A well-written introduction to the works of an Indian auteur.
Debut author Sengupta unpacks eight films by the acclaimed Indian director Girish Kasaravalli in this book of criticism.
Since breaking onto the film scene with his now classic 1977 film Ghatashraddha, Kasaravalli has been one of the country’s major filmic voices for decades. Working in the Kannada-language cinema of his native Karnataka state, Kasaravalli was able to transcend the label of “regional language films” applied to anything outside of the Mumbai-produced Bollywood films to win accolades in India and abroad. Even so, Kasaravalli remains a relatively obscure figure in world cinema, making experimental, politically charged works that have often been overshadowed by the flashier fare of his contemporaries. Here, Sengupta provides a beginner’s guide to the artist, offering insight into the eight films that “best demonstrate Kasaravalli’s vision and temperament as a filmmaker.” He opens with some brief biographical material, explaining how the director emerged (and, in Sengupta’s view, largely broke) from the various literary and cinematic movements that dominated Indian art in the decades after independence in 1947. Most of the book deals directly with the movies themselves: the aforementioned Ghatashraddha, Tabarana Kathe (1986), Mane (1989), Thaayi Sahiba (1997), Nayi Neralu (2006), Gulabi Talkies (2008), Kanasembo Kudureyaneri (2010), and Kurmavatara (2012). Sengupta makes no secret of his admiration for Kasaravalli, and the book is less a critical study than it is a primer for diving into the director’s work. Each essay provides some background on the film and its source materials, followed by a lengthy, scene-by-scene account of the plot. However, there’s strikingly little analysis. It’s as though Sengupta believes that Kasaravalli’s works (or, rather, his descriptions of Kasaravalli’s works) speak for themselves. Oddly, they do: Sengupta is a fine writer, and his accounts of the films are so attuned to the emotion and symbolism of Kasaravelli’s visuals that they function almost as self-contained short stories. That said, the purpose of this book remains somewhat unclear; a person who hasn’t seen the films will be unlikely to read this book, but one who has seen them will gain little from reading it.
A well-written introduction to the works of an Indian auteur.Pub Date: April 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5116-7519-2
Page Count: 298
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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