In the line of fire
An assassination story offers a rich context for a filmmaker – suspense, drama, action, morality and more. No wonder it has fascinated filmmakers and the result has been brilliantly and innovatively crafted gripping classics. Tareque Laskar examines the assassination plot as it unfolds on the silver screen
Shakespeare may have invented the word in the 16th Century, but
it has served as a plot point since ages. Naturally, a subject like an assassination holds great sway over the cinematic medium, with some of the most memorable movies being made with one assassination or the other as a backdrop. An assassination holds intrigue, action, suspense and shenanigans in equal measure and is perfect fodder for a gripping script. And the conspiracy theories don’t hurt either. Look at “JFK”, Oliver Stone’s epic film starring Kevin Costner. The film which examined the JFK assassination through the perspective of a New Orleans District Attorney who discovers there’s more to the Kennedy assassination than the official story and had the tagline ‘The story that won’t go away’. The film, its editing style (it won an Oscar for best editing) puts it right up there on the top of classic movies that treated the subject of an assassination. Shedding light on filmmakers’ fascination for the subject, director Sudhir Mishra tells TSI, “It depends on what the assassination is. It is an event which has a past, which has a story, which can either be the beginning of something or the end of something. There is a dramatic convergence of people, a lot of it will be visual, and a lot of it will be non-verbal so a filmmaker can get interested in a visual way of telling stories. What attracts a filmmaker is an event in which you can say something without dialogues which offers great possibility for sound, for picture, it is an ideal cinematic event in all sorts of ways.” “JFK” fits the description perfectly. So does the Tom Cruise starrer “Valkyrie” which told the story of the plot to kill Adolf Hitler hatched (and then botched) by his own military officers led by the wily Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg.
Sudhir Mishra feels that an assassination film, “can either be trivial, which most of them are, or it can lead to something more interesting.” He continues, “The attraction would be that you can tell a story presuming that there is a possibility of doing something very interesting. There is a characterization there of both the assassin and the person who is assassinated; it can be explored, it can be put in the context of many things– that is the attraction for me personally. I like to tell a story which is tensed and exciting at the same time.” In fact, Hollywood’s tryst with the subject of assassination had mostly derived the excitement out of the post mortem of the event than the event itself. Gabriel Range’s “Death of A President” examined the hypothetical assassination of George W. Bush and its aftermath in a documentary style.
Shakespeare may have invented the word in the 16th Century, but
it has served as a plot point since ages. Naturally, a subject like an assassination holds great sway over the cinematic medium, with some of the most memorable movies being made with one assassination or the other as a backdrop. An assassination holds intrigue, action, suspense and shenanigans in equal measure and is perfect fodder for a gripping script. And the conspiracy theories don’t hurt either. Look at “JFK”, Oliver Stone’s epic film starring Kevin Costner. The film which examined the JFK assassination through the perspective of a New Orleans District Attorney who discovers there’s more to the Kennedy assassination than the official story and had the tagline ‘The story that won’t go away’. The film, its editing style (it won an Oscar for best editing) puts it right up there on the top of classic movies that treated the subject of an assassination. Shedding light on filmmakers’ fascination for the subject, director Sudhir Mishra tells TSI, “It depends on what the assassination is. It is an event which has a past, which has a story, which can either be the beginning of something or the end of something. There is a dramatic convergence of people, a lot of it will be visual, and a lot of it will be non-verbal so a filmmaker can get interested in a visual way of telling stories. What attracts a filmmaker is an event in which you can say something without dialogues which offers great possibility for sound, for picture, it is an ideal cinematic event in all sorts of ways.” “JFK” fits the description perfectly. So does the Tom Cruise starrer “Valkyrie” which told the story of the plot to kill Adolf Hitler hatched (and then botched) by his own military officers led by the wily Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg.Sudhir Mishra feels that an assassination film, “can either be trivial, which most of them are, or it can lead to something more interesting.” He continues, “The attraction would be that you can tell a story presuming that there is a possibility of doing something very interesting. There is a characterization there of both the assassin and the person who is assassinated; it can be explored, it can be put in the context of many things– that is the attraction for me personally. I like to tell a story which is tensed and exciting at the same time.” In fact, Hollywood’s tryst with the subject of assassination had mostly derived the excitement out of the post mortem of the event than the event itself. Gabriel Range’s “Death of A President” examined the hypothetical assassination of George W. Bush and its aftermath in a documentary style.
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Rashmi Bansal Publisher Of JAMMAG Magazine Caught Red-Handed, for details click on the following links:-
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where the Prime Minister would receive petitioners. People would come to her with problems ranging from mistreatment of sacred cows to cases of police brutality. She picked up this direct contact concept from her father. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru used to meet the public at eight in the morning every weekday. There were no security checks during those days.
from Kerala was sad that the state had only 20 constituencies. As the results came out, he boarded himself up inside Delhi’s AKG Bhavan. Party committees blamed chief minister V.S. Achuthanandan’s remarks, his studied silence on controversial issues and the LDF’s relationship with Abdul Nasser Madani’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the loss of 16 seats. Now, the party faces yet another litmus test. The three Assembly seats, which fell vacant after the representatives got elected to the Lok Sabha, go to polls on November 7.
When the chips are down and you perform under pressure, you feel great. I used to love that type of feeling. I felt that I had done my bit for the team.
the world - be it its hyped space missions, interference in world diplomacy or booms or bursts in its economic activities. Even President Obama, recently, grabbing the Nobel peace prize surprised many while flabbergast the rest. Congratulations to him for his noble intentions and most importantly his ability to convince people across the border, though people are still waiting to see Obama and his administration working effectively other than making frivolous speeches. Moreover, the trend of healthcare ad spending in the US is going to shake rather shock the world. Surprisingly, Obama is giving more attention on how innovatively and effectively he can convince people to accept the plan rather how innovative and effective the plan actually is!
abilities and a better immune system will also contribute to make this specimen of the soldier truly dominant. And suspiciously similar to Wolverine, sans the claws. The fascination with the super soldier is not new; mythology is littered with the ultimate warrior’s tales from Achilles to Arjuna. And today’s convergence of technology – in the fields of nanotechnology, biology, chemistry and of course, computing – has resulted in the best chances armies have had in decades to go full speed ahead. Says Major Gen. Thapliyal, “I don't think we can ever come to a situation where people can be made immortal, but there definitely exists training of soldiers to better their reflexes, their skills, their destructive and safeguarding capabilities, which one might say is close to being a super soldier. These soldiers are trained to use high-end gadgets and perform super quick operations with high destruction chances.” 
in 1877 to end British dominance of the textile trade, he blazed a trail. Since then, the Tatas have continued the tradition with their own brand of ‘pragmatic aggression’. They have challenged the system time and again, yet they have coexisted with the system. The Tatas are a live example of how a business house can survive and thrive without compromisng on its core values. 
swadharan bhakti marg or thought, there are three things: gyan, karma and bhakti. But the bhakta has over time learnt that the way to nirvana cannot be through karma; bhakti is, in this case, the essential ingredient. The final stage of mukti, or liberation is nirvana.
pronounced (the finial for instance resembles a trident) that many have claimed it to be a Shiva temple. The most tragic myth surrounding the Taj is that the emperor chopped off the hands of the master craftsmen so that they could not replicate the designs elsewhere, while one of the most absurd ones is that Lord William Bentinck, governor general of India in the 1930s, planned to demolish the Taj and auction the marble in a fund raising drive. Historian Anshuman Dwivedi says the monument is designed to stun. “The ten-and-a-half feet doorway that leads to the Taj (A UNESCO World heritage site) is made of a mixture of eight elements and was originally covered in silver. It picked up wavering reflections of the monument. It has 1100 nails and each is covered with a silver coin.” The Taj’s main dome is 187 feet tall and is made of red sandstone from Fatehpur Sikri, jade and crystal from China, turquoise from Tibet and gems from Sri Lanka.
so timeless? Would Madhubala, Geeta Bali or Smita Patil have been the legends they are if they hadn’t died so young? When Meena Kumari died at 40, Pakeezah became a blockbuster. Wonder what its fate would have been had the tragedy queen lived!
spaceship Sputnik. Space experts have been warning for years that the number of satellites in planet orbits has been increasing at a dangerously high speed. This poses a major threat to other satellites – and yet no one paid heed to them until February 10. That was the day that two communications satellites – one Russian and the other American – disintegrated, spewing tonnes of space debris in the higher and lower orbits.
in Kochi have been found to contain poisonous substances like formalin, sodium bi carbonate and sodium carbonate. Seized samples have been dispatched to Central Food Laboratories, Bangalore for testing to find if there was any presence of Melamine — a synthetic chemical to increase protein content. The samples were collected following police tip-off that adulterated milk was being supplied in Kerala from neighbouring states. The FSC has alerted food safety commissioners of other states about the adulterated milk.
wouldn’t now get the last installment of funds under the Indiramma rural housing subsidy scheme. A 42-year-old committed suicide, doubting the utility of the Arogyasri card that entitles the poor to free healthcare in the void left by YSR. An old couple jumped to their death from a bridge because “elder brother YSR had given them old-age pensions.” Hyderabad-based consultant psychiatrist M Phani Prasant describes such acts of self annihilation as an “impulsive action, an escape from perceived trauma, the result of an inability to rationalise a loss.”
Ahmad. “As the mob came close to our house, he was left with his wife and sister,” recounts his uncle Zahir Siddiqui. With only one bullet left in his revolver, his wife asked him to shoot her lest she be raped by the mob. “I am your wife, I have first right on that bullet,” his wife pleaded. His sister’s entreaties were the same. The next day, Zahir found their bodies. The empty revolver lay by Masoom’s side. Zahir stops the tale here and offers me the last piece of Bihari kebab. Who did Masoom shoot? The truth will go to the grave with Zahir. The kebab tasted awful.
erupted in an orgy of communal violence following the brutal murder of Swami Laxmananda Saraswati and four disciples on August 23, 2008. But the scars are still deep. Ask Sanatan Bagh Singh, a resident of Tikabali town, one of the worst-affected areas of the district.
standard school education from the next year onwards has been welcomed. Initially the new education policy to have a single-board system will be implemented in the academic year (2010-11) for I and VI classes and in 2011-12 it will be expanded to other standards.
is also a history of exciting, adventurous and celebrated love affairs. Dead right. And for excellent reasons. The very nature of film making provides the mood and milieu for two people thrown together, for continuous amorous encounters between them. Far off Switzerland or neighbouring Goa, their close and constant physical contact with each other often begins to lead on (and off the sets) to the romantic intimacies of the screenplay. Then again, they have an exclusive, subliminal and indefinable psychological bond. Idolised and damned, in equal measures, these larger-than-life creatures fall upon each other for fulfillment, leading them to believe (with some truth) that only one star can truly understand, relate and love another. But how does love surface in the first place? And what does this divine madness do to screen lovers? Does it actually help them emote better?
Gujarat assembly elections. For Narendra Modi, it was a crucial poll. He had campaigned rigorously for all the 182 assembly seats except Maninagar constituency from where he himself was contesting. Against him, the Congress had pitched the then Minister of State for Petroleum Dinsha Patel, a leader with a liberal image and strong support from the economically powerful Patidar community. But Modi was confident of victory; and not for wrong reasons as both destiny and his progress report favoured him. Dinsha faced a severe setback and Modi, singlehandedly, captured 117 seats in the Assembly elections.
defaulted on a paltry sum of money, and repaid the sum later. However, you still can’t be sure that this will be reported in CIBIL database. It might still show you a 'defaulter'.
