News and Views

A film can be anything it wants to be, but Dasvi makes the cardinal mistake of being... boring! Innumerable yawn-inducing, unfunny moments together conspire to make it a tiresome watch. It’s all very well to end with a Nelson Mandela quote about the “power of education”, but good intentions alone can’t make a great film. Host: RJ Stutee Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoice...

The UN's big report on climate change is out. It is the IPCC's (WG-III) sixth report on climate mitigation. And if you have been confused about all the jargon, and have been wondering how this report is different from the previous ones and what the big takeaways from it are, then we have the answers.  The Quint spoke to Dr Navroz K Dubash, who is a professor at the Centre for Policy Research, wher...

(This is a review of the Hindi dubbed version of RRR) A man after being bitten by a poisonous snake breaks a wall with his own fist! When he's on death row and in solitary confinement he does push ups! Someone else has his legs broken but takes ferocious leaps in the air to kill his target! SS Rajamouli’s 3-hour-long, hypnotic spectacle RRR is made up of many such moments that nudge us to suspend...

India's suicide crisis is often discussed in bursts of news coverage, often within boxes of celebrity suicide, student suicide or farmer suicides. The crisis though, especially in India, sits outside these boxes and is very much a consequence of systemic socio-economic-political failure, and not one that can be viewed only from the lens of mental illness. A new book Life Interrupted - Understandin...

Written and directed by Nagraj Manjule, Jhund is based on the life of Vijay Barse. A retired sports teacher, Barse founded an NGO called Slum Soccer to rehabilitate street kids and keep them off drugs and crime. The setting is Nagpur and Manjule doesn’t waste much time throwing us into the lives of the “jhund” straight off. We see a bunch of scrawny teenagers bustling around. Their reedy voices ma...

A Sanjay Leela Bhansali canvas and a complete Alia Bhatt show! Based on the 2011 book ‘Mafia Queens of Mumbai' written by Hussain S Zaidi with Jane Borges, Gangubai Kathiwadi documents the fascinating personality of Gangubai Kathiawadi and her tragic life. It’s a compelling story to turn into a film. One can expect a documentary-style detailing of the life and times of Gangubai or the other extrem...

Dr Mallika Sarabhai, famed dancer and the daughter of the space scientist Dr Vikram Sarabhai and the legendary dancer Mrinalini Sarabhai, spoke to The Quint about the real stories behind the recently released show 'Rocket Boys,' based on the lives of the Indian science pioneers Dr Homi Bhabha and Dr Vikram Sarabhai.  In this special podcast, she recounts the memories of her parents and how Dr Bhab...

The duration is a little over two hours and once we are done watching it, Gehraiyaan leaves us feeling absolutely… nothing. We feel precious little for all that transpired on screen, the characters their motivations, probably just a little sad that Anaita Shroff Adjania isn’t your stylist because it is goddamn hard to take one's eyes off Deepika Padukone. But that’s about it and this is Gehraiyaan...

Bollywood steadfastly continues on its mission to set “things straight” as far as depicting the LGBTQIA community is concerned. It has almost become a genre of sorts - a strong social message cushioned with desi humour, a terrifically put together ensemble that entertains and then educates. We know the drill all too well by now. Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against films with a social messag...

The film starts with a message flashing on a mobile screen. “Good decisions come from experience, experience comes from making bad decisions,” it reads. But what is it that pushes us to take a certain decision? Is it free will, is it all predestined? Can a single moment really change the course of our entire life? The way the story is structured we would be tempted to look for a deeper philosophic...

Never mind how baffling or absurd a premise might seem, sometimes the success of a love story depends on how much it makes us care for its characters and root for their union. Atrangi Re, weirdly enough, never trusts us with being up, close and personal with its protagonists. Director Aanand L Rai and writer Himanshu Sharma always keep us at a safe distance, feeding us basic details and nudging us...

No one took Team India seriously when they arrived for the 1983 Cricket World Cup. In fact the dazzling 175 not out by Kapil Dev against Zimbabwe in the group stage match which helped India stay on in the tournament wasn’t even deemed important enough to be covered by the BBC. Kabir Khan’s 83 brings alive on screen many such splendid moments from India’s miraculous rise and eventual ascent as cric...

Ayushmann Khurrana started his career in Hindi films by playing a sperm donor in Vicky Donor. Over the years he has been part of projects where he has gone bald, played a gay protagonist and has essayed the role of a man with erectile dysfunction. Challenging notions of 'masculinity' and striving to do what we like to call something 'hatke'. VO: RJ Stutee Music: Big Bang Fuzz Learn more about your...

Bob Biswas, the poker-faced insurance agent from Sujoy Ghosh’s 2012 cult classic Kahaani gets a spin off. This one is written by Sujoy and directed by his daughter Diya Annapurna Ghosh. Here Bob Biswas, we are told, wakes up from a coma after years and has lost his memory. But the deal is that we remember everything. In fact, Bob Biswas (pronounced Bob Bishash in Bengali) isn’t the kind one can fo...

With several of his shows cancelled due to threats of violence, vandalism and even murder, Munawar Faruqui is a comedian who seems to be in the perennial line of fire of right-wing trolls and Hindutva outfits. In this freewheeling chat with The Quint, Munawar opens up about the toll this is taking on his work, his physical safety and his mental health. Is he seriously considering quitting standup...

After subjecting oneself to the banality of a completely uncalled for sequel, this exercise of then writing about it is even more tiresome. Fatigue has already set in. Is it possible to talk about Bunty Aur Babli 2 without speaking of its predecessor? No! If anything, this new instalment makes us yearn for the original even more. Especially when a forgettable tune plays onscreen and we reminisce a...

Hello, I am Dia Mirza and all through my pregnancy, I smoked. Actually, I didn’t, but it doesn’t really matter, because my unborn child and I are a part of the 90% of the world that breathes polluted air. Breathing in Indian cities has been equated to being a regular smoker. WHO tells us that air pollution kills about 7 million people worldwide each year. In India alone, there were as many as 980,...

Amitav Ghosh, celebrated author and Jnanpith awardee, says it’s not him or his body of work that is changing, but it’s the planet that has changed. Climate change effects that are being observed around the world can no longer be escaped. “There’s nowhere else,” he says. In this special podcast, The Quint’s Opinion Editor, Nishtha Gautam, catches up with Amitav Ghosh to discuss his new book, The Nu...

“Hum do hamare do” generally refers to a couple and their two kids, who help complete a family. However, in the movie Hum Do Hamare Do, the hero is in dire need of parents to have a happily ever after. Dhruv (Rajkummar Rao) is a self-made man.  It’s this need to conjure up a family that then becomes the raison d’etre for everyone involved and we have no option but trudge along. There is nothing in...

It’s for a noble cause after all. BellBottom becomes the first major Bollywood film to release in cinemas after the deadly second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was also one of the first Indian films to start shoot during the pandemic. It's set in the 1980s against the backdrop of a number of Indian Airlines hijackings by forces hostile to India. This has to be a separate genre- the “Akshay Kum...

It’s been 22 years since the Kargil war. Shershaah is based on the life of Captain Vikram Batra who bravely fought for the nation and was awarded the Param Vir Chakra posthumously. Now without this context if we were told the story of a young man who grew up wanting to join the Army, and is so fearless that he charges towards the enemies without a second’s thought for his own safety, a guy so dram...

"Vagueness of the law allows prosecution agencies to charge people. Even 70 years after Independence, our judges don't seem to realise what is sedition, what is terrorism," said former Supreme Court judge Deepak Gupta, who, along with four other former judges, called out the stringent UAPA and sedition laws at a recent public webinar. The webinar titled “Democracy, Dissent and Draconian laws – Sho...

Mimi, streaming on Netflix, is a film that deals with surrogacy. It's full of dialogues and scenes that are a little on the nose, talking about the pious relationship between a child and its mother. However, the dominant presence is that of melodrama. Mimi is as filmy as it gets, and I don’t mean this as a compliment. Tune in for the full review! VO: RJ Stutee Learn more about your ad choices. Vis...

The last time Farhan Akhtar and Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra came together was for Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, a well intentioned but tiresomely told story based on the great Milkha Singh’s life. In Toofaan, all the trappings of a commercial sports biopic are again summoned and a few minutes into the film the fatigue has already set in. An underdog pulsating with passion, finds direction and purpose in life un...

On 9 July, the Uttar Pradesh government released a draft of the proposed Population (control, sterilisation & welfare) Bill 2021 with an aim to make a two-child policy mandatory for those who wish to avail government benefits. Two days later on the occasion of World Population Day, the government also released the state’s population policy saying that the governments aim to bring the birth rate do...