Udoli vcel(Valley of bees,1967 )

Language:Czech
Director:Frantisek Vlasil
Cast: Petr Cepek, Jan Kacer, Vera Galatikova,Zdebek Kryzanek
The movie, set in the medieval times,is about a certain Ondrej/Andrew who has been, when a kid, sent to an order of faith "up the north".The order members , apart from addressing each other as brother and indulging in the "great fasts" and other self-depraving acts, take great pride in keeping their order intact and punishing the "weak and infidel" who try to escape.
Andrew escapes and goes back to his house and a "brother" from the order - Armin, comes after him, vowing to bring him back to the order. How Andrew behaves after being relieved of the stringent rules of knighthood and whether Armin succeeds in his mission or not form the rest of the story.
There's an ample dose of meta-physical and poetic symbolism , much of which went way over my head ( When he's a kid, his dad marries a girl who's barely older than him. Andrew gives her a basket full of flowers as a gift. And she finds that there are bats(!?!?!) hidden among the flowers.Dunno WTF it's supposed to mean. Whats with all the bees anyway? Was it supposed to be an analogy of human life? But yeah, the shots related to the bees were AWESOME. ) But, inspite of all my ignorance of this hifi stuff, I found it a very a gripping drama aided with some wonderful performances. And there's some lovely western classical music in the background. Especially the heavenly piece on a flute-like instrument is absolutely ammmazing!!
Movie is in black and white ( ofcourse) , and the cinematography is cool. But at times the camera work resembles that of a hand-held mini DV (in the amount of shake). The print was also very poor.
One of the highlights of the movie is a deer-hunting scene. Am willing to bet that real deer and dogs have been used to film the sequence. (NFAI guys should thank God that Maneka Gandhi and her ilk do not watch Czech movies).

Interesting movie.Definitely worth a watch if you are even remotely interested in the crusaders and/or religion-vs-pleasure themes.

Anantayatra (1985)

Director: Jayoo Patwardhan,Nachiket Patwardhan
Language:Hindi
Cast: Sudhir Joshi,Rohini Hattangadi,Naseeruddin Shah,Anuradha Patel

The movie is about a certain Anant Godbole ( Sudhir Joshi, a very famous Marathi theatre personality) who is going through mid-life crisis. He finds himself entrapped in the ratrace - finds his job as a manager at a manufacturing company very unrewarding, loses connection with his wife ( Rohini) and is troubled with the widening gap between him and his children.
He keeps grappling with medical tests and doctors in a vain hope of finding some medicine that will put an end to all his problems. One day, out of blue, he gets a call from a mysetrious Mr Jaduwala , Naseeruddin Shah speaking in wonderful Gujarati accent, offering a solution for all his troubles. Although he is sceptic about it all and dismisses the call as a hoax, Anant Godbole finds himself at the Jaduwala residence at the appointed time.
What follows is a hilarious but immensely thought provoking ride right on the Line of control between reality and imagination.
Sudhir Joshi gave a GREAT performance. So did Rohini Hattangadi. I wonder why we could not see much of this immensely talented lady. Anuradha Patel has an interesting role as Shakuntala. And needless to say, Naseeruddin Shah gives yet another BRILLIANT performance. Right from his voice, accent, make-up and posture to his expressions while spouting his philosophy, he totally is in command.
Music by Hridayanath mangeshkar is not bad. Cinematography , especially in the sections related to Anuradha Patel is lovely.
In all, a good comedy with some great performances.
8/10