In 1979, Basu Chatterjee made Baaton Baaton Mein and unobtrusively brought to us the dating and courtship rituals of a community that was till then either caricatured or just overlooked in Hindi cinema. Nancy Perreira and Tony Braganza…
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Matriarchal manipulation in a patriarchal world is depicted unsparingly in Usha Priyamwada’s Pachpan Khambe Laal Deewarein (Now playing on Prasar Bharti). The mother resentful of her lecturer daughter’s comfortable life in her college residence because the younger daughters…
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“Start with hope..always start with hope. We went from being a shitty team to become one of the biggest dynasties in the sport and all it needed was one match to light this fire,” says Michael Jordan at…
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In 1947, my grandparents brought three children and the remains of an uprooted life from Pakistan to India in a train. One of those children was my mother. I grew up hearing a lot of stories about the…
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Three documentaries streaming right now show the ultimate culmination of the Bois Locker Room culture. And what happens when one gender is taught to mistrust its instincts of self-preservation and the other does not even learn something as…
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In Sudip Sharma’s Paatal Lok (Now streaming on Amazon. Co written by Sharma, Sagar Haveli, Hardik Mehta and Gunjit Chopra. Directed by Avinash Arun and Prosit Roy), India’s disowned inhabit the headlines we turn away from. A young…
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In 1979, Basu Chatterjee made Baaton Baaton Mein and unobtrusively brought to us the dating and courtship rituals of a community that was till then either caricatured or just overlooked in Hindi cinema. Nancy Perreira and Tony Braganza were regular young people, seeking love and financial independence in a busy metro. They fleetingly locked eyes […]
Matriarchal manipulation in a patriarchal world is depicted unsparingly in Usha Priyamwada’s Pachpan Khambe Laal Deewarein (Now playing on Prasar Bharti). The mother resentful of her lecturer daughter’s comfortable life in her college residence because the younger daughters are still unmarried. The mother also preying on the male interest in her life to figure if […]
“Start with hope..always start with hope. We went from being a shitty team to become one of the biggest dynasties in the sport and all it needed was one match to light this fire,” says Michael Jordan at the end of the ten part series The Last Dance, co-produced by ESPN Films and Netflix. Directed […]
Three documentaries streaming right now show the ultimate culmination of the Bois Locker Room culture. And what happens when one gender is taught to mistrust its instincts of self-preservation and the other does not even learn something as basic is impulse control. At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal (Hotstar) is a […]
In Sudip Sharma’s Paatal Lok (Now streaming on Amazon. Co written by Sharma, Sagar Haveli, Hardik Mehta and Gunjit Chopra. Directed by Avinash Arun and Prosit Roy), India’s disowned inhabit the headlines we turn away from. A young boy travelling in a train, lynched over ‘suspicious’ looking meat chunks in his lunch box. A lower […]
How empowering that the final scene of Greta Gerwig’s Little Women (Now showing on Amazon Prime) does not end under a rain drenched umbrella with a romantic proposal but a close up of Jo March’s ( a perfectly cast Saoirse Ronan ) face as she watches her book being printed and brought to life for […]
Aah, the Utopian politics of Madam Secretary. No mention so far (I am on Season 3) of white lone wolves with “mental health” issues shooting down people, no pro Nazi rallies, no racism, no out of control police officers shooting black kids (one mention in passing) or the debate about reproductive rights of women, the […]
So Ajay Devgan will now be shaving his head to play Chanakya. And the original Chanakya, Dr. Chandraprakash Dwivedi recently said that when he first pitched the show to DD sometime in the mid-1980s, it was rejected. He also was at pains to add that this baffled him as historical shows like Tipu Sultan were […]
Looking for life affirming movies to watch? Here are a few. Ali (On Netflix), directed by Michael Mann is long and meandering but it has important things to say about race, power and how one man with the intention to not comply can challenge the majoritarian narrative about patriotism. Especially when the notion of patriotism […]
When an actor who built his career playing the poster boy of anti-establishment resistance tweets fake news about how “bacterial energies” during amavas can be dissipated by clapping and shankh naad, you realise once again that opportunistic artists always sell what is in demand. They know the season of discontent and dissent is over and […]
Ghayal was the mainstream version of protest cinema in 1990. This was a time when we looked not at each other to find fault but at flawed governance. A time when it was heroic to stand up to authority and brutal policing, to the nexus between judiciary, police, politics and big money, to fight for […]
Ruchi Narayan’s Guilty, (now streaming on Netflix) is more or less, a 119 minute summation of the core premise of 13 Reasons Why. With a few exceptions made for the post Me Too furore in the Indian context. This is a quick and accurate articulation of rape culture where the final act is just […]