All posts tagged: Opinionentertainment

Imtiaz Ali’s films taught me that getting what you want won’t save you | Opinion-entertainment News

Imtiaz Ali’s films taught me that getting what you want won’t save you | Opinion-entertainment News

Have you ever wept after months of feeling the tears gather at the edges of your being? Have you ever wept until you thought there was nothing left, only to find yourself yearning for more tears, as though they were the very thing your soul had been starved of all along? Have you ever found yourself gasping between sobs after spending so long breathing through life on sheer endurance alone? Have you ever comforted yourself because there was no one else around to do it for you? Have you ever tried to lift your own spirits while knowing that, after all, you were all you had? On an otherwise random summer Monday afternoon, I found myself doing exactly all this. The tears arrived after seasons of anticipation, after many afternoons spent sensing their approach, postponing their arrival, pretending they belonged to another day. And when they finally came, they came all at once. What came to mind almost instantly was Harry (Shah Rukh Khan) from Imtiaz Ali’s Jab Harry Met Sejal. There is a moment …

Maa Behen scrutinizes what Bandar doesn’t bother to examine: Inherent bias against women | Opinion-entertainment News

Maa Behen scrutinizes what Bandar doesn’t bother to examine: Inherent bias against women | Opinion-entertainment News

It’s an interesting week at the movies, particularly when viewed through the lens of gender politics. The two most striking of the lot are Suresh Triveni’s Netflix comedy Maa Behen and Anurag Kashyap’s crime thriller Bandar. While the former exhibits the patriarchal gaze on women — only to turn it on its head by the end — the latter leaves you longing and hoping for one final swing, which will make its women as three-dimensional and evocative as its men. Maa Behen revolves around Rekha (Madhuri Dixit), a widow, and her daughters Jaya (Triptii Dimri) and Sushma (Dharna Durga), harbouring troubled relationships because they hold each other accountable for the increasing burden of patriarchy placed on their shoulders — particularly the peeping bare-skinned shoulders of the mothership, who refuses to conform to sleeved blouses because “humein garmi lagta hai.” It’s no surprise that adman Suresh Triveni borrows the names of his central characters from the popular Nirma advertisement, which showcases its women and their bleached saris to be as spotlessly clear and dew-like pristine as …

Bobby Deol’s Bandar remains captive to its own parochial provocations | Opinion-entertainment News

Bobby Deol’s Bandar remains captive to its own parochial provocations | Opinion-entertainment News

Few filmmakers have pursued the question of masculinity with the persistence of Anurag Kashyap. Across his body of work, manhood is not necessarily a settled condition but more so a site of conflict. His cinema is drawn less to masculine authority than to its insecurities, less to its performance than to the cracks that threaten to undo it. He has repeatedly, urgently, and, rather angrily, traced the uneasy relationship between manhood and power. His protagonists may possess the physicality for battle, yet they often find themselves defeated by institutions far larger than themselves. In Dev.D, he dismantles the vanity and self-mythologising of a privileged man consumed by his own image. In Gulaal, a timid law student becomes the vessel through which wounded masculinity is weaponised. In Mukkabaaz, a lower-caste boxer enters the ring not in pursuit of victory but in defence of his dignity. And, now, with Bandar, starring Bobby Deol in the titular role, Kashyap, once again, returns to a terrain he knows intimately. So, we meet Samar, (Deol), a man suspended between adulthood …

I watched Obsession. The CBFC watched it too and decided what other adults could see | Opinion-entertainment News

I watched Obsession. The CBFC watched it too and decided what other adults could see | Opinion-entertainment News

I walked into the theater to watch Obsession completely blind. No trailers, no plot synopses, no algorithmic hype. And for two hours, I was utterly transfixed. It is a terrific, deeply unsettling film layered with complex psychological undercurrents. Curry Barker’s film, made in 20 days on a $750,000 budget by a 26-year-old YouTube filmmaker, is a horror film about Bear (Michael Johnston), a music store employee who buys a supernatural toy called the “One Wish Willow” and wishes for his friend and co-worker Nikki (Inde Navarette) to love him. The wish is granted. And then everything goes terribly, horribly wrong. The wish didn’t amplify any feeling — it overrode her entirely. The real Nikki remained trapped inside her own body, occasionally breaking through when she could overpower what was controlling her, before being pushed back down again. Her affection curdles into something obsessive, erratic, all-consuming. The film isn’t about a supernatural curse. It’s about the violence of control — what it means to have your autonomy taken, and to watch someone collect on that theft …

Kartik Aaryan became a star with Pyaar Ka Punchnama — and got trapped by it | Opinion-entertainment News

Kartik Aaryan became a star with Pyaar Ka Punchnama — and got trapped by it | Opinion-entertainment News

4 min readNew DelhiUpdated: May 20, 2026 12:51 PM IST When Pyaar Ka Punchnama released today in 2011, Kartik instantly became the voice of a certain urban Indian male frustration. His now-iconic monologue transformed him overnight into the relatable middle-class boy-next-door that young audiences connected with. He wasn’t larger-than-life, overly polished, or inaccessible. He felt familiar. And in a post-multiplex Bollywood era, that relatability became his biggest strength. But Bollywood has always had a habit of turning an actor’s strength into their cage. What started as a breakout identity slowly became a fixed brand. Over the next decade, Kartik kept returning to variations of the same character — the charming but confused boyfriend, the commitment-phobic urban man-child, the witty middle-class hustler navigating romance and chaos. From Pyaar Ka Punchnama to Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety to Luka Chuppi and Pati Patni Aur Woh, the industry rewarded him for staying within that comfort zone. And to be fair, it worked — until it suddenly didn’t. Kartik Aaryan in Pyaar Ka Punchnaama. (Photo: IMDb) The cracks became …

Dear Owen Hunt, you were Grey’s Anatomy’s most hated character and you earned it | Opinion-entertainment News

Dear Owen Hunt, you were Grey’s Anatomy’s most hated character and you earned it | Opinion-entertainment News

You walked into Seattle Grace in Grey’s Anatomy Season 5 carrying the kind of damage that felt earned. A soldier. A trauma surgeon. A man shaped by war trying to re-enter a life. The PTSD was not backstory, it was the centre of who you were, and for a while, it made you genuinely worth watching. That version of you had promise. And then, almost immediately, you started being you. Now that you have packed your bags and boarded a flight to Paris — with Teddy, because of course with Teddy — it feels like the right moment to say some things plainly. Not in anger. Just in the interest of honesty, which was never really your strong suit. Because for seventeen seasons, you managed something that very few characters on this show pulled off — you made an entire audience root against you. Not because you were written as a villain. But because you were written as a man who genuinely believed he was the most reasonable person in every room, and consistently proved …

Sai Pallavi miscast in Ek Din? Even Aamir Khan hasn’t gotten his own roles right | Opinion-entertainment News

Sai Pallavi miscast in Ek Din? Even Aamir Khan hasn’t gotten his own roles right | Opinion-entertainment News

Wide-eyed, mouth agape, brows arching in conflicting directions, and a voice calibrated to a cartoonish pitch. These alone capture Aamir Khan’s last two performances. The characters could scarcely be more disparate, the settings poles apart, the films themselves worlds away. Yet Aamir’s tonal signature remains parochial. Whether embodying human disability in Laal Singh Chaddha or affirming that difference is no deficiency in Sitaare Zameen Par, his delivery borders on buffoonery, undermining the very humanity he intends to convey. Why this sudden critique of his performances? Why not. Recently, Sai Pallavi, in her Bollywood debut with the Aamir-backed Ek Din, confessed on his YouTube channel that perhaps she had been miscast, saying, “I think somebody else was meant to do this film.” It makes you wonder, the superstar, hailed as the “thinking Khan,” seems increasingly at odds with his own portrayals. The precision he demands from others often eludes him in his own embodiment. Casting gone wrong in Laal Singh Chaddha The casting story of Laal Singh Chaddha is arguably more revealing than the film itself. …

Maybe the problem isn’t Junaid Khan-Sai Pallavi-starrer Ek Din, it’s us | Opinion-entertainment News

Maybe the problem isn’t Junaid Khan-Sai Pallavi-starrer Ek Din, it’s us | Opinion-entertainment News

In an era dominated by high-voltage, larger-than-life storytelling like Animal and Dhurandhar, where intensity and spectacle drive engagement, a soft, slice-of-life film almost feels out of place. We have become conditioned to expect constant stimulation—twists, drama, scale. And somewhere in that shift, we may have quietly lost the patience to sit with something gentle, something that doesn’t try to overwhelm us but simply asks us to feel. Perhaps that’s why Ek Din feels unfamiliar. It doesn’t chase grandeur; it chooses to stay with ordinary people and their very real, very quiet emotions. And maybe that discomfort also comes from what the film says about us. It’s one of those stories that, as a society, we are quick to judge — which one of us hasn’t had a crush and gone out of our way for a glimpse, a moment, a conversation? By that measure, haven’t we all, at some point, occupied that awkward, vulnerable space we are so quick to ridicule in others? This is where Junaid Khan’s character quietly stands out. He is invisible …

Pati Patni aur Woh Do: Do we need another film minimising adultery as a comedy of errors? | Opinion-entertainment News

Pati Patni aur Woh Do: Do we need another film minimising adultery as a comedy of errors? | Opinion-entertainment News

It’s 2026, human beings have managed to photograph the far side of the moon, but closer home, there is yet another iteration of Pati Patni aur Woh, titled Pati Patni Aur Woh Do, scheduled to grace our screens on May 15. Ayushmann Khurrana, the poster boy for progressive comedies that spotlight prickly social issues, will seemingly play a sperm donor of a different kind in this film. The teaser shows him romancing Wamiqa Gabbi, Sara Ali Khan and Rakul Preet Singh, but it is unclear (atleast to me) who his wife is. The Pati Patni Aur Woh Do teaser uses clips from the first Pati Patni aur Woh starring Sanjeev Kumar, which released in 1978 and the 2019 remake starring Kartik Aaryan, Bhumi Pednekar and Ananya Panday to inform us that “patiyon ki fitrat” or the innate disposition of husbands never changes. Whether that was supposed to be an admission of a problem or a sexist excuse for why men cheat, I can’t quite understand. A week later, Varun Dhawan, Pooja Hegde and Mrunal Thakur …

I watched Grey’s Anatomy for 16 years; The Pitt made me realise we were never really in a hospital | Opinion-entertainment News

I watched Grey’s Anatomy for 16 years; The Pitt made me realise we were never really in a hospital | Opinion-entertainment News

For the longest time, I believed Grey’s Anatomy had exhausted the medical drama for me. I was not a casual viewer. I stayed with Grey’s for 16 years, right up to season 17. I had lived through the era of McDreamy and McSteamy, watched Cristina Yang love Preston Burke and then fall into that deeply complicated orbit with Owen Hunt, kept count of how many marriages, heartbreaks, deaths this hospital could possibly contain, and stayed invested in characters like Miranda Bailey and Richard Webber. Somewhere along the way, the series became too cluttered, too crowded with new faces and stretched storylines. It simply did not end. I finally lost the trail around season 17, and after that, I lost my appetite for another medical drama altogether. So when The Pitt arrived, I gave it a miss. I was not looking for another hospital, another ER corridor, another round of medical emergencies. But word of mouth around The Pitt became impossible to ignore. It was not just that people liked it. It was that they were …