Smorgasbord Fantasia

It's that time of the year when you sit up and realize yet another year has rocketed past you!  But this year has been at least, a fairly soul-satisfying one for me, from a creative pursuits point of view. My writings are not been dead - I have finished rewriting about forty-thousand words of my previous manuscript with some solid new storylines which I think, is promising. Got a bite from an agent even! Took active participation in some writing contests, did a few nice short stories, even won an award for one of those shorts. The most soul-crushing aspect of publishing journey, which is the querying phase is on now and the agent research is in full swing now. So hey, not bad at all in terms of reviving that flagging part of my tired soul which had been caged up for like two three years past!  So coming to the topic I wanted to write on, the Best TV Shows for this year 2023 - I will run past a few of my favorites that I finally came around to watching, not necessarily released...

I consider myself an animal lover, but this beast from the Arjun Reddy and Kabir Singh director Sandeep Reddy Vanga, was an animal I just couldn't bring myself to like. Sure, there are many things to like about the movie. Like the trailer. Which in fact, drew me to watch the damn bloated excercise in misogynism and excessive alpha-male fan-service that has a run-time of over three hours.  I mean, I love Ranbir Kapoor and grudgingly agree that he's one of the finest actors of his generation but how much of his seething red-eyes and deranged father-hero worship can you take? Seems, not more than perhaps the first half that runs to perhaps a little over ninety minutes.  So well, the basics first : The story is about Vijay, a rich spoilt brat, son of one of the wealthiest industrialist in India, Balbir Singh (Anil Kapoor excels, in this role without resorting to much of his usual bon-vivant histrionics, just resigned fatigued eyes that watch a son go crazy in the name of unrequite...