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Readers Write In #215: A fan’s unusual lament
(by G Waugh) When I saw Rahul Dravid for the first time, it was in a match held at Sharjah probably in 1998. My first impression was that he had a ‘compact’ name – the name did not end with a consonant as most Indian names do (was a ‘compact’ name according to a 13-year […]
Posted in: Readers Write In, Sports
Readers Write In #214: The haunting ‘Under the Shadow’ explores the female psyche in a war-torn Iran
July 2, 2020
(by Vivaciously Yours) I watched Bulbbul recently and that took me back to my experience with Under the Shadow directed by Babak Anvari. Set in the 1980’s in post-Revolution Tehran, the movie follows a mother Shideh, who is left alone to care for her daughter amidst the constant threats of bombings from Iraq. For the […]
Interview: Aditi Rao Hydari (Parts 1 and 2)
July 1, 2020
For more, subscribe to FILM COMPANION SOUTH: http://bit.ly/2xoNult Copyright ©2020 Film Companion.
Kappela on Netflix, with Anna Ben, Roshan Mathew and Sreenath Bhasi: A SPOILER-filled rewind of this tale filled with twists
June 30, 2020
With these actors, the film is certainly watchable. But looking back, I felt cheated at the end, by the very obvious attempts at misdirection. Spoilers ahead… Kappela begins with a misdial and proceeds on misdirection. The former is initiated by Jessy (Anna Ben), a simple girl-next-door in your standard village-next-door in the Wayanad area. Her […]
Posted in: Cinema: Malayalam, Television / Online
Chat Masala #3: Will the star system be replaced? (Taapsee / Parvathy)
June 29, 2020
On this episode of FC Chat Masala, Anupama Chopra and Baradwaj Rangan are joined by Taapsee and Parvathy, who talk about how OTT will affect the star system and how it could enable more female-oriented content. For more, subscribe to FILM COMPANION SOUTH: http://bit.ly/2xoNult Copyright ©2020 Film Companion.
Interview: Rana Daggubati / Ravikanth Perepu (New-gen Telugu Cinema)
June 27, 2020
For more, subscribe to FILM COMPANION SOUTH: http://bit.ly/2xoNult Copyright ©2020 Film Companion.
Posted in: Cinema: Telugu, Interview
The ravishing poetry of Wong Kar-wai’s ‘In the Mood for Love’, which turns 20 this year
June 27, 2020
Part of this mood is created through Su’s wardrobe. Like unhappy, unfulfilled women in the movies — think of Sridevi in ‘English Vinglish’, in Sabyasachi saris — Su’s not-a-hair-out-of-place look is a facade for the turmoil inside. One of my favourite film anecdotes has Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich talking about Greta Garbo. The younger […]
Posted in: Cinema: Foreign, Firstpost Column
Interview: A chat with fellow blog-era critic, Jai Arjun Singh
June 25, 2020
For more, subscribe to FILM COMPANION SOUTH: http://bit.ly/2xoNult Copyright ©2020 Film Companion.
Posted in: Cinema: English, Cinema: Foreign, Cinema: Hindi, Cinema: Malayalam, Cinema: Tamil, Interview
Krishna and His Leela, On Netflix: A classy, well-written update on the one-man-two-women premise
June 25, 2020
What’s interesting in these “new-gen” movies — especially in the context of Telugu cinema — is how interestingly, how consistently the women are written. Spoilers ahead… The “new-gen” in Telugu cinema may not be as big a thing as it is in Malayalam, but even the odd films that trickle out point to a definite […]
Posted in: Cinema: Telugu, Television / Online
Readers Write In #213: The real purpose of education is the joy of discovery
June 25, 2020
(by G Waugh) Virtually every single thing in the universe – trees, bikes, nails, eyes, watches, paints, planes, fishes are all essentially made up of the same constituents. You can theoretically, get almost all elements occurring in nature if you are given with a sufficient supply of protons, electrons and neutrons. And breaking down of […]
Readers Write In #212: Gulabo Sitabo highlights the hypocrisy of mankind
June 25, 2020
(by Carlos Luis) In the song ‘do din ka ye mela‘ Dinesh Pant reminds us that life is a two-day fair and it has to go on. Life is an amalgamation of happy and sad moments. It has its own bitter and sweet stories to narrate. The movie Gulabo Sitabo presents the uncertainty of life […]
Posted in: Cinema: Hindi, Readers Write In
Shoojit Sircar’s Gulabo Sitabo On Amazon Prime: The (too) carefully curated mood feels tonally off with this material
June 25, 2020
The film feels like an anecdote stretched into a novel. By the end, the loose plot does come together, but it doesn’t feel like it’s been worth this kind of build-up. Spoilers ahead… What a curious film this is! There’s, first, the tone. The story begins with the friction between Mirza Sheikh (Amitabh Bachchan), who […]
Posted in: Cinema: Hindi, Television / Online
Readers Write In #211: Blacksails, an underrated show but one of the finest TV shows ever made
June 23, 2020
(by Sudarshan Garg) Hyperbole? Well read on, and then watch it before you decide. To get the ball rolling, the show in a nutshell is about Pirates in the Golden Age of Piracy. It is a prequel to the Book by R L Stevenson, “Treasure Island”. In the book, we start out with a mysterious […]
Posted in: Readers Write In, Television / Online
Readers Write In #210: Sushant Singh Rajput and the curse of introversion
June 23, 2020
(by Madan Mohan) Seeing as everyone, including myself, has only been talking about Sushant Singh Rajput for the last week or so, I didn’t want to compose a write up that would pile on. Until I saw something today that hit a raw nerve… The first time I watched Sushant Singh Rajput in a film […]
Spirit of Humanity – a musical journey
June 22, 2020
On June 26, the orchestral album “Spirit of Humanity” is set for a grand worldwide launch. Chennai-based composer Ganesh B. Kumar speaks about his journey. Dhahara Vidhya Foundation, a Chennai based non-profit charitable trust, aims to spread ‘Peace and Harmony’ globally through music. The trust commissioned Ganesh B. Kumar to compose two orchestral works, and […]
Posted in: Music: Western
Revisiting Sachy’s screenplay for Driving Licence, with Prithviraj and Suraj Venjaramoodu, now on Amazon Prime
June 22, 2020
Sachy’s special talent shone through his writing in his last two films: they’re a masterclass in how to make the same “story” look and feel different. Spoilers ahead… Range is one way to tell how talented a screenwriter is: he can dish out a four-handkerchief melodrama, he can also dish out a serial-killer thriller. The […]
Posted in: Cinema: Malayalam, Television / Online
Podcast on NAYAKAN for ‘Love of Cinema’
June 21, 2020
For more, subscribe to FILM COMPANION SOUTH: http://bit.ly/2xoNult LOVE OF CINEMA invited me to chat about NAYAKAN… Here’s the link! https://loveofcinema.buzzsprout.com/257788/4231754-s2-episode-9-nayakan-1987-with-baradwaj-rangan?play=true Copyright ©2020 Love Of Cinema.
Federico Fellini’s ‘La Dolce Vita’ depicts the suicide of an intellectual and the death of everything he stands for
June 20, 2020
How prescient this film seems from today, from this world around us where sensationalism is everything. Fittingly, ‘La Dolce Vita’ also gave us the word “paparazzi” in the intrusive, invasive sense we recognise it today. … Ingmar Bergman died the best possible way, in 2007: peacefully, in his sleep. But seven years earlier, a report […]
Readers Write In #209: Mommy-fied, Or: The Supermom, according to Keerthy Suresh and Vidya Balan
June 19, 2020
(by Piyush Pratik) Spoilers for Kahaani (2012) and Penguin (2020) ahead. First and foremost, I will get this off my chest (and duck swiftly): I find both Vidya Balan and Keerthy Suresh quite similar. And their physical presence, which is so affectionate, so delightful, so pleasing, so…homely, is the least of it. Both of them […]
Penguin, with Keerthy Suresh, on Amazon Prime: This wannabe moody thriller falls victim to some seriously bad writing
June 19, 2020
I felt very sorry for Keerthy Suresh, who’s stuck with a character whose motivations — at any given point — are: “Er, uh, it says so in the script.” Spoilers ahead… Right from the beginning, Penguin proves that it has cunning twists up its sleeve. To start with, the film is not set in Antarctica. […]
July 2, 2020
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