Phone Bhoot trailer launch: Horrorlarius Ever since the audience saw the first poster of Katrina Kaif, Siddhant Chaturvedi, and Ishaan Khattar starrer Phone Bhoot, they were eagerly waiting to get more glimpses of the film. Their wait is over: the trailer of this most awaited comedy of horrors was launched on 10 October at the PVR multiplex, Juhu, Mumbai. Phone Bhoot is a title most likely chosen as a pun on the word Phone Booth, and has been in the news for some time now, because superstar ...

Thugs of Hindostan, Review: Where are the thugs? In the Hindostan of the early 1800s, as in most countries at any time in history, there were thugs. India, as Hindostan came to be called by the British, had an exactly similar term for these gentlemen, only the t in thug was hardened to sound like tug. Our story begins in 1795, when one small kingdom dared to withstand the marauding East India Company forces, led by John Clive. There is one solitary thug in the film, who has an ambivalent att...

Siraj Syed reviews Fuddu: Fuddy Duddy Cuddy in the Nuddy You wouldn’t use this f word if you called yourself a gentleman. In their wisdom, the makers of this misbegotten enterprise have named it Fuddu. Heaven knows why. I cannot recall even one occasion in the film when the word as mouthed, probably because the locale is Mumbai and the characters are all from Varanasi, where the culture is anything but Punjabi. Some Punjabis, and maybe Delhi-ites, who revel in the use of colourful langu...

Continuing short reviews of films, seen at the 46th International Film Festival of India. (See Festival Diary I, II, III, IV and V for more coverage) Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara: India: Zoya Akhtar Dude, this was released in 2011! So how come you are writing about it now? Simple. I saw it NOW! Daughter of a writer-poet father, one of India’s best-known, and an actress who was famous as a child star, Zoya is perhaps not as famous as her brother Farhan, who is an actor-director-producer-wr...

MFF 17, by Jio-MAMI, Festival Diary, part I  MFF 17, by Jio-MAMI, Festival Diary, II                                       Kiran Rao and Anupama Chandra Come 28 October, and we learnt that the inauguration of Jio MAMI 17th Mumbai Film Festival would be held on 29th October in open-air at Mumbai’s most famous landmark, the Gateway of India. It was also learnt that the inaugural fi...

Phantom, Review: RAW-hide Rambo Saif Ali Khan comes in for Salman, Katrina stays put, so do the London locales and the secret agent assassin theme, as director Kabir Khan tries to go one up on his last outing in the genre, Ek Tha Tiger (2012). He has claimed that Tiger was unrealistic, whereas Phantom is close to reality. That claim is highly debatable. Phantom is indeed inspired by real and devastating, events that wreaked terror in Mumbai, in November 2008, killing 167 persons. That does ma...