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RRREVIEW: RRRIt has been five yearrrs since the magnum opus BAHUBALI’s sequel hit the big scrrreens. And dirrrectorrr RRRajamouli had set the barrr so high for the fantasy genrrre in Indian movies that no one else had the guts to attempt making a movie on that scale. And so the onus was on the same perrrson to attempt anotherrr fantasy crrreation.And the idea of RRR was borrrn!Not surrrprrrising…

REVIEW: DOWNFALL: THE CASE AGAINST BOEINGVery tragically, just as I set out to write a review of the new Netflix documentary “DOWNFALL: THE CASE AGAINST BOEING”, comes the news of the crash of a BOEING aircraft belonging to China Eastern in China.This 90 minute stark documentary is scathing about the impact of the culture changes in Boeing after the McDonell Douglas merger with BOEING from being…

THREE REVIEWS: THE KASHMIR FILES/ BADHAAI DO/ JALSA After a long, long time, I saw three Hindi movies on three successive days, all of which came up to what I call “Malayalam Standard”. What does “Malayalam Standard” connote? Movie that are fairly devoid of glamour, marked by excellent direction and acting by actors whose “star” value is not in the top rungs, and featuring themes that are wildly…

REVIEW: THE POWER OF THE DOG (Netflix)RATING: 4 out of 5When a friend recommended to me to watch this new release on Netflix ( this was released worldwide in theatres last month), and said that it was a western, I promptly put this on my “to watch” list.I had not seen a western for a long time; the excellent actor Benedict Cumberbatch was playing a lead role, and because of the title, I thought…

REVIEW: The Great Indian Kitchen

REVIEW: THE GREAT INDIAN KITCHEN This is easily one of the best movies in its genre in at least the last two decades. And that can be seen from the rating that I have given in the end.Now, what’s the genre which we are talking about?Nothing can be more misleading than the title of this 2021 Malayalam movie (presently on Amazon Prime) when it comes to describing the genre of this movie. Yes,…

THE MUSIC OF 99 SONGS : A R RAHMAN

THE MUSIC (or should I say MAGIC) OF 99 SONGS : A R RAHMAN About four weeks back, when I first listened to fourteen songs from 99 songs, the first thing which I decided was that I would listen to these over and over again. And I have listened to these numbers at least a dozen times in the last four weeks! And this is the second time that I have heard new songs at such a frequency in 2020, the…

REVIEW: BANDSH BANDITS [ New Series on AMAZON PRIME]

IF I hadn’t been referred to watch this new series, I may not have watched it. ( Why: That will come later on!) IF you are a hardcore addict of violence, crime and continuous thrill infused movie buff, IF you are someone who doesn’t like to see fresh faces on the stale idiot box, IF you are someone who hates classical music of any kind,…

REVIEW: SHAKUNTALA DEVI

Anu Menon’s previous directorial effort was five years back, when she directed Naseeruddin Shah and Kalki Koechlin in WAITING. A poignantly made movie about a friendship between two persons, whose spouses are in a comatose condition, this 100 minutes movie was a worth watching production. If you have missed seeing it, you can catch it on Hotstar. The BITS, Pilani…

RATING : 2.5 out of 5 July 25th, 2020

REVIEW : DIL BECHARA A few days back, I wrote positively about the music of DIL BECHARA. If you haven’t still listened to it, please do so, because it is the best Bollywood music album from amongst all the movies released in 2020. And if you have heard the numbers a few times, you may like when the numbers are played out when and if you watch the movie. That…

THE MUSIC OF “DIL BECHARA” There aren’t many of my friends who wouldn’t have heard of the unfortunate passing away of the Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput a little over a month back. Sushant’s last film is DIL BECHARA which is slated for release in the next few days on Amazon Prime platform. The songs were released less than a fortnight back and I have just kept listening to these songs every…

SEVEN TAMIL MOVIES WORTH WATCHING 1

SEVEN NOT TO BE MISSED RECENT TAMIL MOVIES Soon after we were grounded at home following the COVID 19 scare, we began to engage ourselves by watching interesting Malayalam movies on the TV screen. Our choice of Malayalam movies was guided by the fact that the few Malayalam movies which we saw, were not only off-beat, but highly watchable. But more about Malayalam movies in my next post. This post…

WALK ON MAY 17th

Today morning, on my walk, I encountered a few known four legged friends (known to you and me). I told them that I was impressed that they were following one way street restrictions. When I asked them as to why they weren’t wearing masks, they said that those rules weren’t for the likes of them. And they added that they didn’t have to do social distancing either. They then spotted the 17th Cross…

The first mainstream movie from Bollywood which decided to be on the OTT platform before releasing in the theatres, GULABO SITABO is as quirky as the title. Gulabo and Sitabo refer to, in the world of puppetry in Lucknow, the wife and the mistress and the puppet show is about the squabbles between these two characters. And here in the movie, these squabbles are between the ageing Mirza (played…

TIT BITS ABOUT HAKKI PIKKI

TIT BITS ABOUT HAKKI PIKKI My last post was about Green Chikki and those who read that could be pardoned for assuming that this post about Hakki Pikki is a sequel to Green Chikki! But it is not! If you were to be a relatively new recruit and posted at Bengaluru Immigration at the International Airport, it is likely that you could have had the following conversation with an international passenger. Y…

THE GREEN CHIKKI Spirulina is a type of blue-green algae that grows in both salt and fresh water. It is considered to be one of the richest sources of protein, vitamins and minerals. In fact, gram for gram, Spirulina is widely considered to be the most nutritious food on this planet and has in the last two decades, found itself in the list of nutrition supplements world over. Today, on my morning…

LESSONS IN LIVING: THE NEW CINDRELLA STORY

LESSONS IN LIVING 1 When I received this from a friend, I thought that it had an important lesson… Enjoy! Cinderella is now 95 years old. After a fulfilling life with the now dead prince, she happily sits upon her rocking chair, watching the world go by from her front porch, with a cat named Brian for companionship. One sunny afternoon out of nowhere, appeared the fairy godmother. Cinderella…

REVIEW: AARYA (Web Series)

REVIEW : AARYA ( TV Series currently on Disney+Hotstar) Few Bollywood buffs would have forgotten a movie called NEERJA made about 4 years back on the real life story of an air hostess trapped in an airline hijack situation. NEERJA was a slickly made movie and was backed up by good acting, and a grossly underrated music score. Ram Madhwani was the director and Vishal Khurana the music…