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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*This piece was written on March 3 The shift towards a more lucrative ideological stand began with Baby for Akshay Kumar. Or perhaps the seeds of opportunism were always there. After all, here is a hero who went from a rebellious lover boy in his debut film Saugandh to a super human khiladi to an […]
The rehabilitation of those tainted by the #MeToo movement has begun in the Hindi film industry. On June 1, just before the release of Super 30’s first trailer, director Vikas Bahl, accused of sexual harassment by a former employee of the now defunct Phantom Films, was given a clean chit by an “internal committee.” The said committee […]
That viral video of Kangana Ranaut on a dummy horse without legs , issuing a blood curdling cry is emblematic of the kind of fake nationalism we are being asked to adhere to these days. It allows the lady in question to diss anyone she dislikes from Alia Bhatt to Shabana Azmi without watching her […]
In a world where reductionist phrases simplify trends in unintelligent words, it is the season of supposedly “woke” men turning out to be predators. Case in point being Vikas Bahl, the man who directed Queen and also a few other successful men who were supposed to behave better than louts hanging around dark street corners, […]
The idea of entitlement is not new to the Indian film industry. Nor is the hegemony fuelled by privileged stars and their coteries. So it took someone of Nawazuddin Siddqui’s talent, 15 years to land his first solo lead in Manjhi (though he played a pivotal part in Gangs of Wasseypur) but all it took […]
Ironical that for a film that tars Pakistan as the enemy behind every potential danger stalking India, Neeraj Pandey’s Baby has two popular Pakistani actors in key roles. Heartthrob Mikaal Zulfikaar as a young facilitator helping Indian agents and seasoned actor Rasheed Naz as Maulana Mohammed Rehman,the dreaded “mother lode’ of terrorism. While watching the film, one […]
There is a lot of walking in Neeraj Pandey’s Special 26. Everyone walks. While conducting conversations. On their way to and from heists. Sometimes in slow motion to the music of an era that instantly brings back the memories of the 80s. Right from the opening credits and yes, the background track, this film pays […]