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The Galatta Plus conclave, Session 1: ’35 years of NAYAKAN’
For more, subscribe to GALATTA PLUS: https://tinyurl.com/ysbkyrht Copyright ©2022 GALATTA.
Posted in: Cinema: Tamil, Interview
Anubhav Sinha’s ‘Anek’, with Ayushmann Khurrana, takes us into the problems in the North East, but the socio-dramatic punch of this duo’s earlier work is missing.
May 27, 2022
Spoilers ahead… The big problem is the very direct dialogue, which makes us feel like we are listening to a political manifesto. The visual and conceptual touches work much better. Anubhav Sinha may be one of the most important, and also one of the most earnest Hindi filmmakers today. Ever since he made that U-turn […]
Posted in: Cinema: Hindi
Rest
May 23, 2022
A plug for Pooja Nair’s book of stories, ‘I Was With You’ . Death, or rather the fear of it, struck Vasant Rao with unexpected suddenness, when he turned eighty-four. A celebration would be organised with friends and relatives who would come with good wishes on this occasion, called Sathabhishekam in Sanskrit. A day, when […]
Interview: Lokesh Kanagaraj (Vikram)
May 23, 2022
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Posted in: Cinema: Tamil, Interview
The new Mohanlal-Jeethu Joseph thriller, ’12th Man’, on Disney+ Hotstar is talky and dull
May 21, 2022
Spoilers ahead… The film is not unwatchable, exactly. But none of the characters are terribly interesting, so it never matters who the culprit is going to be. Jeethu Joseph’s 12th Man opens with a secret that quickly is told to someone, who tells it to someone else, and so on – until the secret is […]
Posted in: Cinema: Malayalam, Television / Online
Kangana Ranaut gets into action mode, but even she can’t battle a script that is just a bunch of cliches
May 21, 2022
Spoilers ahead… The film looks spectacular but we feel we have seen it all before. Razneesh ‘Raz’ Ghai’s Dhaakad is the kind of action-thriller where someone in the back room tells the field operative something like this: Dragonfly, this is Ringmaster! It’s the kind of movie where the protagonist suffers stabbings and ten thousand bullets […]
Posted in: Cinema: Hindi
Rahul PK’s ‘Sakutumba Sametha’ plays like an easy-breezy rom-com, but it’s more: a beautifully written choreography of conflict
May 20, 2022
Spoilers ahead… The film is not just about the relationship between the boy and the girl. The film is about relationships in general. At first, I thought I was watching an easy-breezy rom-com. A boy from Bengaluru has met a girl on an online matrimony portal. They are days away from the marriage, when she […]
Posted in: Cinema: Kannada
Rahul Riji Nair’s cyber-thriller ‘Keedam’ has solid performances from Rajisha Vijayan and Sreenivasan, but the plotting never transcends the basics of the genre
May 20, 2022
Spoilers ahead… What the film does well is instill in us a deep fear of what hackers are capable of. But that cannot sustain a feature. Rahul Riji Nair has had an interesting career. He started out with indie-ish films like Ottamuri Velicham and the superb Kalla Nottam, where the GoPro camera dictated our point […]
Posted in: Cinema: Malayalam
Readers Write In #464: நான் எப்படி “ஒரு மனிதன் ஒரு வீடு ஒரு உலகத்தை” புரிந்துகொண்டிருக்கிறேன் ?
May 19, 2022
By G Waugh “நான் சென்ற வாரம் ஜெயகாந்தன் எழுதிய ஒரு மனிதன் ஒரு வீடு ஒரு உலகம் படித்தேன். அதை படித்த எல்லோரும் அதை சிலாகிக்கும் அளவுக்கு அதில் அப்படி ஒன்றும் இல்லையே?” என்று என் நண்பர் ஒருவர் சொன்னார். நானும் அந்த புத்தகத்தை இதற்கு முன்பு படித்திருக்கவில்லை என்பதால் எனக்கு மூன்று நாட்கள் நேரம் தருமாறு வேண்டிக்கொண்டு படித்து முடித்துவிட்டு அதை பற்றி விவாதிக்கலாம் அன்று சொல்லி அந்த புத்தகத்தை அவரிடம் இருந்து வாங்கி […]
Posted in: Books, Readers Write In
We did a YouTube Live for a small landmark: 50k subscribers.
May 19, 2022
Copyright ©2022 GALATTA.
Posted in: #AskBR / #QnA, Cinema
Mammootty is spectacular in Ratheena’s ‘Puzhu’ (SonyLIV), the rare film where a man from a dominant caste is depicted as a victim
May 19, 2022
Spoilers ahead… The filmmaking is solid, but the writing does not match up. The excessive focus on the protagonist leaves the other characters stranded. In an early scene in Ratheena’s Puzhu, a young boy reads aloud pages from a textbook. These pages are about the “toilet-cleaning community” and how Gandhiji opposed this. Many decades later, […]
Posted in: Cinema: Malayalam, Television / Online
Interview: Kangana Ranaut (Dhaakad)
May 16, 2022
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Posted in: Cinema: Hindi, Interview
10 Questions: Parvathy
May 12, 2022
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Posted in: Cinema: Malayalam, Interview
Interview: Parvathy (Puzhu)
May 9, 2022
For more, subscribe to GALATTA PLUS: https://tinyurl.com/ysbkyrht Copyright ©2022 GALATTA.
Posted in: Cinema: Malayalam, Interview
Readers Write In #463: The Devil Wears…Propaganda?
May 9, 2022
By Madan Mohan Can you take a book (for the purpose of shooting a middle budget Hollywood movie), adapt it reasonably faithfully and still change just enough of it that the whole thrust, the crux of it is altered more than significantly and the message is rendered ambiguous or even mildly positive? With potentially damaging […]
Posted in: Cinema: English, Readers Write In
Raj Singh Chaudhary’s ‘Thar’, on Netflix, is a neo-Western that sets up an interesting premise and does very little with it
May 6, 2022
Spoilers ahead… None of these characters or situations are written with any depth, and apart from veterans Anil Kapoor and Satish Kaushik, no one is capable of fashioning at least the semblance of a flesh-and-blood person on their own. The lay of the land is laid out in the most brilliantly poetic fashion in Thar, […]
Posted in: Cinema: Hindi, Television / Online
Arun Matheswaran’s ‘Saani Kaayidham’, on Amazon Prime, is a gory revenge drama with impeccable craft, but the writing needed much more meat
May 6, 2022
Spoilers ahead… The main attraction of the film is the cast. Stripped of makeup, Keerthy Suresh dives into a difficult role. And Selvaraghavan is wonderful. When I saw Arun Matheswaran’s first film, Rocky, I said that the narrative was generic, but the film signalled the arrival of a genuine cinematic voice. I said that the […]
Posted in: Cinema: Tamil, Television / Online
10 Questions: Vignesh Shivan
May 4, 2022
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Posted in: Cinema: Tamil, Interview
Readers Write In #462: Gangubai Kathiawadi – Impotent Pomposity
May 4, 2022
By Karthik Iyer Vijay Raaz’s character, Raziabai, symbolizes Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Gangubai Kathiawadi. Dolled up, impotent pomposity. Raaz has no real use in the movie, just like the movie has little use in our changing cinematic landscape. His character could have been mentioned in the passing as a personality that exists but is never shown; […]
Readers Write In #461: Kaathu Vaakula… A tale of two many backstories
May 3, 2022
By Harish Prakash Let’s start where KRK begins. Rambo’s many uncles and an aunt remain unmarried because of a supposed curse running in the family that marriages will lead to mishaps. This happens as soon as Rambo is born. His father falls off a water tower and dies and his mother falls ill and gets […]
Posted in: Cinema: Tamil, Readers Write In
Baradwaj Rangan 
May 27, 2022
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