‘Mere Paas Maa Hai!’ Rupa 2016, pp 196, Hardcover, Rs. 395 It was around 10 on a lazy Sunday morning, the year, 1970 or so. I was standing at my fourth floor Dhobhi Talao balcony, exactly opposite the Anjuman Fire Temple. My eyes strayed to a posh gleaming car as it pulled up outside the […]
Not every film acknowledges the Chief Minister of the state. The small rustic town of Baliya in Uttar Pradesh, is the setting for the lives of four youth of the locality, to intersect. Suraj (Karan Mahavar) has developed a fixation for the sassy Jyoti (Aradhana Jagota); Kadambri (Aditya Kumar) is in the family business of […]
Based on the 2013 Muzzafarnagar riots, the film is upon us finally. Reportedly banned in parts of UP, Shorgul is the story of a Hindu boy Raghu in love with a Muslim girl Zainab (debutante Suha Gezen), who breaks into a toothy smile whenever the camera is focused on her. For good measure, we have […]
Screened at various film festivals around the globe and having won its fair share of encomiums, ‘Fireflies in the Abyss’ is a reflective documentary with shades of grey. It explores the lives of those in Jaintia Hills of Northeast India, whose sole means of subsistence is quarrying from the coal mines. Having worked for Nat […]
With the historical background of Congo in the opening credits, Tarzan revisits his place of birth where he was raised by apes, but this time with his wife Jane Porter (Margot Robbie). Accompanied by US representative George Washington Williams (Samuel L. Jackson in an insipid role), Tarzan reaches the African shores to set matters right […]
Cast: Avinash Dhyani, Tulna Butalia, Prashant Narayanan Films such as Fredrick should be included in every Film study and appreciation course – to show how a film ought not to be made. It’s touted as ‘a thrilling musical journey’; if the sole criterion of ‘musical’ is the sheer number of songs in a film, it […]
Voice: Red-Jason Sudeikis, Chuck-Josh Gad, Bomb- Danny McBride, Matilda- Maya Rudolph, Leonard- Bill Hader, Mighty Eagle- Peter Winklage Even birds of disparate feathers flock together – that, probably, is the only message sent out in this app-inspired animated film by the two debutant directors. Red, who’s supposed to be a bird with a questionable temperament, […]
With ‘Veerappan’, Ram Gopal Varma seems to be back in business after a series of duds. Voltaire’s ‘a society gets the criminal it deserves’ is artfully woven into the film’s introduction even as RGV opens the film of a juvenile delinquent settling down to an avowed life of crime, chronicling 40 years of evils of […]
Shorn of the usual trappings of Hindi cinema – tear–jerker dialogues and outlandish performances – ‘Waiting’ (largely in English), alluding to the time spent in waiting-rooms of hospitals and the periods consumed waiting for the recovery of your loved ones, has a refreshingly rational take on the above. Shiv Kumar (Naseeruddin Shah) is a retired […]
The title may sound vague, if not misleading. It alludes to the conformist book-learning system of education in India as opposed to the knowledge gleaned in the developed countries by imparting practical learning. Santoshi Kumari (Tannishtha Chatterjee), whose motto is ‘one should celebrate failure too’, is happily married to an income-tax official i.e. till he […]
Biopics are a gateway to revisiting your childhood heroes. Ramchandra Chitalkar (C. Ramchandra the music director) was Bhagwan (Dada) Abhaji Palav’s alter ego. The two sons of the Maharashtrian soil combined harmoniously to give the Hindi film industry, in 1951, arguably its greatest musical sleeper hit. Ekk Albela opens in 1930 before the diminutive actor […]