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Bhalobasar Juddha, a full length Bangla feature film, presents two passionate love stories with emotion (and some lose motion?).
   As the theme moves forward, Akash, the only child of an industrialist (he believed in family planning) falls in love with Bijli who is employed in a junior position at a private company. The protagonist sketches her face on canvas and falls head over heels in love with her that he is always talks to himself (what is he saying?). Though Cupid blesses the young couple, Akash’s father becomes the villain and wants to separate them from each other. After all how can a son from the exalted ‘Chowdhury’ family marry a lowly woman? Na na e hotey parey na!
   The world seems to be against them and the lovers face obstacles and hazards of hardship, financial problems, physical illness, racial and social prejudices and psychological stress.
   As both Akash and Bijli are determined to tie the knot, Akash leaves his parents to make his dream come true. On the way to his beloved’s house, he meets with an accident which leaves him paralysed.
   The story dramatically changes when Bijli moves to Chittagong with bag and baggage and there she meets Agun, a renowned business man (now we are talking!). As time goes by, both take the decision to tie the knot (hey baby, money talks, nay it ties)
   But they do not live happily ever after because the producer has to fill up three hours of the viewers’ money’s worth; tension and stress of day-to-day life, infidelity and incompatibility problems enter the plot.
   The film then takes the viewers abroad where Agun meets Akash at a hotel; they become the best of friends (in such a short time?) and disclose their respective love stories (maybe after three pegs of whiskey on the rocks!) when both of them decide to return to their homeland.
   As the finale draws near, Akash appears before Bijli in Chittagong and expresses his profound feeling for her (hey buddy what happened to trust and friendship in the first place?) but Bijli refuses him as she has decided to marry Agun.
   One question though, Chittagong, is far away from the capital but how did the director make it possible to present locations in two cities in the same shot? Arey, this is Bangla film; dum maro, script likho, jay baba Bholanath bolo.
   Different roles are played by Ferdous, Shabnur, Bappa Raj and others.

Ray is perhaps best remembered for his films that make revolutionary usage of the position of the camera or for storylines that either reflect on the duplicity of our society or the problems afflicting our existence; but how many want to look at Ray as the man perpetually in love with suspense?
   In most cases, while trying to decipher the man who has tried to make cinemas different from the commercial genre we forget that Ray, apart from being a social observer was also a person who frequently got lost in a world of fantasy. But many of his films deny that vehemently.
   In Gonoshotru, we see a man with principles being shunned and demonised by society because he puts logic above prejudice – obviously a practice that we encounter quite often, in Aguntuk, we are faced with the nuclear family of the 20th century – sophisticated, enlightened yet, driven by monetary impulses and in Nayak, we face the superhero with glamour and glitz all around him failing as a man and dying inside because he is alone in the real world.
   So, how do we reconcile a man who has presented so much reality with the image of one madly obsessed with the unexplained and the unseen? In fact, reality and fantasy do not go together, but, Ray is the exception. As the world remembers this icon, let us look at Satyajit the man who loved to be thrilled.
   To trace the other side of Ray, we must touch three of his characters, Professor Shanku, Feluda and the eternally lonely man who has been featured in many of his stories and films.
   Shanku adventures have not been made into films but Ray did roll the camera for Feluda and other stories of suspense and Feluda is the unmarried man who lives by solving cases and in choosing to do so he is the Bengali guy who to a great extent is westernised. But then, Feluda is also the western style detective with a heart that is purely Bengali.
   In the films Jai Baba Felunath and Sonar Kella we see him in a kurta and sandals – very much a Bengali babu. But, what is it in Feluda that attracts us so much and stands him out among others? Well, in a way, Feluda is perhaps Ray wanted to be – a man free from the mundane responsibilities of society, living in books and solving mind-boggling crime cases.
   As we see the films and read the books, we find how much Ray loved the character of Feluda. In fact, the Feluda films became reality only because of Ray’s love for the genre of thrill and suspense. In presenting this character he has tried to fantasise of a Bengali man different from the conventional role of a person who works from nine to five, comes back home and retires into trivial pursuits like gossiping and back biting.
   Then there is Ray’s another obsession – the life of the lonely man. In many of his stories the character is a person from the middle class but who is free from the grinding burdens synonymous to the class.
   We get a man who leads a common life but every now and then goes out to travel and ends up encountering an uncanny adventure. Here again, we come closer to Ray’s inner fantasy to leave the stereotyped life and seek out thrill.
   When Ray was alive he was asked why he didn’t make these into films and he replied, not without sadness that there would be very few people willing to invest in such projects.
   It would not be incorrect to say that Ray often embellished Feluda with many of his personal traits (smoking Charminar, travelling and reading) and thus we can safely say that in Feluda the other side of Ray is alive. After Ray’s death his son took up the job of presenting Feluda serials on TV and he has done a grand job of it too.
   The stories of the lonely man caught in adventure are being filmed and if we want to remember Ray then we must not ignore these; after all without understanding the child in Ray and his infatuation with suspense, one will never get to know the man, the film-maker and the story-teller.
   Those who will cover all aspects of Ray are the ones who will realise that he was a Bengali who wanted to carve out a more colourful role for us.

May 5: Black, (drama), 135 minutes, India, 2004, 3:30pm, Duer, (thriller), 90 minutes, USA, 1971 6:30pm
   May 6: Room at the top, (drama), 117 minutes, UK, 1958 3:30pm, Hotel Rwanda, (thriller), South Africa, 2004 6:30pm
   May 7: Ocean’s 11, (action), 115 minutes, USA, 2000 6:30pm,
   May 8: Underground, (thriller), 160 minutes, Germany, 1995 6:30pm
   May 9: Black, India, 2004 6:30pm,
   May 10: Madame Bovary, 205 minutes, France, 2002 6:30pm
   May 11: We’re No Angels, (comedy), 106 minutes, USA, 1989, 6:30pm, Things to do in Denver When You’re Dead, (action), 115 minutes, USA, 1995, 8:30pm,

The fastest legs and hps are back to make sure the streets of America are safe. This time, Lee Chan) and Carter (Tucker) are vacationing in Hong Kong when a bomb explodes in the American Embassy. killing two secret agents on the trail of a ring of smugglers. This time they are up against powerful and inscrutable crime lord Ricky Tan (Lone, The Hunted) and his deadly right-hand woman (Zhang) While Lde dishes out the kicks and antics hard and fast, Carter is content motor-mouthing the bad guys to death. Rush Hour 2 is a zesty salad bowl of don't-blink fisticuffs and jabber-jaw lines. It's the fastesttalking, fastest-brawling movie sequel yet!
   HBO
   9:30pm
   Starring
   Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker, Ziyi Zhang, John Lone