Panic, Panic, Hope.

"যার গান শুনে একদিন কণ্ঠে পরালে মালা, আজ তোমাদের সভা হতে তার বিদায় নেবার পালা"  The lines above from "Deya Neya" are one of Uttam Kumar's many Goosebumb inducing lines. He as Arindam Mukherjee declares in Ray's Nayak: "I will go to the top.. the top.. the top". And Uttam Kumar did. Neither anyone had any doubt over that. It's one thing to reach the top, but it is even harder to stay there. And to stay at the top in everyone's memory even a few decades after one's death is sheer Uttam Enigma. From the restrained Bhodrolok acts to the exuberant adorations- his artistry cuts across generations, borders and equivocally Bengalis have chosen Uttam Kumar as the Matinee Idol, the Mahanayak. But it's saddening that Bengalis are more emotional about than critical. His name brings nostalgia in Addas and you will see people singing a few couplets from these movies, but rarely you would find his artistry discussed and dissected in Intellectual c...

Jim Jarmusch’s “Paterson” is a movie about everyday virtue where nothing really happens, but the movie isn’t remotely about Nothingness. This is a movie about poetry hidden in everyday mundane habits. But “Paterson” doesn’t feel the need to romanticize it as a struggle or downplay work as just a “day job.” In “Paterson” job and art all work in tandem. The movie takes us to a small town in New Jersey and it’s about a week in the life of a Paterson bus driver (Adam Driver) also named Paterson, who writes poems in his private notebook, who lives and breathes in solitude of the town Paterson, and who loves Paterson, a public book of poems by William Carlos Williams.  Paterson is a poet, an artist, but the story isn’t a typical bildungsroman saga. It breaks every possible stereotype associated with the character of a solitary artist. He is a working-class artist, who has a day job to earn his bread, but we never see any rage or grief in his expression, neither we see him str...