Many years ago, actor Matt Damon ‘dumped’ (yes, that is the word that was bandied around) Minnie Driver, his co-star in Good Will Hunting and then girlfriend, on The Oprah Winfrey Show and even though those were relatively innocent times (and private relationships were not managed or mismanaged in full public view to the extent […]
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Author: Reema Moudgil
We Can’t Let Aarushi Talwar Rest In Peace
We cannot let go of her. Of her parents. Or their tragedy. Or the speculations about what could have happened on the night of 15-16 May, 2008 in an upper-middle class Noida home. And so (they changed the ‘w’ in the title to ‘v,’ just in case) a film about her death will hit the […]
The Anatomy Of Porn
Recently, when the story of a child abuse scandal in Pakistan was broken, 400 video recordings of more than 280 children being forced to have sex, were discovered. Just another form of porn, that is also distributed and consumed. In 2013, according to reports, the Shakti Mills rapists made the survivor watch clippings of […]
The Year Of Sheroes
Rebecca Ferguson in a gold gown, climbing towards a precarious vantage point so that she can disrupt an opera with a stray bullet. Yes, the camera lingers on those sculpted legs, the sinewy shoulders but it is to drive home the fact that this woman is liquid steel. When someone calls Tom Cruise the manifestation […]
Manjhi Becomes A Cinematic Ploy
He is Farhad, cutting through a taciturn mountain with clenched tenacity. And Forrest Gump fuelled by an impossible to bear grief, traversing long distances like a messiah and being followed by agenda seekers. Or Gandhi who will be the change he wants to see in the world. And Aron Ralston, trapped between a rock and […]
The Metro Man Is Still A Tireless Idealist
How do you sum up a success story that goes beyond individual achievement? How do you sum up Elattuvalapil Sreedharan in a few stock phrases like the Metro Man and the Karmyogi? The fact that he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 2008 and the Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur in 2005 and named […]
When A MasterChef Served Wisdom
George Calombaris is a diminutive man but you would never know it. He is someone who could always see the big picture and the story goes that when he was an apprentice, he used to work with a really tall chef. But George would be too busy running the ship to notice that. He […]
Vicky Kaushal: A Staggering Debut
During one of the many special screenings of Masaan in Mumbai, Shabana Azmi came up to Vicky Kaushal and said incredulously, “Tum kaun ho? Kya kaam kiya hai tumne! (Who are you? What an amazing job!) Come, you must meet Javed saab!’’ Javed Akhtar who was coming out of the theatre just at that […]
Jon Stewart: The Long Goodbye
Jon Stewart was television gold. His beautiful, sardonic face dominated America’s political opinion-scape with a raised eyebrow and a barely perceptible twitch for 16 years on The Daily Show. The show was ironically aired on Comedy Central, a channel one would not expect searing political satire from but Stewart was nothing if not an astute […]
The Lasting Affair With Cookbooks
When I took leave of Patiala and my first job as an LKG teacher, I was given two Tarla Dalal books by my colleagues to accompany me to my new life in Bengaluru. This was in 1994 and Ms Dalal was possibly the only known name in the Indian publishing industry. The recipe booklet that […]
‘I Will Never Ignore The Voice Within’
The imperishable memories Shweta Tripathi gathered while playing a small-town girl in Neeraj Ghaywan’s Masaan include the night when she sobbed over the end of a beautiful story. She recalls, “I cried not for what was happening to my character but for what was happening to her story with Deepak. I just lay, looking up […]
Drishyam’s Only True Note Is Its Story
For some reason Drishyam reminded me of RGV’s Bhoot where Ajay Devgn spent a good amount of screen time going up and down elevators. And looking scared, thoughtful or protective when he was in his house. He does a lot of bike riding in this film, and jeep driving and bus commuting and frowning […]