News and Views

Truth be told, I really tried to come up with some funny, attention-grabbing opening paragraph for this review. But I have failed miserably. As it is, this lockdown is hard and then to watch Mrs Serial Killer can really bring on the blues. So straight to the point. I won't be so mean and tell you who the killer is (though no big surprise in store) but I can tell you Mrs Serial Killer is really a g...

For some reason, Irrfan Khan’s going away seems deeply personal. Some of us were lucky to have met him in person but for most of us, it was his magic on the big screen that made us feel like we had forged a special relationship with him. One of the last films I saw in a theatre and reviewed before this lockdown was Angrezi Medium. At that time I had no idea that it would indeed be his last. This s...

Hotstar’s latest show starts with the voiceover of one of its leads introducing us to the other. As ACP Saumya Shukla aka Lara Dutta’s voice slowly takes us through Nethra Patil aka Rinku Rajguru’s life and motions we do get a hint of how the two women will invariably be conjoined in their efforts to question the status quo. The word “Hundred” in the title refers to the number of days Nethra’s doc...

We meet a bloodied Chris Hemsworth surrounded by absolute mayhem as he crawls to safety dragging his injured leg. Hemsworth coughs blood and as he stares into space we wonder what could possibly have happened that lead to so much pain? Almost on cue we are quickly prompted to what transpired 2 days earlier to give some context before director Sam Hargrave can bedazzle us with his stunt genius. Don...

DISCLAIMER: This podcast has been recorded on Skype due to the ongoing lockdown. We apologise for the bad audio quality. Even though the coronavirus pandemic is the big crisis of the moment, for the underprivileged it is hunger and starvation that is the bigger crisis.  Did it take a pandemic and a lockdown for the country’s privileged to understand who does the bulk of our work? The migrant labou...

Siddhi, Damini, Umang and Anjana –the fabulously flawed women are back! A little more than a year later after we first met them, the warm familiarity and the infectious joie de vivre help us form an instant connect again -all positive signs while welcoming a new season. Season 2 of Four More Shots Please! starts four months after what ensued in the lives of our 4 women protagonists. Umang’s dramat...

Actor and Producer Dia Mirza has had a longstanding relationship with the environment. UN's Goodwill Ambassador Dia in a conversation with The Quint said that we must listen to what nature is telling us and learn from it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Yes, we are calling it Stage 3. Officially we may not call it – but it is the beginning of Stage 3,” said Dr Girdhar Gyani, the convenor of a task force on COVID-19 hospitals, in an interview to the The Quint. Dr Gyani, who’s the founder of the Association of Healthcare Providers, was part of a video conference of healthcare professionals with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 24 March. This task f...

The human spirit is indefatigable! We have stood upto some arduous times and learn to come out of it stronger. It is true that sometimes we fall victims to our own vanity. We have drawn boundaries all around us – borders on maps, borders of caste, creed, race, religion, gender, wealth – to separate us from the rest. And as if it’s to mock at our conceit, a microscopic virus, invisible to our naked...

Desperate times call for desperate measures. While the coronavirus is forcing everyone to stay at home, what is the best way to put those idle hours when not working from home to good use? A new series, She, created by Imtiaz Ali, has dropped on Netflix. Ali hasn’t been in the best form lately, and after his last offering Love Aaj Kal 2, the apprehension about his work is only increasing. However,...

"Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” - That's what JFK said at his inaugural speech as America's President in 1961. "Stand at your doors, windows and balconies and beat your plates, and ring your bells to thank those providing essential services during this crisis," and that's what PM Modi said on 19 March 2020, while addressing the nation about the COV...

Neeraj Pandey has a natural flair when it comes to making films revolving around India’s internal security or tackling threats from neighbouring countries. Having directed films like A Wednesday, Baby, Naam Shabana (he wrote the screenplay), it’s a turf that feels like home to him. Having enlisted Shivam Nair as the director, Pandey’s latest offering is an eight-episode strong slow-burning espiona...

A spin-off to the much-loved Hindi Medium, Angrezi Medium makes us realise right at the outset how much we missed seeing Irrfan Khan on screen. It's where he shines his brightest. Taarika (Radhika Madan) is an average student, who shares an endearing bond with her dad and has big dreams of travelling the world. Champak soon realises that no matter how much he tries and keeps her aspirations in che...

A largely unfunny, plot-heavy film, Baaghi 3 is a fusion of mainstream elements of Hindi cinema. There's family drama, there’s action, and there's terrorism. Starring our new age ‘king of action’ Tiger Shroff, Riteish Deshmukh, and Shraddha Kapoor, this Ahmed Khan directorial is an adaptation of the 2012 Tamil film Vettai. It also stars Vijay Varma as a Pakistani pickpocket Akhtar Lahori and Jacki...

Amrita’s (Taapsee Pannu) life has a routine. A very specific tightly knit routine. She wakes up, opens her front door to collect milk, picks up the newspaper, makes chai, shuts off the husband’s alarm, serves him chai as he lazily rubs his eyes, checks on the mother in law, has a quiet moment sipping from her cup of morning tea, clicks a picture from her phone as the day breaks, smiles at her neig...

Filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj talks to The Quint about his support to the anti CAA-NRC protests going on across the country. He raises some pertinent questions about patriotism and people’s inability to agree to disagree. During the conversation Bhardwaj also takes a dig at Akshay Kumar’s Canadian nationality. Host: Nishtha Gautam Editor: Deepthi Ramdass Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megapho...

There are some very common tropes that we associate with the horror genre and debutant director Bhanu Pratap Singh pretty much ticks most of the boxes. With some, he genuinely excels but by the end of this two and a half hour saga, the film loses steam. In 'Bhoot', the moments of dread are as important as the buildup. But this unrelenting ominous journey has its fair share of hits and misses. Host...

'Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan' makes many smart moves and most pay off. The addition of Ayushmann Khurana and Jitendra Kumar and the “normal” way their “love” is shown. It begins at a point where it almost seems like the two confide in us that they can’t stay without each other. There is just as much explanation provided for this attraction as there would have been if say Ayushmann and Bhumi Pednek...

In 1967, India fought China to protect its land and won. But why was this crucial victory forgotten? Probal DasGupta, the author of ‘Watershed 1967: India’s forgotten victory over China’, weighs in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1960, Bollywood saw the release of director K Asif's ambitious film Mughal-e-Azam starring Madhubala and Dilip Kumar. It was the widest release of any Indian film at that time that also left behind a whole lot of nostalgia. Fifty-six years later, in 2016, theatre and film director Feroz Abbas Khan made an equally ambitious adaptation of this cult classic in a grand Broadway style musical. And h...

In this episode of Rajpath, economist and former Planning Commission deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia speaks to The Quint’s Editorial Director Sanjay Pugalia on a range of issues pertaining to the state of the Indian economy, and also looks back on his years in government. What does the current economic situation need? How will India be able to make its way through this slowdown? Sanjay P...

Flawed characters are enticing and their relatability makes them endearing. Love and relationships we all know are complicated... Is it chemistry, is it biology? Does it develop over time or does the first flush of romance leave an indelible mark forever? Such questions are ready fodder for any film about the conflict of the head and the heart. Ali himself has always had such emotionally fragile a...

Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s latest directorial venture opens with the caveat that it’s a work of fiction based on true events. Also, we are told that the people we see on the screen at the refugee camps aren't just actors but actual refugees who were displaced and rendered homeless during one of the most tragic chapters in our country’s history - the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits. It is Chopra’s most person...

Two purposeless vagabonds with loads of money meet in Goa and decide to have fun in Malang. Soon, the viewers are in for a treat. There is a method to this madness. The free- spirited girl Sara we thought had no higher calling tells us she has many fears in life that she wants to conquer . For example she quips, “I want to be with a stranger and have fun.” Ahem. Not just that, she wants to bungee...

On the night of 19 January 1990, all hell broke loose in Kashmir — a place many think of as ‘Heaven on Earth’. Several mosques in Srinagar played the Azaadi slogans, asking the Indian security forces to quit: ‘aey jabiro, aey zalimo, Kashmir hamara chhor dou’ . They didn’t. Those who were in barracks and bunkers and at the borders were brought down to kitchens and bedrooms by the deafening chants....