Dwindling membership, no funds, punishing rentals. The woes of film societies are all too familiar by now.

The film fan frat

Business Standard

The great director Yasujiro Ozu was often described as the &ldquo;most Japanese&rdquo; of the major filmmakers from his country. This was a way of saying that Ozu&rsquo;s quiet stories about family life were too provincial and unfashionable for Western audiences &mdash;especially when set beside the kinetic action films of Akira Kurosawa, who gained an enormous international following in the 1950s. But it wasn&rsquo;t just the content of Ozu&rsquo;s movies that was understated. His shooting style was frugal, almost as if he were a Buddhist monk denying himself the more lavish pleasures of life (in this case, refusing to use the many tools at a filmmaker&rsquo;s disposal). His camera rarely moved; it stayed in a static position, coolly recording the movements and conversations of people.

Eclipsed by Kurosawa

Growing up in Delhi, one phrase pretty much summed up our fatalistic way of life. Everything was koi baat nahin, a philosophy that basically says, life is a mess, but bash on regardless.

I'm ok, you're ok, it's ok

Our Bollywood superstars seem to be assured of our unwavering, uncritical devotion.

Do we get the celebrities we deserve?

William Congreve&rsquo;s The Mourning Bride was published in 1697. Act 3, Scene 8 of the play has the lines, &ldquo;Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned&rdquo;. Three hundred and thirteen years later, the lesson is still being driven home, this time in the cricket&rsquo;s latest match-fixing scandal involving Pakistan&rsquo;s two Ms &mdash; Asif and Aamer &mdash; two of the best young bowlers in the world, and captain Salman Butt.

Is it all about money?

Hank Paulson headed Goldman Sachs and the US Department of the Treasury. His book gives a flawed but copiously detailed view of the financial crisis from both perspectives.

View from crisis central

For a man who spent 40 years&rsquo; worth of working days seated at desk K.1 in the Reading Room of the British Museum in London &mdash; the room that once harboured Marx and Lenin &mdash; Eric Partridge was unusually alive and kicking.

Lone ranger

The action last week included wo rapids and a blitz. Carlsen beat Anand in the Arctic Securities Finals in Kristiansund, Norway. Anand's reputation as the best rapid-blitz player around is now under threat if one goes by this result.

Chess (#638)

They&rsquo;re not quite fashion accessories in India. But Gargi Gupta went umbrella hunting and found a few jazzy ones &mdash; from a classic Burberry to a quirky number from Kolkata, with a fan attached.

Brolly good fellows

Time was when the only wines anyone knew about were from France: like Scotch for whisky, French wines practically defined the category, and all the rest was considered &lsquo;plonk&rsquo;.

French, cheap and still good

The first element of your garden plan should be trees. After that come bushes and shrubs, which provide focus as well as colour, style and depth.

Picture perfect

It is hard to imagine Ashish Hemrajani, the boyish looking 35-year old founder-CEO of online entertainment ticketing site Bookmyshow, as a tough nut. But he must be one. After all, he&rsquo;s survived two recessions in the 11 years he has been in business &mdash; the dotcom bust of 2000 and last years&rsquo; global financial crisis. Today, bookMyShow is India&rsquo;s premiere online ticketing site, having sold movie tickets worth Rs 6.21 crore for Avatar and Rs 9 crore for 3 idiots early this year.

The queue buster

With the proliferation of e-readers and development of e-ink technologies, there are those who have already begun to put chisel to headstone of traditional reading. On the other hand, technology is making access to books easier, such as in the form of online libraries that let readers browse and reserve books online, which are then delivered home.

Online libraries: 'E' for convenience

The Indian Red Cross gets a wholesome new space for its blood bank in New Delhi.

Fresh blood

When it comes to Pakistan, it wouldn&rsquo;t be correct to claim that I&rsquo;m entirely a dove. This is not because I&rsquo;m so on top of affairs in that country that I can rattle off good reasons for this wariness &mdash; I barely know what&rsquo;s going on in my own head, let alone theirs &mdash; but because I have, through a combination of scanning the headlines and osmosis, developed the general impression that one should trust, but verify. Which is another way of saying that on no account should one believe a word spoken by those double-crossing so-and-sos.

Things fall apart

Future financial crises could accelerate the rebalancing of global economic activity from developed to emerging markets.

Globalisation's critical imbalances

United Technologies wants its three businesses in India &mdash; Carrier, Otis and UTC Fire &amp; Security &mdash; to work in tandem.

United we stand

In the last few months, the challenge to Nestle&rsquo;s Maggi has come from various quarters. The fiercest however has come from two key rivals &mdash; Hindustan Unilever (HUL) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Consumer. Their brands: Knorr and Foodles, respectively.

Spicing up the two-minute market

The Amul girl seems to have slowed down. The aggressive retail expansion drive launched by the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), which owns and markets the Amul and Sagar brand of milk and milk products, has lost momentum.

Utterly butterly slowly

Today the thick, definite line that exists between brands and commodities is getting blurred. The middle class invasion brought together by the two most emerging economies of the world, China and India, has forced the world to provide the best products at a cheap price. This has led to a proliferating warfare based on discounts, literally eroding the margins in the process.

Why consumers look, feel and pay more?

Mobile makers now provide &lsquo;push email&rsquo; services on cheaper handsets.

Push your inbox on to your cells

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