Smorgasbord Fantasia

For ages, we have been pining for that huge gap in our lives left by the excellent Game of Thrones ( minus that terrible ending, of course!) and Amazon Prime has been trying hard, to get us hooked onto multiple different options. The grandest of them all, is of course The Wheel of Time currently running on Prime ( more on this later!) but we've seen a few more ambitious attempts.  Carnival Row - Season I (2019) falls somewhere right in the middle. Luscious worldbuilding, fantastic visuals that looks like a Dickensian Fever Dream, earnest performances and an overstuffed ambitious storyline.  Does it qualify to fill in that void? Nope, not by a long measure. but by itself, without drawing comparisons, Carnival Row is not a bad series at all, headlined by Orlando Bloom and several others playing key roles in the first season.  The story is a gas-lamp fantasy set in a world populated by both humans and the ‘fairyland residents, ‘fae”. As the story opens, the fairyland has be...

 Dhrishyam set the standards for crime-thrillers in Malayalam movies pretty high when it released in 2013 and was subsequently remade in multiple languages across different states in India. And on Friday, Feb 19th, the sequel to this superb Murder-Mystery, Dhrishyam - Part 2 (The Resumption) released on Amazon Prime. (Prime by the way does a fabulous job of bringing the 'right' kind of blockbusters to OTT platform - recently watched Lokesh Kanagaraj-Vijay movie Master, an absolute cracker of entertainment and action!)  Does the sequel live up to the hype? Can Jeethu Joseph+Mohanlal duo re-create the magic of the original? Is there an angle that needs to be pursued here? What could possibly happen post that humdinger of a twist by the end of Dhrishyam-I?  Naturally, the expectations were stratospheric and the audience ecstatic about the possibilities. The trailer gives us hints, that the sword is still hanging above George-Kutty and his family's head and there is no peace ...

 If you, like me, are stumped by the unexpected Diwali rains, and are surfing aimlessly on Netflix or Prime, then let me suggest an absolutely well-made movie about an underdog triumphing against the sky-high odds (pun intended!) story - called Soorarai Pottru , on Amazon Prime Video .  Inspired by the aviation stories from "Simply Fly" by Captain K Gopinath - the pioneer of low-cost aviation in India, this movie is a dramatised version of his realisation of this impossible dream, a epic David-vs-Goliath story of how he moved mountains to achieve his dream and make India fly. With Suriya firmly in the pilot's seat, this movie doesn't just fly, it soars!  With his inimitable style and characteristic intensity, Suriya triumphantly carries through this whole narrative on his able shoulders, making us cry, cringe and then smile as he brings alive the pain and triumph of "Maaran", the man behind the impossible one-rupee air-tickets.  While yes the story remains ...

 Oct 23rd will see the goons of Mirzapur take over Amazon prime in India, once again. ( Oh it's so happening now, am guessing!) Season - II premieres on the platform and Prime is pinning its hopes on this ultra-violent, gripping series focused on the caste-and-politics based violence of the UP Hinterlands to bring an extra shine to their overall festive season dominance.  I managed to just about catch up on Season-I on time before the new season arrives - and while it may have its flaws in being morally decadent and perhaps a  questionable story-telling style etc, I was frankly hooked on to this. For a good day and a half, over the weekend. I literally 'binged" on the nine 45-minutes long episodes of the first season, hanging on for dear life as the businessmen, politicians and the goons played havoc with each others life, each episode layered on with enough profanity, gratuitous violence and sex to last TV viewers for a full two years ( This first season released in 2...

Amazon Prime , for long has been trying to outdo the frenzied success that Sacred Games brought for Netflix India . They finally might have found one. In Pataal Lok , produced by Anushka Sharma, directed by Sudip Sharma. Set in the seedier outlands of Delhi ( Outer Jamnaa Paar )  Pataal Lok is a black noir thriller with mythological overtones, focused on the efforts of a down-on-his-luck honest but cynical cop, Hathi Ram Chaudhary's attempts to unravel the mystery behind a failed assassination attempt of a high-profile journalist. It succeeds at different levels, often because of the realistic treatment of the issues of casteism, racial prejudices and the political machinations that is weaved into the crime-narrative, rather than be just backdrops against which typically such crimes flourish. While the first couple of episodes lays the foundation for an intriguing mystery and assuredly plumbs the seedier parts of a Delhi, we have never seen really, the series truly soars -...

Malayalam film industry is a touch above the rest of Indian cinema when it comes to making original stories of the soil, come alive in myriad colors. It's a bold statement but when watching movies like Kumbalangi Nights by Fahadh & Friends , this claim clearly doesn't seem outlandish and I am convinced this is the right direction, we should be moving in. This movie is a fascinating portrayal of the cracks and fissures spider-webbing through the thin patina of a sleepy backwater tourist haven. Kumbalangi Nights rips through the concepts of dysfunctional families and even the toxic masculinity that has been the focus on many a malayalam movies for long. Aided by a fabulous, perceptive script[ written by Shyam Pushkaran ] debutant director Madhu C Narayanan brings to life, the lesser aspects of the idyllic life on a fishing hamlet, going beyond the happy facade presented to the tourist. Delving deep into the uninspired and almost wasted lives of a family of brothers. S...