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Siraj Syed is the India Correspondent for FilmFestivals.com and a member of FIPRESCI, the International Federation of Film Critics. He is a Film Festival Correspondent since 1976, Film-critic since 1969 and a Feature-writer since 1970. He is also an acting and dialogue coach. @SirajHSyed
Spiderman: Homecoming, Review by Siraj Syed: The Age of Coming
This tale of and by (the opening credits say so) Peter Parker is just a shade slower than Transformers 5, which means it is crack-neck, if not break-neck. Nevertheless, that’s some relief. Looks like it is the trend now, and this is what comic/superhero films are going to be all about—hundreds of rapid fire cuts and thousands of barely discernible special effects, all adding up to a good two-and-a half hours or thereab...
Transformers-The Last Knight, Review by Siraj Syed: Michael’s Bay Watch
A lot of words related to media get either entirely new meanings or stretch their known meanings to the limit and beyond, once you have watched Michael Bay’s Transformers.
It is far too tempting to let the last Knight remain as it is, without getting punny. I saw the film last Night (Wednesday late afternoon, to be precise), and I often felt that last Night was never going to end. It eventually did, and exiti...
Hired Gun, Review by Siraj Syed: Meet the unsung heroes of top music bands
Michael Jackson, Bon Jovi, PINK, Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper and Billy Joel are bands and acts that were the rage of their times. Each notched-up success after success, chartbuster following chartbuster.
Supporting the bandleader/lead-singer in their pop/rock/heavy metal gigs and recordings were dozens of backing musicians, who often got credit on the records, but not always. There are many unsung heroes wh...
Sony Announces Next Gen CineAlta 36x24mm Full-Frame Motion Picture Camera System
This latest addition to the CineAlta family is being developed through careful research and close collaboration with creative professionals, including directors, cinematographers and digital imaging technicians. Features required by them demonstrate Sony’s commitment for innovation and creative freedom, for feature film-making and drama productions.
Technology Highlights and Key Benefits
• ...
Cars 3, Review by Siraj Syed: Car-actor roles
Imagine this. You are a fading racing veteran and suddenly you lose a race to a rookie? What do you do? Seek professional help and training, even dig out your late mentor’s buddies and have a go at the next race. Now imagine all these characters are cars, not human beings, and you know you are watching the new Disney-Pixar enterprise dubbed Cars 3. It’s as human as human can be, but then again, it is as automobiley as automobiley can g...
Phullu, Review by Siraj Syed: Misleading title, taboo subject, tenacious treatment
This is a good example of a film named after its lead character, with no regard for audiences’ perception of what it might stand for, and no clue about the storyline. The word is not a corruption of phool (flower), though it could well be an attempt to synthesise phool with ullu (owl; figuratively, a fool). We can go with the assumption that they intended to call him the flower fool, Phullu.
Phullu is ab...
Idyabooster offers film and TV rights for Indian and foreign, children and adult content
Idyabooster Advisors Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, a media and entertainment company, is offering films and TV serial rights for purchase, under their Digibooster label. Their latest catalogue includes the following five titles:
Guillermina Y Candelario (2017)
Project Type: Animation Series
Language: Spanish
Genre: Animation / Children
No. of episodes: 71 episodes (22 minutes each)
Available ...
Siraj Syed covers CommunicAsia 2017, Post-event reportage, 03: Object Matrix and Fortium Partner for Content Security
Object Matrix and Fortium Technologies launched a joint solution, offering secure media management for digital content archive storage. It combines security certified solutions from each provider, to offer protection of media assets throughout their lifecycle.
The solution combines the MatrixStore object storage and Digital Content Governance platform from Object Matrix, wh...
Barrage, Review by Siraj Syed: Exquisite ennui
Some exquisite nature photography cannot save this Luxembourg-Belgium-France co-production from recurring ennui. A wafer thin story about three generations of women, Barrage sticks to its theme, though it moves at snail’s pace. Previewed at a Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI) screening for members of its film club, the film is in French language and has English sub-titles. Barrage in French means dam/block/barricade, not quite the Engli...
Siraj Syed reports: SgAIFF deadline extended to 10 June
Singapore South Asian International Film Festival (Sg.SAIFF) will be held from 1st to 9th September 2017 at various venues. This is the festival’s première edition. It will have three main sections: Features, shorts, documentary.
Entry procedure and fees are listed below.
Short Films
Early Bird Entry Fee: 15 SGD
Regular Entry Fee: 15 SGD
Late Deadline Fee: 30 SGD
Feature Films
Early Bird Entry Fee: 25 SGD
Regular En...
Siraj Syed covers CommunicAsia 2017, Post-event reportage, 03: Brightcove Unveils Ground-breaking Technology
Brightcove (NASDAQ: BCOV) announced at BroadcastAsia2017 (held in conjunction with CommunicAsia in Singapore, May 2017), the beta availability of Context Aware Encoding, a new video compression technology that lowers the total cost of ownership and improves video quality. Context Aware Encoding uses machine learning and deep video analysis to achieve optimum quality for each video wit...
Siraj Syed covers CommunicAsia 2017: Post-event reportage, 02: GLOBAL Technologies selects Newtec to provide cellular backhaul for Mattel
Newtec--a specialist in designing, developing and manufacturing equipment and technologies for satellite communications—has announced a CommunicAsia Singapore, May 2017, the successful commercial deployment of a Newtec Dialog, multi-service platform, to provide cellular backhaul for Mattel, Mauritania’s leading mobile operator.
Working wi...
Siraj Syed covers CommunicAsia 2017, Singapore: Post event reportage, 01: Accedo and Les Mills
Video Service, Created by Accedo, Gives Les Mills Group Fitness Instructors Instant Access to Exercise Programmes
Accedo (http://www.accedo.tv), the video experience pioneer, announced at CommunicAsia 2017, Singapore, that it has partnered with Les Mills International to create an exercise, music and education video service,...
Hindi Medium, Review by Siraj Syed: Admission only to the affluent and fluent
If you want to get your child admitted in any one of the top five schools in New Delhi, you have to be affluent, fluent (in English) and live a life-style typified by Western influences. This is the premise of Hindi Medium, releasing this week in Mumbai cinemas.
What happens if you have an intelligent daughter, are a couple that speaks Hindi, and have lots of money, not Westernised, and live in the crowded Chandni ...
The Sense of an Ending, Review by Siraj Syed: Sensible transition from novel to film
Many a times, tragic-romantic novels that get made into films tend to be laboured and over ‘textualised’. Not so the The Sense of an Ending. Indian director Ritesh Batra keeps this British film largely simple and lets his actors carry it forward, which works well. A simple story with a tragic and profound undercurrent of regret, the film does not have too much to offer, but gets its basics right. ...
Siraj Syed covers CommunicAsia 2017, Singapore, Pre-event, 06: Hughes remains #1 VSAT Provider in latest COMSYS Report
Hughes Network Systems, LLC (HUGHES), was again confirmed as the leading global provider, in both enterprise and consumer sectors, of the Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) satellite communications industry, by London-based COMSYS, one of the industry’s leading research organisations. This continues a legacy that dates back more than 30 years since Hughes invented and ...
Alien: Covenant, Review by Siraj Syed: Paradise morphed
Five years after Prometheus, this film is the second instalment in the Alien prequel series, and the sixth one in the Alien film series, as well as the third one to be directed by Ridley Scott. Prometheus was his second directorial effort in the series. He was 42 when he directed Alien (1979) and is in his 79th year, when Covenant is releasing. Imagine making a prequel 38 years after the original! Alien Covenant is an interesting film in...
Movie memories, by Siraj Syed—X-Men-The Last Stand (2006): Fire and ice
X-Men and X-Women in all their glory, with abilities that, together, are capable of almost anything, like battling forces of the government of the USA, and each other, in this threequel to X-Men (2000) and X-2 (2003). What would have been a trilogy, has continued into 2017.
Having three to four years in between the successive franchise films works for the project, even in later editions, though there was a spate du...
Siraj Syed covers CommunicAsia 2017 and BroadcastAsia 2017, Singapore, 23-25May: Pre-event 05: Artel to showcase multimedia IP transport solutions
Artel Video Systems will showcase their latest solutions for real-time, multimedia delivery to meet the changes and challenges facing the broadcast industry today.
Video over IP Solutions
Integrated seamlessly within the InfinityLink and DigiLink platforms, Artel's IP solutions are designed specifically t...
Movie memories, by Siraj Syed—Brokeback Mountain (2005): Rough terrain, smooth ride
Friendship between the two protagonists of Brokeback Mountain turns to a homosexual relationship that survives their respective conventional marriages and fatherhoods. Director Ang Lee tackles this taboo theme, placed in the Wyoming of half a century ago, and treats it with old-world unravelling, at a gentle pace and accompanied by slow background score. The dialogue is highly accentuated and mumbled, wh...
Siraj Syed covers CommunicAsia 2017, Singapore: Pre-event, 04: Technicolor to bring in new era of entertainment...
by delivering access excellence and empowering content for audiences everywhere.
*Engineering next-gen technologies and products to deliver access speeds and bandwidth for the most immersive content.
*Building intelligent networks that optimise Wi-Fi efficiency and performance while reducing costs for operators.
*Creating an intuitive, seamless and friction-less home network s...
Movie memories, by Siraj Syed—Bowling for Columbine (2002): Gun lobbies and gun hobbies
America has the highest rate of gun-related deaths and some critics of the gun culture refer to the gun lobby as gun nuts. Michael Moore (Fahrenheit 9/11) pegs this docu-feature as an investigative, analytical account of the Columbine school massacre and derives its title from the story that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold—the two students responsible for the Columbine High School massacre—...
Mantostaan, Review by Siraj Syed: Quadruple fiction, laboured narration
Mantostaan is a parallel compilation of four short stories by outstanding writer, late Saadat Hassan Manto. Manto was a short story writer who wrote in the Urdu language, in addition to being a film and radio scriptwriter, and a journalist. For a brief period in the late forties, he worked in the script department of the legendary studio, Bombay Talkies. Born in undivided India, he returned to what was now Pakistan, and d...
The Guardians of the Galaxy-Vol. 2, Review by Siraj Syed: Turn-up the volume
TGOTG goes back to 1980, when Peter’s father was courting his mother, and then comes to present day, when he s about 35. Like Vol. 1, the film is a riot of colour, sci-fi (visuals) and hi-fi (sounds), even celebrating its own prowess in painting the screen with an explosion of VFX hues, like a futurist child’s dream display of fire-works. It also taps upon latest sound techniques to run music, SFX and dia...
Movie memories, by Siraj Syed—Fahrenheit 9/11(2004): Burning topics
Fahrenheit 9/11 was released on DVD and VHS videotape on October 5, 2004, which is when I must have acquired my copy. Within a few days, the film broke records for the highest-selling documentary ever. About two million copies were sold/rented on the first day.
A companion book too was released, The Official Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader, containing the complete screenplay, maker Michael Moore's sources, audience e-mails ...
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About Siraj Syed
 Syed Siraj
(Siraj Associates)
Siraj Syed is a film-critic since 1970 and a Former President of the Freelance Film Journalists' Combine of India.
He is the India Correspondent of FilmFestivals.com and a member of FIPRESCI, the international Federation of Film Critics, Munich, Germany
Siraj Syed has contributed over 1,015 articles on cinema, international film festivals, conventions, exhibitions, etc., most recently, at IFFI (Goa), MIFF (Mumbai), MFF/MAMI (Mumbai) and CommunicAsia (Singapore). He often edits film festival daily bulletins.
He is also an actor and a dubbing artiste. Further, he has been teaching media, acting and dubbing at over 30 institutes in India and Singapore, since 1984.
Bandra West, Mumbai India View my profileSend me a message
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