Posts

Showing posts from April, 2022

After the humongous success of Never Kiss Your Best Friend

After the humongous success of Never Kiss Your Best Friend, the makers are set to win the hearts of the audience with its second season, which is set to release tomorrow. While the trailer has garnered a tremendous response from fans, Karan Wahi and Sarah Jane Dias' addition to Nakuul Mehta and Anya Singh's show has just made the series better and bigger. Ahead of the release of Never Kiss Your Best Friend season 2, Karan Wahi talks about his shooting experience, chemistry with Anya Singh and much more in an exclusive conversation with Firstpost. Excerpts from the interview: Apart from your character, what drove you to come on board for this show? Yeah, just the entire aspect. I actually watched the show, the first season and I really, really liked the first season. And I thought these are the kind of shows that India needs more, rom-coms ka jo flavour hai, has become a little lesser than what it used to be. Today's shows are all about crime-thrillers or thrillers, or actio

Mushy moments aside

The Tomorrow War movie review: Mushy moments aside, Chris Pratt's alien invasion thriller is a worthy watch Chris Pratt's The Tomorrow War seems to be director Chris McKay's hat-tip to its thematic predecessor, the 1996 seminal feature Independence Day. In the opening shots of The Tomorrow War, Dan Forester (Pratt) is about to enter his house where they are hosting a Halloween party. As he walks across the porch, a blowup Halloween doll comes in centre-frame. The inanimate object flutters in the wind, and its head slowly tilts towards the camera, as if it were alive. Those few seconds are enough to establish a foreground for the narrative. A sudden human intervention reveals to the present world (of 2022) that mankind will come under major threat in the next couple of decades, following an alien invasion. In the raging tussle between man and beast, humans are fast disintegrating to a point of extinction. The future humans ask for public help, and through a process of "

As the news cycle regularly demonstrates

As the news cycle regularly demonstrates, the simple, quintessentially modern act of taking a photograph has now become a predominant way of subverting entrenched power. And female artists, often on the fringes of cultural society, have been using their cameras to do just that for well over 100 years. This is one of the provocative declarations made by Our Selves: Photographs by Women Artists from Helen Kornblum, the Museum of Modern Art’s empowering new exhibit of work by female photographers from over 100 years and all around the globe. “For me it was interesting to constantly ask the question what is a feminist picture, because I got so many answers,” exhibit curator Roxana Marcoci told the Guardian. In fact, Our Selves provides 90 answers to this question, ranging from Frances Benjamin Johnston’s 1899 photograph of young students in a penmanship class to Black photographer Carrie Mae Weem’s 1990s “kitchen table” series. Feminist pictures also look like queer photographer Catherine

A look at actor Dev Patel's career graph

A look at actor Dev Patel's career graph in the film industry Slumdog Millionaire to now on his birthday. When I saw Dev Patel in his film debut, the surprise hit  Slumdog Millionaire—which pre-release rated so low it was supposed to go straight to  DVD—I didn’t think much of him at all. Freida Pinto, whom Dev dated after Slumdog Millionaire,  stole every moment of Dev’s playing time. Dev was gauche and unimpressive in Danny Boyle’s overrated Chawl drama. And then on top of the unimpressive screen presence, Dev went on to do all the wrong films including the disastrous M Night Shyamalan’s 3D  Air Bender,  followed by About Cherry and The Road Within, one worse than the other. I thought that was the end of  Patel’s cinematic journey. I was wrong. Soon after these disasters, Dev (named lovingly by his Mom after her favourite actor) was seen as the mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan in The Man Who Knew Infinity. I thought Patel, a  Gujarati by birth, got the Tamil accent right. H

Each of the women I encountered in Roar

Each of the women I encountered in Roar, the majestic ode to muliebrity in all its glorious hues—the good, the bad and the ugly—were memorable in their own way Strangely when I think of memorable trippy whimsical women characters I think of only non-Indian films, like Jesse Buckley in I Am Thinking Of Ending Things. Or Olivia Colman in The Lost Daughter who ups and leaves her children because she can’t cope with the pressures of motherhood. Years ago Reena Roy did that in J Om Prakash’s Apnapan. She left her child and marriage to pursue a career. She had to eat crow, shed buckets of tears of repentance and apologise to her husband. The only woman in Hindi cinema who was allowed to be whimsical in her life choices was Rosy in Vijay Anand’s Guide. She was “allowed” to leave her husband, live in with her lover and pursue her dancing career. The film was still a hit! I spent four hours with eight gorgeous eccentric women in Apple TV’s Roar and trust me, it was every bit well worth my while

While Runway 34 is directed by Ajay Devgn

While Runway 34 is directed by Ajay Devgn, Tiger Shroff's Heropanti 2 is helmed by choreographer-turned-filmmaker Ahmed Khan. In Bollywood, we have witnessed several biggies locking horns with each other at the box office. In 90 per cent of the cases, one film wins the race but there have been some iconic clashes like Jai Santoshi Maa-Sholay and Lagaan-Gadar, where both the movies emerged winners at the ticket windows. On the coming Friday, we will see two big-ticket films battling it out with each other at the box office. We are talking about Ajay Devgn-Amitabh Bachchan starrer Runway 34 and Tiger Shroff, Nawazuddin Siddiqui's Heropanti 2. Many trade experts are not in favour of this clash as theatres have just reopened after the pandemic crisis and battling it out at the ticket windows in this crucial time can affect the business of both the films. However, we feel this clash will be fruitful at the box office and here are some points to prove that. Eid weekend Runway 34 and

'We have plans to do a few more chapters. It will get bigger and better'

KGF producer Vijay Kiragandur on expanding film's universe: 'We have plans to do a few more chapters. It will get bigger and better' Vijay Kiragandur of Hombale Films talks about KGF Chapter 2 and its clash with Vijay's Beast: 'We are confident that there are enough screens in India. Both films can be accommodated' Ahead of the release of KGF: Chapter 2, producer Vijay Kiragandur talks about how international markets were picked for the Yash-starrer, and plans to continue with the franchise. As fans of the KGF franchise are lining up to buy tickets for the second chapter, producer Vijay Kiragandur shares what makes the action movie the perfect pan-India film. On 14 April, KGF: Chapter 2 will hit the big screens in about 70 countries in Kannada, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam. Among those countries is Greece, which isn't a conventional market for films made in South India. "There was a lot of interest from Greece. We got lots of messages on social me

Lalitham Sundaram is beset by confusion

Lalitham Sundaram is beset by confusion over what it wants to say, further exacerbated by its unimaginative story and storytelling Lalitham Sundaram could mean “simple and beautiful” or “simple is beautiful” or “beautiful simplicity” or all the above. And for the first half of its journey, the film looks set to earn these adjectives, despite the familiarity of its premise. This is a story of troubled siblings gathering reluctantly after the death of a parent – we’ve been there, seen that in cinema (good and bad) across the world and in India. The test each time, it goes without saying, is the treatment.  What keeps Lalitham Sundaram going up to a point is its slice-of-life tone, a sense of humour, the unobtrusive handling of a sprinkling of progressive elements that holds out a promise of out-of-the-box thinking, and the potential in the team-up of two of Malayalam cinema’s most charismatic actors: Manju Warrier (also the film’s producer) and Biju Menon.  Manju, for instance, plays the