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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
Aamir, Nasir, Tahir, Tariq, Mansoor, Amjad: Movies, Masti, Modernity, Flashback 5
To remind you, Aamir is indeed Aamir Khan, Amjad is definitely Gabbar Singh, and the triple M above is to acknowledge that it was Akshay Manwani’s biographical book on the cinema of Nasir Hussain that got me delving into the period of about 15 years, when I interacted with the Hussain Khans (first five) and the bare Khan (last, but the most imposing personality). Actually, Mansoor did not use his middle na...
Siraj Syed covers CommunicAsia 2017, Singapore: Pre-event, 02: Virtual Reality
BroadcastAsia2017 International Conference speaker, Lionel Chok, Start-up Founder/Creative Technologist, Immersively, of Forbes Asia-Singapore Media Academy, shares how VR storytelling is growing fast
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Siraj Syed covers CommunicAsia 2017, Singapore: Pre-event, 01: Smart City
By 2030, 70% of the world’s population will be concentrated in cities. Today, we are seeing large scale rural to urban migration with an estimated of 370,000 people, forecasted to migrate daily, between 2015 and 2020. The massive growth of urban populations has brought about a series of managerial challenges, in both the public and private sectors, from resource limitations, to the constant need to adapt to consum...
Japanese SSF&A Festival Director SeigoTono on India tour
Tuesday, the 28th 0f February, saw the screening of four Japanese shorts at the Rangswar mini-auditorium, located inside Chavan Centre in South Mumbai. Organised by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, courtesy Prabhat Film Society, which completed 50 years this year, it was presented by Seigo Tono, Director of Short Shorts Film Festival (SSFF) and Short Shorts Film Festival Asia (SSFFA), Japan. It will be held during June 1-12...
Siraj Syed reviews Logan: All Gore
Just when we had begun to think that desensitisation was near complete, and violence in American films held no more depths to plumb, there comes Logan. For its genre, it’s a triumph of sorts. For the distanced critic, his worst fears could have come true. Unless, of course, he turns it into a cathartic but guilty experience.
Decapitation with a cap-it-all D is but one of the milder forms of blood and gore strewn across the two hours plus footage of L...
Siraj Syed reviews Lion: Soaring emotions, roaring cinema
Lion is the tale of mothers and sons, brothers and sisters, separation and unification, brimming with humanity, and yet not fighting shy of tilting the camera down, to capture the grim realities of crime and perversion in a cruel and miserable world. All those who frown upon technology as the bane of the 21st century, here’s a glorious tribute to the great service it can and is meant to render, and does, as evidenced in the film....
Siraj Syed reviews John Wick-Chapter 2: His WICked WICKed ways
First tell me, do you have problems with one man shooting down one two hundred, over five encounters, forty each per encounter? Is it fine with you that every time Wick shoots, it’s bull’s eye, while all the shots fired by the Wicked men and women miss the target, and when they do hit pay-dirt, they bounce off his armour? Fine? No problems? Welcome to John Wick 2, a treat for you.
This is Chapter 2, so you must recal...
Siraj Syed reviews Hidden Figures: US-Russia space race & black women’s amazing grace
Did you know that three black women played crucial roles in NASA’s space programme, and without them, John Glenn would not be remembered as the first American astronaut to make it back to earth, but as a young man who got burnt to cinders, along with his spacecraft, by the heat generated on his vehicle’s re-entry into earth’s orbit? This is the true story of the rather unimaginati...
Siraj Syed reviews Biddu’s autobiography, Made in India: Lone Trojan’s Adventures of a Lifetime
That life-time has now seen 72 summers. Karnataka-born world musician Biddu Appaiah, with Coorgi nativity, has chased his recent summers from London, to Spain, to Mumbai to Goa, every year. For one who strongly believes that musicians should retire at 65, including greats like Paul McCartney, he has just about lived up to his conviction. The only creative work he has done in the last se...
Aamir, Nasir, Tahir, Tariq, Mansoor, Amjad: Movies, Masti, Modernity, Flashback 4
To remind you, Aamir is indeed Aamir Khan, Amjad is definitely Gabbar Singh, and the triple M above is to acknowledge that it was Akshay Manwani’s biographical book on the cinema of Nasir Hussain that got me delving into the period of about 15 years, when I interacted with the Hussain Khans (first five) and the bare Khan (last, but the most imposing personality). Actually, Mansoor did not use his middle na...
Siraj Syed reviews Kaagaz Ki Kashti: Paper-boat ride across oceans of melody
When you are making a biopic, you first need to narrow down on either a famous person, or a commoner who has led an uncommon and highly captivating life. Jagjit Singh was an extremely popular singer, with dozens of albums and hundreds of songs to his credit. Next, it always helps if the person is alive, or has passed away not too long ago, because material used in the ...
Siraj Syed reviews Moonlight: Silences waxing eloquent
‘Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon’—Walter de la Mare
In The Color Purple, we realised that black persons appear purple in on some occasions. A character in Moonlight says he was nick-named Blue because he looked blue when seen in moonlight. Others are called Black or Nigger, by their own folk, who are low on self esteem, and susceptible to apartheid, within the segregated race of black...
Ameen Sayani and the film Geetmala: Standing tall
"Every stage singer is a mimic,” said Ameen Sayani ‘clone’ Sagar Sayani to me, in the green room, “and imitates legendary film song singers, Mohammed Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Manna Dey, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle or Geeta Dutt. So what’s wrong if I imitate the compère, the very man who introduced us to these original singers, on radio and on stage, for 65 years?” Lead singer and ad-libber Gaurav Ba...
Siraj Syed reviews Raees: Contentious content, alias “Don’t call me Battery”
Ra.One did it. Don 2 had done it. Raees, wherein he plays a Don once more, adds to his raeesy. Superstar ShahRukh Khan must be a happy man these days, heading in the right direction, hitting the road to Hitsville.Touted as the block-buster of the year, Raees, about a small-time bootlegger who wrangles his way to the top and becomes not only raees (Urdu for ‘rich’) but filthy rich, has no...
Siraj Syed reviews Resident Evil 6-The Final Chapter: Horror is terrific business
There has to be something about it. It’s the first film franchise of the horror genre to cross a billion dollars, since its genesis 15 years ago. If you are from the gaming generation of the new millennium, you are probably aware that it all began as a game, and the eponymous first edition in the series was released in 1996, as a survival horror video game, but the franchise has since grown to encompass ot...
Siraj Syed reviews ‘A Million Rivers’: Complex hOMage to simple man PURI
This ‘homage’ began as a ‘tribute’ to Om Puri, counterpoised against Lillete Dubey, by writer-director Sarah Singh, four years before his death, in 2013, and was completed in 2016. We saw the film on 30th January 2017, at the Black Box, in Central Mumbai, courtesy the G5A Foundation for Contemporary Arts and Culture.
When I last met Om Puri in the last week of November 2016, at the In...
Aamir, Nasir, Tahir, Tariq, Mansoor, Amjad: Movies, Masti, Modernity, Flashback 3
To remind you, Aamir is indeed Aamir Khan, Amjad is definitely Gabbar Singh, and the triple M above is to acknowledge that it was Akshay Manwani’s biographical book on the cinema of Nasir Hussain that got me delving into the period of about 15 years, when I interacted with the Hussain Khans (first five) and the bare Khan (last, but the most imposing personality). Actually, Mansoor did not use his middle na...
Siraj Syed reviews The Founder: Hey Mac, watch out for that Burger!
Your McDonald’s burger is not going to be same again. Neither are the fries, or the softees.
This is a biopic (read ‘Based on a true story') about the Kroc behind the arches, an American salesman known to the world as Raymond A. Kroc, who consolidated and expanded the two-store enterprise to, nearly, what it is today. Not the founder of the pioneering and iconic fast-food chain, he was more or less solely res...
It begins with two friends at a dining table, trying to fix a day for their drinks and dinner to celebrate one of them getting married. They cannot find any convenient date, because, due to sheer bad luck, there is a string of ‘Dry Days’ looming ahead. Dry Days are so named, in India, not because there is no rainfall on these days (there could be plenty of rain on a Dry Day) but because the Indian government bans the sale and consumption of alcohol on national and religious holiday...
Aamir, Nasir, Tahir, Tariq, Mansoor, Amjad: Movies, Masti, Modernity, Flashback 2
To remind you, Aamir is indeed Aamir Khan, Amjad is definitely Gabbar Singh, and the triple M above is to acknowledge that it was Akshay Manwani’s biographical book on the cinema of Nasir Hussain that got me delving into the period of about 15 years, when I interacted with the Hussain Khans (first five) and the bare Khan (last, but the most imposing personality). Actually, Mansoor did not use his middle na...
Erosactivity gets into top gear, announces 50 films, 40+ directors on board
The next financial year for their India econ0my is 01 April 2017-31 March 2018, and at 50 productions in the pipeline, they will have almost every week at the box office covered. It’s a multilingual black-board, and includes wiz-kid Aanand L Rai and their joint production entity, Colour Yellow Production, Viki Rajani's NextGen Films, and Trinity Pictures, Eros’ in-house franchise label.
Commenting o...
Siraj Syed reviews Haraamkhor: Harmful to the core
Haraamkhor: A derisive term, having its roots in Persian (Farsi) and widely used in present-day Urdu and Hindi. Haraamkhor literally means one who feeds on ill-begotten food, haraam meaning immoral, or not kosher, the antonym of halaal, right and approved. Khor refers to eater, or consumer, from the Persian verb khordan, to eat. Some prefer to spell the word beginning with a qh, to distinguish from the kh sound, which is less guttural and not...
Siraj Syed reviews Passengers: Window seat at the journey of a life-time
They’ve got it right. Not perfect, but right. Mind-boggling special effects and a mind-toggling emotional narrative. It’s an elusive, coveted recipé, and for once, somebody nailed it. Use state-of-the-art VFX, but blend them with an equally compelling story-line, sometimes shaken, sometimes stirred, and then pray you hit bull’s eye. Passengers is a journey that starts in outer space, but gets you...
Siraj Syed reviews Allied: Two Allies, Both Spies, One Cries, One Dies
There are a few things to like about Allied. Then there are a few things you don’t like so much. At the end f the report card, you might end up with as many –ves as you mark +ves, which doesn’t get you anywhere, really. Brad Pitt’s third war movie in a row and Marion Cotillard’s sequence of big projects promises you CasaBlanca, but gives you Morocco instead. Almost everything in the film is co...
To remind you, Aamir is indeed Aamir Khan, Amjad is definitely Gabbar Singh, and the triple M above is to acknowledge that it was Akshay Manwani’s biographical book on the cinema of Nasir Hussain that got me delving into the period of about 15 years, when I interacted with the Hussain Khans (first five) and the bare Khan (last, but the most imposing personality). Actually, Mansoor did not use his middle name, so he can be called a Khan too! Tahir stands for Nasir’s (younger) brothe...
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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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