Uttaran Das Gupta

Kolkata trams, now on their way out, inspired city's best-known filmmakers

Now that there will be fewer trams on the city's streets, it will not only be an ecological loss but also an aesthetic and political one

Frames per second: Why are audiences loving re-released Bollywood films?

Looking backwards while going forward can prove to be a tricky business

Hamare Baarah and Maharaj: To watch or not to watch

Heckler's veto or preventing harm? Censoring films that cause offence opens up a can of worms

Frames per second: The churning and the counting

Watching the restored version of the 1976 film Manthan reminds one of the Emergency but also gives hope for a renewed democracy

Amar Singh Chamkila: Bawdy songs and radical obscenity

An accusation of obscenity is usually not an attempt to control prurient art but to limit its radical potential

The plague as a metaphor

Laxmibai Tilak, a contemporary writer, recounts how plague camps, where patients were quarantined, were 'kingdoms of the god of death'

Frames per second: War films as revenge drama

Earlier, Bollywood war flicks were about defending India's borders. Now, they are all about vengeance

Crouching tiger, rising mammoth

Historian Sugata Bose, in his new book, makes a compelling case for Asia to embrace its political, cultural, and economic diversity as it reclaims its centrality in the world

Frames per second: Hullabaloo in the awards season

Ranbir Kapoor winning the Filmfare Best Actor award for 'Animal', while Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig missing out Oscar nominations for 'Barbie' have sparked controversies

A happy life: 2 movies on pursuit of happy life and distractions in between

'Past Lives' and 'Three of Us' celebrate the pragmatism of love over the heady impulsiveness of romance

12th Fail: Great expectations, major victories

The film directed by Vidhu Vinod Chopra is always aware of the fact that the remarkable rags-to-riches story of IPS Manoj Sharma is the exception and not the norm

Shah Rukh Khan: The Return of the King

The three blockbuster films delivered by the Bollywood heartthrob show a definite turn in his oeuvre

Animal: Looking into the mirror

The film starring Ranbir Kapoor and Bobby Deol unleashes the desires of many Indians accustomed to violence

'The Archies' movie review: Vapid nostalgia that misses political nuances

Set in the mid-1960s, the Zoya Akhtar film signals virtues through reference to corporate greed, gender politics, and global warming, but delivers solutions that are too easy

Pokhar Ke Dunu Paar: Things Falling Apart

The struggles of a young couple to find economic security in a small town is a realistic take on the romanticised mofussil of Hindi cinema

Naipaul's India

A similar self-fashioning is evident in the two other books he wrote on India - A Wounded Civilization (1977) and A Million Mutinies Now (1990)

Munich and the moral limits of revenge

Steven Spielberg's spy drama on Mossad's mission to kill Palestinian militants interrogated the ethics of state-sponsored vengeance

A suitable choice

The 30th-anniversary edition of Vikram Seth's landmark novel A Suitable Boy is a timely reminder of India's nascent democratic aspirations

Frames per second: Exploding heads in the time of Oppenheimer

Western and Japanese artists found inspiration for post-humanist visions in the years following Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Instruments of war: Bandit Queen to Manipur

A gendered perspective on conflict - local or international - is essential because women are often targeted as part of conflict strategy