it may be remarked, for instance, that a giant Godzilla foot squelching down on the Jaipur festival lawns on a weekend evening would wipe out our literary community in one swell foop. Importantly, most such comments come from insiders themselves and therefore have a certain amount of wistful self-loathing built into them &mdash; the last time I heard the Godzilla one, it was said at Jaipur on a weekend evening, and by someone who is himself sometimes regarded as being part of this putative &ldquo;community&rdquo;. (He, of course, denies it vigorously. He also denies being the present writer.

Jai Arjun Singh: Dead write

Pandit Ravi Shankar&rsquo;s death last week gave me a pretext to dust off a DVD of an old film he had scored &mdash; Hrishikesh Mukherjee&rsquo;s National Award-winner Anuradha, about a woman who sacrifices her singing career to move to the village with her dedicated doctor husband. This is a lovely film, one of our cinema&rsquo;s best depictions of threatened individuality and a marriage under pressure, highlighted by fine pacing, a subtly plaintive score, and excellent performances: the luminous Leela Naidu shows sensitivity beyond her years in the title role (she was barely 20 at the time) and Balraj Sahni brings dignified understatement to the part of Anuradha&rsquo;s well-meaning but neglectful husband Dr Nirmal. In conjunction, their performances make this film an emotionally complex experience, because it is difficult for the viewer to &ldquo;take sides&rdquo; between the two characters and their circumstances.

A not-so-simple past

One of the most charming scenes in one of the most unexpectedly charming films of this year, Vicky Donor, had a Bengali girl humming a few notes of Rabindrasangeet to her Punjabi boyfriend.

Prodigal puttar

It is an oft-repeated dictum that the technical elements of film-making should be placed at the service of the narrative and must not draw attention to themselves. &ldquo;If someone comes out of a film saying &lsquo;Art design brilliant thi&rsquo;, then it means we have failed,&rdquo; a production designer told me recently. I get the broad point &ndash; that these things should work on a subconscious plane; they must not divert the first-time viewer&rsquo;s attention &ndash; but I also think a one-size-fits-all proclamation on this subject is naive. Much hinges on the type of film one is talking about and the type of viewer (a professional critic wouldn&rsquo;t be doing his job if he didn&rsquo;t consciously register some of a movie&rsquo;s inner workings).

Jai Arjun Singh: Aural storytelling

In an excellent essay about the 1944 film A Canterbury Tale, movie historian and director Peter von Bagh suggested that light and time were the two most important subjects of cinema. Watching Shyam Benegal&rsquo;s 1985 film Trikal recently, I was reminded of this idea. One of the main themes of Benegal&rsquo;s film is the continuing hold of the past on the present: set in the Goa of 1960, on the verge of being &ldquo;liberated&rdquo; from the Portuguese, it is the story of a family trapped between a grand history and an uncertain future. But on a formal level, its most striking quality &mdash; one that consistently enhances the narrative &mdash; is Ashok Mehta&rsquo;s camerawork and use of lighting, among the best I&rsquo;ve seen in a Hindi movie.

Time's soft glow

Most of us first encounter haunted-Housefilms as entries in the horror genre; at least you do if, like me, you have had an unmonitored childhood marked by viewings of slasher movies like Houseand Fright Night. The impulse while watching such films is to be scared in that very particular, jump-three-feet-out-of-your-chair way. And of course, this was the effect that the filmmakers were reaching for.

Bhoot Bongla

On certain occasions, mostly drunken ones, I get asked what sort of book I find most difficult to review &mdash; &ldquo;literary fiction&rdquo;, &ldquo;genre fiction&rdquo; and &ldquo;non-fiction&rdquo; usually being the proffered options. &ldquo;Comics,&rdquo; I reply, and watch the questioner sidle away uneasily. &ldquo;Or rather, graphic novels,&rdquo; I add if I&rsquo;m in a kind mood, and then sometimes he shuffles a step and a half back, still looking nervous.

Jai Arjun Singh: Comic effects

It took a few hours of procrastination and a cup of strong coffee, and my finger may have trembled as I clicked the &ldquo;play&rdquo; button, but I did finally watch the trailer of the forthcoming film Hitchcock, about Alfred Hitchcock and the making of Psycho in 1959-60. It was nearly as unsettling as I had imagined &mdash; and not just because Psycho is a film enormously dear to my heart. On the tiny YouTube screen was one of the most honourable actors of the past few decades &mdash; not hamming it up exactly, but imitating away.

Imitations of life

Among her many other talents, the graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi has shown a skill for moving fluidly from one medium to another. A few years ago Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud co-directed a film version of her most famous book Persepolis, an autobiographical story about her childhood in Iran under the shadow of the Islamic Revolution. I liked the film but I had one reservation: it was too often a straightforward cinematic presentation of the drawings Satrapi had done for the book. Though there were a few well-chosen moments of added animation &mdash; such as an Expressionist scene where little Marjane&rsquo;s features melt until she resembles the screamer in the famous Munch painting &mdash; the viewing experience was repetitive for a reader who was already very familiar with the book (as I was).

Bitter, sweet

The question of how to assess a film&rsquo;s tone has rarely been more fraught than in the context of Anurag Kashyap&rsquo;s widely discussed Gangs of Wasseypur. Much of the early conversation about GoW &ndash; including by those who hadn&rsquo;t seen it &ndash; centred on a very narrow definition of authenticity; some people assumed it was going to be a documentary-like representation of life in the hinterland, and words like &ldquo;gritty&rdquo; were hurled around. But authenticity and realism are always ambiguous concepts in cinema, subject to oversimplification. A backlash of sorts followed when the film was revealed as an (often brilliant) exercise in style.

Jai Arjun Singh: Tone twister

Much has been written about the role played by multiplexes in giving space to &ldquo;smaller&rdquo; films &mdash; the sort of movies that single-screen halls of yore would not have found profitable to accommodate even for a day, let alone a week. However, even in the multiplex era, small films don&rsquo;t always find the audiences that might appreciate them. Lack of information continues to be a problem: I was surprised last week to discover that many of my friends &mdash; including informed movie buffs who keep their eyes peeled for low-profile works &mdash; had not even heard of Nila Madhab Panda&rsquo;s Jalpari: The Desert Mermaid. And this despite the fact that Panda&rsquo;s previous film was the much-awarded I am Kalam.

Half a girl

Two Woody Allen moments, more than 35 years apart. In the new film To Rome With Love, an old man &mdash; a shuffling, white-haired version of one of modern cinema&rsquo;s most recognisable profiles &mdash; delivers a quasi-philosophical monologue in a familiar, nervous-tic-ridden style, ending with a little shrug and the remark that, of course, death probably won&rsquo;t come to him for another 40 or 50 years at least! The line invites a laugh, but the chuckles stick in one&rsquo;s throat.

Ageing supernovas

At the recent Cinefan festival, some poetic things were said when a just-screened movie&rsquo;s crew came up on stage to address the audience. Consider Aakash Maheriya, a non-professional actor from Ahmedabad who played one of the main roles in Prashant Bhargava&rsquo;s fine film Patang, which won a Special Jury Award at the fest. Too many people choose to highlight the unpleasant things about his city&rsquo;s recent history, Maheriya said &mdash; communal riots, for example. &ldquo;Lekin Prashant ne kuay mein haath daalkar hamaari khushiyan nikaali aur aapko dikhayee. (But Prashant dipped his hand in the well, found the happier side of our lives and put it into this film.

Kite and kin

Most intelligent people I know agree that high-quality criticism &mdash; whether it&rsquo;s positive or negative &mdash; involves a considered perspective, backed with knowledge and expressed with clarity (and perhaps some flair too). The reviewer should be honest about his own responses to the work in question and not become unduly influenced by the stated intentions of its creator; D H Lawrence&rsquo;s dictum &ldquo;trust the tale&rdquo; is still as useful as it ever was.

The arm's length critic

A few years ago I used to write a column called Neterati for this paper &mdash; basically, a round-up of what denizens of the Internet were saying about a newsy topic, along with slivers of tasteful (or so I hoped) commentary. The column has long been put to rest, but my fingers began itching something fierce last week when my Facebook timeline and every website I clicked on became jammed with eulogies to Rajesh Khanna.

Jai Arjun Singh: Collective mourning in the Facebook Age

In the Hindi cinema I grew up watching, the definition of nastik (atheist) was a hazy one. It never meant genuine, matter-of-fact unbelief in God: that didn&rsquo;t even seem to be an option. It was more a case of &ldquo;bhagwaan se katti hoon&rdquo; &mdash; I&rsquo;m not on speaking terms with Him because He allowed bad things to happen to my family. Early in the Bachchan-starrer Nastik, little Shankar sulks and tells an idol &ldquo;Aaj se mera-tera koi vaasta nahin.&rdquo; But in the film&rsquo;s climax, when God (or rather the gleaming, jewellery-studded statue that represents Him) shows belated willingness to help by impaling the wicked Amjad Khan with a trident, everything is hunky-dory again and it&rsquo;s back to waking up the neighborhood by clanging those old temple bells.

Pilgrim's progress

Among the visual and aural pleasures of Saeed Mirza&rsquo;s 1978 film Arvind Desai ki Ajeeb Dastan (newly available in a restored print by the National Film Development Corporation) is an enigmatic establishing sequence. The first images are from a village or a very small town, and are set to a minimalist music score &mdash; little more than the gentle plucking of a string instrument, it becomes more hypnotic the more you hear it. We see measurements being taken, cloth being dyed, posts being driven into the ground, threads stretched across them, and soon we realise that we are watching an intricately embroidered carpet coming into existence.

Poor little rich boy

Cinema is not always a very helpful medium journalistically,&rdquo; the critic David Thomson observed once, &ldquo;because movies so easily yield to their own atmosphere and make the intrigue as dark as noir plotting.&rdquo; He said this in the context of investigative political thrillers such as Oliver Stone&rsquo;s JFK (&ldquo;made with extraordinary skill and panache but so carried away by the power of film as to ignore the forces of logic, argument and responsibility&rdquo;) and Costa-Gavras&rsquo;s Z. Thomson&rsquo;s point was that this type of movie, if really well-crafted, can be so seductive for an audience that it can result in obfuscation rather than in the revelation of truth. At worst, it can even be a form of misleading propaganda.

Film as investigation

There&rsquo;s a passage in Vikram Chandra&rsquo;s superb doorstop of a novel Sacred Games where a group of Mumbai gangsters watch the film Deewaar and get tearful because they can identify with Amitabh Bachchan&rsquo;s angry young man Vijay, driven by circumstances to a life outside the law. Though the author doesn&rsquo;t underline the point, one realises that some of these young men will model themselves on this onscreen anti-hero, down to the swagger and the one-liners (&ldquo;Main aaj bhi phenke huye paise nahin uthaata&rdquo;). But it&rsquo;s also worth remembering that Vijay himself was loosely based on a real-life underworld figure, Haji Mastan.

New age villains

Britain's Opposition Conservative Party is leading calls for Prime Minister Keir Starmer to scrap government plans for an official definition of Islamophobia over fears it would restrict free speech and action against wrongdoing.
Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said this weekend that a "false label" of Islamophobia had hampered investigations into the child abuse grooming gang scandal involving men of Pakistani heritage.
It comes as The Daily Telegraph newspaper claims that the Labour Party government is considering a formal definition of anti-Muslim discrimination.
The government should drop its plans for such a deeply flawed definition of Islamophobia, Jenrick told the newspaper.
Throughout the grooming gang scandal the false label of Islamophobia was used to silence people. It appears that the government has learnt nothing and is determined to press ahead with a definition that will have a chilling effect on freedom of speech, he said.
In a social media post, the Tory M

Keir Starmer, UK PM, Prime Minister Starmer

JPMorgan Chase & Co., the largest US bank, looks to be next in line

Bank

Bangladesh's interim government on Sunday cancelled a planned training programme for 50 judges and judicial officers in India, scrapping a previous notification.
The notification has been cancelled, a law ministry spokesman said without elaborating.
The Daily Star newspaper, however, reported the cancellation came in compliance with a directive from Bangladesh's Supreme Court.
The cancellation order came a day after the state-run Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha reported that 50 lower judiciary judges would undergo a one-day training programme from February 10 at the National Judicial Academy and the State Judicial Academy in Madhya Pradesh.
The trainee judges selected under the programme were district and sessions judge or its equivalent officers, additional district and sessions judge, joint district judge, senior assistant judge and assistant judge.
The Indian government was supposed to bear all the expenses for the training programmes.
India and Bangladesh have witnessed strained

India Bangladesh, India, Bangladesh

Nepal Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli on Sunday said the signing of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) framework agreement with China during his recent trip and his meeting with Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the 79th UN General Assembly were important in strengthening bilateral relations.
The 72-year-old Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) leader said these meetings and visits have made meaningful contributions in strengthening Nepal's relations with neighbouring countries.
Oli said this while presenting a political report at the central committee meeting of the party in Lalitpur.
A balanced foreign policy based on mutual interest and equal benefits will be pursued keeping the national interest in focal point to further strengthen multi-faceted diplomacy, economic, social, cultural and trade relations with both the neighbours as well as all the friendly countries, Oli said.
He also expressed his commitment to resolve the existing issues with the

KP Sharma Oli, Oli, Nepal PM

Jharkhand Finance Minister and Congress leader Radhakrishna Kishore on Sunday said that INDIA bloc will take a call on providing subsidised LPG cylinders to consumers at a rate of Rs 450 in the state.
At present, domestic LPG cylinders are available for Rs 860 in major cities of Jharkhand.
The Congress during assembly elections has promised gas cylinders to all citizens at a subsidised rate on being voted to power. The party is part of the JMM-led alliance in the state.
"The call to provide LPG cylinders at Rs 450 has to be taken by the INDIA bloc. The promise was made by a political party - Congress to which I also belong. But a final call can be taken only by the alliance," Kishore told reporters here.
He also said that the Jharkhand government is actively considering resorting to multiple steps, including legal action, to recover the outstanding amount of Rs 1.36 lakh crore from the central government.
The finance minister highlighted that the outstanding sum has been pending f

cylinder,lpg,women

Jagdeep Singh, the former CEO of Quantumscape, has an annual salary of Rs 17,500 crore ($2.06 billion), which surpasses the revenue of several large corporations in the world

Jagdeep Singh

HDFC Bank's LDR was around 87 per cent pre-merger. Following the merger, its LDR went up to 110 per cent

HDFC Bank

Travel booking major OYO has launched a new check-in policy for partner hotels, starting from Meerut, introducing guidelines effective this year whereby unmarried couples will no longer be welcome to check in.
Under the revised policy, all couples will be asked to present valid proof of relationship at the time of check-in, including for bookings made online. OYO has empowered its partner hotels' discretion to decline couple bookings based on their judgment, aligning with local social sensibility, the company said.
OYO has given the directive to its partner hotels in Meerut to ensure this with immediate effect. Based on ground feedback, the company may expand this to more cities, people familiar with the policy change said.
"OYO has received feedback in the past from civil society groups especially in Meerut urging action to address this issue. Additionally, residents from few other cities have petitioned for disallowing unmarried couples to check-in at OYO hotels," they said.
Pawa

OYO, Oyo rooms, Oyo app, Oyo logo

Subsidy to support 72,300 fast charging stations across the country

EV, ELECTRIC VEHICLE

Adani Wilmar Ltd (AWL), India's largest edible oil company, is adopting a strategy similar to ITC's by leveraging its core business and extensive distribution network to drive growth in its high-margin FMCG portfolio after the Adani group exit, according to sources.
Just as ITC used its strong cigarette business to expand into FMCG, AWL is set to use its dominant edible oil business as a foundation for FMCG growth.
Following the exit of the Adani Group, Wilmar may further capitalise on this approach by introducing more global FMCG brands into the Indian market, sources aware of the matter said.
In the December quarter, AWL's FMCG business achieved a 24 per cent year-on-year growth in volume, underscoring its efforts to expand both its food and FMCG product offerings. Consequently, the share of food and FMCG in overall volumes increased to 20 per cent, while its share in total revenues rose to 9 per cent, up from 10 per cent and 5 per cent, respectively, in FY21.
This shift mirrors 

Adani Wilmar

IND vs AUS 5th Test full scorecard: Rishabh Pant was hit on the body 12 times as the southpaw curbed his natural instinct after reports surfaced Gambhir criticised him for rash shot at MCG

India vs Australia 5th Test Day 1 highlights and full scorecard

Though captain dropping himself has happened for the first time in India's cricket history, here are six notable examples in cricketing folklore.

Rohit Sharma

While the reports were flooding in a day before that Rohit dropped himself from India's Playing 11, stand-in captain Jasprit Bumrah revealed at the toss on Friday that Rohit thought about the team

Stock Market Today: The Nifty FMCG Index is currently trading within a crucial range of 58,050 - 55,675, and any breakout above or below this range will likely trigger significant directional momentum

stock market

Here are the best of Business Standard's opinion pieces for today

economic growth

A lot has changed. Both nations are more than a little concerned about how they will revive slowing growth

Jai Arjun Singh

Jai Arjun Singh

Page 4 - Jai Arjun Singh

Chance and intention

Moth, grass, film, living

Jai Arjun Singh: Dead write

A not-so-simple past

Prodigal puttar

Jai Arjun Singh: Aural storytelling

Time's soft glow

Bhoot Bongla

Jai Arjun Singh: Comic effects

Imitations of life

Bitter, sweet

Jai Arjun Singh: Tone twister

Half a girl

Ageing supernovas

Kite and kin

The arm's length critic

Jai Arjun Singh: Collective mourning in the Facebook Age

Pilgrim's progress

Poor little rich boy

Film as investigation

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UK Oppn wants PM Keir Starmer to scrap plans for Islamophobia definition

Wall Street's top banks just quit a once popular net-zero alliance

Bangladesh cancels scheduled judges' training in India amid strained ties

Signing BRI framework with China, Modi meeting key to stronger ties: Oli

INDIA bloc to take a call on subsidised LPG cylinders: J'khand minister

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Indian-origin CEO is world's highest paid person, earns Rs 48 crore per day

HDFC Bank's LDR falls below 100% for the first time after merger

Unmarried couples no longer welcome, OYO changes check-in policy

Govt to switch on massive subsidy to supercharge EV infrastructure

Adani Wilmar to expand FMCG portfolio, emulates ITC post-Adani group exit