Movies to See Before You Die

I’m a buff. What’s that again? A movie buff, silly. You tell people you really, really like watching films, and that’s what they say — that they’re buffs, too. And then they’ll proceed to tell you, in excruciating detail, about all the movies they’ve loved. And hated. And then they will ask you: so, what are your fave films?

I’m always at a bit of a loss on how to answer that one. I start making lists in my head, and then stop: there are just too many. And there are a zillion that I am dying to catch — that wish-list keeps growing with each passing day.

Now, my small screen is about to turn biiiiig. The folks at UTV World Movies have just hit on this really smart idea, and they’re calling it 50 Movies to See before You Die. They’ve invited some of the best filmmakers in India to come up with their top choices, which will unspool Friday nights, right around the year, at the late hour, when pesky kids-pestering spouses-besotted boy friends-gabby roommates, have knocked off for the night.

It began last Friday, with M Night Shyamalan (well, he may live in Philly, but he is and always will be one of ours!), gave his top spot to Zhang Yimou’s magnificently shot, sumptuously mounted ‘Hero’. Tomorrow is Ji-woon Kim’s Korean chiller ‘A Tale Of Two Sisters’ : it left even the ‘The Sixth Sense’ spookmeister scared. I suggest you have someone to clutch on to!

Up next is Mahesh Bhatt with Truffaut’s ‘Jules Et Jim’, and Chaplin’s ‘The Great Dictator’. The much younger enfant terrible of Hindi cinema, Anurag Kashyap, is serving up Truffaut’s (again!) ‘400 Blows’, and the much less known, but equally riveting ‘13 Tzameti’ by Gela Babluani. World-class movies all.

Got me a sizzling date tomorrow night. Just me and my TV screen.

50 Movies To See Before You Die, UTV World Movies, Fridays, 11 pm. Log on to http://www.utvworldmovies.com for more details.