Maithili Rao

The critical success of &#8216;Qala&#8217; and &#8216;Bulbbul&#8217; attests to the writer-director’s subversive 
and immersive storytelling and the courageous backing of her producers

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Current Cinema: Anvitaa Dutt: An Original Voice for Female Fables

Mahesh Bhatt’s Arth made 40 years ago is still the gold standard when it comes to Hindi films on the daily burden of patriarchy forced on Indian women, specially when dealing with their husband’s infidelities. It is unfortunate though that we had to wait four decades to see a film like Anubhav Sinha’s Thappad.

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The Meaning of Arth, 40 Years Later

Shahrukh and Aamir Khan are passé. The violence-prone North Indian heartland wants testosterone-drenched action, not Bollywood’s content-rich films of today. Telugu and Kannada cinema is filling the void with spectacles drenched in excessive machismo

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Why Southern Cinema Has Bollywood Under Siege

Starring Shefali Shah, Kriti Kulhari and Ram Kapoor, Human goes bravely into a new macabre world where the medical profession is put on trial, pronounced guilty and sentenced to death. Here&#8217;s our full review of the series.

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Human: A Dystopic Lens On Our Hospital System

Has the pandemic changed our viewing habits irreversibly? The answer is in our subscription charges. There is an accompanying question too. Along with viewing choices, has it also changed our perception of actors and acting? Well, that would be a yes and a no. Even while we binge-watch series or drag a show on for [&hellip;]

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From Lijomol Jose To Samantha Ruth Prabhu, 9 Actors Who Delivered The Best Performances Of 2021

The Kangana Ranaut starrer Thalaivi is the latest in the male-centric film industry’s fascination with making films based on the lives of female actresses, and calling them ‘fiction’. Is there unseen synergy between biopics and actresses? Not just in India, it seems the world is interested in going behind the screen to find the woman, [&hellip;]

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Fact Or Fiction? The Reality of Biopics Made On Actresses

History is kicked around like a ragged, misshapen football. The teams are bitterly, passionately partisan. It is a clash of ideologies. Of our identity as a people. Our existence as a country. On one side, we have the vicious Indian version of America’s other pandemic, the raging cancel culture propagated by the Left. Our lot, [&hellip;]

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Nikkhil Advani’s The Empire is Noteworthy And Authentic 

From what he has said about a film-maker’s freedom to adapt literature, we can conjecture that the master would have no problem with the way Srijit Mukherji, Abhishek Chaubey, and Vasan Bala have interpreted his stories in Ray “There is always some room for improvisation.” This terse but loaded quote from Satyajit Ray precedes the [&hellip;]

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Current Cinema: Interpreting Satyajit Ray

Kaun kambakht bardasht karne ko peetha hai, main to peetha hu, ki saans le saku. Pain throbs through every syllable. Existential angst, mocking self-pity,  despair at having to endure yet another day. There is no drunken slur to dull the clarity of words of a lovelorn man who makes self-pity into spoken poetry that resonates [&hellip;]

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Dilip Kumar’s Genius Through His Best Films

The idea of the self-sacrificing, nobly suffering woman has been an inherent part of Indian cinema for nearly a century. Jeo Baby is the latest film-maker to join the honourable list of men questioning this compliance in his marvellous The Great Indian Kitchen. Six months is a long time for a film on the net. [&hellip;]