Fukrey 3, Trailer launch: Risqué sera sera On an authoritative website, the word ‘Fukrey’ translates as ‘slackers’. It must be native to Delhi and its environs, as I have never come across this word anywhere else. That a Mumbai-based production house (Excel Entertainment, of Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani), bank-rolled this definitive Delhi dalliances caper, beginning with its first episode in 2013, and stayed with it for another 10 years, shows the faith the...

Azamgarh, Review: Saving the honour of a city, and a religion Quite often, the religious minority of Indian Muslims is targetted for producing and harbouring young men who join terrorist groups, both within and outside India. While maybe a hundred or two hundred such misguided souls are either killed in encounters or found guilty of terrorist attacks and accordingly punished by the law of the land, there are an estimated 20 million Muslims whose motherland is India and who live in peace. That...

IFFI 53, 2022, 09: Bihar as a shooting destination The Bihar pavilion at the 53rd IFFI has called out to budding film-makers to explore the historical, archaeological, cultural and natural heritage of the land of Buddha and Mahaveer. This year, at IFFI, as an initiative, several state governments had installed their pavilions at the Film Bazaar, to promote film-making industry in the states. States such as Manipur, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Tamil Na...

Varun Dhawan holds sway at Amazon Prime Video bae Events starting on time is a rarity in the entertainment circuit of Mumbae….oops, Mumbai, but for once the exception proved the rule. A smartly dressed young lady greeted me at the desk, took my name, which I spelt out to her loud and clear. Then she took my picture on an ipad and told me to collect my identity badge a few minutes later. As I entered the Grand Sangam Ballroom at the J.W. Marriott hotel, Juhu, there was loud dance music ...

Bachchan Paandey, Review: Gangsters are best played by real-life gangsters Why would you choose a name like Bachchan Pandey, unless you thought you could cash-in on the franchises called Amitabh Bachchan (name of a real life actor) and Chulbul Pandey (name of a reel-life character, played in several movies by Salman Khan)? Point is, does a superstar himself, like Akshay Kumar, who plays the title role, need these props? Leaving the Paandey behind, ‘Bachchan’ is made to speak some ...

Angrezi Medium, Review: Crazy Tedium Three years ago, Maddock Films gave us a slice-of-life entertainer called Hindi Medium. ‘Medium’ here referred to the language, the medium of instruction in school education. It was just passably humorous yet proved more popular than expected, garnering a few awards as well. A follow-up went into development soon afterwards, repeating its lead actor Irrfan Khan. Though still to recover completely, Irrfan is back in Maddock’s Angrezi (Engl...

Super 30, Review: Inequality, equality and variable quality Two basic tenets form the paradigm of Super 30: a real-life story about a nondescript do-gooder who is a super achiever must strike a chord with audiences, and, secondly, any tale of a low caste and poverty-stricken protagonist, sacrificing his lady love and filthy lucre for the cause of educating fellow under-privileged ‘untouchables’ in his society, will have them rooting for the unlikely hero. How these doctrines pan o...

Stree, Review: Ironing ‘bored’ What do you call a female ghost? For want of a better word, the villagers who are haunted by this entity call it Stree (Hindi for woman). Fair enough. If English film-makers can call a ghost Entity, what is wrong with a Hindi film selecting Stree as its eponymous title? Mind you, this is no ordinary ghost that haunts or possesses the simple village-folk. It kidnaps only men, every year, with precise accuracy, on the same dates, and leaves behind only...

Angrezi Mein Kehte Hain, Review: Show me that you love me Delhi-born director Harish Vyas makes his Hindi film debut with an adult love story set in Varanasi where the only thing adult about the theme is the fact that the lead actors are husband and wife and gave a grown-up daughter. In fact, the issue it addresses till three quarters of the film has rolled by is the lack of demonstrative love between a conscientious postal clerk and his devoted wife. Enough to keep you curious and sensitised...

Newton, Review: Gravity of the situation Had he been alive in the modern period, the British scientist would have bagged multiple Nobel prizes for his pioneering work in Physics. As it happens, the film of the same name, not a biopic of Sir Isaac, rather about an idealist in the Indian bureaucracy, has been eliminated from the race for the Oscars. A million or more Newtonians are feeling heart-broken that a film that they considered a breakthrough, and the best film made in India in recent t...

Siraj Syed reviews Anaarkali of Arrah: Item girl--“Spite ’em girl, Bite ’em girl” Ten minutes into this loud and raw film, you know you will root for the protagonist, an item girl plying her art in Arrah, a small town in the eastern Indian state of Bihar. An item girl is a woman who wears garish costumes, sings, dances, cavorts, titillates and tantalises on stage, to a public, sing-along audience, that joins her full-of-double-entendre lyrics, lusts after her and drool...