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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While channel surfing a few days back, I saw Mika Singh punning upon Diana Penty’s surname and adding to good effect, “And Mika Kaccha!” I guarantee that you will not hear anyone in the film fraternity rising up in instinctive disgust over this comment just as most of them kept quiet when Salman Khan rose […]
Naseeruddin Shah is a national treasure but he never set out to be one. His ambitions differ from most actors who come into the industry fuelled by nepotism on steroids. When we talk about outsiders making it big on their own terms in Hindi cinema, let us please start the conversation with the likes of […]
I caught a glimpse of a serial on television the other day. This was the scene – a blind wife throws herself at the husband’s feet begging to be allowed to stay with him. Her disability is seen as a major hindrance that prevents her from doing her wifely duties and chores. Well-wishers urge the […]
Garv: Pride and Honour was a movie Salman Khan starred in 2004. The film was about how the righteous brother and upright cop played by Salman avenges the rape of his sister. We will get to the irony of that theme later but this film directed by Puneet Issar was insufferable, tacky and turned rape into, like […]
One of the reasons given to explain the bleeding cuts inflicted on Abhishek Chaubey’s Udta Punjab is that Shahid Kapoor’s Tommy ‘Gabru’ Singh swears when drugged and even when sober! The problem with the film however is not profanity or vulgarity. In any case, the current head of the Central Board of Film Certification of India, Pahlaj Nihalani’s […]
There is a scene in Dulal Guha’s 1976 film Do Anjaane where a nameless mohalla toughie makes an appearance for a few fleeting seconds. That was Mithun Chakraborty. The same Mithun Chakraborty who would go on to win a National Award the same year for his debut in Mrinal Sen’s Mrigayaa. The same who would […]
Dia Mirza is all set to chill her fans in India’s first Horror Web Series, Shockers. After starring in the country’s first Indo-Iranian project, Salaam Mumbai and tapping a whole new segment of television audience with her solo travelling series, Ganga-The Soul of India, the actor is now all set to take the web by storm. Dia […]
Right at the onset, let me make it clear that I had a lot of issues with Kankar, the narrative about domestic violence that is about to conclude on Zee Zindagi. All the women in the serial with the exception of Kiran (Sanam Baloch), spend their lives sharpening invisible knives, wishing each other ill, pretending […]
It was a moment of vindication though she was not looking for one when Kalki Koechlin walked across the stage in Rashtrapati Bhavan to accept a well-earned honour for her role in Margarita with a Straw. This was a film that normalised and mainstreamed a cerebral palsy patient as a full-bodied, ferociously intelligent protagonist. The […]
“The time has come for confessing, how we to each other are bound. to wage battle of ideas outside the mosquito net and bear bare-faced shame of each other’s regret” -Pash A week ahead of Labour Day, the city of Bangalore witnessed the naked rage of thousands of garment workers out on its streets. The […]
Well, Kapil Sharma is back and going by the roar of approval, laughter and cheers packed in a Delhi stadium, a large number of folks really did miss him. And if you thought, in this second coming, he would have evolved into a more..well..refined version of himself, don’t hold your breath. He is still referring […]
Prince frightened the hell out of me when I first discovered him as a teenager. His compelling androgyny baffled me. His charisma seemed almost reptilian. It drew you in its silky coils and never let go. It was dangerous. Erotic. His breathy voice leaving little shivers in its wake. And because this Prince inhabited a universe that […]