Laal Singh Chaddha, Review: A run for your money, in branded underwear It’s been fifteen years after Aamir Khan acted in and directed Taare Zameen Par, about a dyslexic child, and 28 years after Tom Hanks captivated our hearts as Forrest Gump, who had an IQ of 75 and needed braces to correct what was believed to be a curved spine. In 2022, here comes a film that is the official remake of Forrest Gump. It could be among the warmest, heart-tugging tales you’ve heard being told, or i...

The Black Prince who walked the Red Carpet at Cannes Very little is known about Maharaja Duleep Singh, the last Maharaja of Punjab with his capital at Lahore, who is said to have gifted the invaluable Koh-i-Noor diamond to Queen Victoria, while a young boy. Time and again, a lobby is raised in India to try and get it back from Britain, only to fizzle out. Dalip Singh remains an enigmatic figure, a missing chapter from India’s colonial history. All that is set to change with oncoming rel...

Blue Mountains, Review by Siraj Syed: Colourless Molehills Used as a metaphor for distance, apparently unattainable goals, the Blue Mountains of the title prove as elusive and illusory as the real ones the makers project on screen. Lots of colour, lots of singing, lots of dancing, lots of melodrama, and lots of snow do not help Blue Mountains attain any height. Instead, we find ourselves in a cave, at best, or, rather, a gorge. Som (Yatharth Rastogi), a hill-town boy, and part of a gang of f...

Siraj Syed reviews ‘A Million Rivers’: Complex hOMage to simple man PURI This ‘homage’ began as a ‘tribute’ to Om Puri, counterpoised against Lillete Dubey, by writer-director Sarah Singh, four years before his death, in 2013, and was completed in 2016. We saw the film on 30th January 2017, at the Black Box, in Central Mumbai, courtesy the G5A Foundation for Contemporary Arts and Culture. When I last met Om Puri in the last week of November 2016, at the In...