Interview: ‘Travels’ Ramji Natarajan (Location finder for RRR, Dilwale, Endhiran, etc.)

Recent Posts

• Interview: ‘Travels’ Ramji Natarajan (Location finder for RRR, Dilwale, Endhiran, etc.)
• Mahesh Narayanan’s ‘Ariyippu’ (Malayalam) is a wonderful “thriller” that strips away all thrills to present a realistic portrait of a migrant couple
• Readers Write In #530: Kantara: A Socio-Ethical Perspective
• My Top 10 list of films for the Sight & Sound poll, 2022
• Anvita Dutt’s exquisite ‘Qala’, on Netflix, puts us into the state of mind of a disturbed playback singer
• Deepak’s well-researched ‘Witness’, on SonyLIV, is a story about manual scavenging that’s more earnest than emotional
• The Galatta Plus Round Table 2022
• Readers Write In #529: Thoughts on GASLIGHT, RANGOON RADHA 
• Readers Write In #528: Thoughts on Love Today (Film)
• Alphonse Puthren’s ‘Gold’ (Malayalam) has a lot of big ideas but they don’t come together as a satisfying whole
• Interview: Guru Somasundaram (Winner of ‘Best Actor’, India, at the Asian Academy Creative Awards)
• Vivek’s underwhelming ‘The Teacher’ (Malayalam) might have worked better as a pulpy B-movie than a “serious film with good intentions”
• Readers Write In #527: Gold – An overlong and indulgent comedy that only shines in parts!
• Interview: Suresh Krishna (‘Baba’ re-release)
• Readers Write In #526: A ‘nauseating’ history, a memoir
• Interview: SJ Suryah, Pushkar-Gayathri, Andrew Louis (Vadhandhi)
• Prithvi Konanur’s superb ‘Hadinelentu (Seventeeners)’ opened the Indian Panorama section at IFFI; it’s about a leaked sex tape, and is a scalpel-sharp dissection of caste
• Prasun Chatterjee’s Dostojee is a moving, lyrical drama about a childhood that struggles to transcend communal tensions
• Jeo Baby’s terrific ‘Sree Dhanya Catering Service’ is a funnier, more free-flowing take on ‘The Great Indian Kitchen’, with men doing the cooking this time
• Readers Write In #525: Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey- An obscene class narrative masquerading as gender rights story
• Readers Write In #524: A translation of Jeyamohan’s ‘Sivam’
• Anjali Menon’s intermittently effective ‘Wonder Women’, on SonyLIV, is best enjoyed as an experiment in narrative technique
• Senna Hegde’s ‘1744 White Alto’, with Sharaf U Dheen, is a kind of stoner comedy where some jokes land big-time while others feel forced
• R Kaiser Anand’s ‘Anel Meley Pani Thuli’, starring Andrea Jeremiah as a rape survivor, on SonyLIV, is a strong story that needed stronger writing
• Interview: Vetri Maaran, Andrea Jeremiah, Kaiser Anand (Anel Meley Pani Thuli)
• Readers Write In #523: How fiction and non-fiction complemented each other in building my politics
• More than enough
• Interview: Abhishek Bachchan (Breathe: Into the Shadows)
• Vasan Bala’s ‘Monica, O My Darling’, on Netflix, with Rajkummar Rao and a top cast, is a very enjoyable ‘retro’ murder-mystery, propelled by a super-retro score
• Abhinav Sunder Nayak’s ‘Mukundan Unni Associates’, with a superbly cast Vineeth Sreenivasan, is a delicious, deadpan, dark comedy
• Interview: Udhayanidhi Stalin (Kalaga Thalaivan)
• 10 Questions: Bosco Martis (choreographer, director of ‘Rocket Gang’)
• Interview: Vasan Bala, Rajkummar Rao, Huma Qureshi, Radhika Apte (Monica, O My Darling)
• Pradeep Ranganathan’s ‘Love Today’ has a great theme that is let down by the writing, which settles for easy jokes and easy sentimentality
• Happy birthday, Kamal Haasan
• Interview: Janhvi Kapoor (Mili)
• Readers Write In #522: Classics on YouTube #6 – Fallen Angel (1945)
• Readers Write In #521: The Elephant in the Room
• Mathukutty Xavier’s ‘Mili’, with Janhvi Kapoor, shows that even a pure ‘genre film’ can be elevated through superb writing
• Interview: Anjali Menon (Wonder Women)
• Interview: Aishwarya Rajesh (Driver Jamuna)
• Interview: Pradeep Ranganathan (Love Today)
• Maju’s ‘Appan’, with Sunny Wayne and Alencier Ley Lopez, now on SonyLiv, is an interesting drama that is better with characters than plot
• 10 Questions: Anurag Kashyap
• Indra Kumar’s ‘Thank God’, with Ajay Devgn and Sidharth Malhotra, is a dull and shallow dramedy about a man who faces his sins
• Abhishek Sharma’s tedious ‘Ram Setu’, with Akshay Kumar as an atheist archaeologist, is an adventure only in name
• Readers Write In #520: PS1 review- Too many flaws to cover up
• Tanglish Talks: Happy Deepavali
• Readers Write In #519: Classics on YouTube #5 – Made for Each Other (1939)
• Liju Krishna’s ‘Padavettu’, with Nivin Pauly and Aditi Balan, is a powerfully cinematic story of an unlikely saviour