Musings on Cinema
I used to watch a lot of cinema, back in the day. My flat mate had a keen eye for good quality cinema and would somehow find movies that struck a chord. We would watch movies from all over the world, English, Malayalam, Hindi, Tamil, Iranian, Korean, Russian, it did not matter. Every week we would go find a movie to watch. Cinema is extremely popular in my home country. Movie stars enjoy a god like status, and it would be an uphill battle for someone to get a ticket on the first week for a showing if the movie has a top star in it. Names like Rajnikanth, Shah Rukh Khan, Amitabh Bachan, invoke such a passionate response from the audience. When I was younger, I have gone to movies with my friends just because an actor was starring in the film. Nothing else mattered, films had a set template for the most part. It was always a case of good getting the better of evil, some romance and comedy strewn between the scenes to appease the familial crowd and some dance numbers to keep the young men...