Indu Sarkar is an effective propaganda movie only to the extent that it knows its mission-statement and knows whom to shame and whom to take in its stride, feels Sreehari Nair.
Saif Ali Khan takes stock of his recent hits and misses with a fresh perspective.
'Sriram Raghavan is mainstream Hindi cinema's greatest gift to us,' declares Sreehari Nair after watching the director's latest movie caper.
After a series of challenges on reality show Kingfisher Supermodels 3 on NDTV Good Times, Aishwarya Sushmita from Bihar won the crown.
'The bumblebees in Par Ek Din may not be flying yet, but even as they dangle in mid-air, their stings hurt.' 'Effortlessly graceful, this is a work of passion that conveys what being passionate about something truly feels like,' says Sreehari Nair.
Superheroes, Holi, apples and other happenings from Sukanya Verma's super filmi week!
'Polish girls, who try to dance to Bollywood songs after having a little bit of wine, are quite funny to watch!' Erika Kaar gets ready for her Bollywood debut, Shivaay.
Vivek Gambhir revels in his two-city life between the Godrej-owned flagship in Mumbai and his own family in New Delhi.
'Quite the raconteur, much to the dismay of Courtroom 51's CBI Special Judge Jayendra Chandrasen Jagdale, Christopher 'Doglis' Marquis, a Bandra dog-breeder who was Prosecution Witness No 57 and a panch or witness, seemed to move into the witness box with glee, embellishing every answer that he gave to the lawyers' questions with a variety of additional details.' Vaihayasi Pande Daniel reports from the Sheena Bora murder trial.
'This colliding of worlds is a feature of chawl life in Mumbai, where the clashes in one household often become prime-time television for the neighbours; where the boundaries of good sex, lechery, and incest are frequently blurred,' says Sreehari Nair.
The Avengers: Age Of Ultron is one madly indulgent film says Raja Sen.
Raja Sen makes his predictions for Hollywood's first awards show of the year.
And you won't guess which film tops Raja's list! And why.
Sreehari Nair is *not* impressed by this lot of films at all.
Actresses come and go, but these ladies will always dazzle.
Anita Aikara/Rediff.com breaks down the fashion trends for you.
'I was very nervous working with Rani Mukerji in Mardaani initially because she is such a senior actor.' Meet Tahir Raj Bhasin.
'Any Muslim who shows even the slightest hint of revolutionary thought is marked as 'infected'.' 'At that point, he is taken to the nearest Detention Centre where a procedure called Reconditioning awaits him.' 'Areas with a high Muslim population have been designated as Scheduled Religion Zones.' 'To be an active participant in this social cleansing ritual, there is only one prerequisite: You have to be an undying patriot whose friend and family is his country.'
Taapsee Pannu explains why she doesn't want to be an actor all her life.
"Who will be his men?" a distinguished official close to the prime minister asked. Frankly, nobody has an idea. Hardly seven weeks are left for a regime change, but the idea of Narendra Modi on Raisina Hill looks abnormal, if not unreal. Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt captures the uncertain mood in the capital's bureaucracy ahead of the largest democratic transfer of power in the world.
How much more gray or bald would Inspector Alaknure have become when we see him next? Will Peter still be wearing white shirts and khaki trousers and eating large lunches? Will Judge Jagdale be still in charge of the case? Who will be the prime minister when Alaknure appears in court next?
At a farm? At a pop-up restaurant? Or at home? Harnoor Channi Tiwary explores the new-age dining options.
Raja Sen reviews Birdman in three sentences, as a tribute to the film's brilliant one-take technique. We space out the review for easy reading.
Presenting an excerpt from Vaishnavi Nair's debut book OK Now, Who's My Santa?
Shah Rukh Khan yelps and squeaks and shrieks and bares fangs and pouts and, well, exhausts himself overcompensating at every step, despite nobody else in the film following this template.
It is a film worth watching and recommending and loving, like a novel you can't wait to lend to friends you care about.
'It should be considered one of the primary cuisines on Earth,' Zorawar Kalra tells Avantika Bhuyan.
And it's written with tears, blood and unspoken lines.
As the weeks go by in this trial, it has emerged that Shyamvar Rai is that rare species of driver whose knowledge of distances, directions and routes surprisingly would not even fill the back of a postage stamp.
'In Angamaly Diaries, dreams, kinks, small corruptions, cheap lives, and hopes are all given their due and that attitude frees us up to believe that perhaps there is more good than bad in the sum total of us.' 'This is a coming-of-age tale taken straight out of a diary written in blood,' says Sreehari Nair.
'From the beginning (I have told her) "Whatever it may be -- you are losing or winning -- on the ground you're not going to cry!" She never cried.' '"I don't want you to project that you are a loser. You are a winner".' Vaihayasi Pande Daniel/Rediff.com speaks to Leela Raj about her famous daughter, now in the West Indies for the women's T20 World Cup.
'Every Ali obituary I read made the point that he 'transcended his sport' -- a reference to the many battles he fought with America even as he fought in America.' 'What the obituaries leave out is that Ali equally transcended the boundaries of geography and of information -- as witness the Chennai teen who assimilated that most mobile of fighters through still images shorn of context.'
One of the many contrasts that Kumar versus Nilekani highlights is that of a traditional career politician as against a highly successful professional entering politics for the first time. Rupa Subramanya reports
'Peddlers isn't a movie of grand cinematic achievements, but one of small yet startlingly original victories.'
Lootera is a gorgeous, gorgeous film, one that uses its period setting affectionately, with loving detail, and not exploitatively, as our cinema is wont to do.
There is a political vacuum emerging in Tamil Nadu, but can the Superstar, the state's biggest phenomenon since the late MGR, take advantage of it? Does he have what it takes to enter politics, or is he merely ensuring headlines ahead of his film's release, asks N Sathiya Moorthy.
'It took a 75-year-old director to teach the reformist set of Facebook users that Evil is not an aberration, but something that resides in the most regular seeming of human beings,' says Sreehari Nair.
Aseem Chhabra lists the elements that he loved and was pleasantly surprised by in the movies.
