Out of India, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN considers the current Indian and Bollywood Cinema.

Move over Big B. Here comes Royal Rajnikanth. The once Bangalore bus conductor-turned-actor still sells tickets, only these are for films in which he acts. His latest blockbuster in Tamil, Sivaji – The Boss, made at a whopping Rs 80 crores (even Bollywood’s Devdas in 1992 cost only Rs 50 crores) opened June 15 on 900 screens across India, collecting a record Rs 1.7 crores on the first day.

DARREN BEVAN previews Series 2 of “Extras”, premiering on Prime this coming Monday.

LAST TIME we saw Ricky Gervais’ bumbling extra Andy Millman, he’d managed to secure himself a BBC Sitcom – despite overwhelming odds in the shape of his blundering agent Darren Lamb (Stephen Merchant) and hapless naif of a friend Maggie (Ashley Jensen). But Andy’s about to learn everything comes at a price – and you need to be careful of what you wish for.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: a girl and a gun.

IN 1968, Jean-Luc Godard was about to give up mainstream filmmaking, and become an even more militant figure with his Dziga Vertov group. But while he moved over into obscurity, a new generation of filmmakers worldwide were using Godard’s techniques to challenge institutions that were arguably more overbearing than the ones Godard was railing against. Red Light Bandit (Bandido da Luz Vermelha), is one of those films, where Godard’s famous maxim of a movie only needing “a girl and a gun” formed the major basis of the plot. However, Red Light Bandit was also made under highly oppressive conditions – it was at the cusp of increasing repressiveness in Brazil (under the AI5, a government decree that curbed political freedom) and many artists were forced to either renounce their previous opposition or go underground and making highly symbolic and coded films.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: cannibal-tropicalism.

WHO WOULD HAVE ever thought that a cinema could ever have a “cannibal-tropicalist” phase (outside of the Italians). Well the Brazilians did, and a whole bunch of films were made challenging political ideas via outrageous symbolism and grostesque storylines. As Brazil became more and more politically censoring, the Cinema Novo movement was forced to adapt. Macunaíma is considered a key film in this movement, and is indeed wickedly funny and I must admit, rather bizarre.

Out of India, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN considers the current Indian and Bollywood Cinema.

INDIA WAS bashed at the Cannes Film Festival. Journalists and others agreed that the country’s presence at the festival was sadly confined to glamour and the red carpet. India could not participate where it really mattered: the festival’s two most important segments, Competition and A Certain Regard. For a country that clinched the Festival’s Grand Prize in 1946 with Chetan Anand’s Neecha Nagar and the Best Human Document Award ten years later with Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, the slide seems awful. Besides, India has had eminent people on the Cannes jury, and they included Ritwick Ghatak, Mrinal Sen and Mira Nair.