“A gang of skinny-dipping kids raise a cheery ruckus while their families fix supper in shacks by the shore. The tangerine afterglow of the setting sun dances across the expanse of the sea. An abandoned wooden boat lies silent on one side, its commanding frame now reduced to a clothesline.”
“In a shaded corner, enjoying occasional wafts of moist breeze and a steaming cup of cappuccino, sits Gael Garcia Bernal; his angularly sculpted face dissolving into that signature boyish grin as he recalls a dream. “It came to me around 3 weeks ago. It was a very happy dream. But now when I think about it, I feel a little melancholic.”
“For a man who claims he could even eat “bloody Elvis Presley if you put enough vinegar on him,” surprisingly, there are limitations. He says, “I avoid eating dog and cat because I grew up treating them as pets. It’s very difficult for me to break that connection. I understand the hypocrisy involved in my happily killing and eating a pig, but not a dog.”
“Sometimes, I think I won’t last that long. But it’s intoxicating to play, to lose yourself completely. I don’t know who I am on the ground apart from a soccer player, like any other player who’s playing anywhere; in the streets, or on the beach.”
“I barrelled down the inner roads of central Bali as if my bicycle had been retrofitted with an aircraft propeller. Gusts of wind smacked my face. Stretches of mint green fields garlanding the route sweetened my sight. At some point, I surrendered to the quiet and closed my eyes for a fleeting second or two; the wheels carrying my body, my mind shedding all fear. Perhaps, I could have lived that moment anywhere. But it happened to me in Bali.”
“Much like most of Giacometti’s sculptures, The Dog is stripped of all that’s superfluous — flesh, skin, muscles, sheen — and scraped right down to its physical core. And, like most of Picasso’s work, The Goat is robust and lively; the pregnant animal heralding independence, hope, and new beginnings, reflecting the artist’s blossoming relationship with his young mistress, Françoise Gilot. Such telltale differences meld rather seamlessly with the artists’ then-common ground of exploring realism in the post-WWII era, as well as their perspectives on figuration.
Sons of artists, child prodigies, masters of realism and poster boys of modernity and avant-garde optimism, Picasso and Giacometti would leave their respective homes to land in Paris, meet in 1931, and nurture a “friendly and formal” relationship that lasted well into the 1950s.”
“Bengali director Goutam Ghose was lucky to lay his hands on negatives and beta-tapes of his 1984 seminal Paar, which fetched national awards for Naseeruddin Shah and Shabana Azmi, wasting away in a Chennai lab. “Since the film had made the rounds of several festivals, we restored it by referencing prints from Japan, Italy, France and Germany. “We make so many films in India, but how many have we saved for posterity? Producers are busy making money, and the government won’t step in to save our cinematic heritage,” he says bluntly.”
