Amaze on and on and on: Matka King, Dupahiya, Snakes and Ladders, Matka King and The Rana Connection In the third part of my report, here’s the lowdown on four more shows that Amazon has lined-up, in various languages. Matka King (Hindi) In this fictional tale set in 1960s Mumbai, an enterprising cotton trader who craves legitimacy and respect, starts a new gambling game, dubbed ‘Matka’, which takes the city by storm and democratises a terrain previously reserved for the...

Bastar-The Naxal Story, Review: GhostBastar Conflict has been raging at India’s borders for decades and decades. India-China and India-Pakistan borders are conflagration points since the last century, and Kashmir is a region which India claims as its own, while insurgents align themselves with Pakistan. We also face conflict in the North-East, where there are separationists in action. But the largest conflict is between Maoists (Communist Party of India, Marxist-Leninist), known as Naxa...

The Great Indian Family, Review: Pandit pop’s bhajan singing son is a Muslim What a roundabout route it has taken to emerge as The Great Indian Family! It began with the 2010 British film The Infidel, starring Omid Djalili (the D is silent), directed by Josh Appignanesi and a cast that included South Asian sounding names like Archie Panjabi, Saamiya Nasir, James Krishna Floyd, Nabi Nasir, Mina Anwar, Amit Shah, Uzma, Ravin J. Ganatra and Niraj Naik. Five years later, we had an Indian ad...

Two-day Bollywood International Film Festival kicks off on the 17th in Mumbai “A film festival needs to be ethical and impartial, and that is exactly what Bollywood International Film Festival strives to be,” said Bollywood International Film Festival (BIFF) founder-chairperson Pratibha Sharma, and actor-director Yashpal Sharma at the media meet of the film festival, held at the Harmony Hall of Carnival Cinema, Oshiwara, Mumbai Of the 200 plus entries received by the festival, th...

Family of Thakurganj, Review: Nannu, Munnu and nothing New, New Referencing dozens of mafia/gangster movies made in India and the West, Family of Thakurganj glorifies crime for the major part, gets into a conscientious hiccup and sermonising after the midway mark, and ends-up offering ‘crime kills crime’ as a solution against the rot of corruption that has set in the entire fabric of the Indian police/law/politics nexus. Except for a couple of twists in the plot, there is little t...