LoveYaPa, Review: The mobile phone as Pandora’s Box Those who are uninitiated might not realise that the title is a variation of siyapa, which means chaos or jiggery-pokery, and that siyapa itself comes from the Urdu word, siyah, meaning black, or dark. Siyapa has been used in the title of a film some years ago. So the makers of LoveYaPa have come up with this three-word composite term, standing for Love Ya and Pa. Translate these three words, and you get Love Or Pa (father). Clever, ve...

Srilankan film The Other Half, Review: Death, despair and despondency In the opening titles, the carries a long message about Srilankans dying of kidney failure, caused by the wide use of contaminated or sub-standard fertilisers and pesticides. As many as 50,000 of them have lost their lives due to such poisoning, and continue to die, making it a tragedy equal to, or perhaps even greater than the Civil War that ravaged the island state in recent decades. This makes you wonder whether a docume...

Deva, Overview: Different, not distinguished It is different. Though the central character is an Assistant Commissioner of Police (A), and a tough nut at that, the film has a modest littering of corpses and a very few incredible, blood-letting or torture sequences. Based on these very qualities, Deva, which is almost poles apart from the spate of current films that are contrary to this approach, should be welcomed. Moreover, it stars Shahid Kapoor, who is yet to be labelled a hit man, most ...

Ilu Ilu 1998, Review: Too many luse ends A good 38 years ago, in a Hindustani hit film titled Saudagar, lyricist Anand Bakhshi coined a sensible nonsensical term in one of its songs, which began with Ilu Ilu, the three letters of the alphabets, standing for I Love U. It was a runaway hit. The song lived in the memory of a unit of Marathi film-makers, who might have been just born then or in their early childhood. Cut to 2025. A Phalke family (any possible connection with the father of Indian ...

SkyForce, Review: May the Force be with you That is more like it. When you are making a film about war and real wartime heroes, stick to the basics and let jingoism take a back seat. We have had more than our fair share of war movies, with Indo-Pak conflicts dominating the screen. Many have set their tales in British India, going back up to 200 years. Yet others have flashed back a good 1,000 years, to reawaken the history of Muslim/Mughal rule over our country. SkyForce narrates the story of...

Eaten by the Sea -  a james W. Hawk music film and Winter Shadows on New Snow and Wind in the Old Oak Tree - a James W. Hawk experimental time-lapse film were quarter-finalists at the WideScreen Film & Music Video Festival in Toronto, Canada. ...

Overview, Game Changer: The Collector, his sideways sidekick, the CM and the game of musical chairs It used to be ‘the end justifies the means’, and the end was always the turnstiles. So, the end was always the same, only the means, or the ways of getting there, were different. Then it became ‘the means are the same, since the end is the same’. So we had similarity in approach too, with only a semblance of difference. Finally, we have reached a stage where ‘the t...

LoveYaPa, Trailer and song launch: Aamir dominates press and fan meet, speaks with characteristic candour It was a roller-coaster ride for the attendees, and a personal nostalgia trip for me, when the title song and trailer of the forthcoming film, LoveYaPa (a pun on Love or Pa), releasing on 07 February, the week preceding Valentine’s Day, in the presence of media and fans. The day was today and the venue was New Excelsior Cinema, now under Mukta A2 ownership, and the time was…w...

Love is Forever, Overview: Unrequited love, unimpressive expression If one were to take a count of films made on the theme of love, in all its splendour, one might find that the overwhelming majority of films made in the past 100 years have love at their core: filial love, maternal love, paternal love, love between spouses, flirtation, love as lust, love as a pursuit, patriotic love, spiritual love, love of a game, platonic love, sublime love, triangular love and unrequited love, are some exa...

The Heist, by M.K. Shankar: Screenplay-dialogue book review Not many directors/writers publish the screenplay of a film they could not, or did not, make. So, it was surprising when M.K. Shankar, who I first met some 33 years ago, presented me a copy of The Heist, recently. The screenplay of The Heist-One World One Government, is not to be confused with The Heist, a 2024 Hindi-language crime thriller film, directed by Aditya Awandhe, starring Nad Sham, Suman Rao and Siddhanth Kapoor. The scree...

Sky Force trailer launch: Aerial action beyond enemy lines After a spate of films about military engagement and espionage across the border, we have a movie that rises in the air and traces the action of the air force, in 1965. The film is titled Sky Force and its trailer was launched last week at the PVR Cineplex at Juhu, Mumbai. Starring Akshay Kumar and Sara Ali Khan, the film introduces Veer Paharia, an assistant director who graduates to a romantic lead with the film. Akshay and Veer wer...

Pushpa means flower in Hindi. Our protagonist is not a flower, but a fire. Not any ordinary fire, but as he declares, to his nemesis, Shekhawat, “wild fire.”. This ‘flowery wild fire’ learns the skill of swimming and holding his breath underwater for much longer than the average swimmer, instantaneously, when forced to fetch a cricket ball from the bottom of a pond. Apparently illiterate, or, at best, semi-literate, he lives in the Chittoor district of Telangana, so his...

Dhai Aakhar: Merely two-and-a-half letters of an alphabet arouse great expectations Dhai means two-and-a-half, and Aakhar means akshar or the letters of the Hindi alphabet. The title is taken from a doha (simple, moralising poetry written in couplet form) by an Indian saint, Kabeer, centuries ago. The line goes ‘Dhai aakhar prem ka/key padhey so Pandit hoye’ (whoever reads the two-and-a half letters of the Devnagari alphabet, that add-up to mean love, will be a true seer). Co-prod...

Vijay 69, Review: VATs 69 in a name? A story that looks very elevating and moralising on paper does not necessarily translate into an engaging film. Vijay 69 is one such film. It seems to have been made to showcase that Anupam Kher, who played an old man’s role in Mahesh Bhatt’s Saaransh (1984), when he was 29, can play such a role, as a 69 year-old at 69. That is a no-brainer. Forty years on, he has done 540 films and started an acting school, besides trying his hand at directio...

The Sabarmati Report, Trailer launch: Express train. Engine Arrival Time in Mumbai: 06 November 2024, Departure: Unknown On 27 February, 2002, one compartment of the Ahmedabad-Varanasi Sabarmati Express train went-up in flames at a railway station in Godhra Junction, killing 59 engers and injuring 48. Many politicians and media-persons equated this with the 9-11 attacks, on 09 September, 2001, on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, of the USA, and other places, in which 2,997 peopl...

 Film historian Lalit Mohan Joshi’s poignant film ‘‘Angwal’’explores the vibrant yet often overlooked culture of Kumaoni poetry © film critic Lalit Rao (FIPRESCI) dated 05/11/2024  “Angwal,” which translates to “embrace,” is a documentary directed by Lalit Mohan Joshi that explores the vibrant yet often overlooked culture of Kumaoni poetry. A BBC journalist based in the UK and founder of the South Asian Cinema Foundation, J...

Navras Katha Collage, Review: It might get a few ‘awards’, for…. Comedian Jerry Lewis, in the top league during the 50s and 60s, made a breakthrough movie in 1965, called The Family Jewels. Breakthrough, because he played seven roles in the film, all brothers, besides co-writing and directing it. I have been unlucky not to have seen this reportedly hilarious experiment, but I came close when I saw an Indian, Hindustani film, Naya Din, Nayi Raat (NDNR). Nine years after The ...

Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3: Grotesque? Yes. Burlesque: Yes. Statuesque? Yes. Humouresque: No. Maze: Yes. Amazing: No Bhool Bhulaiya literally means a maze or labyrinth, in Hindustani language. This one refers to the Adventures of a Fake Ghostbuster and his Pygmy Partner, who collapses at the slightest sign of danger. They are as fake as the royal family they are summoned to, to perform the task of busting the ghost of a princess, who was imprisoned in a large room, with heavy padlocks, 200 years ago. ...

IFFI, other Film Festivals, and the Media: Partners or undesirables? When the first film festival as held in Bombay in the year 1952, by the Films Division, 30 years after the first international film festival was held in Venice, nobody would have expected we would be holding the 55th edition in 2024. In the 50s and early 60s, festivals were not held in India regularly, only sporadically. In the 70s it became an annual feature, hence only 55 festivals are spread over 72 years. Since then, it ha...

Sonu Nigam on Society Achievers’ September cover: Surprise? Kirti Azad has been there. If cricket and politics can make you a society achiever, why can’t singing? Society Achievers continues the legacy of late Nari Hira’s Lana (La for Lalu Bajaj and Na for Nari) Publishing Company, which has undergone several changes since its formation in the early 1970s, as Lana Publishing Company, Magna Publishing Company, HiBa. Hi for Hira and Ba for Bajaj, his partner, a swimming champi...

Kanguva teaser, trailer and songs launch: Everybody loves everybody else Suriya Sivakumar, Disha Patani, Bobby Deol, K. E. Gnanavel Raja, Jayantilal Gada and Devi Sri Prasad was the quorum this afternoon at the Fun Republic, Andheri, Auditorium 2. Director Siva was busy giving finishing touches to the film, and excused himself, but Suriya said that he was extremely excited at the Mumbai event, but just could not fly down. But they were nowhere to be seen when I arrived, horribly late for a 12...

MAMI’s Mumbai Film Festival treats media like dirt, and then denies accreditation ScreenShots from the MAMI website and information about the (now deleted) Registration Google Form, for PRESS Accreditation at the Mumbai Film Festival, October 19-24. All clicked around 12.45 pm-1.45 pm, on 20 October 2024. You have to go through more than a dozen stages before your application is even accepted by the Festival authorities. Getting Accreditation is another story altogether. Read on. Plea...

Dharma’s Dharmatic Decision: Will it make a difference? Film critics in Mumbai received a communication last week from Dharma Productions, which has been the talk of the community since then. Dharma was founded in the 1970s by the late Yash Johar, and is currently owned by the Johars, Karan and his mother, Hiroo Yash Johar. On the Dharma website, we are told that: “The name Karan Johar is synonymous with prestige, elegance, versatility and success. He is amongst a prolific group...

Jigra, Review: JigrAlia Though ‘jigar’ literally means liver in Hindustani, ‘jigra’ means courage, guts and gumption, essential qualities of a brave-heart. In an era of super-heroes and super-heroines, the title gives little away. So you try to relate the title to its star, Alia Bhatt. Having made a terrific impact with her performances in the last 2-3 years, you feel this might be a new avenue, an action showcase, for her considerable talent. You would not be far from...

Kusum Ka Biyaah: A bridge that divides Jharkhand was carved out of the state of Bihar many years ago. Perhaps some people in either state and the governments have not yet reconciled to the partition. There appear to be irreconcilable differences between them. With this background comes a small indie film, Kusum Ka Biyaah (Kusum’s Marriage), that is set in the border areas of the two states and involves the marriage of a graduate girl called Kusum, from Bihar, to a colliery worker from J...